What Now? with Trevor Noah - Emily McDonald: Can You Rewire Your Brain?

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

Trevor and Eugene sit down with neuroscientist and content creator Emily McDonald (aka EmOnTheBrain) to explore how our brains shape the way we think, feel, and behave. From the real limits (and possibilities) of neuroplasticity to the surprisingly persistent pull of old habits, McDonald breaks down what’s actually happening inside our nervous systems.   Along the way, the trio dive into Emily’s own neurological journey, how elite athletes train their brains for peak performance, and even the spiritual energy of Sedona — all in an effort to understand how we change, and why our brains don’t always make it easy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My idea is we create old age homes that are kindergartens. Yeah. Because old people... They've done that. Wait, they have? So they've done a research study. They stole my idea. Come on.

So if... No, no, no. So they haven't done this for like as a business. So go to do this. No, but there is actually research to show your idea would work. If I'm clear on your idea. This is why I need you in my life. So my idea is great.

You know how many times I say things to people and then they'll be like, I don't know And if I had you around, you could be like, there's research to show. Bam! This is What Now with Trevor Nella. I'm going to call you M-on-the-B-B-B-N-the-B-B-B-N. But what do your friends call you? They call me M. They call you M as well.

M, yeah. I like this. M-O-N-the-B-B-R-N-B-B-N. No, you know, at least you got it right, because a lot of people think it's like E-M-on-the-B-B-----------------------. Yeah. It's a common misconception. Why? Because it's spelled E-M-O-N-T-H-E brain.

I mean, it just seems logical that it would be M on the brain. Although I can't judge them. If you don't read the person's name under their, like, you know, their tag, I guess it's E-M-on. E-M-on-the-Brain. I prefer M. Okay. Okay, M. But this is, this is one.

what I like to call a selfish episode because I feel like Eugene and I are really just going to ask you to fix our brains for us. Perfect. You know what I mean? Because you're known as, and I've watched your evolution online, which has been really great to see from afar. It's like you shared your journey studying, working in and around. What were you studying at the time?

I was studying drug addiction. Drug addiction? Oh wow. Investigating new ways to treat relapse to prevent drug addiction or relapse the drug addiction. Yeah. That's wild. Mm-hmm. And so when you were in university, what were you like going into study?

Because how did you get into, was it neuroscience? Was it, what was you like your focus and your passion at the time? Well, initially I was pre-med. Yeah. Studying biology absolutely hated it. And so I went up to one of my friends that was in my pre-med org. I was in college. And I told him I hated it.

I was like, what should I do? And he goes, well, why don't you try neuroscience? and I had never even heard of neuroscience at the time. It just sounded cool. So I switched my major to it, immediately fell in love, like ace my first exam. My professor reached out to me. He was like, congrats, you couldn't have done better. And I was like, get me in the research lab.

This is so cool. So I started studying learning, memory, the perception of time all throughout brain development in undergrad. So that's what I was doing, fell in love with research. But I knew, I always kind of knew that I wanted to be more kind of preclinical, helping people more directly, like studying learning and memory is cool. but I wanted to be able to help people and solve problems that doctors couldn't solve at the time. Sorry, what does preclinical mean?

Like, for example, so preclinical research is sort of research that happens before, you know, we take a medication, for example, to clinicians, to use, right? So you're doing sort of research to investigate new ways to treat, for example, relapse or treat depression or anxiety or Parkinson's disease. and you, so that's kind of like pre-clinical work before it goes to clinicians, basically. Yeah, and so actually it's funny that you were kind of talking about nicotine before this, because I used to be addicted to nicotine, and that was sort of why I initially became passionate about studying drug addiction, and I took a class in undergrad about why the current treatments for relapse don't work. And they're really just putting, they don't really work because they're just putting band-aids on the symptoms of the problem, rather than actually solving the problem.

And that's why research is so important because you can go and investigate what the problem really is. And so immediately I was like, this is it, what I'm meant to do. I meant to go and cure relapse to drug addiction. I'm going to go get my PhD and I'm going to win a Nobel Prize for this.

And so, yeah, and so from then I was like, okay, let me go get my PhD in neuroscience. So that is sort of how I became really passionate about drug addiction research and how I, the path that led me to the PhD. So, yeah, moved to Arizona, started my PhD in neuroscience with a minor in medical pharmacology so that I could study drug addiction. And that's what I was doing for a few years. That's really crazy.

Did it work for you? Did the research help you? How do you know? Because she had to go to university to do it. You don't know. Are you making these assumptions? He is making assumptions. And I would say the research in itself, no, but my knowledge of the brain, absolutely, yes.

I taught myself to associate, and it was vaping for me, but I taught my brain to associate it with just the feeling of disgust. You rewired your brain. Yes. So you took a feeling that you didn't have before for something that you liked and then recoded it. Yep. And said, this is disgusting.

Yep. The action of it. It's exactly what you did. Buying it. Buying out of the smoke. I would let myself carry it around still. And I would let myself have the craving. And I would put it in a place where it took me,

a second so that there was kind of a gap between the initial craving and the action of actually doing it because that's what addiction is, right? It becomes like this mind, mindless stimulus response behavior where the stimulus is like seeing the vapor, seeing the cigarette, whatever it is, and then immediate response. Or, for example, social media, you see the notification. All of a sudden, you're picking up your phone and you're scrolling and you don't even know how you got there, right? So it's, I kind of added a little bit of space where I still would carry it around. I'd put it, like, I would drive and I'd put it underneath the passenger seat in my car. And I would get that craving and I would like add a red light, you know, it gave me some time to

kind of rewire that association. And the brain's an association machine. You're in a relationship with everything in your life. So yeah, I would pick it up and I'd be like, oh, no, this is disgusting. And even if I wanted to still hit it, I would, but then I would make sure to like pay attention to the feeling of feeling gross that I just did it. And I would sit in that feeling and really feel the feeling and make sure my brain was paying attention to it. And over time, yeah. And so even after I quit, I would get that craving. still, of course, and then immediately my brain would remember, oh, yeah, no, that's gross. We don't really want that.

Okay, wait, so help us understand, or help me understand, really, the process of what's actually happening. Because you're saying this about vaping. You're saying, you know, disgusting. In my head, I'm like, oh, but there's strawberry flavors. I don't even vape, by the way, never smoked. But in my, I love strawberries. I'm like, that's how they'd get me.

But I can, I feel like I can have the same, I have the same story with, like, ice cream late at night or. you know, chocolate and then somebody else might have it with social media where they go, oh, that's exactly me. Every time I pull it out, I've lost two, three hours, four hours, but I didn't actually want to be here. So how does that work? First of all, what is happening to the brain when you're doing that? When you're doing something you don't necessarily want to do, but you keep finding yourself doing what is happening to the brain. And then I want to get to how the rewiring actually works. Yeah. So what's happening is,

really just maladaptive habit formation. And that just means the formation of bad habits. That's all it is. It's just learning. And I think, you know, in undergrad, I was definitely divinely led on the path toward studying learning and memory first because then I really understand the process of learning. And that's really all it is is you've just learned a behavior. Your brain has learned a behavior and it's learned to automate that behavior so that it's no longer a conscious act. For example, getting up in the morning and hopefully brushing your teeth is an automated behavior that you How will they know? They'll never know.

Well, I'm hoping. I'm hoping that that's an automatic thing. Yeah, but before you move on from that, then why is it that good habits are harder to keep? Like, I know that working out is good for me. I know that going for a walk is good for me. I know that stretching is good for me. I know all these things.

And then I'll do them and I'll feel good after doing them. But then I don't find myself craving, like, a gym session, I don't find myself being like, you don't all be nice right now, a little bench pressed, I know it's midnight, but I can sneak in a little 250, mm-mm, mm-hmm, I like to do that sometimes, but I'll tell you, there's a couple things there. All right, so if you want to talk about the neuroscience

of habit formation, the way that every single habit is formed is it first begins as a dopamine-driven activity, right? So when social media first came out, you weren't going on social media out of habit, you went on there because you could connect with your friends. or you could, you could post something or whatever it is, right? You went on there for a goal for a reason. Same thing with ice cream or, you know, vaping, whatever it is.

You started it because it felt good. That's why you started. Okay, so feel good is the first thing. Right. And then that dopamine, so dopamine actually drives learning. It drives neuroplasticity, which is the ability for your brain to rewire. So dopamine drives learning. And dopamine isn't just released when something great happens.

it's also released when something not so great happens. It's more of a salience molecule, which means, like, look at me. So anything that really, like, grabbed your attention, that's why you have really strong memories of bad events as well, because they're emotional and they raise dopamine as well, just in a different way. So, yeah, anything that really boosts dopamine, it will drive that learning, right? And so what actually happens is that over time, the dopamine moves from being released when you get the good thing to being released whenever you see sort of a cue or something that represents that good thing, right?

So, for example, it's super, super easy to just talk about it with, you know, drugs of abuse, but we can talk about ice cream. Initially, you got dopamine from eating ice cream. But over time, you get the dopamine from seeing the ice cream because your brand's anticipating a reward. So your dopamine moves from actually getting the reward to the anticipation of the reward. reward and that's craving. So that's sort of how habit formation works. And then once that happens, then you kind of begin this, it goes from this goal directed behavior, right? And it moves to a stimulus response behavior or a Q response where like before it was like, oh, I want to eat

this ice cream because I know that I want to eat this ice cream. It's going to taste good. And now it's like, oh no, I see the ice cream. Dopamine is released when I see the carton. And that's going to drive me because dopamine is also a molecule of action to go and eat it. And you're not even, you don't want to. It's just that your dopamine has learned to associate the picture of the ice cream that you're seeing with a reward. And now you're not even deciding it. It's just your brain is driving you to do it. This is why ads work. Yeah. But I guess it also explains to me why ads are more effective when you've actually had the thing. So sometimes I'll watch an ad for like Taco Bell, for instance, Taco Bell has come on all the time. It's never, never, ever once made me go, I want

Taco Bell because I haven't had Taco Bell in my life. I don't, ever. Maybe I had it once. I think I had it once on the road when I was with Gabriel Iglesias and then we bought one of my favorite memories. We were on the road somewhere, where were we? Maybe we were in, we're in El Paso, Texas or maybe somewhere in that region. And after all the, after a comedy show, we'd go and we just buy, you know, food, whatever, takeout. And then one day, Gabriel and the gang, we're in the tour bus. And then he's like, he says to me, he's like, yo, he's like, do you want to get some Taco Bell? I was like, I've never had Taco Bell.

Everyone in the bus was like, you never had Taco Bell. It was literally like an ad. Everyone, you've never had, we got to get him Taco Bell. The bus driver, Bob, Bo, Bo. We're on the way to Taco Bell. So now we're driving this giant tour bus. Like, Taco Bell, here we come. We get there.

Now, we want to go through the drive-thru. can't because the bus is too big. So we have to walk through the drive-thru because the Taco Bell's stuff was closed. So we walk through the drive-thru and then they just like we ordered for everyone on the bus plus more because they wanted

me to taste everything and I'll never forget there's a moment where I'm walking back to the bus and I'm carrying two bags but I mean like huge huge huge huge bags. I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman you know when like you I'd come back from shop

But with Taco Bell, guys, I've never felt sexier in my life because I love food. I was like, and I'm walking to the bus. He's looking at me like from the bus. And it was almost like we had the same thought because as I got to the bus, he looked at me. And he's like, you've never looked harder. And I walked on. But that was the only time I ate it, right? And it was like, okay, whatever.

I was going to say, what did you think? Yeah, it was me. It was okay. It was whatever. But it didn't, it wasn't something that like, it didn't stay with me. So genuinely, whenever I watch a Taco Bell ad, I don't have a, oh, I should get that now. But Pizza Hut or like a McDonald's or one of it.

Let them flash a McFlurry on the screen over for half a second. Yeah. I will find that machine wherever it is. Yeah. I will turn it on myself. Do you love ice cream. Hey, my friend. He's the only guy I know who choose ice cream.

Yo, bro, you know me and you love me. You see you, you see me. You, you see me, Eugene. Choose ice cream. He choose it. Even without the toppings? I chew it. I savor it.

He's like an ice cream sommelier. This guy loves me. This guy knows me. No, but that's what I mean. It's like, so like the ads have more power over you. When you've actually experienced the thing. Do you get what I'm saying? Right, right, right.

Because your brain has learned that it's rewarding. Wow. So then it becomes, now it becomes a trigger. That's how it can work on you. It's like because now you've had it when you watch the ad or when you see like the social media thing scroll. I think this explains so much. What you're saying also explains why going cold turkey on anything never works.

Because anything that you love, there's a process to it. Like how we explained you going into the shop, choosing a flavor, paying for that, getting the reward of paying for it because you know, have it now. You put in your pocket. But all of a sudden, if the whole process is cut short, then the reward is not there anymore. Then you start missing the thing more. But I find that when you have the vape inside your car, but you choose not to do it, then you're slowly taking away the one for it. I love that you made that point of like feeling stressed too because that was another thing. And that's why I decided to do it the way that I did.

Because when you go cold turkey, it almost, especially when you're addicted to something, you feel this sense of like stress without it and not having it. And stress reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is the area of your brain that allows you to control your impulses. So it actually makes you. And that's why, you know, when people quit an addiction or something and all of a sudden they feel stressed, they are more likely to relapse because your ability to. control your impulses is reduced. But here's my thing.

Do we quit things that we're addicted to because they're hurting other people? Or do we quit because they're hurting us? Because initially, everything, there was a dopamine spike. I liked what I was doing. I was having too much of a good time at a strip club. Now I have kids. Now I have to think, do I tip strippers or do I pay for school fees? Is it the strippers or is it the kids?

Am I stopping this because I want to stop or because they are crying because they're hungry now? Not the strippers, the kids. These analogies are so crazy. So, Trevor thinks this is really funny. Because you choose ice cream. No, but I'm sitting here, like thinking about this very much from my own perspective and experience. And the way that I decided was it's always about who I'm wanting to become. And it's always about that.

And, you know, you can never force somebody to quit something they don't want to. Like, you have to want to do it. And I think for me, I didn't care to quit vaping. I didn't care how many ads showed. me what happens to your lungs. I didn't care about any of that. I was young. I don't care about that. I don't care about my health. Like, whatever. The thing that actually made me care about stopping was understanding that there is a gap currently between who you are now and the version of you who's achieved everything you've ever wanted in life. And when you visualize that version of you,

when you hold that version of you in your mind, like that version of you has different habits than you do right now. And the version of me, who's boss, woman, like achieving. everything she doesn't bait. And so I was like, damn, like if I want to become that version of me and achieve everything I want to achieve, then I need to stop doing this because it's creating a gap between where I am now and where I want to go. So this is, I think, something that attracted a lot of people to your account and to your work online. There were a lot of people who would give you information about the brain in a very technical way that helped you understand how your brain works, what your brain does, you know, dopamine and all these phrases, you know,

like, stimulus and neoprine and like all these neoprasticity. Maybe you were trying to say neuropanephyan. That's exactly what I was trying to say. That's exactly what I'm, but you knew what I was trying to say. You see? You see? That's exactly what I'm, because every time I see that word, I'm just like, amen. Neoproproprene.

I knew what you meant. Thank you very much. Have you ever seen how it's written? Neopreneuripermin? No. Exactly like that. It is written like that. And then people just, you think you know.

And you're like, oh, the neopropropropinine and the dopamine and then the serotonin and then the oxytocin, okay. And then on the other side of like, let's say the internet slash the world, you have people who are like, visualize and think about what you want in life. And what I, and I think a lot of people would call like woo-woo, you know, you'd be like, visualized you. And you're like, all right. And a lot of people love that and swear by it. And then I find these two worlds have often been at odds. So someone who's like deep in the science goes like, don't listen to that. And someone who's deep in the woo-woo goes like, don't listen to the other thing.

And then you started showing the connection between the two. You went like, no, no, no. No, let me explain how a meditation does something to your brain. And let me show you how your brain responds to what you want or what you think. And let me show you how a visualization shifts you and shapes you. How did you start thinking that? Because I'm assuming you didn't learn that in school. No.

And I actually get asked all the time. Any books you recommend? I'm like, it's very much a connection between two disciplines that I love and that fulfill me. But yeah, I would say in school when I was getting my first neuroscience degree. Yeah, I have two degrees in neuroscience. Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One for you and me eat, Eugene, to make up for the degrees we never got. He said first.

Thank you. I appreciate that. I do too. I do too. So yeah, when I was getting my first degree in neuroscience and studying, especially just the different sensory systems. So, for example, your visual system and how your brain constructs everything that you see, like you're not seeing the world with your eyes. Your eyes are just taking in light signals. And then those light signals travel through the brain where your thoughts, emotions,

memories, your beliefs, who you believe you are. All that's incorporated before you, the image is even put together that you see by your brain. Wait, let's slow that down. Just go back on that because you're going to say it and then we're going to act like we completely got it. Yeah. Which maybe you did. But wait, wait. Your eyes are not seeing.

They're only taking in light. Right. Okay. And that light is then going into. Traveling through the brain, all these different areas. But it's basically being bent by your memories. Exactly. The way you think of.

about the world? Your current emotions. Your current emotions. You ever heard the saying seeing the world through rose-colored lenses? When you are in a positive emotional state, your brain actually constructs color as more vivid. So you actually see the world more vividly and more saturated. So literally the world is more colorful and you actually are seeing the world through rose-colored lenses. That means there's almost a scientific backing behind the phrase woke up on the wrong side of bed. Yeah. Yeah. Your energy state is so important. And then that goes back to exactly what you were asking me about is, is, you know, how did I start to connect spirituality and these woo-woo things with neuroscience? And I think, you know,

exactly when I was learning about these different systems and vision is just one of them. They all work this way. Like, for example, sound and the way that you hear, like the membrane in your ears organized by frequency. And if you're on the woo-woo side of the world, you may have heard before that different frequencies of sound can have different effects on you. Yeah, yeah, like sound bowls and all Sulfesio frequencies 528, 432. And both of those have studies showing that they do actually impact the brain in different ways and binoreal beats and things like that. So literally, actually, it all clicked one moment when I was laying in bed one night in my apartment whenever I was in undergrad. And I just was listening to, and I sort of went on this spiritual journey toward the end of my first degree in neuroscience.

And I read the book, The Untethered Soul. If you guys have ever heard of that, it's really good. And so I started meditating and I started doing like and I was laying in bed listening to 432 hertz as I was falling to sleep. And I was like, well, wait a minute. The membrane in the ears organized by frequency. What if this certain frequency of sound is activating my brain in a specific way and actually changing the way that my state of mind is.

And that's why these frequencies of sound work. And I turn over, pick up my phone. Google it, and there are papers showing exactly what just popped into my head. Like, yeah, 432 Hertz has been shown to boost alpha wave activity in the brain. Alpha waves are associated with a sense of calm. And so, you know, people on the woo-woo side of the world say, oh, it's really good for meditation or sleep. And then in the science world, it has been shown to help people fall asleep, stay asleep,

boost alpha waves in the brain. And so that was kind of my first moment of, oh, maybe there is. some overlap and there are some kind of between the different worlds. Right. And so that kind of just started me on this spiral, this upward spiral of just connecting dots everywhere. And yeah, and I think I've just got, and then, you know, moving to Arizona, I was just talking to your team about Arizona and it's, the desert is a very spiritual place. And moving there while doing my PhD and just really growing in my spirituality while also, of course, doing a PhD in neuroscience, so really studying neuroscience to like the depth.

that you could possibly study it. And yeah, I just started connecting all these dots and then also connecting what I was learning with my own experiences as well. And I think a lot of people ask me, you know, where does this information come from? And most of it, the information I share is from my own lived experience.

And then I'm like, huh, I wonder what's happened in my brain right now. And then I think about it, look into it, read some papers, and I'm like, that makes sense. And then I talk about it. We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break. I wonder why, slash how we got to a place where we got so comfortable dismissing spirituality or the ideas that come with like, you know, connecting to something beyond ourselves and having that clash with what we think of as like intelligence and knowledge. Do you get what I'm saying?

I think religion had a big part in that. What do you mean? Because remember that once religion became a thing, people had to attribute their knowledge to something. Yeah. It could never be, I just know it. You know, we always have, there's always this debate in the spiritual realm of, are you a human having a spiritual experience or are you a spirit having a human experience? And most people feel like when they discover themselves in the middle of their life, whenever it is, they were a human and now they're having a spiritual experience. But I think it's the other way around.

And obviously, literature has proved that. and also when they speak to people who know that. So religion always... Wait, wait, wait. So you're saying, because I mean we can never prove it. I'm with you 100%, by the way. No, but we can never prove it. But I'm intrigued by what you're saying.

You're saying the argument or the discussion is, are we spirits that are experiencing being human? Yes. Or are we humans experiencing being spirits? Yes. But you can't prove it. Are we a human having a spiritual experience? Yes.

Or are we a spirit having a human experience? Yeah. So the thing is, if you want to prove, that's a small part of it, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, M, that you are spirit having a human experience. Emon. Please get our guest name right. Emon.

Now you're going to confuse the list. No, no, it's M, it's M. It's M. Before you have language, before you have experience, you're always had intuition. So how do you account for that? So before you, yeah, no, I'm confused. You see what I mean? No, I'm.

So there's something, there's a remembering that's coded in you already. And as you grow older and you get interference, of signals of society, the time that you were born in, how hard or how easy your life was, all of that gets numbed down and then you start living according to your experiences. Yes, but this is what I'm trying to, this is the question. This is the question that I have for you, though. Go.

Like, I guess for both of you, I guess in a way, is like, we are ready for, there's two degrees between us. Of separation, not academic. That was a good one. The thing I find interesting is this. So I grew up in a very religious household. And the thing that I always struggled with and grappled with was how churches and leaders in churches and even members of churches would treat people using their religion as an excuse. And we see this all over the world.

But my personal experience, I oftentimes, far. myself going, wait, is this, so this is what a Christian does? I was like, I don't know, man. I don't know. It just, it didn't, it didn't gel for me. And so I think that created an allergy to all religion in many ways. As I've gotten older, I've found in like a humbling way, I've gone like, oh, there are so many things that religion teaches people, apart from like, you know, dogma. Yes. That now science has sort of come around too. So whether it's like prayer itself, when you think about journaling and the effects of journaling

and the processing, and I'd love for you to speak a little bit about this, closing your eyes and thinking about your day before you go to sleep, I see all these things coming out now where scientists are like, oh, that really helps you go to sleep. And it also helps your brain sort of like just switch everything off. You know what I mean?

But like, so something like that, or something like fasting, which most religions have. You're starting to see more of the tie-ins where science is sort of catching up to old ideas and then old ideas are showing themselves in science. Where do you think the breakdown came

between people saying, oh, we shouldn't listen to that, and now we're going, maybe we should listen to some of that. Yeah, I think, honestly, there used to be a lot more overlap. There used to be a lot more in science and in research.

especially like in the 1900s there was a lot of research especially I mean even with psychedelics and things like that and what happened was there were a few scientists that just took it a bit too far and it got to the point where in the science world it became yeah I kind of started to have this dogma around it and this sort of like association around it and it became almost disrespected in a way yeah and it bastard right and exactly especially with something as simple as hypnosis for example like Like there's so much judgment and woo-woo around it, but there's so much neuroscience around it as well. But because it has this sort of like, I don't know. Well, the gimmick as well.

Right, right. Once you're making somebody jump on stage and they say they're a dog, I think it undermines what hypnosis may or may not be. And I'm not saying that thing's not real, by the way. Yeah, I think that that's exactly the analogy that I'm trying to make here is that it kind of, that happened with a lot of the different, you know, research studies that were going on. And it happened in not just hypnosis, but in other areas as well. For example, psychedelics. There used to be a lot more research on it. And then scientists took it too far.

And then it became, oh, no, that's wrong. We shouldn't be doing that. And then we went from 100 to zero. And then now we're starting to warm back up to it again. And we're slowly introducing it more and more into research and in studies. But also, I think it's still not really, you know, supported. I mean, whenever I was in the PhD, there's this one research lab that they studied mindfulness and meditation. That lab was not well funded. That lab did not get a lot of money for research. And I think that still is the case today. So now, while we're seeing more research on spiritual concepts and spirituality, I think it's still not happening to the extent that it should be. And yeah, I think that that's been my experience. And then even now, when I'm talking about things that I'm talking about online,

I'm doing research into really more hardcore scientific concepts, like neuroplasticity, the default mode network, the reward system, all of that, and just knowing because I have such a solid foundation of that information. And then I'm learning about, you know, the law of detachment and all these things. And then I'm connecting it to what I already know is true about the brain. So it's not necessarily that there's a specific study that shows, you know, detachment makes your goals come faster, it's more about me knowing that, yeah, when you are in desperation and in this neediness, then that's going to boost cortisol. And when you are in a state of fight or flight, you get that deer in headlights tunnel vision where you're actually less open to opportunities and other

things coming your way. And your brain is filtering for more of that lack and stress because that's the way the brain works. It filters your reality for whatever it is that you're focused on. So I just know how the brain works and then I connect it to spiritual kind of concepts, things that learning. Which are oftentimes easier to understand, I find. That's where I find science is often lacking. Science and academia. My criticism of it is often the fact that, and maybe not of it,

it does its job. And then I feel like there's not enough like sort of middlemen who are getting the message out. Yeah, yeah. So then it's just like a study and it's abstract. And then it's just left to the devices of the world to be like, this is what it actually means. But then from the other side, There's very good salesman. Yeah, yeah.

People did try. I think I read a lot of books that were written by people who grew up in the 60s and were raised by hippies. The Gary Zuccoffs, Dr. Wayne Dyer, all of those people who kind of understood that to sell spiritualism or spiritualism, you're going to have to be a bit commercial and go around and bring your life experiences. I'm a doctor or was in the army. My experiences brought me this. But they knew that they were setting a time bomb that was going to explode in the future. 30, 40 years down the line

because people are not ready and obviously if you think of if hypnosis was taken for what it is, hypnosis is one stage of past life regression. Is what? Is one stage

of actually doing past life regression? I don't even know what that means. But when it goes to a show in Las Vegas and it becomes people barking like dogs. Wait, but you can't just skip past what you just said. Eugene does this to me all the time and then he just says a thing.

I'm understanding what you said. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not and I'm sure there's a lot of people who are not. But I don't even care. about them right now. Just me. What did you just say? I think. Yes. Hypnosis is just one part of doing a past life regression. What does that, yes, what does that mean? So a lot of people, there's a doctor, I think you know about Brian Weiss. I don't know if I do know. He did a lot of work

studying people. He was a professor, a doctor in university. He started having this patient who was struggling with certain issues. And then he did hypnosis and then they regress further and further back. And then he realized many. One body, many lives, as well as one of his books, if I'm not mistaken. So he found out that a lot of things that people deal with is the body or your mind remembers, what happened to you in other lives. So when you go back in other lives, so people who have a fear of drowning, an unreasonable fear of drowning, they've drowned in another life before.

And somehow there's something that happens that triggers that memory, the smell of water or sea water or salt, that triggers that memory. So to cure that fear, you have to pass life regress them. They have to go back into her life where something tragic happened. Yes. And that thing was associated with it. So it's funny, half of my brain completely rejects this idea. Yes. But I mean, you know me.

I always tell you these things. Half of my brain goes like, no. The other half of my brain goes, we've had a trauma specialist on the show, studied trauma her whole life. and she has showed us that there's definitive research that has shown that trauma can be passed down through generations of people

who haven't experienced the initial trauma so there's half of my brain that goes like oh I can understand this being possible but not in the and that's what I mean by the woo-woo versus not woo does that make sense in the world of woo-woo what you've just explained

is the fact that there's soul families no no no no but look look look We remember the pain together. But I get what you're saying. But do you understand what I'm saying? I'm saying like, so sometimes this is what I think happens. And this is why I enjoy your journey so much is we, I think we all live in a world where we are most comfortable with the reality that we've been brought up in. And with the evidence that we've been taught to accept as being correct.

Yes. Right. it is very difficult to shake that and it's very difficult to accept a possibility that something else could be different. But when you move through different worlds, you realize that it's necessary. So an example for me was

there were a lot of criticisms levied at African mothers for how they would raise their children by like Westerners who'd come in whether it was colonizers, whether it was, you know, whatever it was. Like they'd go, oh, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.

The way African mothers, this is wrong, this is wrong. things they would complain about them wrapping the baby onto their bodies and like tying them up and they'd be like no you should put your baby in a cot

and you should leave them this and you should and then over the years when they started doing studies there were scientists and there were groups that did studies where they found

that having the baby up against the mom was really good for regulating their heartbeat changing their respiratory patterns calming them down fostering trust all of these things and then do you

I remember this moment, just think, do you remember when they started launching the things that African moms had had their whole lives? And they started selling them in the Western world. And they're like, the new trend. You wrap your baby to your body. And now it was like $200 to buy a thing that an African mom did with a towel. I remember this for me being a moment where I went, oh, wow, yes. Even I was taught that that thing is like primitive. Your mom did it, but it was primitive. and there's a better way to do it and then at some point science

or you know researchers went oh actually this is a great thing to do and sort of didn't levy the credit that way so I'm open to some of these ideas I think some of the language throws me I'm not going to lie because some people are more comfortable when you just like pass lives then I'm like

whoa whoa whoa in my head I'm hearing a record go but when you explain the concepts behind it I find that maybe I'm not the only person who's a little more open to the possibility of understanding it. It's just when you throw past life's deep and key. The terminology is... I'm not going to lie, it throws me.

Yeah, I think... And I think that's... I like what you just described also because that's something that I really hold true for my own life is always following your own sense of intuition. And I think that if you're waiting around for a study to show you that something is right or wrong, then you're going to be waiting forever

because science is really slow. But also, just because a study shows something, something too doesn't mean that it is right or wrong. There are outliers in every single study. And so just because something might work for one person, you could be that one dot on the graph that it doesn't work for. You could be a flawed study as well. And yeah, and a lot of studies are very biased too.

I mean, I used to do them. So I've seen the types of people, you know, and not saying that, you know, there are people not trying their best. Yes, yeah. You know, it's like humans are human and they are going to make human mistakes. But I think what, what don't we understand about studies? What like, because, you know, as the internet has has exploded, as TikTok has become popular, everyone I see on TikTok references a study. And I mean everyone.

And I've seen everyone reference any study to say the thing that they're saying is correct. But I've seen every. And then I've seen people pull up the same study and go, no, no, no, this is not the study. And then someone else says a meta-analysis is more correct. So help us understand the study. So for everyone out there, for us as well, when you're conducting a study, help me understand the very basic mechanics of what is actually happening and how that leads to a conclusion that then like CBS this morning will report and be like, coffee makes you live 20 years longer. How do they get there? I think those, a lot of the claims that are made end up being in the discussion, which aren't even necessarily the point of the study.

It's more just speculation of how these results can be applied to and extrapolated to other situations in life. But the way that a study begins is by asking a question, right? So we have this background of information. And I studied, you know, in my PhD, a very specific receptor that we thought got leaky when we were relapsing the drugs. Leaky brain. Yeah. Just a leaky calcium channel. And so.

We know one. We're friends with one. And yeah. Shout out for leaky. And yeah, and so you have this background of information, right, and you know some things about it from other areas of research. And you're like, okay, it seems well-informed. And you don't just make a random, ask a random question,

but it seems well-informed. And so it's like, okay, now I think based on what I know about this calcium channel, I think it could have something to do with relapse. And then you have to basically say a hypothesis, right? Like, I think that if I, for example, block this channel, then these, you know, then relapse behavior. Relapse is either gone or it will happen more, right? So you have to decide one way or the other. And then you design a study that you think will help to answer that question.

And now the way that that study works and the results of it is you, no matter what results you get, right, you either say that you either, you don't ever say like, oh, I was right or I was wrong. You're basically just testing to see if the results are more, if one thing is more likely to happen than the other. It's all likelihood. It's never a definitive yes or no. It's this is definitely, you know, this is more likely to not be the case. Or it more likely is the case that, you know, if I block this channel, then these people are no longer going to relapse. Okay, okay. But what else is it affecting in their lives, guess?

Well, that's a whole other topic when we. talk about pharmacology, which was a whole other kind of path that I went down whenever I was right. So whenever I would also like I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was in high school and I was on ADHD medication for a few years and then I learned about exactly what you're talking about. Like what else happens and how do these drugs actually work? And then I made my own personal decision to transition off of them and go a different journey and then rewire my brain to be able to focus as well. But yeah. And so I think that a lot of times we tend to put these studies or research papers up on pedestals and say, oh, this study shows this, therefore, this is the way

things are. And I don't think that that's the way that it should be done at all. It can be used for information to inform, you know, yourself, but also like you were saying, meta-analysis, where you take tons of different studies and kind of look at the results from many different ones. Because another thing that you'll realize is that if you look up something, you could probably find a study proving that you're right. And it could be, I could look up, oh, you know, this is bad for your heart. And I'll find that. a study proving that. And I could say, oh, actually, I think it's good for your heart. And I could find a study proving that too. And so that's the thing is you can find a study to prove whatever it is that

you want. And so I think it is important to, you know, read a lot and read a lot of different research papers, but also have more of a foundational understanding, at least in my field of neuroscience, like having that foundational understanding of the way that the brain works is really important. And so, yeah, I think that the whole, it is becoming really popular that people are wanting to use a study to improve a point. And I don't think that there's anything wrong with that, but I do think it's important to recognize that, you know, you can find a study to prove whatever you want these days. How did you apply this in your life? Because I find the internet slash the world is full of people who are more than willing to dish out advice. And then oftentimes

don't seem to apply that advice to themselves. You know what I mean? And so you get these motivational speakers who when you meet them in real life aren't really motivated. You have like relationships experts who have terrible relationships themselves. Do you get what I'm saying?

And I'm generalizing, but you'll often, you'll find these. What I found interesting with you is, and you'll correct me from wrong, it feels like you were also running these sort of experiments on yourself. And I watched your life change in real time. And over a very long period, I noticed that because I went to DM you.

And I was like, whoa, you DM me like almost two years ago. Yeah, you were like, you were doing, yeah, two years ago, I asked you to come on the podcast. But I've watched you go from. Boy, aren't we clear, that was all you did. Because. No, those, those DMs are safe for you, Eugene. Yeah, Eugene. You app.

You app. I represented you well. You were like, tell me what about this? You're representing your fiance. You're representing your fiance. So when I looked at your life, I went, it felt like just by watching you, I saw somebody who was sharing information whilst also applying that information to themselves. Conducting a real-time experiment. Yeah, and I'd love to know like, I'd love to know what your journey was like because

everything about you changed over time and over time is the key thing for me the key phrase here. I didn't witness like a magical transformation. You know like those YouTube videos weightlifting? They trick you all the time. Have you seen those ones?

They're like, how I lost 40 pounds in six weeks and then they show you a before and after picture and really all they're doing the before picture is they just push their tummy out but they still have a six pack and they just maybe drink a lot of water I don't know and then they get shredded. but they were shredded.

Yeah. With you, with all due respect, it didn't seem like you were shredded in your life. No. And then I watched you slowly work towards the thing that you were telling people about. Like, what were the beginnings of those? What did you start to learn?

Can you give me examples? What were the moments where you went, oh wow, this is working on me? Yeah. And I think if you do go back to the beginning, and I leave all my posts up for that exact reason because I have students now, like clients that I coach.

And I'm like, go back to the beginning and watch my own journey through content because you'll see, like, it's a very accurate representation of my journey in my personal life. But, I mean, I started out with ADHD. That was so bad I would be depressed on days. I wouldn't take the stimulants. And I was super dependent on them. Obviously, we already talked about being addicted to nicotine. Couldn't focus, easily distracted, super impulsive, very emotional as well. Just fight or flight all the time, always stressed.

And also health issues, like physical health issues as well. in and out of doctor's offices when I was younger a lot. And doctors told me I had all these different problems, like depression, anxiety, all these different things. Yeah. And not just mental health problems, but physical, like hormonal imbalances and things like that. So I think, you know, that is what I, I always just kind of thought that's the way that I was because that's something that, you know, doctor gives you a diagnosis. Like, this is you. This is your brain. This is who you are. Good luck. Like, that's going to navigate that now for the rest of your life. And I thought that's just the way that it was. Like, oh, I was diagnosed the ADHD. I'm going to struggle focusing

for the rest of my life. And, you know, I'm going to need these stimulants. And then I think learning about the brain as I was studying neuroscience, I started, you know, neuroplasticity, the ability for your brain to rewire and change and adapt. I started to realize that, oh, wait, maybe the brain can change. And I learned about epigenetics as well. I actually TA'd a class in the Ph.D. on neurogenetics, which is epigenetics is the ability to change the way your DNA is expressed, the genes that are expressed. The way your DNA is expressed. Right. Can you elaborate? Yeah, yeah. So I have this visual in my mind. I'm like, if I had a little model, I could really show it. Did you bring your DNA model, Eugene? Lift it in the car. Ah, always. This guy. Just when we need it.

I know. Next time. But basically the way that you could think about it, right, is like basically you have this ball and then you have like yarn like around the ball, right? And so it can either be the yarn can be tightly wound around the ball or loose. And basically, like, how tightly, if it's super tight, and the yarn is your DNA. Okay, go ahead. And so, you know, there are little proteins that come in and they read your DNA. And then when they read your DNA, they build proteins based off of what it reads, right? If it's super tightly wound, it can't come in and read.

And so no proteins are going to be expressed or built off that DNA that's tightly wound because it can't be read. You're not open-minded. Right. Or you can be openly wound. You can be openly wound, right? And then the proteins can come in and read your DNA and build proteins, right? And so that's just one example, you know, it can be more tightly around. We call it like methylated, phosphorylated, you know.

I like tightly wound. Yeah, there's all these different. If they said tightly wound, I would have had, I would have a degree. Methylated? No, guys, you'll find me in the streets. Methylated, phosphorylated. Yeah. You don't have to agree.

I don't have to go home. with this guy. Yeah, probably. But that's, you know, so yeah. And so that's kind of what I mean. So basically your environment, it basically, it can alter the, how tightly or loosely wound your DNA is. Okay.

And your environment, and this is like the way your environment can actually impact which genes are expressed. So you're not changing your DNA. You have the same DNA. But it's like which proteins can be made based off of that. Based off of your genes. And right. And that is going to depend on a.

number of factors, your environment is one of that, your mindset. If I was to use like a, this is a crazy, crazy analogy. You're making it make sense. I like to. That's what she does. Now you get it. Whoa. Crazy analogy that I would use.

You should check out my content. I've never seen your content. I've literally never seen your content, but now I understand. I feel like you would like it. Based on what you're talking about. Yes, you're making it. Sorry to cut you off there. There was this experiment, not really an experiment, but people were comparing a generation

of people in South Africa that were raised by. grandmothers versus those that were raised by parents. No, no, no, parents. Yeah. And going to a crutch or kindergarten. Yeah. And they found that the ones that were raised by grandmothers had more independence, more empathy. And they knew how to clean to cook, to take care of everyone.

And they were more patient. And the ones that went to kindergarten were more structured and institutionalized. And they believed that other things can be done by someone else. But those that were raised by grandmothers found that, They also settle very early. They are very big on bonds and having. So it was a generational thing for people that grew up in the 80s and the 90s because kindergarten was not a thing.

So usually would get shipped off to go live with our parents before we start at school. This is why I want to, you have once again inspired me to talk about my business that I want to launch. Yes. Yes. My idea is we create old age homes that are kindergartens. Yeah. Because old people.

They've done that. Wait, they have? So they've done a research. They stole my idea. Come on. So if, no, no, so they haven't done this for like as a business. Oh, it's okay. My idea is still safe.

No, but there is actually research to show your idea would work if I'm clear on your idea. This is why I need you in my life. You know how many. Let me tell you something. You know how many times I say things to people and then they'll be like, I don't know if that. And if I had you around, you could be like, there's research to show. Bam! Not you, bam.

Bam, bam in general. But yeah, so they took a bunch of old people and they put them in this house that was decorated like it was the 80s and like say music, like decorations, all of it. And they actually came out with biomarkers that showed that they had sort of reverse age. Yeah. I always say like old people, young people make old people younger, just like their vibe. Whenever I see like grandparents and grandchildren together. Yeah. And then the inverse as well, I find like grandparents help young kids grow up with that like. So I've always thought, why do we put old people away in an old age? Why do we like send them off to die? I completely agree. Why don't we send them?

somewhere to live. And then why are we struggling with the kids? We should have told Zoran this. He wants childcare in New York. Grannies. Yeah. Grannies, yeah. Yeah.

We could start like a whole thing, grannies.com. And then it's like a whole vibe. Yeah. And then you don't feel like your grandparents are just stranded. And they get to see new life growing around them. And then the kids get to. But that's why rich people have so many.

I'm going to give you a percentage. You are here for this. And you're going to be handling our scientific division. And then Eugene, you'll be my spokesperson. Spokesperson? Yeah. How about R&D? No, no, no, no.

R&D. What are you researching? What are you researching? I would know that. I thought I was already. Don't go anywhere because we got more what now after this. So with your life, so you were talking about all these things and you were telling us how you started finding a change your life and how you applied it. Way to bring that back.

I'm always in. I'm locked in. Yeah. And so I think it kind of began for me with and my journey. of really initially the first step was understanding the brain. That was the first step. Understanding the neuroscience of reality. We talked a little bit about the visual system, how you hear, and understanding. And honestly, like, the study that kind of changed the game for me whenever I was in undergrad was learning about this kitten experiment. It's a super classic experiment,

like 1970. And they took these newborn kittens and they raised them in complete darkness, except for a few hours a day where they put one group, and they were alone, each of them individually alone in a cylinder with only vertical black and white stripe lines. And they took different kittens, a different group, and they put them in a cylinder with only horizontal black and white stripe lines. They let their visual cortex develop. And then once they were fully developed or close to that, they put them in a normal everyday environment with everyday objects. And what they found was that the kittens that were only raised to ever see horizontal lines, they didn't respond normally to vertically shaped objects. No way. Like vertically oriented

objects like they would bump into table legs because they couldn't see them and so their brain actually you know didn't put together that image because it wasn't raised to see that and so i and you know and vice versa with the kittens that were raised to only see vertical lines they wouldn't jump up on table tops and perch because they couldn't they didn't really like their brains didn't you know respond normally to horizontal objects so i kind of just was sitting there like damn like if these kittens are only really able to respond in an accurate or appropriate way to things that they grew up seeing, what am I not seeing because of the way I was raised, right? Like what, like the jobs, like money, you know, opportunities, a relationship, a relationships

especially. Like we grew up seeing certain types of relationships between our parents. Education. Like, what am I missing now that is probably right in front of me, but my brain's not constructing that experience because it isn't programmed for it? It's not so obvious to you. Right. And so that I think was like one of the first realizations I had where I was like, okay, like, you know, what I'm wanting my future to look like.

If it's different than what my past has looked like, then I'm going to have to change my brain so that I can construct that experience. And it shows, sorry, it shows this little gap that has become a huge crevice in society where science is replaced art because academia replaced art. because kids used to art used to be a way to measure who likes what so now it became a thing of who can count who can remember the best and then you get channeled that way

but if you let how to draw and then building blocks how do you see the world according to your eyes versus we're going to sit you guys in one and show you the world and we're going to show you to calculate and whoever remembers to calculate the best

the quickest yes is the one that progresses in life I never thought of art like that's beautiful actually I genuinely never thought of art like that It is the perfect petri dish to see how everyone else sees the world. The coloring book and the building blocks. Because remember how every kid used to. But the image is the same. Do you remember this?

Like we'd go, you'd go, I don't know if you did this. I used to see other kids coloring books and I'd be like, why did you? Yeah, why would you use that color? I was a shock at how we all had the same picture. Yeah. And everyone chose completely, and they were like, this is how I see the world. I was like, man. None of us even see color the same way.

Yeah, that one's still. Or remember the building blocks, you'd be like, what is that? they'll be like, it's a house. You'd be like, that doesn't look like that. Right. Well, that's why I always say, like, we also didn't even come to this planet to live in the same reality or experience the life the same. Like, we didn't come here. We didn't come here for that. Like, I actually had a dream about that recently because I was sitting here thinking, you know, I literally a few weeks ago I had a dream about this, maybe a couple months ago, where I was kind of like, how do I not care what other people think? Like, how do you not care what other people say you should or shouldn't do? And then I literally had this dream about the neuroscience. of reality and how no two people's brains are constructing the same experience, right? Because your brain is what's constructing your experience, not your eyes. We've already discussed that. So it's like, okay, no two people are experiencing the same reality. Therefore, how can you

take anybody else's input and apply it to your own life verbatim, word for word? It doesn't make sense. It's like trying to play Mario Kart with the rules of Call of Duty. You shouldn't do that. You're playing Call of Duty. Although that would be a dope game. I'm just going to throw that out there. I'll also take shares in this one. But it would also make you worse. I'll do R&D on this one. I'm just going to throw in before Eugene jumps in. Eugene, you're the spokesperson for this game as well.

But right? Like you'd be really bad at that game. So why are you trying to play your game of life while taking somebody else's rules when they're playing an entirely different game? They don't live in the same video game or experience the same game that you do. This is, wow. There's two thoughts that I have when you're saying this. The first one is, and I'm sorry to do.

do this to Eugene, but I think of... You've done worse. I think of why VAR is so interesting in football and soccer. So VAR video assistant referee is... They had in American sports for a long time. I don't know why it took so long to get to soccer, but they'll pause the game at a crucial moment when there's like a big

foul or a goal that was scored or not scored. Point is people don't agree on what happened. And then they'll start replaying what happened from multiple different angles. And it's sort of what you're saying, I've watched myself, my friends, the commentators, and everyone who's observing this start to realize that their reality is changing depending on the perspective that they're,

so they'll go, that's definitely a foul, and they'll show you another angle, and you'll be like, it still looks like a foul, and they'll show you another angle, then you're like, did he touch him? Yeah. And then the final angle, you're like, no, he didn't touch him. And what you're just saying is sort of that, is like, we're living in this world where we're all watching from our own camera angle and then we're going why don't you think it's a foul? Yeah. Why don't you think

it's a foul? How can you say it's a foul? And then the second thought I was having just based around this is I go you know you're talking about a world where we're all not designed to have the same experience but doesn't doesn't that mean there's a huge swath of society that is always pushed to the fringes

unless they are part of the monolithic experience. As somebody who is diagnosed with ADHD, I've been diagnosed with ADHD, right? I've often felt like having ADHD, there's nothing wrong with it, but you're in the wrong society and world right now because a lot of what the world is is designed not for you in the wrong time,

you're in the wrong time, like. You really are. You're playing the wrong video game. No, you really are, yeah. Because I spoke to one therapist who was talking about how, and these are like hypotheses, but they said,

people with ADHD were probably really beneficial to a tribe and a society when you would go out like hunting together because some people really just need to focus on picking the berries and some people need to be like, what's that? What's that? Do you guys hear that? Yeah. You guys hear that?

But you can't all be going, what's that, what's that? Because then no one's going to focus on the berries. And you can't all be focused on the berries because then no one's going like, yo, guys, did you hear that? What was that? What was that? Patent recognition. So willing to go explore and be curious.

Exactly. And so you need all of these different minds. doing and thinking different things so that we can all function together. But to sort of what you're saying with arts, equity, like the, and what you're saying now, aren't we creating a world where we're compressing everyone into one? We're going like, you all have to do this,

all have to go to school at this time, all have to learn these subjects, all have to sit in an office, all, all, all, all, all. We're trying to. Yeah, no. Yeah. That creates a lot of resistance. Yes.

Yes, I've had this conversation with teachers at my daughter's school since she started high school. And all of it was, if she really applied herself to the math and the science and I used to say to them, just relax. School fees will be paid,

she will pass. You won't have to deal with her for long. Just relax. And then the conversation I'd have with her every time was I don't want great grades. I want you to have the best time possible during this five years of high school

but just passed so I don't have to pay for it again. So that was the conversation for the longest time. And funny enough, I saw a TikTok of someone just the other day who posted all of their high school achievements their badges, their certificates, and they go, in the real world, these count for nothing.

It's like you have monopoly money in the real world. So you've missed out on an entire five years of experiencing your growth and your fundamentals or how you would have been forming as a young adult trying to achieve and impress people you'll never see again. Well, it's funny you say that. I think people would are and would be shocked at how many of the biggest, most successful icons

that they look up to never finished school. Do you know what I mean? So they'll be like, oh yeah, Mark Zuckerberg, you know how big he is, everything. And you're like, he didn't finish. They're like, what do you mean? He went to, yeah, he went to the university

and then he didn't finish. He left to do this thing that we call Facebook. What do you mean? Countless names where they go, they went to the university and then they dropped out and they started a business and they left. No, but to your point.

Yeah, absolutely. But we think that the one thing leads to the other. So we're living in this world where one thing leads to another. You're living in this world. world where one thing leads to another. What was the first breakthrough? I'd love to know, even like on the ADHD side, because what you're saying to me sounds

like a magic trick, your brain can't focus. You're stuck in loops. And now I'm in this place where I literally, I'm writing a book right now and I can go and sit for seven hours and focus without anything at all. Let's walk through that. How do you get that? How on earth did you start? What was the first step?

So like you said, it's been a journey over time. Yeah. Like, that's the way that neuroplasticity works. It's repetition over time. And so the beautiful thing about the brain is that it can change and it does change. And so, you know, I think a lot of people now, it's not that they can't focus. It's that they have super well-practiced distraction. And you get really good.

Oh, you can't just move on from that. A high-definition LED television set. You can't just move on from that. Say that again, please. Mike drop moment. So a lot of people think that they can't focus or their. bad at focus. But really what it is is that they have super well-practiced distraction. Remember I told you yesterday? I said, if I didn't go fetch those sneakers at that time,

it would have ruined my day. I would have, but I know we're going to go on a tangent here, but I want you to help Eugene on this. Only now we're going on a tangent. Yeah, but I'm saying I'm acknowledging the tangent for this specific moment, because this is about you now. Only as Eugene. How would you have helped Eugene with this? So Eugene, tell the story. And then Mn, No, no, no, I want you, let's, here's an actual brain. Yeah. Walk us to the story. What happened?

So I ordered these sneakers online. Okay. And then they arrived. But I didn't think, I didn't, I didn't count for how far they were. In my head, I was like, six and a half kilometers. I can probably make it. But we had this as well to do. So I spent an hour thinking, if I go there, then I would save myself all the grief of thinking about going there while I'm doing this.

But so basically, but also you're leaving out the most important thing you told me, which was. Yeah, yeah, details. Yeah, yeah. Details, okay. Because how much time did we have? I'm going to tell you, no, I'm going to tell you the story. I'm going to tell you the story. This is what happened to Eugene.

Are you here to convict me? No, no. I'm like, for all I know, it's 10 minutes before you've got to be here and you're talking about travel and all the way to Brooklyn. So let me explain. Let me explain. Let me explain what happened here. It was Brooklyn.

Yeah, we were talking about it before we started. So let me explain. That's how much on his mind this event. So I'll explain what happened because my friend told it to me. So what happened was Eugene ordered sneakers. The only location that would have the sneakers was in Brooklyn. Eugene was in Manhattan. Eugene looked up where the store is.

He was like, oh, I've got to get this. It's near the Barclay Center. Google Maps told him how long it could take to get there. Eugene was like, I think I can do this. Now, the time was going to be like super tight, but he's like, I can do it. I get there. And then I spend like 26 minutes getting there.

And then I'll spend two minutes buying the shoes because how long does it takes my shoes. You just got to pick them up. And then I got to get back in the car. And then I come back to Manhattan. And then I've got the thing. Now, I was like, but Eugene, isn't that going to be stressful? Then you just said, no.

If I didn't go pick up the shoes, I would have been more stressed about the shoes the whole day. So when we were recording an episode of the podcast, I'd be like, I can't even think about anything, Trevor, because all I'm thinking about is those shoes. And while I'm talking to the guests, I'll be like, shoes, shoes, shoes, what time did the shoe place close shoes, shoes, shoes? No, so he went and he got the shoes first, right? No, he made it. Okay. But it was a stress. So now I would like you to explain.

I swapped one stress for another. From a brain perspective. No relief whatsoever. I swapped one. I'm like. I was like, go to war or stay married. Whoa. So it was one stress for another because you sat there overthinking for a period of time.

And then you had less time to go and actually do it. And were you stressed on your journey. And he was stressed about getting to the podcast. I was just on my journey going there. It was just coming back. But in my head, I was like, that stress compared to the stress of the whole entire day. I'll take that. Because when would you have been able to get them if you didn't go right before?

No, any other day. No, any other day. Any other day is the answer. And by the way, I'm not judging you. No, I too. You know I didn't even once. Never. You never did.

Well, what were you guys doing before this? Because you were late today. So this was all on me. This is not. This is not him. Tell the story. This is not him at all. This is not him at all. You are therapist now. This is not him at all.

My point is though, like personally... I'm just going to tell you. I have... I'm just going to tell you. Okay. I'm just going to tell you. He said it was technical difficulty. Let me tell you. No, but I wouldn't throw you under the bus.

I would never do that to you. Why are you this person? Go ahead. So there's a technical... There's a part of the podcast. that I specifically like to be a part of, like, it comes to like, you know, when we're working with the transcriptions of the podcast,

what's happening with, like, the titles on YouTube. Like, I like to be involved. Yeah, many of the geeky parts, right? So what I'll often do is I sit there with my laptop or my iPad and I go through the thing and I do it, then I do it, da, da, da, blah. Long story short, the program that I use didn't want to work for the episode that we were doing

because we had multiple Africans on the same episode. Now, I'm not blaming the, racism of technology in this. I'm just explaining to you what happened. But it could not, for the life of it, discern between the Africans. Sometimes it couldn't even say what language they were speaking. They were speaking English, by the way. Now, in the program's defense, in the program's defense, one of our friends says like whack instead of work, and he says like swatfish. But that's Joe. And in his head, he sounds like Hugh Grant. You'll understand this when you listen to the episode. All of this will make sense. All of this will. I'm always. I'm always. I'm

also not blaming Joe for how Joe is. But because we needed that and the whole process relies on me doing that part. Then I was like, we need it, we need it. Then I'm like a hacker like, I got to get in. 10 minutes. I got to give me five more minutes. And so that's the thing. But I want you to first fix the shoes thing.

Well, it's the same thing though, right? So I have a thing. How did you fix it? I don't really like. Let's hear what it is first. Yeah. So my thing. is I don't like to rush. I don't like to rush because when you're when you put when you rush,

you're in fight or flight and then that was cortisol and that actually makes you dumber. So if you're sitting there right before this episode and you're trying to figure it all out and all of a sudden you're stressed about figuring it out, that actually makes you less able to figure it out because you're turning down activity in your prefrontal cortex and raising activity in your amygdala. Now you're in fighter flight, scanning for threats and you're not really in a position mentally to figure it out. That's why when you're in a rush, you spill your drink or you forget your keys, you drop things, right? You're not working at optimal performance. Can I throw something at you? Can I throw something at you? That's so good. It's based on what you told me about

the kittens, though, only because you told me the kitten story, what if I grew up in a life that was so stressed and so high-paced that that's actually when I'm the most relaxed? Because I've lived in horizontal lines for so long. So I'm like the, what if I'm the opposite? Like, I can, I become smarter. I can move better. Like, I don't spill my drink. I don't bump into any. I don't miss a plane. I don't, like you've seen me in an airport. You thrive in that. Let me tell you something.

He's made us drive like crazy. If shit is going down and you need to rush. It's you, you're the guy. You call this guy here. Nothing will get forgotten. Do you know when I've forgotten things is when I had copious amounts of time. And I mean copious amounts of time. I was going to a friend's wedding recently.

M. when I tell you I had time pack the suitcase two days before I was like you know what? You let's not rush. Two days before. Imagine you know me my friend. That's crazy. That sounds like suicide. Exactly. Not you're going to come back ever. I was like you know what? I'm going to pack this. I want to be so

because I didn't want to rush. I'm going to pack the suitcase. I'm going to prepare everything put the shoes in put the tuxedo the thing. You name it. I was like I got this. I'm going to be so because I don't want anything to go wrong. I was like, you know what, let... Not that things go wrong. I was like, I don't want anything to go wrong. Let me try this thing. So let me do this thing. But you're focused on things going wrong ahead of time. Thinking about how you don't want things to go

wrong. This is why you're around. This is great by the way. So I was like, you know what? You manifested calamity. So I was like, let me just do this. Packed everything. Got there wedding, you know, on time. You name it. The night before, I'm hanging up all my clothes. Putting everything up. I had jackets, I had shirts, I had no bottoms.

You didn't pack any bottoms. So you know, you out all the way there and you didn't pack any bottoms. So because the pants went off for tailoring separately. A lot of things are making sense now. The pants went off for tailoring. They came in a different bag and I put the bags and I was so comfortable and calm when I was doing the thing. But when I normally pack, I fly in and I sit. a song and I'm like flying through it.

I'm like, shoes got your socks and then your tucks, get your pants and then your pants. Get your under way you're shut and then your shirt and then your jacket and your jacket. Yeah, every time. I've never left anything behind. I've never been a person who's like, oh, I didn't bring my toothbrush. No, I'll nail it. So I, and I mean this honestly. Okay, well, that's a completely different situation though.

So could I have like the opposite brain of. Yes, you could, but also what you're describing is completely different. What you're describing is why athletes are way better at shooting free throws when they're not thinking about it versus whenever they're thinking about it and they have time, then they miss, right? Because you have it saved in muscle memory and you're trying to introduce conscious thought into something that you shouldn't. I'm a packing athlete.

You heard it here first. There's this famous. Don't come here with no casual packing. Exactly. I'm a packing athlete. But you did that. You did that. You came through with some casual packing and that's what you did.

You know, I'm so grateful for your presence here. Wait, wait, before you go on this. I want you to now go with Eugene's one. Because I've experienced, by the way, no. I've experienced Eugene's one. So I want you to talk us to, because I think a lot of people will relate to this. Help us understand Eugene's thing. How would you have coached?

Did we finish Eugene's situation? No, because yes, because he had the shoes he was five. But then, as he said, he introduced, he swapped one stress for another. What was the other stress? So the one stress would be, I would be sitting here. And then when the guest is talking, I'd be thinking, you know, this 30 minutes. Exactly how long it takes to get to Brooklyn. But what was the stress that you swapped it for?

What ended up being the stress? Oh, the stress was, I were going to make it on time. The driver is driving too slow. Why is the school bus in front of us? Why is the traffic? The school is a school bus when you late. How long did you wait to make that decision to send it? Almost an hour.

Oh. So, I mean, I think, you know, I was saying this before we started recording that I don't negotiate with myself. And so. You don't? What does that mean? I don't, like, for example, you're sitting there going back and forth. Like, do I want to go get a day?

I do. I do that? I just make a decision. I don't like to waste time. But why? What is the thinking behind this? I think it's exactly what happened to Eugene, right? So he wasted an hour just going back and forth.

And then that he had doubled the amount of stress because not only was he overthinking a situation, then he was also stressed about having less time to do it. Right. So again, it's kind of similar to where I was thinking where I have this thought process of who do, like when I visualize my best favorite self, who are they? What are their habits like? What is their mindset like? What are their beliefs like? In this

situation, it's like, okay, when I visualize myself tomorrow or myself later today, or my best favorite self, what does she do? Like, how does she act? She doesn't sit here going back and forth. Should I go get it? Should I not? It's my podcast. If I want to go get shoes, I'm going to go get shoes. And if I'm going to be 10, 15 minutes late, I'm going to be 10, 15 minutes late. And I'm not really going to, I'm not really going to stress about it. And that's why I said, like, I don't like to rush. Like, if I'm going to be, that doesn't mean that I give myself ample time all the time. I don't always have ample time.

And sometimes I am five minutes late. I'm kind of chronically five minutes late to everything. I wasn't today, but I am. But that's because I wasn't alone, right? So, he's on time. And so, yeah, I think when I think about that, if I were in your shoes and I'm like, this is something that I want. These were nice shoes, by the way. From the beginning, you had ample time.

If you didn't waste an hour thinking, you could have gone there and back and not been stressed at all. If it's something that you want to do, that's going to make you happier. And that joy is the best performance enhancing drug ever. So if I'm going to go get these shoes and make myself, I'm wearing my boots. You guys both said you like my boots. We both said we like your boots. Yeah. They are dope. And when you are feeling like your best self, then you actually perform better, right?

Joy enhances your performance. And I knew, M, that those shoes would do that for me. Exactly. We had two back to bags. You came in with swag. I won't like. I knew. You just had like a vibe about it.

you. What you just said, you see now coming back to, so if you just hear it on the woo-woo side of things, people go like visualize your best self, think about who you want to be. And then I've seen a lot of people, and I've probably been one of them at some point who goes, oh, come on, you just visualize your best self. And if you could, then you were. And then you're teaching your brain how to act in situations in life. That's why identity shifting is so powerful. So I read, I read a paper that was written about athletes, the other. the day. And this was an interesting, I'm not even sure that it was a study per se, but it was a really interesting article that I read. And it talked about the difference between like elite athletes

and just athletes who are good by the fact that they are athletes, right? And it said the difference between the athletes wasn't necessarily the fact that one group was nervous and the other the group wasn't nervous in a high stress situation. The difference was the one group who were the elite athletes were able to visualize themselves overcoming the obstacle that they knew was incoming. And the other group could only focus on the obstacle itself. Yes. And so you watch, you know, LeBron James, you watch a, you know, an Erling Haaland, you watch a, you know,

whoever it is, you know, Seqon Barkley. Eugene fine. But like you watch any of these people, you know, whoever it is. And you go, wait, how are they doing that in those moments? And it seems like what you're just saying, they are able to visualize themselves doing the thing that they haven't done yet. And then that, what would say magically or scientifically, means that they're more able to realize it. Help me understand that part. It trains the premotor area of the brain.

Okay. So your problem yesterday was that you were focused on the problem and not how the best version of you moves through situations. And so there's, I actually just filmed my own podcast episode on this and it's like three of my favorite different types of visualizations. But what's the podcast call by the way? Planet M. Planet M. I love it. I love it. Welcome to my world. And so, and so the one type of visualization I talked about, though, was sort of like resilience training. Okay. visualization, and this is exactly what we're talking about. So, and it's what athletes use, NASA, like astronauts at NASA use this. And it's basically the process of visualizing yourself

on the path toward achieving or doing whatever it is, but kind of facing challenges as the best version of you. And so you start out in this visualization sort of just identifying who that is, and then you can bring up a child. Like, for example, you could do this, bring up the challenge from yesterday. Start your visualization with your favorite version of you, the best version of you, and then bring up the situation that happened yesterday. And then you watch as that version of you moves through that situation. And you can do this for so many different things. You can use this as confidence training. If there are things that, as a creator for a while, like certain comments would get to me, visualizing my best self, reading those comments and how she would react to them,

trained my brain to react in a way that is aligned with who I'm wanting to become. You're becoming your own role model essentially. It's because I have this theory that in a meditative state, when you are doing a mantra, you're basically doing a simulation of something that will happen in the future. So when you face that situation, like the athletes in high stressful situations, they've already done this before. They've already faced it. You know, like a challenge is only difficult when it's like, it's not only difficult,

but it's a lot harder the first time you do it. And then the second time, third time, fourth time you face it. It's not even a challenge anymore. It's just like, oh, yeah, this is just one of those obstacles. You just got to go through. And that's what happens when you visualize your best self going to. through it. And also, you're sort of preparing yourself for it and how you want to act. If you don't do that, then you are just putting yourself in a position to allow your default mode or your subconscious

to react to a situation. But when you take the time to visualize and kind of practice the way that you would want to react, then you're going to react in that in real life in a way that you actually feel proud of rather than from... It's like pilots and simulator jets, right? You don't have to crash the real plane. In a relaxed state, you're flying using all the gizmos, all the buttons. You've simulated a crack. You've simulated a crack. You've simulated a nose guide.

So your best version of yourself. You've simulated. Right. So do it practicing. So what is that? Help me understand what that's actually doing in your brain now. Like is it is it? Because you spoke earlier about like tunnel vision, for instance.

So help me understand what some of these things are causing in us as people that we don't realize our brains are doing to us. Please slice that with a concept of time as well. Add it in there. All right. We won't interrupt you for a long time. So, I mean, there are many different points here. So when we are kind of practicing, what we're doing really is just practicing, right?

We're practicing facing challenges. We're just like an athlete. We're practicing, you know, what happens if somebody runs up on us and we have the ball? What are we going to do? We're just practicing that. And so the same way that you want to practice free throws, you want to practice facing challenges. And so you're just activating those pathways in your brain. Like, if I'm visualizing my best self, reading those comments, I'm just practicing and training my brain to react in a way that I would want to react.

So you're just activating those pathways. Like, the way that visualization works is a lot of the time, especially when it's highly vivid and you're using imagery and context, your environment, the emotional state. Your brain doesn't necessarily differentiate between what you're seeing, like through our eyes and what we're imagining in our head. And if you think about, like what I talked about, how your brain constructs everything you see, it's no different because your eyes don't see it anyway. Your brain's constructing everything you see. So what's the difference between your eyes being closed or open? It's the same. You're seeing it in your head.

And it's being constructed by your brain either way. And so what's happening, for example, especially with kind of motor activities like in athletes, they're really training the pre-motor area of the brain. And the motor area is what sends the signals, right? So the motor area is what tells my hand to pick up this cup and take a drink. The premotor area is what plans the movement. And so what you're doing when you visualize this is you are training your brain to plan the reaction, plan the movement better. So that way when you actually are facing the situation in real life, your brain already knows the plan. But what happens when you are in it in real life and you haven't done this and you haven't ever thought about it, then there's no plan and your brain is.

going to go based off of an old version of you, a past version of you, especially if it's a stressful situation and you're in fight or flight, then you're kind of... The body freezes. Right. And what's going to happen is it's really just your subconscious sort of programming from the past that's doing the reacting, that's doing the responding. It's not a conscious response or a plan. It is just sort of you reacting in real time based on old programming that you may or may not want to be, you know, directing your behaviors. Right. And so, I mean, the perception of time thing here, I don't know necessarily how that's going to fit into the story.

You'll make it work. But, I mean, actually, I could. I could. So, I mean, the conscious awareness and having this plan does dilate time. And so when you are present, you have more time to respond versus, and also, right, if you've practiced the response, if you've practiced the situation, if you've been here before, whether it's in real life or in your imagination, then you're not going to have the same stress response. that you would if you've practiced it and you've been here before, right? Then you're going to feel more present, more calm. When you're feeling present and or calm, then time dilates. You have more time to respond rather than being like, oh, my God, I have, you know, just reacting, then you're going to be able to sit back and respond in a way.

And observe yourself. Right? That feels more conscious. And so, and then to bring in sort of the tunnel vision piece that you asked about, if you are in your situation where the shoe situation and you are stressed and you're limited on time and you're like, I don't know what to do. And you're in this fight, flight, freeze. My brain's not really thinking super straight. Clearly, what you get is tunnel vision because stress. If you think about the saying deer in headlights, they're in fight or flight, deer and headlights.

They're frozen. They have extreme tunnel vision. They can't, they're not looking around at the possibilities of what's going on. They are... They can only see the problem that's right in front of them, right? That's what happens when you're stressed, when your nervous system goes into fight or flight. You are that deer in headlights. You can only see the problem. You're not putting your brain in a position to scan for all the different... You're not thinking logically and solution-based and open to different possibilities or other ways of thinking. That's not the state that your nervous system is in. Your nervous system is in a state of, this situation at hand, this is the problem.

We need to think about this problem, this problem alone. And we don't know what to do. We don't have the program. Your brain's not in the position to even think about other avenues or what to do, other paths. It's not even in the position. And so that's when you're in the situation you're in where you sit there for an hour debating and negotiating with yourself and you're not ever coming to a real solution.

It's because, but maybe the way that you want to go about this next time is to stop for five minutes and take some deep breaths, calm your nervous system. and then you would have been able to make a really educated decision based on your position. You know, when you think of the deer and the headlights thing, just when, yeah, the way you break it down, I go, the deer is never in that position when it's being chased by a predator. Never. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

There's no deer that's like, oh, a wolf. No, it runs. It immediately, to your point, because it has so much time to learn from the time it was like a calf and all the way through it's like, it's sort of simulated and it's learned and it's practiced and it's learned and it's learned and it's practice and it's learning practice but the car is a new thing in its world for the most part so it's just like wait what what is it's a new idea that it has never simulated that's when you put it that way it's amazing i would love for you no you know i remember one of your hundred percent i remember one of your one of your videos that that that really really touched me was when you were talking about how the brain the mind and these learnings apply to love and how we process relationships

And I remember this, you know, at the time I was reading a lot about attachment theory. I was listening to people's stories. Even in therapy, I was talking about like, how do I process what a relationship could or could not be based on the relationships I've seen or have not seen? What are the triggers that I think of that another person wouldn't? And what are the things I'm missing that another person wouldn't? And then you shared like a beautiful story of your journey. with love, talking about this, seeing what we couldn't see before or learning to not see what we didn't need to see before. Walk me through this and help me understand how you got

to the beautiful place that you're in now. Yeah, if I'm understanding your, I'm not, if I'm understanding your question. Well, I remember, because you had this video and I mean, this was like years ago, I think, but you, you were talking about the brain and people saying, for instance, oh, I'm lonely. There's no one out there. You never meet anyone. You don't see anyone and no one sees me. And then you shared your own personal story.

I remember at the time talking about how you changed something. I'm forgetting the exact details, but you worked on changing something about how you were perceiving your world. And it opened up opportunities for love to come into your life. But you were like, the world didn't change. It's just how you were perceiving and perceiving. representing in the world. Can you explain that? Yes, I understand now. So it's not necessarily about relationships alone. This is just about life in general. And it all goes back to the kittens,

right? Yeah. The kitten couldn't see the table leg or respond to a table leg normally because it had only ever seen horizontal lines. Now, I grew up not necessarily seeing a relationship, like what a healthy, you know, romantic relationship looked like. And I, I didn't, like, so my brain didn't know how to filter for that, right? My brain didn't know and still is learning how to, you know, filter for that and feel safe in that as well, right? Because you just got done saying that you feel safe. What you described really is like, does my brain have this opposite? What you're describing is your brain feels safe in those chaotic environments. Because it's familiar. Right. Yeah. And so your brain, like, and so I had to teach my brain, right? Like what to even look for? Like,

what does that look like? Like, what does a healthy, loving relationship? look like and can and also feel safe in that and that started with myself like having that relationship with myself. Oh, in what way? Sort of treating myself like I was my dream partner. Like I would walk around calling myself babe and like oh like oh no problem like literally I remember sitting down and maybe the video you're talking about is I remember sitting down to record a video and I was like oh like you need some better lighting honey and like and I.

And I remember getting up and I'm like, wow, like I really talk to myself, like how I would want my dream partner to talk to myself. And it really just boils down to treating myself how I would want to be treated, right? And so, and having that like dream relationship, like, do I want to be taken out on dates? Am I taking myself out on dates? Do I feel safe in that? Or am I going to reject that because my nervous system doesn't feel safe in that because it doesn't ever experience that? Your nervous system feels safest with whatever it's experiencing, whether it's what you, want or not. Simulation. Whether it's what you want or not, right? So you can sit around all day

asking for certain things, but if you've never experienced them, then your brain is not going to experience those things as feeling safe. It's going to feel unpredictable and unpredictability feels unsafe to the brain. So you've got to make what you want predictable, right? By showing it more of that or normalizing what you want. And there's so many different ways to do that. Visualization, but also, for example, when I was wanting to buy a house, like let me go. go drive through this one neighborhood in the mountains in Arizona with all these beautiful homes to show my brain this, to normalize it, right? So there's so many different ways. And then the other piece that you were kind of getting at as well was, yeah, I used to say this all the time. Oh,

dating sucks in my city. Yeah, yeah. Everybody says that. And I've lived in many different cities. We went, we were, I was talking for probably 30 minutes before you guys got here about all the different places I've lived. And I would say it everywhere I lived. Oh, whether it was in the small town where I did the PhD or whether it was the big city when I lived in Miami, you know, no matter where it was, oh, dating sucks in my city or whatever. And I hear people say that all the time. And that's sort of a belief, right? It is an instruction to your brain. Your brain filters your reality or remember, it constructs everything that you see based on your beliefs. Yeah. Based on what you know or think to be true. And so if you, the person, your dream person could be right in front of you,

but you won't see them because you don't believe that dating is good in your city. You think it sucks in your city. And so this guy could come right up to you. Right. And so this guy could come right up to you and offer to buy you a coffee at the coffee shop. Says who? You've always got a chance with me, you know, Chi. But also like taking the stress thing into account as well, right?

Like especially add stress on top of that. If you're in fight or flight or stressed and you walk around throughout your day stressed out, then again, your brain's not going to be filtering for the dream part. or the job. And I've had people, someone came to one of my master classes once, and he said he had been looking for a job for two years. And within two weeks after the class, he got his dream job. And nothing changed in his world. Like nothing changed in the physical world. What changed was in him, his beliefs. It's not magic. No. It is. Yeah, but I mean it's not. I do believe in magic. No, no, no, no, no. But this is what I mean by it's, it's not magic. It's not something that's inexplainable is what I mean. Yes. Yes. I do want to pause, though, and say that there are things that are unexplainable. And I believe in that as well. So, I mean, that's a whole other conversation. And I do believe in things that are unexplainable. Like, science is a lens through which you can look at life. It's not the only lens through which you should look at life. And if you're only looking at life through one or two lenses, then you're missing out on a ton.

So I, but I do appreciate when you can explain these sorts of things with neuroscience. Because, yeah, it makes it feel like real and super understandable. And also, actionable, right? Because it goes from life feeling random to all of a sudden, oh, wait, now I can have control over this situation. I'm not seeing the relationship that I want. I'm not getting the job that I want. Oh, maybe my, maybe it's there. It is there. Like, it's there. The money, the job opportunities. It's all there. The world is so abundant with so many different things. But you have to believe that and you have to move through life with that belief in knowing. Otherwise, you're going to turn down opportunities or you might just not even see them. You won't even apply

for the job because you won't think that you'll get it, right? It's just there's so many different ways that your brain will hold you back. What you're saying is so key because I was actually telling him and said, I want to show him my diary from about six years ago. This was the hardest time of my life. And I started reading these books and I got into it. I started listening to these podcasts. And what I started making a choice of was simulation or assimulating.

So if I had assimilated, I would just carried on with people around me and what they do. In that case, it would have been comedy. but in my simulation, in my mind, in my meditation, I knew what I wanted to do and I knew where I wanted to do it. So I started to write it down. But the next step from writing it down was to visualize, have visual references of it. So I started having screensavers of the city that I wanted to do this thing at on my phone.

Then the next step was, I would say, I want to be paid in this currency. Then I would start saying that over and over again. And remember, I could assimilate or I could be in this simulation. And slowly the simulation started feeling normal and normal and normal. Then I realized if I want to hear this being said, I must say it to myself. Then I would take everything that I wrote down and I would say it in the mirror. Then I was like, yeah, I can hear it.

The vibration thing that you said, makes sense. I could hear it, I could hear it. The more I said it, when I sleep, I'll dream about it and it was that. It took five years. The five years, the opportunity happened in exact the same place, in exactly the same way, in exact the same currency that I'd written down. And I'd written down dates on the diary. I think I've told you about this before.

And I even, so in the same year, I'd done a reading with a medium who said exactly the same things that I'd written down as my thoughts and as my visualization. And when I asked that, she said, remember that as a medium, I'm not saying anything that's not in your reality. I'm just basically reminding you and giving you cues and clues of what to follow and what paths. But it seems like if you've written it down already, you remember it quite well. And what you're saying makes sense because when you try to explain to someone,

and that's where I find with people who are gifted, who are talented, naturally talented at something, trying to explain their success, I often think you're cheating someone who's facing the same conundrum of the real experience. Work hard, do this, do that. No, it's sometimes just thinking about the thing that you want to do and actually thinking and thinking and visualizing it. And those small neurological pathways start becoming little footpaths,

and then they become little two lanes. Then all of a sudden they become freeways and you become a mustard weaving your wand and creating your reality. And that's what I think is missing. Yeah. And I think, and don't get me wrong, I'm all for working hard. I wouldn't be where I am if I didn't work hard. But I think you, when you have the mindset piece and you wire your brain to align with what you're working hard for, that's when you become unstoppable.

And that's when it's inevitable and it's going to happen no matter what, right? But if you're working so hard and your brain isn't wired in alignment, with what you're working hard for, then you're just, you're going to just, you're beating a brick wall. It's when you, that's when you start to face all this resistance. And I mean, there's so much research that shows, you know, like mindset and belief in yourself is a bigger predictor of success than talent or intelligence. But yeah, and it's, it's so important. Like I, and I've been asked many times, like, when, what was the thing that you think really shifted your life and when did you start to really like feel different and do different and be different? And it was when I,

I had this crazy, I mean, I had a crazy DMT experience, but it really opened me up to the spiritual world, but also like to start believing in myself. And when I started believing in myself, everything changed. I became unstoppable. And it didn't matter what happened, right? Because the tests are going to come, the trials, the tribulations, the challenges, the things are going to happen. But when you have that belief in yourself, it's like you keep going and you keep, and belief in yourself improves your performance. Yeah. It's a biological advantage to believe in yourself.

My DMT experience was ayahuasca. What was yours? DMT. Yeah? So you took it orally. How did you do it? Out of a crack pipe. Well, it found me.

I can tell you something. I didn't think I'd have cracked that. Twice in the history of this podcast, way more crack than I thought would be on this podcast. I'm not going to lie. If you asked me about my journal from years ago, I can safely say I did not write that. You know, judging of our races,

People would just like throw... Someone would expect it ayahuasca from you. And crack from Trevor. And crack from you. You cheated. It found me. No, you got me. You got me.

You already threw meth my way. I've got... I can only have one. Okay, okay. I'll take one. You take the crack pipe. You take ayahuasca. Okay, perfect.

I don't know. Yeah. I mean, no, it definitely found me. I didn't go seeking it. But it changed my life. And it really taught me... It changed my meditation practice forever. Like, I...

To this day, I have this. this lightning bolt that strikes through me and my whole body's vibrating and I'm divinely guided and protected and charged up and electrocuted by the divine. So I mean, it changed my life, but also going into the PhD. This happened right before I like went into the PhD. And I just went and with this like such a, such a deep trust and surrender to the flow of life. And I had trust and surrender written on sticky notes like all over my apartment when I first got there. And what does that do for you, by the way. To surrender? No, no, when you when you write, because I've seen you talk about that, what is that doing to the brain or to our minds when we like write something and put it everywhere

and just constantly see it? Well, so writing it down activates those paths. It's similar to affirmations. So just the act of writing down and affirmation actually has been shown to activate reward pathways in the brain, which boosts dopamine. So it makes you feel good in the moment. But also, So it just serves, I mean, it serves as a visual cue and reminder every time you look at it, which activates that pathway in your brain every time you look at it. And then that pathway becomes through Hebs Law, neurons that fire together, wire together. The more often that you activate the pathway, the stronger it becomes. And then it can become your dominant way of thinking, feeling and acting.

Right. It becomes your default mode. Which explains calligraphy and rock art throughout the ancient times, right? If it's written down and it's there and it's beautiful, you're meditating while, right? So it means you believe in it. It goes into the... I'm a big fan of handwriting, especially affirmations. Like, for example, I do this identity shifting visualization.

I like to write down who I saw by hand. It actually improves your ability to remember whatever it is versus typing. Our brain didn't evolve to type. Yes. Yeah. That has nothing to do with this motion versus... Yeah. I also just see, especially journaling by hand.

I notice patterns in my thinking and I get ideas for content and stuff like that. way more than if I'm typing. Let's talk a little bit about psychedelics in general. Over the past, let's say, five years and maybe a decade, I've noticed science slowly opening up and being allowed to open up to, like, in its defense, you know, because the U.S. government changes and you see these things changing around the world.

But we've seen a shift now in how people treat even the conversation around psychedelics, where once it was considered, you know, like this hippie, thing that'll just destroy your life, etc., etc. Now we've seen, you know, the government doing tests around like MDMA therapy and what it could do for veterans

and looking at psychedelics and how terminal cancer patients completely subvert how they feel about the possibility of dying when they've now consumed psilocybin or people on DMT, ayahuasca, etc. What do you think or what have you seen that has sort of like open

opened up a different area of how we see the brain and the mind because of psychedelics. Like, because the research now is still like young in a weird way, even though we've had it for long. And then we have some old stuff that's applying to now. Because in the very beginning, it was cocaine. That was the cure all for everything. Wait, really? Yes. That's why I was trying to say earlier, you know, we think we view this as a new mode of, you know, investigation.

But it's not at all. Like psychedelics were popular way back in the day. Drugs were popular. Opium in China. Yeah, yeah. Whenever I was in the PhD in studying drug addiction, I learned about how all these came to be. Well, you're sorry, before I forget,

there's something I want to ask you about that, though. How do we define an addiction? I think a lot of people struggle with this. I might be one of them, but I know a lot of people will go, I'm not addicted. You know, like sometimes people go, I'm not addicted to my phone. I just use it and I like keeping up to date with stuff,

but I'm not addicted. And someone else would be like, oh, no, I'm not addicted to that. I'm not addicted to this. How do we actually define addiction? Yeah. Well, I mean, there is a whole DSM-5 criteria. And, you know, but I think when you think about just behaviorally, it's tolerance and dependence.

Tolerance and dependence and withdrawal. Right. I mean, and withdrawal kind of can go in with tolerance and dependence. Okay. But when, really, like, in the science world, we don't even really use addiction. We use, like, you know, dependence. Okay. And or substance abuse.

and really what I look at. And when people ask me that I work with, right? Because there are people that smoke weed or different things. Should I stop? How do I know? And really, it's tolerance and dependence. Do you have the ability to stop? Like, is that a conscious choice?

If you were to, would you feel bad? That's dependence and tolerance, right? What happens when people say, I can stop anytime I want to? I just don't want to. Because you hear people say that. And I know, you're absolutely right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I don't know.

Denial. Yeah, but I don't. It's denial. Okay. And I think, again, you can't, you can't stop unless you want to. And that's kind of what I was saying earlier. You cannot convince somebody to stop a behavior if they don't want to stop the behavior. And so that's, I mean, obviously we know from objectively outside looking in, okay, you're probably dependent on this thing. If you don't want to stop, then you're dependent on it. And if it's going to make you feel emotionally, you know, worse. And you feel worse if you don't use it or do this. thing, like, for example, the phone, if you want a day without it, would you feel a raise in anxiety levels? And there's been studies on that, and that's shown that people do feel an increase in anxiety without the phone. I personally feel a decrease. I don't like, I love not being around my phone. But yeah, if you are going to, like we were saying earlier with the nicotine, if you're going to quit cold turkey, does that increase your anxiety levels? Well, that's dependence. And also tolerances, do you need it more and more and more over time?

Yeah. And so that's another way of knowing, you know, know, am I becoming dependent on this drug? Am I becoming addicted to it? Can you be addicted to good things? Absolutely. Like working out? You can be addicted to anything that all drugs of abuse boost dopamine in the reward centers of the brain, every single one.

And so anything that boosts dopamine in the reward centers can technically be addictive, right? Especially if you have an addictive personality. And I think, yeah, there are things that, you know, you can become addicted to that, like personally for me, I love. the grind. Like, I love the feeling of sitting down and being at, like, working for like seven hours straight. Like, oh, wow, okay. It feels so good to me. I love it. And, you know, being in college, and recently was writing my book, I kind of forgot, like, damn, this makes me feel really good.

It's sort of addicting. And, you know, I have this mindset of, like, I really am my own biggest cheerleader because every time I get up to go to the bathroom or get some water, I'm like, you're doing such a great job. And I'm like, you got this. And I had so much dopamine from that. And then also that pride in yourself whenever you after you've done it it's like that feeling is addicting so absolutely like you can be addicted to good things for sure so now so sorry going back because you were going down the path you were talking about um the work that we've done in and around understanding the brain and how psychedelics and all of these things affect then you're talking about in addiction etc etc so going back down that pathway what are we what are we starting to understand that we've maybe forgotten or

what are we picking up on in the fields of neuroscience and psychedelics and how we're they can help people and how they can maybe not help people. Or what does it even like help us understand about the brain itself? Yeah. I think one of the coolest things that it's taught us about the brain is about quieting the default mode network of the brain. You know about that? Okay. Yeah. I think that what we've found through psychedelic research, especially psilocybin, LSD, and also meditation quiets the default mode network as well, so does hypnosis. But what we've found is that when you can quiet the default mode network, you actually can,

you can alter your sense, your self-concept, your sense of self-habits. You can alter, you know, past memories and or trauma. You can really alter things in a way that we haven't really had the ability to before. And that change, and you come out of that experience,

a different person is the point. And when you, when you alter your self-concept, like if you go on YouTube and you look up, oh, quantum leaping, every single hypnosis for quantum leaping is all about just altering yourself concept. Like that's really what it's about. When you alter yourself concept, you alter the story that your default mode network has saved

as who you are. Like I'm a shy person. Right. I'm a messy person. And when you alter your self concept and who you are, that story of who you are, then your default mode network is not only responsible for who you are, but also your default mode of thinking, feeling, behaving, your decision making, all of it. So when you alter your self-concept, now your default mode of thinking, feeling, and behaving is different.

And so it changes you forever rather than just over time working on reducing your stress. No, when you change who you think you are and who you know you are, the person that you are, then it changes everything. So essentially it's almost like these are just external tools and as you said, meditations or internal tools. But fundamentally what it's able to do is change which, lines you're perceptive to as your kitten. You're like shifting. You're like, I'm a horizontal kitten or I was a vertical kitten my whole life.

And it's like, oh, no, no, no. Now you can you can work on changing that. And you're like, no, no, I'm not a horizontal kitten anymore. But I think Wayne Dyer said it nicely when he says, change the way you see things and the things you see will change. I love Wayne Dyer. He was incredible. And it's how Oprah changed her life, right?

And change the course of her show. When she started giving things away and making people. feel good and recognizing people who were working hard was because she was affected by the book. She read the book and she thought it's not about salaciousness and gossip and about conflict. The show could be about giving and sharing and she started reading these books and the book club and introducing people to these concepts. And then they started seeping into the Gary Zucovs and them into the zeitgeist of what America started being about when they thought of a talk show, right? Right. And these drugs, of course, they also boost a lot of neuroplasticity as well.

And that helps to change the brain. long term too. So it's kind of a combination of a lot of things happening all at once, which is why these drugs can make such huge differences in people's lives very quickly. And we can do, we can do those things, you know, over time. But also, you know, these drugs, they alter people's state of consciousness. They allow you to look at the world in a way that you've never seen the world before. And when you do that, there's no going back from that experience, right? You can't unsee it. I I remember the first time I ever looked at the moon and saw, like, you know, when you look at the moon and it's like a waxing crescent or something, you see a crescent moon. And I remember the first time I looked at the moon on psilocybin and saw the entire moon, but just that the sun was coming from over here, only lighting up that little bit.

And I was like, oh, wow. And I saw it in a way that I can never unsee ever again. And it's the way that it actually is. And I think, you know, and this is my personal kind of opinion or a theory on this, but it, Like we've talked about, the brain constructs everything that we see. It constructs our entire experience. And so these mind-altering drugs, they kind of allow you to see those different, like what you were saying in the replay. Yeah, yeah, different replays.

They allow you to see the different replays from all these different angles, right, and have this all of a sudden brand-new perception on life. And you don't come out of that, like, you don't come out of that the same. You come out of that viewing the world completely different. You know what's funny. I've always thought, sorry, I was going to, I've always thought that's why alcohol is legal. And like all these psychedelics have always been pushed to the fringes of illegality. Because alcohol from what I've experienced and what I've seen is something that sort of like dulls your senses in that way. Yeah.

And it's a depressive. Yeah. And it's a perfect tool to keep people living in a system that has you suppressed and oppressed in a certain way. And then psychedelics. I don't know if you ever read, this thing, it really blew my mind was in and around like the whole free love movement and, you know, Vietnam and that whole time. One of the biggest things that scared the U.S. government at that time, I think it was Nixon. I stand to be correct. I'm always bad with the presidents.

But I think it was his administration. One of the things they talked about internally was they said, these drugs are undermining the very, the very principle that America is built on. And that is people aiming upwards to be like, man. manager, manager, district manager. Because people were just like, no, do you need a ride? Jump in. Do you need some food? Come on, let's go.

Hey, come hang out with us. People just walking like free love movement. Yeah, but it now became, they're like, we need to shut this down. Yeah. Because it goes against the structure that we're building, which is get as much as you can from as many people as you can and just fight to stay there in your own little world. We can't allow that. But alcohol ironically does the opposite.

it. If you go to a job that you hate and you hate your world and you hate your thing, you have alcohol. Makes you feel better about it. It makes you forget about it even more than that. And it just it just numbs you. It makes you feel less about it. Yeah, it makes you feel less about it. And then you go do it again. And then you go do it again. And then you go do it again. But if you took psilocybin or if your manager took psilocybin or there's a good chance. They might just be like, hey, I don't know, take Friday off. Who cares about Friday? Did you do the work? Did you do the work? Did you. But that's what the judge. Imagine the judge. Or you might just be like, hey, you know, who is. even needs this defense. Like, I'm like, yeah, a person might be like, actually, aren't we already in prison?

I'll go in. It's fine. You know, but I say this. Yeah, you're right. No, no, no. You're absolutely right. It makes sense. It's joking.

But at the same time, yeah, I mean, I've had experiences where I'm like, you know, maybe I should just live in this, you know, national forest that I'm in right now. This would be awesome and never talk to anybody and not have a phone. Like, that would be great. Yeah. And it really has you wanting that. That's what I mean about like the further, the further we get in disconnect. like M, we could talk to you forever.

And I mean, that's why you wrote a book. That's why you have your podcast. That's where you have all these things. If you were to leave us with one, I mean, you've left us with so much there, but if you were to leave us with like one, just like one idea or one concept in terms of starting. You know, people talk about journaling,

people talk about meditation, people talk about people, but what would you say was just like, just the first catalyst that you would say to somebody, hey, just do this and do it repeatedly. And it might not change everything. but I think that this is like the first step that you might want to take to just start changing how you see the world and yourself in it. Yeah, I would say the first step, and we touched on this a little, is starting with your

internal sort of conversation and like how you think about yourself and about the world and just kind of rewiring that. That's where I started. I would get up every single morning and I would go on a walk and I would listen to after affirmations on YouTube. I actually still have that playlist of affirmations on YouTube completely available to everybody. So if you want to go and listen to it, go for it. But start rewiring the way that you think and that will change everything. Like when you change the way you think, we talked about it changed the way you look at things, the things that you look at change. And the first step

in changing the way that you see the world is changing the way that you see yourself and changing the way that. And we talked about this with relationships too. Like everything changed. is when you change how you treat yourself and you will no longer settle for anything less than you deserve and you'll believe in yourself, which is extremely powerful. So I would say that really is the first step is working on your own self-concept and how you talk to yourself. And that's the best place to start because even if your external reality doesn't change, which I think it will, your internal reality definitely will and you'll start to feel better. And at the end of the day, what's the point of doing any of this work of rewiring your brain if you don't feel better?

That's the point of all. That's the whole point is to feel better. Like we get so caught up in manifesting this or manifesting that or this achievement. But life, the majority of our life is the time between the achievements. It's the journey. It's the, if it was about the destination, it'd be called death. It's about the moments between the achievements. And so how can we make those moments more enjoyable. And it really just comes down to how you treat yourself, how you talk to yourself. That'll change every. It does change everything when you change the way. that you talk to yourself and treat yourself. So I would start there. You've changed everything. Thank you for joining us. Thank you guys for having me. This has been great. Did I not tell you this would be one of your favorites?

Did I know? I wrote that down in your journal, buddy. Are we going to be friends now, Eugene? Yes, we are. Yes, we are. No, I'm for real. Thank you so much. You're amazing.

Thank you for your generosity. Yeah, thank you guys for having me. This has been awesome. Thanks, y'all. You never lied, eh? What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Day Zero Productions? in partnership with Sirius XM. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah,

Sanaziamen, and Jess Hackle. Rebecca Chain is our producer. Our development researcher is Marcia Robiou. Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Brown. Random Other Stuff by Ryan Harduth. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next week for another episode of What Now?