 who are up against some pretty intense algorithms that we can't just will our way past. So that's a real crisis. But I would just caution that this isn't really our fault. There's nothing wrong with our brain. In fact, the reason there can be algorithms that can predict exactly what we will do is because our attention is working so reliably. What's up everybody and welcome to the show today. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified. And in order to do that, you're going to have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. I'm Ishii, welcome to the show. And we would love to hear your origin story and how you became interested in finding your focus with mindfulness. Ooh, good question. Great to be here and to be together. My professional training is as a neuroscientist. So through undergrad and grad school, my real passion and intellectual interest was in the topic of attention. And that's pretty much what I studied. And at some point, not a surprising point when I became a new mom, a new professor, was building my lab, husband in grad school, just sort of like the full catastrophe of life kind of caught up with me. And I had this real crisis of attention and it became this sort of ironic experience of nothing in my professional life and even more research that I could find in literature could guide me to help in feeling like I had lost access to my own focus. And I was feeling pretty lost at that point. Like, I study attention, I know this field. Like, why is there nothing I can do to help myself? And actually found out about mindfulness meditation in particular through one of my dear colleagues, a respected neuroscientist, Richie Davidson. And, you know, it was almost one of those things. I knew I was sort of in a down kind of mindset. I was feeling very overwhelmed and I wouldn't say I called it stress. I just felt like I couldn't shake being distracted all the time. Anyway, so he's at a, this was when I was at the University of Pennsylvania. So he was giving a talk and he's a motion researcher. So he shows these beautiful images on the screen of two brains, basically, two functional MRI images. One is of a negative brain, basically somebody induced to be in a negative mood. And then next to it, a positive brain, meaning somebody induced in a positive mood. And his point was just, look, the brain activation patterns are different. These are different brains. And at the end of his lecture, I raised my hand and it was really like everybody had been done kind of asking their basic questions. And I raised my hand, I'm at the back of the room. I'm like, how do you get that brain to look like that brain? Like, how do I get the, you know, how do I get the negative one to look like the positive one? And he just almost, I thought, kind of in a flippant way said something that was, I made my jaw drop. He said, meditation. And I was like, what, what? We don't use that word here. You know, it was like as offensive as being with astrophysicists and talking about astrology. Like it was just like, you don't, you don't talk about that stuff, dude. What are you talking about? But then we ended up talking later on and he mentioned some of the work they were doing. Now, of course, Richard Davidson heads a major center known for mindfulness. But at that point, he was really early days. It was early 2000s. And it got me curious enough that I had to overcome my own biases to go check it out. And once I started practicing, I realized, oh my goodness, this is that thing I've been looking for. This is a way for me to train my mind from the inside. And I just got so curious. I'm like, we got to bring this to the lab and research it. Maybe we can add tools for other people that are stressed and need to perform at a high level. So sorry, that's a long answer, but that's how I entered the whole topic. Well, I don't think there's any time in history that more people have fought for our attention. And with that, we realize how limited we are with that attention and how important it is where we focus it and how we use it in our own lives and be so indiscriminate and just handing it out to whoever asks for it. Absolutely, I couldn't agree with you more. And we see it, we know that we're in the, we are the commodity in the attention economy. We are, the product, our mind, our attention is the product that many, many people are profiting from. And we're up against some pretty intense algorithms that we can't just will our way past. So that's a real crisis. But I would just caution that this isn't really our fault, there's nothing wrong with our brain. In fact, the reason there can be algorithms that can predict exactly what we will do is because our attention is working so reliably, so perfectly on cue that, you know, it's like, of course, if I see my name and a shiny red button, I'm gonna click on it. Like, why wouldn't I, right? That's just what I've sort of, my evolution has designed me to do that. So I think that's also important to keep in mind. So we don't end up in this sort of self blame mode of like, I just can't keep my attention focused. Well, I think many of us have probably at this point dabbled with mindfulness or meditation. And we hear this time and time again from our audience that I tried it, it's tough to stick to, it didn't work for me. And because of it, you know, a lot of people dismiss it, but we'd love to just unpack the science because I think that's what's often missing from the conversation. As you had your own biases around it, many people think of it as new agey or woo woo and the science has actually caught up in a lot of ways to really talk about the powerful aspect of being more mindful and what you describe as the peak mind. So how do you define the peak mind if we could start there? Yeah, you know, just to make clear, because a lot of times when I, even when I hear people say that, I have this kind of image in my mind of some woman on a mountaintop, you know, her arms like up in the air, like I did it, you know, like I'm a successory and in the flesh. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about really peak experiences or extraordinary moments in time. I'm really talking about peak as having full access to our attentional resources so that no matter the challenges or circumstances, we're fully there to best benefit what we do next. And that to me is even more valuable than having, you know, a mountaintop moment because that means that I can trust myself to really maneuver through no matter what. And by the way, that doesn't just mean that I'm happy and even successful in every moment. It means knowing that when the sadness arises or when the challenge is there, I can maneuver through, I can make a different decision. You know, for example, if I know I'm quite upset, maybe don't press send on that email or, you know, or even if I have a reactive moment and snap at somebody to apologize more quickly. So all of these are what I mean by a peak mind. And, you know, I love what you said regarding mindfulness that it's had its moment there. So it's almost like a buzzword, which to me is just kind of amazing. Because when I started this work, people thought I was nuts. Nobody'd ever care about mindfulness. Why are you bothering studying it? Why are you gonna study the brain basis of this thing? And now it's kind of incredible to be on, you know, your show here, which I know a lot of people listen to and it's almost like you're talking about this topic again. You know, it's just like this very common thing. Part of the reason I think people have challenges with it is what they think they're going to get from practicing. So maybe we could talk about that a little bit because I think the problem is, if you start out putting a lot of pressure on this ancient practice and bringing it to our modern world, that, you know, I'm gonna do this thing and it's like a magic bullet and I'll instantly feel blissed out and everything will be, I don't know, rainbows and unicorns or something like that, right? Like that's just not the case with anything. But the other thing is you're fundamentally getting connected to the nature of your mind and your mind was built to be distractible. It just was. So the fact that you mind wander a thousand times is actually normal and has nothing to do with whether you're successful or not at this thing we can unpack, which is mindfulness meditation. We drop great content each and every week and we want to make sure that you guys get notified and in order to do that, you're gonna have to smash that subscribe button and hit that notification bell. And if you've gotten a lot of value out of this, make sure you give us a like and share our videos with your friends. Well, I think many of us have encountered ADHD and maybe even been diagnosed with it or have friends who are taking the drugs to combat it. And even if you don't have it, you may have dabbled with those to get that focus. We hear about students now taking these drugs to get that focus, to study, to cram, but we don't often hear about controlling the other inputs that form the distraction. So many of us are overwhelmed by distraction. We talk about the devices, the notifications, TV shows, everything else that we have on our plate and it seems like stress is at an all-time high, but we tend to look for drugs or easier outs to get that focus back, to get that limitless superpower back. Mindfulness is the opposite. It's much like working a muscle where if you set a goal of 45 minutes or an hour to work out and you've never worked out in your life, you're really gonna struggle to do that full hour and you're probably not gonna wanna continue tomorrow. And I found every time that we've talked about meditation, we have our fans and our followers who say, well, I can't do 30 minutes. I can't do 20 minutes every single day. It's just too hard. It's too challenging. I'd rather find a shortcut or something easier to do. And the book talks about a much smaller, minimum effective dose that I think many of us, if we just started smaller and really just focused on the initial benefits instead of, as you say, shooting for the sunshine, the rainbows, the unicorns and this practice of an hour long every single day, we might actually start to see some of the benefits of regaining that focus and attention instead of the struggles that we're currently having. So I know that the book is loaded with exercises and opportunities for you to start to sharpen these skills. But if someone in our audience has tried this before and it hasn't clicked or worked for them, what would you say is a core exercise that would be an easy way for them to start to see some of these scientific benefits that you discuss? Let me interrupt right there for one second. I think what would also help set this up is to get a better definition of what attention is because you broke it down into three different parts. And I know for myself, I never saw it in that way. And when you started talking about meditation and how it helps with each one of those, it gave me a lot more clarity. So help our audience out there with that before we get into the meditation. That sounds great. There's so much good stuff. So many questions already in great content. So let's unpack it. I think that you're right, Jenny. Let's just start maybe with the basics like Attention 101 and then we'll jump into AJ your question regarding what can we do right now? The first thing to say is that our capacity to pay attention is the success story of our brain's evolution. And the reason we have attention is because the brain suffered from a really big problem, a really fundamental problem, which is there is far more stuff out there than you could possibly fully analyze. So now in a complex word, I mean, and that was like our ancient ancestors, right? Like we're talking about just very primitive, but even they had too much stuff to deal with. So the evolution of this brain system was the solution to that challenge. And essentially, attention is about privileging a subset of information so we can sample our environment bit by bit. We don't have to take it all in at once, but maybe I can interrogate some portion of it and get more information and that'll help me maneuver and survive, et cetera. So just to keep that in mind. And also to kind of start, and we can actually get into this a little bit more, like what is the nature of this system, this multifaceted system? And I'll be happy to talk about kind of the three main parts that we've discovered. It's highly distractible. And that's by design too. If you can imagine, if you had excellent focus, again, as our ancient ancestors, you're at some watering hole, you're like, I'm thirsty, I'm gonna drink water. Soon enough, you're gonna be eaten because you're gonna be so fixated on the water, you're not gonna notice the predator nearby, et cetera. And by the way, if you can't plan or reflect in the modern world, you're not gonna make it very far. So the capacity for the mind to wander is a good thing and the data suggests about 50% of our waking moments, our mind is not on our task at hand. So that's just the baseline. That's like normal circumstances. And so I just hope that that gives people some comfort to start with that is not you alone. All of us have this feature of our mind. It actually makes sense that we have it. And by the way, there are ways we can actually work with it even better than we have been. So the way that I like to think about this system that's really designed to privilege some information over other information is to figure out how the brain privileges information. The first way we could think about is what it is that we should pay attention to, right? Like the thing on which I should be getting information. And right now, for example, I'm looking at you on my computer screen, that should be the most important sensory input I get. If I looked over at the side of my room, you'd be like, what's up with that, right? That's the wrong thing to do. So what it is matters. The other thing that matters is sort of now, time. I should select for information that's occurring in this moment versus tied to my past or future. And then the third way we could think about even selecting information is based on our goals. What's the most important thing, right? So the content, the timing, the goals, these are all ways that our brain has to think about selecting information. And it ends up that there are brain systems, distinct brain systems that do each of those three things. So the very first system that has to do with this capacity to select what we call the brain's orienting system. I like to think of the metaphor of a flashlight. So if you're in a darkened room, you're in a darkened path, you're walking around outside somewhere and you wanna see where you're going, a flashlight is a super handy tool. Because wherever it is that it's pointing, you're gonna get privileged information about the path that you're walking on and everything else is gonna be blanked out, really. And that's a good thing. You don't need to see everything in your environment. You just really need to make sure what's in front of you matters. The parallel between the actual brain system of orienting and the flashlight is actually multiple. It can be very laser focused. It can be broad. It can be directed to the external environment or even the internal environment. So if I said, you know, what is the sensation right now that you are feeling on the bottoms of your feet? You can direct the flashlight internally and check it out. And I'm positive nobody was probably thinking about that right before I said it. But seamlessly easily we do that. So the flashlight is a really handy metaphor for this selecting thing. And I'll just mention the other two briefly and we can unpack them a little bit more later. But the opposite of this kind of narrowing, selecting, privileging what information is in front of us is broadening and being receptive. And that metaphor I use is a floodlight. You know, frankly the exact opposite. And this is formally called the brain's alerting system. And it really is. It's like, I always think of like when I'm driving down the road and I see a flashing yellow light. You know, like it's flashing usually near some kind of construction zone or weird traffic pattern. What does it cue us to do? Pay attention. Does it tell us exactly what to pay attention to? No, but it's like be broad, be receptive, observe what's happening and be ready to act if you need to. Very, very different mode. In that case, being narrow and privileging some information could really cost us, right? We might miss the child running into the street or the weird turn that arrives onto our lane or whatever it is. So I hope that makes sense that narrow, broad. And then the third system which is really regarding this goals piece is something called the executive system. Sometimes I refer to it as a juggler because it's about kind of keeping all the balls in the air just like the executive of a company. It's not about doing each individual task but it's ensuring that our goals and our behavior align. And that's the sort of manager. And so when we think of attention as all of these different ways then we can start talking about, well, how are you gonna train it? How are you gonna benefit it? Because all of these are vulnerable to stress. They're vulnerable to distractibility. They're vulnerable to the meanderings of the mind as well.