The Self-Driving You (Part 2)

Welcome to Readers, the podcast for the lifelong learner. Join us on our weekly dose of wisdom where we talk about the real life lessons and applications of books. Enjoy. Welcome back to Readers, everyone. This is part 2 of our series on The Self-Driving You by Alan Bodnar. Alan, welcome back to the podcast.

Thanks. I'm excited to be back.

Absolutely. You know, last episode we built the foundation, right? The idea that we're the driver of a level 4 high automation self-driving car. With an automatic self-driving system kind of handling the vast majority of our lives, right? But we also have a conscious driver who could step in and take the wheel. This episode, we're going to be going a little more under the hood, right? We're covering chapters 8 through 15, and it really kind of goes— I'll divide it up into two halves, right? First, you have the actual circuits of our self-driving system, the survival circuits run by the amygdala, the intuitive circuits behind our habits, and the default mode circuits behind all of our mind wandering, right? Then we have the executive driver that can override them. And then you have the practical heart of the book, right? How we apply the brakes, why the things we reach for to feel better only work for so long, and how mindfulness lets us take the wheel and actually start rewiring. So without further ado, Alan, let's pop the hood.

Sounds good.

Well, you know, I think a lot of us can relate to when we've had that moment, right? When, you know, a car cuts us off or like a quick flash of rage, someone jumping out at us and us just reacting. Anyway, you essentially, the whole point of this, right, is that you react a full beat before you've even understood what's happening. And you know, here in this episode, you explained that as the amygdala's low road, right? This fires in about 12 milliseconds before the thinking brain even gets a vote. Now the hallmark of that is essentially the little realization afterwards, right? Where you're kind of like, oh shoot, like I reacted or overreacted. What just happened? Right? Help us with the part that actually matters most, right? In the moment, in the seconds right after something huge like that where we just overreact but don't even realize what we just did, what can the driver actually do? And what would you say to someone who's, you know, probably hard on themselves for overreacting in the first place?

Yeah, so that's where this survival chapter and these responses where the amygdala plays a large role is it's looking for things related to like defense, food, mating. And then we have that full body response. And the part of the circuit within that is like when you mentioned the low road, that's a hijack. Uh, there's also a high road where it's going to look for more information or take in a little more information and then use that to process further. One example would be like, once I was walking on my balcony and I went to take a step and then my foot shot up and that's because it touched something underneath. And then as I looked, so that would have been a low road response, like an instant response, but then I looked and realized it was a feather and then was able to put my foot down and I'm okay. So the low road, especially with the amygdala and when we're talking about defense responses, It's designed to save us when time is of the essence, where time is a factor. So it is, it needs to respond faster than we can consciously process information. And to your question, when we notice these responses, it's difficult because we have been attaching to them our whole lives. So we just see them as accurate for the most part. And if we are angry or frustrated or whatever the response may be, especially as it's tied to defense, that is related, like, as soon as that information is seen in the environment by survival circuits where the amygdala plays a role, a lot of those responses are tied to sympathetic acceleration. So that's our human vehicle's accelerator, and we're going to feel the adrenaline and cortisol that's related to that. If we attach to it, then the body's going to keep creating cortisol. So if I'm mad and I keep attaching to the anger, well, I'm just fueling that further. But what I can do is I can slow my breath. And in the last episode, we mentioned if I manually slow my breath, that's me using my executive circuitry to interrupt that automatic rage, frustration, whatever it may be, and slow my breath. When I do that, I activate my vagus nerve, which triggers the parasympathetic system, and it relaxes my body. So the self-driving system in these moments is triggering acceleration, and then I can go to my breath and I can then trigger the brake. And I can do that anytime. But the challenges we associate with it, we see it as true. So that's what makes it difficult to then try to go to your break because you agree with it. Like we fully associate with the response. So that's what really makes it challenging.

Yeah. I think you make a point in this chapter that I think is, it's pretty hopeful. And it's also really cool to me because there's a lot of neuro concepts in there that were really interesting to me. You, you mentioned that the amygdala is plastic, right? It's like a muscle. Stressful or, you know, maybe like an unstable upbringing can bulk it up and make it hypersensitive, right? It fires at everything. But deliberate practice with the break can actually shrink it back down and recalibrate it. I think a lot of people, you know, I'm sure a lot of our listeners can also maybe hear this and probably relate, but a lot of people kind of walk around believing that their anxiety is just who they are, right? I've always been a worrier, it's just my personality. How much can someone really calibrate or recalibrate a threat system that their life may have spent 20 or 30 years training? And have you watched that change happen in yourself? How does, how does that really happen?

Yeah, so within that, I have been able to rewire a number of behaviors within myself. And what's happening there is, as you mentioned, our experience miscalibrates these patterns, whether in childhood through an unstable upbringing, or as we go through our life, if we encounter a traumatic experience, now we are going to trigger the, that survival response. So that fear response. So if we're, if we encounter a severe trauma or continually trigger our amygdala, now we're doing, as you mentioned, we're, we're working that amygdala out. So if, we're growing up in an unstable environment and our amygdala or our defense response is continually being activated, we're exercising it. And now throughout our life, the way that that works with the amygdala is there is no sense of past or present. It basically sees an event tied to, in this case, defense. And like if a dog bites me, when I'm a kid. Now that gets tied to that circuit. And then at any time in my life, if I see that dog, it's the same as when I first encountered that. On top of that, if I'm worrying about being bitten by a dog, and every time I worry about the dog with the brain, what you think and what you do, there's no difference to the brain. It's firing the same pattern. So if I continually worry about a dog, I'm also exercising, I'm firing that amygdala response and I'm exercising it because I'm attaching to it. So we're unknowingly strengthening our amygdala. And I wrote it for that reason. And all these self-driving circuits, I say it in this way where our early experiences and experiences throughout life can miscalibrate these responses. So in this case, our amygdala, we can exercise it to become extra sensitive to threats. And then it's responding to threats all the time throughout the day. And that's why a lot of us train our vehicle without knowing to chronically accelerate. And then of course, that's tied to high cortisol and then stress. And then now we are the ones who are consciously doing our best to deal with the result, but we unknowingly wired our system to see everything as a threat. And now it's doing its job. It's doing what it was wired to do. So I've done this a lot through social anxiety, for sure. I noticed that before I do any social event, especially when I was young, I would always be in my head and worry about what other people would think about me when I'm there. And that I had feelings of low self-worth. So what I was saying, people would think it's dumb. And almost to the point where when I was talking, That's all I could think about. So I was so in my head, I couldn't even have a conversation. And then what happened was I would start going to my breath and before an event. Now I don't, whenever I catch my mind wandering, this kind of goes back and it ties to mind wandering. But when you catch yourself thinking or wandering about a specific, like anxiety, If we attach to it, we're kind of just strengthening that. But if we go to our breath and apply the brake, then we interrupt it and we're applying the brake instead. And I found that that has really helped me with social situations. So when I do go, when I interrupt it, I might have a thought about going to an event 30 times before I go, and I'll stop myself from wandering and I'll go to my breath. And then when I get there, I don't, I feel free. I don't have that second guessing. I don't have that thought. And this is going to be different for each person. It's more of that self-exploration that we have to do, but that's something I noticed that works for me. And I've also rewired fear around public speaking. And now I don't have that either because it's more of a skill and that came through challenging it as well. So a number of these behaviors were just, it's consciously challenging them and going to the breath is like the first step to apply the brake. When our self-driving system accelerates.

Yeah, I think it's a lot about that attention that you talk about, you know, a little bit later in chapter 10, right? Which we'll get to in a second. I don't wanna spoil too much of that. But I think it's really interesting how you just mentioned the fact that being present in our own lives, although that may sound kind of like, oh, of course I'm present, you know, consciously being present is different. And I think being present when you're making certain key decisions or reacting to things that you typically would on autopilot is important when it comes to wanting to rewire some of those behaviors or thought processes. But for right now, I want to switch gears just a little bit and get into Chapter 10, right? Chapter 10 is all about this default mode, the inner kind of DJ that picks the station whenever we're idle, right? This is, you know, maybe you're in the shower, maybe you're falling asleep or trying to fall asleep, maybe you're walking. Essentially, anytime where you don't have a constant stimulus, where you're being fed what to think or some sort of stimulus in general. And so for a lot of people, right, this DJ essentially has what you call like a rough playlist, right? It'll replay old arguments, it'll rehearse worst-case scenarios, things like that. You cite that a Harvard study once found that our minds wander about 47% of the time and that a wandering mind tends to be an unhappy mind. This makes me really curious, right? I've heard that being in the default mode network is good for you, especially in an age where You know, we're constantly on social media, we're on our phones, we have so much stimulus around us to where we don't even need to be most of the time anymore, right? Although 47% may be a lot, I think if our phones didn't exist, it would be a lot more. But I'm more curious, right? Why do you think the mind left to its own devices drifts toward the negative so often? And what's the very first step to even noticing that this DJ is on?

Yeah, so that's interesting. So the reason why it may drift towards the negative when it wanders is, in my opinion, it's because the circuits get miscalibrated throughout our life. So maybe it doesn't mean that every person has this default mode network that is playing thoughts every time we're at rest or our attention isn't engaged, but basically the way the brain works is A circuit always needs to be active. So we have our circuits that respond to cues, and we have our attention, which roughly equates to our conscious driver. So when those circuits are inactive, then default mode will turn on. So it's like our background circuit that's always active when the other ones are not active. So that's why it's going to always turn on. And most of the time we're not even aware of it because we associate with those. And usually we attach to those thoughts as well. So like we'll place our attention on our wandering thoughts and then we're just carried away wandering with these thoughts and not noticing that we're mind wandering in the first place. And that's the real challenge, but it's with early experience, is what wires the default mode network. And if you did have a— in the book, I say a normal default mode, which would be if you grew up in an enriched environment or a nourishing environment, you may more likely have a normal, normally wired default mode network. So when it does fire outside of your awareness, it's curating a list of thoughts that are less threatening, less prone to worry, less prone to negative ruminations. But when you do grow up in an environment where you are, where it is like unstable, then if there's a lot of stress, then those circuits cannot connect the way that they're supposed to. And then they become what many books call differentiated, and then I call them miscalibrated. So then whenever those circuits fire, that's when you're going to have these negative ruminations, worry, and that kind of thing. But yeah, default mode isn't bad. That's also where you have your, um, like when we have a lot of our spontaneous ideas, that can also come from mind wandering. So it's not to say mind wandering is bad, it's just a state in the brain that turns on. I think it's just becoming more aware of when our mind wanders and trying to direct the mind wandering more effectively.

Yeah, now I wanna talk a little bit about that attention concept that, you know, I was talking a little bit earlier about, but you call it our special power, right? You said it's the thing that lets the driver grab the wheel, and, you know, in your words, quote, where attention goes neural patterns grow. Now, the spotlight of attention is essentially how we could take control of the workspace and decide what gets reinforced, right? But attention seems also like the kind of thing I feel like most of us are losing right now, right? Phones, feeds, notifications, everything in our lives, the new technologies that we interact with mostly on a daily basis, right? They're all engineered to kind of grab that spotlight. And in a world built to essentially hijack our attention, right? Whether this is just practical daily habits or things you've done yourself, things you've seen other people do or heard about in your research, how do we take it back, right? What does training our attention actually look like on a day-to-day basis, right? I think like I've realized maybe a bit more of an extreme example, but also a pretty common one, right? I've noticed that my responses when I'm texting while talking to people versus talking to them while being present are very different, right? And like, let's say I'm on my phone and someone else is talking to me. My responses to them, which are just purely reactive, that's, you know, not really me being conscious or very attentive with my responses. Those are going to be a whole lot less meaningful than the ones where obviously my attention is fully on them. So how do we really train that attention to be where we want it to be?

Yeah, that's really interesting. There's a lot with that one. So as you mentioned, where attention goes, neural patterns grow, and the brain doesn't ask questions, it makes connections. So wherever attention goes, we're making connections for that. Uh, but then there's two systems that control our attention. The self-driving system has what neuroscientists call an attentional filter. And that scans our environment for anything that is salient or important. So from the time we're born, we don't have that executive control to direct our attention. So like we wire our eyes, our eyesight, what we see, how we don't see our parents' face from the moment we're born. That's wired through experience from where our attention goes. We learn how to walk and talk in the same way, but where our attention goes at that time is directed by our self-driving system. So when you mention like now, if we go to my phone, well, my self-driving system is telling me to go to my phone. And then once it does that, then it will put the attention on my phone. And now I'm wiring patterns for that. I'm strengthening that response to look at my phone and to spend time on my phone. What we can do is we also have this executive circuitry, the executive control network that allows us to take control of the wheel. So when I notice that these are happening, like, what I'm saying is, with that executive control, I can also direct attention. And when I direct attention, I can choose what I pay attention to instead of having it directed by the self-driving system. So if it does have me check my phone, I can say, wait, no, I don't want to be on my phone. I want to place my attention on writing a book, on listening to a podcast, on whatever you want to do, on working out. And you can then direct where it goes, or even on mindfulness. But you can choose where your attention goes. And it takes effort, but when we choose where we direct our attention, then we are able to take control of that unbiased process in the brain of where attention goes, neural patterns grow. And we are choosing what we use plasticity for. Like, we choose the patterns that we are going to wire in the brain. And that's— the deliberate attention is our power to do that. But if we're not using it, then we're not directing how the brain as a network wires.

And on that note of, you know, where attention goes, neural patterns grow, right? I think there's technique in these mindfulness chapters that I've been thinking about, which I thought was really cool, right? Instead of arguing with a difficult thought, I think a lot of people tend to really ruminate on these hard thoughts or try and fight them or just think more and more about them, right? Especially when it's something like a recent conflict you may have just had with a close friend or family member or something like that, and you keep reliving that over in your head, or, you know, anything negative that may have happened to you and you You just keep thinking about it. Instead of arguing with a difficult thought, right, you say to drop the story it's telling and essentially turn towards, quote, right, its energy in the body. And now, you know, this doesn't— this isn't just some sort of hocus-pocus energy in the body, whatever, right? But you're talking about some very concrete feelings in the body. When we get angry or riled up or feel some sort of strong emotion, we do feel changes in the body, right? You feel more heat in your body. For example, some people, you know, their faces get redder, their ears get redder, the tightness, the pressure. You essentially feel very real things in your body. And I think you mentioned focus on that more than you're actually focusing on the thought. And here you borrow, and, you know, apologies if I butcher this name here, but Pema Chödrön's line Right. And essentially you say, she says, drop the storyline and find the feeling. And you mentioned that an emotion's physical sensation might actually pass in about 90 seconds if we just stop feeding it with thought. Right. Walk us through what's actually happening there. Right. Why does turning towards the sensation and away from the story make a feeling lose its grip instead of getting bigger?

Yeah, and that's why I like mindfulness so much, because it's, it's a 2,500-year-old exercise, but it applies to neuroscience. And there is a therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and it's around generally the same idea where we are dropping the story and we're going to the energy. So with every thought that we have there is going to be some type of physiological response tied to it. Generally, we attach to the thought. So if I have this thought that, hey, I'm— I've had this happen so many times. So like, if I'm upset with my wife because she does something in my mind that I think is incorrect, so I'm frustrated, and then I can attach to that idea and just keep thinking about Oh, why did this person do this thing? And then it just keeps— I'm adding fuel to that thought. I'm— because I'm attached to the storyline. So if my body does create this sympathetic acceleration response, I'm agreeing with it and it's just going to continue. But if I drop that storyline and I place my attention on where the energy goes in my body, For me, it's usually— I noticed it's usually always like butterflies or nerves that I feel in my solar plexus. So if I put all my attention on that now, I'm dropping the story. So you're essentially turning that response off. You have like— that is a circuit that's firing in your brain to tell you to be frustrated, to be angry, to have a craving. And when you attach to the story, you fuel it more. But when you place your attention on the sensation, you're now deactivating that response and you are going to the energy behind it, which is different than attaching to the thought. And also when you're slowing your breath at the same time, you are going to, uh, trigger your parasympathetic break. So you're relaxing your body and you're also going to this energy, which gives a whole new perspective. And all of a sudden, the response, whether it's to have a coffee or to be angry, it lifts. There's been so many times where I was frustrated and it was real, like, I'm, I'm mad. And then I go to the energy and then I realize that it's not real, like, it lifts. And I realize I'm the problem, like, this thought is not accurate. A lot of the times like I would get frustrated when there's no plans. So if it's like, we're out and then, oh, we just need to stop here, then I get frustrated. But it's like, no, I'm the problem. That's— there's nothing wrong with that. It makes sense. Let's go out. But this is what happens is our brain provides all these responses, we attach to them, and then that becomes our identity. But when we do go to the breath and we place attention on them, it is a way for us to allow these sensations to lift, and then we can gain new insights. And that is where the change happens. But remembering to do this and doing that actively, like, I know this, and I'm telling and providing the advice, but I'm not doing this to everything. It's almost like a habit that we need to form of interrupting our thoughts. Like, I, I know a strategy that works, but I have to train myself to do that. And I get better and I do it more often than I ever did before, but I'm not doing it all the time, every single day. It, it's just a, a lifelong practice for this whole discussion.

Let me ask you this, right? I, I think thinking about planning beforehand for these responses or these reactions, kind of to be more conscious, Obviously there's a lot of tools that you kind of give through this book, and I think breathing is one of the biggest ones, right? You kind of share a counting game where as you breathe, you count each one full in and out breath, and then you try to get to 10 and back. And the moment you lose count, you just start over, right? And like, there's a lot of these kind of meditation games, breathing games, essentially ways you can regain that attention on yourself. But look, when you're you're driving and someone cuts you off, you don't have time for a counting game, right? When you're in an argument with somebody or when you get mad, no one's doing that at that moment, right? Two questions. One is, in the moment when you know you're starting to get a little heated or, you know, things are starting to get a little out of your control in that moment, how do you regain control then? And two, even if you do plan to do these kind of preventative practices like the breathing games, like the meditation, you know, like drawing attention back to yourself, how does that actually help you later on when you have these in-the-moment kind of reactive, you know, opportunities?

Yeah. So it can happen in the moment. There— every response is different, though. I'm With cravings, it's a little more difficult. When it comes to road rage, I used to get angry, like I'd honk the horn when I was driving and get frustrated with people. And now I'm a lot better with that. It's not that the response doesn't happen. So like if someone cuts me off, I'll have this initial response to honk my horn and then I'll stop and I'll go to my breath and then it will lift and I'll realize I'm safe. Why am I upset? It's not that, like, I'm going to be able to do that with every response in my life, but it does work when I do it. And the more you do it, the more you're able to make that a part of your regular routine. So it starts by doing it once, because we first have to experience that it actually works, that you can have this strong response for whatever it is— craving, anger, frustration— and then you go to the energy and then it lifts. But then we need to practice that many times. And then once we do that, then we can make that more of a, a behavior that we actually are able to remember in the moment. But if we're not practicing it, it's going to be hard to remember. And I think that's the other thing is it's not personal. So if before we experience success in this, we are going to have that rage. We are going to have that frustration. So that's okay. Like, this is all just as we're wiring our brain and trying to regulate ourselves. These responses are going to happen and it's okay. It's just a matter of continuing the practice. And once we do that over time, then we can, uh, slowly make it more of something that we do. But it's not that it's It's okay if we don't always remember to do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. You know, kind of to close out here, right? I wanna close on a question and just kind of say this, right? Something I appreciate about your honesty through this book, right? You've been doing this for about what, 5 years now? And you know, you're very open in this book that obviously you've recalibrated quite a lot about fear, you know, and anger in yourself. But certain things still pull you back into the old loop, like coffee, for example, right? I think that's just something pretty refreshing, especially in a genre that promises like a total transformation in 30 days or something like that. So for someone starting out, right, who's maybe reading this book, following along with this podcast right now, and who recognizes that they're gonna fail quite a lot along the way, what's the mindset that keeps them in it? What's the mindset that kept you in it, right? And why is it And why is it that even just noticing a pattern, even if it's already been played out, still a win for them?

Yeah, I think it's that the brain isn't personal. And it took me a long time to get to this point where I wasn't taking it so seriously. And I was hard on myself when I thought that the change wasn't happening, but then I look back and I realize, okay, I, I have changed a lot, especially around cravings. The cravings has been the most difficult for me. It has been over 5 years since I started with mindfulness, and the cravings has been difficult. There's times where I can go a month or two without drinking coffee or something, but then I do fall back into it. And I think it's just It's not personal. It's— we're self-driving. These responses are happening outside of our awareness, and our self-driving system is so powerful. It's driving us and we don't even know. So, the first part, we're not even aware that we're self-driving. So, for us to expect that we're going to just change overnight is not realistic because the brain is has been wired through a lifetime of experience, and we've wired it in this way. So it's just doing its job and it's not going to change. It was wired through attention. So now we need to deliberately direct our attention towards what we want to change 100 to 1,000 times for each response, and we need to override each response. And slowly but surely, we can recalibrate and rewire our self-driving system. But yeah, I joke around with my wife when I talk about this because that's something as well. The 30 days change your life. No, 30 years change your life. Maybe, probably not. Like this, I accept that this will be a lifelong endeavor, but what makes it worth it is I do feel better and I have improved. I am less emotional and I have been able to conquer a lot of fears that were limiting me from moving in the direction I wanted. So is it perfect? And are we ever going to just feel completely happy and perfect? No, because we have a self-driving system that is running 90% of the time. So—

Yeah.

Likely not. But we can— there are strategies that will allow us to apply the brake and rewire it slowly, gradually over time.

You know, Alan, thanks for sharing that, man. This is— I mean, I think today we've been able to really uncover that engine room, right? We've met the survival, intuitive, and default mode circuits. We've met the driver, and we've got the two real levers, right? The breath as a brake and mindfulness as the training that really strengthens the driver and is able to kind of rewire that system over time. To everyone listening, I think the big takeaway from this stretch is that almost none of it's personal. The hijack, the rough mental playlist, you know, reaching for your phone intuitively. I think those are just impersonal circuits doing exactly what they were wired to do. And I think, you know, what we talked about today is that there is a driver in you that can slowly kind of retrain them. Alan, thanks so much for joining us today, man. Really appreciate your insight. And I'm really looking forward to part 3.

Same here. Thanks for having me. And I'm also very excited.

Next episode, we'll go one final level deeper, right? How into the science underneath the whole metaphor, how the brain actually works as a network of neurons, how it learns, what it shares with the artificial networks in the self-driving cars that we started with, and Alan's final closing argument about mastery, practice, and how much of our potential is really even up to us, which I'm really curious to, to hear about. But again, to all our listeners, thank you so much for tuning into Readers. I'll see you in part 3, and until then, keep on learning, keep on changing, and keep on growing.