The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Break Through: Master Your Default Mode and Thrive by Hosein Kouros-Mehr

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

Break Through: Master Your Default Mode and Thrive by Hosein Kouros-Mehr https://amzn.to/4234lHv Yourdefaultmode.com "Break Through is a fascinating, science-backed exploration of the default mode network (DMN), considered to be the actual location of ‘self’ in the brain. Understanding and healing our DMN is a promising way to tackle society’s mental health epidemic.” - Rick Doblin, PhD, Founder of MAPS What's stopping you from being truly happy and at peace? Could it be your wandering mind that constantly revisits painful thoughts and bad habits? Scientists now have a name for the wandering mind—the default mode network (DMN), a barrier that can prevent you from enjoying life. Your DMN takes you away from the present moment and encourages you to ruminate on the past and future. This can lead to painful conditions—mental knots—like stress, anxiety, emotional pain, addiction, and depression. Fortunately, you can break through this wall to the blissful peace in your core. Backed by scientific data, Break Through connects the medical and spiritual realms on a journey of inner healing. With a holistic approach, you can master your default mode and rise to your best self. Unlock health, happiness, and inner peace, and open the door to new possibilities that you once deemed impossible.About the author Hosein Kouros-Mehr, MD, PhD is an author and physician-scientist who has spent over two decades in cancer research and drug development. Thanks to his background, Hosein recognized the extraordinary ramifications of a recent scientific discovery: the default mode network (DMN), which encodes the human ego and influences our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Recognizing the profound impact of this breakthrough on self-understanding (both from clinical and personal experience), he wrote "Break Through: Master Your Default Mode and Thrive" to help readers master the DMN and live happier, more fulfilling lives. Hosein is also the author of two futuristic novels, "Extinction 6" and "Project Bodi: Awaken the Power of Insight," that explore the inner workings of the mind. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm Moses Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show. We certainly appreciate you guys coming by. As always, the Chris Voss Show family is a family that loves you,

but doesn't judge you, at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. But you know how to get on good terms with your mother-in-law? I came up with this last show. Refer the show to her and her family and friends, and she'll love you much more, I'm sure. Or maybe not. But you can try. It's worth a try.

Tell her and all your friends and relatives to go to goodreads.com for just christmas linkedin.com for just christmas christmas one of the tiktokity christmas facebook.com and all those crazy places on the interwebages in the sky today we have an amazing author on the show with us today he's the author of the newest book that just came out november 30th 2023 breakthrough master yourthrough, Master Your Default Mode and Thrive. This is going to be a highly motivational show. We have Hussein Kiran Mair on the show with us today. He's going to be talking to us about his latest book and everything that went into it, his insights, and he's going to be advising you on how you too can break through. He's also on top of being an author, a physician, and scientist.

So he's just not making this stuff up like I would, folks. He knows stuff. He's been to school and he's had the schooling done. He is a doctor, a PhD, an author, and physician scientist. He spent over two decades in cancer research and drug development. I did some drug development myself but that was in high school thanks to his background he uh that was a funny one he recognized the extraordinary ramifications of recent scientific discovery the default mode

network dmn which encodes the human ego and influences our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Recognizing the profound impact of this breakthrough on self-understanding, both from a clinical and personal experience, he wrote Breakthrough, Master Your Default Mode, and Thrive to help readers master the DMN and live happier, more fulfilling lives. So anybody who doesn't want to live a happier, fulfilling life, you can just turn the show off right now, but it's just for the happy wannabes people. Welcome to the show. How are you, Hussein? Thank you, Chris. Great to be here. And it's

Hussein Kourosmer. You're definitely not the first to mispronounce it, but great to be on the show. Thank you for correcting me. So give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs? So it's simple. It's your default mode dot com. And we'll be talking about that default mode network. So very simple to find. There you go. So give us a 30,000 overview.

What's inside your new book? Yeah. So, you know, I've been talking to folks over the last year, maybe about 200 of my friends and colleagues, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and only a few of them have heard about this default mode network, which was really striking. So I really wrote this book to inform the public about this massively important discovery, which is the default mode network, which is essentially your wandering mind, right? So you've probably experienced it several times today already. You're focused on something, driving a car, brushing your teeth, and suddenly your mind

wanders away from the present. It takes you to the past, to an old conversation, or has you worried about the future? So that's that wandering mind. That is the default mode network. Oh, really? That explains a lot. I have ADHD. So I have that problem where I'm talking to people and it's like,

squirrel, you know, that sort of thing. So is that part of, is ADHD part of the whole network? That's exactly right. So that default mode network is what pulls you away from the present moment. So it's a big driver of ADHD. It's also the DMN, as I call it. You'll find it in patients with depression, patients with addiction, patients who have PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. So when it's overactive, this default mode can cause us a lot of problems.

But there are ways, as I talk about in the book, to silence it and to heal it. And that's really coming from a place of self-understanding. There you go. Well, that makes sense. What goes what calls into how did you discover this what was the what was the thing that made you go hey whoa this is a thing so you know this has been popularized by a few people like michael pollan several years ago he had a book called how to change your mind and it you know the people who are into the this new branch of plant medicines there's a group of people who are looking to develop that for, you know, patients with PTSD. So in that small community, they know about the default mode network.

But I realize that most of the general public really isn't aware of this and if you think about it you know the dmn and the ego really sits at the intersection of science medicine but also spirituality and mental health so it's a big big discovery that i think is going to open the door over the next couple of decades to some new you know new medicines and new ways of thinking about the human brain ah so there might be some ways to maybe fix stuff like better like adhd or i don't know it is part of it too one of the things well you can kind of refer to this but one of the things that you have sometimes with depression or adhd is your your mind likes to beat up on you with thoughts like hey remember that one time in 1969 you you were said something and hurt someone's feelings you know exactly beat you up with bad stuff you did and you know the hardest part is you know learning to be present and going

hey i can't i can't change what happened there like why are you bugging me so that's right and we call that the monkey mind and for some people it is on all the time. I mean, you, you have unfortunately victims of war, let's say, and, and folks coming back from war that are never fully present. Their, their mind is always back in the past and it's, it can be a painful way to live. But the good news is that by understanding your default mode and healing it, you can actually, well, break through to, break through to a happier state. And, you know, in the book, it's really holistic in the sense I've got things in there related to therapeutic and non-therapeutic ways of doing this. So like vodka?

Yeah, it's funny. Vodka. I used to use vodka for the monkey brain. It doesn't work quite well. It doesn't actually. It might in the short term, but in the long run, it causes way more problems. I would agree. You talk about that in the book, but there are other ways of doing it. How to silence your default mode, mindfulness exercises, things like prayer, things. And there's many different kinds of mindfulness exercises.

What about burning virgins at a bonfire or anything like that? Does that help? like prayer things and there's many different kinds of mindfulness exercises so and people like what are like burning virgins at a bonfire or anything like that does it help you know nothing that exciting although you know there's a there's a part about plant medicine psychedelics and oh really they can be used yeah actually there might be a goat sacrifice in there somewhere maybe no goat sacrifice but damn it damn it the the funny thing here is well it's not quite funny but if you look back at at the use of plant medicines going back thousands of years right in in among like native american tribes it turns out that what those plant medicines do in part is shutting down the default mode network yeah and and that's how they work

so the and what we're doing now is trying to understand what is the actual medical value of these plant medicines so there are folks like rick doblin working on this and there might be fda approval of some of these in the next you know year yeah i think i had some burnouts as friends when i was a kid do people use that term anymore yes so 80s yeah i had some burnouts as friends when I was a kid. Do people use that term anymore? So 80s. I had some burnout friends who were doing a lot of testing and research, scientific, they said. I know pot does that to me. I think it does it to me, where it makes you just really calm and relaxed

and kind of shuts down all the monkey stuff. I don't know. Do you find that's something that helps people? Marijuana doesn't, as far far as i know does not impact the default mode network it definitely calms you down it triggers things like gaba which is the it's a neurotransmitter that calms you down so yeah i mean it's been shown to help sleep but in terms of that monkey mind it it doesn't quite affect that wow now i've learned a new term here i take gaba to go to sleep so yeah's good stuff. I just take like a whole handful of pills and nevermind.

But yeah, GABA. And I think there's like a bunch of other stuff, melatonin. And there's like a whole cocktail that I take to go to sleep. That's all herbal people. Don't, don't get me wrong,

but this is a new term. I've learned monkey mind. I've always wondered what that is. Cause there was once a time in my life where my ADHD and depression, it got so bad after the death of my dog, that the monkey brain mind was so out of hand, I was considering ending it. And I think that's how some people end up in that situation where the only way you feel like you can get it to stop is to end your life

because the monkey mind is just whipping you relentlessly and it's the only sanity you can get it's a weird place to be there there i've got a chapter on emotional pain it's a big topic all across the world right now unfortunately but you know the if it's you know things like prayer things like mindfulness exercises definitely help. When you, when you, part of this is self-understanding, coming to realize and really learn how your brain is working and why this emotional pain is coming up. When you have that self-discovery, it can open things up. So, and really, this book is not an academic book. This is not a book about facts.

This is a book about helping you self-discover and understand why your brain is doing what it does and to help you heal. I imagine, you know, it may be you have a problem or identifying is the first step towards healing. Absolutely. Number one step. Number one step is the intention. The intention that I want to heal. I want to be happy and healthy number two is self-understanding and then number three is putting together a plan and implementing it and

it's not you're not going to see a change overnight but gradually you can completely overcome emotional pain there you go you can beat back the monkeys i'm thinking of a who's that artist we had on the monkey on my back song. Yeah, get the monkey off your back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy from Genesis. I forget his name. But that song's going through my head now.

It'll be there all week. Hey, is there any way, is that part of it too? Whenever I get a song stuck in my head, like, you know, there's certain songs, if you hear them once, it's stuck in your head like you're asleep at night and it's playing and you're just going insane from it. Is that part of the monkey brain too? That's part of the monkey brain.

So it could be a memory of anything. It could be a memory of a conversation you had as a kid with somebody. And what happens is sometimes that memory comes up and any emotion attached to that memory also comes up, which is why people who come back from war, you know, they remember, but it takes them back to that memory also comes up which is why people who come back from war you know they were they remember but it takes them back to that that raw emotion and it makes it so painful yeah you know i was hearing the other day i don't know if this applies to what you were talking about the monkey brain but in the connection to emotion everything but i was hearing that one of the things that was interesting about the vietnam soldiers is when they were over there they were doing like heroin and all sorts of shit and when they came back the military was like hey

how do we get all these guys off heroin get them straight again and turns out taking them out of the environment that they were in they all came back and were cleaned up they didn't have to go through rehab or anything by putting them in a new environment that probably wasn't hellish like vietnam and they were and they were also back with their family so they had love and support and stuff it's kind of interesting conversation i heard that's interesting i i'm gonna look that up i actually wasn't aware of that that's very interesting and so environment's a big deal so like when you when you when you when you rehab addicts they clean up when they're in the rehab right but then when you put them back in the environment, it's like being an alcoholic and you want to quit drinking.

You have to quit going to the bar. You have to quit going to the environment. That's right. There's a chapter on addiction. So addiction, there's a couple steps in it. Again, intention is number one. I want to get clean, right? That's front and center.

What's most important in addiction, the first part to get clean, right? That's front and center. What's most important in addiction, the first part is surrendering, right? And I try in the book, AA is there. There are Christian-based approaches. There are Buddhist-based approaches. There are approaches for non-religious people in there. The process of surrender is the same, whether you're Christian, Buddhist, non-religious, it's the same process. It's admitting to yourself that this is not working. I need a higher power to help me.

And then after surrender, it's insight. It's relying on that higher power to give you the insight to lead you out of that darkness. So there's a whole chapter on it, but it's a very important topic. Definitely. So is addiction part of that too? there's a whole chapter on it, but it's a very important topic. Yeah, definitely. So is addiction part of that too? I know a lot of people that are addicted to drugs. They have trauma from childhood, sexual trauma,

usually other sorts of trauma from childhood. And a lot of their drug use is trying to get that. I think that monkey brain off their back, because it's just whipping them and driving them to constantly try and self heal. Is that, is that is that that's you nailed it this is all yeah this is all interrelated and people are all different but for some people you know they're they've you know the addiction comes from trying to medicate

an unresolved emotional pain right a trauma so this is all interrelated. And so I call these knots. There's 11 knots in this book that you kind of break through. It starts off with stress, something that we all experience and how to prevent stress from happening. And then the second chapter is on emotional pain. So that once you overcome that old emotional pain, it helps you with up with the other knots and actually addiction is number three and i call it addictive craving because not everyone's addicted to drugs there's some people addicted to their phone there's some people addicted to food food you're right i mean any number of things so money gambling i mean just

vegas oh my god people are addicted stock market market. You know, I mean, gaming. There's all kinds of addictions out there. But those are the big three. Stress, emotional pain, addiction. And then the other knots. Once you unravel those, the others are a lot easier to handle. I stick to one addiction now. Just coffee.

That's how we roll in the old age. We can't do any of the other stuff anymore bodies you're not doing that we're not we're it's going to be a very bad time for you if you have that vodka so you just drink your little coffee boy you have your water your little vitamins and shut the hell up and so we've come to that agreement on this but no i love this idea now part of this you know people talk about the ego self and is there another self? There's an ego self and then there's the conscious. There is another self.

So how does that work? Well, until now, these have been ideas that haven't been grounded in any science. So it's been called, you know, the higher self and the ego and the id and the mind. There's been all these terms. The way I view it is you've got the default mode network on the one hand, it's the wandering mind, it's the monkey mind. On the other hand, I call it the observing mind. And there's a different network there. It's called the central executive network. When you're in that state, you're fully present. And it's called being in the zone, right? When you're in the zone, you're fully present. And it's called being in the zone, right?

When you're in the zone, you're fully present. There's no mental chatter. There's no doubt. You just execute. And so I call that central executive. That's your higher self. And it is possible to go from default mode to central executive and spend most of your time being in the zone. It is absolutely possible to do that

that's really where i like to be is in that zone when you have command and control and that monkey brain isn't whipping you to death and everything i really like that stoicism has really helped me with a lot of i think to fight the monkey brain because when it comes around i just run it off and i i don't let and And part of it is controlling my emotions more through stoicism. I love stoicism. I've got quotes in there from Marcus Aurelius, the Roman emperor.

What an enlightened person he was. I keep the book right here off the screen, so every now and then the monkey brain goes off. I look over and go, stoicism, bitch. Which book is that?'s it's meditations oh i love that book yeah so i keep it right off to my left eye so i can see it every day and it just gives me a kind of like a little i don't know what you call

a mnemonic plug or whatever and so anytime you know something's going weird or something i'll look over and i'll be like sto stoicism, calm down, buddy. It's going to be fine. And that's really helped me, the focusing on not controlling my emotions. And for those of you listening out there, I don't know what it is that I talked about stoicism. They think that it teaches men not to have emotions. And it's not that.

It's that men have logic and reason we have the ability to filter our emotions and so we can we can look you can feel something you go why am i feeling this way is this necessary it's appropriate do i really need to you know be over feeling this way or can we just go well that's that's great you feel that way and cool all right well we'll just work on that and fix that for you. Okay, buddy. And that's it. You don't have to go through, I don't have to become a Karen in a, in a, in a part, you know, raging at somebody. So there, yeah, there's a, there's a chapter in here on negativity, negativity and sort of judgmental thinking. And one of the big, you know, the, the ways to heal that is through what's called equanimity, which is what the Stoics were all about.

It's sort of be at ease with unease. Yeah. Marcus Aurelius said a man endures his pain and doesn't add to it. Yeah. And when you overcome that negative, that judgmental negative mind, it's an amazing release. Oh, definitely. Yeah yeah it definitely is a mental calmness composure and evenness of temper even a difficult situation this is why when you mostly meet guys who are meditations heavy readers they'll always use the line it is what it is

because the line i i don't know i don't mean to be the professor it is what it is but basically what the line means is i accept what it is you know life isn't fair and there's bad shit that's going to happen how i respond to it with logic and reason and the emotions i might be feeling is the important part right yeah so i love good i was just going to say, if you look across, you know, what, what Buddha said, what Jesus said, they all say the same thing. I mean, they're saying in terms of reacting to things, you know, don't react. If you're, if you're, if you're in pain, experience your pain. You don't need to react against the pain. Buddha called that the second arrow that hits you after the first arrow. And, and, and so when you, yeah, when you come to just

experience unease for what it is, it can change your whole life outlook. So. Yeah. And you can deal with pain because you can look at it and go, okay, I'm in pain and this, this hurts and I'm feeling a little emotional distress from it, but it's okay. We'll get through it. We'll take some aspirin, and we'll do it, and we don't have to end up in a pool puddle of the fetal position over it, or hopefully it's not that bad of pain, but it can really help.

And so do you think stoicism and being in that mindset puts you in that other brain, not the monkey brain? What did you say, the command and control brain? The central executive, the observing mind. Yeah, that's right. So when you're in that observing mind, sometimes when I go through pain or anxiety, I just really tune into it and I watch it. I just kind of like a scientist would watch or just an observer would just kind of look at it. And what's amazing is sometimes I'll notice the pain is going up and going down and then sometimes the pain just goes away. I'm

like, well, where the hell did that go? It's pretty amazing. Welcome to being 55. You wake up every day and you're just like, spin the wheel. What's going to hurt today? So it's not too bad. I love love this what you've discovered in this book and what you're talking about because i've always you know tried to figure out this ego stuff and the monkey brain i mean i kind of have it calmed down it seems like the it seems like the less i respond to it and the more i stall it and when it comes you know i've learned to listen and so it's oh hey oh god see you again and and you shut it down. It seems like that habit forms in getting it to diminish or. Yeah.

So what also helps us to understand, like, why the heck do we even have this default mode? What's the purpose of it? Yeah. Yeah. What is. And it serves a really important purpose. I mean, this is how we, you know, decide which memories to keep. This is how we process information and decide, you know, let's say, which of our colleagues we should hang out with or avoid and what things we should avoid. So the default mode, so people with Alzheimer's disease, dementia, their default mode is not working and they can't form new memories. They're having they have problems.

So I think telling yourself that, oh, that's just my brain. It's wandering to protect me and having some gratitude for it. It can change how you view that monkey mind. And rather than being angry when it shows up, being grateful when your observing mind is there. And I think that might be it. So put a positive spin on it and say, oh, I see what you're doing. You're trying to remind me of maybe a bad emotion I felt. You're trying to protect me from having that again.

Right? That's right. Yeah, there you go. God, I love this, man. You've really nailed on to something. Can we mail this book to everybody in America? Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm going to need somebody else's credit card.

But no, I mean, this is why we do the show. So there was a question that I had for you. Oh, one of the problems I had with ADHD was I would try and go to bed at night, and my mind would just whip me relentlessly, probably the monkey brain, I'll ask you. And it would be reminding me of stuff that I need to do the next day. Don't forget to fire that person. Don't forget to write that email. Don't forget to do, and did you forget that?

And it would drive me crazy and it would become, I even had my ADHD so bad, I would go check the front door to make sure it was locked 20 times a night, check to make sure faucets are off, that sort of shit. And so is that part of the monkey brain that's trying to help remind us of stuff? Yeah, it sounds like an overactive monkey brain, right? So there is a chapter on sleep. There's, you know, and for what you're talking about, and also on diet and exercise, that's towards the end of the book. But I think in that case, what's happening in your brain, if it's really overactive,

you've got a lot of glutamate. And what you got to do is turn on the GABA. You mentioned you take the GABA supplement. I do now, yeah. But the key there is to do what I call mindful relaxation. Give yourself 30 minutes to try to relax mindfully, which means whatever helps you relax, I don't know, going for a walk, taking a bath or TikTok, maybe not TikTok. It's bad for you.

Yeah, that actually doesn't turn the gap on, but whatever helps you relax, give yourself 20 minutes of that and put the tiktok away put the phone away for as long as you can at first that may only last a few seconds but yeah give it some practice you'll you'll be surprised after a couple weeks you can go 20 minutes without your phone and i'm willing to bet you'll sleep better yeah one of the things i over kind of beat the monkey brain in that way is i started writing down what it was reminding me of. And then didn't have to remind me anymore. It's okay.

Idiot boy's got shit written down. So we won't forget. That kind of helped. I don't know. But yeah, maybe, maybe there's an underlying anxiety, right? So if you can write things down, if you can try to figure out what is causing this anxiety, address and that that could quiet the mind down so there is a chapter on anxiety yeah and that's a big problem also huge there you go and i think this could really help people that have suicidal issues like i i mean i honestly went to a really

dark place years ago after the death of my dog and then we lost the hard drive with a bunch of pictures on it and And I was just, it was like a double drop kick. And I was just getting whipped, like just endlessly by that monkey brain. And, and I really believe I've often wondered why people would consider suicide because I mean,

you're ending your life. It's, you know, you, if I grab you by the throat, you're going to fight me off because you want to live and but i mean for the body to turn on itself and go we've had enough of you that's quite an extraordinary feat i think that the body has to go through or the mind has to go through

but it reached a point with the monkey brain that the whipping was just so hard 24 7 a day and it was so much and it was relentless you just you reach the point where you're like there's only one way out of this is to shut off my brain and you know if if it gets to that point you it you've got to seek some some professional help you got it you know talk to somebody about it there are people out there wanting to help, wanting to help. So just reach out, talk to somebody about it, get the advice of your doctor or a therapist, get the help. You can't do everything yourself, right? So there's a lot in this book also about getting help from therapists, cognitive behavioral therapy. There's a lot of options. And now a lot in this book also about getting help from therapists, cognitive behavioral therapy.

There's a lot of options. And now a lot of it is online. It's a lot easier to access psychotherapy online or access a therapist online. That's true. You can do telemedicine now. Yeah. A lot of employers provide that. So ask your human resources.

Do they have any resources for you, but, but, you know, get that help. Don't fight it alone. Your book would have been great for that and understanding it. I got lucky and I had a friend on my podcast and he introduced me to Eckhart Tolle and the power of now and becoming present. And that gave me the tools to fight out of the monkey brain and into the present but you know what you've identified goes much deeper than that because that's just a process of trying to calm yourself down i love eckhart tolle he's you know one of the i consider him enlightened and what i've what i i mean my to it is, is sort of adding in the, the medicine and the science.

And the mapping. And the mapping. Yeah. I don't want to diminish what he's done. He is my, my hero. Yeah. But you've got, you've got the scientific approaches, the map of how it's all working in the brain and feeding and the where, the when and the why. Well, I mean, and, and I'm not discounting what Eckhart told us.

He does a great job. But I love what you put in your book. And I think what I'm saying is I think it really helped people that have suicidal tendencies and issues and trauma. You know, childhood trauma is such an interesting thing. It seems like people that suffer from trauma suffer as childhood, suffer a lot of this monkey brain the worst, I would suspect. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. it's a big problem globally i mean and i think it's it's a good time to

return to center a little bit yeah and now that you kind of understand it you know what you've described here on the show and what i can understand about it is you know you you can see your brain and okay there's these different levels you, I think I studied the ego a little bit and how that kind of is a mucky thing for us to be mucking about with. It has, you know, some demented perception of who we are, I guess. And, but understanding that there's that monkey brain, I even know that was a term, the monkey brain. So I learned something new on the show, but yeah, it's, it's, it's quite the thing. What What else have we talked about that you cover in the book? One thing I wanted to say is I really designed this book

for people who are maybe skeptical, they're maybe a little stubborn, you know, they've tried Eckhart Tolle, they didn't quite get it, they've tried mindfulness, they just don't get it. What's the purpose of doing all that? I try to explain why all of this is actually important from a little bit of science where, look, this is actually a signal in the brain. Take a look at this MRI.

Look at it. I mean, it's something tangible. It's practical. It does show up. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. You know how it was discovered? They put some people in an MRI to sort of see what's going on in their head.

And someone accidentally took a scan of somebody who was just kind of sitting there not doing anything. And they were surprised to see that the brain was lighting up super active. Wow. And they're like, huh, that's not what we thought should happen. To show one of the monkey clappers running around the brain? Well, it turns out, I mean, our brains are never really at rest that's what's in mind there's always something going on yeah yeah now let me ask you this when we have dreams it's basically basically it's the bored subconscious mind making movies to entertain

itself i think or something what's your take on that and is that part of the monkey brain too yeah sleep is really fascinating. I mean, we're understanding what happens. It's clear there's different stages of sleep. There's REM sleep, which is where it looks like there's a lot of processing that's going on. Maybe we're deciding what memories to keep, what memories to...

There's a part of the brain called the hippocampus. It's where all the memories are kept. So it looks like sleep is a way of processing everything that's happened to us during the day yeah i've heard i've had some girls call me hippocampus on tinder i mean it's been might be a reference to my size but yeah i mean it's all sorts of people believe but but to me the you know when you dream it's fascinating how like my my brain can make like movies like spielberg type shit sometimes and then of course you can make stupid shit like i don't know whatever and but you know it's interesting what it paints and the creative the creative level i'm like i wish i could wake up remember what that movie was because that would have been a great

horror movie or a great you know steven spielberg type movie and of course you feel it so so real maybe maybe maybe running you through the feelings has something to do with what it's doing or something it's there's there are lots of science lots of scientists working on this um but what i will say is there's a lot of people who don't get enough quality sleep they don't dream they don't get that REM sleep and if you don't get that REM sleep it's it's actually pretty bad for your health so yeah sleep hygiene and being able to sleep through the night critically important uh and I I there's a section on that here yeah maybe the reason maybe I don't know I don't think there's any pain and healing when you're sleeping

but I know the body heals itself maybe it's part of that it's distract your brain from the all the clanking of the working and reconstruction that's being done you know the hammers and stuff i don't know there's some of that too for sure yeah but yeah sleep is so important i mean i know that if i have i have these crazy vivid dreams you know the worst ones are like my dogs have escaped and i can't find them and they're just around the corner and you're just you know it's like that sort of thing anything to do with my dogs which are my children that just makes me mental I dreams about my old set of dogs that I had you know just stuff like that just just kills you and you wake up and you're nice you think you're still in it and and of course usually if the if the pillow is covered in drool then I know I had a good sleep but

usually those ones where I'm gonna wake up and I'll be like, wow, that was terrifying, but thank God it's not real and I slept really well. If I don't have those crazy-ass dreams, then I usually didn't sleep well. But it sounds like you sleep pretty well overall, would you say? Yeah. I use this company called Eight Sleep. And the Eight Sleep is a bed that has a mattress cover and it'll heat up or cool down and what's really cool is it has an ai in it i'm doing a commercial can we get

paid for this actually they sent us to us to review but i've had it for about three years now we've upgraded a few different things but it's got an ai in it so what it does is it monitors your sleep for when you're in your deepest thing and it will adjust the temperatures of the bed to get your hip points so like yesterday i slept for i got a 93 quality sleep i slept for seven and a half hours looks like i got about a an hour and 31 minutes of REM sleep 125 of of deep sleep. And it's got like a little, I don't know if we can, if that'll pick that up, but you can see my ups and downs right there. And so it tells me exactly when I finally fell asleep. It'll give me, I think it gives me heartbeat and stuff. Yeah. Heart rate, HVR, breath rate, schedule consistency. It basically

tells me I'm not dead yet. So there that but yeah you're right sleep is so important but you know that monkey brain running around in the background well it's just something yeah i mean that there's a lot of people millions of people who can't sleep through the night or they're waking up several times throughout the night and i was one of those i didn't sleep well this was about a couple of years ago and actually book, a lot of it is sort of a personal journey over about six months where I resolved a lot of the issues I had. And one of them was, was poor sleep. So I definitely don't take it for granted. Now I thankfully sleep well through the night, but. Yeah. So I had that problem for a lot of years where if I woke up,

the monkey brain would start up and the bed really helps get me back into place. You know, that warmth, that heating just, I mean, just melts you sometimes if you get in there. And then if it's like summer and it's hot or if I come from the gym and I'm just like really blown out my muscles and stuff, you can run a cool. But that thing really helps get you into a preparedness sort of on-ramp or off-ramp to fall into sleep. So I really like it. I think before that, I think one of the other problems where people have problem is you can't wake up and look at your phone. That's like the one rule I have to have. Absolutely.

You know. A blue light hits you. Exactly. Well, that's a big issue right now. If you wake up and spend just 10 minutes, just 10 minutes doing exercises that kind of shut off that monkey mind for 10 minutes, turn on that observing mind, try it out. It actually affects your whole day.

Yeah. I started, I was doing something over the summer. I can't do it in Utah anymore, but I was doing it over the summer when it was warm. And what I would do is I would wake up in the morning and it serves several purposes. So I have two Husky dogs, so they love to go play in the yard and they love to spend time with me. And so what I would do is I wake up in the morning. I'd of course, you know, stumble like the bear that I am over to the coffee maker and try not to murder anybody between there and here and make my coffee. And then I would grab either Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, or Seneca.

And I just randomly grabbed the books and a little highlighter. And then I'd go sit out in the sun to start my circadian rhythms and get my vitamin D. And so I'd sit out there for maybe 15, 20 minutes, play with my dogs. They'd be running around. They're all happy and crap. And then I would read some passages to get my mind straight. And then I would come into my office and take kind of a command position in my office. You know, it used to be, I'd turn on my computer and just start getting blasted by all the emails. And, and now I'd sit

at my desk and I'd play some nice piano music and just kind of get centered. And then I would turn on my computer and start going through stuff. And I would try and create this command and control position ahead of time so that I didn't feel like I was just getting bull whipped every time I turned my computer on. And I don't know. It really seemed to help me at the time. You know what I would recommend is take 10 minutes in the morning. The first thing to do is kind of just observe how you're feeling. Let's say your monkey mind is on. Just take a look at it for a few

seconds. Try for 10 minutes, try different types of exercises. You could try meditation, you could try a prayer, you could try reading, you could try some soft music, you could try a walk. There's hundreds of things you could try. And after 10 10 minutes take a look at your brain again and see what changes the place find those things that help you the best there you go maybe i'll choke the person who bothers me between my bed and my coffee now there's nobody that does that i live alone the but my girlfriends used to say that we we avoid you when you wake up until you get your coffee. We just don't go near you. You're a bear, and we know we'll get the paw if we bug with you. So no one screws you.

You go by your way. Maybe your phone is what you need to choke that's in the way. That could be it because sometimes I do look at my phone. Maybe I should just choke out the phone or turn it off or throw it throw it against the wall that's probably a better use of the phone especially when you're watching tiktok but yeah and and then just going out and like you say having that peace or meditation that was that was the thing being out in the fresh air and getting the vitamin d and and letting that whole circadian rhythm start really helped me and sometimes i wouldn't even maybe read sometimes i just kind of sit there

and just i'm just like wow have some gratitude or maybe gratitude is a good thing that's good gratitude is massive massive you can just look up at the sky have some gratitude for five minutes see how how you feel i mean it's an amazing thing yeah i have a gratitude sunday every sunday sunday is my day there's date night on fridays and Saturdays, and there's no women allowed in my life on Sunday. And so on Sunday is my day. So I go through my archives, I compile the pictures of my life, I go through and I think about stuff that's going on that went on through the week. And then it's kind of my day to check all the boxes and make sure everything's ready to go. It's like my flight. It's my flight check for the week. And then I start looking at my week and going, okay, what do we got? What's up this week? And what do we need to prepare for? And you start getting your mind. It's kind of going to the Super Bowl. You go, okay, so what mindset do i need to have and

what's what's their plays and i find that really helps me it really centers me for the week it really it's kind of like a total gear down from the craziness of the prior week and then it's like this it's like this peaceful meditation where i can just kind of sit there and that way when i hit the ground on monday i'm not sitting there panicking going, what the fuck are we doing again? Exactly. You know? Well, you know,

yeah. And I, I totally hear you. I do something similar on Sundays, but during the week, let's say, you know, I'll just for a few minutes, just express some gratitude for just a couple of minutes throughout the day.

Maybe it's a little prayer. Maybe it's a, you know, a little mindfulness, but just a couple minutes and it, does wonders. It doesn't have to be this whole half an hour thing. You don't have to go to some meditation center. Just a couple of minutes, have some gratitude. Maybe you're walking down the street, you see somebody walking towards you and you just say, you give them some gratitude. You say, hey, I wish the best for you. It's simple, right?

Little things like that actually can do wonders. I do that on Facebook. I go, thank you for being a dumbass idiot, so I know that I'm still smart. Does that work? Is that supposed to work? I don't know. I haven't tried that. No, of course I've tried that.

That doesn't work so well. It doesn't work so well? Well, I don't know. I seem to feel good after, so maybe I'll just stick tried it. It doesn't work so well. It doesn't work so well? Well, I don't know. I seem to feel good after, so maybe I'll just stick with it. There you go. Anything further you want to tease out to people about your book to get them to pick it up? No, I've got a copy here. I would welcome any thoughts on it.

Rick Doblin endorsed it, so Rick Doblin is one of the, I call him a pioneer of modern medicine. This is the guy who's been working 50 years to bring things like MDMA assisted therapy to the market. It's an honor to get his endorsement. And, and so, yeah, I just hope this book is meant to help some people out there. That's it. I love it. And I love the discussion we had on this. I wish you could have been around in my 20s when I had really bad ADHD. Actually, my teens when I had really bad ADHD. But I didn't understand what it was back then.

I don't think a lot of people were really into it back then. I remember, I think it was my late 20s, and I to the doctor and I said I think I'm having a brain hemorrhage I don't know what's going on with the cancer or something and they go no you just have anxiety and I'm like yeah I also have fear, anger, misery you know but they had to explain what anxiety was for me

and I was like oh that's great just like when I needed one more thing. It's pretty common. And I wish I had done this 20 years ago as well. But sometimes you got to go through that pain to really figure out who you are, right? There you go. Well, I'll let your monkey brain kick you for that then. Why didn't I write that book sooner?

There you go. So thank you very much for coming on the show. Give us your dot coms so people can find you on the internet. Yeah, it's yourdefaultmode.com. There you go. The book is called Breakthrough, Master Your Default Mode and Thrive. And you certainly will after what we've talked about in the show. If you can master that monkey slinging poop from you, like at the zoo, into your brain,

you don't want that folks refer the show to your family friends and relatives go to goodreads.com fortune's christmas linkedin.com fortune's christmas christmas one of the tick tocketing christmas one on i don't know it's somewhere out there thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe we'll see you guys next time