Welcome to the eleventh episode of Season Three of Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. On this episode I interview Dr Jennifer Wolkin, Psychologist, Writer, Speaker & Professor.

In this episode, we discuss how to move from surviving to thriving by rewiring our brains for wellness. Five minutes a day, every day has more of an impact and more of a benefit than one hour once a week; repetition is the key to rewiring the brain.

Want to keep in touch? Head to @drkaitlin on Instagram or @wisdomforwellbeingpod on Facebook to connect.

What is covered in this episode:

>>Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to create new neural connections and form new pathways based on our experiences and what we learn

>>It’s important to be a non-judgmental witness to everything we experience by offering ourselves compassion when we don’t do the five minutes and see if we can do it the next day.

>>Being harsh on ourselves as motivation is actually counterintuitive. Psychological learning theory discusses the idea of shaping, which is about validating every successive approximation towards a greater goal. Celebrate all of your little wins!

>>Mindfulness is about:

-Cultivating greater awareness by paying attention on purpose instead of being on autopilot.

-Honing clarity and focus in the present moment instead of ruminating on the past or trying to control what has not happened yet in the future.

-Practising mindfulness non-judgmentally without trying to control or suppress our thoughts, and paying more attention to the mind without judging or evaluating it. Be an objective witnesses; instead of engaging with the thought that comes up and judging it as a good or bad thought, it’s about acknowledging it simply as a thought.

>>Resting into mindful awareness at any time of day no matter what you’re doing – washing dishes, drinking coffee, walking, taking a shower – it’s about being present with each moment.

Links Discussed

• Find Dr Jen’s book Quick Calm here: quickcalmbook.com
• Connect with Dr Jen and her private practice: braincurves.com
• Connect with Dr Jen on Social Media: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok

You’ll find a copy of the Episode Transcript below.

Transcript

Jennifer Wolkin: Everything that we learned that’s new including mindfulness practice has the potential to reinvent our brain in there for ourselves, and that to me is empowering. We are, I like to say, Neural Architects, we can change our current operating system.

Intro: You’re listening to the Wisdom for Wellbeing podcast, the show that blends science and heart to bring you evidence-based tips and tricks for cultivating a healthy, wealthy, and meaningful life. Now, here’s your host, therapist, Yogi, and fellow full life balancer, Dr Kaitlin Harkess.

Kaitlin Harkess: Hi there. Welcome back to Wisdom for Wellbeing. I am delighted to be joined by Dr Jennifer Wolkin today. Now, Dr Jen, as she’s more commonly known as, is a born and bred New Yorker, a psychologist, writer, speaker, and professor. I first connected with Dr Jen on Instagram where she shares amazing insights. She couples her first-hand experiences with some of the struggles that, you know, we, as human beings work through with her clinical expertise. So she brings this insight into a really accessible format and I think that this really speaks to Dr Jen’s inspiration to serve and to make psychological practices that provide us healing and wellness accessible. Not surprisingly then, she has recently released a book called quick calm, which makes meditation accessible. She groups informal and formal mindfulness practices and she allows you then to integrate mindfulness into your daily life. You know, it only takes 5 minutes and this is something we’ve talked about on the podcast before. The fact that briefer, more regular practices of mindfulness meditation are incredibly important to cultivate well-being. So if you’re interested in cultivating, a toolbox of practical methods that you can fit into your life to access quick calm day by day, definitely get your hands on this book, but without further ado, let me introduce you to Dr Jenn, and she can share her wisdom in person via earbuds here now.

Kaitlin Harkess: Jen, thank you so much for joining me on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. I am delighted to be sitting down with you today, and talking all things neuroplasticity and mindfulness and just wellbeing generally with you.

Jennifer Wolkin: Thank you so much for having me, I really am so grateful to be here and be in conversation with you around these topics.

Kaitlin Harkess: And you know, with this, so we’ve come together. I actually first saw your amazing work showing up on Instagram and was then very quickly alerted to Quick Calm, which is the new book that you have written and offered into the world, which the timing for it couldn’t be better. Would you mind just sharing with listeners a little bit about who you are? And you know, the amazing work that you’re doing in these different forums.

Jennifer Wolkin: Thank you so much. That’s again, so humbling. Like I like I said, it’s it’s really something to be of service right now in this particular time, I couldn’t have coordinated the book, the book birth better. I am Dr Jen, known colloquially that way on Instagram. I’m a health and neuropsychologist and I just wrote a book about all things mindfulness, basically, the neuroscience and practice of mindfulness where I really delve into the true understanding of what mindfulness is, why we practice, really, why we practice the benefits of practice and then I offer up curated practices for, for anyone who gets the book or, you know, is chances upon the book, I offer up curated practices that could be done five minutes a day every day.

Kaitlin Harkess: And we were literally before this interview, just talking about in there is a mindful coffee-drinking practice.

Jennifer Wolkin: No joke and I’m sure we’ll jump into. I’m sure we’ll get more into the this concept of how to practice and what practice actually means, right? So there are categories of mindfulness practice in my mind and I put forth in this book. There is more formal mindfulness, there’s informal mindfulness and mindful living and coffee drinking would sort of go under this category of informal mindfulness where we literally bring a mindfulness practice to tasks that we’re doing any day anyway. And I don’t know about you I mean I do because we just had this conversation I’m drinking coffee every day. So why not make it mindful?

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s such a fantastic, you know, I think reminder that mindfulness isn’t something necessarily, like the formal is obviously something that we schedule in and plan around but it isn’t necessarily something that has to be extra work or another thing scheduled in a busy day. It’s something that can be done with, as you said, these little things that we’re doing every day and bringing in that mindful living. But you’re right before we dive into it.

Jennifer Wolkin: I’m like, should I dive in now? Or we’ll that we’ll definitely..

Kaitlin Harkess: Listeners, we’re just perking your interest but I think it’ll be really great to just back stepa little bit because, you know, you mentioned that you’re a health psychologist, neuropsychologist and I am really, really interested if we could maybe explore a little bit around what is like this concept of rewiring our brain? Because I know mindfulness then links to it but, but what does that actually mean? And could you just give us a bit of an overview as as to these words that we hear around neuroplasticity and the like?

Jennifer Wolkin: No, it’s so true. We throw around these words all the time. What do they actually mean? So let me see how to break this down. So neuroplasticity is the idea that the brain can actually create new neural connections and form new experiences. Oh, sorry, and form new path. I’ll say that again, neuroplasticity, is the brain’s ability to create new neural connections and form new pathways based on our experiences and what we learn. So basically in a word, our brain is malleable and this wasn’t always such a popular concept, right? Most researchers years and years and years ago, thought that by early adulthood, the neural circuitry cards that we’ve been dealt were the ones we could play in our lives. And that’s it, right? So they believe that adult brains were not capable of change. I don’t know about you, but I don’t, I find that holy unempowering. So happy to report that these days there’s more evidence to the contrary. It turns out that the brain is in a constant state of change and it’s designed to adapt and it can change both structurally. And when I say structurally I mean the physical structure of the brain and functionally, how how one part of the brain talks to another part. So again, everything that we learned that’s new including mindfulness practice has the potential to reinvent our brain in there for ourselves and that to me is empowering. We are, I like to say, neural architects, we can change your current operating system. The reason though that, I call what I do rewiring for wellness, is that we do have to understand that when we think of neuroplasticity, we sometimes tend to think of it through these rose-colored glasses, right? Yay. New neural connections. Not to be a downer, it’s also important to note the flip, that we can develop new neural pathways in response to unhelpful experiences and stressful experiences and trauma. So to heal right from that, we actually need to rewire. So again, in response, basically just to summarize in response to chronic dysregulation of our nervous system, our brains changes to adapt and to cope which helps in the short term but for the long term, it’s not a brain that can truly thrive. So in order to sort of come back to a place where we can thrive more, we need to rewire and that’s why I talk about rewiring and not wiring because for most of us we’ve been through some sort of. We’ve had experiences that have served to, to wire our brain in a way that makes it less adaptable for the long term. So for example, and I get passionate about this, you can cut me off. So, for example, our amygdala, which is the fear center of the brain right? There’s studies that, it gets bigger, right? As we’ve gone through traumatic experiences and or chronically stressful events, our amygdala actually gets bigger. And so, to rewire for wellness, we would hope that we can sort of decrease the amygdala volume.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s super cool. So it’s not just that the like on that the function as you said, is changing, the actual structure is changing so we can look and if we’ve been through stressful times, we can actually check out what’s going on in our brain and see that the amygdala, for instance, has gotten larger or maybe as we kind of engage in these wellness behaviors and make changes in how we’re relating to our experiences and how we’re living our lives that we might actually then see, the reverse. So like this, this physical manifestation of moving from surviving to thriving, along with the other changes that we might notice in our lives. That is, as you said super empowering and this neural architect kind of analogy, I love it, I can just sort of picture, you know, these little people designing my brain and drawing it out and doing a bit of a reno.

Jennifer Wolkin: That’s the cutest thing ever. I also think in images a lot so I I have that now too, I’m never gonna unsee that. This brain reno. But you’re actually right, not that we can see it, here’s the thing, it’s it’s difficult to grasp because unless we’re put into a functional MRI magnetic resonance imaging, right? Unless we have the tools to actually see our neurocircuitry and there are tools that do that for research purposes for laypeople purposes, there aren’t so we’re not really seeing. Oh, look, our amygdala is getting smaller, right? So it’s sort of more abstract than the more tangible idea of, oh, I can lift weights and over time, I will notice more muscle. It’s just different that way and I think that’s why it’s, it’s trickier and people have more resistance to it, because it’s not as tangible a concept.

Kaitlin Harkess: Yeah, so with that, how do, how do we start on that and like maintain our motivation? Because that’s, you know, very as you said, like it’s huge in our lives, it would affect every area of our lives, but we wouldn’t necessarily have that constant reinforcement that we might see if we’re like wow I’ve gone from five kilos to 10 kilos on my bicep curls, or whatever it may be.

Jennifer Wolkin: I guess for me, the most empowering thing is to know that all we need is five minutes a day, every day. And that’s another premise of my book, that consistency is king queen. That all we need is five minutes a day and that five minutes a day every day has more of an impact and more of a benefit than one hour once a week week, right? Because repetition really, rewires the brain. So, five minutes a day, every day to start, that sounds so much more doable to me. I don’t know about you, but that’s not much, I mean we’re scrolling for like 20 minutes like ah, where’d the time go? So, five minutes a day every day cues the brain to safety, right? It lets it, like, let’s the brain know, it’s okay sweetheart, you can, you can take five minutes out of the day and sort of, you know, engage in these mindfulness exercises. It’s okay, you can let your hyper-vigilant grip go, it’s okay, you’re safe. And so if we’re consistently doing that, it really adds up, of course, even five minutes a day is sometimes difficult. I’ve been meditating and practising mindfulness for over a decade now and I mean I’m just super human,super human not superhuman by way of you know I miss a day here and there and that’s why I talk about the two C’s of practice, right? There’s consistency, I love five minutes a day, every day. And then there’s the compassion part and the compassion part is what we need to bring to self when we don’t practice on a day or 12 or 70, right? Without that practice, sorry, without that compassion, are we actually practicing mindfulness at all anyway? So the idea is consistency and then compassion and compassion doesn’t mean not holding oneself accountable and not trying, it just means compassion and that fits in with the definition of mindfulness which one part is this concept of nonjudgement that we’re always non-judgmental witnesses to everything that we experience in any given moment and so this really fits in because it’s like, how can I be non-judgmental? Offer myself compassion for when I don’t do the five minutes and then, of course, see if I can do it the next day and the next day, and the next day.

Kaitlin Harkess: And seems to me, you know, if we beat ourselves up, oh, you didn’t do it. You know, you’ve lost, you’re all out. It would be much harder than cut to come back to the practice, which we know is probably inevitably going to be good for us. It’s kind of a little bit easier to show up again and and face ourselves however that that looks.

Jennifer Wolkin: Exactly and also, I mean, I think we’re such a society that feels that the best motivator is to beat ourselves up. Like somehow we learn somehow that if we’re not self-flagellating that we’re not going to finish a task or reach our goals or make our dreams come true, right? That’s the narrative. And I think part of mindfulness practice is sort of like giving that narrative of the bird not to be, you know, crude and just saying, no, I don’t need to beat myself up to keep going. Actually that act that essentially backfires, alright? If you really think about it, beating oneself up doesn’t actually help, it actually hurts and then it becomes this vicious cycle. So, yeah, sorry go ahead.

Kaitlin Harkess: No, I was just gonna say that’s, it’s a really interesting point, isn’t it? That we’ve been sort of taught that this is a really effective way of managing or motivating ourselves and and that it’s societal. So, we almost have to be willing to do something a little bit differently than what we’ve, perhaps notice being done and sort of the internal talk that others might have shared with us. And say, ooh, noticing that’s maybe not so helpful.

Jennifer Wolkin: Exactly and it’s not easy of course it’s actually a practice but just one quick thing from even learning theory right? Psychological learning theory talks about the idea of shaping, which is validating every successive approximation towards a greater goal. So literally psychological learning theory is telling us we need to validate and say like yay, for every little increment of gain that we make along the, along our journey. And so, I really think of this often.

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s quite cool. And for those of, you know, I think a lot of us who probably lend towards psychology podcasts are like ooh I love the nerdy stuff so keep going with that.

Jennifer Wolkin: Oh I’ll keep it coming.

Kaitlin Harkess: We’ve got learning theory, that kind of teaches us, okay, acknowledge the little changes. The the little games and movements we make towards where we’re ultimately looking for our behaviour, for our lives to go. You mentioned mindfulness being non-judgmental. I’m just curious if you could maybe provide us a bit more of insight into what mindfulness is because it’s a term that is so prevalent. You know, we’ve all heard of mindfulness but kind of what it means to you and and then it kind of gives us a place to bounce into those discussions around, formal, informal and lifestyle.

Jennifer Wolkin: Yes, I definitely think that mindfulness or being mindful or, or just the notion of a mindfulness practice is thrown around a lot. It’s almost like a colloquialism. I think it’s important to get to the core of what it actually means and I pull from the definition of Jon Kabat-Zinn and he was the psychologist who applied mindfulness, who stripped it of its, you know, religious, any religious tradition or, or heritage that it had tied to it and applied it to a psychological intervention. So this began in the 70s, late 70s or 80s, were Dr Kabat-Zinn used mindfulness to help people with chronic pain relate to their suffering in a, in an alternative way and I, yes he is the first one to have sort of westernized mindfulness which from a historical perspective is thousands of years old, right? And Buddhism holds mindfulness at its core, probably more than any other tradition. But it’s seen in many other traditions including Judaism but what Dr Kabat-Zinn did was strip it, again of these, you know, traditional origins and used it as a psychological technique and he defines mindfulness as a state of greater awareness, cultivated by paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally. So there’s an attention piece, right? We have, we find awareness through cultivating our ability to pay attention and we do this through a non-judgmental lens. And if you want I can go in to each of these more specifically or happy to leave it here.

Kaitlin Harkess: If you don’t mind, just because work probably interesting for us.

Jennifer Wolkin: So basically I mean, let’s parse it, let’s take this apart. So he says it’s a state of greater awareness cultivated by paying attention on purpose. So what does that mean, on purpose? Right? So basically the idea of on purpose is that when we’re not honing our attention on purpose, we’re mostly operating on autopilot, right? So that feeling of being disconnected from self, um, we get lost in doing, we find ourselves struggling to get stuff done without really appreciating the moment of our lives. We’re sort of going through the motion type of thing. You might, I give this example all the time, but you might have had that experience and many of the your listeners might have had that experience where you drive somewhere and you suddenly get there and completely forget how you got there at all, it’s just sort of how you got there. And that’s sort of an autopilot experience. So in contrast, when we’re paying attention on purpose, we live more consciously, we’re more awake or we’re more fully ourselves, and we actually can that way notice the beauty of life, right? So, it’s, it’s like a noticing on purpose outside of an autopilot, going through the motion, kind of mode. The next part of mindfulness is in the present moment, right? So, greater awareness cultivated by paying attention on purpose, we just talked about that then in the present moment. So in the present moment, let’s break that down. Well, well, we’re not in the here and now we are likely dwelling, either in the past, grasping, and replaying it, or we project into to the future, trying to anticipate the unknown. And we all know how that goes because none of us have crystal balls. So right, obviously natural to want to go back. I don’t want to make anyone wrong for that. I mean, that happens to the best of us. We want to go back in our minds so that we can somehow correct what happened or go to the future and try, you know, or our minds drift to the future so that we can manipulate it and we think we can control it that way. But it’s really hamster wheel thinking, or what is called rumination. And when we engage in rumination, we’re more at risk for depression and anxiety and just overall discomfort. When we’re mindful, we hone our clarity and focus as we attend to every moment as it unfolds in the present moment experience, meaning not in the past and not in the future, not in the past that happened that we might regret and not in the future that hasn’t happened that we’re trying to control. And the thing is, is that there’s such a relief, it’s obviously not easy to do this. This is holy and fully a practice, right? It’s easy to say, talk about this concept and it’s one thing to practice it. But when we accept the present moment as it is, the tension caused by wanting things to have been or to be different melts away and it’s just like glorious feeling and even if it lasts for like a moment, it’s like this, it’s like this letting go of sorts and then and again I know I’m aware that I’m talking a lot so feel free to interject.

Kaitlin Harkess: Oh no, it’s great. We’re all probably soaking all this up, like tell us more!

Jennifer Wolkin: Okay. And then and then, the third part of mindfulness is, right, greater awareness cultivated by paying attention on purpose. We just covered that in the present moment. Just covered that and then non-judgmentally. So what does that really mean? So when practicing mindfulness, we’re not trying to control or suppress or stop our thoughts, we don’t want to push them away, that’s not even possible. That’s one of my favorite things to sort of demystify for clients when they when they you know work with me is, is that there’s no clearing our mind, there’s paying attention to our mind without judging or evaluating it, right? So instead of pushing thoughts away, what if we could be non-judgmental, objective witnesses without judging them in any way? So, for example, instead of engaging in thoughts that come up. What if we noticed, thought, there’s a thought without saying this is a good thought, this is a bad thought, just acknowledging thought. And so this I think is the essence of mindfulness, when we cultivate a state of clarity in which we can suspend judgement and then we become witnesses of our present moment experience. And in that way, we can, you know, not keep our minds from wondering because minds wander right? There’s no such thing as minds that don’t wander, but it like allows us to witness our mind with compassion, loving-kindness, non-judgment and sometimes even just fit like beauty, right? When we really get into the thick of practice, it’s like, oh, wow. That’s my mind and so many of these thoughts that I’m having are trying to protect me. They might be harsh, but at the core of these thoughts is this like part of me trying to protect myself and imagine if I had compassion for that part. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Kaitlin Harkess: No I love this because it links it back to the compassion. So I think this is a really interesting experience to actually go through this definition of mindfulness and notice how the components link together because you kind of highlight that it’s deliberate that it’s something that we have to, that we’re not necessarily going to fall into so much, you know, maybe there’s blissful moments and I’m almost thinking of that that Disney movie, Soul, where he’s like watching. Like, oh it’s a beautiful mindful moment but generally in the hustle and bustle of daily life this probably does have to be deliberate the same way we would deliberately go lift those weights at the gym, but that then kind of like this coming to this present moment is vital and noticing when our mind does do the rumination like jumping back to the past or worrying about the future. But as you said kind of like witnessing this experience, noticing what’s going on for us and then that practice of almost connecting the dots again and coming back to this moment on purpose. Like it’s all so intertwined.

Kaitlin Harkess: A hundred percent and that word that you used is just so gorgeous, that word is deliberate, gorgeous understanding of it. So, thank you for that. I- thanks for that offering.

Kaitlin Harkess: Oh my pleasure. I’m glad it came out, it’s amazing what a Disney movie sort of teaches you in contrast to our daily lives. So, with this deliberateness, I imagine the deliberateness kind of plays both into the formal and informal as well as the mindful living but that they’re all done a little bit differently. Would you mind just elaborating on that? Because I think that’s quite unique to have these three avenues, the three entry points.

Jennifer Wolkin: Thanks, no, thank you for asking. I think it’s important and I really, really am a huge fan of understanding the I don’t know if this is a word, the variedness, I guess, how we practice is varied rather and I believe we can practice in many ways. It doesn’t have to be one thing and I think that’s also right, just like we can practice five minutes a day, every day can help people with their resistance to it. Oh, I have to practice for like an hour. So can this concept that mindfulness is not just one thing that we don’t have to be on a cushion somewhere that we can walk and be practicing mindfulness. So, with that being said, here’s what I mean. So formal practice is, I guess I would categorize that as on the cushion, right? It entails intentionally taking time out of our schedule, finding a specific place to embark on a practice, on a yoga mat somewhere, in a chair. An example of formal practice is diaphragmatic breathing or a body scan, or a progressive muscle relaxation, or guided imagery. Where we’re really sitting, we’re like, sitting and taking the specific time and carving out the specific space just for this practice and informal practice I would say is the practice that’s not reserved for that cushion that I was talking about so you don’t have to be sitting somewhere specific, right, to stay non-judgmentally present or paying attention to every sensation as it unfolds. You can rest in mindful awareness at any time of day no matter what you’re doing. Washing dishes, drinking coffee, walking, taking a shower, I mean, anything that you can think of really, right? There’s a Zen saying that when you drink just drink and when you walk just walk and I feel like that really sums up for me, what informal practice means. In my book, I have mindful sweeping exercises, mindful walking exercises, mindful eating exercises, so basically taking the tenant of mindfulness, paying attention on purpose in the present moment and as a non-judgmental witness to whatever it is that we’re doing. So if we were drinking coffee, right? So noticing, making a point to notice the smells, the tastes, the temperature and then if our mind wanders, just as it would, if we were doing a breath exercise. See if we can have compassion for where our mind goes, compassion that it wandered and to just bring our attention back to that smell, to that taste, to that temperature. We can do that with sort of anything.

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s a nice, sorry to jump out, I was just going to say, how you described that autopilot earlier and driving from point A to point B and not even noticing that we got there and we in our society like prize multitasking, don’t we? But in actual fact we’re you know, number one diverting, I’m sure, you could probably speak to what’s actually happening in the brain, you know, on a physiological component more than I could, but we’re like we’re diverting our attention back and forth again which is just neurologically demanding but also we’re losing out on these moments and here, you’re describing an opportunity to incorporate, and I say in air quotes “multitask” mindfulness into our daily life by actually being with our coffee or being with the dishes and that this might actually then lead us to stepping out of that sort of survival mode that we might be in, rewiring our brain and moving to thriving. So, when we notice that our mind is wandering or jumping around, we might feel less grounded than we would otherwise versus if we can come back to the present moment, there’s a real bliss that you described earlier and being there often where we’re just in the moment.

Jennifer Wolkin: Exactly and to touch on quickly, just what you said that you’re right, we are a society that praises multitasking and what happens is that our attention is diverted and that that’s the truth of it all and so how many things can get our attention in one moment? Not much. And so what happens is we end up losing bandwidth, right? Are we really then paying attention to anything at all if we’re trying to multitask?

Kaitlin Harkess: That’s such an interesting point, this idea of losing bandwidth too because again, we pride productivity. So here, we’re almost moving ourselves further from our goals of what we might want to be achieving.

Jennifer Wolkin: Exactly. I think mindfulness practice is, is sort of this, can we be here without judgment, noticing that there might be a toddler screaming in the background or or, or some noise or there was just a siren that went by. And can we just notice that without the impulse to judge it? And I think that’s sort of practice in real time that we can do on a very small scale.

Kaitlin Harkess: Does that link then to mindful living?

Jennifer Wolkin: Yes, so, mindful living, exactly. So mindful living to me is it’s sort of this concept. It’s this way of life. It’s the idea that we begin to live more mindfully when the formal and informal practices that we’ve been engaging in positively impact our relationships with self and other people, right? So it’s a way of showing up in this world. It’s a way of life that encompasses values of gratitude, loving-kindness, radical acceptance. And I think to live mindfully means to hold your life with the greatest level of appreciation. Possible to stand in one’s self-worth to be able to offer self-compassion, self-care, self-love. I suppose, it’s also approaching our relationships again with self and others with more empathy, kindness, compassion again, I, how many times have I used compassion?

Kaitlin Harkess: It’s really important, isn’t it? Like it almost sounds, it sounds like this compassion element is almost vital to the practice itself and certainly to how you’re then living.

Jennifer Wolkin: It’s a huge huge part of it. I like to say, gentle, gentle, gentle. Anyone who knows me on Instagram who’s listening to this, I hope they smile. That sort of a phrase I use a lot. And I also like to just really make it clear that compassion doesn’t mean one is not accountable, right? We have this again, this narrative that it’s either or. Either we show compassion or we’re not motivated and accountable, that’s not true. Why can’t it be both and we show up with accountability, we take responsibility and we have compassion, all of those concepts can be held in one, vast, mind space in one single moment in time and if I could offer anything, that would be, that would be what I would hope someone can get from this, from listening to this right now.

Kaitlin Harkess: So Jen, you just gave a really divine summary of what I think we would all love for our lives. You know, to be able to show up and hold our life in such esteem in ourselves in such esteem that kind of in guiding that path as to where we’re going and what we’re looking for, we start with these formal informal practices and move towards this compassionate living, as you said, gentle, gentle, gentle. Holding everything that we experience gently while still holding ourselves accountable. It doesn’t mean that we can’t move towards thriving and move towards goals and creating the life we want to live but that we do it kindly and with you know, awareness or to pull back that word from earlier, deliberateness that’s quite powerful. So with this then, obviously listeners can pick up a copy of Quick Calm. The gentle, gentle, gentle is, as you said, almost like a staple on on Instagram and other places. Where can we reach out and and connect with you and learn from you?

Jennifer Wolkin: Sure. I’d be so honored to hear from all of you, if you have any questions, if your listeners want me to clarify anything, I’m all in. I am here. I can be reached at quickcalmbook.com. That’s where you can buy the book and pre-order, not just Amazon, I give you more options and that would be lovely. Orders mean so much to an author. And again, it’s it really feels like a purpose and so that would be so lovely. And I am also on Instagram @drjenpsych_.

Kaitlin Harkess: And what I’ll do is, I’ll put links in the show notes, so listeners, if you’re kind of going oh, where’s my pen, I’m driving, multitasking in a beautiful, learning way. I’ll put quickcalmbook and Jen’s Instagram @drjenpsych_ in the show notes so you can link to it really easily. And I think that this is, you know, you mentioned purpose, you know, that there’s this purpose and sharing the message and showing up and being of service which you’ve long been doing. But also you know, what a purpose for us. You know, we hear about rewiring our brain and the fact that the difficult experiences we’ve had in our lives of course they affect us and we are just trying to get through them as best we can and the way that our brain might have restructured itself, made so much sense in that moment. But here’s this beautiful offering you have for us, that we can move actually, from that state of survival to thriving, that recognizing maybe some of the things we’re doing again and again, and the way we’re experiencing life just isn’t working. And here’s this, you know, I’m mind- I was going to say mindful, I’m taking again the colloquials of it but I’m aware that maybe hack isn’t exactly the right term I want for this, but there is a way to navigate what’s been going on in our brain, to rewire and to buy ourselves new opportunities to be, and that’s incredibly empowering. So thank you for sharing with us the, why.

Jennifer Wolkin: My absolute pleasure. I actually think you’re right, it is a hack. It’s a deliberate hack. That’s gonna be a new.

Kaitlin Harkess: We can make a new hashtag, deliberate. Well, thank you so much, Jennifer for your time, and for your wisdom today, and also for your flexibility. Listeners, I’m sure, we’ll edit this so you may not notice as much that there has been a screaming little person in the background, but if you’ve noticed bits and pieces, Jen has been immensely calm and compassionate through the experience so thank you for that.

Jennifer Wolkin: Thank you for having me and again, so grateful for the work you do to create awareness and to put this out into the universe like you do. It’s a pleasure and it’s such a delight to get to have these conversations so I’m looking forward to connecting soon and listeners, definitely, reach out, connect with Jen, and we’ll learn more and more about gentle, gentle, gentle.

Jennifer Wolkin: Sounds great.

Kaitlin Harkess: I hope that you enjoyed that interview with Dr Jen as much as I did. I think it’s really reassuring and inspiring to remind ourselves that we can practice mindfulness, that we can be practicing mindfulness when we’re drinking a sacred cup of coffee, when we’re listening to the birds, when we’re doing life and that it’s something we can integrate into lives that are already quite busy, maybe it will expand, maybe it become formalized, it depends on what resources and we might have for this practice, but what a fantastic place to start by reading Quick Calm and getting a sense of the Neuroscience behind these practices, understanding their utility and really building that toolbox. So head to quickcalmbook.com to get more information and #rewireforwellness. And of course, you can head to braincurves.com to connect with Jen and her private practice. She is on social media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And as I noted she is incredibly prolific on Instagram and I think is a fantastic person to follow in terms of making sure we’re caring for our self-care when we might get caught in the scrolling that social media, you know, can very quickly draw us into, if you do have any further questions or comments, reach out to Jen, grab Quick Calm, and I’m looking forward to connecting with you next fortnight via the earbuds. Alright, bye for now.

Outro: Thanks for joining us this week on the Wisdom for Wellbeing Podcast. Please visit drkaitlin.com to connect, find show notes, other episodes, and to subscribe. While you’re at it, if you find value in the show, we’d appreciate a rating or perhaps simply tell a friend about the show, Wisdom for Wellbeing is not a substitute for professional, individualized, mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, please contact 000, your local emergency number if you are outside of Australia or attend your local hospital ED.