 The story that we've been told for a long time is that something happens in the world. We see it, we hear it, and then we react to it. So there's a scientist we call that, a stimulus. There's something in the world that causes our brains to, our neurons to fire in our brains. And then we evaluate it, and then we plan an action and we execute the action. So stimulus, response. And if we want to control ourselves, sometimes that means putting the brakes on that response and planning a different response instead. And I would say, if you have to put the brakes on, you are already, you know, you've lost the bet. You're already 70%, 80% of the battle is already lost, really. Now that's not to say that we never, that never happens. It does sometimes happen that we put the brakes on one response, hopefully before we, you know, Will Smith should have, you know, put the brakes on. But I would say that the most effective way to build in control is to understand that your brain does not react to things in the world. It's predicting. So your brain is always predicting. And predictions are not these like, you know, abstract mental plans. Your brain is changing the firing of its own neurons to anticipate what's going to happen next and plan for it. And actually, you know, the really, the real crazy bit of this is that if we were to stop time right now and look inside your brain, your brain would be, you know, like having a model of, it would be modeling what it believes to be happening in your body and in the world. And it's gonna predict what's gonna happen next and predictions begin as motor plans. So you're like, the last time I was in this situation with, you know, this pattern of sense data, what did I do next? And that is what your brain starts to plan. It starts to plan the action. And as a consequence of that planning, it also starts to plan what you will start to anticipate, what will you see? What will you hear? What will you smell? What will you feel? So it's not the case that you see first and then you act. It's that you prepare the action first and then you see. And, you know, when I'm explaining this to audiences, I usually, I have some fun examples, but one of the best examples actually is explaining how baseball works, like how, you know, what a pitcher and a batter are facing each other. And I have to admit, I mean, you know, I live in Boston, so I'm not allowed to say too loudly. So just between us and our list or like millions of listeners, like I'm not a real sports fan and I'm not a Red Sox fan, but just because I don't, I didn't really understand baseball very, I wasn't really interested. I actually come from Canada's. I wasn't thrilled with hockey either. But I have to say that now I'm very much, you know, not just hockey and baseball, but like I just started reading about total football, which is a kind of soccer that gets played. And I'm like, this is amazing. Cause sports, everything to do with sports where there are balls and maybe, you know, equipment and multiple humans is the perfect set of examples to explain how prediction works. If your brain wasn't, if brains didn't predict and they only reacted, there would be no baseball, you know, because a batter can't wait until he sees the pitcher release the ball and then prepare the motor response. If he tried to do that, he would miss the ball every single time. It's just physically not possible. So your brain is starting to prepare your actions first and your experience is a consequence. It's conditional on what you see, what you hear and so on conditional on those motor preparations. What does that mean? What that means is that if you want to control your behavior, you have to architect your environment correctly to help you engage in the actions that you want to engage in. A simple example is every day around five o'clock, I really get hungry. Now, am I really hungry? Not really. I'm probably really fatigued and I think that if I eat, it will give me more energy. Right? And what do I want to eat? Do I want to eat, you know, if there are potato chips around in the house, I will eat them. I will eat them. Yeah. So what do I have to do? I have to have no potato chips in my house. Now that's a trivial example, but it's an example of what scientists call niche construction, niche construction. The parts of the world that matter to you that are important to your wellbeing are your niche. And if I make sure that I don't have potato chips in my house, that's a form of niche construction. If I make sure that, you know, I keep my windows open and, you know, to get fresh air or light or I go for a walk, that's niche construction. Because what I'm doing is I'm constructing my environment in a way that will help me engage in the behaviors that I want to engage in, right? So we do things like we have these little, you know, programs or apps that will lock us out of our phones, right? I mean, that's niche construction. And then I would also say though, that for humans, a huge part of our niche, our ecological niche are other humans, okay? And, you know, the best thing for a human nervous system is another human. The worst thing for a human nervous system is also another human. And so the way you treat other people, how predictable your behavior is to other people influences how they treat you, how predictable they are to you. And so the way in which you treat people is also a form of niche construction. It directly influences, it directly impacts your well-being. And I think that if you understand these things, if you understand that the brain is predictive, if you understand that, you know, that basically automatically your brain's gonna predict what to do next. And if you don't wanna have to engage in like the energy, the effort of putting the brakes on, you can try to architect your environment in a way to, you know, do niche construction in a way that will allow you to engage in the behaviors that are the ones that you want.