Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - Neuroscientist Caroline Leaf on What's Possible for the Mind

Episode Date: September 28, 2016

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a cognitive neuroscientist with a PhD in Communication Pathology specializing in Neuropsychology. Since the early 1980‘s she has studied and researched the Mind-Brain connection. In This Episode: -The difference between the mind and the brain -Why it mattered that people believed in her growing up -How to increase awareness of thoughts -The mind as an iceberg: explaining the conscious vs. unconscious parts of your mind -The process in which one atomizes their thoughts -Why we are naturally wired for love -Non-judgmental framework as a component of optimal mindset -The toxic thoughts that get in people’s way -The time it takes to form a habit_________________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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slash finding mastery. That's David, D-A-V-I-D, protein, P-R-O-T-E-I-N.com slash finding mastery. And in this conversation, we connect with Dr. Carolyn Leaf. P-R-O-T-E-I-N dot com slash finding mastery. And in this conversation, we connect with Dr. Carolyn Leaf. She's a cognitive neuroscientist. And over the past few podcast conversations, we've been on this theme about learning. And we're going to extend it here. So Dr. Leaf studies and researches the mind-brain connection.

And it's the connection between the two that is, it's elusive and it's difficult to research and study that. It's difficult enough to try to understand what the brain is. And that the community of brain and neuroscientists is still wrestling with, you know, what exactly the brain does as well as the invisible nature of the mind. So we get into it about the mind and the brain and the connection between those two and how she's been able to develop tools and processes to help people become better in their thinking and their behaviors. And it's that increasing thoughts, the quality of thoughts and increasing the quality of behavior that ultimately impacts the output, which is performance. And so, yeah, so great conversation. We talk about the difference between mind and brain. We talk about why it mattered for her

early on that people believed in her and how that was and has been an accelerant to her growth and her gifts. And we also talk about how to increase awareness of thoughts. And that's not new to anyone on this podcast, the science and the art of mindfulness and how and why that's so important. So there'll be some nice applied takeaways on mindfulness here. And yeah, I just hope that you enjoy this conversation. We get into the science of habit development, habit formation, and the toxic thoughts that tend to get in people's way. Okay. So like always, I hope that this conversation reconnects you or yeah, just reconnects you to you carving your unique and own path.

So whatever that is, whether that's a bit off access or it's right down the middle of, you know, what people would expect of you, I just hope that you're carving your unique path. And with that, you know, not to be too, I don't know, cheesy about it unique path. And with that, you know, not to be too, I don't know, cheesy about it. That's really what it's about now, right? A journey of self

discovery to be able to carve our unique path. Okay. Anyways, let's jump right into this conversation with Carolyn Leaf. Carolyn, I'm so excited to have this conversation with you and, and welcome to the Finding Mastery conversation. Thank you. I'm so excited as well. It's wonderful. Yeah, it is. It is. So you first grabbed my attention when you, I've listened to you online and we've got some mutual friends involved, John Gordon, who I know that you know well, and he's just a wonderful human being. And so he made the introduction to us and I was really eager to want to learn what you've come to understand about the interaction and the separation between mind

and brain. And as we get into that, you've got a very rich voice around it. And can you first, can you go way back for just a minute and give us a sense of when you first started becoming deeply interested in mind and or brain or human betterment, whatever phrase you would use here. It's a great place to start. First of all, thank you very much. I'm very excited to share this conversation with a like-minded professional. So it's great. It's wonderful. I started years ago, even as a young girl, I was very interested in mind and brain. And I was going into psychiatry or neurosurgery. And thank goodness I didn't because I don't think I'd know what I know now. I went down another path. I basically combined different degrees to try and learn as much as I could about the mind and the brain. And 30 years ago, I actually asked a question that was very challenged by my professors at that stage. And I asked the question, can the mind change the brain? And that was considered quite ridiculous because in the 80s, your mind and your brain were basically one and the same thing. And also,

your brain couldn't change. That was what they felt. That was the current worldview, that your brain couldn't change. And there was they felt. That was the current world view, that your brain couldn't change. And there was a lot of confusion around the words mind and brain. Even today and for the last 100 years, it's been very fashionable to actually say that the mind and the brain are the same thing, even though all the research talks about two distinct things. So there's a lot of conflicting kind of terminology in the science literature in this field. But essentially what's very in fashion now, and it has been for about 100 years, is to say that the brain produces the mind. And that the mind is almost like an artifact, like just a side effect,

that we pre-programmed individuals and that we don't have much control over our destiny. We don't have free will. So that's a very strong, you probably, I mean, you know all this. So that's a very strong dominant sort of philosophy in science and it's been very hammered in the world of neuroscience as well, although there's a huge split. And the more that research is being done, the more people are starting to recognize, hey, we can't really say this.

But basically what I did 30 years ago was say that I don't believe that this is the case. And I decided to work with people that had traumatic brain injuries because people with traumatic brain injuries, neurological issues, very little research was done on them. There was such a dearth of research back in the 80s that people just kind of said, well, if your brain's damaged, what can you do? You really can't help the person much except teach them how to cope. And I felt personally that such a negative way of, how many people are landing up with some sort of traumatic brain injury? It's very common. We have to change the situation. The little bit of research that was around showed that

people generally would not change. And generally their cognitive decline would be pretty bad. So I hate using IQs, but IQ was a measure that was very popular back then. And IQs generally would drop around about 20 to 40 points if you had some sort of traumatic brain injury. That was just one of the measures that I looked at. I looked at a multiplicity of behavioral measures to determine change. So what I decided to do was to show that mind and brain are separate. I decided try and show study the science of thought and work out if you direct your mind what is it how is that going to impact on your functioning in daily life and obviously then in the changes within the brain because the brain has we very

neurocentric we're in a very neurocentric society where it's all brain brain brain and we think well brain is the is the is the end you know it's like the beginning and the end and it's not because what we've done with current neuroscience and i'm. And it's not because what we've done with current neuroscience, and I'm just jumping ahead 30 years, is what we've done with current neuroscientific trends is we've basically just shown what we've already known all along. Now, you and I are in a similar field. So we've always looked at more behavioral type stuff and people's functioning and their communication. So we've looked at the end product. We looked at the richness of the human narrative, literally. And from what I've tried to do is build a bridge between that and then go

backwards into the impact on biology. So neuroscience has really just shown us, to quote a great philosopher, basically shown us what's going on in the brain and the brain goings on, literally. So it's not something new. we're just getting the detail of how the brain responds to the mind but back in the 80s it wasn't seen like that and it was seen as you know any kind of any kind of damage was well that's that you've just got to you've got to live with it and so I work with these traumatic brain injuries and long story short these patients they then I taught them how to direct their mind and obviously as we go along in the conversation we can talk what what does that mean what does it mean to direct their mind, and obviously as we go along in the conversation, we can talk about what does that mean? What does it mean to direct your mind?

We found massive change in the brain, statistically significant changes that were way over and above and beyond what we even began to expect. Things like IQ not going down 20 to 40 points, but increasing 20 to 40 points. And academic changes, emotional changes, cognitive changes on every level to the point where these these patients that were written off were actually becoming considered geniuses with holes in their head so you know it just that that started a trend of research then i spent 25 years parallel to that research i spent 25 years in what i call the trenches and of south africa so i come out of south africa which you've probably guessed from my accent.

And we spent, I spent years working in the pre-apartheid era. So in the areas that no one wanted to go to. So I used to go to the schools that were in what we call the township areas. So the schools that kids that just, you know, the government didn't want to acknowledge that the start of society really existed. And the schools were just, I mean, they really weren't even much. They were buildings with no good facilities and no decent training for the educators. And it was shocking. It was absolutely shocking.

Most of those kids that were in the school, some of them were really old. Some of them were already in their late 20s. But most of these students had extreme issues emotionally. A lot of them were trauma victims. Most of them had AIDS. Most of them didn't have parents. They were starving. They really, Michael, if I can tell you, it was just horrific. It was like hell on earth in those places. And I used to spend hours and days there. And it was the kind of place where you didn't really go as a white person because they would kill you. Well, I lasted for, I mean, I'm obviously here, so that didn't happen to me. So it was, they recognized that I was bringing a message to teach them how to think and how to learn and how to overcome circumstances.

And so I spent years. And parallel to that, I ran my practice where I was working with the privileged who could afford to come to a practice and learn how to learn and learn how to deal with emotional issues. And I focused heavily on teaching people how to use their mind to develop their intellect as well as their emotions. So mastery from an angle of you're a brilliant human being, you think in a unique way, let's focus on those points and let's then develop and work around the issues. So coming back to the research, I did various different types of research. And one of the first areas of research I did was with the traumatic brain injury,

where I showed that mind was separate from the brain, that when you direct your mind, you change your brain, that you're literally not a victim of your biology. And by the mid-1990s, as you know, neuroplasticity, which is the mind changing the brain, the brain being able to change, basically was accepted. And with the advent of MRI and fMRI technology, they started seeing that the brain could change. But then there's been a swing on the other side of the ditch where it's now all about brain

and they do the research, they give patients or they give research delegates or they give people that are involved in research, they give patients or they give research delegates or they give people that are involved in research, they give them various mind exercises and then they show the changes in the brain but then they say the brain produced so the interpretation is back to front. So there's such confusion out there and I've made it my life's work now to take the experience from those really the trench work, the work in the trenches, the work with traumatic brain injury, the work in my practice where I worked with a lot of adolescents as well, a lot of adults that had been written off because adolescents back in the 80s, I don't know if you remember, but basically

80s, late 80s, early 90s, if you reach the age of 12, 13, 14, and you still had learning issues, well, that was it. You had to just learn to compensate as opposed to to change and I believed in complete change I believed in complete restoration of function even if you were different became quite different I believed you could restore function and I showed that and I proved that so by the mid-1990s it was accepted what I was doing and so that's where I've now now I basically teach these concepts around the world and I write books and materials and we try and reach as a wider audience as possible just to help people, to encourage them, to understand that you're actually brilliant. And when you direct your mind, you can really change your life. Okay.

So I was having a conversation with a neuroscientist like two weeks ago. And we were having a heated discussion and conversation around like, how does this work? Like from your lenses, what you've come to understand and my insights about and leveraging science as well with practice, like how does this work? How do we become better, whether it's on the world stage or not? And halfway through the conversation, and it was quite heated because we're having differing opinions and leveraging different science and findings. And he says, Mike, and just stops. And he says, you don't really believe that there's a ghost in the machine, do you? And I said, what do you mean? Do you believe

that the explosion from electrical activity creates consciousness? And he says, yes. And so it's like, I don't, I can't get my head around. And so I said, okay, listen, I need to, I need to go understand this a little bit more. And so I can't get my head around that there is, that there is something other than my ability to control and harness my own thinking. And meaning that there's just this, the silly putty in the beginning of, in the center of our skull determines my, my psychology.

And so I want to, that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you is to, is to understand what you've come to understand. And before we go down that path, what, if there's events and people that shape our lives, who were the events or what were the people that shaped you? There's been a few. I had incredible professors when I was doing my master's and PhD research. Because I was treading on such new areas and I was challenging the current paradigms, they were incredibly encouraging.

So honestly, my two professors, one is actually now in the States, they were just phenomenal in encouraging me. Even though they didn't understand totally what I was going at, they supported me. And I think when you've got people that believe in you, even if they don't understand what you're talking about or they're not quite sure how to process it, so they were very big, very, very, very big in terms of encouragement and development. Was there a phrase that they said or something that they did that gave you that thought that they believed in me and they were supporting me? It was what one of the professors said to me, when you go beyond what I know, she was saying about herself, she said, then I know that you're onto something. And so, you know, it was just like she was saying that you, she was recognizing that you don't have to be scared of new information. She was completely open-minded to, hey, you've got a different angle. I'm not threatened by that. Even though it threatens everything I know about my field, I'm not threatened by the fact that you bring in a new angle and that was very powerful then she also said to me because I had been offered professorships in universities and I had been offered that whole academic route to go down that to continue and really I could really have got stuck into academia and she this one professor one of the two said to me if you get stuck in academia you'll do great stuff but you

actually need to get out there and impact the world. You need to take the concepts that you have learned and that you are going to learn, and you need to get those into practical format so that people can access this and change their life. Because the results that I was getting in my research were insanely, crazily incredible. And I mean, really, I don't want to sound like I am boasting about me. It's never about a person. It's about a person who believes. I believe in my skill. I believe in my intellect. I believe in my ability to use my mind. I believe God gave me a very powerful mind. I believe he's given all of us a powerful mind. So I celebrate that in myself and in others. I celebrate intelligence. I'm not scared to say I'm switched on because I am.

I've used my mind, I use my brain, and I continue to develop it. And that's what the professors, they recognize that and they encourage it. They said, don't get stuck. Run with it. Don't be scared to actually develop your intelligence and actually own it. And that's something that I've tried to encourage every patient I've ever worked with and every client I've ever worked with and every person that I now reach millions through my TV show is to really believe. When you recognize brilliance in yourself, you become very humble. And that's a very powerful combination.

Humility and brilliance together is a very, very powerful combination in developing mastery. It also enables you to be set free from the fact that you don't need to be anyone else. Because what the current worldview says is that, okay, to be successful, I need to read every single successful person's book. I need to read Steve Jobs. I need to read your book. I need to read this book. I need to study you. I need to become you. But you make a lousy you. You make a lousy someone else. But you make an amazing you. And if you recognize your brilliance, your humility, that combination makes you recognize your brilliance your humility that combination makes you recognize you don't need to envy or get jealous of anyone else you study

other people not for the purpose of being like them but for celebrating their ability to recognize who they are and that's a major shift that's not what we talked in today's world we talked you've got to like be like that person that person's successful let's emulate their success story into our own life. And then people get envious and jealous, and that pretty much causes brain damage. That causes brain damage. It causes brain damage, literally. What is the process that you help people learn to identify their genius?

One of the first things that I teach people is how to understand what it means to be wired for love and then what it means to be unique so we all very into this whole you know your gift and you know you in in the world of of um you know in the personality profiles people are always looking for something to describe who I am so it's this whole maybe if I put it this way, being in a similar field, the biggest problem in the world currently or the greatest issue in the world is this whole thing of self-esteem. Who am I? So people are constantly trying to understand. There's an instinctive knowledge inside of us that we, a gut feel that, hey, I'm more than what I can just see. I know I can strive to be more.

But we almost get locked into the world's definitions of who we should be or people's what we perceive people's definitions to be of what we should be so when we get see for when we get set free from that when we start trying to stop being someone else and trying to stop measuring ourselves against someone else um that's very important so I teach on a lot on that concept of don't you don't need there's something you can do that no one else can do and then I prove that to them using science. And that's the sort of science that I use and that I've done research on and that I've done in my books and my programs.

I actually go because when you show someone, science is an incredible tool. Science helps us understand creation. It helps us understand how we've been made. And when you really get into science from that angle, I mean, I'd spend two to three hours a day doing scientific neuroscientific research i'm doing clinical trials with doctors i work with neurosurgeons and endocrinologists we're doing i'm constantly trying to understand this further and when you really look at the stuff and i'm getting i'm heavily into quantum physics in terms of understanding um memory formation because memory

so how thoughts form in the science of thought, that's a big part of what I do. When you look at the research, and I know you're doing this yourself, and you read what they actually have been doing in the actual research, and you look at their conclusions, generally they don't match. That's right. Yeah. So if you look at what they're looking at, and you look at their interpretations,

that's not really what they've looked at. And that's where they make those conversations that you've had. I've had a few of those conversations as well with people where they insist that we be predetermined. And the research that I did about an unconscious and conscious mind shows, you know Benjamin Libet, that famous experiment, and how that's been misused. Walk us through the big rocks on that for folks that are not familiar. that famous experiment and how that's been misused. I mean, he even… Walk us through the big rocks on that for those that are not familiar. Okay.

So the big thing, his research is cited often to say that we are the result of our neuronal activity and that basically that our neurons firing and the electromagnetic action of the neurons produces the mind so first of all and i'll come to libay in a moment first of all that's completely incorrect because the electromagnetic um the speed of electromagnetics is way too slow for the speed of our thought life our thought life and the way we process information um in the physical brain is at speeds of 10 to the 27 electromagnetics is not even close to that. So you have to look at, to understand that the inconsistency there is that you can't use classical physics like electromagnetics to, or just the electrons flowing and the way that they describe how neurons fire.

You can't use that to explain the fact that right now at this moment, the thought that you're thinking is impacting every single one of the 75 to 100 trillion cells of your body so you have to look deeper and there's a lot of scientists that are looking much deeper and looking at at the other level which is the quantum level which is going down into the microtubules which is deep down inside the neurons of the brain and how they actually work to build memory etc and we can talk a little bit more about that later on what i want to say but the point I want to make is that we can't use very physical, intuitive, classical type physics to try and understand brain function. We have to go a lot deeper into quantum physics.

That's the one on the physical side. So that's my foundation, a brief foundation. Benjamin Libé basically looked at, he gave his research, the people that were doing the research, that he was doing the research on, they had to do activities physical action of pressing the buttons in response to a stimulus. So he actually found that there's just before, right about 10 seconds before they actually pressed the button, there was activity in the brain on an unconscious level. And then they actually pressed the button. So there was some prior activity to the pressing of the button. And what he initially proposed, and it actually wasn't what he said, because if you look

at his research and look at his other studies he his stuff has been very misconstrued they were saying okay you see it's pre-programmed and he was saying there's action before there's mental action before the physical action and what he was saying was that look we're thinking we're actually thinking before we do it and but the a lot researchers have said, you see, there is a pre-programmed program that is operating. Right. That's the classic argument is that the pre-programming is the response of autotomacicity. Yes. Is that the right word?

Automaticity. Yeah. And because of that, you don't have a choice. Of course you are going to respond that way. Exactly. And it feels different to me. And what I can't figure out is the proper way to reference science, and this is why I wanted to talk to you,

to be able to undo some of the early learnings I had from, I would say, unsophisticated Christianity. And I'm not knocking Christianity. I understand. Yeah. But the way that I was taught Christianity was unsophisticated. And it has had a grip on my belief system. And I find the Trinity to be beautiful and really central to my belief systems however the idea but what that

installed in me at a very young age those thinkings and belief systems were that there was consciousness so it is really a life effort to undo that thought to really pull it apart to say is there is there not what of course i guide my thoughts. That's what free will is. But where's the science that really can point to that? And then the last piece of this is, I see it over and over and over again. People, once they become aware of their thoughts, they fundamentally shift behavior. They shift the way that they respond to actions. And it's the awareness first that allows for the skill to guide. And in that order is, you know,

how I spend most of my time with people. Increase awareness and then provide the skills to be able to guide their thoughts to be more impactful or potent for the demands of the environment. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Momentus. When it comes to high performance, whether you're leading a team,

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all Finding Mastery listeners 20% off. Just head to FelixGray.com and use the code FINDINGMASTERY20 at checkout. Again, that's Felix Gray. You spell it F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y.com and use the code findingmastery20 at felixgray.com for 20% off. So can you drop us down into some very particular habits that you have found to be useful in helping others either become more aware or have more skill on guiding their thoughts? Well, one of the major things that is vital in understanding this is that the mind has got two splits. The mind has got the non-conscious and the conscious part. And as we know, the easy question of science is how does one's work? Where is it? Show me where it is. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. So where is it?

Exactly. So that is it? Exactly. So that's classical physics. Because classical physics is all about what can I see, what can I touch, what can I feel. Things that are intuitively sort of thought about. Concrete. Yeah, the concrete. Concrete and not too big, not too small that you can't see and don't move too fast. So already that's classical physics.

It's very limited. So I always explain it in terms of an iceberg. If you think of the iceberg, the tip sticks out. It's nothing compared to what the iceberg actually is. So classical physics is the tip of the iceberg. And then quantum physics is under the iceberg, under the sea, which kind of never ends because they all go into each other. And then that eventually runs into all the water of the earth. And so there's almost like an unlimited ending to an iceberg underneath the sea. so the conscious mind is like the tip of the iceberg and your non-conscious mind is like the and the there's all this quantum activity underneath so and on a practical level and i've

got a whole my whole research theory is based on this there's tons of scientific references that i've got on my web page and all over the place that I've based this research on. And it's more and more research coming out now that's confirming it. Because the hard question of science is, what is this unique consciousness? And what they're also trying to understand is, what is non-consciousness? In the 80s, the non-conscious mind, the under the water, not the tip of the iceberg, was considered to be unimportant.

You would have been trained in that. We would have had the similar training back there. But it just holds like a filing cabinet holding your basic perceptions, but it doesn't do much. It's like this pre-programmed kind of thing that just predetermines you. Now, before I go into more depth about that, here's the thing. That scientist that you had that argument with or discussion with, heated argument, whatever it was, and I've had a few of those he's actually made a decision he's chosen to believe a certain way so

he's used his free will to say there's no free will so already he's killed his own argument straight I always say that to them you're choosing to say this you are and you're totally different to what I'm saying just the fact that we have a different opinion is shows the uniqueness shows that I'm not. And then they'll go on about, okay, you've programmed to have your opinion. I said, no, but you're going to change your opinion. You're going to learn. As you learn, you're creating new genes. And a lot of them don't understand that. A lot of them aren't studying. They're not putting the pieces of the puzzle together about genetic research, about how our body responds to stimulation. Like if you have a measles virus in your body, you create genes you literally

create new genes to have build a memory to recognize that virus so that's what we're doing when we learn new stuff so we're always changing so your non-conscious mind is this very dynamic part of you where all your memories are basically forming and where they stored and we have trillions and trillions of memories that are dynamic that we are creating literally from conception because in the womb you're responding already. So as soon as we respond as humans to what's coming in through our senses, we will start processing and creating genes and we'll start building that into physical realities in our brain.

So we're designing and shaping our brain. And over time, so we come with our unique nurture, which I believe is very unique i mean nature we get nurturing but what i believe is over dominant over and above that which i've done a lot of research on and that's the eye factor i call it the eye the eye factor as in an eye and the eye factor is this uniqueness this ability that sets us apart from others and each of us has our own eye factor and it's more powerful than whatever your nature was given because your nature is there to be redesigned your nature is not self-emergent your brain's not self-emergent genes are not self-emergent they when you did if you die right

now your brain's not going to do anything okay it's going to it's only doing stuff now we're only having genetic expression happening as we're talking now in both our brains because we happen to be alive but if we were both, that material substance will go away. So no matter what you do with that brain, if they take it out of our heads, it's not going to produce mind. But the fact that we're alive, our mind is the dominant force over and above the brain. So the brain is the substance that responds to the mind. So what you're doing with your non-conscious and conscious thought life

is redesigning the structure of your brain through genetic expression. So how about this thought about non-conscious and conscious thought life is redesigning the structure of your brain through genetic expression so how about um how about this thought about non-conscious and conscious is that that the thoughts that we have over and over and over again that we don't need to you know rehearse them on a regular basis so we push them into the non-conscious they become basically the unaware habit forming tissue if you will of the the thoughts the material thoughts that we're aware of how do you respond to that thought do you agree with that or do you say that no no no non-conscious is something very different than an automatic efficiency process okay so there's always been so much misunderstanding on that it's very easy answer to it's a very easy question to actually answer.

Your conscious mind is where information will come into. Let's say you wake up in the morning or like we're listening now, we're talking to each other. Signals are coming in from the external environment through our five senses. They're going into your mind and your mind is going into action. Consciously, we're awake and we're aware of stuff coming in. Stuff's coming in through our five senses into the conscious mind. As soon as stuff comes in, like right now as we're talking, you're thinking of things and so am I. So we have got memories that we've built, memories of thoughts that we have built over to our experience, our belief systems, the choices we've made, etc.

And those are basically whatever we think of with our mind has become a physical reality in our brain. So those are in our non-conscious. Our non-conscious holds all these trillions of thoughts, and a very well-established thought is a belief system or an attitude. The more entrenched it becomes, the scientific word for that, as you know, is automatization. And then that's basically the fancy word for habit. So a belief system is a cluster of thoughts that have become a very habituated or automatized process. So they are very real, very dynamic, very intelligent.

But because we're not aware of them, you can't be aware of trillions and trillions of thoughts. Your non-conscious mind is extremely fast. It's extremely, it's quantum in nature. It is not bound by space and time. But your conscious mind is much more this much more similar to the tip of the iceberg so it is it is limited it's much slower we can only deal with a certain amount of actions per second in the conscious mind whereas

the non-conscious mind is can deal with so much at once but then so what happens is that the stuff's coming into the conscious mind then thoughts move is that the stuff's coming into the conscious mind then thoughts move up from the non-conscious to the conscious mind so we've got incoming that's right and we've got upcoming and so that upcoming let's let's take it weird for for just a moment to create a dramatic conversation is that let's let's highlight the Dalai Lama or let's highlight Buddha or let's highlight Jesus, let's highlight some figures in our world that stand for enlightenment. And what would the quality of their non-conscious mind be? And how, depending on the framework of how you believe those men to become,

would they have programmed or received that non-conscious information? Okay, so let's take away the word programmed because that implies that the biological automator, that we are like robots, we're not. No, I don't want to say that. But I like the word programmed for this reason. Course, correct me if I'm off. Is that if I think about optimistic thoughts often,

I'm programming the non-conscious material to be able to see the world through the lens that something good is about to take place. And optimism and pessimism need to be learned. And that learning is what I'm calling programming. So I'm not referencing, when I say programming, that there's no choice. I get what you're saying. You use it in a different context. Okay. So I understand what you're saying you use it in a different context okay um so i understand what you're saying so um i'm just that word it's so mechanistic that's why i understand i always move away from using it but i understand your context

you've explained that perfectly so what the way i'm that the way that i understand it from my research is that as we are responding to the incoming and upcoming we're going to now start thinking about this new information. And that new information, the more you think about it, that's quantum physics. It's called the quantum Zeno effect. Whatever you think about the most, you will learn. So it's the repeated effort that makes learning take place. So as you mindlessly focus, mindfully focus on stuff, very consciously, you are building

neurological structures. Now, this is where I've done a lot of work on how long does it take to build something? How long does it take to automatize something? Actual sort of time in terms of days and things. I've got these in all my programs and books and so on. So once you have built something, it then moves into the non-conscious mind. And once it's in the non-conscious mind, it's very intelligent, very dynamic, but you're not actually thinking about it. And you are thinking about it, but you're not consciously thinking about it, but it's still impacting how you function.

So the easiest way to understand this is to think of learning to drive a car. So at first, you're very consciously aware of everything that you're doing. And there's a period of time, and it's normally around about three weeks, where you're very uncomfortable with everything. And then suddenly after three weeks, there is this, oh, I'm starting to get this. And this is for anything new that we learn. And then you basically practice more, and you practice more, and you practice more. And then suddenly you're getting in that car, and you're just driving,

and you're talking to the people in the car. And it seems like you're driving without thinking, but you're not. What you've done is you've consciously turned that you built the thought and then you've consciously automatized the thought automatization is an intelligent and sophisticated and brilliant way of putting it into the non-conscious mind in a way that it's accessible so that when you're in a situation it pops up and you actually then as you drive you you've got this memory that moves up of how to drive. And then as you drive today, you're adding more networks. You're literally redesigning that network. The minute something moves from the non-conscious to the conscious mind, it becomes malleable and changeable. So we can now add to our experience. And that's

in the positive. That's the plastic paradox. It could be in the positive or the negative direction. That's right. And that seems to me to be, I want to pull on this thread and ask you, I want to say a thought and then pull on the thread to ask another question. And so the idea of raising awareness of the non-conscious, which is, I'll use the word programming, but you're using the word, I don't know what the word you would use, about why things become embedded or imbued in the non-conscious process of automatization yeah for efficiency and that you know that's kind of the the brilliance of the brain is that the lack of redundancy or the um yeah so the when we don't

have redundancy where it's a unbelievably efficient mechanism and so when when we become more aware of our non-conscious, then we can shift and change it. And so now I want to pull on this thread and ask you a question. And I want to come back to Dalai Lama and or Jesus and Buddha. And I want to have that, I want to pull on that just a little bit, because I think both of us are going to agree, but I'm not sure if we're born tabula rasa, if we're born with a blank non-consciousness and however our life experiences and the way that we think over and over and over and repeat particular patterns and thoughts create this base of non-consciousness but I want I don't want to assume that I want to ask that okay so let's go into

this question I want to ask which is go back to the beginning driver. And at first, there's lots of forced attention to learn something new. And that forced attention can feel wonderful and it can feel chaotic, right, because it's new. And then over time, as you eloquently put, it becomes easier. And then we can do many things on top of the efficient and automatic responding or skill of driving. And then if we wanted to become the best in the world driver, okay, so we've taken from a new skill to eventually best in the world. Yeah. So what is the, what would you say is the process or what would you say are the key skills and tools to help somebody go from a beginner's experience

all the way through to expertise and possibly beyond into mastery? Well, I believe that it's the repeated effort that makes learning take place. So it's taking that infinite level that we can go to. Intelligence is unlimited, and that links to mastery. So basically, the more you decide, okay, I'm going to become this expert driver, which is the example we've now got stuck on. But we could take anything. It could be like your field. I mean, you becoming an expert in your field, I'm becoming an expert in my field. I spend hours and hours, and so do you, spend hours and hours and hours thinking about reading, research. So it's layer upon layer of knowledge that we're constantly expanding

so that those networks in our brains, I'm talking about you and I now, in our particular fields are becoming ones of expertise because we keep adding more and more layers. We keep redesigning. We keep on integrating more levels of knowledge. So it's continual, ongoing, never-ending learning and thinking to learn, thinking deeply to learn. Are you more interested in that context, thinking deeply to learn,

and then the architecture of thought and the scaffolding around particular ideas, being able to link ideas and sensations that at one time we were not able to link? And that feels like esoteric, and I can't see it and hold it, but I believe that that is what it feels like for me, is that now, 20 years after I first began to learn about how learners learn best and perform on demand, is that I can see it from many points of view. And however, I think what I hear you talking about is that it's also a neural network patterning that's taking place in the actual tissue.

And are those separate for you? Oh, they're totally, yeah. Yeah, the conscious scaffolding, and then, yeah, please. Oh, sorry, sorry. So the brain is simply a physical organ, and it's highly complicated and complex, as know and we only understand somewhere between eight and ten percent if that i think it's closer to about two percent of how the brain actually works personally um but the brain shouldn't be should be complex because our mind is more complex so our mind is

the complexity the brain is just a it's a physical thing that is designed to respond to the mind. So the brain is simply going to do what the mind tells it to do. So we can't say the insula is this and the amygdala is that. I'm very anti that approach because it's not even accurately, accurate scientific. It's come out of a neurocentric approach. Those simply are designed to respond. You will find, yes, if you're emotional,

you are going to find more glucose metabolism in the amygdala areas, et cetera, et cetera, and the limbic system. But the more you get into quantum physics and the vibrations of the – and I'm not talking about it in a weird sense. I'm talking about hardcore physics. When you talk about the actual vibrations along the membranes of a neuron, you are actually talking about a completely different process of response. So the brain is simply a very, very fancy photocopying machine. It's going to respond to what your mind tells it to do. So you literally with your mind generate a signal that is 75 to 98% of the signal that

actually switches the genes on. So the genes are not self-emerging, which means, actually switches the genes on so the genes are not self-emerging which means as i mentioned earlier on the genes can't switch themselves on as you know they have to be activated so that what research has shown is that with the science of epigenetics which has been around for years is that the um the but only really making its like impact now is that 80 percent of the signal that activates physical changes is your mind. The other more or less 2% to 25% is biological. So what you eat, what you consume, psychotropic drugs, creams, all the biology stuff, the biological stuff.

There was a really important study that shifted my understanding, which was when they took a look at couples and the quality of relationships and they measured, do you remember the study? I can't remember the author of it. The blister study. Yes. Are you talking about the blister study? Yes. And then they studied their brains thereafter. And also the healing. Yeah. Unbelievable study. And so what it left me with was an insight that, okay, so the way that we relate to others and the way we relate to ourselves is the primary force on shifting our brain's quality and texture and whatever adjectives that we put in place there. And it blew me away. I feel like the traditional medical model

that many of us were taught from, if can't measure manage it or if you can't measure it you can't manage it and how do you measure thought where does thought exist you know and if you can't see it you're it's a hopeless conversation that just feels esoteric and foo-foo well that's why you have to use something like quantum physics to even get a grip on what what a thought life is and how powerful it is and how to design how we we literally moment by moment of every day, we redesigning our brain. And that's very hopeful. It is very hopeful. Okay.

So let's go back to, I want to learn about how to become the best and from your like lenses, what you've thought, you know, about that topic. And then let's go back to Jesus just for a minute. Sure. I'd love to. Yeah. Let's go back to Jesus just for a minute. Sure, I'd love to. Yeah, and the reason I want to go back to the representation of Jesus, and you are a Christian, I believe. Yes.

Yes, okay. And then, okay, so what was the quality? If you had to guess, what would be the quality of his non-conscious? Well, what I feel as a Christian, I believe in Jesus. I believe in the resurrection I believe in that he was God so I believe that Jesus and I believe that whole concept which is already something to get your mind around which is really I don't believe he was like the Buddha or the Dalai Lama we there's no comparison so if you have to look at his mindset he was created with a

because according to the Christian belief God Jesus is god's son so obviously he's got all the all the genetic material that whatever god how god designed us so in genesis 1 26 and 27 it talks about how we made in god's image and and i will get science in a moment because he's such a bridge there's such a link between science and scripture it It's unreal. And scientists have actually found that we are wired for love. So our natural, normal baseline design is that we are wired for love. So that means that there's no circuit, there's no neurotransmitter, there's no structure in the brain, there's no structure in the human body, there's no organ, there's no cell. Get down to the proteins and enzymes. There is nothing in the human that is designed to handle anything but healthy.

Healthy, love, non-toxic thinking. So that's a completely normal default mode. So if I had to get into the head of Jesus, he actually was God on earth. So basically put into this physical substance in order for us to actually become more relatable to this God that's unrelatable. So Jesus makes this whole concept of God very accessible. And he demonstrates a recognition of his uniqueness, a recognition of having a humility, a humble attitude of serving and loving others, of immersing himself and others in love. And there's so much research showing that when you actually have a belief system that's

operating in love, people get healed quicker. Like if someone's in hospital and you're praying and your loved one's around you, there's all those studies showing how that immersion in love changes them. There's the studies showing how now with epigenetics showing that when you reach out in love genuinely, not thinking, it mustn't be what your belief, your thoughts are dominant over and above what you say. What you say and what you do is first a thought. So you can say the right thing,

but it's your belief system that is actually generating the correct thing. So you can say, oh, hello, how are you? I love you, whatever. But meanwhile, you're thinking this person irritates me. And you're saying the right thing. You seem to be saying, you know, communicating positive stuff, but actually your belief system is the complete opposite so you have cognitive dissonance that's not love and what Jesus represents is this pure non-judgmental doesn't matter who you are get away from the labels get away it's nothing about you this person you that

person you're this it's all about who are you? I am interested in you. What's your story of your life? And that's what Jesus represents. And it's that when you go up to, it doesn't matter, we've all done stuff and we've all got issues. And when we start judging others, and this is, we're in a very judgmental world where everyone thinks that they know better than everyone else and they judge everyone else. What I love about the Jesus model and what I believe is in his non-conscious is this complete and utter, no cognitive dissonance. When he says in the stories in the Bible, I love you, it's genuine. And what can I do? I'm interested in you. I'm not interested in what you've done

that's maybe wrong or that's messed your life up. I am interested in you because I believe you're not a tabula rasa. I believe that you are designed unique, standalone, set apart. There's no one like you. And if you give that message to someone, yes, my patients would come into my practice like they came to you. And they'd come with a whole pile of files of all the things that they couldn't do. And I'd have all these referrals from other doctors saying, hey, there's all this and this wrong. I'd say, don't tell me anymore. I just want to know who you are. Once I know who you are, and we can actually start unpacking this then we'll deal with the issues because you can the who you are is the real you that's the big stuff that's what you've wired in is and what's very

interesting is genetic research by um various different people showing that we you know the whole 97 junk dna and the three percent you know you you know, that whole concept where they now understand that the junk DNA is not junk DNA. It's actually the programming. Well, let's get away from the word programming. It's the language part. It's the intelligent, but it's the intelligent. It's the engineering genes. That's the word I'm looking for, not programming.

The engineering genes that actually control the 3% and how they've shown that only a portion of the 3% is what we can actually damage with our incorrect thinking. So which means that the majority of us, the majority of who each of us uniquely and individually is, is an incredible human being able to cope with life, become genetically and epigenetically and structurally equipped to handle every single pressure in life. And if we can get our perspective right and recognize that the bad stuff that's happened to us and the crazy thinking that we sometimes have and maybe often have is very limited to a portion of the 3% because the majority of who we are is actually very powerful. And that's what I try to teach people and my patients and things.

And that's what I believe Jesus represents, the 100% of the good stuff. And he gives us a model for how to actually be in complete honesty with ourselves and to speak from our belief systems and to take responsibility. Listen, I had a negative thought. I had a toxic thought. I don't like that person. Whatever. It's being very responsible and not trying to pretend it doesn't exist.

Don't suppress it. That will just create mental ill health. It's deal with the issues. Deal with the things that you don't like to deal with. Face the stuff. Don't try and get away from the suffering. Let it shape you. I love it. That will just create mental ill health. It's, you know, it's deal with the issues, deal with the things that you don't like to deal with. Face the stuff. Don't try and get away from the suffering. Let it shape you. I love it. Yeah, the embracing of suffering for sure. And would you imagine that the non-conscious for Jesus would be pure, the 100% optimization of love? Yes, total. I totally agree that that is. And we see that, you know, there's so much fantastic research showing that being wired for love is not just a esoteric spiritual concept,

it's an actual reality. You know, in terms of right down to how microtubules function and tubulin functions in the microtubules, you can see the degeneration when you operate out of that mode. So yeah, it's right down. The physical represents what's happening on the mental and spiritual level. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Cozy Earth. Over the years, I've learned that recovery doesn't just happen when we sleep. It starts with how we transition and wind down. And that's why I've built intentional routines into the way that I close my day. And Cozy Earth has become a new part of that. Their bedding, it's incredibly soft, like next level soft. And what surprised me the

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Definitely under the realm of toxic, I would say unforgiveness and bitterness and envy. So these things, so much happens to us and we can't control events and circumstances. They come through other people's choices. But if, whatever we go through, trauma-wise or voluntarily-wise, because a lot of, you know, we do, we do make wrong decisions. We choose to make, no one forces us to make wrong decisions. We do make wrong decisions. We do think things too incorrectly. So, anything, I always go, I always, when I teach, I always have, like, this little wiry tree that represents toxic thinking on my one side and i have green trees on the other side and i talk about that being the love zone and that being the fear zone so if you just as i'm using my hands love zone fear zone and here we are with our incredible mind which is

filled with love and power and and soundness which the research is showing which is a spiritual concept too that we are our default is love power and soundness and we have got this ability to choose and as we choose we're going to wire in either healthy or toxic thinking and what i'm seeing definitely from um from the biggest thing i would start is is unforgiveness towards oneself towards others and then that affects self-esteem so then when you then you then you start ending because you think, if I had that or if I was like that, then that leads to bitterness. So unforgiveness, envy, and bitterness, those three, which then leads to guilt. And that combination is like so toxic.

It's just they work together in such a little tight-knit thing that you've got to kind of break through. And breaking through is immersing people in an environment of love, not saying you have this label. You're a faulty machine. you've got to just have medication, you've got a chronic lifelong disease. Addiction is not a chronic lifelong disease. Addiction is trying to deal with something that's down there, something happened, what's your story? And that's what's important to recognize, what is your story? Because when we have something that's happened and we haven't dealt with it we've squashed it down it's become this it creates neurochemical chaos in our brain we try and get order back because we we've been designed a wide full of design is very ordered neuroscience is showing us that there's a lot of order in the design of our of our right from the

quantum to a physical level what does that mean that order yeah what does that mean that there's order in the design of love okay so if we look down at, let's take it, let's go from the actual structure of the brain, how the circuits of the brain work together. So we've gone from an understanding that we've got two hemispheres and four lobes and different structures. And there was a lot of work done on, as they started learning more about the brain on what each structure does there was a lot of excitement around your insula does this and they would speak almost like in like personalize you know that whole concept where your insula is doing this and your amygdala is doing that and there's still a little quite a lot of that in science now so but we've progressed but that's kind of that really is old science when you look now it's it's much more we understand there's much more need for understanding the integration of the brain, that no structure works alone,

that when they work, the different parts of the brain work together, that's when you get harmony in the brain and that's when things function well. So it's not a thing of you can take this part out and then only that's missing. When you take this part out or that enzyme is not in its correct balance or that enzyme works with a thousand others, which works with all the different neurotransmitters i mean there's 800 billion proteins in a cell and if all 800 billion proteins work in harmony we have a love design we have the cell doing what it's supposed to do one of those 800 billions just just one out of not functioning like it should

messes up the whole function of the cell. And so we see this totally reflected. We see this in nature. We see this in food that is local, sustainable, whatever. You see everything you need in food for your nutrition of your body. So we see the same wide pool of design in nature as we see in our bodies. Credible matching. So that 8 billion to 1 ratio and getting all of those to line up, how do you think about flow state? The science around flow state, the most optimal state a human being can

be in where there's a blending of awareness and action where time seems to be distorted in a sense of awe, where what we're doing and who we are, there's a complete synchronicity. How do you think about that relative to your framework of what you've come to understand? For me, that's quite easy to understand because of the non-conscious mind research, which is beyond space and time. You see, classical physics is very much we're talking now and just, you know, tonight's going to come and tomorrow's going to come, whereas quantum physics isn't bound by space and time. And so your memories are not bound by space and time. So the who you physics isn't bound by space and time. And so your memories are not bound by space and time.

So the who you are is not bound by space and time. So understanding, this is where we almost get surreal kind of, you know, when you get those moments where you think so deeply and you have those deep conversations or you have those moments where you really think through, you get those almost like, as you say, that flow state where you're actually getting into sort of a, like almost almost surreal it's almost just like you're not even on this earth anymore you get that revelation that's your that's a very strong connection between the non-conscious and the conscious mind which is happening every couple of seconds but on the non-conscious mind you've got these waves of activity happening collapsing and these waves of of energy that are literally

building and collapsing 40 times a second and then even faster these different layers and different levels and every time every now and then we get a glimpse into who we are we get that connection and that's where we start hey this is really who i am we start getting a deeper insight and deeper so the non-conscious mind starts to explain that if you go alongside understanding the principles of quantum physics like heisenberg's uncertainty principle and schrödinger's you know although the schrödinger's wave and all that all those concepts start giving you more of an understanding of this dynamic almost unpredictable well it is unpredictable because of our uniqueness we are totally unpredictable because we are so unique and i I have no idea those last two theories.

Can you give me a highline version of those last two theories that you just shared? Okay, so Schrodinger's theory is basically as you're about to make a choice. So you're listening to me now and you've got information coming into your brain and you've now got to make a decision. Like let's say you get that phone call or you get that email and you've now got to make a decision. So there's information coming in to the conscious mind then you're going to have information moving immediately because the minute we stimulate it we're going

to have stuff moving from the non-conscious to the conscious so you view the current through the past use three existing memories and that helps you get framework you can at the same time as you you're going to like a freeze frame so information comes in information comes up and we are able to literally freeze frame that for a couple of seconds and go into what is called superposition which is okay this is coming in this is coming up what am i going to do mindful the mindfulness that you're talking about i'm describing literally very simplistically the science behind what mindful thinking is which forms so you can actually analyze hey this is what i've got in my head this is what's coming in this is how i'm inclining to move in that direction but you haven't made a

decision yet and there's also never just one solution there are multiple seeds so shooting the deals with the fact that we have multiple probabilities that we can choose from in both the healthy and the toxic zone and then you've got heisenberg's law is that it's uncertain it's very much and then we actually choose so those are just they're basically laws of quantum physics that explain all these weird things in in um the non-conscious mind that are actually not so weird they're actually quite accessible is that different than meta-analysis or the observing the observer is that similar it's very it's very similar because with meta-analysis you and met the observer is that similar it's very it's very similar because

with meta-analysis you and metacognition when i'm in my theory i teach that um metacognition is thinking about your thinking and it's starting to but there's a deeper level of meta you know as we know metacognition we say that but actually metacognition is you're not even really aware of your thinking it's what's going on in your non-conscious mind. So it's only when metacognition meets with cognition that you have an awareness happening. So I believe when you're thinking about your thinking, you're cognitive, doing on your non-conscious. So your non-conscious operates 24 hours a day. So you never exclude metacognition. It's how you access and use your metacognition.

Cognition only operates when you're awake. So when we're cognitive, when we're cognitivism, whatever you want to say, we are consciously aware of stuff. But we are always being driven by our belief systems and our memories. And you can't change them when they're non-conscious, but you can only change them when you're aware of them. So our belief systems are going to be, we're going to be aware of our belief systems

when we're aware of what's actually coming up. And that's what I teach, I used to teach my patients, what I teach clients to do now is being aware of our belief systems with me, aware of what's actually coming up. And that's what I teach my patients, what I teach clients to do now, is being aware of, as that comes in, what actually is coming up, and then how to control that. And that's discipline. What would be, yeah, incredible discipline. Well, discipline to not be distracted by the sounds and the noises and all of the noise around us and inside of us,

to get to the signal is how I think about it. And once we have that signal, can we stay connected to it for more than we did today? Absolutely. Right. And then once we're connected to that signal for an extended period of time, we start to get into those phases of insight and wisdom, and we really have a deeper understanding of how we work, how the world works, you know. And that's a journey.

That's a process that takes time. How do you help people? What would maybe be one, two, three strategies or habits that you help people infuse into their daily rhythms to be able to help them be better? Okay, so I have to, from the working with years with clients and in practice, one of the things I found was the priority is to teach them to take responsibility. So it's to slow down long enough to actually become aware of their thought life. So I teach on things like the default mode network. I teach patients how to actually do this incoming, upcoming freeze frame and actually analyze. So that's one of the, that's incredibly important is to become, to actually discipline your mind to get rid of,

to go out, to switch off from the external to switch onto the internal. Okay, this is what I'm hearing. This is what I'm thinking. Most people are very undisciplined in that area. So once you've mastered that,

then the next thing is, okay, I'm hearing and I'm looking, I'm actually watching my own thinking because your frontal lobe of your brain is designed to enable you to stand outside yourself. I call that the multiple perspective advantage. So it's one of the first things I teach people is how to develop a multiple

perspective advantage. Then once I've done that is now we take responsibility. Until you take responsibility, you're not going to change anything. So when you recognize, okay, that is me, I'm thinking like that. Are you actually happy thinking like that or not happy are you prepared to do the work to change it because if you're not i can't change it for you nor can you so that's very very profound is to teach people to take and people don't want it me also in a worldview where it is don't take responsibility let's drive all your numb everything let's give you all these medications and my whole series on of my second series now season two of my tv shows all on mental

health and the dangers of numbing our emotions and not dealing with our issues, which is why we have such a quadrupling of people on disability because of mental health issues, because they're not dealing with stuff. So I'm very much a proponent of let's reconceptualize. That's a big part of the research that I've done is once you're aware, once you take responsibility, are you prepared to do the work? Now you've got to reconceptualize and That's a big part of the research that I've done is once you're aware, once you take responsibility, are you prepared to do the work? Now you've got to reconceptualize, and that's going to take time. That's going to take at least 63 days. And I've got programs.

I've got online programs where you work daily and in my books and whatever. So I've tried to take all my stuff and put them in and teach people how to not be – I don't want people to be reliant on me because it's not healthy. People need to be reliant on me because it's not healthy. People need to be reliant on themselves. So I believe in teaching them to understand how they work so that they can take responsibility. Why do you say 63 days? Well, people always think it's 21 days to form a habit. I mean, that's been such a belabored point.

It's almost like you've almost taken on myth proportions that it's 21 days to change something but what the science shows is it actually takes around three weeks and it's correct to actually build a network so you'll literally your dendrites change your tubulin your brain you literally have physical changes that proteins change over a period of 21 days so it takes 21 days to actually build something but it takes an additional two cycles of 21 days so So we're going into more or less 63 days, which is more or less three months before you actually automatize something. And then thereafter, you're adding layer upon layer of expertise. And most people give up around day four. Yeah, because there's an increase in the difficultness around the newness

of any thought or behavior. And it's the newness. It's the classic example when you take away, every time a kid cries and you take, every time, no, what's the classic example? You give a kid a lollipop and when you take it away, he cries. And then you complain about his diabetes. Okay. So then mom, dad take away the lollipops and, and then they intellectually understand it. They take away the lollipops, but the kid screams understand it they take away the lollipops but the kid screams more when you take it away and that's the day four reference that i've come to understand is that when it gets harder people revert back to yes the route or the ease of the old habit and okay so with that in mind, specifically, get right down into it.

What would be one thought or habit that you would like to install in other people? Being aware of their thought life. Being very mindfully aware of what's coming up and what's coming in and going into that awareness state. Okay, so I just want to make sure I heard. And is that journaling or is that mindfulness training? Well, I've got a whole technique that as I study the science of thought,

journaling is not enough. You've got to do a lot more than that to capture it because you can just get caught up in journaling. So it's very much these very specific steps that you need to go through. One last question. I want to give a chance for you

to articulate where people can find you. But how do you describe or capture this concept of mastery? That's true. One last question. I want to give a chance for you to articulate where people can find you. But how do you describe or capture this concept of mastery? What I think is very important is two things. To be aware that we can't control the events and circumstances of our life, that we can control our reactions. So the awareness that we can control our reactions is very important in mastery. And then the repeated effort will make learning take place. And mastery is a learning process.

So it's repeated effort. How hard are you prepared to push through? I love it. I love it. It's super tight, nice and crisp. Where can we find out more about what you're doing and what you're up to? Well, my website, drleaf.com. So D-R-L-E-A-F.com.

And then I have a switch on my switch on your brain tv program that is on tbn but all the replays are on my on my web page and there's tons of materials and online programs and we've just released a new book called think and eat yourself smart which is the body side of the whole thing and showing how mind how eating is 80 in the mind and so i'm trying to do what i can to help people social media instagram twitter what are those handles all of it um so it's dr leaf dr dr caroline leaf all the older handles for social for all the social media i love it thank you so much for sharing and bringing us along your insights and your journey and your research and your science approach and we we want to celebrate and accentuate the program that you've created to help people

be better in their own lives. So I hope listeners dive over and I wish you absolutely the best in the afternoon that you have today and look forward to meeting you in person when we get the chance. Yes, that'll be wonderful. I look forward to it. Thank you so much. Thanks for your insight too. I really enjoyed it. Okay. Take care. All the best. Thank you. You too. Thank you. much. Thanks for your insight too. I really enjoyed it. Okay. Take care. All the best. Thank you. You too. Thank you.

Bye. Bye. All right. If you enjoyed this conversation and you haven't subscribed yet to the Finding Mastery podcast, punch over to iTunes and you can take a look for it. Easy to find. Just punch in Finding Mastery. There's also another podcast that we just fired up called Minutes on Mastery.

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taking place there. So wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. All right. Um, hope you enjoyed this conversation and, uh, look forward to hearing from you soon. Take care. 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

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