Habits and Hustle - Episode 109: Dr. Caroline Leaf – Neuroscientist, Mental Health & Mind Expert, and Bestselling Author

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a Neuroscientist, Mental Health & Mind Expert, and Bestselling Author. She breaks down the importance of mindset and the power the mind actually has over the body from a researched scientific point of view. Changing our understanding of habit-forming, explaining the danger of how we describe “mental illness,” and detailing how our mood can affect our organs and vice versa, Dr. Leaf restructures and expands how we should be approaching our day-to-day lives. Stalled by your own mental struggles and nothing’s helped? Having trouble forming habits when you’ve followed what everyone else has said should work? Here’s a hint: 63 days. Now check out the episode to find out what that means. Youtube Link to This Episode Dr. Leaf’s Website  Dr. Leaf’s Instagram  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Did you learn something from tuning in today? Please pay it forward and write us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts. 📧If you have feedback for the show, please email [e-mail]  📙Get yourself a copy of Jennifer Cohen’s newest book from Habit Nest, Badass Body Goals Journal. ℹ️Habits & Hustle Website 📚Habit Nest Website 📱Follow Jennifer – Instagram – Facebook – Twitter – Jennifer’s Website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier or paid subscription starting at 12.99 per month. I got this Tony Robbins, you're listening to Habitson Hustle, fresh it. On today's episode of Habitson Hustle, we have Dr. Caroline Leif. Dr. Leif is a communication pathologist and a cognitive neuroscientist. She has helped literally hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their minds to detox and grow their brain to succeed

in every area of their life, including school, university, and the workplace. She is also a bestselling author of many books. And in her newest book called Cleaning Up Your Mental Mass, Dr. Leif offers five simple and scientifically proven steps called the neuropsychal to help people overcome the unhealthy thinking habits that contribute to their anxiety, stress, depression, toxic thinking, and intrusive thoughts, and replace them with positive thinking that leads to health, happiness, and success. This episode is full of great information that I learned a lot from and is practical that you can integrate into your life easily. I highly suggest you listen and lean as much information from it as I have.

Your newest book is called Leaning up your mental maths. Here it is. Boy, this book has so much information in it. Usually you get a book and if you get one or two little nuggets of wisdom, you're happy. Every page, there's something else. My notes, now the problem is I have so many notes for you, I want to ask you, right? That's, I love this.

It's true. And like, unfortunately though, because there's so many notes, the typing is so small, I won't be able to read them, but that's because I've done that too. Like, I can't read my own writing, then I write them, then I can't read my own handwriting. So it's, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is that, that's exactly what happens to me. And so like, I don't even know where to begin

except like I'm just going to jump right into it. Yeah, just jump in and let's see where the conversation goes. That's great. I'm going to see you. Okay, good. So I have to be in my eye now. Hold on one second. Oh, it's amazing how that can go. That happened to me in the middle of it into the other day. I'm a scorer day. My mascara just dropped into my eyes. And I don't know why. And I have to try not to look like with tears. Exactly. I think I'll be OK.

Let's just talk first of all the whole overall wellness umbrella. How people can to focus on the physical fitness, the diet, and yet the brain, the mind, is always an afterthought when that's what leads everything else. You got it, yeah, I love it. It's true, though, and I find it very interesting, how that should be part of your day-to-day lifestyle, like the other elements are.

Can you, let's talk about what your whole book approach is and like what neuropsychling is and we can kind of then go from there. Because that's absolutely, that's that kind of is like the crux of everything, right? So absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So we, I can begin, we start. Yeah, please go ahead. Okay, okay.

Okay. Well, that, that what you've just said is really it does. It is the crux of everything. If you think of it, your mind is, and your mind never switches off, and the easiest way to understand this is the difference between us being alive and a dead person is our mind.

It's our mind is literally that time important to mind is it's actually like, if you look at the scientific research, it's about 99% of who we are as a human. So when you die, that goes and your body and brain doesn't integrate. And that, so if that's how important it is, if it's literally driving the brain in the body,

it's driving the genetics, it's driving, and I've got all these little props. So for those, that all these little, you'll see brains coming up and all kinds of things coming up. But literally, we are driving this and the brain in the body respond. And once we get that kind of thinking and we realize one of the quotes I've put in the book is that you can go through weeks without food, you can go through days without water, you can go through minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go through seconds without

thinking. You wake up with your mind, you eat with your mind, you do your workout with your mind, we have this conversation with our mind, you interact with your family with your mind, you go to bed with your mind, you sleep with your mind, it never stops. But we don't pay attention to it. In science it's considered the hard question of science, so they kind of relegated to, this is certain branches of science. And but it's actually the most obvious question.

So I've studied it for 38 years and I've wanted to, starting on a very, very clinical sense and then applying it to all different levels, education, corporate and then just being a human and that has really shifted how I understand mine. So basically, mind is how you, it's your aliveness, it's drive to brand new body, your brand of body respond without mind these don't exist. And that it basically is on a psychological level, your mind is how you think and how you feel and how you choose. That's those three things. So you're always right right now, everyone listening and watching you, you're thinking, feeling, choosing, thinking, feeling, choosing in little cycles. When you think you feel, when you think and feel

you choose, I think those always together, that's mind in action. And mind is always in action. So you are thinking, feeling and choosing at the moment at 400 billion actions per second on the non-conscious level to convert what you're hearing and seeing into your brain into little trees in your brain that look literally like trees, we literally growing my words into trees in your brain which is quite amazing. So that means you are driving the neuroplasticity of your brain as you're listening to me. Now, this is really significant.

People may think, well, what's important about that? Well, let me tell you. As you're listening to me, the information I'm giving you and the conversation we have will be going into the root parts. Like, every tree's got a root and the root stays a whole lot. And the roots are the source of where of the thought. So this is a thought tree and like a tree is made of branches

Thoughts are made of memories. So that's the roots are the source. So like our conversation be the source In how what the bright the tree trunk and the branches are you and the listeners and viewers interpretation of what they're hearing Because even though you all hear in the same thing and see the same thing because of our uniqueness We see it on our own unique way based on our history of all of our thoughts. We've been building and whatever is relevant, whatever is popping up at the moment as you build. Now you're doing this 8 to 13,000 times in a day. So you're building around about 8 to 10,000 of these in a day. Not all of them will stay in your mind and brain, but they are real.

They are real physical things. So your mind actually receives, but they are real. They are real physical things. So their in your mind actually receives the information and it builds and it does this whole processing thing and then it pushes it in the brain and the brain responds by building. You also push it into the DNA of your body. So not only are you storing it in your brain, but in your body too. That's why we've got to be holistic in how we approach ourselves as humans. And it's in the mind, where's the mind that's all around and through the brain and the body. And we can use things like gravitational forces and I'mstands work on photons and all

the quantum physics and all these fancy physics to understand that every single human has the only electromagnetic gravitational field around the body and that's mind. So we both memory, they too, in these waves in the mind. So it's phenomenal. We're building every single experience. From the time we open our eyes, till the time we go to sleep, we are converting every experience into these trees in the brain, the mind, and the body.

Now, sometimes we don't react like we showed. So here's a toxic looking tree. So maybe a toxic issue happens like maybe you have an argument or maybe you you read it post on Instagram and getting posters and rumours. Someone says something to you that throws you completely and so that's all these automatic. There's some sort of loss or death or abuse or bullying or whatever it is. The source is toxic. The roots are the toxic source. And then the tree trunk is how you interpret it. And then the branches are your interpretation in terms of your behaviour, your emotions,

how you feel about yourself. That whole thing is how you show up. This whole thing is how you show up. Here is a toxic showing up. So this is the drawing or relationship issues or feelings of constant anxiety and just not functioning like you should and whatever. And this is showing up doing whatever it is that you do that no one else can do and manifesting in your relationship and work etc. So that's those are the basic principles. So in

just in this tiny bit already of speaking we've already explained that the mind and the brain are separate. So we talk very often the current philosophy or the current sort of language is that mind and brain are the same thing, but they're not. The mind is not the brain. The brain is part of the physical, it's only one percent. It's physical structure, it's a responder. The mind is the 99 percent that makes the brain work. So mind and brain are separate, mind being the driver and brain being the responder. And then what is the brain? Bold thoughts, thoughts and thoughts and native memories. So that's also different thoughts and memories are the same thing.

And a thought has got all the emotions in it. So emotions are memories inside thoughts. Because every time your mind works, you think and you feel and you choose. So your thoughts, your thinking and your feeling and your decisions are all in the street. See in response to this. So that's yes. So then I have a bunch of questions. You said a lot of stuff there. It's a foundation. Are you can far away? Oh my gosh, okay. Here I go. So first of all, I guess, so basically you speak a lot about my management and neurocycling and there's five steps, so the book again calls, cleaning up your mental mass, five simple, scientifically proven steps to reduce anxiety, stress, and toxic thinking.

Yep, there you go. I have mine too. Good. Yes. So would you say then, how does does your methodology help let's say with Ruminating right because people tend to like get stuck on the same thing and get not being able to move from that thought Well, how do you kind of speak about in your book with your with your method? How does it how does it how does neuropsychling help something like that?

Pastry in excellent questions. So ruminating is that hamster girl, where we just get stuck, stuck, stuck. Okay, so that's ruminating is now a signal that something's going on in your life. So we don't, everything we do, including ruminating, people pleasing, whatever it is that we're doing, let's build your stick with the ruminating, is showing up, that's something that's showing up

in your life because of, we never do anything just randomly. It's nothing that just sucked out of the air. These are always a reason why we do what we do. So then we've got to go to what the only way we can do something is is from a thought. You can't do, you don't just what everything we're doing is coming from a source. The source is the thought and a thought's got all these components. So if we want to know why we are ruminating, we have to go and track the root. And if we find that root, we will actually understand why we are ruminating because ruminating is an unresolved issue. It's something that we just have not resolved. It's something that's there and we just keep thinking of it over and over again. The other factor why ruminating becomes so dominant is that whatever we think about the

most grows, like think of it as watering a plant. As you water the plant, it just gets bigger and bigger. It's getting in brain science language, you're basically giving it more and more energy. So each time you think of that same thought and you play that story in your head, you're making this thing stronger and stronger. And then this thing, this toxic thought with its origin and its interpretation is then manifesting as the act of ruminating. And that leads to tremendous emotional kind of challenges like frustration or depression or anxiety or worry or tripehation or all of the above or more

that I haven't mentioned. So what we have to do to fix it is we have to become very self-regulated and this is where the mind Management comes in because mind we have in terms of mind We have the mind that's the experimental messy part and that's why we're cleaning up the mental mess The messy mind is the very active one that's bang in the middle of life and is from the time you open your eyes Is doing all the the work of you and from the time you open your eyes is doing all the work of what's going on, what's processing, getting it in your brain, building these thoughts, that we don't always self-regulate like we should. In fact, most people, unless we train ourselves, people just kind of, it's just very much

reactive. They're fire off. Right. Yeah, very reactive. And that's really not a good pattern. That creates tremendous feelings, the feelings of overwhelmed burdened art, the understress, all the things people say all the time. That comes from an unmanage mind.

That's the mental mess I'm talking about and it's a very human experience. We all do that. So it's okay to feel a mental mess, but it's not okay to stay there because if you stay there, you're damaging your brain, your body, and you can talk about that in another section.

I wanna make sure I'm on to your question. So to fix up that ruminating, what we have to do is we have to get our messy mind under control. How? You have a wise mind. And a wise mind, for one thing, I call it the wise mind, or the survival mind. In neuroscience, we actually talk about it being wired for love. So we see that the brain doesn't have any structures or neurobiology for stress or depression or anxiety or frustration or any kind of toxicity. It only has, its design is to manage these things because we know as humans, we're going to be messy and

that's okay. And it's accepting the messiness and repairing and growing. That's what we designed for. That's survival. The survival is whoops, that didn't work, let me fix. But survival isn't mess, mess, mess, mess, mess. So survival is saying, making the messes, seeing them and fixing them. And to do that, we have to step into this optimism bias, this wide full of mind. So when you have a brain that's wide like that, we talk about that. So that's the physical. In the mind, it's called the optimism bias, with a survival mind.

And that means that we've grown to these to fix that because this is an imbalance. This is recognized by the brain immune system as dangerous as a COVID virus, for example. It's as real as COVID virus. So it's got a routine. So this is the real thing in your brain, proteins and chemicals and quantum vibrations and all kinds of quantum science and science and stuff. A virus has also got a physical structure. As soon as there's a virus in your body or damage in your body or bacteria, your brain's

immune system says, whoops, survival, fight this thing, send up your army. Your toxic thought does the same thing. So ruminating is now, if we keep sticking with the same thought and growing it, our brains immune system starts freaking out and we start sending out lots of teal and facytin, bilin, facytin, macrophages to the site and we create inflammation. That will make us feel like foggy and like our decision making is not so good and we start getting these cognitive effects. We also get the downscale effect into our body of feeling like, you know, hovering anxiety in our mind, but we also start feeling anxious in our body. You might feel some pain in your body, gut issues, whatever. So the way to fix this is to recognize the first

of all to recognize the signals signals are warning you like an alarm. How do you do that? The next couple of questions. You said a couple of things. Yes, it's things. You said self-regulation is super important for this. And also having the awareness when it's happening. So for people like self-regulation can be kind of difficult for people who can't self-regulate. If they have that as an issue, how does someone even begin to get better at self-regulating? And how do they even feel? How do people who are not good at having self-awareness get better at those two things? So I feel like in order to fix the ruminating problem, you have two other issues. Yes, and it's really great because I was going to dive into all of that. So you're very, very insight. Yes, very good that you said that. So thank you. You asked what I was going to dive into.

Very insightful. OK, so first of all, yeah, it's great. Self-regulation is absolutely key. Now, first of all, self-regulation is a skill you can develop. So that will make everyone feel at ease. Like you go to, they don't just come to you, they fit, they come to you all the time, and they train. So you don't go to the gym once.

It's the same principle operating, but you don't apply that to our mind. Exactly. Like we know, you cannot go to the gym once. It's the same principle operating. If you don't apply that to our mind, exactly like we know, you cannot go to the gym once. You cannot just, you know, it's completely working. Yes, and your mind is working anyway,

like your muscles are working anyway, but if you don't work your muscles, your muscles are not going to do what they should do. Same thing with your mind. Your brain is a muscle, but your mind is not your mind. It's an energy force that works the muscle. So your muscle of your brain just does what your mind tells you to do. So you have to work your your mind. So you have to learn how to tap into that

wise mind to manage the messy mind. And that's what self-regulation is. And it begins, self-regulation is a big word that takes you into awareness and takes you beyond awareness. Okay, so it's a lot. So we've got to start. So if it takes up regulation and we break it down, it's awareness and then it's beyond. The neuropsychil is the beyond and the awareness is kind of your preparation. How do you do awareness? You train yourself. Mind is malleable, trainable, which is really great to know. So you should be teaching your kids this from young.

Mind management is like a life skill. Without mind management, we're just going to make a mess a lot of the time. A lot of the time we get it right. We're in your cycle with, I'm even knowing we're doing it, that's because this is a scientific process that happens anyway. I've just studied it and made it conscious

and made it simple for people to understand, but this is a brain, mind brain function. So it's something that we as humans can, so it's malleable. So the way that I've developed this is that you can do, you can do the first thing to get awareness is you develop what you, you, you activate what I call the multiple perspective advantage. Right. So you practice standing back and observing your own thinking, feeling and choosing. And so mind is thinking, feeling and choosing and you can

train yourself to be aware of your thinking, feeling and choosing by going into the multiple perspective advantage. We are able as humans to watch ourselves. And if people think, how, just do it right now. Look at yourself in the reflection of the, if you're watching us, look at the pandemic, pick up your cell phone and watch yourself for something. Absolutely. Be a way of, what are you doing? Like, for example, how am I holding my hands?

What am I sitting? What am I doing? So start with a basic, basic level of what am I doing in this moment. Then watch yourself as you read an email. Immediately be away. How am I feeling? What am I? What are my body movements? What am I? What am I? What am I? What am I? Behave? Is how am I responding? What's going through my head? And then then have a conversation with someone and watch how you string your words together your body language or intonation the impact on them the Response and watch the response and watch yourself responding and watch how you choosing you I'll tell you it's once you get into it You get catches like fire and and at the moment

The take a bit of time to develop you talk about developing habits up done research on how long it takes to do a Boulder habit because these very little research and it takes I know I know I was gonna ask you into essay there's very little research and it takes 63 days. I was going to ask you and say that to you. So everyone always says it's 21 days, right? We've had people on this podcast who were habit experts, like BJFog and all sorts of people. Everyone's like, oh, 21 days. But really, people who are like, what you, like doctors neuroscience is there always kind of like you know

hesitant to say and you're saying it's actually 63 days to actually build that Yes, where did it come from where this will 21 day thing come from I came from and I put it in the book There's a plastic surgeon. I think I said plastic surgeon years ago Surgeon years ago was talking about the cycles that our body goes through with healing So if you have a blister it takes a immune system about three weeks for the blister to heal. So you've got a major surgery, you're going to heal in maybe nine weeks or 12 weeks or 24 weeks, but it works in cycles of three for the stem cells and all that. So that was translated into popular myth and became the myth of 21 days. It just kind of worked. That's how my sister did it.

So very, there's been so little research done on it, and I read all these people, like, go, as you said, there's so many people that talk about it. Listen, go to the science, don't talk about what you don't know, because it does not take 21 days. And it takes, what I've explained in the book, and I've given graphs, and everything, to show people. I decided to do the research, because I think there's four, five studies that have been done, one in London, there's a couple in the research, because I think there's four or five studies that have been done, one in London, there's a couple in the States looking at how long does it really take to change behaviour, because I have a means of behaviour change.

What I saw is that it takes 21 days, there is something that happens, it takes 21 days to find this pattern, why you're ruminating, to break it down, and to reconstruct it into a reconceptualized process. Okay, so to take the tree and break it down, you get what you call gamma peaks happening around 21 days. And that's an interesting thing, a gamma peak means gamma, when you get gamma waves in your brain, you get all these different ways, gamma, alpha, beta, delta, but gamma specifically kind of seals the deal when it comes to neuroplasticity

or change. So you want certain kind of gamma waves to flow from the back of your brain to the front of your brain, back to the front of your brain, but in a very kind of ripply way. And I mean, this is, I know I'm trying to make some complex science simple. When it does that, then you actually have all these chemical reactions and you turn this thing, uses its energy, transfers to here, and you grow a thought. But that only happens if it's run by your mind. So your mind is actually running the process in a very systematic sequential daily process. Then, at 21 you will have this

gamma peak, which means you've now done this building thing. So you've built the new sort, you've built what you want to do, where you want to go, you've broken down the toxic pattern or you've identified the trauma and you're at the place where you're not saying, I am depression, you're saying, I am depressed because of and here's the root cause. I am ruminating because of, here's the root cause. That'll take you to anyone days. But to make sure you don't ruminate any more by the same thing, you then need to practice for another 42 days. And the reason being is that this is now a teeny little plant, it's a baby plant and you have to water it. That's literally what's happening.

And if you don't water it, it's there, you know you've done the work and it's the most frustrating thing if people don't get told this because you do the work, because this happens in therapy a lot as well. And then people think, okay, well, why am I not applying this? I know what I'm supposed to do, but I'm not doing it. What's the key? What's the bridge? It's the other 42 days. That's critical. I mean, I'm give or take a few days. I mean, if it's 43 or 45, it's in that region. So that and all you have to do is literally step five of the neuropsych,

the neuropsych was five steps and we can cover that in a moment in one of the questions. But essentially, the second 42 days are very quick. It's about a minute a day, but you're keeping it in your conscious mind with a very deliberate simple process. And that doing that daily, basically then gives it enough energy that it grows and that can jump from the competition of all the trillions of thoughts in your unconscious mind, which you've been building since a certain point in the womb till the age you had now. So these are a ton of stuff there.

And they're all competing for attention. But whatever's got the most energy, that's the one that will move through the subconscious from the non-conscious through the subconscious and actually impact how you behave. So when this comes up, the new behavior and it's strong enough and it comes conscious, I will then carry out that behavior. But if I can't get it up, there, you can't see it. So that's what the 63 days does. It takes that time. It's called automatization. So we see a peak at 21 days. There's a little graph that I can find in a moment and then it drops down and that means it's moving back into

the non-conscious but super strong. And then it moves up. So that's kind of a 63 day thing. Keep coming back, you got plenty of space! Oof, not how you would have done that. You like working with people you can rely on. Like USAA, who has helped guide the military community for the past 100 years. USAA, get a quote today. Vitamin water just dropped a new zero sugar flavor called with love. Get the taste of raspberry So this could be done with anything right. So we're talking about we can talk about what let's just finish with this room and eating but it can this could be applied to anything right. This could be applied to like how you know anxiety depression whatever it is toxic you know a bad habit relationship

relationship. If people pleasing all the stupid stuff that we do, we all are mess. Everyone's a mess and that's what we need to accept as well. Mental health is not a segment of the population. Mental health is the entire planet since the beginning of time. Mental health is not on the rise. It's actually an existing condition of mankind. What we not to do is to manage it. Well, you know, I heard you say that before,

that when people call it mental illness, or calling anxiety or depression, or post-traumatic disorder illness, you said that it's not, it's just actually like, what did you say? It was like, it's response. It's a response, yeah. It's a response, it's a warning. It's a warning.

It's a warning. Everything we do, what we've got to remember is everything we do is driven by the mind. The mind experiences everything. So if the mind's experienced something toxic, the mind has processed it into the brain. It's there in the brain and the mind and the body. And that's how you show up. You don't just show up.

You show up from what you've experienced. Right. That's what we do as humans. You, you, you, all your experience from a baby, from in the room, you're building, your basic personality is sort of there, but it's got to grow. And your and life's experiences are built in the room you're building, your basic personality is sort of there, but it's got to grow and your and life's experiences build in and that's how you show up. That's why a child who's actually traumatized shows up in a certain release pattern. Obviously there's no cookie cutter, but someone who's at bullying is showing

a certain way. Someone who's had whatever, we all show up. How you, we've got to look, and this is part of the self-regulation and the awareness. We've got to look at how we're showing up. And sometimes I tell my patients, it's not actually told, I didn't interview this morning and I was saying that because I asked a similar question, how do you train yourself to be aware? You train yourself to be aware by watching how you show up. And it starts with just observing yourself in that simple way, initially started and then becoming aware of how you're communicating and then becoming aware and just watch yourself in a day. Don't even judge anything. Don't. It's all okay. You must always come into this thing with it so can human humans do this none of this art's bad. I mustn't do this. I'm a semi-graded

two-step and I'm a semi-positive information. So I must you know all the wellness quick fix while what's wrong with me. You've got us you, back with that in its place, which is useful techniques at step five. Then you can bring those in and you can wind them in and give us grace in the process because there is no quick fix or magic potion that's going to change the thing. It's mind development. It is mind development. And I think that's so true.

And people are always looking for a quick fix. And the reality is, it's like anything that you want to have long-term sustainable results You have to be working the program working whatever you're doing if you want to you got to eat well all the time You got to work out all the time consistently to have to be physically fit to have like you know to to have Maintain your weight whatever it is you know me Exactly And it becomes you know it becomes a problem exactly is what it is it is what it is. You know what I mean? If you let it go and it becomes, you know, it becomes a problem. Exactly.

Is what it is. It is what it is. Your mind is, it's working anyway. So if you don't manage it, it's a mess. But if you manage it, which is actually naturally how you designed, you're going to be better. You know, it's interesting related to the world that you move in and what people know, you're very well-full with wellness and fitness and exercise and just general

wellness is the other, I'll use this example. My husband and I and our kids, we try and do try and do fast at work at least five days a week. I mean, we were at the gym the other day and we're doing this, we're doing our work up. If we went earlier than normal because of the schedule, the ca ca ca schedule at the moment and one of the people at the gym said, hey Mac and Caroline, you see you here super early. Now this is the phrase that really got me to get your work out over and done with. Now, you don't say something to like that to me who's a mind person because anything to get over in its wrong mindset. So the point there is I wanted to give her a whole lecture

but I didn't. Does that really? I kind of just said, no, we're enjoying our work out because that is so important. I would have lost it. I was going there just to get over and done with that mindset would change the DNA and the brain and the whole exercise. I would lose up to 80% of the benefit of that routine that exercise I would have just done. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. So it was eating. You come back from that workout and you're now exhausted, so you're hungry and you have

this really organic eggs and whatever it is that you eat and it's all healthy. But you still in that mindset, oh, this was this is a lousy day, you wake up worried, you still worried, you just got your workout done, so you're hassled and you, you know, even though you've had a workout, you feel a little better, but you still hassled, you're going to lose 80% of that nutrition as well. So yeah, you've done two great things, but because your mind was a mess, you've lost most of the benefits. Now, that's what we're not talking about.

Wow. That's really interesting. I think I actually heard you talk about something on a podcast when I was researching you about your pancreas, your releases, all sorts of different neuropeptides. And if you're angry, you're basically not absorbing the nutrients and therefore. Exactly, exactly. It's amazing. So your whole digestive system is run by your mind. Your heart is run by your mind.

Your lungs are everything. It's run by your mind. So if you are now worked up in all that stuff like you just described, your pancreas is going to secrete 20 different neuropeptides that you have to have to assimilate that the nutrients from the food to take to the cells. That's one of the roles of the pancreas.

But if you worked up, and that's just one thing I'm describing, that'll then affect everything else because everything works as a system. But generally, then a lot of those neuropeptals won't be secreted because of the mental mess of your mind. And if they're not secreted, you'll lose up to 75 to 80% of the nutrition. And that's just the pancreas. The pancreas does that, the gallbladder, the intestines, everything's going to do something wrong as well.

Because it has a cascade effect through the entire digestive system. Your microbiome's going to go crazy. So what's happening in your mind is tons of research on the interic nervous system. So this is real. This is impact. That's when the first part of the book I've talked about the clinical trials where I talk about some of the biomarkers down to the level of the DNA that can

be affected if you just don't manage your mind. But if we manage our mind, we can shift that. We can go from having high quotas on, high homocystine, increased inflammation, and biological ages that are 30, 40 years older than our chronological ages, meaning we're vulnerable to sicknesses, to illnesses. We can go from that back to health just by mind management. You may not even have even gone, maybe have solved it yet, but just to me, affect that you are embracing it to solve it.

Shifts the whole way that your physiology functions. And that's the key. That's when I'm trying to put in people's hands, because we've made mental health, this inaccessible, I have to go to a doctor, I have to get a medication, it's a scary neuropsychiatric brain disease. What do I do about a brain disease? I mean, that's just sounds you know, terrible. I mean, think of this example I've been using a lot. Let's say that you at the Dynaparty and we will get back to the remination. You know, say that you added Dynaparty with friends and you sit down and there's a whole ground of you there and you say, oh gosh, I get back to the remination. You know, say that you added dinner party with friends and you sit down and there's a whole grand of you there and you say, oh gosh, I've been to the psychiatrist today

and I've got a diagnosis of clinical depression and I have this neuropsychiatric brain disease and my brain is like this and this. And everyone looks at you and thinks, okay, well, and they treat you differently. There's a whole shift in how people see you because of the messaging we've received for the last 48 years. But if you do what the science actually shows and

what is the normal human response and you go to that dinner table and I cancel that story, here's the other story. Oh hi guys, gosh this week has been unbelievable. This and this and this and this happened. And then this brought all these flashbacks of all these things and then I started realizing and in therapy this happened and that happened and then this came up and people will lean in and say, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, no wonder you feel the priest. That would make me the priest. I can't, I can't even begin to. And then they share their experience. Can you see the difference? Yes, absolutely. It's two different narratives that we have created. And the one narrative has actually put us in a very dangerous predicament in this

modern day and age with advances in medicine and technology. Lack of mind management has led to people dying eight to 25 years younger from preventable lifestyle issues, which is crazy. Absolutely crazy. And the wellness movement has sprung out of that in response, I thank God for the wellness movement, but the wellness movement is not paying enough attention to mind. As you quite rightly said, we talk about this. Do the exercise. Let's eat the healthy diet. And let's do a bit of mindfulness for stress management. You can't do it in that order. Because the mind's driving, the body is driving, the food is driving. How you came to that wellness practice in the first place. How you actually read that book. We'll listen to that podcast. Your mind is, okay, this is just data. Oh, this is real for me.

So we've got to get our mind managed to get the benefits of anything. Absolutely. Also what happens is you get a lot of information overload, right? You can get the data, but then it's executing on the data is the problem, right? Because a lot of people just read a lot,

and it's in one ear out the other. There's a lot of key fads a lot and it's in one ear out the other. You know, like, yeah, there's a lot of like key, you know, fads or trends that people are doing to make them, they say that they're doing to kind of feel that they're more holistic, you know, like you were saying, like the gratitude journals and all these other things, but does it really change? Is it really resonate and does it really work? That's a whole other thing. There was a study though, I was gonna ask you about the idea of like, if you're having a gratitude practice

where you say something out loud like, I'm happy, I feel loved, do you say a bunch of different things? Does it change the way your brain kind of responds and reacts by saying the words because your brain doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's not? Did you know what I'm talking about?

Yeah, there's a lot of studies like that and basically it doesn't have the difference between what's real and what's not. Did you know what I'm talking about? Yes, I do. There's a lot of studies like that. And basically, it doesn't have any sustainability. So yeah, so you'll have a shift because whatever you do, is going to change your brain. But if you are feeling absolutely lousy and you're trying to use a statement, a set of words, to try. Appalemations, or.

Appalemations, you're putting a bandaid on a passie wound. It's not going to treat the issue You're putting a bandaid on you've got to treat the source of why I mean I use a passie wound because it's gross It's people but people will you know people will remember that you can't do that It's like it's like going into the guy another analogy that's not as gross is you going read your garden But you just chop the head off you still have the roots. It's gonna come back. So that's not as gross, is you go and read your garden, but you just chop the head off. You still have the roots, it's going to come back. So that's the issue. So gratitude, I'm going to give gratitude statements and affirmations, but use them in the right place.

And that's step number five, after brain preparation, awareness, five steps, and then only, because only then have you worked out why you would actually need that in the first place. Otherwise, you're just honestly slapping a bandaid on a wound. And it's not sustainable. And there's also backfiring effect, like for example, a lot of meditation practices. And I am not anti-any of them. I think all of it, I'm talking about them in the book,

as well as brain preparation. We need all of these things. But we've taken a lot of the meditation practices out of context from the original sources. And we've taken like bits and pieces and kind of slapped a little bit on. And then people think okay well I've been mindful now and you I'm just be aware of that now moment we never just aware of the now moment because right now is informed by who you are which is your past and what you want in the future we travel

we time travel all the time our mind isn't constant constant time travel mode so the discipline of forcing myself to be aware, which we spoke about a little bit earlier on, is a very good exercise, but you can't just have awareness and not manage it, because in backfires, so people will say things and the research shows this, people will say things like, now I'm more aware of my issues, and I've got these flashbacks, it's freaky me out, I'm not going to meditate, I'm not going to close my eyes, it's too scary, you know, and that's what I found in my research too, I showed, I showed brain to pictures inside the brain of people that become aware, I can even show you

what it looks like. I learned of you saw the colored images and the book. I think I did see that. I'm telling this book was like an encyclopedia. Wow. Well, it's an easy one. I hope an easy one to read. It was. It was. It's not. I have a lot of what you call those those doggy ears in my book here? Oh, yeah, yeah, those on page 166 I think it is So people who are not watching it they're just listening Um, what do I call you doctor leave Carol doctor Carol?

We can learn fun Carol. I could know ease and graces. It's no problem Okay, good. She's showing us a picture of her in her book, Brain. We used to tell them what you're saying. So it's the book's called Cleaning up your Mental Miss. And basically it's, I do neuroscientic research, so I do clinical trials. I look at mind and look at brain.

So I look at the person's story, the whole psychological side, blood markers, DNA, but I also look inside the brain at the energy response of the brain. So I'm holding up brain maps, they're basically called brain maps. We've mapped the energy inside the brain. And what we want is mainly sort of gray with only a little bit of color.

That shows, and everyone's got the unique pattern in that grade, not just one pattern. That's as many people as they're on the planet, there's as many different patterns of grade that you can get. But you can't grade just signifies that these balance in the brain and whatever. And the brain is flowing like, think of the waves of the sea. What I'm looking at, they're the waves of the sea. From the big swalls, deep, deep, deep to the geats, getting smaller to the waves, building up on the beach and breaking and crashing and the little ripples and whatever.

So what you're looking at here is the different frequencies delta theta, alpha beta gamma and this little head mass. So essentially what the bottom you can see on that's bright red. And this is a person in its case study and in the book of a person in my clinical trial that was in the control group. So they got no mind management, but they got all the testing and the testing involved tell me your narrative, tell me what's going

on in your life. And psychological tests that that also would have questioned that tune and questioned their ability and it looked at their, so they were made very aware through all the brain testing of their issues, but they got no mind management. So over the time, the study ran over the 63 days because you were also looking at what was happening in terms of the habit formation and so on. And so they got worse, they got so bad. At the end of the study, obviously, I gave them the neuropsychil,

but in the page before you'll see another lot of heat maps and the first row is all blue and the rest is kind of a gray. And the blue is when the brain is flatline. When the brain, when we see red, it's like tsunamis in the brain. Instead of this nice flow, like I just described, like you'd see on the beach when the beach has been normal. Then we have anxiety, high levels of anxiety and feeling out of overwhelm and all that, you get a really cool red brain. And it either can be spots across the brain, which that person in the control subject had spots like the middle and the side. That

shows that people are having too much of like the break. Think of the big break as on the beach. The words when a brave crashes, not little words. Think of gigantic ones that dump you. That's what you're seeing. When your whole brain goes red, that That is dangerous. That particular person's biological age, the DNA was very, had been so weakened that the biological age was older than the chronological age, which meant the cells of their body were aging from not managing their mind. So, awareness alone is not enough. And also this person also had been labeled with clinical anxiety. So, they were, they identity was all messed up. A clinical anxiety, and depression are not it's schizophrenia, these are not it's, they're

not diseases. They are responses as we said, they're warning signals, they're telling you, hey, pay attention. This red brain isn't like a red, red light, a traffic light telling you, stop. There's something going on. You can't just keep driving through that intersection, you're going to get wiped out. And that's essentially what our brain and body are doing on immune system. That is why that person with the red brain had increased inflammation in their brain and their body and increased cortisol levels and that kind of stuff. I won't go into the detail. But what you do, as soon as you start managing it, now the other person with the blue brain, they were in the

experimental groups, so they got the neuropsych the other person with the blue brain, they were in the experimental groups so they got the neuropsychil. They did the mind management. That will teach on the remination example in a moment. And their brain within 21 days had gone to the gray color we wanted it to go to, which meant it was stabilized. And even, and then that person at the beginning

of the study with the blue brain, they were giving, they had been diagnosed with clinical depression, relationships offline, work offline, not sleeping, tried everything medications, they were giving up. This was kind of the last such a team to just try and get some normality in their life. Within three weeks, they'd gone from saying, it's hopeless to saying, I know why I'm depressed. Not in the beginning, I am depression.

They went from I am depression. By 21 days, they were saying, I'm not depression. I am depressed because of, I had an experience. I had several adverse experiences, but I know what to do. But they still do the little tree. So they had done, they had taken this toxic tree, found the roots, deconstructed, pulled the roots out, destroyed this, and regrown this.

That's literally what happened in the brain. Breathe in, breathe out. Get dressed, head out. Grab some friends, camp out. Get hyped up, vibe out. Take your dean. Let it all out. Now, are we on co-op?

We're here for all the outs. We want you to spend more time outside our doors in the... Try it out, check out, think it out. RRI co-op, all out. Visit RRI.com. Okay, so basically what you're saying is people through this neuropsychling part of it, the awareness, self-regulation,

learning how to do those things, you're kind of at the... But the crux is kind of figuring out for yourself what the root cause of any problem really is. Absolutely, that's the source. That's the source for anything. So everything else is kind of bandages. But then you do talk about, I think in step three, the way, step one is the awareness. Step two is, what's the step two?

Well, step step two is reflect, but the awareness is how you, there's, there's gather awareness, which is a very specific step. So prior to that, we were talking about self-regulation and awareness and how do you get people into self-regulation. And self-regulation is where you monitoring, you're thinking, feeling and choosing,

you're monitoring your mind every 10 seconds. I mean, that's literally what it means. And you might think that's impossible, but your mind's working anyway. So it's just developing a constant state of awareness, which we can do. Okay. Then we spoke about how do you start that process? It starts by being aware and I gave you the simple examples of looking at yourself and then watching. So that is just getting yourself into this multiple perspective advantage. So you come into the neuropsycho with that multiple perspective advantage watching yourself.

Now, you are watching yourself. So you can, you're watching in your wise mind and you also the, the, the, the messy mind. The messy mind that active one doing life and the wise mind saying, hey, like there's a robot, there's a read the traffic light, there's a problem, listen, and we don't always listen though. We kind of ignore this a lot. So this process teaches you to listen.

So the easiest way to deal with these, understand the neuropsycho is to recognize, okay, self-regulation, that awareness, and then so you come in with multiple perspective advantage. So an analogy for that would be imagine that you're flying a little helicopter, but it's like a time capsule. Even the thing never runs out of gas, it just keeps going, it's you driving it, you the pilot. And you're flying over this forest, which is all your experiences, your thoughts, with your memories, so it's all your thought trees,

it's a forest of trees, so you're flying over your mind and your brain. And as you saw in other words, you've got a multiple perspective, you can see it over the top. And when you've got a copilot, your copilot is that wise mind, that wide-for-low survival mind, that I know what I'm supposed to do, that we don't always listen to, but that's the person, that's the part of you that kind of advises you, and that the view develops in skill to tune into that as you self-regulate. So that's

the scenario. So you approach the neuropsycho in your helicopter, which is your multiple perspective advantage. You may see pilot flying all over the place, copilot in your helicopter, which is your multiple perspective advantage. You may see pilot flying all over the place, copilot saying, hey, maybe you shouldn't fly like that. Maybe you should see there's a smoke signal over there. There's things giving a signal off. Maybe we should actually go see what's going on there, because that thing is huge, and that's grabbing your attention. And in this particular example, to come back to example, the signal is how are you showing up and you're showing up with this ruminating. See so no, so there's this, so you, so you, the ruminating leads to happening a lot,

like so that your day just keeps going into rumination. Then the slightest thing just gets it's often you find, you're mind just going over and over and over these narratives and then another thing happens and you do, that's how you deal with stuff. You're just ruminating and nothing progresses forward and it's making you feel terrible. So that's the signal. So instead of just flying over,

which would be drug goods or positive affirmations or gratitude statements or don't do it. Don't do it. I'm not going to do it. And you last for five minutes and you're doing it again. So you don't want to do that. You have to land the helicopter. You have to land the helicopter at the tree and you have to get out the helicopter and

you have to embrace that. And embrace not, I don't mean go hug the tree because let's say the tree is full of poisonous apples, you go hug the tree, they're going to fall on your head, you still be able to be overwhelmed. So you stand back in a safe distance. So all the scenarios how you come in and you give yourself permission, that's okay. Don't feel guilty, don't feel shame, There's no condemnation. You're a human. All of us on this planet since the beginning of time battle with our mind. So you land the plane and that's the attitude

and you get out the plane and you and your copilot, messy mind, wise mind, go up and now you start step one. Okay, so that that's the whole attitude that you come in. And there is an I do explain in the book before you start the neuropsychil. I mean, this attitude takes you a few seconds. Once you understand what it is, it takes me longer to explain than it does to do. So what you're just saying, but then you can prepare, and you can also do a lot of brain preparation. And brain preparation can, are things like meditation, tapping,

havining, deep breathing. And I give you a lot of exercises that it's some examples. And you can do it just for a minute or so. So you land the tree and you look at this and say, oh my gosh, I'm scared. Do some breathing. Do some tapping. Do some haven't in a minute or two. What's happening?

What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening? Havening is when you basically rub, it's the sensation when you just basically hug yourself and you rub up in your arms, up and down, or you can rub your wrists or rub your hands. So it's the sensation of rubbing that then creates calms down, that sensation goes into your brain and calms down the amygdala,

which is one of the, which is a part of our brain that holds, it's like a library holding emotional perceptions. So as we look at the street, there's a whole library of memories associated, look at all the memories. So that's, like, this is a library of memories and the amygdala is because of brain response. The amictola is activated so now your mind is reading all the library books and it's can freak you out and so this is a lot going on here and it's pointed to something I'm not quite sure I want to deal with. I'd rather run away and that's what the that's what that's happening tapping deep breathing can help calm down the neurochemical chaos.

It's happening around that area because in the next two, tapping works too. Tapping, tapping as well. You can do the tapping. There's a different way. Yeah, you can do this. What does this mean? Same thing. It's the calm down, your nervous system.

It does. It's just it's touch. All of this is touch. So this is rubbing touch. So as soon as you touch, you're impacting that gravitational field. Remember, say your mind is gravitational field and your mind works with your body. So it's creating an integration between the mind and the body. And it's a sensation is how we can

also quickly reintegrate because when we feel overwhelmed we disintegrate. Literally disintegrate. So it's a way of reintegrating. I mean, one of the simplest ways of doing it is, so as you're doing the tapping, it's a way of reintegrating. I mean, one of the simplest ways of doing it is, so as you do the simple tapping, it's touch, which sends a sensation. It's an electromagnetic wave and also a quantum wave. That then starts moving through. It increases what we call theta in the brain,

which is a wave in the brain that gives you a sensation of peace. So that increases theta through your brain and that calms you down. So it's a little calming down tactics. They don't solve the problem, but they get you ready for the work. That's why I call them brain preparation. They're offered in the wellness industry as the solution. They're not. They part of the solution. And that's why a lot of people will do them and think we'll don't fix my problem. Well, that's exactly it. So I've heard of tapping and havening, but it's used as a technique to help with anxiety or depression, but you're saying it's just the start.

It's like a minute you do before just to kind of calm yourself down to get to kind of like, it's like the four play before you start basically. That's exactly what it is. That's a great way to do it. It's the four play. It's get your brain and body ready for the work. Because if your neurophysiologies out of whack, it's super difficult to get your mind out of control. These are the principles

that are operating. So then you land your plane, you've got these things, you can do a little bit. One of the exercises I've developed is the 10 second pools, which is based on a lot of different scientists. Yeah, just tell us about that. It's going to ask you about that anyway. The 10 second pause and the 30 90 rule I wanted to ask you both of them. There you go, you see, that's those are good things. Okay, so basically if you breathe in for three counts and out for seven, but it's very forceful.

So in for three and then you push it out for seven, you push oxygen to the front of your brain. The extended exhalation increases your decision-making capability. So one of the things that goes when you are very overwhelmed is decision-making. And what you want is good decision-making, which is preceded by feeling and thinking, because you think, feel choose. So when you extend the breath, you improve your ability to think, feeling choose. And so the... As the key word, choose, right? Because you're you were too right because you're always choosing right you're always making a choice. But it's also feeling and thinking so the three always work together they never

work separately. So what you do to make that 10 second pause even more powerful is you say as you breathing in for three you say to yourself think feel and as you breathe out you say choose you know that ocean breeze from yoga. You like to force it out. You almost feel high, you'll feel like it, because it pushes it out. And that's what you want. And if you do that, if you do that six to nine times, that's a minute to a minute and a half, that even three times, even once will help. But the more you do it, so you don't have to really do more than 90 seconds. But anything from one of those to three to six to nine will help calm down the

neurochemical chaos. So you can not only use it in the doing the work, but you can also do it in a situation that's so new, something happens and you know, people say, breathe, wow, I'm breathing, you know, like the 10 second pause is very powerful, especially with that cognitive aspect. You know, if you think it's like chaotic around you, just breathe in, just within think feel choose for 10 seconds and maybe repeat it a few times. It drops the neurophysiology back to calm state again. So those are just some of the little things that you can do.

And then you would come in and then you actually gather awareness. Step one is gather awareness. Step two is reflect. Step three is right. Step four is at is reject and step five is active reach. And now in, let's say that you are in this process of ruminating and you see you doing it very often, it's a pattern.

Anything that's a pattern is a habit. So you're gonna have to do 63 days to find this. You're not gonna find this in one five step neuropsychal. You can do the neuropsychal very quickly and I explain it on the podcast where I talk about orange theory, where I had an argument with my daughter on the way then. Yes, yes.

So, so we sort of that to get yourself under control, you can do the neuropsycho quickly to get yourself back under control. But if there's any kind of pattern, you need to do the long version. So you can use neuropsyching on two levels. Every day, because your mind's working anyway, in the moment, so if you have an argument like I explained or you read an email and you've got to get your head together and it's thrown you, you've got to get in front of the camera or someone says something to you, you're completely thrown in the moment. So, you can use it very quickly, and the more

you use it, the better you get at using it. The key to why it's so great in the moment and in the long term is it's a systematized way that you get your wise mind talking to your messy mind and driving the neuroplasticity of your brain. So it's a systemized process and the more you apply systems to mind and brain, the more efficient you become. Okay, so that's basically it. So all this picture to paint, you gather awareness like picking apples of a tree. Don't go stand under the apple tree.

Stand back and you control the picking. That's why I say gather. Gather means, and the whole thing is you embracing, you're processing, you reconceptionalize. You're not scared of this. I'm not saying run away from it. I'm saying embrace it. It's not scary. Depression anxiety are not scary.

They're messengers. They're warning signals. So you basically gather awareness. So imagine you're holding a basket. You gather awareness of your emotion, warning signals, your physical warning signals, your behaviour warning, all that, I explained it exactly in the book. So you gather those. So it's very systematic, it's not, don't jump a little together, it's very distinct. Then once you've got them, you then, and you keep telling yourself, it's okay, let your

wise mind keep telling your pilot, your copilot keeps saying, this is okay, this is normal, this is, it's okay, we'll sort out the guilt condemnation, whatever that does, use it to make it work, You keep reassuring yourself Reflect reflect is like is a deep word for if you reflect a light through a prism It comes out the other side in a rainbow. So it's deep reflection is deep It's ask answer discuss to find out why you have those signals all non-judgmental and then as you gather and reflect You're gonna write down and the way that I want to ask, I want to ask you about that because I didn't realize that it was so powerful beyond just organization, like eliminating chaos. There's all this research

about writing in your immune system that I had no idea. Oh yeah, no, totally it's it's by the stage of your right, especially if you write off to those two steps. And if you're right, there's two ways of writing. So if you're right in the third step is right in the form of a metacog. The fourth step is writing, but not rechecking, it's getting older. So the first one is like literally vomiting your brain on the paper. And so it's your mind and your brain. Mind, always remember mind and brain, okay? And brain.

And the system are developed over 38 years. And by the way, I mean, I've done this for 38 years and clinical practice and whatever. There's a whole background here. These are five simple steps but they profoundly researched. When you're right, right in there. They are. This book is unbelievably extensive.

It's amazing. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's also easy to read. I don't know if you know to see that. I'll put little sections in. This is what it means for you. So you can skip the hard science. Look at the pictures and read that and. So I agree. And also you can go to the table of contents and just kind of get the idea

of what it's about. And so it's very, very easy. You do a very good job of making it, putting it in layman's terms for the average person who's not a medical doctor to understand and apply it. So I applied you for that. But yes. That's great. No, it's true. No, thank you. Well, this is what I hope that I have treated in the hands of people to help us get on my stride. If we can get this mind right, it takes one mind at a time to have that collected influence. We can get our society changed. And we've got to deal with things like societal racism. The toxic environment we're living in, we've got to change stuff.

We can't care on doing what we're doing. And so, you know, that's a mind thing. We can't, that's mind. So if we can get on minds thinking differently, we can be much more, and that's, you know, that's the bigger picture of this. I agree, and also having, and taking the control into our own hands and having the proper tools

to help ourselves, which is what this is really about. You're not relying on an external force to help or cure you so to speak, but not a cure, but to help get you to a place where you want to be, you're learning and applying it in a way that's very, very simple and systematic. So...

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cake better fixed today. Only a DQ. Happy taste good. Sorry, so you were saying something about the writing. I don't want to interrupt you. No, no, no, this is good. It's all it's all elaborating on it. And that's very true because your mind is with you all the time. It's 24, 7, you're living with yourself. So how are you managing your mind? If you go to therapy, which is a great thing to do, are toting courage people to go to the therapy, can't think, coaching. This is not going to replace that. This enhances therapy. It enhances coaching and can't think. But you there one or two hours a week, what do you do in the rest of the time? You with yourself. How do you live with yourself?

Absolutely. That's absolutely. Essentially teaching you, how do I live with myself? But also, people can go to a therapist for years and have real and just be at the same spot. Exactly. You know, like that's the other issue. You know, I'm not saying it's a bad thing of what I'm saying, but works for you all the power too.

But it's always good, I think, to take control of your own life and kind of have the ability to try and help progress forward, right? How do you post, yeah? You do. And I think having the tools, like if it's a whole silly saying of like, do you go fishing or do you learn, you know, like, do catch a fish or do you like go fishing? What's that silly thing?

You can teach a person to fish or you can give them a fish. That's that kind of thing. I'd rather do learn. Exactly. And we do because giving a person a fish is not sustainable, but teaching a person to fish is sustainable. So if you are doing this, you'll actually get more benefit out of therapy because therapy won't go on for years and years because you'll get progress. You'll be able to identify and get to the root causes and manage those. The therapy is fantastic in this process to help you manage the stuff that comes up because it gets worse before it gets better. When you start seeing causes of why you're ruminating or why you've got those certain

behavior patterns, it can be shocking because you could have suppressed stuff for years. It's very frightening to see that. That's where therapy is great to help you unpack that and process that. But you take control. Because no one can fix you. No one can fix you. Therapy is a support and a way a place to process and understand and unpack. But you've got to be doing the work.

That's what I'm putting these tools into people's hands. You don't feel completely dependent. You can be independent. I talk about the pathway to empowerment. And that starts with autonomy. And when you realize when you do all this picture of this holy helicopter, I'm giving teaching you about agency, I'm showing you you have agency, you're empowered to face this thing, you have it in you, you have the power in your mind, you're able to face this thing and deconstruct and reconstruct

because that's why I thought in the beginning your mind controls your brain. You can direct what you want to change in your brain. Your brain is changing. So this past can change, doesn't have to be your future. You can change how the past plays out into your future. That's the power of this thing. So you have to be controlled by the past because you all have a past. And we all create a new past in every moment. And we've got to know how to manage those.

And that's what we're addressing. That's why I'm addressing it. That's why I'm so passionate about it because our note works too. No, it's true. And like you're constantly, like you said, you're constantly our every new experience changes your, your, sorry, and so how much time do you have left?

I don't want to go. We can do a part two. We can do a part two. We can do a part two. We want to do that. This always happens. There's just so much to talk about. There's like so much.

We could talk about that and then have one other question about negative thoughts or not toxic thoughts and how to make sure negative thoughts don't turn into toxic. Okay. Perfect. Excellent. Okay. So quickly the writing, when you write your rights in the form of a pattern, it's called a metacog.

And what it does is it pulls the two sides of the brain to work together. It helps you to introspect very deeply and it actually helps to reduce the inflammation in the immune system. Because what you're doing is you're sending the message to the immune system that, okay, I got this, I'm fighting this, I'm, I got it under control. So, if you have an invasion of an army and there's no control, everyone freaks out. But as soon as you've got the army, then protecting you and something's happening, so that's what writing is doing. When you write in the form of a metacog, you're giving the message to your immune system. What is a metacog? Tell people what a metacog is. A metacog is a way of organizing information on the page that looks like a pattern. So

you're starting in the middle and then you're growing branches exactly like a tree. And it's messy, but it's profound. It is, I mean, I can go on for hours about how that helped in therapy with people with dissociation and multiple personalities to the fact that just using it yourself on a day-to-day basis will help you find out why you're ruminating. So it digs very deep, helps you start digging the sand away to the roots. And then you would basically, so you write that down, it's kind of messy, it's stuck, no, it just pours it out. The fourth step is also writing, but now you're making sense, three-check, of what you've written, where you're trying to organize the patterns, the triggers, the activators, the antidotes, and you're reconceptualizing, you're deciding to look at it from a different angle, so you're taking, then you're reconstructing it,

because at this stage you've deconstructed, now you are starting the process of reconstructing. The first step is an act of reach, where you're doing a little simple action because you cannot do hours and hours of this. And people try and do that. You do 15 to 45 minutes in a day and you stop with the active reach. It's the full stop on the sentence. It's the what can I collectively learn from the four steps today. And maybe all you learn is that, okay, I'm ruminating 60% of the time that's your signal. It's making my body a caj聖cemptce from it. I am, it's creating depression. It's making my perspective like life is just too difficult. So you pick up that, what you've gathered, reflect, you may have discovered, okay, well,

I'm doing this. There's this definitely, it's definitely happening a lot and it's impacting the way I'm functioning and it's impacting having a massive'm functioning and it's impacting having a massive impact on my relationship. Whatever. And then you write all that down and as you write and write and as you recheck, you sing, gosh, there's like a lot going on here. I'm remanading because I'm stuck.

It looks like some sort of perfectionism thing. And so the recheck starts making sense. And then you start singing, oh, one little root. And then you stop. And the actor reaches, okay, that's enough and then you stop and active reach is okay. That's enough for today. You don't want to overwhelm. It's a very draining so you want to keep your energy up so you're just going to say, okay,

well, I'm ruminating because there's some kind of perfectionism going on. And so you can say, it's okay to ruminate because I'm finding the solution. You write that down. It's okay to ruminate because I'm finding the solution. So you've given yourself permission. As soon as you give yourself permission, you own it. It doesn't control you anymore. So it's a simple, it could be a simple statement of, I'm not, I don't have to be perfect. I think it's perfectionism. I have a reason for my ruminating. It could

be that. I have a reason for my ruminating. You write that down. I've got an app as well. You can put it in the app or just put it in the app to reach on your, I mean, the reminders on your phone and you make it pop up. and during the day when you want to go back there and get all heavy, you don't, you stop and you just do the active reach and then you come back tomorrow and so you do that for 21 days and then from day 42, 22 to 63, you're going to just do step five which is five because over day one, today 21, you pull this thing apart, you deconstruct it, yep, up ended and you rebuild this. You look there, these light leaves amongst the dark. The dark is how you're going to be behave, how you're going to now function, how you're now going

to show up, you're not going to show up like this anymore, you're not going to ruminate that in that way about because you now know why and the dark, the light there is why you ruminate. So now you practice this by day 63, as you want to ruminate, you just pops up and says, okay, I'm ruminating because I'm not gonna do that catch it. I'm gonna find out what is the reason in this particular case that I'm ruminating. So you behave at changes, you don't ruminate.

And it doesn't impact your relationship. You see what I'm saying? So that's the process. And it's very, very clearly explained in the book how to do that. Perfect, Then quickly because I know we have two minutes, negative thoughts are not, are not toxic thoughts. How are, what are the two key things to prevent negative thoughts to turn to positive thoughts? Okay. So, so the negative thought is, the toxic means it's really kind of doing damage. So, as it, as it builds, as we have a negative thought, we think something negative, and in the

moment, it could be something that's flashing up from the past. So the first thing about a negative thought is where is it coming from? What? Because every time you're like, you're listening to me now, thoughts will pop up. And as they, because we are informed, the way we understand incoming information is through the thoughts from the past. So if it comes up, some of them will be healthy, some will be these negative thoughts. And negative, negative and toxic thoughts are very similar.

Toxic is where you, it's really controlling, it's become very ingrained, it's become a habit, it's become part of its established, whereas a negative thought might be just a momentary reaction in a situation. So someone says something to you and your thought is, are they irritating? That's not toxic yet. It becomes toxic if you dwell on that. And you develop and you start building the story. You start making assumptions and you'll be 70% wrong most of the time anyway. So you start building a story. So when something happens and you have a negative reaction and then you kind of grab it and you start ruminating on it, you then go that into a toxic thought. See, that's the thing. So, to recognize these is to question every reaction you have and that comes back to self-regulation.

So, and then give yourself permission, oh okay, I'm thinking this reaction. Oh, this is everything is, oh, this is information, even the negative stuff that we were talking about. That's bad. You don't see this bad. You see, oh, this is information. even the negative stuff that you were in the wrong. That's bad. You don't see it as bad. You see, oh, this is information. What is it telling me? What is, you know, I thought you were supposed to set a time limit for a negative thought. Like you're only allowed to think about something negative. That's a technique. That's a technique for when you, it's an active reach technique that you can use as a first step. So when you find yourself in the, if you find during the course of the day that you're allowing a lot of these thoughts to come up, then you, you're going to, to control it,

we can get into the habit of just allowing them to keep coming. And what people say, it's okay, well, I've seen that, I see that, I see that. That's like five or six in a row now, write them down. It's okay. Enough. Stop. And now if you've there, three or four that have come up for every negative one that's like five or six in a row now, write them down and say, okay, enough, stop. And now if you've there three or four that have come up for every negative one that's toxic one that's come up, you're now going to force yourself to think of three good ones because the healthy thoughts will end over power.

So it's a discipline. So you're training your mind, your messy mind, which will just go and do its thing. The wise mind says no, okay, you've one or three of these, you've got to think of nine of these. It's a one to three ratio. But you don't ignore these, you acknowledge, and then you say, okay, I'm now for this moment, I'm going to think of three things that are healthy that to build more energy to then get that under control. But I'm not going to pretend this doesn't exist. It just keeps coming up. I have to go do the work. I have to do a 63 day to go and fix it. But in this moment, I still going to work for the day. So I'm going to get

that under control by forcing myself to think of a three to one ratio. That's what that means. Gotcha. Well, you're okay. I know you've got to run to another thing. So I just want to say thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. It was absolutely delightful. Where do people find you, your book, everything about you? Just give us your details. Thank you. They can find me at Dr. Caroline Leif, all my social media handles are Dr. Caroline Leif, DR, and then my book is called Cleaning up your mental Maces. You've been saying, and it's available, wherever books are sold, and I know that, yeah, so it's available everywhere in my website, DrLeif.com, and I have a podcast also called Cleaning up your mental Maces.com. And I have a podcast also called Cheening Up your Mental Mace.

So I can get a great podcast. Thank you so much. I'd like to have you on. I really want to talk about. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'd love to have to talk about. Absolutely.

Habits and hustle, time to get it rolling. Stay up on the grind. Don't stop. Keep it going. Habits and hustle from nothing in the sum. All out, host the budget of fuck going. Visionaries, tune in. You can get to know. Hope you enjoyed this episode. I'm Heather Monahan, host of Creating Confidence, a part of the YAP Media Network, the number one business and self-improvement podcast network.

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