Influencing mental habits requires deliberately identifying cues and providing subsequent rewards.

“Um, but thoughts are not thinking. So what translates us from thoughts to thinking? How do we form better habits or reformat uh maladaptive habits around that? You give a great example, by the way, of the the reaction to getting cut off like an anger reaction. That's absolutely right. So, so the way that we can the way that we can influence our mental habits is that we have to deliberately choose to figure out what the cue is and then we have to give ourselves a reward afterwards. they they operate by the same principle as as behavioral habits or physical habits but it's a little bit more tricky right so oftentimes let's take um let's take innovation innovation is one of the a mental habit that's studied why do some people manage to innovate on demand much better than others right we can all be innovative but some people they need the muse to strike it takes them years and other people you walk in and you say hey look I need 30 great ideas by tonight and they can sit down and they knock them out So what's happening there?”