THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Dr. Martha Beck: Rewiring a Lifetime of Anxiety 

Episode Date: May 6, 2025

What if anxiety isn’t just a condition—what if it’s your culture? This week, I sit down with Dr. Martha Beck, and we get real about something that most of us don’t even realize we’re living with every day: anxiety. Not just the clinical kind—but the kind that’s been baked into our lives from childhood, from trauma, from a society that rewards burnout and worships productivity. I brought Martha on because I’ve been doing this work on myself. I’ve been noticing how I’ve lived in a near-constant state of stress, and the truth is, a lot of you are probably wired the same way. Martha breaks down how anxiety forms, how it’s normalized in our environment, and why it thrives in our left brain—the part obsessed with control and fear. She explains how we mistake anxiety for productivity, and how our bodies carry the toll of it for decades. But here's what blew me away: she shows us how the antidote isn’t force, but curiosity. That if you can activate that right side of the brain, the part that tracks instead of panics, the part that seeks instead of flees, you can start living from peace—and still be successful. We walked through her Perfect Day visualization technique, talked about accessing creativity through calm, and why kindness—especially toward yourself—is the true starting line for transformation. Not the kind of kindness that coddles you, but the kind that treats your anxious self like a scared horse: steady, soothing, safe. And you’ll hear what happened when I applied these tools myself. I’ve been sharper, more productive, and less exhausted. That’s real. This episode isn’t just theory—it’s a playbook. I want you to be able to say, “I am meant to live in peace.” And believe it. Because it’s not either peace or productivity—you can have both. You were never meant to grind your way to worth. You were built for joy, creativity, and ease. Let’s start giving ourselves permission to return to that. Key Takeaways: How anxiety becomes “normal” through trauma and culture The difference between fear and anxiety—and why it matters Why choosing peace doesn’t mean sacrificing success Tools like the “Perfect Day” and “Sanity Quilt” to reconnect with purpose The role of curiosity in calming anxiety and boosting creativity How to talk to yourself like a frightened horse—and why it works This one’s going to stick with you. Share it with someone who needs peace today. Max out.   👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈   → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ←  ➡️ INSTAGRAM   ➡️FACEBOOK   ➡️ LINKEDIN   ➡️ X   ➡️ WEBSITE      Get my exclusive Monday Motivation training in GrowthDay, the world’s #1 app for advanced mindset and personal development. Visit https://growthday.com/ed. This show is sponsored by GrowthDay.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Richard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way the way he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start he's got about five thousand ten thousand dollars worth of courses that are in there that come with the app also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content and they're

on a regular basis like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app and I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis, and I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're gonna get a free, tuition-free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also.

So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. ["The Admirals Show Theme Song"] head. Okay everybody welcome back to the show. We are going to talk about anxiety this week and let me tell you why. I've sort of turned the show into a magnet for myself and so I've been booking guests a lot lately that I think can help me with stuff I'm working on and and so if they can help me I figure they could probably help you and in this woman's case I absolutely know she can. She's a Harvard trained sociologist. Life coach does not

really I don't think adequately describe what she does. She really changes people's lives and I've had a chance to read the advanced copy of her book that's coming out you can get right now called Beyond Anxiety. Hear that? Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity and Finding Your Life's Purpose with someone I wanted to talk to for a long time. So Martha Beck, finally welcome to the show. Oh and it is such an honor. Thanks for having me. Oh this is gonna be great. I uh think I struggle with anxiety more than I realized when I was younger. And I think more people suffer from it than they realize. And I think one of the reasons is,

I don't think most people can make a distinction between like fear and anxiety. It's one of the points you make early in the book. So help someone who's listening or watching right now, go do I have anxiety or is just like fears I'm dealing with? What's the difference? Okay, so fear is like being shot out of a cannon. I started the book with this story. I was in a cottage on a game preserve in South Africa called Londolozi. I love this place.

And I was writing late at night and I was next to a window. I thought the window was closed. The window, it was a door actually, a glass door. It was actually open with a screen. So I'm typing away and I hear, I don't do it very well, but it's kind of like that. That is the territorial call of a leopard. And it was right next to the screen. And I didn't know there was a screen. I just looked over there and there was a leopard going at me. And I felt my entire body like levitate up into the roof beams and cling there, but only in my mind.

It was total fear. And then the leopard turned and walked away and bang, I went completely calm. Because in that place, I was responding kind of like a wild animal. I was surrounded by wild animals. That's fear and that's how it's meant to be used. Bang, take action.

Oh, we're out, we're safe. Calm down. I've watched antelope get chased by lions and when the lions give up, the antelope just stops and starts eating grass in sight of the lion. Because going back to rest and relaxation after a fear impulse is necessary

for us to maintain homeostasis. It's necessary to gather energy for the next time real danger comes. So the leopard left. But in my head, again, it was filthy with leopards in there. It's going to come back. It's going to claw through the screen. Oh my God, I've seen them kill things. Is that going to happen to me? Oh, how would that feel? So humans uniquely, as far as we know among animals,

take a natural protective fear instinct. And then we run stories of it in our brains because we are capable of imagination and language. And that becomes the environment for the more primitive parts of the brain. So all night long, my brain thought it was being attacked by leopards. That's anxiety.

There's no danger to face. It's not like being shot from a cannon. It's like being haunted. What do I, something bad's gonna happen. Oh, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna do? And I had a really serious bout of anxiety. It started at birth and lasted till I was about 60.

So I, that sounds familiar. Go ahead. I didn't know there was any difference. Like I met someone with anxiety disorder and I was like, Oh, what's that like? And she told me, and I said, no, that's completely normal. That's how we all, so you may not have known that you've had high anxiety because the culture around us normalizes high anxiety and actually

helps create it. Let me ask you a question about that. You call it, I didn't want to interrupt you, but I asked you how to pronounce it earlier. You call it an axiogenic environment. You can pronounce it your way. And I'm also wondering, so you stipulate that it's our world today, our current environment. You need to also be the environment in which you specifically grew up in, creates a pattern within you. Because I think in my case, it started so young that it

probably has something to do with my dad's alcoholism. But anyway, I wanted you to describe that term, which no one's ever heard of before. I hadn't before I read the book. And then also, if someone's wondering the source of their own, is it, it could be environmental now, but it also could be some sort of trauma response or environmental response to their childhood too, correct? Absolutely, the more traumatized you are, the more you create phantoms in your mind to keep yourself safe,

because there's danger anywhere and it's unpredictable. For someone with an alcoholic parent, being constantly vigilant is a necessary survival instinct that gets you past childhood, but then what fires together and the brain wires together and you're stuck with a brain that is easily, easily triggered by anxiogenic factors. And that's the way I say it. And that could mean anything from a horrible news story on your phone as you're scrolling through. One of my favorite examples of it is this terrible thing on the internet that I would never do called

the invisible danger prank. Have you seen this? No. Just two people are sitting together and it's usually a man and a woman and the woman jumps up and goes, and then the man goes absolutely bat crap crazy. He's like attacking ceiling fixtures.

He's like, what's happening? That's how fast we go into fear just because it's in the population around us. And in our particular environment, our society, we are surrounded by triggers for anxiety and anxiety is normalized. And that means that we are constantly being subjected to the invisible danger prank.

And it ruins our health, mental and physical. Here's what I like. A lot of times when you read academic works, one of the reasons I don't have that many on is because it's usually a description of a condition or situation without tools to get out of it. And what I like about Martha's work is it's loaded with tools of getting out of the spiral.

And so we're gonna talk about that in a second but I want to ask you one more question about having it you know be a prolific part of your life what fires together wires together and I I think I have such anxiety in my life which is interesting because most people I think would look at my external life and go what are you worried about dude I mean you got a you know bunch of money and you know people kind of know who you are and you got a great family I feel more normal under anxiety than I do with the lack of it it's like a familiar home for me in fact I notice the times because they're so rare when I'm not an anxiety than noticing the times that I am

that's how prevalent it is for someone kind of like me is that another part of it that it's just so familiar that you created a pattern in your brain that is now The reticular activating system whatever part of the brain it is is sort of searching for that leopard Even though it we consciously know it probably doesn't exist. That's exactly right We have an experience of trauma and it then tells us that three things in the brain that happen. The first thing is called the negativity bias. If you walk into a room and it has 15 golden

retriever puppies and one Cobra, where's your attention going to go? To the Cobra. I got to keep myself safe. I've got to keep the puppy safe. You're going to go into a high level of fear. So the brain will not look at the 15 puppies, it will look at the cobra.

And then it shunts its fear impulse to the part of the brain that wants to control things and tell stories. And the control part of the brain says, okay, here's why you should be afraid and here's what you have to do to control it. And by the way, never stop listening to my voice because I'm the only thing keeping you safe.

So we get into what I call the hall of mirrors where a theory impulse gets shunted to the left hemisphere of the brain which then tells a story about why it must remain, why you must remain frightened. And weirdly that part of the brain is so strong that it can create this bizarre phenomenon called hemispatial neglect. You do not need to know that term.

What it means is that if someone loses use of the right side of their brain to an injury to it, something, a stroke, the left side of the brain on its own refuses to acknowledge that anything it doesn't control is actually real. So if you're only using the left side of your brain, you will not believe that your left arm and leg belong to you. So there's this story from, it's that weird Oliver Sacks wrote about going into a hospital when he was a young intern in psychiatry. And there was a man in there who was screaming

at the top of his lungs. He'd had a right hemisphere stroke. And he woke up and he looked at his own left leg and he was absolutely sure it was a severed leg that the nurses had put in bed with him as a prank. And he was screaming. And then he picked up the leg and threw it out of bed. And then his body went with it. And he was like, it's attached to me. It's attached to me. So all of her sex is like, okay, so if that's not your leg, where is your left leg? And he thought for a minute and he said,

it's gone, it doesn't exist. This is the way, I know it's so bizarre, but the left hemisphere of your brain where all the anxiety hangs out is absolutely unwilling to let go of control or to acknowledge that anything but itself is real. And one of the things that tells you over and over again is if you are not afraid all the time, you will never be safe. And when you wake up in an environment like with an alcoholic parent, it's so uneven and unpredictable that that gets baked in stay scared or you're not safe

so the paradox is now the only way you can ever feel safe is to never feel safe and that's in fight oh that's so good I'm I'm I'm sitting here by the way your delivery style so awesome I we're gonna now we're gonna talk about tools here in a second guys but that of the idea the only way to ever feel safest to never feel safe and I think a lot of us that suffer with this I maybe aren't even aware of it we produce a lot of great external results guys I mean that's probably why I have you know a pretty good pile of money because there's never enough of it to feel safe that I'll never be poor. I've got a keen, I work all the time because it could come to an end

and I'd lose momentum. And so this lack of safety is something worth evaluating. Now here's what I told you guys. That's great about her work. We're gonna go through multiple tools and we'll go back into the work again as well. You call curiosity the invisible door, I think is what you call it. If I recall. Yeah, the secret doorway. Nobody knows it. The secret door. The secret door.

Yeah. How and why and how do you leverage or utilize curiosity? What do you mean by all of that? Right. So you need something that's as powerful as that negativity bias to get you away from the anxiety producing part of the brain and into the right hemisphere where there's meaning and love and purpose and joy and presence and all the good things. And you will notice that so this very primitive part of the brain, the amygdala, is what shouts with danger

and gets the cycle started in the left side of your brain. In the right side of your brain there's a little burst of danger and what happens is an intense desire to know. So have you ever driven past an accident and kind of slowed down and rubber-necked a little because people do this and they're like, I shouldn't do this, this is so bad. It's not bad. It's an evolutionary development that helps us know how to avoid danger in the future. So that impulse is very intense and it's curiosity. This is why the average 16-year-old has already seen something like 12,000 televised murders and why people

watch literal murder shows to calm down. Like true crime because we're obsessed with murder. We are curious about it. That's why we have murder mysteries. It's the detective part of the brain. What happened to me in that cottage with the leopard is that I went very rapidly from the vulnerable animal part of my brain to the tracker part of my brain. I'm obsessed with animals.

I love to track them. Thanks to my wonderful teachers there, I thought with curiosity when I saw a wild animal instead of thinking with just fear. So my initial burst of, whoa! Immediately went to, like that next morning, I was out there at first light looking for the tracks, looking for where he came, looking for where he turned, why did he come to... I was fascinated and that's, it's kind of like when we were evolving, if you have, have you ever tracked an animal, Ed?

Have I ever tracked an animal? Yeah. Yes, I have actually, yeah. What am I thinking? Of course I have, yes. When, when? On my island, we tracked some deer that we believed were injured

and we tracked them for three days. I also tracked a fox on my island for about three weeks as well. So yes, I definitely have and I've done it recently. Have you had the experience where you're walking along and the track starts to kind of speak to you? Yeah. It's your life. You feel that Tom Brown the tracker says, um, the first track is the end of a string at the other end. A being is moving. And doesn't that just pull you into curiosity? So this is why when people undergo a trauma, like there was a terrible thing

where a busload of school children was hijacked and driven to this cave. And most of the kids just panicked, but a few of them kept saying, what's happening? What are we doing? Can we take the top off the bus them kept saying, what's happening? What are we doing? Can we take the top off the bus? Can we take the bottom off? What are we going to, how can we figure it out? They treated it like a murder mystery.

And they were the ones who didn't develop PTSD. Now, if you're, the way anxiety came to you, Ed, you were too young to speak. You were too young to, here's the thing. Babies are born, they're true selves and feeling like a million bucks. The moment they start to get social signals to tell them, Oh, the adults want me to be quiet, the adults want me to smile, the adults want me to shut up or whatever it is, it's usually shut up and be quiet. If you have a safe parenting environment, you just explore that.

The toddler that goes out and comes in, comes out and comes in. There's a study with five month old babies where they put them, they could just crawl and they put them on this dais that went to a plexiglass dais. So it looked like they were going to fall. So they crawled along and they put these babies mothers at the back of the room and the mothers didn't move or say anything, they just gave facial expressions.

So half the babies mothers gave fear expressions and the other half smiled. The babies whose mothers smiled were the only ones who would go out on the plexiglass to find out what the hell was happening. If you have apparent radiating anxiety, pain, difficulty, dementia, which is what alcohol intoxication really is, long before you could talk, you learned to beware, be very, very careful. So your natural curiosity got overbalanced by,

I have to be, I have to feel safe to be, feeling danger to feel safe. You got stuck in it as a tiny, tiny child. And many of us are like that. And that's only a tragedy if we don't make something out of it. And you've made a hell of a lot out of it. Now I would love to see you feeling joyful and happy and coming at the same type of creativity with like the fascination of tracking an animal to figure out what

your life's gonna be. Well I have to tell you the reason I think you work so proud, and by the way we will stop talking about me now, hopefully you're seeing yourselves through me but we're gonna talk about different circumstances in a second. The other thing you teach though, that has helped me as this perfect day idea, this perfect day exercise. I think everyone, I think this is like, we're going to do two or three tools here, but this one here, no matter where your anxiety comes from, maybe it's not child, maybe it is live with a little anxiety right now, you know, career displacement or money issues, or you're worried about the geopolitical world whatever you got anxiety here's here's a here's a tool

out let's do the perfect day one all right we're gonna do the perfect day but first I'm gonna set you up for it and the reason is not because I think you need setting up it's because as this you know as the book came out and people started talking to me they were in levels of fear that were so high that they couldn't actually just go to curiosity. So I developed an acronym, K-A-T, and the K stands for kindness. So if I told you, if we were in danger and I said to you, be calm, be calm, there's no way you could force that. But if there were a lot of people around us and we had to keep them safe and I said, Ed, be kind, be kind. You would know how to do that even if you were very frightened yourself.

I have a friend who was a dude on a cattle ranch in Wyoming, and there was a huge horse that was a matriarch of this horse herd. And one night she felt something strange was going on with the horses and she went out and this huge horse was completely tangled in barbed wire and brush. Now this is a horse that was highly afraid, that could easily kill you with one accidental kick. They don't even mean to, they don't know how powerful they are. So here's my friend in the middle

of a freezing Wyoming night, walking up to this horse, which is bolting and sweating. And every single one of us instinctively knows Wyoming night, walking up to this horse, which is bolting and sweating, and every single one of us instinctively knows how to calm a frightened animal. And our culture tells us that our anxious brains are broken machines, but they're simply frightened animals. How would you approach that horse, Ed? How would you give it kindness?

Hmm. Well, I've had that situation, exact situation really? Yeah I have I have a 18 hands big old horse that got tangled up and was doing a bunch of damage and was probably gonna kill itself and so I I know what my approach was mine was obviously very calm, kindness, slow, but I'll let you answer the question because you're more qualified than I am. You're doing exactly the right thing. We don't know how to bash ourselves with biochemistry or analyze ourselves. And in fact, approaching anxiety that way is so wrongheaded because analyze means to

chop something up and figure out what makes it happen. And then drugging something into insensitivity, say, well, I'm gonna get over my anxiety and bring it down. If you go up to an animal that's frightened and say, I'm gonna bring you down, I'm gonna cut you up, I'm gonna drug you senseless, because I want you out of here, will that make it calmer? No, it will not.

Escalates. But what you just did, every human is inherently endowed through evolution with the ability to know how to calm a frightened animal. You slow the pitch, the volume, and the speed of your voice. Chris Voss, who was the lead FBI hostage negotiator. Chris has been on the show. He's great. Oh my god, he's amazing.

I worship him. And you were going with a psychotic maniac, and he talks to them exactly the way you do. FBI hostage negotiator. First time on the show, he's great. Oh my God, he's amazing, I worship him. And he will go in with a psychotic maniac and he talks to them exactly the way you talk to that horse. You're okay, I got you, we're gonna fix this, it's all right. So that, I just ask people before we start going into creativity and all the other things that can replace your anxiety,

offer wherever you are in the world. Talk to yourself the way you would talk to a frightened horse. Know what? I'm not here to hurt you. I'm here to help you get out of this. You're going to be okay. We're together now. I've got you. I've got you. So if you say those, even in your mind, Ed, can you feel how something

shifts? Certainly. What does it feel like to you? Well, it slows things down. One of the things that I think I do when I have anxiety, and you talk about in the book, is I thought stack, and I repeatedly, I speed things up almost, it gets noisier, it gets faster. And your tendency is to try to overwhelm it. And so when you speak like what you were just speaking, it slows things down, it's soothing. To be honest with you, it sounds like how God would talk to you. That's how it sounds.

Exactly. Exactly. Kind, gentle sounds, feeling of connection, being gently touched. And I know, you know, this goes over a lot easier with women than with men. But I discovered it because when I was at what I call the time of three, I was working on my third Harvard degree. I had three little kids under five, one with a disability Down syndrome, and I had three autoimmune diseases that were considered progressive and incurable. So I was screwed. I never slept and all my life I had fed my anxiety thinking it was the fuel for success and it burned me to a crisp and pretty much, you know, my kids still, and I still talk about

that wasn't a great time, was it mom? Um, and so I learned from that. When I asked you that, why was the first thing, um, kindness, why was that the first thing you said? Because if you're not kind, that kindness is the ultimate, it's like water is the universal solvent that dissolves things. Kindness is the universal solvent of our emotions. It relaxes whatever we're feeling into its best possible state. If I'd asked you to do a perfect day exercise, which we're going to do, and you had not been in a state of kindness toward yourself,

you would have made up a day that was basically blank. And I've done this with so many clients. And I didn't know that they were anxious, so they would make up the same day. If they were women, they'd wake up in a white room with white windows and white curtains, and they'd put on a white dress and go to a white beach. If it was a man, he always owned a bar on a beach.

And everything was sort of, like that owned a bar on a beach and everything was sort of like that and it was just so stereotypical and I was like this is not what they actually want, what's going wrong? And I realized they weren't able to access creativity because anxiety shuts down creativity and that's what I learned during the research for this book that anxiety and creativity toggle in the brain. When one is up, the other has to be down. When one is on, the other is off. Yeah. And it was very exciting for me actually to see this in the neural. What a great chunk of information for all of you watching this listening, right? Like

just to know that the presence of creativity means at least to some extent the diminishing of anxiety. That's really, really critical to know between the left and the right brain. Okay, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just want, for me that jumps out. Right, right. So when you, when I was pushing my life with creativity, I nearly burned myself out and I thought that having great success and being a Harvard professor would do everything for me and it wouldn't have. Because I had to be kind to myself, I developed a whole new universe of what was possible and ideal for me.

And so I wanted you to just find that 18-hand horse inside you who's going, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip, fwip Very good. You're okay, I've got you. It is a scary world, but I'm here. I've got you. That's sweet. Yeah? It is. I wish I could bring Martha with me every time. Every speech I give, every podcast I do.

I know I can. By the way, I have for like the last three weeks since I read the book. Oh. It's true. It's true. I didn't tell you how to treat that horse. That came from you. That is the calming energy.

And it was right there when you accessed it. Boom, no problem. No tricks. You just went to it. So if you're kind to that inner horse, relax, let your breath go out. And we're going to go to a day that is in, let's see, the year will be, and I don't know when y'all will be listening to this, but right now we're in 2025, this will be 2030. So just think, how old will you be then? How old will your kids be? Just sort of get established in that timeline. Now, I'm going to prompt you through a day.

And the instructions are, don't make anything up. You are going to hear, see, touch, feel, touch, smell, taste the things that happen in the day if they arise in your mind. And if they don't arise, say, nothing's coming. And then we'll just move on. Because this is being shown to you. It is not something you make up.

And if you're relaxed, it will be shown to you in much greater detail because the universe that wants to show it to you loves you. And it wants you to be happy and calm. So let's go. be happy and calm. So let's go. It is 20 30 and you are waking up in a normal day in your perfect life. Before you wake up, you wake up refreshed and rejuvenated and happy for the day. Don't even open your eyes at first. Just tell me what you hear. I can feel the wind blowing a little bit and I can feel the breeze from the ocean.

I have my, I know that I probably have my window or my doors open because- Oh, absolutely. Not, not probably. We're maxing this out. You want maximum performance? Max this sucker out, okay? And look at the color of the sheets.

What kind of sheets do you have? What kind of bedding? I'm picturing the ones I have. They are gray. They're gray satin sheets. Mmm, sweet, cool. That's so awesome that you already have one component of your ideal life right now.

So now I want you to sit up and look around the room. How big is the room? What does it look like? What's the color of the walls? Are there pictures? Yeah, there's pictures of my family. I got a mechanic with you. It's actually the room I wake up in now. Oh, it's like a picture of that room. It there pictures? Yeah, there's pictures of my family. I got a mechanic with you. It's actually the room I wake up in now.

Oh, it's like picture of that room. It's actually where I am. I mean, not where I'm filming today, but actually this house, that room, I would say is that room. And you may not even know what you're doing, but maybe you see yourself with a bunch of friends in a cave or what, you know, I don't know, in a board room.

I see my granddaughter in my lap on Bill, my horse, and she's not born yet and she's not conceived yet and no one's even ready to have a granddaughter in my family yet, but that's what I see. Oh, I have the shivers. I'm feeling the chill of truth here, Ed. All right, take the breaks off what you imagine. What you imagine is it comes to you as easily

if it's a big dream as if it's a small dream. I really agree with Joe Dispenza. We live the life we imagine and most of us imagine the same thing we saw growing up going on forever. And so we never create anything but that. What do you see in the house? I see out of the house. So what would be different is that when I come down the stairs, I can actually see the ocean when I get down to that level. So I don't really see a lot of things in there that are different, but I know what I see when I look out.

And when I look out, there's this huge wide open like door slider that you can walk out and you can look out from being in the house and you can see the waves crashing. That's what it's. Oh my gosh. Little bit of theory. The reason our lives are so angiogenic is we have been cut off from nature. I mean, that's one of the reasons. And we evolved to wake up to sounds like wind in the trees and birds song.

And there is research to show that those sounds give us homeostasis and the ocean does the same thing. So I love that you can't really see what's in the house because it tells me that your spirit is moving you out to commune with the natural environment where we evolved to be happy. So the big takeaway of my book was when I realized looking at the neurobiology of the brain, that creativity anxiety toggle, that they're opposite systems.

And if you are in the anxiogenic part, the anxious part of your brain, and you drive yourself and you succeed in our culture, which is about being driven, you'll get as burned out as I did with my third Harvard degree, my third child, and my third job. It was like, and my third progressive illness. Now I have no symptoms of those illnesses, by the way. They're not supposed to get better, they just did. And the reason they did was that I learned to exchange anxiety for flow. So you watch those waves, you're looking at the waves

because the waves are telling you something. Can you feel nature speaking to you? The wave comes in and that recedes. There is no push. There is no anxiety. There is the flow of everything in nature and everything in nature breathes in and then out and in and then out. But our culture says, push, push, push, push, push,

push harder, never stop. It's insane. And it's suicidal in the end. Y'all should really do what we just did. Now, the reason that this is relatively easy for me is I've been doing some of this work now for about three weeks. Here's what will happen, is the absence of anxiety.

And like you'll feel it in your body. Like you'll just like it's the absence of it. Like you can't really do that work. And what it is is it's curiosity, but it's also specificity and it's not rushed. And like that's why even when she didn't ask, I said I can actually feel the sand in my feet. Because I've noticed with me me it's not just visual. There's some kinesthetic aspects of it, which is like what am I feeling? Is the wind on my... and I can be honest with you guys. It's a... for those of you that are like achievers, you're like, hey, this is great, but I'll just be candid with you.

It's very easy for us to get back to that other person. It's very easy to get back to the, all right, let's car max out. That's that, that place is easy to find. So it's not like I'm going to be in this meditation or in this moment, a hundred. But what I can do is potentially return back to that work without the stress load on my body, my heart, and my spirit. In other words, there's an ease. As she said, the flow to doing the work. And I'm going to tell you the number one thing that I have noticed a difference as I'm doing the work since

I've been making some of these changes and this is huge for me my cognitive abilities to recall things on cue and command have become much more heightened than before in other words like on stage guys Finding references for talking points and things that were harder for me to find before are easier my I've written literally three or four brand new talks the last three weeks and not done them under duress or pressure I haven't had any I haven't had any as I've been doing it. I wasn't fatigued when I was done doing it. That's the other thing, I mean I'm interviewing you so I'm gonna shut up here, but the other thing that other, I want to acknowledge what you're teaching. The other part of it is I've not been so

damn tired after I'm done my work. You know, I mean Martha stipulates in the book, you can live anxiety-free. I'm not telling you I'm there in three weeks, but I've diminished it significantly So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth and you know By the way It's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow and also taking a look at the future if you want to Change your future you got to change the things you're doing if you continue to do the same things You're probably going to produce the same results

But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented, you're much more likely to do that yourself. And that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second, growthday.com forward slash ed. My friend Brendon Bruchard has created the most incredible personal development and business app that I've ever seen in my life. Everything from goal setting software to personal accountability, journaling, horses, thousands of dollars worth of courses in there as well. I create content in there on Mondays where I contribute as do a whole bunch of other influences like the Avengers of influencers and business minds in there.

It's the Netflix for high achievers or people that want to be high achievers so go check it out. My friend Brennan's made it very affordable, very easy to get involved. Go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. Listen, all of us are busy and I keep hearing about Tonal when it comes to fitness. I'm like, what is Tonal? And then they ended up approaching the show. I have so many friends that are working with Tonal because let's be honest, we have a million

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It's really cool. Right now, Tonal is offering our listeners $200 off your Tonal purchase with promo code EDMILETTE. That's tonal.com and use promo code EDMILETTE for $200 off your purchase. Wow. That's tonal.com promo code EDMILETTE for $200 off your purchase. Wow. That's tonal.com promo code Edmylet for $200 off. All right, everybody. Right over there off camera is my element drink. I've been super obsessed with my hydration lately. I find my energy is better. My skin's gotten a lot better.

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sodium levels, which could lead to headaches. So just pouring a bunch of water in your body can dilute some of the good stuff. Enter Element. Element has enough sodium, potassium, and magnesium to get you feeling and performing your best. Element came with a fantastic offer for us. Just go to drinklmnt.com slash my let and get a free sample pack with any purchase. That's drinklmnt.com slash my let. These statements and products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. You talk about, I want to use the term the correct way because I wrote this down, sensing

truth in the body. That's kind of like a correlated tool, right? Like I want to stay in there just for a minute because that's a big difference for me. Like I didn't realize how much I carry anxiety and stress in my body, like back aches, fatigue, my feet are sore. I also have some autoimmune stuff. I'm actually Thursday this week going

to see a rheumatologist finally about it. And this stuff is just starting. Here's what I can tell you all guys, at about 54, this stuff just like eventually stacks in your body. It just does. And like, you don't need to wait to be 54 to fix this like I am, you can be proactive with it.

But can you tell them the tool about sensing truth in the body? Because it's sort of in the same zone here. It's finding your line. I mean, I had a friend who was a bodybuilder who went skiing for the first time and he was just, he wanted to be at speed. So he'd put himself straight down the line, level his skis and just go without, he

would just go as straight as he could and he would crash every time. But when he learned to go back and forth between letting the gravity pull you down and then letting the slope pull you up and then doing that again and again. You begin to move with the flow of nature and you become much, much more powerful. And it's not coddling. It's getting aligned with the forces of nature and science in the brain that can work hard, not work hard, work, work fun, work easy, work playfully, and all of that has gone out of it for a lot, especially of men,

because it's considered sort of pandering to yourself. But my friend Boyd Vardy, who taught me to track lions, he lives in South Africa, and he was the one who told me that we were tracking lions and it was super exciting. And then he said, here's the thing. When you find the track of your right life, the print you're looking for, like you learn a lion's footprint or a rhino's footprint, you are looking for joy in the body. Joy in the body.

And I was like, whoa, say that again. Really good. Most of us, because we've been tensed up and we've been gunning down that hill and we're Joy in the body. And I was like, whoa, say that again. Really good. Most of us, because we've been tensed up and we've been gunning down that hill and we're going to crash and we don't care because we're tough. We are not even paying attention to the danger our own bodies are in from this sort of reckless course we're taking. So Boyd will take men out tracking and teach them to feel the insides of their bodies the way you're learning through illness. That's how I had to do it too, through illness.

And then you start to look for something in your life that gives you this feeling of uplift, ease, and joy and playfulness. When you said that about being on your horse with your granddaughter, who is just a twinkle in someone's eye right now. Right. I felt it was a track. Okay, that. And there are tracks that you're kind of sure of, like that probably is a lion. And then there's a track that is a dead cert.

Yes. That one landed in my body as I was looking at you. So just in case people out there don't know how to get there, I've spent 30 years traveling the world and talking to people looking for the sense of what is truest. And I found that there's one thing that you can say, whether I've worked with prisoners, I've worked with heroin addicts on the streets, I've worked with billionaires, and everyone responds with the sense of truth to this sentence. I am meant to live in peace. I am meant to live in peace. If you say that to yourself silently four or five day, in no hour, in no minute, in no second, are

you ever required to do more than you can do in peace? And when you start doing that, what happens is not that you slow down, is that you start to ski life. You start the joyful feeling of just staying balanced in the things that you love while the forces of nature help you move forward, give it to you, lavish it on you. The universe is dying for you to be kind to yourself. And when you are, you're going to feel that sense of truth. So when you said that about the granddaughter, that was like, bong, for me.

Well, for me, I think it's, I am meant to live in peace. I think that's a bong. I mean, this is an all-timer, you guys. Just because I'm such a good case study for a lot of you too, right? Let me tell you what my wiring is, which is crazy. But my wiring is, okay, that's the lack of work. That's the lack of productivity. That's the lack of success. And so I either choose peace, everyone, I bet I'm giving you a breakthrough right now. I choose a peaceful state or I choose a productive state. And I think most people are like me. You may not have the level of anxiety or whatever,

but I do think when you pick your piece, it's a corona on the beach and that's it. And in my crazy wiring, like I think in order for it to have been work, I have to be tired and stressed. Does that sound familiar to any of you? This is when I put on my sociologist hat. Let's go.

And tell you that until about 300 years ago, everybody woke up to the sounds of one another's voices, maybe water, maybe wind, maybe birds, and that they stayed with people they loved or knew all day long doing things that had a direct application to their happiness. Children played and learned by playing. When the industrial revolution started and factory labor became the biggest thing and obsessive materialism became the measure of success, they started installing like blaring horns

in villages that would go off at 5 a.m. So everybody would have to get up and go into the factory, away from their loved ones, away from nature, away from everything natural. We started batching children in same age, same size groups and making them sit at desks and learn things that had no application to their actual curiosity. We live in a bizarre, anxiogenic, crazy society

that tells us we have to be productive and the only image we can even have of peace is that we get a little break from that. But let me tell you different. When you leave the hemisphere of anxiety and you go into the right hemisphere, what happens as you start to restore the joy and the peace in all those little parts of yourself. I tried this as an experiment with myself and many clients as I wrote this book and what everyone

got was an absolute explosion of delighted creativity. Yes. And all the problems we'd been facing and trying to solve anxiously, we found those solutions because the right brain is wildly productive. When we let it out of the anxious gate, when we let it out of the anxious gate, when we let it out of the social norm, it starts generating solutions

that just will blow your freaking mind and your life gets so much fun and hell is... Right, Marta, you're exactly right, you guys. Choosing peace does not mean you're not choosing productivity. In fact, you're probably choosing more check this out everybody I've only been on her work for three weeks And when I speak which you guys know, I probably I might be the most book speaker in the world

I'm probably am and and so typically when friends or my wife or kids say, how'd you do dad? I Normally go it was a five or six or it was terrible or this or I screwed this up And it's very real and it can be almost a debilitating process and the last three weeks There's been multiple occasions including the last speech. I just gave Where they had you do and I go actually pretty good and here's the kicker. I Wasn't so tired afterwards. Yeah. Well, I didn't need to take kicker. I wasn't so tired afterwards. I didn't need to take a nap after I wasn't. I there's a place to create from that. And the only other experience I've had doing is I've been doing more faith based speaking with my Christian faith. I've

been doing more speaking doing that. And I've told many of my friends, the difference is one I'm better when I'm doing that but two I'm not tired after it's not a grind because I think I'm in this peaceful state as I'm communicating so guys this is not like whimsical like let's sit on the beats like what's your dream life this stuff works hey guys I've been talking about NetSuite now for I don't know seven years on the show we've had such a great relationship because I believe so deeply in the company. And quite frankly, thousands of you have decided to become a NetSuite client. And that's because right now, I don't know if there's a bull or a bear market.

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Oh, I love an integrity cleanse. When I was 29, I was completely miserable. This is the time when I had the three jobs, the three kids, the three illnesses. And I wanted to be free. And I was looking at all these wisdom traditions and they said, the truth will set you free. So I was like, okay, I'm all in. I'm not going to tell a single lie of any kind for an entire year. And that is what I did. And please do not do this.

That year, I walked away from or blew up my childhood religion, which was very intense. That meant losing my family of origin. I decided I really wasn't cut out to be an academic. I kind of hated the faculty meetings. I basically burned every bridge but love. But let me tell you something, Ed. Oh, it set me free. Don't do it the way I did it. It hurts. Don't do it. Every day, tell yourself, I am going to be aware of whether I am saying or doing things

that feel like peace or not like peace. And if you choose something that is not like peace, do it deliberately and say to yourself, I am choosing this, but it is not peace. You say something to a person that's not really true. You say, okay, I said that, but it wasn't my truth. Stop lying to yourself. That's the first thing. That's where I would say go on an integrity cleanse, take a month

and don't lie to yourself once. But it's not what those things were when your friend says, how do I look at this? You shouldn't go, you look terrible, you look fat. There's a limit to it. I'm paraphrasing what you said. Yeah, I did things like that and it was horrible. I tried to be kind, but I'd be like, why do I say that's true?

So I learned after that year, I decided that- That's a big year, Martha. That's a big year. It was a big year. The reason it started really was that I had a surgery for all the illnesses and within the surgery I had one of those experiences that are kind of near death. I wasn't dead but I became very conscious and sat up and looked around and and my body was like on the gurney or whatever they've had me on. I'm like, how am I sitting up? Then I lay back and this light appeared,

and I won't go into it too much, but oh, good heavens. If that is how we are meant to feel. But when that light touched me, the joy and the relief and the laughter and the beauty of it were just like nothing I'd ever experienced before. And then it said, you're not dying,

but your job from here on is to go out and live your life so that you feel like this all the time. And that's... Do you most of the time? I would say about 95% of the time, yeah. Really? Yeah, and I'm pretty productive. No, and you have great energy.

You have very high but loving kind energy. Is this you before that year? In other words, was this your energy? Were you this high energy, this kind energy even before, or is this a different being almost that I'm talking to? Exhausted, frantic, on edge, sharp and short with people because I was so tired all the time because I never slept. I cried so much, my ex-husband used to call me puddles.

You know, I was a wreck, Ed. I was an absolute shipwreck. And that's why I took drastic measures to change it. And I think that's why I was a wreck, Ed. I was an absolute shipwreck. And that's why I took drastic measures to change it. And I think that's why I was given that experience in the surgery. I don't know if it was my brain or what a subconscious, whatever it was, but it reoriented me in a way that set me free from our culture's belief

that anxiety is what we need to be happy and safe and productive. I dropped that lie. I knew it was a lie. You know, millions of people listen to the happy and safe and productive. I dropped that lie. I knew it was a lie. You know, millions of people listen to the show. They love it. Is this my truth still? Is this what I still should be doing? I think re-auditing your life regularly feels good.

I made some decisions a couple years ago about some people that I dislike. They're just not in alignment with my integrity anymore. They weren't bad people by any means. It just, they weren't. And by the way, I know when you teach us in the book that this is an internal game, not an external game, but people are a part of your environment. Guys, we've only done 10% of what's in the book. Maybe not even that, but we shouldn't let everybody go without them at least knowing what the sanity

quilt is because this is another thing. It's they'll remember it. Number one. And it's also just valuable and let me say one thing as she answers this you guys you will unleash new levels of productivity and creativity if you will begin to ask that question and I have it written down here and that statement to yourself that I am I am meant to live in peace and when you repeat that over and over and do these exercises you'll unleash more productivity more energy more success More bliss and joy in your life not less Today's show is sponsored by strawberry dot me. So, you know this

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Let's at least make sure that we let them know about the quilt. Okay. So I was thinking, you know, society gives us patterns that were meant to replicate. Okay. I got a good job. I, or, you know, like I become Ed, I become really successful and wealthy and people love me and admire me and everything. And that's the public speaker mode.

And then there are people who take the accountant pattern and it's kind of like making a quilt by very, very carefully gridding out the pieces and making sure they're cut right and sewn together perfectly. Now there's something called a crazy quilt where you take pieces of fabric that just don't really match anything but you love them and you take your favorite and then you take your next favorite and you just sew them together and then you take your next favorite and sew that to the first two and you go around and around in a spiral until you've got a quilt that you can

square off and finish. And they call that a crazy quilt. And I thought, that's how I want to live my life. And that is how I do live my life. I take my very favorite things and I put them in the center of my attention, if not my time, always in the center of my attention. And then I take my next favorite thing and I put them together. So for example, I talk about South Africa a lot because I'm in love with it and I'm in love with the wild land there and the people there. And

I love to coach people. So I was talking to the owner of the preserve who his specialty is he restores nature to its pristine beautiful Eden like form. And he said the problem is I could restore all the planet, all the ecosystems on Earth, but you can't change people. And I say, Dave, I can only change people, but maybe. So we put it together and now every year I go to South Africa and I coach seminars by taking out people to, you know, learn from animal trackers and learn from the animals themselves and be in this primordial place where humans develop.

Two things I love, the African wilderness and coaching. So them together. Now what's the next thing? I like to do watercolors. Great. Put that on next. What's the next thing? I love jokes.

Okay. Put jokes in there. And so you go around and round, putting the things you love at the center, and you will create what I call an economic ecosystem, where your joy and your vividness will be so infectious that people will start paying you to do what you're doing. I never set out to be a coach. People just kept asking me and paying me. I couldn't figure it out. I still can't. But anyway, the result, I thought it's not a crazy quilt. It's a sanity quilt. It's insane to get up and live your life like a robot. It's insane. And Jeff Bezos tells

all his employees, he says in his annual reports, to wake up terrified and stay scared all day. Daniel reports to wake up terrified and stay scared all day. Huh? Why? You know, why? To be more productive. Well, he's already one of the richest men in the world. So is it really worth thousands of people living in constant fear?

That's the quilt of our society. Everybody goes, oh, that sounds right. To me, that's the insanity. And putting your life together out of the things you love and it will not look like anyone else's quilt but I call it a sanity quilt because it will give you back to yourself. So good Martha. This is so good. I want to go five more minutes. I'm sorry. It's just it's really it's really I love you. Are we tired? We are not tired. We are paying here. Right we are and I

haven't done a lot of shows where like I want to really keep going and so my audience knows this when they listen it's just that I just feel like I feel like we're I'm trying to find something in here for all of you today guys because I just want you happier. You do deserve to live in peace and so I just I want to reach as far as I can because I just want you happier. You do deserve to live in peace and so I just I want to reach as far as I can because I care about you as a human being and I and I know a lot of you this is easy to slough this off and go yeah I'm gonna get around to this win and I am a I am a 54 year old who waited to get around to it too long. You don't need to wait to get around to it for one second you can

begin to give yourself these gifts. Let me ask you this last. By the way, I want to say the book's name before we're finished, which it's Beyond Anxiety, Curiosity, Creativity and Finding Your Life's Purpose by Martha Beck. So now you guys know the book, I always finish with that, but I want to ask a question after that. If there was something we didn't cover today, like someone just says, hey Martha, I heard you on the Ed Mylett show, they ran into you at Starbucks. And she said, I got all this stuff. I'm working on my sanity quilt and I've got, you know, the, I've got this visualization technique of my perfect day and I'm treating myself with kindness.

I'm repeating the right thing. But when anxiety pops up, is there something I can do quickly that's like a hack? Everyone's always looking for a hack. Can you give me a hack? Yeah, here's your hack. And it's the entire life's work of a great psychologist named James Pennebaker. He just did this experiment once where he had college students write down what they did for a summer vacation, but he had some of them write down something traumatic or difficult or unpleasant that they were dealing with. Right after doing it, those students were a little disturbed, but for a long time afterward, they had higher levels of satisfaction and health

by any number of measures. So here's what I want to give you as a hack. If you have even a second with your phone, with a notebook, with your computer, sit down, get calm, and look for any part of you that is feeling anxious at all and just say, are you okay in there? Write it down with your hands. Are you okay in there?

And then if you're writing in a notebook, switch to your non-dominant hand and let yourself write whatever comes up. You don't have to switch hands, but if you do, some more surprising things come up. But if it says, I'm really anxious about, like, I'm looking for anxiety in myself right now, I can't find any. This is the problem. I have trouble coming up with examples. That's awesome. Okay, I'm kind of anxious about the geopolitical state of the world. So I would write down, and it was, I'm nervous about politics and things. And then I say, I would write down, tell me everything.

Put it all down, tell me everything. I care. Now it is playful, but it's deadly serious too. The part of you that is saying to the horse, you're okay, I've got you. In order to write to the part of you that is saying to the horse, you're okay, I've got you. In order to write to the part of yourself that is anxious, you force the awakening of a part of the brain that is compassionate. Did you use that voice as the voice you want us to use? That's why I said playful. We're using that voice as a point of emphasis for the show. You follow what I'm saying? I was being a

bit silly. Okay, okay. I want to make, cause I didn't know that, cause there's a technique where you'll use a playful voice to minimize something's impact. So that wasn't that, that was you emphasizing the terminology. Yeah. Okay. Weirdly it can help if you're doing this aloud, it helps to whisper.

When we whisper, the right side of the brain turns on. I don't know why. Psychiatrist taught me that. I believe it. Yeah, so really genuinely. And if you walk in and your spouse or your kids are being grumpy and obnoxious, don't get caught in that, sit down with them.

And you will only be able to do this with them if you can do it with yourself, your employees, everybody. You sit down and say, what's going on? Tell me everything. And then they say, well, and then say, say more, tell me more. After five to 15 minutes, most of your problems will have been solved by the creative right side of your brain if you engage in this dialogue. And you will start to discover the compassionate witness that is actually what you are.

Can I lay out a really trippy quote from an Indian guru here? This guy named Nisargadatta Maharaj, he said, mind is interested in what happens while awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy. So an anxious thought is clutched in your mind the way a child would clutch a toy. And when you say, are you okay? I'm here. Tell me everything.

You become the loving parental force that can embrace your anxious self. And then it can like a like a tired horse that you finally when you got that horse out how did it how did it act once you got it free actually I could tell you his name is Bill and once we got him out and he calmed down he was he there's mud he was rolling around in the mud and playing in the mud he was super happy like overflowing with joy afterwards he breathed he breathed a bunch by the way at first too.

Yeah, and you'll find yourself breathing more deeply as you go through this exercise. Tell me everything. The part of you that is in compassion breathes more deeply. It's really interesting. You'll see all kinds of physiological effects just from writing down. Are you okay in there? And then, no, I'm feeling a little blah, blah, blah, blah. Tell me everything, blah, blah, blah, blah. Tell me more, blah, blah, blah. No, I'm not anxious anymore, but I thought of a solution. It's actually really fast.

Slow down enough to do it for five minutes and it will speed up everything you're trying to get done. I love it. I'm gonna do it with a non-dominant hand too, so if she threw that in there, I'm gonna do that. This was extraordinary today, guys. You're welcome welcome and I'm grateful to you Martha for the work you do. It's helped me. Everybody can tell from listening to today's show and I'm honored that I get to share some of your work with the world today. And you

are a miracle on legs and I'm so grateful for what you put into the world and so deeply honored to be here with you and to be heard by whoever happens to listen to this. They're gonna be a bunch. I can tell you that. I want to meet you in person, so I hope we get a chance to do that. At least if we do another podcast, we have to agree to do it in person. I'll come down to Florida.

I'll be right there. All right. I love that. All right. Thank you for today. Thank you, Ed. So good. Everyone share today's episode.

Everybody needs to hear a piece of this. There's some peace in there today. Somebody needs to hear that you love and that you care about, starting with you. God bless you.