High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 471: What We Need to Know about Neuroscience with Dr. John Molidor, CSP, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

Have you ever wondered how your brain really works, how it sometimes drifts away, or why you sometimes talk to yourself? In this podcast, we will translate some of the brain science into applicable, doable, and easily implemented steps for higher performance. Dr. John B. Molidor, CSP, works with individuals, leaders, and organizations to understand how their brains work, to use their brains more efficiently, and to avoid making bad decisions. He learned much of this from his undergraduate years at the University of St. Thomas (St. Paul, Minnesota) and then at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine (East Lansing and Flint, Michigan) working with medical students, residents, and faculty.  John is currently a Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry, a Past President of the National Speakers Association, a Past President of the Global Speakers Federation, and the recent recipient of the Cavett Award from the National Speakers Association.   In this episode, Dr. John and Cindra discuss: The brain’s main function How to break the pattern of limiting beliefs Why we each need to practice his AARP concept Why we pay more attention to stories And many other brain strategies for us to be our best more often HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/471 FB COMMUNITY FOR THE HPM PODCAST: https://www.facebook.com/groups/highperformancemindsetcommunity FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong TO FIND MORE ABOUT JOHN AND HIS WORK, EMAIL HIM AT: [e-mail] Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901

Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best. So you can accomplish all your goals and dreams.

So I'm over here following my big dreams. And I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Miss Pac-Man. Yes, the 1980s game Miss Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. Napoleon Hill once said you either control your mind or it controls you. And Stephen King once said the brain is a muscle that can change the world. Thank you so much for joining me for episode 471. This is your host, Dr. Cinder Campoff. And if you ever wondered how your brain really works, how it sometimes drifts away, or why sometimes you talk to yourself, in this podcast episode, we're going to translate some of the

latest brain science research into doable, actionable, and easy steps that you can implement to be your best more often and reach high performance. Today on the podcast episode, I have Dr. John Molidor, who works with individuals, leaders, and organizations to understand how their brain works, how to use their brains more effectively and efficiently, and to avoid making bad decisions. He learned much of this from his undergraduate years at the University of St. Paul, here in Minnesota where I live, and then at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine, where he worked with medical students, residents, and faculty. John is currently a professor emeritus of psychiatry, a past president of the National Speakers Association, that's how I know John, a past president of the Global Speakers Federation, and the recent recipient of the Cavett Award break the pattern of limiting beliefs that can get in your way, why we each need to practice his ARP concept, and that's a good one, why we pay more attention to

stories, and a lot of other brain strategies for us to be at our best more often. If you'd like to see the full show notes, as well as a transcript of this interview, you can head over to syndracampoff.com slash 471 for episode 471. And if you haven't already, we'd love for you to leave us a rating and a review. That would mean so much to us. So wherever you're listening, please leave us a rating and a review. For example, if you are on your iPhone or your phone, you can just scroll up wherever you're listening and leave us a rating and a review there. Without further ado,

let's bring on Dr. Molidor. I'm so excited today for John Molidor to be joining us today. How are you doing, doctor? I'm doing great, Dr. K. So doing well. Thank you. I'm looking forward to our conversation. And I had the privilege of listening to John speak to our National Speakers Association chapter of Minnesota last month. So I wanted to have him on because I thought his content was so powerful and would be helpful for everyone who's listening. So to get us started, Dr. Molidor, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. So my greatest passion right now, outside of my grandkids and my wife and son and the family. So yeah, we'll move all that to the side is thinking about the brain,

how the brain works, how it serves us, how it doesn't serve us. And so that's been probably my, my greatest passion, especially during this time of sheltering, of actually having time to do some research and to do reading. And then finding out a lot of stuff that I was taught in grad school, or what I thought I knew is wrong. And so I've had to sort of like, redo everything, and kind of get the new stuff. So it's been exciting and a little bit frustrating at the same time because it's like, oh no, I thought that's how the world operated, how the brain operated or how things worked. And now I'm finding out not so much. So it's, it's been, it's been an interesting challenge, but fun. Well, that makes me think about just how we all need to keep educating ourselves, even if we have a doctor, you know, to make sure that it's fresh.

And, you know, what I love about your background, John, is, well, first of all, you were born in Iowa. And so so was I. You were raised in Illinois. You were schooled in Minnesota. I live in Minnesota and you went to St. You were schooled in Minnesota. I live in Minnesota. And you went to St. Thomas undergraduate, which is great. And now you live in Michigan and got your PhD there. So I could imagine that you have a hard time when the Big Ten football tournament comes on. Who do you cheer for? Well, it is difficult. But then since Michigan State has paid for my salary for so many years, I go green. I mean, I'm green and white. It's going to be Michigan State. But I must admit, you know, when Minnesota is playing, I'm kind of or Illinois or Iowa, I'm always torn.

But Michigan State's right now where I identify most with. Yeah, I love it. So tell us a bit about why you started studying psychiatry to begin with. So I was in an interesting situation. For my graduate work, what I was studying was how people made decisions. And so it was a whole cognitive psychology. And I was fascinated by how people make judgments about other people, how they made decisions. And so early on, I started actually building mathematical models that would mimic how people made decisions. And one of the groups that I was working with were physicians. So how physicians made certain decisions. So from there, it's kind of like I just continued on and thinking about the whole concept of decision making and judgment.

And that then started to lead to why do people believe certain things? Why do people think certain ways or think about things in a certain way? Why do people feel about certain things? And so I became more and more fascinated with the brain and the role of the brain in how people learn, how people form biases. And that's what's very, very exciting to me is to continue to learn that versus, and you're quite aware, many people are aware of this. There's tons of theories out there. Right. And, and I want, and that was nice, but it often felt like, well, what's the hot theory or what's, you know, what's in, and I wanted to, to learn a little bit more

about, well, what underlies all this. And that sort of led me to trying to read about neuroscience and the brain and the psychology of decision making. And so that's where I'm really focusing right now. Well, there's so many questions I could ask you, but let's start with maybe the most important question. What would you say is the function of the brain? Well, and this one was a fascinating one. I think if you were to ask our listeners, you know, what's the primary function of your brain? Most of us would probably say, well, it's to think or to feel and or some combo of that. And again, that was something that I was taught. And that's what I thought. And that's what I felt that that's what the brain is for. It isn't. The brain is probably to, in some research,

or some writers are talking about managing the body budget, because the brain eats up about 20% of your daily energy. And so the brain is always trying to figure out how do I need to budget and manage this energy? And so that's, that's his primary function. And then right with that is the brain is a prediction machine. It's always trying to predict what it thinks is going to happen or what will happen next. And so that's, that's so cool. And so it's trying to make these predictions, but it's based on what's already in your head, your memories.

And so it's something happens and it's like it can pay you could, you would then start comparing it to, well, what's happened in the past or if this person does this, do I have to do that? And so it's a prediction machine. It's trying to figure out what's going to happen next. At the same time, trying to do this whole body budgeting in terms of, well, do I need to expend a ton of energy now? Do I need to save it up? And so it's this continuous ebb and flow.

And so that would be, for me, what the primary function of the brain is. Well, and you said earlier, John, something that piqued my interest, and you said you've been studying the ways that the brain serves us, and then the ways that our brain doesn't serve us. And I think about all the ways the clients I work with, their brain serves them, and then the ways that it doesn't, right? And I even think about the ways my brain doesn't always serve me. And these memories sometimes don't serve us, you know, in terms of like, maybe we kind of believe that we can't accomplish something or we don't dream big enough because, you know, our beliefs or what we've seen

in the past. So what are the ways that you think our brain doesn't serve us? So I think where it doesn't service, and again, this is going to be the paradox of it, that the brain sense is always trying to figure out how much energy do I need to expend or save? We would say brains are kind of lazy in that regard. And so given a choice of some high activity or low activity, it probably would take the low activity because it's like, I never know if I need more energy. So I'm going to go with the lower one. So the brain is always trying to then make stuff to become more of a habit or what we would call reflexive behavior. And so when it does the reflexive behavior,

it just sort of shunts it off. You know, it's like the first time you learned how to drive a car, you know, you're like, you're, you're looking at the mirror, the side mirror, the pedals, the steering, everything is new. And so the brain's having to figure this out. And then what happens is over time, those connections get, we would say, tuned and pruned. They get sort of refined. And so now you get in the car and you don't even think about it. Then every once in a while, you may even have to go, oh, did I put the seatbelt on? Because it's such a reflexive habit.

You don't even think about it. So where it then doesn't serve well is all of a sudden, if it's reflexive, you're not even thinking about it. It just happens. So in real life, if you were raised, for example, or you were told growing up, don't trust anybody outside the family or anybody outside the family can't impact us. And if that was a steady diet, excuse me, that becomes then your memory, that becomes your reflexive pattern. So then when somebody outside the family comes in to try to advise your company, your organization, somebody from the outside, you might go, no, can't trust them. Only trust the people within. And so that's where the brain can actually be a disservice to you. And so you have to break that pattern. And there is a way to do that,

but it's going to take some time and energy to break that pattern. So the brain is always trying to make stuff easy and what we call reflexive or habit. And yet sometimes those habits can lead us astray. Yeah. So the million dollar question is how, in your opinion, do we break that habit? Because I'm thinking about there's a lot of people that I work with who have some limiting beliefs, like what if I ask for help and people say no, or people will judge me if I really speak my mind or get out there with my business, you know, I think, or what if I go for that big goal and then I fail, right? So what advice would you give us for that in terms of breaking that pattern? So one of the ways that we know,

and we've talked about this is you have to have awareness. So if there's no awareness, there's no behavioral change. So if you're not aware that you're doing it, you can't change behavior. So let's, so let's put the awareness to the side, but let's, let's say you go, you know, I'm aware that I'm not speaking up or I'm not telling my truth or I'm just letting stuff and you're aware of it. Then what you have to do, it's kind of a gated process. You'd have to go through that first. You want to you got to get a little agitated. You got to get a little bit like I need to do something about this. And so you get a little agitated. You got to get a little bit like, I need to do something about this. And

so you get a little agitated. And what the agitation does is it releases adrenaline. And so adrenaline, as you know, is the classic sort of fight, fight or freeze. And so it's preparing the body for something. So again, little agitation. Then what you want to do is attention. So now you want to narrow the focus in and say, what is it specifically that I want to do or that I want to change? I want to learn a new language. I want to speak up more. I want to not remain silent during a meeting. So you're bringing your attention to it.

Then what you have to do is reward yourself. And so by rewarding yourself, you're then conditioning again, the behavior, you're reinforcing the behavior and actually trying to form a new habit. And then here's the one that was kind of freaky was that then you have to process it. And how do you process it? You process it through sleep. So deep rest. And again,

I was taught that in this whole concept is this change is called neuroplasticity is neuroplasticity. Actually, I thought happened while you were doing it. And now we're finding out it doesn't, it happens then later in sleep. And typically probably has to happen within one or two days, three days, maybe at most. After you learn something, you want to have good sleep or rest like a nap or meditating or just kind of quiet downtime.

So what happens is it allows the brain then to process this new learning, these new steps. And so the acronym that I use to remember it is AARP, since most people, so the brain is not fully formed till about age 25. So prior to age 25, this change or this neuroplasticity is relatively easy, or we'll say it's easier. After age 25, it gets a little bit harder. And that because it's harder, that's why you have to go through these AARP. So again, agitation, attention, reward, and then processing. So I use the AARP since you're over 25. And again, a side note for anybody out there that has kids. I mean, one of the dangers of drug use under age 25 is the brain's not fully formed. And so it has, it probably has, it's magnified the effects. And so again, probably stupid or silly, but it's kind of like, Hey, if you're going to

do drugs, wait till at least age 25, because then the brain is formed and we don't know, we know probably bad things happen. We don't always know exactly what happens, but bad thing happens. Anyways, to the side. So AARP. So I love it. So going through that. And so the way that, again, we talked about the agitation, it's like, all right, I want to do this. And you kind of, that's the adrenaline. Then the attention is then acetylcholine. Acetylcholine then helps you in terms of the focus. and then the processing, the P for that,

the processing is that sleep or rest. And that allows the brain then to then do this neuroplasticity. It allows the brain to make changes. But you have to go through those steps. And so if you don't, it doesn't stick. Again, classic example. You have a test and you pull the all-nighter. Yeah.

That material rarely gets then stuck in the brain because it's like you've pushed way past your sleep cycle. And so we might as well talk about this too. Most people don't sleep very well. I know. That's what I was thinking. I was going to ask you, like, is there anything we should do before we go to sleep? Because I actually don't think that I sleep very well. I think my husband and I talk about it that, you know, so many years of getting up with the boys.

It's like, I don't know if I've gotten back to actually regular sleep. So, yeah, most people don't sleep very well. Yeah. And so what I think what we've done is we've also created some anxiety around this because, you know, you're continually, you need to seven to nine, you know, hours of sleep. And most people are going, I don't even come close to getting seven to nine. And then you have the sheltering has probably made it even harder. So a couple of things that they say, and again, Matt Walker has written a book on sleep. And that to me right now is the go-to book

about learning about sleep, but it's, you probably want a routine. There is some research to say that if you can't get the seven to nine, just be consistent in whatever your amount is. So let's say you're getting six and a half to seven hours, then just stay with that. And apparently that's better than if you had, you know, slept nine hours one day and then six on the other and then eight and then 10. It's probably just being consistent. Probably routine typically is a good thing to have. You might want to reduce caffeine. Although there are some people that can

drink caffeine or caffeinated drinks right up before they go to sleep, but they probably have a certain receptor in their body that allows that, but it still probably is not allowing you deep sleep. And so what you want is be able to have a routine. You typically make the room colder than you normally would. You want to have it as dark as possible. Set up the routine. Stay, again, all these things. Your listeners know this, again. Stay away from the smart devices because that's probably activating part of your brain. So just kind of have a routine that you can sort of do it and sleep. Well, I like the ARP acronym mostly because I think it's funny. But also because it's really sticky and easy way to remember this.

And one question I have, John, is the agitation part. Can you give us some examples? Does that mean like get mad about it, get angry about it? You know, what are some ways that we can get agitated? So what you want to do for the agitation against the releasing of this adrenaline is it's like you might say to yourself, I want to do this. So let's say you want to learn a new language and say, okay, I need to do this because it may help me in my job. It may help me on the next trip that I take and I need to do it and I'm not doing it. And so it's just, again, some of that self-talk that you're just sort of pumping yourself up a little

bit. And you know, this working with athletes, it's a similar thing. It's like, all right, we need to do it. You're getting this adrenaline, the fight or flight type of thing. And so you're just kind of revving your body up a little bit. And so self-talk is going to be very critical to get you going on that. So you don't have to get angry. You don't have to get mad. It's just like, I need to do this. I want to do this. This is something that's going to help me, you know, make me stronger in my relationship, make me better in my job, make me better parent, make me a better partner. It's like, all right, a little agitation gets you ready for that. And what are the ways that you would suggest we reward ourselves?

So reward yourself is incremental. It's fast. It's quick. Do it in small little bites. So let's say you have to put together a presentation for work. And so you start, you know, so you just got to start, right? It's like, okay, I can do this. You know, let's do it. I've done it before. And then, you know, then you bring your focus in. So the reward is, is I start designing it. And again, this will sound probably silly, but when I have to design a presentation, I actually spend a fair amount of time on the title slide. Sure. Because it's pretty simple. It's going to have my name on it, a date on it, and then what the presentation is. And then

I might do a graphic and put it in there. And so when I get the title slide, right, it's sort of like, nice, good job. Nothing big. You're giving yourself a pat on the back. Hey, nice. All right. Good start. And then it's like, okay, so what do you, what do you want to do after? All right. Well, I probably need to tell them what the presentation is going to be about and so i do that and so i'm trying to very incrementally very quickly give myself that reward and then again the release of dopamine which then is going to continuation then of then i will continue to do this and continue to work on the presentation um when i get into the um stuff that's a little bit more difficult,

I also try to make sure that I'm giving myself plenty of space to make mistakes. And so what I want to do is make my mistakes early and quickly, and then sort of get over it and then move on. And so I'm, you know, if I'm stuck, then I will move on. I won't, I won't sort of say there and perseverate on this isn't right. I don't like, you know, and then move on. And so the reward then, then comes in doing it. Now, when it comes time to presenting, I then actually will try to go, right. I want to make sure that this is 90%, 95% done the day before. So that night, right before I go to sleep, I may say to myself, you have this, let it sort of

marinate in your brain. And I will literally say that to myself. I'm all right, go ahead and think about it, play around with it. But I'll actually do that every night leading up to the presentation, because then I'm like, all right, what else could you do on the presentation? What else could you change? And so I'm always letting my brain while I'm sleeping, kind of work on that. And then sometimes wake up in the morning, go, yeah, that's a good way to, to do it. Well, I like that setting that intention before you go to sleep. And sometimes I wake up with such great ideas, but I don't always be, I'm not always intentional with telling myself what to think about while I'm sleeping. So I like that idea.

Yeah. And so it's kind of nice. You can, and so the brain is just, when you go to sleep, you know, the brain is then it's sort of washing toxins out of your brain and it's all the thoughts and stuff and it's it's just sort of it's a good sleep is your best therapy especially during the sheltering it's it's great therapy and it's really quite inexpensive and so it's something to do and another again, again, side note, another great form of therapy is exercising, walking. So I've just built this in. So the way I've approached it is one of my tasks,

one of my jobs Monday through Friday is to walk. And so I just get up and then I try to do it relatively early in the morning. I love it. And then you're ready for the rest of your day. Well, ARP, agitation, attention, reward, and process. John, you've also been a member of the National Speakers Association since 1989, which is amazing. And you've given, I don't even know how many talks at this point about lots of different topics. Tell us a bit about how we might use ARP or other ideas related to the brain to help us give better presentations or talks or keynotes, whatever we might do in our job. So I think, you know, we talk about our body's health and sometimes we don't talk so much about our brain health.

And so to be a better speaker, presenter, we would say go learn something new, because when you learn something new, the brain has to sort of put out this whole neural network, make all these connections, trying to figure it out. And so remember, it to figure it out. And so remember, it's taking energy now. So what it does is it overlays that neural network, if you will, over your existing neural network. And then as things get pruned off, tuned and pruned, we talked about, is then it makes connections with something else. And so maybe there's a new insight that you have because you learn a new topic or you decided to teach yourself something new. That new thing may overlay on something else and you go, hey, this would be a unique way of doing it. So for example, perfect. We know that alcohol consumption has gone up during the sheltering. Yes, I did read that. And so I thought, well, I don't know much about

wine. And so I did one of those took one of those online uh classes or online thing about how do you evaluate wine and one of the things that they talked about is how they rate wine and so she had like a pie chart and you know this number goes to this and so they they use a hundred a hundred is their scale and then so if you see something that's you know know, 90 or 92, you know, that's that's pretty good. But, you know, if you see somebody 96, 98, then they start to get really expensive. And so I'm thinking, well, how would you teach, again, making decisions about somebody and then rating them? Could you do the same 100 scale and pick four areas that the wine, you know, typically evaluate and then break them into the categories it's like oh that'd be kind of fun just to teach a class on how to evaluate somebody using you know

why you know the wine metrics exactly like color and clarity and you know all this stuff and so again overlaying it kind of connected with something I already knew about the thing and then said, all right, how, how might you think of this in a novel or different way? So it's just, it's taking care of the brain. It's we would also say anything that's heart healthy is probably brain healthy. That's why exercise is so good again it's bringing rich oxygenated blood uh to the brain it's helping wash out stuff um the brain also is is uh we call it you're a fat head or it's fatty and so eat the right uh fats so get your omegas three five six seven nine i mean most people know about omega-3s but and try to get those be plant-based but three five uh six seven nine those are the the fats that you should be

getting they're healthy for the brain um it's it's doing because remember if you continue to do like crossword puzzles or sudokos or things to keep the brain going the brain then eventually remember tries to make it a habit it makes it reflexive so it doesn't eat up a lot of energy so you have to change those up so challenge your brain learn new things and that's the beauty you can teach you know the old saying you can teach old dogs new tricks. And that's that whole neuroplasticity. The brain can rewire itself. It's so fascinating. Only organ in the body that can do that. And so it's so cool. So do that because if you're not challenging your brain, if you're not exercising your brain, it's, you're starting to lose capacity well and one of the things john that when you spoke to our chapter that i really loved is you gave some really clear advice or tips for people

when they're presenting and you were talking about how your brain loves stories why is that the case and what do we do about that so what happens with stories and the beauty of the stories is that the way the brain forms its memories is they put the pieces in different parts of the brain. And then the beauty of stories is that it's actually activating huge parts of the brain. So maybe there's a visual component. Maybe there's a, well, obviously there'll be an auditory component but as you paint pictures with your story then the brain parts of your own your audience's brain is being activated because they're remember comparing them to their own stories their own memories their own experiences

so we would say tap into that versus if you just give data, again, nothing wrong with data, but data probably is just going to activate one part of the brain versus telling a story around it. Then it's causing the listener or your audience or the recipient to have to use or hit different parts of their brain. So the brain loves stories. And it's so much easier to remember things around the story. And that's, you know, we basically, as a society, we started with the oral tradition. That's how you had the hero stories or heroine stories and how you then talked about the culture or the morals of the tribe or the organization. And so we're finding more and more that successful organizations tell stories.

Yeah. And I notice when I'm on stage and I tell a story, all the eyes are on me typically. Right. When I may be sharing a concept, they're not all locked, quite locked in. So I know that, that, you know, people are processing it and they're really paying attention when you're telling a story. And I like what you said about you're activating a different part of your brain. One of the things that you said at our chapter meeting that I wrote down that I really liked is you said, if you want to change behavior, you have to change the nervous system. And you talked about changing their focus on their senses, their perceptions, feelings, and thoughts. Tell us a bit about that and how we might do that if we're presenting or speaking. So one of the things when we talk about the brain,

and sometimes, and we're all probably a little bit guilty of it, we talk as if the brain is this one little entity. Well, the brain actually is part of the nervous system. And so if we sort of clump it together, it's going to be your brain, your spinal cord, and then the connections from your brain and spinal cord to all your organs, as well as all the connections from the organs back to your spinal cord and brain. And so this is this continuous loop, continuous flow of information. And so you can't separate out the brain from your body. You can't separate. And you hear this often in organizations and sales, especially.

People buy with their heart and they justify with their mind. No, they're not separate. They're just this continuous loop. Now the selling may cause an activation of a certain part of the brain that maybe has more emotional, or it may activate more of the cognitive part, the decision-making part, but it's a continuous flow. And so if you want to change behavior, we would say you have to change the nervous system. So by again, creating adrenaline, that's causing the body to change. That's the, you know, your adrenal glands, you know, then releasing adrenaline. And then, and that's causing causing again something that the body is now changed and so that's why agitation it's a it's impacting your body it's going to impact your brain so this all

goes hand in hand in this continuous flow and loop and that's why we say if you want to change behavior you have to change their nervous system versus if i just say, if I'm, oh, just giving you data or research or facts, I'm probably not impacting your, your nervous system too much. And if I want to change the behavior, I want to go after all of it. Yeah. And I think about speakers that I've heard that I still remember, you know, like they touched me in some way with, touched me in my heart, or I guess my feelings, really, that's what I mean. Or they, they activated me in some way, right? They made me think about my life or changing my life. Or I'm thinking about even somebody like Tony Robbins, when I've been to his events, he gets you to stand up and move around. And, you know, I'm sure all of that is really intentional. It has to be because that's, again, it's changing. It's bringing the physical. It's, again, it's this whole, from a neuroscience perspective, it's this continuous loop then of the brain the spinal cord organs and the

communication back and forth and that's you know and many of the presenters have had audiences where they sit there and their arms are crossed and it's like prove it and so the best way to probably open that up is then through story or if if you want to, you want to agitate them. So you might make a shocking or startling statement. Then again, that's causing that release then of adrenaline. So it's like, you know, so not that I'm going to suggest this, but if you were in some group that was pretty complacent, you'd be like, I don't know how to tell you this, but what you're doing sucks. It's like, what? You know, or you've been doing this all wrong, and you're about to go down badly. It's like, what? And it's sort of, now, you better follow

that up. Because again, if you just shock them for the shake of shocking then you know once that adrenaline runs off they'll probably turn on you or they'll do the flight it's like i'm out of here you know i'm not gonna listen to you anymore so i could see how you could do that with your like gentle smiley demeanor it's like oh by the way you've been doing this all wrong with your like gentle smiley demeanor. It's like, oh, by the way, you've been doing this all wrong. John, you said a few times, you know, just this kind of shelter in place and how things have changed, you know, obviously for everyone in the world. But you talked a little bit about Zoom fatigue when I heard you speak, which I want to ask you a little bit about, and then any other changes that you've seen to people's

brains, like during this time period of the last year or so, what have you been seeing in general in terms of maybe how people are treating their brain or any other ideas you might have. So one of the things, if we go back to the second A, if you will, in the AARP. So the attention, think about how addictive then many of our smart devices are. So when you look at the horizon line, you expand your vision. It's, it's kind of calming. And most people, when they look at the horizon line, you know, it's calming. Even you hear people that if they're, they're on a boat or even flying and they're starting to get nauseous, they immediately tell you, go look at the horizon line.

Cause you expand out because the brain, then the visual field can't focus it's just expands and it's it's more relaxing the minute you start to focus in then we also know that your energy focus follows your visual focus and so that's why these phones are so addictive because then basically you're causing then the focus to be very, very tight. And so when we do that, it's now going to take energy. And if we're on Zoom calls all day, focus is in these little boxes and it takes energy and it's hard. And so one of the things we would suggest, and we suggested this at the chapter meeting, is that when you're done with the Zoom call, just if you go outside and just kind of look at the horizon, do so. Or if you can't go outside, go to the window and just let your visual field sort of expand, get a little bit diffuse, not to be so narrow, and try to build

that in. When you get up in the morning, try to go outside and look at the horizon or go to the window and look outside. There's a lot of benefit to doing that. So what's happened is because of the sheltering and we're missing some of the human interaction and contact. You see sometimes people after Zoom calls, they stay on the call a little bit longer just to sort of chat or make a connection or because I think we're hungry for that connection and we've lost some of that in the sheltering or the social distancing. So I would pay, and I try to pay attention to this, that I get up and I move, I go to the window, I look out the window, or again, I'll go for the walk and then just kind of let my brain,

you know, relax and try to do it. So those are a couple of things that I would suggest. Thank you, Dr. Molidor. So amazing to have you here this morning. There's several things I wrote down. So I'm going to summarize what I took today from your conversation, the brain's primary function and keeping that in mind. You talked about, I love breaking this pattern with ARP, agitation, attention, reward, and process, and how you can do that when your brain doesn't serve you or any time that you want to make any kind of behavior change. I appreciated what you shared with us about stories and the importance of those and how our brain remembers them.

And then just the importance of changing your brain. We have to change the nervous system to change our brain. So Dr. Molidor, how could people reach out to you if they want to learn more about your work, book you as a speaker, talk to you about anything that you mentioned today? How might we contact you or follow along with you? So the easiest way is then to send me an email and that'd be one way. So it's molidor, M-O-L-I-D-O-R at msu.edu or 810-516-2442. Or they could get hold of you because you know where I'm at. You could get hold of me. I do. I love it. I'm like, I just got Molidor's cell phone number and I wrote it down.

That's right. Now, most most students, you know, you could probably sell that to most of the medical students and they would know, actually, give it to students, too. your presence. And thank you so much for bringing it here with us today and sharing us with everything that you've learned, at least in the recent time period about the brain. So thank you again, John, for joining us here today on the High Performance Mindset. You're welcome. Thank you so much, Dr. K. Enjoyed our conversation. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.