Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Dr. John Ratey, Neuropsychiatry Expert

Episode Date: December 12, 2018

This week’s conversation is with bestselling author, Dr. John Ratey, an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized expert in Neuropsychiatry.He has published over 60 peer-reviewed articles, and 11 books published in 17 languages, including the groundbreaking ADD-ADHD “Driven to Distraction” series with Ned Hallowell.With the publication of "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," Dr. Ratey has established himself as one of the world's foremost authorities on the brain-fitness connection.His most recent book, “Go Wild” explores how we can achieve optimal physical and mental health by getting in touch with our caveman roots, and how we can “re-wild” our lives.Recognized by his peers as one of the Best Doctors in America since 1997, Dr. Ratey was recently honored by the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society as "Outstanding Psychiatrist of the Year" for advancing the field.John is an expert in human focus and especially in this day and age, it’s one of the most valuable skills we can train.For those of you who are longtime Finding Mastery listeners, you may have noticed a question I like to ask is: “Where do you feel it in your body?”That’s one of John’s favorite questions and it highlights what this conversation is really about: attention.It starts with paying attention to your internal states of arousal.We discuss how arousal states, motivations, and the prefrontal cortex all play a role in making someone an expert at focusing.Being skilled at focusing goes hand-in-hand with being present and John shares some of his strategies for being present more often.This conversation is rich with insight and I hope it makes you more aware of your triggers for focusing deeply. _________________Subscribe to our Youtube Channel for more powerful conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and meaning: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMasteryGet exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors! Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike's Morning Mindset Routine! https://www.findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow us on Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And that means you have to be really conscious of what you're doing. All right, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I'm Michael Gervais and by trade and training, I'm a sport and performance psychologist, which means that I've spent most of my life efforts working on the science and application of how people become their very best. And some of those people end up changing the way we understand what's possible. But the idea behind this conversation, behind this podcast, is to learn from those people, the most courageous doers and thinkers in the world, to understand how they've organized their internal life and their external world

to follow the path of mastery or to carve, in some cases, the path of mastery. So we want to understand their framework, how they understand the world, and we also want to understand the mental skills that they've used to build and refine their craft. Finding Mastery is brought to you by LinkedIn Sales Solutions. In any high-performing environment that I've been part of, from elite teams to executive boardrooms, one thing holds true. Meaningful relationships are at the center of sustained success. And building those relationships, it takes more than effort.

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And that's something here at Finding Mastery that our team lives and breathes by. If you're ready to start building stronger relationships that actually convert, try LinkedIn Sales Navigator for free for 60 days at linkedin.com slash deal. That's linkedin.com slash deal. For two full months for free, terms and conditions apply. Fighting Mastery is brought to you by David Protein. I'm pretty intentional about what I eat, and the majority of my nutrition comes from whole foods. And when I'm traveling or in between meals, on a demanding day certainly, I need something quick that will support the way that I feel and think and perform. And that's why I've been leaning on David Protein Bars.

And so has the team here at Finding Mastery. In fact, our GM, Stuart, he loves them so much. I just want to kind of quickly put him on the spot. Stuart, I know you're listening. I think you might be the reason that we're running out of these bars so quickly. They're incredible, Mike. I love them.

One a day. One a day. What do you mean one a day? There's way more than that happening here. Don't tell. Okay. All right. Look, they're incredibly simple.

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strength, but for energy and focus, recovery, for longevity. And I love that David is making that easier. So if you're trying to hit your daily protein goals with something seamless, I'd love for you to go check them out. Get a free variety pack, a $25 value and 10% off for life when you head to davidprotein.com slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash Mastery. This week's conversation is with bestselling author John Rady, medical doctor and associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an internationally recognized expert in neuropsychiatry. He's published over 60 peer-reviewed articles, so we're getting right to the essence of what science and the applied science from his lenses looks and feels like in this

conversation. 11 books in 17 languages and the groundbreaking book for me about focus and attention really centered on ADD and ADHD called Driven to Distraction. If you've been in the psychology world, you've definitely read it. And if not, I think it's something to definitely pay attention to. And he did that series with Ned Holloway, and he's also an MD as well. His most recent book, Go Wild, explores how we can achieve just optimization, physical and mental health, by getting in touch with our cave man and woman roots and how we can literally rewild ourselves. And he's recognized in the community as one of the best docs for a long time. He's really done some amazing work. And so I'm honored to introduce you to him and to really celebrate his genius. And he's just an expert on how people focus better, human focus.

And as we've talked about a lot in this podcast, is that focus is one of the key entry points into optimization. It's definitely part of the portal to flow state. It's definitely part of the makeup of high performance. And in modern times, we're competing with so many distractions that it's hard to train up and commit to a deeply focused way of living. So we get to talk about like body, brain, mind interactions. And if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I often ask, where do you feel that in your body? And that's one of John's favorite questions as well. And it's a perfect segue into what this conversation really is about. And so it's that connection between mind and body, emotions and body, emotions and mind, and all of the interactions

that take place internally that affect our external world. So this conversation is rich and he's got great insight and I hope it makes you more aware of your triggers and the strategies to help focus more deeply. And with that, let's jump right into this week's conversation with Dr. John Raiti. John. Hi. I'm so looking forward to this conversation. So am I. I've been looking forward to it since we met. I know. Okay. So here's like just kind of kicking it off. One of the things I'm most interested in. One is you're one of the rich and deep studiers of focus and distraction and attention. And it's one of the key characteristics for those who are able to excel in rugged, hostile, and even quiet moments. Focusing is what I'm talking about. So if it's one of the

key variables, that's what I've come to learn. My hope is, and by the way, Driven to Distraction was a game changer for me, one of your books. And so what I'm hoping is that you're going to take me further and take us further on understanding both, uh, just the, the, the neuro, the psychological and the biological components that help people explore potential. And if we reduce it down, help people understand how to focus better here and now, right. You know? And so, okay. So as as we get going where did your path start how did your path begin boy uh i think it really began when i was a junior in high school and i read crime and punishment dorset fc's crime and punishment and i said. Because I grew up as an athlete in western Pennsylvania where Joe Namath and Tony Dorsett and Mike Ditka and all those characters are from.

And everybody played every sport. And the idea was you did well enough in sports to get out of the area, to go to a good college and get an athletic scholarship. So anyway, I happened to land on tennis, and I became a ranked tennis player in the East. You say you landed on it. Well, I played everything. But we also started to play tennis, me and my buddy Joe. And how old?

Well, when we were 12. We picked up when we were 12. But see, we were from the other side of the tracks and everybody else was country clubbers. And so when we went to play at a match, we got pretty good very quickly. Why is that? Why is that? What? Why?

Why? Okay. So how did being on the other side of the tracks help you get good quickly? Because we weren't going to lose. You know, we weren't going to lose. You had that, you know, no one was going to beat us. And we had some fire. And we said, we got to get it.

We got to go for it. Where did you get that from? Where did that come from? I think it was just the environment I grew up in. You know, I mean, it wasn't kill or be killed. But it was like, try as hard as you can because you're going to, otherwise you're going to work in the steel mill. Okay. You know, and that's because that was when the mills were burning, you know, I mean, really, really flying.

Did you have family? Yeah, yeah, yeah. My dad was a blue collar worker and my mother was a housewife, but also had jobs and stuff. And so, yeah, it was like we were the poor kids who played with the rich kids eventually. In our little town, it wasn't so much that. But when we played, we were 30 miles from Pittsburgh. And we went up to Pittsburgh to play all the kids from Mount Lebanon and really she-she places, you know, and they had the great strokes, but we weren't going to lose. And we got ranked number one in the East when we were 16 in doubles.

And I was number six in singles. My Joe was number one in singles. And we shouldn't have been. I mean, we never had a lesson by that time. And everybody else knew how to serve and had pros and all that. And so that really propelled me into athletics and into sort of traveling around the country. I went to the Nationals. And we got through a round in the Nationals

and then met the top seeds from California, Bobby Lutz's brother, Donnie Lutz, and Alberto Carrero were the top seed. And we got on the court with them and didn't get a point. You know, they were practicing their serves. They limited the Californians, by the way, at that time to 16 people, 16 Californians in any of the big tournaments because they'd win them. Yeah, it's a hotbed in California. Yeah, it is a hotbed. Bring us back to a point in time that you remember feeling that fire, even though across the net were people that had better strokes, that were more skilled than you. Is there a particular game or match or event?

Oh, yeah. The Louisville Boat Club. Can you believe that? I forget. Louisville Boat Club Invitational. Okay. It was a really high society it's 16 16 and I was playing Peyton Watson from North Carolina and he was ranked and he had the nicest strokes and

the ease and overhead and everything and I was just said I'm not gonna I'm not gonna lose this I ended up losing but it was really close and And I, it, it, it, it was something that he wasn't expecting and nor were, nor was I. What, where do you feel that in your body? Like when you talk about that fire and that fight, you know, is there a particular, how do you capture that inside? And it's, it's in my, it's in my stomach and in my chest. I think that's really where it is. And that is, you know, where it starts. And it's like the whole being is there, coalesced around it. Is there shape? Is there size?

Is there anything in particular about it that's unique to you? Unique to me? I think, you know, as I say, the steel mills were on fire. And so we would be driving along and there'd be fire flying out of the steel mills all the time. And that's what I felt inside. I mean, I felt that fire, you know. And then, you know, I played football and I was a skinny little kid and slow of foot. And so I held the dummies, you know.

I was a scrub, you know, with these guys who were, but I was not going to be beaten. I mean, I was going to not be knocked over and we did summer practice two days and running up the hill on the side and trying to trying to make the team okay so if we go from 12 to 16 and now fast forward xx number of years and you're no longer competing athletically the way you once did. And now you've understood deeply about focus and attention and the brain and behavior and psychology. What, what looking back, what could you tell somebody to help their child or to help a coworker or to help themselves how to tap into fire, how to tap into that thing that has propelled you probably to stay, you know, grinding and really fighting, whether it's as an academician or wherever.

Right. Well, what I can say is to find very big on the mission. Get the right mission and find what that is no matter what you where you're at no matter how distraught you are and for a child to find something that they really want and really really will put all their heart and soul into and that that and doing one just just finishing one thing you know it reminds me of the billy crystal movie the where the guy says find the one thing and if you find that one thing you know it reminds me of the billy crystal movie the where the guy says find the one thing and if you find that one thing and go for it and you've completed that develops a feeling of self-efficacy confidence that you can do it it doesn't matter how small it is or how insignificant it might seem to other people but if it's something that you want to do and that you feel that you have to

work at to get it, then you develop a feeling of the, of the, you can do it. You know, that resonates with me so much more than that, you know, trite statement, help somebody find what they love. Okay. I get that. Right. However, a sharper point to that is help somebody connect to a mission and to be mission minded about whatever it is that they think could happen possibly later. Is it right? No, no, you're right on the right, right there. And, and then, you know, help them maybe if we're thinking children or coworkers or self even is to get really clear about what are the things I need to work at. Right.

Are we on the. Yeah. No, exactly. And make it something that's not just easy. It demands attention, basically. It demands focus. Like, for instance, basically. It demands focus. Like, for instance, okay, I went, I was, after college, I went to Boston, and I happened to, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I happened to get a job at Harvard Medical School.

I didn't know it. Didn't know it. And I just got a job at their psychiatric hospital as a psychiatric attendant. How old? 22. So this was right out of college? Right out of college. And it was like Athens.

I mean, it was amazing. All the greats in psychiatry were there. And I got to interact with them. And I fell in love with psychiatry because I had to take my pre-med courses and all that to get into medical school. And, but I was on a mission to then come back and do my training there. That's where, that's what I wanted. And your first question, where did I feel it? Was what our leader, our, the iconic leader of Mass Mental Health Center was a guy named elvin samarit and he was

he was like the boss of or the the leader of boston psychoanalytic institute but also the kind of person that everybody emulated and wanted to be like and he had a way of interacting with people to get to know where did you feel it in your body. The schizophrenics, I mean, as regressed and as out of it as some of these people, that he would be able to touch them, be able to figure out, to get them to connect, you see, beyond all their crazy uh ideas and all and he would somehow by he had a uh forget what it was called but it was like a uh a scan of your body where do you feel it where do you feel the pain where do you feel the love where do you feel and it was amazing. Yeah. I'm right there with you. The idea that,

so take like this intellectual concept and then apply it. And I want to know how, what I just heard you say is that he valued having people feel or be connected to their body, whether they're in pain or maybe now we could put another frame on it and say, if they're searching or hunting for excellence, like the still alignment and connectivity is important. So one of the things that intellectually is that alignment of thoughts, words, and actions, right? That concept, very Buddhist, if you will, but also really important for performance, right? Connecting those three and that alignment is where some amazing things take place. So a simple question I've found, and I'd love if you could decode this a little bit,

a simple question like, do you notice where you feel that right now? Just that simple question. And then it almost forces some sort of internalization to connect, right? And then what? And the big thing was for being a psychiatrist or being a human that wants to connect right and then what now and the big thing was for in being a psychiatrist or being a human that wants to connect to the other person is that they know you're interested in that they know you're interested in what where you feel it godless because it's unique to you yeah but they want to know your your first question where did i feel it you really wanted to know whether you know it was in my gut in my head in my heart you know i mean you you really that's empathy you know like you really wanted to connect with me so that's that's what my whole career has sort of been

based on oh cool which is the connection your Yeah, there you go. Okay. So if you put your science hat on for just a moment, because we got to go back to age 18 in a minute, right? Because we got to 16 when I get to 17, 18. But if you put your science hat on for a minute, what's happening when somebody does a scan and they find out where they're feeling something or get more clear where they're feeling something? So I get the connection between the two people, but what is the interconnection? What are the mechanics or mechanisms happening there? Well, first, you know, I mean, it's, it's sort of, it's more the feeling states and where that is in the brain, who now knows, but it's...

Well, you're supposed to. No, no, you don't know. We don't know. But you're scanning and it's important. Okay, it's valuable because you want to know and I want to know to be able to communicate with you and you really want to know where that is. So I'm really attending to my own body in a way that I might not. And a lot of these people with ADD just never pay attention to the way they're feeling. They just go for it.

And so that's one of the things that we know, that if you bring them back to themselves, what they're doing, how they're acting, and how they're feeling, and that that's important, then they begin to scan themselves and get more, hopefully more juice out of it. Okay. So that, that level of awareness is to facilitate some sort of insight. Okay. And I'd love if you can chin check this model a little bit, which is if you think of an X, Y axis, right? And at any given point in time, you can focus on internally or you could focus externally. Let's call that the horizontal axis. Externally, I'm sorry, internally or externally. And so this question is about internal focus.

You can also focus at any given point in time in a broad capacity or narrow capacity. Okay, so I'm borrowing this thought from the research of Dr. Bob Nidafer or Robert Nidafer. Does that seem right to you, that there's those four quadrants? Or is it more complicated? Are there more nuances in your understanding boy i'd like to be able to divide up the world like that it it would be nice i mean it's just like you know all my studies of the brain and understanding and everything i mean you're you're you're just humbled. I can't say that I divide the world up like that. I just don't. Okay.

You know, so because, you know, your internal feeling is going to drive your attention, you know, and that's one thing we know i mean the the motivation is huge with attention right you know it's it's 1986 the arousal motivation and executive function are all part of the attention system so and i'm sorry i'm getting technical here right away but it's no no let's let's let's let's pull this apart and and you know and and i've been there all the way through this 60s and 70s it was about arousal it was about you know what we used to think of the it was the ADD kids were bouncing off the wall to keep themselves awake. Right. Then in the 90s, people were saying, oh, it's a motivational deficit disorder, meaning it was a biologic kind of motivation.

And then it became all up in the frontal cortex because we had fancy scans and we could see things. But we know that it's all the way through. I mean, it has to be arousal. It has to be motivation. And then you turn on the attention system. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team, raising a family, pushing physical limits, or simply trying to be better today than you were yesterday. What you put in your body matters. And that's why I trust Momentus. From the moment I sat down with Jeff Byers, their co-founder and CEO, I could tell this was not your average supplement company. And I was immediately drawn to their mission, helping people achieve performance for

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Appropriate or paying attention to the arousal state. Yes. Is that right? That's right. Being connected to the motivation that they are desirous of. Is that the right way to say it? They want that it's going to turn them on, whether it be to avoid the sort of Damocles, you know, the pain. Right.

For not finishing or not doing well, or to get the reward, whatever that might be. And then that turns on our, what's called our frontal executive, or it turns on our highest part of our brain and okay so okay which is the prefrontal cortex prefrontal cortex okay so all right i love this because help me think through this if you would be so kind is that i'm going to oversimplify something but i'd love to hear how you respond to it which is that there's two primary orientations in life. And this is more from a sport perspective that I, I tripped into. However, I think it applies to most people. And anytime somebody starts to simplify things too much, I start to go, Oh boy, you know, like this can't be accurate, but see if you can like, um, help with this. Either we're approaching success or avoiding failure.

Those are two different things, yes. They are different. For me, they feel fun. Either I'm going for it and I've got that fire that you talked about. Or you're being defensive. Right. Or I'm protecting. Yeah, you're protecting.

Yeah, and they're very different. And that's what I said. I've had support to go for things. Okay, okay. Unpack that. You've had support. You know, to go on the offensive. You know, not just worrying about the offensive.

Is that the family structure that supported you? It was partly family, but then it was professors. Then it was people that I admired. Do you think, I think I have the same thing. Do you think that you're wired to hear that? Because there were some people that told you, hey, be careful. But for some reason you didn't hear it. You heard somebody say, hey, John, I think you could do that.

Why don't you go for it? Come on, fight now. Yeah, exactly. Do you think you were genetically pred what'd you go for come on fight now yeah yeah exactly do you think you were genetically predisposed or there was just an early family environment in a way it's my brain too you know it's having add is like because i i i i all overemphasize the positive just in general you tend to yeah and so and i you know a little bit of hypomania or whatever you want to call it but it's like okay you can go for it and then to have people who i admired my icons my models for and in psychiatry i'm specifically, to have a few of them really sort of push me.

I never forget, two of my heroes in psychiatry were two of the busiest guys in the world, you know, professors at Harvard, when I was just a little scrub, you know. And I had a paper that I wrote, and I gave it to the one guy, and he got it back to me the next day with comments and the next and then I had another paper of a different variety and gave it to another

the more scientific guy and I got it back the next day that was like wow because I would have never I would have you know put it on the shelf or put it on you know and and so i always remember that and i try to do that to be generative to to somebody comes up with an idea or something and i'll i'll try to address it that day wow yeah oh my gosh i mean you talk about you talk about like okay you're valuable jeez yeah i mean even if it was a piece of crap, you know, I mean, they were looking at it and they knew that I cared about it and I wanted their opinion. And my God, the next day, you know, these guys were doing millions of things. that action taking action is has when other people take action to support you to go for it is that has that been more impactful than people saying hey john i see something in you you can go for it like just words oh yeah no it's certainly somebody who acts for you or who provides a way

or just like like that that those are the two important launch points for me that i that i remember so keenly right because i never thought they would get to it you know i mean it's just amazing and then you internalize that somehow that if they did that i must be important yes exactly i must matter to them right i'm what i I wrote and what I say might have some meaning, you know, might have some weight. What would you have done if they didn't get it back to you? Would you have still said, well, I matter. They must be busy. I'm trying to get like Locus now.

I would have continued. Okay. Because I was on a mission already. Isn't that good how that all ties together? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that just boosts, and. Isn't that good how that all ties together? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that just boosts, man.

That just boosts. Okay. So let's play that out though. Now this is about your model, right? You've got this model about them, that they're busy and doing some amazing things and they got right back to you. So you said, I must matter. Yes.

And then if it didn't come back to you, would you say, would you externalize it and say, they must be busy? Yeah. Is that how you would do it? Yes. Absolutely. Yes. And then if it didn't come back to you, would you say, would you externalize it and say they must be busy? Is that how you would do it? Yes, absolutely. Okay. Did someone teach you that, that that's how you make sense of the world, which you know what we're doing, right? Like locus of control and is it internal? Is it external? No, I think, I think, I think that evolves over time. It's not somebody saying it. It evolves over time that, you know, like, for instance, I think my success in tennis and getting tennis scholarships and doing that, I mean, making my way out of there, out of where I grew up in Beaver, Pennsylvania,

you know, making my way out was really key and, and, and paying my own way through college because my parents didn't have any money in doing all that stuff. And it just, I can do it. I just, I just did it. When you look back, what shaped you to believe that you could be different than almost everyone else around you who went to work with to the mills? Like what it just like, if you pull that back a little bit what do you think was the predominant force in that process well i think the models that i had uh uh my brother was seven years older than i was or six years old seven years older than I was, or six years older, seven years older than I was, he was quarterback on the Beaver High School football team.

Okay. As a senior, he was number one all-star. Number two all-star from Beaver Falls High School, who was a junior, was Joe Namath. Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. Yeah. Wow, that's pretty cool.

So what happened to your brother? My brother went to the Coast Guard Academy because Otto Graham was coming from the Cleveland Browns. Wait a minute. How did your brother get into the Coast Guard Academy? He was going to go to Annapolis. Back then, back when he was applying for school it's one of the toughest it was ivy league or the or the academies i mean that was really that's right that was those were the tops it's like i think now like a few people i know that have gone to naval academies like they almost or coast guard is they need like congressional letters yeah well no but he

but he was a big star see so that oh so they you you get a little bit of a push from everybody to you know the congressman and all that so uh that was his way but but it was always about you know grit and and and pushing himself to do it so okay where did that come from i'm trying to get the family well but again i think it i think it was both my mom and dad but more my mom who was you know i mean you can't believe this but she at the age of 11 she grew up on top of a coal mine okay okay, and was the first oldest girl of, like, nine kids. And she was sent away at the age of 11 to work as a kitchen maid far away in Pittsburgh, which was then probably a four-hour journey.

Wow. And then came back and was sent away again to work as another kitchen maid in New Jersey, which was really far away, you know, before the highways, big roads, you know. And so when she came back, she was in New York for a while in a shirt factory, came back home, and she was already a veteran of New York city at the age of 16. So, so you talk about grit. She had it. It was like, you know, she just was, she knew she could do it. Did she, did she do well with that experience? Cause now that would be like child abuse or something. No, no. She do well. certainly she had she had there are reasons for it that i won't

go into but it okay it uh uh it was more protective for her mom to send her away to uh-oh okay yeah so this was a better choice yeah well in a way yeah and not because of anything my mom just because circumstances of the environment okay yeah and so did your mom come to learn that she shared that with you i think she focused on the lack of then having a childhood you know i mean it more but she also knew that it was for a reason it wasn't just to earn money although that was part of it back then this is pre-depression um and uh but that that kind of grit was always there got it okay and then so you got out of high school and you're pretty good at tennis you understood some basic stuff which is how to work hard how to access that fire in your chest and in

your body and you yeah so working hard and have that fire and then you had a role model above you that was really good and you saw that there was possibility. Okay. And then straight out of high school, then what happens? Well, that's what I said. I read Dostoevsky's crime and punishment and I decided I was going to be a philosopher. This is back in the late sixties. Did you say Tulsky? Which philosopher did you say? Dostoevsky. You know, Crime and Punishment. Yes. Okay. So I was reading philosophy in my

senior year in high school in Beaver, Pennsylvania, which no one else was. I mean, they just didn't do that. Was there a particular thought in that reading that captured your attention? It wasn't a spot. It was the idea that somebody wrote something so intensely about the human experience. Okay. That's what got me. And I said, oh, my God. So I started, I hadn't been much of a reader up until that point. And so I just went right into reading like crazy.

And so I was going to be a philosopher and teach philosophy. Again, remember, this is in 65, you know, right before the Beatles and the big change. Come on. It was really dynamic. Anything can happen and you can do anything. You know, all that was there. That was what I grew up in so yeah so it was more it was also the the environment of change were there any other philosophers that got your attention well no but so i i started to i started to read the greeks

in high school you know and so plato Plato, Aristotle, but Plato was like, wow, because I didn't think people thought like this. You know, the things that you and I are talking about now, we're going to get more into. We've been talking about this for 2000 years. Yes, exactly. It's crazy. Yeah, it's really wild. Exactly.

It's amazing. And then I said, wow, the richness of like everything from uh plato and socrates and the socratic method yeah you know that's what you and i are doing right now right yeah right and then all the way through like some of the the mystics and then uh you know the stoics and like and then john stewart mill and you know there's just some amazing thought leaders. No, it's amazing. So I just was so addicted to this whole thing. And I chose the college I went to, Colgate, which had a reputation of being the best philosophy department in the country. Is that what your degree was in? Yeah, philosophy and religion.

That's PNR. It was called PNR. Yeah, that was my minor was in? Yeah, philosophy and religion. That's PNR. It was called PNR. Yeah, that was my minor. Yeah. Yeah, philosophy and world religion. Yeah. Well, that's what I wrote my senior thesis on the Majimika scriptures. Oh, you did?

Yeah. Oh, my God. I knew there was a nice synergy between us. That's great. And I lived as a Zen monk for a month with the zen master from kyoto this is in 1970 so it was before from maharishi before what before the maharishi and all you know we were into that because i don't know what that is the maharishi oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah before he really took hold with the beatles and all that You know, it was, it, so, but we had a professor of religion and philosophy there who was really into world religions.

And it just was unbelievable. You know, I'm having this thought that, so you were deep into thinking and thinking about thinking and the human condition and then fast forward x number of years and you're a psychiatrist that has a deep interest in understanding of brain which is you know like it's so concrete and so elusive is my at least my experience in it and so you went from the squishiness right what's the word? Squishy. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Perfect analysis of me. Okay, so here's what happened.

Okay. So when I was at Harvard as an attendant, a psychiatric attendant. I love that you started that, that you didn't really even know what Harvard was special about. I had no idea. I just happened to go in and go for an interview. Oh, my God? I had no idea. I just happened to, I just happened to go in and go for an interview. Oh my God. I had no idea. None. I really had none. Uh, and, uh, it could have been some other place that I would have taken a night shift, you know, I mean, honestly. So, uh, anyway, so luck, luck has played a big part, obviously, in our lives. I mean, you know.

So the squishiness from theory. Thanks for bringing me back. Okay, squishiness. So while I was there, biological psychiatry was just getting born. Okay, because at my hospital, we were the first ones to use antipsychotics. I mean, it was really the leader.

We were the first one to bring in lithium into the country. Previous to that, people were using LSD and walking around the halls with LSD. You were part of that train, that experimental stuff? No, no, no. That was the tradition in the Mass Mental Health Center. In other words, that had been three or four years before my time. I was only there for a year first. But I saw this. I had the first patient getting lithium in the US. I was there. It was on my unit. I was taking care of him. And I saw the magic. But I was still much more interested in becoming a psychoanalyst. So, because that's what everybody, that's what graduate psychiatrists did. That's what everybody did in 1970. And so, but I said, Jesus, I better get this biology down. So when I went to medical school, I said, I'm going to learn all the neurology, all the neuroscience. And I took neuropathology.

I almost became a neurosurgeon because I took so much of it. I loved it. I did research. I had three papers when I came out of medical school. Okay, that's amazing. One on offsprings of schizophrenics, because I was joined a big study before I entered, before school began. I went and joined up with a professor because they gave us a whole sheet of who was doing what. And this guy was studying offsprings of schizophrenics and really elaborate, lots of money because it was pre-Nixon. And, you know, there was a lot of money to study stuff.

And so he had a very elaborate lab. And we discovered that black babies had 10 beats per minute more than white babies at the third day of life. Who knew why? And so we could hypothesize, but we got it published in the biggest journal in child psychiatry. I even forget, but it was a significant finding. Wow. Yeah, I've never even heard of that. Yeah, I know. I mean, you know, it's, yeah.

And so. Is that objective finding still the case? I mean, we had 100 each. Oh, you did. We had huge numbers. Yeah, that is big. Wow. Okay.

It's true. Just like, not the. It doesn't mean, what does it mean? Who knows? Yeah. I mean, it means their their parasympathetic probably isn't developed as developed as the caucasian uh at birth it doesn't mean anything but it could be uh related to their proneness to get parkinson's

disease and not to get um cystic fibrosis. I mean, those are the two things that I, because I read everything. I was so enamored. And then I had worked on lithium at the Red Cell, lithium uptake, and I wrote a paper. If there was a, so lithium is primarily used for. Manic depressive. Yeah, like for mood stabilization right and if there was a i've never even thought about this but what would be a counterintuitive use for lithium

to aid or facilitate performance could there be such a thing no it because it it really slows the thinking a bit. It also is something that a little bit may be protective against the cell damage as we age. So some people have suggested taking a little bit of lithium. Everybody. Really? Yeah. And just because of what its action is, it may be protective. But I never did and never would. But, you know, but it can.

I mean, for people that are ferociously aggressive, it's it's the number one treatment. I mean, unless being ferociously aggressive facilitates great performance. Which I know I'm talking to. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Okay. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep.

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and then um you fell in love with learning more of the mechanical parts of the brain and the biochemistry or not even the biochemistry you see see, I wanted to have that in my back pocket. I thought I could. Do you have it? I was going to say, I don't know anyone that has it down. Yeah. Oh my goodness. What are some things now? So now let's tie this into focus. What are you coming to understand about focus now? Maybe we can just kind of dive into your, your work for driven to distraction. One of your books. Yeah. Game changer. Yeah, that was a big game changer. Okay, so I was an athlete. I came to Boston right in the middle, back to Boston from the University of Pittsburgh

Medical School. And I came back to, I got into the residency at Mass Meno. And everybody was running. It was Marathon City because of the Bill Rogers and the Boston Marathon was just booming. And everybody, literally 60% of my classmates were running. Okay. And they never had run before, a lot of them.

And so everybody was into that. So the big game changer for me was this one patient who was a MacArthur fellow, had been a Harvard junior fellow, which there's like four a year, which means you come to Harvard and you do whatever the hell you want, and they pay for you forever if you want. And they just, it's like, yeah. And he's eventually a MacArthur fellow. Well, anyway, he had a position.

He was a professor both at MIT and at Harvard. And he heard me. I was already interested in ADD because I was seeing. Anyway, I had seen kids being taken off their Ritalin, basically, when they were 16, because at that time people felt, after 16, you'll use it as a substance abuse. It'll be an abusive substance. So they took people off of it. They really did. Right.

I mean, this was true. So I was beginning to see this in the hospital, these weird cases that no one could control, and putting them on Ritalin and it could help. And so I was beginning to talk about it a lot. And I went to this cocktail party and I was talking to it and this guy heard me and he said, can I come and see you? So here's his story. He had been an athlete, a marathoner all of his life, all of his life. He had started running when he was a kid, ran cross country and then started doing marathons, was a member of the Boston Athletic Association running team.

You know, I mean, and was down to the seconds for his miles, you know, that kind of thing. And he got hurt. He hurt his knee. So he had to stop running. And he got depressed. He came to me. His depression got better. Came to me after that. And he said, I think I have adult onset ADD. I said, he said, I've never been like this. I can't get started. I procrastinate. I don't answer the phone. I forget things. I'm rude. I'm mean to people. And I don't, you know, I'm going to lose my girlfriend because, you know, it's like never happened before. And, and a big part of that was that he wasn't moving. Self-medicating through exercise. Absolutely. So that, and this is 1981. Got it. Cause that's a really common thought now. Yeah. Yeah. Common thought now. Yeah. Pretty much based on your work. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. Because that's a really common thought now. Yeah, yeah. Common thought now. Yeah, pretty much based on your work.

Yeah. Yeah. So it was really like, oh, my God. You know, I mean, here's this MacArthur fellow because they were like, you know, unbelievable heroes. And he couldn't produce anymore because he wasn't running. So that led me into both the ADD, which was huge. Obviously, it was so big in my life. And also a passion and awareness of how exercise might play a role in mental health and in our health in general. And if you did a quick synopsis, what are some

of those solid findings or thoughts that you have about attention for performance and attention for health? What are some of those basic pillars? Well, attention for performance is, to perform well, you really have to have attention. I mean, there's just no way around it. And that means you have to be really conscious of what you're doing. Now, I wrote a book, User's Guide to the Brain, and I have a whole section, a whole chapter on attention and consciousness. And Francis Crick became a neuroscientist after he got his nobel prize for the discovering the double helix just they all do they all they'll become neuroscientists

and then they end up their career writing a book on creativity it's amazing it's amazing how many people did that well you know yeah it it is an interesting finding isn't it and then and then i want to get to spark one of your other books in a minute because I think there's a nice bridge here. But that thought is really captivating to me because it's like they went deep into mechanics of something and then they go as far as they possibly can. But to do that, what they end up writing about is the creative process. Right. about is the creative process, right? Because once you acquire a said amount of knowledge and information and understanding of craft, whether you are a tennis player or a basketball player or an executive or an entrepreneur, it's not the knowledge. But for me, at least it's, that's a

requisite. That's like a prerequisite. You have to have it. However, it's, there's a difference between, I'd love for you to riff on this. There's a difference between the Beatles and the Beatles cover band. The Beatles cover band play the Beatles music. The Beatles, they can play all the chords when they only play like four chords or whatever the joke is. However, they innovated and created, which is the separation between those that can just play what others play. It just sent chills through my body, just like the Beatles, you know, because they were the game changer for our lives in the late 60s.

It was just amazing with Sgt. Peppers. And it's just like, whoa, a whole new way of thinking. So it was probably their energy, the four of them together that that really made it. Paul being more narcissistic than and or maybe John was. I don't know. But I mean, they, you know, working together and having their push, pushing each other forward and George being a little crazy and, and Ringo being just Ringo. And, you know, I mean,

probably stabilizing everybody. Right. Right. Yeah. And then, so that allowed the creative juices to flow and it just, they just flowed. And then they,

you know, they got the long hair and they got all the adulation and they had all the money in the world, but that, so they had that covered and then they could just go with it. So they had the mechanics and this is true, I think across any craft mechanics are important. And then how we acquire mechanics. See, I've got so many questions for you. The way that we acquire mechanics, I think is really important as well. So there's formal and structural learning, right? Whatever that is like do a, to get B.

And then once you get B, do B a lot to get to C. And what, like if we break it down, free throw shooting, like keep, keep your, tuck your elbow in and snap your wrist, you know, extend and then snap your wrist and leave it at one o'clock and then do that a thousand times. And you'll get better at the mechanics. But some people don't learn that way. And they have this other thing. It's not formal instruction, but it's guided discovery. And the idea of guided discovery is like you figure it out on your own. And that figuring it out is a rapid trial and error process, which is no different than failing fast, failing forward, failing frequently, all of the kind of buzzwords now

in entrepreneurship and business. But it really is in that guided discovery. What I've come to understand is that people learn as many different angles. It's like a requirement. They learn to see something from many different points of view because elbow out didn't work with consistency. Elbow in did. But sometimes a little bit elbow out is good for me, even though everyone else is telling me keep my elbow in.

So it's like that innovative process to come under to understand the mechanics is interesting. Yes. Yes. And what you're saying about seeing from all these different angles. I mean, that's that's that in medical school. I was studying the brain, but, you know, and I was learning about the brain, but I learned about everything, including the endocrine system and endocrinology and how that affected the brain and how that affected. And it just was like, oh my God, there's so much. And it was just like amazing, you know, to, so it was all these different points and that's the way it is now

today, you know, it's, and. And so what did I land on? I land on chaos theory and complexity. And I became a reader of that and looking for complexity everywhere and fascinated with this whole, you know. And I was right. When I was seeing patients, I saw some of the MIT people that had been at the beginning of the chaos theory with the weather. You're right on that. Oh, man.

It was amazing. For some folks that aren't familiar with chaos theory, can you? Yeah. The difference between Newtonian theory and chaos theory is that Newtonian is A plus B equals C. With complexity theory, there are millions of factors that make C. And A plus B equals C doesn't work because there's too much going on. And you have to know about what we call initial conditions and and then see where the one change and their big thing is saying a butterfly flapping its wing in japan might cause a thunderstorm in

the united states you know because it shifts the wind and so forth and so on so there's so much going on and and and that's the way best way to understand the brain and uh oh so you took chaos theory into the brain oh yeah oh you did oh yeah yeah because so that's how best way to understand the brain. Oh, so you took chaos theory into the brain. Oh, yeah. Oh, you did. Oh, yeah. So that's how you see the brain, right? There's so many.

There's too much. There's so much. I mean, it's not mechanistic. I mean, it can be in all of our medicine. But look, I just taught in the Masters of Psychopharmacology course for Harvard, 750 psychiatrists. And everybody was saying, there's been nothing new in 30 years, you know. And anything that we have done has mainly been serendipity in psychopharmacology. It's all been, you know, oh, we didn't think it was going to work like this.

Or we didn't even know it had an effect like this, you know, but it does. And then we try to explain it. Like today, we call them SSRIs, right? Prozac-like drugs. Serotonin, selective serotonin reuptake. Reuptake inhibitor. But is it, are we increasing serotonin levels? We don't know. Let's go back to chaos theory. And then I want to pull out a thread of first principle in a moment. And I'm wondering if both of those... So first principle is an idea that it's not about deduction. It's about trying to get to the first true principle. And that's very much a philosophical approach to understanding information. So nothing wrong with deductive or inductive reasoning, but how do we get to the first principle?

And that's what I've come to understand, the value of Socratic method, which is a particular way of asking questions to try to get down to the very basic principle, which is if all men, um, gosh, I'm blanking on the logic statement to get to, if all men are blue and John is a man, then John is blue. Right. So we've got to get to that first principle. Right. I don't know where that blue came in, but whatever. Yeah. Okay. So, so chaos theory is how you understand the brain. And then are you working to try to find first principles or are you working just to understand the nuances and complication of chaos? Well, I think certainly the first principle today is genetics and the proteomics, you know, the proteins that are made from the genes and measuring those. You know, I mean, it's just like that's where it's at.

You know, it's been that way since, you know, for 15 years because genes are one thing, but then what genes are turned on, how much they're turned on epigenetics, all that kind of stuff. So that's where it gets chaotic. Right. And, and what affects it? Is it the cheese you ate yesterday or is it the cheese or your grandmother? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And now we think we've seen genetic changes passed on in one generation, which is wild, because we think of genetic changes as being glacial speed, really moving very slowly. slowly and that's um but there's all all this learning is just exploding around us with all this amazing stuff that we're we're learning about how the gene how are the gene functions but all the brain functions um and how we turn on certain genes to make certain stuff to help our brains work better. And are there any very, do you have very practical and applied strategies or ideas or things that people can do to facilitate better focus, better passion and fire?

Like, are there some really concrete things based on all of the chaos and the confusion that you've studied so i've come back to what's what some people have called evolutionary mandates this is your new book right yeah yeah this is go wild but that's i didn't didn't even have that phrase and somebody just recently i'm working with is said well you you gave us the evolutionary mandates, you know, from Go Wild, meaning that our genes are saying do this. Genes are saying eat correctly. Okay. So diet is really important. And we're learning so much about that.

It's so incredible. Now that we have the microbiome, that's the new undiscovered universe. The second brain. Yeah. And more than that, just like we have no idea what to do with that. And people are selling probiotics like crazy. Yeah, that's exactly where I was going. Oh, my God.

Are you recommending probiotics? No. You're not? No, I have no idea. We are at the very, very, not even at the first step of knowing about that. You know, and even the, you know, you ask the gastroenterologist, you know, about it, and they're just, yeah, it's really important. And two years ago, we had a bunch of gastroenterologists come to our week-long CME course for psychiatrists, okay, because they wanted to learn. You know, these are gastroenterologists, and they really were interested because they know that the gut is really so important for control of the moods and all that, and they wanted to get sharp on that.

I love it. Okay, so let's get into practical stuff right now. Okay, so eating. Okay, eating is so important, especially because we're also, the new buzzword has been for 10 years is inflammation in the body and in the brain. Right, right.

Okay, so, and that is all about microbiome and what we eat. And we know that sugar and starch cause a lot more inflammation than we ever thought before. And that we know that our diets are heavily based on sugar and starch. And we have to change that. Is there a difference between, for that internal response is there a difference between refined sugar meaning like candy and fruit fruit is you that's why people recommend limiting the blueberries you eat even though blueberries have good stuff in them it also has

a lot of sugar and and the content and the answer is no there's no difference there's no difference so you still except you get a little bit of fiber yeah yeah well that's the big thing and that's the same way with people saying uh what was it called the whole grains you know i woke up one morning and told alicia i'm i'm done with whole grains. Meaning, I said, I'm done with rap. I'm done with whole grains. Wait, wait. You used to like rap music? No, no.

Yeah, OK. Yeah, no, no. Hip hop, hip hop. I'm done with it. Yeah, I did like hip hop. You did? Rap, no. What did you like about hip hop?

Well, I like the beat. I like the beat. I like the rhythm. I like the attitude. Like, I really love Biggie Smalls. You know, my daughter gave me, for her Christmas present, gave me Biggie Smalls. I love it. Harvard train, Biggie Smalls has made it everywhere. It's so good. Okay.

All right. So let's go back so eating is important i sleep okay check check but let's go let's pull on that one level down which is eating frequently or eating quality and of course it's both but which one might be more important eating quality eating more than frequently yeah god i'm getting this wrong then yeah because i've been finding eating eating eating frequently uh we don't know okay but look look at our evolutionary mandates okay you know if we were walking and foraging and we were in a in a mango grove we would eat frequently but there are plenty of

times when we were moving that we ate not at all. And that's one of the reasons why we have obesity crisis right now is because overabundance of food is always there. And we're driven to eat it. And we're also driven to conserve it. So those two things. Eat the highest caloric food you can and save it. So those two things eat the highest caloric food you can and save it. So that's why we sit on the TV, sit on the couch and use a clicker for the TV. We're conserving it. We're no one to waste it. And that's why it's hard for people to get busy exercising and get busy moving.

Why is it hard? Because we're trying to conserve we have what we're trying to conserve the energy. I mean, but biologically, biologically, yeah, okay, this is the Is it hard? Because we're trying to conserve? Yeah, we're trying to conserve the energy. Biologically. Biologically, yeah. This is the evolutionary mandate. But at the same time, we come out of the womb expecting to play and move and exercise and do all that stuff. But play is so important.

It's an evolutionary mandate. It's in our genes. We're mammals, and all mammals play, and we're expecting to play and by play i mean not with the ipad i mean with each other and wrestling and chasing and tag and interacting how do adults play how do adults play well you have the history of surfing there you know i mean we we we do sports you know that's that's the big way of playing if you put a four in front of that phrase is that how adults play for play sex is a big part of uh of life yes yes yes is that play is that like an adult yeah so sports certainly is and then flirting probably is part of play But I think that's not what you're thinking.

I think that what you're conveying is like moving multi joints at once without knowing the outcome. Right. And also also having finding that passion, finding the joy, finding, you know, the fun in it and and and that's one of my big topics is now and and and in the schools is is getting people to to recognize that this is part of who we are okay yeah which okay so what who we are is we're movers we're players and uh we're we're good eaters we're good eaters and we're and we're sleepers and we're good sleepers those four is there anything else oh sure. We're, you know, down here in Hermosa Beach, you're in nature all the time. OK, but that's not the way most people live anymore, you know, unless you're in the Midwest and West. But you think of China, you think of Taiwan, you think of South Korea. I mean, it is they're not outside. They're not outside.

We're not outside in the east as much because we have to wear coats and no coats out here. What have you learned about what happens in the brain or in, yeah, let's go to the brain, when people are in nature? In nature, your serotonin levels, I mean, you know, just down to the fine tune, your serotonin levels are higher. Your dopamine levels are higher. You are more alert. You're more, you feel more passionate. down to the fine tune your serotonin levels are higher your dopamine levels are higher you are more alert you're more you feel more passionate you know feeling wise your immune system is better i mean all these things change so so 15 years ago there was a big flurry about nature deficit disorder yeah i remember that yeah yeah you know and that's real and and uh it's real like for

instance i love this it okay a cardiac rehab unit where they just did cardiac surgery on people they there's no windows okay there's no windows but uh so they did this study they put up a scene much like your uh waterfall here on this is the a poster and a picture of one of the athletes um coming over palouse falls okay just just the idea of seeing that as opposed to a blank wall yeah less medicine less pain earlier dismissal from the hospital just seeing just having it there just having the picture there less pain yeah less pain less medicine for for pain and and quicker recovery and out of the hospital if if you take a test in front of that as opposed to taking tests in front

of a blank wall you'll do better and that being the picture of nature picture poster of of nature or if you have an open window so if we take the picture of nature, picture, poster of nature, or if you have an open window. So if we take the bit of research, okay, that's interesting. If we take the bit of research that learning in the environment as close as possible to the actual environment, you're going to be tested in that strategy facilitates better memory and performance. Okay. So would you suggest that if you study with pictures of nature, but then you're going to test without pictures of nature, is there any kind of complication? No. No.

No, no, no. You're going to get it down. But no. No, it's not like that. So you want to use the practice environment with as many different strategies as you can. One of them would be having some sort of picture or open window to nature. Right. Okay.

I'm going to go one. One of them would be having some sort of picture or open window to nature. Right. Okay. I'm going to go one. This is more applied stuff for me, for us, I think, is that are you familiar with the concept of earthing? Earthing. Earthing. I don't know. Okay. So I'd be curious where you go with this, is that there's an idea to activate the parasympathetic nervous system.

Okay. After post intense training is just pull the, pull the boots off somebody or cleats or whatever it is. Activate the parasympathetic nervous system, okay, after post-intense training. It is just pull the boots off somebody or cleats or whatever it is. And get your feet in the dirt. Get your feet in the sand. Get your feet in the grass. I'm reading this book called Dirt Therapy. Yeah.

Oh, I haven't heard of it. I know. Somebody sent it to me to review. You know, basically, I'm sure it has that part to play in it, but it's more about getting your immune system up and eating dirt. Oh, eating dirt. Oh, yeah. You know, now with all of our peanut allergies, all of our asthma you know the concentration of asthmatic kids is so much higher on the west side of new york the upper west side you know than it is in the pig farms of arkansas so why why well because they're exposed to all kinds of stuff early on and that's what i mean

my dad you always say you have to eat a peck of dirt in your life you know and not that you eat it but it you know something falls on the ground you take it in yeah oh yeah no problems and like i remember uh washing carrots i remember when i was a young kid my mom would say because we had a garden yeah i don't yeah so we had a garden we'd wash some carrots and she said don, don't wipe, don't wash all the dirt off. Right. Right. Leave it on. Yeah. Right. Leave it on. Okay. All right. So, okay. So where are we going? So, so taking some of this research on, uh, nature, and then would you imagine, even if you just took a educated guess that getting people to put their feet in the sand or grass or something? Absolutely. Absolutely.

How powerful? I think because you would, in fact, probably turn on the parasympathetic to sort of help you calm down. You know, and that, so that's not a bad idea. Three minutes, 15 minutes? Whatever, you know, dig it in there and just they get in there and just, uh, and just relax and, and have that, that sense of touching patchy mama. Yeah. Yeah. You know, mother earth.

I love it. Okay. So we're, we're jumping around in my mind. I'm following a real clean thread, but for me it's, so we're going from nature and then we've talked about eating and so it's quality. You know, and the biggest one is connection. To? To others. What about nature and self?

Nature? No, I mean the connection. Being connected. To others. To others. Yeah. But what about nature and self? Getting connected to others.

Yes. I'm sorry. Getting connected to nature and getting connected to self. Well, the big thing is getting connected to others. You know, you talk about evolutionary mandates. That is so crucial. It is amazing what we're learning today in real numbers. Okay, keep going. I mean, in terms of avoiding health care budgets.

Okay, I'll give you what I learned recently up in Palo Alto with a bunch of guys who've been studying this for a year and a half. What is the best way to keep the elderly from using the health care budget? Okay, so we give positive numbers to it. So if you take your medicine as your doctor prescribed, you get a positive of 12.5. If you exercise four times a week, you get a positive of 22. If you are a smoker and you stop smoking you get a positive of 25 if you get social you get a positive of 60 well okay why such a big difference that's the question okay the big difference is oxytocin the big difference is feeling connected feeling part of feeling part of a family, feeling accepted.

I can't believe you're talking about oxytocin right now because it's one of the things that facilitates social flow and creativity. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it also is jumped up when we exercise. But anyway, the thing that is so important about connection. See, now what I was telling you about how we started this, about Alvin Semerad and about your question about where do I feel the fire? Where in my body? And that's all about establishing a connection.

And that's what Mass Mental Health Center, Harvard's major teaching hospital way back then, it was all about being connected. And it was all about establishing that connection and valuing it. And that was for our patients, but also for the staff to support one another. And so it is so imperative. It's an evolutionary imperative. And I'm, you know, I'm feeling that it's even more imperative than I used to think so. You know, when I heard this stuff, and these guys had no truck with wishy-washy bullshit, you know. I mean, they were not caring. They were looking, what is the best way to get the elderly to not use the

healthcare budget? That's pure and simple, their mission. Yeah. Economic driven. Yeah. It was all economic driven and, and they, they, and they've been studying this. These are smart people. How did they know to incentivize? This is maybe kind of deep in the weeds, but why did they incentivize a 60 something for, for social connectivity and a 20 something for stopping smoking. Because that's what the numbers showed. They did big data analysis. I mean, it wasn't just So the big data analysis. No, this is what fell out. Oh, that's what fell out. This wasn't our priority. No, this wasn't what they've proven yet. But this is what fell out of all the stuff that we have already. Even cooler, I thought

arbitrarily no no no no no no i'm sorry but i mean this is what fell out if you take the doctor's prescription prescribed medicine you get a 12.5 if you exercise you double it and then if you connect with other people you triple it you know it's just amazing jeez so so in other words it it this fell out of all their big data studies you know looking at all the studies that have been out there you know if we think about this in a maybe um i don't know i'm fascinated by the people that survive post elite sport because many many have a really difficult time surviving. And I don't mean that like physically surviving, but the quality of life for many post elite sport is very challenging for

them. And it's always like the providing or pervasive thought has been because they've had the spotlight on them. They fed that narcissistic side. It's hard to feel that outside or feel that after sport, but that's probably not the case based on what I'm hearing you say now is that the bond and the connectivity between either coach and athlete or athlete and athlete is so strong in the athletic experience that when you're done with athletics, it might be something. Oh, it's very much that. Yeah. yeah all right so then let's get into sleep really quickly sleep yeah sleep is is is so important to us and we know that if you don't sleep well you're going to be fat dumb and stupid uh fat depressed and stupid fat depressed that sounds

awful fat depressed and stupid yes all right keep going. And this is from the leading researcher in the U.S. in the world, perhaps at Harvard and Stanford. Because we need sleep to help regulate our body rhythms and to recover and repair and keep our inflammation system under control. All that we know. We still, and we also know that during sleep, we practice what we learn during the day. And we do it, it's like a freebie. It's like a free tutoring lesson, you know, for students. What you really have studied that day,

you'll go over very quickly in your REM state and you'll really log it in. The consolidation of memory. Yes. Yeah. And then is that, so if REM stage increases with time over the stages of sleep throughout the night and we're getting the biggest bang for the buck in the seventh and eighth hour. Right. Is that too simple of an idea? No, that's not too simple.

And we all know it. You know, you wake up with the dreams if you sleep long enough. That's right. Yeah, because you're down into the seventh hour. Or six and a half, seven, somewhere around there. But, you know, some of us, like myself, I go into restorative sleep very quickly, which is really great. And restorative deep sleep, that's why in my book, Spark, I talk about when you do intense training, you will go into restorative sleep and stay there longer. You'll go into it quicker and stay there longer. So the body knows.

Majority of athletes inherently do not ever question the value of sleep. There's some certainly that are freaks of nature that get by somehow on four and a half hours of sleep on a regular basis. And they're freaks. But most of them are like, I like nine. I like nine hours of sleep. Yeah, but I mean, LeBron is 12 hours a day, man. And Nadal and Federer are up around 11, 12 hours a day. And they, you know, my God, the Stanford basketball team, when they went to the final four, they had a sleep guy guiding them.

So they were napping and doing all that. And so it increases the performance. It really does. And it's hard because. And then I hear this thought from entrepreneurs and or executive is that the if you're wanting to be in the business uh to have a global footprint or even a you know multi-time zone footprint that it can be really challenging for sleep so yeah so do you have any thoughts on sleep is so tough around the world it's the you know as i travel all over and talk to people and uh and see

what's happening everyone's sleep deprived everyone the debt is outrageous everyone everyone and that's our devices that's our that's our global connectedness i mean that's just one example of it yeah because you got to understand what's happening in china you know i taught a course in taiwan on skype so you know i mean god the state, you know, starting to talk at 9 p.m., 10, 11, and they wanted me to stay for till 12. And I said, you're kidding me. I got to follow my own science here. Okay. So there's a couple like easy little things.

And this is easy little phrases like four hours. If you average four or five hours of sleep, it's no different than going to work with a six pack. You know, like some kind of fun little stuff like that. But what are some of your findings for sleep optimization and then sleep deficit? Sleep optimization. Turn off your devices two hours before. Right. Is that because of blue light? No that no no no no just because of noise just because stimulation you know you know and and do not have any light in the room how dark very dark okay completely dark if you're

if you're if you're plugged in to charge your phone, do it outside. Even that little bit of light and have great shades. That's the best way to sleep and sleep through. And some sleep researchers say that we're melatonin deficient because we have so much light around us all the time. Right. So they take small doses of melatonin every night. I don't take it every night, but it's a game changer when I travel. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know how many milligrams per. It's probably five. Five. Yeah. So if I take between five and ten, it's like, whoa, I'm all of a sudden sleepy. When I take five milligrams of melatonin, it's all of a sudden sleepy yeah when i take a five milligrams of melatonin that's all of a sudden i'm reading and then i can't understand what i'm reading and then i fall

asleep yeah i mean it's just amazing yeah it's crazy and blue light as a as a reducer of melatonin output is um yeah it's probably a challenge at night okay all right keep going with some okay we buzzed over exercise but that's okay it's okay we can do that next time yeah yeah okay but connectedness you know being connected and i we titled the chapter in the book small tribes because we were we evolved as in a tribe i love that word by the way i do too i think it's the best yeah oh my god do you have a tribe yeah oh yeah plenty we all have multiple tribes i love that idea too you know and uh every group session i'm in i say look we've created a tribe here you know this is a

little tribe you know 30 people 40 people when you have 500 people this is a little tribe, 30 people, 40 people. When you have 500 people, this is a little bit different. But when you have a tribe, it really means that you can deal with each other mano a mano, woman on woman and woman on man, person on person. You don't need a leader. I mean, you know, it's when we got above got above 40 45 then you began to have leaders and and therefore the anyway the the the person themselves couldn't be as much of an agent without the boss man got it okay so it's around we are we we really are so connected to people now i don't mean facebook having 30 million friends uh or twitter account or you know

whatever is there any buzz any any love that comes from having a e-social connections there's a lot there's a buzz i i say you know we're in a conference and i say okay i know what your guys are going to do as soon as you leave you're going to check your messages you know on their smartphone and i said what are you going to get and i said this now 14 years ago i said you're going to get a dopamine squirt. You're going to get a squirt of dopamine because it's exciting. It's interesting. Who loves me? Who hates me? Am I still relevant?

It's crazy, but that's exactly it. Yeah, and it is a squirt of dopamine. So it's a replacement, a cheap replacement of physical connection, of foreplay. Yeah, right. You know. Because you're not going to get oxytocin from e-social connections. You may, you know, you may get some, but it's not going to be like what it is somebody touching you.

Yeah, there you go. Okay. You're not, I mean, that's got to be the oxytocin stimulant. This is called the cuddle chemical. Yeah. I mean, you think about it. I tell people, say, you know, I was speaking to 35 women the other day, and I was saying, you know, you guys know a lot about oxytocin

because when you had your first baby, you looked at that baby and all you felt is love. And that baby caused you more pain than anything in your life. Yeah. To deliver that baby. And they all went, Oh my God. Yeah. I said,

but did you, were you angry at the baby? No. You just said, Oh my God, my baby. Yeah. And the reading I've come around this is that it distorts the memory of

pain yes right it clouds and it distorts the memory of pain so that you'll have another child no exactly like my wife went through a 30 hour labor you know for for the first child and and and it was really oh pain pain pain and long long long and as soon as she held the baby she says oh i want another one you know and just like what okay so so so let's keep going on go wild and then i want to ask a couple quick questions about spark so go wild it sounds be primitive get back to that primitive sense right which is get in nature you know get your sleep right move uh on a regular clip um get in nature and and get in nature and and also be present be mindful okay keep going now one of the things that's so important about the about

the undergathers and what they can teach us is working with a hunter. Now the hunters are out there and they are present. They notice shit that we don't. If you ever traveled with a hunter and they see things that

I don't. I'm a wild with a partner that is a hunter. Lives in Montana and hunts for his meat. You know, I mean, not all his meat, but a lot of it. You know, elk and deer, certainly. But he would observe things as we were walking along the streets of Boston and New York City that I never would have noticed. And he said, well, I'm a hunter.

So they're present. And that's why the Native American culture and the indigenous peoples, they're more primitive but more connected to the earth because this is what they got. They notice it. So, okay, moving on to meditation and all that. That is a practice. See, I love the idea of yoga practice. Boy, you know, when I first discovered it and talking about it and thinking about it and say yoga practice, well, who's the best? Well, there isn't any best.

It's just a practice. It's a practice. It means that you're practicing it. And what are you practicing? You're practicing your movement. You're getting painful in your body and your joints and everything. And you're trying to push yourself. But you're really to push yourself, but you're

really practicing getting present. And, and same way with the Zen meditation or any of the meditation, you're practicing being present. Do you have a particular practice that you use on other than maybe yoga, but like a mindfulness training? Mindfulness, it just, it's-minute breaks of just watching your breath. Breath counting. That's the way I grew up.

And that's the way my Zen teachers taught us. We lived as Zen for a month. And it was all about breath counting, breath noticing. And clearing your mind. Just clearing your mind. Every so often, drop in for two minutes. Drop out. Yeah, there you go.

And that's the way like teachers, you know, they teach you say, oh, we'll get these kindergarten through fourth grade kids. We get them running for 45 minutes or 35 minutes. How are we going to get them settled down? Then it's what I say. Okay, just have them sit and watch their breath go in and out. But the practice then brings you to being centered in the moment. And that's really, it is a skill. Yeah, without a doubt, it's a skill. And then if you can do it in quiet moments, you're likely, at least the hypothesis I

work from is that if I can do it in quiet moments, I'm likely to be able to do it in quiet moments, you're likely, at least the hypothesis I work from is that if I can do it in quiet moments, I'm likely to be able to do it in more rugged environments when there's more task. I'm sorry, there's more demands in the environment other than sometimes. I know this is counterintuitive, but sometimes quiet moments are more rugged than rugged moments. Yeah, for focus and attention. And the thing that people have to remember about meditation and things is it's a very active process. Your brain is really challenged. There's an incredible amount of work. And so people think, oh, well, that's got to be real different.

You get the same kind of chemical changes you do from exercises in meditation would you make such a blanket stadium a stadium a blanket statement work yeah right that every human being on the earth could benefit from a mindfulness practice yeah i i think that they certainly could and we used to now the the hunter gatherer never sat down and did meditation but they were always meditating they were always present it was living mind yeah they were they were living mindfully all the time you know it's just amazing this is one of the some of the findings that we've tripped on from studying action and adventure most people know them as extreme athletes is that it's almost as if they have bypassed the need to slow down to meditate because they force themselves in such hostile environments that if you can't focus in that environment,

you become hurt. And this was, I took a, this was the first book that I was working on that never launched. And there's a bunch of reasons of why that came to be. And we can talk about that another time. But what we found is that when they put themselves in high risk situations, if they couldn't focus deeply, a la be mindful, they were hurt and they wouldn't, we wouldn't be around very long. So there's so much to learn about for, I think most people figuring out how to train your mind so that you can progressively put yourself in riskier situations. And then being in the risk situation is also a learning experience of focus. But the consequence is great. Yeah, yeah, the consequence is just amazing.

You know, if you don't, and that's why the hunter really, I mean, constantly is observing everything. And so your high intense athletes, they have to be, because there's danger everywhere and they just are observant like never before. Okay, so I think we've really got some really good applied frames for Go Wild. Okay, and then there's more, some really good applied frames for go wild. Okay. And then there's more, obviously a deeper dive in the book. Now in, in this idea of focus, just one more pass at focus is that what can you help us understand to, that would be the greatest accelerant to us being able to pursue our

potential. And that's the general question. And then the side question to that, if you want to take this one first would be, or parallel question is, can you teach us how to be better at taking and taking risk, just being a risk taker? And to me, they run parallel path, but I'm wondering if you could just riff on that. One of the things that I learned early was that it was okay to say the emperor had no clothes. It was okay to say, this is stupid doing it this way, let's do it this way. To say, yeah, this intervention really works.

It works really well. And, yeah, all the data have said before, no, it's not the way to go. But, hey, this is really something. It's just like spark in medicine, spark in psychiatry, you know, the exercise component. Hey, exercise does it better than any of our drugs you know for psychiatric issues for you know many psychiatric problems maybe not just as fast but if you can get a seriously depressed patient to exercise you and you keep them at it they're they're going to get out of it so the risk taking is just knowing that you can, you can try things, you can think about doing things and then going for it, you know, and going

for it. And it's okay. And to have, have support enough to do that. So the value is in going for it. It's going for it. It's not the failure and the mistake. However, sometimes failing and mistakes cost a lot of money and a reputation or life in limb if you're in severely hostile environments. So if people feel as though their genetic coding is kicked on in such a way and they feel as though putting up their hand in a board meeting or putting up their hand to pitch an idea is so risk so full of risk how can you help us be better at that moment in time well because well how can i help you be better at that at that particular moment is just is to gird your loins and say, I'm going to do it, you know, because you will, yes, self-talking and you will go out and you know what you're going to say as you leave the room. You're going to say, I wish I would have said this or they're full of shit. I should have

said this. And it's those people who are accused of not having a filter who do that, they put up their hand and say, this is bullshit. John, there's a phrase that, that, uh, one of the greatest risk takers in the world has taught me in his, well, I'll just stop there. Like one of the greatest risk takers in the world. And he said, I should say that I've come, I've been fortunate enough to learn to know is that he says, it's more painful for me to have an idea and not go for it than to go for it and become bruised or maybe even die. Right. Right. And then, and I think that's, that's the,

that's the, that's the way to sort of self-talk yourself around it is to remember the times that you haven't done it and and and how how bad you i'm not bad but you know how flat you felt okay you know so even pulling up that memory more often yeah yeah and just saying oh yeah no we all remember i walked out of the room and i felt shit i should have said something because i believe it and and you would have been in its anatomy, you know, it's, it's everybody else to ride you and whatever. But you say the emperor has no clothes, man. Okay. You know, so would you use that as a training methodology when you know that there's something coming up in your environment that you're going to prepare to go for it, that you, it would be beneficial to remember times that you didn't feel that pain and then flip it and say,

I'm not doing that again. I'm going to do fill in the blank. Right. And then it might mean your job or it might mean your reputation and all that. But you know, it's the road less traveled by, you know, you're going to go down that road and you're going to feel more authentic, even if you're fired, which is hard for people to do today. But the, you know, it's just hard, but, but feeling authentic is really so crucial. So on that thought, authenticity is one of the ways that I try to work towards authenticity is know who it is that I am and then be able to fit and match that in every environment. So is there a word or a phrase that captures who you are? Oh man. that's a very good question it's it's sort of hard to self-reflect like that for me um okay let's let's let's work around it is there a word or phrase that understand

that captures what you understand most around this topic what i understand most is the courage to go for it that's that's what you we've been talking about courage okay not skill but courage no it's nothing about skill i think it's courage it's courage and it's it's the grit uh skill is fine i mean that's important but it's courage. It's courage. And it's the grit. Skills, fine. I mean, that's important. But courage means you have a backstop. You have somebody there. You can go and do it. You can risk. You can take that risk. And then is there a word or phrase that captures who you are? You understand in this space the courage to go for it. But if you think about all of your life's efforts, what are the guiding phrases or ideas that really are pronounced in the back or the front of your mind or in your stomach, wherever they might be? Well, I think it is going for it. It is not letting this opportunity pass. How about this? It all comes down to...

It all comes down to... It all comes down to movement. In the beginning, there was the action. You know, going back to Goethe. You know, I mean, it's in the beginning, there was the movement. It wasn't the word. It was the action. So movement, okay, now to spark a little bit.

And I know we have to stop, but emuvra is the root word, Latin word, for movement, motivation, and emotion. So, and all of them are tied. What is the Latin word? Emuvra. E-M-O-V-R-E. Okay. Yeah, E-R-E. I'm not sure.

Okay. But it's in my book. I know. I know that feeling. Okay. All right. Pressure comes from? Pressure.

Yeah. Pressure comes from? Demands? Internal or external? Both. Mm-hmm. which one's louder internal yeah and then um um relationships when i say that what happens for you i think of my wife, my kids, you know, my, my friends and how important they are. And then, okay. And then if there was a time in your life that was at the center of you choosing the path you're on, is there an experience or a capture that comes to your mind? The fork in the road? Yeah, yeah, no, I know exactly what you're saying.

Well, there was a time early in my experience, early in my career, when I was just a resident, that I discovered, because a nurse pushed me towards it, that the beta blockers, which are heart medicine, are unbelievably useful for aggression. Okay, it was like no one else thought about this. Okay, and it was like, boom. It was amazing.

So I said, I'm going with it. So I wrote a bunch of papers and finally got them accepted. And I started to use it. I wanted somebody else to take it up and do the research with it, but no one else was interested. So I got money from various companies who had beta blockers back in those days that were new to do all this research. I didn't want to do it. I mean, I didn't want to go through it, but then I had to become a researcher and it just was like, I wanted to think I didn't want to like worry about grants and all that sort of kind of stuff. And I said, okay, this is what you got to

do to show it. And then, so I did it. And so I came 40 papers out of looking at aggression. Aggression and beta blockers. Oh my goodness. so can we do this can we go through your books okay and we'll go in reverse order and just give a one to two line sentence i mean it's like how do you do that from a life's efforts of work but um driven to distraction okay big game. A combination of efforts with Ned Alowel and I putting together what we saw as we were discovering this field. And then what is the thoughts? So that's what it meant to you and me as well. What is the takeaway from Driven to Distraction? that attention is such a crucial system or skill in our lives, and we need to honor and pay attention to it.

And then the follow-on was the book called Answers to Distraction. Answers to Distraction was simply, we got so many letters, so many questions, so much feedback from people who were discovering themselves that they had attention deficit disorder that they sent us these questions. And we decided we'd put them into categories and then answer them. So it was just a way of expanding in a very human way on Driven. I mean, Driven was full of good stories, but these were little tips. I really appreciate this book, Shadow Syndromes, mild forms of disorders that sabotage us. Yeah, Shadow Syndromes was something that I wrote

in contradistinction to DSM-3, and then by that time it was DSM-4. But, you know, everybody was thinking in terms of these diagnoses, which we made up, which didn't come down from God, which weren't on the tablets, you know, that Moses got. That they were just made up. And we'd use these words to help us do better research. And there were all these people who were on the fringes. So my my my big funny one is, you know, you have to have four items out of 10 to be called depressed. OK, 10 possibilities. What if you have three? What are you? Just miserable. OK, the user's guide to the brain, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain.

Yeah. This was a labor of love. I was addicted to the brain really early on, but not necessarily wanting to be as much as I was. But I started from all my writings. That took 10 years. And during that 10 years, I wrote, we wrote the two distraction books. We wrote, I wrote Shadow Syndromes. And all that time, I was learning about the brain and writing about the brain and doing chapter after chapter. And it was basically, because everybody was starting to talk about the brain in psychiatry and psychology, and no one to talk about the brain in psychiatry and psychology, and no one knew anything about the brain.

I mean, and this was like a handbook for people to try and understand what the hell they were talking about. Because people would say, oh, brain, brain this, brain that, and no one had any idea what the hell they were talking about. Spark, the revolutionary new science of exercise in the brain. Now, that really was such a, it's such a monument, monumental piece for me, because it's led to everything that I've done since subsequent to that. But it was saying, okay, this is what we know. This is a thousand papers distilled and put in human language that you can understand that what exercise does for us and it's amazing it is amazing yeah it's a great book easy read well done and then go wild we've talked a lot about that today already but but the big point

about spark and and why it's easy reading i chose as my co-author and ghostwriter, basically, someone who didn't know anything about the brain at all. And I had to teach him. Yeah. So he translated my jargon into human language. It was hard because we almost got into fistfights at times because he was an editor. Right. And so we spent a lot of time together. It wasn't done, you know, over a couple of weeks, it was done over a year and a half.

And we went away for, I was teaching down in Florida and he came with me for a week and my wife and kids didn't come and cause they were doing other things. And, so uh we hardly got anything written because we were so mad at each other you know because he would say it's all part of the creative process isn't it oh my god it's just amazing but it came out so well golly it was it's a great book john thank you for coming in oh thanks thanks for having me i was so looking forward to spending time with you so thank you so much um where can we find out more about what you're doing well there's two places that i would send people to one is is my website which is pretty static and it's johnrady.com so

that i don't pay much attention to that much and i generally try to keep up my list of where i'm going to be speaking and all that but i don't do a very good job with that. But then there's I have a nonprofit that actually is funding somebody to keep up my Facebook page. John Rady, M.D. really smart and finds a new article every day to post that's in the press about exercise or about meditation or, you know, not food yet, but meditation and exercise, about how powerful they can be. Every day? Every day. Five days a week.

Okay. I've got to check it out. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, really digs it out. John Rady, MD. Yeah. Facebook. John Rady, MD. Yeah. Facebook. John Rady, MD.

There's a John Rady page that somebody started for me a million years ago that I never even look at. Okay. You know, but John Rady, MD will get you to that page. And they're incredible stories. I mean, it's at ABC News, Time Magazine, you know, Wasala, Washington News. I mean, it's at ABC News, Time Magazine, you know, Wasaila Washington News. I mean, it's something. You know, Korea, Netherlands, I mean, all over the world. God bless it.

Okay, you have had an incredible career. So, thank you again. Well, thank you. I was looking forward to this. Me too. Okay, so thank you everyone for listening. Head over to iTunes, subscribe, finding mastery at Michael Gervais on Twitter, and then go check out John's work. It's game changer. Pick up one of the books we've talked about. And it's an honor to sit

across from you and learn. And so thanks everyone for what we're doing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing these conversations with you. We really appreciate you being part of this community. And if you're enjoying the show, the easiest no-cost way to support is to hit the subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening. Also, if you haven't already, please consider dropping us a review on Apple or Spotify. We are incredibly grateful for the support and feedback. If you're looking for even more insights,

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