Manage Your Mental Mess and Change Your Life in 5 steps

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ed Mylett Show – "Manage Your Mental Mess and Change Your Life in 5 Steps"

Podcast Information:

• Title: THE ED MYLETT SHOW
• Host/Author: Ed Mylett | Cumulus Podcast Network
• Episode: Manage Your Mental Mess and Change Your Life in 5 Steps
• Release Date: March 29, 2025
• Guest: Dr. Caroline Leaf, Neuropsychologist and Author

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Introduction to the Episode

In this insightful episode, Ed Mylett welcomes Dr. Caroline Leaf, a renowned neuropsychologist, to discuss transformative strategies for managing mental clutter and enhancing personal growth. The conversation delves deep into practical steps to rewire the brain, improve mental health, and foster a growth-oriented mindset.

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Understanding the NeuroCycle: A Five-Step Process

Dr. Caroline Leaf introduces the NeuroCycle, a strategic five-step method designed to deconstruct and reconstruct mental patterns over a span of 63 days. This process aims to enhance self-awareness, facilitate healing, and promote lasting behavioral change.

1. Gather Awareness (00:02:13)

   • Description: Deliberately observe and label your emotions, behaviors, physical sensations, and perspectives.
   • Quote:
     "Gathering awareness is like gathering apples off a tree. We're very organized in labeling our emotions, behaviors, bodily sensations, and viewpoints." ([02:50])

2. Reflect (00:03:00)

   • Description: Delve deeper into understanding the reasons behind your emotions and behaviors without trying to solve them all at once.
   • Quote:
     "Ask why you're feeling these emotions. It's not about solving everything in one day but understanding the underlying triggers." ([03:00])

3. Write (00:07:35)

   • Description: Dump all gathered and reflected information onto paper in a non-linear, dimensional format to engage both sides of the brain.
   • Quote:
     "Writing dimensionally forces the two sides of the brain to work together, creating a strong connection between conscious and subconscious." ([07:35])

4. Recheck (00:08:25)

   • Description: Identify triggers and patterns from your written reflections to move towards reconceptualization and healing.
   • Quote:
     "Look at what you've gathered—identify triggers and patterns to start the healing process." ([08:25])

5. Active Reach (00:09:26)

   • Description: Take actionable steps to reinforce positive changes and maintain progress throughout the day.
   • Quote:
     "Identify an action you can take today that reinforces your healing and keeps you moving forward." ([09:26])

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Application of the NeuroCycle Beyond Mental Health

Ed Mylett explores the versatility of the NeuroCycle, emphasizing its applicability not only for overcoming mental challenges like anxiety and depression but also as a tool for achieving personal goals and fostering growth.

• Goal Setting and Visualization ([10:39] - [12:10])
  • Ed's Adaptation:
    Ed shares his method of using the NeuroCycle for goal setting, likening it to creating a "highlight reel" to visualize past successes and propel future achievements.
  • Quote:
    "The highlight reel technique starts with familiar memories to create a positive neurochemistry that helps visualize and pursue future goals." ([12:10])

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Physical Activity and Mental Health

Dr. Leaf and Ed discuss the crucial role of physical movement in maintaining brain health, especially in children. They highlight how physical activity can serve as a pathway out of negative emotions and improve overall mental well-being.

• Impact on Children ([16:35] - [19:29])
  • Physical Activity as Therapy:
    Dr. Leaf emphasizes integrating physical exercises within the NeuroCycle to aid children in managing stress and improving sleep.
  • Ed's Personal Insights:
    Ed shares his experiences of how physical activities enhance emotional connections and reduce screen time-related issues in children.
  • Quote:
    "When we incorporate physical movement, we activate and release energy, helping children manage their emotions and improve sleep." ([19:29])

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Sleep: An Indicator of Mental Health

The conversation shifts to the importance of sleep as both an indicator and a facilitator of mental health. Dr. Leaf provides strategies for improving sleep patterns in children and adults through the NeuroCycle.

• Strategies for Better Sleep ([20:52] - [27:52])
  • Practical Steps:
    Dr. Leaf outlines methods for assessing and improving sleep by identifying emotional and behavioral signals that disrupt rest.
  • Case Study:
    A poignant example is shared about an abused child who overcame chronic sleep issues through the NeuroCycle, underscoring the process's efficacy.
  • Quote:
    "Helping a child visualize positive affirmations can significantly alter their neurochemistry, leading to better sleep and mental health." ([25:40])

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Medication vs. Behavioral Strategies

A critical discussion on the role of medication in managing mental health issues. Dr. Leaf advocates for empowering individuals through behavioral strategies before considering medication, emphasizing the limitations and drawbacks of pharmaceutical interventions.

• Empowerment Through NeuroCycle ([30:06] - [35:35])
  • Medication Cautions:
    Dr. Leaf explains that while medication can provide temporary relief, it doesn't address underlying issues. She distinguishes between drugs and medicines, advocating for psychological immunity and behavioral strategies.
  • Empowerment Focus:
    The emphasis is on creating safe spaces, validating emotions, and empowering individuals to change their relationship with themselves.
  • Quote:
    "Building psychological immunity is essential. It’s about feeling empowered to change your relationship with yourself, rather than relying solely on medication." ([30:08])

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Additional Insights and Practical Applications

Ed and Dr. Leaf delve into the integration of faith and physical cues to enhance mental health practices, highlighting the holistic approach of the NeuroCycle.

• Incorporating Prayer and Physical Cues ([26:01] - [29:08])
  • Prayer as a Tool:
    Ed shares how prayer aids in unloading burdens and fostering a sense of safety, while Dr. Leaf connects this to neurochemical processes that promote relaxation and readiness for sleep.
  • Managing Screen Time:
    They discuss the impact of excessive screen time on children’s mental health and sleep, advocating for balanced physical activity and mindful internet usage.
  • Quote:
    "Teaching children to manage their screen time and incorporate physical activities can prevent the negative impacts on their mental health and sleep patterns." ([29:08])

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Conclusion

In this episode of The Ed Mylett Show, Dr. Caroline Leaf provides a comprehensive framework—the NeuroCycle—for managing mental clutter and fostering personal growth. By systematically increasing self-awareness, reflecting on underlying causes, and taking actionable steps, listeners are equipped with practical tools to rewire their brains and enhance their lives. The discussion underscores the interplay between mental strategies, physical activity, sleep, and the judicious use of medication, offering a holistic approach to mental well-being.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Gathering awareness is like gathering apples off a tree. We're very organized in labeling our emotions, behaviors, bodily sensations, and viewpoints." — Dr. Caroline Leaf ([02:50])

• "Writing dimensionally forces the two sides of the brain to work together, creating a strong connection between conscious and subconscious." — Dr. Caroline Leaf ([07:35])

• "Building psychological immunity is essential. It’s about feeling empowered to change your relationship with yourself, rather than relying solely on medication." — Dr. Caroline Leaf ([30:08])

• "Teaching children to manage their screen time and incorporate physical activities can prevent the negative impacts on their mental health and sleep patterns." — Dr. Caroline Leaf ([29:08])

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Final Thoughts:

This episode serves as a valuable resource for anyone seeking to understand and improve their mental health through structured and scientifically grounded methods. Dr. Caroline Leaf's NeuroCycle offers a roadmap to not only manage mental mess but also to achieve significant personal transformation.

Transcript

[Ed Mylett]

So, hey guys, listen. We're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down. Growthday.com forward/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. He's got about 5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the Avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition, free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com that's growthday.com Ed this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

[Brendan Burchard]

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[Ed Mylett]

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[Brendan Burchard]

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[Ed Mylett]

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[Brendan Burchard]

Available in all states or situations.

[Ed Mylett]

Prices vary based on how you buy. This is the Ed and Mylan Show. Hey everyone. Welcome. Welcome to my weekend special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. I'm so excited about today because the woman sitting across from me is the definition of brilliant. And so, Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you for being here today.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

I'm very, very flattered, very honored. Thank you. And I love talking to you. It's always just you're an amazing interviewer.

[Ed Mylett]

During those 63 days. Let's do something practical. So now we kind of understand what it looks like, how it affects, how it gets wired, all that other stuff. So let's do strategic stuff now for a second. Okay, so what is. You wrote this for how to help your child. But when I'm reading the work, I'm like, this helps humans. Right? That's what it is. But so what is something, a strategy? You said awareness of the thought helps it lose its power over you. I'm using my description of it. Right. So I've always said that. Now I know why.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Yes.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay. What is something, a tactic or a strategy or a technique that somebody can use for their chopping or themselves that can help this in these 63 days that you would be proposing they do.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Okay, so what you do is you do the five steps of the neurocycle. Because what I did was strategically look over the years at how can you actually find the signals and do this whole deconstruction reconstruction thing. So you can't do it in one shot. So what you want to do is do a neurocycle, which is five steps. What are they? And I'll go through those in a moment. But you're going to do five steps in the sequence. The first part of the sequence is the first more or less three weeks where you go through the five steps in around 45, 15 to 45 minutes, not more and not less. Then the second 42 days where you stabilize and you just do it in five minutes. So the five steps are basically gathering awareness. And notice I say gathering. So it's a very conscious and deliberate. It's not like a mindfulness awareness, which this is beyond that. So when we talk about mindfulness meditation, breathing, decompression, all of those are very important to prepare the brain. So what you would do before you dive into the neurocycle, and you'll see this in my books and in my app. I've got an app as well called the NeuroCycle. These are two to three minute brain preparation, which could be anything from focusing on momentum worry to doing a 7:3:10 breathing exercise. So it's something to just get the neurophysiology under control. Then you. Or it could be a meditation, a prayer, whatever. Then you move into the actual work. And I'm about to slip off this chair.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay, go ahead.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

And you move into the. I get so into this, into the work of gather awareness, step one. So gathering awareness is a very specific process. Everything's really layered. Your mind, brain connection, psychoneurobiology, mind, brain, body. I'M actually a psychoneurobiologist to study that connection is very ordered and sequenced and structured. And if you want something to change, you've got to follow the steps of the order. So the neurocycle is a system in that you can put CBT techniques, you can put prayer, you can put whatever works for you, but put them in the right step. So when we gather awareness, we are gathering like gathering apples off a tree. We're not just randomly looking at things. You're very organized. Okay, what am I going to gather? Awareness of my emotions. I'm feeling depressed, I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling frustrated, whatever, just label them related to that emotion. What am I doing? What are my behaviors? What am I doing? What am I saying? How am I doing? And saying them. So maybe it's depression and maybe it's withdrawal. Then the third thing is you're going to say, how do I feel in my body when I'm feeling depressed and withdrawing? Maybe cardiovascular issues, heart palpitating. And then fourth category is, how am I looking at life in this moment? As I feel depressed, gut ache and withdrawing, I feel that life sucks. Very simple example. Those are four signals. So you go, step one is to gather those four. Step two is to ask why you're going a little deeper. Why am I feeling these emotions? Now you're not solving the whole problem. Don't try and solve it in one day. Just go as much as you can handle. It's very draining. So that's why I say limit. So it's, why am I having these. Maybe I'm having this depression. I seem to be having it because of it's happening a lot. I'm not sure why, but it's happening five times a day or it's happening once a week. Oh, if it is once a week, am I having the same behaviors? Why am I doing that? Withdrawing? How often am I withdrawing? What other things am I doing? Why do I think I'm doing that? So you work through each of those signals and try and get some more. Don't stay too long on those two steps. And then you write. Now you don't journal, you write, you dump. You literally dump what you've gathered awareness of and what you have reflected on. Because the first step was to gather awareness. The second step was to do this reflection thing. And then you dump it down on and literally in mind, I'm just write it all over the page. I've developed a system called the Metacog and for kids it's the bubble cog. And it's basically writing in a way that looks like a tree. So it's starting from the middle and it's working around in circles and branches and colors and arrows. And everything's connected. Everything's either on a line, in a bubble. If you don't like doing that, just write any old way. But try to write dimensionally, don't do it in lines, try and just put it all over the page. Because it brings in forces the two sides of the brain to work together. Creates a very strong connection between the conscious and the subconscious. Through the bridge of the subconscious. Yeah. And it starts diving deep. I mean, it's like, I can tell, you know, that when I worked with patients that had symptoms of schizophrenia, this is an extreme example. But just to show you how well this works, we would have them just basically metacog out what all these steps I'm going through. And they would have one whole personality on this side and they'd be continuing the same conversation in another hole. So you'd see the shift and then we could show them, hey, look what's going on. And from there we could unpack and find roots and things like that. So it's phenomenal in getting insight. Now you spoke about introspection earlier on. Introspection, insight, it means diving into the depths of the non conscious. That's the most intelligent.

[Ed Mylett]

So is writing part of step two or is that step three?

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Step three. So writing is step three, sorry. Gather awareness. Step one, reflect. Step two, writing step three. You're bringing order out of chaos. You're getting those three steps are taking deeper, deeper, deeper, getting increasing your introspection insight, pulling up things that are associated now that is things all over the page. A lot of it won't make sense. Things may shock you that come out day one, not really. But as you progress through the days, more and more will come up. And for example, around day seven, people start saying, oh, I never saw this connection. Day 14, like insight, insight into. Oh, that's associated with that. I didn't see that. This is why I'm doing this. So there's tremendous growth. If you don't force it, you just go through the cycle.

[Ed Mylett]

I don't want to interrupt you, but I want to ask you think during that awareness and the writing that you are uncovering some of the things that may trigger you as well.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Totally. So it's step four. Excellent question. Step four is looking at what you've gathered, awareness reflected on and written. You look, what are my triggers? What are the patterns? This has happened. What can I do? So step four is moving towards reconceptualization, reconstruction, healing, putting food on the plant, food on the roots to heal them. It's leading to that acceptance. You're not going to know why someone raped a child, why someone did this. That's their story. But that's your story. So you need to find out. I'm not crazy. I don't have a broken brain. I'm not genetically flawed. I don't have a mental illness. I'm showing up like this because of what happened to me. I can't answer why. I have to get to a certain level of acceptance. But at least I know why it's not me. It's because of. And that helps you heal and move forward. So it's very progressive. It's not walking in circles, round and around and around. You know, this is where you can bring in things like these or psychodynamic theory and act. There's a lot of different therapy techniques that people can bring in experiences from EMDR and into all these. Because this is a system. Yeah. Into these spaces.

[Ed Mylett]

What's the fifth step?

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

The fifth step is an action. Active reach. So you, you go into. From the triggers and things like that, you want to move towards an antidote for today. An action for today. So what can I do today to keep me in a safe space? I've done the work for today. I'm not going to fall back into working on this anyway. I've got to get going through the day. And also your brain and mind need a rest. They get tired. So it's an action, it's like a visualization, a statement, a combination, a little prayer, an affirmation. So this is where you would fit an affirmation or a CBT type technique like maybe a little visualization exercise or. So it's something that you do and say maybe something a simple as I can do this, I don't know how. And then visualize a rainbow. I mean it could be something as simple as that to an actual little technique or it could be a breathing technique. So it's an action that keeps you going through the day which helps you focus on the fact that you are moving towards healing. So you're removing energy from this thing because this process has brought this from the non conscious to the conscious and it's weakened these branches in the non conscious in it's strong and driving. When the non conscious and conscious are working together then this is weakened the protein branches, the chemicals so I can start restructuring and reorganizing I gotta tell.

[Ed Mylett]

You what I'm thinking when you're doing this because this applies to two different people. So everybody stay in here. Okay, so those are the five steps to sort of begin to rewire yourself or change your brain. The other part of me listening to this is if you're thinking, I really don't have a lot of these issues of anxiety or worry or depression. I also think that's the formula to create a change. Like if I had a goal and ambition, I'd become aware of what I wanted. Right.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Touch it.

[Ed Mylett]

I'd have all these reflections about it. I would then write about it. And I like the idea of it not being linear like a book, but actually all over the place. So there'd be like, that's almost like a dream, personal vision board or dream board that you're doing. Then I'd think about what were the triggers I need to create to generate this state. Could be snapping my fingers, it could be seeing something, it could be walking into my office, it could be getting into my car, it could be a particular person. So I'd use that trigger to then create that state. And then obviously the fifth would be what's an action that I can take towards this?

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

You've got it.

[Ed Mylett]

So that cycle can be used to uncover trauma, you know, reverse trauma, create brain health, but can also be a creative process in order to change your life.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

So you are brilliant because that's exactly where I started my research 38 years ago with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities and people that just wanted to improve their life. They just wanted. And it's called brain building. So it's the neuro cycle. And that was the first iteration of this thing to develop brain building. So it was helping kids learn. So getting data in as a. Opposed to deconstructing. It was constructing. So it's taking from the knowledge in school to learn for an exam or what is the goal in your vision? So that's the brain building aspect of the neuropsych.

[Ed Mylett]

This is huge right here. I gotta tell you something, because everyone always wants to create change. They're like, all right, do I get a vision board out? Like, do I? So this is a five step process.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

It actually does it.

[Ed Mylett]

To actually do it and to do it. Reinforcement. And by the way, in 63 days.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Exactly.

[Ed Mylett]

You're a different human being.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Totally different.

[Ed Mylett]

I do a thing. You're talking about visualization techniques. I should share this with you and maybe you can speak to why it might work. So everyone asked me, I Don't visualize very well. Yes, you do. You just need to get quiet. And it's a muscle you build when you decide to start visualizing your life. It is difficult. But one thing I've done is I've created, I teach it to a lot of my athletes is I use what I call a highlight reel technique. So what I actually start with is I start. I've never said this on the show because it's part of my private work, but I want you to speak to it. I actually start by visualizing memories from my life that are highlights. So it could be, for example, the birth of my son, the birth of my daughter, a home run I hit in baseball, an award I got a sale that I closed that was important. These are things my brain are already familiar with. To your point earlier, it's already been wired. I've already repeated the emotion. It's already in there. And so I see those things, and those are easy for me to recall because they're familiar. And then I move to what I want. So my brain, I think, begins to think they're one big highlight reel. Is there any data to prove that that's true? Meaning I'm already visualizing what I already something I want. I've seen an achievement. I've seen an achievement, and then I see the one that I want to achieve. And for me, my brain more easily sees the future when I start with things that I'm already familiar with in my past, because I think we do that in reverse. So if we've had a traumatic someone's hurt us in our life, we see this, we repeat it over and over, and then we then regenerate it in our real life with the next relations. And that's why people end up dating the same person over and over again.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

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

[Brendan Burchard]

Yes, that's exactly right.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

So I actually call these insurance policies. So they literally. So when I work with a person to actually be able to build their brain, we building an insurance policy. So you should be spending time on doing exactly that. So as you do that, you activate a whole different way that your energy flows across the two sides of your brain. You go into the highest level of intelligence, you unmask resilience, you increase your wisdom, you tune into the depths of your non conscious where intelligence, pretty much your intelligence resides because your conscious is basically a workhorse and it's guided by your non consciousness. So what we've got to see is what is dominant in the non conscious. Now your non conscious is a gentle lady, gentleman and it's basically always looking for the things that are blocking this growing and keeping you stuck in those. So it's on your side, but you have to tune in to what's coming up. So when you describe when you want to do something difficult, you first think of something good. What you've done is you've listened to wisdom from your non conscious, which is that process. You've then called those up, you've activated your resilience, you've put yourself in a highly intelligent wise state. Now you're in a state that's more able to cope with it. So when I work with a patient, for example, I would never start with that. I would say, okay, let's talk about, you know, your favorite moments or your tell me a story about, tell me a great movie, you know, let's talk about a great book, anything. And then we would focus on that. When they were in that state, I knew that I had got the mind brain connection, the psycho neuropathy.

[Ed Mylett]

I like, I feel like thinking about the things that have been positive in my life or experiences creates a neurochemistry to which I can create eyes.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

That's exactly what you do. Yes, you have, you've changed all the flow. These change, they increase gamma, which is a way that you want to flow. And when your eyes are open, you want like what we call low gamma across the whole brain. And then there's certain other patterns. I won't go into the details and that's got to go into have a certain beta pattern and so on. Those energy waves, when they are flowing in that state, they activate the different parts of the brain to then be on high alert, to respond and do what they designed to do, which then impacts your neurochemistry, then your endocrine system, your cardio, everything then comes together and you are in this prime state. Your HPA axis is now on high alert and you now are in the ideal state for solution finding.

[Ed Mylett]

This is so good you guys. This is why I do the show right here. So let me just give you this again. Step one, gather awareness. Step two, reflect Step three, write, play, draw. Step four, recheck. Step five, active reach, which is basically what we've been describing here. What about physical movement and brain health? And it's not in here, but I want to ask you about that. I find that my anxiety and depression and concern and worry or angst is often something physically I'm doing. I feel like there's a physical nature to it. And I have found that when I change my physiology, I tend to feel like I've changed. Maybe your physical body is your unconscious mind, I don't know. I'll let you answer this. But when my body begins to move in a certain way, I have found that to be a pathway out of some of the negative emotions that I'm feeling. And I'm wondering, even with children, is part of the mental health issues we're seeing that they're less and less active physically, meaning a lot more video gaming. Right. A lot more stuff on their phone, a lot more stuff on their Mac or their iPad. Whereas when I was a kid, I'm sure mental health issues were very prevalent. But we were outside playing, we were playing football, we were running around, we were running. There was nothing to do inside, right? So we were outdoors more. And I know that's not really part of what we're talking about here, but.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

I'm just saying it is related.

[Ed Mylett]

Is it related?

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

No, it's totally related. And part of. You'll see in my books, in my neuroscience, where all these steps are the Neurocycle app, I literally walk you through the process. And in the children's book, the Active Reaches, I encourage that physical activity. I encourage. And you'll see throughout the actual five steps, you can bring in the physical activity in different ways. So basically your body, your mind stores in three places. Mind which is all around you, these gravitational fields and so on. Brain, the trees, but in the body, in the cells. So therefore that's how we have body memory. That's how when you have recall something that you get, your body responds as well. So that body response is really important. For example, if you're trying to get your children to talk after school and they don't want to talk, let them have a little rest, but go for a walk, start doing something and the action activates and releases. So it's not that the non conscious is the body, it's that the non conscious is operating the body. It's your driving system, it's mind driving. So your non conscious is the thing that's always using every part of you, your mind, brain, and body are on your side. We have this intent, this, this psychoneurobiological link that is our superpower, that literally when we understand how to read it, we can move forward. So you explained, you said that if you feel angst, you can feel your body feeling it angst. Emotional warning signal, your body feeling it, physical warning signal. You probably not totally focused initially on your behaviors and your perspective. Then you move. As you move, you start unlocking and getting an idea of okay, and that's fall under the behavioral signal as well. Then it starts unlocking the others and you start getting into space where you can work on going through this process and then you can fit movement in any way.

[Ed Mylett]

The reason I feel so big about physical stuff and brain mental health is like, take your spouse for a second. You think about the moments of your life that you feel the most connected. Let's just be honest. Some of it can be your sexual time with. Why? What's happening? Something physical is happening between the two of you. When I want to open up, like with my children or something like that. When I really want to get them to talk. You're so brilliant. Because I found putting them on the couch or sitting on their bed is okay, but if we take a walk, it's brilliant. We take a walk. To your point, we're changing something there. Even laying on the couch with your spouse, watching Netflix, when they're actually touching each other and laying on each other, compared to when they're on one side of the couch and you're on the other, there's a deeper connection when something physical is involved.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Exactly.

[Ed Mylett]

The other part of it that you write about in the book that I've never really looked at before. And you talk about this particularly with children. So the book is written. You know, Dr. Lee's books have been for everybody. This one's more specifically guided towards children, but really everything in them.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Parents for children. So to have parents help parents help their children.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah, parents and children. Right. But sleep. So if you have a child or yourself, because I know this is true with me, when I'm not sleeping, something's not so good with me.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Typically.

[Ed Mylett]

Right. But it's interesting to me. I never thought about sleep when it came to my children. If they're not sleeping, that's probably an indicator of something. So talk about sleep and children and even how they relate to each of us individually.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Absolutely. Well, what I've tried to do in this book is to try and find the things that I know are hot button topics to try and help parents have A and to teach the neuropsycho in such a way that it's super simple, it's very practical, whatever. So I take areas like trauma, sleep, etc. And I'm glad you've mentioned the sleep because there's so much scariness around sleep too because you know, you go to a doctor, one of the first things they'll say about you is your child sleeping. Are you sleeping? And they have to sleep or they're going to die. It's not quite that extreme. It's very fear mongering. And yes there is a valid point to sleep. Sleep is very important. How many hours of sleep a person should sleep in a day, we don't actually know really. And also people have different patterns of sleep. So this thing that your child must sleep eight hours a day is not necessarily true. Exactly. But if your child isn't sleeping and there is a persistent pattern of bad sleep, there's something going on that definitely would be classified under your behavioral warning signals and it's worth investigating. And that's why I actually put sleep neuro cycles into the book on things. There's different ones that you can do because preparing yourself for sleep starts when you wake up in the morning. You know, it's like when you wake up in the morning, the first thing is as the chemistry starts readjusting so that you can become conscious at that moment to train yourself to just what are my four signals? What am I feeling? Am I feeling sad? Am I complaining? Quickly assist your quick assessment of your four signals. So it's what are my emotions? What's my body doing? What are my behaviors in this moment? Like I know I'm lying in bed, but am I tense? And what's my perspective? I don't want to do today. If you can catch that takes you those four things can take you 10 seconds and can really already prepare you for a night's sleep. It sets you into it opens your mind that you can actually then face the day. So that's one thing you can do. I've got a whole thing there that you can do a sleep neurocycle for children as they wake up. Then if you see there's a pattern of children not sleeping, it's to find a time during the day that's a good time either early evening when they've been to school, they've had dinner, they've played, that's sort of a good time to kind of work around. But you can find don't do this when they're exhausted and then you can Do a whole neurocycle to try and work through what the cause could be when we don't sleep. The main reason we don't sleep, and a lot of people will maybe not agree with me here, but the main reason we don't sleep is because we have unresolved issues that we are scared of.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes, for sure, agree.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

It changes your energy in your brain and your brain, all the things, the melatonin, all those things. Because there's so many cases, and I actually give a case in the study in the book of quite a traumatic situation of a child who was abused physically and sexually from 3 months of age but just could not sleep through the night. And they did everything, all the sleep aids, all the white noise, everything you can possibly do. And not that those don't work, they are definitely going to facilitate and help. But the core issue was the child's abuse and the impact of that. Although the child was out of that unsafe environment that you had to deal with what was going on. And that child was very young. So once the parent just happened to come across my stuff and do the neurocycle and the child saw the parent doing it and started doing it. And within four days this child was sleeping. Now this was an eight year old. They didn't use this book because this book wasn't out yet. The child saw what the mom was doing, saw the change in the mom because if the kids watch us and this was an 8 year old and said, I want to do what you're doing. And so she adapted it as best she could and this child started sleeping within four days. So the core issue there was a trauma that was unresolved. And you said it yourself. I know I do. If I've got something that I haven't dealt with or something's worried me or I have that phone call before bed that said, that's it. My sleep's gone until I've dealt with it.

[Ed Mylett]

Can I give you one with children that I think is unsaid And I know you're such a person of faith, so I'm going to give you what helps me sleep and it leads to this unresolved stuff. And I just want to say this to everybody, it's prayer. And let me say why. So prayer at night is a chance for me to take my burdens and put them on my higher power, in my case, Jesus. But whatever your faith is, and I know you share my faith and I wonder how many people are praying with their children at night because this is an opportunity for your children to probably open up, up. I think it's an opportunity for them to relieve themselves of their burdens. And I have found that when I have really deep, beautiful prayer, even if it's brief, that I sleep better at night because there's a perspective that I get that I'm protected, safe. I really wonder that. The second thing is, I want to ask you about both these. So this is for adults, but it also affects our children more and more. Our children are on their screens late at night. I know this is just a brain issue, so it's not necessarily trauma, but there's all this data about blue screen time and how it's difficult to sleep. I don't know if it's accurate or not, but I know there's. When you're doing homework, it's stressful. I think people let their children do their homework too late at night, and now that's a problem. Now it's a stressor. Now it's a trauma. Also, they're on their screen. And a lot of these schools put so much homework on their children. This is being real.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Yeah, it's like a real problem's a problem.

[Ed Mylett]

So when your kids get home from school, wouldn't it be smarter to get them a. To start doing their homework earlier so they're off of their screens and away from stress? Stressful stuff before sleep. Also true for you as an adult. And just prayer. I know it's not a major part of what's happening in here, but am I right that both of those things would probably make an impact on sleep and maybe then their mental health?

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Absolutely. You know, through prayer, if you look at prayer in terms of any religion or any philosophy or any belief, if people don't even believe in anything, it can be seen as a way of just trying to organize yourself and then believe that it's not just me, there's something more. And we know what's common to all mankind, and that's love. So, you know, to talk to a child about loveness. So you could do a loveness neuro cycle. You could call it a prayer neuro cycle, whatever you want. But you can actually say, okay, well, let's look at what are. What am I feeling right now? And why do we think we feel that? And you can go through the five steps and that's your prayer. And you can. Your little active reach could maybe be in some quote, a little scripture. It could be a visualization of something, whatever, a beautiful quote or something like that. So that is basically a form of prayer because you're tuning into an unconscious, which is your spirit, which is your wisdom, which is your. And you're teaching a child to do that. So yes, it is form of unloading your burdens into. Either you believe it's Jesus, God, loveness, whatever. I love to talk about godness and loveness because that's something that's relatable to anyone, you know. So you kind of step into that space and there's so much physics behind this too and quantum physics and science behind how you're collapsing the consciousness and I mean, it's just. We could talk for another two hours about that. So yes, totally. I do believe that. And it'll set your brain waves to a point where your brain can start shifting into sleep mode, which will then have a neurochemical effect on the melatonin and those kinds of things and controlling adrenaline. So it will have, it has. What I've shown with my work is that when you use mind stuff and specifically the tool of the neuro cycle, which is mind management, and as I said, you can put whatever you want in that. You are changing your psychoneurobiology. So you're changing cortisol levels, you're changing homocysteine levels, you're changing all the things that can keep you awake, you are getting them to the point where you're dropping, changing, getting brain balance with the brain waves, that kind of stuff. So it's real. I mean that's very, very real.

[Ed Mylett]

I don't think I've done an interview in like 45 or 50 minutes with more stuff. We've done thought tre, done the neuro cycle, we've done the non conscious mind, we've done all of these different things here. We've done the highlight reel which I kicked in here today. If I was to ask you, I get to ask you one more question.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Did you want me to answer the second part of the other question?

[Ed Mylett]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

What was the second part of the other question?

[Ed Mylett]

Second part of the other question was blue screen.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Oh yes. Okay. Bullying, social media, all that stuff, it's immersed us in stimulation. So it's good, very good. And bad. All we need to do is teach our kids to manage it. That's the key. It's not going away. So it's not a bad thing if we know how to manage it. So it's just finding what works for you and your family in terms of blue screens and all those things. There's a lot of science that supports and contradicts the concept. Listen, if a person's worked Up. Doesn't matter what you do about blue screens, they're still going to stay awake. So sometimes people, if they're relaxed enough and they're watching their film or whatever before they go to sleep, it's not going to be an issue. It's very much up to the individual. It's how we are managing. It's what you've got to experiment with your child and with yourself and see what works for you that's really important. So it's a bio individual aspect but just to bear in mind if we don't manage the immersion that we live in before, for example, very quick kids would get bullied at school. That's not anything bullying's been around since.

[Ed Mylett]

The difference is it follows them home.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Now it's 24, it's the immerse. It's an immersion versus an immersion experience versus an intermittent experience. And when you have that distinction, that's what. So we have to learn to manage the immers. So I mean I can go for hours about that alone but that kind of just.

[Ed Mylett]

By the way, I would love you to stay for hours. I would actually love that you know that unfortunately you have somewhere to go. I can sit here all day.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

I know I could stay all day chatting to you as well.

[Ed Mylett]

Let me ask you one last question because I think people want to know this. I have a very good friend I've been thinking about the entire interview who has a child that's just really had chronic struggles with mental health issues over and over to the point where they've done cutting and self harm. It's gotten really severe and that child probably in my opinion should be more physically active. I know they have prayer in their life. The neuro cycle could be a game changer for them. So I can't wait for them to hear this. I really, really believe the neuro cycle could be a game changer. And to think that maybe in 63 to a certain amount of days if it's more traumatic, you said a little bit longer that someone can create positive and or remove negative things in their.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Life, balance the two together.

[Ed Mylett]

When is. I guess the last question I would have for today is because it's worth asking when is it time for medication with somebody in their brain? Is that something that you know, you must believe in some cases if someone's, you know, schizophrenic that potentially they need medication or do you believe medication never. When does somebody step and the risks of doing so.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Okay, so loaded question. First of all, you're just to quickly Refer to your friend's child who's self harming. What is the age? Just very quickly, teenager, Teenager, okay. So that what they need, what we all need, is to feel empowered and not to feel that there's something wrong with us. And our current biomedical model will say that you've got a broken brain and so that creates a sense of hopelessness. We also need to help our children develop psychological immunity. So not just immune system, like our immune system helps. We build our immune system, you build your muscles and resistance training. We've got to build our psychological immunity. And what we've taken from our children in a lot of our current models is that ability to say, it's okay to be a mess, let's work through this mess together. So a huge part of my work in the book that I've just released is about you as a parent knowing how to manage your. They model what they see and model exactly. And then allowing a child a space, no matter what they say to you, no judgment, no compassion, but saying, listen, I see how you're showing up. I validate, I recognize, let's work through this together. Here's a system that's scientific that we can work through together. And the key, Ed, is empowerment. You have to get a person empowered to change their relationship with themself. And when that happens, that's when the growth comes, the cutting, the self harm, whatever it is. Alcohol addiction, whatever it may be, is coming from. Yes, the traumas you can go through, all the. I bet you that child probably has had so much therapy that they can tell you why they're doing it to a certain extent. But to get the change in a person's life, it starts with feeling, okay, I am empowered to do this. It's okay to be like this. It's not me. I'm responding to life circumstances. Here's a plan for me to be able to move forward and be empowered to actually rewise that my brain and my body do what my mind, what I know my wise mind wants it to do. So that's a simple answer to that. Medication's a very complex answer, but I'm going to do the easiest, quickest version, absolutely upfront. I'm not telling anyone to stop their medication immediately because of the withdrawal. Let's make a quick distinction between drugs and medicine. Medicines are aimed to try and fix a problem, like insulin for diabetes. We can test for diabetes, we can find. We know there's a biological cause and we've got a drug that's fairly specific to the problem. When it comes to where is a child cutting, which is a behaviour depression perspective of life sucks, battling all the things that you describe with your friend's child, which is obviously, this is very what I'm saying, but that cluster of things, that is not a brain disease, that's going to be fixed by a drug that's not coming from something wrong in the brain and a chemical imbalance, it's coming from some cluster of toxic issues and things that that child does not know how to process. Self cutting, for example, is so much pain inside yourself that it's too much inside, so it's easier to transfer the pain to the cutting so that that pain detracts from the internal pain. And that's an energy that's. No energy's lost, it's only. So it's transferred energy. So we must transfer child's energy into being able to create safe spaces so that they can talk to us as parents, not just the therapist, but us as parents, caregivers, people that they trust, peers. Peers are fantastic for supporting and that will help them sort of transfer that energy. So a drug is something that, like alcohol, cocaine and psychotropics, they fall under the same category. They're not fixing anything, they're not restoring, they are drugs and a drug is a psychoactive substance. So change the state of the brain versus a medicine is trying to fix something. So antidepressants aren't fixing chemical imbalance that's been disproved, It's a myth. The pillars of psychiatry that are used to say that you've got a chemical imbalance, etc. They're not doing that. What they're doing is they are providing temporary relief. So if someone is in such a bad state, so for example, someone's having very extreme delusions and hallucinations, which is not a disease of schizophrenia, it's schizophrenia symptoms. So instead of saying schizophrenia, bipolar, etc. As a label or diagnosis, which is very unscientific and inaccurate, and does this actually does harm, research has shown to the person it doesn't recognize the enormity of what they're going through. It's rather, let's say they describe it as behaviours because of something huge in their life. And let's look at this whole person, they don't need a disease label and a medication to validate what they're going through. It's valid enough for them to get the support they need a label and a drug, put it in a little box and make it smaller. Telling them the story, letting them talk, going through that process gives it the size that it needs, if that makes sense. So the drug, the way I would recommend drugs is to see them as drugs, not medications. And if someone's in an extreme state temporarily, like you don't, if you have a headache, you take an ibuprofen to relieve the symptoms but you don't go on ibuprofen chronically, in other words, every day. That's how we should look at these things. So if someone's in a. Yeah, so if someone's in a really bad way, medicine.

[Ed Mylett]

And by the way, she also said in the very beginning that if you're on medication, she's not encouraging to.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

And if people do want to withdraw. I have interviewed top scientists in the world that are drug withdrawal experts and they can go and listen to my podcast and they can search through drug withdrawal and they'll have the top experts with all the resources to guide them through that process.

[Ed Mylett]

What a remarkable conversation. It just flew by.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

It did.

[Ed Mylett]

It did fly by. I'm so excited to have this guest here today. She's one of the most brilliant people you're ever going to meet in your life. She's a best selling author, she's got a PhD in communication pathology, she's brain brilliant. And you're going to write a bunch of notes today. I mean like a bunch of notes. So Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you so.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Much for that lovely introduction and I just absolutely love talking to you. We had the most amazing talk on when you, when I interviewed you and I think you're incredible as well. So thank you.

[Ed Mylett]

What's difference between brain and mind and what are these five steps to managing our mind? Maybe you just listed a few of them there but I like lists so I'm just wondering what those are.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Absolutely. Well first of all, the five steps we call the neuro, what I call it the neuro cycle. So with your mind, you're cycling through your brain, you directing the neuroplasticity which is really nice to know you can actually direct changes in your brain. So my whole premise is that if you are always, your mind is always working and it's always changing the brain and it's always happening. Can we direct that process? So for three, three almost four decades now I've been researching that and the answer is yes. And that's what's in the book cleaning up your mental mess. So if you add the neuro cycle to your lifestyle and it's a lifestyle, you actually will literally improve your ability to manage your mind by 81% and more which is phenomenal because it that you influence cellular health through the telomeres which we can unpack as well. You can reduce inflammation, you can improve your immune function, your cardiovascular function, neurological, kidney like everything about your body will respond to mind management because your mind basically is driving all those functions anyway. Your gut health, your gut brain interaction, all of it isn't happening. If you did, your brain and body are dead. So what's keeping, what's the difference between a dead person and an alignment person? Mind. So if mind is messy, brain and body are messy. If mind is cleaned up and it's a process because we all going to be messy because we have free will. And part of getting their mind sorted out, part of mind management is dealing with a mental mess. It's accepting I'm going to be make bad decisions, I'm going to get into arguments, I am going to make, you know, misunderstand people. I am going to have acute traumas and toxic trauma and imposter syndrome and people pleasing and all this stuff all of us go through in different ways. So I'm going to have that and it's okay, but how am I going to manage it? So for me personally what's happened over the years is that I still go through these things. But the difference is I'm 81% more efficient in identifying and managing. So instead of something that could throw me years ago for days and affect my work and everything, I can deal with it within seconds, in minutes and get back on track. So that's one part of the answer. So before I go to mind brain, do you want to ask anything or unpack anything with what I said, are.

[Ed Mylett]

There specifically five things like it are going to sequence?

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Yes, it's a sequence. So, so before I tell the sequence, let me tell you mind brain, because it'll make so much more sense because I've said alluded to it a lot. So your mind is separate from your brain but inseparable. So the body is the brain. The brain and mind are not the same thing. And the brain and body collectively are made of 37 to 100 trillion cells. And your mind is. And then those 37 to 100 trillion cells arrange themselves into this incredible the brain and the heart and the lungs, et cetera. And your mind is what actually is the external force that keeps them going. The blood flowing, the chemicals, electricity, electromagnetics, all of that, which is phenomenal. So that's why if our mind's not managed, the body and the brain will be a mess. And so, and that goes down to even like if you are eating, if you're eating, maybe eating a farm to table, wonderful diet, et cetera, but you're not dealing with your anxiety or you're not, you're just trying to stuff it down or you're not dealing with that bad habit or that toxic trauma. You will lose up to 80% of the nutrition because your mind has affected the ability of the digestive system to actually digest and get the, simulate the nutrients. And sometimes it's kind of messy and sometimes it's great. And we all, if we're human, we are going to experience messes and there's no shame in that. The sooner we get rid of the shame, shame and guilt and condemnation around being messy. And the sooner we as leaders talk about the mind more authentically, the more we give people that follow us permission to talk about mind. Only 3% of leaders are talking about mind, which is terrible. So that doesn't, that's creating the stigma that they are pretending that we're perfect. And that's why we see people that seem to be perfect in their lives and they're committing suicide. Meanwhile, it's because we've got this philosophy in this day and age, age of not being open and seeing issues of the mind as helpful messengers of an underlying issue. The neuro cycle then is these five step. It is how you manage your mind moment by moment. So it's a lifestyle. So the neuro cycle is what you do when you're awake and, and conscious and it then automatically prepares you for sleep because sleep is fixing up your brain. So your mind is always with you, so your mind always needs to be managed. And so an analogy. And then I'll dive into, into the five steps. You can go three weeks without food, you can go three days without water, you can go three minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go three seconds without using your mind. So you're always thinking, feeling and choosing. Yeah. So it's gather awareness. Second step is to reflect. Third step is to write. Four step is to recheck. And the first step is an active reach. So each of those, they're so profound, they do the most phenomenal stuff in your brain. And the first half, the book where I talk about the mental health system and I talk about my clinical trials, I do explain what each of those steps are doing. So the first thing is to gather awareness. Gather awareness and I've chosen words very carefully. If you think of a big fat apple tree and you apple picking and this apple tree is so Full that you actually can't. Like, you just go up and you just nudge it and the apples are just falling on your head. That's how we often feel when our mind's a mess. They just. Everything's just falling on our head and it's just too much. So what you can do with the neuropsycho is when you feel that situation coming on, remove yourself from the tree and stand back and watch the tree and gather awareness of all of that. Don't be scared of it. Don't run away from the apple tree. Just stand back and observe the apple tree. Observe what's going on there.

[Ed Mylett]

Let me jump in about that. This is brilliant. One of the things I've taught for a long time, I didn't understand the neuroscience behind it was that for me, and there's four other steps. This is why everybody needs to get the book. But awareness of your thoughts. I've always said when I'm aware of these patterns, when I'm aware of my thoughts, they begin to lose their power over me, their influence over me. And one of the reasons that you're explaining it scientifically, which I've always wanted to understand better, because I do become separate from the thought when I observe it, almost like I'm above it and distant from it, like you said. And I realize I'm not just that thought. And that is a pattern that I'm running. And so I just want to acknowledge what Caroline is saying, because from a practical standpoint, when I coach people, this is something that is the first thing I teach is just becoming aware. Now, to know that there's four other steps is obviously very empowering as well. But I want to just unpack this a little bit into another area. So I want to use your brilliance towards something else. One thing I want to acknowledge is that what Caroline is saying is that neuroplasticity is real, that mind can change matter. That literally that these thoughts that if you change them, change the protein structures and in your brain, change the matter of your brain. So this is powerful to know that we can physically change our brain by using our mind. And this distinction between the mind and the brain is also a breakthrough way of listening to it or seeing it. For me, as I'm sure it is for everybody else, just those things alone, just those two things alone have made our time already incredibly invaluable for me and anybody listening to it. All right, pants I'm wearing pretty comfy. Fit me really, really well. Can't show you quite on the camera here. 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Where dramatic design meets distinctive sporting character, it truly redefines luxury with dramatic modernity. Explore the Range Rover sport@range rover.com US Sports Sport. This message is sponsored by Green Light. Hey listen, one of the things I did okay as a dad was I did teach my kids about money and it was one of the most difficult things to teach them because it's not taught in school at all. They learned all of these things in school that quite frankly they're not going to use in their real life and things they really need like learning about money and budgeting and the value of a dollar. Let's be honest, most of us learned about saving and budgeting way later than we should have. But here's the good news. You can give it to your kids with a head start with Green Light. Green Light's a debit card and a app made for families that lets kids learn how to save, invest and spend money wisely. Parents can send their kids money on the app and keep track of their saving and spending. It's convenient way for parents to raise financially smart kids and families to navigate life together. It's really good. Maybe that's why millions of parents are already using it with their kids and learning about how money works on Greenlight. So start your risk free Greenlight trial [e-mail] ED that's greenlight.com ED to get started. Greenlight.com ED that was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Mylett show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. I'm so excited to have this lady here with me. I'm fascinated by her work and because the applications in so many different areas of my own life. And I believe for the audience today she's got a new book out called Peak Mind. She's a neuroscientist professor of psychology at University of Miami and I already like her. Amishi Jha, welcome to the program.

[Brendan Burchard]

Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

[Ed Mylett]

I think also that if you've had some success too, that if it doesn't come with a dose of humility, that when you begin to walk into every room and every environment, think you've already figured it out. You already know this stunts growth as well because you're, what you're saying is it blunts you taking in new data and new information. Information.

[Brendan Burchard]

Correct. Correct. You get it. You totally get it. You are denying yourself better data, more data to inform the decisions that happen. So don't do that. Don't do that to yourself. Right?

[Ed Mylett]

Give us the exercise we've been building up. Give us one.

[Brendan Burchard]

Okay, so this is, I'm gonna give you a longer one just to describe the steps and then we'll do like one that you could do anytime, all the time. So this is like a basic mindfulness practice and I call it again tied to what we're talking about in the book. And attention the find your Flashlight practice.

[Ed Mylett]

Great.

[Brendan Burchard]

Because oftentimes it's not that we don't. We can't focus. It's that we don't know where we're focusing at any moment.

[Ed Mylett]

That's true.

[Brendan Burchard]

So the instruction would be, and I guide people to kind of ramp up to about 12 minutes a day that our data suggests is beneficial. Do this. But to start out, like, do 30 seconds of this, commit to that for a few weeks and see how that goes. So the practice is essentially find a quiet, comfortable spot and take this time seriously, Even if it's 30 seconds or a minute. Sit in an upright, alert posture, like a dignified. You know, if we do it now, it's just like upright, alert, dignified. And first step is just acknowledge notice. Shine the floodlight on your experience that you're breathing right now. Then what you're going to do is hone in on something that actually you notice is prominent in your experiences of breathing. So do you notice anything that feels prominent, like the coolness of air, maybe by your nose or maybe your chest?

[Ed Mylett]

It's actually the sound I'm making.

[Brendan Burchard]

Okay, great. Yeah, the sound. That's a great one, too. That's where you're going to hold the point, the flashlight. That's your attentional target for this short practice. So direct that flashlight right there. Keep it steady. You can close your eyes if you want to.

[Ed Mylett]

What?

[Brendan Burchard]

Whatever you choose. Just to limit this sensory input. And if it hasn't happened yet, it surely will. Your mind will wander, and all you do in that moment is notice it. Ah, the mind has wandered away. Next step, take that flashlight, redirect it back to that same attentional target, and repeat. So it's essentially focus, point that flashlight. Notice, use the floodlight redirect, get the juggler to do its job.

[Ed Mylett]

Oh, my goodness. You know, one. Can I ask about that?

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah, please.

[Ed Mylett]

When I first started this, there was like a judgment when I drift away.

[Brendan Burchard]

Oh, now it's a total win. It's a win.

[Ed Mylett]

It's actually a win because it gives us a chance to redirect the flashlight. Right. This is so important because I used to, I don't know, maybe you. Maybe you're further along than me, but in the beginning, I was like, gosh, man, I'm gone this for like 24 seconds and I'm out. But you're actually saying that's actually a gift when we drift away, because it allows us to build this flashlight. I'll call it a muscle, so to speak.

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Ed Mylett]

That we're coming back. That's really good.

[Brendan Burchard]

But now I hope it makes sense why I wanted to describe those three systems because we hit all three in this.

[Ed Mylett]

It does.

[Brendan Burchard]

And I think it's really important to not think of the want wandering as a problem. The wandering. Remember we started out talking about 50% of the time it's the nature of the mind. I didn't say, ed, if you happen to be one of those weird people with mind wanders like us normal people don't have that you have mind wandering. I didn't say that. I said when your mind wanders, because it's gonna wander for sure. Just bring it back. And not doing that with the added story, the added reactivity is so important.

[Ed Mylett]

I was just thinking of the. I did a lot of work when I was younger than I do now with kids, and I have so many parents almost just judge their children for their. He can't stay focused in the classroom. He drifts away. And I'm just thinking right now, like, what a breakthrough this might be for some parents who are listening to this to realize that that's. Actually everyone is at 50%. Maybe your kid reveals it more than other kids do. Doesn't conceal it as well.

[Brendan Burchard]

Right.

[Ed Mylett]

Maybe it manifests in talking out loud as opposed to scribbling on a sheet of paper. So it's more apparent. But this is something that even with. Do you believe. Is there a particular age where you. You believe a child might be able to begin to build this? I'm calling it building a muscle because everybody can relate to that.

[Brendan Burchard]

I think it is. It's practice. It's strengthening. So the first thing to say is that this brain system of attention is one of the slowest to develop. We don't fully develop this capacity till we're about 25. And one of the reasons is it relies on the frontal lobes, which are the slowest brain region to develop. So, you know, it does kind of drive me nuts sometimes. And I feel for parents when they're. But when they're not happy that their children aren't paying attention or their response is pay attention, it's not going to help at all. And in fact, understanding that that's the thing that is your child is not not paying attention because they don't know that they should. Often it's that they don't know where their attention is. Just like we are saying, we don't know.

[Ed Mylett]

That's good.

[Brendan Burchard]

So I think that the thing to. And by the way, yes, absolutely. There's a huge enterprise of offering mindfulness training in a Developmentally appropriate manner to children as young as preschool. Really, we can do these in very useful ways for children. But what you're having them cultivate is not just focus, focus, focus, it's where are you right now? Where are you in a friendly, self supportive way? And is that where you want to be right now? You know, when you talk to yourself in that manner of like, where am I right now? Is that where I want to be? All of a sudden the world doesn't feel as dire, like, oh, I'm over here, I think I want to be over there. Instead, I think that's what I should be doing right now is being over there. It's a different relationship. And if you, the younger that we can get people to start understanding that this is befriending your mind in a way that allows it to be used to your benefit.

[Ed Mylett]

That's fascinating to me.

[Brendan Burchard]

Punitive to yourself.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah, I'm just thinking I'm sitting here as a 50 year old old man. I've done different forms of meditation, mindfulness. I'm relatively productive human being and I'm confessing to the audience that oftentimes I'm going 24 seconds and I'm out of my attention. Well, my attention has changed rather so the idea that we're concerned about our 8 year old who might have the exact same or does have the exact same scenario that I do. I'm just curious, has there been any data? Are kids even more than 50% where their attention moves or would you assume that because those frontal lobes aren't as developed or is it pretty much.

[Brendan Burchard]

Okay, so here's the tricky part of having assessing that with children, by the way, what does it take for you to even know if somebody's on task or off task? Right. They have to have the awareness. It's something called meta awareness awareness or attention to your attention that is also a developmentally slow process. So we're getting a fuzzy read on them. I mean we could take them into the lab and look directly at their performance on tasks. And yeah, they mind wander a lot. Their attention can be off often, you know, off task often. But I don't think that's the thing we want to help cultivate, which is the counterintuitive thing, and I mean I refer to it in the book is like a peak mind pivot. It's like we think that we have to focus better. We think we need to focus on. We need to train ourselves to focus and I'm saying no, to focus better. Train your mind to notice when you're not focused.

[Ed Mylett]

Gosh. Very good.

[Brendan Burchard]

So, you know, that's a totally different set of your exercising the focus floodlight and the juggler. The flashlight will do its thing. It knows how to do its thing. But really pay attention to the understanding of where your mind is moment by moment.

[Ed Mylett]

I did that during your TED Talk. You actually say something similar during your TED Talk. And then I thought, well, where am I now? And then I'm back with you. And then, where am I now? And then I came back with you.

[Brendan Burchard]

And that's it, you know, 24 seconds. If you're truly going 24 seconds, you are. We gotta bring you to the lab because that's really good.

[Ed Mylett]

I made the number up. It's probably more like 2.4 seconds. I don't know.

[Brendan Burchard]

I actually asked a colleague of mine who'd been practicing mindfulness for 30 years because I was getting in the initial stages when I was just trying to understand what this thing is. I was like, I'm not going very long before my mind wanders. And will that be the thing that will extend as I practice more? That was my thinking. That's a reasonable hypothesis. If it's five seconds now, maybe it'll be 10 and 15 each year. I might get long before it wandering. And I was very humbled by what he said. He said, 30 years of practice. He said, 7 seconds.

[Ed Mylett]

No kidding.

[Brendan Burchard]

So at first I'm like, oh, great, why am I being bothering? It's still going to be seven seconds after 30 years. But what he said next really helped. He said, you know, what has happened is that my mind now, instead of being completely lost in a fantasy or a doomsday scenario. And I love that. It was like, almost poetic. He's like, it's like I'm seeing the ripples, you know, the ripples at the distance of the placid lake. And I was like, oh, he is really knows his mind. Like, he can tell. It's like tug. He doesn't have to go full on into, you know, next vacation has been planned while you're trying to do five minutes of a mindfulness practice. That felt so much more like he knows his mind. He knows where it is. That with that love of granularity.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah.

[Brendan Burchard]

And in some sense, this is the part that I think is also really interesting, especially as we talk about athletes and military service members and special operators, etc. It's this sense that you develop because, you know, your mind, a sense of. I'm gonna use the term mental toughness. It's Like I know this space, I know the, the lake. It may not always be placid, it's usually from me like a rough, stormy place, but I can take anything. Like my mind is here for it. And frankly that's developing that same floodlight capacity. I am here, I'm present for it. I'm not going to be thrown off. I'm steady in the middle of whatever's going on.

[Ed Mylett]

Very good. You know, I think some of the most self confident people I know are just more self aware. And I think that's actually what you're describing. There's an awareness of, there's an awareness of self. I'm loving this and I want to keep going. So I want to ask you about. You've described things in visual terminology a lot and I'd like to think that I am a visual person also, although I don't know that there's such a thing. I'm wondering if part of that self awareness is, are some people more predisposed to be kinesthetic or auditory or visual in their, in the deductions they make in the observations that they make? And is that something to be cognizant of about yourself when you're in a state of attention that you are not just, I feel like I'm very visual, but maybe every single person is or are there more auditory, predisposed people, Kinesthetic, visual?

[Brendan Burchard]

I mean the jury is out. Most people say now that like the notion of learning styles or specific modalities is not all that well supported. So I would say we don't know yet if that's actually the case. But frankly the bulk of the brain as human beings compared to our little dogs that run around so dominant with vision, visual. But you brought up something that I want to actually, I want to like kind of ping that because that what you described is not what I'm talking about when I use the term meta awareness. What you just described, very powerful thing to do, is something we call metacognition. So both of these are tied to self awareness, but meta awareness is a different thing. So metacognition is essentially knowing your tendencies, knowing your styles, knowing your decision making capacities, your strengths, your weaknesses. I mean everything you just described would be really great to know for your metacognitive style, for example. And yes, it can definitely there could be differences, maybe not tactile or visual, but there are definitely differences in the way people operate metacognitively. So you may be a maximizer in your decision making versus a satisfier, you know, there's these different orientations, but I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking, talking about when I talk about the floodlight, because remember the floodlight system is really about the now. And meta awareness is awareness of the moment to moment processes and contents within your mind. So I don't, it doesn't really matter from the meta awareness point of view what your tendencies are, what is going on right now, where is your mind right now? And I think that, that what's important now kind of orientation is so important in performance context because it doesn't matter what you're doing. I'm like, what's going on now?

[Ed Mylett]

Is it always important to be in the now? In other words, is it bad to be dreaming in the future? Is that a bad or good? I don't even like that terminology. But useful, yeah. Is it useful?

[Brendan Burchard]

Such a great question. I'm so glad you asked me that because I don't want it to seem like I'm saying always be here right now. No, no, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. In fact, this capacity to mention mentally time travel, just like you did with your what did you have for dinner last night? Right. Is so useful for us. In fact, it may be the thing that defines us in our evolutionary advantage as human beings.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Right.

[Brendan Burchard]

We can displace ourselves in something called time travel. Right. We can rewind the mind, we can fast forward the mind. You heard about me talking about that a little bit in the TED talk, But it's not just about time traveling, it's also about mind travel.

[Ed Mylett]

Okay, what does that mean?

[Brendan Burchard]

Mind traveling is essentially putting yourself in the shoes and mind of somebody else. So both of those are really, really powerful things to do. When we talk about mindfulness, it's really, it's a solution to a vulnerability in our capacity to do both of those things. So the problem with time travel though, it's extremely useful for productively reflecting or planning it becomes problematic under certain states. And I do think of the athletes like my heart goes go, go out to them. Oftentimes when I see mess ups, right. Like you did something you totally messed up and it happens you glitched. If you can't stop rewinding the mind, you are no way going to be able to succeed in the next moment. So how do you get yourself to not rewind?

[Ed Mylett]

Very good.

[Brendan Burchard]

Right. So.

[Ed Mylett]

Or Amisha, that's really good.

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah. And I think that the other part is you may be in and on necessary necessarily the athletic setting, but in our like Even during COVID like, if you can't stop catastrophizing and worrying about the future, you got it, you're stuck. You're going to be. Probably have a lot of anxiety. So the reason we want, and frankly, it's the same thing, goes with mind traveling. If I'm constantly preoccupied about your view of me, social anxiety is going to set in. So the reason mindfulness became such an important solution for me, going back to why we study it in my lab, is because each of those things, ruminating about the past, catastrophizing about the others, overly caring about the viewpoints and evaluation on yourself, hijack attention. It depletes attention.

[Ed Mylett]

Gosh, it's so good. You're describing from a scientific standpoint all the things that people listening to this go, I know this is true, and I think this, the rewinding thing, man, that's just huge. So many people are in the rewind, rewind and just beating themselves up and repeating the same story over and over again. But the other thing that I've figured out is that oftentimes stress is time travel in the future, meaning that it's not so much the speech you have to give or the sale you have to close or the putt you have to hit that is stressing you out. It's you projecting into the future the negative result of it. And then on top of that, what other people are going to think or say about you when you miss the putt, when you don't close the sale.

[Brendan Burchard]

Exactly.

[Ed Mylett]

Is that not true?

[Brendan Burchard]

Exactly. You describe both the mind travel and the time travel, right? Those are what I would really call the kryptonite scenarios. Like, you're really. What all of that is doing is attention still being used. And you're draining it out. You're draining the fuel in spinning in those directions. So how do you. You know, it's easy to say, well, don't do that. Get back to here and now. It's easy to say it. It's very hard to do because the tendencies are so strong. So you got to train for it. Just like. Like anything else that's hard to do.

[Ed Mylett]

You were gonna give us one other. I think you were gonna give us one other one. Another training. And then, by the way, let's get peak mind. Let's get the book so that we all.

[Brendan Burchard]

You get the whole thing.

[Ed Mylett]

You get the whole thing. That's the whole idea. But one more of them would be, I'm driving in my car and I'm like, I want her to get Me one more.

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, the car is a perfect example. You didn't even know I was gonna go there. This other practice is just called the stop practice, literally S, T, O, P. And do it while you're driving, do it while you're walking. Do it at any time you want. Stop is stop. Like whatever the progression of your life is in that moment, halt it. Take a breath, and that's this conscious breath, aware that you're doing it. Observe. Oh, proceed. Be. So it's just. It's a mini mindfulness practice, and I really think it's useful because you know where your flashlight is at the end of it. I know it's right here, right now. I'm back. So use stop signs, use red lights to remind yourself to do that over and over again.

[Ed Mylett]

So good. I'm just thinking of something. When you asked me to do that, I actually did it with you. And I actually noticed a couple things in my visual space that have been here the entire time that I didn't see that. Interesting. Yeah. And we're going a little bit deeper probably than I should, but I. There's a lot of things that your brain does on habit mode, Correct? Like, if I'm driving to work and I take the same off ramp every single day, I think my brain is storing energy by doing something that's habitual. That's how I've always understood it, anyways, that I'm taking that same off ramp. Whether I'm right or wrong, it doesn't matter. The point that I want to make about that is that for me, I think for most people, being present is even though, yes, there's a benefit to being in the future and rewinding, there's a benefit to being reflective and reminiscing in the past and gaining wisdom from it. But for most of us, that's not a struggle for most people. The struggle for most people is being present. And that's why this is so important, what you're teaching here. And for me, there's so many things in a given day that mindfulness practices make me just aware of being present, that I'm curious as to, in practical application, how much time a day. I know there's no formula, but if you were just saying, hey, Ed, I'd recommend to you, it's 10 minutes a day, it's five different times a day, it's once a day. Do it at the same time of the day. Doesn't matter when you do it. What would your advice be on just building this practice as the habit aspect?

[Brendan Burchard]

Yeah, well, I mean, the last line of the title is invest 12 minutes a day. So that gives you a sense of. And that number comes out of many studies that have suggested, you know, if you get to that amount, we tend to see benefits. And the more you do from that, the more you benefit. But if you don't quite get to that, it's almost like, is going for a walk in my neighborhood, walking my dog, going to build my physical fitness? Probably not. It's not going to be bad for you, but you're not going to get to that level. So here's my answer to the question of so the when would be. And you can get a deeper understanding of why I say 12 minutes if you read more about it, but just know that it comes from a lot of.

[Ed Mylett]

I did. I just want them a lot of research.

[Brendan Burchard]

I know, I know, but I'm just saying. But your question regarding when to do it and the habits issue is the best time to do it is when you're gonna do it. And that's kind of maybe a cop out, but literally the key to anything. And you'd probably say the same thing regarding physical excellence. Right? The key is advantaging your capacity to create it and incorporate it into daily routine.

[Ed Mylett]

Yeah.

[Brendan Burchard]

And so what I suggest for people, like I just said with when we were doing the short practice, if you think you can do three minutes, set the goal of a minute and a half and get the win of I did it, I did it, I did it. And yoke it to something that you already do. You know, my recommendation is something that you know you're gonna do every day without exception, maybe right after you brush your teeth in the morning or maybe right before you have your cup of coffee some time that you know you're gonna do it. And what I would suggest just to play around with when that works for you is to try it at different times of the day. What many people say when we say try the morning, you know, just play around with the time of day is like, people say things like, I love the taste of my coffee so much more. It's like I actually taste it.

[Ed Mylett]

Gosh, it's so true, you know?

[Brendan Burchard]

So true. And why are you depriving yourself of that? Right? Why are we rushing through? I mean, you're gonna have the coffee anyway. Why not have a little bit more pleasure with that experience?

[Ed Mylett]

I have to just say, though, I was gonna tell you off camera, but I'm so glad you said this, because I forgot, which is that I just want to give Everybody the gift of this, that by the way, I'm nowhere near where you would be or other people. I don't think there's rankings either, by the way. It's not a judgment thing. But my sensory experiences just in general have been so dramatically increased by this practice. And people always say to me that there's this duality. Maybe one of the reasons like me is that maybe I'm sort of like a. Maybe a masculine dude, but I'm very emotional and very sensitive. I don't know that I've always been that way. But like I do find that I experience my emotions on a deeper level over the last decade or so. That my laughter is a little deeper and more joyous, the taste of food is a little bit more pleasurable. My acknowledgement and noticing beauty around me and the nuances and specificities of it and not just the visual, but smells and wind hitting my face. I know this sounds ridiculous to some people. It's just richer because of this practice. Never mind being far more present and productive. And I think also for me, peak is such a word that I've used over and over when I'm fully present, it appears to me that I've got better access to my vocabulary, better access to insights. In reading somebody similar experience for you.

[Brendan Burchard]

I mean, for sure. And it can be life saving in many ways. And actually, you know, you describe the plus side and I think it's so, it's so great. It's like almost like. You mean I can just have more joy by being here more. Yeah, you can. But there's another part that I think is very important in the context of our action and our humanity. We're also more present to the suffering of other people. We're also more connected to other people. We also have more sense and respect for the humanity of others around us and for the environment. And I think that at this particular point, kind of in our human, human history consciousness, we need to be more aware of what the heck is going on. We have very little time to like try to make things better for our planet, for example, and also with all the injustices happening. And you know, I was talking recently to somebody regarding this notion of burnout. And you know, so many people are feeling so burnt out. Can mindfulness help with burnout? And the answer is yes, mindfulness can help with burnout. But you know, actually in the context of a conference I was at with critical care nurses, now we know over Covid that has been a group that has been very, very crunched, right? And the Question was, can mindfulness help me with burnout? And I said, yes. And they said, but then the system that the organization of the scheduling is the reason I feel burnt out. And I was like, yes, but there's no way you're going to demand change or even conceptualize how to create change if you don't have the capacity to see what's going on.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Brendan Burchard]

So just use that as the next step to give back to those who may not have this capacity yet. It's like the more present we are, the more we can enact change and empower other people to do the same.

[Ed Mylett]

You're so right. And I know you know you're right, but people have told me that the last ten years or so. I'm just using practical experience. For me, you're more patient than you used to be. That's sort of more like a symptom almost that it is more what you have described, which is that I try to be present with people and see them and hear them and experience them more than fix them like I used to, and try to truly empathize and understand their experience and their reality. And I've always felt, since I started this, like, I wish more of. I don't care what political party you're probably. I wish more political people had that ability for empathy and understanding and just stopped and listened to people and didn't assess it all the time. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that I attribute some, if not most of that to these practices because obviously I'm a performer, peak performer, expert person, supposedly. But it's the other benefits of doing this that have enriched my life far more than the fact that I've made more money because I. I'm more present with people or these other things. I'm actually curious about this. What about memory? So is it that my memory can be improved because of this? Because I was actually present in more moments, so I have better recall because my attention was where I was more often? Or is it that there's something happening in my brain where I'm developing the ability to recall and remember things better? Pretty good question, huh?

[Brendan Burchard]

Yes.

[Ed Mylett]

Right. So you could say, well, yeah, your memory's better. Well, maybe that's just because I was more present. Or is there actually something operating in my brain where I'm. Is there new myelin forming in my brain? I don't know. I'm just.

[Brendan Burchard]

Well, first of all, everything. This conversation is changing your brain. I mean, I don't just mean because it's some kind of massively transformative thing. Every experience.

[Ed Mylett]

Mom.

[Brendan Burchard]

Every experience we have impacts the way our brain functions function. So there's no like, there's no divide between experience and brain changes. They're just happening concurrently.

[Dr. Caroline Leaf]

Right.

[Brendan Burchard]

So yes, it is the case. So you're such a great, you're such a great intuition about neuroscience. It's awesome.

[Ed Mylett]

Thank you.

[Brendan Burchard]

So, yes, it is the case that the more we can get, the more attentive we are, the more granular, fine grained the inputs are for our memory. In fact, attention is the gateway for memory. If you don't pay attention, there's no way that you're going to have the experience of encoding episodes in your life, gaining new information. Now, there are aspects of our memory that are outside the scope of something you need attention for after it's well learned. So for example, if I tell you, tell me across the board of a keyboard what the letters are. I mean, I couldn't tell you, but if you give me a keyboard, I can type it. So that's an example of something we call procedural memory, which is you actually don't need to your attention for that, but for episodes and knowledge, you need attention to input the information. You also need your attention to pull it out. So remember we were talking about the flashlight and your dinner meal. You have to have clarity of directing it to call up the right thing. So it is on both ends of that. And frankly, there's another thing to think about which is that, what did you call it? Myelin. So yes, it ends up that long term memory is structural change within the brain. It actually becomes like fixed, hard in terms of neural connections that occur. That process is helped by having clarity of mind and actually just kind of to really tie the loose ends of this conversation together. Current models suggest maybe that's where all this mind wandering is actually happening. It may be a memory encoding process. The reason the brain pumps out thoughts isn't because it's just trying to mess with us, is because that's the way episodic memory encoding happens. It's a replay button that just happens by default. And as it keeps replaying, things kind of harden into long term memory.

[Ed Mylett]

Oh, this is so good. All right, first off, I want everybody to get peak mind. I want them to get your book. The reason that I want them to get the book is because I think the application of what you're teaching is different for many different people. And I love things that have broad applications. So I think if you're an athlete, you want to read this book. I think if you're someone who wants to find a little bit more bliss in your life and be more present, I think this is a book that you should have. And I think just having an overall understanding of one's self is why I think this work is so fascinating. It's why my audience knows I love every interview that I do. I don't talk to people that I don't want to share with the world, but there are certain topics that just fascinate me because I like like to understand why some of the things I teach work. I understand some of it and you're helping me so much with that. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money. When you bundle your home and auto policies, the process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states. This is a message from sponsor Intuit TurboTax. Here's the thing. You gotta handle your taxes and waiting around and worrying if you're gonna get money back or what you owe and then waiting and wondering some more. You don't have to do that anymore. Right now you can get a TurboTax expert who can do your taxes as soon as today. An expert who gives your taxes their individual undivided attention as they work on your return. Will you get real time updates on their progress so you can focus on your day? Isn't that what you want to be able to do? Have an expert get your taxes done. Figure out whether you're getting any money back and when you're going to get it back and doing it. The sooner the better for everybody. An expert who will find you every possible deduction and file every form, every investment, everything with 100% accuracy so you don't need to worry about it all so you can get the most money back guaranteed. No waiting, no wondering, no worries. Now this is Taxes get an Expert now on TurboTax.com only available with Turbo Tax Live full service real time Updates only. An iOS mobile app. See guarantee [e-mail] guarantees very short intermission here folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next next guest. I Have a real friend here today and somebody that I admire tremendously. He's helped me. He scanned my brain. I think he's the foremost expert on brain health on the planet. He's a great friend of mine. I love him very much. He's a strong man of faith as well. Dr. Daniel Amen. Welcome back to the show, brother.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Thank you so much.

[Ed Mylett]

What about physical activity as it affects brain health? This is a gamer phone, etc. So combination question, physical activity. And I've asked you two two parters today because I just think they're somewhat connected and is there an age you think some child should not be on.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Social media as long as possible?

[Ed Mylett]

If you had kids again right now, would your 10 year old be on social or no? No, no, not 10.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

No. Because why Apple and Facebook and TikTok, they work with neuroscientists to keep you there longer. Their goal is mind share. And that's not okay because they're stealing the minds of this generation. I mean, on average, people are spending three and a half, four hours on social media. Just imagine, imagine what you could do with that time. So put screens off as long as humanly you can and get them to exercise. But it's coordination exercises. Remember we talked about the cerebellum. It's tennis and table tennis and pickleball, racquetball. Those are really great for brain development. Development. Because the cerebellum, I'm getting old and people don't remember. Rodney Dangerfield. I sure do.

[Ed Mylett]

Respect.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Horrifying for me, I get no respect. Cerebellums. This Rodney Dangerfield part of the brain, 10% of the brain's volume, but has half of the brain's neurons. And when you do coordination exercises, you're developing that very important part of you, your brain. And yeah, I'm not a fan of hitting soccer balls with your head.

[Ed Mylett]

You said that multiple times.

[Dr. Daniel Amen]

Yeah, or letting kids play tackle football. I did the big NFL study when the NFL was sort of lying. They had a problem with traumatic brain injury and football and now everybody knows it's true. Why would you put a developing brain in a position to help have damage? Think about that. Your brain, and most people don't know this, but your brain is not finished developing until you're 25. So there's this process called myelinization. So your neurons, your brain cells get wrapped with a white fatty substance called myelin, sort of like insulation on a copper wire. And once they're myelinated, they work 10 to 100 times faster. So this is where maturity happens. Myelinization, well, it starts in the back when you're two months old, right? Babies can see. And when you smile at them, they smile back. Your prefrontal cortex, largest in humans than any other animal, by far. Focus, forethought, judgment, impulse control, organization, planning, empathy, learning from the mistakes you make. It's not finished developing until you're 25, which is why I'm not a fan of sending kids away to college and have them join sororities and fraternities with other underdeveloped brains. It's just a prescription for a lot of trauma and bad things to happen.

[Ed Mylett]

I got my hair cut this morning, and it's a young lady that cuts my hair. And she's always asking me for advice, you know, on life. And I said, well, I said, you know, you'll see these videos on social media. Often when you ask somebody towards the end of their life, they'll say, what are your regrets? And it's not typically, I wish I'd have worked more. It's typically, I wish I'd have been more present with my family. I wish I'd have traveled more. I wish I had more memories. And I told her, and I wish I'd have taken more risks and pursued my dreams. I wish I wouldn't have played it so safe in my life. And it made an impact on her. And I watched her kind of drift into her thoughts, and she says, you know, Ed, I think my generation, at the end of their life, when we get there, they're going to say their biggest regret is they wish they spent less time on their phones, they wish they spent less time on social media, that they wasted their lives away in these digital devices, and they weren't present in the real world. And I told her, I said, I think you're 100% right. She goes, I know 30 years from now, we'll be watching my generation say this. So your point is so incredibly profound. All right, this is, as usual, my conversations with you. I want to go 11 hours with you. My guest today is Dr. Andrew Huberman, and he's a neuroscientist. His lab is at Stanford. Today's gonna be one of the more interesting shows for me that we've ever done before because I'm fascinated with this man's work. There's a general societal belief about certain things. So if that's true. But I've also heard you say your thoughts are a choice. So if it's this involuntary process that's happening where we've all sort of agreed to this. And we're almost pre programmed through a series of evolution to believe certain things. How is it also that we choose our thoughts?

[Dr. Andrew Huberman]

Great question. It's the question that neuroscientists think about. And just as a bit of a disclaimer, there's going to be a little bit abstract, but I promise to get concrete and I'll do my best to be as succinct as possible. Succinctness is not the quality that's typically associated with academics. What I will promise, however, is I'll try and use as few acronyms as possible and I'll only name things if I think it's going to be important for people to go look up more as opposed to just raining terminology down on people, because that's not useful. So you're absolutely right. The nervous system is responsible for sensation, perception, feelings, thoughts, actions and memories, all of that. Let's talk about what's non negotiable. What's non negotiable are the sensations. I have receptors in my eye. You have receptors in your eye. We have receptors in our skin, in our tongue, in our ears, et cetera, that take physical events in the universe, universe of which there are many, and can only sense some of those. So for instance, I'm not a pit viper. I can't see in the infrared. A pit viper can. I can see in the infrared if I snap on infrared goggles, but if I don't do that, my eye can't sense those. So I can't sense magnetic fields. There are people that claim that they can sense magnetic fields. If they can, it's an unusual quality. It hasn't been shown very robustly in the the lab. Turtles, on the other hand, navigate extremely long distances by virtue of magnetic fields. They are magneto sensing organisms. The things that we can pull out of the universe and into our nervous system to work with, those are fixed entities. Now, a colorblind person, 1 in 80 males, is red green, colorblind. They can't see red the way you and I can. My dog is red green, colorblind. So there are some unusual cases, but in the absence of any technology, the sensations the that we can detect are fixed. They are non negotiable as much as gravity is non negotiable. We have to develop technologies to overcome them if we want to see into the infrared or see ultraviolet light, et cetera. Okay, now perceptions, feelings, thoughts, those are where it gets negotiable because for instance, I can decide that the color of your shirt has meaning to me, like we're both wearing a black shirt. And therefore we must have met in a previous lifetime. And pretty soon I'd start to sound like a crazy person. Because the definition of psychosis or crazy is assigning meaning to something for which there's none, right? So we have to agree, as in, as groups or individual groups of individuals. And societally, what sorts of meanings matter? And that's where it gets very subjective. You know, we have. We place value on the fact that somebody who commits a crime before the age 18 versus after 18, we call them an adult. But developmental trajectories are from birth to death. There isn't some cliff, that biological event. So we could go really deep down this rabbit hole or not. But what we know is that sensations are non negotiable. What we know is that societies and the way that we function as families and couples and in the workplace, they obey certain principles or rules of engagement that on app are adaptive for a given culture. So we meet, we say hello, we agree on these cultural things that because on average they're adaptive. Whereas if we met and we decided first we were gonna fight, first of all, we both know you're gonna win, that we're gonna physically fight. And second of all, it's just not adaptive for the evolution of cultures. Most cultures, there are circumstances where that's appropriate. So what's important for us to understand is that the human brain is very, very good at all these things. Sensation, perception, feeling, thought and action. It's also very good at two other things. One is interoception, paying attention to what's going on inside me, and exteroception, paying attention to what's going on in the outside world and balancing the weight of one or the other in order to move adaptively through life. Now, and I'll just throw this out as one more kind of conceptual thing, but I promised I would make it more concrete as opposed to abstract. When we say it's adaptive, what we mean is that this neural machinery in our heads, literally, I've opened up a lot of skulls, I've held a lot of brains in my lab. I teach neuroanatomy to medical students now for 10 years. I promise you, it's just meat in there. Meat and some fluid. And so the neurons of the brain takes and. And the only thing neurons can do, the only language they can speak, is to be electrically active at certain times and in certain sequences, like the keys on a piano. And it's this amazing thing, like it still inspires wonder in Me, when I think about it, that you do this, I do this. And we agree on some common rules of engagement that are adaptive. And it's what led us out of caves, hunter gatherer cultures, technologies, the car, the plane, the iPhone, phone. It's amazing. And we are, I think the important thing to remember is that we are still in our evolution as a species. We are still trying to work out whether or not 10 hours a day with the smartphone is good or bad for us. We're still trying to figure out whether or not traveling to other planets is good or bad for us. What should we do about this Covid thing? We're still trying to work this out. And the language that we do to work that out is neural language.

[Ed Mylett]

Yes.

[Dr. Andrew Huberman]

And so I apologize if I made things more abstract than before.

[Ed Mylett]

But you didn't.

[Dr. Andrew Huberman]

We just have to agree on some rules of a game. Just like if we're going to play chess, we need to set up some constraints. And so those are the constraints in broad terms, how do those so good?

[Ed Mylett]

So, no, it's perfect because I want to now I want to move it into like where we are in culture and also performance. Just what you just said. And so I know what I teach, but I don't know that I always know why it works the way it does. So these, this nervous system I'd like you to speak to, maybe it makes no impact. I have an assumption that it does previous experience in life. And does the importance of something in one's life change one's sensory acuity to it? So what I mean by that is there's this great debate right now about racial and social issues. And so I wonder, I've wondered if someone has not had an experience with something that they literally perceive sensory wise less of it. And if they've got a history of some sort of a situation with a racial issue or sexual abuse or something like that, that they see or feel more of it because it's important to them. And perhaps that's why there are certain things in society we can't come to a consensus on, because importance and previous experience may change the way in which we gather this information. And on the other flip side of that, is that also then true to program yourself to win, that when something is important enough to you, you begin to see, feel and hear things that will lead you towards those particular goals that you wouldn't see if it wasn't important in terms of your sensory acuity or your nervous system picking up on it, or are they not correlated in any way? Can you speak to both of those?

[Dr. Andrew Huberman]

Sure. Again, again, a great set of questions. So moment ago I mentioned that we have this interoception which is really just paying attention to what's going on internally. I could stop now and think about how my stomach feels or my breathing, or really go internal or I can be externally focused. And that's what the nervous system is doing. The nervous system has some very basic jobs. It wants to, so it learns things. We're born into this world and the organization of the nervous system when we come into this world is not a completely born blank slate. It's designed to learn. It's a learning machine. The brain is amazing because it's the only organ that wires up itself, which is incredible. So it's a self learning, self building machine for the early part of life. The goal of the brain is twofold. One is to maintain all the housekeeping stuff, keep the heart beating, keep digestion going, keep breathing going at a minimum to keep the organism alive, to keep us alive. And then, then it wants to learn things that are specific to its environment and learn the rules of these sensations. Objects fall down, not up. Mom walks in the room, she leaves the room, she comes back on average or doesn't learning these rules, contingencies and then passing those off to reflexive parts of the nervous system. So just like a baby never has to think about taking a breath or governing its heartbeat with consciousness, thought. The nervous system wants to learn things and then push that to reflexive action. It's a lot of work to do. What's called serial processing. Not serial, but like serial as in series. I know you know this, but just for those, you know, maybe second language. English. Second language or something. So serial processing is hard for the nervous system. It's about thinking if A then B, then B, then C. Oh wait, was it C? Yes, A, B, then C. It's, it's work and it requires areas of the brain that are very metabolically costly to engage. It's why thinking hard kind of hurts. There's some strain associated with it. So the more we experience something, the more our reactions to it are going to become reflexive. For better or for worse. If it's a bad event, the nervous system or it creates a sensation that's uncomfortable, the nervous system will create an association whereby we naturally start to avoid that thing. Whether or not it's good for us or bad for us. If it's something that we like, we get re rewarded and we want with a chemical, typically dopamine or serotonin. And we want to move toward that thing again. And that illustrates the other key feature of the nervous system that I think will help simplify some of this kind of overwhelming number of things that the brain can do and how it can do it, which is we have in our brain a few chemical systems that are called neuromodulators. They're not responsible for the communication between neurons. What they do is they modulate or change the likelihood that certain brain circuits will engage and other ones won't. They fall into very specific categories. The most famous of these is the neuromodulator dopamine. Dopamine is released anytime we experience something we really, really like. But under very specific conditions, anytime we are moving towards something and we think we're on the right path path, dopamine is released. And this is nature's way of telling whatever neurons are active during that movement down that path. So this could be exercise, it could be a relationship breakthrough, it could be a business breakthrough. It could be learning some little piece of a puzzle that you're excited to learn you've been straining on. It tells you more of that. More of those neural symphonies or neurons being active in the way they just were, whatever you were doing just there. More, More of that. So it sends you down this path. And dopamine is very misunderstood. People think dopamine is about getting the reward. Dopamine is about sending you toward the reward. Think of it like a jet propulsion system, right? It's not just the finish line. It's a jet propulsion system, and every animal needed that.

[Ed Mylett]

I'm going to give it back to you. I just got to say something. I think it's one of the most significant things ever said on the show, honestly, and it explains my own life experience or my relationships. I want you to hear what he just said, said everybody, that you're getting more dopamine, on average, in the pursuit of your dream and your goal than you actually do with the attainment of it. And that maybe there's a little key here to. If dopamine is sort of a happiness drug, right, if you want to call it that, makes you feel good. Could it not possibly be true that one of the keys of happiness in life is the pursuit of something great, the pursuit of growth, and that. That that's the key, that you don't have to achieve everything in order to give yourself the gift of happiness? I didn't mean to interrupt you. That's so freaking significant because I think a lot of people sort of cheat themselves from just the pursuit, because they think, well, I'll only be happy when I get there. I'm not qualified. I haven't read enough. I don't know enough people. I don't have enough context. And they stand still and they're not happy. And what they're missing is the science that that tells us actually, if you just begin to pursue this and show some progress towards it, that you're going to get that happiness you're seeking that you think you will only get when you get there. Correct?

[Dr. Andrew Huberman]

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm so glad you bring this up because, you know, there are some concepts from psychology that we can start to weave into this. You know, I can give examples from evolutionary biology. You know, an animal that's thirsty goes out looking for water, and when, and it finds that first drop of clean water, dopamine is released. But maybe that's not the big lake that it needs, but that's going to tell it it's on the right path. And dopamine naturally causes neuroplasticity of whatever brain circuits were active previously. So it says, hey, whatever I did to get to this point, this milestone, not the finish line, that is something that I might want to repeat reflexively in the future. I might not want to have to work so hard to do that. Now, the cool thing about dopamine, many cool things about dopamine, and then it has a dark side, and we should talk about the dark side, because even if, and I'm notand, of course, the dark side can be associated with drugs of abuse like cocaine and things. But actually there's a more, even more sinister dark side that I think a lot of people fall into this trap. So the great things about dopamine is it rewards us and it gives us energy. When I say energy, I don't mean glycogen, I don't mean glucose, I mean neural energy. And the, the reason is effort of all kinds. Whether or not you're writing with a pen, whether or not you're racing uphill with a weight vest, or whether or not you're slogging it out through any discomfort is generally associated with the neuromodulator adrenaline, also called epinephrine. Adrenaline in the body. It's called adrenaline in the body. It's released from the adrenals, and then epinephrine in the brain is released from a couple places. But there's one particular place for the aficionados, it's called locus coeruleus. It's in the brainstem. It wakes us up. It gives us a sense of urgency. And it's about effort. And it doesn't care if you're doing something out of love or out of hate, out of revenge. It does not care. These are neurochemicals, and they don't care about you or your life experience, but they are in your brain and they are the engines. Okay.

[Brendan Burchard]

Wow.

[Ed Mylett]

This is the Ed Milan show.