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Tony talks about why unfinished tasks take up so much emotional energy and why, even with this knowledge, it can be so challenging to begin even the most simple project. The Ziegarnik Effect is the tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished tasks. Tony "reacts to" Cynthia Vinney's article "The Ziegarnik Effect? Definitions and Examples" https://www.thoughtco.com/zeigarnik-effect-4771725 Understanding how The Ziegarnik Effect works can help you address procrastination, poor study habits, and more.
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Check out this episode (285) of the Virtual Couch where I discuss this topic at length.
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[00:00:05] The. Come on in and take a seat.
[00:00:21] Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode two hundred and eighty five of the virtual couch, and I'm going to start with story time. Friday night, my wife and I had gone to a high school football game. My son's girlfriend is a cheerleader where we're watching the Friday Night Lights. It's starting to get crisp and cool. It was amazing, but we had we had not gone to dinner before. So afterward we head to dinner and we go to a Mexican restaurant and we haven't eaten a lot all day. So a bit impulsively we get the chips in queso because it's amazing and we drive away and we're in the midst of just talking. And I think I actually stopped a little short at a stoplight and my wife just checked to make sure that our food didn't spill everywhere. And she just mentions, Hey, they forgot the queso, which is the whole point of chips and queso chips are good, but cakes, those amazing. So we're a little ways away, and I just I just say, Hey, I'll go back. No problem. And so we go back and we had just been there. It was late. It was after 10 o'clock, the restaurant closes at 11. There had been no one else in the restaurant. It was one of those where you go up to the counter and you place your order. And I had made witty jokes and I thought I had really connected with the person helping because I felt like it was late at night and I wanted her to smile and have a great end to the evening.
[00:01:33] So I'm thinking, Oh, she'll remember, and she'll say, Hey, what's going on? And I walk in and absolute zero recollection. Not that I'm somebody that stands out in a crowd. Don't get me wrong, but my point being, I just left there and I had mentioned that, hey, we just left and unfortunately forgot the queso. And still, this just blank look on her face, which is fine. But the point of this story is that you do sometimes wonder how does somebody just not quite remember something that had just happened? And it had me think of this thing called the zeigen effect. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Sounds super nerdy and boring, but it's amazing. What the Zagorin effect is is that you once you complete a project, then it is out of your mind. So somebody that works in the food service industry, for example, when you have left and you have paid, you are done to them. They have had so many people come through that day that while you are still put in your order together before you've paid, while you're still in front of them, you're relevant and they're going to remember you and they're going to remember what you were trying to order or what they need to do for the most part. But when you leave, that task is completed and done.
[00:02:41] And so there's so much fascinating psychology around this organic effect today, and we're going to talk about that how it fits into your mental health. Things like procrastination. Things like why we want to continually binge on Netflix or Hulu episodes one after the other, because there's this thing that's left undone or why we want to click on clickbait, even though we know it's clickbait. Because once we have something in our minds and that is not completed, our mind is just going to start turning and turning. And it really wants to do something about this unfinished task or this incomplete information. So we're going to talk about this Zigarnic effect, and I'm going to refer to an article from a website called Thought Code.com, and it's by someone named Cynthia Vinny. And I just am going to do quite a bit of reading, but I'm going to react, I guess, is what the kids say these days. It's funny in my day as an old man, it's commentary, but I love this concept of a React video. We teach a Sunday school class and we were even going to do this on Sunday where it show this video that that our church had put together. And I had asked kids, I said, Hey, how many of you guys watch YouTube channels where they react to fill in the blank? They react to video trailers, they react to video games, just this reaction, and almost all of them raise their hand.
[00:04:00] That is such a thing. And so I did realize in that moment I like to hear a commentary on things. But again, today we're talking reaction. So we're going to talk about this article, and Cynthia sets it up by saying, Have you ever found yourself thinking about a partially finished project for school? Or is it hard for you to work when you're trying to focus on other things? Or you maybe wondered what would happen next in your favorite TV show or film series? If so, you've experienced this Zagorink effect, which is the tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished tasks. And I have so many thoughts on this because again, truly, every individual listening to this podcast is a very unique individual that has all of their own processes and thoughts and abilities that come into any situation. And what I mean by that is if I take my wife and I, for example, I, she has to complete a task. She's just has an amazing ability to keep a to do list. I've heard of these to do lists. I've tried to keep them. I have sticky notes all over my desk right now. I've tried to do to do apps or back in the day there were day timers and planners and that sort of thing. But my wife is just so good at every day. You hear this little ding on her phone and she checks off these tasks that she's accomplished. Or if? We both been asked to speak somewhere again, let's go back to this church setting.
[00:05:17] I'm going to put this thing off until the last minute where she is going to not rest until that talk is completed because it's this unfinished task. So we're going to even talk about the differences in individuals and how that works as well. So the origins of the Zagorin took effect one day while sitting in a busy Viennese restaurant in the nineteen twenties. A Russian psychologist named Bloom as Organic noticed that the waiters could successfully remember the details of the orders for the tables that had yet to receive and pay for their food. But like my experience on Friday night, as soon as the food was delivered and the check was closed, the waiters memories of the order seemed to just disappear from their minds. So she went on to study this in a lot of different ways. There was a series of experiments to study this phenomenon, so she had asked participants, for example, at one setting to complete a series of somewhere between 18 and 20 to simple tasks, including things like making a clay figure, constructing a puzzle, completing a math problem, and already we frame this in the world of a reaction video or reacting to even this article. It's funny because when I thought about the concept of making a clay figure, for example, I have zero artistic talent, and that's not this humble brag. Oh, no, but let me show you all these amazing things that I've done artistically.
[00:06:30] I'm talking zero. So it's funny because I feel like if someone interrupted me and making this clay figure, I don't feel like I would. That would be this task left undone. I feel like it would be this big sense of relief. So even as I talk about the series of experiments, I know that your mileage may vary. But when people were interrupted and doing these tasks, half of the tasks were interrupted before the participant could complete them. And meanwhile, the participant was able to work on others until they were done so. Afterward, the participant was asked to tell the experimenter about the task that they worked on, and Zagorink wanted to know which tasks that the participants would recall first. And an initial group of participants recalled these interrupt. I will definitely be editing this out and initial group of participants recalled in it. Let's do take three, shall we? And initial group of participants recalled interrupted tasks 90 percent better than the task that they completed. And then a second group of participants recalled interrupted tasks over twice, as well as the completed tasks. So in a variation of that experiment, as well as the it found that adults once again experienced a 90 percent memory advantage, 14 interrupted for interrupted tasks. And furthermore, children remembered unfinished tasks over twice as often as they did completed tasks. And just hold on because we're going to talk about how you can even use that to your advantage when it comes to things like studying, preparing for tests or that sort of thing.
[00:07:58] So there was more research done that again Zagarnic lived in the twenties. In a study conducted in the nineteen sixties, a guy named John Baddeley, a memory researcher, asked participants to solve a series of anagrams within a specific amount of time. And once again, where I go with that is I don't know if I can solve an anagram, so it would most likely be a huge sense of relief to be interrupted in this process. But for the group that was studied, they were given the answers to the anagrams that they were unable to finish, and later participants were better able to recall the words of for the anagrams they failed to complete over those that they successfully finished. And then in nineteen eighty two, this study that was done by Kenneth McGraw and Jeremiah Fiala interrupted participants before they could complete a spatial reasoning task. And even after the experiment was over, this one again, I found fascinating. Eighty six percent of the people who were given absolutely no incentive for their participation decided to stick around and continue working on the task until they could finish it. Eighty six percent, that means 14 out of the hundred would just say thank you and leave and have a nice day, which I think that would be myself. And to be fair, there is evidence that's against this Sagana effect.
[00:09:11] Other studies that have failed to replicate this gigantic effect, and this is where I like where things get pretty interesting with this. So that evidence demonstrates that there's a number of factors that impact the effect of the Zagorin effect. And as the year ticket initially made room for this, in her original research, she suggested that things like the timing of the interruption. But here's the big one I think the motivation to successfully complete a task. She went on to talk about how fatigued an individual is or how difficult they believe. The task is that all of those will impact the person's recall for this unfinished task. So here's the big one for me. If somebody isn't really motivated to complete a task, they will be less likely to recall it regardless of whether or not they completed it. And I really feel like that goes into the that concept that I talk about any chance I can. This concept of a socially compliant goal where if you remember a socially compliant goal is something that you feel you have to do or else you are going to let someone down that someone could be someone close to you or it can even be yourself. If you have this, I should again. I would like it to be should on, but I should be able to do this or I should want to do this. Examples of that might be I was talking with someone not too long ago and they just talked about how they really don't care about cleaning their house, but they feel like they should.
[00:10:28] They know they should. People have told them they should, but they don't. So they spend an awful lot of time beating themselves up around why they don't want to clean their house, rather than just accepting the fact that they're not a big fan of cleaning their house almost once they accept that fact. And again, acceptance doesn't mean apathy. It doesn't mean that they will never clean their house ever again. But actually, by accepting that they don't really want to do that, that that's not something that is important to them. They're more likely to either start to do a little bit of cleaning because they're not beating themselves up about it. Or better yet, they may be able to now say, I think you need to hire somebody to clean my house and then not feel bad about that and then be able to say, Oh, no, I'm not a fan of cleaning my house, but it feels good to have someone do that and then it does make me feel better. The emotional clutter is not there, but nothing is wrong with me if I personally don't have that motivation to clean my house. I want to get to something that I haven't ever talked about. It's so funny I can hear my own ego where let me bestow upon you this knowledge that I have made up on the spot, and you will be very excited to hear this.
[00:11:32] I'm not saying that, but I've thought about this so much in this zigarnic effect plays in this a little bit. Let's talk about implications for everyday life and Cynthia Vinnie goes on and talks about how the knowledge of the Zagorink effect can be put into everyday life in several different ways. The first one she talks about is procrastination, and I have some good, deep thoughts on this. So if you are one who procrastinates, if you know somebody who procrastinates, then I would love to hear your thoughts on this. So Cynthia says that this effect is especially well-suited in helping overcome procrastination. She said that we often put off big tasks that seem overwhelming, which I know I do that so often. However, this is a gornick. Effect suggests that the key to overcoming procrastination is to simply get started, and the first step could be something small, seemingly insubstantial. And she says, in fact, it's probably best if it is something fairly easy. I remember doing an episode quite a while ago on procrastination, and if somebody is struggling to write a paper literally just sitting in front of your computer and typing your name, and Mrs. Johnson's class is oftentimes the ice breaker that one needs to just start moving. And what she went on to say is it's the key is that the task has been started but not completed because this will take up psychological energy that will lead us or will lead the task to intrude on our thoughts.
[00:12:48] And it's an uncomfortable feeling that will drive us to complete the task at which point we can let go and no longer keep the task at the forefront of our minds. And so what that so if you look at this zigarnic effect in general, what we're talking about is that the more that you have not completed the task, the more that it is on the forefront of your mind. And I feel like we probably most of us have this experience where once you get started, the task isn't as daunting as you felt like it was. But I think the key here is the emotional calories or the emotional energy that is taken up in just continually thinking about the project or thinking about completing the task is what this is a Zirganic effect is talking about because and I know this resonates with me so much of if I know that I have something that I have to do, I am continually thinking about it, thinking about it. And then it becomes pretty ominous and more larger and daunting. And so I feel like sometimes just knowledge or the awareness of something helps so much so knowing that this is the Zagarink effect that the more I think about it and the more emotional calories I'm burning and the more emotional energy that it's taking up in my brain will be satisfied once I complete the task.
[00:13:55] And when I start telling myself that I have to get in a better position, that I will be able to complete the task once I am well rested or once I have these other things out of the way that that is just my brain's way of coming up with a story because I feel uncomfortable. And that makes me feel better in that moment, because then for a brief moment, I have this anxiety around. I need to complete this task, but then my brain will say, Man, you need to do it, though, when you have more time or when you can really sit down and think about something and what we're doing that relieves that anxiety for a short moment. But then it just comes right back because of this zigarnic effect. Now here is the information that I have been thinking about so often and and I really feel like this has helped some of the clients I'm working with individually for procrastination. It has to do with a combination pack of procrastination and acceptance and commitment therapy. So here goes, and I just have to say I have a new desk. I have a new studio in my office and the desk is one where I can stand up and I've been waiting for this for so long. So if you've ever been inclined to subscribe, I would love for you to on my YouTube channel for the virtual couch, because right now I am staring just passionately into the camera because I can stand and I can use my hands and I'm about to get really excited.
[00:15:08] So here we go. So with procrastination, so I feel like so often, let's say that your deadline is Friday at six p.m. and you have to get something done because so often I'm working with college students where that is this deadline and they have to submit a paper, turn in a paper, upload a paper or whatever that looks like. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, they will say so often I just I got to get this done. I just need to sit down and get it done. So let's go. Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, they set aside this time and they sit down and they just need to study and they need to put their thoughts together. But when they sit down and they know that that deadline is pretty far away, it's on a Friday. They spend Monday night, Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, just finding other things to do, this experiential avoidance of just kicking the can down the road so they sit down. But then they realize, OK, I should probably just answer some emails first or we going to play a couple of games. Or maybe I'm going to watch one episode of something or I'm going to just spend a little bit of time on YouTube, those stories that our brain tells us. But then that turns into a more than a couple of games, more than a little bit of time on YouTube or more than just answering email.
[00:16:16] Maybe now we're on social media. We've got that just scrolling zombie thing going on where it should scroll, scroll, scroll. We've tried the five four three two one countdown where, OK, I'm going to I'm going to quit the app when I get to one and we get the one and we're still scrolling. And then what happens at the end of that night? We often then beat ourselves up because we didn't get anything accomplished or we feel like, Man, what is wrong with me? I sat down to study, now I only have these other days left, and in the meantime, I missed out on maybe doing some things with my friends or some self-care or things that I really want to do because I really have to study. So then repeat that process and I could be dramatic and lay out every night, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. But when Friday comes and you've got the six o'clock deadline, about three o'clock, all of a sudden you become hyper fixated. And I've talked about this before. We know that part of that is your brain creates its own supply of the drug dopamine. Dopamine is the hyper focused drug, and so we're actually conditioning our brains to wait until we pour out that dopamine at the last minute. Then we become hyper focused and then we finish right at the deadline, and then we even tell ourselves this story that I work best under pressure.
[00:17:23] Well, that's because you've created this situation where you continually find yourself under pressure and have to complete that task. So it's just this, this feedback loop that we've created for ourselves. So here's my say. Here's my controversial theory that no one's ever heard of. Therefore, it would not be controversial, but I feel like acceptance comes into play if I know for a fact that I am not going to get started until Friday, and I have to be honest with myself. I go back to my accountability podcast with my buddy Preston Pug Meyer. What am I pretending not to know? I'm pretending not to know that. I'm probably not. No, not even probably. I'm not going to be working on this these next few days. But what happens is during those few days we sit down and we tell ourselves that we should be working on it. How about socially compliant goal, anybody? And we might even want to be working on it, but we have to accept the fact that that is not work for us. Up to this point. So acceptance doesn't mean apathy. If you accept the fact that you are going to wait until the last minute, it doesn't mean that, well, there we go. I guess I'm going to wait till the last minute, but I feel like sometimes we need to acknowledge or take ownership of the fact that that's how we work right now.
[00:18:26] So if I accept the fact that I will not be working on anything until the last minute, then what can I do with Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? I can now take control of my life, my situation, and I can do things that will help raise my emotional baseline where I can do self-care things. Self-care is not selfish. So let's take that Monday night alone. If I know for a fact, I will not be studying and I accept it and I take ownership of it. But now maybe I do go out and connect with someone, visit friends. If I go to the gym, if I exercise and I leave that the end of that evening and I feel like I accomplished some things. Then if that happens Tuesday, if that happens Wednesday, Thursday, then I have some nice anecdotal in my office data that says that someone is going to be more likely to start working on that project before that three hours before the deadline. Now it might be four hours before the deadline might be five hours before the deadline. But I found that when we give ourselves grace, when we give ourselves some acceptance that we are human beings and we don't want to do that paper, then oftentimes we then will find ourselves turning to do that paper sooner. And I feel like if you take that information combined with this Zagarnik effect and then we acknowledge the fact that I don't really want to do it on Monday or Tuesday.
[00:19:42] And so I'm going to do things that matter to me. I'm going to take action on my values, some value based goals or connections. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to connect with people. I'm going to maybe I maybe am going to clean my house if I like to do that, but I'm going to work on things that will help me feel better about myself and better about my situation. What am I doing? It's this I feel like it's this exponential effect where I'm not only not beating myself up because I didn't do something, but I'm doing things that provide me with a sense of purpose and a sense of well-being in that raises my emotional baseline and puts me in a better spot to now tackle those projects now I'm still accepting the fact that my brain is pretty wired right now to wait until the last minute. But with that acceptance, and as I've done, things that have helped me feel again a sense of purpose or better about myself, I'm going to turn to that project earlier. And now that I'm aware this is the zagarnic effect. And now I even feel like, OK, you know what? I'm still thinking about that project that I have to do, but I've accepted the fact that I'm not going to jump on this thing Monday, Tuesday, maybe even Wednesday. But I also am aware, but thank you, bloom as zagarnic that this unfinished task, as soon as I resolve it, that it's gone, it's gone from my mind.
[00:20:51] It feels good. It isn't taking up that emotional space or energy. Then I feel like you put those things together and you will be more likely to start that project earlier. So as the Zagarnick effect, Cynthia Vinnie also talked about improving study habits. I thought this one was really interesting. If only I would have had this back in high school or college. She said that the Zanik effect can also be useful for students who are studying for an exam. The effect tells us that breaking up study sessions can actually improve recall. Oh, that would have been nice to know. So instead of cramming for an exam all in one sitting, which I have been guilty of doing that throughout my life, breaks should be scheduled in which the student focuses on something else, because this will cause these thoughts about the information that must be remembered and that will enable the student to rehearse and consolidate it, leading to better recall when they take the exam. I remember studying for my licensing exams for therapy, and I had recorded the lectures that I bought this course to prepare me, and I had them as podcasts, in a sense. So I had these recordings. I listened to them. When I would run, I would go study on the weekends, and I did just break up things in so many tiny segments and chunks.
[00:21:58] And because if I just sat there and tried to study for long periods of time, quite frankly, at the time, I fell asleep or my mind would just wander. This is well before my ADHD diagnosis. But breaking things up in these smaller chunks, I think, is the key. And I was able to pass the the two exams on the first go, which is not always common in the world of licensing exams. So I was very grateful for that and it was something that I didn't even recognize. But when you put that in the context of this zagarnic effect, it makes so much sense. But here's what I really like. Excuse me, Cynthia and says the impact on mental health is the Gornick effect also points to reasons that people may experience mental health problems. For example, if an individual leaves important tasks incomplete the intrusive thoughts that can result can lead to stress or anxiety or difficulty sleeping or mental and emotional depletion, she said. On the other hand, the Zaguernic effect can improve mental health by providing a motivation needed to finish tasks, and completing a task can give an individual a sense of accomplishment and then promote the self esteem and self-confidence. And completing stressful tasks in particular can lead to a feeling of closure that can improve your psychological well-being. And I feel like that is all so true, and I'll have the link to this article in the show notes.
[00:23:10] But I do want to comment that this is where I will say again that your mileage may vary, that if you're already to this point where you find yourself going into this negative spiral or you beat yourself up often, then I understand that this can still, any task can still feel overwhelming or heavy. And I also absolutely understand that when people are just saying you just need to, you just need to break it into small chunks. You just need to use this zigarnic effect that oftentimes people can just feel that can add to this feeling of feeling overwhelmed. And so this is where I implore you. And if you are if I'm working with a client and they come into my office and one of the first things to do is they people just need to be heard. To be heard is to be healed, to be heard and not to be told what to do or to be heard and to not have things fixed is a incredibly underrated, understated psychological principle to have a safe place where somebody can just say, What is that like? Or tell me more about that or that really sounds hard that I just I tell you as a therapist who sits with people every day that that is such an important part of the human experience to have someone that you can just say, Can I just share something with you? Can I just vent? Can I just unload something? Can I get something off my chest and have somebody just say, Tell me all about it. What was that like? Then what did you do, boy? How does that? How do you feel when that happens and not just say, Oh boy, well, did you think about this or did you? Why didn't you do this? Or Here's what I do because I hammer home and every chance I get my four pillars of a connected conversation.
[00:24:42] But well before I had put those four pillars together, I used to just say that nobody likes to be should on. You should do this, but even more so people. I used to talk often about turning off your fixing and judgment brain that when somebody is coming to you and they are suggesting things that if we say, Oh, I would have done this, or why did you do this or that? The message we're telling them is my pillar to that, hey, you're wrong. What you did was wrong. I would have done it a different way. And people need to be heard to be healed and people need to be heard. And then if you feel like you want to give a. Ice, I'm a big fan of saying, man, I so appreciate that. Do you have anything else you want to share about? And hey, I'm just curious, are you? Would you? There's a part of me that wants to just say, Man, here's what I would do or can I go into fix it mode? Or can I maybe offer one suggestion? And that's often safer than somebody just saying what you need to do this, or why don't you do this? Or you should do this? And I think we all have friends that are that way, and I want my pillar one assuming good intentions that nobody wakes up and thinks, How can I hurt this person? When you when somebody comes to you or you, you go to somebody and you just feel like you need to pour their heart out, and all of a sudden they're saying, Wow, I had no idea you've been doing that or that you've been going through that, or you don't even know what to tell you that they're not trying to hurt you, but that oftentimes they don't really feel like they know what to say or what to do.
[00:25:58] So I really feel like when you talk about this, this whole Zagorink effect that it is all true that when you can complete some task, that it will alleviate that emotional or mental pressure that we feel, and that can be a very satisfying feeling. Or it can just be a feeling of I've moved past something that I was really struggling with. But again, oftentimes we feel overwhelmed and we don't even know where to start. So when somebody comes into my office and again, we want to be heard, but the next step is self-care.
[00:26:29] Self-care is not selfish. Raise your emotional baseline every bit that you can do to improve your emotional or physical or your wellbeing will bump up your baseline just a little bit. And the more you bump up that emotional baseline, the better position you're going to be to interact or make decisions of the things that are coming at you on a day to day basis. And this is where I talk about medication. Often I will say that when I started and it wasn't that I was anti medication, but I just thought, Oh, I'll help people if they feel like they don't want to be on medication. And I remember working with people early on and they were so low and they were so down that you would even you would hear them and you would even get them on board with tools that they felt like would work for them. But then they felt they couldn't do or use the tools, which then allowed them to say, What's wrong with me? I'm going to therapy. I can't even use the tools, and that's where nothing is wrong. You're a human being going through these experiences. And so oftentimes I felt like medication was just enough to bump up your emotional baseline to a point where then you could start to do the work. And once you start to do the work, whatever the work is, whether it works, mindfulness, whether it works, identifying your values and taking action on them, whether the work is when I work with people that are struggling with pornography, for example, is a coping mechanism.
[00:27:44] I identify these five voids. Oftentimes, the people that are in my office, they don't want to be turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms just like any of us don't want to with food or gambling or social media or pornography or, you know, compulsive sexual behavior or any of that. But there's so often this component of I call, I call them Void's, so they may not feel connected in their marriage. They may need help with marriage. They may not feel connected in their parenting. They may need a parenting. They may be struggling with their faith. I do so much with faith journeys and faith crisis and helping people really identify who they are and what matters to them. So that's a huge component or their health. People often felt like man, at this point in my life, I would have six pack abs and be, you know, running marathons every weekend. And if they're not, they often feel like what's wrong with me or their career. People feel stuck. And when you feel stuck in a position, then that can really, really make things difficult, especially if you are going into this environment every day that you don't feel a connection to. It will just zap you emotionally and then you're supposed to come home and then say, OK, I work to live now. I'm home now. Let me be excited.
[00:28:47] But when you've had that just energy drained from you all day, so often back to the kinds of the medication, sometimes a medication will help raise your emotional baseline to a point where now you can do the work. You are more engaged in your parenting or your marriage, or you're ready to work on your faith journey or those type of things, or maybe even start to look at a career change or new job. But when you feel overwhelmed and emotionally just depleted, those things seem so far out of reach. It's incredible. And then if somebody's even telling you, Well, here's what you should do, then we have all that psychological reactance built up that instant negative reaction to being told what to do where we're think to ourselves, You know what? I'm going to actually not do that. I'm going to go so far away from doing that. What people are telling me to do that even I'm aware that it's probably to my detriment, but that's when somebody feels a real, low emotional baseline how they may react. So medication may bump that baseline up enough to do the work. Now that will raise your baseline. Even more so if you want to look at getting off medication down the road. When you do, there might be a slight decrease in that emotional baseline. But you're in a position now where you have the tools and you know how to do the work to keep you in a better place.
[00:29:47] So I hope that you pulled something from the Zygienic effect today that if anything, you have a little bit of awareness. And I know that awareness doesn't solve all the world's problems, but it's a start. There's my nerdy trans theoretical model of change. I've done a podcast or two on that is that we go from. We didn't even know the old, we don't know what we don't know. And then we move into, Oh, now I know, but I'm still not really doing anything about it. Perfectly normal. Don't beat yourself up about it. Then we start to take action, and then it maybe doesn't go right all the time. And then we are brain still wants to beat ourselves up. See, that didn't work well. We're not arguing. If it worked or not, we're taking action. And eventually that becomes something that you do a little more regularly now. And the fascinating thing about this trans theoretical model of change is then there's a after you, you have this pre contemplation. I even know what what I didn't know then contemplation. Oh, now I know I might do it. Then you take some action, then you, then you're doing it, and then which is maintenance, then you have relapse. So oftentimes when we start really rolling with something new, then we feel like this is easy. I don't have to worry about it as much. And then we take our foot off the gas and we're not doing it anymore.
[00:30:52] All part of being human. And as soon as we recognize these things, then we can get back to the things that matter. We can take action on those things that give us the sense of purpose. And then the more we keep turning back to these things that matter, eventually our brain will finally say, fine, that's your new path of that's your new neural pathway. Go go ahead. I'll get you some other hell. Thank you so much for taking the time today. If you if you found anything helpful or important here, feel free to forward this podcast to something that you think it might help. And if you get a second, you can go check it out on YouTube and or subscribe rate through all those things that I think people say at this point. But I appreciate the feedback. I appreciate the support on the Waking Up the Narcissism podcast. I've got two episodes now and I can't even begin to tell you the numbers, the feedback, the emails have Blown Me Away. So I appreciate the support next round of the magnetic marriage courses in about two or three weeks. So you can go to Tony over magnetic and sign up to find out more. Or you can contact me with questions, podcasts, suggestions, anything through the contact form on TonyOverbay.com. And I just I appreciate everything that you do in supporting the podcast, and I'll see you next time
[00:31:55] On the virtual.
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