Change Your Brain Every Day - How to Make Every Day Count, with Jay Shetty

Episode Date: September 8, 2020

Getting from where you are to where you want to be involves putting your armor on each day and putting in the work, chiseling away to get to the masterpiece beneath the unformed stone. In this second episode in a series with On Purpose host Jay Shetty, Jay and the Amens discuss the philosophies of some everyday practices you can use to lead a happier, more productive life.  For more info on Jay Shetty's new book "Think Like a Monk", visit https://www.amazon.com/Think-Like-Monk-Train-Purpose/dp/1982134488

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your 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 nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We're here with Jay Shetty. You know, when we give you the tools, it's not like you do them once and expect miraculously

that depression goes away. It's a practice like I'm going to see an Olympic athlete next week that I'm really excited about. And he didn't become that way by like training once. No. It's repeated over and over and over again. How did you learn that practice as a monk? What was the training like? Yeah, I was actually speaking to, uh, one of my monk friends the other day, and this example that you're mentioning, he was quoting

Michelangelo who has asked, how did he create these incredible sculptures and how did he create these incredible designs? And he would say that the design is already there, I just have to chisel around it. And it's that daily chiseling that we're all doing with our minds and our brains and our bodies that needs to be done to excavate, to discover what's already there. And so it's a chiseling process. It's a daily process. If you paint one day and never paint again, there's a beautiful story that I love sharing that i talk about in the book it's it's a allegory that was created years ago around the life of picasso and so this woman sees picasso in the marketplace and she walks up to picasso and she said picasso can you draw me a portrait he says sure i'll draw your portrait he whips out a pen and paper and in

30 seconds he paints an identical portrait of this lady, handing it back to her. He says, that will be $30,000. She said, Picasso, how can that cost you 30? How can that cost $30,000? It took you 30 seconds, right? He said, it took me 30 years to be able to do that in 30 seconds. And obviously it's not a true story. It's a story with a message, but the point being that it's that 30 years of practice. So in our lives, our daily practice was waking up at 4am every single day. The reason for rising early was not to create pain. The reason for rising early was that there was less traffic in your mind. So if you look at the traffic on the road, if I'm trying to drive to your home at this time, when we're nearly approaching noon right now and we're recording, the traffic is nearly growing to its highest point.

As it goes later in the day, the traffic gets worse and worse. But if I'm driving at 4 a.m. from where I am in Hollywood to Marina del Rey or San Diego or wherever it is, I'll get there quicker. So the access point to calm your mind in the morning is much more prominent than it will be as the day gets busier. So that's one thing. We started our collective meditations at 4.30 till about 5.15. And from 5.15 to 7.15 was our individual meditations. From 7.15 till 8 was again collective meditations and 8 to 9 was a class kind of like this like a discussion and a Q&A and a conversation about these themes then from 9 a.m onwards up to breakfast our days were different but the point was every day you started by putting on your armor

you started by putting on your shield you You started by, you know, what you said, you don't just show up on fight day, Tanner, in your book that, you know, Daniel was mentioning. That's such a beautiful way to think about it because you don't even start the day before you put on your shield. And so half our day was self and the other half was service. And today in a lot of our lives, we're trying to spend a lot of our time trying to help people. But we haven't yet put our own shield on, we haven't yet put on our own armor, and therefore we get wounded very easily. I love this. I'm finding so many parallels to what you're saying, which is really interesting, because I'm a fighter, and you're a lover, obviously. You're a monk, and I'm a martial artist. But martial arts actually has roots in meditation and being

able to still your mind. Oh, for sure. So I've got a black belt in Taekwondo and a secondary degree black belt in Kenpo. And people will often say to me, well, like, that's so hard. Like, you must be so tough. And I'm like, I'm really not. I mean, I'm 120 pounds. I'm really not a tough person.

But we have a saying that I love, you know, black belt is just a white belt who shows up every day. It's like, I just showed up long enough. I finally put a belt on you. Right. Cause you train long enough. And you had so many parallels to how we train. Like, and I used to get up at four o'clock every morning. I sort of figured that out intuitively when I was a teenager, which is weird for a teenager. Um, but I was super anxious. And so I used to go to the gym. I would get up really early because no one else was awake yet. And

all the stuff couldn't start. People couldn't bother me. So I could go to the gym and get it done and then just start my day. Right. And so that time in the morning that is yours, you know, to exercise, to pray, to meditate, to really get your day started before everybody needs your time, before everybody's interfering with what you're doing is so important. I love what you're saying. Absolutely. And I fully agree with you. I love that, you know, your background in martial arts, because if you look at the Shaolin monks who are known to perform incredible feats, and I write about them in the book, if you look at their ability, their ability doesn't come from strength or just dealing with pain.

It comes from mind control. So when they looked at some studies, when they placed a, and Daniel will know far more about this than I do, but here I go trying to explain something to an expert. They had a plate almost like this that would gradually heat up on monks and non-meditators. And they found that when a non-meditator touched the plate and it gradually heated up, they would start to see physical pain in the brain, but also emotional and mental pain in the brain attached to that physical pain.

Whereas when they looked at the monk scans, they found that there was only a physical trigger in pain, but no emotional and mental pain attached to that physical pain. And so similarly, in martial arts, it's so much more about discipline. And there's a beautiful story, I'm sure you've told it's, it's a it's one of these old tales that I love telling, it's a martial arts story. And it's the story of a young karate kid who wants to be a karate kid and goes up to his sensei and says, I really want to learn karate in self-defense because I don't have a left arm because he's lost his left arm.

And the sensei says to him, sure, come back here tomorrow and we'll start training. They start training. And for the first seven days, they do the same thing every day. And the karate kid's going, what am I learning every day? The same thing. I keep paying this sensei. He doesn't say anything. And then they do the same thing? I keep paying this sensei. He doesn't say anything. And then they do the same thing again for the next week and the next week. And then after a month, the kid comes up to the sensei and says, we've learned the same thing every day. How is this helpful to me?

And the sensei says, well, you're ready for a tournament. And the kid's feeling completely insecure, going, how am I going to be useful in this tournament? They go to the karate tournament. The kid without a left arm is in the tournament. They start fighting and the kid now forgets all of his training and just tried to use his mind to manipulate the situation. And he loses every time. And he says, look, I'm losing. You haven't taught me enough. We've just been doing the same thing. And the center says, just do the thing I taught you. Just do that one thing. So he does that in the next game and he wins. He does

in the next one and he wins. He does in the next one and he wins. And so he goes up to the teacher afterwards, the sensei, and perplexed, he says, how is it that I am winning when I was losing in the beginning? And the sensei says, because if anyone wants to counteract that one move, they'd have to grab hold of your left hand. I love it. And you don't have one. So I taught you the only move that no one can counter. I love it.

And it's a beautiful story that I love sharing because it reminds us that sometimes in meditation or in our good habits, it's like Dr. Daniel Amen will keep saying every day, take this, do this, take this. You said the same thing every day. But the funny thing is, it's the day that you don't do it that you feel the lack.

And sometimes that's how we learn if habits are good for us. I know the difference. We all eat every day. You feel the difference when you don't eat. You don't notice it when you're eating every day. When you eat every day, you feel full every day and you don't realize what that sensation feels like. If you skip a meal or you skip a day of eating, you will feel different. And that's what good habits are like. You only feel their benefit when you stop doing them. Yeah. And likewise, for those of us that eat really clean,

when you don't eat clean, you feel it. We had to practice in our house. We practice gratitude when the when this pandemic first hit and we were out of town. I came home and I'm a sort of a prepper. So I had lots of stuff here. But I went to the store and all the stuff I would normally get was not there. So it's like, all right, well, we're eating bread and rice, I guess, because we don't normally eat that, right? So it's amazing how your gluten allergy, suddenly you're like, well, I'm going to deal with it. But it's interesting, because I really didn't feel like myself, I was very grateful. And we talked a lot about it in our house. It's like, you know, wartime rules are different than peacetime rules, you just do things differently.

And so we're going to be grateful for what we have. We have plenty. So we're going to be focusing on that. But I felt it. And so when I was able to get back to my normal routine, I really felt good. Like I was really grateful for that. So I really like what you're saying about that. We'll be right back. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode. And while you're at it, feel free to give us a review or five-star rating as that helps others find the podcast. If you're considering coming to Amen Clinics or trying some of the brain-healthy supplements from BrainMD, can use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or a 10% discount on all supplements at brainmdhealth.com. For more information, give us a call at 855-978-1363.