Ian Nathaniel Puang's Key Ideas from Peak Mind
by Amishi P. Jha

• attention biases brain activity. It gives a competitive advantage to the information it selects. Whatever it is you pay attention to will have more neural activity associated with it. Your attention, quite literally, alters the functioning of your brain at the cellular level. It truly is a superpower.

The Flashlight

• Where you focus to, that point become clearer. Other than that point, become suppressed. Like a flashlight
• Called orienting system

The Floodlight

• Opposite of flashlight, this subsystem is broad and open. Your attention is ready for any input within your vision
• Called alerting system

The Juggler

• To direct, oversee, and manage what we’re doing, moment to moment, as well as ensure that our actions are aligned with what we’re aiming to do
• This is the overseer that makes sure we stay on track
• Called central executive

• Attention never vanishes, even though it might feel as if it does when you’re struggling to focus and simply can’t
• The amount of attention you have remains constant. It just gets used differently, and maybe not how you want it to be used
• You always use 100 percent of your attention. Attention always goes somewhere. So the question becomes: Where?

Any tasks you do over a period of time:

• Performance declines
• Errors goes up
• Response becomes slower and more variable

1. Get ready, sit in an upright alerted posture, shoulder back chest open and be comfortable.
2. Tune in to the breath related sensation, imagine the air entering your lung as you breathe in slowly, and exit your lung as you breathe out
3. Notice when your mind wander and focus back to the breathing exercises. It's normal to wander and always use constructive words when trying to refocus

• When we try to do two things at once that both require our attention, it’s really hard to do either of them well
• Think of it this way: You only have one flashlight. Not two. Not three. And your one flashlight can only ever be shining at one thing at a time
• When you’re trying to accomplish multiple tasks at once that require your focused attention, what you’re actually doing is moving your flashlight from one thing, then to the next, then back to the first

To get a sense of what this means for your cognition, imagine a studio apartment. There is only one room. Every time you want to use the room, you have to completely change out the furniture. Want to sleep? Set up a bed and nightstand. Want to host a party? Take down the bedroom and set up couches and coffee tables. Need to cook? Drag that all away and set up a stove, counter, and cooking supplies. Sound exhausting? It is! And it’s the same for your cognition, when you switch from task to task.

• Working memory is where you hold the micro-intentions and deliberate aim of having a desired outcome for each and every task you engage in
• All the decisions, planning, thinking, actions, and behaviors you do over the course of a day: anything you set out to do
• You lean on your working memory to maintain your goals and subgoals, update them, and scrap them for a different goal, on a continuous, moment-by-moment, task-by-task basis.
• Hold a goal in mind, and then take action based on that goal. That’s how working memory works, and also why it impacts you so profoundly

Working memory is the essential partner to attention: it’s what allows you to actually do something with the information your flashlight focuses on. But if attention keeps piping in salient and distracting content, that will become a big problem for goal maintenance, let alone goal accomplishment. Why? Because you only have so much space to work with. Just like a real-life whiteboard, your working memory has limits

The flashlight encodes information and maintains it in working memory, “retracing” it on the whiteboard to keep it there for longer.

— Key vulnerability: Bait and Switch

When your attention is automatically “captured” or yanked by something salient, this more exciting (to your attention) content overwrites what was being maintained. Voluntary attention then starts retracing this new content. The prior information is lost forever, gone without a trace.

The floodlight gains access to the whiteboard to accomplish an urgent goal. Under acute threat or stress, your alerting system temporarily blocks access to working memory to ensure that your brain’s action systems prioritize basic survival behaviors (fight, flight, freeze) over any other goals or plans.

— Key vulnerability: Road Block

The alerting system can be set off by feelings of threat, even when there is no real danger. This temporarily cuts off access to working memory and impairs any functions that rely on it (like long-term memory, social connection, and emotion regulation).

The juggler keeps your current goals active on the whiteboard, and updates these goals as circumstances change.

— Key vulnerability: Ball Drop

Overload, blanking, and distraction in working memory all derail the central executive’s juggler, leading to lost goals and misguided behaviors. The juggler drops the ball.

1. Repeat the previous steps. We begin the same way we did with the basic Find Your Flashlight (find where your thoughts focus on), by sitting in a chair, comfortable but upright, resting your hands in your lap, and closing or lowering your eyes (to limit visual distraction). Again, select prominent breath-related sensations. Remember the metaphor of your attention as a flashlight, the beam pointing toward your selected breath-related body sensation. When your flashlight drifts to something else . . .

2. Notice where it goes. This is a new step! In the first exercise, I asked you to notice if attention wandered away, and if so to immediately move your flashlight back to your breath. This time, I want you to pause for a moment and observe where the flashlight is now directed.

3. Give it a label. Identify what type of distraction has appeared on your whiteboard. Is it a thought, an emotion, or a sensation? A thought could be a worry, a reminder, a memory, an idea, an item on your to-do list. An emotion could be a feeling of frustration, an urge to stop doing the practice and do something else, a twinge of happiness, a swell of stress. A sensation is something in your physical body: An itch. A sore muscle. Noticing that your back hurts from sitting there, or noticing something you heard, smelled, touched, or saw (such as a door slamming, food cooking, cat jumping).

4. Make this a quick process. Notice if you begin going down a rabbit hole of elaborating on the distraction, or asking why you are thinking about this particular topic, or defaulting to unsupportive habits like chastising yourself for getting distracted in the first place. It is not your job right now to answer these questions or reprimand yourself. Now is actually the time to notice what is on your whiteboard but not to engage with it. Just label the contents as best you can from these three categories: thought, emotion, sensation. And then . . .

5. Move on. Come back to the present moment, back to your breath, after every instance of labeling. If it’s a strong experience, it might pop up repeatedly—then just label it again.

6. Repeat. Each time you notice yourself mind-wandering, tag the content of your mind-wandering (as thought, emotion, or sensation) and then come back to your breath.

your memory for experiences, involves selective encoding of only those aspects of experience that were most attended to and held in working memory. Translation: you’ll only remember what you focused on and “wrote” on your whiteboard—not everything that occurred. And further, your episodic memory doesn’t merely involve the external aspects of events (who, what, where, and so forth) but is deeply wrapped up in your autobiographical take on what you experienced. So—was the experience happy? Sad? Interesting? Tense? Your emotional experience will influence what you focus on.

your general world knowledge, for facts, ideas, concepts—is similarly selective. What you remember is based on what else you’ve previously learned.

Do these three critical things:

1. Rehearsal

when you studied with flashcards, that was rehearsal

2. Elaboration

relating new experiences or facts to knowledge or memories you already have

3. Consolidation

This is what happens as you’re performing the above two functions, and it ultimately leads to the memory being stored. As the brain replays information, it’s laying down new neural pathways and then going over them, strengthening those new connections

Certain things may become “sticky” on our whiteboards because of generalization. We can make generalizations about the behavior and intentions of others (“She never supports me”) or regarding ourselves (“I will never amount to anything”). An incident where you made a mistake becomes “I always get this stuff wrong—I’m such an idiot!” It’s not the incident itself that takes center stage on your whiteboard: it’s the generalization you derived from it. The oversimplified packaging allows it to remain in working memory with minimal effort: it’s short, it’s clear, and it probably isn’t accurate.

Get ready . . . This time, stand up! You can always sit if you prefer, in the same way as with the previous practices. But I usually recommend doing this practice in what is commonly known as Mountain Pose. Stand comfortably, your feet shoulder-distance apart. Let your arms relax at your sides, palms out. Close your eyes or lower your gaze.

Get set . . . Find your flashlight and direct it toward prominent breath-related sensations for several breaths. This is always where we’ll start with any practice. And at any point in this exercise if you feel yourself getting drawn away (for example, getting caught in a ruminative loop), you can always anchor back on the breath. Flashlight on the breath is your home base—return to it whenever necessary, and reset.

Go! Now broaden your awareness so that you are not selecting any target object. Instead, use the metaphor of your mind being like a river. You’re standing on the riverbank, watching the water flow by. Imagine your thoughts, memories, sensations, emotions—whatever arises—as if they are flowing past you. Notice what appears there, but don’t engage with it. Don’t fish it up, chase it, or elaborate on it. Just let it flow by.

Keep going. You’re not going to be actively “labeling” the stuff that you notice on your whiteboard, nor returning to your breath once you do. Your job right now is not to be making distinctions between which content is useful or relevant, and what’s mind wandering. You’re not even going to try to stop your mind from wandering. The river will keep flowing—there isn’t anything you can or need to do about that. This is the key to open monitoring: you allow your mind to do what it will do. Your job is simply to observe that flow, at a distance, without engagement or participation.

Troubleshooting. If you have difficulty letting things pass you by, come back to your breath. Imagine your breath sensations as a boulder in the middle of all that flowing water. Rest your attention on that stable, steady object; when you feel ready, broaden your attention again and go back to monitoring.

(1) Stop the inner war against the actual circumstances—just accept them. It is what it is. Let me be clear: this does not mean that you are “all good” with the situation. It has nothing to do with your judgement about the actual event. It just means that you are accepting the actuality of what has occurred.

(2) Drop the story—your assessment of this situation is merely one story. Not the only one.

(3) Roll with it—keep going, keep moving, get curious about what the next moment will bring.

During a difficult interaction, take a moment to pause. It can be the length of one breath. Or, before a difficult interaction, take a moment and picture this person. Then, remind yourself: “This person has experienced pain, just like me. This person has experienced loss, just like me. Joy, just like me. Was born from a mother, just like me; will die someday, just like me.” If these phrases don’t resonate with you, feel free to substitute with other phrases that emphasize the common humanity we share with others.

1. Begin this practice as you have the others, sitting comfortably yet alert. Anchor on your breath and focus on breath-related sensations.
2. Now shift to bringing a sense of yourself into your mind, at this very moment in your life.

3. Silently repeat the following phrases to offer yourself well-wishes (three min). Remember: the point is to offer yourself well-wishes, not make requests or demands for them. Saying these phrases supports that:

May I be happy

May I be healthy

May I be safe

May I live with ease

The phrases and their order are not important. Some people may say, May I be free from suffering instead of May I be safe. Others may wish to say, May I find peace instead of May I live with ease. The important thing is that you choose phrases that resonate with you and that convey a feeling of goodwill to the recipient.

4. Next, while allowing this sense of yourself to recede from your focus, call to mind someone who has been very good to you in this life, very kind and supportive, someone you might describe as a benefactor. Silently repeat the phrases below, offering them to this person:

May you be happy

May you be healthy

May you be safe

May you live with ease

5. Now, letting your sense of this person recede, bring to mind the image of someone with whom you have no real connection and for whom your feelings are neutral. It could be someone you see now and again but don’t have strong feelings for, one way or another. Perhaps it’s a neighbor you pass while walking your dog, a parking lot attendant you see daily, or a grocery store clerk. Mentally offer them the phrases.

6. As a sense of this person recedes from your focus, next bring to mind an image of someone with whom things are challenging at this time in your life. This is often called a “difficult person” . Remember, you are not endorsing their view and are not necessarily even forgiving their actions in the past. You are simply offering kindness to them as a practice aimed at strengthening your ability to take another’s perspective, realizing that—like you—they too wish for happiness, health, safety, and ease. With this in mind, mentally offer them the phrases.

7. Now move on to everyone in your home, community, state or province, and country, and continue to expand outward until you include all beings everywhere. Spend a few moments visualizing each place (your home, your community), and then offer the phrases to everyone there.

8. Throughout this practice, notice when your mind wanders away from the chosen focus, and gently guide your attention back.

9. When you’re ready, spend a few moments anchoring on your breath to end the practice.