Something You Should Know - How to Follow Through On Your Good Intentions & What’s Going On Inside Your Brain

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Christmas is a fun holiday with lots of stories and traditions. This episode begins with some interesting facts about Christmas you may not know. Ever wonder why we use the term Noel at Christmas time? OR did you ever wonder what Christmas decorations are edible? Listen to discover the answers and other fascinating Christmas intel? (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/50-things-yule-never-know-653613) We all have the best of intentions. We so often say we are going to do things with the best intentions yet often fail to follow through. Why is that? If you tell yourself you are going to do something, why don’t you just do it and get it done? Well there is a good reason and joining me to discuss this is Steve Levinson, clinical psychologist, inventor, entrepreneur and internationally recognized authority on the topic of following through. He is the author of a couple of books including Following Through (https://amzn.to/36rIldU). Your brain is really the control center of your body. It does so many wonderful things and works in so many ways - many of which you don’t even realize. Joining me to discuss how your brain functions and ways you can help make it work even better is neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She is a professor at Northeastern University, Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior at Harvard University and author of the book Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (https://amzn.to/2JJecxK). Is it a good idea to let your car warm up on a cold morning before you drive it? If your car battery is dead and needs a jump, how long before it is fully charged? We tackle these important questions every car owner needs to know.(https://www.motorbiscuit.com/do-you-really-need-to-warm-up-your-car/ & https://bit.ly/2I2TyZ8) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! This episode is sponsored by Geico. https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future.

Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, some interesting facts about Christmas you probably never knew.

Then, why do we begin things with the best of intentions and then fail to follow through? One of the reasons we do such a lousy job as humans is that we adopt too many intentions. We treat our good intentions as if they're a dime a dozen. And if you treat them that way, that's exactly what they're worth. Also, is it better to warm up your car's engine first on cold winter mornings? And understanding how your brain works and why you need to take such very good care of it. You don't see with your eyes, you see with your brain. You don't feel with your skin, you feel with your brain. You hear with your brain, you smell with your brain.

Everything that you experience and every action you take starts in your brain. All this today on Something You Should Know. Something You Should Know. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, and welcome.

This episode of Something You Should Know is being sponsored by GEICO. And I believe this is the first time this has happened in the four plus years we've been doing this podcast that an entire episode is being sponsored. And having been a satisfied GEICO customer for many, many years, it's a real pleasure to have them as our sponsor today. Now, first up, you probably know a lot about Christmas, but there's always more things to learn. For example, the first commercial Christmas cards

were commissioned by British civil servant Sir Henry Cole in London in 1843. One of the cards from the very first set of Christmas cards was sold at auction back in 2013 for $6,846. The word Noël is from the French expression Les Bons Nouvelles, or The Good News. Before turkey, the traditional Christmas meal in England was a pig's head and mustard. James Pierpont's 1857 song Jingle Bells was first called One Horse Open Sleigh, and it was actually written for Thanksgiving.

Many parts of the Christmas tree can be eaten. What? Really? With the needles being a good source of vitamin C. The Beatles hold the record for most Christmas number one singles in England, topping the charts in 1963, 1965, and 1967. Electric tree lights were invented by Edward Johnson in the U.S. in 1882. And finally, in several countries, Greece, Italy, Spain, and I believe Germany, workers get a Christmas bonus of one month's salary by law. And that is something you should know.

I suspect there is not a single person listening to this who hasn't started something, or said they are going to start something, or wanted to start something, and never followed through. I know I've done it many times, and I've always wondered why it is. Why do we say we're going to do something, we tell ourselves we're going to do it, but somehow we lose interest, or we can't find the time, or whatever the reason, it never gets done. So how do we conquer that? How do you start something and actually finish what you start? Well, here to explain why we do it and how to fix it is Steve Levinson. Dr. Levinson is a clinical psychologist, inventor, entrepreneur,

and he's an internationally recognized authority on the topic of following through. He's written a couple of books, including one called Following Through. Hi, Steve. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Michael. Nice to see you. So it clearly is a universal problem. Why is it a problem? Why would I tell myself I'm going to do something and then just not do it? Well, it certainly is a universal problem. My colleague Pete Greider and I, back in the mid-1990s, we went and we talked to people all over the place, rich people, poor people, successful people, people who were not so successful.

And we found that everyone had trouble following through on their own good intentions. What we discovered, which was not what we expected, is that the problem actually lies with the way the human mind is designed. We are kind of an unusual experiment that Mother Nature decided to conduct, where we were given this incredible intelligence that allows us to figure out what's in our best interest to do. Should we go here? Should we go there? Should we make a left turn or right turn, go straight ahead, back up, stay put? We figure out what we should do intelligently. remains largely connected to a much more primitive system that actually makes us act most of the time in accord with what we feel in our gut and not what we intelligently decide. So that's where the problem is. And we've never really quite accepted that. Society has not accepted that. People don't accept that. People still think that they should just be able to figure out what they should do. And if it's a really good idea,

if it just seems like a good idea, well, why wouldn't I do that? That they would just go ahead and implement it. And it doesn't work. It's not because the system is very mixed up. The wiring is faulty. So put a face on that. Give me just an example of somebody deciding what they think they should do, and then their gut tells them to do something else. Okay, great. Great example, because everybody can relate to wanting very badly to eat things that they intelligently decide they shouldn't eat or shouldn't eat as much of. So you can decide if you're a cookie-holic, for example, and you've decided that because of your weight and because of a health concern, you really shouldn't be eating cookies so much anymore. So you decide

at 11 o'clock in the morning that you're just not going to have any cookies today. And then somebody comes along and has these really yummy smelling cookies. They look great. It's exactly what you want. And you just jump all over them. So on the one hand, you make a decision. You intelligently decide where you should go. And then you just feel in your gut that you want to do something else. And your gut often wins.

It often wins. In that example, I can imagine, though, that if somebody brought that plate of cookies by right after I made the decision not to eat them, my willpower would keep me from eating them as opposed to if they came eight hours later and after the day is old and I've done a lot of things and my willpower isn't quite what it was, I'm much more inclined to eat them. You're absolutely right. Willpower has a very short half-life. It just, it does not last. Your intentions are the most powerful at the moment you create them, and then they just wane and wane and wane, and they just don't work. The same thing is true, by the way, of inspiration. You know, how many times do people go to listen to an inspirational

speaker, and they get all hyped up, excited. Oh, I'm going to change this. I'm going to fix that. And I'm going to do this differently. And by, you know, three, four days later, there's not much left. It's just it's all gone. So if intentions aren't enough, if that doesn't do it, then what does? How do you do it the right way? to therefore basically trick ourselves into feeling like doing the things that we intelligently decide we should do. Okay. Case in point, this was a gentleman like so many of us who decide that it really would make sense to exercise regularly. So he joined a health club and like so many of us, pretty soon he wasn't going very regularly and pretty soon he wasn't going at all. So he thought maybe he could join a better health club that had different kind of equipment, different clientele, and that would do

it. That didn't do it either. Nothing worked. And he wanted to exercise regularly for health reasons, health reasons, weight reasons. These were good reasons, excellent reasons, but the excellent reasons didn't get him to actually go to the club every day and do what he thought he needed to do in order to stay healthy and stay trim. So he realized that he has to make himself feel, actually feel like he has no choice but to go to the health club. So here's what he did. He made a promise to himself that from now on, he would only own one stick of underarm deodorant and he would keep that stick of underarm deodorant in his locker at the gym. So he would get up every morning and feel like he always did. Oh, sugar. I don't want to go to the gym. That's the last thing in the world

that I want to do. But then he would think, you know what? If I don't go to the gym, I'm going to stink all day. And I don't want that at all. That moved him. That was what I would call a compelling reason. In other words, a reason that actually gets in your gut, that you can feel, that propelled him to go to the gym. Whereas the good reasons, the logical reasons, the reasons that made perfectly good sense, which was to stay healthy and stay trim, that didn't work. So he was pushed every day by this fear of stinking to go to the gym. And once he got to the gym, people would say, hey, Joe, good morning. And he would feel so incredibly

stupid about just using his deodorant and going home and going back to bed that he stayed and he exercised and eventually developed the habit, the routine, which he had never done before. So relying on the right reasons, they are the right reasons, and they're effective in getting you to decide what you should do, but they're often not effective enough to actually get you to do what you've decided to do. To do what you decided to do, you have to create a compelling reason, something that you can feel in your gut. What about, though, when it's something that is less urgent? Like if you have health problems or you're concerned about your health,

at least there's a little bit of that pushing you to even make the decision to put the deodorant in the gym in the first place but what if it's those someday i'm gonna write a book or someday you know i'm really thinking i'm gonna build that thing out back and and it's just kind of a very vague no deadline nothing really matters if I don't do it. But I'd really like to do it. Great, great, great question. I'll say two things about that. Number one, one of the reasons we do such a lousy job as humans, and again, this is universal.

This is all of us, not just some of us. It's all of us. One of the reasons we do so poorly at following through is that we adopt too many intentions. We say, oh, I'm going to do that. Oh, that's a good idea. I'm going to do that. Oh, I think I'll do that, too. We should be much more careful about the intentions that we adopt.

Because the best way to think about them is that they are equivalent to promises that you would make to someone else. And you're much more careful about the promise, most of us at least, are much more careful about the promises we make to someone else than we are about the promises we make to ourselves. So one of the things that I recommend, and I don't just preach it, I practice it, is that I consider an intention to be a solemn promise. And if I think about something like that, oh, yeah, I'd really like to write another book. Maybe I'll start next week. I carefully evaluate that and decide whether is that something that I really, is that a promise that I really can keep? Because if it isn't, I'm not going to do it. I'll consider it just to be a good idea and I'll put it

on the list for some other time to take it off the list and examine it under the light. But if I'm not prepared to keep it as a promise, I'm not prepared to make it, period. So I think the problem that we often have is that we treat our good intentions as if they're a dime a dozen. And frankly, if you treat them that way the idea of thinking about an intention being a promise to yourself and being similar to a promise you would make to someone else. If you promised someone else that you were going to do something and then you didn't do it, and then you promised them again and you didn't do that either, and you promised them something else, you didn't do that either. Pretty soon you'd have very little credibility and you wouldn't get much from them if you wanted to borrow their lawnmower, for example. But if you do the same to yourself, the same thing happens. You essentially, your intentions lose their clout. They lose their authority. They lose their power to actually

have some control over your intentions. So that's the first thing, to be much more careful, much more selective, much more deliberate and explicit about the intentions you adopt. And so, as you say, when you make a promise to someone else, it seems you're much more likely to do it because someone else is counting on you. So why don't you involve someone else in the first place in the intentions to yourself and be accountable to somebody else and be much more likely to do it because somebody else is counting on you? You should. You absolutely should. Many times people will formulate an intention and adopt an intention and kind of keep it secret. They don't want anyone to know.

I don't want anyone to know that I'm working on this book or I'm working on this project or I'm doing this or doing that. They don't want anyone to know. And they're actually diluting the power that they could actually bring on board to help them accomplish what they set out to accomplish. So it does make sense to invite other people to participate in your intentions, as long as those people make you feel accountable. Often, a person that matters the most is a child. If you have children or you have a niece or a nephew, and you tell them, hey, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to get this done by February 17th. And you ask me about it and I'll show you.

That often because people feel they feel more likely in their gut that they've made a promise to a child than to many other adults who also don't follow through very well and don't care as much. But if someone makes you feel accountable, and again, the key is feel. If someone makes you feel accountable, by all means, you should include them. We are talking about finishing what you start. And my guest is Steve Levinson, a clinical psychologist and author of the book, Following Through. And this episode is sponsored by GEICO.

Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show

one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Steve, it's my experience that going to the gym and working out with a trainer, for example, I know many people who do that. And it's not like they don't know how to work the machines. They've been doing it for years. It's that that person is there waiting

for them. They're going to have to pay them whether they show up or not, and that person is expecting them to show up, so they show up. Exactly. Exactly. And using that, harnessing that, makes very good sense, and it's a key way to make your intentions more effective, to actually take advantage of the fact that you are pushed and pulled by expectations. So that if you know that when people expect you to do something, you're more likely to do it, then you want to actually deliberately, sometimes creatively, make situations that pull you and push you to do what you intend to do. Well, it makes me think, too, that when people don't do that, when people keep their intentions secret, it makes me wonder if they really are intentions, if they really, really want to do it,

or if they just like to say they want to do it. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. They're fooling themselves. And in the process, they're diluting the potential effectiveness of their intentions. Absolutely. I mean, let me give you an example of how or an illustration, a far out illustration of how people normally don't take their own intentions seriously. If you told me, Michael, that you were going to do something this afternoon,

you're going to wash your car. Let's say a stupid example, but it's the best I can come up with. You're going to wash your car because you haven't done it in a long time. It really needs it. If I said to you, Michaelael are you really serious about that you would say well yeah yeah i said i was going to do it this afternoon i said okay here's the deal if you don't do it will you give me will you give me your car will you just sign it over give me the deed no i don't care why why you told me you were going to wash your car this afternoon why what why would why would you worry about making a promise like that making a deal like that well the end i'll answer the question the answer is because you're giving yourself wiggle room to not do it and we

give ourselves wiggle room all the time. And the wiggle room is what kills us. The wiggle room is what prevents us from actually falling through. In an ideal situation, every time we actually adopt an intention, we should be so serious about behaving in accord with it that we'd be more than willing to give up our car, our house, our firstborn child, whatever it is, because that's how serious we should be. And by not being that serious, surprise, surprise, we often don't follow through. Well, it does seem so human nature to not follow through that it's almost like you you know you're not so you don't expect much and it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy i know i really i'm i mean i've always

thought you know i'd really love to have a restaurant now i'm never gonna have a restaurant i i wouldn't know the first thing about it i'm i'm not even inclined to go learn about it i i like the fantasy of it or you know i think wouldn't it even inclined to go learn about it. I like the fantasy of it. I think, wouldn't it be cool to have a restaurant? It probably would. I've heard horrible stories about people who own restaurants. But there's something fine with me about it just sitting there in my head as this little fantasy that, yeah, that'd be fun. Hey, there's nothing wrong with having fantasies like that. Just don't allow it to slip in the category of an intention,

something that you've actually literally put on your to-do list that you're not going to do because it's not really a promise. It's not realistic. Here's what I see all the time. When people adopt intentions that they actually are not going to follow through on, and they really know they're not going to follow through on, it's like hauling something behind you in a trail or something very heavy, filled with logs or something terribly heavy, all this stuff that you're not going to do, but it kind of weighs you down because you intend to do it. So you just have to be really careful about what you tell yourself you intend to do. It seems like we have different levels of commitment to our intentions. I mean, for example, Geico is sponsoring this episode of the podcast, and how many times has everybody seen their commercials saying,

you could save all this money on car insurance if you would take 15 minutes to compare, and you probably see that commercial and you intend to maybe do that, but then you probably have to see the commercial a couple of more times before you actually really intend to do that and actually commit to doing that. And it also seems like we can set ourselves up for success with our intentions. And what I mean by that is, you know, I remember in school that it was always hard to do homework at home. But if I went to the library where I didn't have the distractions I had at home, it was a lot easier to just sit down and do my homework. So that's what I would be inclined to do. It seems like

you can set up the conditions, the time of day, the place, who you're with, all those things can help or hinder your success. So you were being a scientist in your own life, and you had noticed that things work better for you in one setting than in another setting. So you adjusted your behavior accordingly and favored the setting that helped you behave the way you wanted. That's exactly what people should do. Now, everyone is different. And I could imagine someone being a scientist in their own life and discovering exactly the opposite, that despite what seems to make sense and what most people say, geez, I can do my homework better when I have noises, family noises around me and dishes clanging around in the kitchen and people having the TV on, for whatever reason, I seem to do better there.

Then by all means, that's what you should do. It does seem that good intentions, when we set goals and we have good intentions, there's this tendency, maybe it's me, but there seems to be a tendency to think that this is going to be easier than it really is. And then as soon as it turns out to be a lot harder than it really, than you thought it was going to be, it's easier to say, well, I can't do this. Yep. And you're getting right to the, right to the crux of the, of the matter. We believe that intentions, uh, I'll use a terrible analogy. We think intentions are like an electronic device that we buy that includes batteries, and it doesn't. If you don't put the batteries in, put your own batteries in, it isn't going to work.

It doesn't matter how well designed it is. It needs batteries, and it doesn't come with them. You're going to have to add them. Intentions, all they are is a decision. It's a decision about what would be good to do, what would be wise for you to do, what would be the best thing for you to do with your time and energy and so forth, so forth. But it does not come with batteries. It does not often, it does not come with the motivation, the feeling in your gut that has to power your behavior to actually make good on that intention. So often we think that we're done.

When we decided we had an inspiration, we figured out that, oh, yes, I should do this. That's it. It doesn't even seem that hard. we think it's done we think that then we're going to do it we're not going to do it because because we didn't add the batteries the batteries are creating it's creating that the the energy the feeling in your gut that makes you actually feel like it's necessary to do what you've decided to do. Well, how often have we heard other people say, and how often have we said, well, I had the best of intentions. This was done with the best of intentions. But as we've discovered in the last several minutes here,

intentions by themselves are not enough. Steve Levinson has been my guest. He's a clinical psychologist, inventor, entrepreneur, and author of the book, Following Through. You'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Hey, thanks for coming on, Steve. Thank you, Michael. It's been great. So there's this blob of tissue in your head called your brain, and it does a lot of things. Many of the things it does, you're not even aware of. And understanding how it works is not only interesting, it can help you optimize how your brain performs.

Here to explain this is neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She's a professor at Northeastern University. She's the chief science officer for the Center for Law, Brain, and Behavior at Harvard. And she's author of the book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. Hi, Lisa. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me on your show. So when we're born, do we all pretty much start out with a clean slate? Do we all start with more or less the same brain and then it's life and experiences that change it? Or are our brains all very different right from the start?

Or how do things get going? We all start out with generally the same brain plan, but the devil is in the details. So infant brains are like not miniature adult brains. They're brains that are born under construction and they get their wiring instructions from the world around them. So your brain, when you were born, was not complete and it wired itself to the specifics of your body and the specifics of your physical surroundings and also to the social surroundings, the way that other people took care of you, spoke to you, sung to you, what foods they fed you and so on. What is the brain supposedly doing? It seems like from what we hear that pretty much the brain is the control center.

It does everything. It's involved in everything we do. So it seems like it's pretty busy and it has a lot of responsibility. There are many ways to answer that question. Your brain is always busy, and it's always working from the moment that you draw your first breath until the moment that you draw your last. Even when you're sleeping, your brain is very busy. And brains do many things, right? You think, you feel, you see things, you hear things, but it turns out

that your brain's most important job is controlling the systems of your body to keep you alive and well. And so thinking and feeling and seeing and hearing are all in the service of your brain's main mission, which is to control your body. That's its most important job. That's not how we experience things, but that's actually the way the wiring looks. And are there things that people do or can do that make that functioning better, more efficient? Or how does what we do affect how it works? And so the way that I like to describe it to people, of course, there's a very technical term for this. It's called allostasis. But the idea is that your brain is running a budget for

your body. And your brain isn't budgeting money, it's budgeting these resources, because you've got, you know, billions and billions and billions of cells that all need resources. Every time you learn something new, every time you move your body, your brain is expending resources. Every time you sleep or eat something healthful or maybe even give or receive a hug from a close friend, you are either literally or metaphorically making deposits into your body budget. So your brain is running a budget for your body and it's attempting to anticipate the spending and make sure that the resources are there when that spending is going to occur. And so anything that you can do that will keep your body budget solvent,

for example, if you know you're going to have a big outlay of expenditure, you're going to exercise, it makes sense to drink enough water and eat something, usually a carbohydrate, before you exercise so the resources will be there when you need them. And in general, I would say to keep your body budget solvent and keep everything humming along healthfully, there are a couple of things that most people can do, which sound really boring. When I talk about this, I think, oh, I sound like a mother. And I am a mother, but now I'm speaking to you as a neuroscientist. To keep your body budget functioning well, get enough sleep. That's probably the most important thing that you can do. Eat healthily.

Make sure you drink enough water. Make sure you exercise on a regular basis. These all sound really mundane, but actually, chronic withdrawals from your body budget without replenishing, without making investments, puts your body budget into the red and means that you're running a deficit. One of the things that interests me about the brain, just from what I see, is that it seems like the brain requires or desires interaction with other brains that if left to itself in isolation, because when you see people who don't have interaction with other people, things can go very wrong. Well, I think the way to think about it is, I think you're right. And I think the way to think about it, it's not that the brain desires anything.

It's that we evolved as a social species. We make deposits and withdrawals into each other's body budgets. So your brain did not evolve to manage your body budget by yourself. And neither did mine. And neither did any, neither did any other humans, you know, some of us are more social, some of us are less social, but everybody needs somebody. So the way that I like to say it is, when you have relationships with people, and people pass away, or, or you break up with someone, you know, you feel like you're going to die, but you don't. You feel like you've lost a part of yourself because you have.

You know, you've lost someone who has helped to keep your body budget solvent. And you don't die from a breakup, but you certainly will die sooner if you are alone for a long period of time. We are the caretakers of our own nervous systems, but we're the caretakers of other people's nervous systems to a much greater extent, I think, than people realize. And that leaves us with a dilemma, I think, in our culture, which is that we prize individual rights and freedoms very strongly. But we also have these interdependent nervous systems, which not because we're snowflakes, but because we're human. We evolved that way. And that's a real important aspect of our health. Is it safe to say that if you take care of your body, you do all the things

that we hear about diet and sleep and exercise, that by doing that, you're also taking care of your brain? Absolutely. I mean, it's a totally boring thing to say, but yes, absolutely. There's absolutely no question. But there's nothing beyond that specifically that you can do, like crossword puzzles or whatever, that even makes your brain better. That those kinds of interventions don't really make you smarter, make your cognitive function improve. Yes, I think there are some things that you can do, but I think they're not crossword

puzzles or Sudoku or whatever. Those aren't really going to necessarily do anything for you. Your brain is kind of a use it or lose it organ. So if you want to keep your brain healthy, get enough sleep, eat healthfully, exercise, really important to exercise. I mean, just the from an anatomical standpoint, when you look at the anatomy of the brain, it's really clear to see why that would be the case. So you need to exercise. But I would also say, learning new things is a really good investment for brain health. And when I say learning new things, I mean learning to the point where it feels kind of hard. So you know how, I don't know about you when you exercise, but when I exercise, I always get to a certain point

where I think, oh God, like I just, it's really uncomfortable and I really want to be done. And the real temptation is to stop. But I think that's the point at which real change is starting to happen, not just in your muscles, but actually in your brain. I wrote a piece about this in the New York Times a number of years ago. I think it's actually my top piece that was read the most. I think it was downloaded like a million and a half times or something like that.

The evidence suggests that working hard until it feels really hard, and then replenished. And so that could be learning to skate or learning piano or learning a new language or learning to paint, or, you know, learning any kind of skill that requires practice. And what's going to happen, of course, is that over time, it'll get easier and easier and easier for you because your brain is learning and it's optimizing. And so when you get really good at it, that's really great. And then it's time to move on to something new. That's why interval training in the gym works really, really well because as soon as you get good at something, you're like onto something new and then it's hard again. So you're saying that when you learn

something new, you're challenging the brain, even when you're learning something physical like ice skating or something mental like a new language, that learning process is what challenges the brain and keeps it young. Yeah, the two most expensive things your brain can do are move your body and learn. So learning is a way to keep your brain really healthy. So a simple crossword puzzle isn't going to do it, but learning something that will require your sustained attention, require you to remember things, even to the point when it feels, you know, sometimes learning is a little unpleasant, it's a little hard. But that's the time to really stick with it and really push. Because that in the end is gonna,

as long as you replenish and you sleep enough, and so on, you're as long as you make deposits into your body budget as you're doing this, that's going to keep your brain healthier for longer. What about, because a lot of the advice you hear about keeping your brain working well is offered to people in their 50s, 60s, 70s as they're seeing decline. Is there any reason to think that helps? And is there any reason to think that if you did this stuff in your 20s, that you wouldn't have a problem in your 60s, 70s and 80s? The evidence shows really clearly that if you start to exercise and sleep healthfully and learn new skills as an elderly person, it will help. It will help keep your brain healthier for longer. If you start in your middle age, it will help more. If you start when you're in your 20s, right, so the longer, the further back you go and you start having healthful habits,

the longer, and you maintain those habits, the longer you can maintain brain health. But I think the thing that's really important to understand is that scientists now think that the seeds of illness, like Alzheimer's disease and heart disease and diabetes, you know, illnesses that we think of as occurring, you know, in middle age or maybe later in life, those seeds are planted really, really, really early, like in childhood. And so, for example, there's very good evidence, very robust evidence to show that if you experienced prolonged adversity as a child, that you lived in poverty, that you were neglected, that you lived in an abusive household, there's a much higher increase in likelihood that you will develop illness as an adult. So I

think the important message is start today. If you're not, if you, you know, not everybody can control everything in their lives. Some people are more fortunate than others, but everybody can control something. And so healthful habits, as boring as it sounds to say, healthful habits are really good for brain health. And that's true for everyone, including little kids. It does seem that the brain is extremely busy doing a lot of things. And I imagine a lot of these things are going on in the background that we don't actually consciously experience.

Can you just pick one and talk about it? Everything, every experience you have, every action you take, comes from your brain predicting what's going to happen next. So to us, it feels as if we see things and then we react to them or we hear them and we react to them, that our brains are basically off until they're stimulated by the world, by something we see or hear, and then we react. That is not at all how the brain is wired or how the brain works.

In fact, your brain is basically always talking to itself, making predictions about what's going to happen next. So if we stopped time, your brain would be representing what's going on around you in the world and what's going on around what's going on inside your own body. And it would be predicting what's going to happen next. Based on your past experience, what will you see next? What will you hear next? What will you feel next? What will you do in the next moment?

That's pretty surprising, I think. But you know what's interesting is as you say that, that feels right to me. that is what I'm doing. Because I must be predicting what's going to happen next, because when something happens that seems somewhat unpredictable, I react to that like, well, I wasn't expecting that. Well, if I'm not expecting that, then I must have been expecting something else. Exactly. Exactly. And we don't go, we don't walk around being surprised all the time. And that's because our brains do a pretty decent job. If you have a neurotypical brain, your brain does a pretty decent job of predicting what's going to happen next. It's using past experience to do that. If you want to change what you experience or what you do in the future, the best way

to do that is to change what you're doing and you're experiencing right now. If you want to change who you are, you can't reach back into your past and change it. You can try. I mean, that's really what psychotherapy is for. But the best way to change, really, is to change what you're doing now. Cultivate new experiences. Try new things. These are all expensive things to do. As long as you take care of your body budget, you will reap the benefits because your brain will predict differently in the future. This prediction is happening really automatically. It's not like you have to stop and switch gears, which is really hard to do in the moment. You're just seeding your brain to predict differently. So in a sense, we're all cultivating continuously a past that is used

for predicting the future and actually creating the actions and experiences of your future self. Well, as you said, everything begins and ends with the brain. We see with our brain, we smell with our brain, we touch with our brain. It's really all about the brain. We see with our brain. We smell with our brain. We touch with our brain. It's really all about the brain, and it's really interesting to hear how it works and what we can do to optimize it. My guest has been Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett. She's a professor at Northeastern University, and the name of her book is Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain. There's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Lisa.

My pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Since this episode of Something You Should Know is sponsored by Geico, I wanted to make sure we worked in some car intel. Anyone who grew up in cold winter weather knows about letting a car's engine warm up before you drive it. Well, that might have been good advice for yesteryear's cars,

but it is just not necessary today. Modern engines warm up more quickly when they're driven, not idling in the driveway. And the sooner they warm up, the sooner they reach maximum efficiency and deliver the best fuel economy and performance. But if you are driving a cold car, don't rev the engine high over the first few miles while it's warming up. Here's another myth. After you

jumpstart your car battery, it will soon get back to full charge. The reality is it could take hours of driving to restore a battery's full charge, especially in the winter. That's because power accessories, such as heated seats, draw so much electricity that in some cars the alternator has little left over to recharge the battery. A load test at a service station can determine whether the battery can A load test at a service station can determine whether the battery can still hold a charge. If so, maybe a few hours on a battery charger might be needed to revive the

battery to its full potential. And that is something you should know. And that's our podcast today. This episode sponsored by GEICO. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up four hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, We dive deep into listeners' questions,

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Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong? And don't miss Fisting Friday, where we catch up, chat about pop culture, TV and movies. It's the perfect way to kick off your weekend. So if you're looking for a podcast that feels like a chat with your besties, listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Contained herein are the heresies of Redolph Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator.

Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The heresies of Redolph Buntwine, wherever podcasts are available.