← Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast
Cognitive Neuroscientist: The Formula to Rewire Your Mind | Dr. Caroline Leaf
00:46:53
Your mind is more powerful than you think. Are you leading it well? Dr. Caroline Leaf breaks down the science and practical steps to manage your mind under pressure—and how rewiring unhealthy thought patterns builds the mental resilience great leaders need.
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- [00:00]
A
The minute you identify pattern, Craig, and intrusive thoughts are showing you patterns, you're going to have to spend at least 63 days. That's what I've shown with my research over these 44 years that I've been in this game is that to do this process. And basically I've described a formula called the neurocycle, where you're going from observing yourself to reconstructing, embracing, processing, and reconceptualizing. Until you do that with the patterns that that intrusive thought tell us, they're going to always control you. You're just going to keep falling back into the same pattern.
- [00:37]
B
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast, where our mission is clear. To help you become a leader that people love to follow. If you're new with us, head over to cglp.com I want to get you the leader guide. We send one out with the release of every new episode. It's important you get that. Lots of helpful information. I've got a brilliant guest on. She is a cognitive neuroscientist, written 19 books, a pioneer in neuroplasticity. We're going to get all into the mind. How do you lead your mind into the right places? Her name is Dr. Caroline Leaf. If you haven't learned from her, you're going to learn today. Let's now go to the interview with Dr. Leif. Dr. Leif, it's an honor to have you on the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast.
- [01:23]
A
Thank you so much, Craig. And please call me Caroline.
- [01:26]
B
Well, I'll call you Caroline now. I might have to call you Dr. Leaf because I respect and admire you so much. I was joking with our team. I feel like you are my best friend that I haven't spent hardly any time with, but I've learned from your work for years and years. You are one of the most brilliant people that I've learned from and I admire your work. It's incredibly helpful and, and I love that you speak directly just about the mind and from a perspective of faith. And so I'm excited to interview you today.
- [01:58]
A
Well, thank you so much, Craig. It's always, I agree with you. I feel like we best friends even though we haven't physically. Even physically met, which is crazy.
- [02:06]
B
Yeah. Well, congratulations on your new book. It's called Help in a Simple Tips for Finding Peace when youn're Overwhelmed, Anxious or Stressed and Talking to a Lot of Leaders. I have the privilege of working with leaders all over the world. If there is ever a book that's going to be helpful to leaders who feel overwhelmed, anxious or stressed. This would be an amazing resource. Thank you for your work on it. I do want to ask you, from a leadership perspective, working with the mind and the emotions, what would you say, Dr. Leif, do you see that leaders are experiencing today that might be different from a decade ago?
- [02:44]
A
Definitely. In this hurry. Culture, pressure culture, productivity culture. There is a different level of demand. I mean, really, we think about your story with your amazing new book as well, how the pressure building up. There's so much expected that people are constantly on the go and that, that's honestly one of the reasons that I wrote this book as well, is that people wanted to know, what do I do in the moment of extreme pressure? Like, we all know we need to work on our stuff. We all know. And you know, from our work, it takes time to rewire networks and so on and so on, which I know we'll talk about. But what do you do in the moment? And that's what I'm finding leaders saying things like, I just fell into so much pressure. I just, I don't know what to do in the moment, in that middle of that meeting, et cetera, et cetera. So it's knowing how to handle in the moment pressure. I think that's become very different. Access to information, information overload, all those things. That's been one of the, I would say one of the top things.
- [03:40]
B
So one of the many things I love about your book just, I'm gonna read a couple of chapters, titles, Help them in a hurry. What's that? Help. What's going on in my head? Help. I'm under pressure. Help. My brain won't shut up. Help. This one's funny. Help. I want to punch that person in the face. I can't even believe you wrote that, doctor. Leave. Help. The world seem so black and white. Help. I'm tired all the time. Some people said maybe your most practical book. And what I want to do today is I want to speak to leaders from a really practical standpoint. And so let's just start with what was helpful. A leader is in the middle of a meeting and has an incredibly stressful moment. Leaders, we don't often have time to plan. We don't always have time to really intimately strategize. But you're in the middle of a heated moment, you've got to make a difficult decision in the moment, and you feel anxious, you feel overwhelmed. What is something practical in that very moment that a leader can do to normalize stabilize, calm their emotions and make wise decisions instead of reactive ones.
- [04:49]
A
Okay, first thing is to. Great question. First thing is to stand back and observe oneself. So not physically stand back, but go into what I call the multiple perspective advantage, which is an actual scientific concept where you're able to, we as humans, we can train ourselves to do something that's actually very natural and that stand back and observe ourselves and observe how we are actually functioning and that. So it's almost like we step back and we say to ourselves, okay, and first thing you go into the multiple perspective advantage, which is literally I'm going to pause for this moment, I'm going to observe myself reacting in the situation. So you're watching yourself like you're watching yourself through a video camera or something or your phone. And in that moment you say you acknowledge, very important to acknowledge what, how you are feeling in that moment, what you're thinking about in that moment, the scenario. So it's in other words a description. So saying in your head something like this person has just said this and it's really frustrating me, I really feel like I want to punch them in the face. So you're not saying it out loud, you saying it in your head. And what you do then is that you bring. Because that person, whatever's going on, that's information that's coming at you. Your deepest level of you, which we call the non unconscious mind is absorbing all of that, everything about them, all the words, the body, body, the body language, etc, etc, all of that's being processed at 400 billion actions per second into the, the non conscious mind, which is literally an energy force. It's then being coded into the brain and the body. And the brain and body are only 1% of who we are and only then or does it get filtered and bubble up into our conscious mind. So when you are hearing that person and you're feeling yourself react, 400 billion actions per second have already happened. And in that process, and here's the key, the reason why I say going to the multiple perspective advantage and in your mind describe what's frustrating you in that moment and how you're feeling. What's happening there is that you are, as all that stuff's coming in, a network has formed. But by you doing what I just described, you take that network and you weaken it before it can become a problem. Also it enables you to bring up or maybe previous meetings that you've had, any other, any other memories inside thought patterns associated with that particular situation or that person, or that person's or whatever, all of that will come up as well. And if you're not careful, that comes up as a rush, like a tidal wave, and that pushes us into making those wrong decisions. So there's this rush of information, but by standing back and acknowledging it in your head, you control the rush. You're in control. It's no longer a tidal wave. It is okay, that is happening. I'm not going to respond to that because if I do, your entire mind, brain, body connection is going to get haywire. So that's the first thing. And I took longer to explain it than to do it. So it's literally think about going into this state where you observe yourself and acknowledging this person said that again, it's making me mad. I can't believe they're saying it again. You're doing this, you're looking, but you're doing this in your head. Then what you do is you actually need to acknowledge. It's making me feel really frustrated or whatever. So acknowledge the emotion. And then you do a mind shift. Now, a mind shift is that person. Is that person. It's not me. It's a reconceptualization. It's saying something like, that person has their issues. That's not something that I choose to take into me. Because if I take their toxic energy into me, I am not going to be able to think clearly. So I'm going to kind of put a window or put them inside a window, some sort of a visualization where I'm going to put them there. And I'm going to stand back and I choose not to absorb all the toxicity or their anger or their frustration, because that's going to block my ability to think clearly. I'm going to protect myself, and I'm going to choose to see that they've got something going on in their life, that they're reacting like that. There's a reason, but I don't need to fix that. I need to know how to keep myself in a space. So that's a lot. In summary, you're going to stand back and observe yourself. You're going to acknowledge what's happening, you're going to acknowledge the feeling, and then you're going to do a mind shift. And part of that mind shift is protecting yourself, visualizing them in a box or inside a window or something, and choosing to not let what they are saying get inside of you, which will then keep you in a space of wisdom where you can then actually hear from the deepest part of you what the words are. That you should say, or the next action that you should take, the tidal wave will block that. Does that make sense?
- [09:31]
B
It does. Walk it through in a scenario and I'll give you an imaginary one because it sounds like extraordinarily helpful, but it's also a lot to do in a moment. So let's say we're in a meeting and the person that's kind of always objectionable and critical and everybody knows it, does that again. And so he's rude, he's harsh, and he's blocking an idea that everybody probably thinks is a pretty good idea, but he's doing it in a way that's really changing the mood of the meeting. So at that point my emotions feel frustrated and angry. And so I'm going to take a step back and I'm going to observe myself. And what am I seeing?
- [10:15]
A
You're seeing how you would normally react to that person. So instead of being sucked in, you're going to step back because being sucked into the criticism, the previous interactions, you're going to get caught up in a tidal wave. There'll be no clarity. You're going to go into a consciousness, conscious mind brain loop. And a conscious mind brain loop is surface thinking. We want to get into our deep spiritual wisdom thinking. So you're observing yourself is going to take you out of that scenario. You're literally almost taking yourself out of that scenario, even though you're still in that scenario, but meant Your mind is 99% of who you are. You want your mind to dominate. In that moment when you're very activated, your sensations in your body get very strong and your body and brain are only 1% of who you are. So what we have to do is control that desire to respond to that very strong sensory response that we get in our, in our, in our body and in our brain. And we want, which is all physical stuff that's coming back at us. So we want to be able to stand back and observe. So stand back and observe. And as soon as you're in that state, you shift your physiology and then you say, okay, I am not going to react like I normally would react. This person is frustrating me. So you acknowledge, if you deny it makes it worse. It's acknowledging what's, literally stating this is what's happening. This person is doing this again. This person is saying that again. As you do that, you weaken, weaken the hold of the previous memories, the toxic memories that would have kept you sucked in. You kind of disconnecting from them. Does that, does that.
- [11:44]
B
I like that thought. A lot because I actually can, I can visualize it now. So I find myself getting frustrated, maybe a little bit angry. And I'm about to say something. I'm going to meet his anger with my anger or his critical spirit with my defensiveness. And so I'm going to step back, I'm going to be objective. I'm going to say this is what I would normally do. But I'm not going to, I'm going to capture that. I'm going to put him in a place to say, maybe he had a bad day, maybe he's always this way. I'm kind of sad, he's distant enough. I'm now objectively looking at it and breathing in. And I'm going to come back and say, okay, let's look at this objectively. Or I understand why you'd feel that way, but let's. And so it's creating a emotional barrier between my emotions and my response. It does seem a little bit challenging to do that in a split second. So I'm assuming that this is kind of a skill because I can't really go one step two, what was it? I can't remember step two. It's probably a skill that I would develop over time that I would apply in the moment.
- [12:42]
A
Oh, absolutely. And that is what all of these techniques in that book and everything that I teach. Nothing. This is no quick fix for anything in the moment. What you can do that you can remember is you can breathe. I mean, breathing will increase your heart rate variability when you breathe in a specific way. So that's easy to remember. So in that moment, let's say that you just are so activated by that person by taking a deep breath, in for three counts and out for seven, that creates a 10 second pause and that increases the heart rate variability. It lowers what we call the alpha wave. Increases the alpha wave in the brain, lowers the theta wave in the brain and the body. What that means is that think of a surfer surfing on a big wave. You don't want too much of the big wave. You want to have nice smooth waves of energy. You don't want a massive wave in your head. So if react, I'm going to have a massive wave in my head. But if I stand back and just breathe, I'm already going to get control and then I'll remember the steps. So the breathing increases, heart rate variability changes. The brainwave setup enables a healing wave to start flowing through your brain and your body. So if you forget everything else, breathe in for three and out for seven and that creates a 10 second pause. If you still worked up, you can do it again. Does that make sense?
- [13:55]
B
No, it does totally make sense. And I could see now, based on hearing it a couple times, that I could actually do that in a breath. So I'm going to. I'm going to see it, I'm going to breathe in. I'm resetting, I'm looking objectively, I'm distancing myself emotionally. I'm resetting my brain. And on the outflow of the breath, I'm saying something that's calm and wise rather than reactive and angry. So that's super helpful. Yes.
- [14:20]
A
You can do it in 10 seconds. That's beautiful what you've just said. As you breathe in, that's the moment that you get back. Observe, acknowledge. And then as you breathe out, that's your mind shift.
- [14:29]
B
I like it.
- [14:29]
A
I'm going to put them in a box. They're going to shrink like an ant. I'm going to just see the data. They're in their own. They've got their own issues going on. But that's not my issue. What I need is the data that is required for this meeting. As the leader of this meeting, Whatever, I like it. So you can do it in 10 seconds. So there's a bit of practice. It takes longer to explain than it does to do. But we've got now to the point where actually you can do this.
- [14:50]
B
No, I love the practical tools. I use so many of them. I want to talk specifically Dr. Leaf. Whenever I can talk with a leader and they get really transparent. It's one of my favorite times and I've had so many leaders tell me they just don't feel capable, they don't feel good enough, they don't feel adequate, they feel like an imposter and they have intrusive thoughts like, you're not going to succeed. You can't get it all done. What would you say practically to a leader that doesn't feel good enough, maybe doesn't even feel like a capable leader? What can they practically do with those intrusive thoughts to reprogram their mind to effective, healthy thoughts instead of the ones that will paralyze so many leaders?
- [15:34]
A
Excellent question. So an intrusive thought is your new best friend. And when I say that, people often say, I hate them. I don't want them to. How can they be my new best friend? Okay, so what is an intrusive thought? It's a thought that has literally is made of memories and it's called basic. It's A real physical thing that is a cloud of energy in your mind. And I'm going to make this very clear in a moment. It's a network in your brain that looks like a tree and it is like a squashed up tree, like a hedge inside every cell of your body. And I'm saying this to say that when you feel that intrusive thought coming up, that you're not good enough or are you really capable. The imposter syndrome, whatever, whatever the deed, whatever the detail of the thought is, but it's blocking your ability to really function like you should. That isn't something that's just not real, it's real. It's a real thought that has been built by you, with your mind. With our mind, we build experiences into thoughts. Thoughts are made of details, made of memories. So it's real. So I'm going to hold up a tree over here. You've probably seen this cray, you've seen my trees over the years. This represents a thought. This is kind of what a thought would look like in the brain. It's made of roots, right? It's got branches, it's got a trunk. And this would be a healthy one. So you've got, for those that are listening, I'm holding up a toxic looking wiry tree and a green healthy tree. Now, essentially, thoughts are real things that we create with our mind. So mind therefore is not our brain. Our mind is 99% of who you are. It's your aliveness, your energy force, your ability to think, feel, choose, your ability to have wisdom, intuition, creativity. It's your aliveness. It's what animates your brain and your body. Your brain and your body don't do anything except what your mind tells it to do. And I'm saying this little bit of background we're going to come to the intrude back to the intrusive thought. But I want you to understand that this intrusive thought didn't just, it's not just didn't just get there. We build these with our mind. We, and we build thoughts all day long in response to what's happening to us. So what happens is that from time to born to the whatever age we are today, every experience is building just thoughts. Hopefully most of them build into these thoughts. Thoughts and thoughts are the things that drive us. So an intrusive thought is a thought that, that is driving you. Whatever's coming up the most is what's driving you. But also an intrusive thought is telling you something that's Why I say it's your new best friend. It's filled with memories, it's filled with data, it's got a source where it came from, it's got the weight, the kind of mindset that it generates. It's got the behaviors and the emotions and the perceptions and the, the way that what you say and what you do, it's got all of that embedded in it and it's, it's driving how you function. So if something keeps coming up, it's actually a prompt from the deepest, wisest part of you that, that I call the non conscious. No, in not subconscious, not unconscious, but the non conscious that has been, that has, that has been built by the non conscious and unconscious part of your mind does all the building and it stores everything. But when it builds these toxic and healthy. If it's a toxic issue, a disruptive issue, something that wasn't great, and let's say more and more things happen over time, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. That has to be dealt with because it goes against your natural wired, full of nature. So when you have an intrusive thought, it is your spirit level, your wisdom, telling you to say, pay attention. And that's why I say, they're your new best friend. Now that's a long explanation. But if you pay attention to the data and you say, okay, why am I having this intrusive, what is it? What is the data? What is it saying? What is the details of this? Where does this come from? When you see it like that, and you see it objectively as data that comes from something, there's a, because of behind it, you weaken it. The minute you face something, the minute you confront something, we know from neuroscience that you weaken the network. Now that's the great thing here, is that with every single network that's toxic, every single thought that we build that's toxic, they are always, because of wisdom, we generate solutions. So imagine surrounding this toxic thought are a whole bunch of healthy thoughts, a whole bunch of them, okay? Now those healthy thoughts are the thoughts that we are going to draw on when we pay attention to the intrusive thought. If I ignore the intrusive thought, I'm going to suppress it. And this is, this is what will happen if you suppress it. It will get worse. Whatever you push down, whatever you suppress doesn't go away, it goes back worse than before. So it will keep coming back. So it's a prompt. You have to deal with this. The only way to deal with this, embrace it. And then it will tell you Something about yourself and you will grow. And in doing that, you're going to activate all of these and work out which is the best way of moving forward. I know that's a lot of sort of theoretical science, but an intrusive thoughts telling you data. So when you take the time to sit down and say, okay, this thought's coming up, what is it? What does it look like? What are the emotions? What are. How's affecting my behaviors? What am I saying and doing when I think of this thought? What is, how is it affecting my perceptions, how I'm looking at life, my attitude, my mindset, how's it affecting my body? Is there a heaviness? Is it whatever. And when you do that, you now start getting detailed. Then that, that takes you to the top of the tree, takes you to. Then you've got to dive inside and say, okay, well now what more, what else is there? Why do I have this? The who, the what, the when, the where, the why, that starts showing you these branches, you get more detail. You're being curious, you're facing this, you're seeing this as data. And you can use that multiple perspective advantage where you stand back and observe while you're doing this. Then you go even deeper and you say, what else is coming up? When I think about this thought, what other data is coming up which will take you down to the root. Then you can say, okay, now I've got all this data. This is what's happened. There's something that happened. It seems to be a pattern. It's something that seems to constantly occur with this person. Or I can see this is coming from some previous whatever. This is what's happened. What am I going to do about it? Because it's affecting my leadership style. There's a pattern, It's a pattern. Therefore I'm going to have to. And the pattern's got to be cause and now I'm going to have to rewire. And so that's a reconceptualization. Then you take the action. And the action would be, I am going to work on this pattern daily. Now to change a pattern. Once you've found this, once you've started facing this intrusive thought and you've seen that it's causing you to operate in a certain way, like with imposter syndrome, which is a big word for what, why. Now you can see, okay, well it's this, this I can seeing, whatever. When you see that this is a pattern that's consistently activated when I mean this kind of scenario with These kind of people triggered by this kind of thing. You've identified a pattern. The intrusive thought has shown you you have a pattern and it's never going away until you weaken the thing. You've got to take the energy out of this and you've got to reconstruct it. Never go away. You can't just pull it out, but you can take the energy out and shrink that and reconstruct it into how you would like to function. And that process isn't quick. The help in a hurry book that you. That's behind me, that you're referring to, those are techniques for in the moment. But the minute you identify pattern Craig, and intrusive thoughts are showing you patterns, you're going to have to spend at least 63 days. That's what I've shown with my research over these 44 years that I've been in this, in this game is that to do this process. And basically I've described a formula called the neurocycle, where you're going from observing yourself to reconstructing, embracing, processing and reconceptualizing until you do that with the patterns that intrusive thoughts tell us, they're going to always control you. You're just going to keep falling back into the same pattern. And it takes that amount of time to rewire. Because these are things that are made of energy, protein. They don't just go away. You can't just zap them, medicate them, breathe them, pray them. It's work. It's a work process.
- [23:29]
B
So that's fascinating to think about the intrusive thought being my new best friend. That's. It's shocking at first. And then after hearing you talk for a while, it makes some sense that this is kind of an indicator, kind of like if a red light goes on in a car, it's showing me what we need to work on so the car would run in a healthy way. And so this is an indicator of something that's deeper in my life that I need to objectively look at, distance myself from it, find out maybe some of the roots. And then I like the thought of 63 days of working on it, because 63 days is a long time. And then in some ways it's not to think about something that could have been a problem for years and years. If you can strategically effectively work on something for just 63 days, you can reprogram your brain out of toxic, unhealthy thoughts into better thought patterns. So I love that. I wanna get really practical with you. Dr. Leif and talk about kind of the sense of overwhelm and that leaders are having right now. I've got some theories around this, but I want to hear your take on it. And so let me ramble for just a minute. It seems to me today that a lot of people are less resilient than in the past. It may or may not be true. It seems to me today that things that people used to be able to endure hit them harder and faster today. It seems to me that people have more time off in the past but are not as healthy as in the past. And it seems to me that the habits, sometimes even outside of work, of scrolling nonstop on social media, looking at constant inputs from the news that are disruptive to our minds, it seems like they're counterproductive. And so when I look at the world today that leaders live in objectively, or at least my opinion, and it seems like there are more negative inputs that are creating less resilient leaders, creating more stress, more anxiety. And I think there's something in the system that's possibly unhealthy. Can you comment on that? Am I right? Am I crazy? Are there external factors making it more difficult that we can change and manage? I know I'm asking kind of a complicated question, but it seems like there are forces working against us that we might need to fight back against. True, accurate. What would you say?
- [25:57]
A
I love your question and I couldn't agree more. So, Craig, the concept of resilience is something that's wired into our, into our mind, brain, body connection. So when we talk about mind, brain, body, we're talking about psychoneurobiology. That's the fancy word. And psycho is. The psycho part, is our mind. Our mind is our spirit and Soul and that's 99% of who we are. Brain and body are 1% of who we are. Now the brain and the body are what we live in. And if you don't look after them, they are going to break down. And so things like when I was interviewing you, we had an amazing interview. You gave such beautiful, deep answers about your own life. And one of the things you felt, you got literally got burnt out. And so your brain and your body, physically being 1% of you, are only limited in energy. Your mind has different levels. The deepest part of your mind, your non conscious, has unlimited energy. But your conscious mind, which is what's awake when you're awake, it's kind of your surface versus your deep mind. Your car and your surface mind is kind of like a toddler. It Just can go all over the place unless guided. So the conscious mind needs to always work with the non conscious mind. And it's the mind that then drives codes life into the brain and the body. Okay, so now with that scenario in mind, here I am in life with my mind. My non conscious mind absorbs everything, processes everything, has total wisdom, wires it into the codes it into the brain and the body and then filters it through into the conscious mind. So you hearing me, your viewers and listeners are hearing me, but your conscious awareness happened after your non conscious action. So every 800, we are making 800,000 to a million new cells every second. There's 400 billion actions happening behind every sound that comes out of my mouth and your mouth. So having said that, we are capable of a lot. We busy fast. Our design is amazing, but our non conscious mind is way faster, it's unlimited in its speed and its ability to process than the conscious mind and the brain and the body. Therefore we need called mind management for resilience to operate, we need mind management. If we don't manage intrusive thoughts, if we don't manage that meeting scenario that you created in the beginning, if we don't manage that imposter syndrome, if we don't manage our restoration and not just rest like we talked about in the interview, you explained beautifully about the difference between rest and restoration. Where if we don't do those kinds of things, if we don't manage how we are on mindset, as we go into looking at social media, if you don't, if we don't manage our mind or that means we switch off from the wise part of us, if we just boom through life, we are like toddlers without any guidance. You've got grandchildren, you've had children, seven. You've got six children, seven grandchildren. Think of a toddler. If you don't guide them, they're all over the place. So what we're living in is a world that has become so materialist, so, so physicalist. It's a physicalist philosophy which means that it's all about what you can see, touch here and feel. And if something's broken, you can just put, put a chemical in to fix it. Doesn't work like that. The body and the brain physically are different to the mind. And if we put all our attention on the, if we put 100% of our attention on the 1%, we're going to crash. So we live in a world that has focused on what Einstein calls the rational mind and not enough of the sacred gift which is the non conscious mind. So in other words, 1% is brain and body. We are spending 99 to 100% focusing on that. In our current paradigm, which is about a 50 year old paradigm where we've been doing this prior to this, we didn't do it quite as badly. So you're totally correct in saying things have changed. We're spending maybe 1% on the 99%. There's an imbalance now. Research starting in 1996 more or less showed that if we don't start managing our mind. I'm paraphrasing the study, making it simple. It's in my books that if we don't do that, we're going to land up with a major problem. That was in 1996. And that major problem they predicted is that people would be dying 8 to 25 years younger from preventable lifestyle diseases. Healthspan would be affected, mental challenges would be huge increase. And living in an era where for 50 years we've had this very biomedical, very physicalist approach to humanity, we have moved away from the sacred gift of the mind in terms of managing it. And we've put all our focus on the physical, external sensations, sensory part of us. And that will drain resilience. We have unlimited resilience. But it's resilience that is required to grow and to be activated. How many times in a day does someone just stop? And I know you're doing it now because you were forced to do it, but how many times in a day do we stop? And I call them glimmer moments, stop and just appreciate for 30 seconds the beautiful sunshine. We've had snow for four months. I'm looking at sunshine today. Take the time and I love the snow, but it's just the different light that's a glimmer moment that just those little things will start opening the door to resilience. But the biggest thing, Craig, is we have to manage our mind. And managing our mind means the help in a hurry concept of let me catch myself in the moment, let me find and I recommend people look through those chapters, find the areas that are weak and learn the techniques, practice them so that when you in the scenario that's challenging, you've got.
- [31:22]
B
So can you get really practical with me? So we're doing this interview during the middle of a workday and so I'm going to walk out of here, go into meetings, got a long list of things coming. It seems to me that there would be some things like limiting social media intake might be helpful. Limiting the News that you read might be helpful. Training my thoughts on like literally starting the day with, for me, a person of faith might be some declarations or confessions of what God says about me as a person, as a leader, as a dad, as a husband or whatever. What are some things during the day when someone walks out of, they're listening to this interview over lunch, they go back to the office. What are some practical things they can do to manage their mind?
- [32:12]
A
Brilliant question. So the most important thing is to train yourself to observe yourself so that multiple perspective advantage. I spoke about multiple perspective advantage. You are structured your psychoneurobiology as a human is structured for you to actually watch yourself. And so what we see from the research and what I see from clinical practice and so on is that when you train yourself to observe yourself, you operate differently. In other words, how are you showing up in the moment? So not just doing it, watching how you're doing it. So as I'm talking to you, I'm not just talking to you. I'm very aware. It's easy because I've got a camera, I can see myself, but I'm very aware of, of how I'm doing it. What's the, what am I doing? How am I using my hands? What is my mental approach to this meeting, to this, to whatever. So in other words, watching yourself. So as you find yourself getting irritated and you want to snap, or you find yourself about to shoot a text, or you find yourself and notice I say find yourself. The key thing, Craig, is to train yourself to watch yourself. And if you don't like how you're showing up, up in the way you're saying things, the emotions you're feeling, the perceptions you have in that moment, the words, the way you speaking and doing things, catch it. Catch it immediately and stop. Take that. Three seconds in, seven breathe. Three seconds in, seven seconds out. Create that pause. Do that very first exercise, that very first one. Catch yourself. Breathe in and then breathe out. And as you're breathing out, acknowledge I'm reacting like this. It's making me feel like this. I'm going to shift that. I'm going to do that mind shift.
- [33:52]
B
Can you help me be objective about that? For example, I preach on the weekends and I don't like watching myself preach back. When it's recorded in my mind, I'm brilliant and incredible and then I watch it back going, that's not, I'm not that good. And so I think the same thing would be true in my leadership that I think I'm coming across a certain way, but in reality I'm not. I think that in my mind I'm warm and friendly and other times people say you're actually short and you're rushed. And so how do I look on objectively and see myself not just as I think I am, but as I am so that I can correct it. Talk to me about objectivity and self awareness.
- [34:44]
A
I think of being you talking about leadership. This is a leadership podcast. So think about leading your mind. You leading your mind. So your conscious mind is the active thing that is influencing how you thinking, feeling and choosing and showing up in the moment. But. And if you just rush with just the conscious mind, which is coding into the brain all the time and there's a loop going on, that's when we're going to be just going to boomerang through. We're going to think we're okay, but we're not tapping into the non conscious mind is actually seeing. I just, did I just speak like that to my wife, to Amy? Did I just say how did I just respond? It's looking at that person's face that you just spoke to. It's looking at the, your attitude as you texted that email. It's being very observant of how you saying and doing anything in that moment. And this may sound crazy, but it's the most powerful thing that you to lead your mind. It's really, it's, it's the practical thing. It's looking at, okay, I've just answered that question. What was my tone? I got irritated or I just answered my, oh my gosh, I gave them such a big smile. Look at their response. It's noticing, it's noticing how you and what you are saying and doing. It's noticing four signals. What are, what are my emotions in that moment? What are my behaviors? In other words, what am I saying and doing? How am I saying and doing it? What is my perspective in this moment? And what, what, what am I feeling in my body in this moment? Four signals. You can train your multiple, multiple pmpa, multiple perspective advantage. Those four signals, it is life changing.
- [36:20]
B
Yes.
- [36:20]
A
Life changing.
- [36:21]
B
Yes.
- [36:22]
A
When you get a hold of that, you can add another little trick. This little trick is phenomenal. So that's number one. Just if you want to.
- [36:30]
B
I want to hear your trick, but I'm about to explode with excitement about a thought that you just gave me. So give me. No, no, give me the trick. I want to hear the trick and then I want to, then I want to ramp for just a minute because I don't want people to miss the brilliance of what you just said. So, okay, so you're aware and now what's your advice, your trick?
- [36:46]
A
So I think a moment is switching off to the external, switching onto the internal. Your eyes can be open or closed. You can do it for anything from 10 seconds to 60 to five minutes. And you daydream. You literally just let thoughts move through your mind. You just let thoughts come up through your mind, but as they're coming up, you're observing. You follow the train, you follow the thread, and then you just come back again. Daydreaming for 30 seconds. A Thinker moment for 30 seconds is so revealing. At the end of that 60 seconds, you'll either feel a boost or you may think, wow, I didn't even know I was thinking that. Write it down and then do that. Write it down for a few days and you will pick up patterns, you will pick up the intrusive thoughts. Like that, you will pick up. And not only that, that you're getting advice. You're literally getting advice from the deepest level. Now, what is the deepest level connected to wisdom? Godness, God, the source, all wisdom.
- [37:42]
B
I want to take a step back and I want to talk to our audience because this is super, super important. I've been studying and following Dr. Lee for years. And what I've learned about your work is you are so brilliant, I have to think work just to keep up with you. The book, in my opinion, I think this is one of the most accessible practical books you've written. Help in a hurry. Simple tips for finding peace when you're overwhelmed, anxious or stressed. If you tried to listen to this podcast on 1.5 speed, you missed the brilliance. This is one you have to go back and listen to. Slowly. Let it sink in. Dr. Leif, you said something that I think I wanna hit on it for just a moment. Forgive me. Cause I'm gonna talk longer than I normally would. Is one of the greatest mind shifts for leaders that I've ever thought of when it comes to your mind. So I want all of you leaders out there now. You feel like you're not good enough. Sometimes you feel like you can't get it all done. You feel anxious, you feel overwhelmed, you feel inadequate. What I want you to do in listening to what Dr. Leaf says is I want you to think about what you think about. You might do a thought audit, literally go through your mind. And according to Dr. Leif, if you have an intrusive thought, something that's not true, that is your new Best friend. So what are you gonna do? What you're gonna do, I would say from a Christian perspective is you're going to renew your mind, take your thoughts captive. Dr. Leif might agree with my perspective and then take it into the neuroscience of it is you're gonna create new neural pathways. You're gonna think a thought once. If that's not a healthy thought, you're gonna think a new and more healthy thought. You're gonna create new neural pathways. Pathways. I'm going to take it now from a new perspective based on one thing you said and it is revolutionary. What are you going to do as a leader? You are going to lead your mind. That's what you're going to do. You are going to lead your mind. I'm going to take a step back. What is leadership? Leadership is we have a vision of where we're going. We have values. What matters to us. We're going to bring the right people into it. We're going to empower the right people. We're going to have great asset allocation. Where do we put what? And we're going to create an amazing culture that's leadership at its core. So what are we going to do in our mind is we're have a vision. Where do we want our mind to go? What do we want to think about? We're going to have values. What values matter most? And we're going to think on those values that are going to begin to shape our mind. Then we're going to. We don't have people, but we do have thoughts. These are the things that we want to empower the right thoughts to do the right things. We're going to have asset allocation. Where do we put our time? What are we going to put in? What do we want coming into our mind so that what comes out of our mind reflects the right things. And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna create the right culture literally by leading our mind out of the toxic, unhealthy, unhelpful thoughts into the God honoring, helpful, healthy thoughts. What I want you to do, leaders is lead your mind. You lead people, you lead organizations, you lead churches, you lead nonprofits. Lead your mind. You are not the sum total of the lies that you believe. You are who God says you are. Don't believe the lies. If you've got an unhealthy culture, you lead them into a healthy culture. If you've got unhealthy spending habits, you lead them into healthy spending habits. If you got making unhealthy Hires you lead them into a healthy hire culture. If you've got unhealthy thoughts, intrusive thoughts, lying thoughts, toxic thoughts, capture those thoughts and lead your mind to the right place. You know how to do it in organizations. Now do it in your mind. Dr. Leif, that's a brilliant thought. I think I might want to co write a book with you one day on Leading youg Mind thoughts or comments about Leading youg Mind. I want to ask you about where people can find out more about you.
- [41:27]
A
Well, that's. Thank you for saying all of that. You said it beautifully. So leading your mind is a rhythm. Can I explain?
- [41:33]
B
No, please, go, go, go.
- [41:34]
A
So leading your mind is a rhythm. It's mind management and it's a rhythm that, that. All the questions you've asked me so far, we have to summarize all of that. There's literally a formula for leading your mind and that formula is called a neuro cycle. And a neuro cycle formula is what all my research and theories and clinical trials and papers and all the facts, the foundation of all my books, 20 books, et cetera. And what it is, it's the formula for how we lead our mind literally. And it's something that you can learn to even all the techniques that are in that help in a hurry book I'm pointing behind me here. All my other books are based on the rhythm. What is that rhythm? The rhythm is, and I've already started expanding a little bit. Stand back and observe yourself. And in that state you've got to gather awareness of your emotions, your behaviors, your bodily sensations and your perspective. Four signals. That's the first thing you have to lead your mind. You're going to have to learn how am I showing up in this moment? You have to gather awareness of those four signals. So that's step number one of this neuro cycle formula, which is a rhythm. And then the second thing is you have to reflect. It's very, very organized. The mind, brain, body connection is very organized. You need to reflect. Reflection is who, what, when, where, why, what triggered it? So it's not answering, it's getting data. These are both data capturing. So you literally say in the first one, what am, what is, what is this all coming up? How does it make me feel? How that, where do I feel it in my body? What is it making me say and do in this moment? How is it affecting my perspective? Next step, why? Who, when, where, what? That's the reflection. Gather awareness. First step, second step, reflect of this rhythm. Third part is a mind Storm, I've done this. Gather, very specific gather. I've done this very specific reflect asking why now? What else comes up? I'm digging deep into the non conscious. Those first two steps have taken me down to wisdom. What else do I need? What other thoughts are connected? What are the details of the thoughts? You can never pull a thought out. You wire new neural networks. But when you've got an existing toxic, intrusive thought, you basically deconstruct and reconstruct it so you've got it. You'll always remember how you used to be, but you change how it plays out into your future. Okay, so then the third step is what other stuff comes up? Gather that data. Fourth step now is recheck, reconceptualize. Okay, this is the data. These three steps gave me the data. This is what's happened. What am I going to do about this? How am I going to manage myself in this moment? This argumentative person in this meeting, in this moment, this imposter syndrome, this relationship with whatever, how am I going to do that? How do I see this differently? What are different perspectives? And then the last thing, action. How do I action this? So as a leader, you've got to do all this is a rhythm and this is this neuropsycho rhythm. If you want to change a pattern in your life, you do those five steps daily. So you do the neurocycle daily for 63 days. And there's a whole lot of science behind it. It takes that time to deconstruct and reconstruct and so on and get the right energy, like watering a plant, et cetera, et cetera. Now got in, I talk about this concept in that book. I have an app called the Neurocycle app. I have another book called cleaning up your mental mess where I describe this rhythm as well and how to do this. The help in a hurry course and the book, there's a course that goes with it to help you understand and then there's actually a neuropsych course as well. A lot of stuff I've said I don't want to break.
- [45:01]
B
Well, the new book is help in a hurry, the one that you held up, Kevin. They didn't see it is your mental mess. And then if they want to find you directly, best place to connect with you would be where?
- [45:13]
A
My website, drleaf.com so that's D R L E A F.com drleaf.com social media. I'm on all the platforms and all my platform handles are Dr. Caroline Leaf.
- [45:23]
B
Everything's on and you're really smart but you're also really fun on social media. So don't let the intelligence fool you. She's also a lot of fun as well. To our leaders out there. If you think about this, a lot of what Dr. Li's talking about today is kind of just like developing other people is you're helping them become self aware. You're helping them see objectively. You're looking at what needs to change and then you're developing the rhythms over and over and over again. And that's what we can do with our mind. We're not stuck where we are. And the intrusive, unhealthy thoughts do not have to define you moving forward. And so I love the idea of the neuro cycle. I'm going to do a deeper dive into this book. And Dr. Leif, just thank you for your heart, thank you for your research and you're helping make us better. Incredibly grateful for you and it's been fun to interview you.
- [46:13]
A
Thank you so much. Craig. You're so great to talk to as well. You asked great questions and I'm so glad you brought up that concept of leading the mind and you got that because we lead our mind, we change the world. It's with our mind we change, change. It's with our mind we create. It's with our mind we break. So we don't lead our mind, we just, we're going to keep seeing a broken world.
- [46:31]
B
Yep. I've got a request for you. Next book is called Leading youg Mind by Dr. Carolyn Leaf. New York Times best selling. I predict it now. Thank you for your time and leaders out there. Guess what? Today was a very, very helpful to your mind that'll help you get better. And guess what? We know that everyone wins when the leader gets better. Hey, it's Craig here. And you know the weight that comes from being a leader, the pressure, the stress, the mental load that nobody talks about. In my new book, Heal youl hurting mind, Dr. Wayne Chappelle and I tackle the struggles so many leaders face. You know, anxiety, burnout, depression. And we show you that getting help isn't a sign of weakness. It's a step toward breakthrough. So I promise you this isn't just about managing symptoms. It's about finding lasting freedom. So you can learn more@craig groeschel.com or pick up a copy of Heal youl Hurting Mind wherever you buy books.