Change Your Brain Every Day - How To Create Sustainable Joy This Holiday Season

Episode Date: December 6, 2017

We all want to feel good. But all too often we engage in activities that provide short-term gratification but ultimately have a negative effect by wearing our pleasure centers out. In the second installment of the “Success Starts Here” series, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen share philosophies and techniques to finding your own unique purpose, and then using it to bring meaning and joy that lasts a lifetime.

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 to Success Starts Here, our series on how to get the most out of your brain and your life. And this session is called Create Sustainable Joy. Protect your brain's pleasure centers to live with passion and purpose and avoid addictions and depression. What I like about this title is that it's true. You can create joy. A lot of people keep waiting to feel joy. They keep waiting for something to happen so that they will feel happiness or they will feel joy. And what most people don't realize is that because of the way you are wired, you can actually do things to help create that joy. So it puts you, it's an empowering thought. Or you can deaden your pleasure centers and feel sad and apathy. So understanding how joy is actually sort of created in your body from a

sort of a biological physiological standpoint is really important. Well, and there are two neurotransmitters that we want you to understand, dopamine and serotonin. So dopamine works in what is really called the pleasure motivation circuit in the brain. And there are structures called the basal ganglia, nucleus accumbens. I really think of them as like little pleasure buttons in the brain that you push on them and you feel happy. But if you push on them too much or too hard, you wear them out. And then it requires more and more in order to feel anything at all. So people who like to go faster and faster or they become addicted to pornography or they become addicted to drugs, the more you do, it's like I I need more to get that feeling. You're wearing out those pleasure centers, right? Right. And, uh, but first let's start is purpose good for your brain? Are people who are purposeful? I think you're a

purposeful person. Um, is that good for your brain? Well, the studies actually say you bet better mental health, less depression, greater happiness, more satisfaction, personal growth, self-acceptance, better sleep, and you live longer. Don't you live like 11 years longer? Significantly longer. Over time, they have a reduced incidence of Alzheimer's disease. They have less mild cognitive impairment. They have a slower rate of cognitive decline in old age. So we should be living a very long time because we spend our lives purposeful. Right. Right.

I think the brain warrior's way was just our statement in the sand. It's a war and we're going to lead you to a better life. Well, and purpose is double-edged. So if you think about purpose, it's like, oh, you know, people, it's like, if I have purpose, I'm going to live longer just because I'm doing something purposeful. But the flip side of that is that when you have a strong purpose, you tend to make better decisions. For example, I have this thought in my head that I really want to be here for my daughter. Okay. So that's a major part of my purpose, right? So whether it's because of the work we're doing or because of my daughter or whatever it is,

that drives very, very strong. That keeps me making better decisions, right? Because if I make bad decisions, I won't be here for her. You won't get what you want. Right. And that's very important. If you stay with us, we're actually going to talk to you about how to create purpose in your own life in a very short period of time. But I see a lot of, I've seen this a lot where even some of the moms will go out at lunchtime and they're like, they love their, I know they love their kids. They're taking good care of their kids, but they'll drink at lunch and then get in their

cars and drive. And I'm like, see, to me, those are connected. Does that make sense? I would be afraid to do that. I would not do that because I would be afraid of the consequences and not being there for my child. Forethought. That's frontal lobes. We're going to talk about them next.

So how do you know if you have purpose in your life? Answer these five questions. One, I feel good when I think of what I've done in the past and what I hope to do in the future. Two, I have a sense of direction and purpose in life. Three, I enjoy making plans for the future and working them to a reality. Four, I'm an active person in carrying out plans I set for myself. And five, some people wander aimlessly through life, but I am not one of them. I like this, but I'm going to push back on number one. So what I've done in the past and what I hope to do in the future, many people have really hard past. They've either made bad decisions or they've been a victim of something in the past.

That does not mean that you cannot shift that into being very, like using it as fuel for purpose in the future. Certainly, I know a lot of people that almost like the more painful their stories are, and we've written a lot about them, the more driven they are to be purposeful. So if I think about it, you know, I was beaten up a lot as a little kid and anxious and smaller than everyone else. And I can focus on that. And, and, you know, I mean, you grew up in a lot of chaos. You can think about that and be really upset. Or you can think of the amazing times you had, and you had amazing times with your mom and with your grandmother. And, um, you know, certainly I got to hang out with my grandfather who made fudge. That was awesome. And, um,

where you bring your attention often determines how you feel. We're going to talk about that in mastering your mind. And the other thing is, is if you do have something in your past, uh, an unresolved trauma, or you were a victim of something, or you made bad decisions, you were the person making bad decisions. It doesn't mean like do something empowering to pull yourself out of that. I think of that as an unresourceful state, right? That is going to drag you down. That will not give you purpose. Thinking about that and dwelling on those awful things in the past. For me, like I love doing what we do. I practice karate because as somebody who grew up in that chaotic environment,

you know, there were some physical things that had happened. I like feeling empowered. Those things take me out of that. They put me in a more resourceful state, like almost instantly. I think being proactive is really important. So in an upcoming lesson, we're going to talk about embracing change and learning from the failures. So if you have a learning mindset, then they become incredibly important to you. So I want to talk just a little bit about the addiction cycle.

That's where people engage in actions that increase dopamine. So we talked about these two neurotransmitters that we should. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that increases the feeling of pleasure. It works in the pleasure centers. It increases focus and motivation. When it's too low, people feel sad. They feel unmotivated, hopeless, helpless, worthless. When it's too high, they feel anxious, agitated, can be aggressive, confused, even psychotic sometimes.

Serotonin, on the other side, they balance each other, dopamine and serotonin. Serotonin, when it's healthy, it helps you feel happy and optimistic, helps you sleep. When it's too low, people get depressed, anxious, obsessive. And when it's too high, they feel apathetic and passive. So these two counterbalance each other. Most addictive drugs are not boosting serotonin, although ecstasy does that. But most of them boost dopamine. Right. And so you feel high.

You feel pleasure. So like methamphetamines, crystal, cocaine. Nicotine, caffeine, methamphetamines, cocaine, and so on. And so the dopamine is that sort of like gives you drive. And the serotonin is like, oh, don't worry, be happy, like chill. Correct. And so the addiction cycle is you engage in actions that increase dopamine. So you mentioned pornography.

Right. You also mentioned methamphetamines. You mentioned cocaine and the more you do it the more you press on your pleasure centers the same part of the brain right for the drugs versus the pornography well and love new love presses on that too um so that's why i tell people don't get married in eight days after after you've met someone. Let the cocaine effect wear off. So the more you engage in a behavior that dumps dopamine, cocaine, for example, dumps dopamine into your brain, it begins to wear those pleasure centers out and they get what we call tolerant. So it actually takes more and more cocaine, pornography, new love in order to feel normal. So that's the important thing. It takes more and more of that

behavior. Which is why you see them go into dark places. To feel normal. Right. Which is why you see them go into dark places. Normal. Right. Which is why they end up getting strung out or addicted. Or on TV, on the news. What's going on lately? That is just crazy. So what about daredevils? The same thing, fast cars, jumping out of planes. They're looking for that. They're looking to turn their brains on. They get that pleasure rush in their brain. So you engage in the behavior, you feel high when dopamine wears off. So I really want people to go for the dopamine drip. Ah, we did that in the hospital all the time. Rather than the dopamine. You just like took me back. Rather than the dopamine rush or the dopamine dump, you want to go for the dopamine drip. So living with purpose is sort of a dopamine drip. Now, we get a lot of great stories from people who follow our work, and that's sort of like a dopamine rush.

Right. But you want a consistent, low level, positive feeling in order to keep those parts of your brain healthy. So when dopamine wears off from, you know, you have a dopamine squirt or dopamine splash, we have to find the right word for this. It wears off. So you feel flat, sad, depressed. And so you re-engage in the dopamine behavior like gambling, even if it's bad for you, even if you've had negative societal consequences. Your wife has left you, you've been arrested, you have to file for bankruptcy. Shopping for

some people. It's like, oh, I found that thing. It's not you. Obviously not you. Shoot me now. And so with intense stimulation, the pleasure centers need more and more excitement in order to feel anything at all. And we actually have two conditions that you wear out these pleasure centers quickly. One is ADD because with ADD, you actually have low dopamine levels in the brain. Right.

So people, unless they get treated and the treatment we use is dopamine enhancing supplements or dopamine enhancing medications. They tend to be excitement seeking, conflict driven. They tend to drive fast. They tend to use stimulants like coffee or but you kind of think that i work out like i do and go practice karate because i like dopamine yeah well i mean we've talked before but i'm not but i'm not one of those crazy like because i'm too anxious yeah you have the anxious type of add you know as we've talked before there's seven different types but the classic type,

they're just simulation. The thing I like about exercise is it actually increases all of the good neurotransmitters and hormones. It increases serotonin, dopamine, and the endorphins. So you feel balanced. You feel good. That's why people always say, oh, I feel so good when I exercise. The other condition we should talk about just for a minute is Parkinson's disease. Because in Parkinson's disease, the dopamine neurons start to die, especially in the area of the brain called the substantia nigra. And I had this one patient who was the father of of one of my college friends and uh just the nicest religious man calm sweet moral when he got parkinson's like syndrome he started to fall in love with jerry springer oh god and dr phil and he just waited for those shows to come on and And I think it's because, you know, it's like, why? Right? It's he needed

that dopamine splash in order to feel normal. So, you know, families having sex with each other. I could have invited him over for Thanksgiving. Jerry Springer had nothing on your family. That's, that's true. But why scary movies? I don't know. Someone please tell me. I got drugged to these horror movies when I was nine years old. So is Saw 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 3D, are they dopamine drips or are they dopamine dumps? They just scare the hell out of me. That's all I know is I want to run. Well, what do you think they're doing inside someone's brain? Well, it's dopamine, obviously. It's dumping dopamine, but I don't understand it. Going to a spectacular movie. We just

watched Good Will Hunting. It's a fabulous movie. Okay. And I admit, I do like movies like Taken because I love justice so and that's a dopamine but that's a different kind of dopamine but it's your dopamine it's my dopamine yes i want justice in mine or some of the fast and furious movies you love those love those yes yeah um all right so how to protect your pleasure centers to feel lifelong joy. So I'm going to give you some principles. You have to limit the use of constantly stimulating devices and activities such as smartphones, gaming, shopping, pornography, scary movies, and high risk activities. So you should, we should probably not gloss over that too much.

We got to give them something to do instead. It's coming. Okay. Just making sure. Stay with me. Engage in regular exercise. Yes. Especially something you love that does not endanger your brain, such as karate, but without

head. I got to tell you, there's nothing that feels better than going and just beating the hell out of bags. It's just fun. It just feels good. It's like therapy. So karate, dancing, swimming, tennis, table tennis, meditation protects your brain while boosts activity in your pleasure centers. You want to make time to laugh. Humor enhances the pleasure centers and doesn't wear them out. Connect meaningful activities and pleasures such as volunteering for activities you love. For example, I love table tennis. Enjoy keeping score for others during tournaments. I'm doing something purposeful that I love. Start every day by thinking of three things that you're grateful for. Small dopamine.

See, I actually think that really works. And it sounds so trivial. It sounds so minor. And it's not. It actually really works. If you do that consistently for a week, I promise you, you'll start to feel better. And think of one person you appreciate every day, another small dopamine trip, and then reach out to them and tell the person you appreciate them with a text or an email.

So you're building a bridge of gratitude. So you just did a little dopamine squirt in their brain or dopamine drip in their brain. Seek pleasure in the little things in life, such as a walk with a friend, holding hands with your spouse, a great meal, or a meaningful church service. So positive things that activate dopamine, meaning and purpose, lasting love, volunteering, relationships, new learning, traveling to places where they speak English. Seriously, we're not having therapy on there right now. He does not want to go to vacation anywhere out of the U.S. anymore. He's just like done. Did you see the volcano in Bali? You wanted to go to Bali. You know what? I don't want to hear it. I really don't want to hear it. Pumpkin seeds, increased dopamine as this green

tea, gratitude, appreciation, winning by striving to be your best, losing when it motivates you to practice and be better, and digital discipline, potentially negative things that activate dopamine, jumping out of of airplanes repeatedly falling in love high-risk sports like helicopter skiing marital affairs people do that as a way to stimulate their brains that sounds dangerous actually you're married to you it's absolutely dangerous excessive video games pornography cocaine methamphetamines alcohol fame the prayer for some of the young celebrities i see is dear god please don't let me be famous before my frontal lobes are developed right um winning by hurting people that activates dopamine in a bad way what losing when it causes pain

undisciplined digital behavior, scary movies, and gossip. I don't understand the winning by hurting other people. How does that stimulate dopamine? It's the Machiavellian kind of winning. I love torturing. I don't understand that. That sounds terrible. Well, think of S&M.

But that sounds terrible. It doesn't sound like a good thing. People whose pleasure centers have been worn out or they get pleasure by hurting people. You see, that's why I like movies like Taken and Law Abiding Citizen. That's why I like those movies. Viktor Frankl. I love that.

Believed that there were three ways to create meaning. So tell them the name of the book because it's a great book. Man's Search for Meaning. Yes. One of the best books. So you don't have to hate all of us no i loved his book he said three ways to create meaning purposeful work or being productive asking questions such as why is the world a better place because i am here what am i contributing um love

loving the people who are central to your life is purposeful. I have a cool story coming up. Courage in the face of difficulty, shouldering, whatever difficult fate we have and helping others shoulder theirs. So in the face of difficulty, Franklin, uh, Frankel said, everything can be taken from a man, but one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. He was a Nazi concentration camp survivor.

I mean, his story is horrifying, but it was great. He encouraged his patients to see meaning in life's moments and to direct their focus away from painful moments to ones that were more appealing love he says is the ultimate and highest goal man can aspire to um he also said people find meaning in creative values so for me it's and for you too it's writing uh creating this podcast or courses well and and even things like i know you know helping chloe our daughter helping her when she's really struggling with something and you know that brings me joy being able to be able to do that you know is um wonderful experiential

values mountain climbing sports traveling going out to dinner, attitudinal values, looking for meaning in situation, even ones that appear meaningless. And there's a story about Frankl treating an older man who could not stop grieving the loss of his wife. I'll be like that. He asked the man, what would have happened if you had died first and your wife would have had to survive you oh god oh the man replied for her this would have been terrible how she would have suffered franklin said frankl said see such a suffering has been spared her oh and it is you who have spared her this suffering. That's a great way to flip that. But now you have to pay for it by surviving her and mourning her. The man said no word, but shut Frankel's hand and left his office.

Frankel believed we can find meaning in difficult situations. I mean, it's like, you know, why for years were people saying... That was very powerful. I want to stop for a minute and think about that. If you just think about that for a second, I mean, I know so many parents, they just have this terrible fear of something happening to their child, right? I mean, I can't think of anything worse. But if I were to stop and think about, you know, my child having to like raise herself, I mean, there's a lot of ways to spin it, right? It's, it's, it's always how you take things, right? Right. Always. It's the part you focus on.

On my board for my patients, A plus B equals C. A is what happens to you in life. B is your interpretation of what happens to you in life. And C is how you act. And C actually has nothing to do with A. It's the B stuff. It's how you interpret what happens to you. That's very powerful. So how can you know your purpose in five minutes? There's this great TED talk by Adam Leipzig. He has like 10 million views. And he's a very successful guy who went to his 25th college reunion at Yale. And he said he made it an astounding discovery. 80% of his privileged, well-off, powerful friends were unhappy with their lives, despite being on their second spouse and their second house. Isn't that crazy?

The difference between them and the other 20% who were happy was knowing their purpose, which makes sense given the research we've discussed. To know your purpose, Leipzig said you have to know the answer to five simple questions. So do it. Do it with me. Okay. Question number one, what is your name? Tana. Question number two. What do you love to do? For example, writing, cooking, designing, speaking, parenting, teaching, crunching numbers. What do you love to do? Parenting. I love being a wife.

I love to write books and I love to teach people. And I love karate. Question three. Who do you do it for? That's a crazy question because I not only do it for the people that I'm trying to help. I mean, I do it for you. I do it for Chloe. I do it for our community, but quite frankly, I do it because it feels good. So I do it for both. Okay. So for me, for Chloe, for your community, what do we need from you? Oh, see, I would say for me to be healthy and invest time and be my best person, be

my best self, to be wise, not making bad decisions. I mean, that's what I would say. So we need consistency and love and information. And good decision making, which equals consistency. Right. Okay. How do these people change as a result of what you do? Oh, well, with my daughter, I mean, I think that's fairly an easy one. When you spend

time with your kids, I mean, I'm watching her turn into this amazing young woman. I mean, she's just amazing. She's like far beyond what I ever imagined being at her age. So I'm seeing that happen before my eyes. I see our patients get well, lose a hundred pounds. Some of them. Just the story of Denny recently right right the veteran that we brought in but i mean they lose weight they feel better they have purpose they have passion so so notice and my marriage these five questions actually have nothing to do with you it's they're outward basic right is that cool i love that so for mine um my name is daniel i love optimizing people's brains and inspiring them to take care of it.

I love doing it within the context of our team. We do it for our families, those who come to our clinics, read our books, watch our shows. The people we touch want to suffer less, to feel better, to be sharper, greater control over their lives. They want better brains and better lives. As a result of what we do, people change. By having better brains and better lives, they suffer less, become happier and healthier, and they pass it on. So only two of the five questions are about me, three are about others. The happiest people leipsic knows and then i know and you know are outward facing focusing more on the people they serve than on

themselves you know when especially women i think i don't know i've never been a man but women can very quickly um just speaking you, from a female perspective and knowing my friends and myself, um, when like you always even tell me, you know, I'm dangerous without a project. So it's true. I'm dangerous without a purpose. I'm dangerous without something that I'm doing. That's meaningful because we can get caught up in the craziest things in our head. I mean, even the little stuff, I mean, I know I mope around and I pout and I'm like, my life has no meaning as soon as we finish a book. Right. But I can also then start to hyper focus on my own personal flaws. And I know women are famous for that. They notice the lines on their face. They notice their thighs. They notice, you know, every tiny thing when you are not

focusing on helping other people or doing something bigger than yourself in the world, it's very quick. It happens very fast and insidiously, just like you begin to focus on things that bring you down. So let me read this paragraph. I'm working on it in the book. Leipzig closes his talk by preaching, by teaching us a powerful technique. He says, when you're at a gathering and someone asks you, what do you do? Answer them by telling them the answer to question number five. In my example, when people ask me what I do, I might say, as a result of what we do, people have better brains and better lives. They suffer less, become happier and healthier, and pass it on to others. By answering that simple question, I get to share my life's purpose with everyone I meet.

Isn't that beautiful? Yeah, I really like that. All right, so summarizing the key strategies to creating a joyful life, to live with love, passion, meaning, and purpose over a prolonged period of time. One, focus on what you truly want in a balanced way. That helps to prevent burnout.

What do you want in your relationships? I want to have a kind, caring, loving, passionate relationship with you. I want to raise healthy kids that I'm happy with. And I think this is important to write down, to take time to really write it down. Write down what you want. Limit substances and activities that wear out your pleasure centers, such as caffeine, nicotine, pornography, digital addictions, high-risk behavior, scary movies.

Three, engage in high-value activities that increase dopamine and strengthen your pleasure centers in a healthy way. Getting more sunlight actually boosts dopamine. Exercise, massage, listening to pleasurable music. Four, reach out to help others five focus on living each moment with meaning and purpose and eliminate things that don't much matter next lesson we're going to talk about saying no to yourself and others and six live with the end in mind yeah so when i like that that's one of my favorites

so i read elizabeth kubler-ross when i was in college. See, I like that. That's one of my favorites. So I read Elizabeth Kubler-Ross when I was in college. I took a class on death and dying. So did I, yeah. We both went to Christian colleges, so I think that that's sort of- We had to write our own funerals. Right. And so I always think about, does this, and you and I talk about this a lot, if what I'm going to do now and the problem I have now, does it have eternal value? That saves me. It literally saves me from sometimes either having a nervous breakdown or killing someone else. Cause like

things happen right in your day. Things happen that just set you off. Like we had the wrong floor put in our house, like stuff like that happens. And it's easy to just like go, Oh my gosh, did it have eternal value? No, we literally, we stopped. We helped each other through this because we both got really angry at first. And then we like went, wait a second. This doesn't have eternal value. There's a solution somewhere. There's a solution somewhere.

We will figure it out. Let it go. Anger dumps dopamine too. So you want to get rid of that. All right, stay with us. Success starts here. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review

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