That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - TJ Power

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

TJ Power joins Gaby to talk about DOSE! (Dopamine / Oxytocin / Serotonin / Endorphins)TJ gives us some tips on how to add little things into your routines to make you feel happier and better about yourself.One of the big problems that is effecting our health is how much time everyone is spending on their phones, so Gaby asks TJ for some top tips (and easy wins) to help us get off our phones and out in the open.Remember you can watch all our episodes on our YouTube channel - where you can also see our Show n Tell episodes (released every Friday). If you're enjoying the podcast, please do like, follow and subscribe so we can spread the word! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi everyone, Gabby here, and I'm absolutely thrilled to share some exciting news. Now, you know I love starting my day with a good breakfast, and there's one granola that's the go-to in our house. It's Lizzie's. So you can imagine how delighted I am to now be officially working with the fantastic team at Lizzie's as their new brand ambassador. It's a brand I believe in and have been enjoying ever since discovering it in my local waitrose years ago. Lizzie's has a variety of delicious granolas, including high protein, of which the chocolate, and peanut is my husband's absolute favourite and low sugar, which both have loads of different flavours for all taste.

My kids cannot get enough of it either. Plus, as many of you may know, I have a gluten allergy. So finding delicious and trustworthy gluten-free options is so important. And Lizzie's gluten-free granola range, honestly, it is delicious. My personal favour is the gluten-free caramelised nuts. Yum! So for a tasty and nutritious start your day, whatever your needs or preferences. Give Lizzie's granola a try.

It's my favourite at breakfast time and soon it will be yours too. TJ, your book is fantastic. Many congratulations. Everybody's talking about it. Everybody's buying it. Everybody's reading it. I'm very lucky to have met you before. I've read your book twice.

That's crazy. And I think it's the book that everybody is. should have. That's why I wanted you to come on this podcast. I wanted to talk to you for longer, because it is the book that everybody should have. And I've got nothing to do with sales of your book. I'm not going to make any money from sales of your book. But for people who don't know what the dose effect is, do you want to sort of give us an idea of the D-O-S-E, please? Yeah, definitely. So we as humans have these four brain chemicals living within us, one called dopamine that's become super famous, then oxytocin, then serotonin and endorphins. Each of them have very specific functions for us as human

beings. Each of them is getting disrupted by the way in which we live in the modern world with our addiction to phones and all our time spent inside and our sedentary lifestyles and so on. And dose basically provides a really clear answer to the challenges we're now facing. So people probably heard of all of those words. Yeah. And they'll think, oh, but they don't really affect me. And I know if I go to the gym, I'll feel better, but I don't want to go to the gym. I know if I laugh, I'm going to feel better. I know if I sleep well, I'm going to feel better, but I can't do it all. You know, it's, do you hear a lot of that? People say, no, yeah, that's great, that's great, but my life's too busy. I can't do that. I'm stressed, but, but, but, but I don't, there's a lot of buts.

For sure. And our life is very intense now. It's very fast-paced. It's digitally just super intensive and the whole purpose of dose is just to make it very, very simple to add little things into your life that feel achievable. With those chemicals, they've kind of been come to understood, come to be understood as like happy hormones. That's kind of what most people would think of them as. And they're really much more than that. They have very specific purposes for us. Dopamine is this one that creates all of our motivation. So when you're sitting there and you feel really flat and you can't be bothered to do anything, if you know the kind of actions that would boost dopamine, it can get you out of that rut. So what would, okay, so somebody's listening to

this now and they're just, they're slouched down, thank you very much for listening, but they're slouched down and they're thinking, oh, God, no, don't tell me what to do. It's actually very simple, isn't it? Yeah, so if we're in that rut, we're low in this dopamine chemical. Typically, we're low in it because of potentially being on our phone for too long. When we're on our phone for a long period of time, it uses up a lot of the dopamine that's in our brain very quickly, which is why it feels very addictive when we scroll these videos and constantly check our phones. Then when we're in that state, the thought of working or cleaning our house or going out for a walk, anything is horrible because you're like, I can't be bothered to do it.

The best thing you can do, first of all, is just count down. This is a really great thing to do in your brain. It's just count down from five seconds down to one. And you've set yourself a plan for what you're going to do as soon as you get there. So you're sitting there scrolling your phone, you can't be bothered to do anything. And you tell yourself, in five seconds, I'm going to get off this sofa. And then you go five, four, three, two, one. And it just creates a bit of anticipation that actually begins to help the dopamine

move in your brain, then immediately you go and put the phone in a different room to the room you're in. And that just gives you some physical separation. The best thing you could possibly do to just start building a little bit of dopamine is then to start organizing just a little area of your home. It might be emptying the dishwasher, emptying the sink, making your bed, but that's just going to start the engine effectively to then get you to the next step. See that's so simple. Okay. So the O. O is about oxytocin. This is our connection chemical. It's the chemical that really humans have sought after for all of time. Like there's nothing more humans want than love, falling in love,

like having children, that whole experience of friendship and family. That was really like the highest thing humans are really looking for. And it's really getting sacrificed for our pursuit of dopamine now. And what I mean by that is every time we're lying in bed with our partner and we're both scrolling our phones instead of like talking or cuddling, we're choosing dopamine, quick pleasure over oxytocin over love. And whenever we can begin to reprioritize that deep presence and good experiences with the humans that we care for, it begins to build this chemical. But is that also the sort of working from home ethic

that's happening now? Is it because you don't get human contact at all? For sure. Like we really... Zoom's or... Zoom isn't going to fulfill it. But it's kind of moderately satisfying it so we're like okay with the level we're at.

Like if everyone just had to sit in a room and not have any phones or computers, obviously we'd go crazy without seeing humans so we'd all go out. But because we're seeing each other kind of on social media and on Zoom, we're kind of like, oh, that's probably enough. But it's not actually filling us up, that experience of social connection.

And we really need to start considering how much of our day is spent deeply in connection with other humans. It's very interesting because I've been, I talk about it on this podcast, and I think I've mentioned it to you before as well, but I've been working on this big thing about tackling loneliness. Cool. And it's a huge project. But one of the things is that young people are suffering extreme loneliness. Yeah.

and going to awful lengths as we're aware. And partly it is because they're not interacting with people. And when they do interact, it's via a phone. And so just looking at somebody in the face is, it's magical what they can do. I mean, just saying, hello. I think I've told you. But, you know, when I'm on the train, when I'm on the tube, when I'm on the bus, when I'm walking, I talk to everybody.

I've always done it, but I always say hello to strangers, always. Lots of people who would talk, and there are a lot of people who will say, I feel very lonely. This is the first time somebody's spoken to me. But we're doing it to ourselves, aren't we really, as well? Maybe not the older generation, but the younger generation. Yeah, I think there has been a massive change. Like, my parents used to always get the train to London when they were working,

and they said that they had, like, relationships for all those people on the train. Like, they'd get on, because they were in, like, the same kind of patterns of time flow. they would say, how are you and how's your work and that sort of stuff. Now you'd never see people talk on the train. That's like a random weird thing to happen. If someone said hello to you, it's almost like, what the hell are they doing? I know some people give me very old looks. And that's sad that we've reached that point.

And we desperately are looking for this chemical to transfer in our brains. And there's this brilliant scientist at Yale University in America called Gillian Sandstrom. And she's done this whole research into this thing called fleeting connection, which is exactly what you've described, which is just good morning to strangers on dog walks. how are you at the brister's making your coffee, saying have a good day when you're in the cashier, with the cashier in the supermarket.

People that do that experience significant shifts in their well-being. And I think it's something we can intentionally become conscious off. Like when you're buying your food in the supermarket, you can actually go to the till where there's a human instead of the robot till. And you can just ask them how their day's going. And you see it creates this brightness within them. And that brightness is oxytocin. I don't work for M&S.

But M&S now do it. They've got chatty tills where you can... Chattie tills. Interesting. Yeah. We're trying to get some benches everywhere. I'm trying to work out where to put benches that people just know that they're the places to talk. You could talk.

Interesting. I think it's important. Okay, so the S. The S is for serotonin. Again, a chemical people have probably heard of, but don't necessarily know exactly what it does. It's really responsible for regulating our mood. And lots of us experience pretty volatile mood. Like, sometimes feel great, then feel really bad, then really good.

And it's very fluctuating. 90% of the serotonin chemical is creating. created in our gut, inside literally the intestinal lining within your gut, and it really wants our body to be thriving. So our gut health is a really big component of this, the nutrition that enters us. Then even things like how much sunlight our body gets, which is really big, like we spend almost no time outside at all now. For context, we used to spend about 85% of our time outside. 85% of our time in outdoor environments. Because we used to even sleep outside as hunter-gatherers. Sometimes we're being caged. Are you talking back then? I'm talking,

Yeah, 300,000 years. Humans spent about 85% of their time outside. Now we spend about 7% on average of our time outside. And that's actually reducing quite quickly. Like there's a huge amount of people spending 2% or 3% of their day outside. And every time we're outside, like it really builds this chemical. And we know it, particularly as Brits, like when the weather changes, we all feel these big mood fluctuations.

And people smile. People smile. Yeah, I love my life. It's sunny. And that feeling, that seroton. And then E. E is endorphins. Endorphins are a very useful chemical because it can de-stress our brain.

Our brains in the modern world are pretty tense and stressed out, quite frustrated. Like we feel that tension within us. Endorphins basically evolved as a chemical so that when we were in particularly high-stress situations like being attacked by an animal or whatever it may be looking and searching for food, these chemicals would release into us to immediately take the stress out of our brain so that we could focus on survival. And they really need physical action. One of the challenges we have now is we have loads of what's called.

called micro-stressers in the modern world. Loads of little things just stressing us out all day. Stuff on our phones, political opinions, all kinds of things. Money, loads of little things. And it all builds up. But our brain evolved to always move whenever it felt stress. And now it kind of builds up, but we just stay sitting down and we swallow all that stress into our body.

This is a big thing with kids as well. Like they're getting really stressed out, but they're just staying dead still and they're not releasing the stress from their body. The endorphins enable us to do that. So, I mean, we're all reading about it and we all probably know people who say that young people around them, all ages, very young, as we're aware, that there's a lot of five and six-year-olds who are having anxiety moments because of brought on from COVID and being so we're aware of all of that. But up into teenagers and early 20s, anxiety is on the rise.

What would you, as somebody who's studied all of this, what do you think is that, is it purely phones? It's rooted in the phone, but it's not just being on the phone. It's, what the phone is causing people to sacrifice as a result of being on it all the time. Because what calms us as a human being and settles our anxiety is things like really good sleep is massive, time outside in nature, time playing, particularly young people just like playing with their friends and not thinking, just like doing what's in front of them, time in the sunlight whilst they're in the nature. These are the kind of things that settle our whole nervous system and regulate it. A life where you're just smashing through TikTok and Snapchat doesn't provide the opportunity for the chemicals that are needed

through oxytocin and seroton and endorphins to chill them out and calm them down. And when you look back at being a kid, like I was like just on the curve of this. I had an iPhone when I was 11 years old. So I did grow up with an iPhone, but they weren't really, really good yet. Like TikTok and stuff wasn't around. So it wasn't like really addictive. And I experienced this like blended experience of lots of nature and friends and fun and building thoughts and being a kid,

but then also getting hooked into the phones and the gaming and got addicted to that. And I was still getting a nice balance. So my brain was capable of managing it. The kids we train today just aren't getting that balance right. There may be 90% on the phone and 10% being a real human. And that's just not the balance that will work. I suppose a lot of, you know, there's been a lot of conversation around all of this toxic masculinity. And because of adolescence, which was remarkable drama.

Yeah, I was seriously engaging. I was locked in when I was watching that. I mean, so disturbing as well. But that's, it's important that we all see that. And I love that it's available in schools now for free. and Netflix have done that. But when you see, as a neuroscientist and a psychologist, when you see this happening to young people,

don't you, probably you don't want to scream? I was going to say, don't you want to scream and say, right, come on, we've got to sort this. How do you see all of that? Because you just talked about, all the political beliefs and people are being very loud now, far, whatever, and the young people and follow them.

the toxic masculinity. How do you see that stopping? How can you see an end to that? I think it's unbelievably important that young people find direction in their life. I think a lot of young people feel a lack of pursuit of anything at all. And when you feel aimless in life,

your brain is going to instinctively crave dopamine. Your brain, as a human being, just looks for this chemical. And it did that for hundreds of thousands of years so that we could find food and build shelter and so on. And the brain just is always thinking, where's the dopamine, where's the dopamine?

When you take a young person, and we train thousands of young people, I'm with young people every week for hours and hours, when there's a young person that has some kind of direction, whether that's they play basketball or they do drama, or they have art or music or whatever it might be, even if it was something like learning to code on their computer, but it was some kind of active experience that they were doing, then they're willing to sacrifice just mindless crap on their phones.

And all of those challenges you're talking about toxic masculinity and the division and the political, like, intensity that we're experiencing. That's all just because we're over-consuming content on our phones. And if they have some kind of direction, they're then willing to actually sacrifice that time. So if there's a young person listening or a parent of a young person who is suffering with anxiety,

you'd say, try and find that something else. Yeah, and how I would do it is sit down together with your phones and both go on your Instagram reels or your TikTok, whatever your main kind of video feed is, and scroll it for about 10 minutes and look for the most frequently, reoccurring content in the feed. And you might discover that there's loads of videos of

of guitar or football or art or whatever it may be. And for a huge amount of us, we're basically just spending our time scrolling videos of the things we could be doing, but are just passively watching it instead of doing it. And if you, the parent and the young person could then agree, like once a day, I'm going to actually try and do something that's in this feed rather than just watch what's on the feet.

That begins the path. Mine's crazy dancing in the street. That's what I get fed. And I will, what you want to do. I will crazy. I will do that. I do it. I do it.

How did all of this start for you? I had an interesting kind of psychology from quite young. I played a lot of golf as a kid. That was like my original dream. How old were you when you were playing golf? Like from six to 14. Six? Yeah, I played it really intensely.

My whole goal was next Tiger Woods. That was the initial vision. And during that period of time, you then get lots of psychological support because golf's just like a very brain sport. It's so in your head. whether you're good or bad at it. And then at 14, interestingly, to what I'm now teaching on,

I basically gave up the whole golf thing because I discovered quick dopamine. I discovered going to parties and drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes and gaming. And I just like killed that whole dream for what I now trying to help young people to not spend their life doing. But it gave me an interest in psychology from young.

From 16, I then started studying psychology at college. I had about five years of a really intense period with my family where five people passed. the way in my family, which was just savage as a young guy. I didn't know how to process it at all. It was just like, I really didn't, I didn't know at any age you wouldn't know what to do, but I just was super young. So my game plan was just like get really drunk and just like completely ignore that reality. Up until about 21, I was then studying psychology a lot, but I was in this ironic place to kind of really destroying my brain chemistry whilst also learning about it.

And at 22 had this one like festival I went to where I really just damaged my brain. I left early. And I just remember lying there thinking, like, this isn't the right path for me. I'm thinking I just really need to try and sort my brain out and use all the knowledge I've learned about these chemicals as a game plan to try and do that. Really did get myself into a much better place within about 60 to 90 days of like real disciplined with it. I'm very young to be so disciplined as well. It's incredible. I just, I was never going to be able to get a job that was a part of it. Because I just like, I didn't fit in in school at all. I couldn't do all the exam stuff.

I just was constantly being pushed different schools. And it was just a nightmare, the school experience for me. So I knew like getting a job would also be a very similar type thing. If I was to have a boss, I probably wouldn't be very good at that. And I thought I'm going to need like a career. I'm going to need to do something after I finish university. And I thought getting me into the best place possible is just going to make that more likely to happen. So then I discovered I could do that, then made it into this dose thing.

And now it helps others, which is cool. But what's so remarkable for me listening to you, you know, that's a sort of very quick snapshot of you went through a really, really tough time, a really crap time. Yeah, horrible time. But how quickly something inside you knew that what you were doing wasn't right and you had to fix it? Yeah, I was really afraid of the choir. The quiet was like horrible to me going on walks or going to sleep in the choir. And I joined this in my final year of university.

I went to this like mindfulness lecture series. had never heard of mindfulness and I honestly picked it on the list because I thought it would be a bit easier than all my like intense clinical law and all this like psychology stuff that I was doing I thought oh that looks a bit lighter then came to discover it was actually the hardest module

I ever had to do because we got there and at the start of each one you'd have to sit in silence for like 25 minutes and breathe and although Are you able to do it? Now I'm able to do it Were you then? No it was hell I actually remember so well like sitting in this circle and opening my eyes

about 10 minutes in thinking Jesus this is so hard to do this. And actually, I saw everyone else was really committed to it. So I actually got my phone out. I went on my phone in the meditations, which is just like so the reality I'm trying to pull people away from now. But that's just because I was so deep in it. That's why I care for this stuff. And Jerry, who was the kind of psychologist and lecturer who was taking this module, I just like really connected with him and just felt that there was something down that lane in the quiet for me. And when you say like, it's interesting, you had that experience of like wanting change or becoming aware of it, it really was in just like a lot of quiet.

I think the brain has a huge amount of wisdom in it that it will tell you. I just think we never let it speak to us anymore. It's interesting you're saying about In the Quiet because my kids do it. Most people you see on trains and tubes have headphones in all the time. I don't because I go on and on about I want to hear. I'm very nosy. So I like listening to people's conversations. But that's how I come up with ideas for TV shows and radio shows and things.

I just want to know what's going on. I've always been very nosy. But people do. That's it. They're either listening, thank you, to a podcast, or they're listening to music. It's never silent anymore. Never silent.

And I think for many people, they thought of it is actually just scary. It's like, I don't want to listen to that noise in my head and my worries and the things that are stressing me. So it's just like you put it in and suddenly it all kind of talks to you, that voice. It still kind of talks to you that voice, but you can't hear it very well

because there's another voice are also being played into your ears. And I think for many people, I don't think necessarily starting with, for example, silence on the tube would be the right place to explore what silence is like. Because it's just like an intensive place. If you can get to that point, that's really good.

But I think in nature specifically, because it's so calming for our nervous system, just being in the nature, it's powerful. Oh my word. I get up very, very early to do various breakfast things. Cool. Breakfast shows. And when I get up for morning live,

I wanted to the studio, it's, it's, you know, I'm up at 3.30 and I just listen to the, I love it. I love it. Yeah, they're like crisp early morning. Oh, and you can hear the silence and you can hit, then you can hear the birds and you can hear sounds from the furthest away sound. It's a, it's a trick that we learned when I was at college, but when training, but it was there, we had this wonderful tutor there, wonderful man called Ian. And Ian used to say, what you have to do is, listen.

to the silence and then hear the furthest away sound. I could try it. And then go to even further away. It's magical. Because I sit on a bench in the morning. I do this breathing thing and I have a period where I listen to sound. I've never tried to listen to the furthest sound. Try the furthest away sound.

And you can notice the distances, can you, if you pay attention? If you really concentrate, because you'll hear a bird that's closed. And then you'll hear a car. But you've just, and then you'll know that, oh, there's a train. And it's quite extraordinary. Cool. And you do that in the morning when you're walking to work. Well, I do that. If I, when I'm walk, I walk everywhere. So I'm very lucky. I walk about 10 miles a day. I'm able to. How many steps is that? Do you track the steps or not?

Yeah, I do. I do. I actually, it was the steps thing. Well, I probably, it's around 20,000, just about 20,000. Really? Every day. That's good. But it's been, it's an absolute, I go on and on about it on my socials as well, because I think it's an absolute lifesaver. It's good for your mind, body, spirit and the planet. So it's just good for you. It's a win. And everyone goes, oh, walking.

And then they start, they go, oh, you know what? I do feel better. Yeah, steps are really good. Like, it's such an underrated way in which you can keep yourself fit and your mind clear, for sure. My 90-year-old father-in-law does, it counts his steps. Cool. When he goes walking, which I'm awful, which I think is fantastic. So with you, this wanting to help other people,

you helped yourself but when did you realise you wanted to help other people? I I was pretty drawn towards that straight away like that summer when I was doing it I just remember thinking like

I have a lot of friends that also were in very unhealthy patterns like I was like to be honest most young people I know are in pretty unhealthy patterns with all the dopamine and the alcohol and the partying and the phones and porn

and all that stuff's pretty across everyone at least who I know And I set up like a WhatsApp group that summer called Level Up. And it was like if anyone wants to be in this WhatsApp group. And I'll just each day tell you what I'm doing. And if fancy doing it, you can. And there was like, I don't know, 20 people in there or something.

And I enjoyed that experience of just coaching them. I wasn't charged for it or anything. I was just helping my friends. And I liked that experience. And then one of the people in my family who passed away in that journey when I was 16 was my beautiful cousin who's called Vicky. And she was really young. She was 27 when she passed away.

and far too young. Far too young. And my family set up this quite called Cancer Charity for young women as a result of that experience. And that summer, because I had all this understanding of kind of the brain and calming the nervous system, we thought maybe I could do some kind of program

for all the women that were in this charity. So that was kind of the first thing I ever built was like a brain chemistry teaching for women in that situation. And I learned a lot from coaching them. I really found that a very fulfilling experience and there's tons of cool science you can go into in terms of like nature and cancer and mindfulness and cancer and all kinds of things that just help settle the body when you're going through a really intense time and that then kind of led to the

build of the first ever kind of coaching program I could take people through and then it kind of rapidly like random moments happen where companies or schools came across things I was sharing and then it kind of evolved from there so the word therapy would you call yourself a therapy and people are sort of fearful and worried about saying therapist, aren't they? Would you call yourself a therapist in the broadest sense? No, I actually wouldn't say I am a therapist. I do believe in therapy.

I have therapy myself. I've had therapy every month for like four years or something. And so I do think therapy is really good to speak through what you're navigating in your life. For me, more I'm just like helping people with behavioural change in terms of all their habits. That's what I'm doing with these dose chemicals is we're stuck in pretty unhealthy patterns

stemming from our phone and then it's knocking on to loads of other aspects of our relationships and exercise and sleep and movement and so on. And it's more habit change and behaviour that I'd say I'm oriented towards. And it means that there's no, I don't necessarily in my work help people like bring up challenges they're navigating in terms of their like grief or something like that. That's not where my expertise lies. I would personally be able to help like a friend with that kind of thing.

Because obviously I've had a lot of experience. You've had a lot of experience. But it's not where I do my professional stuff. But if somebody comes to you, I mean, you must get it all the time that people say, you, oh, this has happened, or that's happened, or I can't do this, or I can't do this, or how should I do this? You're not backwards and coming forward. You're there to help everybody. I mean, you are, you're a giver. Yeah, for sure. I do think, and we can return to the oxytocin chemical, but giving is literally like the purpose of basically being a human. We're

just designed to just help a group survive. That's what our brain is programmed to do. In the modern world, that's kind of getting broken down a little bit. We're becoming more focused on our own experience of life and the group. So in general, giving, I think, is important. And typically, if I do help someone, I would just like start with their phone because it just seems across everyone, the phone is having an impact, then get them into nature, then get them into the quiet, then get them thinking about the kind of things they could take their brain through in the choir in terms of what are their goals that they could be focused on moving towards and hearing kind of the truth that's in their system. I think we have this, like, genius thing in us. I don't know whether it's our soul,

there's some kind of radar in us that actually just knows what's best for us in our life. And I normally just get people to try and tap into that thing. People are scared to do that, though. Yeah, they are. Like when I listened to mine for the first time in the quiet nature, it was not very nice to me. It was like, yeah, it was so brutal to me about how I was approaching alcohol and work and my relationship with my mum and dad. And there was so much stuff that was so easy for me to just keep avoiding.

But then really, when I was honest with myself, like, it was pretty good guidance that my body was trying to give me. And our brain and bodies are just genius survival machines that just have a lot of programming into our DNA that want us to make sure the group survives and make sure we flourish or that we can have a family and we can contribute. And deep in there somewhere, there's an answer that we really need to hear. Do you think it's about trust? Do you think people are scared to trust, to trust themselves, to trust others? Yeah, I think trust is definitely lowering. You literally need a certain level of oxytocin in your brain to actually experience the emotion of trust. And we're very low in that love chemical and trust really stems from love both our actual respect and love for

ourselves builds trust with ourselves then also trust with others and i think whilst obviously i'm someone on the internet sharing health ideas for people to experiment with i think for many people it's actually too much consumption of different ideas is making them not trust their own intuition about their approach to food or exercise or sleep whatever it might be like i think we can get overwhelmed with like, wow, I need to do all these different things, when there's actually something in you that just knows the food that you should eat and when you should go to bed and how much you should walk each day.

And I think great to learn online, but then also great to listen to your own insight as well. I think there's also the word fear, and I do use that word a lot. I think there are a lot of people who are really fearful. They're fearful of life. They're fearful of themselves. They're fearful of what ifs.

I mean, I also, I bore people about, I'm very lucky I've always lived in the moment, live now. In this moment, I'm not going to have that second with you ever again. That's gone. That's gone. But it's a lot of people, a lot of people, and quite rightly and understandably, are very caught up in the past. And very fearful of tomorrow because they don't know how they're going to pay their bills, how they're going to, whatever it is. There were a lot of very, very heavy things. So what do you say to those people

who are fearful of the past, fearful of the future and not quite sure of the now? How do you help them with that? Yeah, I think this is an area where the whole gratitude piece becomes really important. People do go blah, gratitude, well. I know, they can't be bothered with it. And like, I would have said to say,

I think that it needs a new word for some words. Like, gratitude is just a word that people go super-connected with. It needs some kind of thankful word. But when I, I didn't get raised in a religious household with like Christian parents or anything like that. And over the last three or three years or so, I started praying. And I've never done that before. Never had anyone around me doing it. Pray to God.

Praying to God, but not necessarily the exact thing that like a Christian belief system would be. Whilst I think that also could be fantastic. But just praying to some kind of energy that's put together. There's so many religions out there. So it could be a god of any religion. You don't pray to a religious god, you pray. Pray to just like the, in my head I'm imagining that some kind of energy has put this earth together. Like, I mean, there is life all over this earth and all the other ones are just like boring sandy rock planets.

So like there's something that made our planet really cool. And I don't think we did it to like something else that's bigger than us might have done it. And in those moments, because I struggle with what you just described. I'm more struggle with future stressing myself out about what's coming than the past thing. but it could be either way. And sometimes when I do my breathing thing in the morning, my brain will like forget about that whole breathing thing and then just get lost in like some worries.

Like everybody else. Like everyone. And in this, I'll do some kind of prayer where I'll just like really immerse myself into what is going to plan right now and what I'm grateful for right now. And I think it needs to be very consistent that process to train your brain to live more in the now.

Like your brain may naturally live there. Maybe you've done some strategic things to get it there. But I think whilst everyone thinks, oh, I can't be bothered with gratitude. If you do it on a very frequent basis, it just is going to make your life a more blissful and peaceful experience. I think it's worth it.

It's absolutely worth it. But I mean, I've had the conversation with so many people where I'll say, you know, what are you grateful for today? They go, oh, God, not the gratitude, mindfulness, oh, breathing. It's funny how people, and I think it's a fear of being in the moment for them. understand like I said it's totally understandable it's not easy to do and there's a but it's very difficult for somebody to to take that gratitude thing on board or the mindfulness thing because they're maybe they feel that it's not going to work it's not going to work yeah yeah i think you just have to ask

yourself like if if you're really happy and things are feeling good then what you're doing right now is going to plan but if if something doesn't feel right in your life and you feel pretty stressed out or anxious or worried, maybe it's worth just like experimenting with some of these age old strategies that people have been talking about for thousands of years. So things stand the test of time because they work. Because they work, yes. That is one of those things that just like it does seem to make a significant difference. And I think it comes back to that like honesty thing with yourself.

Like I think we're lacking a truthful relationship with our experience of life. And I think it'd be good to hear it. So for you and there I was talking about living in the moment and I do mean it. And it's interesting that you said you do stress about what's next. You've taken on a big load, really. You're helping fix people. And that is a big load to take on. And you are very young still.

And you've got so much more to give. And I'm so excited for whatever those things are. But it's interesting. And thank you for being honest and saying, you do stress about what the next thing is. And I wonder if that's because I'm going back to your book now. it's been a massive huge success and a huge hit. Does that leave you with slight anxiety?

It's like, oh, you weren't expecting it to be the massive hit that it has been. Yeah. I presume you won't probably. No, I wasn't. So it's a weird thing to say, but I'm quite pleased to hear that you also have those anxieties that we all have still. I really have only been able to come up with this whole dose thing because I, struggle so much in my brain. Like if I was just like chilling, like I have some friends, two of my male friends come to mind that like in my head, their brain chemistry just must be like

naturally elevated across all the chemicals because they just breeze through life. Life feels pretty good. They're always pretty happy. And they can get really drunk and they don't get that anxious after drinking loads of alcohol or whatever it might be. I have such an opposite experience of that. Like if I don't keep things like pretty pretty good with my health, like my brain just really suffers. and I have a brain that's very future-oriented in terms of planning. Like, I'm always trying to plan. I had a bit of, like, chaos whilst I was growing up, and I saw some problems happen with my family.

So then I was, I'm always trying to, like, stop that happening with my own experience, my own future family that I'm going to have. So, yeah, I do experience these things. And that's why I've tried to build, like, a nice, simple game plan, basically for my own brain, but then discovered it works for other brains as well. So that's what you've done, is what you were saying is listening to you, your, I'm going to say listening to your gut, because that's, you know, old expression, but listening to our inner gut, our inner feeling.

You've done that for yourself and you've very kindly shared it with everybody else. Yeah, like, that's where I'm trying to find the ideas to help people, is within my own experience. And recently I've been constructing this new idea within my mind called dopamine land and this idea of living in dopamine land. Is that like Disneyland, but even better? Unfortunately, it's not actually a positive thing. But I'm not a positive thing But we There is a positive side to it

Which is escaping to the oxytocin oasis Which is where our brain actually wants to be But Dofmanland is like a life where life feels like Very addictive and stimulating And overwhelming and exhausting It's a bit like Disneyland Pretty much Disneyland

I mean Disneyland is also like They've constructed a dopamine land A super high stimulation place And the kind of symptoms of being in dopamine land Would be you're constantly checking your phone you feel like you're always working. You think about money too much. That'd be like a sign you're living in dopamine land.

Maybe you're feeling pretty burnt out and exhausted. You're doom scrolling social media. A lot of us are there. The only way I've been to come up with that idea is realizing those challenges I'm facing in my own mind. Like for a period of time, I found money was just in my thought process too much just thinking about money.

Like paying the bills and like different costs that were coming in and just stressing my mind. Same for everybody. I mean, you know, it's expensive at the moment. The cost of living crisis that we're still in. It's, there's a lot of angst around that. For sure. And then I start thinking like, always being in that dopamine land where I'm like hyper-stimulated,

always working, thinking about money, that's just not a peaceful place for a human to be. It's necessary to work and to think about money. But it's not a place we want 100% of our time to be spent. Absolutely. So then I start thinking to my brain like these are some things I'm experiencing. How can I get myself out of this with oxytocin and nature and serotonin and all these kind of things? And that process, then I find that the more I reflect on my own experience, it seems that others are also having a similar one.

You should do, if you're thinking of this, then apologise. I apologize now if I've ruined it. But I think you should do a cartoon for young people. That's so interesting. That's what you just said. Very young people. And they're all called.

So there's serotonin. Serotonin could be good. Yeah. And then dopey. Yeah. That's it. That's your cartoon. Dopee mean.

Yeah. Netflix. Serotonin. And the adults get it from it as well. Yeah, I think that would be my dream. I really want to have kids quite young. Like, I really want kids quite soon. Yeah, you said that to me when I met you,

and I thought that was so honest, because people don't say that anymore. Yeah, I just... How old are you now? 20-8. 28. So now, like, compared to my friends, my friends are all going to think I'm nuts

if I start having kids. But, like, I just, like, really want to have kids. Stop worrying about what the people think. Yeah, there you go. And I think once I've got kids, and I discovered just how unbelievably hard, it actually is this whole, like iPad thing and phones and keeping them entertained and stuff.

Then hopefully I'll be able to create that cartoon idea, something that can support them. They can do it now. You don't have to have kids to do it. No, do you not think I need to feel the experience of being a parent. No, no, because you understand how people's minds work. Yeah, it's true. Because children are people, adults are people. We're all just people.

Yeah. You just do the cartoon. Interesting. And the kids' books. Okay. They're coming. But you call them serotonin. Serotonin.

Serotonin is a good name. Dopamine. You are dopy when you're low in dopamine. So we endopin, mean, yeah. And serotonin and ox, yeah. There would be something on the other two. Oxi.

Oxi. Could just be called oxy, like Roxy. Yeah, oxy. Toesin. And then endo. Endo isn't quite a good name. Endy. Endy.

Endy. Endy. Endy. Endy could be called. Endy. I could see the characters. They could each have like specific superpowers, also challenges based on how that chemical operates.

There we are all sorted. You get real people to do the animation. You get the children's books actually drawn by hand by real artists. And you get it out there and the young people do the voices as well. Yeah, young people doing the voice would be cool. They would learn a lot about the chemicals who ever learned that script. Exactly. You make it all accessible and then schools have them as a school book and parents.

There we go. Whole idea is done. There we go. Future is done. All sorted. It's such a pleasure talking to you. It really is. And I just keep flying, TJ.

Thanks. Keep flying because we need you. That's beautiful to hear. Thank you.