The School of Greatness - BRAIN SURGEON Reveals How To Heal Your Body & Mind w/Dr. Rahul Jandial EP 1249

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Today's guest is Dr. Rahul Jandial, a dual-trained brain surgeon and neuroscientist at City of Hope in Los Angeles, California. Before finding his calling in the operating room, Dr. Jandial was a college dropout and worked as a security guard. As a surgeon, he now provides complex surgical treatment to patients with cancer. As a scientist, his laboratory investigates the biology of the human brain. Throughout his career, he has authored 10 books and over 100 academic articles. Be sure to check out his new book, Life on a Knife’s Edge: A Brain Surgeon’s Reflections on Life, Loss and Survival. In this episode, you will learnHow to heal the memories of past trauma.How to better regulate your emotions.How to transform yourself using your mind.Why it is so important to play and keep your body active. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1249Mel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod  

Being in a better frame of mind, exercising, eating right, being calm, stress, all of that changes things physiologically that make your whole body better at fighting cancer. That we agree on, that's measured. Now, let's go back to the brain. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. You've worked as a brain surgeon and neuroscientist for a while now. And so you're an expert on all things the brain and also the mind. Trying to be. Which I think is kind of fascinating, or you're in a constant studying process of it. I'm curious, the first question I have is, what do you think is the biggest factor, since

you've studied both the brain and the mind, what is the biggest factor that holds us back from thinking in terms of abundance and thinking in terms of positivity? Why do we stay stuck on negative thinking, negative thoughts, and limited mindset so much? Yeah, that's a big question. So the simple answer is that the stories we've been told about what's going on in our skull, they're just wrong. Interesting. we've been told about what's going on in our skull they're just wrong interesting okay so the first thing is there's no wires we're not hardwired there are no gears so let's go backwards way back when like ancient egypt they thought it was just like flan or something the soul was in the heart and i believe you know i can see that i've opened chest before for cardiac surgery and's fierce. And what they would do is stick a straw up the nose and slurp out the

brain, just get rid of it. So for a while I could understand the complete misunderstanding. Then when sort of like, you know, speakeasies and industrial revolution, all the pictures about, about the brain, you see them as gears. And, but modern time we're starting to think about it as wired I'm wired for this I'm wired for that you're not wired for anything it's an ecosystem filled with throbbing hundred billion microscopic jellyfish sparking electricity at each other trying to approach each other shaving down pruning branching arborizing so when I use those words like arborization pruning those are neuroscience words in rigorous neuroscience journals but it hasn't sort of made it to pop culture so I think

part of what keeps us stuck is that we think I'm wired this way or I have to rewire and it's too on-off rather than flows right it's not freeway from A to B it's the way you see a school of birds flow and they roll over each other Aurora Borealis that's our thoughts and that's how feelings float through the ether of our minds when you start to understand it like that then you know every day something new is possible is it it easy? No, but it's possible. Wow. That's the real way to think of your brain, mind, and behavior, that it's completely plastic in the sense that you're never the same person just from a moment ago since we've met.

That's a good introduction to this I'm curious because you you do surgeries on a weekly basis where you open the skull mostly the top of the skull well all different areas it's like ice fishing so we make holes out different wherever we need to get we make the hole underneath it so we can get there so it may not be a full top of the school that's in Hannibal Lecter's movie so you're taking little holes. The slickest brain surgeons, meaning who can do it the best, make the smallest hole to get right where you need to,

the smallest incision, and do the most, you know. The least amount of damage, I guess, to the whole skull. Have you ever had to take off the top, the whole top? No, but in trauma, after boxing, sports, car accidents, sometimes we take off the top the whole top no but in trauma after boxing sports car accidents sometimes we take off two big pancake sizes on the left and right so when the brain is throbbing yeah you take the lid off really but you don't take the whole thing off because you got a giant vein coming down the middle so that's you can't do the mohawk part so you take two strips sides yeah so if you look at when i travel through South America, you look at the trepanations, the holes in the skulls, they're always on the side.

You can't make holes in the middle and still live. Giant veins splitting the two hemispheres. Oh, so that's just in the movies. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's a silence of the lab. Exactly. But that's a good question though, that there's a, it's a targeted approach. Interesting. You want the patient to feel it the least and wake up the best. Right, of course. What's been one of the biggest realizations from studying neuroscience but also studying the brain and actually opening up pieces of the skull, looking in there, surgically doing things to optimize it? What was one of a big aha moment for you of studying both areas where you're like, wow, there's something that I didn't think was possible that is actually possible for human beings to do? Yeah.

Is there anything? Yeah, a really good question. It ties back to your first question about what holds us back. So the thing that shocked me was that we could actually remove parts of the brain and people would go home a week later. I'm not saying there isn't some subtle neuropsychiatric issue. for example I had a guy come in he's a framer and you know they have the the pneumatic you know it's not hammer and nails as many people conceive it to be but yeah a lot of times when a real quote recoils back they'll pop a nail through the orbit or no into their frontal lobe this happened

and they drive in. With the male in their brain? Right. So that's the first thing. I was like, wait a second. No, no, totally. I got pictures on my phone that we're not going to show anybody. But you can have a penetrating injury to certain parts.

Of the brain. Of the brain. And you drive in. Holy cow. So that's the first thing I realized was, so there isn't a region in the brain for creativity. there isn't a region in the brain for creativity. There isn't a region in the brain for this. So the first thing I had to realize was, no, this thing is working as an environment, as an ocean filled with like a kelp forest and jellyfish.

So if you drop something into the ocean, you're not going to disrupt it. There's no spot for something. There's no spot for something. And that ties back to what I want people to walk away with is that you have to think of your thoughts and feelings and the working of your flesh inside your skull as a garden, as an ecosystem. Just because you have one weed or one spike doesn't mean the harmony is disrupted. So, for example, one frontal lobe we can surgically remove if needed after trauma or tumor. And patients function. They drive. They talk on the phone.

Again, you don't want this. One occipital lobe doesn't leave you blind. People think, occipital blindness. No. If I take out a tumor from the right occipital lobe, I just can't trust my left rear view mirror when I drive it's a it's a field cut your world goes from this to this so I when I when I first started seeing that because I assumed you hit any part of the brain it's your dust because people will say like the left side of the brain is for this and the right side of the brain is for this and you know I use more of the

right side of my brain and that's why I'm creative or whatever it is or I'm more analytical because I use this side of the brain. Or my fear-based side of the brain is heightened. So you're saying if one part of the brain is under attack, tumor, trauma, a nail, whatever it is, something happens to that part of the brain. It may not hold you back from your creativity or your critical thinking potentially no it because the rest of your brain can compensate now let me give you now that's not true for the entire brain so let me just go backwards a little bit but those were the aha moments i had i mean i'd been i'd seen bowels i'd taken care of patients aids was you know going crazy in the 80s i'd seen bowels. I'd taken care of patients. AIDS was, you know, going crazy in the 80s.

I'd seen a lot. The first time I saw somebody do brain surgery, I was like, is that possible? First, like, can you even remove the skull? And they're like, yeah. And then they were, you know, can you remove that tissue to get to the tumor? They're like, yeah. You just have to understand how the whole thing works globally in harmony. Now, the way I think of the brain is like

a mushroom. And so you've got the canopy and all the magic and the thoughts spark from the top, the surface. And then they send things down to the stock, which comes deep to your mouth and comes out of the bottom of your skull and then turns your spinal cord. So if when I want to move my left hand, my right brain says, move your left hand. It sends down signals that come into my armpit. They come into this nerve and that's what happens. Right now. So what is that lower parts?

They, there is some, you hit that, you lose something, something down here, the reptilian brain, the spinal cord, every millimeter does something. Cause it's a lot of think of it as cables, even though it's not wires, but there are a lot of contracts of it as cables even though it's not wires but there are a lot of contracts t-r-a-c-t-s there are a lot of tracks that are communicating the things that the canopy thought of and in that area if there's a nail injury you do get a certain deficit but in your thinking your feeling your emotions your love your fear It's not a fear spot or a love spot. It's sort of, again, the aurora borealis and the worlds of a school of birds just flowing in different energy, right? Or fish, a school of fish or something. Yeah, exactly. That's fascinating. I want people to walk away with,

okay, so what that leaves people with is the fear I have is real, but it's not fixed. It's not wired. It's not permanent. And through effort, through exposure therapy, through whatever it is, whatever your process is, that school of fish can flow in a different way. To me, that's infinitely powerful that we are new every day. That also gives us the responsibility to hold on to our positive attributes. That we can spiral away every day, we can spiral downward, and we can spiral upward any day. Wow.

And so have you studied brains where someone came in at one point and then maybe a year or five years later you saw them again? And you were able to look inside their brain? Another good question. And what did you see different with the brain? I wonder, can we enhance our brain by the way we think and our behaviors and our actions and our, and the way we love ourselves and treat ourselves internally and emotionally? Or can we hurt our brain by doing the opposite? That's a profound question.

So, again, let me start with a very sort of dramatic example to set the point to the larger takeaway. On occasion, for epilepsy that shuts down kids, we have to actually take away half of the brain. It's called a hemiserectomy. You have to take out half the brain. We remove. Everybody can Google it. It's not like it's something we invented today.

It's been going on for decades. Yet, because a lot of the people in this space are not actual brain surgeons, we're not getting a lot of those stories from there. space are not actual brain surgeons we're not getting a lot of those stories from there but there's a tremendous story there that when there's a medical need and the parents ask for it and it helps the child we can actually make a big incision and take away a frontal lobe a parietal lobe an occipital lobe that's sparking um seizures and when they wake up that left side doesn't work. Three years later, when you see them, this is not even sci-fi. They can move. They can function fully again. So the remaining hemisphere can reorganize.

The linebacker can also be the defensive end, can also be sometimes even on offense. There are different roles those neurons can play. Yeah. So, and how do we know that? Because you've removed half the brain and it's still functioning. And we took a picture three years later and that half the brain was still gone. Still gone. Yeah.

It didn't sprout back. It's not like a liver where we cut half of it off and the mom grows some back, you take a chunk of it and you put it in the kid. So that part is still missing. Gone. Yet that function has returned that's crazy so that's what i mean about different players on the team can cover for each other so i want people to know that that that's true plasticity and it's not rewiring it's not

regrowing it's actually whatever you have is repurposed and how do they do that well through the electrical flows of the mind there's um wow that's it's not the electrical flows of the brain right the electrical flows of the mind of the mind so what is people like okay now he's gone now he's he's he's got he's selling crystals in malibu no no, no, no, no. Stay with me. When you walk, you played, right? And we talked about that briefly. I didn't know that about you. It's fascinating.

I think there are a lot of parallels with surgeons and athletes. I think surgeons want to be athletes. I became surgeons. Yes. When you walk up to a stadium, there's every single, you know, so I was at SoFi. That's incredible. I've been there. It's unbelievable.

I don't think people understand. It's the world's largest pit. You come in near the top because of the LAX flight path. And you come in and you look down. They dug deep. I know. It's amazing. It's good to be in my hometown. Yeah.

When you walk up and you see the pieces, 70,000 fans. Think of those as neurons. We have 100 billion. Those little magical sparks from the jellyfish that I described, because they look like that. They're not squares. So people are talking and moving. That's how people conceive or conceptualize the brain. But what happens when they roar together? That's what I mean about the electricity. There's an energy. Right.

There's an energy. You feel it. It's an epiphenomenon. Okay, now let's build an engine. The parts are there. You fire it up and there's a hum, right? That's more than just the engine and the pistons. A symphony, you've got the musicians.

I'm less familiar with this, but they create something bigger. That's what I mean about the mind, that it's not a forward-backward electricity zinging around on wires. It's that thing that happens when you have a hundred billion throbbing, growing, branching neurons. And it's electricity-based. You can put a sticker on and light a small light bulb. Really? Yeah. And so that's how we measure for seniors. Have you done this before?

Oh, yeah. But this is decades old. This isn't like... So what I want people to say is like, understand is when we remove the right hemisphere and the patient comes back three years later, kids, and they can function again, no new wires sprouted nothing was spliced what remained

Created a new roar created a new hum created, you know recovered the function So that's not always easy for people understand, but that's the truth and that's our current understanding of how the brain leads to the mind Wow, yeah, can the brain function without the mind? If you get knocked down a ring, you're not thinking. Right. And if we put electrodes, there's dampened electricity, but that stalk, remember I mentioned the mushroom, that can still keep you breathing and protect your airway

and keep your heart still going. So the reptilian areas of the brain, the ones that we share with many animals, will function without a mind. If you equate mind with consciousness, thought, love, emotion. So it's like the babushka dolls where you have stock. So it can function, but it's baseline function yeah it's keeping you all breathing high level cognitive function that we so the mind is really what's keeping everything activated that's what yeah that's in concert right right the mind can think down the heart rate that the reptilian brain right keeps going if you get

knocked out so they're they're integrated and so you put it nicely the mind can keep things going but if you have brain death then there's no mind there's no electricity the brain brain deaths unfortunately what's that mean meaning sometimes the heart the body's alive but the brain has died how does that happen well we'll get into some some I think it's important for people to understand so car accidents, brain swelling, those hundred billion neurons they burst from smashing into each other. We we put a catheter in the thigh and we we squirt dye and we see there's no blood going into the skull. It's a dark vault.

So your brain has... If it's so much swelling, the blood can't flow. There's so much inflammation that it's hard for blood to flow. So instead of a heart attack, you've had a complete brain attack. Can you recover... And for a day... No, no, no. You can't recover from this.

Not even miracles. When it's 100.00 out, there's never anything left. But for a day, since the heart nerves have their own pulse, Yes, they're pumping. We can put machines and things to keep people going for a day or so. That's where the world of organ transplantation comes in. So a lot of guys, a lot of people who ride motorcycles, they have that kind of injury and their bodily organs are healthy.

And they often are the ones that provide transplants for other people. Their brain is not functioning. Brain death, body is alive. Really? In that setting, there's no mind. There's no electricity coming out. So when you're asking about mind and brain. out so when you're asking about mind and brain um and so that's a fascinating area for people to know those examples to understand themselves better right and it comes back to that we are

electrical currents we're not wires we're not switches we're not gears spots we're not gears electrical currents yeah they're flows that's what is that so like uh you go to a lake and you drop a big you jump in there whatever right yeah yeah there's a wave that moves through the lake but the water molecules didn't ride with it right right right so that's the the hum the symphony the roar the electrical global waves that are pulsating through our brains. And when people say they're in the zone or they're in a flow state or they're in a meditative state, that global energy flow, those waves, they're different.

They can be measured and categorized. Really? Yeah. So what does that mean when someone's in a flow state in terms of the mind-brain connection? What is happening? Are these 100 billion jellyfish in symphony and they're humming mean when someone's in a flow state in terms of the mind brain connection what is happening yeah are these 100 billion jellyfish like in symphony and they're humming at a high level they're

working in concert let me jump in right there actually that's perfect actually you would think that if somebody's about to hit a game-winning shot their best performance is when they're at a high level meaning wild frenetic actually no whether it's super calm somewhere in between okay so so not asleep right but not hey i'm on my third espresso just taking in stuff in the morning focused focused but relaxed and there is a measured state for that and it usually has to do with sort of medium brain waves that's something i'm writing about right now and and whether you meditate or you're under that the two-minute drill in football or you're a ballerina and you have that that perfect you know dance routine coming up or maneuver um you are actually disengaging some of the things

that would get in the way of you releasing a performance. So you're not thinking the performance. You're getting out of the way. You're being. You're just... Yeah. And that has a different measurable electrical flow state, you know? And it's not revved up. It's not hyperactive.

It's... Somewhere in between. Above calm, but calm. It's not fifth gear. It's not idle. Yeah. They're at their best. And they've seen that in athletes and different things.

What's the fastest way for a human being to get into a flow state? For that, in my opinion, there are no shortcuts. Because what it takes is a lot of practice. And it takes a lot of learning. And then when you are performing. And being confident in your abilities. Yeah. But it's executing.

I don't think you can get into. I might be wrong. But when I see my you know i don't think you can get no i might be wrong but when i see my kids i don't think you can get into a flow state just rolling through instagram right it's actually delivering a skill you've trained for so you have a craft that you've trained for and you're performing it at a high level so you see race car drivers talking about stuff like that. It is sort of your craft performed just at the edge of your comfort level. Like video games, if they're too hard, kids will check out. If they're too easy, they'll check out. Something about, it tends to be a physical maneuver.

I always find that fascinating where I guess you could think yourself into one of those states but you see it a lot with people who do a physical task that's challenging rewarding something they're engaged in and at the level of their performance you know it's a two-minute drill at the end of a football game or yeah it's go time man yeah did you play football no I love sports though cuz I think are a lot of parallels. Yeah, of course. The challenging thing is, I don't know if I'd, I don't have kids, but I don't know if I'd let my kids play football after all the head trauma that I took. I mean, every day we were just taught back in the late 90s to just lead with the head,

hit with the head. Now it's illegal. You can't hit the head at all. Monday Night Football used to open up with the two helmets. Smack, crashing, crashing yeah I remember that and the trauma that you know I feel like I've had to heal for the last 15 18 years now I don't know if it's worth it I think I guess if you're not hitting the head anymore it's different but they're still gonna be clashing I got a

couple of thoughts about that I mean one thing that I didn't like about it was I think they knew this was bad for us and they kept trying to hide it from us. Of course. Hey, just tell us it's bad. Just tell us smoking's bad. We know boxing's bad. Nobody goes into boxing and says, I don't know. Yeah. But you held information that, you know, traumatic head injury in football was sort of messing people up. That's one of my things with it. On the other side is if it's something you love and it's an opportunity for you to advance in your life, who am I to say no, as long as the risks are made aware. Like, hey, if you banged your knee against the wall

30 times a day for 10 years, your knee's gonna be jacked up. It's no different for your brain. Got it, I still wanna play. You know what I mean? It's more about that to me. We all live in different worlds and safety and risk. My sons didn't play though.

They could have, but they didn't. They didn't. Yeah. They played flag and they all played baseball. Yeah. It's probably safer. So the brain has the ability to heal from traumatic, from trauma then. Physical and emotional trauma,

because I feel like the emotional hidden trauma can be more painful and harder to recover for some, the psychological, emotional trauma, than the physical trauma. You can see it and you can treat the physical trauma in a sense, but depending on how intense it is, but the emotional, psychological, hidden traumas, I feel like are invisible

and people don't think they need to treat it because they don't see a broken arm and say, I need to go to the doctor because my bone is sticking out. Let me put a splint on it and heal it up. We're not trained that way. There is no easy answer. Yeah. But what I will say is that trauma,

these are my concepts, they're not, I'm not. There's therapeutic trauma. And what I mean by that is resetting a bone after it's broken, the pain of a cancer surgery, but then you know that your cancer's been cut out. Like, that's good pain. Right. And we're just talking about physical cut out. That's good pain. Right. And we're just talking about physical trauma.

Yes. Then there's emotional trauma if people are attacked, that's also intimately connected to emotional trauma. So the people who don't have memory after certain injuries or operations, they never have PTSD, because they don't remember it. So the emotional context and memories related to trauma, be it emotional, physical, or a combination,

requires memory. That's cool, right? I like to think about, like, just as a concept. I don't have a solution for, I don't, hey, don't do these three things, you'll be better. Sort of not my approach because when people did that with me, I was like, how do you know what I'm going through, man? You look at me, you think everything's good. Are you sure? Are you sure I wasn't attacked last night? Are you sure I didn't find out that my patient didn't do well last night? Are you sure I didn't find out a loved one was diagnosed with something? I just don't want to put people in boxes. In fact, I want people to know that they are new every day.

I'm not even the same version of myself I was before the last few years. How can I be understood as a group of people, a man or a surgeon? You know, I just want people to think of each other as individuals and dynamic. That said, I never judge people's trauma to be better worse people are looking or stronger or justified uh they're looking at everybody's going to have a traumatic event in their life whether it's a car crash or hearing there's it's unavoidable it's partly because we put ourselves out there it's partly because the way we approach the world is to be completely adaptive right if we're rigid then there's less chances for trauma but but

that's a life less well-lived so when you put yourself out there traumatic experiences are unavoidable that said okay so that said yeah you get a bruise what I'm gonna say is I want to hear you say is that if we don't have the memory of the traumatic event, we don't have PTSD. We don't have trauma. We don't have a trauma detail. Right. So that's the concept that I want people to walk away and say. Memory is important.

Memory is the thing that determines whether the event remains traumatic in your heart and mind. Whether it's painful still for you. Very good. So let's get into that. So we just need to heal the memory of the trauma. Right. This is exactly where I'm taking it. Very good. So memories are not files in a cabinet. In the brain.

Yeah. How is memory categorized? Again, there are some regions that we if we remove them you would lose memory but memory is not only there it relies on pulling from memories of smell to new like for example smell is very interesting it's one of the five senses that we can't tamp down with our thinking so the perfume or cologne smell and memory are intimately intertwined and so you're pulling from all different parts of the brain again memory is a certain electrical flow in the brain um but it's not it's malleable it's moldable just because you have a certain memory

today doesn't mean that that experience good or or bad, will remain good or bad. Our positive vibe right now can be made negative. Our negative vibe right now can be made positive as we look back at our day to day. Really? So when you see memory that way, then you say, okay, wait a second. I was attacked or I was hurt or something really traumatized me. was hurt or something really traumatized me and i think of it when i smell that smell when i see that color i'm i'm traumatized again i clench up i have like stress of fear anxiety yeah so the emotional the emotional context to a memory is what you can change you don't want to you don't

want dementia you don't want to delete the memory because that's a different problem yeah you don't want to you don't want dementia you don't want to delete the memory because that's a different problem yeah you don't want to block it you don't want yeah but you what you want to do is change the emotional context attached to that memory what happens if we you hear this from people a lot who might have been traumatized as kids where they forget they kind of block the memory and then they remember resurfaces they resur. It's very raw. But they've stuffed it. They've blocked it. They've numbed it, addicted it, whatever you want to call it. Driven it to addiction.

Yeah, exactly. So what happens when... I don't know. I don't know about the kid stuff as much because that's a different space. And I don't want to stay where I feel real comfortable with what I've been reading and learning. You know, I want to stay where I feel real comfortable with what I've been reading and learning. So emotional context and memory for adults in the right setting with the right person through, you know, they have their techniques. You can actually work through the trauma of the memory and the experience by going to certain therapists who help you get better with that.

To process the memory. Yeah, just to take the emotional pain, right, the emotional trauma, and dampen that so you can say, for example, yeah, I was, you know, I'm just bringing examples from my world. Yeah, when I was diagnosed with cancer. That's a traumatic event. And then you see my patients, you see them over time through different ways, when they say they say, I was diagnosed with cancer and I did this, their face is different describing it later than it was immediately after receiving the diagnosis. So that's a real life example, right?

It doesn't have to be all the stuff related to violence and all that. The traumatic experience of a cancer diagnosis and how patients cope with that immediately, and then you see them months later, years later, because I'd be a mess, right? I'd be like, okay, I wouldn't be able to cope. But they, surprisingly, not some of them,

most of them cope. They get dressed, they come in for their three month scans, which to me would be a traumatic experience every time. Is this guy gonna tell me it's back or it's bigger? I mean, think about it, like, getting that thing in your mail or email, I gotta go in for this, news again. But somehow they cope. And that's where, in Life email, I got to go in for this news again. But somehow they cope.

And that's where in Life on a Knife's Edge, I learned so much from them that it's possible to cope with traumatic experiences. I'm not saying you as an individual can. I'm not saying I can. of cancer patients and most of them Wow cope live move on from very traumatic emotional experiences as well as physical experience of cancer pain and cancer surgery right that's the lesson I want everybody to go through in their mind when they're dealing with their own challenges Wow what's the biggest lessons you've learned from the cancer patients you've treated on the way they process and handle their journey from first hearing about they have cancer in the

brain or tumor or something to recovery? What's the biggest lessons you've learned there? It doesn't all end well. Some suffer. Many suffer, you know, in their own ways. So it's not this, you know, nobody wishes cancer upon somebody else or on, you know. So it's not like, you know, it's not like this thing, like, it's not an opportunity. I don't want to ever present it that way. But those that have coped well, they invariably say, I wish I would have lived my life the way I am now after a cancer diagnosis.

Oh, man. Like, I wish I would have lived my life having seen the finish line relatively. Because it changes how they live. And they're not sad. It's a generalization. Like I said, some have suffered. Many have suffered. But they wish that they would have made quality of life a priority throughout life, not after the cancer diagnosis.

Something about seeing the finish line on the horizon makes people go, I don't like that guy. I'm not going to see him much. This is something I enjoy. They get after it. They get to the business of living in the way they want to deep down inside, but often have been encumbered by the weirdness of interpersonal relationships. Pressure and everything else. How do you show up in your personal life after seeing all this for the last couple decades?

That's a heavy question. I can't i can't say that i've always dealt well with it the human stories were important but i was just i was going for perfection of the craft you were trying to be yeah a precise surgeon just trying to remove it and heal it fix it yeah and and then and then you weren't as connected to the human stories you were just like yeah me i wouldn't say i was disconnected but right the the the second the from the fifth to the tenth year approximately when the craft became uh occupied less of my uh my mind because it was more automatic obviously everyone's specific but it's more automatic in

a rhythm yeah and um i actually enjoyed the challenge and that's what you want as a cancer surgeon who's trying to be the best for you and be the best for them at this craft. That's an interesting intersection. They want me to be the best. They want me to have ambition at being the best surgeon, which means tackling the biggest cancer and the people who chose me to perform their surgery

have the fewest complications. Biggest mountain, fewest complications. That's a personal ambition that aligns with what the cancer patients wanted. So that was an interesting thing. You know, it was, it drove me. And at the same time, I could see that since I take care mostly of stage four cancer and there's no stage five. Really? Stage five means what?

There is no stage five. That means death. Okay. So stage four is, the word terminal is not fair, but stage four is the most advanced cancer. So all my patients live a few years. Let's just say that. But that means after a while, I was like, I've cared for over a thousand people and they're no longer alive. Wow.

And it started to mess with my head, man. Because stage four, there's no way to cure it, is what you're saying. Stage four, by definition, other than in blood cancers, is not curable. So the question is, can we get out a few years? Extend life, yes. And quality life during that time. Oh my gosh, man. Yeah, so after a while I was like, man, I got a drawer full of invitations to funerals

and I just stood back a little bit and I was having some struggles in my own life and so the answer to your question is for those who are involved in cancer care to make yourself vulnerable to actually sort of in piecemeal go on their difficult journey with them, it can be hurtful. It was raw the last five years the last three years i've been able to take that and write about it and see that like i have been fortified by

by letting them teach me and the privilege of them saying come along with me my difficult times this airplane must crash. And you will ride with us. We choose you to ride with us. But you have the parachute at the end. And after a while, I was just telling my kids that, man. I just feel like I'm crashing a lot of planes. And so it went from not noticing it to noticing it and having it mess with me to wait a second that might have been the biggest gift of my craft is to learn from the people in their most difficult times and how they

remain optimistic while the face of calamity so I I'm in a different space about the last couple of years but that that's probably the best question anybody's asked me in the last couple years while I'm in but of course man Wow so how do you personally manage your mind and your brain health knowing that I Mean is there is there any sick I guess six survival rates after a few years of any patient that you work on few Yeah, so maybe it's a it's more of a stage three cancer, I guess or it's yeah Yeah, the earlier stages have a cure cure cure potential. When they come to see me, it's usually that it's spread to the brain from a cancer in the body that's broken out.

Gotcha. And is there no way to see, to do a surgery on a brain that has less cancer, on stage one or two, and remove it fully? Is that possible? Some. Or is it hard to see that? Yeah. There's two types of brain cancers.

One that grow from the flesh of the brain and they come in different stages and more commonly are those that spread to the brain. Jimmy Carter president is 90 something and he's got melanoma that's in the brain but it was that you know so it's not always but for breast cancer or lung cancer that spreads to the brain it's sort of the uh the the final manifestation of the cancer spread man now but those are heroic stories to me right that oh man that that look you gave me that was me five six seven eight years ago like man this is good you know but the last couple of years it man, they made it to the graduation. They made it to, you know, moms are always like,

I just want to get to where my kid is out of high school. There's something. These are kids with it? No, moms who have breast cancer in their 40s. They got a kid in 15. 15-year-olds in ninth grade. But so when you see them, it's, like I said, it's, like I said, it's not sad at all for me anymore. Right.

It's actually how rare of a gift that I can see people at their most valiant. Oh, my gosh. So now it informs me. But back to your original question, there was about five years where I was just messing with my mind. How does someone, this is more of a educational question i guess for people how does someone prevent cancer you know and where does most of these cancers come from is it random that people just get it if they're whatever genetics is it their environment their levels of stress their food intake is it you know anxiety that are dealt with

trauma that they're not processing what is the the cause of most cancer their cancers we potentially give ourselves from our bad choices really give me smoking okay yeah okay but not everybody has smoke gets it right and 20% of lung cancer people never smoke really right then where do they get lung cancer from if they're not smoking so but do you remember i was talking about the brain being this garden and stuff like that well our bodies they're not an interesting garden in my opinion you know but they're they're garden too their skin is shedding off liver cells grow so when grow, they can sprout weeds.

So parts of the body that don't ever change, like strangely, heart never gets cancer. So things that don't change don't sprout cancers. It's a byproduct of constantly having cells in our bodies die and regrow. And when you do that regrowth product process you're gonna spin off something that doesn't behave so when how do you spin off things that are healthy and you know in orishing as opposed to little weeds here and there how do you how do you when you're doing both how do you do so well I'm talking to physiologically before we get to the mind yeah it's an interesting point.

Thoughts can be thought of that way too. The body, when it is 99% of the time, is doing the right thing. We're both here. But when you do it with the sheer volume of a lifespan, and you do it over 7 billion people, you're going to sprout some cancers. So you get cancers in the body, cancers in the brain. Can our thoughts become cancerous? That's a provocative... And can our thoughts heal cancerous that's a provocative uh and can our thoughts heal cancer that's a very provocative thought i have not seen um positive thinking

there's no i'm not saying it's not possible and i encourage people to do it but i think positive thinking, meditating, cultivating optimism, all of these things, they do change the global physiology of your body. Not just the brain, but the body. Right. And that, in turn, can affect what's going on in the brain. But I don't know if a thought can send an electrical zap to a tumor and hurt the tumor but a certain way of thinking can make you have a certain physiologic response which there in turn could you know get in the way of cancer's progression that's why i mean i feel like if we're for breaking this down from what i'm hearing you say there's a garden in our brain

there's a garden right and how think of it as a garden i'm thinking of it as a garden or a school of fish you know working in harmony yeah all these different things right so if our if we have a level of thinking that is let's call it positive let's call it beautiful thinking as opposed to suffering-based thinking. Beautiful thoughts, joy, gratitude, happiness, peace, appreciation, acknowledgement, self-love and love for others. Let's say those types of thoughts versus the opposite, suffering-type thoughts. If we have those thoughts on a consistent basis in the mind, basis in the mind, would those then in fact penetrate the brain to flourish more healthy?

To nurture that part of the garden. The hundred billion jellyfish floating in harmony, would they be in more harmony and healthier as opposed to penetrating it with these suffering-based thoughts? as opposed to penetrating it with these suffering-based thoughts. And then in return, with the brain activated and flowing and not having these breaks and blocks, then it's signaling down to the body to send a more healthy ecosystem throughout the body and then returning the body back to the brain and back to the mind and having a more... Let me unpack that for you

because i've got that's a enormous question that i think i have a very specific answer because i think when we're talking about this earlier language can be confusing if it's if it's used too casually but let's let's take the cancer part out for now. Yes. But, yeah, being in a better frame of mind, exercising, eating right, being calm, stress, all of that changes things physiologically that make your whole body better at fighting cancer. That we agree on. That's measured. Now, let's go back to the brain as a garden. Yes.

Now, let's go back to the brain as a garden. Yes. So can we cultivate that part of the garden, or can we cultivate a garden that lean towards a positive mind frame? Yes. Because if bombs are falling, even the most optimistic garden will go into a threat response. You don't only want to be chill. You don't only want to be positive. You want to be aware. You want to be flexible. You don't only wanna be chill. You don't only wanna be positive. You wanna be aware, you wanna be, yeah,

you wanna be flexible, you wanna be all these things. So let's say there isn't external stress around, yet you're too jacked up, you're too stressed. That's a common ailment of city life, at least here where we have safety. This is really fascinating. It's one of my favorite things that I love talking about. You remember we talked about the reptilian brain?

You get knocked out and you stay awake. And then we talked about the mushroom canopy. Well, there's another one in the middle called the limbic system, but I call it the emotional brain. Categories are not that simple, but it's got its own little anatomy. Like if there was a slice down the side of my head, you would actually see the mushroom canopy,

and you'd see some unique Star Wars-looking structures in the middle, and then you actually see the mushroom canopy and you'd see some unique star wars looking structures in the middle and then you'd see the reptilian brain like the stem yeah the stem is the reptilian reptilian brain and in the middle is the limbic system and on top is the mushroom right that's the cortical we call it the cortical canopy we used we use like ecological terms to describe it in journals yeah so the cortical canopy and that emotional brain limbic system They have branches towards each other measurable and so when somebody goes from age 16 to being wild to being 18 and more composed, let's say adolescence

The structure of the brain hasn't changed. It weighs the same, it looks the same on MRIs, but the person's totally different, right? Well, because of the cultivation of thought from the cortical canopy, the mushroom cap, to the emotional brain, as they integrate more, you're able to say, hey, maybe don't run across that freeway or maybe wear that seatbelt. It's learning. But it's interacting with emotions. At the same time, you don't want to be emotionless. So emotion is making a push back to thought.

Like, no, love is an emotion. This pain I'm feeling because mom is sick is an emotion. I don't want to be spock about it or tamp it down. mom is sick is an emotion. I don't want to be Spock about it or tamp it down. So that cultivation of thought and emotion is what is the most lush way to live because then you're adaptive to stress. Like, hey, this is actually something dangerous going on. Thought is coming in. Let's be aware. Emotions going on. But at the same time, you have this internal, what they call emotional regulation, like nothing's wrong and you're just freaked out. And that's where those branches, thought, meditation, therapy, counseling, hugging your puppy, it creates a better balance between thought and emotion and that that tone not on off thanks for asking this question i love this

the tone is what life is about you know you you you become a new parent let that let that emotion run rampant cry you're about to go see your boss you know it's not going to go well and you're starting to do things that you know is emotion running rampant then use thought and breathing exercises turn the volume down just just set the tone a little different on that and then go and see your boss or your lover or some conflict situation you're in that is what we're doing throughout life and the example of it is adolescence where it happens most for most of us automatically but then we stop like we're grown-ups that that that tone is something you cultivate through the experiences of life and then when you get older or when the next trauma comes you're you're better braced and positioned for how to cope with this a little more thought because i'm running hot on emotion

or like man i'm too cold about this right now it is a raw situation i need a safe place to let my emotions run wild right a safe environment yeah that's that's the way i approach uh the intersection of thought and emotion yeah i think uh you said emotional regulation i feel like is for me one of the most powerful skills that someone can learn in relationships and career and driving you know on the street with other people around the emotions are dominant by the way yes which is great but so it's usually emotional regulation not thought regulation right but learning how to have emotional regulation is such a powerful skill for each individual um and we're never done because you don't know what's coming.

But it's the tending to the garden, it's the lifelong cultivation. Because what's happening if we allow our emotions, the limbic part of the brain is the emotion-based part of the brain, thought is the... No exact regions, but there is some anatomy relative. But yes, I'm with you.

It's more of the main focus of the brain. Obviously, if it was taken out, it would regulate. But if the emotion is, if you're always in reaction mode, you see something, you're in freak out mode, you're in scream mode, you're in defensive attack mode, I'm in someone's hurting me mode. If you're always in that space what happens to the brain physiology what happens to the actual physical aspect of the brain and how does that affect the

body and the mind if your emotions are always running high oh I love this question I'll be because this when I was reading about let's go and I'm all no because this is this is what this is this is what can empower people is an understanding of of how things lean yeah and how things that can be modified otherwise it's just i mean i can't tell my cancer patients just try not to stress out right it's just it's hollow it's shallow it's rude actually yeah so i think there's too much of that advice going on what i want to show people is how we're sort of designed our natural inclinations and then you come up with your approach i'm telling you how can my my son got a puppy in the pandemic that man that's my therapy dog i didn't even understand the con i hugged that animal and you brought so much peace and love just what i'm telling my physiology changes calm just haha yeah it just so everybody's got to have an individual

approach to that so here's the two things about emotions there's uh we could cut out the thinking just to put it coarsely cut out the thinking brain and you'll still be alive you somehow were able to take out that middle part of the brain there is no life left there's the consciousness relies on emotions on emotions consciousness relies on emotions yeah because what would they spark through right remember the branches front to lobe deeper branching intersecting the global waves of electricity that's why there's something called deep brain stimulation. Just let me riff on this for a little bit.

Go for it. So when we want people to not wash their hands 150 times a day or have Tourette's or sometimes depression or sometimes a drive for obesity or certain tremors, we take a little catheter and just the tip isn't covered in plastic and we put it into the emotional come on the limbic brain the limbic brain you stick it down through the top of the mushroom what do you call the cortisol cortical canopy yeah cortical canopy you can punch through that

you punch through that and it doesn't affect you guys can look it up d brainstem at dbf it's around for 40 years yeah yeah so you put it through So those drives that like Tourette's, uh, we don't tickle the cortical, the thought, you're not just tapping the top. It's an emotional. Oh my gosh. So you're sticking it in through the middle of the brain and what happens? And then the tip with just a little pulse, like the brain's pacemaker and it changes the electric mix. It's not, it's not brand new. I understand. But why would it work?

You can pulse the limbic brain how long do you do this for five minutes an hour what is this process they wear it under their they want they wear it under their clavicle like you would like grandma with a pacemaker grandpa so keeping it all the time yeah it's you were right here and what what do you do i mean you just push a button when you're freaking out and it kind of relaxes you or so the waves on that lake yeah if i also jumped in on the other side, when those waves come towards each other, sometimes they negate each other, right? Similarly, the right electrical pulse can reset the electrical waves in your brain

that we were talking about earlier. That's how deep brain stimulation has worked for 40 years. So how do we create deep brain stimulation on our own? Oh, that's a good question. Let me answer the first one. I'll come back to that. Deep brain stimulation on our own is through paced breathing. Let's get back to that one.

Breathing, meditation. And I'll show you the anatomy for that. Because as we talked about, I need somebody to explain it to me. I can't just say do this. Emotional regulation is tricky in two ways. Explain it to me. I can't just say do this. Emotional regulation is tricky in two ways.

Hot emotions lead to high heart rate, surging blood pressure, lots of things being released. We've already heard about them. So you're running your body in overdrive for no reason. You're wearing yourself out. That makes sense to people. That's a good reason to be physiologically not stressed if you can and you come up with your coping maneuvers mm-hmm what's more interesting is with the intersection of the the frontal lobes of thinking brain and the emotional brain is that emotions are they're coming in favored they're always hot this the thinking brain has to do

more of the work and at some point if you are not able to cultivate emotional regulation it becomes a feed-forward thing because the connections start to sever. And then you start having this emotional brain that's no longer being tamped down or paced or controlled by the thinking brain. So emotional regulation is the life skill to deal with the trauma coming up to rev your body down but if you don't try to cultivate it you'll actually lose control of it and as you get older you'll have more rampant uncontrolled emotions and not not be approaching life the way you want to so that's the answer about emotional regulation do emotions have more power over thoughts or

thoughts have more power over emotions we start off with the emotions are generally on overdrive compared to thought so thinking through emotions thinking which emotions have earned the right to be there is that lifelong process and people like what does that mean well take adolescence teenager goes from 15 to 19 very different person yeah and that's all emotional regulation right thought was losing teenagers i miss it actually it was a wild time but then thought comes into balance emotion your reflection and thinking and yeah so take that thing that you know happens. Take my explanations, if they're of value to you. And then say, now let me take the wheel of that thing that happened without me actually choosing or driving.

That maturity happens on its own. Now let me take the wheel of that process and try to do it for the rest of my life. Every year. Every moment. And not just say, hey, whatever I got at 18, 19 is who I am. Going back to your first thing, you're new every day. So it's a responsibility to cultivate that emotional regulation through thought and through certain behaviors for our whole life

because you never know what's going to happen, pandemic, war, and you want to be best braced for that and not approach that as a 15 year old right you want to have more awareness and i don't know if you want to call it control but i think you want to have control over your emotions and not let your emotions control you yeah to do something right a little bit control the roller coaster a little bit trim the sails so that that the emotions are mostly based in the limbic part of the brain, right? Obviously it's all connected in certain areas, but if you're talking about an area. And so what's the best way to train the emotional part of the brain so that we

are in, we have a personal power over it. That we're in control that we, that we have. Or, or, or more. Yeah. It depends on the situation. We can turn it up or turn it down. And we are or more yeah it depends on the situation we can turn it up or turn it down and we are depending on the depending on what's going on yeah maybe we need to be more emotional in a moment and not be chill and relaxed when you're in attack maybe the moment is so big man it's of course you're just emotionally over the top and we know that's what's been going

on the last couple years and even today so but that but that leaves you a flexibility and it also leaves you without feeling bad like oh i was emotional then now i'm not i'm not a person that has emotional regulation you don't have this brain the same forever it's a constant trimming of the sails modulating tone to me it's a little bit of work if you're in a good spot like hey don't this ain't guaranteed yeah but it's also so a little bit of work if you're in a good spot like hey don't this ain't guaranteed yeah but it's also so much power and opportunity that if you're if you're uh not in a good spot like tomorrow can be better and if not tomorrow then the month or the year after right so emotional regulation um the shortcut so now we're getting to like, is there a tip, you know, because I hope people feel like, wait a second, this, everything is possible, but it's going to take a lot of work. Okay. That's really what I was trying to get at for the first part.

But are there shortcuts? Because I love shortcuts with LA freeways or whatever. Right. Ways is good. Yeah. But there are, there is one that has stood the test of time and that I can now explain to you based on things that we do as surgeons. And that's, I refer to it as meditative breathing in my first book, but really it's pacing your breath. And so what does that do? And that's something you study with actual scans or? No, no, no. It's even wilder than that. If you have aberrant brain electricity and we check a scan and there's some funky marble-type tuft of brain tissue that doesn't look right, we know that's the epicenter.

That's where the electricity is sprouting from. But some people that have it, some kids that have it, some adults that have it, there isn't anything wrong with the scan, right? The scan looks pretty. Brain looks perfect. But the electricity is off, right? That's what epilepsy is. That's yet another proof. Seizures.

One seizure, two seizures is epilepsy. Then you get the diagnosis. But yes, seizures is aberrant electrical activity of the brain. The same things we've been talking about um so when we don't know where it's sprouting um because if it's from a small space we can dissect it out and take away the the epicenter right you can take it i mean you can cut it out we can cut it out wow and the patients are seizure Yeah. Now, but what if there isn't a spot that we find and their seizures are horrible? And it's well before thinking about removing half the brain.

So what we would do is we make a reverse question mark incision. It's a scalp. It's not very tender. That's what they tell me. Ribs are more tender, is what they say. Patients. Then we make our little ice fishing hole are they numb when they're taking this this this for this one they're asleep there's others

they're awake do you numb the skull the skin you just cut through the skin no numbing they're they're fully asleep oh but when they're awake then at the very end i inject the cut so the numbing lasts the longest with numbing gotcha yeah um you're not just sitting there awake and they're just cutting it off that's that is an operation we do but that's a different story yeah the so you take the skull off the brain has a covering you don't see the brain right away there's like a sheath um like a like skin like no it's like almost a nylon material you can pick it up and stitch it that's what keeps the water inside the skull. It's not the bone.

It's a sack. Yeah, brain sack, there you go. It's a brain sack, right? It's like a sack. But it's nylon, it's pretty. And we cut it and then the clear water pours out. You can see the surface of the brain. And water's coming out.

Yeah, because the brain is floating in an aquarium, right? That's crazy. Yeah, it's buoyant. Your brain doesn't sit on bone, it's floating. Again, jellyfish. And water. So when you're having a lot of fast actions and you're hitting something, is it hitting? Yeah, your skull stops and then inside it sloshes into the inside. That can't be good for you, is it?

That's where all the CTE and football stuff is the issue. It's the sudden stops, repeated sudden stops with the brain sloshing and hitting the inside surface of your skull that can't be good can it well people are pretty people get by but we're seeing that if you do it too much as with kids and nfl people but so you got to open then there's a little it's the size of a deck of a card it's got a little 96 or different electrodes on it you put the deck of the card on the naked brain you take those wires you pop them out with little needles through the back almost like like yeah and then you put the bone back on and you stitch up the scalp and then you put some numbing medicine and you you put on a head wrap and

they hang on the hospital for weeks because you're waiting for the seizure to happen so you've got a pad on the brain a grid so when the seizure sparks we can see uh it was it was like in connect four or battles battle was that was that board game battleship yeah it's in it's into you know where it's at yeah you know where it's at two six because that way you know where you're gonna so there's a there's a mesh uh pad electromagnetic pad or something that can track with wires that are coming out of the back of this. Connected to the monitor. That are connected to the monitor at all times. And they're there for a couple weeks.

It's insanity. Because they're functional. They're happy. They're fine. Like us. Hanging out. Playing video games. Playing some video games.

Watching TV. So what happened was a bunch of. The wires coming out of their necks. Yeah. But the scalp. Yeah. But we have things. People, you know, you'd be surprised what we can. You wrapped we can, what kind of devices we put in and dangle from people.

You know, from broken legs, they come up with those little metal grids and they move around. So then after a few weeks, you wait until a seizure happens. And then we know where, under that grid, where it sparked. We found the epicenter. And then from that, you track the data, you have the recording of the data, and then you can go in and then, what, tweak it? Or you remove it? Remove that little part.

And then they're done, they don't have seizures anymore. Sometimes. Wow. Or they're reduced. Now here's something that's more interesting for you and your audience. Well, that's a boring couple of weeks, so a bunch of cognitive science students and brain students and all,

they come in and they started hanging out with them and they said hey Can we go through these lessons of paced breathing and meditative breathing? Uh-huh? Can we do this without? Removing it. Yeah. Well completely unrelated to the clinical work. We're hanging I've got a direct feed of the true electricity from the surface of your naked brain. While they're breathing. Yeah. They're sitting there. So they do something new with them. They teach them meditative breathing. Come on.

What are you seeing on the brain activity recordings? The same thing that we see when we give Valium, which is an anxiolytic. Their anxiety level goes down. Their electricity goes from fast to medium. Remember we started this and we're talking about athletes not wanting to be in fast we want to be in the flow state meditative breathing led to direct changes in the electricity of their brain as measured not with a sticker on the forehead but with a grid on the surface of the naked brain. On the brain. It's true measurable changes in the electricity there for the mind. So meditative breathing that for thousands of years people have said can help you chill out,

is an anxiolytic, can break anxiety. Well, we have proof of that now. And I think that's important for people to know that it's not just some, it's just not a concept that's being thrown around too casually. That through awake, direct electrophysiologic recording of seizure planning surgery at elite centers, while looking for the seizures, there's a lot of data coming out about let's play video games. Let's do meditative breathing. Let's read. And then what changes and so that's what I love in book one that I shared was that's raw

data that's real data and there's an explanation behind how that happens and so what I would say to people is that's something you have that's free because I'm not selling anything breathing and the pace of breathing and what's the pace that works best I mean there's lots of different techniques of meditative breathing they found you know it doesn't you know people say through your nose or mouth and that's kind of the confusing stuff that's out there well the nose and the mouth connect before they get to the trachea and it goes to your lungs so it doesn't matter how but it's about slowing the cadence and making the cadence more methodical a deep ring you know deep breath in and a deep breath out it's no different than what we do in surgery when you

feel the case getting a little out of your control what do you do well i first the first thing is i just slow my breathing down and that doesn't mean the solution will arise, but I know that puts me in my most calm and focused state to find the solution for the problem in front of me. And likely that's what athletes at Thrive do as well. You don't want your brain surgeon to be like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Exactly. But that's what stress does.

It makes you hyperventilate, right? Absolutely. That's a great point. If you just hyperventilate just because you're just doing it for whatever reason, you'll get physically jittery yeah you will give yourself anxiety by just doing that yeah i felt that just for a second i'm i'm showing you the proof on the other side do the opposite of hyperventilation and you'll make yourself less frenetic will that solve your relationship problems i'm not sure will that make you not

want to get in a fight with your boss i'm not not sure. But you should know that that puts you at your most in command of your emotions, your emotional regulation. That's a great, great question. The emotional regulation, it sounds like a big part of the health or the lack of health of our brain and our bodies is what I'm hearing you say. The emotional regulation is at the center of our potential, let's call it sprouting of healthy brain activity and connections and also healthy cells throughout the body and organs. Or a lack of emotional regulation could potentially damage the brain activity or could have it so up and down as opposed to a calmer activity and the body as well to create potentially more, I don't want to call it cancerous cells, but... You wear yourself out if you let the emotions run too high. Exhaustion, stress, anxiety, depression, all these different things. You wear yourself out. What I'm hearing you say is emotional regulation is at the core of these things.

I think so. And it's the rarest skill to cultivate and the most important one. And it's in your control. But it's not easy. It's not easy. It's taken me a long time to learn this process. So we've got thoughts. Do thoughts come from the brain or from the mind that question

that that's a deep question and is the mind but the mind is only activated when the brain is activated it's like saying does the roar come from the person in the stadium you know or is its own thing. You need the neurons to roar, to connect with electricity to have the mind. The mind is that roar outside of the stadium. Interestingly, they tried to, they did this experiment again with direct, like, I need some, I need hard science. I don't want fluffy language. Somebody says says in the next five minutes decide to decide on your own at your own whatever you want that you're going to move you're going to grab this coffee cup and then they're measuring me the electricity pops before i report wanting to move

this coffee cup what do you mean meaning that that the electricity happens before you make a move. Before I think I'm ready to make a move. The ambition comes from the electricity. It's not like I'm going to grab this coffee cup and then electricity. It's the electricity. I think I'm going to grab this coffee cup. Really? Yeah. So this is something you've done. Yeah, it comes first. You've scanned this. You've seen this. seen this more than scan right because a lot of brain scans going on these days everybody in a car accident with a headache is getting a brain scan i'm talking about direct electrical measurements you mean with on the brain yeah yeah yeah so the electricity is the thought so before i move my hand to grab this coffee cup,

there's an electrical- I can measure a little flick like your light bulb. I can measure something before without you telling me when. So you can tell me when I'm gonna move for it based on- I can tell you when electricity changes. I can't tell you your intentions. I can't read your mind. Gotcha.

But the electricity pops before you actually think I'm having a thought the electricity is you having the thought what does that mean i don't know but that's measurement that we can we can we can uh you know it's uh that's why it's fascinating the inner you know let me tell you something about this man the electric we are electrical beings. Yes. Like eels. The nerves to your legs, you can put electrode in there. We're electric.

We're flesh. We have chemistry. Electrochemistry. There's a battery. And you separate these little ions. What's a battery? We are batteries. Those neurons are essentially batteries. They're things that are separated that currents can run through and people say oh man that sounds so i know i said i know we're measuring it seizures are aberrant electrical activity

without any changes in brain anatomy i'm trying to get people out of flesh people out of being wired to electrical flows and And then think about this. In a bipolar disorder, when you can be really manic or really depressed, the treatment is an ion, lithium. Really? From bipolar? Mm-hmm. Wow.

And for decades. It's on the periodic table next to all the other ones like hydrogen. It's an ion. It's on the periodic table next to all the other ones like hydrogen. It's an ion. It's stardust. Stardust, lithium, is cheap. Right. It's a pill. And it can bring down your mania.

And it can lift your depression. Really? So I'm seeing a lot of different things that point to uh that we are electrical flows our thoughts our feelings our emotions and behaviors because that's what we're talking about today right like the bigger stuff um not how do i move an arm or how do i right right right and again um if you see if you see your thoughts as billowing through your skull um if you see them moving like aurora borealis, like a school of fish or birds, that leaves us with potential that we can think differently, we can feel differently, that we can transform. That takeaway is for you to make, but I'm trying to give you a lot of

evidence that the world of neuroscience is starting to see things that way and not about gears or wires. So how do we train our brains and our minds to live a more abundant life? Everybody's got their own drive. I mean, I've got people who don't like to be on lithium because they think they're more creative when they're manic. So I don't judge. I inform. It's up to people what they want to do.

I guess abundant and peaceful, loving life, you know, it's like all that. Well, I mean, if that's your ambition, I think you would, you know, because it isn't for some, actually. They want wildlife or they want to, you know, they take risks, they climb mountains,

they like the thrill, you know. I don't, that's up to you. But to optimize brain function, I think whichever direction you want to steer it is to first look at the flesh, because it is flesh. And so keeping the arteries open and irrigating that garden, that flesh is important. If something's good for your heart,

keep the arteries open in your brain. You want blood flow going. You want water going to your garden. that flesh is important. So things good for your heart, keep the arteries open in your brain. You know, you want blood flow going. You want water going in your garden. That's easy enough. And you get that through how? The same things that keep your heart arteries open. Exercise. Exercise has double benefit.

But, yeah, if you're my age, 49, cholesterol pills, you've got to keep the plumbing open. Exercise, eating right, keeping your cholesterol down. All those things they tell you so you don't get a heart attack, well, keeping those arteries open on the surface of your heart, also keep these arteries open into the garden of your brain. So that's easy for people to get, like, okay, heart health is good for brain health.

Well, heart health is good for brain flesh. We are more than flesh, right? And so then you have to leave the world of of heart behind um and come more into sort of the mind then there's thinking thoughts not just brain health but thinking health yeah i like that exactly because it's not a pump you know right it's thought health yeah yeah i like that and now before we get to the electricity up here that we've touched on a lot we've talked about now heart health is good for brain flesh health yes there's something in between that we haven't touched and that's the chemical that there are

chemicals neurotransmitters often used I hate the word you know but dope it's a dopamine hit it's not that simple so now there's chemicals there too so in this garden the piece that i didn't tell you about is that those hundred billion neurons when they are trying to branch with each other when successful they never actually touch there's always going to be a gap and in that gap they spray chemicals at each. So you have electricity coming down this neuron, and to get across this cleft to the other neuron, it sprays dopamine, it sprays serotonin, it sprays other things, GABA. And so you are electrochemical.

And that's why things like Prozac as an antidepressant is out there. That's where lithium works. You can change the global electrical pattern and flows of your brain by modifying the chemistry in those little clips. So, we are going to use a specific example, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. A lot of people are on antidepressants. When serotonin is sprayed, the reuptake inhibitor is a little vacuum and it does not clear the cleft of serotonin. You're messing with the vacuum. So there's more serotonin in the cleft that tends to work as an antidepressant. So chemicals have to be thought about also. There's the flesh, there's the chemistry,

and then there's the electricity. What seems to help everything, and people aren't going to like this answer, but it is exercise. Right, yeah, of course. And exercise in a way where you're also thinking. There are these cool things like they had people running on a treadmill and dodging wild game. Oh, wow. Like thought and movement together. So like a racket sport where you're like

hand-eye coordination you have to move ping pong tennis pickleball is amazing I just started playing last year I've only played like five times I'm like

this is an incredible sport I played with my sons we were dropping them off in San Francisco for Berkeley and they got it I hadn't played and my sons were like

this is why dad you don't play board games with us or sports with us because you're insanely competitive I was that it's it's a fun game yeah yeah but so but that's powerful right because people sit at home don't want to hear man get on your treadmill get active get engaged go and do stuff yeah board games moving thought so the the thought cultivation is really important so uh brain you know the keeping the flesh going but once you get out of thinking just about the flesh it's about engagement it's about stimulation it's about you know the results don't happen the next day it's a life pattern right

it's not knowing how to play the violin but trying to learn how to play the violin it's not you know the results don't happen the next day it's a life pattern yeah it's not knowing how to play the violin but trying to learn how to play the violin so you have to learn the second next language right just gotta try just gotta try to pull from all the corners of that garden as a habit I'm not saying hundred I'm not saying all day every day but that nobody told us those habits should also be introduced nobody told us to cultivate our thought is something kids should learn something we should have dedicated time to we already learned a lot about heart health you know and now it's time to get onto brain and mind health especially with the pandemic especially with other things that are going on is that so i think um when i was in medical school it was just heart

heart heart all the time right in fact heart surgery was one of the most the second most competitive along with brain surgery in the last three decades as they've gotten better with catheters and stents and the pills have been better heart surgeons have significantly been reduced because there isn't the need for it and I think when you look at the dent that has been made in cardiac health through a couple of decades of messaging and may you go in there to check your blood pressure they check all this stuff for your heart but nobody asked you how you're doing right the emotional right therapeutic side of things. Mind health. Yes. So emotions is mind health. Well, I think it depends.

So some people, let's stay with that for a second. Because for some people, the lack of emotional regulation is leading them to suffer or not have the mind health they want. But they're feeling it in their body, the emotion. When you think of emotions, you feel like your body is... And that book has continued to do well. The Body Keeps Score. It's a clever title, too. It's an amazing book. Yeah. emotion you think of emotions you feel like that body continue to do well the body keeps score it's a clever title it's amazing yeah it's it's especially in these times it's number two on

the bestseller list in new york i mean new york times bestseller list but right but that that space is true but there's also other people whose mind health is a lack of focus or attention like they feel good they just can't get the words out and so my cancer patients that have chemo um they can sometimes develop chemo fog. And there's things like, you know, COVID brain fog. So yes, mind health and emotional regulation, likely the most important thing. But also other things like concentration and attention is all under the umbrella of mind health. So like if I had an attention coach when i was younger i could have done better in

school i see my boys my one of them i'm just like you're the sharpest you're the sharpest tool in the shed you just can't you know look at a problem for longer than 20 seconds right and then you're distracted so stay in this stay in the striking distance when that naturally comes to you in your 20s you're going to be the boss man And so realizing attention and focus is one part of mind health. Realizing emotional regulation is one part of mind health. Realizing that if they eat a certain way and you teach them to eat a certain way, there is a proven mind diet. It's Mediterranean, mostly plants, fish. If you put these habits in them now think about where they will be at age 49 having the tools some of the tricks having had the diet that has preserved their flesh the best

likely to have staved off dementia a little bit like those things we do now as a lesson my opinion that's a lesson for the pandemic let's not wait to see how this pandemic has just rocked kids' minds. Let's put this stuff in now. Let's front load this and then let them develop and see how this generation happens after this cataclysmic event. As a parent of three boys, and after all the information you've learned, personally from life experience, but also as a brain surgeon and neuroscientist, if you could only share three pieces of wisdom for parents today to raise their kids, to have an optimal life, what would you say with the three things you think they should

do the the answers I give I want to back it with sure this the even now saying the sciences doesn't mean as much as you science is fluid yes like always evolving and changing right I want to back it with an explanation okay that you can understand and take home and grasp. The third thing is just what we talked about. I'd love to equip them with mind health tools. So that would be a certain type of diet. Good food, I'm not talking about being skinny or fat or heavy or obese or undue,

I'm not talking about any of those things. The things you eat regardless of your weight can help preserve the flesh of your brain. And that's the Mediterranean diet. So I would have added salmon a couple of times. And if you're vegan, there are vegetables that add that sort of omega-3s in there. I would have said, look, this has to be a part of what you eat,

even if you're eating French fries every day. I'm not telling you what not to eat. Make sure you have this at least. This vitamin. Nature's true vitamins for your brain. I would have taught him that and sort of the emotional coping skills. And now we've gone over why that's important.

For these things to work, they're a multi-decade. They're a glacial process. It's not, what can we take tomorrow? Can I take this pill and it'll fix everything? If there was one, I'd be taking it and I'd share it with you. I'm not against it, actually. I just, there isn't one.

And when you think of the brain and the ways we've tried to conceptualize them today, you can imagine one pill ain't going to fix all of that. The other thing that I find interesting is when they're born they actually have more neurons than they hold on to and that was one you know you said in surgery like there was an aha moment I was like can you do that well in neuroscience there was this one aha moment for me it's like they have more of those neurons, those jellyfish, when they're young than when they're older? So you're born with the biggest block of marble. Wow.

And you shave off what you don't use because the brain is an energy hog, right? So it wants to be efficient. So if you see that there will be a pruning of the diversity of neurons, see that there will be a pruning of the diversity of neurons and then certain things will be have better connections and and and stay in there if you know there's a a culling coming for for the diversity of neurons the the most broad types of neurons um i think it's important to let them have the most broad types of life experiences so they hold on to those as they get older and then they can choose what they want to do

and shave off a few they ain't using anymore, right? Right. So it's called pruning. Huh. Okay. The human brain in kids will go through pruning. And people are like, what does that mean? Well, you know, we're born and we can't walk

and then we learn to walk, so some changes are going on. The changes are also going on up here. You're born with a lot and you're shaving certain things down diversity of experiences i think are very important so i took them traveling with me all around the world like each of them eight trips to eight trips around the world each wow um and that's when we did all our vibing, bonding, talking, hanging. Of course, took them to all the practices and games and stuff like that, but the diversity of experiences is important to me. That could be with grandma, cookies, different cookies. It doesn't have to be all international.

That helps prune the brain and optimize the brain. Yeah, so that helps. But diversity of experiences will let them have the widest repertoire of neurons. As opposed to what? Limiting their experiences? Yeah, because then the brain will shave off the stuff it doesn't do. If you tie one hand behind the back, certain neurons will fall away. So we want to keep those neurons as long as we can.

And that's my second point. I got a buddy who's an Olympian and not in in England he's a decathlete uh-huh Greg white and he made a great point he's I was the Catholic in college oh yeah it's just fascinating see it was amazing man it's great like I've always tried to be sort of a decathlete in life like me too yeah I want to be I want to enjoy it's not that I want to be good at a decathlete in life. In life, me too. Yeah, I want to enjoy. It's not that I want to be good at a lot of different things. I want to see what it looks like when you get to be good at certain things. Yeah, exactly.

Because you get into different worlds like this one. But the other thing is that proprioception, which should be cultivated in my mind, which is knowing your arm is up or down. And so Greg and I, we talked about it. It would be fun for everybody should play as much as to their capacity because I know people have children with intellectual or physical disabilities. But similarly, getting them physically is teaching them how to do somersaults, putting them in a, not that they're going to be gymnasts.

Yeah, stands and backflips. But some sort of sporting, they call it sporting over there like you know exposure so they're fully coordinated with their bodies I think that's an important whether that translates to less Falls as grandma when they become grandparents I don't know but the the full integration of of brain to physical coordination I think would be an interesting one. Using the mouse with their left hand, using the fork with their left hand, forcing those neurons to stay relevant.

So that's in experiences, and that's number two, I would say in movement. And then number three is, what we talked about is teaching them what should be eaten. I think it's easy to say, I had this conversation with one of my sons the other day. I was like, try to eat this regardless of what else you eat. Right. Because there are things in fatty fish, certain vegetables, and plants that's separate from the junk foods,

separate from all the other bad stuff you might eat. I mean, it's delicious, man. Happiness is important. I eat some junk food, but I have tried hard since I learned about this to... To be on the Mediterranean diet. Yeah, or to add plants and omega-3s and however you want to do that.

Wow. Not to lose weight, not for all of that, but to preserve the flesh in my brain. So I think, you know, diversity experiences to keep your neurons around. Lots of movement and coordination training to keep those neurons engaged. And then eat plants to keep the flesh going. What do you feel like is, I've heard from one, I've heard from different neuroscientists that, tell me if this is accurate, that the bigger your body gets, the more obese it gets, the smaller your brain becomes. It shrinks the brain. Or there's

a correlation there with obesity and brain size is that i haven't heard of that okay and just on a regular level i operate on patients who are obese and when i open their skull they're fine there's there's not oh i haven't seen that you haven't seen a smaller or bigger yeah and actually that's that can be you know i have seen withered brains work perfectly really and i have seen juicy brains have issues with epilepsy or autism so the flesh is the starting point but it's it's the mind and the function that's so fascinating so trying to go you know if you're heavy and your brain is smaller brain smaller bigger this spot that spot uh hardwired not hardwired i'm geared for this i just but if you have a perfect looking juicy brain let's say right that you're like wow that's a beautiful

looking it looks healthy and that's what epilepsy is most people it's just beautiful looking brain but the electricity that is sparking is off and sometimes they pass out sometimes they smell certain things sometimes they have visions it's all from the electricity right like that's a real life gotcha i mean there's stuff about they're like authors and writers that in their before having the seizures when they felt most connected to god so that's an electrical thing their brain mri looks the same as his brain m. I love these three pieces of advice you'd give to parents, which is optimizing the physical body with coordination-type activities and doing that.

The second one, diversity of experiences in life, just providing a range of opportunities to experience life at its fullest. And then nutrition for mind health. Mind health tools, including nutrition and emotional coping skills and emotional regulation skills. I feel like I could go for a few more hours with you. This stuff's fascinating to me. What do you feel like you're going to be shocked to learn over the next five years as a surgeon and a neuroscientist with the capabilities of where you see the brain mind connect emotional connection heading the thing that has fascinated

me recently um a bit out of my wheelhouse because it doesn't require a surgeon which is good i'd love for my career to be obsolete you know if we can help people um without having to cut them open that's prevention yeah yeah or non-invasive treatments like i'm i'm trying to invent those i'm trying to make myself obsolete but right now the stuff that some of the stuff the patients are, they come looking for surgeons. I don't do the type of surgery where I try to offer you improved something. People come to me with a scan or a feeling that say, can you help me? And I have to decide if I can, and I guide them through that. So I enjoy my craft, but I also want there to be a time when opening a skull is no longer needed. That said, NPR, so out of Stanford or Karolinska, I'm not sure, but I love the way science communicates.

You can see the work, but the transcranial, and again, these words can be easily manipulated, so I'm trying to give you the explanation. So when you read it some other time, you could say, I remember he was talking about the electricity of the brain. They have figured out the thing looks like the size of a camera, and they put it, you know, it's on a frame on the outside of your skull, and they pulse mild electrical currents. Not the sky-high ones from shock therapy like Jack Nicklaus in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but the fact that if you understand that we are electric, the same deep brain

stimulation, the little pulse, the heavy pulse of many electrodes of shock therapy, electroconvulsive therapy, that they can do it at more, they can turn the voltage down, and they can direct it more. And recently, in a rigorous journal, they were able to get it down to five most-of-the-day sessions, and they had an 80% reduction in refractory depression. So you're depressed. You've taken all the pills. Things are difficult.

You've considered things. Suicidal thoughts or, yeah. That's an interesting one. Let me get on that one just for a second. Because when people have suicidal thoughts and they go into a hospital, they can't wait six weeks for the pills to work, if they work. They need relief now. Or in five days, like with this kind of little, just the softest shock therapy.

The patient's report feels like a woodpecker. On the brain. On the brain. That's not something a neurosurgeon will do. But to me, that is where things are headed. Wow. I would caution, don't buy the stuff from Amazon. There's always a dark side to being manipulated

by some of these sci-fi technologies. They've already been doing studies on this, where 80% reduction on depression. Yeah, powerful. From just the electronic shock, a gentle, for what? Well, shock therapy is for severe depression. For what, 30 minutes or five minutes? Is this an hour?

It's 10-minute episodes spaced by time over most of the day. But, you know, you've got to spend some time. But five days, it's powerful. And then it stays, or it's for a period of time? It was a very good question. Some of the patients found it to be durable. Maybe in that time, the pills come in. Maybe in that time the pills come in. Maybe in that time the therapy comes in.

But the point is, and they can do it with magnets too. So be careful on YouTube what magnets can do. But it's electromagnetic. Gosh, it's fascinating. Yeah, and it's not completely in my space. That's why I'm also more fast. I'm a surgeon i stimulate the brain i use electric wands i put electric pulses but the whole space of doing it

from outside the skull is a non-surgical space but to me it's very fascinating it reinforces a concept that our highest levels of thinking feeling and emotions are all sort of electrical flows oh my god this is this is my jam i love this stuff man i'm so excited but there's a lot of room for you know there's a lot of room for exploitation when you use language like that because it's easier to say gears and wired but it's not yeah otherwise otherwise you know doskiewski wouldn't report writing his best work the moments preceding his epilepsy right that's you're talking about art and literature otherwise you wouldn't put a a little battery in the controlled medical

environment and break depression and otherwise you wouldn't you know be in shock therapy it's still some of these centers and it can be useful where you literally, you shock the skull and people wake up non-suicidal. Even if it happens once, all three of these things from ancient literature and the world of epilepsy to a new study out of modern science to modern, but it's a lot of the theme that connects it all is all juicy brains, but all different people because of the theme that connects it all is all juicy brains, but all different people because the electricity that sprouts from those juicy brains. Oh man. Yeah. So it's a bit to wrap your head around, but that's our current understanding. It'd be easier for me to come in there and say, you're wired this way.

You're wired that way. Change your wiring by eating a blueberry. Look, it's just not, that's just not where our understanding is this is fascinating man we're gonna have to have you come back on for part two sometime but i want to ask you a couple final questions yep uh this is a question well actually before i do ask you a couple final questions i want people to check out your work you've got a new book called life on a Knife's Edge, A Brain Surgeon's Reflections on Life, Loss, and Survival. You've got a number of books, but people can check out that one. It's the recent one.

If they go to your website, what's your website where they can learn more about it all? I would just Google because you see a lot of different things like that. My website isn't really the conduit, but I'm a cancer surgeon at City of Hope, and there's different stuff I've been doing. Are you on social media at all?

I am on Instagram, actually. That's where I put my good stuff. Okay, cool. So we'll follow that. That's Dr. At Dr. John Deal, yeah. John Deal, yes. J-A-N-D-I-A-L.

So go check you out over there. And the book's on Amazon and everywhere else. But again, check out the book, Life on a Knife's Edge. This stuff's fascinating, man. I'm so intrigued by this. I feel like in another life, I would have been a neuroscientist. Probably not a surgeon, but a neuroscientist. Because I just think, yeah, surgery for me, that might be a little too much, but I don't know how you do it, man. every week it's that's got to be intense but uh really fascinating stuff that you've been studying and practicing and I want people to to get the book and learn more about you how else can we best be

supportive of you and what you're up to right now I mean this is a I never take it lightly to have a voice and to share my opinions so that right away you've you know you've already done me a tremendous favor to invite me on your show so sure so we're all good um and i think you know i don't you know i don't ask for, there's nothing I'm selling. I don't have anything like that. But I'm turning 50 this year. And, you know, my pops and other people I've seen, you know, this run ain't forever. I think I'm just super happy that I'm still, I'm exploring and investigating and tearing myself apart, you know, putting my soul work in this book. And just to have the opportunity to have that as a component of my life, I never expected that. And so by being given that opportunity, that's support enough, brother.

That's cool, man. I'm excited. I'm excited for people to get the book. This question is called The Three Truths. It's a question I ask everyone at the end of the interviews. Hypothetical scenario. Imagine you live as long as you want to live, but it's your last day on earth. You've accomplished everything.

You've done the stuff you want to do. You have a happy, healthy life, family, all that stuff. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your message with you to the next place. It's your last day. You got to turn the lights off. There's no more electricity in the brain and you move on to the next place. You take all of your work with you, all the message, the content, anything you shared, your lessons, no one has access to anymore. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons you would leave with the world. And that's all that we would have to remember you by are these three lessons. What would you say are yours? I think the first one would be that life is short, but art is long. I never fully understood understood that but through the last few years where I've become an author I've realized I can impact a lot of a lot of

people and then the words in this book and the the soul work in this book can actually last onward yeah so life is short but art is long and having an opportunity to leave a bit of art has been a tremendous opportunity. And that would be a message I would leave the world. The second thing I would say is it really touched me. I think people think he was being facetious. But Kafka said, I think. And I learned about these authors and stuff later.

I never read. Actually, I didn't read much at all when I was young. I was just rocking out. But in the last four or five years of trying to put this, trying to talk about the human brain and mind, you have to bring in artists and literature. But he said the meaning of life is that it ends. My cancer patients have shown me that is when you get that feeling of mortality that it can be fuel for you to live absolutely so and and

the third thing is if you can this was more mine if you're if you can, this one's more mine, if you're fortunate enough to find true love, take care of it so you don't lose it. And that's on an interpersonal level between friends and lovers and parents even, and the children.

That's what I got, baby. Man, I want to acknowledge you for a moment for putting your message out there in a way that we can understand it. Because I think it's confusing to understand the brain and the mind, the emotions, and how it all is connected. And I think people are communicating in a way of rewiring.

I've said these things. And it's understanding. How do we? Start to change the language around this and understand the brain and the mind and the emotions and the body and the flesh and electricity of it all and so you can you doing the practical work as a surgeon and a certain Neuroscientist and bringing both fields together to then educate in more simplified ways of something that's extremely complex that we'll probably never fully understand how it all works is really helpful. And for me, this has just been really inspiring. So I appreciate and acknowledge your work and your ability to want to continue to grow as a human and serve people with your message. It's really inspiring, man. My final question is what's your definition of greatness? That elusive goal that no one achieves but keeps us striving for more.

My man. Thanks, sir. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys.

So share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.