Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,

[music] where we revisit past episodes

for the most potent and actionable

science-based tools for mental health,

physical health, and performance.

I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and opthalmology at

Stanford School of Medicine. Today we're

talking all about goals and the science

of goal setting and achieving your

goals. So when we think about goal

seeking and the pursuit of goals of any

kind in the brain, it doesn't matter

what the goal is. It involves a common

set of neural circuits. One of the brain

areas is the so-called amydala. The

amydala is most often associated with

fear. So you might say, "Wow, how is

that involved in goal- directed

behavior?" Well, a lot of our goal-

directed behavior is to avoid

punishments, including things like

embarrassment or financial ruin or

things of that sort. And so the amygdala

and some sense of anxiety or fear is

actually built in to the circuits that

generate goal seeking and our motivation

to pursue goals. The other areas are the

so-called vententral strriatam. The

strriatam is part of what's called the

basil ganglia. The basil ganglia is a

neural circuit that can very simply be

described as a neural circuit that helps

us generate go meaning the initiation of

action and no go the prevention of

action type scenarios. Let me make that

even simpler. The vententral stratum is

part of this thing called the basil

ganglia. The basil ganglia has sort of

two circuits within it. One circuit is

involved in getting us to do things like

I'm going to get up tomorrow and I'm

going to run 5 miles first thing in the

morning. I don't know if I'm actually

going to do that, but I'm just using

that as an example. Another circuit

within the basil ganglia is a no-go

circuit. It's the one that says no, I'm

not going to go for the second cookie or

the third cookie. I'm not going to eat

that. And then the go circuit would be

the one that's responsible for instead

eating something else. Okay. So we have

go and no go circuits within the basil

ganglia. So we've got amydala. So think

of as kind of fear and anxiety and

avoidance. We've got the basil ganglia

which are for initiating action and

preventing action. And then there is the

so-called cortex. The cortex is the

outer shell of the brain. And there are

two sub regions of the cortex that are

involved in goal- directed behavior. One

is the lateral prefrontal cortex.

Prefrontal cortex is involved in

so-called executive function. Things

like planning, thinking about things

under different time scales. So not just

what we want in the immediate term, but

what we might want tomorrow or the next

day and how our actions currently are

going to relate to the future. And the

so-called orbrontal cortex. Orbital

frontal cortex has a large number of

functions. But one of the key functions

of the orbital frontal cortex, it's

involved in meshing some emotionality

with our current state of progress and

comparing that emotionality to where we

it might be when we are closer to a

goal. Okay. So there basically four

areas. One involved in anxiety, one

involved in emotion, one involved in

planning, and another involved in this

go no-go action. Okay. If we want to

make this even simpler, I'll just do

this one more time. Think anxiety and

fear. It's the amydala. The second is

involved in action and inaction.

Remember go and no go. So that's the

basil ganglia. The other one is involved

in planning and thinking across

different time scales. So that's lateral

prefrontal cortex. And then the fourth

one is involved in emotionality. Where

we sit emotionally at present compared

to where we think we will be emotionally

when we reach some particular goal. And

that's the orbital frontal cortex. What

is going on in these circuits can

basically be boiled down to two

particular things. The first is value

information. Trying to understand

whether or not something is really worth

pursuing or not. The other component of

this neural circuit is associated with

action. Which actions to take and which

actions not to take given the value of a

particular goal in a given moment's

time. You're going to hear me say over

and over again in this episode, the

value information about a goal is so

key. Here's why. There is basically one

neurotransmitter or rather neurom

modulator system that governs our goal

setting, goal assessment and goal

pursuit and that is the neurom modulator

dopamine. Dopamine is the common

currency by which we assess our progress

toward particular things of particular

value. In fact, dopamine is the way that

we assess value of our pursuits. There

are basically only three or four

elements to goal setting and goal

pursuit. Basically, an individual or set

of individuals has to identify a

specific thing that they're going to

attain. Assessment of what whether or

not one is making progress towards those

goals is a second but necessary step.

And then there's the business of goal

execution. And that brings us back to

the neural circuit components. Remember

this neural circuit involving those four

things earlier, the amygdala stratum or

frontal cortex and the prefrontal

cortex. They work together to divide the

whole process as I mentioned before into

two general categories. The first is

assessing value. Knowing whether or not

where one is at one given moment relates

to some external thing. Are things going

well or are things going poorly? And

knowing how to gauge that accurately.

And then action steps, goes and no goes.

do more of this, do less of that, do

this, don't do that, etc. So now we are

going to shift back to the neuroscience.

And as we do this, I'd like you to keep

in mind what are some things that you've

either accomplished or that you'd like

to accomplish going forward. Because as

we do this, we can build toward a set of

protocols that at the end, you'll be

able to very quickly plug in your

particular goals and a route to those

particular goals that's grounded in the

science that I think are going to be

very effective in allowing you to reach

those goals more quickly and with indeed

less effort. In fact, let's start with a

tool. Now, the first thing to do is to

understand the difference between

perpersonal space and extrapersonal

space. Perpersonal space is a key

concept in neuroscience because you have

particular neural circuits and

particular chemicals that are geared

toward what are called consumatory

behaviors. Meaning using things and

consuming things and enjoying things

that are in your immediate parersonal

space. Within my current parersonal

space is my interosception, my

understanding or perception of my

internal body. So, how quickly I'm

breathing, my heart rate, the feelings

on the surface of my skin, etc. But also

within the confines of my perpersonal

space is this coffee mug that if you're

listening to this, you can't see this,

but I'm lifting lifting up a coffee mug.

I'm going to take a sip of coffee.

That's a consumatory behavior. I have

the coffee. I don't have to do much or

motivate much to get it. Contrast that

with the so-called extrapersonal space.

Extrapersonal space is everything beyond

the confines of my reach. How we feel

about a particular goal is truly a

feeling that we experience in the here

and now even though the goal is in the

future. Okay.

If we are going to evaluate whether or

not we made progress today or yesterday

or not, that's an evaluation of how we

feel in the immediate perpersonal space.

However, moving toward any goal involves

orienting our thinking towards the

extrapal space. I'm just going to seed a

little bit of the later conversation by

saying that when we focus on an external

point, we are in a process of

exterception. It's the focus on the

extra personal space, not the

perpersonal space. Work at NYU in

particular in the laboratory of a a

phenomenal researcher in their

psychology department um by the name of

Emily Bettis, B A L C I S. Emily Bettis

has done really nice work on this.

they've done is they've had people focus

their visual attention on a goal line of

some sort and then to engage in some

sort of behavior that requires a lot of

effort. The long and short of these

studies is that when people have to

focus their attention on one location

like a goal line, they are much more

effective in reaching those goals and

they achieve them with the perception

that they expended less effort. And what

they did is they had a group of people

exercise wearing 15 pound ankle weights

and they had to basically move a certain

distance or run a certain distance to

reach a goal line. One group was focused

on the goal line, visually focused on

the goal line. The other group was not

told to visually focus on the goal line.

And what they found was that the group

that focused on the goal line did was

able to achieve reaching that goal with

17% less effort. and that it got there

23% quicker. Simply by looking at the

goal line does something to the

psychology and and physiology of these

people that allows them to move forward

with less perceived effort and to do it

more quickly. So what is special about

focusing one's visual attention at a

given location? Well, it turns out that

we have two branches of our visual

system. So visual information all comes

in through our eyes, but then it can

head down two different pathways. one

pathway is engaged when our vision is

brought to a common point, what we call

a virgin's eye movement. So if we're

focusing very intensely on a given

point, regardless of how far away from

us that point is, our visual system

engages a certain set of neurons, neural

circuits that are involved in resolving

fine detail and that can evaluate small

changes over small periods of time. The

other pathway through the visual system

is a so-called magnosellar pathway. And

this is a pathway that's involved in

taking in global information about lots

of things that are happening around us.

Movement of things to our right,

movement of things to our left, things

that are happening down on the ground

and all around us. And that pathway

involves a sort of relaxation, if you

will, of the neural circuits that are

associated with alertness and attention.

When you focus your eyes on a particular

location, blood pressure goes up. And

there are some other systems that are

coordinated with it in your brain and

body that start releasing adrenaline,

low amounts of adrenaline in most cases.

And that adrenaline further readies your

body for action. Conversely, when our

visual system is in a mode of looking at

everything when the aperture of our

visual system is very broad,

we know that there's also a reduction in

our goal- directed behavior and a

reduction in blood pressure. What many

of you are probably thinking is okay

well that's some physiology there's some

psychology but how do you actually apply

this towards setting and achieving goals

well you do that by understanding that

your mental frame and your attention are

always either positioned to your

perpersonal space focused on your

immediate possessions and state or

towards things outside you but that you

also have the ability to dynamically

travel back and forth between those if

you already know what goal you want to

pursue maybe it's a workout maybe it's a

cognitive work of some particular sort.

Again, the process is very simple.

You're going to focus your visual

attention on one point beyond your

perpersonal space. So, it could be on

your computer, it could be on the wall,

it could be a horizon, it could be at a

at a distance, and you're going to focus

your visual attention there. And with

some effort, you're going to hold your

visual attention for 30 to 60 seconds.

You might blink, that's okay, but you're

going to try and hold your visual

attention there. So, no moving your head

around, um, no diverting your attention

to other locations. Again, it places

your brain and body into a state of

readiness. And then the idea is to move

into the particular actions that bring

you closer to your goal. Okay, we

haven't yet talked about how to set

goals and how to assess progress. This

is simply how to pursue goals. Okay, but

the visual component is important. In

fact, I would argue that the visual

system and harnessing your visual

attention to a narrow point is going to

be the most effective way to get your

brain and body into a mode of action to

pursue whatever goal it is you're trying

to pursue. So, does visualization work?

Well, turns out that visualization of

the big win, the end goal, so the Super

Bowl win or eight gold medals in the

Olympics or graduation from the

university of your choice or making a

certain amount of money or finding the

partner of your choice, etc.

That visualization is effective in

getting the goal pursuit process

started, but it actually is a pretty

lousy and maybe even counterproductive

way of maintaining

pursuit of that goal. In fact, there's a

much better way to maintain ongoing

action toward a goal that also involves

visualization. But it turns out it's not

about visualizing success. It's about

visualizing failure. If you look at the

literature, the scientific literature,

there's a near doubling near doubling in

the probability of reaching one's goal.

If you focus routinely on foreshadowing

failure, you think about the ways in

which things could fail if you take

action A or you take action B and

instead therefore you take action C. If

we think back to the neural circuit

associated with assessing value in our

goal pursuits, this makes perfect sense.

The amygdala, that center of the brain

that's involved in anxiety and fear and

worry, well, the amygdala is one of the

four core components of our goal setting

and goal pursuit circuitry. And so,

while I'd love to be able to tell you

that all you should think about is

rainbows and puppies and all the

wonderful rewarding things that are

going to happen when you achieve your

goals, the truth is you should be

thinking mainly about how bad it's

really going to get if you don't do it.

How disappointing yourself you're going

to feel. How it will negatively impact

you if not in the immediate term, in the

long term, if indeed your goal is to

reach your goal. And the more specific

you can get by writing down or thinking

about or talking about how bad it will

be if you don't achieve your goals, the

more likely you are to achieve those

goals. If you're going to visualize in a

positive way, do that at the very

beginning of some goal pursuit. Maybe

intermittently every once in a while.

You imagine the big win of, you know,

scoring perfect on an exam or winning

the championship or the great

relationship. Most of the time if you

want to be effective you should be

focusing on avoiding failure and you

should be really clear about what those

failures would look like and feel like.

Now let's talk about goal setting. The

goal should be significant. We are told

it should be inspirational. It should be

aggressive yet realistic. But what does

that really look like and what does that

correspond to and how do we actually

make that happen? Turns out that the

probability of achieving a goal goes up

or down depending on whether or not one

visualizes or sets a goal that is easy,

moderate, or impossible. Turns out that

if the goal is too easy, it's too within

reach, it doesn't recruit enough of the

autonomic nervous system to make pursuit

of that goal likely. Also, if a goal was

too lofty, if it was too far from their

current abilities,

it didn't recruit enough systolic blood

pressure. Even if people could get very

excited about something mentally, it

simply didn't place their body into a

state of readiness because they it

wasn't tangible that they could actually

perhaps really achieve it. So it turns

out that when goals were moderate, when

they were just outside of one's

immediate abilities or that one felt

that yeah, that would take a lot of

effort but it's within range or maybe in

range like maybe I can do it, maybe I

can't, then there was a near doubling of

the likelihood that they would engage in

the ongoing pursuit of that particular

goal. The goals need to be realistic and

truly challenging. Don't set goals that

are so challenging and so lofty that

they crash that blood pressure system in

the other direction and make you or

anyone feel unmotivated. Now, I'd like

to talk about three particular areas of

scientific study that point to goal

pursuit, goal assessment, and goal

achievement. Any discussion about goals

and goal pursuit would be incomplete

without a discussion about the molecule

dopamine.

Dopamine is often thought of as the

molecule of pleasure and reward, but

actually it is the molecule of

motivation. This is best illustrated by

a classic set of studies that have been

carried out in both animals and in

humans. The animal study can be

described the following way. Two rats

each in a separate cage. You can provide

those rats with the opportunity to

indulge in something that they like like

food or mating or heat if it's cold in

the environment or a cool spot in the

cage if it's warm in the environment and

so forth. And what you find is that rats

will very readily approach the rewarding

thing. They will mate, they will eat,

they will pursue something that is of

pleasure. Now, if you are to take one of

those rats and deplete its dopamine

neurons, you can eliminate its dopamine

neurons or block dopamine in the brain.

What you find is that those animals will

still

enjoy pleasure. However, their

motivation to achieve pleasure is vastly

reduced. In fact, if you place the item

of pleasure, the mate, the food, etc.,

even just one rat's length away from

that rat, the rat without dopamine will

not even move one length of its own body

in order to achieve that pleasure. And

there are naturally occurring

experiments in humans that mimic that

result very accurately.

There are certain conditions in humans

where there is a depletion of dopamine.

And what you find is that the depletion

of dopamine does not inhibit an ability

to experience pleasure necessarily. It

inhibits an ability to pursue or go

through the series of action steps in

order to achieve pleasure. So, dopamine

really sits at the heart of our

motivational state to seek out goals and

to seek pleasure. And this is true for

immediate goals that take place within a

time frame of minutes or a time frame of

a day or the time frame of a week or the

time frame of a lifetime. Dopamine is

the common currency by which we pursue

goals. Now, dopamine does a number of

things that are very interesting. I'm

going to describe a few of them as they

relate to goal seeking behavior. First

of all, there's a fundamental feature of

how our brain releases and uses dopamine

that's called reward prediction error.

And the simplest way to think about

dopamine reward prediction error is that

dopamine is released in the greatest

amount and places uses into a greater

state of motivation. When something

happens that's positive and novel. If

you don't expect something positive to

happen, you're just going about your day

and something positive happens, dopamine

and a lot of dopamine is released.

However, if we anticipate something

positive is going to happen and then

that thing happens,

we experience dopamine as part of the

anticipation. So, even before we get the

reward, there's an increase in dopamine.

It's not as high as it would be if

something really novel and unexpected

and positive happened, but we do get an

increase in dopamine. And then when we

actually experience the reward, we

experience the positive thing, there's a

smaller increase in dopamine. Okay? So

again, the biggest increases in dopamine

are response to things that are positive

and unexpected.

Lesser dopamine is released when we

anticipate something good will happen.

And when that happens, yes, we get some

dopamine and we also get some dopamine

when the positive thing happens. There's

also the case in which we predict that

something good will happen. When that

happens, there's an increase in dopamine

just as it was before. But then if that

thing doesn't happen, for instance, our

friends don't show up for dinner, then

there's a drop in dopamine below our

initial baseline. That drop in dopamine

is the chemical essence of what we call

disappointment.

Now, this dopamine reward prediction

error, as it's called, can be leveraged

toward trying to reach our goals because

it tells us where we should set our

milestones.

We can't be in a mode of simply being

focused on the finish line. So

understanding what we know about reward

prediction error. We can make better

choices about where to place the

milestones, how far out in the future to

place milestones. So then the question

becomes how often or at what intervals

should one assess progress. I think that

checking in at the end of a week,

looking back on the previous week, and

assessing how well you performed in

pursuit of a given goal or how many

times you did something that you wanted

to do or avoided something that you

didn't want to do. I think that's a

reasonable and tractable schedule to

assess once a week. This dopamine system

is critical to reup to remind ourselves

that we are on track if indeed we are on

track because dopamine itself provides a

state of motivation and readiness to

continue in the regular pursuit of our

goals. Another very interesting aspect

of dopamine is actually how the dopamine

system interacts with the visual system.

When we are focused on a particular

point in visual space or a particular

goal or horizon, all those systems, our

blood pressure, epinephrine, and indeed

dopamine get recruited to put us into a

state of readiness and willingness to go

pursue things in that extra personal

space. When our visual attention is very

diffuse, all of that relaxes and we tend

to be more comfortable staying in the

place that we are in our perpersonal

space. And the effect works in the other

direction too.

When dopamine is increased, our visual

attention for particular things out in

space increase. So the way it works is

reciprocal. When we use our visual

system in a particular way, bring it to

a point of focus, it recruits chemical

and neural systems in our brain and body

that put us into a state of readiness

and pursuit. And when we increase

certain chemicals in our brain and body

like epinephrine, like dopamine, then we

also allow our visual system to be in a

state of looking out at particular

locations in our visual world. So the

system works in both directions. And

some people leverage this by using

things like caffeine or taking things

like elyroine to increase dopamine. And

again, it works both ways. There's no

right or wrong way to do it. I'm a

particular fan of using behavioral tools

always prior to using supplementation or

any kinds of other tools because

behavioral tools have a very unique

feature that supplementation and other

chemical tools don't, which is that

behavioral tools used over time engage

neuroplasticity. As we start to practice

using our visual system to harness our

attention to particular locations and in

that way move toward particular goals,

we get better and better at using those

systems. In fact, the systems for focus

and motivation themselves have

plasticity. So, we get better at being

motivated and focused when we place our

visual attention at a given location.

I'd like to just briefly recap what I've

covered up until now. First of all, set

goals that are challenging but possible.

Those moderate goals, not super easy,

not super difficult, but moderately

challenging goals seem to be the most

effective in moving people towards their

goals over the short and long term.

Second, plan concretely. You need a

concrete set of actions that you're

going to follow in order to reach your

goals. Third, foreshadow failure. It

turns out that imagining success and

visualizing success can be useful at the

outset of a goal and maybe every once in

a while in pursuit of that goal, but

that it's not terrific for putting you

in constant pursuit of that goal.

Rather, foreshadowing failure,

visualizing failure and all the terrible

things that it's going to bring seems to

be more effective. And that maps very

well to what's known about the neural

circuitry and the involvement of the

amydala.

Focus on particular visual points as a

way to harness your attention and to

remove distractors. Removing distractors

and getting your body and brain into a

mode of activation, getting that healthy

increase in systolic blood pressure that

puts you into forward motion towards

your goals is absolutely key. So that's

a brief summary of what I've covered up

until now. But I want to be sure to

include a tool that's been especially

powerful for me that's grounded in the

neuroscience research and in the

psychology research. And as I describe

this tool next, I think you'll see the

ways in which it meshes nicely with the

work that Emily Balsetus and colleagues

have done. This is something that I've

personally been doing for many years

based on my understanding of the visual

system and the understanding that indeed

we can move our cognition and our

perception from a place of

interosception and focusing on our

perpersonal space that space within us

and immediately around us and on the

things that are immediately accessible

to us. that we can shift from that mode

to this mode of exterception of focusing

on things outside the confines of our

skin and that are beyond our reach that

are literally goal- directed behaviors

and goal- directed thoughts. And

[snorts] this is something that in the

past I've talked about a little bit and

I've talked about something called

space-time bridging. And we haven't

talked too much about the time domain of

the visual system today. But spac-time

bridging is simply a way of using one's

visual system to focus on the

perpersonal space and interception and

then gradually in a deliberate way

stepping one's focus into the

extrapersonal space and then back to the

perpersonal space in a way that gives

you a lot of flexibility and control

over that ability in your daily life. So

I'm going to first describe the tool and

then I will explain more about the

underlying science and the underlying

mechanism.

Here's how you would do this. What you

first do is you would close your eyes

and you would focus as much of your

attention including your visual

attention on your inner landscape on

your interosception. So that would be

your breathing, your heart rate, maybe

even the surface of your skin, but

really focusing internally. And you

would do that for a duration of

approximately three slow breaths. Then

you would open your eyes and you would

focus your visual attention on some area

on the surface of your body. So for me,

the way that I typically do this will be

to focus on say the palm of my hand. So

I'll focus my visual attention on the

palm of my hand. And I then do three

breaths again focusing on my internal

state. But now I'm splitting out a

little bit of my attention from

interosception to exterception. I'm

focusing on something outside me. The

ratio or the split of attention is about

9010. About 90% of my attention is

focused internally, but I'm also

focusing some of my attention

externally. Okay, most people can do

this pretty easily. Then there's a third

what I call station. I now move my

visual attention to outside my body to

some location in the room or if I'm

outside in the external environment,

something in the range of 5 to 15 feet

away. And I'm trying to move 90% of my

attention to that external object. As I

breathe, I'm paying attention to those

three breaths. So that's why there's

still 10% that's focused on my internal

landscape because I want to pay

attention to those three breaths, but

I'm focusing as much of my attention

outside of myself, maintaining just a

little bit on my internal state so I can

measure the cadence of those three

breaths. Then I move my visual attention

to yet another station which is further

away. Typically a horizon or something

as far off in the distance as I can

possibly see. Again, for the duration of

three breaths.

And at that point, I'm trying my very

best to move 99 if not 100% of my

attention to that external location.

Okay? And then what I typically will do

is I will try and expand both my vision

and my cognition to a much broader

sphere. This is that magnosellar vision

that we talked about before where I'm

not focusing on a particular location on

the horizon. I'm trying to dilate the

aperture of my field of view so I can

see as much of the visual landscape as

I'm in as possible. Again, for the

duration of three breaths. Then I would

return immediately to my internal

landscape. I would close my eyes and I

would do three more breaths focusing

entirely on my interosception on my

internal landscape or what we called

before my perpersonal space. And I would

work through each of those stations

maybe two or three times. The entire

thing takes about 90 seconds to 3

minutes depending on how many breaths

you do. What is all of this doing? Why

do I call this space-time bridging and

why is this useful for goal setting?

>> [clears throat]

>> The reason I call it spac-time bridging

is that the visual system is not just

about analyzing space. It's actually how

we batch time. It's how we carve up

time. And the simple way to state this

is that when we focus our visual

attention on a very narrow point that's

close to our body and our immediate

experience, we tend to slice up time

very finely. We're focused on our

breathing. We're focused on our

heartbeats. In fact, our breathing and

our internal landscape and our

heartbeats become the sort of seconds

hand if you will on our experience. We

are carving up time according to our

immediate physiological experience.

Whereas when we focus our visual

attention outside our body, not only do

we engage that exterceptive extrapol

system and we start to engage the

dopamine system, the goal- directed

system, but we also start batching time

differently. When we focus our visual

system into a broader sphere of space or

into a space beyond the confines of our

skin, we start carving up time. Our

frame rate changes. Now this is useful

in the context of goal setting, goal

assessment and goal pursuit because with

the exception of a very few isolated

examples, almost all goals involve

setting some goal that's often the

future and then carving up the time

between now and the achievement of that

goal into milestones that range in

duration. And the rewards even if we try

and just make them every week are going

to come at some unexpected intervals.

And that's actually can be helpful for

reinforcing behavior. Intermittent

reward that's intermittent and random is

the most effective reward schedule we

know.

But the problem is always how do we keep

our cognition in line with the long-term

goal while also being focused on these

more immediate goals. This behavior or

this practice rather is teaching us to

use our visual system and thereby our

cognitive system and thereby our reward

systems to orient to different locations

in space and therefore at different

locations in time. And that is the

essence of goal-directed behavior. That

is the essence of setting a goal. It's

about thinking about what you want. Then

it's about setting milestones that are

intermediate to that goal. Then it's

about assessing whether or not you're

reaching those milestones. And then it's

of course about updating your goals if

you need to update your goals. All of

that is an enormously confusing batch of

challenges if you think about it all at

once. But if you break it down into

these elements that the visual system

can help you find and move towards those

milestones. I think there's ample

evidence to support that. What's very

clear is that an ability to move from

different visual stations and to do that

in a deliberate way, in a focused and

conscious way clearly maps to an ability

to conceive of different goals over

different periods of time and I do

believe can be greatly beneficial in

allowing one to set particular goals and

then move through the milestones to

those goals and to constantly update

one's pursuit and reward in reaching

those milestones and eventually the

overall goal. Per usual, I covered a lot

of material today. We talked about some

of the neuroscience and psychology and

popular understanding of goal seeeking

behavior, how to assess goals, etc.

Talked about the use of the visual

system to better achieve goals and

indeed things like visualization and why

forecasting failure can be more

effective than forecasting success. And

in addition, I described this practice

that one can incorporate as a daily or

semi-aily practice of so-called

space-time bridging of using the visual

system and your ability to deliberately

step your visual system from stations

that are within your body so-called

perpersonal or interceptive space out

into the world further and further and

then back again in sequence as a way to

harness and cultivate and build up these

systems that link vision, space, time,

reward systems, and so forth.

Ultimately,

as you set out to accomplish your goals,

there are going to be a number of basic

steps that everyone will have to follow.

You'll have to clearly identify what the

long-ching ultimate goal is. You'll have

to identify what the milestones will be.

You might not know all of them at the

outset, but you ought to have some idea

about the intervals at which you are

going to set those milestones and set

your reward schedule for assessing

progress in route to those milestones

and your ultimate goal. My hope is that

you'll be able to incorporate these

tools, if not all of them, perhaps just

one of them or two of them in pursuit of

whatever particular goals you happen to

be focused on at this point and in the

future. And last, but certainly not

least, thank you for your interest in

science.

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