okay so you guys were actually really happy about the idea of thought stopping and Zen meditation so uh there was quite a few comments where you guys asked me to talk a little bit more about thought stopping in Zen meditation as ways of practicing cognitive control or cognitive steering another way to think of it is cognitive damping or dampening so cognitive dampening is like you uh titrate any emotional shocks or cognitive shocks going on so that way you can uh have a little bit more steady control over what's going on and so I I love using a race car analogy for systems thinkers brains or ADHD or gifted brains or whatever if your brain is powerful um it's a lot like driving a Ferrari or a Formula 1 race car if you just floor it you're going to spin in circles um it takes a lot of control and discipline to use a powerful brain and so uh the gas like like I said in the last video we have no problem with the accelerator our engines our mental engines very powerful the accelerator very powerful that that's not the problem the problem is breaks so thought stopping and uh Zen meditation they're all different sides of the same coin the idea is practicing breaking mechanisms and so um as I mentioned in the other video just in case you didn't see it is there are two fundamental forces to the human brain and that is excitation and inhibition uh you have neurons in your brain many of them uh emit signals many others actually uh react inversely meaning the more signals they get the more they shut down and so it's not just about activation if you have Cascade activations in the brain that's actually a seizure so quieting the signal getting rid of the noise is actually more important to the operation of the brain okay great you get the idea so thought stopping uh as I mentioned in the other video thought stopping was when I first saw it was actually uh presented as a way of stopping yourself from fantasizing whenever you start to fall in love with someone so like imagine you go out on a date and it's like wow that person's really sexy if I get with them my life is going to be better um and you start imagining your future like what's the wedding going to look like and blah blah blah blah blah this is a common enough thing that it's not really like I'm not going to pathologize it and say this means that you know blah blah blah you have abandon or whatever um but what I will say is that while it is common it can be harmful or at least unhelpful and so in the original article that I read and this was like gosh it must have been 17 years ago half my life ago um what they said was when you catch yourself fantasizing about your future with someone whether it's a friend or a lover or whatever just stop um now it's okay saying just stop it's not that easy first you have to catch yourself so catching yourself requires self-awareness metacognitive awareness and then you de you develop uh practice putting on the brakes one of the techniques that a lot of people recommend is you just snap yourself with a rubber band like put a rubber band on your wrist and when you catch yourself doing something that you're not supposed to just snap your wrist that physical sensation because it stings a little bit that physical sensation serves as a reminder to your brain hey we're going the wrong direction we're going too fast in the wrong direction let's do something else now that technique of thought stopping applies to literally everything else in your life I realized that that idea of thought stopping was Universal many years ago I was like it applies to more than just dating it applies to let's say someone says something really mean at work or online or whatever and you start getting irritated and you're just like wait this line of thinking is not helpful this is an unproductive unhelpful or even harmful line of thinking so I'm going to stop and I'm going to go somewhere else and it's just mentally like imagine you're in the driver's seat of of a Ferrari and you're heading towards a wall you say that's not a good direction to go or you're going off a cliff so what do you do you slam on the brakes and you turn the car around do the same thing with your brain now that's thought stopping so then Zen meditation oh also um even some members in my community I mentioned Zen meditation or suyat and they're like how do you do that and I was like well go ask a chatbot and uh I realized that's not the most helpful answer so how to do Zen meditation it's similar to mindfulness meditation so you can start there but the key thing is with mindfulness meditation you're trying to get grounded in your body and your breath and just allowing your thoughts to go as they are naturally the difference with Zen meditation or sunata is you actually want to bring your brain to a standstill and this actually changes your brain waves so from an objective scientific standpoint the goal is to get out of alpha or beta waves and into delta waves and so what happens is when you get good at this kind of meditation your brain will actually look like it's asleep um from a just from a brain wave perspective but you'll still be conscious you'll still be aware of what's going on one of the most interesting things and the way that uh the way that I know I'm successfully doing this meditation sorry going up and down Hills the way that I know that I've succeeded in getting into this Delta state is your perception of time gets really weird um so I I use a I use a playlist um it's actually a uh meditation track in my Fitbit app um you can use singing bowls um The Meditation singing bowls are actually really good because it's not predictable um or pan flutes or whatever there's all kinds of stuff try different ones um and find what one that Suits You digo music is good but really the singing bows are probably the best so what you do listen to that start to meditate focus on your breath at first and then every time you have a have a thought or an emotion or a memory you just like mentally I just say stop just stop and eventually it's all it it feels like you're mentally taking your hands off the off your brain steering wheel it's really weird it's hard to describe but then over time it gets easier and easier because your brain's going to be like but what about this what about this what about this and you'll come up with more and more outlandish memories or things you know what am I going to do later and all you tell yourself is none of that matters nothing matters just be in this moment stop stop stop stop and eventually you will be conscious of how empty and still your mind is and the benefits of this this practice because basically what you're doing is the gas pedal is taped down in in most people's brains and so you're pulling the tape off the gas pedal and stomping on the brake pedal so you do this for 20 to 45 minutes time the time will feel like it flies by and then it'll be so it'll be a little bit grotesque it feels a lot like post nut Clarity but without the any of the other stuff going on and it lasts a lot a lot longer it lasts so much longer your reflexes will be better your mental control your cognitive control will be better you'll be more aware of your motivations that was one of the weirdest things when I started doing Zen meditation again I was just like oh yesterday I would have made this decision but now I'm going to stop and go a different direction it's just it's like you have so much more control and as many of you pointed out in the comments yeah like if you're going to be a successful race car driver you need gas brakes and steering you need all three of those so every systems thinker I think I mean anyone can benefit from this but particularly if you're a systems thinker practice thought stopping practice Zen meditation and get really good at controlling your own brain um also by the way I'm pretty sure this is what Frank Herbert was referring to with mentats in Dune this is one of the skills that mentats have is thought stopping and letting the brain process and then the right answer will pop out later so anyways let me know what you think in the comments uh if this model works for you um also add your stories I really like when you guys tell me your own stories or your own anecdotes or or whatever tips you guys have very helpful also if you have any questions so cheers thanks for watching