Hello and welcome to the new mindset hootis podcast. My name is Case Kenney at case.kens.k on

Instagram and this is my weekly podcast where I create short no BS episodes dedicated to helping

you become the person you're meant to be, leave your comfort zone and live a purposeful and

fulfilling life. Let's go.

Thank you. live a purposeful and fulfilling life. Let's go. All right. Welcome to episode 754. Hello, my friend. Welcome to a fresh new episode of New Mindset, Who This, as always. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for supporting me. And today, why can't you stop thinking about it? Why can't you stop thinking about them? Why can't you stop thinking about the thing, the circumstance, the decision, the randomness, the unfairness, the question in your head, that's what we want to talk

about. Why do we all collectively find it so difficult to let go of certain thoughts and feelings

and preoccupations, the nagging what ifs, the shoulda, could have would of life? Well, I think it's one thing in particular and it's

something that we can work through. So let me start with a bit of grounding about

this one thing. We can't let go because we are wired to focus on what our brains

has deemed what our brain has deemed to be incomplete what our brain has deemed to be

uncertain unfinished ongoing unsure incomplete as much as that's annoying because it's why we can't seem to

like it was not really a flaw of human design it's actually kind of a a core feature. Case in point to illustrate, and this will make sense. There's something called the

Zegarnik study that you might be familiar with. It basically showed that the brain holds on to

unfinished tasks with far more intensity than finished, completed tasks. It was in 1920s, Bluma Zegarnik, basically.

She investigated why people seem to remember unfinished tasks more easily than completed

ones. And her research was inspired by, maybe you've heard of this in particular, the

observation of a waiter, you know, a waiter at a restaurant who easily recalls unpaid

orders, but easily forgets paid orders. She designed a series of experiments in which

adults and children, the participants, were asked to perform a number of tasks like simple tasks,

like beating, threading beads, counting backwards, folding

paper, solving puzzles. And in some cases, the tasks were allowed to reach completion, finish,

and in others, they were interrupted halfway through. And then after a delay, participants were

...