Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Jay Sheddy and I'm thrilled to announce
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Speaker 1: yours today. How much do we actually know about the
Speaker 1: brain and its potential?
Speaker 2: We have years of knowledge, but there is an enormous
Speaker 2: amount that we still don't know. There are brain areas
Speaker 2: we have no idea what they do. Every ping of
Speaker 2: the phone is anxiety producing, which then launches her stress response,
Speaker 2: and that keeps us stressful for way too much of
Speaker 2: the day. So many people are appreciating at a higher
Speaker 2: level stress and anxiety and depression. A little bit of
Speaker 2: that is actually good for the brain. You want to
Speaker 2: live a long, healthy, energized life, start paying attention to
Speaker 2: all the things you need to do to make your
Speaker 2: brain work beautifully. It defines everything that we do and
Speaker 2: everything that we are. The number one Health and well
Speaker 2: Iness Podcast.
Speaker 1: Jay set Jay Sheddy, Wendy, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being him so grateful to have you on on purpose.
Speaker 1: I was really looking forward to this and even just
Speaker 1: the few words we've exchanged now I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: click record asam. We need to capture all of it.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, let's dive right in. Yeah, the first thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you was how much do we actually
Speaker 1: know about the brain and its potential?
Speaker 2: That is such a great question. We have hours and
Speaker 2: semesters and years of knowledge that we have gained about
Speaker 2: the brain since we've seriously been studying it, but there
Speaker 2: is an enormous amount that we still don't know. There
Speaker 2: are brain areas we have no idea what they do.
Speaker 2: My favorite is called the claustrum. Somebody asked me, what's
Speaker 2: the most mysterious brain area that you know? Wendy, this
Speaker 2: is a brain area that connects to everything cortically subcortically,
Speaker 2: it should be integrating something critical. We have no idea
Speaker 2: what it does. We have little idea of how consciousness works.
Speaker 2: We know a lot about vision. So it is a
Speaker 2: beautiful bag of information and mystery that our brain represents.
Speaker 1: There's something about that, right that There's so much we've learned,
Speaker 1: but there's so much yet to uncover. Yes, but I
Speaker 1: feel when we talk about the brain and what's relevant
Speaker 1: to us, I think about what does a healthy and
Speaker 1: unhealthy brain feel like? Yes, and how do we know
Speaker 1: whether we have a healthy or unhealthy brain?
Speaker 2: I think that the answer to that is, so many
Speaker 2: people are appreciating at a higher level their stress and
Speaker 2: anxiety and depression. A little bit of that is actually
Speaker 2: good for the brain. Chronic all the time can't get
Speaker 2: out from under the cloud or the big rock around
Speaker 2: your neck, that anxiety can feel like. That is not
Speaker 2: good for your brain. High levels of stress overall will
Speaker 2: start to first damage and then kill some neurons in
Speaker 2: your brain. That is not good. So if you are
Speaker 2: at that level, that is not good for your brain.
Speaker 1: What about someone who says, and I'm sure you hear
Speaker 1: this all the time, Wendy, Oh, you know, stress doesn't
Speaker 1: really affect me. You know, I can just keep going.
Speaker 1: I don't really notice it. What would you say to
Speaker 1: someone who says.
Speaker 2: That, I would say I said that a lot to myself.
Speaker 2: And when I sat down to write my second book,
Speaker 2: Good Anxiety, I realized how much stress and anxiety that
Speaker 2: I was dealing with in my life. And also, I
Speaker 2: think the key was there were simple tools that one
Speaker 2: could use to address not all forms of your stress
Speaker 2: and anxiety, but a lot of those forms of stress
Speaker 2: and anxiety. And so the first step is awareness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so becoming aware. Why are we in denial about
Speaker 1: our stress?
Speaker 2: I think, well, I live in New York City. People
Speaker 2: like to wear a badge of stress. Oh you know
Speaker 2: you every time you answer how are you? Oh so
Speaker 2: stressed out? So much to do? It's like a badge
Speaker 2: of a badge of honor. So I think that that
Speaker 2: becomes has become part of our individualistic society, and that's
Speaker 2: not good. I mean, what you should be able to say,
Speaker 2: at least a good chunk of the time is actually,
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. I feel good, I feel energized. And
Speaker 2: you don't hear that response all too often. And that's
Speaker 2: not just in New York, but I think all over
Speaker 2: the country and all over the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. No, I think you're so right. I
Speaker 1: think people are used to saying surviving, Yes, just surviving,
Speaker 1: just getting through this day. Yeah, I'm just moving forward.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why we're doing this episode, because
Speaker 1: we want people to be able to turn around and say, oh, no,
Speaker 1: I'm doing well, imnergizing. But it's almost like we carry
Speaker 1: this guilt if we are about to say that, right,
Speaker 1: there's a feeling of like, oh, there's a feeling of
Speaker 1: shame that I'm not working hard enough. Yes, right, So
Speaker 1: going back the other way with the badge of honor,
Speaker 1: there's a feeling of if I said, oh, no, I'm
Speaker 1: actually doing okay, Yeah, that's me saying I'm not working
Speaker 1: hard in it.
Speaker 2: Right. I've noticed that as well. I've noticed that in
Speaker 2: myself and my colleagues. And it's about stepping back and realizing.
Speaker 2: You know, I think one of the most profound pieces
Speaker 2: of advice that somebody gave me early on is making
Speaker 2: me realize how important and how complex my brain was.
Speaker 2: It defines everything that we do and everything that we are,
Speaker 2: and making that work well should be high on our list.
Speaker 2: Chronic stress and buying into that I'm busy all the
Speaker 2: time culture is not conducive to brain health. So you
Speaker 2: want to live a long, healthy, energized life, start paying
Speaker 2: attention to all the things you need to do to
Speaker 2: make your brain work beautifully.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no matter how much you think you've got away
Speaker 1: with it up until now, Yes, it's not good to
Speaker 1: keep pushing that and testing, yes, how far the brain
Speaker 1: can go exactly. Walk me through the difference between anxiety
Speaker 1: and stress and why is it important to know the difference.
Speaker 2: They are intertwined in a really complex way. So physiologically,
Speaker 2: the stress response is enacted by the sympathetic nervous system,
Speaker 2: and it's all those feelings that we are very familiar with.
Speaker 2: Increase heart rate, increased respiration rate, our eyes dilate, there's
Speaker 2: a upset stomach because actually blood is rushing away from
Speaker 2: our digestion and reproductive systems towards our muscles, because the
Speaker 2: response is to get us ready to run away, to
Speaker 2: physically flee. Now, anxiety is the emotion of fearing something
Speaker 2: that is coming up in the future, that could that
Speaker 2: we don't like, that that could harm us. In his essence,
Speaker 2: it is protective. So you know, a woman three point
Speaker 2: five million years ago, trying to protect your baby wanted
Speaker 2: to use those feelings of anxiety to keep that baby
Speaker 2: safe from those physical dangers that were there. The problem
Speaker 2: is that in today's world, every ping of the phone
Speaker 2: is anxiety producing, which then launches your stress response, and
Speaker 2: that keeps us stressful for way too much of the day.
Speaker 2: So the key, I think is learning how to turn
Speaker 2: the volume down on those anxiety cues that then launch
Speaker 2: stress and learning what they are for yourself, but also
Speaker 2: using the tools of science to turn that volume down.
Speaker 2: It's a simple first step that everybody can take.
Speaker 1: How do we do that?
Speaker 2: So the first thing that you can do is first realize,
Speaker 2: you said, you know, how do we know we're stressed?
Speaker 2: Self reflect for a moment. Am I am? I telling
Speaker 2: everybody I'm stressed all the time? Do I not sleep
Speaker 2: well because of stress? When you do that, there are
Speaker 2: my number one and number two tools that I immediately go to,
Speaker 2: And I know you've talked about this so many times
Speaker 2: on your show. Number one, because it is immediate, is
Speaker 2: deep breathing breath work. Why because breath work activates the
Speaker 2: equal and opposite part of that sympathetic fight or flight system,
Speaker 2: the parasympathetic system. I told you all the things that
Speaker 2: stress activates, heart rate rays, respiration rays. You know you're
Speaker 2: blood rushing. I can't control where my blood rushes, and
Speaker 2: I can't really control my heart rate, but I can
Speaker 2: control exactly how deep and profound and frequent my breathing is.
Speaker 2: So that's why just deep breathing just two or three times,
Speaker 2: can you know, tried out, It can really calm you down,
Speaker 2: and if you practice it, it gets even more powerful.
Speaker 2: That's my tool. Go to number one, and it's number
Speaker 2: one because if I'm getting anxious about this interview, could
Speaker 2: actually do this in the background you don't even know,
Speaker 2: And I can calm myself down even in the heat
Speaker 2: of a This is not a stressful conversation at all,
Speaker 2: but I'm pretending that you know it could be. Number
Speaker 2: two is moving your body, and so ten minutes of
Speaker 2: walking outside or anywhere up and down the stairs, down
Speaker 2: the hallway has been shown to decrease your anxiety and
Speaker 2: stress levels. It's one of the fastest way that you
Speaker 2: can use physical activity to address your stress and anxiety levels.
Speaker 2: Those are my number one and number two go tos.
Speaker 2: Anybody can use. You don't even have to change.
Speaker 1: Your clothes that first Roe. I'm so glad you brought
Speaker 1: that up. And it's a practice I do still till
Speaker 1: this day if I'm going on stage or if I'm
Speaker 1: doing something that's anxiety and using And I think people
Speaker 1: are always like, Jay, wait a minute, you experienced anxiety.
Speaker 1: I'm like, of course I do it. Yeah, It's a
Speaker 1: part of everyday life. And if I'm about to do
Speaker 1: something that feels that way, I can not. It's the
Speaker 1: same thing. But now that I've noticed that queue, which is,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's easy for me to think, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I know I need to breathe in for a four
Speaker 1: and breathe out for more than four, which is a pattern.
Speaker 1: I like, Are there any patterns that you suggest or
Speaker 1: is it just deep breathing?
Speaker 2: You know, the easiest is just deep you for three
Speaker 2: or four counts in three, four counts out. But I
Speaker 2: like box breathing, which I know you know about. Deep
Speaker 2: breath in for four counts, hold at the top for
Speaker 2: four counts, deep breath out for four counts, hold it
Speaker 2: at the bottom for four counts. It's funny every time
Speaker 2: I even say that, and I often say that in
Speaker 2: these kinds of interviews, I feel myself destressing as I
Speaker 2: do that, because the muscle memory of when I do
Speaker 2: do that comes in. But yes, it is such a
Speaker 2: powerful technique that everybody can use.
Speaker 1: And how do we spot our cues more closely? Because
Speaker 1: so for a long time I used to say I
Speaker 1: don't get stressed, And then I started to realize when
Speaker 1: I was actually still, that all my stress was stored
Speaker 1: in my body. So I wouldn't get stressed mentally, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't ex experience it in my mind, and I wouldn't
Speaker 1: experience it in my chest or my heart. But then
Speaker 1: I started to notice that my upper shoulders or my
Speaker 1: neck is always tight. Yeah, And it took me a
Speaker 1: while before I started to recognize that stress existed in
Speaker 1: different ways as opposed to this idea of oh, well
Speaker 1: it's not up here, so it doesn't exist. How do
Speaker 1: we get closer to those cues? Because I think there's
Speaker 1: two questions. One is how do we get closer to
Speaker 1: our cues? And the second is when you feel that
Speaker 1: cue or trigger, how do you remind yourself to breathe?
Speaker 2: I think to get closer to your cues. The easiest
Speaker 2: answer is to spend time in open awareness of your
Speaker 2: own cues. And just as you said, and it's the
Speaker 2: same for me, they don't suddenly appear on a list
Speaker 2: in front of you. You have to go and seek
Speaker 2: them out because for you, it wasn't in your head,
Speaker 2: it was in your body. I'll never forget. Multiple times
Speaker 2: I've had the experience of deep tissue massage in certain
Speaker 2: places that triggered just crying in me and I'm I'm
Speaker 2: so sorry, what's happening? They said, No, I've just touched
Speaker 2: a point in your body that you store a lot
Speaker 2: of stress. You mean, like actually cry, actual physical crime.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't like I couldn't help it. And it's happened.
Speaker 2: It's happened just twice. But that was my very clear
Speaker 2: cue that I also store a lot of stress and
Speaker 2: anxiety in my own body. You have to go and
Speaker 2: look for that, and you have to notice it, and
Speaker 2: you have to remind yourself when you've been covering up
Speaker 2: your own stress and anxiety, which I am also a
Speaker 2: master of. It takes a little exploration, and I think
Speaker 2: that listening to others and and and actually asking a friend,
Speaker 2: do you notice times when when you think I'm more
Speaker 2: stress than others, and sometimes you might be surprised. That
Speaker 2: might be a really good, you know, moment of realization.
Speaker 2: And so then your second question was, once you realize
Speaker 2: in this moment, how do you remind yourself to breathe?
Speaker 2: And that's a hard one and I think the best
Speaker 2: way is don't wait until say, oh I'm anxious, I
Speaker 2: need to breathe. But never having any practice with this breathing,
Speaker 2: it is wonderful to take To take a class time
Speaker 2: and go to a breath meditation class. You learn so
Speaker 2: much because there is literally thousands of years of breath
Speaker 2: work technique to learn. And I've been exploring that as well.
Speaker 2: But you don't have to get super fancy. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: just about you said you like the inhale and exhale
Speaker 2: for a longer time. That is a very basic but
Speaker 2: powerful one. Explore that on YouTube. There are thousands of
Speaker 2: free meditations you can do that. I always send people
Speaker 2: there practice it, see which ones you like. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: too long of a hold for people, and you have
Speaker 2: to find the one that you like, practice, get it
Speaker 2: comfortable with yourself, and then it'll be easier to call
Speaker 2: it up when you do notice that moment coming up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I think I think that's great. At
Speaker 1: what advice it's you can't have something help you. It's
Speaker 1: almost like I remember being at school and they'd always
Speaker 1: train you with what happens if there was a fire,
Speaker 1: So you're training when there isn't a fire, yes, and
Speaker 1: so it's like, hey, when there's a fire, you're going
Speaker 1: to walk through this door, you're going to line up outside,
Speaker 1: you're going to do this. And it's almost like we
Speaker 1: need that yes for when the fires appear in our
Speaker 1: mind exactly, and you've got to do the routine before
Speaker 1: it happens in reality.
Speaker 2: Right, And if you do, do it, really think about
Speaker 2: how that made you feel. Do you feel that difference?
Speaker 2: And it's important to keep exploring how different things make
Speaker 2: you feel. Because maybe you chose just a bum breath technique.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work for you, and there are those that
Speaker 2: you know just won't hack it for you, So try
Speaker 2: other things, but stay aware. And that practice of self
Speaker 2: awareness I think is so important for the rest of
Speaker 2: our lives.
Speaker 1: I think what's actually happening to the brain when we
Speaker 1: ignore anxiety and stress for a long periods of time.
Speaker 2: Stress very physiologically releases stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol goes through
Speaker 2: the blood brain barrier, goes into the brain. And the
Speaker 2: danger is that there are key brain areas that you
Speaker 2: want to keep healthy and thriving and growing throughout your
Speaker 2: life that high levels of consistent cortisol will damage and
Speaker 2: then eventually kill cells. And the first brain area I'll
Speaker 2: focus on is called the hippocampus, critical for memory function,
Speaker 2: and here we know that long term stress. For example,
Speaker 2: people with PTSD monkeys that have low rank in the
Speaker 2: pecking order male monkeys have tiny little hippocampi because those
Speaker 2: cells have gotten damage and then died, and that is
Speaker 2: not good. We need what I like to call a big, fat,
Speaker 2: fluffy hippa campus for the rest of our lives. This
Speaker 2: is the area that first gets attacked in Alzheimer's disease,
Speaker 2: and you want to keep that beautiful and healthy. The
Speaker 2: other brain area that is attacked in stress is your
Speaker 2: prefrontal cortex, critical for decision making, being able to shift
Speaker 2: and focus your attention. And so you are starting to
Speaker 2: damage two key areas you know. I lead nine thousand
Speaker 2: students The two brain areas I want to work best
Speaker 2: in these students are the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 2: And it kills me that during finals, all that stress
Speaker 2: that comes off is damaging their ability to show us
Speaker 2: all the beautiful knowledge that they learn. Of course, not
Speaker 2: just my students, but all students around the world. How
Speaker 2: how can we destress that process and thereby help learning,
Speaker 2: help help re call, help their professors know what they
Speaker 2: do understand about the topic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what what are our daily activities that are damaging
Speaker 1: the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is that every day stress. It's
Speaker 2: the anxiety provoked by scary news that we read every
Speaker 2: single day, by social media. And here I'm thinking about younger,
Speaker 2: younger people well known how much it damages self esteem
Speaker 2: to spend too much time on social media, all these things.
Speaker 2: We all know these stressors in our lives. But it's
Speaker 2: actually hard to put the newspaper down. It's hard, it's
Speaker 2: really hard to put the phone down. But that could
Speaker 2: be such a game changer for both adults and children.
Speaker 2: And you just ask, well, what am I going to
Speaker 2: do have a conversation with the real person, which is
Speaker 2: what I always try and push people to do. That
Speaker 2: is such a joy and a privilege in our lives
Speaker 2: to be able to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've really found also that if we can just find
Speaker 1: a gap between when you wake up and when you
Speaker 1: pick up your phone, it just rewires the brain. And
Speaker 1: I think we have to think about it, yeah, physically
Speaker 1: where it goes. Okay, Well, if I don't put my
Speaker 1: brain in this noise in the morning, just as I
Speaker 1: would never wake up to like volume one hundred on
Speaker 1: any song or whatever it may be, if I just
Speaker 1: allow my brain some time to like speed up naturally
Speaker 1: and catch up with the pace of the day, then
Speaker 1: actually I'll be better at doing everything else rather than
Speaker 1: when I rush my brain from zero to one hundred
Speaker 1: miles per hour with fifty emails and thirty notifications, I'm
Speaker 1: expecting so much of my brain, and no wonder I'm
Speaker 1: stressed out immediately because my brain's trying to compute and formulate.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like if your partner turned to you
Speaker 1: in the morning and said I want to have a
Speaker 1: really deep discussion about life. Yeah first in the morning,
Speaker 1: It's like you'd be like, well, I don't think I
Speaker 1: can handle that right now. Yeah, and it's shocking to
Speaker 1: me how many of us are putting ourselves in stress
Speaker 1: by looking at our phones first thing in the morning.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have a morning routine that I've come to love,
Speaker 2: which is about a forty five minute meditation when I
Speaker 2: first wake up. So that's the first thing that I do.
Speaker 2: And I do a tea meditation, which is meditation over
Speaker 2: the brewing and drinking of tea, because not tea bag tea,
Speaker 2: but you know, loose leaf tea where you have to
Speaker 2: seep it for a certain amount of time or else
Speaker 2: it doesn't taste its best, and then you pour it
Speaker 2: and then you drink it and then you re seep it.
Speaker 2: So for me, that ritual really keeps me in meditation.
Speaker 2: And what do I mean by meditation Just I do
Speaker 2: body scans. I have prayers that I go through every morning,
Speaker 2: which is I think, the antithesis of looking at your email.
Speaker 2: And then I do a thirty minute workout, which is
Speaker 2: I do it online, So I do open my computer,
Speaker 2: but I'm not, you know, looking at the newspaper at
Speaker 2: the same time I'm doing my workout. I'm focused on
Speaker 2: that workout, and that really prepares me for the day,
Speaker 2: and if I miss either one of those, I feel
Speaker 2: it the rest of the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, I love hearing that. How long have you
Speaker 1: done that for?
Speaker 2: I've done the meditation for nine years straight and I've
Speaker 2: missed only a few days when I have those four
Speaker 2: am you have to get on the cab at four
Speaker 2: am to get to the airport and exercise I've been
Speaker 2: doing for even longer. I've gone through lots of habits
Speaker 2: with my exercise, but having the morning habit and really
Speaker 2: forcing myself, not forcing, it's a habit, having the habit
Speaker 2: of even when I only have five minutes I'll do
Speaker 2: some sort of you know, stretch or something for that
Speaker 2: five minutes every single day and feel good about that
Speaker 2: in addition to my good thirty minute cardio strength workout
Speaker 2: where I really sweat. So, I mean, I think we're
Speaker 2: both talking about the habits that we choose for ourselves
Speaker 2: that improve our mental health, strengthen our brain. This is
Speaker 2: so important to choose for us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And I think the point is you'll get
Speaker 1: so much more out of your day and your brain. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think often we think, well if I skip that,
Speaker 1: I used to be like this with my wife. She
Speaker 1: was the one who kept drilling into me how important
Speaker 1: physical activity was. Yeah, And I was just like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm fine, and she was like, imagine how alert you'll be,
Speaker 1: Imagine how focused you will be. And I didn't believe her.
Speaker 1: And then when I started to do it, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's right, and it's such an interesting thing. It's so
Speaker 1: easy to think I'll accomplish more if I don't make
Speaker 1: time for meditation, breath work and working out, But you won't.
Speaker 1: You'll actually accomplish less.
Speaker 2: You'll accomplished.
Speaker 1: Is that what you found is that does a science
Speaker 1: show that too?
Speaker 2: You know, the science shows that exercise improves your mood,
Speaker 2: it improves your ability to shift and focus your attention.
Speaker 2: Long term, it will improve your memory. And so compared
Speaker 2: to subjects or you know, animal subjects that don't do exercise,
Speaker 2: there is better brain function in those people that are exercising. So, yes,
Speaker 2: the science is behind it. And there's beautiful science in
Speaker 2: meditation showing that there are brain areas that are enhanced
Speaker 2: with in months. For example, that's going way. I'm never
Speaker 2: going to be a monk. But the active meditation is
Speaker 2: a act of learning how to focus better, so that
Speaker 2: I could focus on your questions and not be distracted
Speaker 2: by whatever is going on on the outside. I mean,
Speaker 2: we have a nice quiet room, but sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: I live in New York, We're on the subway and
Speaker 2: there's so much noise, and when you practice the meditation,
Speaker 2: you realize how powerful that is for your life, that
Speaker 2: I could choose to focus on you. That's all I'm
Speaker 2: focused on. I'm listening to you deeply, I'm thinking about
Speaker 2: it deeply, And that is an experience that not enough
Speaker 2: of us are having on a very regular basis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why does it feel like when we're trying to
Speaker 1: do that? It almost feels like it hut right, Like
Speaker 1: when someone's really trying to focus, it's like you're trying
Speaker 1: to pull the energy. And people can feel like, oh god,
Speaker 1: it's so tiring, where it's exhausting to be present and
Speaker 1: it almost feels like you're having to pull yourself in
Speaker 1: a certain direction, but there's some tension and resistance back.
Speaker 1: What are we experiencing? What's going on? You know?
Speaker 2: I think part of that is our lives have been
Speaker 2: focused on getting pulled in ten different directions at the
Speaker 2: same time. We get used to that, and so no,
Speaker 2: I can't focus on you for a whole hour because
Speaker 2: I have thirty other things that I usually get pulled into.
Speaker 2: And that becomes your habit. If that is your habit,
Speaker 2: I think you need to rethink that. And it's a
Speaker 2: muscle that you build. I remember my undergraduate IT advisor,
Speaker 2: the woman who made me want to become a neuroscientist.
Speaker 2: She used to say that new learning, this is a
Speaker 2: new habit that you're learning, will hurt. It'll make your
Speaker 2: brain hurt because it's those dendrites that are growing and
Speaker 2: stretching out and making new connections. It's not an easy thing.
Speaker 2: It's a metabolic load. It is an effort to build
Speaker 2: new pathways. But that's what we're doing when we're trying
Speaker 2: to focus and connect for longer periods of time than
Speaker 2: we were used to.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's okay if it hurts.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, absolutely, it's supposed to hurt.
Speaker 1: Right. It's almost like you're walking through a path that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist yet, yes, and so you're having to pave
Speaker 1: that way exactly. You're the first person walking in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing ahead of you. You're chopping down the trees
Speaker 1: and leaves in front of you. You're building the bridge
Speaker 1: the pathway. Yes, and that's why it hurts. And it's
Speaker 1: so interesting when you think about it that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you go, oh, okay, So every time I walk over
Speaker 1: that bridge, it will become stronger, yes, And every time
Speaker 1: I step on that step path becomes clearer, and now
Speaker 1: it's going to be easier for me every time. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating to me just how everything that's good
Speaker 1: for you seems hard and everything that's bad for you
Speaker 1: seems easy.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, I think at the certain at a certain
Speaker 2: point of the journey, that is absolutely the case. But
Speaker 2: at a different point of the journey, when you've when
Speaker 2: you've you know, cut down those trees with your machete,
Speaker 2: it feels glorious to be able to have these deep
Speaker 2: conversations with your friends and build that habit with your
Speaker 2: friends and your loved ones, and build that habit of
Speaker 2: first thing in the morning, no no phone, and meditation,
Speaker 2: and you know how much better you're going to feel.
Speaker 2: And that that is the part of the gratitude. Yes,
Speaker 2: I have a gratitude practice. It is that it is
Speaker 2: like being grateful for all those good habits that I
Speaker 2: have been forming and throwing those away that I don't
Speaker 2: and being grateful that I threw that away.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I talked a lot about going back to your
Speaker 1: point around Monk's Brains. I talked a lot about the
Speaker 1: science be Monk's Brains in my first book, Think Like
Speaker 1: a Monk. And I remember a simple practice that we
Speaker 1: used to do when I lived as a month that
Speaker 1: was really helpful to me. So we would often meditate
Speaker 1: on beads, and we were always told because we'd be
Speaker 1: meditating on those beads sometimes for two hours at a time,
Speaker 1: four hours at a time, even more. And so we
Speaker 1: were always told, when you hear the word two hours,
Speaker 1: you're just like, God, how am I going to get
Speaker 1: through two hours? And we're always told, just focus on
Speaker 1: one bead at a time, one mantra at a time,
Speaker 1: just one at a time, And all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it became so much easier where it was just like,
Speaker 1: it's just about this bead, it's just about this mantra,
Speaker 1: it's just about this step, it's not about two hours.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes when we're thinking, oh gosh, I've
Speaker 1: got to build this new habit, I've got to work
Speaker 1: out five days a week, and I've got to it's
Speaker 1: like that just feels so insurmountable. Why does the brain
Speaker 1: work better with small steps and habits and changes.
Speaker 2: That's such a great question. I think that it is
Speaker 2: part of the effort that goes into something new, the
Speaker 2: novelty of praying on a single bead and kind of
Speaker 2: fighting away that instacts like, oh I didn't get through
Speaker 2: one hundred beads, I'm a failure. That's a lot of
Speaker 2: cognitive noise. And I always say for exercise and meditation,
Speaker 2: those those two things that could immediately decrease your stress
Speaker 2: and anxiety levels. It's great. In fact, I tell you,
Speaker 2: I tell everybody to start small. Ten minutes of walking.
Speaker 2: Don't even have to change your clothes or your shoes,
Speaker 2: just a minute of deep breathing, just put your phone on,
Speaker 2: you know, just the clock and just so you know
Speaker 2: how much that minute is. And just doing that is
Speaker 2: is good enough. And the effort comes in batting away
Speaker 2: all those feelings of failure and the difference between your
Speaker 2: one minute and ten hours that you really wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Definitely, what's the difference between everyday anxiety and then having
Speaker 1: an anxiety disorder?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Anxiety is a normal human emotion. Everybody has anxiety.
Speaker 2: I think it's been kind of clinicalized. Oh I have anxiety. Yeah,
Speaker 2: everybody has anxiety. But anxiety exists on a very very
Speaker 2: large spectrum. So we all have anxiety, and yes, the
Speaker 2: highest levels of anxiety that prevent you from doing the
Speaker 2: everyday things that you need to do in your life
Speaker 2: and having a job and having relationships and going out
Speaker 2: and doing things. That's clinical and it is just kind
Speaker 2: of going down that rabbit hole of anxiety and needing
Speaker 2: more help, clinical help to get you out with cognitive
Speaker 2: behavioral therapy, so many different techniques that you could use.
Speaker 2: So it's all part of a spectrum, which you know,
Speaker 2: I hope that makes people feel better because you can
Speaker 2: come back. Everybody has it. Let's just pull you back
Speaker 2: from that highest level and let you take advantage of
Speaker 2: I think one of the things I love the most
Speaker 2: from my book Good Anxiety is that it's not about
Speaker 2: anxiety so bad. Let me just tell you the tools
Speaker 2: to get rid of it in your life. It is
Speaker 2: the acknowledgment that anxiety is a protective mechanism. My invitation is,
Speaker 2: can I invite you to try and use your anxiety
Speaker 2: to help protect you, to actually give you some gifts
Speaker 2: or superpowers, because there's a lot that we can learn
Speaker 2: from our anxiety and all our uncomfortable emotions.
Speaker 1: I think when people hear that, they may think, oh,
Speaker 1: that's cool, but I don't believe it, Like, how could
Speaker 1: I believe that anxiety can be my superpower?
Speaker 2: How do I do that?
Speaker 1: Make that switch from going I'm scared, yeah too, actually unprepared?
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. So I start with I think the easiest
Speaker 2: to implement. So this one is the superpower of productivity
Speaker 2: that comes from a very common form of anxiety that
Speaker 2: everybody has, which is the to do list that comes
Speaker 2: up at opportune times like oh you get overwhelmed. For me,
Speaker 2: it comes up right before I'm going to go to sleep,
Speaker 2: and so it prevents me from going to sleep, so annoying.
Speaker 2: And so the flip for that is to take the
Speaker 2: to do list, and first I want you to notice
Speaker 2: that all of these things are things that you care
Speaker 2: about doing well. They're usually about your job, or your
Speaker 2: relationship or money, money, things, all good to be concerned
Speaker 2: about them. The trick is to take that what if
Speaker 2: list and turn it into a to do list and
Speaker 2: so for me, I don't do it in the middle
Speaker 2: of the night. I wait till the next morning. But
Speaker 2: I've trained myself that I'm going to take care of
Speaker 2: each one of those worries and do something active. If
Speaker 2: there is an issue at work, I'm going to talk
Speaker 2: to three people about it and try and get input
Speaker 2: for that. There's something active that you can do for
Speaker 2: every single one of your worries, and the more people
Speaker 2: you talk to about it, you realize that very productive
Speaker 2: people are already doing this, so take advantage of that
Speaker 2: of that trick.
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Speaker 1: make sure you use the code on purpose. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: really like that. And one thing that's really helped me
Speaker 1: is I always look at my anxiety as revealing to
Speaker 1: me a skill I haven't yet developed. Yes, and I
Speaker 1: really believe that it's like it's a muscle that you
Speaker 1: need to develop. So I go, Okay, if I'm anxious
Speaker 1: about going to this event and having to do small talk,
Speaker 1: it's because I haven't built the skill to be able
Speaker 1: to do small talk. So maybe if I read a book,
Speaker 1: or I spoke to someone, or I sat down with
Speaker 1: an expert, or I listened to a podcast with an
Speaker 1: expert on how to have good conversations, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: now I know what questions to ask, and at least
Speaker 1: it makes me feel comfortable. Or if a I'm nervous
Speaker 1: about the fact that I've been asked to do something
Speaker 1: at work and I know nothing about it, Hey, let
Speaker 1: me go and take a course on it or a
Speaker 1: class on it. And I feel I always look at
Speaker 1: anxiety as just a sign of what's a skill I
Speaker 1: don't have, quality, I haven't developed, an ability, or a
Speaker 1: priority I haven't made, and now let me do that.
Speaker 1: It could be the skill of having tough conversations, the
Speaker 1: skill of learning to say no, the skill of setting boundaries,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. It's just this one skill away,
Speaker 1: not that I won't feel that anxiety ever again, but
Speaker 1: that I can actually better manage that anxiety when it arrives.
Speaker 2: Right. I love that because you've just created a new
Speaker 2: superpower of anxiety, which is the love of learning. So
Speaker 2: can you turn your anxieties into the next learning project
Speaker 2: that you have and then get better at small talk
Speaker 2: or whatever you're anxious about. I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, it's the only thing that's ever helped me
Speaker 1: for so many years subconsciously. I just I've always experienced anxiety,
Speaker 1: but I've found that it just got less and less
Speaker 1: and less as my skills developed. Yeah yeah, And developing
Speaker 1: those skills was hard, and that took time and effort
Speaker 1: and it wasn't easy. But as those skills grew, now
Speaker 1: it was just like, oh, I can manage this. I
Speaker 1: know I can deal with this. And of course there
Speaker 1: are always going to be things that surprise you and
Speaker 1: then you go, oh god, I have no skills for
Speaker 1: this one. And that's okay too. But even if the
Speaker 1: skill is resilient, or even if the skill is learning
Speaker 1: to develop how to deal with grief, I feel these
Speaker 1: are all skills and muscles and if they looked to
Speaker 1: that way, we can deal with them better.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. I mean, those anxieties are really telling you what
Speaker 2: you hold dear in your life. I think, wow, that
Speaker 2: sounds good. I want to know what I hold dear
Speaker 2: in my life because the flip side of your anxiety,
Speaker 2: and the flip side of grief is deep love. And
Speaker 2: so I think that all of these more difficult emotions,
Speaker 2: when seen in that light, can be embraced in a
Speaker 2: new way instead of trying to kick them out the
Speaker 2: door and never experience them again. That that is not
Speaker 2: a full life if you don't have grief, because it
Speaker 2: suggests you didn't have that deep love that turns into
Speaker 2: grief when something goes away. Not that I'm wishing people grief,
Speaker 2: but that helped me so much in my periods of
Speaker 2: grief to realize that that grief would never be so
Speaker 2: deep that I could never even imagine it before it happened,
Speaker 2: unless unless the love for those people were were so
Speaker 2: deep in the first place. And it's like, Wow, I
Speaker 2: loved them more than I even realized, which was a
Speaker 2: gift to realize that and pulled me out of my grief.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's so beautiful. Could you share more on that
Speaker 1: from real perspective, how you actually got to that realization,
Speaker 1: How was it before you felt that way?
Speaker 2: So that realization really really defined the way I wrote
Speaker 2: this book Good Anxiety, because I started the book before
Speaker 2: these events, and it was going to be a neuroscience
Speaker 2: based book on anxiety, and I was going to explain
Speaker 2: the science of it so everybody could understand. And it
Speaker 2: was going forward in an exciting way. And then my
Speaker 2: father passed away, and he was eighty five, and he
Speaker 2: had dementia and he had a sudden heart attack, and
Speaker 2: it was just so so sad, and I remember being
Speaker 2: so grateful that my brother did the eulogy, because that
Speaker 2: has been my biggest fear in life, to have to
Speaker 2: do eulogy and have to stand up and talk about
Speaker 2: somebody who's just passed without your crying uncontrollably. He did
Speaker 2: such a beautiful job. But the next traggy tragedy was
Speaker 2: that three months later, my brother, who's two years younger,
Speaker 2: also passed away of a heart attack. Suddenly. He was
Speaker 2: the most fit person and that you would ever know.
Speaker 2: And that was devastating to lose both of them of
Speaker 2: the same thing within three months. And I was trying
Speaker 2: to go through it, and I stopped writing the book
Speaker 2: because I couldn't because I was grieving. Then I realized
Speaker 2: I had to. I had to do his eulogy because
Speaker 2: there was nobody else left. It was it was only me. Uh,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of soul searching what am I
Speaker 2: going to say? How am I going to get through this?
Speaker 2: And it was in that search that I realized that
Speaker 2: that grief was coming from a good place, and it
Speaker 2: actually was inspired by a workout that it was doing,
Speaker 2: where the instructor said and trying to get us to
Speaker 2: work out harder. She said, with great pain comes great wisdom.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, my god, that's what I
Speaker 2: need to know right at this moment. What is the
Speaker 2: wisdom that's coming from this huge pain that I've never
Speaker 2: felt before? And I realized that the wisdom was that
Speaker 2: the deep grief was showing me how much I love them.
Speaker 2: And so it was still hardest thing I've ever done
Speaker 2: to write this eulogy and stand up, but I basically
Speaker 2: invited everybody to cry along with me at the one
Speaker 2: point that was hardest to get through, and I got
Speaker 2: through with that way. But it allowed me to approach
Speaker 2: grief in a very different way, and I want to
Speaker 2: say I'm almost thankful for that experience because it made
Speaker 2: me search for the beauty that comes from the pain
Speaker 2: in our lives in a brand new way.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing that, And I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry for that period in your life. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: how Yeah, how challenging and stressful that is talking about
Speaker 1: stress and anxiety. Yeah, and I really appreciate how you
Speaker 1: connect to the dots for us, because it's one thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you're this incredible researcher, professor, you have so
Speaker 1: much amazing insight, but then to apply it in real
Speaker 1: life in extreme cases, it is so hard. What did
Speaker 1: you learn about the brain when going through that that
Speaker 1: you didn't know already?
Speaker 2: I learned that my brain was more resilient, to more
Speaker 2: resilient than I thought it was. I expanded the range
Speaker 2: of my emotions that I had experienced in my life,
Speaker 2: which is a good thing. I think that relativism is beautiful.
Speaker 2: That dark feeling of deep grief helps me appreciate the
Speaker 2: joyous moments better. And I think about that a lot
Speaker 2: after this has happened. It really that was part of
Speaker 2: the gift that I got. And yes, and it changed
Speaker 2: the way I looked at because then I did the eulogy.
Speaker 2: I came out of it. I was feeling better. Okay.
Speaker 2: I to go back to this book on anxiety, but
Speaker 2: I couldn't write it in the same way anymore. I
Speaker 2: had to find the gifts or the superpowers that came
Speaker 2: from anxiety, which I've already shared that with you, But
Speaker 2: that's the reason why I never would have I don't
Speaker 2: know what the gifts are. Well, I did learn not trick.
Speaker 2: I learned that lesson through through that experience, and I
Speaker 2: applied it to the emotion of anxiety, and I think
Speaker 2: it changed the book. Well I know it changed the book.
Speaker 2: I wrote it in a completely different way and I've
Speaker 2: used those lessons in a different way in my life
Speaker 2: since that experience.
Speaker 1: Wonderful And what did you know about the brain already
Speaker 1: at the time that helped you get through it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, as a nerdy neuroscience and neuroscientists, I know all
Speaker 2: about the mechanisms and the receptors involved in stress. And
Speaker 2: not that I studied grief per se, but grief is
Speaker 2: one you know, it gives you a lot of stress
Speaker 2: when you have grief. I think my whole life has
Speaker 2: helped me bring my more academic study of neuroscience to life.
Speaker 2: There is the lessons that I could teach and that
Speaker 2: I do teach to students about what we know about
Speaker 2: the stress system, the memory system, your prefrontal cortex, decision making,
Speaker 2: all these fascinating topics. But then there is life that
Speaker 2: comes in, and I think that what I've been doing
Speaker 2: more recently in my career. I did a very traditional
Speaker 2: academic career up to a certain point, and then I
Speaker 2: started to try and apply kind of life's lessons to neuroscience.
Speaker 2: And so what does that mean? That means going off
Speaker 2: book and thinking about, you know, other ways to convey anxiety,
Speaker 2: not just the clinical part, but the useful part for
Speaker 2: your life. So that's how I wud describe it absolutely.
Speaker 1: How do traumatic events like that what you went through
Speaker 1: over a period of three months? And I know so
Speaker 1: many friends have been through similar things and different things
Speaker 1: that man maybe are not to do with grief in
Speaker 1: that way, but even grief of a life you could
Speaker 1: have had if you've had breakups. How does emotional trauma
Speaker 1: actually affect the brain? What's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know emotional trauma. Also there's a relatively
Speaker 2: simple formula with what happens, which is going back to
Speaker 2: the stress hormone cortisol. Depending on the actual stressor and
Speaker 2: the duration of that, it is going to first kind
Speaker 2: of alert your brains. Like I don't want to listen
Speaker 2: to happen again. It's like, this will not happen again.
Speaker 2: And that's what it was supposed to do. It's supposed
Speaker 2: to heighten your senses so you can escape from the
Speaker 2: burning building. However, in these other life circumstances a breakup
Speaker 2: or death that you know, the emotional effects linger for
Speaker 2: a long time. They might actually cause what's called fear
Speaker 2: memories to develop. These are memories dependent on a structure
Speaker 2: called the amygdala that again are trying to protect you, like,
Speaker 2: don't have this happen again, and steer you away from events.
Speaker 2: So I might have been steered away from eulogies or
Speaker 2: speaking in front of crowds, which I do all the time,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I would have been steered away from eulogies.
Speaker 2: When you have these broader realizations about what's going on,
Speaker 2: you could actually learn in a deeper way from them,
Speaker 2: and instead of being steered away, instead of developing a
Speaker 2: fear memory that is very strong and hard to get
Speaker 2: rid of, you can have a deeper learning that sharing
Speaker 2: those very personal, very deep, very difficult emotions to feel.
Speaker 2: Talk about new synapses forming is a deeply cathartic process
Speaker 2: that brought me closer to my family and to everybody
Speaker 2: that was there footing, all my brother's friends, many of
Speaker 2: whom I didn't know.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, Is it possible to prepare for future
Speaker 1: trauma or is the only way to be prepared for
Speaker 1: it to go through it. Can we build resilience before
Speaker 1: a traumatic event?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I wouldn't recommend that everybody goes out
Speaker 2: to try and prepare for trauma. But but you know,
Speaker 2: everybody has some form of trauma. And I think going
Speaker 2: back to your superpower of anxiety and learning learning from
Speaker 2: that and also realizing this was another big realization for me.
Speaker 2: You're not going to get rid of that deep negative emotion.
Speaker 2: It's there for a reason to warn you against this
Speaker 2: is a bad time. If you didn't have this warning,
Speaker 2: you would be walking in the middle of the freeway
Speaker 2: with no care in the world. So you're not going
Speaker 2: to get rid of that. But to focus yourself on
Speaker 2: the learning that comes out of it and that yes,
Speaker 2: it might take some time, and to give yourself that time.
Speaker 2: Maybe what I'm trying to get at is a self
Speaker 2: compassion that can come from any trauma that you have,
Speaker 2: and learning to apply that to yourself I think is
Speaker 2: a really good thing that you can prepare. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think when you lose someone you love, that painful
Speaker 1: feeling inside is a reminder that life is sacred. Yes,
Speaker 1: that you should tell the people that are close to
Speaker 1: you that you love them, that you should really value
Speaker 1: and prioritize time together and moments together. It's a reminder
Speaker 1: that pains just pushing you in the right direction, nudging
Speaker 1: in the right direction to say, don't make the wrong priorities,
Speaker 1: don't set the wrong focuses in your life.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And if it went away, as it does, we also
Speaker 1: forget that as the distance grows from when you've lost
Speaker 1: someone and the distance from that pain, it's not that
Speaker 1: pain goes away, but it gets less and less and less,
Speaker 1: we also forget that. Yeah, and then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden something else happens again, and we've read prioritized, right,
Speaker 1: does it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Why do we forget lessons that we learn?
Speaker 2: Well, if I could answer that, that would be that
Speaker 2: would be the sixty four million dollar question. And actually
Speaker 2: part of the answer is the brain evolved to help
Speaker 2: us remember those lessons around dangerous situations that we have,
Speaker 2: so we don't go in that direction anymore. Yes, we
Speaker 2: might forget, but actually our brain is has evolved to
Speaker 2: make those kinds of fear memories or difficulty memories the
Speaker 2: hardest to get rid of. That is why PTSD is
Speaker 2: so hard to get rid of, and those you don't
Speaker 2: want to be carrying around. So I would ask a
Speaker 2: flip question, which is how come we don't relive our
Speaker 2: most glorious memories more often than our lives. And in fact,
Speaker 2: I think of that because that is my favorite brain
Speaker 2: hack from good anxiety, which are tools that you can
Speaker 2: use to decrease your anxiety. And this tool is called
Speaker 2: joy conditioning, and it is designed to specifically to counter
Speaker 2: fear conditioning dependent on the amigla. Joy conditioning is dependent
Speaker 2: on another structure called the hippocampus, which allows us to
Speaker 2: form and routaine our everyday memories for events. And so
Speaker 2: joy conditioning is simply using all the tools that we
Speaker 2: know about neuroscience that make those kinds of memories stick,
Speaker 2: which is reliving them. I just went on a beautiful
Speaker 2: week long yoga breath work it was actually not yoga
Speaker 2: breath work retreat, and I completely unplug rugged and so
Speaker 2: what I'm practicing my joy conditioning on is what it
Speaker 2: felt to be in that circle every day, every morning,
Speaker 2: every afternoon. I remember that the ocean was so loud.
Speaker 2: We're right by the sea. The heat was so hot.
Speaker 2: The food or the fruits were so amazing, just the
Speaker 2: flavor of the fruits. And those are the things that
Speaker 2: that that rea vivification of the what where, why? When
Speaker 2: the taste, the smells, the sounds, that's what strengthens the memory.
Speaker 2: I am strengthening this joyous memory and I do that consciously,
Speaker 2: and I invite everybody to do this to kind of
Speaker 2: counteract all those negative memories that are hard to get
Speaker 2: rid of. Let's let's fill our brains with all the
Speaker 2: most joyous, funny, fun memories of our lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that joy conditioning hock and Habit was
Speaker 1: when I went on tour last year. We went to
Speaker 1: nearly forty cities across the world, and at the end
Speaker 1: of them, I'd lead in meditation. And I didn't have
Speaker 1: a name for it, but that's exactly the meditation I do.
Speaker 1: I ask everyone to go back to a moment where
Speaker 1: they experienced the most love and joy in their life
Speaker 1: and to relive it in the feelings. And I was
Speaker 1: thinking about earlier this year, you reminded me as you
Speaker 1: were talking about your breathwork retreat. Earlier this year, I
Speaker 1: visited Bhutan and I'd never been before. And for anyone
Speaker 1: who doesn't know, Bhutan is this tiny, beautiful country landlocked
Speaker 1: between India and China, right in between, and it's got
Speaker 1: a beautiful culture. They're famously known for measuring GNH not
Speaker 1: GDP and gnh's gross National Happiness, and so it's the
Speaker 1: culture of Bhutan is very very much mindful and being present.
Speaker 1: And I was asked the leader session there and I
Speaker 1: remember we'd gone inside one of these old Bhutanese buildings.
Speaker 1: It was We're in this beautiful courtyards surrounded by candles.
Speaker 1: It got really really dark, where even though I was
Speaker 1: giving a presentation, no one could see me. They could
Speaker 1: only hear me. And before it got dark, when it
Speaker 1: was just the sun was about to set, I asked
Speaker 1: everyone to take a mental picture. And I always love
Speaker 1: that technique, the five four three two one technique. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I asked everyone to look at five things
Speaker 1: they could see, four things they could touch, three things
Speaker 1: they could hear, two things they could smell, and one
Speaker 1: thing they could taste. And I was like this is
Speaker 1: how we take a mental picture. And now literally, if
Speaker 1: I close my eyes, I can go back there, right now,
Speaker 1: to that moment, because I took in the colors like
Speaker 1: you were just saying, took in the shade of the sky,
Speaker 1: took in the shapes of the Bhutanese architecture like all
Speaker 1: of these, and as you were describing the fruits and
Speaker 1: the colors, and I just feel like, if we all
Speaker 1: I love what you're saying, because I do think we
Speaker 1: have so much joy in our lives. Yes, but we
Speaker 1: relived the negativity more. If you had a tough journey
Speaker 1: coming here, or I did, we would talk about how
Speaker 1: tough it was the whole day, yes, But if we
Speaker 1: had the most beautiful journey coming here, we wouldn't talk
Speaker 1: about it once exactly, and we just ignore it and
Speaker 1: feel like, well, that's normal. But what's become normal is
Speaker 1: us repeating our challenges. When does talking about our problems
Speaker 1: and our anxiety actually help our brain versus our brain?
Speaker 2: I think it depends on how you talk about your anxiety.
Speaker 2: And I think, again, going back to this learning process,
Speaker 2: can you talk about your anxiety as what it brings you,
Speaker 2: what you learned from either the fantastic way you handed
Speaker 2: your anxiety or the non optimal way, and then think about, well,
Speaker 2: how will I do that differently the next time. That
Speaker 2: is the classic growth mindset. And if we can learn
Speaker 2: how to talk about our fear or anxiety that way,
Speaker 2: that is beautiful. In my meditation this morning, actually it
Speaker 2: was an auditory, you know, I was listening to a
Speaker 2: guided meditation. They asked me to think about four things
Speaker 2: and I just loved it. I didn't know this was
Speaker 2: coming up. It was what do you fear? What scares you?
Speaker 2: What brings you joy, and what brings you hope? I thought, Wow,
Speaker 2: what great things to ponder, and it really kind of
Speaker 2: brought things into focus for me when I the first
Speaker 2: thing that came to mind what do I fear? Who
Speaker 2: do I fear? Losing more people? What am I scared of?
Speaker 2: And there it was, you know, I get scared of
Speaker 2: people's opinions about myself. What brings me joy, all the
Speaker 2: friends that bring me joy? And what do I hope
Speaker 2: for when don't want to build in this world? So
Speaker 2: it's about approaching and there's anxiety in that list that
Speaker 2: everybody will do when they if they choose to do
Speaker 2: those four things. But again, anxiety is pointing you towards
Speaker 2: what you hold dear, and all of those questions point
Speaker 2: out what you hold dear and what your aspirations are.
Speaker 2: So so to summarize mindset is so critical as we
Speaker 2: are living, even as we're talking about our bad day,
Speaker 2: you know, our bad parking experience or driving experience, is
Speaker 2: it to learn or is it to commiserate or just
Speaker 2: to you know? Or or you're not realizing you are
Speaker 2: focusing too much on a negative thing. Mindset and awareness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And also what you're saying, is this over amplification
Speaker 1: as well of something that actually was quite insignificant, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or if it was significant. You're talking about looking at
Speaker 1: our challenges or talking about them in a way that
Speaker 1: takes accountability and future accountability. And that's what I love
Speaker 1: this idea of, well, let me talk about what went
Speaker 1: wrong today, and maybe I shouldn't take that route to
Speaker 1: work anymore, or you know, maybe let me talk about
Speaker 1: what went wrong in this conversation with someone I love,
Speaker 1: and maybe I've got to set better boundaries. It's always
Speaker 1: about a solution oriented growth focus, as you said, but
Speaker 1: so many of our conversations today, especially about anxiety and
Speaker 1: stress are victim based and how do we make that switch?
Speaker 1: Because when you feel like the victim, it feels so
Speaker 1: real to you. It does, yeah, and you do feel
Speaker 1: so hurt that if someone said, well, what could you
Speaker 1: do differently, You'd be like nothing, I did everything the
Speaker 1: best I could. So how do we open up that
Speaker 1: switch from anxiety to growth?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I think that something that has really helped
Speaker 2: me is to pay attention to who you are talking to,
Speaker 2: who is feeding you information in your life, and if
Speaker 2: it's too negative and it if it you know, you
Speaker 2: know this person is the best complainer in the world,
Speaker 2: and and you you join in because it feels good
Speaker 2: to complain, you know, with a with a friend about something.
Speaker 2: Step back and instead choose somebody who has that growth
Speaker 2: mindset that can open up other possible ways to think
Speaker 2: about that. Do it yourself. Think, okay, you know you
Speaker 2: can do an exercise, do the complainer mindset for you
Speaker 2: on yourself, by yourself, and then do the growth mindset
Speaker 2: and ask yourself, how does that feel? What does it
Speaker 2: feel if I just go down the road of the
Speaker 2: complainer versus what I like? Oh? I actually like that idea?
Speaker 2: What if I do that next time? Can you inspire yourself?
Speaker 2: So many different routes and coaches, therapists can they're experts
Speaker 2: at doing this as well. So that's another route to go.
Speaker 2: But podcasts or another, this is a common topic in
Speaker 2: in podcast these days.
Speaker 1: Definitely, what does healing actually look like in the brain
Speaker 1: from trauma, like from a chemical perspective, like, what's actually
Speaker 1: happening when we're healing?
Speaker 2: I must say I'm more of an expert not on
Speaker 2: healing from trauma, but on growth in the positive direction.
Speaker 2: And so here's what growth can look like based on
Speaker 2: of the things that we've already talked about. So we
Speaker 2: talked about the effects that the fact that moving your
Speaker 2: body can have an immediate positive effect on your anxiety,
Speaker 2: also on your depression, decrease your stress response. What's happening there?
Speaker 2: Every single time you move your body, you're releasing a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain. I like to
Speaker 2: call it a neurochemical bubble bath for your brain.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: And so you're giving yourself this bubble bath. What's in
Speaker 2: that bubble bath? Well, you've heard some of these neurochemicals
Speaker 2: before dopamine. I know you love talking about dopamine. You
Speaker 2: and so many other people talk about dopamine in such
Speaker 2: interesting ways. Gitonin nor adrenaline endorphins. That's what's being released
Speaker 2: in this bubble bath, and so not surprisingly, you feel
Speaker 2: better after you walk. That is why you're feeling better.
Speaker 2: But the other thing that gets released is growth factors.
Speaker 2: Growth factors get released and they go to the hippocampus
Speaker 2: and they actually build new brain cells in the hippo camps.
Speaker 2: They help new brain cells grow in the hippocampus. Now,
Speaker 2: you want as many shiny new hippampal brain cells as
Speaker 2: you can get, which means that and they don't pop
Speaker 2: up like mushrooms. It takes a while. You need to
Speaker 2: keep up that physical activity and for that, the best
Speaker 2: way to get high levels of growth factors in your
Speaker 2: bubble bath is to do an aerobic workout, any workout
Speaker 2: that increases your heart rate. Now, this gives you lots
Speaker 2: of options. You like to dance, go dance, You like
Speaker 2: to take your dog for a walk, Go take for
Speaker 2: a dog for a power walk, like to walk, go
Speaker 2: for a walk. Anything that gets your heart rate up.
Speaker 2: I don't care what it is will help with this.
Speaker 2: But keep it up, and it's like I picture a
Speaker 2: watering can with growth factors going on your left and
Speaker 2: your right hippocampus, making it big and fat and fluffy.
Speaker 2: And that is one of the harbingers two great brain growth.
Speaker 2: The other brain area, which I'm sure is huge in you,
Speaker 2: is your prefrontal cortex. Living a life of a monk
Speaker 2: and doing that deep practice of focusing your attention keeping
Speaker 2: it there makes your area ten, which is right behind
Speaker 2: your forehead, enhanced, enriched, not because of new neurons, but
Speaker 2: likely because of new synapses. And so basically, what a
Speaker 2: healed brain looks like is a bigger, fatter, fluffier brain
Speaker 2: that is kind of flush with good neurochemicals and is
Speaker 2: building new synaptic connections. That is kind of the beautiful
Speaker 2: picture of what I call positive brain plasticity.
Speaker 1: You make it sound so simple in terms of what
Speaker 1: we need to do. We need to want breathing and moving. Yes,
Speaker 1: like it's as simple as that. What if we're doing
Speaker 1: breathing and moving and we're still not feeling positive benefits,
Speaker 1: what could be a play there?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think that sometimes it's hard to
Speaker 2: appreciate what's going on. It could be that you're not
Speaker 2: moving quite in the same way. I think it's easy
Speaker 2: to get in a habit of moving, and so sometimes
Speaker 2: you need to push yourself a little bit more. If
Speaker 2: you're doing ten minutes of walking, maybe try fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: and it's it's you know, there are some pillars that
Speaker 2: not just me, but so many neuroscientists have shown are
Speaker 2: so important for brain plasticity, which is actually what my
Speaker 2: undergraduate advisor discovered as she was a young neuroscientist in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties at U SEE Berkeley, Marion Diamond, and
Speaker 2: so exercise was one of the pillars stress reduction that
Speaker 2: comes from meditation. Social interaction. We are social beings. I'm
Speaker 2: sorry social media does not count person to person interaction.
Speaker 2: That is what humans were evolved to do. Sleep, which
Speaker 2: we haven't talked about but is so critically important. And
Speaker 2: the fifth pillar is good nutrition. Social interaction. Sorry, I
Speaker 2: need to add that social interaction doesn't mean just conversations.
Speaker 2: I include love. There. Having love in your life is
Speaker 2: something that neuroscientists don't often talk about, but it is
Speaker 2: absolutely critical for the health of your brain.
Speaker 1: And how do you define love from a neuroscience perspective?
Speaker 2: Well, so you can study the neurobiology of love and
Speaker 2: compare the brain areas that get active when you look
Speaker 2: at the picture of an acquaintance versus the picture of
Speaker 2: somebody that you might have.
Speaker 1: Well, you see, you would see you would see.
Speaker 2: Ward areas lighting up, but other areas social interaction areas
Speaker 2: as well. And one of the most interesting findings that
Speaker 2: I love from that neurobiology of love fMRI study of
Speaker 2: love literature is that they've also started to look at
Speaker 2: how does the brain response to your loved one change
Speaker 2: from the first throws of romantic love when you can't
Speaker 2: get enough of each other to a relationship that has
Speaker 2: evolved to something stable but very very loving. And what
Speaker 2: happens is it goes from just lots of lots of
Speaker 2: dopamine and lots of reward areas and kind of a
Speaker 2: suppression of the amigla and and kind of the fear.
Speaker 2: You're fearless when you are first in love. And I know,
Speaker 2: you know I felt fearless. I don't know if in
Speaker 2: a good way, but we feel fearless. And it starts
Speaker 2: to evolve into a pattern that looks like the maternal
Speaker 2: or paternal pattern, that is that protective element and we
Speaker 2: can't see everything from fMRI, but I thought, I thought,
Speaker 2: that's such a beautiful pattern to think about that that, yes,
Speaker 2: I can't sustain that first you know, flush of love
Speaker 2: for the rest of my life. But that deep love
Speaker 2: that you do feel for a child, that is what
Speaker 2: comes with long term.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard about that from when your That's so interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting, that romantic love. But the way it
Speaker 1: looks afterwards is more paternal and protective.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, not in every single you know, Marcel, but
Speaker 2: when you look at the relationships that you admire, you know,
Speaker 2: those long term relationship, there is the devotion that is
Speaker 2: there that of course you see for you know, protection
Speaker 2: for your young child. It's not identical, but that devotion
Speaker 2: is beautiful. That's what's moving about those kinds of relationships.
Speaker 1: And I feel like today it's become harder and harder
Speaker 1: and harder even just in how people gather. Like I
Speaker 1: feel like I was just watching what I just see,
Speaker 1: Gladiated too, And I remember watching Gladiator one and I
Speaker 1: was just while I was watching it, I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about the fact that the Roman Colisseum was so
Speaker 1: big and that people would gather every week. I mean,
Speaker 1: they'd gather for the worst reason. But the idea that
Speaker 1: so many people would gather every week, or I think
Speaker 1: at one point it was every day, And I'm like,
Speaker 1: first of all, what is everyone doing in their spare time?
Speaker 1: But so many people would gather, so many people would
Speaker 1: be together. Of course, if we look at whether it's
Speaker 1: community census, churches, temples, the places of gathering today we
Speaker 1: have less and less places of gathering. Even though there's
Speaker 1: millions of people going to listen to this episode, they're
Speaker 1: not in the same place listening to it. And I
Speaker 1: know that if we did have a million people here
Speaker 1: right now, even if we had a portion of the
Speaker 1: people that listen to the episode here, they could then
Speaker 1: talk about it yeah, and discuss it and exchange it,
Speaker 1: and they could look at each other's eyes and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: you feel that too, Oh my gosh, I went through
Speaker 1: that grief, and how amazing would that be? And we're
Speaker 1: losing that, And so the ability to create love and
Speaker 1: connection is becoming harder and harder and harder because our
Speaker 1: places of similar value are now digital. Right If this
Speaker 1: is a place, I know everyone who listens to us
Speaker 1: has similar values, cares about similar things, but they're not
Speaker 1: meeting each other. And you know, we're trying to do
Speaker 1: that by when I go on tour. That's really one
Speaker 1: of my biggest goals because I'm hoping when everyone walks out,
Speaker 1: they're all going to just talk to each other and
Speaker 1: ask each other questions. Should we be forcing ourselves to
Speaker 1: have places to gather of similar value? Like should we
Speaker 1: make that a priority?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? And I immediately think of the university, And that
Speaker 2: is a natural place of gathering in person. Universities, you're
Speaker 2: gathering every single day, multiple times a day. But sometimes
Speaker 2: I see the stress and the worry of do I
Speaker 2: you know, am I smart enough? You know in this
Speaker 2: room pushes people apart and then they go and they
Speaker 2: go on their phone and it's more comfortable to do that.
Speaker 2: That is what I'm trying to shift, so that we
Speaker 2: take full advantage of this person to person place of
Speaker 2: gathering at our university, that they feel connected to each other,
Speaker 2: they feel like they belong there for whatever thing that
Speaker 2: you want to promote, I, as dean, want to promote
Speaker 2: the joy of learning. That is what I want to
Speaker 2: teach them. That is what I want them to feel like.
Speaker 2: And so yes, all of you university professors out there.
Speaker 2: You have this power to make your place of gathering
Speaker 2: one of these places where people are talking and interacting.
Speaker 2: And of course we all try that. It's harder because
Speaker 2: because of the pandemic and we're not used to being
Speaker 2: together as much in society or you know, in our
Speaker 2: growing up. So the answer to your question is, yes,
Speaker 2: it's our responsibility to do that. How can we do
Speaker 2: that more? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I love that example. I saw I read a study
Speaker 1: that said eighty percent of us pull out our phone
Speaker 1: in a crowd just to avoid conversation and contact. And
Speaker 1: so I love what you're saying about building it on
Speaker 1: a college campus. And I think the same applies inside
Speaker 1: a corporation if people are coming to work, even if
Speaker 1: they're coming to work three days a week. As a
Speaker 1: dean yourself, how do you do that when you've got targets.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's results you have to get to. You've
Speaker 1: got things, deadlines you have to meet, You've got a
Speaker 1: ton of stuff on your play, as does a CEO
Speaker 1: of a major corporation or an organization. How do you
Speaker 1: prioritize a love for learning and belonging and connection. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not just as nice things that you say, but actually
Speaker 1: do How do you do that? Because I see it
Speaker 1: as very genuine from you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, real, absolutely, And so how do I prioritize I
Speaker 2: just make it a priority, and I decide the actions
Speaker 2: that I'm going to do to get to that goal. So,
Speaker 2: for example, I am literally strategizing about how I could
Speaker 2: get in front of as many of those nine thousand
Speaker 2: students that I have multiple times during their four years
Speaker 2: with us. I see them all, every single first year student,
Speaker 2: I see every single one graduating. I see there's a
Speaker 2: lot of time between that. What can I do to
Speaker 2: have a meaningful How should I go on tour just
Speaker 2: like you do, but talk to the first year is,
Speaker 2: the second year is the third years. I loved my
Speaker 2: college experience because I was imbued with the love of learning,
Speaker 2: and so I do that through the coursework that I
Speaker 2: provide for my students. That is actually I'm trying to
Speaker 2: develop it right now. It is an online class, but
Speaker 2: with an in person component so that I could kind
Speaker 2: of gut up to sk the first time I did it.
Speaker 2: It's called it's called the Fluffy Brain Course. So I
Speaker 2: want to give all the students in this course a
Speaker 2: fluffy brain teaching them a lot about what we've just
Speaker 2: spent the last hour talking about. But there's always going
Speaker 2: to be an in person component and the goal of
Speaker 2: this class is to inspire them to do person, not
Speaker 2: inspire them. It's part of the class. That's a great
Speaker 2: thing about a class. I could assign things to you.
Speaker 2: So your assignment is to do a personal experiment about exercise.
Speaker 2: How are you going to up your exercise for the
Speaker 2: next week, But first you're going to just notice your
Speaker 2: mood or your regular mood states, so that self awareness,
Speaker 2: and the next week you are going to propose something,
Speaker 2: do it, increase your exercise, and then self reflect about
Speaker 2: that and we will we will explore that and talk
Speaker 2: about it together.
Speaker 1: I love that. And they have to do it, they
Speaker 1: have to really do it. Yeah, I'm really happy that
Speaker 1: you're saying this, because I do think as leaders in
Speaker 1: different institutions and organizations, there's such a there's a responsibility.
Speaker 1: There's also just a vision for what an amazingly happy,
Speaker 1: fluffy brain community looks like. Yes, And when I think
Speaker 1: about it, coming from college, it's hard because people are
Speaker 1: coming from so many different motivations. Yes, right, someone's coming
Speaker 1: there for the best job in the world. Someone's coming
Speaker 1: there for an amazing social experience. Someone's coming there to
Speaker 1: compete with everyone else. Right, You've got all these drivers,
Speaker 1: and to kind of take everyone's drivers and point it
Speaker 1: in one direction is one of the hardest things to
Speaker 1: do in the world because everyone's got their background and
Speaker 1: their walk of life. And I remember in the monastery,
Speaker 1: it's similar to what you said, our senior most monk
Speaker 1: would always talk about three qualities above all qualities, and
Speaker 1: it was humility, tolerance, and compassion that was it. And
Speaker 1: so if you went to one of his lectures, that's
Speaker 1: all he was going to talk about. And what you
Speaker 1: realized slowly was that, at least for me, I found
Speaker 1: that those became qualities that inspired for because I recognized
Speaker 1: they were most valued in this place, even though I
Speaker 1: may have come from a different set of values before.
Speaker 1: I would have come from like ambition, drive, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, it's humility and tolerance, compassion.
Speaker 1: And then you saw those who accepted and those who
Speaker 1: rejected it as well. There were some people who just
Speaker 1: went ye oh, yeah, whatever, who cares, and then there
Speaker 1: was some that went, no, that seems to be the
Speaker 1: truth and so what do you find is the healthiest
Speaker 1: way to encourage people in the right direction. Is people
Speaker 1: don't want to be told and people don't want to
Speaker 1: be preached to. So how do you do it in
Speaker 1: a way that actually the brain digests.
Speaker 2: So I start with the official greeting of the College
Speaker 2: of Arts and Science, which is Jay, you have a
Speaker 2: beautiful brain. And so I invite all the students when
Speaker 2: they see me on the street to come up and say,
Speaker 2: you have a beautiful brain. And of course I will
Speaker 2: say it back to them. And I love starting from
Speaker 2: there because that is the truth, the neurobiological truth, that
Speaker 2: every single one of the brains of my students is beautiful.
Speaker 2: Your brain is beautiful, My brain is beautiful. And no
Speaker 2: matter what your motivation for being in this space with me,
Speaker 2: it has a beautiful brain. And from there we go,
Speaker 2: from which hopefully provides a sense of belonging, we go
Speaker 2: to let's share. Let's share what you have to give
Speaker 2: from your beautiful brain, because your brain has something to
Speaker 2: give that is different than what my brain. And let's
Speaker 2: just provide a situation and an environment that's open to
Speaker 2: all of that sharing and talk about the fact that
Speaker 2: no it's not about competition, it's not about getting the
Speaker 2: highest mark. It's learning the deepest for whatever class you are.
Speaker 2: And I know these are hard priorities, but I'm building
Speaker 2: them over the last two and a half years and
Speaker 2: it's really a joy to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: They're so lucky to have you there, really are. That's
Speaker 1: such a you know, to leave college with that mindset,
Speaker 1: with a love for deep learning, I think we'll set
Speaker 1: people up for so much more success, yes than just
Speaker 1: a great job that eventually may end up being the
Speaker 1: job that they don't want to be in and a
Speaker 1: career that they don't enjoy. And then when you realize
Speaker 1: that and you don't have a deep love for learning, yes,
Speaker 1: that becomes really really hard. And that's kind of what
Speaker 1: I see. I feel like I speak to a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are kind of got the job that
Speaker 1: they thought they want out of college, and then five
Speaker 1: years in, maybe even quicker to like, it's actually not
Speaker 1: what I wanted yea, And now I'm trying to find
Speaker 1: meaning in life. For the problem is I didn't have
Speaker 1: that deep love for learning, and so now I have
Speaker 1: to build it later on. So it's so lucky to
Speaker 1: have you. Oh, thank you, it's really amazing. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you when you say that after meation, I
Speaker 1: love that you have a beautiful brain. Does positive thinking
Speaker 1: and positive affirmations do they actually work?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? I mean there are studies showing that if you
Speaker 2: take a group of people and have them do positive affirmations,
Speaker 2: not just just saying them a certain number of time
Speaker 2: every day, versus people that don't do those positive affirmations,
Speaker 2: their affect is better. It's higher, you know, less uh,
Speaker 2: less negative affect and more positive affect. Yes, it does
Speaker 2: have an effect, which makes sense. Our brain takes in
Speaker 2: everything that's happening to us. So you know, this is
Speaker 2: why we talked about looking at the people that you are,
Speaker 2: that you're that's feeding you information. Are they cynical? Are
Speaker 2: they negative? Or are they giving you a growth mindset?
Speaker 2: Are they are they giving you interesting new possibilities to
Speaker 2: go to? Very important to ask yourself that I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Ask you, BENDIVI, it's okay. A couple of questions from
Speaker 1: your first book about memory. Yeah, sure, because I just
Speaker 1: think it's such a fascinating subject. And when we think
Speaker 1: about the brain and memory, I think there's there's just
Speaker 1: there's so much connection that I think would fascinate people.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you, why is it that we
Speaker 1: can remember different things about the same event and when
Speaker 1: you're there with the same people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so sorry to say, but our memory does not
Speaker 2: work very well. Generally we think, oh, you know, I'm young,
Speaker 2: I have a great memory. No, our memory is not great.
Speaker 2: And so the reason why two people at the same
Speaker 2: event remember different things is that we are focused on
Speaker 2: these different things. And let me just go over the
Speaker 2: four things that makes memory stick. This works at all
Speaker 2: ages based on the neurophysiology and biology of this hippy
Speaker 2: campus that we talked about critical for forming and retaining new,
Speaker 2: new long term memories. So what makes memory stick? Repetition.
Speaker 2: So you and I might be at the same event
Speaker 2: and you're focused on one thing and it's the same event,
Speaker 2: but event is big. I'm focused on something else, so
Speaker 2: you're repeating something that I that I never saw, and
Speaker 2: I'm seeing something that you never saw. Repetition association. We
Speaker 2: remember things better when they're associated with other things that
Speaker 2: are in our long term memory. So we might be
Speaker 2: easier to remember a friend of a friend that we
Speaker 2: know really really well and they introduced us versus somebody
Speaker 2: that you don't know at all, and you try to
Speaker 2: remember them from anybody association. Novelty, if it's really novel,
Speaker 2: you've never experienced this in your life, it tends to
Speaker 2: be more memorable because our brains are focused on novelty.
Speaker 2: It's a danger kind of you know, we have to
Speaker 2: pay attention to novelty, and maybe there are things at
Speaker 2: the event that were really novel to you that, like
Speaker 2: I've seen a million times in my brain just completely
Speaker 2: ignores them. And the fourth thing that makes memory stick
Speaker 2: is emotional resonance. So we remember the happiest and the
Speaker 2: saddest points in our life. That's what this structure, the
Speaker 2: amygdala helps with. It kind of helps those really emotional
Speaker 2: memories stick better. And again, at this same event, you
Speaker 2: might be moved by something that either I didn't see
Speaker 2: or just I wasn't moved by because that wasn't in
Speaker 2: my in my life experience. So there's lots of different
Speaker 2: reasons why two different people will have sometimes very different
Speaker 2: memories of the same event.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I have a friend who is very present,
Speaker 1: like you know, in the moment. But if I was
Speaker 1: to say to them to remember something from one two
Speaker 1: years back, even from like fifteen years back, they cannot
Speaker 1: recall it at all. Well, yeah, is that an issue?
Speaker 2: You know, memory is also there's a lot of variability.
Speaker 2: And I remember at I met somebody with something called
Speaker 2: highly superior autobiographical memory. I don't know if you've heard
Speaker 2: of this. They did this great show on sixteen minutes
Speaker 2: about people. It was actually discovered by colleagues of mine,
Speaker 2: neuroscientists at UC Irvine. And these are people that have
Speaker 2: extraordinary memory for details, so they could remember when they
Speaker 2: were eight years old what was on TV at seven pm,
Speaker 2: seven thirty eight pm, and this this uh uh, this
Speaker 2: incredible memory. It gets in the way. But but uh
Speaker 2: there's on one end that form of memory, and then
Speaker 2: all the way too. There's actually particularly poor memory in
Speaker 2: that same vein. I'm not sure if two years ago
Speaker 2: memories don't stick as long as the person can you know,
Speaker 2: live their lives and they have you know, regular memory
Speaker 2: for the things they need to live their lives for.
Speaker 2: But there Yeah, there's a there's a wide variety of
Speaker 2: memory levels that that can exist.
Speaker 1: In the world. So that's not a sign for dementia Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: Know how old are they?
Speaker 1: No, they're young, They're young.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So so so many people have this fear of demand.
Speaker 2: I have dimension in my family. It's uh our memories. Also,
Speaker 2: here's a tip for everybody. They get worse as a
Speaker 2: as we age because we know and we've experienced more
Speaker 2: in our life. It's called interference. So I didn't know
Speaker 2: anything when I was in high school. My memory was
Speaker 2: better because I had nothing to interfere. Now I have
Speaker 2: so much to keep track of. I don't I give
Speaker 2: myself some slack when I don't remember certain things. That's
Speaker 2: why I have an assistant to tell me what I
Speaker 2: really need to remember. But I'm not worried because there
Speaker 2: is a lot of interference in my life, and I
Speaker 2: take that into account.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if we want to strengthen our memory, what
Speaker 1: would you suggest?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, strengthening your memory is all about being present
Speaker 2: to what you really want to remember using those four techniques. Now,
Speaker 2: you can't make something emotional emotionally resonant unless you try
Speaker 2: and make it funny. So that's actually one technique that
Speaker 2: I've used. If I really want to try and remember
Speaker 2: somebody's name or something, I try and create a funny
Speaker 2: image about it, but sorry. Repetition repetition. Repetition will help
Speaker 2: your memory, no problem. Association can help. So if you
Speaker 2: can associate this person or this name, or this concept
Speaker 2: with something that it reminds you of to help those
Speaker 2: kind of recall lines that you can have to this memory,
Speaker 2: that can help as well. You can't make something novel
Speaker 2: if it's not completely novel. But it's not unfortunately a
Speaker 2: magic bullet.
Speaker 1: Wendy, You've been so kind and gracious with your time today.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've learned so much. We've talked about
Speaker 1: absolutely everything. I really hope that everyone goes and grabs
Speaker 1: a copy of your book Good Anxiety. It's brilliant. I
Speaker 1: think there's a need for us to use anxiety in
Speaker 1: the way you're saying, rather than this desire to avoid it.
Speaker 1: We end every episode with a final five, so these
Speaker 1: questions have to be answered in one word to one
Speaker 1: sentence for maximum Okay, So, Wendy, these are your final five.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 1: The first question is what is the best advice you've
Speaker 1: ever heard or received?
Speaker 2: Your brain defines who you are. Take care of it.
Speaker 1: Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever
Speaker 1: heard or received?
Speaker 2: Put your head down and work as hard as you
Speaker 2: can until you reach your goal. I'm the one that
Speaker 2: told me that that bad advice.
Speaker 1: So I love that question Number three, what's something you
Speaker 1: can't wait to discover about the brain?
Speaker 2: I would love to discover how to enhance joyous memories
Speaker 2: more easily.
Speaker 1: I love that question. Number fore, what's something that you
Speaker 1: used to think was true about the brain but now isn't.
Speaker 2: Oh well, we used to think back in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties that the adult brain had no capacity to
Speaker 2: change or grow. And my whole neuroscience career has been
Speaker 2: showing how that could happen. How do you make it
Speaker 2: happen more? And what are those activities that you can
Speaker 2: bring into your life to do that beautifully?
Speaker 1: Why did we believe that? Where did that come from?
Speaker 2: It came from the point in time we were in neuroscience.
Speaker 2: There was just no evidence that there were over changes.
Speaker 2: We didn't have deep enough microscopes to see the molecular changes,
Speaker 2: even the structural changes that we can now see very
Speaker 2: easily with our more powerful tools. And so understandably they said, oh,
Speaker 2: I see no evidence for change once you reach adulthood,
Speaker 2: I see no change. And so of course that was
Speaker 2: the dogma until somebody said, hey, I think let's look
Speaker 2: at this in a different way. And of course that
Speaker 2: wasn't believed at first, but then with effort, that was
Speaker 2: the concept of brain plasticity. And now we know that
Speaker 2: so much can change in the brain.
Speaker 1: Is there an age at which certain things can't change?
Speaker 2: You know? Yes, for certain things. Language, there's a language change. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think it is. Don't quote me on this, around
Speaker 2: ten years old. It's good to learn the languages before that.
Speaker 2: That could be a little bit on the low side. Also,
Speaker 2: it's really important to get bilateral good vision, and so
Speaker 2: if you have amblyoplia, it changes your vision. So those
Speaker 2: are things that change with me.
Speaker 1: All right. Fifth and final question. Okay, we asked this
Speaker 1: to everyone who's ever been on the show. If you
Speaker 1: could create one law that everyone in the world had
Speaker 1: to follow, what would it be?
Speaker 2: You must make at least five deep friendships in your life.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. Thank you so much, doctor Wendy Siziki. You
Speaker 1: are incredible. That was so much fun. I had a
Speaker 1: great time with you. Thank you for being so personal
Speaker 1: as well and open about your own journey with grief,
Speaker 1: and I hope you'll come back onto the show.
Speaker 2: I would love to thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you. If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my
Speaker 1: interview with doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your
Speaker 1: life by changing your brain.
Speaker 2: If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with
Speaker 2: a healthy brain. You know, I've had the blessing or
Speaker 2: the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and
Speaker 2: over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged.