Kind: captions
Language: en
we're talking about the firing of a
particular neural configuration
and if you've heard that phrase neurons
that fire together wire together and
it's this notion that out of all of our
brain cells there's some that are going
to have sort of the synchronized
activity and through that the
connections between them will grow and
be privileged over other connections
and that is essentially the foundation
for human memory
so that once a particular let's say an
episode has occurred
when we go to recall it
if we hit one of the nodes in this
neural network that represents the
episode we experienced all of the
neurons that kind of fired together will
become activated and that'll bring up
the richness of the actual episode
itself in our memories
[Music]
amishi ja welcome to the show it's great
to be here i'm very excited to have you
the brain is a weird and wonderful place
and you really dive into some of the
more enjoyable parts of its weirdness
one of the things that i find really
fascinating about your work is somebody
who has a mind that wanders
obsessively
and i would say i have a bad memory and
for a long time i considered that to be
the bane of my existence and then i
started asking the question but from an
evolutionary standpoint is there an
advantage like has some part of this
been selected for
as you think about the context of
attention and a wandering mind
has it been selected for and if so
why
oh has mind wandering been selected for
great question absolutely
the and this is sort of a puzzle that
we're still figuring out
but if you just look at the
prevalence of mind wandering so 50 of
our waking moments we're doing this
from a metabolic point of view that
would be a really inefficient design and
every single thing the brain does
it really is trying to advantage it
functioning well
so for some reason we do this and
it is on purpose meaning designed for
through the course of human evolution
and the mystery has been what is it what
is it that is actually supporting
um
what processes are being supported by
the fact that we mind wander
and we have some clues
yeah yeah so the first thing i'd say is
let's just be clear on what i mean so
the broadest category
of which mind wandering is a subset is
something called spontaneous thought
essentially
something we get in touch with very very
quickly when we're meditating practicing
mindfulness meditation for example this
sputtering out of mental content just
boom boom boom you could be doing
anything you could be going for a walk
you know taking the shower the monkey
mind exactly the monkey mind right
and
most of the time when there is no other
pressing requirement so no problem i
mean the mind does that
but other than it tends to go to
negative things a lot of the time okay
right that's a different thing
that is going to be definitely a a bad
thing but for example right before we
started our conversation i took the
opportunity
to uh look out at the beautiful view you
have here in your home
and
just taking it in right there was
nothing really on my mind just this
expansive scene and and little thought
particles were popping up and
like popcorn and i was just allowing
them to be
and there was no cost associated with
that
but when we use the term mind wandering
what we're really talking about and
specifically the way i operationalize it
is off task thoughts
during an ongoing task or activity so
there is something we're trying to do
and so in this moment as we're having
this conversation and there is a point
to what i'm trying to say if a random
thought
pulls me away
that could be problematic i won't make
sense anymore or i'll pause or i'll
stumble somehow
so
some of the ideas regarding spontaneous
thought which is this broader category
of the thought pump or monkey mind as
you said
is that it supports our ability to
remember so it's funny that you
mentioned
memory already
and one of the reasons we think this is
the case is because memory requires this
process called consolidation
so i'm just going right into this now
i'm not yeah yeah please memory
formation is really interesting and
weird
i'm assuming you're going to talk about
this but the the way that they're not
sort of solid state things that we
change them constantly that's right i
mean in some sense they're solid in the
sense
that we're talking about the firing of a
particular neural configuration
and if you've heard that phrase neurons
that fire together wire together and
it's this notion that out of all of our
brain cells there's some that are going
to have sort of the synchronized
activity and through that the
connections between them will grow and
be privileged over other connections
and that is essentially the foundation
for human memory
so that once a particular let's say an
episode has occurred
when we go to recall it
if we hit one of the nodes in this
neural network that represents the
episode we experienced all of the
neurons that kind of fired together will
become activated and that'll bring up
the richness of the actual episode
itself in our memories
but how does that process of firing
together to wire together occur it goes
back to this notion of spontaneous
thought
in some sense every time we experience
anything so even as we're talking to
each other right now or those at a later
point they're listening to us
every time we experience anything
there's a neural
activity pattern that occurs
and there's bits and pieces of it that
may need to replay themselves over and
over again
for there to be
a privileged
co-occurrence of their firing privileged
because in the repetition we've given a
signal to the brain this is important
enough to
myelinate essentially to make that more
efficient um yeah but we would even
before we myelinate even before we do
anything to connect the two just i have
this experience
and some replaying of it will begin
almost immediately after you've had the
experience so and we know this right if
you watch a tv show right before going
to bed almost as you're going to bed at
night you might have like episodes of it
just pop up you're not trying to make
that happen or even a conversation or a
song just random little bits and pieces
and what we think might be happening
there
is that it's essentially a replay
function so that when it replays over
and over again with every replaying
there's some things that
occur again and there's some things that
may not because of chance but what makes
it privileged privileged is that the the
thing that gets replayed over and over
again consistently is the thing that
becomes privileged
so while i'm replaying this conversation
another thought might pop up or another
little thing may come up but the thing
that happens consistently after 10 20 50
100 maybe a thousand times we we have no
idea how often this occurs then those
neurons are going to say these keep
firing together now i want to actually
have stronger connections between
the neurons that represent them so
privilege is the result of a process
and it has to do with an averaging that
occurs i mean like i told you we're
getting into the geeky part of this but
it's an averaging that occurs and that
will allow us to have memories this is
very common process during sleep but now
we think mind wandering and spontaneous
thought
maybe something that is the beginnings
of that that then continues in sleep
it's really interesting and i've heard
multiple explanations for why we dream
when we sleep yeah one of these and i
think this is a pretty early hypothesis
i don't think i i forget who
uh posited this but i even
at the time they were saying it i don't
think they were trying to put forth it
no this is like proven science but
there's a very interesting idea and i've
heard you talk about the fact that 50 of
our brain is allocated to vision
and there's a mechanism in the brain
where if you're not using something it
will get reallocated really quickly and
they were positing that even the eight
hours that you're asleep may be a long
enough period of time that if you're not
using the vision
the centers for vision in your brain
that they would start to get encroached
on by other areas and that one of the
possible reasons that we dream is to use
the visual areas of our brain even
though our eyes are closed and not
actually taking in any light but you're
using visual processing
and that
keeps at bay the other areas of the
brain from taking over which
i found a certainly very interesting
hypothesis because it gets at this
idea that the body isn't the body
achieves harmony through battle if that
makes sense that they're all wrestling
for resources yeah that's a great uh
that's interesting hypothesis i'd not
heard that before
a more kind of common view of why
dreaming may occur and we know this from
studies in rodents for example
is for memory consolidation so that
you're replaying over and over again but
why is that so evident
why because it's not like you replay it
realistically it's like all of a sudden
my mom and i are literally i had this
dream one time my mom and i are in a
dinghy in the middle of the ocean
and something happened i don't remember
what she ends up falling overboard and
like
the terminator and terminator 2 as she
sank and if i remember right there was
like a piano tied to her ankle and as
she was sinking she gave me thumbs up
wow it was one of the most emotionally
charged like to the point that dream
must have been 30 years ago oh wow
sometime after terminator 2. so somebody
can check that but uh
it was emotionally resonant yeah but
obviously my mom and i have never been
in a dinghy in the middle of the ocean
my mom did not fall overboard with the
piano tied to her ankle yeah so
the question becomes what like if that's
memory consolidation why is it so weird
right
well first of all it's the elements that
could be consolidated have nothing to do
with how they're put together
because for example if you just think
about the most simple thing this amazing
dream by the way and i'm glad that you
had that such a um ability to remember
it that it has an impact even today it's
rare that that can happen i remember the
world's smallest handful of dreams much
to my dismay because i find them so
interesting yeah
but let me just take a much more kind of
simple view of of dreaming because
you're right and this is not my area so
i'm already speaking from let's take it
way out into the weird just hypothesis
guess
if you take a very simple model of
having a rat
some kind of rodent learn a maze
and you can actually go in because it's
a rodent model
know exactly what set of neurons what
population of cells are active as the
rat pursues this maze as it's actually
moving around through it and the
sequence of how these neurons actually
activate like you know let's say neurons
one two three and then four five six for
example as it turns left and right etc
so now the rat is in sleep you're still
you still have as the animal researcher
you still have those electrodes hooked
up and now you're not um you're just
observing what happens and what you
notice is that there is this replay
function not only are those same set of
neurons firing but they're firing in the
same sequence in that same coordinated
fashion and then the next day when the
animal performs the animal is much more
efficient with those
sets of activity profiles that were more
reliable
and clearer and across animals you
notice this those that have really
strong
firing patterns that are cohesive and
replicate the actual experience of
walking through the maze do better than
those that don't have strong patterns
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[Music]
okay now i'm gonna just really go into
absurd waters here but so as you're
saying that a my first question is have
they done that same study in humans
because i'd be very curious to know if
part of what we're consolidating because
as i replay that dream about my mom
which i haven't thought about in a long
time
was there meaning that was being
consolidated like the
understanding how to process a sense of
loss like how would i deal with the loss
of my mother
her trying to communicate that it would
be okay and that's my own subconscious
trying to
and it's possible that that dream was
long enough ago that i had anxiety over
the loss of my parents still and so
it's interesting if
instead of consolidating the literal
running of a maze which there's no doubt
i mean there's been enough studies that
if you mess up people sleep they're not
going to learn algebra and things like
that so clearly there is some link to
that
but if there's also another thing going
on where our brain is dealing in a more
abstract layer of
meaning and emotional resonance where
the literal firing of turn right turn
left whatever might not apply
well yeah i mean i think as we
uh
i mean as species became more complex
and could do more things this same
fundamental aspect is going to happen in
various parts of the brain
and so whether it happens in uh aspects
that have to do with our
meaning our sense of purpose our sense
of
value
emotionally salient things it's possible
in
any of those kinds of processing modes
that we can experience this
um and has it been done with humans i
mean again this is so outside my area
i'm sure aspects of this have been done
with implanted electrodes with eeg for
example there's a lot known on
on dreams then um
then a lot more known that i know in
this moment but the way it connects to
my work is that first of all the things
that tend to become salient parts of
this mind wandering this mental popcorn
spontaneous thought
really does at some level require some
conscious input we do have to pay
attention or we have had paid attention
at some moment to have it reappear over
and over again to eventually become a
memory to eventually become this neurons
that fire together
wire together
so at some point if you've had that
insight through the course of waking up
from the dream you probably had some
aspects of those
that that experience that emotional
quality that
conceptual realization at some other
point
um or right after you woke up you put
together the elements to make meaning
so the timing i don't know i don't know
if in this particular instance when it
could have occurred but typically the
elements have occurred somehow
the applying meaning to it the story
that we tell ourselves which is a big
part of your work and how we get lost in
those narratives and applying meaning to
things is very interesting and i think
profoundly impactful in people's lives i
want to go back to
what we were talking about a minute ago
where so you've got these um
memories that you're consolidating with
the um oh god what'd you call it the
spontaneous
spontaneous thought thank you so the
spontaneous audits popping up it's a way
for us to consolidate those memories but
the part of that that makes this really
complicated is that i'm not
i'm not making any attempt to faithfully
rewrite it
if i understand this correctly and hit
me if i'm not but
my understanding of the way that memory
works is that we pull it up into working
memory
and we will
in some way manipulate it massage it
like as we retell it we may be making it
worse darker applying that story
applying meaning to it that wasn't there
before making it better whatever
and
then as it gets re-put into long-term
memory as i changed it
i'm now storing that slightly changed
variation
and when i think about and we're
bringing a lot of elements together
that's why i find your work so
fascinating
there's other
there is a hypothesis that when we sleep
one of the things that we're doing is
stripping the emotional intensity from a
situation and people with ptsd basically
have constantly elevated cortisol levels
so even as they sleep and they should be
stripping that memory of its like
emotional intensity which is why
technically time heals all wounds
it doesn't it never gets stripped of the
emotional intensity if anything the
emotional intensity gets like hardwired
because it's constantly there so i'm
wondering if you've thought about like
as we do this spontaneous thought and
were
consolidating it in our waking hours
and were manipulating it if that
manipulation
was selected for in that
what we're doing is essentially making
that memory more usable and sort of damn
the truth just how do i make this memory
more usable which is why i mean they've
done all kinds of studies about uh
whether an eyewitness actually remembers
things correctly and it's just
absolutely terrible we don't remember
things faithfully at all
do you think that plays into it at all
that that the the brain as a product of
evolution has found that actually
changing this a bit is a good thing
so much richness in everything you just
said
um
i don't know about good thing or bad
thing but it's definitely a thing it's a
thing that happens right and and you
described it beautifully so a memory
already exists
we're now going to recall it so even
even something as innocuous as what i
had for breakfast this morning right i
want to you know i love the hotel i'm
staying at i'm having such a great
experience i recall this this breakfast
i had and i like
i have this sort of overlay of it was an
overall great experience so even as i
reply in my own mind the experience of
tasting the food i may infuse it with
this layer of overall with such a great
experience right so there again now is
that the truth of what occurred what is
the truth of what occurred right and and
now when i uh uh store that memory again
it's gonna have that aspect overlaid
onto it and baked into now what gets
pulled up the next time
um and these things are constantly
mutable and that's why we think of
memory not as this solid thing but this
ever changing thing
which uh first of all should give us a
lot of humility like what we remember we
should be we should really have like a a
sense that well i think this is the case
but i don't really know doing the best i
can we're not we're not actually
pressing record when we remember
um it's constantly being updated and
this can be a very useful thing don't
blow past that i've heard you talk about
that so i know where you're headed yeah
but when you say that we don't press
record when we remember something what
do you mean oh
it's not verbatim it's not as it
occurred there is no objectivity in the
way we remember
there's no point to that the point of
memory is to support our actions in the
future
we're helping ourselves out
so if you want to have an interaction
and it's a pleasant one
the main thing i should take away that i
should remember
is that this is a person that i enjoy
spending time around this person is not
a threat this person is not going to
harm me
uh there's wellness associated with the
experience itself i'm not recording
every single moment of what occurred
kind of with a neutrality about it it's
always shaped and to remember through
the course of human evolution that that
shaping is really to privilege our
maximum learning for the next episodes
of our life it's to fuel the future it's
to benefit the future we don't actually
record
in quotes we don't actually remember
to savor the past but only so that we
can use that information for the next
action in our in our life at the risk of
really taking us off course i do have to
ask so you just said something we're not
programmed to savor the past
in my mid-40s i have now found myself
with uh a sudden wave of nostalgia is a
really
pleasurable thing
and i hunger for that feeling
that nostalgia brings and i have no idea
why i've never been a backwards looking
person i've always looked forward in my
life
and all almost all of a sudden over the
last couple of years it's become this
just incredibly potent wonderful feeling
but it's not true like when i was a kid
i just wanted to be an adult
and so but now all of a sudden i find
myself thinking about oh my god the way
movies were when i was a kid like it was
so amazing and
what is that about like why
if our so i love the definition of the
human brain as being a prediction
machine yeah so everything it's
optimized for is making really useful
predictions about what the future is
going to bring
so why
is nostalgia like why would that feel
good
yeah that's a i don't i don't have a
great answer for you but let me just say
let me just
re-say something i said a moment ago
which is it's not built for savoring the
past in us in the sense that it's some
kind of
objective recording
but it's capable of savoring it's
capable of nostalgia and so are you
asking me sort of what's the v what's
the benefit of nostalgia like if you if
you had a guess so we're this prediction
machine yeah we are
trying to optimize in a way that allows
us to not be eaten by a saber-toothed
tiger hiding in the bush to not get
grabbed by a snake to make sure that our
kids make it to adulthood to find mates
all that stuff
but there is something
incredibly potent about remembering
something specifically from your
childhood and i don't understand why
what possible selection pressure is
there for that is that around
conservatism i don't know it's so weird
well i mean i think that kind of more
plainly it's just if you have
aspects of your past that have been
um
kind of
shorthanded as
fun beautiful fulfilling etc
you can call upon those
uh to model what you might do in the
future that would be a very simple way
to put it like
when we gather together
and there is real connection and uh
tradition for example it feels
fulfilling that's going to prompt you to
probably try to replicate those
circumstances
in the future so i mean i could go on
and on about all the possibilities but i
think that i would probably say what's
fascinating is that
we are much more than
this simple straightforward
um
product of wanting to have evolutionary
advantage
we've outgrown those sort of functions
and anything we say to ourselves that is
simply for the purposes of survival is
probably wrong because that's in and of
itself a story
um and again we have this problem as
humans that we're only now retroactively
looking at the evolutionary um uh
nodes that have led us to what we are
now and that's true for everything
that's true for our understanding of
memory that's true for our understanding
of why attention developed it's it's
true for our predictions regarding why
it is that we may have spontaneous
thought we don't really know what we
know is that we are this right now and
these are our capabilities
and um we're doing the best we can as
neuroscientists to even understand how
it works it's huge amounts of conjecture
to say why it developed this way i'm
just gonna put it out there and also
that that limited view that it's for
evolutionary survival
it doesn't hold anymore it gets it's way
more complex
in what way
well there's just
everything we do is not that simply
uh the notion even what family is the
notion of what mate is the notion of
what survival is
um
they're all different now do you think
that that's a recent phenomenon or do
you think that we will
even
that this was true 200 years ago we just
haven't yet had the tools to discover
the truth of all this because i
definitely until 90 seconds ago when you
said that
just took it sort of as the default
assumption that the
right
way to think about the brain is it's a
product of evolution everything that
it's designed for is does in fact i've
said this a gazillion times that your
brain is designed to make sure that you
have children
that have children and that's you're
optimized for that and so as i think
through all the weird things that our
brain does including going to negative
things well negative things were the
things that were more high risk so of
course you had to pay more attention to
that because that's how you avoided to
get eaten
um and of course you wouldn't want to be
ostracized by the group because that you
know could lead to your death and so
you're just optimized to be hyper
paranoid about what other people think
so that you can fit in
if that isn't the right sort of framing
what is oh i don't mean that that's not
a useful framing or that aspects of that
probably aren't
true what i'm saying is moment by moment
in the way that we use our minds now
cannot simply be reduced
to our evolutionary inheritance and the
so the causes for that inheritance
like right now we don't do things simply
for those same reasons as what i'm
saying because we're not in the same
circumstance i mean we're gonna use our
mind but are we dancing to that drum
i don't know if if i care
interesting do you know how to feel
beholden to the way your mind works well
what i'm saying is
we have to really watch out for a very
strong tendency of mind even as we're
thinking about the mind when you say
tendency of mind yes story making
reducing
mental phenomena in a way that would be
able to be nicely packaged recalled
used
and guide our comprehension of what's
happening in the moment that is such a
strong need we have that is our default
and it's a very efficient default but
just again like i said have humility
about it this is our story and science
in some sense is is building complex
stories that are theories where we can
predict things to actually see if we can
reproduce certain kinds of phenomena
um
so i don't know i guess i'm just saying
that
the the complexity of the modern
circumstance the complexity of uh the
use of our brain in novel ways that
never existed for our ancestors till
maybe even 15 years ago we never had
smartphones before we have social media
the nature of how the mind gets used in
complex and new ways
is ever unfolding
and i wouldn't want to i wouldn't say we
have no idea but i would say that
i don't i would say we don't know yet
how certain
primitives meaning certain kind of um
inheritances that the mind has
um are now being
utilized for the modern purpose
right
i don't know i think it's i think it's
we don't know quite yet
um but i don't think there's anything
wrong with the way that you're operating
that it makes sense to me that the way
that we are driven
has some evolutionary basis i don't
think there's any problem with that but
i would just say i put a little asterisk
next to that that yeah but we still
don't really understand because it's a
work in progress and we as humans are
trying to observe ourselves
as this is all unfolding
i love that so i've heard you talk about
this before but i'd love it if you um
would explain now what is the risk of
having these stories does it blind us to
something
yeah
well i mean it's a very powerful thing i
mean we've already been doing it even in
our conversation right we have ideas
concepts that's in some sense stories
about the way things happen occur very
useful
packaging of complex information
with the chronology with a narrative
within
an experiential or phenomenological
perspective i'm not knocking stories
stories are great
but stories are constructed
stories can as we already discussed with
regard to human memory stories can be
reconstructed
uh stories can be altered as we're
retelling them without us realizing
without us realizing
and um you know i'm a scientist stories
are hypotheses and we should kind of
keep that in mind
uh even as we retell a story that we
think is factually just by the book what
happened
yeah maybe maybe not our perspective is
going to bias that so my caution
regarding stories is in our drive in our
desire to make something have meaning
and shorthand it in a way that i can
efficiently carry it around
i may lose some aspect of what is useful
and what is true
so in the book i give this example from
um a dear colleague of mine a military
leader who had this occurred to uh with
his uh unit while they were on the side
of a mountain mountain uh
in afghanistan
and you know these are real consequences
of stories so the the intel that they've
been given i'm just going to retell it
no this story is so good please um
this terrifies me ps yeah and and think
about what's unfolding right now in our
world right with regard to conflicts
that are unfolding
um so anyway the story is that the story
that that that i'm reflecting on is um
this colleague of mine uh who was then a
colonel colonel piet
he and he told it to me because it was
in his mind a reason
uh that mindfulness was such a going to
be such a valuable tool for soldiers
including those that he was leading
but what happened was that they were
given intel and he was the leader of
this uh this particular brigade at that
point
um or battalion i can't remember what
his particular leadership role was
but they were told that on the top of
this mountain is an encampment and the
encampment is taliban
and all the signs are there there's
small groups they're organized in this
way they've been roaming around
they just arrived um
they are the enemy
and they need to be
terminated so essentially he
uh they had you know planes flying above
that were just on his command gonna drop
a bomb and that group of the enemy was
gonna be obliterated obliterated
well they all had that story in their
mind and again as they're approaching
this encampment going up the mountain
literally him and his soldiers
um that story is is is fully present and
was going to bias everything that they
are seeing because if you are told that
this is what you're seeing there's going
to be something called the confirmation
bias where all the cues that are aligned
with that story become more salient to
you you're checking boxes that say yep
looks like that looks like that anyway
one of his uh soldiers who was
essentially a scout at the at the front
of this unit walking up
um went all the way up where he could
make he could see could get a visual
confirmation regarding this group and
and he's basically checking the list yes
i see young men
um i see you know that they're they're
roaming about
they're they're surveying something
and then he saw something
that made this um then colonel pause
he said there are no i see no weapons
and that was
that was weird because if this is truly
a taliban group that would be very odd
for them to be roaming around without
weapons on them so essentially he saw he
noticed what he did not see which was
breaking out of that confirmation bias
and um and then he reports back i see no
weapon so everybody's sort of flagged at
this point like that doesn't make sense
that's weird
but that alerted the colonel to say
don't fire don't don't drop the bomb on
these people let's check it out and that
scout went and actually just ran up and
tackled these these guys that were
sitting outside all of a sudden a group
of people walked out of one of the um
you know dwellings and it was this
robust woman who was like screaming at
them like get off of my guys this was
not a taliban encampment this was a
bedouin tribe that had been going there
for hundreds of years to let their
animals roam
and have food
and then eventually the colonel made it
up there they actually sat with the
leadership of this tribe
and you know he recalled he ever called
him telling me you know it was one guy
that was not biased by his own story
that is the reason these people are
alive right now
consequential
and
the thing that he thought was key was
that the soldier's ability to remove
himself from the story and actually get
the raw data of what was occurring is
the thing that made him say no weapons
so if we could get that skill the more
people it can be very powerful
especially more soldiers in the context
of his line of work that could be very
powerful because they would have more
opportunities to break free of the
constraints that stories put on us in
our thinking and even in our perception
to hopefully not just save lives but to
actually improve the fullness of what we
experience
reminds me that famous quote it doesn't
matter what you look at it matters what
you see
and i've seen this at play in business a
lot where people they have an idea in
their head and
you don't realize how much that's like
filling in the gaps right so and i think
most people don't understand you talk
about this in the book if i remember
correctly
that even your vision like you're
actually seeing clearly this really
tiny amount of your visual field like
two percent or whatever
is clear everything else is the brain
filling it in like there is where the
optic nerve actually connects to the eye
as you well know there's just a blank
spot but none of us perceive the blank
spot your brain is drawing it in it's
crazy it's crazy it is and so when i
think about if you tell another story in
the book that's only tangentially
related but i'll i'll bring them
together
which was um the
guy who called in the worst friendly
fire um strike in u.s history or
something
and it was because he changed the
battery on his coordinate device and
even though he knew
that
when you change the batteries the it
will like re-put your base coordinates
or whatever
and
he knew that forgot
does it calls in the strike on his own
people because he forgot that it changed
and i saw oh my god that's so e your
brain is like oh cool i know where they
are i've got the data it's right there
cool it's all connected oh let me change
the batteries and then yep okay it's
connected i already ran through that so
you have like it the story locked in
your mind that i've already done it i've
already checked i know this is good
and so now your brain just like paints
it yep there's the coordinates we're all
good
drop the bomb and whoa like it is just
really terrifying even to what you were
saying earlier that part of why you're
telling the story is to shrink the
complexity into something that you can
carry around yeah but if you can't get
outside of that it is really distressing
how
i'm sure if you had
like okay you guys are looking at the
scene close your eyes don't look again
what kind of weapons are they carrying
well the one guy had an m6 or uh uh
ak-47 whatever they would normally carry
the russian arrow weapons
and then nope you actually didn't see
anything because none of them have a
weapon but your brain is so convinced
that you saw it
so i teach a class for business leaders
and one of the things is about this
sort of contextualized differently but
you have to have a story to move forward
because you need something that's
simplified enough to give you clarity
that you can impart that clarity to
other people so that you can create this
forward momentum
and as the leader you need to intoxicate
everyone with your certainty
but oh secretly you better go off into a
corner and go is this really right
because if you don't have the story you
can't get people moving even yourself
but if you get sucked in so deeply to
the story that you forget it's a story
then you won't actually check to see if
it's working
and
uh it's this really weird part of the
human psyche yeah yeah and by the way i
think that i love that you do that
because i think that that's such a
useful thing to tell leaders because and
it's atypical most people aren't
thinking that it might be have a better
story or guide them in a way that makes
them buy into your story more but the
fact that you should question and
reacquaint yourself with the fact that
you've constructed this story really
gold information i think for leaders but
the thing to remember is that it's not
like you can have a story or not have a
story you can go back and forth
into the mode of being in the story mode
it's just that you have to be able to
step outside of it to even remember that
it exists
and that
aspect of our functioning to step
outside of a story is very hard to do
and most of us don't even think that it
is worthy of doing and even if we want
to do it it's hard to do it
so part of what i think the power of
something like mindfulness meditation is
um just from an intentional point of
view is that it trains us to be able to
get into that mode that observational
mode which we can do at a distance to
watch but we can also do it while we're
actually in it like we can do it from
this sort of more embodied perspective
oh this is what this story feels like
so it can be both at a distance or
within
but it's taking an observational stance
and when we take an observational stance
we can actually see the structure of the
story
and that is very powerful because now we
see the scaffolding that we've built
and we can make a choice like does this
scaffolding actually hold true or not
and we can do this moment by moment and
even as you're guiding people if you
realize ah this aspect of the story that
i've constructed is actually not going
to serve these people or is entirely
incorrect
you can rebuild it but if you don't know
that you're in it
and that it's driving everything you're
doing there's no chance you're going to
even attempt
to observe and then rebuild as needed
fax so how do people develop meta
attention yeah yeah um you know i think
the shorthand would be it's not just
about reframing it because sometimes
people like i got to hone my story it's
about this other term i like to use
deframing it it's like you just and part
of deframing is acknowledging the
framework itself
um yeah i mean meta tension or what i
would say meta awareness
so this is awareness of the ongoing
contents and processes in your mind
moment by moment
very very powerful thing just having
that awareness
and i wish it was a quick fix to
cultivate this but it actually does
train it does require
training i mean but there are in the
moment things you can do to to become
meta aware but it's important for people
to know it is possible like you actually
can get better oh you absolutely can
better can get better and even if before
you've really cultivated you can do it
in the moment
so you know i'm just thinking back to
the view outside of your um your
beautiful home and also the uh title of
my book peak mind right so in some sense
when you see the term peak mind it's
like the pinnacle of something but what
i actually uh the the view outside
actually reminded me of why i wrote the
brian liked the title peak mind because
in many ways a peak mind is a mind that
has the point of view of the vista from
the peak
not just arriving somewhere but actually
seeing the landscape
um which can be very powerful so the in
the moment way to have meta awareness
would be essentially
kind of getting a sense of what the
landscape is
um whether that's from a ridge above or
you know i always think when i talk to
my kids about this it's like imagine
you're like a traffic helicopter
hovering above and you're reporting down
on what's occurring
in moments where you feel locked in or
you want to just check yourself of like
is this is this correct what i'm
actually experiencing um you can take
that that kind of distanced perspective
and that's all we're talking about right
now something called psychological
distancing
um and what you can do in that moment is
kind of say what are the facts right now
what am i witnessing right now what is
the landscape before me right now and
reporting that can kind of
like you were saying before about memory
it can kind of reduce the emotional
control or overlay that the
circumstances can have especially if
there's a lot of reactivity because
essentially now i'm not amishi
experiencing fear confusion rage anger
whatever it is i'm
talking about this person amish who is
experiencing those things
and that can be extremely powerful so
you know i i would say start by moments
where you feel stuck to take that
bird's-eye view or drones view or
traffic helicopter view can you give
people an example so in the book you
talk about somebody walking by you they
don't even look at you
and you relayed what that is when you
strip story and emotion and i was like
whoa that it is it is a startling level
of difference that i think people once
you're not just overlaying a different
story you just no story no story what
does that sound like it's like just the
facts just give me the facts what
occurred
knowing with humility that like i'm
gonna always be biased i'm just going to
accept that i'm going to be biased but
so the the the very trivial example but
you know i'm sure at some point in our
lives some most of us have experienced
something like this where you're walking
down the hall
and uh for whatever reason the person
walking toward you you might even have a
like kind of a warmth toward the fact
that somebody's passing you by and are
passing by you and you might even want
to like smile or just say hello or
something kind of neutral pro-social
and you notice that the person is kind
of angrily averting their eyes
angrily already didn't overlap the
person is averting their eyes and
walking past you and the thought that
probably would emerge is
why is this person being a jerk to me or
did i do something to offend this person
or so all this all these ideas start
proliferating regarding why this
occurred
and and then you might even go on to
make a story about it oh it's because
probably i took that bagel at the last
time we had breakfast and he's still
pissed at me that whatever the story is
that you make up you've created a
full-on
uh
story regarding why you've had this
particular interaction but now let's
take this kind of
dis psychologically distance perspective
and the first thing is
the truth
you really have no idea you really truly
have no idea why this particular set of
circumstances has occurred in this
moment there's no certainty everything
that you think you're certain about you
created in your own mind and then relay
what actually transpired
a human was walking in the direction
opposite to the direction i was walking
eye contact was not made
facial expressions that were expected
were not occurring
uh expectations were not melt met and uh
this human mind created a whole bunch of
proliferating concepts to make sense of
this episode that's what occurred
so that just stating it that way all of
a sudden you realize oh there's a world
of possibilities of why that could
occurred
and and if we get better at this we can
actually become more observant as we're
experiencing things like this so for
example you know the next time you now
are walking down the hall and something
like that happens you might actually try
to observe more with that curiosity and
openness and not framing anything you
might notice oh my gosh that person
looks like they're actually bleeding
they cut themselves or
whatever it is that could occur you
become more attuned to the novel
features with the curiosity and you're
not so locked in to the particular set
of things that's such a trivial example
but i think that you know from from the
kinds of groups that you speak to too
from a leadership perspective this is
very very powerful
uh to be able to take that uh distanced
view
no doubt so important i had a guy on the
show named donald hoffman
it's got a whole hypothesis that not
only is the world not real
meaning that it it isn't as you perceive
it
it couldn't possibly be as you perceive
it and
the he gave an example that hit me so
hard and i have remembered it like like
right at the forefront of my brain since
he said it which is reality is the
number of photons falling on an object
that you're looking at and he was like
but you don't perceive it as there's
this many are you know rgb it's or cmyk
it's like this many in this color
spectrum this mini and this he was like
you perceive it as blue as black as
white whatever
and
he was like that is so abstracted from
what is real and once you realize you're
layering meaning on top of meaning on
top of meaning like even just the
the
the experience of walking towards
somebody it's already layered with this
abstractness of your brain
only having eyes nose ears touch you
know pressure sensation heat sensation
things like that
which is a narrow narrow narrow like the
amount of what we call visible light is
only point zero zero three five percent
of the available electromagnetic
spectrum
so we're already in this just obscenely
narrow band of what's happening and then
on top of that you're layering all of
this meaning and
you use the word simulation in the book
and i'm obsessed with that long time
viewers of this show will know that i
resonate i was like a simulation indeed
once people understand that you really
are a brain in a vat it's just that the
vat happens to be your skull
then you begin to realize that whoa like
i am brick by brick constructing an
artificial i'll put that in quotes but
an artificial reality
and
the ability to as much as useful like i
don't often
think about the world as photons falling
on an object but
the more layers of abstraction that you
can recognize you have added to this
the more likely you are to be open to
what's actually happening and therefore
can have a more useful response
totally
and i love that
and yeah don hoffman is a as a hero in
you know
is are you talking about the professor
at uc irvine
uh i don't know if he's okay
this is very difficult probably yeah but
anyway this notion of
reality is constructed and frankly a
hallucination is sort of these kinds of
ideas that he's
um
talking about these days and coming up
with the theorems that people have a
hard time kind of arguing against
so i think it's very it's very
interesting but what you described i
think is such a beautiful way
to again have humility regarding
everything we perceive
think ways we behave
that is a
a particular slice that is wholly
constructed and the thing that i'm
interested in because yes if we can
accept that
uh
we orient with a lot more curiosity
and
awareness of our lack of knowing about a
lot of things
but the reality is that sometimes we do
get locked in
and sometimes we do ruminate and
sometimes the story feels so real or the
memory so salient and damaging and
harmful or problematic that it
it paralyzes us
so on the one hand i'm all for kind of
getting to the root of the constructed
nature of reality which it is and
sometimes we get little glimmers of that
um in very uh compelling ways like oh
this is totally made up
or this doesn't have to be this way it
was constructed this way
though i think that that's an important
thing to be in touch with the other
thing is we need just practical tools
so though it may be that the mind is
constructing these things there are ways
in which the mind does has propensities
towards certain kinds of mental
processes that can really not serve us
and so if we can train our mind to not
just become aware of what's going on
but to have more control of our for
example attentional capacity something
that i study in my lab it can really
serve us
even if it is the case this is all
ultimately a giant hallucination life is
itself hallucination uh even so um if i
notice that i'm fearful of walking
outside my home or
of a crippling anxiety about something
or a a memory that just
flattens me i have to live my life
and so it's almost like the absolute and
the relative and we're constantly kind
of gonna have to go back and forth
between them
um and in this surprising thing i found
is that the same things that help us
deal
with the um challenges of our humanness
um actually lead us more and more to a
fundamental understanding of the nature
of things which tell me more well well
because once we realize you know
everything you've described with regard
to the small sliver of reality that we
actually have access to because of our
our uh perceptual systems um
and so we're limited in that way but
there's another thing that we haven't
talked about yet which is that even the
nature of brain processes
um which you can say okay my brain
processes are limited because you know
my eyes can only see a certain amount of
the visual spectra or i only have two
hands i don't have ten hands or
um you know memories are gonna be formed
in this way whatever
um you know in some sense the
the reality is um
that we have to contend with time
meaning whatever brain process is
happening in a moment
there's a contingent nature of what is
going to happen in the next moment just
based on what occurred
so
we're limited and we're in some sense
helpless
even if our notion of what free will is
can become challenged because if what i
do in the next moment
is bound by what i just did am i truly
free ever
um so i'm now adding another layer of
limitations in our in our functioning uh
and what we're going to be tied to just
because the physics in some sense so we
talk about this with regard to
brain microstates
and we know that there's certain
configurations in which the brain is for
let's say 40 milliseconds 40 000 of a
second that can predict its likely
configuration in the next micro state
so that that is going to be a problem as
well
um so i don't i mean i didn't know where
our conversation was going to go i mean
i i think this is fun but to go back to
what i was saying regarding
the insights we can gain to help us in
our
in
destructive and and difficult mind
states
through something like contemplative
practice
not only can help us deal with those
destructive and problematic mind states
but they can start connecting us to the
kind of fundamental nature of what
reality is in its
constraints in its
uh sort of impermanent nature in its
highly interconnected and
dynamic nature
uh in its constructed nature and they're
related to each other
so i don't know is this making sense
when i'm what i'm saying definitely and
i think that as we get into um the
specifics of mindfulness yeah
one
why does it work
and as somebody who thankfully
discovered this
i don't know how many years ago now
eight years something like that
um it changed my life like it that's an
easy one to draw a line in the sand and
say okay before this and after this yeah
really but oh yes
but
one i think it's worth talking about the
flashlight to define attention and
mindfulness and then understand going
back to the idea of meta awareness
how we practice like at a mechanistic
level how do we practice the
getting back up to the peak
easy
um but no i think that that's great i'm
glad that you want to want to talk about
this and i'm so happy to hear that this
is something that's touched your life uh
personally as a tool for your own
leadership and you know sense profoundly
um
emotional well-being that would be the
right thing i don't know how people
if they're pursuing something big i
don't know how you manage it unless you
have meditation i really don't like i
would not have been able to
um
pursue
the goals that i pursue without it no
way it would have stopped being fun i
would have stopped for sure
so i know this is your show but i want
to ask you a question
what do you think it is that it gave you
in practicing that allowed you to not
stop and to keep going the easy analogy
is
the
brain and body
function similarly to a car
and
if you're stepping on the accelerator
it can be fine if you're
already in fifth gear but if you're in
first gear and you stamp on the
accelerator you rev into the red it
breaks the engine and and you're done
and that's burnout that's people just
like they're constantly running the
engine in the red
and at the not at the risk i'm going to
mix metaphors i've always referred to
this as background radiation
and what happens you're just like nah i
feel agitated i don't i don't feel
comfortable i feel a sense of
something's wrong or something's about
to go wrong but i don't know what it is
and
that's stress that's anxiety that's like
that
i'm no longer even sure i've just been
running in the red so long that my
body's just expecting a problem
and
with meditation what i found is it's
shifting gears or it's letting off the
accelerator maybe the better way to
think about it so
in my life i have been incredibly
stressed i've dealt with things where
hundreds of millions of dollars are on
the line
and i have never once been more than 45
minutes away from total equanimity
because i learned how to breathe from my
diaphragm and it's purely mechanistic
like i'm not thinking anything i'm
literally i mean it's exactly what you
tell people to do in your book so none
of it will be surprising to you and
it'll be good for you to walk people
through it but
i am
from by breathing from my diaphragm and
just reminding myself every time i have
a spontaneous thought just come back to
the breath come back to the breath and
there's no magic
it is
to quote you there is no blissful state
there's just coming back to the breath
and in doing that my background
radiation just drops and so it's taking
your foot off the accelerator it's
shifting into the right gear whatever
way you want to think about it
but
if you don't do that what ends up
happening is each day you're just
pressing on the gas a little bit harder
a little bit harder a little bit harder
and so you're revving farther and
farther and farther and then all of a
sudden you're just like i don't want to
[ __ ] do this and you just like you
you burn out you quit your job you're
huddled in the corner crying you're
whatever like all the things that humans
go through
but
in your pocket at all times is the
ability to
let it go and then you just
decompress it's it is so basic
and yet so profound oh i love that you
described all that i mean i think that
it's very helpful for people to hear
me saying as a scientist who studies in
the lab is one thing but you as somebody
who not only
has been practicing but can show the
actionable benefits yeah but your teeth
you've got some pretty like personal
levels i do i definitely do have
personal level insights but i'm just
saying you made it come alive in such a
tangible way and i love the way you put
it 45 minutes from equanimity i love
that
and it kind of i will definitely talk
about all the things you said but i want
to just touch on something that you said
that i think
connects to all the more esoteric topics
we've been talking about already
um so for example you know we talked
about the constructed nature of reality
we talked about conceptual elaboration
we talked about story making and meaning
making all of those are what i would say
is this revving up process
these are active energetically costly
things that we do by default
and um and that proliferate not just
construct and create but proliferate our
experience of stress
and so by what you considered the uh you
know in some sense i would say simple
but not always easy and very elegant act
of focus back on the breath
what you allowed yourself to do in that
moment is take a break from that
constructing and proliferating and story
making and the nature of the mind with
something called working memory is that
unless we are actively keeping the
contents of our conscious experience
uh refreshed and rewritten moment by
moment they will fade away oh my god no
one's i've never heard anybody say that
before that's so true
and uh i think you just tapped into that
the power of that that if i'm not
feeding this
it and i'm focusing on the breath
instead now what the only thing on my
mental white board as i like to call
working memory it's going to be that
it's not going to be the the whole
castle or doomsday scenario that i've
built up in my mind
and and the reason i love the 45 minutes
uh idea and i would save in 45 seconds
probably for you at this point when you
feel an edge you might be able to kind
of hardly it takes time
right but you could probably say i have
that tool
even if you're not going to be able to
use that tool in that moment because
you're pretty spun up you know you've
got that tool there is that place and
that place is right here right now
that's the kind of irony of it there's
nowhere to go you're actually
not going anywhere that's the place you
are meeting the moment right now
and when you actually get in touch with
this moment things do fall away the
constructed nature of reality and those
doomsday uh ideas that are pumping
cortisol through your
body can take a little bit of a break
um so then you know back to your
question of like well how do you do that
um you've obviously been doing it so you
know how to do it but i'll just describe
from sort of the attentional mechanistic
point of view
of how to do that because in some sense
um showing up to the present moment
is this weird journey
because the reality is that's all we
have all we have is right now our entire
lives are just right now
and now right now
but because we have this very powerful
simulation machine that we carry around
between our ears
um we can hijack ourselves away in time
in place
so something called mental time travel
and we can hijack ourselves away from
even my own mind so it's not just time
travel it's mind travel
and both of those together are the best
ways to simulate reality
um
uh
mind travel would be me for example
right now being in your mind and saying
what is he's thinking about the way that
i'm phrasing this sentence is he
understanding it so it's it's a way to
change perspectives so that you're
actually seeing the world through
somebody else's eyes
and oftentimes that can be very very
powerful and socially and emotionally
intelligent like perspective taking but
can also be very damaging when you
layer into the notion of judgment or
um other bad things that other people
can do to you but now they haven't done
it but you've you've kind of put
yourself in their mind so that you're
experiencing it from that perspective
um
so anyway i think that that's just
something to really remember that all we
have is right now and anytime we're not
feeling right now it's because the
simulation that we've generated our own
mind has taken us away from my point of
view mindfulness is not really has
nothing to do mindfulness of breathing
has nothing to do with manipulation of
the breath having a different co2 to o2
level no it's nothing about that it's
the way that you're going to make your
attention which is present centered and
narrowed with this particular
breath-related sensation as the anchor
and so you're taking that flashlight of
attention you've decided that i'm gonna
have the goal right now of focusing on
breath-related sensations and then
you're just going to observe what is
occurring within the sensory
phenomena that arise tied to the breath
so
very very simple instructions pay
attention to breath related
sensations but
because of everything we've talked about
yeah everything we've talked about 50 of
our waking moments our mind wanders
spontaneous thought is the nature of the
mind we have a strong propensity for
story making editorializing
emotionally reacting so there's a second
thing we have to do you know it's like
we can't just say focus on the breath
and then we're done because within
nanoseconds of deciding to focus on the
breath
thought pops up you know got an itch got
something that's not breath related
sensations which should be where i'm
pointing that flashlight will arise
and it is likely that that will pull my
attention away the flashlight will no
longer be focused on breath related
sensations but it's yanked away by
something else so the second instruction
is notice
notice what is unfolding and that's that
meta awareness piece that you were
talking about
become meta aware of your
moment-to-moment experience so you have
a goal and you know what you're supposed
to do in the service of that goal but
notice what is actually transpiring
and then so it's focus
notice
and the third step is essentially
redirect if there's a mismatch between
your goal of focusing your attention on
the breath and your attention is off
somewhere else
redirect it back
and through that simple act of focus
notice redirect and i think you
beautifully described it with your
what you do when when you feel that that
um teetering toward burnout when the
accelerator and
um is really just gonna go when you're
in the wrong gear
um is it it provides a
safe stable presence-centered way of
making the mind
which which gives it a break from all
that elaborating and editorializing that
we do
and that's pretty much all we need and
we could do it for from my our research
12 minutes a day it's a great way to
kind of reset our mind
yeah it is it is profoundly
transformational and you said in words
something that is just fundamentally
true but i've never heard anybody
articulate it i never thought about it
before
but if you
don't feed the process of like worrying
and catastrophizing and projecting all
this negative stuff back at yourself
from the other person's perspective
it goes away
like by default it's just all you have
to do is not feed it
yes
but often what we do instead of
disengaging from that momentum
is we'll do some other kind of
conceptual process i'll push it away
i'll think about it differently i'll not
think about it so don't think about that
troubling thought don't think about that
troubling thought guess what's most
prominent on your mental whiteboard the
troubling thought because you have to
keep in mind not to think about the
thing and that's the thing
so it seems like a straightforward thing
and i love that you appreciate that
point that
essentially just allowing the mind to be
in its in its kind of natural state
that those conceptual processes which
are effortful
and require cognitive fuel to produce
will
fall away
they may arise again
but they can they they well they will
arise again
but
they can
um
pass away without you having to push
away
or shove it in a corner or scold
yourself for the fact that they've
arisen
and we need to practice being able to
let it pass away without
messing with it without going in there
and tinkering with it just really like
foot off the pedal in some sense and let
it just fade
uh it gives us a lot more freedom in the
next moment of what we do
yeah it's it is utterly fascinating to
me how
one how well it works just to breathe
from your diaphragm but two
the people have been saying this for
thousands of years
and trying to get people to understand
a thing that i call frame of reference
and dave have you heard david david
foster wallace's talk this is water
oh you're in for a treat it is so good
now the very sad punchline is that he
ends up committing suicide but his
the talk is about how
your mind is constructing a reality
it is so ever-present that there's
there's nothing to peel at there's no
way to get underneath it there's no way
to see that it's a construct that all of
the feelings and everything that you
have like it's it's what water is to a
fish
and water is so taken for granted by the
fish that they don't they don't have a
perception of water not water they're
just it just is
and
once people realize wait a second this
milieu that i live in
that seems to be the truth it's just
tom they're just facts i'm just
recognizing the truth of the world
that no no it's all a construct all of
it everything every bit it's all fake
i'll put that in quotes because it you
know we're all experiencing it and that
experience is in and of itself real but
it's all a construct and that if you
just stop feeding it you will slide back
to neutral
and
because and this is the same reason that
people pursue money and fame money's
amazing it's more powerful than people
think but it's not what they've been
told and so they're going to get it and
they're going to be very confused that
it does not make them feel better about
themselves because that's not what money
does
but because money is useful people keep
pursuing it because it actually does
have utility same with fame fame has
utilities not going to change how you
feel about yourself which of course is
the only thing that ultimately matters
in life but because it has utility
and
people will pursue it but it will be
very confusing when they get it because
they were pursuing it for utility that
it cannot provide
and
once you understand that all of the
construct that your brain is coughing up
all of the spontaneous thought all of
the worry all of the fear all of the
projection all of it it has utility and
so you in some ways you need to do it
but you have to recognize oh this is a
tool and right now this tool i'm hitting
myself in the face with this hammer and
while the tool remains useful
smashing myself in the face is
counterproductive and so we get to the
point where
you know to a hammer every problem looks
like a nail and so we just we worry we
catastrophize we do all of this stuff
and because it has utility we keep doing
it but we don't understand that we're
now using it in ways that are just
wildly self-destructive
and to stick with the hammer metaphor
you you can actually set the hammer down
and
that the way you set the hammer down is
so simple that
it was already written about
3000 years ago or whatever and people
still have to like re-encounter it from
a thousand different angles because it
is so
hard
it's hard just uh if i know that my
brain
to quote your long meditating friend is
going to monkey mind every seven seconds
no matter how long i do this
it's hard
yeah absolutely
but i think that
[Music]
a lot of things are hard
and worth pursuing
and
thankfully
we don't have to figure out strategies
completely
on our own to figure out how to do it
that's where the traditions can be
helpful as well
because things like focusing on the
breath is one approach but there's a
whole
bunch of tools we can lean on
of housing other ones
well for example uh
you first of all you could pick some
other object you could focus on the
sensations of walking you can focus on
the way that you
taste food
you can embody the moment it from
multiple
in multiple ways
you can also train the mind to
take this observational stance with
practices like open monitoring practice
or in the book i call it
the the river of thought where you're
taking really a steady
a steady seat uh you're steadying
yourself usually it requires having
built these concentrative practices uh
concentrative capacities first and then
just allowing observing practicing
observing the mind without engaging with
it how do you get that distance
again i think it is practice
um
but is is that distance cultivated by
returning to the feel of walking or
the breath same thing no no no it's a
very different function
so the two kind of broad categories of
um so so far remember in the in the way
that i talked about the mindfulness of
breathing i talked about essentially
this focus notice redirect
in that mode of of practicing something
called concentrative mindfulness
practice there is a target object
and
there are things that are non-targets
basically the thing you should not be
focusing on and what we do when we
practice that kind of breath focused or
whatever walking focused
uh practice is there's what we call
signal and noise right so the signal is
the target the thing that you should be
focusing on everything else is noise and
when i'm on the wrong target i'm on the
non-target it's i'm in the noise i want
to get back to the signal so that's why
we focus on the thing that's the signal
we notice when we're off target and we
come back
that still requires sort of this
conflict experience of like uh i'm not
on the target right now i'm doing
something like it's wrong what i'm
feeling and that's a very potent thing
that we experience thousands of times in
our day when there's a goal we're not on
it or
something happens not in the way we
expect or want
um and then we course correct we either
change the goal or we correct our
behavior so that aligns with the goal
but all of that requires a level of
engagement with the mental processes
that are occurring because we're going
to muck with them if we're on something
else we're going to do something about
it to get back
this so that's all what we'd call
concentrated practices
what you're what we're talking about now
isn't is tapping into a whole other mode
of practicing called open monitoring
practices
and this one essentially
we're dialing down the signal-to-noise
ratio there is nothing that is signal
and there's nothing that is noise
you know in the in the concentrative
practices when we mind wander that's
noise i'm making an error in focusing on
the mind wandering content i need to get
back to signal
so here even mind wandering
is not a problem
because what we're doing is
because there are is no signal no no
noise what i'm doing is taking an
observational stance to whatever arises
without
grabbing at it without mucking with it
without doing anything about it or even
evaluating
its nature just acknowledging its
presence
so sometimes people talk about this as
you know if you think about the way we
make the mind
like a vast open sky
thoughts feeling sensations are like
clouds passing you know that's one kind
of metaphor or or i like to think of it
as sort of like you're sitting sitting
at a strong giant boulder on the river
on a riverbank and you're just sitting
there and all the occurrences in your
mind all the contents of your
phenomenology are just passing away in
the river they're they're faint and they
become prominent and then they can
become
faint again we're not chasing a fish
we're not splashing in the water we're
not grabbing onto leaves
um we're not trying to move around the
boulders so the water flows differently
we are just
sitting and observing
and this is a very we can do this but
it's a very unnatural meaning it doesn't
feel like the the typical thing we've
trained throughout our course the course
of our life to do most of that
time when we notice a thought we do
something with it we have another
thought and then another thought or we
um act differently based on the thought
uh instead we're just noticing the
arising of it
not participating and letting it fade
off that white board
um so that's the way that really hard
i'm not going to lie it is very good
uh come back to the breath yeah but to
just be like oh there's a a panic
striking thought but i'm not going to
grab it it's like it hits me so visceral
right often times i will feel it even
before the thought
forms into something useful i'll just be
like oh that's a massive burst of
anxiety
okay that's why i just felt that so i i
completely appreciate what you're saying
that it's hard it it is hard it is hard
it's it's going against the grain of the
way that most of our cognitive functions
have been kind of honed throughout our
lives and and like you were saying
before the a hammer is a useful tool
um
but you can let go of it that's
essentially what we're doing is we're
saying let's let go of it so the next
time even the thought that this is hard
notice that that too is a thought the
evaluation of the experience is part of
it so
it's it
it's just
practicing it
and um it we usually want to have this
occur after we've studied ourselves when
we when we have practiced the breath
related for focused or concentrated
approaches because it can get very
unstable you're like where am i what is
going on and if you feel like you can't
you either feel like a instability or
you're definitely grabbed onto something
you can always go back to the breath and
kind of restabilize and then
open back up again
so you know if it feels like it's hard
but you've been practicing concentrated
practices for a long time
do it just out of curiosity
and when you notice that something has
gripped you
ah
there i am being gripped
let go of the hammer
just sitting right here
and when you get like it it leans on
everything we've cultivated through the
concentrated practice
but it would be really useful to see how
it impacts you
um because it gives you a whole other
tool and you don't have to journey into
this space for long even you know
microseconds of just letting go can let
those conceptual structures kind of fall
away and you can rebuild again as you
want to
but it's like you were saying before
it gives you a chance to know you are a
fish in water
and that there's something besides the
water in which you are
surrounded yes
why doesn't positivity work why can't i
just and this is one thing it's never
worked for me and
your explanation may be the reason why
but people will be like okay you're
about to do something that's really
anxiety provoking but there's really no
difference between
the physiological response to something
that is provoking anxiety and something
that you're excited about and so it's
heart racing
um
you're feeling flush
you there's butterflies in your stomach
and i'm like
so they're like just tell yourself it's
exciting and i'm like
man anxiety does not feel the same to me
but okay i'm gonna try it
and i tried it and i tried it and i'm
like this doesn't work like i i can
build the facade up for a minute and
then it just comes back at me again that
no this actually i'm really nervous
about this
uh you talk about why that doesn't work
why doesn't it work
um
there's so many reasons that that can be
challenging
um but i'm curious even the way that you
just described it right that it's like
you want to reframe the experience from
a different point of view now this isn't
actually uh
anxiety in a bad way this is like you're
about to go down the steep part of the
roller coaster it's fun
and you're like no it's not fun because
i'm not going down the steep part of
roller coaster i'm in this very massive
you know this very difficult situation
and like you can't kind of override that
right because you know what the reality
is of the the
experiences you're perceiving it in the
moment
um
but i will say that you know there is
evidence that positive psychology and
positive cultivation of positive emotion
can be beneficial there are ways in
which we can
uh
focus on
the good focus on aspects of our
experience focus on i'm with you and
thousand percent
i'm talking about the trying to
make believe that something that
is scary and actually
consequential
is like oh no it's all good this is just
excitement right so the whole it's all
good it's like you feel like you're
lying to yourself like no it's not all
good um anyway so the perspective that i
can talk about it from i just want to
mention that you know i'm not saying
that all
cultivation of positive emotion is a is
a fruitless thing there are many ways in
which it can be fruitful especially if
it's an underemphasized aspect of our
experience so if we tend to like you
already we're talking about gravitate
toward the negative because we've been i
don't know there's a strong evolutionary
advantage to doing that so we kind of
tend to do that um to remind ourselves
that we have that propensity and then
focus on the thing we don't tend to
focus on which is the good right so
there are benefits to doing that what
we're talking about i don't think is
that it's not that there are aspects of
the experience that we're disregarding
this is really that the framing we're
using we're saying use a different frame
and figure out a way to be okay with
that new framing and and reinterpret
your physiologic sensations from that
new frame
first of all
it is a very energetically costly thing
to do that
it takes so much attention so many
attentional resources
and a massive amount of cognitive
control to hold that view in your mind
um because there's another view so
you've got to override that
and you've got to hold all the detail of
this new view to try to interpret your
current present moment experience from
that lens
so if you are depleted in any way and we
haven't talked about this but just to
say when we are under
high stress circumstances demanding
circumstances for some protracted period
of time
this very limited precious brain
resource of attention that fuels our
ability to do all of these things
thinking feeling connecting
you know
conceptually elaborating making stories
predictions making decisions
the fuel that allows us to do all that
stuff is reduced
and with less attentional control
available things are going to start
getting messed up so
um that's just sort of the steady state
if you if you are under high demand for
multiple weeks you have less attentional
capacity available to you you're going
to default to problematic approaches
now in the face of that which is usually
what
corresponds with our experience of
stress it's like something's going on
there is an experience of stress because
of the nature of the demands and their
protracted presence like it's not that
i'm just it's not acute stress it's
really chronic stress
so already the attentional gas tank is
on empty and then we're going to
actually burn more fuel by trying to
create this whole other structure and
we're going to find that it just keeps
crumbling like we can't hold it up
because we don't have enough
uh capacity to actually build it and
it's in those circumstances that we find
that it's actually more problematic to
try to do that thing of of uh generate
positive emotion than do something else
like take a mindful
a presence-centered accepting stance
toward what's occurring when difficult
situations are transpiring
so we know this from a study that we did
with actually active duty service
members where
over the course of a long pre-deployment
training interval
where we knew because we had tracked it
before their attention is depleted if we
do nothing at all over about four to
eight weeks
when we evaluate their attention by
having to do simple attention tasks
their performance is worse
after four to eight weeks um
than at the beginning
and um think about that that's like
pre-deployment now they got to go be
deployed so anyway we wanted to see what
we could do to help with this and one
approach that the army was using is
positive psychology so
um to protect soldiers well-being have
them cultivate positive emotion have
them think about
positive memories have them
actively create
more positivity in their
moment-to-moment experience and a whole
bunch of tools to be able to do that now
when you're not under a high stress
period of time there are ways in which
this can be very helpful to do because
you can actually do it
but under high stress what we found was
that the group that got the positivity
training looked no different than the
control group in fact they looked a
little bit worse not only did they
decline
they looked uh they they declined a
little bit more than the control group
we had another condition which was a
training and mindfulness so we had
essentially three groups no training
positivity and mindfulness so the no
training and mind positivity look very
similar both degradation over time the
mindfulness group did not degrade they
stayed stable over time so at the end of
that four to eight week interval their
attention was unchanged
which to us was a win because if we do
nothing at all or give them these
alternate approaches they're depleted
um
so that would that's where i i come to
this understanding that you know if
you're going to cultivate positive
emotion just check in to make sure
you've got the attentional resources to
do it and if you and if you feel like
you're working against yourself in
trying to create these images
or or feelings
don't do it
you know at least try something else
take an accepting stance meaning not
like i'm all good with this or i'm even
okay with this but it is what it is
it is these are the circumstances that
i'm in right now uh neutrality in some
sense a non-judgmental presence-centered
orientation
experience
all right so
all of this is incredibly powerful
transformational
there's a way to sort of supercharge
this which is something i haven't done
too much but every time it comes up i
find myself fascinated which is loving
kindness
talk to me about that
it's really interesting so you've not
practiced loving kindness i've done
little smidgens of it and i'm always
surprised how much better it feels
but i
don't spend a lot of time on it if i'm
completely honest just curious like what
what makes you
not want to spend time on it oh it's not
that i don't want to spend time on it
it's that i have programmed my life to
be very goal-oriented
and so
in
i don't find myself needing that to want
to do things for other people
but i do find that when you get into
that zone it's close to sort of a
blissful state like if i were really in
need
if i were in an emotionally dark place i
would do it all day and the irony that
and i know that you say to also do it to
yourself but the irony for me
that focusing on other people is the
thing that's going to make me feel
better like wanting good things for them
and like really thinking about amazing
things like
lifts me up and makes me feel better so
if i were ever down my thing is stress
more than like feeling low or depressed
or anything like that
but if i were boom i would go
hard on loving kindness
um
[Music]
yeah i i appreciate you saying that i am
curious to see do an experiment try it
for a week
uh two weeks see what happens because
um in some sense it is meeting a pain
point that we might not even know is
part of our experience of stress
um but but let me just back up to just
say what it is because we've kind of
been talking about it without really
getting into it so first of all i don't
usually use the term loving kindness i
think that it's the traditions we'll
talk about it or
it's often
the term would be meta m-e-t-t-a
uh as a
buddhist term for this
um
essentially that practice is a different
category it's not concentrative it's not
open monitoring or what we call
receptive practice
this is kind of a third category but it
leans on a lot of the receptive
concentrated
practices because when we
do this practice we are in that mode of
there is something specific we're trying
to do
and we're going to ensure that that's
the thing we're doing not going off and
some some other thing is not going to
happen
so um
the intention
uh behind loving practice
loving-kindness practice or what we call
connection practice in our work with
special forces and first responders and
people like that
is to
have an orientation of well-wishing
so this is not manifesting this is not
prescribing
but it's that that sense of
connecting with we what we most wish
for ourselves for other people for our
world
and to hold that very clearly
as uh something we're going to actively
do we're going to wish well
and there are many ways we can do this
that the formal practice actually uh
encourages us to use
phrases
that kind of use a word that describes
the nature of the well-wish
so for example
i'll just give you some that uh i often
use and that are part of some of the
trainings that we do
so it would be something like and we
start with our we can start with
ourselves as the target for the
well-wish
but we can move away from ourselves so
we start with ourselves then we go to a
close other somebody where it's very
easy somebody a benefactor somebody that
we have no trouble
wishing them well
um then we go to a neutral person
somebody we might not even know
you know maybe
for me it would be like the the uber
driver that brought me
i don't know
but neutral um
and then a slightly difficult person
there's somebody that you have friction
with you're going to wish them these
these well wishes
and then kind of expand not just in
terms of distance in terms of your
affiliative aspects
but broadening out to
you know everybody in this house right
now everybody that's in this
neighborhood everybody that's in uh this
town and then kind of eventually to all
beings everywhere
so we're gonna we're gonna expand
outward in that way
um and we're gonna do it by like i said
a series of phrases that we're gonna
repeat over and over again so um
but to know that we're not trying to
make up whole stories here it's just
getting to the essence of that well-wish
so some of the phrases would be
um
may i be safe
may i be happy
may i be healthy
may i live with ease
so we can just shorthand that as safe
happy
healthy
ease
and you can pick whatever words you want
but it should be kind of at the essence
of something that
uh captures something a lot broader and
that when you say them you're actually
there's an aspect of feeling that thing
that feeling that well-wishing in the
same way you might say you know have a
great day or happy birthday like there's
a sincerity to it you're not just
saying this mindlessly
um and
to repeat it
like you know when i when we uh when i
do this practice it would be some days
i'll just do 12 minutes just for myself
i'm going to repeat these phrases just
for me and you'll be surprised you know
when you say that when you feel stressed
the stress can be problematic
um
to me what i found kind of interesting
about doing this practice for myself is
that
it reminds me that
out of all the things that are happening
in my life all the things i'm striving
for that are important to me that i'm
working for most fundamentally
this is what i want for myself
this is what i want for myself and it
doesn't have to look a particular way
it's that reminding of the well wishes
that i have for myself
or in the context of relationships you
know doing it for that
uh neutral person for example or even
the slightly difficult person
when those friction moments happen in
our lives remember even for this person
who i'm finding difficult my wish for
this person is
that they're happy
healthy safe
and to live with ease
and there's a wisdom to that because we
know if everybody that we found to be
difficult had that had those qualities
in their life the chances of them
behaving in ways that are problematic
that impinge on us maybe less
it's also the case that it promotes sort
of de-escalation so if you're in a very
confrontational mode and you kind of
hold this as what you are wishing for
the person even that you
are having this
uh challenge with
um and i'm talking now let's just talk
about personal lives like a spouse like
for me oftentimes the person that is the
person easiest to generate these things
for can sometimes also become the
difficult person you know whether it's
your children or your spouse or even
your friends family whatever it is
but to hold that to spend some time
where i practice this and wish that for
another person
when that challenge moment occurs
and i could be a very uh confrontational
or reactive it's like a reminder like i
could really scream right now but what
do i really wish for this person and how
am i going to get to a point where both
of us feel like we can maneuver through
this difficulty
with that that those wishes held
uh instead of me acting against what i
truly want for another human being
uh or truly want for myself ultimately
i love that amish this has been
wonderful where can people
follow you read the book all that good
stuff
um thanks for asking they can find me if
they remember my first name amishi
amishi.com
and the book is peak mind and available
everywhere books are sold love it are
you on social media i am yeah so
on instagram amishipja
uh twitter and michija
love it it's amazing
so glad that uh you wrote the book that
we got a chance to talk this really was
fantastic
boys and girls um
man let me tell you this is something
that has completely changed my life i
hope that you guys will give mindfulness
uh it's due it is really a game changer
and speaking of things that are a game
changer if you haven't already be sure
to subscribe and until next time my
friends be legendary take care peace