← The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 769 | How AI Is Damaging Your Mind and Brain: Dr. Caroline Leaf on How to Battle Stress, Burnout, and Anxiety
00:53:11
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the podcast. Hey. We're going to dive into today's conversation in a few minutes, but first my monthly segment with David Kinnaman from the Barna Group. We are talking about the state of the church and right now we've got Bible reading, like Bible trends under the microscope. What are we learning?
- [00:17]
B
Well, we're excited to announce that we're seeing some real substantial rise in Bible reading among Americans. So the data show that there has been a significant rise in the percentage of Americans who say they read the Bible in the last seven days. It has really bounced back in this last 12 to 24 months. A lot of the other trends have been bouncing back since COVID over the last four or five years. But Bible reading in particular has taken a couple of years. But we see that just about half of all Americans say they read the Bible in typical month and Covid times. It was actually down to 30%. So it's a big significant.
- [00:56]
A
It was down to 30% five or six years ago and all of a sudden it's up to. That's huge. It's 46, quite a doub.
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B
40, 46% currently.
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A
Wow.
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B
So that's a big shift. And the, the, the real notable thing is that just like some of the other trends that we're reporting, the most significant increase is among Gen Z and millennials. Gen Z has doubled their, their reported reading of the Bible in the last year, which is just like mind boggling. Millennials are, have gone from about 18% to 34%. So they're just about double. Not quite. And so it's this sort of resurgence of spiritual interest and especially among younger generations that is defining American spirituality right now.
- [01:45]
A
Well, I've heard a lot about Bible sales, but, you know, I don't know about you, I bought a couple of books I haven't read behind me yet. But you know, Bible reading is a really encouraging trend. So we're seeing that spike up. It's funny, even at our church. I was meeting with my lead pastor today. He's like, I think we're known as the church that gives away free Bibles. We are giving away a half dozen to a dozen a week. Just like to people who are like, I haven't read the Bible. How can I get one in my hands? Actually, here you go, we'll get you started.
- [02:15]
B
Well, the interesting thing, so I, I think the other kind of notable trend is that about half of all Christians strongly agree that the Bible is accurate in all the principles that it teaches. And we've seen just A tiny increase in the last year. But overall, this is an interesting kind of trend, counter trend. As we just reported, there is a increase in Bible reading that correlates. As we were talking about an increase in Bible sales. People are sort of saying there's an interest in the Bible today. I think that's kind of a lagging indicator of spiritual interest generally. But what is not matching there is the percentage of Americans generally or the percentage of Christians who say they strongly affirm the teachings of the Bible. So that's an important indicator for us to be watching. You know, there's this constant discussion about whether we're in revival or sort of renewal or pre revival. And I heard Ed Stetzer say this recently that, you know, if we're in revival, we're not going to be asking ourselves, are we in revival? And I, and I, and I do think that this is an indicator. People are interested in scripture, they're interested in the Bible. There. There is good evidence to suggest that young people are more interested in Jesus, are committed to Jesus and new, new and ways. But we would love to see renewal stretch into the plausibility and believability of the Scriptures, the belief that the Bible is accurate in what it teaches. And so I think that's an important thing for us to have as a important caveat.
- [03:45]
A
Yeah, okay, that's really helpful. Anything else, David? Otherwise we'll just tell people where they can find more.
- [03:51]
B
Yeah, no, I think this is another indicator. We've seen at the beginning of 2025, an increase in interest in Jesus. In the middle of the reported on kind of an increase of church attendance among young churchgoers. And this is sort of the third in the series, the trilogy of sort of Spiritual renewal of America renews its pursuit of Christianity, of the church. And again, there's some positive signs in all of this. There's some challenges that come alongside of it. But we're in unprecedented waters where we see not just the decline of the church, but a kind of renewal of interest. And what will we make of this as Christian leaders? That is the question on the table for, for us.
- [04:31]
A
Well, you can learn more by going to stateofthechurch.com Carrie. We've got all the data there, including this. David, thank you so much.
- [04:39]
B
Happy to be here.
- [04:40]
A
And now to today's episode, the Art of Leadership Network.
- [04:44]
C
So therefore AI is not even close to our human intelligence. If we use AI incorrectly, we dumb ourselves down. That's in a nutshell.
- [04:55]
A
Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast. Carrie here and I Hope our time together helps you thrive in life and leadership, man. Want to welcome all of you who are listening for the very first time. I talked to a church leader recently who said, you know what, A lot of millennial leaders are now stepping into senior leadership. And you know, you were kids when we started this podcast, so you're discovering it. And man, we're just here to support you and do everything we can to help put some wind in your sails. And we want to bring you some great conversations. Today I've got Dr. Caroline Leaf. We're going to talk about how AI is damaging your mind and brain and how to battle stress, burnout and anxiety. A whole lot more. Dr. Caroline Leaf is a renowned clinical and research neuroscientist, communication pathologist, and audiologist. She's a bestselling author and a leading expert in the science of mind management, neuroplasticity and emotional resilience. She's got four, four decades of groundbreaking research. And so we kind of pick her brain on her theory and a whole lot more. I hope you enjoy it. Hey, if you want to stay in touch, then one of the best ways you can do that is. Follow me on Instagram. I'm just Carrie Newhoff on Instagram. Pretty active there. Last month, for example, I did a fly fishing trip with a bunch of leaders, including some former podcast guests at the Refuge in Montana. Had an amazing time. I post stuff like that, plus my obsession on lawn lines and some other random stuff from my life, as well as a lot of this content. So you can find me there on Instagram. In the meantime, let's dive right into my conversation with Dr. Caroline Leaf. Well, Caroline, welcome. Really glad to have you on the podcast for the first time.
- [06:34]
C
Thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to our chat.
- [06:37]
A
So you know pastors, managers, CEOs, and we have a lot of church leaders, a lot of business leaders committed to the church listening too. They're burning out at record levels. And every year I wrote a book on the subject. You write on this subject. We say, okay, we'll get some information out there. It's not getting better, it's getting worse. Why do you think the incidences of anxiety, stress and even depression and burnout keep rising?
- [07:03]
C
Okay, so this is an excellent question and really in my wheelhouse. And it's interesting because I just have done the last two weekends I've done conferences and it's the topic that came up the most. And if we so these, there's multiple answers to that, but the main one I would say is if you don't have a stress or burnout epidemic, we have a mind management epidemic that will lead to that. So in other words, the stress and the burnout that we're seeing are the result of. They are basically symptoms or signals of a bigger problem, a deeper problem. And that is one of mind management. People are not managing their mind. And I see you frowning.
- [07:41]
A
Yes. So fill me in. What does that mean?
- [07:44]
C
Yeah, so essentially we have been so fed in the last 50 years with a biomedical model. And that is one of the minute you feel any kind of discomfort, there's potentially something wrong with your brain or your body or your genes. And that the ways to treat that is to get a diagnosis, implying there's an underlying biological cause and that there's some sort of medication to fix it. And that model works perfectly if it's a cardiovascular issue or if it's an immune system or something physically wrong with the brain and the body. But when it comes to the issues of life, the issues of being a human, the issues of being alive, dealing with all the stuff that we deal with as humans, you can't use that model. And it's not scientific either. It was never proven as a good model for mental health or mind management. It was always basically medicine was sort of. It was subsumed into the medical model, the mind management thing. So for 2,000 years, that's we've been talking about mind and brain and body as being separate. It's only in the last 50 years or so that the concepts of mind and brain have been collapsed to mean the same thing. So when the biomedical model is a materialistic model where it talks about mind as being an epiphenomenon, which basically means that they saying that your brain and body are everything, and your brain produces your mind, your thoughts and everything about your thoughts and how you function as a human as a mistake, it's kind of like this mistake. So if the brain machinery is not working properly for some whatever genetic, a chemical reason, then that will produce depression, anxiety, et cetera. So with that model in mind, which works for something like cancer and diabetes and all that sort of thing doesn't work for when you've had a major experience. So for example, if there were 10 people from your audience that now phoned in and told us about the, that that we asked the question, okay, ten of you phone in. Don't phone in. I'm just giving you this as an analogy.
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A
Yeah, yeah. There's no 1, 800 number, but standby.
- [09:41]
C
I'm just Giving an example. And they all. And we told them, phone in and talk to us because you've been diagnosed with depression. And if we actually listened to them, we would have 10 different incredibly big, complex stories of their lives. And therefore they don't have depression as an illness. They are experiencing depression as a behavioral signal in response to what they're going through or have been going through or are going through, or will be going through. And all the complexity of what that means, and it will retain very complex stories and very complex nuances and things and sources, et cetera, where these things started. So how could we just subsume all of that into one label? So to come full circle back to why you think this burnout thing is happening is when we just take the complexities of life and we channel them down into a label, we remove the element of being able to, as a human, process through that stuff. We are supposed to process through our stuff. We supposed to manage our mind. And that comes to the concept of mind management being the core issue. So mind is not the brain. Mind is your 99% of who you are. Your mind manages your brain and your body. Your brain and your body can't think. Your mind thinks. Your brain and your body don't create mind. They basically just store the elements of conversation, the details, the memories, in clusters called thoughts. They simply store the emotions. They simply respond. Whatever the mind tells the brain to do, the brain respond. So it's a responder, it's a transducer, kind of like a tv, kind of like a radio, receiving signals from the mind, transducing those and enabling us to have this conversation, to function in a physical body. But the brain isn't thinking. The mind is doing it all. So what we see from the research that actually goes back a couple of thousand years, if not longer, is that our mind is who we are. Your mind is your spirit. Soul, if you want to use.
- [11:33]
A
Yeah, I was going to say, would biblical times, would that have been soul?
- [11:37]
C
Yeah, well, yes. So lots of words for it. So mind is the word that is the oldest word. That's why I tend to use that word. Spirit and soul are quite modern words, quite interestingly enough. And to a certain extent, when I say modern, talking about a few hundred years, the words consciousness, that's a very. That's a sort of couple of hundred years old as well. But the concept of mind is very ancient and it donates the concept of this humanity that we have, this ability to think, feel, choose, love, appreciate, be sad, be happy, fall in love, appreciate a Rainbow, have a conversation, think deeply. All of that is a mind function. And our mind has this eternal value. So mind has got this spirit and soul, spirit being the biggest part and soul being the more interactive conscious level. And so that's mind. It's this big thing that drives the brain. The brain and the body are used by the mind, the nervous system of the brain and the body, or how the mind actually use the brain and the body so that you can show up. So mind is 99% mind is fundamental. Brain and body are responders, receivers. They hold the information. So if you do open brain surgery, for example, and you poke a part of the brain, memory will be triggered, but it's just random events. It is the person who's awake, lying on the table that makes sense of that and gives the context to the story. So that's the mind, the person. So I know it's quite hard to visualize, but what I always tell people is because we've been so indoctrinated with the concept of mind and brain being the same thing when they're not, we have mind, brain and body, psychoneurobiology, three separate parts working together with the mind being the dominant force. And this is where the science is the strongest that I'm telling you about. It's actually the strongest science that we actually have. And if you think of your mind as being around you and through you, it's what's basically keeping you alive physiologically. So when we see a heartbeat or do an eeg, an ekg, any way that we look at what's going on in the body, we are seeing the action of the mind keeping our physiology and neurology working. And when we talk and act and behave and have conversations, we seeing evidence of mind in action using the body and the brain. So with that in mind, 99% is this mind thing, 1% is brain and body. But we live in a world that looks at brain and body as the 1% being the 100%. And the mind, which we can't see because it's atoms and it's gravitational fields and it's electromagnetic light forces and it's quantum energy and all these things that people don't really in the majority don't fully understand and you can't see it, it's sort of. Well, we can't explain that. So push that aside. So it's all very much down to the physical. So in that if we then have someone who's these 10 people, these 10 complex stories, feeling depression has been subsumed, has been the sort of label given to them. We look at that and we see, well, this is not. That doesn't allow us to really understand what that person is going through. And if they've just, you know, medicated or given a very basic level of therapy, they've never been allowed to really process because the messaging is there's something wrong with you, you've taken that hope away. But if you shift and that's, that's where mind has been ignored. So what we need to do is understand mind and manage our mind. So what we see from mind research, which 100 years of neuroscience has pretty much confirmed this 2000 years, as I keep saying, of mind and body understanding, back to Hippocrates, Aristotle, et cetera, we see that mind is this ability we have to think, feel and choose and create thoughts. But these levels and the most obvious level is we both conscious, we're both aware of this conversation. The listeners and viewers are aware of this conversation. So that's conscious mind. Conscious mind is, it's very obvious what it is. What's not so obvious is the non conscious, N o N. Not unconscious, not subconscious, non conscious. And that is a term that is used in science, has been used for many years, but not in the common dialect of the average person. But that represents your spirit level quite literally. That is where your wisdom, your intuition, your intelligence, your logic, your reasoning, your creativity, your imagination, all the things required for leadership, for living life, for literally you talk a lot about leadership. Leadership of mind management is mind leadership. You are learning to lead your mind. Now how do you lead yourself because of the different levels. So conscious mind is like a toddler, literally, for want of a better expression. And a toddler left to their own devices without a parent guiding them will land up in a trouble. But they're also hungry to learn and they're learning fast. Our conscious mind is a data processor. It's up and down, it's messy, it's beautiful, it thinks, feels, chooses, but it needs guidance. So we need to have that guiding force. So what we are able to do is stand back and observe ourself and think I'm showing up here with a lot of irritation or wanting to punch someone in the face or people pleasing or imposter syndrome or as you started the conversation, total burnout under pressure. When we did our survey for my most recent book and research, we found that the top issue that people wanted help in a hurry with was burnout, stress, pressure. Of the 18 top areas, that was number one. So when you in that state what does that mean? It means that I'm consciously experiencing this pressure and burnout. I'm feeling it in my body, cause I'm feeling the gut ache and I'm feeling the pressure in my shoulders and the tension in my neck and whatever, and whatever illnesses and whatever. But I'm also feeling this depression and anxiety and this perspective on life that's negative and lack of hope. And my behaviors have changed, irritable, withdrawing, whatever. So we can, in other words, we experiencing a whole lot of signals, behaviors, emotions, perceptions and physical signals. And it's those behaviors as those show up in life, those need to be managed. Those are expressions of our conscious mind, brain, body, reaction to an experience in life. So I am able, you are able. We as humans are able to stand back and make a decision. Okay, this is how I'm showing up. I'm not happy with this. I don't like being under pressure and burnout. I don't want to be part of the statistic. So how can I change this? How can I observe myself? The minute we step into mind management, observing ourself, metacognition, many different names for this. We watching how we show up, we activate a link to wisdom, to the spiritual level, to this non conscious mind that I'm equating to the spirit level, wisdom, intuition, all that stuff. And now we can look at things differently on a neuroscience, scientific level. The minute I stand back and observe myself and observe how I'm showing up in the moment and in my life and the patterns, I am now active bringing that network. Because every experience in life is processed through the mind and then into the brain and the body as protein tree like structures throughout the brain and the body connected to the mind, which is energy. There's this network that's formed. So as I shine the spotlight and stand back and observe, I activate the existing network that that way I'm functioning is attached to. So here the person, the 10 stories they depressed, maybe they've got gut ache, various different physical responses in their body, neck problems, whatever, potentially some illnesses forming or constant exposure, behavioral patterns, may be withdrawing, maybe very irritable, maybe very worried, just living life, whatever. And then their perspective, life sucks and the way they. So basically we're looking at emotions, frustration, anger, whatever. So we're looking at four categories of signals, behavioral responses, sorry, bodily sensations, behaviors, emotions and perspective. You can stand back and observe those. The minute you do that, you bring the network, you activate. It's like shining a light on the network. And that network being a protein, chemical energy, structure, that runs from the mind through the brain and the body. That's encapsulated the experience that's resulted in us feeling this way. We highlight that and we can actually now change it. Through the process of directed management. We can rewire because of neuroplasticity, which is the ability that we have to change the brain networks with our mind. And not only the brain networks, but the bodily networks, we can change both with our mind. So we've got to get into that, out of that just toddler mode. We've got to activate the parent working with the toddler. The minute you do that, you activate wisdom, which are all the books on advice and parenting. I mean, I'm just giving you analogies. And we need to get that network going. We need to tap into the depths of who we are. Because not only does our spirit level, our non conscious have all this wisdom and intuition and insight, it also has the solutions. We have everything we need inside of us. But we get so caught in that toddler mind, conscious, conscious toddler brain, body sensation, the 1% and then part of the mind, the conscious mind that we kind of don't listen to the other levels of mind. And then we get stuck. And when you're stuck in that loop, you are operating against the natur that your brain and body, mind, brain, body connection works. We quite literally wired for love and not listening to our deep level of non conscious spiritual level. We create stuckness, we create inflammation responses, it affects our biology, it affects our brain waves, it affects the networks. And then that loop keeps us stuck and then we feel more and more pressure and you get stuck. You just don't know one more thing. It just is the straw that broke the camel's back. So mind management's the core issue. We've got to teach people mind management. So I've shown that when you teach people mind management, which is the stand back, observe, tap into all that stuff and I'm giving you the big, obviously the big picture. You then shift how you are running your networks. You therefore then shift the mental health responses that we are seeing. You shift your ability to manage those stress responses, those pressure responses, that burnout staying. If you don't tap into the non conscious levels, you will literally burn out because you're running on the wrong, running on the wrong type of network, if that makes sense.
- [21:44]
A
This episode is brought to you by Igniter Media. So let's be honest, keeping your church's visuals and communications fresh week after week, that's tough. And that's where Igniter Media comes in. Igniter has a robust library of ready made church media, from sermon videos to beautifully designed backgrounds that work seamlessly in all church presentation software applications. Whether you're a big church with a design staff or a small church with not a big budget, Igniter's got you covered. So you can prep for Christmas, launch a new series, or bring some life to those pesky announcements, all without losing your sanity. And for my listeners, Igniter Media is offering a free exclusive sermon series package valued at $330. It comes with a complimentary sermon bumper title graphics, worship backgrounds, social graphics, canva templates, and a propresenter theme. So you can try it for free@ignitermedia.com Carrie that's ignitermedia.com C-A-R E Y so I appreciate that. I mean, that's sort of your whole framework, right? In all of your work.
- [22:51]
C
Very broad, very big board, over 50 years.
- [22:53]
A
Very broad. You look at a lifetime of work, and that's your 40 years. 40 years of operating system in 14 minutes. That's pretty impressive. But I guess you know where I sit. I'm dealing with leaders who are just saying it's harder than it be used to. Used to be. You know, they've got unpleasable congregations, they've got demands that seem to be increasing. I mean, you've read the stats like everybody else. Anxiety is up, depression is up. People don't have friends anymore. I'm just wondering, is there. So I understand, you know, in your framework, there's a big distinction and perhaps in reality between the mind and the body. And I think a lot of us, maybe, maybe I'm misunderstanding your work, but yeah, I get it. If I get really bent out of shape over a bunch of issues, just give it a few minutes. I'm gonna have some physical symptoms. I'm gonna feel sick to my stomach. My shoulders and neck are gonna get tense. My aura ring is gonna tell me something is wrong. I'm not gonna sleep well at night. So I think we get that. But two things. Number one, why is it worse? And if so, why do more leaders seem to be struggling with this than, say, our parents or our predecessors did? And then secondly, what do you do about that? Yeah, because we have agency. We have control over what we think. But for a lot of us, our thought life is kind of spiraling out of control and we're losing people in leadership left, right and center as a result. So I'm just curious, can you map out, is it spiking? Why is it spiking? And then. And what does it actually mean? Because it's often the mind that seems to be a little bit spiraling out of control.
- [24:36]
C
Well, it's the mind that drives everything, not the brain. You've got to remember.
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A
Yeah, that's what I thought I said. Maybe I didn't.
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C
Brain and body do not drive the show. But if you batter your brain and your body, you're going to be very consumed by the physical symptoms of your brain and your body. And if you don't recognize because you get stuck in them, they're so in your face. So if your body, and if your.
- [24:53]
A
Body and brain, you get sick, literally you're on stress leave and.
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C
Yeah. And you feel, you know, you get. It's just so easy to be sucked into those sensations. So it's to recognize that. So yes, number one, it is burning people. The stats have changed. But as I said, it's not that mental health is rising as a cause, it's a result. So we have to, as I keep stressing it, we have to teach leadership of the mind, management of the mind. Right.
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A
I'm just trying to get a causation.
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C
Like why the causation is that people are literally, quite literally in a situation where they, let's say that they're in a world environment and they've got one thing after another because we foster with technology, et cetera. So there's a, there's an overload. So they're not. So there's. And then they're in meetings and then someone's saying things and they working them up and they've got imposter syndrome. And then that accumulates all of those. Now that's all mind, that's all mine. That's not any, that's signals coming from outside processed in mind and not managed. So therefore I'm just falling in that person irritates me. I've got another thing to do. And there's no analysis, there's no standing back and saying, well, why is that person and irritating me? Why am I letting them irritate me? Why am I letting them get into, into my psyche, into my mind and affecting me? Because I can choose not to be affected by that. But we not blocking, protecting ourselves in that way. We are letting everything just come into us. And when you. Then you let everything come into you, which it does, and you don't filter and you don't decide, I don't want to function like that. I don't want to respond like that. I want to manage it like this. I Want to change this? I want. If you don't, you don't not just want to, you've actually got to do it. It starts with you standing back and observing how you are functioning in that moment.
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A
So you're saying if someone's feeling overwhelmed, burned out, depressed, you got to step back for a moment, take a look at what's happening, why that's happening.
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C
Yes. You have to understand that this is not an external force crashing on you. It's life that you don't know how to live in, in because it's changed so much and because we've got productivity hacks that make us even less productive, that are supposed to make us more productive. So you'll have, for example.
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A
What's an example of that?
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C
Yeah, an example would be like, there's all these great software programs that you can use to help you run your business more efficiently. And whereas just taking notes on your phone or something or having a notepad where you take that is easier to manage. Now, what was one task has now become 26 steps that you've got to do that are supposed to increase your efficiency, but have actually added to your load. So our technology, we need to judge things more. We need to be very careful. What works for me in this moment, if I'm. If here's the easiest way to understand it. Every 63 seconds, we are able to stand back and observe our own thinking. We are able to catch a spiral before it becomes a ingrained network inside of our mind and body network. So we can train ourselves literally to capture thought and renew our mind. This is the science of 63 seconds.
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A
What's the thing about 63 seconds?
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C
There's a whole lot of science behind it. So within the minute framework, that is because of the way that the non conscious and the conscious mind work at 400 million actions per second, down to a million, whatever. It's a whole lot of different levels of speed. It's kind of like if you watch a cartoon, when a cartoon is drawn. When we watch a cartoon on like an animation, it's not one, it's 40. There's 40 images for every one sc every few seconds or something. I think it's every 10 seconds, there's 40 images. It's the same thing for every. Every time we focus on like a concept. Like now as I'm talking, you are focusing on words and concepts, but behind that, for every word or concept you're focusing on, there are 40 little bits of information in your stream of consciousness. Now, consciously, we're not aware of that. What we are consciously aware of is every more or less, every 60 seconds we focus in on a concept and that builds. So every 10 seconds we focusing on little concep and then a meaning drops in where we can actually start directing and choosing more or less every 60 seconds. So it goes in layers. So it's literally from the millions to the every few seconds up to the minute. So the way we can constructively stand back and observe and actually say, you know, okay, I don't like how I'm functioning Or this is really upsetting me. Do I want this to upset me? Do I want to, why are my people pleasing again? Or why am I feeling under this pressure? Why have I reacted like this? We can do that more or less every 60 seconds. And that's where this comes to. So what I've shown with my research and much other research around this concept is that when you can manage the moment, that more or less 60 seconds, 63 seconds, you can a minute, just make it a minute, round it off to a minute, you can then control the next minute, you can then control 10 minutes. You can then start seeing, okay, I can get this irritation under control now. I'm feeling better. I'm standing back observing. I don't need to need to let that person irritate me. I don't need to take on this next task. Why have I just taken this on? I'm people pleasing again. I'm actually. And you can start working through the process of analyzing and making decisions and you can do that quite effectively within a one minute moment. Takes a little bit of practice and obviously you want to practice this.
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A
So you pull yourself out of the moment, out of the difficult meeting, out of the elevated emotions, out of the argument, and you're like, what am I doing here?
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C
Exactly, Exactly. There's a formula that I have researched over these 40 years in clinical trials, et cetera. And that formula you can apply very fast in that 60 seconds with a bit of practice.
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A
I wouldn't give us the summary of it.
- [30:30]
C
Yes, I will. I'm going to give you the summary. So let me quickly explain how the 63 second transitions and then I'm going to give you that formula. So the basic formula, the idea is catch the moment. If I catch the moment, I can catch the 10 minutes, et cetera, et cetera. If I. As soon as I experience as humans, as soon as we experience a little bit of success. So let's say that you speak to someone in a really irritated tone and you recognize it causes and inflates that fight. And now suddenly you're feeling pressure from that argument. And so now you make a bad decision because you're in an argumentative mode. And you're physiology, psychology. You stuck in the conscious toddler mind. And now you accept another task, and now you don't have time for that task. And now you're sitting, freaked out. Now an intrusive thought pops up and says, oh, no, you're useless. You think you can do all of this or whatever, and you have this. I think people can.
- [31:15]
A
We've all been there.
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C
So now we want to say, okay, this is happening right now. I can stand back and observe. What am I seeing? What is my emotion that I'm feeling in this moment? First thing, osmo. How am I feeling? Totally frustrated or whatever. What? How am I feeling this in my body? Maybe my shoulder. My first area is my neck. I will get tension in my neck. Very common. Or because we lift our shoulders, we breathe shallow, and that sends the signal to our body to tense up. And then we have a whole hormonal response and we create this. I can give you tons of physiology around that, but that's enough for now.
- [31:48]
A
I think we all get it.
- [31:49]
C
Yeah, we all get it. Okay, so we want to look at our physiology. So emotional. So you ask yourself, gather awareness. What am I feeling in this moment? Okay, I'm frustrated. Simple sentence. What am I feeling in this moment? Frustrated. Where am I feeling this in my body? Tension in my neck? How is that making me. What am I about to do? I'm about to snap at this person or send a nasty email or accept another task that I shouldn't because I'm already overloaded. And then what's my perspective in the moment? This is totally frustrating. It keeps carrying on. So you identify with four sentences. You gather. So the first step of this formula is to gather awareness of those four signals as four sentences. Very calming, very nonjudgmental, very compassionate. You stand back and you observe. That puts you into. So that process of gathering those four sentences, answering those four questions, puts you into that metacognitive state. The minute you're in that state, you've activated the parent part of your mind.
- [32:45]
A
Can you repeat the four questions again just real quick? So it kind of sinks in?
- [32:49]
C
So you ask yourself, how am I feeling in this moment? What are my emotions? What is my emotions? Emotional warning signal. What? Where am I feeling this emotional warning signal in my body? In other words, what's the behavioral?
- [33:00]
A
Is it my neck? Is it my stomach? Is it? Yep.
- [33:03]
C
Then the next thing is what, how is this affecting how I'm about to speak or what I'm about to say and do behaviors, behavioral warning signal. And the fourth is how is this affecting my perspective, my attitude, my mindset in this moment? So all in this moment, you don't worry about next 10 minutes, you about worry, worry about now.
- [33:21]
A
We'll put those questions in the show notes and we'll link to all of your work as well. That's super helpful.
- [33:25]
C
I've got apps and I've got it throughout all my books and I've got an app.
- [33:29]
A
Yeah, absolutely. It is.
- [33:30]
C
You've got a course. I'll give it all to you. Okay, so you get those four. Now that's gather awareness and that's getting you into that state where you are literally like the parents saying, hey, no, you can't jump off that wall because you're four. You know, it's that kind of thing.
- [33:43]
A
Do you know what's going to happen if you really let loose in this meeting?
- [33:46]
C
Exactly, exactly, exactly. And the downside consequences, because that pressure feel from that will make you feel more stressed and more burnt out. It burns you out. You have quick sidebar. We have a limited amount of energy in our brain and conscious mind, conscious mind in any one day now that is used up very, very fast when we're in a toxic situation. When you're in a managed situation, a mind managed situation, you have a lot more energy. Okay. So this is really key. So mind management allows you to use, use your energy limit in a much more effective way, if that makes sense.
- [34:22]
A
Yeah. You know, I had one CEO tell me once, he can have one bad meeting and it can destroy his entire week. There we go. He's not wrong.
- [34:30]
C
And then that in itself creates burnout. So that reaction that he has, that's why we have burnout, because he didn't manage his mind in the moment and that moment accumulated into the next, the next, the next, the day, the week. And a pattern. And as soon as it's a pattern, which is a habit, which takes 63 days to form, it takes 63 days to build a habit. Not 20, 21 have done years of research on this in clinical trials and so on. And then now that habit drives you, whatever's a habit will drive you. So now you're in that triggered situation again. Guess what happens? The same stress response, the same stress language, the same stress, the same people, please get irritated. Now there's another week lost. You add all those weeks up, you add all those moments up. You burnt out. This is what we're sitting with now. What we need to do, what they used to do, times gone by was we didn't have the technology, we didn't have the speed, we didn't have the. You didn't have your following you to bed at night where you. You actually had time to, you know, you had to maybe walk home or drive home without maybe just listening to the radio or whatever. We had time to actually sit under the tree and think. We had time to make dinner and think about things so that you don't need hours of time, but we just need to disconnect from all the stimulation. And I know the technology is one of the things that you wanted to talk about.
- [35:43]
A
This episode is brought to you by Amplify plus from Ministry Brands. One thing you've heard me say a lot of times is time off won't heal you if the problem is how you spend your time on. Well, for so many pastors, our best hours get swallowed up by systems that don't work right. Scattered tools, disconnected processes, constant admin. These hours are the very ones you could be spending on things that matter most. For example, investing in people, shaping vision, or leading your church toward its mission. That's why I want you to see what 55,000 churches nationwide are using. Amplify plus from Ministry Brands. It's a fully connected church management platform that brings your people, communication, events, and scheduling all into one place. When your systems work, your time on fuels the heart of Ministry. Visit ministrybrands.com Amplify to learn more. I do want to talk about that a little bit, if that's okay. No, that's a really helpful framing, Caroline and I want to think. I mean, you're busy. You got a podcast, you write books, you speak all over the world. You're in many ways like many of the listeners, just like too much going on. And very tech savvy. You and I both run remote companies. Right?
- [37:00]
C
Exactly.
- [37:00]
A
So everything is technology. Cal Newport's been a guest several times on this podcast. He talks about task switching and how cognitively exhausting. Moving from Slack to Asana to Riverside to Evernote to Gmail to.
- [37:14]
C
Exactly. The twin. Yeah. It's exhaust.
- [37:16]
A
Exhausting. Right. And that's all open right now on my screen as I'm talking to you. Literally.
- [37:20]
C
Exactly. I've got about 20 things open on my computer. Yeah.
- [37:23]
A
So I want to know, like, practically speaking, how do you guard against that? Like, how do you make sure that doesn't happen? Where it overtakes you? You know, Cal wrote about digital minimalism and he's like super minimalist on that. What are your practices?
- [37:41]
C
Well, I use predominantly this formula called the Neurocycle that I've been explaining to you. I live in mind management. I'll do all, all of those tech things and all the little physical things as step five of this formula. So anything like reducing technology, exercise, control, eating, all those taking walks, all that is those activities of the brain and the body.
- [38:02]
A
So you're building those into your day.
- [38:04]
C
You'Re building an exercise, but they come in step five. And when I say step five of this formula, first I manage my mind, I do the 99% first. And I'm doing that all day long. So I'm managing moments all day long. The moments that I don't manage, those 60 second moments, that's when I will crash and feel the pressure. But I can recognize it very fast cause I've trained myself and I move back into those techniques. So essentially in a nutshell, I told you the first step, which is gather awareness. There's five steps to the formula. So I do those, I apply them, I apply them in the moment. That's why I wrote this book help in a hurry. Because this is how you use the formula in the 60 seconds when you use a form. When I apply that formula and I see, okay, I'm doing this, I will consciously make a note in my phone or in my journal about, okay, this is a new thing. I need to observe myself over the next seven days to see if this is a pattern, if this is a pattern that's disruptive to my life sounds, adding to my burnout or pressure or whatever it may be, or whatever. Then I'm going to do a 63 day neurocycle. So then I'm going to take that habit and I'm going to reconstruct it daily using the same formula, about 15 minutes a day, but over 63 days. Because to break down that network, if I'm doing something as a pattern, that means I have a network built into my mind, brain, body connection that looks like a toxic wiry tree quite literally. And that's driving me, I don't want that to drive me. So I look for those, I look for the moments, I control the moments and then I look for the patterns and I work on patterns. So I'm always working in a 63 day neurocycle, neurocycle being the word that I use for the five step formula. And I do it daily over to organize. I've got a whole app, a neurocycle app that I literally walk you through it. So if people are interested, they can actually use the app to. And then fit in whatever they're working on into the app. And that's a daily practice trained millions around the world are doing or using this concept. Then what? The moment stuff. The in the moment stuff is vital. So first step was gather awareness of those four signals. So I'll do that if I get. I'll give you an example. We had a issue. I had an issue this morning where I had to do a presentation and I might, for some reason it slipped through. Not the timing and everything, but what the slideshow that needed to be made. There was a main slide that needed to be in this presentation. It was to a corporate and my team. Team, for some reason didn't make that slide for me. I make my own slideshows, but there was one that had to be because it was based on the company's needs. And so that part of the team that has those meetings, they create that data for me and they give it to me so I can add it to my slideshow. And like literally 30 minutes before I opened up the slideshow that I'd prepared and said to my team, I don't have that slide in here because it's collaborating and whatever. So it should have been in there. So Now I've got 30 minutes, minutes to get the most, probably the most important slide. It's the pivot slide. And now. So now what do I do? Because I'm also still getting ready because I had another meeting before that. Okay. And I had done a sauna. So I had done a sauna. I had done a meeting in my sauna. So the picture, you get it? Okay? So now. So I'm thinking 30 minutes, I have to finish getting ready and I have to get this. I'm getting. Instructing my team that I could feel my neck, my shoulders, I could feel. I was getting irritated. I was about to send out some snarky. Well, this is your job. You should have done this. And I literally said, sent a text that was a little snarky. And then immediately realized, this is just making. Everyone's getting worked up. We have to solve this problem now. And so I did a neurocycle. So I. It took me 60 seconds. For 10 seconds, I did a bit of physiology work, which is I breathed in for three counts and out for seven. When you breathe in, you activate your physiology and you start telling your brain it's going to. It's going to be okay. Then you Breathe out longer than you breathe in. It then calms down your actual physiology. So I know everyone knows about breathing, but the science behind breathing, well, the science behind it is, is like the inner why you breathe in, why you breathe out, why this time, why that time? So I used the 3 7, which is a 10 second pause, which is very powerful. That was 10 seconds of my 60 seconds. I quickly gathered awareness. I was getting very frustrated. I was irritated as well. And I'm feeling tremendous pressure. So pressure, the perspective, this is pressure. I've got to get ready and get this presentation ready. And it was to a huge crowd. And then the perspective. So frustration, irritation. My perspective was, oh my gosh, this is gonna be, you know, this could be a disaster. And in my body, my neck, and then in my, and then my behavior, I started making some snarky text remarks and then I stopped immediately. So I stood back, stopped texting, did the breathing, did those four sentences. I'm now 20 seconds in. Now in the next 10 seconds I reflected and thought, okay, why am I reacting like this? What actually happened here? And so that's the second step, is to reflect the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, the how. And I realized, oh, okay, there was a misconne because there was a change in time and this meeting moved from Wednesday 4pm to Monday 9am and something got crossed over in the wires. So then I remembered why this potentially happened. And that took me 10 seconds. And then I did the third step, which is a mindstorm write step. So it's like a genetic thing that you influence your gene switch and so on. And it's to do with writing. And I didn't even need to write, I had a pen right next to me, so I just wrote one word down. But the third step is, okay, what else is came up? What came up was that, okay, we need to have a system in place. Not another slack or another thing to control, but we just need to have a better system in place that this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future. Because actually it's happened in the past. Another 10 seconds has passed and I've just remembered this is, this could potentially be a pattern. So we need to watch out for it. Then I go into the fourth step, which is the recheck reconceptualization. Okay, this has happened. What do I do right now? What did you just. I instructed the main team member very nicely, I said, okay, there's been a mix up, can you do this? Otherwise I can use this alternative. And I Sent through the alternative that I quickly had created. In the moments where I was irritated, I said it's not very nice, but I can use it or can you fix this up? And then because I asked so nicely and I stayed calmed down, they sent back the within five minutes they sent back a beautiful version of that version and apologized for not having it on time. And basically my team had a discussion working out what went wrong so it won't happen in the future. And that was the reconceptualization the active reach was. While they were doing that, I went and finished getting ready and I didn't think about it because they said they would handle it. And when I was ready, opened my presentation, sat in front of my camera and lo and behold, it was a successful presentation. Now if I hadn't done that, that would have been a flustered moment, I would not have been pulled it together, et cetera. So that's what I'm talking about, managing the marketplace.
- [44:40]
A
Yeah, no, that's really helpful.
- [44:41]
C
Now that same 5 seconds steps is how you manage that moment, but it's also how you then do it. You stretch that out over 15 minutes over 63 days. If you've got a pattern. So let's say there's a trauma or there's a constant people pleasing or a constant problem with technology that you are overusing it and you need to actually work out a plan to rewire or whatever. That's when you need to go into the 63 day neuro cycle. So just to help people and then.
- [45:08]
A
You have a new habit, you have.
- [45:09]
C
A new response, then you have a new habit. So this is the book plus there's a course called a help in a hurry course that we've just launched that teaches you the 63 second with lots of techniques dealing with pressure, burnout, whatever. And then this is the book along with the NeuroCycle app that helps you do the wiring of the habit. So the neurocycle over 63 days. I'm just making that distinction because it's a lot of stuff that I'm saying.
- [45:32]
A
Yeah, it is a lot. And thank you. And we'll link to everything in the show notes. I want to shift gears in our remaining time together. I've seen you post online about artificial intelligence intelligence and I was just looking at my notes and you had a post, I think it was on Instagram that talked about outsourcing your brain.
- [45:51]
C
Yes.
- [45:52]
A
And that's something that I am concerned about. I use artificial intelligence. I don't think it's endemically Terrible. I think the right use is wise. I'm working, as we were discussing earlier before we hit record on a book about AI in the church. But I think you have to be really careful. And I'm worried about cognitive decline, I'm worried about mental obesity, so to speak. And I'm wondering, when you say this is your brain outsource, can you give us some thoughts about helpful and dangerous perhaps to the human mind. To the human.
- [46:27]
C
To humans Mind, brain, body connection, the psychonomic.
- [46:30]
A
Thank you. That's what I'm looking for.
- [46:31]
C
There you go. What is it doing?
- [46:33]
A
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I'd love to wrap up on that.
- [46:36]
C
Absolutely. So, like you, I'm totally for technology and AI. I think it's amazing, but it is, it is. If unmanaged, if you don't manage your mind through AI, you will have this issue. So there's been a lot of studies, in fact, Apple, you probably sought, brought out a couple of studies, they've been flying around in the recent months showing that they've done MRI imaging. Not them, but the student, the university they worked with.
- [46:59]
A
That's mit, right?
- [47:00]
C
That study, mit. And there's been the Stanford, there's been a lot of them popping out now. There's been a lot of. But in essence, in a nutshell, if you, you rely on AI to think for you. So if you just think, okay, well, I'm not going to write this email, I'm just going to give the instruction to AI and it's just going to generate that a. That's outsourcing the exercise that is so important that we need between the mind, brain, body connection. So what you do is you exclude, you close the door to the non conscious mind and the subconscious, which is basically like the filtering point in between the nonconscious and the consciousness, conscious mind. And when you do that, you actually affect the health of the brain and the body. So the brain literally is used to being stimulated. It is designed for constant food, which is thinking in a deep way. So if you don't think in a deep way and you basically outsource that thinking to a machine, that will actually AI, that will technology that will actually hallucinate when you give it too many instructions. I'm sure you've read about the AI hallucination.
- [48:03]
A
I've seen it, yeah.
- [48:04]
C
Yeah, you've seen it. I've seen it too.
- [48:05]
A
Yeah, I've broken it. That was fun.
- [48:08]
C
There we go. Exactly. You are. Your brain actually will get these changes, the structures change, you get more toxic, the brain gets More toxic. It affects your immune system, it affects your body, et cetera, et cetera.
- [48:19]
A
So you're getting into neuroplasticity. It can work against you and for you.
- [48:23]
C
Absolutely. Neuroplasticity, as I did some of the earliest work in the 90s, as I mentioned, in the world, actually. And neuroplasticity is happening whether you like it or not. Not. It's happening all day long, the moment you wake up, till the moment you go to sleep, and even when you're asleep, it's a different type, but it's also happening. So if you don't manage it, it's going in the wrong direction. So you're going to build the wrong networks in your brain and body if you don't use AI correctly. And using AI correctly is to recognize that it is algorithmic, it's computational. Your brain works on a. On an expanded version of algorithmic computation, which basically means that AI has been designed to. Based on how one neuron fires and the electromagnetics of one neuron doesn't look inside the neuron at the gravitational fields and the vibrational forces inside. A neuron also isn't able yet the technology to look at the relationship between when two neurons fire together. We have 100 billion. We don't even understand how one neuron connects with another neuron and how that generates. We haven't fully developed that science yet. So how can we even say that AI is equivalent to a brain, let alone mind? Because now we're talking brain. The mind is infinite and the brain is basically, it's finite, but it has the operational capacity to be used in an infinite way, if that makes sense. So therefore, AI is not even close to our human intelligence. If we use AI incorrectly, we dumb ourselves down. That's in a nutshell. Wow.
- [49:52]
A
Okay. If we use AI incorrectly, we dumb ourselves.
- [49:56]
C
Yeah, but if you use it correctly, you can actually enhance your functioning.
- [50:00]
A
Okay, so let's talk about correct and incorrect uses of AI, knowing that it's developing all the time. And you're totally right about the algorithm. I mean, it's basically. And the business model is there to keep you in, you know, you and I will be finished this conversation at some point. If I was having it with Chat or Claude or Perplexity. We're never done done. It's like, would you like me to turn that into a slide deck? Would you like a PDF document? Like, it's just, you know. And that's a business model, right?
- [50:29]
C
Yeah, yeah, that's a business model. As you said, the thing Is that.
- [50:32]
A
So right and wrong uses?
- [50:34]
C
Well, right uses are, it saves you a lot of time. But wrong uses is to think that that is the correct information so you can test it yourself. I mean, if you give an instruction, multiple instructions, and it starts to hallucinate. So let's say that you're trying to write, you're writing your book. Let's say now you, you say, okay, write a chapter just as a test. You're not, no one should write books with AI. I think that's the most terrible thing out. But let's just say that you want to write a blog and you want to write a blog on whatever, and you give the instruction and a few instructions to Claude or whatever and it generates this blog and you don't actually read it and evaluate it, you just, oh, it looks quite nice and you scan it and oh, nice fancy language because it's good at pulling words from all over the place and you don't actually go in and read. What does it actually say? On the surface it may sound like what you intended, but if you go and read and you read how the words are combined and you really think deeply. So you ask, answer, discuss around every sentence, you will be using AI correctly. Because when you ask, answer, discuss, you tap into the non conscious and you now bring your wisdom to evaluate. Ah, okay, great stimulation. There's a great sentence in front of me, but is it saying what I wanted to say? Ask yourself, answer yourself, discuss with yourself. Circle with a pen, even if you print it out, circle the concept level, which is the 35% level, circle what the concepts are if you can't find the meaning. And then when you look at what you've circled, you'll find you'll see this is not saying anything. Like I wanted to say this sentence and that word. This is nonsense. This sounds pretty, but it's actually not saying anything. And that's what I mean. That's an example.
- [52:10]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the worst thing you could do, just to summarize as we wrap up, is to use it to delegate your brain. Just like create my paper, I'm using it.
- [52:20]
C
Not just your brain, your mind, your conscious mind is a data processor, your non conscious mind and subconscious. The intelligence lies within the non conscious. So your data process, your conscious mind is not, not intelligent, but it doesn't have the intelligence because a child, a toddler is intelligent. But they learning, it's a very messy part of you and it has to be. It's hypothesis, it's a scientist, it's experimenting. So without Guidance. It will go all over the place, therefore. But it's way more intelligent than AI way. But you still need to guide. You don't want the conscious mind to get into loops very quickly, very, very, very quickly without the guidance of the non conscious. So if you. Yeah, so that's what AI can create, that very stuck mind. And that creates a stress response. And that stress response will lead to burnout. It will literally lead to burnout.
- [53:11]
A
I can't thank you enough for your time today and your insights. Your latest book is help in a hurry. And the other book you were about talking, talking about about the 63 day.
- [53:18]
C
Habit is called cleaning up your mental mess.
- [53:21]
A
There you go. All right.
- [53:24]
C
There's an app as well called NeuroCycle. It's available on itunes, Google Pay and the app. And we've got a web version. And then there's also a course, we have a help in a hurry course that teaches you how to do the 63 second little thing.
- [53:35]
A
Beautiful. We'll link to it all in the show notes and everything with Dr. Leaf. Caroline, thank you so much for your time today.
- [53:43]
C
My pleasure. Thank you for your great questions and allowing me to explain all this complex stuff.
- [53:49]
A
Well, that was an awful lot to cover. If you want show notes, we've got them for you. You can find them in the art of leadership academy. And if you want a quick and easy way to get into the academy absolutely free, you can join over 13,000 other leaders. You can go to theartofleadershipacademy.com and join there. Once you get in, you will discover all the show notes and some great discussion around episodes like this. And that's absolutely free. Coming up next time. We got J.D. greer. Man, I'm excited for this one. We talk about the culture wars, we talk about Charlie Kirk, when to speak out, why you can never win when you do, and social outrage. I think you are going to really resonate with this episode. If you follow wherever you're listening or watching, you'll never miss an episode. Also coming up, Lisa Terkerst, N.T. wright, Matt Redman, David Kinnaman and if you subscribe, you'll get my 2026 church trend as soon as they are released. Thank you so much for listening. I hope our conversation today was helpful. If it was leave a rating or review. We try to bring you the best conversations we can and I hope our conversation today helped you identify and break a growth barrier you're facing. Hey, before we go today, just a quick word. Let's be honest. At a point, certain certain point, hustling harder doesn't help. You probably hit that wall, right? I'm not sure about you, but when things aren't going particularly well or growing particularly well and I'm stuck, my gut reaction is just to double down and go harder. But what I've learned over time is you know what I need? I need an outside perspective. I need other voices to help me figure out what am I not seeing. Is there a better system, better strategy, like where are my blind spots? And you know, know what? You only learn from others who have been there. And that's why I created the Art of Leadership Academy. It's an online community of growth minded leaders. It's growing every day and it's a very focused space where you can grow faster and lead more effectively. Now you'll get stuff like show notes for every episode, but even better than that, you get some quarterly free webinars. With me, you get real dialogue with other church leaders. It's a troll free. I'm going to say it. Weirdo. Free environment. Okay? You're not going to get the kind of of stuff you get on social media. We moderate the content very carefully and the community. So if that sounds like something you'd benefit from, real leaders trying to make real progress in real churches, I would love for you to join in. And you know what's super cool? You're gonna find people who are a step ahead of you and you're gonna find people who are a step behind you. The people a step ahead of you are gonna help you. The people a step behind you, well, you can help them. And I'm in that community on a daily basis. So if that sounds like something you would love, it's totally, totally free. No gimmicks, no tricks. Just sign up today. Visit theartofleadershipacademy.com or click the link in the description of this episode. A few clicks, you're in and I'll see you on the inside.