Change Your Brain Every Day - Can These Tiny Habits Change Your Life?

Episode Date: January 9, 2019

Continuing with our recap of the top brain health tips of 2018, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen give you advice on how to rise above your current predicament by using simple, tiny habits to permanently alter your behavior and completely change your personal trajectory.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We are launching into this new year with you and reviewing the highlights from the Brain Warriors Way, which is a book Tan and I wrote together. We actually have an online course. There's a 50% discount this week.

The course is 26 hours. It's awesome. So if you really want to be a brain warrior, go to Amen University and sign up for the course. I love the reviews. Thank you for sending the reviews. This is from Fran Sinclair. Thank you, Tana, for being so open and honest. To be vulnerable and open about a painful time is very hard to do,

but you are helping a lot of people by sharing your experience. I have depression and PTSD for over seven years and have tried everything to get better. It's a horrible place to be. I have a son with autism and it breaks my heart that he has never truly gotten to know who I really am. Thank you for sharing your story. Well, Fran, we know how hard that is, but if you can stay present and do the right things for your brain and for his brain. That really is so hard.

Early this year, we have a new course with Dr. Jerry Kartzenelm called Healing Autism that is coming out from Amen University. You know, just to acknowledge this. So I've had depression to where I wanted to die. And I've also been really sick with cancer. And I've had, in April, I said I had a hysterectomy. So I've had acute illness as well. And I got to tell you, there's no comparison. I think I was even telling you. So when I had, like, I didn't want to say we were talking about our best moments of the last year. And I'm like, well, I can't really say that it was my best moment. Cause I literally was in so much pain from surgery, but one of my best moments was after surgery,

you and Chloe were just so good to me. So even's my point, is that depression is a whole different thing. You can be sick and you can be in pain, and if you don't have depression, it's not as bad. I mean, you can overcome that if you've got support, but when you are depressed, it's just horrific. It's horrific.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that because I've had both. Yes, you have. I would do anything to avoid being oppressed. So what are the things you avoid? Yeah, I'm like, if I start to feel myself getting wonky, like as soon as I started to feel myself not, I just started to feel like I didn't have motivation. Like my passion wasn't the same. I'm like, okay, time to go to the doctor. My numbers checked. Cause if I start to feel anything, you got to get your mindset.

I can do something about this. Oh, absolutely. The second thing is assessment. Yeah. Know your important numbers. And too often your doctor will go, Oh, you don't need to know all of those things. Yeah, because for me, it's a huge red flag and I'm like out the door. And so often, we see your thyroid's off or your hemoglobin A1C's off. Your ferritin. Your vitamin D's off. Your vitamin D. And then for me, I go exercise almost immediately. Get your food right.

And then T, so we're talking about mastery. So this is the backbone of the Brain Warriors way, is training. Yep. What are the things you do day in and day out that hurt you? And I'm absolutely convinced you use exercise as an antidepressant. I totally use exercise as an antidepressant. And I figured that out when I was a teenager. And here's the thing. When you're down and you're – and no one knows this better than I do when you're down and you

don't feel like it and you're not motivated and you're feeling icky, you don't want to exercise. So what I tell myself is it doesn't matter what I want. Okay. You don't do it because what do you, do you let your kids do that? No, it doesn't matter what I want. And I tell myself that in a minute. I'm not doing this because I want to. I'm doing this because it's my medicine. That's just it. And you just get up and you do it. And if you don't feel like working out heavily, go for a walk.

Because then you're going to start to feel better. And then just do a little bit more and a little bit more. It's not about what you want. It's about what you need. So you actually just reminded me of Freud. Please don't say that. And you know, I'm not a huge fan. I'm not a, I'm not a fan.

But one of the most helpful concepts that he came up with is understanding the id, the ego, and the superego. So the id is the child in you. And too often the reason your health isn't right is the four year old is running the fricking show of your life where you go, Oh, I don't want to exercise. So I don't exercise. And the ego is sort of like the healthy adult. It's so I think of it as the good mother or the good father. And the superego is sort of the punishing conscience. And we are living in a society where the id and the superego

are running the show, you should do this, you should do that, you're bad because you don't believe the way I believe. Or the child is I want what I want when I want it. And if I don't get it, I'm going to throw this massive temper tantrum. Right. So a little detour into parenting. The best parents are firm and kind. You have rules at home.

And I like the podcast we did with Jim Fay because his rule was don't make a problem. I love that. All rules rolled into one. Don't make a problem. And when you say something, you mean it and you back it up. So is, you know, you said, well, I don't want to exercise. And the good parent inside you said, this will make you feel better. Go do it. And this ties right into our very first podcast for this week. So when I didn't feel like it, like just this morning, I was busy. So this morning, it wasn't because I didn't want, it was more because I needed to hurry. And so you start making excuses. So I told myself, okay, this has nothing to do with what I want to do right now. Today it's heart health. It's just those, that's it. Get in there and do it. You're

taking care of your heart today. So you have to have, that's why you have to be motivated. You have to tie into the intention, right? If I just went, well, I don't feel like working out cause I'm busy. Well, I would have just given into that. But because it's tied to my why, right? So either I don't want to be depressed, I don't want to be a slog, like just like slugging around all day, or because I'm like today it's about my heart. I'm going to like do today's heart health. I love your heart.

Aw, thank you. So training, exercise, so many benefits. I'm working on a new book called The End of Mental Illness, and I've been having so much fun with it. And you just have to look at the research with exercise. It increases neuroplasticity, so how your brain takes care of itself. It increases, it grows the size of your hippocampus. It's involved in mood and memory. It stabilizes your blood sugar. It increases nitric oxide. It has been shown to be an antidepressant. There's just so many good things it does. It's just, you know, if you could do one thing, it's, you know, walk like you're late more.

And I know this is going to throw us into the next episode for the rest of it, but it's okay because this is important. So one of the things with training is it's really about daily habits. So we talk about that in the book. You did a whole thing on daily habits. It's wonderful. It's tiny habits, right? So it's about creating these tiny habits every day. And so someone asked me, um, she said, well, what would you suggest for someone? Like she goes, I just don't know how to give up, um, soda. I can't give up my diet Coke. I go, you can't.

And she goes, well, what would you suggest? Like what kind of a tiny habit would work for that? I go, Oh, that oh, this is perfect. So, but she gave me like three things at once, right? So I was trying to explain to her, okay, tiny habits. So she's like, so does that mean I have to, you know, give up Diet Coke and I have to now start drinking water and I have to, she goes, and I have to like, you know, start drinking green juice. I'm like, wait, whoa, back up. Tiny, we're tiny, okay. green juice. I'm like, wait, whoa, back up. Tiny. We're tiny.

Okay. She's defeating her. So, right. So tiny habit. Let's, let's back up. So maybe, maybe it means that for today. Okay. We're going to start, we're going to start with today. You're going to not have the Diet Coke. Instead of the Diet Coke, you're going to replace it. And we always, we never want to just like eliminate it. We're going to replace it. We're going to replace the diet Coke with sparkling water and you're going to add some Stevia to it. Right? So that's, that's one of them. So she was trying to get rid of all sugar from all drinks is what she was trying to do. So she like started with diet Coke and then she went to coffee and then she went to like all these different things that she had sugar in. So I'm like, let's start with that. Let's do sparkling water with Stevia and let's do that for a week.

Well, and let's tell you it's, there's a company, we have no stock in it, called Sweet Leaf. Maybe I should buy stock. I know, right? Yeah. They make 10 different flavors of stevia, from peppermint to orange, lemon, grape, berry. My favorite is chocolate. I put chocolate in everything. And so I get sparkling water. And I love this. I'm on a plane. And, you know, what do you want to drink? Sparkling water. I always carry the chocolate stevia in my computer bag. And I put in, you know, a squirt of it. It tastes like a soft drink, but there's no calories and nothing bad for me.

And I'm a value spender. I hate wasting money, right? I mean, I'm not cheap, but I'm a value spender. Wasting money just irritates me. And so I think of that way with calories because calories are like money. And so just that one simple act saves me tens of thousands of calories. And the sugar, the amount of sugar. So, so when I talk to her, so I go look at the whole point of the tiny habit is do that for a week or so. And if it takes two weeks, it takes two weeks until you feel like, okay, I can do this. I've eliminated the diet Coke. Then go to the coffee. And then I gave her the recipe that we use for our, for our half-calf, you know, almond milk cappuccino. She's like, oh, I could do that. Like I can do that. I'm like, the point of a tiny habit is chunk it down to a size that feels manageable to you so that you can

master it. The whole point of this is mastery, right? Well, and what I gave for Christmas gifts this year to the people close to me is because I love making Tana's almond milk cappuccino, pumpkin spice cappuccino, is I actually gave people not the recipe. I gave them all the things to make it. So that make it super easy because it's how I show Tan I love her every day. And that's how I show the people in my life I love them.

I'm not making it for them unless they come to our house. But it's just, you know, giving the gift of brain health, that's love, right? I mean, you do this because you love them. Right. So figure out one bad habit that you want to change. And other training things, and then we'll have to stop. Right. But one bad habit you want to change, and then figure out a tiny habit you can take

from that tiny. And if it feels too big, make it tinier and then master that. We'll be back. Use the code PODCAST10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month.