THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Manage Your Mental Mess and Change Your Life in 5 steps

Episode Date: March 29, 2025

👇 SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL - so this show can reach more people 👇 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIprGZAdzn3ZqgLmDuibYcw?sub_confirmation=1 Click Link Below to Subscribe to my email list to MAXOUT your life (all value, no fluff) https://konect.to/edmylett Are you stuck in a mental loop that keeps holding you back? In this Mashup episode, I brought together some of the most brilliant minds in neuroscience and psychology to give you the practical tools and strategies to finally take back control of your thoughts—and your life. You’ll hear from Dr. Caroline Leaf, Dr. Amishi Jha, Dr. Daniel Amen, and Dr. Andrew Huberman as we unpack the science of rewiring your brain, building awareness, and developing the mental strength to break free from anxiety, stress, and distraction. I walk through the exact five-step process of Dr. Leaf’s Neurocycle—a mental workout that rewires your thinking in just 63 days. I’ve been using parts of this myself and it’s a game-changer. And this isn’t just for trauma healing. Whether you’re battling depression or trying to reach a new level in your life, these five steps—gathering awareness, reflecting, writing, rechecking, and taking action—can help you create lasting change. We even break down how to use this cycle to achieve your goals by creating the right emotional triggers and visual cues. Dr. Huberman and Dr. Amen dive into how your brain actually works—when it develops, how dopamine drives performance, and why your habits and physical activity shape your mental clarity. We talk about why movement isn’t just good for your body—it’s crucial for mental health. Dr. Jha then takes us into the power of attention training, helping us understand why mindfulness isn’t about controlling your thoughts, but becoming aware of where your attention really is. That’s where your power lives. We also take on parenting, screen time, trauma, and even sleep—and how all of it ties back to mind management. And I get personal, sharing the visualization technique I teach my athletes—starting with real, emotional memories to make future goals feel real in your brain. Key Takeaways: - The 5-step Neurocycle to break negative thought patterns - How to train your brain for attention and focus in just 12 minutes a day - The connection between movement and mental clarity - The science of dopamine and why the pursuit matters more than the achievement - A practical prayer-based approach to help your children sleep and open up emotionally - Why your brain doesn’t finish developing until 25—and what that means for parents - How social media impacts emotional regulation and what to do about it There’s no perfect mind, but there is a better way to manage it. This episode is packed with tools you can use right now to shift how you think, feel, and show up. Whether you're healing from pain or hungry to create something new, you’ll walk away equipped to change your brain and your life. Thank you for watching this video—Please Share it and get the word out! 👇 SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL👇 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIprGZAdzn3ZqgLmDuibYcw?sub_confirmation=1 ▶︎ Visit My WEBSITE | https://www.EdMylett.com #EdMylett #Motivation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive and the question is how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth-based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster and that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. He's got about 5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with

the app. Also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content and they're on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up.

You're gonna get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. ["The Admirals Show Theme Song"] head. This is the Ed Mylett Show. Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special.

I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. I'm so excited about today because the woman sitting across from me is the definition of brilliant. And so Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you for being here today. I'm very flattered, very honored.

Thank you. And I love talking to you. You're an amazing interviewer. During those 63 days, let's do something practical. So now we kind of understand what it looks like, how it affects, how it gets wired, all that other stuff. So let's do strategic stuff now for a second, okay? So what is, you wrote this for how to help your child,

but when I'm reading the work, I'm like, this just helps humans, right? That's what it's for. So what is something, a strategy, you said awareness of the thought helps it lose its power over you. I'm using my description of it, right? So I've always said that, now I know why.

Yes. Okay, what is something, a tactic or a strategy or a technique that somebody can use for their child or themselves that can help this in these 63 days that you would be proposing they do? Okay, so what you do is you do the five steps of the neuro cycle, because what I did was strategically look over the years at how can you actually find the signals

and do this whole deconstruction, reconstruction thing. So you can't do it in one shot. So what you wanna do is do a neuropsychology, which is five steps. And I'll go through this in a moment, but you're gonna do five steps in the sequence. The first part of the sequence is the first more or less three weeks,

where you go through the five steps in around 15 to 45 minutes, not more and not less. Then the second 42 days where you stabilize and you just do it in five minutes. So the five steps are basically gathering awareness. And notice I say gathering. So it's a very conscious and deliberate. It's not like a mindfulness awareness, which this is beyond that. So when we talk about mindfulness, meditation, breathing, decompression, all of those are very important to prepare the brain. So what you would do before you dive into the neuro cycle, and you'll see this in my books and in my app, I've got an app as well called the NeuroCycle, there's a two to three minute brain preparation, which could be anything from focusing on momentum worry to doing a

7-3-10 breathing exercise. So it's something to just get the neurophysiology under control. Then you, or it could be a lot of meditation, a prayer, whatever. doing a 7-3-10 breathing exercise. So it's something to just get the neurophysiology under control. Then you, or it could be a lot of meditation, a prayer, whatever. Then you move into the actual work, and I'm about to slip off this chair. Okay, go ahead. Do you want to just? Then you move into the work, I get so into this, into the work of gather awareness, step

one. So gathering awareness is a very specific process. Everything's very layered. Your mind-brain connection, psychoneurobiology Your mind-brain connection, psycho-neurobiology, mind-brain body, I'm actually a psycho-neurobiologist to study that connection, is very ordered and sequenced and structured. And if you want something to change, you've got to follow the steps of the order. So the neuro-cycle is a system in that you can put CBT techniques, you can put prayer, you can put whatever works for you, but put them in the right step. So

when we gather awareness, we are gathering apples off a tree. We're not just randomly looking at things. You're very organized. Okay, what am I gonna gather awareness of? My emotions. I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling frustrated, whatever. Just label them.

What related to that emotion? What am I doing? What are my behaviors? What am I doing? What am I saying? How am I doing in saying them? So maybe it's depression and maybe it's withdrawal Then the third thing is you're going to say how do I feel in my body when I'm feeling depressed and withdrawing maybe? cardiovascular issues part-pulpitating and then fourth category is how am I looking at life in this moment as I feel depressed gutache and

Withdrawing I feel that life sucks. Very simple example, those are four signals. So you go, step one is to gather those four. Step two is to ask why. You're going a little deeper. Why am I feeling these emotions? You're not solving the whole problem. Don't try and solve it in one day.

Just go as much as you can handle. It's very draining. So that's why I say limit. So it's why am I having this? Maybe I'm having this depression. I seem to be having it because of it's happening a lot. I'm not sure why, but it's happening five times a day or it's happening once a week. Oh, if it is once a week, am I having the same behaviors? Why am I getting that? Why am I doing that with drawing? How often am I with doing? What other things am I doing?

Why do I think I'm doing that? So you work through each of those signals and try and get some more. Don't stay too long on those two steps and then you write. Now you don't journal, you write, you dump. You literally dump what you've gathered awareness of and what you have reflected on. Because the first step was to gather awareness, the second step was to do this reflection thing. And then you dump it down on, and literally in mind,

I'm just writing it all over the page. I've developed a system called the MetaCog. And for kids, it down on and literally in mind, I'm just writing it all over the page I've developed a system called the meta cog and the kids It's the bubble cog and it's basically writing in a way that looks like a tree So it's starting from the middle and it's working around in circles and branches and colors and arrows and everything's connected Everything's either on a line in a bubble if you don't like doing that just write any old way But try to write dimensionally. Don't do it in lines. Try and just put it all over the page because it brings in forces the two sides of the brain to work together. Creates a very strong connection between the conscious and the subconscious through the bridge of the subconscious. Yeah.

And it starts diving deep. I mean, it's like, I can tell you now that when I worked with patients that had symptoms of schizophrenia, this is an extreme example, but just to show you how well this works, we would have them just basically metacog out what all these steps I'm going through. And they would have one whole personality on the side and that continuing the same conversation in another hall. So you'd see the shift and then we could show them, Hey, look, what's going on. And from there we could unpack and find roots and things like that. So it's phenomenal in getting insight. Now you spoke about introspection earlier on. Introspection, insight, it means

diving into the depths of the non-conscious. That's the most intelligent part of us. So is writing part of step two or is that step three? Step three. So writing is step three. Sorry. Gather awareness, step one. Reflect, step two. Writing, step three. You're bringing order out of chaos. You're getting those three steps are taking deeper, deeper, deeper, getting increasing your introspection, insight, pulling up things that are associated. Now that is things all over the page. A lot of it won't make sense. Things may shock you that come out.

Day one, not really, but as you progress through the days, more and more will come up. And for example, around day seven, people start saying, oh, I never saw this connection. Day 14, like insight, insight into, oh, that's associated with that. I didn't see that. This is why I'm doing this. So there's tremendous growth. If you don't force it, you just go through the cycle. I don't wanna interrupt you, but I wanna ask you.

Go ahead. Do you think during that awareness and the writing and that you are uncovering some of the things that may trigger you as well? Totally. So it's step four, excellent question. Step four is looking at what you've gathered, awareness reflected on and written.

You look, what are my triggers? What are the patterns? This has happened, what can I do? So step four is moving towards re-conceptualization, reconstruction, healing, putting food on, plant food on the roots to heal them. It's leading to that acceptance. You're not gonna know why someone raped a child, why someone did this. That's their story. But that's your

story. So you need to find out, I'm not crazy. I don't have a broken brain. I'm not genetically flawed. I don't have a mental illness. I'm showing up like this because of what happened to me. I can't answer why. I have to get to a certain level of acceptance, but at least I know why. It's not me. It's because of. And that helps you heal and move forward. So it's very progressive. It's not walking in circles, round and around and around. This is where you can bring in things like

these all psychodynamic theory and ACD. There's a lot of different therapy techniques that people can bring in experiences from EMDR and into all these, because this is a system. Yeah, into these spaces. What's the fifth step? The fifth step is an action, active reach.

So you go into from the triggers and things like that, you want to move towards an antidote for today, an action for today. So what can I do today to keep me in a safe space? I've done the work for today. I'm not going to fall back into working on this anyway. I've got to get going through the day. And also your brain and mind need a rest. They get tired. So it's an action, it's like a visualization,

a statement, a combination, a little pray, an affirmation, so this is where you would fit an affirmation or a CBT type technique, like maybe a little visualization exercise. So it's something that you do and say, maybe something as simple as, I can do this, I don't know how, and then visualize a rainbow. I mean, it could be something as simple as that

to an actual little technique, or it could be a breathing technique. So it's an action that keeps you going through the day, which helps you focus on the fact that you are moving towards healing. So you're removing energy from this thing, because this process has brought this from the non-conscious to the conscious,

and it's weakened these branches. In the non-conscious, it's strong and driving. In the, when the non-conscious and conscious are working together, then this is weakened. The protein branches, the chemicals, so I can start restructuring and reorganizing. You can do these steps. See, I'm gonna tell you what I'm thinking

when you're doing this. Because this applies to two different people, so everybody stay in here, okay? So those are the five steps to sort of begin to rewire yourself or change your brain. The other part of me listening to this is if you're Thinking I really don't have a lot of these issues of anxiety or worry depression I also think that's the formula to create a change like if I had a goal and ambition

I'd become aware of what I wanted right I'd have all these reflections about it I would then write about it So and I like the idea of it not being linear like a book, but actually all over the place. So there'd be like, that's almost like a dream personal vision board or dream board that you're doing. Then I'd think about what were the triggers I need to create to generate this state. Could be snapping my fingers, it could be seeing something,

it could be walking into my office, it could be getting into my car, it could be a particular person. So I'd use that trigger to then create that state. And then obviously the fifth would be what's an action that I can take towards this stuff. So that cycle can be used to uncover trauma, you know, reverse trauma, create brain health, but can also be a creative process in order to change your life. So you are brilliant because that's exactly where I started my research.

38 years ago with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and people that just wanted to improve their life. They just wanted, and it's called brain building. So it's the neurocycline that was the first iteration of this thing was to develop brain building. So it was helping kids learn, so getting data in as opposed to deconstructing, it was constructing. So it's taking from the knowledge in school

to learn for an exam, or what is the goal in your vision. So that's the brain building aspect of the neuropsychology. This is huge right here. I gotta tell you something because everyone always wants to create change. They're like, all right, do I get a vision board out? Like do I? So this is a five-step process. It actually does it. To actually do it. And to do it reinforcement. And by the way, in 63 days, you're a different human being. Totally different. I do a thing, you're talking about visualization techniques. I should share this with you and maybe you can speak to why it might work. So everyone asks me, I don't visualize very well. Yes, you do. You just need to get quiet and it's a muscle you build.

You know, when you decide to start visualizing your life, it is difficult. But one thing I've done is I've created, I teach it to a lot of my athletes is I use what I call like a highlight reel technique. So what I actually start with is I start, I've never said this on the show because it's part of my private work, but I want you to speak to it. I actually start by visualizing memories from my life that are highlights. So it could be, for example, you know,

the birth of my son, the birth of my daughter, a home run I hit in baseball, an award I got, a sale that I closed that was important. These are things my brain are already familiar with, to your point earlier. It's already been wired. I've already repeated the emotion. It's already in there. And so I see those things and those are easy for me to recall because they're familiar.

And then I move to what I want. So my brain, I think, begins to think they're one big highlight reel. Is there any data to prove that that's true meaning I'm already visualizing what I've already something I want I've seen an achievement I've seen an achievement and then I see the one that I want to achieve and for me My brain more easily sees the future When I start with things that I'm already familiar with in my past because I think we do that in reverse

So if we've had a traumatic someone's hurt us in our life with in my past, because I think we do that in reverse. So if we've had a traumatic, someone's hurt us in our life. We see this, we repeat it over and over, and then we then regenerate it in our real life with the next relationship. And that's why people end up dating the same person over and over again in a different body. Exactly, exactly.

Okay, so I'm jumping out of my chair with excitement because you've said exactly the correct thing. So what you've just described, remember I said a moment ago, I spoke about how I'll rep recall this conversation, it's a great conversation and I'll build it. That's what we're talking about here. So you are recalling these, you're recalling those and you're using those to unmask your natural resilience. Yes! So I actually call these insurance policies. So they literally, so when I

work with a person to actually be able to build their brain, we're building an insurance policy. So you should be spending time on doing exactly that. So as you do that, you activate a whole different way that your energy flows across the two sides of your brain. You go into the highest level of intelligence, you unmask resilience, you increase your wisdom, you tune into the depths of your non-conscious where intelligence, pretty much your intelligence resides. Because your conscious is basically a workhorse

and it's guided by your non-conscious. So what we've got to see is what is dominant in the non-conscious. Now your non-conscious is a gentle lady, gentle man, and it's basically always looking for the things that are blocking this growing and keeping you stuck in those. So it's on your side.

But you have to tune in to what's coming up So when you describe when you want to do something difficult you first think of something good What you've done is you've listened to wisdom from your non-conscious, which is that process you've then called those up You've activated your resilience. You put yourself in a highly intelligent wise state now You're in a state that's more able to cope with it. So when I work with a patient, for example, I would never start with that. I would say, okay, let's talk about your favorite moments

or you'll tell me a story about telling a great movie. Let's talk about a great book, anything, and then we would focus on that. When they were in that state, I knew that I had got the mind-brain connection, the psychoneuro-biology. I feel like thinking about the things that have been positive in my life or experiences creates a neurochemistry to which I can create out of.

That's exactly what you do. Right. Yes, you have. You've changed all the flow. These change, they increase gamma, which is the way that you want to flow. Okay. And when your eyes are open, you want what we call low gamma across the whole brain. And then there's certain other patterns.

I don't want to go into the details here, and that's got to go into have a certain beta pattern and so on. Those energy waves, when they are flowing in that state, they activate the different parts of the brain to then be on high alert to respond and do what they're designed to do, which then impacts your neurochemistry,

then your endocrine system, your cardio, everything then comes together and you are in this prime state, your HPA axis is now on high alert and you now are in the ideal state for solution finding. This is so good. You guys, this is why I do the show right here. So let me just give you this again. Step one, gather awareness. Step two, reflect.

Step three, right play, draw. Step four, recheck. Step five, active reach, which is basically what we've been describing here. What about physical movement and brain health? It's not in here, but I want to ask you about that. I find that my anxiety and depression and concern and worry or angst is often something physically I'm doing. I feel like there's a physical nature to it.

And I have found that when I change my physiology, I tend to feel like I've changed, maybe your physical body is your unconscious mind. I don't know, I'll let you answer this. But when my body begins to move in a certain way, I have found that to be a pathway out of some of the negative emotions that I'm feeling. And I'm wondering, even with children,

is part of the mental health issues we're seeing that they're less and less active physically, meaning a lot more video gaming, right? A lot more stuff on their phone, a lot more stuff on their Mac or their iPad, whereas when I was a kid, I'm sure mental health issues were very prevalent, but we were outside playing.

We were playing football, we were running around, we were running, there was nothing to do inside, right? So we were outdoors more. And I know that's not really part of what we're talking about here, but I'm just curious. No, it is related. Is it related? No, it's totally related. And part of, you'll see in my books, in my Neuropsycho app, where all these steps are,

the Neuropsycho app, I literally walk you through the process. And in the children's book, the active reaches, I encourage that physical activity. And you'll see throughout the actual five steps you can bring in the physical activity in different ways. So basically your body, your mind stores in three places. Mind, which is all around you, these gravitational fields and so on. Brain, the trees, but in the body, in the cells. So therefore you, that's how we have body memory.

That's how when you have recalling something that you get your body responds as well. So that body response is really important. Like for example, if you're trying to get your children to talk after school and they don't wanna talk, and let them have a little rest, but go for a walk, start doing something, and the action activates and releases. So it's not that the non-conscious is the body,

it's that the non-conscious is operating the body. It's your driving system. It's mind driving. So your non-conscious is the thing that's always using every part of you. Your mind, brain, and body are on your side. We have this psycho-neurobiological link that is our superpower, that literally,

when we understand how to read it, we can move forward. So you explained, you said that if you feel angst, you can feel your body feeling it. Angst, emotional warning signal. Your body feeling it, angst, emotional warning signal, your body feeling it, physical warning signal, you're probably not totally focused initially on your behaviors and your perspective. Then you move, as you move you start unlocking and getting an idea of, and that's full under the behavioral signal as well, then it starts unlocking the others and you start getting

into that space where you can work on going through this process. And then you can work on going through this process. And then you can fit movement in anyway. The reason I feel so big about physical stuff and brain mental health is like, take your spouse for a second. You think about the moments of your life that you feel the most connected. Let's just be honest, a lot, some of it can be your sexual time with them. Exactly. Why? What's happening? Something physical's happening between the two of you.

When I want to open up, and like with my children or something like that, when I really want to get them to talk, you. When I wanna open up, like with my children or something like that, when I really want to get them to talk, you're so brilliant because I found, putting them on the couch or sitting on their bed is okay, but if we take a walk, we take a walk to your point, we're changing something there.

Even laying on the couch with your spouse watching Netflix when they're actually touching each other and laying on each other compared to when they're on one side of the couch and you're on the couch with your spouse watching Netflix when they're actually touching each other and laying on each other compared to when they're on one side of the couch and you're on the other. There's a deeper connection when something physical's involved. Exactly. The other part of it that you write about in the book

that I've never really looked at before, and you talk about this particularly with children. So the book is written, Dr. Lee's books have been for everybody. This one's more specifically guided towards children, but really everything in there. Parents for children. So to have parents help parents help their children. Yeah, parents and children.

Right. But sleep. So if you have a child or yourself, because I know this is true with me, when I'm not sleeping, something's not so good with me typically, right? But it's interesting to me. I never thought about sleep when it came to my children. If they're not sleeping, that's probably an indicator of something. So talk about sleep and children and even how it relates to each of us individually.

Absolutely. Well, what I've tried to do in this book is to try and find the things that are not hot button topics to try and help parents have a, and to teach the neuro cycle in such a way that it's super simple, it's very practical, whatever. So I take areas like trauma, sleep, et cetera. And I'm glad you've mentioned the sleep

because there's so much scariness around sleep too. Because you go to a doctor, one of the first things they'll say about you is your child sleeping, are you sleeping? They have to sleep or they're gonna die. It's not quite that extreme. It's very fear-mongering. And yes, there is a valid point to sleep.

Sleep is very important. But how many hours of sleep a person should sleep in a day, we don't actually know. Really? And also people have different patterns of sleep. So this thing that your child must sleep eight hours a day is- Not necessarily true. Yes, exactly.

But if your child isn't sleeping and there is a persistent pattern of bad sleep, there's something going on. That's definitely what we classify under your behavioral warning signals and it's worth investigating. And that's why I actually put sleep neuro cycles into the book on things, there's different ones that you can do. Cause preparing yourself for sleep starts when you wake up in the morning. You know, it's like when you wake up in the morning,

the first thing is as the chemistry starts to readjusting so that you can become conscious at that moment to train yourself to just, what are my four signals? What am I feeling? Am I complaining? Am I feeling sad? Am I complaining? Quickly assess, do a quick assessment of your four signals.

So it's what are my emotions? What's my body doing? What are my behaviors in this moment? Like I know I'm lying in bed, but am I tense? And what's my perspective? I don't wanna do today. If you can catch that, it takes you, those four things can take you 10 seconds and can really, really prepare you for a night's sleep. It sets you into it, opens your mind

that you can actually then face the day. So that's one thing you can do. I've got a whole thing there that you can do a sleep neuro cycle for children as they wake up. Then if you see there's a pattern of children not sleeping, it's to find a time during the day that's a good time. Either early evening when they've been to school, they've had dinner, they've played,

that's sort of a good time to kind of work around. But you can find, don't do this when they're exhausted. And then you can do a whole neuro cycle to try and work through what the cause could be. When we don't sleep, the main reason we don't sleep, and a lot of people will maybe not agree with me here, but the main reason we don't sleep is because we have unresolved issues

that help scare them. I sure agree. It changes your energy and your brain, and your brain, all the things, the melatonin and all those things. Because there's so many cases, and I actually give a case in the study in the book of a quite a traumatic situation of a child who was abused physically and sexually from three months of age, but just could not sleep through the night.

And they did everything, all the sleep aids, all the swipe noise, everything you can possibly do. And not that those don't work, they are definitely gonna facilitate and help. But the core issue was the child's abuse. And what the impact of that, although the child was out of that unsafe environment, that you had to deal with what was going on. And that child was very young.

So once the parent just happened to come across my stuff and do the neuropsych on the child, so like the, so the parent doing it, and sort of doing it, and within four days, this child was sleeping. Now this was an eight-year-old, they didn't use this book, because this book wasn't out yet.

The child saw what the mom was doing, saw the change in the mom, because the kids watched us, and this was an eight-year-old, and said, I wanna do what you're doing, and so she adapted it as best she could, and this child started sleeping within four days. So the core issue there was a trauma that was unresolved

and you said it yourself, I know, I do. If I've got something that I haven't dealt with or something's worried me or I have that phone call before bed that says, that's it, my sleep's gone until I've dealt with it. Can I give you one with children that I think is unsaid and I know you're such a person of faith so I'm gonna give you what helps me sleep

and it leads to this unresolved stuff. And I just wanna say this to everybody, it's prayer. And let me say why. So prayer at night is a chance for me to take my burdens and put them on my higher power, in my case, Jesus, but whatever your faith is. And I know you share my faith. And I wonder how many people are praying

with their children at night, because this is an opportunity for your children to probably open up. I think it's an opportunity for them to relieve themselves of their burdens. And I have found that when I have really deep, beautiful prayer, even if it's brief, that I sleep better at night,

because there's a perspective that I get that I'm protected. And I really wonder that. The second thing is, I wanna ask you about both these. So this is for adults, but it also affects our children. More and more our children are on their screens late at night. I know this is just a brain issue.

So it's not necessarily trauma, but there's all this data about blue screen time and how it's difficult to sleep. I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I know when you're doing homework, it's stressful. I think people let their children do their homework too late at night. And now that's a problem. Now it's a stressor. Now it's a trauma. Also they're on their screen and a lot of these schools put so much homework on their children. This is being real.

It's like a real thing. The school system's a problem. So when your kids get home from school, wouldn't it be smarter to get them, A, to start doing their homework earlier so they're off of their screens and away from stressful stuff before sleep? Also true for you as an adult. And just prayer.

I know it's not a major part of what's happening in here, but am I right that both of those things would probably make an impact on sleep and maybe then their mental health? Absolutely. You know, you, through prayer, if you look at prayer in terms of any religion or any philosophy or any belief or if people don't even

believe in anything, it can be seen as a way of just trying to organize yourself and then believe that it's not just me, there's something more. And we know what's common to all mankind, and that's love. So to talk to a child about loveness, so you could do a loveness neuropsych, or you could call it a prayer neuropsych, or whatever you want, but you can actually say, okay, well, let's look at what are, what am I feeling right now? And why do we think we feel that? And you can go through the five steps, and that's your prayer, and you can do a little

act of reach, could maybe be in some quote, a little scripture, or it could be a visualization of something, whatever, a beautiful quote or something like that. So that is basically a form of prayer, because you're tuning into an unconscious, which is your spirit, which is your wisdom, which is your, and you're teaching a child to do that. So yes, it is a form of unloading your burdens into either you believe it's Jesus, God, Loveness, whatever.

I love to talk about Godness and Loveness, because that's something that's relatable to anyone. Everybody, right. And so you kind of step into that space, and there's so much physics behind this too, and quantum physics and science behind how you're collapsing the consciousness. And I mean, it's just that we could talk for another two hours about that. So yes, totally, I do believe that.

And it'll set your brain waves to a point where your brain can start shifting into sleep mode, which will then have a neurochemical effect on the melatonin and those kinds of things and controlling adrenaline. So it will have, it has, what I've shown with my work is that when you use mind stuff and specifically the tool of the neuropsycho which is mind management and as I said you can put whatever you want in that you are changing your psycho neurobiology so you're changing cortisol levels you're changing homocysteine levels you're changing all the things that can keep you awake you are getting them to the

point where that you dropping changing getting brain balance with the brain waves that kind of stuff. So it's real. I mean that's very very real. I think I've done an interview in like 45 or 50 minutes with more stuff. We've done thought trees, we've done the neuropsycho, we've done the non-conscious mind, we've done you know all of these different things here. We've done the highlight reel which I kicked in here today. If I was asked you I, I get to ask you one more question. Did you want me to answer the second part of the other question?

Yes, yes, yes. What was the second part of the other question? Second part of the other question was blue screen. Oh yes, okay. In me, bullying, social media, all that stuff, it's immersed us in stimulation. So it's good, very good, and bad. It's, all we need to do is teach our kids to manage it.

That's the key. It's not going away. So it's not a bad do is teach our kids to manage it. That's the key. It's not going away. So it's not a bad thing if we know how to manage it. So it's just finding what works for you and your family. In terms of blue screens and all those things, there's a lot of science that supports and contradicts the concept. Listen, if a person's worked up,

doesn't matter what you do about blue screens, they're still gonna stay awake. So sometimes people, if they're relaxed enough and they're watching their film or whatever before they go to sleep, it's not going to be an issue. It's very much up to the awake. So sometimes people, if they're relaxed enough and they're watching their film or whatever before they go to sleep, it's not going to be an issue. It's very much up to the individual. It's how we are managing it. You've got to experiment with your child and with yourself

and see what works for you. That's really important. So it's by individual aspect, but just to bear in mind, if we don't manage the immersion that we live in. For example, very quick, kids would get bullied at school. That's not anything new. Bullying's been around since the beginning of time. The difference is it follows them home now.

It's 24. It's the immersion. It's an immersion versus an experience. An immersion experience versus an intermittent experience. And when you have that distinction, so we have to learn to manage the immersion. So I mean, I can go for hours about that alone, but that kind of gives you a-

Well, by the way, I would love you to stay for hours. I would actually love that. You know, unfortunately, you have somewhere to go. I can sit here all day if you want. Oh, I know. I could stay for hours. I would actually love that. You know, unfortunately, you have somewhere to go. I can sit here all day if you want. Oh, I know, I could stay all day chatting to you as well. Let me ask you one last question, because I think people want to know this.

I have a very good friend, I've been thinking about the entire interview, who has a child that's just really had chronic struggles with mental health issues over and over, to the point where they've done cutting and... Self harm. It's gotten really severe. And that child, probably in my opinion

should be more physically active. I know they have prayer in their life. The neural cycle could be a game changer for them. So I can't wait for them to hear this. I really, really believe the neural cycle could be a game changer. And to think that maybe in 63 to a certain amount of days, if it's more traumatic, you said a little bit longer,

that someone can create positive and or remove negative things in their life. Balance the two together? When is, I guess the last question I would have for today is, because it's worth asking, when is it time for medication with somebody in their brain? Is that something that you must believe in some cases if someone's schizophrenic that potentially they

need medication, or do you believe medication never? When does someone take a step and the risks of doing so? Okay, so loaded question. First of all, just to quickly refer to your friends, childhood self-harming, what is the age, just very quickly? Teenager. Teenager, okay. So what we all need is to feel empowered and not to feel that there's something wrong with us.

And our current biomedical model will say that you've got a broken brain. And so that creates a sense of hopelessness. We also need to help our children develop psychological immunity. So not just immune system, like our immune system helps, you know, we build our immune system, you build your muscles and resistance training. We've got to build our psychological immunity. And what we've taken from our children in a lot of our current models is that ability

to say, it's okay to be a mess. Let's work through this mess together. So a huge part of my work in the book that I've just released is about you as a parent knowing how to manage your own, get your own. And then help model and model exactly. And then allowing a child a space, no matter what they say to you,

no judgment, no compassion, but saying, listen, I see how you're showing up, I validate, I recognize, let's work through this together. Here's a system that's scientific that we can work through together. And the key, Ed, is empowerment. You have to get a person empowered to change their relationship with themself.

And when that happens, that's when the growth comes. The cutting, the self-harm, whatever it is, alcohol addiction, whatever it may be, is coming from, yes, the traumas, you can go through all that, I bet you that child probably has had so much therapy that they can tell you why they're doing it to a certain extent.

But to get the change in a person's life, it starts with feeling, okay, I am empowered to do this, it's okay to be like this, it's not me, I'm responding to life circumstances, here's a plan for me to be able to move forward and be empowered to actually re-wise that my brain and my body do what my mind, what I know my wise mind wants it to do. So that's a simple answer to that.

Medication is a very complex answer, but I'm going to do the easiest, quickest version. Up front, I'm not telling anyone to stop their medication immediately because of the withdrawal. Let's make a quick distinction between drugs and medicine. Medicines are aimed to try and fix a problem like insulin for diabetes. We can test for diabetes, we know there's a biological cause and we've got a drug that's fairly specific to the problem.

When it comes to where is a child cutting, which is a behavior, depression, perspective of life sucks, battling, all the things that you describe with your friend's child, which is obviously this is very surface what I'm saying, but that cluster of things, that is not a brain disease that's going to be fixed by a drug. That's not coming from something wrong in the brain and a chemical imbalance. It's coming from some cluster of toxic issues and things that that child does not know how to process.

Self-cutting, for example, is so much pain inside yourself that it's too much inside, so it's easier to transfer the pain to the cutting so that that pain detracts from the internal pain. And that's an energy that's, no energy's lost, it's only transferred, so it's transferred energy. So we must transfer a child's energy into being able to create safe spaces

so that they can talk to us as parents, not just the therapist, but us as parents, caregivers, people that they trust, peers are fantastic for supporting. And that will help them sort of transfer that energy. So a drug is something that like alcohol, cocaine, and psychotropics, they fall under the same category. They're not fixing anything. They're not restoring. And psychotropics, they fall under the same category. They're not fixing anything. They're not restoring. And psychotropics, let's see.

There are drugs. And a drug is a psychoactive substance, so it changes the state of the brain, versus a medicine is trying to fix something. So antidepressants aren't fixing chemical imbalance. That's been disproved. It's a myth. The pillars of psychiatry that are used to say

that you've got a chemical imbalance, et cetera, they're not doing that. What they're doing is they are providing temporary relief. So if someone is in such a bad state, so for example, someone's having very extreme delusions and hallucinations, which is not a disease of schizophrenia, it's schizophrenia symptoms. So instead of saying schizophrenia, bipolar, etc. as a label or diagnosis, which is very unscientific and inaccurate and actually does harm, research has shown, to the person.

It doesn't recognize the enormity of what they're going through. It's rather, let's say, they describe it as behaviors because of something huge in their life, and let's look at this whole person. They don't need a disease label and a medication to validate what they're going through. It's valid enough for them to get the support they need.

A label and a drug, put it in a little box and make it small, telling them the story, letting them talk, going through that process, gives it the size that it needs, if that makes sense. So the drug, the way I would recommend drugs is to see them as drugs, not medications, and if someone's in an extreme state, temporarily, like you don't, if you have a headache,

you take an ibuprofen to relieve the symptoms, but you don't go on ibuprofen chronically, in other words, every day. That's how we should look at these things. So if someone's in a really bad way. Medicine, and by the way, she also said in the beginning that if you're on medication, she's not encouraging you to get off of it.

And if people do want to withdraw, I have interviewed top scientists in the world that are drug withdrawal experts, and they can go and listen to my podcast and they can search through drug withdrawal and they'll have the top experts with all the resources to guide them through that process. What a remarkable conversation. It just flew by. It did. It did fly by. I'm so excited to have this guest here today.

She's one of the most brilliant people you're ever going to meet in your life. She's a bestselling author. She's got a PhD in communication pathology, she's brilliant and you're gonna write a bunch of notes today. I mean like a bunch of notes. So Dr. Caroline Leath. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction and I just absolutely love talking to you. We hit the most amazing talk on when you're when I interviewed you and I think you're incredible as well. So thank you. What's the difference between brain and mind and what are these five steps to

managing our mind? Maybe you just listed a few of them there, but I like lists, so I'm just wondering what those are. Absolutely. Well, first of all, the five steps we call the neuro, well, I call it the neuro cycle. So with your mind, you're cycling through your brain, you're directing the neuroplasticity, which is really nice to know.

You can actually direct changes in your brain. So my whole premise is that if you are always, your mind is always working and it's always changing the brain and it's always happening, can we direct that process? So for three, almost four decades now, I've been researching that. And the answer is yes.

And that's what's in the book, cleaning up your mental mess. So if you add the nearest cycle to your lifestyle and it's a lifestyle, you actually will literally improve your ability to manage your mind by 81% and more, which is phenomenal because it means that you influence cellular health through the telomeres,

which we can unpack as well. You can reduce inflammation, you can improve your immune function, your cardiovascular function, neurological, kidney, everything about your body will respond to mind management because your mind basically is driving all those functions anyway. Your gut health, your gut brain interaction, all of it isn't happy if you date your brain and body are dead. So what's keeping what's the

difference between a dead person and a live person mind. So if mind is messy, brain and body are messy. If mind is cleaned up, and it's a process because we're all going to be messy because we have free will and part of getting a mind sorted out, part of my management is dealing with the mental mess. It's accepting I'm going to be make bad decisions, I'm going to get into arguments, I am going to make you know misunderstand people, I am going to have acute traumas and toxic traumas and imposter syndrome and people pleasing and all the stuff all of us go through in different ways. So I'm going to have that and it's okay, but how am I going to manage it? So for me personally, what's happened over the years is that I still

go through these things, but the difference is I'm 81% more efficient in identifying and managing. So instead of something that could throw me years ago for days and affect my work and everything, I can deal with it within seconds and minutes and get back on track. So that's one part of the answer. So before I go to MindBrain, do you want to ask anything or unpack anything with what I said? No, are there specifically five things like it are going to sequence? Yes, it's a sequence. So before I tell a sequence, let me tell you mind brain because it'll make so much more sense. Okay. Because I've alluded to it a lot. So your mind is separate from your brain but inseparable. So what is the brain? The brain and mind are not the same

thing. And the brain and body collectively are made of 37 to 100 trillion cells and your mind is and then those 37 to 100 trillion cells arrange themselves into this incredible the brain and the heart and the lungs etc and your mind is what actually is the external force that keeps them going the blood flowing their chemicals electricity the electromagnetics all of that which is phenomenal so that's why if our minds not managed the body and the brain will be a mess and so and that goes down to even like, if you are eating, if you're eating,

maybe eating a farm to table, wonderful diet, et cetera, but you not dealing with your anxiety or you're not, you're just trying to stuff it down or you're not getting through that bad habit or that toxic trauma, you will lose up to 80% of the nutrition because your mind has affected the ability of the digestive system to actually digest and get the,

simulate the nutrients. And sometimes it's kind of messy and sometimes it's great and we all, if we're human, we are going to experience messes and there's no shame in that. The sooner we get rid of the shame and guilt and condemnation around being messy and the sooner we as leaders talk about the mind more authentically, the more we give people that follow us a permission to talk about mind. Only 3% of leaders are talking about mind, which is terrible. So that doesn't, that's creating the stigma that they are pretending that be perfect. And that's how we see people that seem to be perfect in their lives and they're committing suicide. Meanwhile, it's because we've got this philosophy in this day and age of not being open and

seeing issues of the mind as helpful messengers of an underlying issue. The neuro cycle then is these five steps. It is how you manage your mind moment by moment. So it's a lifestyle. So the neuro cycle is what you do when you're awake and conscious and it then automatically prepares you for sleep because sleep is fixing up your brain. So your mind is always with you. So your mind always needs to be managed. And so an analogy, and then I'll dive into the five steps. You can go three weeks without food. You can go three days without water, you can go three minutes without oxygen,

but you don't even go three seconds without using your mind. So you're always thinking, feeling and choosing. Yeah. So it's gather awareness. Second step is to reflect third step is to write fourth step is to recheck and the first step is an act of reach So each of those they so profound they do the most phenomenal stuff in your brain and the first half the book We are talk about the mental health system and I talk about my clinical trials I do explain what each of those steps are doing. So the first thing is to gather awareness. Gather awareness, and I've chosen words very carefully. If you think of a big fat apple tree and you're apple picking, and this apple tree is so full

that you actually can't, like you just go up and you just nudge it and this apple is just falling on your head. That's how we often feel when our minds are messed. Everything's just falling on our head and it's just too much. So what you can do with the neuropsycho is when you feel that situation coming on, remove yourself from the tree and stand back and watch the tree and gather awareness of all of that. Don't be scared of it, don't run away from the apple tree. Just stand back and observe the apple tree,

observe what's going on there. Let me jump in about that, this is brilliant. One of the things I've taught for a long time, I didn't understand the neuroscience behind it, was that for me, and there's four other steps, this is why everybody needs to get the book, but awareness of your thoughts. I've always said when I'm aware of these patterns, when I'm aware of my thoughts, they begin to lose their power over me, their influence over me, and one of the reasons that you're explaining it scientifically, which I've always wanted to understand better, because I do become separate from the

thought when I observe it almost like I'm above it and distant from it like you said and I realize I'm not just that thought and that it is a pattern that I'm running and so I just want to acknowledge what Caroline's saying because from a practical standpoint when I coach people this is something that is the first thing I teach is just becoming aware now to know that there's four other steps is obviously very empowering as well, but I want to just unpack this a little bit into another area. So I want to use your brilliance towards something else.

One thing I want to acknowledge is that what Caroline is saying is that neuroplasticity is real, that mind can change matter, that literally that these thoughts, that if you change them, change the that these thoughts, if you change them, change the protein structures in your brain, change the matter of your brain. So this is powerful to know that we can physically change our brain by using our mind and this distinction between the mind and the brain is also a breakthrough way of listening to it or seeing it. For me, as I'm sure it is for everybody else, just those things alone, just those two things alone have made our time already incredibly invaluable for me and anybody listening to it.

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That's tonal.com and use promo code EDMILETTE for $200 off your purchase. Wow. That's tonal.com promo code EdMyLet for $200 off. That was a great conversation and if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the EdMyLet show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. I'm so excited to have this lady here with me. I'm fascinated by her work and because the applications in so many different areas

of my own life and I believe for the audience today, she's got a new book out called Peak Mind. She's a neuroscientist, professor of psychology at the University of Miami and I already like her. Amishi Jha, welcome to the program. Thank you so much, it's great to be here. I think also that if you've had some success too, that if it doesn't come with a dose of humility,

that when you begin to walk into every room and every environment, I think you've already figured it out. You already know. This stunts growth as well, because what you're saying is it blunts you taking in new data and new information. Correct, correct, you get it.

You totally get it. You are denying yourself better data, more data to inform the decisions that happen. So don't do that. Don't do that to yourself, right? All right, give us the exercise. We've been building up. Give us one. Yeah, okay.

So this is like this, I'm going to give you a longer one just to describe the steps and then we'll do like one that you could do anytime, all the time. Okay. So this is like a basic mindfulness practice and I call it, again, tied to what we're talking about in the book and attention, the find your flashlight practice. Great. Because oftentimes, it's not that we can't focus. It's that we don't know where we're focusing at any moment.

That's true. So the instruction would be, and I guide people to kind of ramp up to about 12 minutes a day that our data suggests is beneficial to do this. But to start out, like like do 30 seconds of this. Commit to that for a few weeks and see how that goes. So the practice is essentially find a quiet, comfortable spot

and take this time seriously, even if it's 30 seconds or a minute. Sit in an upright, alert posture, like a dignified, you know, if we do it now, it's just like upright, alert, dignified. And first step is just acknowledge, notice, shine the floodlight on your experience that you're breathing right now.

Then what you're gonna do is hone in on something that actually you notice is prominent in your experience of breathing. So do you notice anything that feels prominent, like the coolness of air maybe by your nose or maybe your chest? It's actually the sound I'm making. Okay great, yeah the sound that's a great one too.

That's where you're going to hold the point, the flashlight. That's your attentional target for this short practice. So direct that flashlight right there. Keep it steady. You can close your eyes if you want to, whatever you choose, just to limit the sensory input. And if it hasn't happened yet, it surely will. Your mind will wander. And all you do in that moment is notice it. Ah, the mind has wandered away. Next step, take that flashlight, redirect it back to that same attentional target. And repeat.

So it's essentially focus, point that flashlight, notice, use the floodlight, redirect, get the juggler to do its job. Oh my goodness. You know, can I ask about that? Yeah, please when I first started this There was like a judgment when I drift away Oh, no, I'm saying when it's a win. It's actually a win because it gives us a chance to redirect the flashlight, right? This is so important because I said I don't know maybe you maybe you're further along than me But the beginning I was like gosh man

I'm gone this for like 24 seconds, then I'm out. But you're actually saying that's actually a gift when we drift away because it allows us to build this flashlight, I'll call it a muscle, so to speak, that we're coming back. It's really good. Now I hope it makes sense why I wanted to describe those three systems,

because we hit all three in this, and I think it's really important to not think of the wandering as a problem. The wandering, remember we started out talking about 50% of the time, it's the nature of the mind. I didn't say, Ed, if you happen to be one of those weird people with mind wanders, like us normal people don't have that, you have mind wandering.

I didn't say that. I said, when your mind wanders, because it's going to wander for sure, just bring it back. And not doing that with the added story, the added reactivity is so important. I was just thinking of the, I did a lot of work when I was younger and I do now with kids and I have so many parents almost judge their children further. He can't stay focused in the classroom, he drifts away and I'm just thinking right now like what a breakthrough this might be for some parents who are listening to this to realize that that's actually everyone is at 50 percent. Maybe your kid reveals it more than other kids do.

Doesn't conceal it as well. Right. Maybe it manifests in talking out loud as opposed to scribbling on a sheet of paper so it's more apparent. But this is something that even with, do you believe it, is there a particular age where you believe a child might be able to begin to build this, I'm calling it building a muscle because everybody can relate to that? Yeah, no, I think it is. It's practice, it's strengthening. So the first thing to say is that this brain system of attention is one of the slowest to develop.

We don't fully develop this capacity until we're about 25. And one of the reasons is it relies on the frontal lobes, which are the slowest brain region to develop. So it does kind of drive me nuts sometimes. And I feel for parents when they're not happy that their children aren't paying attention, or their response is, pay attention, it's not going to help at all.

And in fact, understanding that that's the thing that is your child is not paying attention because they don't know that they should often, it's that they don't know where their attention is. Just like we are saying we don't know. So I think that the thing to really and by the way, yes, absolutely, there's a huge enterprise of offering mindfulness training in a developmentally appropriate manner to children as young as preschool.

Really? We can do this in very useful ways for children, but what you're having them cultivate is not just focus, focus, focus, it's where are you right now? No, where are you in a friendly, self-supportive way? And is that where you wanna be right now? When you talk to yourself in that manner of like,

where am I right now? Is that where I wanna be? All of a sudden, the world doesn't feel as dire. Like, oh, I'm over here. I think I want to be over there instead. I think that's what I should be doing right now, is being over there. It's a different relationship. And the younger that we can get people

to start understanding that this is befriending your mind in a way that allows it to be used to your benefit, instead of being punitive to yourself. Yeah, I'm just thinking, I'm sitting here as a 50-year-old man. I've done different forms of meditation, mindfulness, I'm a relatively productive human being. And I'm confessing to the audience that oftentimes I'm going 24 seconds and I'm out of my attention.

Well, my attention has changed rather. So the idea that we're concerned about our eight year old who might have the exact same or does have the exact same scenario that I do. I'm just curious, has there been any data? Are kids even more than 50% where their attention moves? Or would you assume that they're more than 50% who might have the exact same or does have the exact same scenario that I do. I'm just curious, has there been any data? Are kids even more than 50% where their attention moves or would you assume that because those frontal lobes aren't as developed or is it pretty much the same?

Okay, so here's the tricky part of having assessing that with children, by the way. What does it take for you to even know if somebody's on task or off task? They have to have the awareness. It's something called meta-awareness. Awareness or attention to your attention. That is also a developmentally slow process. So we're getting a fuzzy read on them. I mean, we could take them into the lab and look directly at their performance on tasks. And yeah, they mind wander a lot. Their attention can be off-offin, off-task-offin. But I don't think that's the thing we want to help cultivate, which is

the counterintuitive thing. And I mean, I refer to it in the book as like a peak mind pivot. It's like we think that we have to focus better, we think we need to focus on, we need to train ourselves to focus, and I'm saying no. To focus better, train your mind to notice when you're not focused. Gosh, very good. So, you know, that's a totally different set of your exercising the floodlight and the juggler. The flashlight will do its thing.

It knows how to do its thing. But really pay attention to the understanding of where your mind is moment by moment. I did that during your TED Talk. You actually say something similar during your TED Talk. And then I thought, well, where am I now? And then I'm back with you. And then where am I now? And then I came back with you. And then where am I now? And then I came back with you.

And that's it. You know, 24 seconds, if you're truly going 24 seconds, you are, we got to bring you into the lab because that's really good. I made the number up. It's probably more like 2.4 seconds. I don't know. I actually asked a colleague of mine who'd been practicing mindfulness for 30 years, because I was getting, in the initial stages when I was just trying to understand what this thing is, I was like, I'm not going very long before my mind wanders. And will that be the thing that will extend as I practice more? That was my thinking.

Like that's a reasonable hypothesis. I might, if it's, you know, five seconds now, maybe it'll be 10 and 15 each year. I might get longer before it wandering. And I was very humbled by what he said. He said 30 years of practice. He said seven seconds. No kidding. And, but, you know, so at first I'm like, oh, great. He said, seven seconds? No kidding. But at first I'm like, oh great,

why am I being bothering? It's still gonna be seven seconds after 30 years. But what he said next really helped. He said, you know, what has happened is that my mind now, instead of being completely lost in a fantasy or a doomsday scenario, and I love that, it was almost poetic, he's love that it was like almost poetic. He's like, it's like I'm seeing the ripples,

the ripples at the distance of the Placid Lake. And I was like, oh, he is really knows his mind. Like he can tell it slight tug. He doesn't have to go full on into, next vacation has been planned while you're trying to do five minutes of a mindfulness practice. That felt so much more like he knows his mind, he knows where it is that with that level

of granularity. And in some sense this is the part that I think is also really interesting especially as we talk about athletes and military service members and special operators etc. It's this sense that you develop because you know your mind, a sense of, I'm gonna use the term, mental toughness. It's like I know the space, I know the lake, it may not always be plastic, it's usually for me like a rough stormy place, but I can take anything. Like my mind is here for it and frankly that's developing that same floodlight capacity. I am here I'm present for it. I'm not gonna be thrown off

I'm steady in the middle of whatever's going on very good You know, I I think some of the most self-confident people I know are just more self-aware And I think that's actually what you're describing. There's an awareness of there's an awareness of self I'm loving this and I want to keep going So when I I'm gonna ask you about you've described things in visual terminology a lot, and I'd like to think that I am a visual person also, although I don't know that there's such a thing. I'm wondering if part of that self-awareness is, are some people more predisposed to be kinesthetic or auditory or visual in the deductions they make, in the observations that they make, and is that something to be

cognizant of about yourself when you're in a state of attention that you are not just, I feel like I'm very visual, but maybe every single person is, or are there more auditory, predisposed people, kinesthetic, visual? Yeah. I mean, the jury is out. Most people say now that the notion of learning styles or specific modalities is not all that well supported. I would say, we don't know yet if that's actually the case.

But frankly, the bulk of the brain as human beings compared to our little dogs that run around, so dominant with vision. But you brought up something that I wanna actually, I wanna like kind of ping that. Because that what you describe is not what I'm talking about when I use the term meta awareness. What you just described, very powerful thing to do

is something we call meta cognition. So both of these are tied to self awareness, but meta awareness is a different thing. So meta cognition is essentially knowing your tendencies, knowing your styles, knowing your decision making capacities, your strengths, your weaknesses. I mean everything you just described would be really great to know for your metacognitive style, for example.

And yes, it can definitely, there could be differences, maybe not tactile or visual, but there are definitely differences in the way people operate metacognitively. So you may be a maximizer in your decision-making versus a satisfier. You know, there's these different orientations. But I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about when I talk about the floodlight, you know, there's these different orientations. But I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about when I talk about the floodlight, because remember, the floodlight system is really about the now

and meta awareness is awareness of the moment to moment processes and contents within your mind. So I don't it doesn't really matter from the meta from the meta awareness point of view, what your tendencies are, what is going on right now? Where is your mind right now? And I think that that what's important now kind of orientation is so important in performance context. Because it doesn't matter what you're doing, I'm like, what's going on now?

Is it always important to be in the now? In other words, is it bad to be dreaming in the future? Is it bad or good? I don't even like that terminology but. Useful. Yeah, is it useful? Such a great question. I'm so glad you asked me that because I don't want it to seem like I'm saying always be

here right now. Yeah. No, no, no, no. No, that's not what I'm saying. In fact, this capacity to mentally time travel, just like you did with your what did you have for dinner last night, right? Is so useful for us. In fact, it may be the thing that defines us

in our evolutionary advantage as human beings. We can displace ourselves in something called time travel. We can rewind the mind, we can fast forward the mind. You heard about me talking about that a little bit in the TED Talk. But it's not just about time traveling. It's also about mind traveling. So mind traveling is essentially putting yourself in the shoes and mind of somebody else.

So both of those are really, really powerful things to do. When we talk about mindfulness, it's really, it's a solution to a vulnerability in our capacity to do both of those things. So the problem with time travel, though it's extremely useful for productively reflecting or planning, it becomes problematic under certain states. And I do think of the athletes, like my heart goes go out to them oftentimes when I see mess ups, right? Like you did something, you totally messed up and it happens. You glitched. If you can't stop rewinding the mind, you are no way gonna be able to succeed in the next moment. So how do you get yourself to not rewind?

Very good. Right? So, or- Amicia, that's really good. Yeah, and I think that the other part is you may be in and on necessarily the athletic setting, but in our, like even during COVID, like if you can't stop catastrophizing

and worrying about the future- You got it. You're stuck, you're gonna be, like if you can't stop catastrophizing and worrying about the future. You got it. You're stuck, you're gonna be, probably have a lot of anxiety. So the reason we want, and frankly, the same thing goes with mind traveling. If I'm constantly preoccupied about your view of me, social anxiety is gonna set in.

So the reason mindfulness became such an important solution for me, going back to why we study in my lab, is because each of those things, ruminating about the past, catastrophizing about the others, overly caring about the viewpoints of an evaluation on yourself,

hijack attention, it depletes attention. Gosh, that's so good. You're describing from a scientific standpoint all the things that people listening to this go, I know this is true. And I think the rewinding thing, man, it's just huge. So many people are in the rewind and just beating themselves up

and repeating the same story over and over again. But the other thing that I've figured out is that oftentimes stress is time travel in the future. Meaning that it's not so much the speech you have to give or the sale you have to close or the putt you have to hit that is stressing you out. It's you projecting into the future the negative result of it and then on top of that,

what other people are going to think or say about you when you miss the putt, when you don't close the sale. Is that not true? Exactly, you describe both the mind travel and the time travel, right? Those are what I would really call the kryptonite scenarios. Like you're really, what all of that is doing is attention is still being used and you're

draining it out, you're draining the fuel in spinning in those directions. So how do you, you know, it's easy to say, well don't do that. Get back to here and now. It's easy to say it, it's very hard to do because the tendencies are so strong. So you got to train for it just like anything else that's hard to do. You were going to give us one other, I think you're going to give us one other one. Oh yeah, right. So let me give you the other one. Give another training. And then by the way, let's get peak mind. Let's get the book.

So that we also. You get the whole thing, right. You get the whole thing. That's the whole idea. But one more of them would be I'm driving in my car and I'm like, I want her to get me one more. Well, the car is a perfect example. You didn't even know I was going to go there. Okay. This other practice is just called the stop practice. Okay.

Literally S-T-O-P and do it while you're driving. Okay. Do it while you're driving. Do it while you're walking. Do it at any time you want. Stop is stop. Like, whatever the progression of your life is in that moment, halt it. So it's just, it's a mini mindfulness practice and I really think it's useful because you know where your flashlight is at the end of it. I know it's right here right now, I'm back. So use stop signs, use red lights to remind yourself to do that over and over again. So good.

I'm just thinking of something, when you asked me to do that, I actually did it with you. And I actually noticed a couple things in my visual space that have been here the entire time that I didn't see. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. And we're going a little bit deeper probably than I should. But there's a lot of things that your brain does on habit mode, correct?

Like if I'm driving to work and I take the same off-r ramp every single day, I think my brain is storing energy by doing something that's habitual. That's how I've always understood it anyways, that I'm taking that same off ramp. Whether I'm right or wrong, it doesn't matter. The point that I want to make about that is that for me, I think for most people being present is, even though yes there's a benefit to being in the future and rewinding, there's a benefit to being reflective and reminiscing in the past and gaining wisdom from it. But for most of us, that's not a struggle for most people. The struggle for most people is being present.

And that's why this is so important what you're teaching here. And for me, there's so many things in a given day that mindfulness practices make me just aware of being present that I'm curious as to in practical application, how much time a day, I know there's no formula but if you were just saying hey Ed I'd recommend to you it's 10 minutes a day, it's five different times a day, it's once a day, do it at the same time of the day, doesn't matter when you do it, what would your advice be on just

building this practice? As the habit aspect? Yeah. Well, I mean, the last line of the title is invest 12 minutes a day. So that gives you a sense of, and that number comes out of many studies that have suggested, you know, if you get to that mount, we tend to see benefits and the more you do from that, the more you benefit. But if you don't quite get to that, it's almost like is going for a walk in my neighborhood,

walking my dog, going to build my physical fitness? Probably not. It's not going to be bad for you, in my neighborhood, walking my dog, gonna build my physical fitness? Probably not. It's not gonna be bad for you, but you're not gonna get to that level. So here's the answer to the question of, so the when would be, and you can get a deeper understanding of why I say 12 minutes if you read more about it, but just know that it comes from a life.

I did, I just want them to know. A lot of research, I know, I know. I'm just saying, but your question regarding when to do it and the habit issue is the best time to do it is when you're gonna do it. Okay. And that's kind of a maybe a cop out but literally the key to anything and you'd probably say the same thing regarding physical excellence right? The key is advantaging your capacity to create it and incorporate it into daily routine. Yeah. And so what I suggest for

people like I just said with what we were doing, the short practice, if you think you can do three minutes, set the goal of a minute and a half and get the win of I did it, I did it, I did it. And yoke it to something that you already do. My recommendation is something that you know you're gonna do every day without exception, maybe right after you brush your teeth in the morning

or maybe right before you have your cup of coffee, some time that you know you're gonna do it. And what I would suggest is just to play around with when that works for you, is to try it at different times of the day. What many people say when we say try the morning, you know, just play around with the time of day, is like people say things like,

I love the taste of my coffee so much more. It's like I've actually tasted. Gosh, it's so true. I can't, I mean, it's so true. I can't, you know, so and why are you depriving yourself of that? Right? Why are we rushing through? I mean, you're going to have the coffee anyway. Why not have a little bit more pleasure with that experience? I have to just say though, I was going to tell you off camera, but I'm so glad you said this because I forgot, which is that I just want to give everybody the gift of

this that I, by the way, I'm nowhere near where you would be or other people. I don't think there's rankings either, by the way. It's not a judgment thing. But my sensory experiences, just in general, have been so dramatically increased by this practice. And people always say to me that there's this duality. Maybe one of the reasons they even like me is that maybe I'm sort of like a, maybe a masculine dude, but I'm very emotional and very sensitive.

I don't know that I've always been that way, but like I do find that I experienced my emotions on a deeper level over the last decade or so that my laughter is a little deeper and more joyous. The taste of food is a little bit more pleasurable. My, my acknowledgement and noticing beauty around me and the nuances and specificities of it and not just the visual but Smells and wind hitting my face. I know this sounds ridiculous to some people It's just richer because of this practice never mind being far more present present and productive

And I think also for me peak is such a word that I've used over and over When I'm fully present it appears to me that I've got better access to my vocabulary, better access to insights in reading somebody. Would you, similar experience for you? I mean, for sure. And it can be life-saving in many ways. And actually, you know, you described the plus side, and I want, I think it's so, it's so great. It's like almost like, you mean I can just have more joy by being here more? Yeah, you can.

But there's another part that I think is very important in the context of our action and our humanity. We're also more present to the suffering of other people. We're also more connected to other people. We also have more sense and respect for the humanity of others around us and for the environment. And I think that at this particular point, kind of in our human history,

we need to be more aware of what the heck is going on. We have very little time to like try to make things better for our planet, for example. And also with all the injustices happening, and I was talking recently to somebody regarding this notion of burnout. And so many people are feeling so burnt out. Can mindfulness help with burnout?

And the answer is yes, mindfulness can help with burnout. But actually, in the context of a conference I was at with critical care nurses, now we know over COVID, that has been a group that has been very, very crunched, right? And the question was, can mindfulness help me with burnout? And I said yes. And they said, but then the system, the organization of the scheduling is the reason I feel burnt out.

And I was like, yes, but there's no way you're gonna demand change, or even conceptualize how to create change if you don't have the capacity to see what's going on. So just use that as the next step to give back to those who may not have this capacity yet. It's like, the more present we are, the more we can enact change and empower other people to do the same.

It's so you're so right. And I know you know you're right. But people have told me that the last 10 years or so I'm just using practical experience for me. You're more patient than you used to be. That's sort of more like the symptom almost that, that it is more what you have described, which is that I try to be present with people and see them and hear them and experience them

more than fix them like I used to. And try to truly empathize and understand their experience and their reality. And I've always felt since I started this, like I wish more of, I don't care what political party you're part of, I wish more political people had that ability for empathy and understanding

and just stopped and listened to people and didn't assess it all the time. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I attribute some if not most of that to these practices. Because obviously I'm a performer, peak performer, expert person supposedly, but it's the other benefits of doing this that have enriched my life far more than the fact that I've made more money because I'm more present with people or these other things. I'm actually curious about this. What about memory? So is it that

my memory can be improved because of this, because I was actually present in more moments so I have better recall because my attention was where I was more often? Or is it that there's something happening in my brain where I'm developing the ability to recall and remember things better? Pretty good question, huh? Yes. Yeah, right? So, cause you could say, well, yeah, your memory's better. Well, maybe that's just because I was more present,

or is there actually something operating in my brain where there's a new myelin forming in my brain? I don't know. Well, first of all, everything, this conversation is changing your brain. I mean, I don't just mean cause it's some kind of massively transformative thing. Every experience we have impacts the way our brain functions.

So there's no divide between experience and brain changes. They're just happening concurrently, right? So yes, it is the case. So you're such a great intuition about neuroscience. It's awesome. So yes, it is the case that the more we can get, the more attentive we are, the more granular, fine grained the inputs are for our memory.

In fact, attention is the gateway for memory. If you don't pay attention, there's no way that you're going to have the experience of encoding episodes in your life, gaining new information. Now, there are aspects of our memory that are outside the scope of something you need attention for after it's well learned. So for example, if I tell you,

tell me across the board of a keyboard what the letters are. I mean, I can tell you, but if you give me a keyboard, I can type it. So that's an example of something we call procedural memory, which is, you actually don't need your attention for that. But for episodes and knowledge, you need attention to input the information. You also need your

attention to pull it out. So remember we were talking about the flashlight and your dinner meal? You have to have clarity of directing it to call up the right thing. So it is on both ends of that. And frankly, there's another thing to think about, which is that you call it, what did you call it, myelin? So yes, it ends up that long-term memory is a structural change within the brain. It actually becomes fixed hard in terms of neural connections that occur. That process is helped by having clarity of mind and actually just kind of to really tie the loose ends of this conversation together, current models suggest maybe that's where all this mind wandering is actually happening.

It may be a memory encoding process. The reason the brain pumps out thoughts isn't because it's just trying to mess with us, it's because that's the way episodic memory encoding happens. It's a replay button that just happens by default and as it keeps replaying, things kind of harden into long-term memory. Oh, this is so good. that just happens by default and as it keeps replaying, things kind of harden into long-term memory. Oh, this is so good. All right, of course I want everybody to get peak mind.

I want them to get your book. The reason that I want them to get the book is because I think the application of what you're teaching is different for many different people. And I love things that have broad application. So I think if you're an athlete, you wanna read this book. I think if you're someone who wants to find a little bit more bliss in your life and be more present

I think this is a book that that you should have and I think just having an overall understanding of one's self Is why I think this work is so fascinating. It's why my audience knows I love every interview that I do I don't talk to people that I don't want to share with the world, but there are certain topics that just Fascinate me because I like to understand why share with the world, but there are certain topics that just fascinate me because I like to understand why some of the things I teach work, I understand some of it. And you're helping me so much with that.

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And it was one of the most difficult things to teach them because it's not taught in school at all They learned all of these things in school They're quite frankly They're not going to use in their real life and things they really need, like learning about money and budgeting and the value of a dollar. Let's be honest, most of us learned about saving and budgeting way later than we should have, but here's the good news. You can give it to your kids with a head start with Greenlight. Greenlight's a debit card and a money app made for families that lets kids learn how

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are already using it with their kids and learning about how money works on Greenlight. So start your risk-free Greenlight trial today at greenlight.com slash ed. That's greenlight.com slash ed to get started. Greenlight.com slash ed. That's greenlight.com slash ed to get started. greenlight.com slash ed. Very short intermission here folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. I have a real friend here

today and somebody that I admire tremendously. He's helped me. He's scanned my brain. I think he's the foremost expert on brain health on the planet. He's a great friend of mine. I love him very much. He's a strong man of faith as well. Dr. Daniel Amon, welcome back to the show, brother. Thank you so much.

What about physical activity as it affects brain health? This is a gamer, phone, et cetera. So combination question, physical activity, and I've asked you two two-parters today, because I think they're somewhat connected. And is there an age you think some child should not be on social media? As long as possible.

If you had kids again right now, would your 10-year-old be on social or no? No. No. No. No. No. Because why? Apple and Facebook and TikTok they work with neuroscientists to keep you there longer. Their goal is mindshare and that's not okay because they're stealing the minds of this generation. I mean, on average, people are spending three and a half, four hours on social media. Just imagine what you could do at that time.

So put screens off as long as humanly you can and get them to exercise but It's coordination exercises. Remember we talked about the cerebellum. Yes, it's tennis and table tennis and pickleball and racquetball Those are really great for brain development because the cerebellum I'm getting old and people don't remember Rodney Dangerfield. I sure do. So, horrifying for me. I get no respect. The cerebellum is this Rodney Dangerfield part of the brain. Ten percent of the brain's volume but has half of the brain's neurons. And when you do

coordination exercises you're developing that very important part of your brain. And yeah, I'm not a fan of hitting soccer balls with your head. You said that multiple times, yeah. Or letting kids play tackle football. I did the big NFL study when the NFL was sort of lying, they had a problem with traumatic brain injury and football.

And now everybody knows it's true. Why would you put a developing brain in a position to have damage? Think about that. Your brain, and most people don't know this, but your brain is not finished developing until you're 25. So there's this process called myelinization. So your neurons, your brain cells,

get wrapped with a white fatty substance called myelin, sort of like insulation on a copper wire. And once they're myelinated, they work 10 to 100 times faster. So this is where maturity happens, myelinization. Well, it starts in the back when you're two months old, right? Babies can see and when you smile at them they smile back. Your prefrontal cortex, largest in humans than any other animal by far, focus, forethought,

judgment, impulse control, organization, planning, empathy, learning from the mistakes you make. It's not finished developing until you're 25. Which is why I'm not a fan of sending kids away to college and have them join sororities and fraternities with other underdeveloped brains. That's just a prescription for a lot of trauma and bad things to happen. I got my hair cut this morning and it's a young lady that cuts my hair and she's always asking me for advice, you know, on life. And I said, well, I said, you know, you'll see these videos on social media often when you ask somebody towards the end of their life, they'll say, what are your regrets?

And it's not typically, I wish I'd have worked more. It's typically, I wish I'd have been more present with my family. I wish I'd have traveled more. I wish I'd have been more present with my family. I wish I'd have traveled more. I wish I had more memories and I told her and I wish I'd have taken more risks and pursued my dreams. I wish I wouldn't have played it so safe in my life and it made an impact on her and I watched her kind of drift into her thoughts and she says you know Ed, I think my generation at the end of their life when we get there they're gonna say their biggest regret is they wish they spent less time on their phones.

when we get there they're gonna say their biggest regret is they wish they spent less time on their phones. They wish they spent less time on social media, that they wasted their lives away on these digital devices and they weren't present in the real world. And I told her I said I think you're 100% right. She goes I know 30 years from now we'll be watching my generation say this. And so your point is so incredibly profound. All right. This is as usual, my conversations with you. I want to go 11 hours with you. My guest today is Dr. Andrew Huberman, and he's a neuroscientist. His lab is at Stanford.

Today's going to be one of the more interesting shows for me that we've ever done before, because I'm fascinated with this man's work. There's a general societal belief about certain things. So if that's true, but I've also heard you say your thoughts are a choice. So if it's this involuntary process that's happening where we've all sort of agreed to this and we're almost pre-programmed through a series of evolution to believe certain things, how is it also that we choose our thoughts? Great question. It's the question that neuroscientists think about. And just as a bit of a disclaimer, there's gonna be a little bit abstract, but I promise to get concrete

and I'll do my best to be as succinct as possible. Succinctness is not the quality that's typically associated with academics. What I will promise, however, is I'll try and use as few acronyms as possible. I'll only name things if I think it's going to be important for people to go look up more as opposed to just raining terminology down on people because that's not useful. You're absolutely right.

The nervous system is responsible for sensation, perception, feelings, thoughts, actions, and memories, all of that. Let's talk about what's non-negotiable. What's non-negotiable are the sensations. I have receptors in my eye. You have receptors in your eye. We have receptors in our skin, in our tongue, in our ears, et cetera, that take physical events in the universe, of which there are many, and can only sense some of

those. For instance, I'm not a pit viper. I can't see in the infrared a pit viper can. I can see in the infrared if I snap on infrared goggles, but if I don't do that, my eye can't sense those. I can't sense magnetic fields. There are people that claim that they can sense magnetic fields. If they can, it's an unusual quality.

It hasn't been shown very robustly in the lab. Turtles, on the other hand, navigate extremely long distances by virtue of magnetic fields. They are magneto-sensing organisms. The things that we can pull out of the universe and into our nervous system to work with, those are fixed entities. Now, a colorblind person, one in 80 males is red, green, colorblind. They can't see red as the way you and I can. My dog is red, green, colorblind. There are some unusual cases, but in the absence of any technology, the sensations that we can detect are fixed. They are non-negotiable as much as gravity is non-negotiable.

We have to develop technologies to overcome them if we want to see into the infrared or see ultraviolet light, et cetera. Okay. Now, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, those are where it gets negotiable because, for instance, I can decide that the color of your shirt has meaning to me, like we're both wearing a black shirt and therefore we must have met in a previous lifetime and pretty soon I'd start to sound like a crazy person because the definition of psychosis or crazy is assigning meaning to something for which there's none, right?

So we have to agree as groups of individuals and societally, what sorts of meanings matter. And that's where it gets very subjective. You know, we have, we place value on the fact that somebody who commits a crime before the age 18 versus after 18, we call them an adult, but developmental trajectories are from birth to death and not, there isn't some cliff that, you know, biological event. So we could go really deep down this rabbit hole or not and I'm but what we know is that sensations are non-negotiable. What we know is that societies and the way that we function as families and couples and

in the workplace they obey certain principles or rules of engagement that on average are adaptive for a given culture. So we meet, we say hello, we agree on these cultural things that because on average they're adaptive whereas if we met and we decide first we were going to fight, first of all, we both know you're going to win that, we're going to physically fight. And second of all, it's just not adaptive for the evolution of Cultures most cultures there are circumstances where that's appropriate. So What's important for us to understand is that the human brain is? Very very good at all these things sensation perception feeling thought and action. It's also very good at two other things

one is interoception, paying attention to what's going on inside me, and exteroception, paying attention to what's going on in the outside world, and balancing the weight of one or the other in order to move adaptively through life. Now, and I'll just throw this out as one more kind of conceptual thing,

but as I promised, I would make it more concrete as opposed to abstract. When we say it's adaptive, what we mean is that this neural machinery in our heads, literally, I've opened up a lot of skulls, I've held a lot of brains in my life, I teach neuroanatomy to medical students now for 10 years. I promise you, it's just meat in there, meat and some fluid. And so the neurons of the brain take sensations. And the only thing neurons can do, the only language they can speak is to be electrically active at certain times and in certain sequences, like the keys on a piano. And it's this amazing thing like it still inspires wondering me when I think about it, that you do this, I

do this, and we agree on some common rules of engagement that are adaptive and it's what led us out of caves, hunter-gatherer cultures, technologies, the car, the plane, the iPhone. It's amazing. And we are, I think the important thing to remember is that we are still in our evolution as a species. We are still trying to work out whether or not 10 hours a day with the smartphone is good or bad for us. We're still trying to figure out whether or not traveling to other planets is good or bad for us. What should we do about this COVID thing? We're still trying to work this out. And the language that we do to work that out is neural language. And so I apologize if I made things more abstract than before, but you

didn't. We just have to agree on some rules of a game, just like if we're going to play chess, we need to set up some constraints. And so those are the constraints in broad terms. How do those so good? So no, it's perfect because I want to now I want to move it into like where we are in culture and also performance, just what you just said. And so I know what I teach, but I don't know that I always know why it works the way it does. So this nervous system, I'd like you to speak to, maybe it makes no impact, I have an assumption that it does,

previous experience in life, and does the importance of something in one's life change one's sensory acuity to it? So what I mean by that is, there's this great debate right now about racial and social issues. And so I wonder, I've wondered if someone has not had an experience with something that they literally perceive sensory wise less of it. And if they've got a history of some sort of a situation with a racial issue or sexual

abuse or something like that, that they see or feel more of it because it's important to them. And perhaps that's why there are certain things in society we can't come to a consensus on because importance in previous experience may change the way in which we gather this information. And on the other flip side of that,

is that also then true to program yourself to win? That when something is important enough to you, you begin to see, feel, and hear things that will lead you towards those particular goals that you wouldn't see if it wasn't important in terms of your sensory acuity or your nervous system picking up on it, or are they not correlated in any way? Can you speak to both of those? Sure. Again, a great set of questions.

So a moment ago, I mentioned that we have this interoception, which is really just paying attention to what's going on internally. Like I could stop now and think about how my stomach feels or my breathing or really go internal or I can be externally focused. And that's what the nervous system is doing. The nervous system has some very basic jobs. It's, it wants to, so it learns things. We're born into this world and the organization of the nervous system.

When we come into this world is not a completely blank slate. It's designed to learn. It's a learning machine. The brain is amazing because it's the only organ that wires up itself, which is incredible. So it's a self-learning, self-building machine. And for the early part of life, the goal of the brain is twofold. One is to maintain all the housekeeping stuff, keep the heart beating, keep digestion going, keep breathing going at a minimum to keep the organism alive, breathing going at a minimum to keep the organism alive, to keep us alive. Then it wants to learn things that are specific to its environment and learn the rules of these sensations.

Objects fall down, not up. Mom walks in the room. She leaves the room. She comes back on average or doesn't. Learning these rules, contingencies, and then passing those off to reflexive parts of the nervous system. So just like a baby never has to think about taking a breath

or governing its heartbeat with conscious thought, the nervous system wants to learn things and then push that to reflexive action. It's a lot of work to do what's called serial processing. Not serial, like, but like serial as in series. I know you know this, but just for those, you know, maybe second language, English second language or something. So serial processing is hard for the nervous system.

It's about thinking if A then B, then B, then C. Oh wait, was it C? Yes. A, B, then C. It's work. And it requires areas of the brain that are very metabolically costly to engage. It's why thinking hard kind of hurts. There's some strain associated with it. The more we experience something, the more our reactions to it are going to become reflexive, for better or for worse.

If it's a bad event, the nervous system or it creates a sensation that's uncomfortable, the nervous system will create an association whereby we naturally start to avoid that thing, whether or not it's good for us or bad for us. If it's something that we like, we get rewarded and we want with a chemical, typically dopamine or serotonin, and we want to move toward that thing again. And that illustrates the other key feature of the nervous system that I think will help simplify some of this kind of overwhelming number of things that the brain can do and how it can do it, which is we have in our brain a few chemical systems that are called neuromodulators.

They're not responsible for the communication between neurons. What they do is they modulate or change the likelihood that certain brain circuits will engage and other ones won't. And they fall into very specific categories. The most famous of these is the neuromodulator dopamine. Dopamine is released anytime we experience something we really, really like, but under very specific conditions. Anytime we are moving towards something and we think we're on the right path, dopamine is released. And this is nature's way of telling whatever neurons

are active during that movement down that path. So this could be exercise. It could be a relationship breakthrough. It could be a business breakthrough. It could be learning some little piece of a puzzle that you're excited to learn, even straining on. It tells you more of that, more of those neural symphonies or neurons being active in the way they just were. Whatever you were doing just there, more of that. So it sends you down this path. And dopamine's very misunderstood.

People think dopamine is about getting the reward. Dopamine is about sending you toward the reward. Think of it like a jet propulsion system. Whoa. Right, it's not just the finish line, it's a jet propulsion system. Well, right? It's not just the finish line. It's a jet propulsion system. And every animal needed that. And I'm going to give it back to you.

I just want to say something. I think it's one of the most significant things ever said on the show, honestly, and it explains my own life experience or my relationships. I want you to hear what he just said everybody. That you're getting more dopamine on average in the pursuit of your dream and your goal than you actually do with the attainment of it. And that maybe there's a little key here to, if dopamine's sort of a happiness drug, right?

You wanna call it that. What's your feel again? Could it not possibly be true that one of the keys of happiness in life is the pursuit of something great, the pursuit of growth and that that's the key that you don't have to achieve everything in order to give yourself the gift of happiness. I didn't mean to interrupt you, that's so freaking significant because I think a lot of people sort of cheat themselves from just

the pursuit because they think, well, I'll only be happy when I get there. I'm not qualified. I haven't read enough. I don't know enough people. I don't have enough context. And they stand still and they're not happy. And what they're missing is the science that tells us, actually, if you just begin to pursue this and show some progress towards it, that you're going to get that happiness you're seeking that you think you will only get when you get there, correct? Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and I'm so glad you bring this stuff because, you know, there's some concepts from psychology that we can start to weave into this. You know, I can

give examples from evolutionary biology, you know, an animal that's thirsty goes out looking for water and when it's finds that first drop of clean water, dopamine is released, but maybe that's not the big lake that it needs, but that's gonna tell it it's on the right path, and dopamine naturally causes neuroplasticity of whatever brain circuits were active previously. So it says, hey, whatever I did to get to this point, this milestone, not the finish line,

that is something that I might want to repeat reflexively in the future. I might not want to have to work so hard to do that. Now, the cool thing about dopamine, many cool things about dopamine, and then it has a dark side. And we should talk about the dark side because even if, and I'm not, and of course the dark side can be associated with drugs of abuse like cocaine and things, but I'll actually, there's a, there's a more, even more sinister dark side that I think a lot of people fall into this trap. The great thing about dopamine is it rewards us and it gives us energy. When I say energy, I don't mean glycogen.

I don't mean glucose. I mean neural energy. The reason is effort of all kinds, whether or not you're writing with a pen, whether or not you're racing uphill with a weight vest, or whether or not you're writing with a pen, whether or not you're racing uphill with a weight vest or whether or not you're slogging it out through any discomfort is generally associated with the neuromodulator. Adrenaline, also called epinephrine. It's called adrenaline in the body. It's released from the adrenals.

Then epinephrine in the brain is released from a couple places, but there's one particular place for the aficionados. It's called the locus coeruleus. It's in the brain stem. It wakes us up. It gives us a sense of urgency and it's about effort. And it doesn't care if you're doing something out of love or out of hate, out of revenge. It does not care. These are neuro chemicals and they don't care about you or your life experience, but they are in your brain and they are the engines. Okay? This is the Ed Myron Show.