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One of the books that I pulled up my shelf, I don't know how many times, during the last 20 years. It's made a profound impact on me. I go back to some of the concepts in there over and over again.

It's a book called the Mind and the Brain Doctor Jeffrey Schwartz. I love the subtitle neuroplasticity and the power of mental force. He's the first guy that I came across that, talked about the physical brain and the mind being something different. the brain body is the physical part of us, but the mind We do wanna call it the spirit, the soul, intelligence, whatever it is. They're they're different things and they the body acts on the mind, the mind acts on the body. And it just makes so much sense to me as I have worked with those who are struggling with addiction issues, anxiety, depression, so forth.

Listen to this sentence, and then I wanna talk about it for just just a couple minutes. The only willful choice one has is the quality of attention one gives to a thought at any moment. So this book is about free will. This book is about choice. It's kind of mind boggling to me that there really are people in the world today who don't believe in free choice. They are, of what's called the materialist mindset. a determined mindset. Just thinking that we are kind of robots and we're acted upon by our genes and there's really nothing we can do individually to change that. Just makes absolutely sense to me.

I don't agree with it. It would if that were the case, life would have absolutely no meaning. So I love the concept of choice of agency that we are the ones that determine the quality of our life If we don't like where things are going, we absolutely have the capacity to do something about it. Doctor Schwartz, he he worked with those who struggled with severe OCD issues.

And he he absolutely acknowledged and recognized that the brain impacts the mind when the brain somehow gets wired a little bit differently, it's off meaning that it will send compulsive thoughts to do something from the deeper regions of the brain and the prefrontal cortex higher functioning part of the brain where the mind works through. The mind can inhibit and restructure and reframe the compulsion or drive that is hitting the person, and and they can actually go and perform another behavior. 1 of the key concepts has to do with awareness, increasing our level of awareness.

This is what mindfulness is all about, learning to recognize certain thoughts, recognize triggers, and he scientifically in the book it it brings it out shows that when we have a compulsion or a trigger or an idea to do something, there's a part that fires in the brain before any action happens. And this reminds me of that classical statement by Victor Franco. He is so credible to me.

Victor Franco is a guy who -- through the horrors of of the Holocaust. in a concentration camp for a number of years. I think it was 4 years and and lost most of his loved ones. and even in those conditions, he he this is why he's so critical when he said this. Notwithstanding that all his freedom was taken away physically, He was in prison. He was told what he could eat. He was forced to work. He was freezing, holes in his shoes, so forth, and anyway, here's the statement that he he made everything can be taken from a man but one thing the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstance to choose one's own way. between stimulus and response, there is a space.

So back to what Jeffrey Sports talks about He says there really is scientifically when we have an intention to do something, there's a little space between stimulus of even a thought There's a space where we choose our response. So back to what Victor Frankel says between stimulus and response, there is a space In that space is our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom. except for the rare cases where individuals are strugg