Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Dr. Kyra Bobinet: The Brain's Motivation Center They Don't Tell You About

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Discover the SECRET part of your BRAIN that controls MOTIVATION and what you might be doing to unknowingly sabotage your success.   MOTIVATION EXPERT, Dr. Kyra Bobinet (physician, public health leader, behavior change designer) breaks down the mysterious habenula and explains how to achieve your goals.   Discover why your To-Do Lists & New Year’s resolutions are secretly hurting you. Learn how to truly LOSE WEIGHT, succeed in RELATIONSHIPS, and why faking ORGASMS might lead to addiction!!   Stop everyday habits that may be DESTROYING your motivation.   We're unveiling the SHOCKING secrets of failure and imposter syndrome that are holding you back from true greatness - Are YOU unknowingly setting yourself up to fail?   Dr. Bobinet also explains: - Benefits of dopamine fasting - Different types of failure - Dangers of doom-scrolling - Ties between addiction, depression, and failure - How to regulate your environment to reduce your chances of failure - Best sources of motivation for short term goals vs long term goals - Ketamine effects on the habenula in treating depression - Why porn can be so addictive to some - Why we're more likely to focus on losses vs wins - What triggers imposter syndrome and who is most susceptible to it - Positive & negative effects of the latest GLP-1 weight loss drugs on the brain - Process of deep brain stimulation - How to hack your way out of avoidant attachment - Effects of inauthenticity in sexual relationships - Downside of institutions overusing performance-based tools - Difference between "performing" vs authentically being   Learn practical ways to form healthy habits and LITERALLY change your brain to avoid & move through FAILURE!    Dr. Kyra Bobinet's book, Unstoppable Brain: The New Neuroscience That Frees Us From Failure, Eases Our Stress, and Creates Lasting Change: https://drkyrabobinet.com/unstoppable-brain-book/   BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I outed myself that I had been faking orgasms. Your hebenula was faking orgasms. Yes, your hebenula was while you were performing, and then your abenula is like, this is not working out. Oh, my gosh. And so I was tired of failing at orgasms, and I told him. And that just opened up a whole new world of like... I mean, whose failure is it when you don't have an orgasm, doctor?

I know. You're protecting your partners, Habenula, by acting not... truthful, you're performing as a sexual being. It's kind of a whack-a-mole. Like if you're denying that about how you're feeling in this one domain of sex, then guess what, you're going to eat, or you're going to drink alcohol, or you're going to numb out in some other way, you know, or you're going to look for the next hit. You're going to look for the next lover. I think that there's just a whole other level of sex health that has not been accessed in any way because we are so busy performing either as porn stars

or as people not telling our truth. There's so much inauthenticity in the sexual relationships with people. What is the percentage of people who have faked orgasm? For women, it's the majority. Never thought this episode would go here. It kind of seems like the Hbenula is like this holy grail of mental wellness. Is that how you see it? It's really becoming this big,

revelation and groundbreaking information in science and medicine. Two areas I predict are going to explode. One is in depression anxiety, the kind of like mood disorder area around habanula and treatments for that. And then the second one is going to be for addiction because we've now found the culprit. It's my and be all eggs break down. She's going to break it down for you because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down.

Hi, I'm I'm Bialik. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. This is a place where we break things down so you don't have to. We're talking to Dr. Kyra Bobinette. She's an MD and a Master of Public Health. And she wrote this book called Unstoppable Brain, The New Neuroscience that frees us from failure,

eases our stress and creates lasting change. So if you've ever thought about anything that has had a component of, am I going to fail, am I going to get this right? why can't I maintain a fitness routine? Why can't I keep up with my New Year's resolutions? Why can't I lose that 10 pounds?

If you've ever thought any of those things, you have to listen to this episode. There's a part of the brain that I basically knew as a neuroanatomical marker. There's all this incredible new research that Dr. Bobinet is going to talk about that reveals that this teeny tiny half centimeter region of your brain

called the Hbenula is the base of monitoring motivation and processing failure. And it's possibly at the root of so many things that ail us. I'm going to take it even one step further and say, you may not have even realized that you've set yourself up to feel like you've failed. You may be like, I'm going to set out to achieve this new business venture, this new relationship.

I'm going to start working out. And unconsciously, unbeknownst to you, you may be doing it in a way that is going to make you perceive any type of setback as a failure and thus reduce your motivation to keep going. She explains to us the new science of how to set yourself up to be successful, to increase your motivation, to make yourself happier. also dopamine fasting in order to achieve more. Yeah, Dr. Bobinet also talks about the increasingly important role of understanding dopamine and the hebenula and also oxytocin. So she tells us about the science of how pleasure can both motivate us, but also can be a motivation killer if it's not framed in the right way.

And she has this really, really incredible framework that she gives us. and it's called having an iterative mindset, and she's going to go through how to have an iterative mindset to basically accomplish anything, start a business, have a successful relationship, get over addiction. And the notion is not that, like, we found the cure-all. The notion is that knowledge is your best friend

and understanding the Hebenula, understanding motivation, reward, and our perception of achievement and failure, even at things that we think we're doing great, like my to-do lists, she's going to explain how a different framing can literally make your brain unstop. Hence the title of the book, Unstoppable Brain.

I'd like to welcome to the breakdown, Dr. Kaira Bobinette. Break it down. So great to be here. It's really exciting to have you here. I feel very motivated. And I don't want to fail. So I really enjoyed Unstoppable Brain. I'd like to think that I have an Unstoppable Brain.

But one of the things that was really interesting is I saw a lot of my fault or perhaps misplaced thought patterns really throughout the book. You really kind of hone in on places that we either stop ourselves or we don't let ourselves kind of fully be ourselves. So before we kind of get into that, I want to start with a super basic question. Who did you write this book for? Like what was the impetus for saying this is a book that needs to be out there? Yeah.

So I've tried to change the behavior of millions of people in my career. and created interventions of all kinds of complexity or simplicity, trying to get at this problem of, you know, I know what I should do, I just don't do it. And I wrote it for people who have that problem, which is almost everybody in every way. I'm trying to think, is there anyone that doesn't have something, right? Probably not. There's always got to be something. Absolutely. Like if it's not weight, it's fitness. If it's not fitness, it's work. It's work. if it's not work, it's relationships. Do you feel that there's sort of one general problem

that society or even our culture is collectively experiencing that sort of also needs this wisdom? Yeah, I think right now we've kind of run aground in overusing performance-based tools and performing, performing, performing, and being performative. And that in particular in this time in history

is lighting up the brain in massive amounts of mental health problems and physical health problems and that kind of thing. So I think that this is a right-hand turn. You know, I like to say that there was a time in medicine before we knew about bacteria. And we used leeches and we used like weird things and we had typhoid Mary and things like that. And so after we knew about bacteria, then we had antibiotics. And this whole new era was ushered in of like how to treat that. Let's go right into this performative notion because this really hadn't occurred to me.

you lay it out really, really clearly, you say that performing as ourselves instead of really understanding and then being ourselves is kind of the cause for what you would describe as the disease of failure, meaning that we're all, not that we're all failures, but this notion that we will fail or that we get stopped because of a fear of failure, you know, that the the cause of that is this performative aspect. So can you tell us what does that look like? Because when I saw the list, I was actually, or well, I made it into a list because I make everything into lists. When I looked at the things that literally can be performative, I'm just going to list them. Yes, please. The list is New Year's resolutions. And so for that one, I was like, okay, well, I usually get annoyed with New Year's resolutions. And I'm like, I don't really make them. So maybe.

Maybe I was on to something. Social media. Competitive sports. Fitness trends. And now I'm like, uh-oh. Smart goals, which is an acronym, which we can talk about in a bit, dieting, habit routines. And now I'm thinking like, okay, Kyra's off her rocker. What do you mean habit routines?

Then she went for the guttural to-do lists, like my favorite thing. Yeah. And then it expands out lying, career goals, relationship goals. And I literally wrote in my document, can I strive for anything? So all of the, all of these are what you would describe as falling under this performative category. So what does it look like if I'm performing instead of being? Yeah. So performing basically uses a neural network that terminates in the area of disempowerment and extrinsic motivation.

And so I'm doing it for you or my mental model in myself is I'm doing it for myself, right? So we're already there. And those two neural networks do not cross over. They are completely separate and independent of each other. And the reason why that's important is that when I'm doing it for somebody else, not myself, first of all, it's a disconnected state. But also, it sets up my brain to be triggered by any non-expected result. So that becomes a failure.

I become disappointed, frustrated, whatever the case may be. If I don't have that perfect expectation happen, which is most of the time. And so the performing basically sets up a failure field. The failure field triggers the brain in this new area of the brain that we're going to talk about, the Habanula, and then that's a setup. So you can use performing, the literature shows that you can use performing kind of tools short term for short term goals or for single simple tasks. But nothing complex, dynamic, irreversible, those kinds of things. And also, I just want to note, because of course, I'm sure that people, like, the first thing I thought of

and maybe other people thinking is like, but it works, it works, right? Or like, I lost 50 pounds or whatever it is. But I think what you're talking about is there's a price. There's both a neurological price and kind of a neuropsychological price. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you can use it, you know, like you can use it if you know about the habanula. Because then when you have a disappointment or a discrepancy between what you thought was going to happen and what actually happened, then you know what to do. Right. know in this history, we don't know what to do when things don't work out perfectly. And then we're lost and then we get demotivated. And that's this kind of like pervasive motivation loss. Even doom

scrolling has been shown to trigger the Habenula result in motivation loss. So basically every youth in America and around the world who is doom scrolling at night and also in the morning like my kids are basically disempowering themselves, causing motivation loss in the evenings and the mornings. And so then you get this kind of self-blame that sits on top of that and depression, anxiety, all that kind of stuff ensues. If that's what it looks like to perform, right? And the notion also is, of course, you would say, like, I'm getting fit for myself. But in a lot of cases, it is about a metric, right? Or it's about if I get to look like this, I'll have access to this person, this job, this opportunity, right? So that's the performative aspect. So the, the, the, the, the,

the converse is being yourself. So in brief, what does that look like? Because for me, it looks like to do lists and, you know, like all the things that I do, having goals and like forming habits. Like that's the old way of thinking. What is this newer way? Do you mind if I explore the two-dos list? Do it. Jonathan loves what people ask me questions. So how do you psychologically respond when you don't get to all your to do list things? What does that? that like for you? Well, I mean, it doesn't feel great. I mean, literally before we started recording, I told you that I made a to-do list for my son because I had a list of chores that I actually needed him to do before he left the house. Yeah, there's usually, I mean, there's shame.

You know, there's a feeling of why did I try in the first place? I mean, I've also read the book. So, like, I'm sort of like, piecing it together. But the practical question I have for you is, if I have a list of things that I need to get done, what is the better? way to do them. What would it look like to be myself if I have a list of things I have to get done? Yeah, it's about letting go of the performance and just saying this is an aid. This is a tool. So reframing tends to be the sort of wise thing that people who do this right do. And so if you approached it as, you know, this is a potential list that we will get to or that my son might do, right? Because you can't control another human being, especially a teenager. Then the way you hold

it seems to be the key, you know, but the fact that you're having shame. I angled it like this. I went like here. And the fact that you're experiencing shame means that you're holding it in a way, you know, that it becomes a sharp object. Got it. So then knowing where that sharp object, you know, happens, anything can be helpful as a tool in performance. You can set a goal. You can say, I want to run a faster mile. You can do all these things. But if it becomes a sharp object at the end of the day, then you're harming yourself. So, okay, so that makes sense. We now have performative me versus just me trying to be me. And there's some more reframing to that. But I do want to talk about, before we get into the Hibenula in particular, when you talk about

that we're constantly failing and you talk about that our disease, or I like to call it dis-ease, you know, our dis-ease is failure. What does that mean? Because like obviously I think of like, oh, are we failing as a country? Like, are we failing, you know, because we're not being nice to our neighbors. What does this failure look like when you talk about it that way? Long time ago, when I wrote my first book, I had run across this paper when I was writing the motivation chapter that failure lit up this new area that I'd never heard of called the Habeinula. And it was discovered in like the late 1800s, but in the last 20 years, it's exploding. And in that paper, it showed that. And then a different paper, it showed that when we think

we fail or when the Hbenula turns on, we lose motivation. to keep trying something. So I was like, ah, Reese's peanut butter and chocolate, kind of like it came together. And so then from that point forward, it was like, oh, we need to manage the failure, not the success. There's a paradox there because if you look at even behavioral economics, you know, we're twice as sensitive to loss as gain. Like this is the source of the brain that is causing that sort of asymmetry of real pain

and psychic pain when the habenula goes on. It's your worst situation. and then we just try to reach for anything to shut it up. My Ambialx breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water. There's no real data.

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Not only did Superpower reduce their price to just $199, but for a limited time, our listeners get an additional $20 off with the code break. Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention My Ambiotics Breakdown to help support the show. I want to touch on something that was just said. We're twice as sensitive to loss as we are to gain. I don't think people really understand. the impact of that. So I want to actually go back to the beginning of what you were just talking about in terms of failure. What I hear is that people are setting themselves up for failure. If they make a

goal and they say, I need to do this because it's a part of myself worth, I'm going to be able to lose weight and then I'm going to feel good. I'm going to be able to get into this relationship because that means something. There's all these unconsors. All these unconsors. conscious motivators or values that they're associating with the goal that they're putting up. And if they don't get that, then that's the setback. Can you frame a little bit about maybe the very challenging and dangerous situation that people are unknowingly putting themselves in without realizing it? That's a really good way to put that.

So they're playing with fire. I like to call it failure fires. If you had a fire in your house, you would put it out immediately. And myself as a clinician, a researcher, for many years did underappreciated how toxic failure or the thoughts of failure are. Now I see it as, oh, that's the most important thing. Not the setting of the goal. And again, just like the to-do list, it's how you hold it.

You know, if you hold a smart goal even, you know, in a way that's flexible or reframing any failure along the way, then it doesn't become a sharp object. But most the way that we're doing these things is very linear and very, you know, wind, lose and very all or nothing. And so that's the way it's being held currently. And I think that we can, now that this is, this information is coming out to the public, then the public can do something more creative and more protective of themselves so they don't keep getting cut by this. And I really, I mean, failure is like a bad word, you know, in our society. And so I, like many others, trying to help people, never wanted to mention it or never wanted to go there. You know,

nothing's more of a bummer than when you're all excited, you know, to change your world. And then somebody's saying, well, let's talk about failure. Let's talk about what you're going to do when this doesn't work out like you think. I want to talk in particular about this magic Hbenula because you describe it as a failure detector, meaning it detects failure. For lack of a better word, it lights up, you know, if you're talking about scans. but it's a failure detector and it's a motivator killer. And it's a very, very tiny, tiny region.

I only knew about the Hbenula because it was kind of a landmark in neuroanatomy, meaning when you're dissecting the brain, it's like, where's the Hbenula? Oh, it's right there. Like it was question like 12F, you know, on like my midterm exam in neuroanatomy. So it's this tiny little region. Why don't you orient us a little bit? Because most people who've, you know, watched or listened to our podcast. know some things about the limbic brain. We talk about the amygdala. We talk about the thalamus

as like a processing center. You know, my thesis was about the hypothalamic pituitary axis. So like we, these are words that people have heard. Orient us as to where this special little part of the brain is. Yeah. So it's epithalamic. It's above the thalmus. And epi's the fancy term that just means above. Above. Half a centimeter large. There's two of them, one on either side, but central in your brain. And yeah, it's connected to everything. It's connected to your prefrontal cortex, your reward pathway, your limbic system. You know, it basically, and it's also in front of, interestingly, the pineal gland. Oh, that's a big important.

So, right? Because the pineal glands like go and the hebrinal is like, stop. The pineal gland is actually in yogic and Eastern practice is kind of what is related to the third eye center. So when you meditate in Kundalini yoga in particular and you look, they say to close your eyes and look upward and towards your third eye, it's actually pineal gland activation is what, you know, sort of the notion is. So I really like this idea of the pineal and the habenula as sort of, you know, in opposition, as it were. And the research that you talk about in your book, you know, has links for the hebenula to depression, to anxiety, to addiction, to hunger, to sleep. I mean,

a lot of the things that the hypothalamus also does, these are all kind of homeostatic mechanisms, also connections to aces, which are adverse childhood experiences. And this is a term we've talked about a little bit here, but I think is really important to mention. You know, it kind of seems like the Hbenula is like this holy grail of mental wellness. Is that how you see it? As far as I know, because, you know, I was a dorsolateral prefrontal cortex gal. Before this, I created, I created, you know, mindfulness programs at work and things like that because I was like, oh, it's the, it's the PFC. You know, it's the rumination. That's what's causing the depression. And and it really looks like this is the one. This is the locust. And there's an explosion of literature that is

reproducing this in both rat animals and humans. And so, you know, it really opens up the world. You know, again, I say like there's a world before bacteria and now after, we're in that post-bacteria world where we can treat depression differently, you know, even some of the transmagnetic stuff that's going on. I think that can be helpful. Deep brain stimulation. I mean, ketamine is also a really big, like since I published the book, there has been more evidence to support the ketamine absorbs into the hebenula and cures the symptoms of depression,

you know, so treatment resistant. depression. And so it's really becoming this big revelation and groundbreaking information in science and medicine. I mean, I'm still stuck in the beginning. I really am. I'm just thinking about, you know, making it tangible how people are unknowingly setting themselves up for triggering this system of their brain to help them not succeed. That's right. And, you know, we don't, we're careless right now because we don't know how consequential failure or its friends can be. And there's a lot of failure types. I started a list in the book, and I'm really interested in seeing what the public has to say about that and saying, oh, I fail this way.

But there's, there's kind of like, you know, your brain has favorite ways to fail. And we did some research recently in our company on failure types across different segments. And some people who struggle the most with behavior change have a very strong signal around shitting. And then people who are successful long term and iterative, you know, which we can get into, have more like I used to be type of failure types. So there's really kind of these groups of strategies and also the way that you neutralize failure and what you're dealing with around failure that are very specific to different populations and different people. So I have the list of types of failure. I'm happy to go there. So what you describe is that the ways that people, it's more like the ways that people feel

that they're failing, right? There's certain categories that people fall into. And one of them is all or nothing thinking. One of them is comparing. There's the, I used to be able to. There's what you describe as pre-failing. Nothing works for me. Been there, done that. Imposter syndrome as a type of failure.

And then shoulding. And, you know, I've heard people say that we can't should all over people. Yeah. You know, these are going to show up differently depending on what. What determines the kind of failure that you've foresee for yourself, I guess is the question. I don't know. What I would imagine hypothetically is that, you know, the brain is very habitual. And so whatever you got that, you know, in my family system, you know, it was all or nothing was a big signal. And so I had to overcome that. And there's a lot of

ways in which I lose power around things that I'm scared of and that I pre-fail too. And, And so, you know, I think that maybe the audience can tell us, you know, which of those are most prominent in kind of their brain habits of how they like to fail, you know, what gets your goat. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, just speaking for myself, I was actually, I was very interested in pre-failing. Can you talk a little bit about that one? Yeah, yeah.

I think this is kind of the class of performance anxiety, things where you already have forecast. that you are not, it's not going to work out for you. And so the Hbenula is always looking around the corner and saying, is this going to be safe or not? Is this going to be okay or not? You know, like, is this going to work out for me or not? And so if we, if we train ourselves to always listen to that voice, I can imagine that it becomes habitual to just pause and to not approach, you know, whatever it is we're supposed to be approaching. And for me, that creates procrastination. you know, when I'm afraid to fail, I just dally and I do all kinds of weird things. I clean. You know, I do weird things. And so I think that that is something that once you know explicitly that you're doing that,

you're not just procrastinating, which is more of like a self-blame type of way of experiencing that. Then you can say, oh, you know, like my Hbenula is telling me something that is not helpful, that is not, you know, I need to push through that. I need to try something else. I need to refraining frame the inevitable failure into like, well, maybe not. Talk about imposter syndrome a little bit. This is one of these terms that's kind of thrown around a lot. And I was actually, I was pleased to see it in this context because, you know, we tend to think of it as like, I don't belong here.

But it's actually a lot more complicated than that. Yeah, yeah. So it's basically, you know, you have a performing self, you know, that is at the fore that kind of triggers the feeling of imposter because if we were fully ourselves all the time and showing up that way, there would be no problem. But, you know, more higher performing people tend to be susceptible to imposter syndrome in the sense that they step into an environment and they feel like, well, I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't, you know, it shouldn't be me, that kind of thing. And that's a form of failure trigger to the Hibenula and then losing your motivation to keep trying. So there's that kind of

anxiety that's produced by the Hbeni love, like, this isn't working out for me. They're just going to find out. It's kind of similar to pre-failing in that way that you're kind of future facing. And you're saying, you know, they're going to find out, they're going to kick me out. They're going to, expose me, that kind of thing. I want to talk about a little bit more about some of these performative tools that fail. Can you talk about what smart goals are and what that acronym stands for? Yeah. So smart goals is specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time back. That's literally all the most important things in life. Jonathan, would you agree?

100%. So what is wrong with having specific, measurable, achievable? What's the R? Realistic or something? Realistic time bound. What's wrong with having goals like that? Yeah, it seems counterintuitive, doesn't it? Because it seems like, oh, that's clarity.

Right. Right. But the way that the clarity gets obvious. operate at over time is that you have this smart goal and if it doesn't happen exactly like that, which is most of the time, eventually, eventually it will fail, eventually it will, you'll need something different. Then, and the probability that your past self predicts perfectly what your future self is going to do and how it's going to work out for that person is very, very minuscule. So everything leads to failure. Everything, you know, that ideal sets an ideal and everything

else the brain is noticing, well, that's not exactly specific. That's not exactly measured. It has a criteria against which to fail. And so, again, it's how you hold it. If you had smart goals, but you had some additional instruction of, hey, you know, if it doesn't work out exactly like this, that's normal. Don't freak out. It's okay. Just iterate. And that in my research has been the Holy Grail solution to the Habanula, to everything that we're, we're currently using becoming a sharp object for people. And I want to get to this notion of the iterative mindset. But I think, you know, one of the areas that that you talk about a lot is, you know,

one of the biggest money makers in our culture, which is health and fitness, you know, and specifically weight loss. Yeah. And you talk about, you know, kind of the trajectory of what it's like not only to try and lose weight, but to keep weight off. what are people doing without even knowing that they're self-sabotaging that is causing this kind of cycle? Yeah. So I like to think, you know, you can use anything to lose weight. You know, performative tools, strict diets, you know, a personal trainer, all that kind of stuff. But the key is does it last? And do you know what to do after the party's over? And so I started doing research on long-term weight loss. and figuring out what's different about the people who achieve that long-term state.

And to a person, the only thing they had in common is that they were iterating their way through. So even if they did, you know, a boot camp, even if they did a yoga retreat, even if they did all these things, each one of those was almost like a tile in their iterations of what inspired them at that period of time to keep going or to really get into something. and their space in between those tiles was very, very small. Versus other people who were like, oh, I used to do yoga, now I don't do it anymore. And then failure, failure, failure, habanula loss, no motivation, then blaming self for motivation loss. All that stuff starts to be triggered off.

So the notion is not there's anything wrong with goals, right? The notion is not that there's anything wrong with wanting to get fit. Right. The idea is that the way we. we frame it and the way we execute it is actually the difference in getting your Hibanula to help you or to hinder you. Right. Or, you know, the marketing, the current marketing of, you know, lose this in 60 days or whatever the case may be, really hurts us because it sets that expectation that that's going to happen and that it's going to be permanent. And all that stuff just sets up

the Hapenula to be like, uh-huh, yeah, right. All right. So I'm going to ask a controversial question. a lot of people are taking drugs to lose weight. Ozambic and what's the other one? Well, we don't need to name it, Manjaro. I don't remember. It sounds like a mountain. I don't know. So what's happening, and I live in Los Angeles,

so this stuff is like, it's big news and it's kind of everywhere. The gas station. Right. And what's happening is that it gets an immediate response, right? Meaning it's such a performative thing. Yeah. Are people who are using these methods, like, are they trying to hack the Hibendula? Is the Hibenula being bypassed?

Is there a component of this where you might say that's performatively positive, but what's the long-term implications? What's going on? Yeah, yeah. I mean, nobody's done that study yet, but I hope they do after hearing this interview. Because my hypothesis is that it's got to touch the Hibnula. Hibnula controls hedonic eating, controls satiety. So if you have satiety as part of the main activation of this gLP one, which by the way,

GLP ones are a daughter molecule of oxytocin. And to me, from a public health perspective, that means that we don't have enough oxytocin in our social systems in our society to help people feel good. And they feel lonely and scared. And they feel like the only worth that they have is as a performer of some kind, whether it's in business or entertainment or those kinds of things, online influencers. And so, yeah, it is a performative tool if held that way. But I also know for people who have really traumatic childhoods or things like that

where food is the only thing that can shut up their psychic pain from their hebenula, having compassion for that situation, this could be kind of a way to provide a safety net, in an otherwise frustrating situation where they've blown through so many diets and they've really wrecked their metabolism set points and things like that, it really helps them to kind of have some hope, you know, but I don't think that it's a long-term solution for most people, for a lot of reasons. You know, there's really questionable, and I think Peter Attia opened my eyes to this, which is like muscle wasting, you know, like that's the number one thing for frailty in longevity. And so we're playing with fire in that way.

So I do think that for people who are just stuck in a whirlpool, then can't get out, this is a good way to kind of fish them out of that despair. And then it also, because it also has some side effects on lowering depression, I also think it's activating the Havanaula. It's got to be. So what is the iterative mindset? So what I did is I had a large project for the larger, retailer in the U.S. and their employees' health was the subject of the behavioral research.

And upon looking at deep dive into their stories nationwide, there was this subset of people that changed their health, you know, got off their medications, lost weight, got fit, that kind of thing. And in the face of the world's worst, you know, social and economic pressures and time pressures. And they didn't know each other. And to to a person, the only thing they had in common was that they had this iterative mindset. And the way that I pulled it out of the research is that they would iterate instead of fail. What does that mean for people who are like, what is iterate?

Yeah. Iteration is like versioning on your phone, you know, like version 15, 16, 17. It's a constant state of improvement through versioning through something. It's like leveling up? it's, it's, leveling up is a, is that performative? It might be a performance. But, but it is a natural point of like if you get tired of something and you want variety and you want to kind of like see if you can challenge yourself, that's a really good thing to do.

But in this case, what they would do is, for example, there was a woman who was addicted to Doritos and she just couldn't get off of them. And what she did was that she would eat the whole bag every day at baseline. and then when she started changing her behavior iteratively, she would eat the whole bag except one chip and then two chips and three chips until she was leaving every chip in the bag, taking one chip and licking off the flavoring

and then throwing the chip away because she had realized iteratively that she was addicted to the chemicals of the cheese. And so that became her path. Of course, if you post that online, people might try that, it may not work for them. I would just lick all the cheese flavoring off, all the chips every day. I actually remember doing that as a teenager.

So everybody had their own path and they got there through iteration. Like, does this work experimenting, tweaking things, you know, tinkering with it, adapting it? If, you know, they changed shifts, then they couldn't go to their normal gym. They moved. They got divorced. All those things. They iterated their way through so that they found their next thing. And that's what made them superpowered.

And so the iterative mindset, you're continuously improving. Here's the goal I have to reach. I'll say you're continuously trying. You're figuring it, you're puzzling. You might be in the valley. You might be like, I don't know what to do, but I'm going to do this. You know, I'm going to try this little thing. But the attitude, which is why it's a mindset, is that this is going to work out for me

because I'm going to iterate my way through it. Iterators never fail is what I've noticed. And then the other thing that they do really well is that they, through iteration or even some self-talk, they neutralize the effects of failure. So these people were naturally kind of intuitively figuring out, hey, failure is not where it is. I'm going to unblock myself. Tomorrow is a new day. Whatever little mantra that they would tell themselves or try it with a friend, you know, try it with my mom, all those kinds of things were a way of getting past the failure. So you have a clever acronym. I like acronyms. And it's for iterates, right? And it kind of goes through the

iterative mindset and talks about all these different components. The components are inspiration, time, environment, reduce, add, togetherness, expectations, and swaps. So these are all different components of the iterative mindset, correct? These are different, these are different sort of like, creature innovations that I found in research that kind of grouped together into categories. So not everybody iterated with one variable or three variables or whatever, but in composite, this seems to be a pretty comprehensive palette of the ways in which humans are inventive. So give me an example of inspiration. The mantras.

So, you know, a mantra that neutralizes failure, such as tomorrow's a new day or it didn't take me one day to get here. It's not going to take me one day to get out. Those kinds of things where they set their mind away from the failure. Give me an example of time, where time comes into the iterative mindset. Yeah. And this gets into like current thinking around habit design where, you know, you stack habits, you know, before I brush my teeth, I'm going to do this or at bedtime, I'm going to do that. Oh, you're supposed to meditate after you brush your teeth. Yeah. You can't. Yeah, exactly. And you can move that meditation around because it might, it might not go for you in the morning. It might go for you at night. Like those kinds of things. So moving that variable time,

time can be time of day. It could be before or after something, like the habit stacking example. It could be frequency, you know. It could be intensity of the time. So those kinds of things. And when we talk about environment, you know, this is a place where I start thinking of kind of differences in, you know, how culture distributes resources. Like there's so many components here, I think especially that are important in conversations we're having about equity and about equality. Where does environment come into this? Yeah, I mean, it's powerful, right?

If you go to, you know, in Buddhism, there's this idea of Sanga, you know, and that's like a mini environment. It's kind of, and people who go to religious ceremonies or religious activities, even neighborhood. There's a social norming that goes whenever there's people around. But there's also the things on your desk. There's where you place things in your fridge. And, you know, I think there's some real legitimacy to, you know, kind of out of sight,

out of mind, you know, for things that are tempting and those kinds of things. And even, you know, for me, if I have a sugar addiction. And so if I have a relapse, you know, like let's say we go and we get ice cream at night and I just put it in the freezer and I forget about it or I throw it away, you know, if my lower self kind of did something. So I kind of regulate, you know, my environment that way. What about reducing and adding? This is actually really interesting to me because for me, when I think about wanting to expand

or wanting to improve or try, it seems like it would always be adding, but reducing can be just as important. Yeah, we find that like there's something in the brain called heuristics, right, which is the way that you like to take shortcuts, you know, your fast brain because we can't, you know, cogitate on everything. So in reducing, that has to do with the people who, you know, I'm at a six, you know, canned soda, you know, pace, and I'm going to go to five. I'm going to go to four. Got it. So just being able to kind of harm reduced, it's called in psychology, is kind of the variable of reducing things. Okay. And then adding makes more sense to me. Talk a little bit about

the importance of togetherness. Yeah, nobody changes alone. In my research, it shows that, like, you know, nobody changes alone. They always have a buddy or they have a group or they have co-worker. Usually spouse is number one and then followed by another family member or friend. And what is it about that togetherness that kind of helps with iterative mindset? It's kind of a microenvironment for social accountability and social support. I would say that accountability is very perform. It can be very performative. So we've got to be careful with that. But it is somebody else who's doing, you know, people like me do things like this. you know, per Seth Godin's definition of tribe.

We're just so wired for social that it would be neglectful and it's not successful if you don't have it. Tell me about the expectations component of this mindset. Yeah. So that's where we were getting into smart goals earlier where if you expect something to happen and it doesn't happen, you've got to do something about that. So reframing is the number one way that people neutralize failure that is kind of live in the their system. You know, when something didn't work out the way they thought, they tend to, you know, change what they expected. You know, well, maybe, you know, it'll take a little longer. Or maybe I didn't try that hard or that kind of thing to make it okay. Because if you leave that live like that,

then it becomes a failure or sharp object in your Hbenulas-Lan. And the final, the final of this acronym, what about swaps? What are, what, give me an example of a couple good swaps that, that you can do. Yeah, these are clever people. You know, I mean, we have zoodles for noodles these days and, and, you know, people who hack their sugar drink with stevia, like those honey, like those kinds of things are, you know, neural similar, sensory similar, crunchy for crunchy, you know, salty for salty, sugar for sugar, you know, sweet for sweet. That kind of thing is what people do. Even if you are, you know, struggling with with alcohol addiction, you go to a party and you have a non-alcoholic beer. But the whole

sensory experience is otherwise the same. You know, like those are swaps that kind of trick the brain into thinking like, okay, we're all right. You know, it's familiar. On page 133 of your book, this is a very, very sexy heading. It says the biggest mistake people make about habits. What is the biggest mistake that people make about habits? That, well, two things. One is that it is permanent and that it is going to happen in 21 days, you know. And so really understanding that habits is not a marketing term. It is a neuroplastic change that happens at about a year, you know, firmly, and that it takes a year to construct that automatic way of being. I don't want to hear that. I know. I know. It's super sad.

It's super sad. Well, it's super sad, but it also, you know, what it does is it highlights a much larger concept that you are trying to communicate to people, which is that there is no quick fix. there are changes that can happen quickly. Yeah. Right? Like if you stop using the drug that you are addicted to, right? You'll see some changes pretty quickly. You'll feel all the things that you were trying to unfeel when you were taking the drug. But the notion of having a different mindset, that is something that is a life commitment.

Yeah. And mindset moves faster than habits. So the good news is that if you work on your mindset, it's going to be very rewarding. It's going to be, you know, the opposite of depression is not happiness. Right. It's getting rid of the failure. And, you know, when people get mired down in depression, they cannot get out of. It's because they have an active set of failure fires, wildfires that are going on in their being and they can't figure out how to extinguish them.

What is depression in the framework of failure? Depression is fed by failure. So if you don't have an idea or notion of failure anymore, whether it's because you, You know, some people meditate and they kind of go to this, you know, metacognitive state and they no longer, they can observe the brain. And other people do compassion practice. Other people do service leadership. Other people, you know, at work out, like whatever works for them. But there's a way to counteract the idea of failure in whatever area that you're failing.

And we talked about at the beginning, there's different domains of life, right? So I might be succeeding in at work. I might be failing as a parent. And so we're just underappreciating how the parenting failing can cause depression. And this is also a place where a lot of people misunderstand when someone is depressed because what they'll say is you have a beautiful house. You've got a great job. You have a husband that loves you or whatever.

You have kids. And this is a place where, you know, the kind of old thinking was what do you have to be? depressed about. And for people who understand major depressive disorder, which is a distinction from I feel depressed, or it's a distinction from, God forbid, you know, lost a parent and I'm having appropriate reactions, which are called a depressive episode. But when you talk about major depressive disorder, and this is sort of, you know, I love to point out when people are using nomenclature and psychiatry that's inappropriate, if you have, quote, no reason to be depressed from an outside perspective and you are still depressed,

chances are you probably need a lot of support because you likely have major depressive disorder. Right, right. I mean, that's like a sort of an armchair, you know, analysis. Yeah. Is that there's an abstract notion of what should, you know, allow people to feel depressed, which is completely arbitrary and inappropriate.

But what you're talking about is if someone's personal meter for failure, right, is so out of whack. I mean, if they're habenula, is, you know, exhausted, depleted, you know, rung out, no amount of external success will feel good. No. And we're kind of at that, you know, place in psychiatry where we're not, I mean, we honor the content, but we realize that the content can be secondary, you know, and the chemical, even the neurochemical environment can be secondary. It can be just a neural network issue, electrical problem, you know. And so, you know, this was no more illustrated than that case study that I cited in the book where there's this German woman and she has recalcitrant major depressive disorder.

She's very suicidal. And her husband's really worried about losing her. And then they did a deep brain stimulation of her habanula. And boom, the husband's like, this is the woman I married. Like, she's back, you know. So we didn't have to do therapy. We didn't have to like make her happy. we didn't have to talk her out of her misery.

We didn't have to do any of those things. She had an electrical signaling problem. She an electrical problem also. Exactly. So deep brain stimulation, do you want to explain to the good folks what that is? It's, you know, there's a few categories that we use DBS. Deep brain stimulation for it. But can you describe what deep brain stimulation would look like for the Hibnulon?

Yeah. I mean, for me, it's just one point. But they're doing it more in animal models right now in terms of like being able to turn off certain areas of the brain. So a probe, you can do it other ways. Again, trans-magnetic is really where you kind of do the same thing. You're sending like surge of magnetic energy and electrical energy to a particular area to change its activation level. And so if you're trying to turn off the habanula, this is... Basically overwhelm it. Yeah. Yeah. And we don't know. Again, lateral, medial, you know, both sides, you know, we don't really know what's going to work. And I don't know the

protocol that they used for that particular woman. Yeah, I'm picturing, I mean, for deep brain stimulation, we first started hearing about it when I was in grad school, you know, in the 1700s. And they were doing it for basal ganglia stimulation for Parkinson's. And they were able to see, you know, people with active tremors and, you know, that sort of Parkinsonian mask. And it literally was like it would, it would, you would light up. I mean, it was, yeah, I think of it like a long acupuncture needle. Valerie was like, are there side effects? Yes. It's like a probe in your brain. Yeah. So, you have to be extremely precise, like it's a whole mapping thing, which is why they're not doing it a time. Yes, it is invasive, but really fascinating. So when we think about dieting, when we think about

fitness, you know, in some ways, I feel like when you look at the list of the performative tools, you know, that are bound to fail, my to-do lists went in the garbage, you know, our experience on social media, New Year's resolutions, you know, places. in relationships where we have goals. I guess the question is, is there anything that we can strive for in a healthy way? And is that where the iterative mindset comes in? Yeah. So, you know, in my research on thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, the key around the Habeñola order, to keep it quiet, because you don't want to poke the bear, is iteration. And this is something I first saw at Stanford. We had a panel of expert patients who were leaders in

their disease area, whether it was liver cancer or heart disease or diabetes, and to a person, they were all kind of iterating through their disease to really inspire other people who were having trouble. Where we go wrong on social media is that you follow an influencer and you take verbatim their workout routine or what I eat in a day or whatever for models or whatever that is. And that becomes performative as opposed to understanding the pattern. that, hey, that person is iterating on how they're using smoothies or how they're, you know, getting their heart rate up or whatever and being able to say, like, what would it be for me to iterate my way through that? And that's an empowered state as opposed to a disempowered somebody else.

I'm trying to be somebody else. I'm trying to be this influencer. I'm trying to not be myself. And so that seems to be the key to keeping somebody safe from their hebenula and keeping the Habeiola happy and quiet. Well, also, I can't help but point out that, you know, almost all of those things that you just mentioned are a predominant feature of being a teenager. Absolutely. You know, being a young person. And, you know, and I would also argue, like, we have a little bit of an extended

adolescence, I think. You know, my son tells me every generation thinks that about the next generation, but I really think it about this one. There just seems to be a little bit of an extended, you know, kind of period of uncertainty and, you know, kind of trying to find your way and being. very, very impressionable. So how do we navigate, you know, either having kids or, you know, ourselves feeling like we're impressionable? Like, how do you navigate that when that is also a feature of development? You know, I did one thing right as a mother, which is that I taught my children,

you know, the number one rule of life has changed. And the number one thing you can do is figure it out. And I didn't even realize my own future self would find iterative mindset and that this was actually a thing. So I think that the safest safety rep, safety vest, whatever you want to say for teenagers and for all of us, is to teach them to iterate. Carol Dweck's early work divided the world into performance mindsets and learning mindsets. And then she went down the rabbit hole of growth mindset from there. And growth mindset is essential, but it's not sufficient. to undo the barrage of what's coming at our young people. And so I would say, I would argue that iterative mindset is, at least in my 30 years of researching all this stuff, the most protective

factor that you could give a young person or an older person to navigate this world of failure triggers that were immersed in. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about addiction. You touch on it here and there in the book. But I wonder if you can kind of lean into it. You can kind of lean into to it a little bit more because this is one of those things, you know, I'm thinking about people who are chronic relapsers, right, which is a very special category. Okay. So on sugar. Yeah. So, you know, there are chronic relapsers and obviously sugar can have significant consequences, but I also think about people who, you know, see their lives crash, you know, lose their homes, lose their money, lose their spouses, their job, their kids, lose their entire way of being, get clean. And

and still will relapse, right? And the notion is you think, like, oh, once someone's hit bottom, right? You want to believe that's the bottom. But I wonder if you can speak to sort of what might be going on in the Hibbenula and what are some of the, you know, kind of deeper ways that we can understand the addictive process in this framework. Yeah. So before people started looking at the Habeñola, there was this, you know, addiction medicine 2.0 kind of idea where, like, if you have a number line and you have the person try to get pleasure, you know, through their addictive substance, they'll go one point to the positive for the moment. And then, again, loss as twice as powerful as gain, you get two marks negative on the number line. So now you're at negative one. Then you try to get

back to homeostasis at zero, and then you get punished negative two. So now what's coming out is that the Habenula is the source of that negative two for every one step towards something pleasurable. And that's why doctors are recommending or playing with dopamine fasting. Because there's no other way. You can't get there through happiness. You have to get there through managing the failure, through managing the negativity. And a Habeanula that's on, all I can say is like it's such a psychically itchy state that there is a natural proclivity for us to numb out, to distract, to do anything to get that, because it's got a stranglehold on our dopamine. It controls serotonin. You know, it has the most nicotinic receptors of any way,

you know, so there's a lot of operants in the habanula and addiction. And there was one study where they had young men who unfortunately lost their lives to overdose of heroin. And they found that their habanula was shrunken down. So you could imagine like that repeated, you know, a wash of the addictive substance kind of suppressing the habanula and the abenula stopping you from doing something maybe wrong for you or threatening to you. Just their brakes went out in their car and they drove over the cliff, you know, because they didn't have habanula brakes anymore. And so, you know, it's very consequential. I think that two areas I predict are going to explode. One is in depression anxiety, the kind of like mood disorder area around habanula and treatments.

for that. And then the second one is going to be for addiction because we've now found the culprit for something that we've observed in people's lives, you know. I want you to talk a little bit more about this notion of dopamine. You know, this is a very hot chemical and we obviously, you know, it comes up here a lot. But you said something about, you know, kind of why dopamine fasts are recommended. I wonder if, can you explain a little bit more that pleasure is not kind of what will get you there. It's being able to modulate kind of the distribution of pleasure. Yeah. If anybody's known somebody who really struggles with addiction, what they'll say is, I'm not trying to get high. I'm trying to feel normal. So they're trying to get back to

that zero point on the number line, that equilibrium. And they can't, because they're slipping further and further to your point around like hitting rock bottom. That's when you've tried so many times to get back to the zero on the number line and slipped further and further away from it because of this plus one minus two equation. And so in terms of, you know, the, the habanula and what it's doing to you, you're trying to shut it up with the addictive substance. The addictive substance at one point, I think, just gets rid of your hebenular activity whatsoever because you won, right? But then you're pursuing your fiend for that dopamine and you're not able to feel. that high. And so the current thinking is that if you just stop pursuing the pleasure, it's called

withdrawal. And the Hbenula causes the most, is the cause of withdrawal symptoms. It's nasty. It's a nasty little half centimeter thing. Yeah. I mean, like I went to FES once and there was camels with like little rings in their nose. So there's this giant animal and it's led around by this ring in their nose. So I'm almost thinking that the Hbenula is kind of like the ring in our knows that we can be let around by, you know, whether it's by other people or addictive substances. And so, you know, this psychic pain is just like itchy and it's whatever and like, you know, shut it up, shut it up. And so if somebody can get through that, that I think a month long, real painful period, then they can start getting some of their homoostasis back. They can get some of

their like normal dopamine and normal normalcy. Can we talk a little bit about how it can influence people, who just feel generally stuck. There are so many more people out there these days that just kind of feel numb. They have this malaise about themselves and about the world around them. And they just stop really enjoying things. They kind of are going through life in a bit of a fog.

And maybe it's endless scrolling. Maybe it's just feeling overwhelmed by the news. But more and more people are not excited. by things that either used to bring them excitement or that, you know, decades ago, before we were endlessly connected, people would go outside and play. And, you know, there used to be more of a sense of, oh, I'm just going to enjoy, quote, unquote, the simple things. So whenever somebody is in a state of anodonia, you know, that sort of state below or above depression,

you know, before depression sets in, that is by definition. a habanula on state now that we know the habanula is the cause of that. And so when that's on, again, it's an itchy experience. And then there is a natural proclivity towards reaching for something to numb or something to entertain or something to distract. And so that's basically the loop that you're describing. And so the answer off the miracle round is to iterate your way out of that. Dopamine fasting is an iteration. I don't think it is important in all cases. There's weird people who can like, you know, cold turkey themselves when they kind of wake up to, oh, that's not working out for me. I'm just going to cold turkey, you know. Is that the dopamine

fast that you say, like, I'm not going to get a dopamine hit from this anymore? Those people, I don't even know, they're freaks of nature. It's a permanent dopamine fast for that. And maybe they, maybe they, you know, their addictive mind goes to another domain. Nobody's, I think, really articulated that that I know of. But I would assume that's what's happening. But yeah, they like just quit smoking one day because something clicked and they're like, it's not going to do this anymore. And those kinds of, you know, kind of miracles of behavior change. But for everybody else, you know, being able to do harm reduction, dopamine fasting, that kind of stuff, even the GLP ones is kind of like, you know, inducing that, you know, where you're not able to

like get the pleasure out of the food and all that yummy, you know, all that kind of stuff is not going on because it's kind of stopping you. And it's giving you that pleasure in a way or that need for pleasure downstream of oxytocin, that satisfaction, that satiety, and then also dampening your anadonia, your depression at the same time. So it's replacing something that's been lost by your own spinning in the way that you're living your life. So the question I have, because if we're looking at the Hibenula sort of overseeing a variety of different, you know, aspects of motivation and of notions of failure, does that put a different lens on, let's say, fitness goals and weight loss? Do we get to look at it in the framework of not just the addiction to food that might be driving you to, let's say, be a compulsive overeater? But the notion is that we become addicted to this process, right? Where we're, we're, we're, we're going to, basically our Hibenula is so depleted, deprived, compromised, right, that we have created an addiction of trying to fix an addiction. That's right. Yeah, you're kind of adding insult to injury,

you know, when you're reaching for the wrong thing. So it's the wrong view. You know, when we have habanila activity, and this is something I'm, I'm, this is my edge right now, is when I see myself not motivated to do the thing that I should do for myself, what is different about me because I have a jump on this information, is I start looking for where did I think I failed? And then dealing with that because it's not going to come through distraction or numbing or pursuing pleasure or, you know, a version of any kind.

But this takes a long time and people don't want that. They want, I mean, they want like the fast, you know. That is fast, though. Yeah. You know, I think it's equally as fast to, really spend your energy being like, oh, like this isn't working out for me, like really reframing that. It's just that we don't have the right instruction right now. I was just going to say, I didn't, I didn't mean to say that people don't want it, but in our fast-paced culture where,

you know, we're kind of like scrolling all day and like looking at the puppies blowing bubbles, you know, like that's a lot of where a lot of our energy goes. Or we're trying to escape from the realities of politics and the world and just everything is crazy. This is hard for people. Also, we're not taught to think about, hey, where did I think I've failed and finding that psychological trap that we may have set for ourselves. What we're taught is, I'm going to focus on all my strengths. And if I just focus enough on my strengths, that's what's going to help me get over the next hump.

But actually going backwards in auditing, that is a really powerful practice to say, where have I tricked myself into thinking or set up an expectation for myself that I haven't met. Yeah. In my research, I saw two groups of people. One is that they would go and look at the why. You know, why did this happen? That tends to be me, you know, maybe overeducated people do that more often. But then the other, there was another group people that just, okay, that's broken. I'm just going to iterate. Not going to think about it. Generally men, you know. And so, So there's a couple ways. Say more.

They just start solving, they go into problem solving mode and they iterate. You know, whenever they are not getting what they... My ex-husband did this. He's very successful at certain things. Because he's just like, I'm just going to figure it out and I'm going to do it. Yeah, exactly. So if I see myself watching too many puppies with blowing bubbles, then I iterate on what is going to cause me to, you know, right-size that in my life.

So you have to recognize the problem, right? I see that there's something I don't want and there's something I do want. And then, you know, certain people are just like, I'm just going to start puzzling over here. I don't have to like analyze why this other thing is happening. I don't have to get all caught up in that. I had been off news. Like I had been, I had to do a news fast. It was specifically really bad for, you know, call me whatever you want. I'm a highly sensitive person, like all the things. Like, yeah. So I had gone on a fast. And then, you know, things happen. And then. You know, things happen. And. And then you come off the fast. But I realized I was having reactions that were pervading my day, midday, and night. Like what? Specifically, if I would wake up and the first thing I would go to was to check the news, I would feel my heart start racing. And I would feel like I'm putting all these chemicals of, you know,

and legitimate chemicals, meaning I'm outraged, I'm scared, I'm sad, like whatever those feelings are, but I'm putting them in my brain first thing in the morning and then expecting to not feel grumpy or out of sorts, right? And also I would then like, you know, send things to Valerie or Jonathan. Like, look what I saw in the new. I'm sharing the trauma. Right. I'm making everyone else feel trauma with me. And one of the things that I did, which, you know, I'm already judging it, like I'm not entirely pleased with the solution, but I started playing word games instead. meaning I really love like crossword puzzles and I got into Wordle like 10 years after everyone else did.

And I started like doing easy Sudoku because I knew that my brain wanted to, it wanted to, it wanted to chew on something. But I gave it something that wasn't as, I don't know, hurtful. That's a swap. I did a swap. You did a swap? I did a swap. Yes. I want to do all of them.

Yeah. So you noticed, you noticed, you know, the thing that. was kind of causing you more and more suffering. And by the way, you know, exposing your brain to the news, which is, I think it should be called the bad news because it's a misnomer. It sets up expectations that there's something, you know, positive or helpful. And then you're awash and your hebenulas on. And it's not...

My habanula's always on. It's not the problem of like taking an information for which you have a compassionate response. That's not the problem. The problem is that you have no... way to do anything about it. Well, and there may be some people for whom they don't have that specific response. Like, my dad used to read the New York Times every single day.

Yeah. Every day of my life, every day of my life, my dad would sit down and, like, you didn't interrupt him, or, like, I learned to, like, read the newspaper with him, which was like my hands would get all, you know, the print on them. But, like, that was the thing. And sometimes he'd get upset about things. But, like, mostly, he just seemed to, like, read the paper. But I don't know if it's that the news has changed.

I think it all changed with, like, the place. political situation where like everybody, like, where it was on Twitter and like I have to know what the president is tweeting while he's sitting on the toilet, like things like that. But it just became so, so much a part of our constant culture. Well, news used to be more boring because it wasn't monetized. And so once it became monetized and also competitive with outrage with things like social media and stuff like that, then it did become super, supercharged. Right.

It's supercharged. The language, if you, I'm a member, sure. sure if you pulled archives, the language was a lot more straightforward and bland in terms of what your dad's brain was drinking in every day. What I'm hearing about MIMS experiences, it's less important and maybe even counterproductive for her to go through a whole evaluative process of why am I being drawn to the news and what in my past is making me want to chew on something right now and more important to really quickly iterate on a solution to get her chewing on something that is less activated. That's right.

And my own with New York Times specifically, my own iteration was to delete the app because I put friction in the way of, this is one of those ads, ad friction. I put friction in the way of between me and having to like type it into my browser, you know, to get the fix. And, you know, I also do a lot of solitaire game, just like non-open to social, just me, myself and I doing solitaire. It's a soothing exercise. So I think that, you know, there's productive ways to redirect that energy when you're feeling overloaded, especially for sensitive people like myself, yourself. There's a lot of iteration that needs to happen. I wanted to talk about, and I guess this falls a little bit under inspiration from the iterative

mindset. You mentioned something, and there's a couple points in this book that get very transcendental. You know, you have indigenous lineage. And so there's some really beautiful kind of stories that you weave through and traditions and in some cases some ritual aspects that you weave through. You also do talk about the use of psychedelics. You talk about a particular, you know, really kind of therapeutic journey that you took. But there was one section of the book that just it stuck out to me, not because it didn't

belong. You talked about I Am, which is Soham, in Sanskrit. And this is a monjohn. that is used. And there's actually one of my favorite in Kundalini Yoga. There's a lot of songs that we listen to. And there's a lot of like, there's bands that just sing like Kundalini music. And one of my favorite pieces is just the words I am. And it's a beautiful piece. And it's like over and over, I am. I am. And, you know, we're all singing and we're swaying. But you talk about the significance of owning this notion of I am as part of shifting out of this failure mindset into the iterative mindset.

Can you talk about I am? Yeah. So, you know, our ruminative brain, we have a narrative self within that. And so that's something, you know, I'm telling myself right now that I'm on this podcast. You know, you're telling yourself that you're my ambiolic. There's a, there's a subconscious aspect of that that's going on at all times. And, and, you're a, you're telling myself. And, in terms of how we locate ourselves. And of course, with psychedelics, that's all scrambled, you know, when the person is in a journey, the I am is kind of disorganized, it gives you a break, because what if your I am is I am the worst person on the planet, you know?

How did you know what mine was? Sometimes not having an I am is good. But the main thing is that we do need to, with failure, kick out any notions of I am a failure, you know, in some way transform those into I am learning, you know, I am iterating, whatever it is that I am focused on, you know, that I'm telling myself that I am, to re-identify with things that maybe other humans programmed us to think negatively about ourselves or the world programmed us to think negatively about ourselves. And so that's something that is, unless we deal with that sort of chamber of the bank of I Am and the narrative self,

we're going to be kind of spinning. Is this notion of I am, like, is this positive thinking, for lack of a better phrase? I think optimists, you know, if you look at the literature, optimism is a very protective factor. But just like growth mindset, like I'm not, you know, a failure. I'm not, it's not over for me. That is very essential, but it's not sufficient. And so I find that the iteration on top of that is really the operant part of getting out of any destructive, negative aspects of notion of self. I mean, I just want to hear more stories about people who like the Dorito addict had had ways of successfully changing their behavior. It's fascinating.

Maybe we could throw out a couple. Would you mind if I threw out a couple scenarios? Okay, Jonathan, why don't we throw out a couple scenarios? Yeah, one that hit me was the procrastinator or the person that assumes they're going to fail. How does that show up in relationships? Yeah, so, you know, in animal behavioral science, there's this kind of shortcut of approach avoid, right? And so the habanilo we've established is the avoid part of that equation. And so if I am wanting to be in love or I'm wanting to approach my partner with something that's really vulnerable for me or that kind of thing, then I may

have a pre-failing notion of like, well, this didn't work out before. I was never received. I was never listen to, that kind of thing. I might hesitate, and my habanula is already pre-failing me into not connecting. That's avoidant attachment. Yes. You just defined avoidant attachment. I feel like this is like the answer to everything. Like you talked about Holy Grail, it's like, oh, everything goes back to the abenula, right? Because it is everywhere all at once and all of our behavior. And so then if I don't do that, then I don't form a bond with my partner, then the relationship and You know, so there's a lot of consequences in me not be able to wrestle with my Habenula and get it to quiet down. So that, and again, I don't mean to throw avoid an attachment out there, but if,

bring it, if you have this notion that I'm afraid to approach and attempts are never going to be complete because there's always going to be that, you know, Habeanula pulling you back, right? This then becomes a loop that's very difficult to break out of because you've just had reinforced that you will fail. That's right. So how do you hack that? How do you, if you are an avoidant attachment person, let's say because of your Hbenula, you can't just say like, sorry, it's my Hibenula, how do you hack that? I hope people start saying things like that. I really do. It's not me. I want this to like, I want this to like enter the zeitgeist. So yeah, I think that iteration is the golden ticket to everything. You know, I iterate. I might try like a little bit of a, you know, maybe being more

vulnerable in this moment. I might go to a support group for that. I might, you know, read a book on that. Like, those kinds of things are iterations. And everything is going to be different. You know, each person will be unlocked by a particular resource in a different way. And so, you know, it's just about finding, again, it's like finding what it is that's going to turn off your Havanaula in particular. I want to give an example about eating and food. You know, you talk about it quite a bit in the book. You know, in the category of overeating, I have decided, let's say, let's say I make the decision, I'm only going to have one helping, right? Like, this is like a thing. I mean, the standard American diet is usually the portions are super large, but then like I always

also like will be like, well, I want seconds. So my, my notion, and it's part of its pleasure principle, if something's good, more of it is better. That's not always true, especially if you're trying to control your caloric intake. How do I hack that? So the iterations for overeating that I've seen work for people is to, again, throw away the food as soon as possible, to split it and save it for later to cancel their order if they ordered it, you know, in a moment of weakness, to reducing the number of bites. And some people can kind of, and then if you also just blow past all of those gates of safety and you're just ravenous and you just, the inner monster has taken over, then as soon as possible, get off the, you know, get out of the relapse.

You know, the people who succeed long term. Right. Don't keep diving in. being like, I messed it up, I might as well keep going. It's slippery. You know, like, you can, you can just go all the way to the bottom of that, but people who are more experienced with themselves start to get more, better and better at pulling out of that tailspin faster and faster. And that tends to be built on iteration, but also their mindset is, they have right view, as they say in Buddhism, you know, like, they're seeing it clearly that, oh, I'm in a relapse and now I'm going to, you know, dream my way out of this into, or I'm just going to

forgive myself. Here's another one. Some people when they wake up in the middle of the night go to the fridge. What? Not naming any names. What is that? How do you hack that? So there may be a disempowered state of the habanila before bed.

There may be a habit around going to the fridge and so it's comfort. It's familiar. And so, again, iterations for a late-night fridge is to have something as healthy as possible at the fore of that fridge and hide everything that the monster might, you know, go after that would be counteractive for oneself. And just say, like, this is satisfying. And also even, you know, people do mindful eating. So if somebody has the presence of mind, not usually in a groggy, sleepy state. But, again, making the good thing easy and the bad thing hard or the bad thing hard is kind of a, an adage that we have in behavioral design.

Okay, so we did a relationship example. We did some eating examples. Jonathan, do you want to, Jonathan is very into, like, fitness and things like that. Why don't you give us a fitness challenge, like, you know, something that's challenging in the fitness world that we could try and figure out a hack for? Well, there's more fitness influencers on Instagram and elsewhere than I think maybe anything else. So if someone is trying to develop a new fitness routine, if they're trying to get over a hump or set a goal, what's the best way to be successful?

So iterations in fitness, as you mentioned, are there's a plethora of information. The main thing is that, you know, in trying those out, that they don't become sharp objects because fitness can become so easily performative. But if you look at people, professional athletes. When is it not performative? I think when you're seeing the performance as the iteration, there's a meta there that I think that some people, some super smart people are doing, and I hope other people copy that, not their workout. And so if I see a great inspiring workout, like there's kind of this notion of let's see in the self-talk world, you know, like, let's see if I can get myself to do this. Let's see what percent of this. Let's see how long I can get myself to do this for.

but the expectation from the get-go on every workout should be at one point this will fail me, bore me, and I will need to, I will need to iterate, you know. So if I go into it, eyes wide open that way, then I will keep going where other people get caught up in, I'm not doing Zumba anymore. Huh. Yeah. That's interesting because I've noticed that Jonathan, who does look at Instagram and things like that, he'll sometimes get an idea for something, and he'll be super into it and I'm like, okay, this is his thing now. Yeah. But then it will run its course and he'll find another thing. And I find that very confusing because I'm a little bit binary about it. You know, like, what's your thing? Well, it's like, you know, I started doing taekwondo and I worked

my way up to a black belt. Now I have a black belt. Like, that's my thing. And now I work for my second degree black belt. You know, whereas Jonathan is like, I hang from the ceiling on these things. And then I'll play pickleball. And then I want to pull a sled. He really wants to pull a sled through the backyard because he keeps seeing people pulling his lap. Then he keeps showing me this guy who runs on all fours. And I'm like, is this my life? Now he's going to start running on all fours. His limbs are so long. But like that's kind of how it goes. And I think, you know, for me, like, I am very performative, you know. I mean, that's just, I think I was born that way even before I started being an actor. But I kind of feel like I've put my performative needs on him. Like,

is he doing it to the degree that he wants? And then why is he stopping? Did he fail? I'm all up in his performative Hibedula business. I think after this conversation, you're going to see the world differently. I think so. And I think you're going to see Jonathan differently. And I think you're going to see... He's just one big Hbenula waiting to fail. I think you're going to see the sled as an iteration.

I think you're going to see the animal flow as an iteration. I think you're going to see it differently. And then be supportive in a way that you probably can't even predict right now. I haven't been supportive of my friend Jonathan because my Hbenula has been compromised. I'm going to blame the Hibonelah. You're in the middle of a lifelong relationship with taekwondo. I thought you were to say with my abenula. Yeah, well, also that.

But the taekwondo at some point will fail you. Right. It may be, you know, in the last couple months of your life, as an old, frail woman. Who knows, you know, but everything expires. Got it. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I do with some of these exercises I find also is that I will not do them exactly

because I have a hip replacement. I'm always just sort of inching into things, seeing how much they impact me. Can I recover fast enough? And then I'm like, oh, so for me, it's research. I don't have a personal trainer. It's a lot of like, can I gather the information? Can I remember it?

I get bored easily. And then I try to implement it. And then the other thing that I'm hearing here, and I get stuck in a lot, is like, oh, if I miss a week, if I miss two weeks, do I not get upset about the time that I lost and just say, okay, I can come back and reinforce the positivity of starting again that day and trying to build the next momentum that's going to carry me forward versus sitting in the momentum of not having done it to prevent me from actually getting back in. That's right. And, you know, that's where it could become a pointy object

is in the week or two. You get sick, you're traveling, whatever the case, maybe. be all kinds of life happens, right? And if you wallow or you interpret that as failure, watch out because you're having laws on. And then you won't feel like doing it more. And then you're in this big long relapse period, you know. And so it's just about like get back up, get back up, get back out there, you know, do anything. And I've seen that. I've seen myself say, like, I made this commitment. I was going to have all this progress in this in this next month, but I missed two and a half weeks. Look at all the, and so I've lost this progress, and I'm sort of hard on myself for not having

gotten there, because I'm like, oh, I go play pickleball or I go do something. And I'm like, oh, I'm a little sore. Imagine how much less sore if I had just done those two and a half weeks. I would have had all these gains. And so it's interesting. I'm hearing and I'm seeing myself grieving the loss that we spoke about. And I also see that if I can put that away, if I can actually just focus. on, well, today I just did it. Let me feel how good that feels. And if I can focus on that,

it will lead me more to be able to do it the next day versus the other. You're sounding very iterative as your main fuel that you're fueling, which is why you're able to keep going. But then there's these little catches of where you think you have to be performative. And so what I would say is that if you held the performative aspect, which does, it's a very important. It's a lot of exciting. It's like, it's like, you know, jet fuel, performative stuff. It's like, oh, there's a high at the end of it. If you do what you say you do and you get the results, you win the race or that kind of thing. But then know that there's a lull, you know, after the concert's over, after the rock star and there's that big high or the awards show or whatever, that's when people underestimate

the Havanaula is going to come on and do a negative two on you. And you got to be ready for that. I think I have extra Hbenulas. You do? You got extra. I do. This is a question you don't mention at all in your book. I want an entire book on it. I want you to talk about sex.

Because this is an act that is, by definition, performative. Yes. And also... Can be. Can be and also should be, ultimately and ideally, a true expression of you being yourself. And I'm thinking of you being yourself. And I'm thinking about, especially with hookup culture, right? What is the Hbenula doing when you're having casual sex versus committed, connected sex?

So this is great. This is all very hypothetical. So I'll just say that up front. But, you know, my favorite kind of science. When I was 30 with my first husband, I don't think I'm revealing anything, I outed myself that I had been faking orgasms. Your hebenula was faking orgasms. Yes, your hebenula was while you were performing and then your abenula is like, this is not working out.

Oh my gosh. And so I was tired of failing at orgasms. And I told him. And that just opened up a whole new world of like. I mean, whose failure is it when you don't have an orgasm, doctor? I know. It's not just you. But then you're protecting the man's hebenula if you're heterosexual.

And so you're protecting your partners, Habenula by. acting not truthful, you know, you're performing as a sexual being. And of course, with so much pervasive porn, which is an addiction, which is dopamine seeking. And then, you know, Habenula is going to come right after that. So right after, you know, the masturbation, that's the, for men, especially, that is the biggest surge of oxytocin that they get is post-jaculation. And so then you've got this like dopamine seeking thing. You're, You've got, you know, the Hibenula punishing you in the negative direction. You know, look, you're lonely.

Nobody loves you. Like, you know, they're calling you afterwards. Like, all that kind of stuff comes into play. And so in hookup culture, you may be enjoying the dopamine in the moment. But the next morning, the reason why you feel so horrible is because the Habenula is punishing you and that negative two thing that's doing. And then you want more. Then you want to go into more addiction.

Or you push it aside. Because I know a lot of people are like, I don't feel horrible. I feel amazing. there's a notion also of pushing that aside because if you look deeply, and again, like there may be people who like to hook up with people, it's like not for me to say. But I'm thinking about in this scenario of if there's a loneliness behind it, if there's an emptiness, if there's a desperation, if there's getting involved in situations that are dangerous and you know it and you're putting yourself at risk, right? Like that's where your Hibbenula is like, I'm at the party. Yeah. And most people don't realize when they say, I'm fine. They're just remembering how good it felt to feel connected in the that moment because they have this surge of oxytocin, which is stronger and more pervasive in terms of

receptor sites than dopamine. Is that always true if I'm fine? You're thinking back to when you were fine. Yeah, like, yeah, maybe, maybe. But it's a story. It's not really how you're really feeling. Because I know this because I've talked to so many people in depth about their lives. It's kind of a whack-a-mole. Like if you're denying that about how you're feeling in this one domain of sex, then guess what? You're going to eat or you're going to drink alcohol. Or you're going to numb out in some other way, you know, or you're going to look for the next hit. You're going to look for the next lover. Okay, let's get back to you and your first husband, because that's very interesting. I didn't consent him for this conversation. No, but. But my question is, once you've made that

admission, right, is that then a place that you get to say, I want to step into my authentic self, and I'm either not going to have an orgasm or it's going to become a priority for me in my abenula? Oh my gosh. It just throws a gauntlet down, doesn't it, between you? Because then they have all kinds of banal activity around like, well, this whole time, I haven't been as good of a lover as I thought. So I'm failing as a lover. Wow. Right. And as a sexual partner. And then, you know, man, especially, you know, with erections, things that, they're really sensitive around that. And so how do you then, you know, I don't know what role it played in our divorce, but, you know, two years later we got divorced. I mean, he had trouble with intimacy in general. you know. So I think that there's just a whole other level of sex health that has not been accessed in any way because we are so busy performing either as porn stars or as people not telling our truth. Right. I mean, that's what it is. Yeah. There's so much inauthenticity in the sexual relationships of people. It's really funny because I'm just going to go ahead and never

thought this episode would go here. Me neither. I have never, I've never in my life faked an orgasm. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. for you. And well, thank you. But I remember that when I would hear that women would do this, and you know, you learn about it in magazines or something, you know, and I was a late bloomer, for those of you playing bingo at home, I was a late bloomer, but I remember that when I heard that that people did that, I was like, why would you make someone think something about themselves that they could do that just isn't true? Wow. Meaning it just, it boggled my mind. And, and that's not to say, that, you know, I absolutely have the best sex life of any human on the planet. But I'm just saying

that, like, it never made sense to me. But it's interesting because in so many other aspects of my life, some might argue all the other aspects of my life, there is a very strong sense of how's the other person and what do they need. And am I making them happy? And like, my job as an actor is to make other people say, yes, you got the job. Exactly. So this was like the one arena. It's the island of the island of orgasm isolation. Good for you. Good for you. I mean, you're, you know, you're in the minority. I've also never had an orgasm. Is that, no, I'm just kidding. But you know you're in the minority. I guess, but like I said, it never made sense to me. And, you know, I was like a young, empowered feminist. Like, yeah. Why would you make someone think that they succeeded in pleasing

you if they didn't? Because then you're missing an opportunity to teach them what actually makes you feel good. Now you're making me interested in polling feminist versus non-feminist and finding, you know, where that breaks. Do you have a feminist hebenula or not? Yeah. That's the title of this episode. Exactly. Did your hebenula have an orgasm last night?

What is the percentage of people who have faked orgasm? It sounds like you've done a little research in this space. For women, it's the majority. And I don't remember that it's been years since I've seen the actual numbers and it's not coming to me. Let's touch on pornography for a moment and the impact that you see it having on people's feelings of authenticity versus feelings of shame. When you think about performative versus authentic expression, there's a larger question to be had about pornography in terms of what impact it has on our ability to then either mimic in a performative sense.

or is it a neutral way to get in touch with a variety of things that we're learning about? Is pornography impeding my ability to be my authentic self? The very nature of seeing other people in a pornographic sense is not in itself harmful. I think that kind of like we were talking about with the news, if I could make a weird analogy there, the porn industry is fueled by outrage, you know, that they're competing with each other for, race to the bottom of the brainstem, as Tristan Harris calls it. And so it's an attention economy. And it's set up to be an addiction economy. I was just going to say one of the components of sex addiction in this arena is the need to keep upping the stakes. Which is, I think also what that

sort of proliferation in outrageous porn is sort of getting harmful, harmful, abusive, like, correct. But there's a notion of needing. But there's a notion of needing to need. to sort of up the stakes, which addicts themselves don't always enjoy, meaning it's a compulsive machine. That's right. And so, you know, that hyperstimulation is always, you know, kind of a a reach for when your Habeula's on and you don't know it's on, you know, I mean, I think it's just cannot be overstated that the Hbenula is doing this in a silent, quiet way. There's no, like, ouch, my Hibbenula's on. It's just, it's very secret, you know, it's just, it's stealthy. And so, in a person who's using porn as their drug to quiet their habanula, they're on that number

line. One step towards dopamine pleasure, two steps pain. One step pleasure, two steps pain. So they're falling down into a hole where they've got to do more and more drug, the more, more rough drug and harsh drug and things like that in order to get to. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, it's the same result. I iterate your way out of that, you know, dopamine fast, whatever. can get you out of that terrible, terrible state of helplessness and powerlessness against your addiction. I can't help but think about things like chronic pain and things like, you know, for those of us with autoimmune conditions, right, where there's, for lack of a better word, iterative, you know, iterative aches, pains, you know, things. I, you know, I'm a person who like,

my back will go out, you know, twice a year. It's always the same thing, and it's the SOAS muscle. I'm like, it's the muscle of change. Whatever, I'm, like, done changing. But I was thinking about the role of the hebenula, because if we're talking about addiction, you know, the brain is very redundant. It doesn't have as many communication pathways as there are pathways. So it is a redundant system.

It uses a discrete amount of chemicals. It uses a discrete amount of receptors and channels and things that open and electrophysiological changes. So it's a very redundant system. But, you know, I'm kind of buying into this like Holy Grail component because obviously there's never one thing in the brain that we can say. For some people, the Hibenula may be a really, really important hot point. And for someone else, it might be hypothalamic. It could be amygdala. Like, it could be a lot of things.

But when I think about addiction and I think about patterns and I think about, you know, these grooves that our brain will go into, I can't help but think about things like chronic pain and things that. and things that we used to call psychosomatic illness. I mean, people used to be told it's all in your head. Then we shifted to psychosomatic, and now we're shifting into more of the Dr. Sarno conception of like the mind-body syndrome, right? So where does mind-body syndrome

and sort of the intersection of your thoughts and your physiology, where does that play into the sort of patterns that the Hibenula is going to try and tap into as well? Yeah, and this is a very recent study, like a week ago kind of thing, you know, with rheumatoid arthritis and depression. And what they found is that habanula mediates the depression of rheumatoid arthritis.

Wow. And mediates the rheumatoid arthritis. So there's something really intriguing about that. Also like what comes first, right? Yeah, yeah. We don't have that all worked out. You know, so that's the area where I think science is going to explode, is figuring out, you know, chicken or eggs on those kinds of things,

or even how the cycle gets started. and then also how to undo it. Yeah, and Jonathan and I did a talk at South by Southwest on the intersection of science and spirituality, but a huge component of this was, you know, it's very hard to know what comes first, right? Are people who are depressed, you know, well, we know. And Gabour Maté has done, you know, all this work and Bessel van der Kuk.

We know that people who have, let's say, adverse childhood experiences, children who witness trauma, children who experience trauma themselves, right? This is all setting the state. for, I would say, a habanula that is struggling, a limbic system that is on fire, right? An amygdala that doesn't know real from imagined, right? Yeah. So then you have this notion of those people are susceptible to autoimmune disorders, right? We talk about the personalities associated with multiple sclerosis, you know, with epilepsy, that there's a personality that often even with cancer, you know, these are some of the hardest statistics. But it's really interesting because, and this is, you know,

for better or worse, you know, this is where animal studies come in to try and figure out what is the mechanism. Is it the depression that is opening up to a range of autoimmune dysfunction? Is it the Hbenula that is compromised or that is, you know, lacking appropriate connections, let's say, to other places. But especially, I'd be fascinated to see if for things like chronic pain or things like these autoimmune conditions, I'm so curious where more research will lead in terms of the Hibenula's role. Me too. And again, it just gives me that image of, you know, the camel with the little nose ring. You know, the Habenula is that little nose ring.

It's so outpowered and, you know, undersized, but it is overpowering everything. It's honestly the most powerful behavioral control I've ever seen in my career. Unbelievable. Yeah. The title of your book is Unstoppable Brain. And I want to have an unstoppable brain, and I think a lot of people do.

And I know it's hard to ask you to sort of like sum up, you know, your book in the top three things. But if I were to say to you, you know, I feel stuck, I feel whatever it is, depressed, unmotivated, I can't move forward, whether it's work, weight, fitness, relationships. What are the three things you would suggest that I do to go from a stuck brain to an unstoppable brain? Yeah, so stop overperforming everything. You know, right-sized performance where it is beneficial and then don't. Don't go. When it becomes a sharp object, stop. Wow.

The second is turn off the habanula by talking yourself out of or letting go of or doing anything you can to neutralize failure or prevent failure, you know, failure thinking. And then the third one is iterate the shit out of your life. That's what people do that succeed long term. If you look at any successful person in any domain, what's hiding in plain sight is the, amount of iteration that person is using to do that superhuman thing. I have kind of a rudimentary question, and I know that there's a lot of research and a lot more research coming out about the Hibbenula. What happens if you just section out the Hibenula?

What does behavior look like? Yeah, I have no idea. So there's a medial and a lot. We didn't get into this detail, but this is okay. Medial and a lateral, and the lateral seems to be most operant when it's active in causing depressive. et cetera, all the kind of psychic pain. The medial may be mitigating that, but it's like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and we've only got a few pieces on the board. So there's no way to tell exactly how those are parsed out yet. But I'll say that, you know, there's even a more recent study that came out last week where they took mice, mother mice, and they killed, they cut off their lateral hapenula activity. And what they found is that they found is that,

that they stopped mothering their pups. And so it's just so consequential the different things that people are trying to see, you know, how each of these parts of the havenula activate. Dr. Kaira Babanet, the book is Unstoppable Brain. The new neuroscience that frees us from failure, eases our stress, and creates lasting change. It's really been so great to talk to you. We covered so many things in the book, not in the book, but I highly recommend people get the book. It's a wonderful reference to have.

there's so many sections that you can pull up when you're in a particular situation. It's really a wonderful book to have on your shelf in your mental health and neuroscience category. So it's really been such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. So Jonathan, Dr. Bobinet predicted that we would look at the world totally differently now that we've spoken to her and learned about the Hibenula. You now want to push my sled too. I want to push your sled too. Also, we can pull it. It's a dual direction sled.

I think what I found interesting about sort of her statement around that is that we can sometimes even in, I'm imagining even in work relationships and in personal relationships, and I mean, especially with our children, we can have performative expectations for other people. It's not just for ourselves. I was thinking about, I mean, parenting is like a whole other aspect. Like I want her to write a book about the Habenula and porn, Habenula and parenting, like all the things. I was thinking about how much of what we want for our kids is often what we think looks good, right? And so much of, I think, our culture lends itself to, you know, almost adults acting like adolescence in terms of like, I want it to look good. I want it to look good for him.

I want him to have the car he wants. I want her to have the shoes that she wants. Or, you know, we're going to go into debt so that I can give them this trip that we can't afford. You know, how much of our lives is this conflict between my performative self and what I think I should do so that I'll look a certain way versus my authentic self? I think people have mostly been programmed not to even know what their authentic self is. How do we get to that in a modern day society where we're overrun with images of what other people are doing, what we think will make us happy? I mean, I see my son who is 16 now

and he's really into training for tennis, training for pickleball, but on YouTube reels, he sees a lot of bodybuilders. And I see him comparing himself to these bodybuilders and looking at his traps and being like, do I have big traps? Am I broad?

My friend has this muscle over here. How do I get that muscle? And in some way... Tell him to look at his father. He's going to have the... the same exact body. And in some ways, that information is available. When I wanted to lift weights, I had to go read Arnold's bodybook,

bodybuilding manual and flip through the pages. And now he has access to all of these different exercises at the tip of his fingers. But on the same regard, I'm like, how much of this is driven by his need to look good to versus have his body perform well in the activities that he's passionate about that motivate him. That's a slippery slope. When we listed the performative tools that fail, so I just want to go over them real quick. New Year's resolutions, social media, sports goals, fitness trends, dieting, habit routines, to-do lists, lying was one of them, career and relationship goals, and then those smart goals,

those like, you know, specific kind of metrics goals. Jonathan, what's your, what is your most reliable performative tool that you might want to change? I've really been working on being consistent with working out. And it's, I'm trying really not to base that on any sort of metrics for visual appeal or building a type of muscle versus functional performance. meaning I know that to be healthy, to increase lifespan, as Peter Atia talks about, that building and maintaining muscle is super important. So instead of doing it of, I want to get Jack to look great for summer, I'm doing it much more so with the mindset to not have it be a sharp object

if I do not execute five days a week or six days a week or lift this number of plates, but really iterating so that I know what exercises I can do that I can recover from, that I can stay consistent with. And if I do miss a day or if I'm not hitting it, that I'm not beating myself up for that. I really like that. And I think that notion that it's not bad to have a habit. It's not bad to have a to-do list. It's not bad to have a career goal or a relationship goal.

But it's all kind of about the framing. I'm also curious, Jonathan, if any of the types of failure, like the types of ways that we tend to sort of think about failure, if any of those were relatable to you. So the choices are all or nothing thinking. That's kind of my specialty. Comparing, I used to be able to pre-failing imposter syndrome, nothing works for me, been there, done that, or shoulding.

Like, I should have done this, he should have done that. I can relate to shoulding for sure. Oh, I should do this and then I will have gotten that result. I mean, imposter syndrome, you know, when we first started this podcast, I didn't think I was going to have a microphone. Sometimes you ask me questions. I'm like, there should be a doctor or someone to speak to this. Who might say any of this?

So I struggle with that for sure. Pre-failing, I have definitely thought about like, oh, is this worth it? you know, is should I go down this path of like learning something or exploring an avenue, how much time effort is that going to take and trying to do mental gymnastics to try to think about the cost-benefit ratio? I've had a handful of friends in my life where I can recall them dating someone who was really smart and charismatic and fun and seemed to be really ambitious, but had what they described as a fear of success as opposed to a fear of failure. But when I was looking at this list, the been there, done that is actually kind of, it's a way of being afraid of

success because it's like, oh, I've already done that or I don't need that. And I just thought it was kind of interesting because it's a component of this larger notion of a fear of failure. And, you know, I think everyone can relate to one of these, if not more than one, right? But for me, the all or nothing thinking, or I used to be able to, right? Like, I used to be more fit or especially like as our bodies get older and especially as women like I used to be able to do this. Why would I even try? You know, I have friends who started running triathlons in, you know, their late 30s and they were able to push past that, you know, like nothing works for me. I know people who get in that ruminative, depressive, like, why should I try, you know?

Actually, black and white thinking is a big one. I used to think things were much more binary. I can do this thing or I could do that thing, but they can't always fit together. Even when one of those two things that I would juxtapose, neither of them felt right. And what I've seen more and more is that often the solution is some combination. There's actually a joke when I'm presented two creative options. My answer is always, can we take a little bit of each of them? And there's a strategy amongst creatives where they'll give you two or three

polar, they'll give you the Goldilocks scenario. You know, you take this option, you take the middle option, or you take the extreme option. And almost always, I'm trying to blend things to create the ideal. Well, I think that that's really the iterative mindset, you know, and I thought that was interesting that she mentioned that there may be some gender differences

in how people organize around the iterative mindset. But yeah, that's you kind of adding, right? It's you adding. That was one of the aspects, right? Inspiration, time, environment, reduce add, togetherness, expectations, and swaps. I really do appreciate this, new perspective. I don't know if it's going to make my brain unstoppable, but I definitely

I'm going to try and incorporate more of this iterative mindset to be constantly trying. That's how I'm continuously trying. That's how I kind of feel like I'm going to take on the day. If by unstoppable, she means an unstoppable jukebox with songs in your head, then you're already unstoppable. I'm unstoppable today. It's a see a song. probable today. Spabable today. Skip? Oh, you want to skip?

No, I'm not playing that game. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's My and Bealix Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down.

It's a breakdown.