What is your findings on the lower brain versus the frontal cortex? Can you help us with that a little bit?

Yeah.

So with the brain, it's a network made of patterns.

These patterns are circuits.

We have a number of them.

We have I guess actually we could start first with the systems.

So there's Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, where he popularized System 1 and System 2.

But I guess my question is, do you think that we can learn compassion or do you think it's just something we have in us?

So, Alan, what is deliberate attention and why do you consider it one of our greatest human superpowers?

Yeah, it's definitely a superpower because deliberate attention is how we take the wheel.

Attention is how the brain wires.

And whatever we place attention on, patterns in the brain start to form.

With repetition, these become the automatic habits, skills, emotions that are available to us or the self-driving system.

Attention... can be activated in two ways.

So from the moment we're born, our self-driving system has an attentional filter.

How do you define mindfulness from a neuroscience perspective?

How am I gonna shift my attention? What does that mean?

Well, that's through, like we said, mindfulness.

And as you just said, though, before, with, um, when we do place our attention, everything comes down to attention.

So when our self-driving system does generate these thoughts, neuroscience states that what we fire, we wire.

So when our self-driving system fires any thought about low self-worth or fear or anxiety or anything, and when we attach to it as true, then we are just re- like, we're reinforcing that and strengthening that response.

So yeah, as you're saying, the challenge is now we need to use deliberate attention in a way that serves us to direct it somewhere else, and the way to do that is through mindfulness.

And mindfulness, then, well, deliberate attention, but the strategy of mindfulness, and, um, especially for me, it's more just slowing the breath and then going to bodily sensations.

You got one more chapter for us before we have to say goodbye?

So which part of our life is the system one and which part of our life is system two?

Well, that's a spectrum that varies for every person.

So the best way to understand that would be right now they're not commercially available, but there is this vehicle, it's a level four high automation self-driving car.

It's one step before a fully autonomous car.

So when you have a fully autonomous car, it doesn't even need a gas pedal or a steering wheel.

You'll go in and it will just do 100% of the driving.

But there's a model or type just before we have a fully autonomous car, and that's your level four high automation vehicle.

Um, how does the brain reinforce, uh, automatic behavior, and what step can we take to begin rewi-rewiring those patterns?

Can you explain the idea behind the self-driving you and how the self-driving car metaphor relates to the human mind?

Yeah, for sure.

So the way it works is there is a classification for self-driving cars where it goes from level zero to level five.

Level zero is the car that we know where we do all the driving.

And level five is fully autonomous.

So if you were to get into that car, it would do all of the driving and you wouldn't have to do anything.

One level before that is level four.

So from your perspective and a decade long of experience, so what's really happening or what's really happening beneath the surface?

and uh let's make this real like i want to bring your framework into a tuesday afternoon moment when someone is in a situation that's frustrating they're about to react the way they always react and the pattern is going to play out exactly as it is always does so what does the self-driving framework actually change in that moment

Yeah, that's a great example because yeah, we've all been there.

And let's say even more specifically that we're at work and someone sent us an email and we're frustrated and now we're about to send another instant email in response.

So all of that would be self-driving.

We are the driver that can, in that instance, go with it or take the wheel and stop that from happening.

But this isn't suppression.

This is, like you said, pausing in that moment.

And you seem to see differently, like what does unlocking potential actually mean through the lens of your framework?