The Habit of Attention with Amishi Jha

Jessica Honegger [00:00:03] Hey, there. Welcome to Going Scared. I'm Jessica Honegger, founder of the world changing brand Noonday Collection, and I'm so glad to have you here for today's conversation. Our Going Scared community gathers here every week for direct and honest conversations that help you live a life of courage by leaving comfort and going scared. We are in the middle of our habits for highly hesitant habit keepers’ series, and I'm curious what habits have you started during this series? What which habits have you reconnected to? Which habits if you just patted yourself on the back because you just had them all along? For me, I've always been a bad bed maker. Always. And then the pandemic hit, and suddenly I'm working from home a lot. My schedule went out the window. I stopped making my bed. So, thanks to this series, I've committed to making my bed. I've had a drinking water habit since last August and I am keeping up with that habit and I've started to regularly go through my piles every week. These are just a few of the habits that I have recommitted to. Today, we are talking about a cornerstone habit. A cornerstone habit is a habit that you have that actually has a halo effect on all your other habits. And the habit we are talking about today is the habit of our attention. Where are you putting your focus? Where is your mind? Because where your thoughts go is what is going to grow. And I was so excited about today's guest because she has been on Dax Shepard's podcast. She's been on all sorts of national network TV, really expert in what can we learn to pay attention to? Dr. Amishi Jha. Dr. Amishi Jha is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, and she serves as the director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Davis and Postdoctoral Training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University. Her most recent book, Peak Mind, is all about how we can learn to have the habit of mindfulness and paying attention. And actually, after this episode, you're going to hear I came up with a new habit that I have now at stoplights. Hello Amishi Jha, welcome to our show.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:02:54] It is great to be here.

Jessica Honegger [00:02:55] Well, I'm really excited to have you here today because attention is one of my favorite topics.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:03:00] Really?

Jessica Honegger [00:03:01] Yes, I love that because I am very, really in correlation to digital health and what digital technology has done to our attention over the last 10 years. And I'm swimming upstream and how I'm raising my kids. My middle school children don't have iPhones and are currently actually at the house right now, and I literally put all of the remote controls in my bag before I came to the office. I know I did because they're teenagers and I told them, hey, I don't want you on tech. You know, it's a beautiful day, but I don't trust them to not get on tech. So, there you go. I just took the remote controls. Everybody knows now. This is how we parent. Our last podcast series was about self-awareness, which is first and foremost about learning to pay attention to your thoughts, feelings, and body. And now we're in this new series and we're calling it nine habits for highly hesitant habit keepers. And we're talking about the importance of starting and keeping healthy habits. And really, one of the primary habits we have are our habitual thoughts and our visual lack of paying attention. So, I'm really excited for your work today and specifically how pragmatic you get because I just love the subtitle of your book that is 12 minutes to learning how to pay attention, peak mind, find your focus, own your attention, and just invest 12 minutes a day. So, this is going to be really a great conversation. OK? When I was prepping for this podcast, I searched your name in Spotify, and I swear every podcast came up. Armchair Expert, The Louis Howe shows you've never done interviews with Anderson Cooper. This topic of attention is getting a lot of attention, so I'd love to just hear why. Why is this getting so much attention right now?

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:04:57] [00:04:57] I think you pointed to it, even though it is the case that from a brain biology perspective, there is actually nothing wrong with our attention. The attention system has not changed over the course of human history, despite the prevalence of technology, despite the consistent imposition that smartphones bring into our lives, our attention is the attention. But there is a pain point right now, and that is the feeling that we cannot manage the onslaught of information and engagement that is required of us or sort of compelled by us. [35.5s] And so I think people want solutions and the solutions that are currently sort of out there are not working all that well. So, for example, breaking up with our phone, you know, as a parent, we can have we could, as you were just describing, we could have a little bit more control over our children, but frankly, nobody is going to do that for us. And the I would say more humbling news is that even if they did, meaning we had all of our technology magically vanish away, preoccupation, disturbing thoughts, worry, catastrophizing, ruminating would be the internal distraction that would still be challenged by. So, there's a lot to say about this, and thankfully science is showing us that there are solutions to help us.

Jessica Honegger [00:06:16] I love that, and we have talked a lot about attention on this podcast. We've had neurobiologists on the show, Dr. Dan Siegel based out of UCLA. And what we talk a lot about is how what we pay attention to matters because what we focus on grows. And oftentimes we're watering thoughts like we're watering a newly planted seed without even realizing it before you know it, we've got it like a deep root tree system growing in our brain and you are really talking to that. You're talking about not just taking away the things that might be grabbing our attention, but then actually, what do we need to be paying attention to? And I love how your website says that research shows we're missing 50 percent of our lives because we aren't paying attention. So, what does it mean to not be paying attention?

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:07:03] Right. [00:07:04] So this is now tapping into something that is fundamental to us as human beings. It's a capacity that we'd consider almost the greatest evolutionary leap that the human brain has been allowed to make. But in this case, it is quite problematic for us, and that is something called mental time travel. So, this is the notion that we can in this very moment, move our attention to the past. So, you can think about it as rewinding the mind to past episodes we've experienced, knowledge we hold, or we can fluidly and without much effort fast forward the mind to create simulated realities of what may occur in the future so we can plan, and we can actually predict what might happen. So very, very useful to be able to rewind and fast forward, but when I talk about that 50 percent, no, what I'm saying is that unfortunately, we are doing that when we need to be and ought to be and want to be, in most cases, paying attention to what is going on right now. [59.5s] So that when we ask people, what are you doing right now? And these are studies that have been done in my lab and other labs, what are you doing right now? It could be any time of day or night if we if we do it through an experience sampling approach where we ping people on their cell phones and we say, tell us the category of what you're doing, click on a button that tells us, I'm having a conversation, reading a book, in a meeting, all the things that humans do during their waking hours. You select the basic category of what you're doing and then you ask your second question Where is your attention right now? Is it on the task at hand, the thing you just clicked a moment ago? Or is it somewhere else? That's where we get the number 50 percent. [00:08:41] Only about half of our waking moments is our attention actually in the task at hand. And you know, that's kind of remarkable. [8.3s] It's like what you think people during the day, and this is what the state of things are, and we have that same sort of skepticism. We're like, OK, maybe this is just because they're busy. You know, you get text messages all the time. Maybe you're not really trying to do the task at hand because you've got other things happening in your life. Let's bring them into the lab and let's tell them, OK, for this next 15 minutes, you're going to be doing an intentionally demanding task. And then let's probe them on where their attention is. So, we did that. We brought people into the lab and many labs have done this. They do it an intentionally demanding task. Every now and then we pause the experiment, and we ask them, where is your attention right now? And only half the time will they say it's on the task I'm actually doing. Then we can say, let's take it one step further. We're going to pay people to stay on task. It's like, how much more motivated can you get? You know, I'm actually going to bring them to the lab and say, the longer you stay on task, the more reward you get for participating in the study. Even then, people are hovering around that 50 percent number. This is what makes us realize that the mind has this tendency to wander away from the present moment, and there are consequences to that. [00:09:55] And my work, which is, you know, from the neuroscience perspective, looking at very high demand in some cases, high stress professionals such as military service members, elite athletes, first responders, emergency services professionals and at some level, all of us right are high demand individuals. We have a lot to do in our lives and there's is consequential what we do for them and us, when we experience high stress, that number goes above 50 percent. And now we're kind of in a dangerous terrain where we are missing more of our life than we are present for it. And that's what made me compelled and interested in finding solutions to our research. [38.3s]

Jessica Honegger [00:10:35] So really, when we are doing the work of being present in our minds, it is going against the flow. And so, it really is about almost breaking this habit of rewind or fast forward and learning how to be present. Can you go ahead and tell us, break it down, give us the cliff notes to how we can invest these 12 minutes a day because I'm a looper, I'm a looper. And maybe that's why research around attention and the topic of attention has my attention because I am very aware. I'm a very future oriented person. I'm a planner. I'm a dreamer. I'm a catastrophizer, like they all kind of go together and I have to work really hard to be present and to form this habit of being attentive. And it's hard for me, even as much work as I do. Like this requires effort. This work requires effort. So, I love how you broke it down into 12 minutes a day. So, for those of us, this is the start of the new year. I do feel like this is the foundation we can go and create so many habits this year. But if the habit of what we pay attention to and being present in the moment isn't there, we're just going to be just as frazzled as we already are starting this year off.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:11:57] Right, right. [00:11:58] And here's the reason why it's so problematic to wander away from the present moment. Any time we deviate from our plans, our wishes, our goals, in order to course correct, we have to have an awareness of what is actually going on. And when we are not checking in with the here and the now, we aren't paying attention to where our mind is moment by moment, we're less likely to be able to course correct when we're off track. So, it is fundamental and it's fundamental to habit formation. It's fundamental to creating new habits and for living our lives in ways that are consistent with our ethical code and our and our wishes and our dreams and really our passions. [39.1s] So it ends up being quite fundamental. But I wanted to just tell you that you're not alone in finding it difficult, you know? And that's one of the reasons I wanted to write the book is that when we started looking at these very high stress, high demand groups, they were in extraordinary circumstances where there their attention was going to be challenged and maybe I want to say a little bit about that. The notion that when we endure high stress intervals and frankly, even though it's a new year, we are still saddled with the consequences of a global pandemic. And that in and of itself puts us in a high stress situation. Absolutely. But when we are in high stress circumstances, this tendency to fast forward and rewind increases, which means that just willing ourselves to be in the present moment is not going to be sufficient. We're going to go against the grain of, like you said, the default of what our mind does. So, we have to start thinking about this from a brain trading perspective. [00:13:33] You know, in the same way, you know, recently I after a long break from traveling through this pandemic, I took a trip and had to put my suitcase above my seat in the airplane. And in that moment, I had that kind of insight like, look, you know, all the exercise I've been doing to keep my upper body fit and strong comes in handy right now, but it's already embodied within me. If I had trouble putting my suitcase up, it would make no sense for me to drop to the ground in that moment and start doing some push-ups. I'm not going to gain the strength when I need it, I need to already embody it. And we want to think about the mind the same way we can train ourselves daily. [34.4s] And like you said, I say in the book as little as 12 minutes a day and I'll describe the kinds of suite of exercises that we offer, but we need to train ourselves now because then it will be embodied. It will be actually part of the neural plastic structure of our brain to be able to default back to the present much more readily than we do right now.

Jessica Honegger [00:14:29] Which is really what a habit is. And because I am not, I was not excited about doing this podcast series. My Instagram community did a poll and this one won, like far and above everything else. Yeah, and I was a little bit annoyed, but I think, and I we launched the podcast with Gretchen Rubin. I don't know if you know her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, she helped me reframe and I, you know, I am actually, you know, enjoy habits because here's the deal. Once you have a habit and it's embodied, it then requires no energy. Exactly it. It's that embodied. And that's what I'm looking for, you know, and all like, that's what this series is about. It's like, how do we form these habits that become so embodied that they then require no energy? So, then you can be free to put energy to creating and to being a co-creator and to living a life of purpose with energy and flourishing. And but it requires the effort. And I think to your point, I have to just tell you this your meme I got today because you brought up just like how we're still I mean, two years in and we're still in a high stress environment, and this meme just absolutely summed up the stressful environment we're in. It says, is it Omicron or Delta or your period or a cold or flu or allergies or anxiety or long COVID or perimenopause or food poisoning or migraine or a tumor? It's not a tumor or PTSD or parenting is just so hard or too much sitting and screen time and stress. Or is it COVID?

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:16:01] Oh my goodness. Oh, it's so true.

Jessica Honegger [00:16:05] Because what's going on in our minds, like a snapshot of you have one symptom of something and then you're like, this that. And so, I just want to remind everyone that this like we are in a high stress environment. And so doing this work of learning how to be present, doing these exercises, investing in creating these neural pathways, uprooting your root system that might be kind of deep in your mind is worth it. Because then we actually get to have more freedom in the future. I just don't like that it's...I am finding that during this environment, it's just taking me a lot more effort. And I don't want effort right now. I want ease, you know what I mean?

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:16:44] Well, so absolutely. But here's the thing to think about. You know, you described having required less energy. One of the things that mindfulness training, which is the solution ultimately, that my lab came to is that the way to train attention out of all the different things that we actually tried, the only way that we were finding successfully helped our participants was through embarking on a mindfulness training program. But the way that mindfulness training positions itself relative to other forms of training is that it is present centered, just like you said. [00:17:17] In fact, I would describe or define mindfulness as a mental mode, a way of making the mind that has to do with paying attention to our present moment experience in a very particular way, in a way that is non-judgmental or non-elaborated. [13.2s] Because I like to say so that we're not. I like that.

Jessica Honegger [00:17:33] I like that. I usually use the term non-judgmental. But you're right, it doesn't elaborate.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:17:39] Exactly, or we're not hyper linking over and over even looping, right? We're just it's not an elaboration and it's non-reactive. And so that's the mode we want to achieve. Why do we want to achieve that? Because. [00:17:50] Is in some sense that is the least energy demanding mode, you know, proliferation of thought, reactivity, what you call looping, these things are extremely energy consuming. And frankly, that's what spends out our attentional fuel to say the same thought to yourself over and over again, or to essentially catastrophize the numerous scenarios that may never come to pass all require your energy and you are spending out that fuel in unproductive ways. And frankly, you know, there is uncertainty, there is ambiguity. And to live with that kind of tolerance, we might even call it distress tolerance takes this steadiness, which allows us to arrive back in the here and the now, non-elaborately and non-reactively. So, we want that. [51.3s] We don't want to be nobody wants to be thinking of ever doomsday scenario. We don't enjoy that or even or even ruminating on the past of how it used to be, how we used to get together it right. Both of those are quite unpleasant. In fact, going back to that study, I was describing what we learned about 50 percent of our waking moments. Our minds are not in the present moment. One of the seminal studies in that topic was a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, because that's the next causal link we understood is that when we aren't in the present moment, we tend to have a little bit of dysphoria negative affect negative mood associated with that. So, staying in the present can be useful because it allows us to recoup our attentional fuel. It protects our mood. And frankly, the reality is when there's a whole world of uncertainty being present to the fact that it is uncertain is just the nature of reality. That is the case, right? So, this is it's all kind of linked together. But you know, I really want to get to the question that you asked, which I think is a really important one. How do I do that? I want that. And how do I do that? And part of our journey in the lab has been to take evidence-based programs. And there's so many evidence-based programs now involving mindfulness but making it the most time efficient possible. And what I call really establishing the minimum effective dose.

Jessica Honegger [00:19:59] I love that. I love that. That's also like there's another study done on habits, and it talks about like the cornerstone habit, the one habit that if you have that, it kind of has this halo effect on domino effect on other habits. So, and I like that about exercise, too. Like, I hate hour-long workouts because I think it's been scientifically proven that you don't need to work out for an hour to get the benefits of it. So, I love how you broken it down to these 12 minutes. I can't wait to hear how you did that.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:20:27] Yeah, yeah. So, the search for the minimum effective dose was because, like you said, most of us don't want to spend more time than we need to. And frankly, we always have an invitation to do more. This is just the least amount, the threshold we need to get to actually start seeing benefits in our lives. And in particular, the benefits I was interested in as an attention researcher were attentional benefits. [00:20:49] So how can we keep attention stable instead of having it get depleted over high stress intervals? And why do we care about attention? Because, like I said, it is a type of fuel it actually allows us. And by the way, this is exactly why we're feeling a lot of cognitive fog and irritability right now amidst the number of months now, almost into the second full year of the pandemic. It does fuel our ability to think and when we have less attention, our thinking is fuzzy. We're more we're more likely to be illogical, irrational. It also fuels our ability to feel emotion and regulate emotion so we might be more, more agitated, or reactive than we would when we fully have our attentional capacity. And it also actually helps us with our connection to other people. So, under potentially depleted circumstances, we're going to be more likely to be disconnected, less able to empathize. [57.5s] And if you see what's happening on frankly going back to the notion of planes, all the stuff that's happening on planes as humans are now getting in contact with each other a little bit more, we're seeing that fractured quality. Our social divisiveness, I think, is not it's not a coincidence alone that is causing a lot of the social upheaval that we're seeing. [00:22:05] So just to just to say attention is important for thinking, feeling, and connecting. It truly is a fuel. It gets depleted under high stress, and the search for the minimum effective dose is a very useful one. [12.7s] And now to kind of get into kind of the what the suite of practices are, frankly, the goal was to capitalize on the nature of the way attention already functions. And one very common way we all know that we pay attention. We use this term all the time focus. So, our ability and when we say focus, what we really mean is I can privilege some content over other content. So right now, you know, it could be for me the sound of your voice. Jessica, it could be I don't know if I'm reading a book, obviously, the words on the page. Whatever it is, that's the center of my world and everything fades away, and like you said, this has ripple effects because frankly, moment by moment what we pay attention to ends up being our life, right? [00:23:03] So the metaphor I like to use for attention it is that it's in some sense like a flashlight. So, if you were in a darkened room, flashlight is such a handy tool, it allows you to direct it willfully and wherever you direct it, you get privileged access to that information. It's clearer, crisper, more salient to you. Everything else is darkened. At the brain level, that is exactly what happens when we pay attention. Whatever that content is, gets really more brain resources devoted to processing it. But there's other things that are really useful about that flashlight metaphor. Not only can we point it, but it can get yanked, it can get pulled by things. [37.0s] And what are the things that pull our attention like we already talked about, right? So, rumination worries about the future or kind of woeful feelings about the past, longing for the past yanks, our flashlight, our technology yanks our flashlight, alerts on our phone pull our flashlight. So, you know, when you and I really appreciate the care, the mothering care of you toward your children to say, you know what? Stop being at the mercy of what whatever the technology gives you, go out and be in nature. I mean, truly, that is a gift you're giving your children. But we want to give that to ourselves, even as grown-ups who don't have parents, parents pulling away our opportunities or allowing us to have opportunities to do that. So, you know, one of the things from mindfulness practice, and I'll just describe one fundamental practice that maybe you've even talked about on this podcast before. That really, we can...I'm going to describe a kind of a more formal practice, but I want to give like a practice that you can do on the go because this day we're always on the go. [00:24:40] So, you know, the foundational practice that we offer, and, in the book, I describe a whole series of practices is the foundational practice that I want to talk about now is something called I call it the find your flashlight practice and the and the reason I do that is because the flashlight is most often, we don't know where. We're typically not aware of where our attention is. We're just in that moment immersed in it. So, it's taking these few minutes to actually pay attention to where the flashlight is and exercising the ability to direct it willfully, where we want it to be carries over into the rest of our lives. So, what do you do in this practice? And you know, you've had wonderful friends of mine like Dan Siegel on the show, so probably you've heard some aspects of this, but for example, for the find your flashlight practice often called breath awareness practice. We pick an object that's going to be the target of our attention for a few dedicated minutes of time every day. And as I suggest in the subtitle of my book Build Up, have the habit become your daily dozen 12 minutes a day that you do this. So, you're going to just take time aside to find a quiet, supportive place to do this. No special posture is required, but I do suggest people take sort of this upright but not uptight orientation like really embody what you are aiming to achieve. Being more attentive and present in your life. So, you want to kind of get collect yourself, have like a dignified, upright posture. And then the first thing you're going to do is just check in to the fact that as you sit there, you have a body that's breathing. That's just what's occurring in the moment. And the breath is such a handy tool because the breath only occurs in this moment. You can't save it up for later and you can't really reflect on it in the past. [102.4s] Why would you want to? So, it's this is the stimulus that we don't have to effort fully work to produce breath related sensations. They just happen. So, we're just checking into the fact that we've got this sort of breath sphere in our body right now. And then what we do is we try to identify something that's vivid about the breath, what is salient, what stands out for me, it tends to be sort of the coolness of air around my nose. And so, for the short period of time that I do this practice, I take that flashlight of my attention and I direct it toward those sensations’ breath related sensations. For me, it happens to be around that part of my body, the coolness of air coming in and out of my nostrils but pick what really stands out for you. And then for the period of time of practicing, that's where the goal is to keep your flashlight focused. That's that step

Jessica Honegger [00:27:13] I think is going to change my life because I seriously, because I'm just I've been picturing this flashlight, but I'm like, well, but that one needs to be in the spotlight, you know what I mean? Like, I know how to turn it away from what I don't want it, but then I am having problems. So, you literally just are pointing the flashlight at whatever sensation your breath is, causing you to notice.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:27:35] Exactly. It's there. It's just checking into it. Like right now in this moment, if I said, Jessica, what are the sensations on your feet right now and the bottoms of your feet? Can you check into that currently, right? Because I guess maybe like soft if you get. Nice, warm socks on, or, you know, I was sitting on this cozy, kind of fluffy elastic mat, so I go kind of spongy, whatever it is. Before I said that those sensations were not in your mind at all. But as soon as you directed your attention there, they became more prominent. That's what we're talking about. You're just the breath is happening. Something is prominent. You're going to devote this time to focusing on that. But that's only step one. [00:28:13] So focusing on salient or prominent breath related sensations. Step one. Second step. Notice where your mind is. And notice in particular, has it wandered away from those breath related sensations like not? If your mind wanders away, your mind is going to wander away, we already set baseline 50 percent of your waking moments you're not in the task at hand. It's going to flit around its natural, normal, healthy for the brain to do that. We were designed for distractibility. So don't worry about the fact that your mind will wander away. It is not about clearing the mind. It is not about always having unwavering focus. It's not going to happen. Second, important step. Notice when the mind has wandered away. Third step when you notice this, redirect the flashlight back to those breath related sensations. [46.3s] So in some sense, you know, a lot of my military colleagues will say, this is you giving us the push up for the mind focus notice redirect. And through our 12 minutes, we're just doing this rep over and over and over again. It doesn't matter. Your mind could wander a thousand times or more. Doesn't matter. You're just finding your flashlight. It's a win every time you find it, it's like, oh, look at that. It was thinking about this. Come back. No arguments with yourself. You're doing this in a self-supportive manner and really experience it as a win. If I had not noticed where my flashlight was, I would never have been able to get it back to the task at hand.

Jessica Honegger [00:29:36] So is this something we can do when we notice we're ruminating is just get our flashlight out and do this breathing exercise? And that alone can help us break those ruminating thoughts?

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:29:49] That's absolutely right. You can use it all the time. That's what I was going to say that's the formal practice. Now, the quick mini version of this is something I call the stop practice, and I like to use the word stop because if we're driving or walking, there's plenty of moments where we're stopped. We're literally stopped at a stoplight, a stop sign. We can be stopped waiting for an elevator, you know, waiting in line. [00:30:09] Any time you're physically stopped, just use it as an opportunity to do a mini practice and stop itself is an acronym. So, it's stop, meaning whatever mental and physical processes are happening, right? If you're walking, you're stopped physically. And if you're ruminating, you're going to halt that and not suppress it. Just I'm going to stop that right now. So S is for stop. T take a breath. That's one conscious breath in the same way I just described just fully experiencing the sensory realm of the breath, as you're inhaling and exhaling. Then the next letter, you know, we got S and T, stop, take a breath. O is observe. Just check it out. What's happening inside, outside, just inside the mind, outside of the body, wherever it is, just notice in a receptive way what's occurring. You know, if you're literally driving a car, you and you stop do this. You're just noticing, oh, there's cars, you know, moving now and I'm going to be going next. And then P proceed. Continue on. [59.9s] So these are sort of pause moments. You know, if you think about like an MP3 player, you don't want to be in rewind or fast forward, you want to be in play where we're being mindful, or you want to stop in this way to break the cycle of wherever your mind tends to go. So, pause, you could even say. So, use both of these use the formal practice to just set up the habit, but you stop multiple times a day and you've pointed out so beautifully that you know it could be really handy for us when we are ruminating, when we are catastrophizing to just say, you know what? Stop. Now I want to make one other point that I think could be helpful if rumination and anxiety are a big part of what is happening. [00:31:48] Another sort of phrase that I think you just put it on a post-it and put it on top of your computer screen. Very helpful. I actually have this here because oftentimes, even if you're on your phone, you're going to start ‘doomscrolling.’ Things are going to come up, the mind is going to go and do it’s kind of default thing. Despite our best intentions, and that's the phrase and reminder that thoughts are not facts. So even though we are ruminating, and it could be about a potential future event, that's a thought my mind generated. [28.1s] It is not any more real than me thinking about unicorns or, I don't know, three-legged octopus walking into my room right now, like this is fantasy, right? It's in some sense just the nature of the mind to simulate reality. And it's not to say it doesn't matter. It's to say take it with a grain of salt that it does not equal signs that. So, I think both of those together can be good ways to kind of break these mental defaults that we have. And really, the daily practice can support this becoming the default of our mind.

Jessica Honegger [00:32:49] I'm so excited about this. I'm already picturing the two stop signs and the stop light that I go through on my way to and from the office, and that's going to be my new habit.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:32:59] Good. Excellent. I love it.

Jessica Honegger [00:33:01] Oh, I love this. I love this, and I love thinking about a unicorn like I love. Just, you know, that is so disruptive as well, so practical. I am just super excited, and I know that. When did your book come out?

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:33:17] It came out October 19th.

Jessica Honegger [00:33:19] So awesome. Peak Mind: Find your focus, own your attention, invest 12 minutes a day.

Jessica Honegger [00:33:24] I love how practical it is. This has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Dr. Amishi Jha [00:33:30] Oh, thank you. I'm so excited for your support of your community and that you're taking this topic so seriously and providing so much help for so many. Thanks, Jessica.

Jessica Honegger [00:33:39] Thank you. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's conversation. I am curious if you are also going to start the stop habit with me. If you have learned anything from this series, I would love for you to share it with a friend. Text it, email it's put a link on Facebook. Throw it up on your Insta stories and tag me. This is such a fun series to walk through, together with other people because we know that we cannot build habits alone unless you're a rebel. And if you know what a rebel is, it's because you've listened to my very first podcasts in this series called The Habit of Habits with Gretchen Rubin. So go back and listen if this is your first one to tune into, but I can't wait to see you again next week. Our music is by Ellie Holcomb, and I'm Jessica Honegger until next time. Let's take each other by the hand and keep going scared.