Hello, welcome to Mindfulness Plus. I'm your host, Thomas McConkey. Thanks so much for listening today.

So in case you're new to Mindfulness Plus, let me tell you a little bit about how this works. Each week, I release a new lesson Wednesday afternoon,

and I introduce a topic that I believe will be helpful to in developing this life-changing skill of mindfulness.

Today, the topic is positive feedback loops.

So what is a positive feedback loop and what is its role in helping us develop mindful awareness?

So let's start with the positive feedback loop. By definition, a positive feedback loop is A causes B and B causes more A.

B causes more A and then A causes more B and so on and so on.

So a common example of a positive feedback loop is a stampede.

So imagine a wildebeest out in the savannah and it thinks that here's a snake rustling in the grass.

It gets spooked, so it starts to run.

It starts to run, and wildebeests around it in the herd get spooked as well, and they start to run.

And the more wildebeest that run, the more other wildebeest get spooked.

And before you know it, you've got a stampede.

So this is an example, a classic example of a positive feedback loop. And notice that positive in positive feedback loop does not imply that the results you get from the feedback loop are

desirable. Depending on who you are and where you are,

a stampede may or may not be a good thing.

Okay.

So I've got another example, I think more relevant

to what we're doing here today,

about a positive feedback loop

that really changed my life early on in practice. So I talked about this in a previous show

that what originally drove me to a mindfulness practice was insomnia. I just couldn't fall asleep.

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