← The mindbodygreen Podcast
The mindbodygreen Podcast
609: How to handle stress, avoid triggers, & overcome regret | Caroline Leaf, Ph.D.
00:45:23
Caroline Leaf, Ph.D., renowned cognitive neuroscientist and communication pathologist, joins us today to give us permission to not be okay and the tools to self-regulate.
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the MyBodyGreen podcast. I'm Jason Wakab, founder and co CEO of MyBodyGreen and your host.
- [00:08]
B
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- [00:39]
A
Doctor Caroline Leaf is back on the show to talk about just how one minute of awareness can transform how we handle stress, pressure and emotional triggers. Dr. Leif is a renowned cognitive neuroscientist and communication pathologist who has spent over 40 years researching the mind brain connection. She's the author of 19 bestselling books, a podcast host, and is a leading voice in psychoneurobiology and mental health. In today's show, Dr. Leif introduces us to a concept she calls Help in a hurry, a science backed practice of using 63 seconds to pause, reset and reroute your emotional state from people pleasing to regret spirals to pressure filled days. Dr. Leif explains how learning to self regulate in the moment can have lasting effects on your brain, your health and your relationships. We also talk about why our culture's obsession with always being okay is actually increasing anxiety and why resilience isn't built through hacks, it's built through repeated intentional choices. If you've ever wished for a better way to respond in a high pressure moment or to stop letting other people's words ruin your entire day, this conversation will give you the science and the language to take back control. So something I really like about the book is you emphasize the this idea it's okay not to be okay. So how do you think about maintaining that clarity, that sense of peace in the middle of chaos in our very.
- [02:08]
B
Productive hustle culture, we are supposed to be okay all the time. And the whole messaging, unfortunately for almost 50 years now has increasingly been one of the more you do, the better you are. And you've always got to show up like you've got everything under control and if you don't, well, there's something wrong with your mental health, go get your diagnosis diagnosis kind of thing. And unfortunately that very black and white dichotomy puts a lot of pressure on people. But meanwhile, according to the research, 95% of our day, most of the time, 95% of the day we just, you know, we kind of just getting through the day, we're not being happy avatars and what we doing be doing life, we're Looking after our kids, we're working, we're doing whatever. We're not in this happy, happy, happy state all the time. So a lot of the positive psychology and the happiness movement, which are all good things, got slightly unbalanced, mixed in with hustle culture and suddenly it wasn't okay to be okay. But actually we need to be okay with not being okay because of the uncertainty of life, the things that we can't, that are unexpected, that as I said, the research shows 95% of our day, we just getting on with life. And that's on average, average, average statistics. So that message we need to get in, we need to say, I don't feel great now or I'm reacting like this in this way, or this is what's going on, or I'm angry about this or and that's okay, let's just stop the bus and take a gap and move forward. But if I'm under pressure to be okay when I'm not okay and think it's not okay to not be okay, that messaging increases our anxiety and then we don't have wisdom and we don't perform well. So it's really a big message I'm trying to bring through is it's not okay to be okay. Let's just take a breath, let's catch a gap and let's then see how we're going to manage the next moment. And this book's about that. Managing the 63 seconds the next moment before you try and manage your, you know, all these major things that we try and manage in our life.
- [04:02]
A
You know, it really resonates with me because I think about quick fixes and biohacking culture and my view is there aren't many quick fixes and you can't hack your way through health and wellness to some degree. And I think to some degree you can. But, but for real sustainable health, whether it's mental health or physical health, emotional health, it is about doing the work. And it's this idea of building long term resilience and I think instant gratification. We're just so attuned to it. If something's wrong, how do we fix it? Or I want to improve, you know, this metric as relates to my health. How do we fix it right now without doing the work? I love that that's something important to you.
- [04:55]
B
So important. And I'm glad you brought up the biohacking issue because you and I and Colleen have discussed this before about resilience takes time. You spoke about this in your book as well, but I was asked this question by a biohacker the other day. Isn't there a way of making this happen quicker? You know, we can hack our bodies and said no. When it comes to real change, there is no quick fix. And then the title of my book's almost a conundrum because it's help in a hurry. But it's not a fix. It's actually the help that you need in the moment to build the long term resilience. So what we see happening on a clinical level and research level and then just life level from people commenting and just experience as you're following your gut feel is that we'll be in a moment of life where suddenly someone makes us angry because they make a comment in a meeting that's just ridiculous. Or there's just someone in your meetings that just kind of aggravates yours, maybe in a family issue and you find yourself getting irritated or you find yourself people pleasing when you just don't want your people pleasing, compromising your values. Or you find yourself in a regret cycle that just keeps you stuck. Whatever they may be. Those things, if we don't catch those in the moment, the moment being around about a 60 second block and there's a lot of interesting signs behind that, then the rest of the day can actually go crazy. But if you can catch that moment, help in a hurry is catching the moment, recognizing the things that trigger you and having proactively working on recognizing those patterns and having a plan in place to catch that so I don't punch that person in the face, that I don't react angrily, that I don't get stuck in that people pleasing moment, that I don't see it as a black and white moment, whatever it is that I create, that pause, almost like a traffic light, you know, the red and the orange before you go green. We're so reactive. The productivity hustle, biohacking, wellness, which are all good things, but when they are so extreme, when they become 100% focus, we've become a very reactive society. And this is all about trying to help people stop being reactive and become responsive versus reactive.
- [07:06]
A
And that's massive and it requires work. And you've got some great metaphors in the book, I believe. The onions, the storms, the viruses. Can you walk us through these metaphors and how they can help us prepare?
- [07:19]
B
So yeah, I'm always trying to find analogies and metaphors and things like that. But let's take the storm one for example. We get in a storm and if we don't have an umbrella, we get drenched. But if we can have our umbrella, we put up our umbrella and we get to a place of safety. So we're creating that little gap. The onion example is what appears to be the issue is not necessarily the issue. You peel away the layers. There's a lot of layers to whatever you're going through. So the concept of the is in terms of creating this pause or this gap that people also speak about, or this help in a hurry moment is to tell people that you can self regulate, you can learn to self regulate. It's one of the most important skills as humans that we need to develop. And when I talk about self regulation, it's self regulation in terms of managing our mind. And when you manage your mind in the moment, if I can manage the next moment of 60 seconds, let's say I can then manage the next hour, I can then manage the next day. What the research shows is when you train yourself, and my clinical work showed this as well, is that when you can train yourself to catch yourself before you shout that comment back or send that text or that in frustration or react in a frustrated way, if you can train yourself to catch that moment, put up the umbrella, you can prevent the storm from drenching you and then reacting. But it requires proactivity. So what I always tell people is don't grab this book and then in the midst of an angry moment, say, just hold on one moment before I get angry, let me look for a technique. I mean, I'm being facetious, but we've got to be a bit more proactive about regulating our lives. And this goes to the whole quick fix thing. There's no quick fix. I'm not offering you a quick fix. What I'm offering you here is a lifestyle shift. And that lifestyle shift is that reactivity is dangerous. And when we learn to control reactivity in the moment, we can then direct, we are then self regulating and then we can direct the next moment, which means we actually directing our neuroplasticity. We are directing the networks that form in the mind, brain, body connection. We're designing them in a way. So that angry comment that someone just said to you, that's not going to go away. They've said it, it's done. They think that whatever they're thinking. But what you can do is change what it looks like in how you wire that into your network and therefore how it plays out into your future. So you can take that anger, get even more angry remembering from the past when they irritated you as well, and you can grow that and that messes the relationship, steals your wisdom and you won't react well. Or you can decide, okay, they angry, that's their issue, not mine. There could be validity in it. I can look for those details. But in this moment now, I'm not going to react. I'm going to make sure that I don't put a negative, whole negative wiring system into my internal world wide web. That's going to pretty much strain my brain and my body and feedback into my mind and this whole feedback loop sets up and that then influences how I function the rest of the day. It's like stopping a person upsetting you for the whole day. It's like catch it now or stopping yourself upsetting yourself, being okay with not being okay. Does that make sense?
- [10:28]
A
It does. And I'm curious. When something is a trigger, I think of time as a really important variable. I'm assuming the more, if you're able to wait, you know, three seconds, five seconds, a minute, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, I'm assuming the more time elapses, the better position you are in to not be reactive. How do you view time as something that's fundamental to how reactive you are and trying to create as much space as possible.
- [11:03]
B
So I love you always ask these really insightful questions that can you really think about things? I love that with your questions. So thank you. Okay, so time does play a role in our at the conscious level. So our consciousness is very aware of time. Our non conscious level, which is our more deeper sort of spiritual level, whatever you want to call it, isn't bound by time. But where we live in the moment, we live through time and through our nervous system. And we need to regulate those because those can make they. So in your face you feel that reaction. In your body you feel those words coming at you, you feel upset, you feel those physical responses, you feel the chaos in the thoughts, that kind of thing. And so what we want to do is catch that and slow it down and neaten it up and whatever. And what we found from interesting research, Jason, is that, gosh, without getting too complicated with the mathematics on non conscious level, which is our biggest level, that never level of part of our mind that never switches off and it's working when we sleeping and it's got all of our, everything that we've ever experienced, you know, clusters of memories clustered into thoughts, whatever. That thing is really fast. It's always searching out, it takes in all information. It's always searching for what's disruptive in our life. And also what's good in our life, because what's good in our life needs to be focused on to build resilience. And what's disruptive in our life needs to be fixed, reconstructed, so that we can build resilience. And our non conscious is always doing that. Our nonconscious is always ten steps ahead of the conscious mind. There's a lot of research, Benjamin Liebe and other people, I've also done some of this research showing that our conscious mind's always, you know, a few seconds behind the non conscious mind. So when we consciously aware of all those feelings in our body and our thought, life and so on, there's already a whole process happening in our mind, brain, body, network, that's already happened. But then with our conscious mind we can do some intervening. So that's the one part. The other part is in terms of timing. Our non conscious mind is working at billions of actions per second, which is multiple conversations. To give you some sort of an analogy to hang onto, our conscious mind is operating at a much slower pace. Our conscious mind can handle one conversation at a time. For example, like now we having a conversation. But if your producer and my producer came in and started both having a conversation with us, while you and I trying to have a conversation would suddenly be three conversations going on or four. We couldn't concentrate. When you're watching TV and someone asks you a lot of questions, which I'm always doing to my poor husband Mac, you can't concentrate. So it is our conscious mind works with, it's kind of like two words per second. So that's the second part. The third part is that it's like a stream of consciousness that works in, in batches of 10 seconds. So if you think of a cartoon, we see Mickey Mouse moving across the screen or whatever. But as we know, there's been multiple flat images that have been created. And to create that movie, what seems like movements, actually a whole lot of different images. So what happens is our nonconscious mind kind of narrows down the speed of our thoughts and advice, et cetera, that comes from the, into the subconscious mind. So it kind of filters through. There's this middle layer of the subconscious, which is like a filter in a waiting room to slow the information down and then it trickles into the conscious mind. So there's this whole system operating. And so this trickle that comes through, comes through in bursts of 10 seconds. And what we find is that more or less every six groups of 10 seconds, this is more or less, it's you know, it's give or take a few seconds here or there. I'm trying to make something complex, simple. So every sort of 10, six groups of 10, which is about 60 seconds, which is about a minute, is a key time frame in which we are able to start learning how to self regulate. So with my patients for for example, I would teach them to try and self regulate and catch that moment. So this is what's happened now in these 60 seconds, let's look at how we are about to react. Let's evaluate those emotions and what they feel like in your body. And just very quickly, don't spend long. You can literally do these exercises that I've got in this book. In those timeframes, you've got to practice them a few times. Then that timeframe that creates that ability for you to stand back and take control. And when I say stand back, you stand back. What is the that even mean? It means that you stand back into your wise mind, which is actually the non conscious part of you working with the conscious part of you where your wisdom is. So we've got this messy conscious part. That's great. It's like a toddler, you've got young kids. Toddlers, without guidance of parents will create chaos in their lives and everyone else's life. So a toddler needs a parent to guide them. The conscious mind is very much like a toddler. Hungry for knowledge, excited about everything, up one minute, down the next. But that's where the parent steps in and guides that process. And as the parent steps in, parents reach out to other parents and to each other and books and whatever to get wisdom. So with that analogy, our conscious mind is like a toddler and there's a parent part. And so when we gather that 60 seconds moment when we instead of just reacting, we stop and create that pause. We are then the toddler listening to the parent. And as soon as the parent and toddler are connecting, then wisdom is activated. Then we get this direct line into our non conscious where everything, all the problems plus the solutions are there. We just got to. It's our intuition, it's our gut feel, it's our insight, it's our ability to work through things that's coming from this deep part of us. So we want to attach into that. So that's a long explanation. But as you do the technique, like for example, someone makes you angry. That was the example I started with. You're in a meeting, someone makes you angry. This is top of the mind because someone actually gave me this example yesterday in an interview. And they said they have this. There's someone in this meeting and they've been working with them for a long time. But every time they say this, they always react. And then it's. There's this whole reactive moment going, what do they do? How do they control that? So whatever they say, that's going to be absorbed by your non conscious and all these levels of your mind are activated. And then your conscious mind is aware. A few seconds later, it's milliseconds. And now you have this chance to regulate. You have this chance to think, okay, that's my toddler mind. My toddler mind wants to freak out because of the frustration, the emotional frustration or irritation or anger combination. My body is just tensing up my behaviors. I want to just snap back and say something really angry with a bad tone of voice. And my perspective is, oh my gosh, this person is just always doing this and that's happening very fast. So you want to. And in the toddler mind, we're just going to react to that and say the wrong thing. And wisdom does not pursue or ensue. But if I stop and say, okay, I acknowledge that. I honor that. I'm feeling like this. So it's very important that we honor what we've just experienced. And by honoring it, I mean acknowledge it. It's okay. They said something valid that irritated you. This is a problem. There's something going on here. Doesn't mean it's the end of the world. It's okay to not be okay. We can sort this out. But reacting is going to make it worse. So you kind of like a little bit of self talk there that helps you to honor what you're doing, honor those emotions and bodily sensations and perspectives and those things just very quickly. You can do that in 10 seconds. And then from there you do a little bit of a mind shift where you start saying, all right, well if I react now like this, then I'm good. This is going to happen. Maybe there's something valid in what they're saying. Maybe I can spend some time later just thinking of this pattern that keeps occurring. Because there's definitely a pattern here or whatever. But right now I need to still run this meeting or I still need to contribute to this meeting. I need to stay calm. So what can I do to calm myself down? I could take a deep breath in, I could visualize, blah, blah, blah. And let's talk for a moment about that breathing. The breathing is so interesting because as we know, we breathe as humans and we breathe in oxygen molecules. We all know that and we all know that breath work is huge. People are so into breath work and there's a big reason why they are. But here's something interesting that some people may not realize. When you're angry and you're stimulated by anger, this in the example that we've got, we often will do, you know, we'll take a deep breath and it's not always to calm ourselves down. It's actually a breath of anger. So we take in that oxygen, but we breathe in a way that's actually got this mindset that is all those things that I described. So then the next breath that follows that is actually oxygen that's carrying an energy because that's really what these thoughts. It's electromagnetic fields that create these. That's what the person is saying. It's auditory sound waves and electromagnetic fields. It's all physics. It's very real stuff. And it's a little cloud of energy. So when you like this and you shoot that out, you are making it worse. So the oxygen that you breathe in anger kind of accelerates the issue. So we've got to really. That's why I say honor it first. You know, get some little bit of honoring going on in terms of yes, you feel like that and all that thing that I mentioned, go into a bit of a mind shift and then do your breathing. But now breathe in in a calmer state so that you're not breathing anger, you actually breathing. Okay, solution. And it shifts. The way that the oxygen moves through the body calms down. The neurophysiology changes how the, the dopamine, the oxytocin, the anandamide, all the different neurochemicals and neurohormones. I mean it a huge thing in your hypothalamic pituitary axis. So it's not just. It's quick and fast, but it is a tiny shift that we can make that completely transforms literally how we handle that next moment. So that's a long answer, but really what's. It took me longer to explain. But once you know how to do it and you can choose what technique, I'm giving you a broad outline. But once you've mastered one or two techniques and you practice it, wow. The payback for learning to self regulate in the moment, it's huge. It's absolutely huge. That's where peace comes. And that was one of the first questions you asked me about this okay to not be okay. And you mentioned the word peace, which is like a fuel. Once we start mastering the 60 seconds. We start activating our fuel, which is peace. Peace starts coming in. So you don't have the answers yet. You're still irritated, but you're different. And that peace will then help you manage the next moment.
- [21:11]
A
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- [21:31]
B
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- [21:41]
A
So it sounds like when you're in this moment, try to shift internally to toddler mind. I feel like people need a toddler mind signed at their desk sometimes just to hold up to acknowledge it. Toddler mind and acknowledge it. And try to pivot quickly to breathing, but more, more in line with nasal breathing. Longer exhales. If you have a wearable, watch your heart rate. Like try to, try to take down the temperature. Not short, quick inhales. That's only going to amp you up. But like focus on the exhales. Try to slow things down. And the more time elapses, it sounds like the 60 seconds a minute is kind of a key metric.
- [22:28]
B
Yeah.
- [22:28]
A
The better shape you're in to react, whether you still need to react or maybe you don't. Maybe. Exactly asked you said, I don't need to say anything.
- [22:37]
B
Exactly. So that takes you into the next minute. So you can go. I mean, some of these exercises you can do for, you know, maybe two or three or four minutes, depending on what situation you're in. If you're on your own, you can take a little longer. But if you need, you know, you got to at least try and get that 60 seconds in. And I'm glad you stressed the breathing about the longer exhale, not the short. You know, the short breath is tension, it creates tension. But the deep breath is great. What works beautifully for being triggered in that moment for anger is the sip breathing. I'm sure you're familiar with that. And that's really where you take the. A very deep breath in. And then when you think you can't take any more, you take one more sip and you get a kind of Sense of being high almost and then you breathe it out. But it's unbelievable what it does to your neurophysiology, you know, so it's knowing those little tricks in to add on. But don't breathe before. I mean, you're still breathing. Don't not breathe, obviously breathing. But really important to just acknowledge in your head, say to yourself, they've said that I feel like this in my body. Four signals. I feel like this. Where is it in my body? So I feel angry. My shoulders are tensing. I'm going to snap at this person. And they're always doing this. Just quick acknowledgment, say, okay, now let's shift. Do a little bit of a mind shift a bit of self talk and then do some sort of breathing or visualization, whatever. There's a lot of different things. So many things that you can do.
- [23:51]
A
Well building off of that and the power of the, you know, brain, body connection. You need to practice.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And the more you practice when you're not in the heat of the moment, the better you will be when it occurs. So what are some of the things we can do in our everyday life in terms of exercises that can help us better prepare so when that moment does occur, we're going to be better equipped to handle it.
- [24:21]
B
So one of the. It's three things, three overarching things. The first thing is get the knowledge. And that goes to your point that you made about. Just become familiar with, with the concept. So what we did was we did surveys and then we took the surveys plus the research, plus my clinical work. And we found 18 areas that people tend to. There's a lot, but some major areas and some of, you know, those are the sort of main headings. I'll read up some of them. Help. I'm under pressure. For example, is a top one. Help. My brain won't shut up. Help. I want to punch that person in the face. Help. Everything seem so black and white. Help. I'm tired all the time. My intrusive thoughts won't quit. I don't feel happy all the time. I mean, that's so interesting that one. Help. I'm angry all the time. These have come from current surveys that we've done and analyzed and align with the research to. Help. My regrets are holding me back. Help. I don't know what the heck is happening. There's a few more. Help. My inner critic won't lead up. So we found the main areas. So the way I would recommend in terms of the knowledge aspect, so number One is scan through the chapter titles and see what resonates with you the most. Probably all of them will resonate with you, but there'll be one that's prioritized. You're probably top three and then prioritize of those top three. So maybe it's regrets. That used to be a massive, massive issue for me. And I say used to. I still have to watch it. But I honestly would lose joy in the moment because I would be, I would do something, I would have a conversation with someone and the minute it was over I'd say why didn't I say it like that? I could have said this, I should have done that. And I start creating scenarios in my head and those scenarios would include things like if I had said that then this would have happened. And that is called an upward counterfactual. And what that means is that the facts are that something happened. The facts are that happened. It's done, I said that. That's the conversation, it's finished. Those are the facts. Now a counterfactual is I start creating a scenario in my head of what could have happened. An upward counterfactual is if I had done that, something better would have happened. So if I'd said that there would have been this amazing solution that I'm making. It's not going to happen. It's all imagination, it's all I'm hoping for. But. But it ties you in knots because then you think it makes you feel worse and worse and worse. You get a downward counterfactual. You'll say, well, if I had that conversation in this way, if I said this, then a worse thing would have happened that initially is better than an upward one. You kind of feel a little bit better, but eventually that spirals as well. And so what one wants to do is. So that's just an example. Just so you keep on topic and on your question number one is find your area and read the stuff. So read, understand it. So regret your issue. Read what? Upward and downward counterfactual. Read the little. So the chapters are short. There's science, there's simple science and there's how to apply this. It's a very hands on book. This has come from people saying, please can you give me something to move to use in the moment.
- [27:13]
A
So let's talk about regrets. I think that's an interesting one. I think I regret more now that I'm admit, you know, I'm 50 and I have two little kids and I didn't used to go back and think A lot about what I could have done better when I was a child and a teenager and a young adult. But I do now. I think about it a lot as I think about raising our girls. Is that common? What's your take, like middle age? Is that when regrets start popping up or earlier and what's healthy and what's not healthy there? Because in some degree I think it is healthy. I think if you have no regrets in your middle age, like are you maybe a narcissist or you tell me, you're the clinician.
- [27:58]
B
Well, you've raised a really great point. So regret is a big one. It's like one of the ones that everyone has regrets and they come at different stages. So some people like myself, I lived with regrets from a young child. So I used to regret everything. And what really changed it was as I learned more, did research and started understanding what was going on and saw my patients doing it. I still battled, but I started getting insight. But what really changed me was my children. So interesting you, you know, you say that I, I was quite a young mom and my one day we were on holiday and every time we left I would think, oh, we didn't do this, we didn't do that. And Dominique, you know Dominique, you've met Dominique, she was about 7 and she turned around to meet Jason and she said, mom, you spoiling a holiday because you keep on regretting everything. I don't even know how she knew the word regret, but I'll never Forget this. The 7 year old said the word regret, she keep on saying, if only you're spoiling everything. And she got kind of mad. As a little seven year old, it stopped me in my tracks and made me dive in and understand that. So different now you've got kids, your kids have really triggered that in you. So regrets are not bad things. Everyone battles with them in different ways at different stages. It's really unique to the person, but it's a very common human thing. There isn't anyone who hasn't lived with regrets, just some of us have mastered it in at different stages or know how to control it quicker at certain stages, certain trigger points in our life, like having children or whatever, as in your case, brings that through and whatever. So number one, regrets are normal. Number two, they tend to occur at different stages depending on who you are, your story, your life experiences, etc. Number three, they are actually very good if you know how to manage them. So if you're having a situation where you are saying, gosh, I wish I had Done that when I was younger, so I was better prepared for this. The statement you grab the statement. Never run from a statement. Never run from the regret. Welcome it, Honor it. This is really key that you'll hear me say a lot through this concept is immediately say, okay, take the time. Don't just rush on with your work and shove it aside. Take the moment to say, oh, wow, it's so interesting that I'm actually saying that. So what am I learning here? There's no failure. There's only, what have I learned, what not to do. So why am I regretting this? Is this something that I feel that I could have, that I'm seeing my children benefit from, that I could have benefited from? And I almost grieving because I almost lost out, out in something in my life or, you know, you remember a period in your life or whatever, or is this something that I see I could have done better? And maybe this is carried over into how I'm bringing up my kids. And I said something the other day that triggered whatever. Go and explore it. Honor it, and explore it. The minute you honor something and by honoring, I'm not saying make it a big thing and put it up there, I'm saying honor it by acknowledging that you feel this. Because if you push it down, it doesn't go away. It just gets stronger. So what you want to do is get control over the regret. So you want to become aware. So what. What we see from neuroscience is that as soon as you acknowledge something and say, yeah, I do feel this regret, let me dive deeper. The minute you do that, that mind, brain, body, network, and mind is 99%. Brain and body are 1% of who we are as humans. That network, which is our own internal web that specifically is linked to whatever the situation was that triggered that regret, that network comes up, a light shines on it. Now, the minute that we are aware of a network, it becomes malleable, which means changeable. This is where neuroplasticity, or directed neuroplasticity happens. We're not made of stone. We're not cast in stone. No experience is cast in stone. All our stories will stay with us. But what they look like inside of our networks and how they play out into our future, that's in our hands. We can change the power of those. If we don't deal with them, they become more powerful and they drive us in the wrong direction. So by acknowledging that regret, analyzing it in terms of the emotions, the behaviors, the body sensations, the perspectives, doesn't take you long. That Gives you the power and starts enabling you to change the network. Now what do you want to change? You need to confront the data. What is this giving me? What is the data that this is giving me? Why? And do a bit of exploring, a bit of deconstructing and reconstructing to find the potential source. Sometimes you can do that in one five minute session. Sometimes you see, oh, gosh, this is actually a pattern. This is linked to other areas of my life. I can see this is in my relationship with my wife and my kids, my business. Okay, this is a pattern. Then what you'd need to do, which is actually part two of the answer of the initial question, is then you need to get a, get a, some sort of plan in the moment, the 63 seconds, which we can talk about. And then that will open the door to seeing that this is a pattern. When you do the short thing, when you do the help in a hurry moment, it opens your eyes, it gives you insight, you tap into your intuitive nature and you start recognizing the pattern. Then that becomes your sort of third step, which is, okay, now I need to change this pattern. Because if this pattern is driving me to a level of regret that's impacting my behaviors as a parent, then, and I potentially could see this could be problematic, or I could see I could actually learn something great from this. I need to spend time on this. And that is the change that takes time. And that's going to take around 63 days, which we've spoken about before on the podcast, the research on, on changing time. So it's the moment of self regulation, it's the knowledge, it's the moment of self regulation. And then it's the change of the pattern, which is over time, which is about. So it's literally get the knowledge, the 60 seconds and the 63 days, or the 63 seconds and the 63 days kind of. That is your rhythm that we need to get into. In that way. We then get the data from the regret and we turn it into possibilities of growth. And that's powerful. And we design it, we direct it.
- [33:41]
A
Acknowledge it, and then make it a teaching moment. Ask the question, what can I learn from this? I can't change this. What's done is done. But how can I learn from this?
- [33:50]
B
Exactly what have I learned? What not to do. That's a really key question because that is a very way of flipping the, It's a very, really great question to flip the guilt that can come from regret, because regret tends to have a lot of guilt attached to flips it on its head because we can say, okay, I failed, I did this, this, whatever, what have I learned? What not to do. And that stops you battering yourself and getting worse. It actually helps you to stand back into the parent mind and get the wisdom from the non conscious and then grow forward. That really is a. It's a great question to ask to shift.
- [34:26]
A
Can you talk about some of your own life experiences you share in the book and how your personal journey really shaped this one and your work in general?
- [34:36]
B
Oh, yeah, for sure. So I felt in a lot of my work, I felt that the books I've written and all the things I've done and apps, whatever, I felt there was a missing link and I almost couldn't put my finger on it. And it's this concept of the 63 seconds. And I thought, why haven't I ever really spoken about this? Because I live this. I live the 63 second moment. I've researched it for years. I helped my patients in my practice handle the moment and then the long term stuff. I also know that when you tell someone, hey, it's going to take you 63 days to change your life, one of the first reactions I get is, I haven't got 63 days. I don't even have five minutes in my life. So you've got to. Then there's the whole argument, well, you're changing anyway, so don't you want to direct that change? So it's just a matter of shifting mindsets and so on. So the reason, one of the main reasons I wrote this book was because the greatest changes that happened in me, with regret, with not reacting, not dealing with people pleasing, was another big one in my life, was learning to control that moment. And then I felt, hey, if I can control 63 seconds, I can then control the next minute. I can then control the next hour. And when you apply it, a classic example is in our marriage. Mac and I've been married 37 years, been together 39 years. We're together 24 7. We live together, we work together. Same as you and Colleen. You're together all the time. It's very easy to get into patterns of irritation because you start a marriage with your know, each with your baggage and all that kind of thing. And we honestly are, all these years later, we've learned a lot and everything, but we came. There were a lot of things that I would do. Mac would have a tone of get a certain tone or a certain look on his face and I would react to that and it would lead to a fight that doesn't happen anymore. Like just the other day, I'll give you an example. We had had a particularly busy week traveling and there was just a lot, all great stuff, but there was just too much without putting proper reset. So we didn't reset, we didn't restore properly. And I had, I've got a 20 month old grandchild. And she talks about having big emotions. I'm sure you do this with your kids too, but the big emotions miss Rachel and all that stuff. And I turned to Mac and he said, and I was, I snapped at him. I was so sarcastic and it's not my nature, but I was so wound up from everything. I hadn't reset. And so he said something and the poor guy just got hammered on and he looks at me and he said, do you even love me? And I said, why are you asking such a stupid question? And I climbed back into him or whatever and at that moment it hit me, 63 seconds, catch this. What are you doing? And I stopped immediately. And I said, I'm so sorry, I'm having some seriously big emotions here. And I actually just talked it through and I just said, I'm really sorry, I had no right to speak with that tone. And you know, and I just talked it through, I went through the process and I caught that 60 in that 63 seconds. I said, oh my gosh, I'm having huge emotions saying nasty things. I'm speaking in a tone that's awful. I'm dragging up stuff from 30 years ago that we've resolved already a hundred times. I'm saying to him, you always do this when he doesn't do that anymore. And I thought, wow, teaching moment, learning moment. And I just spoke it out loud and went through that process of acknowledging that and saying, where does this come from? And then it was very easy to see. Gosh, I just, I'm tired. I didn't take a break. Let me just take a moment, Let me just catch my breath, do some breathing, start again and reset. And let's have this conversation over. There's a classic example and that is, I mean that's self regulation in action. And when you've done it once, it really, you notice, you notice, oh, tone of that email. Oh, my tone's wrong. I'm going to say something. Oh, I'm thinking that thought about that person before and I may be smiling, but I'm thinking that thought now. I know from the science that I do that if I've got a thought towards someone of envy or irritation Maybe I'm smiling and whatever, but I'm going to generate that electromagnetic field. And this is not woo woo science, this is hardcore science. Regenerating the energy from that thought. You feel it. You walk into a room and you know someone doesn't like you, you can sense it or you know someone's irritated with you, they're not saying anything but you know they're irritated. This is what I'm talking about. When you train yourself to self regulate, that is what you notice in the moment. Now I'm not saying I've got it all together but Jason, what I've done is I've learned to catch it quick. And I am noticing that my kids who all work with me, as you know, even my son in laws and we have a very intense schedule like you guys. It's so easy in with work that our external teams you don't get, you know, you, you polite and whatever but with your own family it's so easy to let your guard down. So we've made it a rule in our own business, self regulation, that 63 seconds help in a hurry and it comes out all the time, it's hey, you need a help in a hurry moment. So it's become a lifestyle for us and that's why I wrote this book. I thought these things are so good. These are the sorts of things that people reach out to me and ask me to help them with that I coach people with. That's went into this book. For me this is life changing stuff.
- [39:24]
A
It is life changing and I think of a world that's changing rapidly with AI and I think of children and qualities we want them to have. I think self regulation has to be at top of the list. You know, I think of emotional intelligence, self regulation, the ability to deal with adversity. Like what are things that are just going to be non negotiables exactly. For all of us as we go forward. Well, I, I love the book.
- [39:46]
B
Book.
- [39:47]
A
I know we covered a lot today. Is there anything before, before we wrap you want to touch on which we didn't touch on or talk more about where people can find you?
- [39:56]
B
Oh, I think we've, I think you did a great job covering everything. I think. But one of the things, maybe just to give people another example very quickly is one of the top ones that came out in our surveys and research and it's probably the most common thing that people say to me at book tables, conferences and when I practice was the stake statement. I am under so much pressure, I am so stressed. So I put that as the, literally the first chapter in the book. And there's many different areas of stress that people deal with, but there's seven main kind of sentences. It's not, obviously I can't cover everything in this book, but there's seven main areas that are top areas that people battle with, with pressure. And one of the top of those seven is I didn't get X done. Which comes back to the very first question you asked me, which was about, it's okay not to be okay. There's so much pressure in today's society, as you say, with AI, with productivity, with information at our fingertips, with us not knowing how to really restore properly. We do, but we don't do it like we should. And that kind of thing that people often will be, will angle the end of the day as a, oh, I didn't get X done. Whatever that may be. And that in itself creates such a neurophysiological strain on the brain and the body and the conscious mind lives, get stuck in the toddler mindset in any of these. So regret cycles, pressure, whatever. So if you start saying to yourself, oh, I didn't get this done, I didn't get this done. I didn't get this done. I didn't get this done. You stay in your toddler mind, that information in your mind is placed, is copied, literally, it's a bunch of energy that's copied and placed into the brain and there's a whole reaction genetically and you wire that in as a network and then it goes in every cell of your body as well. And you've just now created a network of, of I didn't get X done. And if you don't deal with that tomorrow, you do it again, the next day you do it again. Before you know it, 63 days has passed. That is a network that's actually driving you. And so this, what, what the, this particular chapter deals with is find those pressure points and then start training yourself. When you, when you catch yourself saying I didn't get X done, just, you know, once again, acknowledge, etc. Etc. Do the little bit of I've given some ideas for different breathing or visualization exercises and then flip it on its head and say something like, I call these a mind shift. Say, instead of saying I didn't get X done, rather say I got X done. So you just shift one word, I didn't get X done. I did get X done. And you force yourself to focus on what you did get done. And that minor shift will shift your neurophysiology it will get your conscious mind to listen the toddler to listen to the parent and the minute that activation is set up we tap into the wisdom of our nonconscious pieces then activated we've got fuel then to manage the next moment. So that's just another example that I think is pretty helpful for people in this busy world and then we can see the patterns and do the 63 days and all the rest of it.
- [42:48]
A
Well very sage advice and another best selling book. Caroline, thank you so much. Always a pleasure.
- [42:54]
B
My pleasure. Thanks so much and I love being on your show and thank you so much for having me on your show and I want to have you on my show again. The Dr. Leaf Show. People can find lots of information on there. We're putting lots of little mini podcasts on all these concepts so people can learn from them as well and the books available wherever books are sold and all my social media handles are Dr. Caroline Leaf.