On Purpose with Jay Shetty - 4 Ways to Avoid Distractions and Train Your Brain for Focus During Lockdown

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

You love On Purpose because it inspires your life. Have you tried Jay’s Genius workshops and meditations to access even deeper well-being? Learn more at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGenius Have you ever listened to a song and wished you could listen to it forever? Or hugged a loved one and never wanted to let go? On this episode of On Purpose with Jay Shetty, guides you through ways to linger those positive moments to train your brain to be happier, more focused, and less stressed.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, it's Debbie Brown, host of the Deeply Well Podcast, where we hold conscious conversations with leaders and radical healers and wellness around topics that are meant to expand and support you on your wellbeing journey. Deeply well is your soft place to land, to work on yourself without judgment, to heal, to learn, to grow, to become who you deserve to be. Deeply well with Debbie Brown is available now on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Namaste. I'm Munga Shatekler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in major league baseball, international banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The world of chocolate has been turned upside down. A very unusual situation. You saw this tax-appcussion in our office. Chocolate comes from the cacountry, and recently, Variety's cacao, thought to have been lost centuries ago, were re-discovered in the Amazon.

There is no chocolate on Earth like this. Now some chocolate makers are racing, deep into the jungle, to find the next game-changing chocolate, and I'm coming along. OK, that was a very large crack it up. Listen to the obsessions while chocolate on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The new year is about hope.

This is the special time of year when we're allowed to press the reset button and start over. I know that 2020 or the beginning of 2021 hasn't been what everyone is expecting, but now we can try and restart in February. So I'd like to invite you to join my 2021 reset and restart new habits for a new time five day program to register. Just go to jshediginius.com forward slash new habits starting February 3rd. I'll be meeting with you virtually for five consecutive days to give you the tools you need to create the year you need together will meditate and set our intentions for the 2021 we want to have five days five

workshops one fresh start. Let's say yes to starting 2021 with an open heart and open mind It all starts with you go to jshediginius.com forward slash new habits to register today. Thank you and get excited for February 3rd Three out of five Americans say they feel mis-understood. They feel lonely, disconnected and left out, and the loneliness trend is rising, with the highest levels of reported loneliness among millennials. And according to the Royal Society for Public Health, rates of anxiety and depression have increased 70% over the last 25 years.

On one hand, those numbers are shocking. Y'all on the other, this data probably comes as no real surprise when so many of us ourselves are experiencing bouts of isolation and insecurity, disconnection, fear and anxiety. But as you may know, and as I've discussed on this show, so much of how we experience life is about our minds and our perception. You may know, and as I've discussed on this show, so much of how we experience life is about our minds and our perception. That doesn't mean our fears and our worries aren't real, but so much of how we feel about them is something we can influence.

Still, just knowing that's not helpful if we don't have real concrete tools to change and shift our perception. Struggle is real. Our problems are real, and yet our brains have a way of taking what we focus on and magnifying it even more. And that makes our problems seem even worse. It makes it harder to find solutions from them.

Researchers took employees who work on creative tasks and analyzed their work diaries, scanning more than 9,000 entries. They discovered that the more pressure the employees were under to produce, the less creative they were. In another study, researchers showed a group of participants a clip of either the first 30 minutes of the movie's saving private Ryan or the first 30 minutes of Shrek. Then they had the participants do a word association exercise that was designed to see how creative

they were. You can probably guess how this ended up. Those who had just watched this stressful movie scenes performed worse on the task. When we're anxious, we don't handle stress as well. And that not only affects our performance and our creativity, it affects how we experience life. But how do we change that? There are loads of solutions out there, and I've talked about a number of them here.

But today we're going to look at how to change the problem at the source, your brain. I'm going to share with you three steps to actually, literally rewiring your brain so it's set up to support you to focus less on the feelings you don't want, and more on the ones you do. If you've been listening regularly, and I hope you have, and I so appreciate your time and your willingness to be here and share this space with me. But if you've been with me the last few Fridays, you know that we've been taking ideas and thoughts from my book, Think Like A Monk, and Going going deeper. Today, we're focusing on chapter 7, which is all about the mind and mind separation for today's podcast comes from the following passage from the book.

True growth involves understanding the mind. It is the filter, judge, and director of all our experiences, but we are not always of one mind. The more we can evaluate, understand, train and strengthen our relationship with the mind, the more successfully we can navigate our lives and overcome challenges. I'm so excited because I love getting into science and data and marrying it with Ancient Wisdom. And today we're going to get into the actual brain science of how we can change our brains to support greater happiness and wholeness and resilience.

And I'm going to tell you, you'll be shocked at how simple it is. I know I was. And that's why I'm so excited to share this with you. These techniques are so accessible. You don't need any special equipment, apps, or anything like that to do these things. So let's get started.

Now maybe you've heard this idea before. What you focus on, you create more of. For some of you that conjures the idea of manifesting. For some of you, it's the idea of increasing your productivity. But the thing is, that idea can be a bit fuzzy, right? It sounds good. What you focus on, you create more of. So if I just focus on something I want, it will appear or multiply, right? But some of you are like, Jay, I could stare at this 10 dollar bill all day long and it's not going to magically multiply. If only it were that easy.

And yet in a way, some things are. Maybe don't magically making more money appear. But when it comes to the experiences we want to have in life and the feelings we want to feel, it turns out this saying is grounded in neuroscience and in ancient wisdom. Harvard researchers created an app that contacted volunteers at random intervals and asked them what they were doing, what they were thinking about, and whether they were happy. It turns out that people's minds were not on the task at hand a massive 47% of the time. Instead, they were distracted.

And most of the time they were distracted, volunteers said they were unhappy. One of the lead researchers said he thinks lack of attention to the present moment was actually the cause of respondents' high rates of unhappiness. Being fully present with whatever you're doing at the moment not only calms your mind, but also improves your mood. In a separate study, researchers looked at the brains of experienced meditators and non-meditators while they followed the same meditation cues. Imaging showed that those who'd been meditating longer showed less mind wandering.

But don't worry, you can start to change your brain patterns relatively quickly. So we know distraction can increase our agitation, and we know activities like meditation can decrease distraction and help us focus. But one of the missing pieces is we often don't talk about what to focus on. According to neuroscientists long term meditator and bestselling author Rick Hanson, if we understand how our brains work, we can shape how we experience our lives. And that starts with

understanding our negativity bias. Now you may have heard me talk about negativity bias before. It's our brain's tendency to focus on the negative over the positive, like how we'll choose to read negative news headlines over positive ones. It's a holdover from our brain's survival circuitry, which is designed to keep us safe. Our brain is programmed to scan for threats, so its natural inclination is to pay more attention

to the negative than the positive. Hansen describes the brain as being like Velcro for bad experiences and Teflon for good. What tends to stick with us is the negative. If you think back on your life or even the last few months or weeks, what sticks out to you the most? Maybe it's confinement and restriction from the lockdown, stress from trying to make sure your kids are getting the support they need with their schoolings, worries over your work, and trying to balance everything. Chances are you've had some positive experience over the last few months, as well, but those

aren't the ones that pop us first, right? You may have to go digging around in your mind to even remember them. However says Hansen, even though our brains are naturally wired to focus on the negative, we can change that. Don't worry, we're not going to totally dismantle our survival circuitry. We do need that. We want to be able to respond to actual threats, but we can train our brains to amplify more of the positive experiences in our lives. The science of how to do this comes down to something called neuroplasticity,

which is essentially our brain's ability to change. It allows us to learn. It's our meditation and other techniques for focus and compassion can actually rewire your brain. Neuroscience and ancient teachings agree that our minds shape our experiences. And as Hansen says, what we repeat and emphasize in our minds rewires our brain. Looking at monks, for example,

scientists can actually see how their brains are wired for greater peace, happiness and compassion. On the flip side, sadly, scientists can also see how things like exposure to violence rewires our brains to make us even more sensitive to potential threats, which can not only keep us in more fearful states, but can also negatively impact our physical health. Repeated exposure changes your experience of life. And if, like most of us, you're not aware or consciously directing what your brain is focusing on because of our negativity bias, your brain is often looping negativity. It happens every time you fixate or ruminate on a challenge or on a fight you had or a

memory of feeling of left-hour rejected. It's like putting a negativity filter on your brain and then making that filter stronger and stronger. But now you're probably like, Jay, I get it, but how do I change it? How we change this pattern in our brains is to focus on what we want more of. But don't worry, this goes way beyond just positive thinking.

And as researchers at Stanford have pointed out, simply trying to change your thoughts to be more positive can actually have negative effects. What we need to do, as Hansen says, is to use not just our minds, but also our bodies to emphasise the experiences we want more of in our lives. The Buddha once wrote, There's one thing that when cultivated and regularly practiced leads to deep spiritual intention, to peace, to mindfulness and clear comprehension, to vision and knowledge,

to a happy life here and now, and to the culmination of wisdom and awakening. And what is that one thing? It is mindfulness centered on the body. Conquer your New Year's resolution to be more productive with the Before Breakfast Podcast in each bite-sized daily episode. Time management and productivity expert, Laura Vandercam, teaches you how to make the most of your time, both at work and at home.

These are the practical suggestions you need to get more done with your day. Just as lifting weights keeps our bodies strong as we age, learning new skills is the mental equivalent of pumping iron. Listen to Before Breakfast on the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Not too long ago, in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, this explorer stumbled upon something that would change his life.

I saw it and I saw, oh wow, this is a very unusual situation. It was cacao, the tree that gives us chocolate. But this cacao was unlike anything experts had seen, or tasted. I've never wanted us to have a gun fight. I mean, you saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate sort of forms this vortex. It sucks you in.

It's like I can be the queen of wild chocolate. We're all lost. It was madness. It was a game changer. People quit their jobs. They left their lives behind, so they could search for more of this stuff. I wanted to tell their stories, so I followed them deep into the jungle, and it wasn't always pretty. Basically, this like disgruntled guy and his family surrounded the building arm with machetes.

And we've heard all sorts of things that, you know, somebody got shot over this. Sometimes I think, oh, all this for a damn bar of chocolate. Listen to obsessions, wild chocolate, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. In the 1680s, a feisty, opera singer burned down a nunnery and stole away with her secret lover. In 1810, a pirate queen negotiated her cruiseway

to total freedom, with all their loot. During World War II, a flirtatious gambling double agent helped keep D-Day a secret from the Germans. What are these stories having common? They're all about real women who were left out of your history books. If you're tired of missing out, check out the Womanica podcast, a daily women's history podcast highlighting women you may not have heard of,

but definitely should know about. I'm your host, Jenny Kaplan, and for me, diving into these stories is the best part of my day. I learned something new about women from around the world and leafyling amazed, inspired, and sometimes shocked. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So often when we talk about mindfulness and meditation, we think of it as well, something

we think of. We don't pay a lot of attention to our bodies, but Hansen says using our bodies is a critical component to changing our brains. I love music, right? Lots of you do too. I like to think of our bodies like a stereo. And by body, I'm including your brain. Lots of time to say it's really impossible to separate the brain and mind from the body

in any real way because they're so elaborately connected. In ways we don't even fully understand yet. So if your whole body is hysteria, your mind is the receiver. You can choose to tune into experiences and feelings you want to focus on and feel more of. Your body and all of the sensations it can feel at a speaker's, which can help you amplify

the experiences. If it doesn't make sense, stay with me. When we set the channel on what we want to experience more of, joy, connection, meaning, purpose, and we use our body to turn up the volume on those experiences, we change our brains. We can also turn down the volume on undesired brain states by turning the channel or detaching. It's like changing the presets on your tuner from negative channels to more positive and powerful ones.

And here's how we do that. And this is going to sound deceptively simple, but it really works. When you have a moment that you feel like, this is it, this is what I want more of. You extend its duration and its intensity. If you were tuning a stereo, you would get to that channel

where suddenly finding a song you love and you stop and stay there, right? And if you really like it, you turn up the volume. This is just like that. Say you're standing at the kitchen counter and you're working away on your laptop because that's what a lot of us are doing right now. Your office is like the corner of a table or a counter. So you're feeling that stress and then your partner comes to you and gives you a hug. Or you open an email and it's a compliment from a coworker on that report. Or maybe you're on a Zoom call and someone says you're really funny. Stop right there.

Resist the urge to change the channel. As humans, we do a lot of flicking around from one thing to the next. But when you find this feeling and this song you love, stay where you are, stay there! You notice the amazing feeling of that hug. Or you notice that sense of recognition with the compliment from your coworker, or you notice how much you need a laugh. As Hansen says, we want to identify and underscore that feeling. Freeze frame right there, that's something I want to feel more of.

When we identify and recognize what we're experiencing as something we want to feel more of, we then deepen that feeling and extend the length of time we feel it. Instead of moving out of the hug, of clicking onto the next email or stopping the laughter and shifting back to the task at hand, stay with it. Now this doesn't have to mean it becomes a 5 minute hug. Staying with it can mean just seconds longer than you normally would, because again, our tendencies to switch channels really quickly, right?

Instead, just stay there and listen to the whole song. We also increased the intensity of the song by turning up the volume. And how would you do that is we connect to the experience with our bodies. We notice all of the sensations we're feeling. Our partners arms wrapped around us, our heart speeding together, our breath, maybe the touch of their hair against your cheek,

or the pride we feel that email the way our heart seems to swell with it, the lift in our posture and the lightning of the load of stress, or the effervescence of laughter. How you sit back in your chair and your head tilts back as you laugh, deepens, and the bubbling up of joy and connection in your chest. When we connect with our brains and our bodies, we get incredibly powerful results. I'm Dr. Romani and I am back with season two of my podcast Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was loved by the Tinder swindler.

The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissists in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships,

gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to navigating narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. How's that New Year's resolution coming along? You know, the one you made about paying off your pesky credit card debt and finally starting to save a retirement?

Well, you're not alone if you haven't made progress yet, roughly four in five New Year's resolutions fail within the first month or two. But that doesn't have to be the case for you and your goals, our podcast, How to Money can help. That's right, we're two best buds who've been at it for more than five years now, and we want to see you achieve your money goals,

and it's our goal to provide the information and encouragement you need to do it. We keep the show fresh by answering list of questions, interviewing experts, and focusing on the relevant financial news that you need to know about. Our show is Choc Full of the Personal Finance Knowledge that you need with guidance three times a week, and we talk about debt payoff, if, let's say you've had a particularly spend thrift holiday season, we also talk about building up your savings, intelligent investing, and growing your income, no matter where you are on your financial journey, how do

monies got your back? Millions of listeners have trusted us to help them achieve their financial goals. Ensure that your resolution turns into ongoing progress. Listen to how to money on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on I Heart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University, and I've spent my career exploring the three-pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand

our lives and our realities like does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Intercosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Researchers took a group of people and trained them in a mental exercise about exercising. That is, they trained them how to think about exercising their calf muscles.

They didn't actually work out. For five times a day over four weeks, the study participants just imagined exercising their calf muscles. One even managed a 39% increase in strength. The most were closer to 8%. that's the power of the mind. Imagine when you combine actual exercise with mental presence and focus. That's what this amplifying technique does with your brain. Remember, the reverse is also true.

When we get stuck on a negative channel and we amplified that experience, we wire our brains to more deeply focus on negativity. Here's an incredible story about the power of what we choose to focus on. As a young man growing up in Austria, long before he became a monk, brother David Stein O'Rast was conscripted into the military during World War II to fight on the side of the Nazis. Fortunately, he never ended up in a situation where he was responsible for harming anyone. But while he was experiencing it, he had no idea what was to come. When talking about how he got through the ordeal,

which included literally watching friends and family die, one of the worst things we can imagine, he says, absolute presence was the key. Stindle Ross wrote, we only attended to what needed to be done, moment by moment. In his autobiography, he describes this time in his life as years of utmost aliveness, because he and his loved ones were forced to live so firmly in the present as their means of holding on to hope. And that aliveness they felt in those moments

allowed them to experience joy in spite of perhaps the biggest horror all around them. Even in the midst of war, it all rolled down to bringing full attention to what was in front of them and amplifying the positive experience. It wasn't about pretending or ignoring what was going on. It was about taking each of those small moments of beauty and connection and extending and intensifying their focus on them. That's how they survived emotionally. Rick Hanson points out something that the story illustrates,

that we don't only need to focus on joyful experiences or experiences of connection. If we want to experience more of a sense of resilience in our lives, for example, we can stop the channel on moments when we are aware of making progress in spite of challenge. Like when you finish that one piece of a long or tough project you're working on,

and you let yourself hold onto and amplify that feeling for a moment. Artist Georgia O'Keefe was known for her unique eye for detail portraying everyday subjects such as flowers and landscapes in new and remarkable ways. O'Keefe once recalled the time in an art class when an instructor taught her the difference between looking and seeing. He held up a flower, called a jack and the pulpit, and pointed out shadows, contrast, and

all kinds of other aspects. She had never noticed before. It forever changed the way O'Keefe saw the world. And she wrote later in her life, still in a way nobody sees a flower. Really it is so small we haven't the time and to see takes time. Hansen says our minds essentially have hundreds of trillions of microprocessors in it. That's a lot of power we can harness to create the life we want to experience. As monks say our senses are responsible for our desires

and attachments, and they pull us in the direction of impulsivity, passion, and pleasure. There's a quote from the Upanishads, which is an ancient Vedic text, beyond the senses are their objects. Beyond the objects is the mind, but beyond the mind is the intellect. Beyond the intellect is the great self.

Monks calm and direct our senses in order to calm and direct our mind. And that's something you know how to do. Try it for just a few days and see what happens. And let me know. I'd love to hear from you, tag me on Instagram, at J. Shetty, and I can't wait to read how you learn to amplify, extend, and emphasize these beautiful, deep, powerful moments. Thanks for listening.

This podcast was produced by Dust Light Productions. Our executive producer from Dust Light is Misha Yusuf. Our senior producer is Juliana Bradley. Our associate producer is Jacqueline Castillo. Valentino Rivera is our engineer. Our music is from Blue Dot Sessions and special thanks to Rachel Garcia, the Duslight development and operations coordinator. operations coordinator. I'm Danny Shapiro, host of Family Secrets. It's hard to believe we're entering our eighth season, and yet we're constantly discovering new secrets. The variety of them continues to be astonishing.

I can't wait to share 10 incredible stories with you, stories of tenacity, resilience, and the profoundly necessary excavation of long-held family secrets. Listen to season eight of Family Secrets on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'll get your podcasts. I'm Eva Longoria. And I'm Maite Gomes-Rajorn.

We're so excited to introduce you to our new podcast, Hungry for History. On every episode, we're exploring you to our new podcast, Hungry For History! On every episode, we're exploring some of our favorite dishes, ingredients, beverages, from our Mexican culture. We'll share personal memories and family stories, decode culinary customs, and even provide a recipe or two for you to try at home. Listen to Hungry For History on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Our 20s are often seen as this golden decade. Our time to be carefree, make mistakes and figure

out our lives. But what can psychology teach us about this time? I'm Jermis Beg, the host of the psychology of your 20s. Each week we take a deep dive into a unique aspect of our 20s, from career anxiety, mental health, heartbreak, money and much more to explore the science behind our experiences. The psychology of your 20s hosted by me, Gemma Speg. Listen now on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. or wherever you get your podcasts.