Change Your Brain Every Day - Why You Shouldn’t Solve All Your Problems, with Dr. John Townsend

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

According to Dr. John Townsend, the key to growth, whether it be for large companies or for a single individual, is the need to need. What this means is that we need to have others that we rely upon, that we need in order to achieve success. In the final episode with Dr. Townsend, he shares with Daniel and Tana Amen some of the ways that needing other people (certain types of other people!) can bring us closer to our goals.

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 are still with our friend, John Townsend. This has been such a powerful week, such an important week. I'm so excited about your book, People Fuel. Thank you, John, for being with us. Wow. The last episode, I just think, was so important, talking about responsibility for your own life, the ability to respond, not taking blame necessarily, but being able to be in your place of power. I just love it. And in this podcast, we're going to talk about resilience. Let's talk about how you bounce back from some of these things.

Some of us have been through a lot. So what about resilience? Well, before we do that, we would dearly love if you'd leave a question for us or a review on brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. And what's the one thing that you're going to take away from either this podcast or this week of podcasts with Dr. Townsend and post it on any of your social media sites and hashtag Brain Warriors Way podcast. We would just be so grateful. So this is what I think really floats your boat and my boat. It's not sort of treating mental illness. It's how to make people the best they can be. And people fuel just

contributes to that in a powerful way. So talk to us, John, on your thoughts about resilience. You mentioned making people the best. And that's why I'm so excited about a thing called optimization. Because when in our world, we call it pathologizing people. If all people think about it, their depression, their anxiety, their drugs, which you have to deal with, then they never get to the level of, I want to be optimized. I've got 12 cylinders in my head and I want to burn around the cylinders. It's about being the best you could design to be, not just solving the problems. You've got to do both. And resilience is a key part of that because there are setbacks.

There are going to be people that are going to let you down, and you're going to let yourself down. And when that happens, you've got to have some strategies in mind. What I always tell people is the first thing you've got to do, you have to evaluate the severity of the setback. If it's like, well, a guy flipped me off on the freeway and gave me a bad day, all right, okay, sorry about that. But that's like, well, like I flipped me off on the freeway and it gave me a bad day. All right. Okay.

Sorry about that. But that's not going to change your life. Unless you chase him. I've had patients who've chased them and ended up arrested. So if I would say that's about, yes, but, but then there's,

you know, somebody left me or I lost a lot of money or I had a big health thing or whatever. And somebody in my family went upside down. Those are really matters of gravitas. That means you've got to come to the conclusion, number one, I have evaluated that it's serious. You've got to evaluate it's serious. Number two, you've got to say, how much was me, how much was somebody else, and how much was the fact that the world doesn't work right?

I've got to parcel this out. I've got to own, we talked about it earlier in the podcast, I've got to own my part of change, maybe my attitude, maybe my behavior. I've got to call some people to task and either correct what went wrong or maybe they're not right for me. And thirdly, was it just some bad circumstance? Was it a disease or a tsunami or something like that? And I've just got to be sad and adapt to that.

That gives me some tools to deal with the problem itself. The next step, though, is I've got to realize I cannot solve all my problems on my own. I start the book off in people field. I said, talk about I was working with some leaders in a high-level strategic retreat. We went away to a cabin for a weekend. And I said, what do you guys need to be successful? They said, vision, alignment, strategy, resources, products. I said, great. Here's the other thing you need. to a cabin for a weekend and i said what do you guys need to be successful this is vision alignment strategy resources products great here's the other thing you need you need to need and they went what

do you mean i said you need to need they said we already told you what we needed we got the right retreat leader here what's wrong with you and i said you got to need each other and i don't mean need each other like give me a cup of sugar or let me borrow your car. That's what we call functional needs. You need to need other people inside you, people that you can trust. Like I'm watching you guys on this, on the video we're doing for your podcast, and you guys will touch each other's arms. It's kind of like I'm there for you, you're there for me. It's just a beautiful thing. You need a few people in your life to be that because life is too hard to go alone. So who do you find that can say, I can bear this with you? Because if I can bear this with you, I've still got to solve my own problem, but at least I've got support around me.

Those are how the resilient people sail right through. So sort of like a rising tide floats all boats. A rising tide floats all boats. Yeah, so you surround yourself with people who help you to rise. And then when it's their turn and they have a really crummy thing, you say, hey, let's go out and lunch because you were there for me. Right. It needs to be reciprocal. Yeah, I agree. I like that. Well, so you can categorize the people in your life and then fill in some of the deficits. So help move on. And for some of us, the needing part can be hard. If you've been through a lot where you became hard to trust people, maybe a background when you were a child or whatever, it's difficult to learn to trust

people. Maybe that's the work you need to do. And you, you know, John, your work has been so great in that area of like learning how to, you know, heal some of those broken relationships, but maybe that's your work is learning how to trust enough to need people again. Yeah. And the problem with that is you're going to have to take a risk to do that and it could go south. So you've got to be careful about how much they can handle. But my experience has been that once you're done with the crazies, most people feel honored for you to be vulnerable with them. And they'll go, you know, you helped me so much at our lunches and you helped me with my struggles. I feel honored that you even brought that out to me. And I'll hold that for you and I'll be there for you and I'll be confidential.

Most people feel like it's a sign of respect. So when you take the risk of something, they come away going, man, that was great. I thought that they would like reject me or gossip about me or judge me. And they just felt more, they felt more closer to me. I had a conversation like that this morning with somebody where I talked about a struggle I was going through. And they said, you know what? I feel like you're a better friend than I ever thought you were. So take a little risk and see what they do with it.

You know, I find one of the reasons that people struggle in relationships is they're conflict avoidant, and they have social anxiety. And so they tend to keep people around longer than they should because they recriminate themselves about the relationship rather than taking sort of an honest look. So I used to have a really hard time firing people. And when you're the CEO of a company that has 200 employees, not everybody fits. But if you're afraid because you don't want to be a bad boss,

you don't want to hurt someone else's feelings, you never want to be a source of negativity or pain for another person, it really can cause you as a leader to become frozen. And Byron Katie, one of our friends, when I had to let someone go, she goes, you didn't fire them, they fired themselves. And just learning how to manage the thoughts around relationships is just so important. I can give you a great skill for your listeners. If it's a scary conversation and you got to say something hard,

like either I'm going to let you go or our relationships, whatever. And it's a tough talk. The number one thing that I tell people to take people through is a role play i like it get together and you have the scary conversation kind of scripted out what my points are why i'm saying it what what the conclusion is and you feel all the anxiety when you're role playing like oh my gosh they're going to hate me or they're going to take a machete and cut my throat or whatever we're afraid of and then you get through and you go, whew, I survived that. And then you're much more equipped to go into the conversation and hold your own. Role plays are very powerful.

I like that. I like that a lot. What else? Final thoughts before we have to wrap up this week. You have just been such a treasure for us. Well, yeah, we are good. We're good partners here. Yeah. well yeah we we are good we're good partners here yeah i i have a model that i talk about when you said be all the best you can be it's three three steps all of us were designed to be fully none i mean sorry to be fully to be fully functional i want to be as helpful and and burn up my my my energy to do the right things by end of my life, on my tombstone, I don't want to say,

nice guy, he thought about himself a lot. That would kind of suck, right? I want to be fully functional, use everything. But to be fully functional, what the neuroscience says is I must be fully loved because love brings up the nutrients and the energy and the positivity and resilience me I gotta have people love me that's all good but the third one's hard and Tana just referred to it fully functional I mean I gotta be fully loved first but to be fully loved here's the hard part I've

got to be fully numb I've got to be fully known by not everybody a few people three to ten people, and they know the pain, they know the mistakes, they know the hurt, but I can trust them with me. See? That's how people grow. And so when I get fully known, then I know that I'm fully loved, then I can be fully functional. I don't want to go through life being two-thirds known because that makes me two-thirds loved, that makes me two-thirds functional. I don't want to go through life being two-thirds numb because that makes me two-thirds

loved. That makes me two-thirds functional. I want it all. So you've got to start there. I love that. I just want to say that that does come with a warning label. If it's a psychiatrist that you get involved with that fully knows you, they're going to push you way past your comfort zone. Pretty soon everybody's going to know you. One less scared child. Tana's in the middle of writing it. Well, John, we are so grateful for your time,

for your friendship, for your love. You are amazing. For your new book, for Boundaries, for all the work you do. How can people learn more about your work if they want to connect with you and your work? drtownsend.com, drtownsend.com, Daniel. It has everything about the Institute

if somebody wants an academic degree, but some people just want a professional training. We have a leadership group called Townsend Leadership where people can get into small groups with other high-level people and learn their EQ and learn their strategies. So we have both the professional end and the academic end. One of the things I love about retreats and courses like that is, and I've always had this, well, not always, since I went on this journey to heal my past and improve myself um just like we always talk about you become like the people you surround yourself with and magic

happens when you are with a group of people trying to work on something magic happens it's just amazing and just it doesn't happen in baby steps it's like it happens exponentially it's really cool two heads are better than one yeah Yeah. All right. Thank you, my friend. All right, guys. Take care. Bye-bye. 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, you 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.