THE ED MYLETT SHOW - Overcome Negative Thoughts for Positive Thinking Feat. Dr.Daniel Amen Thumbnail Text: Grow A Strong Mind

Episode Date: October 19, 2024

Overcome Negative Thoughts & Take Control of Your Mind Are your thoughts holding you back? In this mashup episode, we tackle one of the biggest challenges we all face—how to break free from the grip of negative thinking. Featuring Dr. Daniel Amen, Dr. Caroline Leaf, Andrew Huberman, and more, we explore practical ways to manage your mind and elevate your mental health. Dr. Daniel Amen explains how automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) can sabotage our happiness and success. He shares simple yet powerful strategies to stop these thoughts from spiraling out of control and offers actionable steps to rewire your brain for positivity. You'll learn how negative thinking patterns can impact your mental and physical well-being—and most importantly, how to overcome them. Dr. Caroline Leaf introduces her neurocycle, a five-step process designed to help you manage your mind and direct your thoughts. This system has been proven to reduce anxiety, improve focus, and even boost immune function. Meanwhile, Andrew Huberman dives into the science of habit formation and reveals how to train your brain to default to positive, productive behaviors. Here’s what you’ll gain from this episode: - Learn how to identify and stop automatic negative thoughts (ANTs). - Discover practical strategies to reprogram your brain for positivity. - Understand the mind-body connection and how it impacts your mental health. - Gain insights into how your daily habits shape your thoughts and overall mindset. This isn’t just about thinking positively—it’s about taking control of your mind and shaping your reality. If you’re ready to break free from negative thought patterns and unlock your true potential, this episode is for you. Let’s start rewriting your mental script today. 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 Rushard 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, 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 $5,000, $10,000 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 in there 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 going to 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. This is The Ed Mylet Show. Hey everyone, welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow The Ed Mylet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. I have a real friend here today and somebody that I admire tremendously. He's helped me. He's scanned my brain. I think he's the

foremost expert on brain health on the planet. He's a great friend of mine. I love him very much. He's a strong man of faith as well. Dr. Daniel Amon, welcome back to the show brother. Thank you so much. Kids are in trouble more than ever before. It's horrifying. There's a new study the CDC put out that 54% of teenage girls report being persistently sad, that 32% have thought of killing themselves, 24% have planned to kill themselves. Just think of that.

A quarter of teenage girls and 13% have tried. These are statistics unlike anything in recorded history. Why? Well, it's an interesting question, but we're living in a toxic society. So if you take the toxic food, we feed them. The toxic products that go on their bodies, the toxic social media that creates this high level of self-absorption, and self-absorbed people are never happy people.

And then the toxic news, which really drives them to negative thinking patterns, because you and I both know the news is no longer the news. The news is like the crisis news network, because if they scare you, you'll pay attention. And so you buy more copper underwear. But the negativity, and I actually

have been studying negativity bias. So does your mind tend to go to what's wrong, or does it go to what's right? And if your mind goes to what's wrong, you're much more likely to be anxious, to be depressed, to have an addiction. And so I train kids to have a positivity bias and to take care of their brains. In the book you reference the fact that they need to be working on their brains and their minds. Tell me, did I misunderstand that,

or is there a difference between those two things? Well, your brain, the physical functioning of your brain, moment by moment, creates your mind. And like all the parenting books on the bookshelf, nobody's talking about brain health, but it's the health of your brain that then creates your mind. So if you think of it like hardware and software, you have to get the hardware right first. And then you have to program it properly. Like in the book, we talk about brain health and brain reserve and how to have a healthy brain.

But once you have a healthy brain, how do you have a healthy mind? And we talk about killing the ants, the automatic negative thoughts that steal people's happiness. I was 28 years old in my psychiatric residency before I learned I didn't have to believe every stupid thing I thought. The brain is a sneaky organ, right? We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear, but there's nothing in school. I'm friends with Paul Simon, love Paul Simon, especially his song Kodachrome,

which starts off with, when I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all. And if you think, schools really have not been redesigned in 120 years, we need to redesign them to create healthy people. Well, I was 48 years old before I learned about the ants, which was from you.

And I remember leaving you that day and saying to my son, who was the first person I saw, I go, hey Max, I just had a revelation. He goes, what's that, Dad? I said, I don't have to believe everything I think. And one other thing I have a tendency to do, I wanna know if this affects children, because really this book and today's conversation

will be about mental health in general, but more specifically how it applies to our children. I do something when I have a negative thought, Dr. Eamon, where I do what I call it, like thought stacking. So I get a negative thought. I don't do this with my positive ones, I do it with my negative ones, where I repeat it over and over

and over, and then I stack it. If this happens, then that happens, and this, and I create this entire almost narrative in my mind of what I determine, I coin thought stacking. Is that a common thing in people just like me, or is that something that happens in children as well, where maybe they're being bullied at school, have a thought I don't want to go and then they repeat it and repeat it and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger and

now you believe the bigger lie that's even worse than the original lie you were telling yourself. Thoughts stack the ants the automatic negative thoughts they link they stack they link and then they attack attack you. And it's not hard to kill the ants, but it needs to become a practice. And I have my patients, especially the ones that are anxious, depressed, or obsessive, write down 100 of their worst thoughts and then take them through a process to get rid of

them. And it doesn't work after you do it the first, second, third, or fourth time. But after you do it the 20th or 30th time, pretty soon your brain is making new connections to attack and eliminate the ants. And in the book, I talk about nine different types of ants. So, whether- Let's go through three or four of them if you don't mind. We want them to get the book, but let's give them a-

Fortune telling. What's that? I know what it is, but you tell them. Where you're predicting things are gonna turn out badly, even though you don't have evidence for it. There's mind reading, where you believe you know what another person is thinking even though they haven't told you that and I have 25 years of education and I can't tell what anybody else is thinking. A negative,

you know, a negative look from someone else may mean nothing more than they're constipated. You don't know, right? It's like, clarify it. Blame is the worst ant. It's a big red ant because when you blame someone else for the problems in your life, you become a victim and you become powerless. So I wrote my first book many moons ago. It was called The Sabotageage factor, all the ways we mess ourselves up from getting what we want. And the number one hallmark of self-defeating behavior is blaming other people for how your life is turning out. There's guilt beating, ants.

And one of the worst ones that's happening, we're in a political year, is labeling. Whenever you label yourself or someone else with a negative term, you're liberal, you're conservative, you're a jerk, he's an idiot, you lump them with all the liberals, conservatives, jerks, idiots that you've ever known, and you can't deal with them anymore because you're not dealing with them. You're dealing with a group of them. So here's the exercise. Whenever you're sad, mad, nervous, or out of control, write down what you're thinking

and then identify what kind of ant it is. And then we take them through this process that actually borrowed from my friend Byron Cady is like, Tana never listens to me. So that's an all or nothing thought. Whenever you think in words like always, never, everyone, every time, it's usually wrong. So Tana, my wife, never listens to me. I've had that thought.

And so you write it down. And then you go, is that true? And if you're really irritated, you go, yeah. And then you go, is that true? And if you're really irritated, you go, yeah. And then you go, is it absolutely true? With 100% certainty. I've written and produced 18 national public television specials about the brain. She has listened to all of the scripts.

So it's like, no, that's actually not true. The third question is, how does that thought make you feel? Sad. How does the thought make you act? Mad. What's the outcome of the thought? Separation. So the fourth question is how would I feel if I didn't have the thought?

Happy. How would I act? Connected. What's the outcome? We have a better relationship. And my favorite question of all of them is five. Take the original thought, Tana never listens to me, and flip it to the opposite. Tana does listen to me. Now, don't go to the narcissistic opposite, which is she always listens to me, because that's not true either. And go, Tana does listen to me. And then I'm completely not bugged by my thought. And you have to understand, thoughts are creations of your mind. And they come from all sorts of places. Sometimes they're not yours. Sometimes they actually come from your mom or dad

or from your grandparents because we know trauma, for example, gets transmitted epigenetically. So it actually comes through our genes. And so if my grandfather, because he had a big trauma when he was 19 years old, that can actually impact my dad's genes and then impact me. So this whole thing of epigenetics is so interesting. So thoughts can come from a different generation.

They come from the voices, obviously, of my mom, you know, I'll give you something to cry about, or my dad, who told me, what did he say? I told him I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Why don't you want to be a real doctor? Why do you want to be a nut doctor and hang out with nuts all day long? So voices come from our parents, from our siblings, from our friends, our foes, from the music we listen to, the news we watch, and they lie.

I mean, that's the one thing I didn't know till I was 28. Thoughts lie. Just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true, whether or not it's helpful, and you can learn to direct them or you can become a victim of them. One great strategy I talk about in the book is give your mind a name. It's based on this concept of gaining psychological distance from the nonsense in your head. I named my mind after my pet raccoon. When I was 16, I grew up in the San Fernando Valley.

I had a pet raccoon. I loved her, but she was a troublemaker. Would leave raccoon poo in my shoes, ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. And that's my mind. My mind will just stir up trouble. And I'll see everything's gone away, and I die this horrible death.

My mind used to do the same thing you were talking about. It would stack and link and then attack me. Like if I almost got into an accident, I wouldn't go, oh, thank God, I'm fine. I would see the accident play out. I'd then see the car burst into flames. I'd then see the ambulance driver probably had ADD and got lost to the accident and that I would be in the hospital and I'd be burned over 80% of my body, and the nurse was not cute.

I was thinking two things. One, the separation from the thought. These exercises are separating you, that word that you use, and when you get distance or above your thought, you can begin to see sort of the folly of them and the ridiculousness of them. As you were describing it also,

I'm processing, cause this is something that I really work on myself, you and I have talked about this. And the techniques that you just went through and more of them that are in the book, the lack of them, that pattern that we get is like, you truly become a prisoner of your thoughts. And the techniques on the way out creates

what I was thinking when you were saying it is freedom. There should be some freedom. If you could actually flip that, that strategy that you talked about, you go from being a prisoner of your thoughts to freedom. I just talked about this in the last interview and there's this great quote that I mess up all the time from Gandhi that says,

"'I will not allow you to trample through my mind "'with your dirty feet.'" And in my own life, a lot of time, I'm the guy walking and trampling through my mind with my dirty feet. And in my own life, a lot of time, I'm the guy walking and trampling through my mind with my dirty feet. And I don't have to believe everything I think. So hey guys, as you know, I've partnered up with my good friend, Brennan Bruchard, who's created the greatest personal development system that has ever been designed called Growth Day. If you go to growthday.com forward slash ed, you can get all the information,

but it's that time of year where everybody's trying to form new habits. They've got new resolutions and goals and you need an environment and you need some coaches and you need to be able to do it super inexpensively. And that's where growthday.com forward slash ed comes in. There's everything from journaling to accountability programs, live messages every Monday from myself and other influencers. There's an opportunity for you to get courses that would cost thousands of dollars completely for free. It's incredible Go to growthday.com forward slash ed and check it out if we were to look at The scans of an unhealthy brain of one of these children or one of ourselves

What would we see number one? Would we see this evidence if we looked at a scan? and two the traditional world's prescription for that is literally a prescription most of the time, which is some sort of medication. And so I want your thoughts on that. What would we see if we looked at the scan of someone who's healthy versus unhealthy in these situations and how do you feel about prescribing prescription medication to children for the most part as a general answer for these ailments or problems they think they have.

Oh, two huge questions. I did a study with Noelle Nelson, who wrote a book called The Power of Appreciation, and we scanned her when she was appreciating her life, and then, and her brain was really healthy and I'm like we need to scan you when you're hating your life and she goes oh I don't want to do that that'll make me unhappy I'm like come on you have to suffer for science and so I remember it like it was yesterday right before I scanned her, her dog was sick.

And so her thoughts linked. My dog is sick, I have to stay home, I'm gonna lose my job, I won't have money to take care of the dog, the dog will die, and I'll be sad and I'll end up homeless in Malibu. I mean, like within five minutes. That was the trail and then I injected the medicine that we do the scans with and

The spec scans we do are so cool because we're getting that moment in time of that couple of minutes, but that couple of minutes seems to be your brain over time and healthy that couple of minutes, but that couple of minutes seems to be your brain over time. And healthy, when she thought what she appreciated about her life, and when she thought what she hated about her life or her fear, her frontal lobes dropped, so the frontal lobes is the break in your brain. Her left temporal lobe dropped, which is often a source of really dark thoughts, like suicidal thoughts. And her cerebellum dropped.

Cerebellum's the back bottom part of the brain that's involved in physical coordination, but it's also involved in thought coordination. So she's not coordinated. She's irritated, and she has less control. And when I saw that, I'm like, oh, this is negativity is the pattern that creates athletic slumps. Because if you think you're gonna strike out, you're a little less coordinated, and you're more likely to strike out. Isn't that interesting? If I think I'm gonna miss the free throw, then I'm more likely to strike out. Isn't that interesting? If I think I'm gonna miss the free throw,

then I'm more likely to miss the free throw. And so, negativity is bad for the brain. And I'm doing this study now on negativity bias, and it's just associated with every bad thing. Now, medication, that's a huge topic. And it's not the first thing I think about. I own a supplement company. So if you're depressed, I want you

to be on a good multiple vitamin. I want you to take omega-3 fatty acids. And I want you to take saffron. Because there are now 25 randomized controlled trials showing it's equally effective to antidepressants, but rather than knock off your libido, it enhances it and it enhances your memory. So the science of saffron is very exciting. Now if nothing is working, generally with kids I don't give them antidepressants because

they have black box warnings and can increase the risk of suicidal behavior. Now if I'm really stumped, I might. The issue with ADD is different though. And I know everybody thinks all the kids are over-medicated and they are, but there are a lot of kids that aren't medicated that should be because having untreated ADD, right, whenever the doctor says, oh, I think maybe we should treat them for ADD, you want to go, I want to know the side effects. And the general can lose their appetite, can develop tics, can have problems sleeping, I mean, it has side effects.

But you have to ask the other question, what are the side effects of having untreated ADD, which are things like school failure, friend failure, incarceration, bankruptcy, divorce. It's a lot. Identity and confidence starts to stack the wrong way. If you're not, if you really have ADD and you're not diagnosed by the age of nine, your

self-esteem generally is problematic because you try and it doesn't work. You try and it doesn't work. And you know, my first thought is not medicine. I have natural solutions like decrease their time on gadgets, get them to exercise, more sunshine, simple supplements like multiple vitamin, fish oil, rhodiola is one of my favorite supplements to help with focus and decrease stress. But if those things don't work, I'd think about it, stimulant.

I would. Is it saffron, is that how you said it? Saffron. Spelled half, so everybody knows. So, S-A-F-F-R-O-N. So the spice, it's the world's most expensive spice, but if you just look at the science, it's stunning. Okay, that's crazy.

And when I learned about saffron, it was 25 years ago, I'm reading the studies and they're pro-sexual, And that's the thing that got me, because all the SSRIs I've prescribed, people don't want to have sex, or it takes longer to have an orgasm. Now, if somebody has premature ejaculation, that can be really helpful for them.

It's like one of those little tricks with Prozac. I'm like, you'll last longer, sometimes you'll last forever. Wear your partner out, very bad. But I saw it was prosexual and I'm like, pay attention. And then, so there's five studies showing sexual enhancement for females and males, but 25 studies on mood. Interesting.

So small thing, well not small. One thing you emphasized with me was caffeine. And I'm just curious if you still feel strongly about that because I'm thinking about kids in general and I'm thinking of all these energy drinks. Everybody drinks coffee at about age three it seems like nowadays, right? And I remember in my case you were saying,

hey listen this may seem insignificant and small and yeah I have omega-3s but also like your caffeine intake is making an impact on your brain health and I just want if people have children right now that are pumping them full of caffeine and soft drinks and all these other things there's got to be an impact on brain health for them as well. And why would you do that? It's clearly a drug and it's just a bad idea caffeine and the reason you know I pick on lots of things. I pick on know, I pick on lots of things. I pick on alcohol, I pick on marijuana.

But I pick on caffeine because it constricts blood flow to the brain. And what we've learned is neurons, brain cells, don't age. It's blood vessels that age. And so what you want, I often talk about brain envy, you know, you want to want to have a better brain. Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the thing. You want to have blood flow envy because you want to keep their blood flow, your blood flow, right? Because to be mentally, have mentally strong kids, you have to model that, right? So it always starts with the parents being mentally strong. But you want to lose the caffeine and sugar, right?

I mean, energy drinks are just a disaster. I have one sitting right over there. That's probably why I'm doing such a bad job in the interview. Now, they're not good for you because, I mean, one, the sugar is pro-inflammatory Brand new study out today on inflammation Damaging the dopamine circuit in the front part of your brain So kill the sugar and whenever it comes to food, you just want to ask yourself this question Do I love it and does it love me back? And so with kids when my daughter was two,

we played this game called Chloe's Game. Is this good for my brain or bad for it? And so I'd go avocados and she'd go two thumbs up, God's butter. If I said blueberries, she'd put her little hands on her hips and go, are they organic? Because non-organic blueberries hold more pesticides than almost any fruit.

I'm like, no, of course they're organic. She goes, oh, God's candy. Oh, God's candy, I love that. Hitting a soccer ball with your head, oh, very stupid. Brain is soft, skull is hard, skull has sharp bony ridges. Right, and playing these games, I talk about this in the book,

playing these games with kids just to get them to love and think about and care about their brain and a lot of parents especially parents of teenagers go I just don't have any influence it's because you don't have a good bond with them. I'm so excited to have this guest here today she's one of the most brilliant people you're ever gonna meet in your life she's a best-selling author she's got a PhD in communication pathology she's brilliant and you're ever going to meet in your life. She's a best-selling author, she's got a PhD in communication pathology, she's brilliant and you're going to write a bunch of notes today. I mean like a bunch of notes. So Dr. Caroline Leath. Thank you so much for that lovely

introduction and I just absolutely love talking to you. We hit the most amazing talk on when you're when I interviewed you and I think you're incredible as well. So thank you. Give us a quick, what's the difference between brain and mind and what are these five steps to managing our mind? Maybe you just listed a few of them there, but I like lists, so I'm just wondering what those are. Absolutely. Well, first of all, the five steps we call the neuro, what I call it the neuro cycle. So with your mind, you're cycling through your brain, you're directing the neuroplasticity,

which is really nice to know. You can actually direct changes in your brain. So my whole premise is that if your mind is always working and it's always changing the brain and it's always happening, can we direct that process? So for almost four decades now, I've been researching that. And the answer is yes. And that's what's in the book, cleaning up your mental mess. So if you add the nearest cycle to your lifestyle, and it's a lifestyle, you actually will literally improve your ability to manage your mind by 81% and more, which is phenomenal because it means that you influence

cellular health through the telomeres, which we can unpack as well. You can reduce inflammation, you can improve your immune function, your cardiovascular function, neurological, kidney line, everything about your body will respond to mind management because your mind basically is driving all those functions anyway. Your gut health, your gut brain interaction, all of it isn't happy if you date your brain and body are dead. So what's keeping, what's the difference between a dead person and a live person? Mind. So if mind is messy, brain and body are messy. If mind is cleaned up, and it's a process, because we're all going to be messy, because we have free will. And part of getting a mind sorted out, part of my

management is dealing with the mental mess. It's accepting I'm going to be make bad decisions, I'm going to get into arguments, I am going to make, you know, misunderstand people, I am going to have acute traumas and toxic toxic tumors and imposter syndrome and people pleasing and all this stuff all of us go through in different ways. So I'm going to have that and it's okay, but how am I going to manage it? So for me personally, what's happened over the years is that I still go through these things, but the difference is I'm 81% more efficient in identifying and managing. So instead of something that could throw me years ago for days and affect my work and everything, I can deal with it within seconds and minutes and get back on track. So that's one part of the

answer. So before I go to MindBrain, do you want to ask anything or unpack anything with what I said? No, are there are there specifically five things like it are going to sequence? Yes, it's a sequence. So before I tell the sequence, let me tell you mind brain, because it'll make so much more sense. Because I've alluded to it a lot. So your mind is separate from your brain, but inseparable. So what is the brain? The brain and mind are not the same thing.

And the brain and body collectively are made of 37 to 100 trillion cells. And your mind is, and then those 37 to 100 trillion cells and your mind is, and then those 37 to 100 trillion cells arrange themselves into this incredible, the brain and the heart and the lungs, et cetera. And your mind is what actually is the external force that keeps them going, the blood flowing, the chemicals, electricity, the electromagnetics, all of that, which is phenomenal.

So that's why if our mind's not managed, the body and the brain will be a mess. And so, and that goes down to even like if you are eating, if you're eating, maybe eating a farm to table wonderful diet, etc., but you're not dealing with your anxiety or you're not, you're trying to stuff it down or you're not getting that bad habit or that toxic trauma, you will lose up to 80% of the nutrition because your mind has affected the ability of the digestive system to actually digest and get the simulate the nutrients. And sometimes it's kind of messy and sometimes it's great and we all if we're human, we are going to experience

messes and there's no shame in that. The sooner we get rid of the shame and guilt and condemnation around being messy, and the sooner we as leaders talk about the mind more authentically, the more we give people that follow us a permission to talk about mind. Only 3% of leaders are talking about mind, which is terrible. So that doesn't that's creating the stigma that they are pretending that be perfect. And that's why we see people that seem to be perfect in their lives and they're committing suicide. Meanwhile, it's because we've got this philosophy in this day and age of being open and seeing issues of the mind as helpful messengers of an underlying issue. The neuro cycle then is these five steps. It is how you manage your mind moment by moment.

So it's a lifestyle. So the neuro cycle is what you do when you're awake and conscious and it then automatically prepares you for sleep because sleep is fixing up your brain. So your mind is always with you. So your mind always needs to be managed. And so an analogy, and then I'll dive into the five steps. You can go three weeks without food. You can go three days without water.

You can go three minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go three seconds without using your mind. So you're always thinking, feeling and choosing. Yeah. So it's gather awareness, feeling and choosing. Yeah. So it's gather awareness. Second step is to reflect. Third step is to write. Fourth step is to recheck. And the first step is an act of reach. So each of those, they're so profound, they do the most phenomenal stuff in your brain. And the first half of the book, where I talk about

the mental health system, and I talk about my clinical trials, I do explain what each of those steps are doing. So the first thing is to gather awareness. Gather awareness, and I've chosen words very carefully. If you think of a big fat apple tree and you're apple picking, and this apple tree is so full that you actually can't, like you just go up to and you just nudge it and this apple is just falling on your head.

That's how we often feel when our minds are messed. It's just, everything's just falling on our head and it's just too much. So what you can do with the neuropsycho is when you feel that situation coming on, remove yourself from the tree and stand back and watch the tree. And gather awareness of all of that.

Don't be scared of it. Don't run away from the apple tree. Just stand back and observe the apple tree. Observe what's going on there. Let me jump in about that. This is brilliant. One of the things I've taught for a long time, I didn't understand the neuroscience behind it was that for me, and there's four other steps, this is why everybody needs to get the book, but awareness of your thoughts,

I've always said when I'm aware of these patterns, when I'm aware of my thoughts, they begin to lose their power over me, their influence over me, and one of the reasons that that you're you're explaining it scientifically, which I've always wanted to understand better because I do become separate from the thought when I observe it almost like I'm above it and distant from it like you said and I realize I'm not just that thought and that it is a pattern that I'm running and so I just want to acknowledge what Caroline's saying because from a practical standpoint when I coach people this is something that is the first thing I teach is just becoming aware. Now to know that there's four other steps is obviously very empowering as well but and I want to just unpack this a little bit into another area. So I want to use your brilliance towards

something else. One thing I want to acknowledge is that what Caroline is saying is that neuroplasticity is real, that mind can change matter, that literally that these thoughts, if you change them, change the protein structures in your brain, change the matter of your brain. So this is powerful to know that we can physically change our brain by using our mind and this distinction between the mind and the brain is also a breakthrough way of listening to it or seeing it for me as I'm sure it is for everybody else. Just those things alone, just those two things alone have made our time already incredibly invaluable

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Laurel Road, your partner on the road to financial peace of mind, equal housing lender, member FDIC. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. So people ask me all the time, of the 800 or so guests you've had on the show, is there one thing they all have in common? I can tell you a thing they all have in common.

Most of them have been to therapy or are currently going to therapy. One of the reasons for that is it's just healthy to be able to talk out loud about the problems you have in your life or to work on solutions. Whether or not you've got like trauma from your childhood that's pretty severe that you need to work through or maybe you're just feeling some emotions that don't serve you right now and you want to change them. Maybe it's none of that stuff and you just want to kind of get some more clarity and focus in your life and talk with somebody about where you want to go

or what you want to accomplish or even what's holding you back. That's where BetterHelp comes in and I love it because all you really got to do, first off it's all done entirely online. You just fill out a brief questionnaire, you get matched with a licensed therapist and you can switch therapists if you don't click with them for no additional charge. I love BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash edshow today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash EdShow. Very short intermission here folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple

and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. I'm so excited about today because the woman sitting across from me is the definition of brilliant. And so Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you for being here today. I'm very flattered, very honored. Thank you. And I love talking to you. It's always just, you're an amazing interviewer.

You wrote this for how to help your child, but when I'm reading the work, I'm like, this just helps humans, right? That's what it's for. But so what is something, a strategy, or how to help your child, but when I'm reading the work, I'm like, this just helps humans, right? In general. But, so what is something, a strategy, you said awareness of the thought helps it lose its power over you. I'm using my description of it, right?

So, I've always said that, now I know why. Yes. Okay, what is something, a tactic or a strategy or a technique that somebody can use for their child or themselves that can help this in these 63 days that you would be proposing they do. Okay, so what you do is you do the five steps of the neuropsycho, because what I did was strategically

look over the years at how can you actually find the signals and do this whole deconstruction, reconstruction thing. So you can't do it in one shot. So what you wanna do is do a neuropsycho, which is five steps. What are they? And I'll go through those in a moment,

but you're gonna do five steps in the sequence. The first part of the sequence is the first more or less three weeks, where you go through the five steps in around 15 to 45 minutes, not more and not less. Then the second 42 days where you stabilize and you just do it in five minutes. So the five steps are basically gathering awareness. Awareness. And notice I say gathering. Okay. So it's a very conscious and deliberate,

it's not like a mindfulness awareness, which this is beyond that. So when we talk about mindfulness, meditation, breathing, decompression, all of those are very important to prepare the brain. So what you would do before you dive into the neuro cycle, and you'll see this in my books and in my app, I've got an app as well called the Neuro Cycle,

there's a two to three minute brain preparation, which could be anything from focusing on momentum worry to doing a 7-3-10 breathing exercise. So it's something to just get the neurophysiology under control. Then you, or it could be a lot of meditation, a prayer, whatever. Then you move into the actual work. And I'm about to slip off this chair. Okay, go ahead. Then you move into the work, so into this, into the work of gather awareness, step one. So gathering awareness is a very specific process. Everything's very layered.

Your mind-brain connection, psycho-neurobiology, mind-brain body, I'm actually a psycho-neurobiologist to study that connection, is very ordered and sequenced and structured. And if you want something to change, you've got to follow the steps of the order. So the neuropsycho is a system in that you can put CBT techniques, you can put prayer, you can put whatever works for you, but put them in the right step.

So when we gather awareness, we are gathering apples off a tree. We're not just randomly looking at things. You're very organized. Okay, what am I gonna gather awareness of? My emotions. I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling frustrated, Whatever just just label them

What am I what related to that emotion? What am I doing? What are my behaviors? What am I doing? What am I saying? How am I doing and saying them? So maybe it's depression and maybe it's withdrawal Then the third thing is you're going to say how do I feel in my body when I'm feeling depressed and withdrawing maybe? cardiovascular issues, part-pulpotating. And then fourth category is how am I looking at life in this moment? As I feel depressed, gut ache, and withdrawing, I feel that life sucks. Very simple example. Those are four signals.

So you go, step one is to gather those four. Step two is to ask why. You're going a little deeper. Why am I feeling these emotions? Now you're not solving the whole problem. Don't try and solve it in one day. Just go as much as you can handle. It's very draining. So that's why I say limit. So it's why am I having this? Maybe I'm having this depression. I seem to be having it because of it's happening a lot. I'm not sure why,

but it's happening five times a day or it's feeling what's happening once a week. Oh, if it is once a week, what am I having the same behaviors? Why am I getting that? Why am I doing that with drawing? How often am I with doing? What other things am I doing? Why do I think I'm doing that? So you work through each of those signals and try and get some more.

Don't stay too long on those two steps. And then you write. Now, you don't journal. You write, you dump, you literally dump what you've gathered awareness of and what you have reflected on. Because the first step was to gather awareness, the second step was to do this reflection thing. And then you dump it down on, and literally in mind, I'm just writing it all over the

page. I've developed a system called the Meta-Cog. And for kids, it's the bubble cog. And it's basically writing in a way that looks like a tree. So it's starting from the middle and it's working around in circles and branches and colors and arrows and everything's connected. Everything's either on a line, in a bubble. If you don't like doing that, just write any old way.

But try to write dimensionally. Don't do it in lines. Try and just put it all over the page because it brings in, forces the two sides of the brain to work together. Creates a very strong connection between the conscious and the subconscious through the bridge of the subconscious.

Yeah, and it starts diving deep. I mean, it's like, I can tell you now that when I worked with patients that had symptoms of schizophrenia, this is an extreme example, but just to show you how well this works, we would have them just basically metacog out what all these steps I'm going through,

and they would have one whole personality on the side, and they'd be continuing the same conversation in another whole. So you'd see the shift and then we could show them, hey look what's going on and from there we could unpack and find roots and things like that. So it's phenomenal in getting insight. Now you spoke about introspection earlier on. Introspection, insight, it means diving into the depths of the non-conscious. That's the most intelligent part of us. So is writing part of step two or is that step three? So writing is step three. Sorry gather awareness step one reflect step two writing step three You're bringing order out of chaos. You're getting those three steps are taking deeper deeper deeper getting increasing your introspection Insight pulling up things that are associated

Now that is things all over the page a lot of it won't make sense things may shock you that come out day one Not really things all over the page. A lot of it won't make sense. Things may shock you that come out. Day one, not really, but as you progress through the days, more and more will come up. And for example, around day seven, people start saying, oh, I never saw this connection. Day 14, like insight into, oh, that's associated with that. I didn't see that. This is why I'm doing this.

So there's tremendous growth. If you don't force it, you just go through the cycle. I don't wanna interrupt you, but I wanna ask you. Go ahead. Do you think during that awareness in the writing that you are uncovering some of the things that might trigger you as well? Totally, so it's step four, excellent question.

Step four is looking at what you've gathered, awareness reflected on and written. You look, what are my triggers? What are the patterns? This has happened, what can I do? So step four is moving towards re-conceptualization, reconstruction, healing, putting food on, plant food on the roots to heal them. It's leading to that acceptance.

You're not going to know why someone raped a child, why someone did this. That's their story. But that's your story. So you need to find out, I'm not crazy. I don't have a broken brain. I'm not genetically flawed. I don't have a mental illness. I'm showing up like this because of what happened to me. I can't answer why I have to get to a certain

level of acceptance, but at least I know why. It's not me, it's because of. And that helps you heal and move forward. So it's very progressive. It's not walking in circles round and around and around. You know, this is where you can bring in things like these psychodynamic theory and ACD. There's a lot of different therapy techniques that people can bring in experiences from EMDR and into all these, because this is a system. Yeah, into these spaces. What's the fifth step? The fifth step is an action, active reach.

So you go into from the triggers and things like that, you want to move towards an antidote for today, an action for today. So what can I do today to keep me in a safe space? I've done the work for today. I'm not gonna fall back into working on this anyway. I've gotta get going through the day. And also your brain and mind need a rest. They get tired.

So it's an action. It's like a visualization, a statement, a combination, a little pray, an affirmation. So this is where you would fit an affirmation or a CBT type technique, like maybe a little visualization exercise. So it's something that you do and say, maybe something as simple as, I can do this, I don't know how, and then

visualize a rainbow. I mean, it could be something as simple as that to an actual little technique or it could be a breathing technique. So it's an action that keeps you going through the day, which helps you focus on the fact that you are moving towards healing. So you're removing energy from this thing because this process has brought this from the non conscious To the conscious and it's weakened these branches in the non conscious It's strong and driving in the when the non conscious and conscious are working together

Then this is weakened at the protein branches the chemicals so I can start restructuring and reorganizing Thinking when you're doing this because this applies to two different people so everybody stay in here the protein branches, the chemicals, so I can start restructuring and reorganizing. And that's what these things. See, I gotta tell you what I'm thinking when you're doing this. Because this applies to two different people, so everybody stay in here, okay? So those are the five steps to sort of begin to rewire yourself or change your brain. The other part of me listening to this is if you're

thinking I really don't have a lot of these issues of anxiety or worry or depression, I also think that's the formula to create a change. Like if I had a goal and ambition, I'd become aware of what I wanted, right? I'd have all these reflections about it. I would then write about it. So, and I like the idea of it not being linear like a book, but actually all over the place. So there'd be like, that's almost like a dream personal vision board or dream board that you're doing. Then I'd think about what were the triggers I need to create to generate this state? Could be snapping my fingers. It could be seeing something, it could be walking into my office,

it could be getting into my car, it could be a particular person. So I'd use that trigger to then create that state. And then obviously the fifth would be what's an action that I can take towards this stuff. So that cycle can be used to uncover trauma, you know, reverse trauma, create brain health, but can also be a creative process in order to change your life. So you are brilliant, because that's exactly where I started my research.

38 years ago, with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and people that just wanted to improve their life. They just wanted, and it's called brain building. So it's the neuropsychon that was the first iteration of this thing was to develop brain building. So it was helping kids learn. So getting data in, as opposed to deconstructing sure it was

Constructing sure it's taking from the knowledge in education school to learn for an exam or what is the goal in your vision? So that's the brain building aspect of the new site. This is huge right here I'm gonna tell you something because everyone always wants to create change. They're like alright Do I get a vision board out like do I so this is a five-step process? She does it to actually does it. To actually do it. Over the 63 days. And to do it reinforcement.

And by the way, in 63 days. Exactly. You're a different human being. Totally different. I do a thing, you're talking about visualization techniques. Let's just share this with you and then maybe you can speak to why it might work. So everyone asks me, I don't visualize very well.

Yes you do, you just need to get quiet. And it's a muscle you build. You know, when you decide to start visualizing your life, it is difficult. But one thing I've done is I've created, I teach it to a lot of my athletes is, I use what I call like a highlight reel technique. So what I actually start with is I start,

I've never said this on the show because it's part of my private work, but I want you to speak to it. I actually start by visualizing memories from my life that are highlights. So it could be, for example, for example, the birth of my son, the birth of my daughter, a home run I hit in baseball, an award I got, a sale that I closed that was important.

These are things my brain are already familiar with, to your point earlier. It's already been wired. I've already repeated the emotion. It's already in there. And so I see those things, and those are easy for me to recall because they're familiar. And then I move to what I want. So my brain I think begins to think they're one big highlight reel. Is there any data to prove that that's true? Meaning I'm already

visualizing what I already something I want. I've seen an achievement, I've seen an achievement, and then I see the one that I want to achieve and for me my brain more easily sees the future When I start with things that I'm already familiar with in my past because I think we do that in reverse So if we've had a traumatic someone's hurt us in our life We see this we repeat it over and over and then we then regenerate it in our real life with the next relationship And that's why people end up dating the same person Exactly, right exactly. Okay, so I'm jumping out of my chair with with excitement because you've you've said exactly the correct thing where people end up dating the same person over and over again in a different body. Exactly. Right. Exactly.

Okay, so I'm jumping out of my chair with excitement because you've said exactly the correct thing. So what you've just described, remember I said a moment ago, I spoke about how I'll recall this conversation because it's a great conversation and I'll build it. That's what we're talking about here. So you are recalling these, you're recalling those

and you're using those to unmask your natural resilience. So I actually call these insurance policies. So they literally, so when I work with a person to actually be able to build their brain, we're building an insurance policy. So you should be spending time on doing exactly that. So as you do that, you activate a whole different way that your energy flows across the two sides of your brain. You go into the highest level of intelligence, you unmask resilience, sides of your brain. You go into the highest level of intelligence, you unmask resilience, you increase your wisdom, you tune into the depths of your non-conscious

where intelligence, pretty much your intelligence resides. Because your conscious is basically a workhorse and it's guided by your non-conscious. So what we've got to see is what is dominant in the non-conscious. Now your non-conscious is a gentle lady, gentle man, and it's basically always looking for the things that are blocking this growing

and keeping you stuck in those. So it's on your side. But you have to tune in to what's coming up. So when you describe, when you wanna do something difficult, you first think of something good. What you've done is you've listened to wisdom from your non-conscious, which is that process.

You've then called those up, you've activated your resilience, you've put yourself in a highly intelligent, wise state. Now you're in a state that's more able to cope with it. So when I work with a patient, for example, I would never start with that. I would say, okay, let's talk about your favorite moments or you'll tell me a story about telling a great movie. Let's talk about a great book, anything anything and then you would focus on that when they were in that state I knew that I had got the mind-brain connection. They're psycho in Europe. I like I feel like

Thinking about the things that have been positive in my life or experiences creates a neurochemistry to which I can create That's exactly what you do. Yes. Yes you have you've changed all the flow you've these change What they increase gamma, which is a wave that you want to flow. And when your eyes are open, you want, like what we call low gamma, across the whole brain. And then there's certain other patterns. I don't want to go into the details here,

and that's got to go into have a certain beta pattern and so on. Those energy waves, when they are flowing in that state, they activate the different parts of the brain to then be on high alert to respond and do what they're designed to do, which then impacts your neurochemistry, then your endocrine system, your cardio. Everything then comes together and you are in this prime state. Your HPA axis is now on high alert and you now are in the ideal state for solution finding. This is so good.

You guys, this is why I do the show right here. So let me just give you this again. Step one, gather awareness. Step two, reflect. Step three, right play, draw. Step four, recheck. Step five, active reach, which is basically what we've been describing here. I specifically invited Dr. Amy Shah to be here today.

So welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. What is the main solution if I'm, because it's a, it's a science that's sort of like, you can't always measure all of it, right? So I'm maybe I'm bloated or I'm inflamed or I'm fatigued or my emotions aren't in check. That sounds like it could be different bacteria for different things, right? They all have a different name on them. So what's this?

Is there like a package solution? Like do you just, do you take probiotics? Like what do you do if it's, if it's an emotional thing or a physical thing? Well, the hundred billion dollar, you know, industry of medications and probiotics will tell you it's probiotics, but really we don't, we don't have a probiotic solution that in fact, some of the probiotic solutions that they've looked into actually don't work as good as dietary changes. Makes sense, right? When you're eating the bacteria like through fermented foods or which I'll talk about, then you're actually keeping

it in your gut. Whereas if you're throwing a probiotic and it's almost like throwing seeds out of an airplane at 10,000 feet, like you hope that something sticks, but you're just kind of throwing it and that's what I would think. Yeah. So some of it's flying in the wind and that's what probiotics are. And right now we still don't have a one shot solution to fixing that gut. Um, one of the things that are counterintuitive, um, besides diet is this concept of circadian rhythms, the sun.

Yep. Um, that piece is super easy. besides diet is this concept of circadian rhythms, the sun. That piece is super easy. It can improve your brain health in ways that you subjectively know. When you go out and get some sunshine in the morning, first thing, it resets your entire body, your brain, your gut bacteria, and every cell in your body has a clock

that needs to see that sun. And even if it's's a cloudy day people message me all the time on Instagram oh but I live in a cloudy overcast place doesn't matter it doesn't matter it doesn't have to be bright it can be overcast gray raining whatever it is but that natural light is very different from the artificial light that we get indoors and if you are indoors all the time, which again we were, you will break the clocks, you will damage the clocks, you will damage the gut bacterial clocks, and you will end up with higher rates of obesity and diabetes and high cholesterol and all of the things that we don't want that we're trying to battle. It's actually going way up by not

paying attention to this. Okay, you're awesome. So, let's say, those of you that work in an office building all day long, you need to hear what she just said. Those of you that work in cities really need to hear what she just said. But I want to understand this a little bit deeper. I know that we have circadian rhythms.

Are you saying the bacteria itself has its own circadian rhythm? Yeah. Come on. Isn't that crazy? The bacteria itself does. They, these bacteria, okay, by the way, we have 100 trillion and their genes outnumber the stars in the universe. Okay. They have personalities, they have food preferences, and they need sun and dark just as much as we do. Oh my goodness. What's the foods then?

Yeah, they, they're starving to death actually, because in 97% of Americans, we're not eating enough of what it eats as its primary food, which is fiber. Fiber. Fiber is stripped away to give you white sugar, to give you refined flour, to give you all the conveniences of today. So when you think about it that way it makes so much sense that diseases are going up, anxieties going up, fatigue is going up, depression is going up. Look at our food supply. Look at how much processed food we're eating, fiberless food. And now it's gotten to the point where 97% of Americans are not getting even the minimum amount of fiber that you need to keep those bacteria alive.

So should we be eating more celery or should we like take a fiber supplement? Yeah, whatever I say fiber, people are like, what brand do you recommend? No, I'm not talking about a brand. It's literally free. I mean, or low cost. You eat the food. So when you're eating a broccoli, it has fiber in it, right? But when you're eating a white table sugar,

it does not have any fiber. It's removed. So the sugar cane that it came from had tons of fiber. Have you ever had raw sugar cane? It's like the most fibrous thing you could ever eat, right? You have to chew it and there's a ton of fiber. But what we wanted to do is make it easy, you know, convenient and so we stripped it all away.

Same thing with wheat, you know? You take real wheat and it's very fibrous. So we basically took real food, stripped off the fiber, and that's what we're eating as food-like substances, which is not feeding that bacteria. And not only is that bacteria dying, it's growing the wrong kinds of bacteria that's sending inflammation signals to the brain,

that's making us depressed, that's making us sick. So it's just insane how this knowledge can literally, like smart entrepreneurs who's listening to this might say, oh well why the heck are we marketing this to all these health conscious people? Why don't we start making foods that have you know prebiotic fiber which is the food for the gut bacteria? What about real fermented foods in the diet? They just published a study that showed that six fermented foods a day, which is like unheard of for most people, and I'll tell you what fermented food is, that was the amount of food that it would take to

really grow and flourish that gut bacteria. And six fermented foods is like sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha. You can get probiotic, you know, yogurt, cottage cheese. You can even get probiotic cheese, which is like Gouda. And you can eat pickle, anything that has live bacteria is actually so good for the gut, even better than just eating fiber is adding those foods.

And not, notice I didn't say any brands, any pills, anything you have to buy. It's literally the food that you eat. How long does it take to fix? Do we know? Well, there's, it can change in as little as three days. So they took a group of people who were on a Western, very unhealthy diet, which is kind of extreme. And they changed them to completely healthy plant focused whole foods diet. And they saw in three days of market change in their gut microbiome.

Okay. Is, I feel like there's, we're going so fast, right? Cause like I just have all this stuff I want to know for my own health and for the people that are listening to this. My guest today is Dr. Andrew Huberman, and he's a neuroscientist. His lab is at Stanford. Today's going to be one of the more interesting shows for me that we've ever done before because I'm fascinated with this man's work.

One of the things I've learned from your work is this concept that you said earlier, but it was in the middle of so many gems, is that the brain would like to preserve energy and I'll use it, say it my way and move to default reflexive mode. So as many things as it can process and just default to reflexive mode, rather than effort mode with critical thinking and adjustment, it will do. So your brain is constantly trying to find ways and situations and circumstances you're in to default to what you do reflexively. Okay. So would that not mean then, Andrew, that those things you do reflectively called habits and rituals better serve you or you'll default continuously to the reflexive mode of drinking

or laziness or the video game or Instagram? That's a reflective default mode. Some people for stress, they encounter stress. The brain reflects to a default reflexive mode of whatever they do to cope with that stress. True? Absolutely. I think I'm not alone in the noticing that occasionally I pick up my phone and I log into an app and I didn't make the conscious decision to do it. I just do it reflexively I might even go into a sub window within that app. And the reason is that the brain of the nervous system are constantly seeking rewards and novelty and

If we're not deliberate about how we're doing that we will do it entirely reflexively and that's not necessarily a bad thing I enjoy social media, teaching neuroscience on Instagram. I enjoy doing that and I enjoy the feedback of most of it. I think the brain and nervous system wants to make things reflexive. Habits are very powerful because they set us on trajectories. Some people, they are uncomfortable with the fact that effort is the first gate that you have to go through in order to build this pathway that involves norepinephrine, adrenaline, and epinephrine.

Sometimes people jump on me about using norepinephrine and epinephrine interchangeably. I know they're not the same thing, but today we're just going to broadly describe them as systems in the brain and body, not get too down in the weeds. The idea is you've got effort. You can associate that with adrenaline and epinephrine. You've got dopamine, which is your internal reward system. It can be externally rewarded. This is very important.

There are intrinsic rewards and extrinsic rewards. There's a beautiful study that was done at Bing Nursery School at Stanford. I had nothing to do with this study in the mid-70s where they took kids that liked to draw and they then rewarded some of those kids with just a little star, like kids like the shiny star, makes them special, for drawing. Then they took away the star the next day or the next day. And the kids that liked drawing just for the intrinsic pleasure of it, they drew less.

So these reward systems can attach to external things or internal things. I have a good buddy. He's friends and co-founders of this company MadeFor that you talked to Blake Mycoskie about. His name is Pat Nasse. He's the former Navy SEAL.

He and I were giving a talk once to a bunch of people, and we were talking about reward processes in the brain and how SEALs do it and what neuroscience thinks. Someone asked us a really good question. They said, how do I continue to tap into this dopamine system? Our answer was, be very careful with extrinsic rewards. Make sure that your dopamine system is attached more to the effort process than it ever is to any external reward. It's because of a very important principle of dopamine rewards.

It's what neuroscientists call dopamine reward prediction error. Reward prediction error is the reason why people that work, work, work, work, work in pursuit of a goal and then reach that goal become miserable and don't know what to do with themselves. Reward prediction error says you always need the dopamine at the final stage to exceed all the little bits of dopamine you got en route to that reward or you will actually be disappointed. You'll experience a sort of postpartum depression of sorts.

So the key is learn to attach reward to the effort process. You know, I'm not David Goggins psychologist, but I do know David and he's come out to my lab before. We've had some conversations. I don't know what his process is, except as he's described it. But I have the sense, based on what I know about neuroscience and knowing a little bit about his story and having read his book, that he's learned to attach some sort of internal reward mechanism to the pursuit

and friction process. It's not about feeling good about some external milestone. It's about learning how to tap into this engine that we have. And I actually do believe that, in knowing some people from the special operations community, that this is actually one of the things that they are selected for

is not just grit or resilience. It's actually this ability to reward oneself internally in their mind as a way to buffer the effort process, it gives them more gas, more of an engine. And it's not just special operations, people that make it through cancer treatment, people that raise a special needs child or make it through a tough stage of economics in their life. Many people are probably in that situation right now. It's about learning how to take that strain, the feeling that you're being something or some force or some life force is trying to push you back on your heels and learning how to use self-reward, not delusional thinking,

but self-reward as a means to get more energy to continue to plow forward. It's a real thing. Wow. So good. By the way, it's interesting you say that when I interviewed David, we've become real good friends. We've done a lot of things together since then. He said something when I interviewed him that's along those lines and it surprised me. I sort of stared at him for a minute. We're talking about the endurance races that he does. And he goes, and I don't care if I win. I just stared at him. He goes, I'm more concerned with the fact that I'm making the effort and that I finish. And I thought, wow, that's exactly along the lines. It was actually the thing that stood out to me when we were having that

conversation. And you just said so. That's it in a nutshell. Yeah. That's the real growth mindset. You know, a lot of people, hashtag growth mindset is one of the most popular hashtags in social media, but most people don't actually know what it means. And then again, this is Carol Dweck's discovery, not mine. It was discovered in a group of kids that were doing math problems or other kinds of puzzles that they knew they couldn't get right, but they enjoy doing them and they perform exceedingly well on lots of sorts of tests of that sort when there is the right answer, of course. And so what they do is they somehow they're wired for effort. They're wired for the puzzle,

not for the solution. And when I say puzzle, I don't mean the noun puzzle. I mean the verb for being puzzled for them feels good. And so we need to think if we're talking about the nervous system and we want to make it actionable for high performance, whether or not it's in business or sport or otherwise, we want to think in terms of processes, not events and verbs, not nouns. So growth mindset as a verb, as an action item, you know, reward as a verb, not just as a, oh, you're going to just pat yourself on the back. Like it's no, it's what you internalize. It's a process. That's how the neural circuits that underlie reward get stronger. And the beauty of the brain is that you have this thing of neuroplasticity, which is its ability to change

itself throughout the whole lifespan. And the more you practice this, the better you get at it. And it does not mean you're walking around talking delusionally about how great life is when everything is terrible. It means you might even be very stoic. You might be, hopefully you're very rational, but you have the energy to continue to push forward. Whereas other people are going to be dropping out because everybody shows up gritty and resilient and they watch their inspirational aspirational story. One of the big motivations for me being here today and in general of my lab is to try and make these concepts from psychology and personal development and high achievement to make them what we call operational.

Meaning give them definitions that people can grab onto and apply and not just have to watch you know 50, you know everyone loves the Rocky movie. I mean it's super makes you feel really good. It makes you feel like anything's possible but you don't always have access to that. By the way it's that you just said that because I was reflecting, brother, I love when energy's prevalent, even on Zoom. While you were talking,

I was thinking about David and I talking again. We were both as kids, these crazy Rocky fans. We both watched Rocky one and two, literally thousands of times. And what we were both struck by in the movie is exactly what you're describing. It wasn't Rocky winning. It's this time where Apollo Creed knocks him down,

he puts his arms up and he thinks he's won the fight. I get emotionally even saying it. And it's a movie and Sly's a buddy of mine and I know he's an actor, you know? And you turn back and Apollo Creed looks at Rocky and he starts to get back up again and Creed's just like, what? And the inspirational aspect of that, wasn't winning was the effort deposit

was the pursuit right and so guys if you've ever heard about this before like this is scientific proof that you've got to be giving yourself the reward for the effort deposit. My guest here today is an expert on optimal brain performance on learning on learning quickly, and on maxing out your capacity to think and perform in your life. My guest today is the great Jim Quick. Jim, thank you. Ed, thank you so much. I've been looking forward to this so much. Me too, brother. Let's just go back just a little bit, because I want to give people context, because I really believe life happens for us, not to us, and it's the meaning in our life of the events that happen to us

Not the event but the meaning we take from it And so you've become this world-renowned expert you've worked with the Dalai Lama Richard Branson, right? Some of the highest profile celebrities in the world most successful business people But it's ironic that that was founded out of a boy with a broken brain, right? And that was because you had fallen and hurt your head, is that right, like a five-year-old? Or tell us that story real quick. Yeah, you know, it's funny,

I just posted this on Instagram today. I said, difficult times could define us, they could diminish us, or they could develop us. You decide. Because ultimately we do decide. And yeah, I'm such a big fan of yours. Thank you. And follow over your work. And first of all, before we get started, I appreciate everyone a big fan of yours. I can follow over your work. And first of all, before we get started,

I appreciate everyone who's watching this. And what I love is you are the person you are on and off camera. Oh, thank you. And that means a lot to me. You know, your humility because you're so accomplished. And so the reason why I'm excited about this is because I think this message we have to talk to people

about is so important because your brain controls everything. Yeah. Right? When I see people see me on stage, they'll see me have a hundred people stand up and I'll memorize all their names as they introduce themselves or a hundred words or a hundred numbers that they give me forwards and backwards. I've seen this man have a hundred people give him two numbers out of sequence and he'll

repeat back a hundred people's multiple numbers like this. And here's the thing, I always tell people I don't do this to impress you, I do this to express to you what's really possible. Because the truth is, every single person that's listening and watching this could do that and a lot more. The thing is, we weren't taught, you know, if anything we were taught a lie, that somehow our capabilities, our potential, our memory for instance, our learning abilities, our intelligence is somehow fixed, like our shoe size.

And it's absolutely not true. We've discovered more about the human brain in the past 20 years than the previous 2,000 years combined. And what we found is we've grossly underestimated our own potential, our own capabilities. And that's the thing, it's just because we weren't taught. And I really think the nature of the work that you do, that I do, that our community is really backing is about transcending

It's about ending the trance Transcend and the trance ending this massive gnosis in media and marketing that's telling us that we're broken Yeah, that we need to be fixed now. We're not enough and I feel like that is what's holds us back You know this this illusion if you will that's remarkable Did you feel that way as a little guy. You know, this illusion, if you will. Yeah, that's remarkable. Did you feel that way as a little guy? You know, when I was five years old, as you mentioned, I had this accident.

I had trauma, brain injury, traumatic brain injury. After that, my parents said I was never the same. You know, I became extremely shy, introverted. I had learning difficulties. I was labeled, and a label is tough, right? You know, when you're put in special classes, I couldn't understand things. My teachers would repeat themselves four or five times,

and I would pretend to understand. Like sometimes we do as an adult, because we have this imposter syndrome. We always wanna look good. We don't wanna ever make a mistake, which I feel like also holds us back. In this space, the things you teach can affect someone's life like this,

and that's what I love. So can we talk about some of those things? Absolutely. I'm just fascinated. Like, look at me, right? We only have an hour. I wish we had 17. So if there's one thing I struggle with in my health,

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by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. At your job, do you ever have to deal with a nose roller? How about a snub pulley? Well, if you're installing a new conveyor belt system, dealing with the different components can sound like you're speaking a foreign language.

Luckily, you've got a team ready to help. Grainger's technical product specialists are fluent in maintenance, repair, and operations. So whenever you wanna talk shop, just reach out. Call, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milett show on Apple and Spotify.

Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. What an honor it is to be with this gentleman here today and to share him with all of you. Most of you are probably familiar from him for the first time from The Secret. He's one of the stars, if not the star of The Secret. So I have John Asaroff here with me today. John, thanks for being here, brother. Ed, it's so good to be here and thank you for giving me the honor to be here with you.

So I'll start with the story first and then I'll share beliefs and then what to do. So we have some practical things that you can start doing today. So back in 1987 when I bought the franchise of rights for remax of Indiana, I had no idea how to build a company. I was 26 years old but I had another mentor who I invested $75,000 to become his partner to have the opportunity to learn from this man who at the time was worth probably $100 million. And so I was very, very keen on learning and I didn't know how to build a business. I didn't know anything other than how to sell real estate.

And I set a goal to generate $1 billion a year in sales. And I set the goal for five years in the future, not knowing a billion dollar goal is like mind boggling big for me. And there was an interview the second week I was in Indianapolis, I moved from Toronto to Indianapolis for this opportunity. And I was interviewed by the Indianapolis Business Journal and I said in the interview that I was at a goal for a billion dollars. And the reporter said, are you aware that there's two companies that have been in the state of Indiana for 80 years, one hundred years, the other one, and they haven't hit a billion dollars in real estate sales in all of these years? And I said, yeah, I know it's Graves and Tucker.

And you can let them know that I'll be the first. Right. And as I said that, I almost felt like I put my foot right in my mouth because I didn't know how I was going to do it. Right. Long story short, five years later, we sold enough franchise, recruited enough agents. We did $1.2 billion and we were stuck, which is a great place to be stuck. I was asking myself, how is it possible that I'm training these agents with strategies, with tactics, with selling skills, marketing skills? We were like the gurus of here's the books, here's the cassettes, here's the trainers,

like out of the deep end and the agents who, for example, would make $30,000 a year, kept making $30,000 a year. The agents who made $50,000 kept making $50,000. They each made $100,000, kept making $100,000. And so I realized that they weren't missing the skills or the knowledge. There was something else at play. And what helped me from the age of 19 to 27, 28, 30, was every single day, and I still do it today, and I'll share this with you in just a little bit, every single day I was priming my brain with the beliefs and the self image required to

achieve the goals that I wanted. So I got 75 agents together who agreed to pay $3,000 each to be part of an inner game training. Forget the outer game, the inner game training. We worked on affirmations, visualization, mindfulness, meditation, listening to our affirmations on our vision on our cassette recorders. We had a lot of cassettes we put in our cars and so I had them work on their self-image and self-worth and self-esteem and to develop the beliefs that we were going to imprint or impregnate into their subconscious mind

by listening to these audios every single day twice a day and while they were driving and those 75 agents over six months increased sales by 100 million dollars. My gosh. We didn't teach them one thing about selling more. We thought about changing their identity and their belief structure so that it matched the goals they wanted to achieve. And then I said, holy shit, this works even for other people, not just me. So we started to teach that to all of our agents.

And we created these cassettes with these recordings on them of the beliefs that we needed them to believe, the self-image that they deserved, that they were good enough, they were smart enough. And we went from 1.2 billion to 4.5 billion a year. Wow. Within four years. Wow.

And that's my beliefs, and so, guys, that's a ballistic belief. That's a little bit of beliefs and believing in a new self-image and identity and a new story. Gosh, so good. Are you gonna tell us about beliefs, what they are? Yeah, so if you think of, yeah, so when you were born, were you born with any beliefs? No.

Were you born with any habits? No. Were you born with any fears? No. No. So from a neuroscience and neuropsychology perspective, a belief is nothing more than this. Imagine that you're born and your brain's made up of a hundred billion marbles.

And every time you have an experience or somebody says something to you, you read something or you watch something, these marbles make these connections. And the connections that are reinforced go from conscious connections to subconscious connections. And once these subconscious connections are made and reinforced, they run the show 98% of the time. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern in the brain. And our conscious brain can choose what we want when we're in that part of our brain,

but our subconscious mind can't choose its program from the age of 0 to 3 in the imprinting years, 3 to about 7 or 8 the modeling years, and then eight on as the experiential years. And so if you have these powerful beliefs that you're good enough, you're smart enough, you're worthy to achieve the goals that you have. If you have these powerful leads, you are able to achieve any amount of income you choose no matter what the amount is, you just need to learn how. So if you have these empowering beliefs, you have brainherence between conscious and subconscious What if you said okay? I want to make let's just say a hundred thousand dollars here or a million

It doesn't make a difference and I asked you What do you need to believe about yourself? To achieve this so I need to believe I'm smarter. That's good write down. I am smarter. What else do I need to believe I'm smarter than, good. Write down I am smarter than. What else do you need to believe? I need to believe that I am worthy. I need to believe that I deserve this. I need to believe that it's possible. I need to believe, you write down five or six

or seven beliefs that are just words on a sheet of paper. Now let me stop for just a moment. I'm gonna tell a story and come back to this. I want you to imagine that somebody tapped you on the shoulder sometime today and say, hey, I work with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks in Hollywood, and we have this new script, okay, that if you get really good at this script where you could read it in front of a camera without the script, we'll pay you 10 million bucks.

Now I want you to imagine you've never seen the script, you don't know how to act, but they said to you, we're going to give you an acting coach, we're going to give you everything you need to memorize the script, we're going to give you everything you need to act it perfectly. What would you do to take that script that's on a piece of paper that you've never seen before, what would you do to take that script to make it yours for you to own it? And the answer is you'd probably read it like what, once? Would you read it maybe 100 times, 200 times, 500 times?

You think you might role play with somebody while you're holding the script in your hand? Do you think you might research the role? Do you think you might take a camera and practice it? And do you think that if you practice it one time, 50 times, 100 times, 500 times, you can finally put the script down and you can get in front of the camera and go, boom, here is the script. Do you think you could do that? Well, guess what? A script that's on a piece of paper that you don't believe with practice, you start to believe. So what happens if you take a belief system and you start to imprint it into your subconscious mind initially through conscious repetition.

But there are ways to access the subconscious mind that we know today that are faster and easier than just doing it consciously. And so you take a vision of you achieving your goals and dreams. You take the beliefs you need. You learn how to manage your emotions a little bit better and then you develop the habits which again are nothing more than neural patterns in the brain that have been reinforced. When you learn how to deactivate the destructive ones and activate constructive ones through space repetition and reinforcement now you are resetting your default way of being. So a belief is nothing more than a reinforced pattern

that if you learn how to deactivate it and create a new one, it's like a software upgrade for your brain. Wow, so guys, what he didn't say, so good, John, thank you. Guys, this is stuff that you pay thousands of dollars for, but you, by the way, can get in his book and you get here, because I know him for

free. Um, but guys, what he didn't say is beliefs are necessarily true. No, thank you for the truth. And this is important. You know, I've told you many times everybody that your thoughts aren't necessarily true. Your beliefs are not necessarily true. They're patterns reinforced over time. And so if you could create this new script, that's reinforced these patterns over time, that's a conscious way of doing it give us one key said we know now there's subconscious ways to do it that are faster and more powerful give us one that is a new hack to do this. So one that

everybody's heard of and very few people do unless you're a professional athlete astronaut or Navy SEAL is visualization. Yes. Thank you. Simple, simple, simple. I know you had Phil Mickelson on in the past and I watched him and if you think about visualization is simulation. Now here is the difference. Whoa, that's good.

Okay, go ahead. So visualization is simulation. So when we close our eyes or even if our eyes are open and we start to use our Einstein brain, the imagination, we now have just activated one of the biggest centers of our brain, the occipital lobe that's connected to the motor cortex. It's connected to the motivational circle, the nucleus that releases that dopamine that makes you feel good, that makes you want to take action. So if you visualize yourself achieving the goal,

if you visualize yourself behaving in ways that match the new belief, if you even visualize the words or you take the words on a sheet of paper and you read them, run your right finger across it, run your left finger across it, close your eyes, see it and feel it Your brain is creating a mental movie with the words and as it creates a mental movie with the words that's happening in your subconscious mind And when you give the subconscious these instructions a couple things happen because of the way the brain hierarchy

works number one is survival, but then number two is safety. And then number three is energy conservation. Now, when you do something 20, 30, 40, 50 times, it takes about 66 days to 365 days of repetition to override an old habitual circuit. Not 10 days, not 21 days, 66 to 365. So if you visualize yourself achieving the goal, feeling the success that you want to feel, seeing the belief on the screen of your mind, you are actually creating a neural network through the science

of neuroplasticity and the networks that you reinforce become the most dominant networks. And since your brain wants to conserve energy, if you do this on a consistent basis, your brain says, okay, you're doing this so often, let me just make this automatic. Let me set aside the old beliefs. Let me replace it with the new beliefs. And now you've deliberately and consciously evolved yourself. My gosh. So guys, it's patterns. John, thank you.

Coherence. John used a word earlier which was coherence and it can fly by. But when you've done this hard work, and I say fun work by the way, on your subconscious brain, on your subconscious mind, what happens is now when you set that ambitious goal, there's a coherence between what's lying underneath you

and what's on the surface. And that's why you know people, you all have someone you know that, when they point their mind at something, it's almost like a weapon. When they point themselves at a dream, they draw it towards them. Part of that's energy, part of that's vibration, but a big part of that is coherence in your brain. And so you've got to do this difficult work that you might think is difficult,

which by the way is fun, is easy, and it's really just a matter of patterns and taking control of your life Taking control of the things you do You can literally everybody change your life. You can change the external parts of your life By changing the internal or the inner sizes that he teaches part of your life That's why I do this show what we're talking about that he teaches part of your life. That's why I do this show. That's what we're talking about. Can I just piggyback on something? Please. Since you picked up on the word coherence

and you mentioned the law of attraction earlier. For the people who think that the law of attraction is you know, think, believe and you'll achieve. First, I'm going to tell you that's bullshit. So let's call it bullshit. But I want you to think of your brains a little bit differently and think of it this way. Let's say you love rock and roll. And let's say rock and roll is on station 95.5. If you're on station 92.1, that might be classical. If you're on station 98.7, that might be punk rock, but a 92.5, that's rock and roll.

So imagine coherence just means locking your electromagnetic spectrum of your brain, lock it and load it on exactly what you want. So what's the vision? What's the goal? What are the beliefs? What are the emotions that create coherence so you're locked and loaded to the frequency of the universe that is matching that goal? Part one, part two is when you get locked and loaded, you've actually activated the Einstein brain

connected to the motor cortex connected to the dopamine release in your body. And when that happens, okay, now you're in coherence, but there's another part that happens, okay, now you're in coherence but there's another part that happens in this Einstein part of the brain. That's actually what the latest neuroscientists and psychologists are thinking is connected to this GPS part of our brain to the frequency of where all of the tools, resources, people are that resonate with that frequency. So we've been evolving for what, two and a half million years since Homo erectus

to now 108 billion humans on earth with a brain that's been changing and growing. And my belief is we're just scratching the proverbial surface when we talk about, you know, little quantum mechanics or quantum physics with entanglement how we're all connected we're all tuning into the frequencies that are us and within us and all around us now when we learn to use our brain better it's just mind-boggling how we can achieve goals and dreams that we thought were impossible

to achieve before this is the fun part now. To me this is the fun part and by the way when you see two people that are vibrating at frequency like this you get an interview like what you're experiencing right now everybody like we both have done lots of interviews and we know when we're in the midst of a great one and everyone I just want to be clear please follow John please and if you're listening to the show or watching it share my show my gosh people need to know this you know someone you care about or believe in or love that should be hearing these things. A couple more tips and then I want to talk about something pretty serious at the end

if you don't mind because you're just such a treasure. But one of the ways that you can do some of this work, many of you know about vision boards and we can have a competent person talk about it. John, I can have you touch on that a little bit, but John goes even deeper into these accomplished boards, I think you call them. And he's got a crap board, which I've never flipping heard of in my life. And again, guys, you're just not going to get this anywhere else. I am so grateful that this man sitting across from me is here today for a lot of reasons.

Number one, he's changed so many lives in my lifetime, and I grew up listening to him on Loveline. And so I'm really grateful to have Dr. Drew sitting in this seat finally across from me today. Finally indeed, it's such a privilege. We have mutual friends, we kind of live near each other in weird ways, it's all odd, but I'm so glad I'm here. It is odd.

I wanna talk about heart, brain, what I call coherence or whatever. And you said you wanted to talk about that a little bit today. So one of the, I said earlier that I've done a lot of work and some of that work has been therapy, reading, having friends like you in my life that I talk, literally, I've just become more self-aware. And a lot of times just my awareness of some of my behavior patterns, it's lost some of

its power over me. Oh, a hundred percent. That's why, that's why there's a whole category in treatment, frankly, called psycho education. Okay. And interesting in my early, my therapy, I had to understand what was happening before I felt comfortable going in. So I read a ton of stuff before the therapist was like, why do you, why do you, I just, I need to understand.

I just need to, well, for me, it was, it wasn't just that it was like, I've produced an externally really pretty good life. And I was afraid if I'm being candid, that if I changed some of these patterns that I had in my life, that although maybe I had a little bit more of that in peace, but I'd lose my edge, I'd lose my success.

By the way, I think my audience listening resonates with what I just said deeply. But here's the thing about treatment and healing. You have to be, your brain hates change. Our brain fight changes just the way we hate We don't want our arm cut off. We don't want our we don't want to change fundamentally who our brain thinks we are But you have to be prepared to become whoever you're supposed to be And and that is a really hard thing for people to do I went through it myself

It's it's you have to kind of let go and let things happen. And your brain fights you. And that's kind of why, when I recommend professionals get involved, that's their skill set, is working around and through those resistances. That's one of the most important things someone said, because what I ended up finding out, because this is like an achiever audience overall, right? I ended up finding out that in fact I externally

produced way more abundance in my life when I had patterns that served me in my life and I gave myself the gift of a little bit more equanimity and peace in my life. One of the things I did also work on though was what I would, I'd like you to elaborate on it because you'd be better at it than me, but I've worked on small things all the way to like my breathing. Oh sure. To you know, alter my HRV rate so that I've got a little bit more heart and brain coherence, which most people don't know about. So just rift on that. Well, I just, there's a guy named Steven Porges, okay? If you want to read about the neurobiology of attachment and regulation,

Alan Shore is your guy and Peter Fonagy who really has worked out this socio-emotional exchange system which is something that's evolutionarily built into not just our bodies but actually into our development. And so there's, I'm going to have trouble explaining this in a way that's cohesive but I'm going have trouble explaining this in a way that's cohesive, but I'm gonna try. The brain, the base of the brain, the brainstem, the cranial nerves, and the autonomic and parasympathetic nervous systems,

all develop together and are embedded in the face, the ear, the vocal cords, through something called the brachial pouches, which is these things that develop into our face and neck and whatever, and the sympathetic outflow to our heart and gut. And it turns out, obviously the face and our voice

and our ear is how we exchange emotionality. We are exquisitely sensitive to what's going on in other people's faces. And what goes on in our faces can have micro, micro changes that the other person, maybe not on a conscious level, is able to read and receive as information about the other person's emotional states. So this, we ultimately learn to regulate our emotions

through being in and around other people. Our identity comes from being in and around other people. You know, we said the brain is embedded in the body, but the brain body is embedded in the body, but the brain body is embedded in a social system. And how it manifests, you mentioned earlier about trends and things and how they affect people. They do.

I'm interested in that, I'm not an expert in that, but I read a lot about that stuff these days. History was one of my weak spots, I've read a ton about it trying to make sense of it all. But the socio-emotional exchange system is also connected through various nuclei in the brain stem to the vagus nerve, the gut, and then the sympathetic outflow. Some 70 or 80% of the vagus is an inflow to the brain. When I went to medical school, we were taught, well, that Vegas is a system that decreases your, maybe changes your acid secretion in your stomach

and slows your heart down. Right. No, 70% of it is getting information from your body and taking it back to the brain. To the brain. Goes that way. It's crazy. Goes that way.

And it's deeply embedded in this socio-emotional exchange system. And he has all this data about how heart rates change and breathing change with our emotional states. It's from infancy, from infancy. From infancy. What have you done in that world for yourself? Do you do, do you?

I like the breathing stuff. I try to do that. I'm not a religious. My thing has been the psychotherapeutic process. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but as it pertains to breathing and heart rate and facial expressions and stuff, I know when I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but as it pertains to breathing and heart rate and facial expressions and stuff, I know when I'm around great therapists that are highly attuned to their

patients, because when I see them work or I interact with them, I notice I start breathing with them too. Interesting. Literally my heart rate of breathing starts syncing up with that other person. And when I become aware of, I've actually been, this one woman who I've become close with who treats sex addiction actually, I saw her in a video working with a patient

and I noticed it was happening to me and I went, oh, this woman has got- No way. This woman's got powers. And so I got to know her and lo and behold, she really is an exquisite therapist. And they can just be fully present and attuned to that person on not just a attentive, attentional level, but your whole body is an instrument.

And if you've ever been in a therapeutic process where your body is present like that, it's weird. I've been the subject of it as a patient and I've helped other people by being the antenna. And you experience things and smell things and hear things that are not yours. And you know it because you've never experienced these things before. And, and they're really the, I'll tell you a story in a second about one of my favorite story with this. I tell it all the time, but the real art in, in the therapeutic process is not just receiving, listening with your whole body, I call that,

but knowing when to bring it in the room. In other words, when to go, you know, I'm having an experience. And I'll tell you a story about that. I had this guy that was severely traumatized and usually it's traumatized parts of the self that are needing attention that aren't the patient isn't even aware isn't there in the room with that patient at the time. It's sort of a walled off part of themselves that's screaming for some kind of attention. And, uh, this guy was coming in and as he would sit down every day, I started hearing the opening riff on mad men. I was like, where is that coming from? Like, I don't hear that normally.

And I was like, well, isn't that interesting? And damn it, every time he would start, he walked in the room. Well, then it got weirder. Then as we were working together, it wasn't that long, there's a few visits, I started feeling like I was that shadowy character falling through the buildings, right?

Like, so I had that feeling and I was like, whoa, this is interesting. But I didn't bring it up with the patient because he was talking about horrible trauma and all these horrible things that happened to him. And then about halfway through one of these visits later, music kicked in, I'm falling. And all of a sudden I experienced myself

as a baby falling through these buildings. As I talk about it now, it constricts my chest. It was an overwhelming experience. I couldn't stay with it. It was like, it just took my breath away. It's like this incredibly traumatic feeling, and I thought I have to bring it up. And I said, listen, I actually interrupted him. He was telling another traumatic story. I said, look, I'm having an experience and I'm wondering if this is meaningful to you.

And I told him what I've been experiencing. He became furious, stormed out of the room. You and your psychobabble. How dare you? You think you know what you're talking about? And just ran out of the room. Whoa. And I thought, maybe that wasn't the right time

to bring that in. Comes back in the next day and he sits down calmly and says, how did you know? He goes, how did you know? All I hear is the baby, the baby, the baby screaming in my head. I, it's going all the time. I, and, and it was, and because of the depth of that attunement, he and I were, he trusted me. And then by the way, if you've been traumatized, trust is a big deal. He, we were able to kind of work together for a while. And I, and I always see that. Yeah.

And so I would get people in, in working with people with trauma and addiction stuff, I'm always getting them at the front end, at the beginning of their treatment, and I really always conceived of my role, my one other than get them through the medical stuff to teach them that you could be a fully appreciated. I can fully experience you and you can trust that you could be a fully appreciated, I could fully experience you and you can trust that you can stay close to another person and they don't abuse. They don't nothing. You just be, they'll be there for you. It makes me emotional. Just thinking about it. Yeah. It makes me emotional. And the part of it that makes me emotional is

the, to understand how connected humans can actually be together. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable, right? And so when you ask, and it's weird, it's almost psychic-y kind of stuff. And every therapist who does this kind of work has had these experiences where you feel a pain somewhere that's not yours, or you hear music, or you see something.

But of course, then we affect each other on a, on a, on a macro scale too. Right. I don't understand why there are these huge trends, you know, why it happens. I'm trying to understand that. And it feels to me like it's sort of French revolution type trend, you know, like where there people are bringing out guillotines and things. Same here. This is the Ed Mylan Show.