Speaker 1: When we positively associate with a song, a person, a face,
Speaker 1: an object. We don't just benefit from those activities based
Speaker 1: on the effects of those activities. It's also what we
Speaker 1: believe about those activities. Combine and the release of dopamine
Speaker 1: makes you more capable of then leaning into life and
Speaker 1: going and doing other things. The effect of a small,
Speaker 1: even you know, half a percent increase in dopamine transmission
Speaker 1: in the brain is the difference between feeling like your
Speaker 1: life is bleak and you can completely attack the day
Speaker 1: in the positive sense. Hey, everyone, welcome back to on Purpose.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful let you come back every single week
Speaker 1: to listen, learn and grow. And I am so excited
Speaker 1: to be talking to you today. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: My new book, Eight Rules of Love is out and
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to share it with you. I am
Speaker 1: so excited for you to read this book, for you
Speaker 1: to listen to this book. I read the audiobook. If
Speaker 1: you haven't got it already, make sure you go to
Speaker 1: eight Rules of Love dot com. It's dedicated to anyone
Speaker 1: who's trying to find, keep, or let go of love.
Speaker 1: So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up,
Speaker 1: or struggling with love. Make sure you grab this book
Speaker 1: and I'd love to invite you to come and see
Speaker 1: me for my global tour Love Rules. Go to Ja
Speaker 1: shettytour dot com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences,
Speaker 1: and more. I can't wait to see you this year.
Speaker 1: And you know that the podcast for me is just
Speaker 1: an opportunity to reach out to people that I'm inspired by,
Speaker 1: people that I feel are changing the world, people that
Speaker 1: I feel have amazing insights that I can learn from
Speaker 1: and want to share with you. And today's guest is
Speaker 1: someone that I've been connected with for a while, but
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to finally have him in the studio
Speaker 1: because not only is his insights having a huge impact
Speaker 1: on how we live, how we think, just the energy
Speaker 1: that I felt from him in the first couple of
Speaker 1: moments that I've met him, I can already tell that
Speaker 1: it's all in his heart too. And so to meet
Speaker 1: someone who's super strategic, super scientific, has an incredible mind,
Speaker 1: but has a beautiful heart in person, that's my kind
Speaker 1: of person. And today's guest is none other than Andrew Huberman.
Speaker 1: He's a neuroscientist and tenant professor in the Department of
Speaker 1: Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He has
Speaker 1: made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development,
Speaker 1: brain function, and neuroplasticity, which is the ability of our
Speaker 1: nervous system to rewire and learn new behaviors, skills, and
Speaker 1: cognitive functioning. He also is a McKnight Foundation and Pew
Speaker 1: Foundation Fellow and was awarded the Kogan Award in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Work from the Huberman Laboratory at Stanford School of Medicine
Speaker 1: has been published in top journals including Nature, Science, and Sell,
Speaker 1: and has been featured in Time, BBC, Scientific, American Discover,
Speaker 1: and other top media outlets. In twenty twenty one, doctor
Speaker 1: Huberman launched The Huberman Lab Parts, which I'm a huge
Speaker 1: fan of and I know you are too. The podcast
Speaker 1: is frequently ranked in the top twenty five of all
Speaker 1: podcasts globally and is often ranked as the number one
Speaker 1: in the categories of science, Education, Health and fitness. Please
Speaker 1: welcome my new friend and someone that I'm a huge
Speaker 1: fan of an admire Andrew hu Woman. Andrew, thank you
Speaker 1: for doing this, thank you for being here, and honestly,
Speaker 1: thank you for what you do in the world. I
Speaker 1: think it's been brilliant to see someone bring so much
Speaker 1: heart into science and science into heart. And I know
Speaker 1: that people who listen to you and hear from you
Speaker 1: and communicate with you, and even I've really meant it
Speaker 1: a few moments we just spent right now. I love
Speaker 1: that combination, and I wonder how you whether you even
Speaker 1: see it that way, whether you don't. But I'm fascinated
Speaker 1: by Is that how you've always lived? Have you been
Speaker 1: fascinated by the heart and science for a while. First
Speaker 1: of all, I just want to say thank you for
Speaker 1: having me here. We've known each other through some mutual
Speaker 1: contacts for a while and it's a delight to be
Speaker 1: here an admirer and a fan of all you do
Speaker 1: and the way you approach it. So heartfelt. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me here in terms of you know, how things
Speaker 1: have evolved to where they are now. You know, I
Speaker 1: don't have much of a mission statement, but I suppose
Speaker 1: if I had to pick one, it's to share the
Speaker 1: beauty and the utility of biology. Since I was very young,
Speaker 1: I've been obsessed with learning, and I've also had a
Speaker 1: compulsion to share what I've learned, especially when I think
Speaker 1: that the information can be of use to people. So
Speaker 1: the little six and eight year old and ten year
Speaker 1: old version of me wouldn't shut up. I was just
Speaker 1: constantly talking about all the stuff I had been reading
Speaker 1: about on the weekends, and over time I just made
Speaker 1: sense to become an academic for that reason. And then nowadays,
Speaker 1: with the advent of podcasting, I have this wonderful opportunity
Speaker 1: to share things that I think are useful in terms
Speaker 1: of the heart and the mind. You know, I can
Speaker 1: only frame it by saying that, you know, our nervous
Speaker 1: system is our brain, our spinal cord, but of course
Speaker 1: all their connections with the organs of the body and
Speaker 1: back again, and so we really can't divorce any of
Speaker 1: the organs of the body from our thinking and feeling
Speaker 1: and action and vice versa, as you very well know.
Speaker 1: And then from a more personal standpoint, you know, I've
Speaker 1: had the great benefit of training with mentors in science
Speaker 1: who really lived and breathed their science, but also had
Speaker 1: a deep sense of humanity. Each one of them had
Speaker 1: an ear, an ear towards things that were relevant to them.
Speaker 1: In one case, one with a particular interest in mental
Speaker 1: health and the struggles around mental health and mental illness.
Speaker 1: The other just a person who just loved animals and
Speaker 1: the natural kingdom. And then my other advisor was a
Speaker 1: very strong advocate for scientists of all kinds and backgrounds.
Speaker 1: And so I was so blessed to be weaned by
Speaker 1: people who really instilled in me a love and a
Speaker 1: desire for learning and sharing and doing research, but also
Speaker 1: understood that how one shows up to the conversation means everything.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I just feel very blessed to
Speaker 1: have had that, and I'm just trying to do right
Speaker 1: by them. I love hearing that, like I had no
Speaker 1: idea that that was a part of how you were
Speaker 1: mentored and guided. And I mean, I'm sure they feel
Speaker 1: very proud in seeing that you continue on and pass
Speaker 1: that legacy and so beautifully. But I think what I
Speaker 1: find even more intriguing about that is so many of
Speaker 1: our early learning experiences are not necessarily that way. And
Speaker 1: you said that you loved learning and you love sharing.
Speaker 1: I think most people that I know, are at least
Speaker 1: that I talk to or I hear from in comments
Speaker 1: or podcasts, would say school was not an exciting place
Speaker 1: for them. Maybe they went to college or didn't go
Speaker 1: to college, but they necessarily didn't have a positive experience.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was filled with fear or doubt or judgment
Speaker 1: or criticism, or maybe there was a lack of confidence.
Speaker 1: That could have been not only from teachers in the
Speaker 1: school system, it could have been from friends or bullies
Speaker 1: or people in that environment. So what I'm fascinated by
Speaker 1: is our relationship with learning, because when I look at
Speaker 1: my relationship with learning too, I remember starting off having
Speaker 1: that buzz and spark, then almost feeling like I was
Speaker 1: forced to believe there are only certain ways you could learn.
Speaker 1: I grew up believing I didn't like reading because we
Speaker 1: were only encouraged to read fiction books, and even till
Speaker 1: this day, I don't like reading fiction books. I have
Speaker 1: no interest in reading fiction books. I love reading nonfiction.
Speaker 1: And today I can read nonfiction books every day, every week,
Speaker 1: every month, every year, and I'm fully engrossed and immersed.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm excited for your book one day. And
Speaker 1: I think that is something that I learned that I
Speaker 1: do love reading. I do love learning, but I was
Speaker 1: never introduced to that form until my father gave me
Speaker 1: a biography when I was fourteen years old. And so
Speaker 1: how do you think our relationship with learning has been
Speaker 1: formed over time? Hearing from your own as well. I
Speaker 1: think it was the great physicist Max del Brooke who
Speaker 1: said that, you know, when teaching, assume zero knowledge and
Speaker 1: infinite intelligence. I try and keep that in mind. I
Speaker 1: think that we are all innate learners by virtue of
Speaker 1: the fact that this thing, this nervous system as it's called,
Speaker 1: is really a map of our experience, and it's there
Speaker 1: to form itself. It's unusual among the organs in that
Speaker 1: it shapes itself right, Unlike the kidney or the liver
Speaker 1: there doesn't constantly update its own form and function in
Speaker 1: the same way. The nervous system is there essentially to
Speaker 1: educate itself so that it can operate better in a
Speaker 1: given environment. And once one understands that, you start to
Speaker 1: realize that the forms of learning are many. So, for instance,
Speaker 1: you know math, or I suppose in the UK's maths, maths,
Speaker 1: you know, could be learned by way of different using
Speaker 1: different types of examples, movement of trains or bartering systems,
Speaker 1: or on paper just simple long division and multiplication. But
Speaker 1: in the end, what you're really trying to find anytime
Speaker 1: you're teaching or learning is you're trying to find a
Speaker 1: universal algorithm of how the brain works. And what I
Speaker 1: mean by that is that you know, all these nerve cells,
Speaker 1: they only can communicate through chemicals and electricity. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really just meat in there, I believe it or not,
Speaker 1: but there are algorithms that are universal. So whether or
Speaker 1: not one learns better verbally or visually, or whether one
Speaker 1: has a propensity for math or for verbal subjects, what
Speaker 1: is true for all of us is that the brain
Speaker 1: is they're always asking questions and trying to make predictions
Speaker 1: about its environment. And I think what happens is when
Speaker 1: we're children, we are learning passively all the time. As
Speaker 1: we get older, and especially as we get to our
Speaker 1: mid in late twenties, it takes an immense amount of
Speaker 1: focus and energy in order to learn. But of course
Speaker 1: the nervous system can still shape itself well into adulthood,
Speaker 1: almost certainly for the entire lifespan. But that focus and
Speaker 1: energy feels almost like an agitation. And I think that
Speaker 1: as children, we don't necessarily experience that agitation, because we
Speaker 1: can for better, for worse. We can experience and change passively.
Speaker 1: Neuralplasticity just happens by way of pure experience. As we
Speaker 1: get older mid twenties, early thirties and so on, that
Speaker 1: threshold of agitation for people feels like it's something to
Speaker 1: back away from. But if we can learn to approach
Speaker 1: that and understand that that agitation is actually the circulation
Speaker 1: of chemicals, which is the brain and nervous system telling itself. Aha,
Speaker 1: now I need to pay attention and change. We can
Speaker 1: start to actually modify the way that system works. So
Speaker 1: it's a bit of a convoluted answer to your question,
Speaker 1: but I think that at the heart of our nervous
Speaker 1: system is this ability, these algorithms by which it can
Speaker 1: change themselves. And it's on all of us to understand
Speaker 1: that that bit of agitation and discomfort need not be
Speaker 1: interpreted as discomfort. That's the edge where learning is beginning.
Speaker 1: So confusion and being perplexed, feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the
Speaker 1: amount of information, that's actually the stir of chemicals that
Speaker 1: are queuing the nervous system to change. Because if it
Speaker 1: can do something easily, there's no reason for the nervous
Speaker 1: system to change. Now, in terms of different styles of
Speaker 1: teaching and learning, I think that many of us experience
Speaker 1: that agitation early on, and we, for reasons that are understandable,
Speaker 1: we backed away from learning anymore. So, for instance, I'm
Speaker 1: musically I can't. I'm musically deficient. I love music, but
Speaker 1: I can't play music to save my life. And I
Speaker 1: think that's entirely because as a kid, every time I
Speaker 1: would try and play music, it just sounded terrible. Everyone cringed,
Speaker 1: the dogs, dogs literally howled, So I stopped right But
Speaker 1: knowing what I know now, that would be the queue
Speaker 1: to that. The agitation, the stress, the embarrassment is actually
Speaker 1: the cue to the nervous system that it's about to
Speaker 1: rewire itself. So I think if people just understood that
Speaker 1: children and adults would lean into learning more regularly and
Speaker 1: hopefully with more ease overall. Yeah, definitely, I mean even
Speaker 1: now when what sparks from that answer, which I actually
Speaker 1: really appreciated, is the idea that as we get older,
Speaker 1: as you said, it has to become more conscious, it
Speaker 1: has that tension. It's almost like you have to start
Speaker 1: figuring out how you learn based best and how you
Speaker 1: process ideas. So for me, I know that I love
Speaker 1: to first dive deep and immerse myself in something, and
Speaker 1: then I like to create a structured approach to get
Speaker 1: there if I enjoy it. So if I want to
Speaker 1: learn a new skill, I'll get obsessed with it for
Speaker 1: a weekend. I'll go on the course, I'll read the book,
Speaker 1: I'll watch every video. I just want to dive in
Speaker 1: to really see if I genuinely care or whether it's
Speaker 1: me thinking I care, and to try and separate that
Speaker 1: ego and that true desire for me at least. And
Speaker 1: if I do a weekend of something and I realized, oh,
Speaker 1: my ego like that, but I didn't really like that,
Speaker 1: I'm going to step away or actually, wow, this is fascinating,
Speaker 1: then I'll go and build a step by step plan
Speaker 1: with small steps and incremental steps that I've learned over
Speaker 1: a long time of learning different things. How can people
Speaker 1: think about the best way they can learn? What are
Speaker 1: different styles? What are different methods that you think people
Speaker 1: can think? If someone's listening right now and they're like Andrew, well,
Speaker 1: I want to learn a new instrument, or I want
Speaker 1: to learn a new language, or maybe it's I want
Speaker 1: to learn how to start a podcast, or I want
Speaker 1: to learn how to players sport or whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: How can someone start thinking about how they should approach learning?
Speaker 1: Terrific question, and fortunately nowadays we can look to studies
Speaker 1: done in humans that define some very key principles. The
Speaker 1: first principle is that the whole process of neuroplasticity and
Speaker 1: learning is really a two stage process. First, there must
Speaker 1: be focus and alertness. That focus and alertness is associated
Speaker 1: with the release of neurochemicals so called neuromodulators, things like
Speaker 1: a setocline in particular, which sort of acts as highlighter
Speaker 1: pen if you will, for certain connections in the brain
Speaker 1: to later be reinforced. And the neurochemical adrenaline, which is
Speaker 1: also called epinephrin also depending on if you're in the
Speaker 1: UK or elsewhere. A long interesting story not for this
Speaker 1: time about why it has multiple names, also called adrenaline,
Speaker 1: is associated with an increasing kind of agitation and alertness
Speaker 1: a pseudocoline. Think of it as kind of a spotlight
Speaker 1: or a highlighter pen for certain connections in the brain,
Speaker 1: so you need alertness and focus. And then the second
Speaker 1: stage is that it is only during periods of deep rest,
Speaker 1: in particular sleep and something that I call non sleep
Speaker 1: deep rest, which I've given an ACRONYMCA. Scientists like acronyms,
Speaker 1: n SDR, non sleep, deep rest, things like yoga, nidra,
Speaker 1: things like shallow naps, things like forms of meditation that
Speaker 1: don't involve a lot of focused concentration. You're a far
Speaker 1: more the experience a meditator than I. So I'm outside
Speaker 1: my wheelhouse when talking about meditation. But it is only
Speaker 1: periods of intense focus and alertness followed by periods of
Speaker 1: deep rest that allow the nervous system to change, and
Speaker 1: there is an abundance of evidence for that. So that's
Speaker 1: the first thing to understand. The brain actually rewires during
Speaker 1: deep sleep and rest, because during deep sleep and rest, naps, yoga, nidra,
Speaker 1: deep sleep, there's a replay of the very same cells
Speaker 1: in the brain that we're active during learning, oftentimes in
Speaker 1: reverse for reasons that are still not understood, but at
Speaker 1: a much higher repetition rate. So you're actually getting repetitions
Speaker 1: while you sleep. This is why one will strain to
Speaker 1: learn a language or a motor skill, or maths or
Speaker 1: something like that over and over and over. Doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: You take a couple of nights sleep, take a break
Speaker 1: from and all of a sudden it's there, it's because
Speaker 1: it happens in rest. Now, there's some other things that
Speaker 1: one can do to enhance this process further that are
Speaker 1: arrived to us from good data. First of all, there's
Speaker 1: a so called alltradean rhythm, which is the ninety minute
Speaker 1: cycles during which we can focus pretty well for a
Speaker 1: duration of about ninety minutes. Of course, flickering in and
Speaker 1: out of focus. Nobody really focuses for ninety minutes straight
Speaker 1: unless they've built up that capacity or they are very
Speaker 1: interested in what they're learning, right, they're just wrapped with attention.
Speaker 1: Usually people flicker in and out, And of course, nowadays
Speaker 1: there's a lot of literature and ideas about ways to
Speaker 1: maintain focus, put the phone away, limit noise. Some people
Speaker 1: like background noise, some people like music, some don't. It's
Speaker 1: very contextual, highly individualized. But ninety minutes is sort of
Speaker 1: the batch of time that the brain can focus really
Speaker 1: hard on one thing before it needs a true rest
Speaker 1: of an hour or two before you can go back
Speaker 1: to learning or working very hard. The other thing is
Speaker 1: that there's some very interesting data showing that shallow naps
Speaker 1: or NSDR non sleep deep rest done within four hours
Speaker 1: of one of these ninety minute learning belts can be
Speaker 1: very beneficial for accelerating learning. And then there are these
Speaker 1: incredible data on so called gap effects. So there have
Speaker 1: been studies of skills that are physical skills, mental skills
Speaker 1: where people will, for instance, try to learn scales on
Speaker 1: the piano or a math problem or a spatial problem
Speaker 1: or a physical skill, and then at random, every so
Speaker 1: offen a buzzer will go off and the person will
Speaker 1: just be told to do nothing, sit their eyes closed
Speaker 1: or eyes open, and do nothing, just stop the learning
Speaker 1: process for about ten seconds and then return to doing
Speaker 1: what they're doing. These are these little microrests. It turns
Speaker 1: out that during those microrests, the hippocampus of brain areas
Speaker 1: you know that's associated with learning and memory, and the
Speaker 1: neo cortex, also associated with learning and memory, undergoes replay
Speaker 1: of the thing that the individuals trying to learn at
Speaker 1: twenty times the speed, also in reverse, just as in sleep,
Speaker 1: and that can lead and has been shown to lead
Speaker 1: to accelerations in learning. So they're these ways. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even think of them as hacks because the word hack
Speaker 1: is a little tricky because when I think of the
Speaker 1: word hack, it seems doing something with an object or
Speaker 1: a tool that wasn't designed for that purpose. Right, the
Speaker 1: nervous system already harbors these mechanisms and one can access
Speaker 1: them through these little microrests. So, whether or not you're
Speaker 1: a child or an adult, every so often when trying
Speaker 1: to learn something, just pause for ten seconds or so
Speaker 1: do your best to just clear your mind. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to clear them up mind, but do
Speaker 1: your best to clear the mind and then go back
Speaker 1: to the learning task as it were, And that has
Speaker 1: been shown to vary to significantly accelerate the learning process
Speaker 1: and the retention of newly learned information. And then the
Speaker 1: last thing you touched on earlier, which is this notion
Speaker 1: of incremental learning. You said you like to throw yourself
Speaker 1: into something as kind of a litmus test of whether
Speaker 1: or not you enjoy it or not. Turns out that
Speaker 1: from beautiful work done by my colleague at Stanford School
Speaker 1: of Medicine, Eric Knutson, has shown that yes, it's true
Speaker 1: that early in development in humans this would be up
Speaker 1: until the mid twenties, we can learn things in larger
Speaker 1: batches and much more easily than we can later in life. However,
Speaker 1: if one batches that work into smaller increments, and so
Speaker 1: for instance, deciding maybe set a timer, turning the phone
Speaker 1: off otherwise, and saying, I'm going to spend three minutes,
Speaker 1: just three minutes in trying to intensely learn this thing,
Speaker 1: even if I feel like I'm failing. If one does
Speaker 1: that repeatedly, those little increments of learning can lead to
Speaker 1: an outsized amount of learning overall. And so the nervous
Speaker 1: system loves incremental learning. It loves to batch things into
Speaker 1: focused little bouts. And you know, if that's already the
Speaker 1: tools that you've built up, which it sounds like you have, wonderful,
Speaker 1: But if somebody is out there trying, you know, struggling
Speaker 1: to learn, really trying to break things down into very
Speaker 1: brief periods of intense focus, that is the queue by
Speaker 1: which during sleep the nervous system will change itself. And
Speaker 1: this has been shown over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: even in very late life individuals and people in there.
Speaker 1: You know, we like to think life could go on
Speaker 1: further than this, but people in their eighties and nineties
Speaker 1: still have neuroplasticity. There's even evidence that new neurons can
Speaker 1: be produced in the hipocampus of people in their late
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties. So the capacity is there. This is
Speaker 1: why I love what you do, because you would never
Speaker 1: consider that the answer to learning is depressed right lessly,
Speaker 1: provided the focus comes first. But of course, sleep deprivation
Speaker 1: makes it very hard to learn. And there's something else
Speaker 1: and that happens in sleep. Nowadays, we I think most people,
Speaker 1: thanks to the beautiful work of Matthew Walker at Berkeley
Speaker 1: and others, really understand the value of sleep for health,
Speaker 1: immune system function, etc. There is a stage of sleep,
Speaker 1: rapid eye movement sleep that we're all familiar with, of course,
Speaker 1: and where literally the eyes are moving, that tends to
Speaker 1: come later in the night, during the second half of sleep,
Speaker 1: where there's a there's a tendency to have very emotional dreams,
Speaker 1: or at least dreams that are laden with a lot
Speaker 1: of emotional content of some kind. During rapid eye movement sleep,
Speaker 1: there's an inability to move the body. We call this atonia.
Speaker 1: It's literally a sleep induced paralysis that's healthy and a
Speaker 1: complete failure of the nervous system to release adrenaline, epinephrin.
Speaker 1: This is sort of like a trauma therapy in some sense.
Speaker 1: If you think about it, it's a replay of an
Speaker 1: emotional events the neurochemical that makes us feel tense and agitated,
Speaker 1: so in our mind, those dreams can often feel very distressing.
Speaker 1: It's been shown that if you deprive people of rapid
Speaker 1: eye movement sleep, they fail to dump the negative emotions
Speaker 1: of things that happened the day before and the day before.
Speaker 1: And I think all of us have experienced the shifting
Speaker 1: emotionality that happens when we are sleep deprived. What ends
Speaker 1: up happening is that the little things seem like big things,
Speaker 1: but after a few nights sleep, we're okay, and there's
Speaker 1: no mystery to why that is anymore. I think almost
Speaker 1: every sleep scientist believes that has something to do with
Speaker 1: this built in kind of trauma release therapy where you
Speaker 1: get to experience the thing in your sleep minus the
Speaker 1: neurochemicals that make your body feel terrible, and somehow that
Speaker 1: dissociation allows people to then step back into life with
Speaker 1: a clean slate. Wow. Yeah, no, I've heard those ideas before,
Speaker 1: but the way you just wove ail together is really special.
Speaker 1: What I'm intrigued by, then, is what's the latest science
Speaker 1: on dreams? Because there are so many spiritual wisdom based
Speaker 1: approaches to dreams. I've never really dive deep enough, I think,
Speaker 1: from a scientific perspective into dreams apart from some particular aspects.
Speaker 1: But let's go there. Yeah, where is so? I love
Speaker 1: the idea that sleep, of course, is acting as somewhat
Speaker 1: of a dishwasher cleansing, healing agent, so that while we're sleeping,
Speaker 1: we're actually being able to release these ideas. Hence we
Speaker 1: have where did dreams fit into that? Picks? Ye? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said dishwasher because from a pure physiological standpoint,
Speaker 1: this is separate from dreams. But from a pure physiological standpoint,
Speaker 1: it's now well appreciated that during sleep there's a rinsing
Speaker 1: out of the debris that accumulate in the brain. The
Speaker 1: brain is the most metamolically demanding organ that we have.
Speaker 1: It consumes tons of energy. Most of the energy that
Speaker 1: we burn in terms of calories, is from our brain,
Speaker 1: not our muscles. Even if people aren't don't feel like
Speaker 1: they're thinking very hard, and thinking very hard as we know,
Speaker 1: can feel very taxing. We can feel exhausted after a
Speaker 1: hard conversation. Right. This washout, as it's called, is a
Speaker 1: so called glimphatic rinse out. The brain wasn't thought to
Speaker 1: have a lymphatic system, but it does. Cerebral spinal fluid
Speaker 1: starts to reverse basically it's pattern of flow during sleep.
Speaker 1: All these incredible ways of washing out the brain during sleep. Now,
Speaker 1: during the first half of one's night, the ninety minute
Speaker 1: cycles still persists. That we were talking about earlier, these
Speaker 1: old trading cycles, and those ninety minute cycles are mostly
Speaker 1: made up of a so called slow wave sleep, so
Speaker 1: we see big amplitude brain waves this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Dreams tend to be pretty boring early in the night.
Speaker 1: They tend to be more associated with motor function and movement,
Speaker 1: and it's actually the case that growth hormone is released
Speaker 1: in the early part of the night and that most
Speaker 1: of the repair of the body and tissues is occurring
Speaker 1: during that first half of sleep. As the night goes on,
Speaker 1: dreams become more intense and more emotionally laden, regardless of
Speaker 1: what's been going on in someone's waking life, And in fact,
Speaker 1: toward morning, almost all of those ninety minute cycles that
Speaker 1: occur back to back is going to be comprised of
Speaker 1: this rapid eye movement sleep. So the sleep toward morning
Speaker 1: is going to be much more emotional. Now. The interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that if you look at the data on
Speaker 1: dreaming in humans and you look at it purely through
Speaker 1: the lens of neuroscience, you get a bunch of language
Speaker 1: back about okay, not much up and effor in happening.
Speaker 1: So you're associating the emotion from the neurochemical state. If
Speaker 1: you look to the psychology literature, which I do, or
Speaker 1: you read a book like Memories, Dreams and Reflections by Yung,
Speaker 1: or you start to look at some of the kind
Speaker 1: of hybrid work which is psychiatry, which of course are
Speaker 1: mds that are grounded in physiology but also think psychoanalytically.
Speaker 1: They I think they're really onto something with this idea
Speaker 1: that dreams are basically a time in which the ordinary
Speaker 1: sequence of life events is converted into heuristics, shorthand symbols,
Speaker 1: and the brain loves symbols in the daytime too, right,
Speaker 1: we don't walk around parsing every angle of every object.
Speaker 1: The way the visual system works is that the recognition
Speaker 1: of your face, for instance, there's a brain area that
Speaker 1: I've seen you many many millions of time, billions of
Speaker 1: times probably, and I recognize you immediately as Jay Shetty
Speaker 1: because there literally is a neuron my brain that's a
Speaker 1: Jay Shetty neuron. We know this right from recording from
Speaker 1: brains of people that recognize people. Right. If I met
Speaker 1: some of your staff today, lovely people, for the first time, now,
Speaker 1: those neurons exist for them, But that representation of you
Speaker 1: was built up through basic representation of just the orientations
Speaker 1: of lines, all right, just like a one would sketch
Speaker 1: your face and then build in more elaborate representation. The
Speaker 1: brain represents things in symbols in a very abstract way,
Speaker 1: so without going down too far of a rabbit hole,
Speaker 1: if I were to, for instance, say you know what, Jay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to play artists today, of which I'm not,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to draw your face, and I did
Speaker 1: my best to draw your face and showed it to
Speaker 1: you'd probably say, oh, well, that's not great, but you'd
Speaker 1: probably recognize some of the features. But for instance, if
Speaker 1: I had decided that I was going to put your
Speaker 1: eyes in a different location, eliminate your teeth, put a
Speaker 1: bunch of tattoos on your face for fun, and show
Speaker 1: you this, and I'd say, you'd say that doesn't look
Speaker 1: anything like me, And I'd say, ah, but that's my
Speaker 1: abstract representation of you. It turns out that the brain
Speaker 1: represents everything in the external world as a shorthand abstract representation,
Speaker 1: and in dreams, the reason that we tend to, for instance,
Speaker 1: replace people with animals or objects with different objects is
Speaker 1: because the brain is thinking more in terms of the
Speaker 1: relationships between objects than it is the objects themselves. And
Speaker 1: so this is where dream analysis gets a little bit tricky.
Speaker 1: So the analysts would say, you know, the for instance,
Speaker 1: I had a dream not that long ago where I
Speaker 1: was being chased by two animals. It was a bear
Speaker 1: and a wolf, a very salient dream for me. And
Speaker 1: turns out that that bear and that wolf I realized
Speaker 1: only later that day. I was walking around. I'd gone
Speaker 1: for a swim in the ocean, got out of the ocean,
Speaker 1: and I turned to someone. I said, oh, my goodness,
Speaker 1: I know what that was about. That was about these
Speaker 1: two children that are now in my life. That and
Speaker 1: I thought, they're chased me, like they need something for me,
Speaker 1: And it opened up an entire conscious discussion about that.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, these children were represented as animals,
Speaker 1: not because children are always represented as animals, but probably
Speaker 1: because it was the feeling that they were impinging on me,
Speaker 1: and they're they're lovely children, but nonetheless that they're impinging
Speaker 1: on me. So the point is not my dream. The
Speaker 1: point is that dream analysis always has to take into
Speaker 1: account that the brain operates in symbols where objects are
Speaker 1: replaceable and there is there are only relationships between objects,
Speaker 1: and so if one has a very scary dream about
Speaker 1: a person or sees a monster, it's really in the
Speaker 1: early waking state of the day that we are in
Speaker 1: a position to best understand those relationships. So here's a
Speaker 1: tool I recommend that's actually supported by sleep science, which
Speaker 1: is when waking and in the first thirty minutes or
Speaker 1: so around waking, you're in this liminal state. Even if
Speaker 1: you're somebody who wakes up and feels very alert, you're
Speaker 1: in this liminal state where that symbolism is still quite fluid.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend that people try and not bring in
Speaker 1: too much new sensory experience if they want to understand
Speaker 1: their dream, stay lying down with your eyes closed. Maybe
Speaker 1: tell your partner, if someone else you live with, if
Speaker 1: you live with somebody that you just need a few
Speaker 1: moments and just try and move about your day in
Speaker 1: a way where you're not trying to solve the dream,
Speaker 1: but you're also not bringing in a lot of new
Speaker 1: sensory experience because in that moment, you actually stand a
Speaker 1: chance of parsing what that relationship is. And this is
Speaker 1: something that psychoanalysts understand. This is something that, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, clinical hypnotists understand bring people into a state
Speaker 1: of deep relaxation and be able to capture that transition
Speaker 1: between the sleep and waking state. Forgive me for the
Speaker 1: you know, excessively long answer, but not exacting, not excessively long,
Speaker 1: please carry on. Yeah, Well, so there's physiology that we know,
Speaker 1: and then there's the psychology of this. And just to
Speaker 1: make it very clear, the brain thinks in symbols in
Speaker 1: the daytime and in dreams, in waking states, and in dreams.
Speaker 1: It's all symbols. Every This is symbolic representation because we
Speaker 1: can't parse all the information coming into our nervous system,
Speaker 1: but because the nervous system's main job is to make
Speaker 1: really good predictions, to basically do statistics like when, for instance,
Speaker 1: as a child, one of the first things you learn
Speaker 1: is that objects fall down, not up. So the first
Speaker 1: time they see a helium balloon, it's like awe and excitement.
Speaker 1: That on excitement is the release of neurochemicals that teach
Speaker 1: the brain sometimes objects fall up, so to speak. So
Speaker 1: once one starts to recognize that the brain is always
Speaker 1: trying to make these predictions, you can start to look
Speaker 1: at your dreams as symbolic representations and how those relate
Speaker 1: to one another. The action functions are far more interesting
Speaker 1: and important than it was a vase. And you know,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, there was a vase in
Speaker 1: my grandmother's home, and that vase represented something maybe, but
Speaker 1: more likely you would want to think about the shape
Speaker 1: of it or where that vase was in relationship to
Speaker 1: other things, because that's how the brain works. It makes
Speaker 1: predictions based on context. Yeah. I hope that's helpful to people.
Speaker 1: If there's If there are other theories of dreams, and
Speaker 1: I'm certain that there are that extend past this, I
Speaker 1: apologize for not addressing them, but I think for most people,
Speaker 1: just thinking about the relationship between objects in their dreams
Speaker 1: is going to be more useful than thinking about what
Speaker 1: exactly that the dream was about, quote unquote, Yes, and
Speaker 1: I want to just say, please, do not apologize. That
Speaker 1: was a brilliant answer, and it was so useful even
Speaker 1: for me, because I think you're so right that so
Speaker 1: often even people will ask me. They'll be like, hey,
Speaker 1: I had this dream, what does it mean? One thing
Speaker 1: we have not solved as a neuroscientists. Two things. One
Speaker 1: why it is that people need to tell other people
Speaker 1: their dreams because other people, unless it's a trained therapist,
Speaker 1: are useless, of course help unless they have intense knowledge
Speaker 1: of the symbolic representations of your life. We should all
Speaker 1: be doing this ourselves. And the other one is a
Speaker 1: kind of peculiar one which there seems to be a
Speaker 1: need among many people that if they wake up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and they can't sleep, to
Speaker 1: wake up other people who are sleeping. But I haven't
Speaker 1: solved that one. No, I love that, and I completely
Speaker 1: agree with you. I think when I think about that though,
Speaker 1: what really struck me was this idea of the brain
Speaker 1: loving symbols, and I think of what are healthy symbols
Speaker 1: throughout the day, because I think we forget. I mean,
Speaker 1: you came into this room earlier, we came into the
Speaker 1: studio and you were looking around it all my symbols
Speaker 1: that I surround myself with. Do they count as symbols?
Speaker 1: Do they not count as absolutely? One thing I've noticed
Speaker 1: immediately on walking in here is these many things that
Speaker 1: are beautiful and they have a lot of depth to them.
Speaker 1: And I have this obsession with anytime I'm in a
Speaker 1: new environment, provided that it's appropriate, I just have to
Speaker 1: sniff around and look at everything to kind of know
Speaker 1: where I am in relationship to things. Absolutely, And I
Speaker 1: saw you do that, and I didn't want to bore
Speaker 1: you with the history of everything I can said it
Speaker 1: to you. But the idea that I find as well,
Speaker 1: this environment has been sculpted with symbols that allow me
Speaker 1: to be present with someone and what I hope will
Speaker 1: help others be present as well, or at least spark
Speaker 1: their curiosity and intrigue so that we can have that
Speaker 1: in our conversation. I wonder what are healthy symbols are
Speaker 1: there set and healthy symbols for the brain to connect
Speaker 1: with on a daily basis before sleep to sleep that
Speaker 1: allow us to program ourselves more effectively, because I feel
Speaker 1: like most of the symbols that we're seeing are unconscious
Speaker 1: or unintentional or mainly marketing or advertising or propaganda. But
Speaker 1: we're not really selective around our symbols. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that you asked this question because for years, you know,
Speaker 1: we hear these things, like you know, you're the some
Speaker 1: of the five people you spend the most time with.
Speaker 1: But nowadays we spend more time with symbols and people
Speaker 1: on social media than we do oftentimes with other individuals,
Speaker 1: or at least equal amounts of time in the room. Right,
Speaker 1: Rarely is it just the physical bodies in the room.
Speaker 1: It's all the people in our phone, which I don't
Speaker 1: see is a bad thing. Right. Actually, for years, when
Speaker 1: I was working more or less in isolation in my lab,
Speaker 1: I had this little list. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: shared this before. I had this little list of people
Speaker 1: who I love and admire, many of whom I've never met,
Speaker 1: and I just would read that list over and over again.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that at the time, but I was
Speaker 1: developing what I believe the analysts call this an interject
Speaker 1: or an introject. Perhaps someone should look that up forget
Speaker 1: which one it is, which is actually a subconscious representation
Speaker 1: of somebody else's ideas and approach to things that if we,
Speaker 1: for instance, listen to you over and over again, the
Speaker 1: nervous system starts to ask questions like what would Jay
Speaker 1: do in this circumstance. That's a very real thing, and
Speaker 1: we're not always consciously aware of it. Now. Physical symbols
Speaker 1: are also very important because the brain likes to make predictions.
Speaker 1: It loves symbols because symbols are a shorthand way of
Speaker 1: eliminating a lot of useless information. But much of the
Speaker 1: way that we operate and feel really does impact us
Speaker 1: at a subconscious level. And this has been shown over
Speaker 1: and over again. I mean, it's and it's always cast
Speaker 1: in the context of subconscious bias, which has kind of
Speaker 1: a negative slant anytime we hear bias, of course, but
Speaker 1: there are positive biases as well. So I think that
Speaker 1: for some people, having order among symbols is very important,
Speaker 1: equal spacing, everything very aligned. I'm sort of one of those,
Speaker 1: but you know, I'm kind of in the middle. Other
Speaker 1: people they aren't so consumed with the relationships between how
Speaker 1: they arrange things physically, but they enjoy great depth and
Speaker 1: emotional relationship to things, And it could be appendant. It
Speaker 1: could be nowadays, you know, people like tattoos are kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. Yeah, they're much more prominent than when I
Speaker 1: was growing up. They are an externalization of how people
Speaker 1: feel on the inside. Yes, right, So those are very
Speaker 1: powerful symbols. And there's something about the process of stamping
Speaker 1: in into one skin, etc. The slighter intense pain involved
Speaker 1: depending on where and who does it and the person's
Speaker 1: pain threshold. So symbols are a way in which we
Speaker 1: create an external reflection of who we are to ourselves.
Speaker 1: But also they are operating in a subconscious level to
Speaker 1: keep us, for instance, in a place of order, like
Speaker 1: to be able to organize one's thoughts. In a world
Speaker 1: filled with statistical information, every ray of sunshine is statistical information.
Speaker 1: We can't pay attention to all of it. So I
Speaker 1: think that to directly answer your question, there are a
Speaker 1: couple of things that I think from morning till night,
Speaker 1: make it outsize positive effect on our nervous system, both
Speaker 1: in terms of its ability to feel, think and act
Speaker 1: and its ability to learn. The first one isn't so
Speaker 1: much a symbol unless you adopted as one, and I
Speaker 1: certainly have, which is there are now thousands of quality
Speaker 1: studies showing that we should all try and get some
Speaker 1: bright light, ideally sunlight in our eyes within the early
Speaker 1: hours of waking. This doesn't necessarily meaning waking with the sunrise,
Speaker 1: although if you can do that that's great. Some people
Speaker 1: wake up before the sun comes out. Getting a lot
Speaker 1: of bright sunlight in one's eyes early in the day
Speaker 1: puts a number of neurochemicals and hormones into a state
Speaker 1: of let's just call it what it is, positivity. Mood
Speaker 1: is enhanced immune system function. Sleep is enhanced sixteen to
Speaker 1: twenty hours later, and so on, also in the evening.
Speaker 1: So the sun as a symbol is very important, but
Speaker 1: it's also anchoring our subconscious physiology. Because every cell in
Speaker 1: our body has a twenty four hour clock, we need
Speaker 1: to time it to the rise and fall of the
Speaker 1: sun each day. When human beings become misaligned with that
Speaker 1: rising and falling of the sun, bad things happens to
Speaker 1: the nervus system. Now, fortunately it's very easy to fix.
Speaker 1: There's a study done at University of Colorado taking college
Speaker 1: students camping. I wish I had been a subject in
Speaker 1: the sense moment. But they found is that melotonin rhythms
Speaker 1: cortisol rhythms, which can be a healthy thing. We all
Speaker 1: have cortisol, protects, us, energizes us, dopamine, epinephren All these
Speaker 1: rhythms of the body could be reinstated to their proper
Speaker 1: timing by waking up and seeing the sun and going
Speaker 1: to sleep not too long after sunset, depending on time
Speaker 1: of year, for two nights and two mornings, and this
Speaker 1: lasted at least two weeks, even though people were getting
Speaker 1: artificial light. So I would say the symbol of the
Speaker 1: sun is not just uh, you know, it's not a
Speaker 1: trivial thing at all. It's the anchor by which our
Speaker 1: biology is designed, in our psychology follows. Of course, I
Speaker 1: think you know, many people who have wile sleeping, many
Speaker 1: people who have mood issues. Is a metabolism. I mean,
Speaker 1: I could list it on and on and on people
Speaker 1: will ask, So I'll just put it out there. Try
Speaker 1: and do this without sunglasses if you safely can't. You
Speaker 1: don't stare directly at the sun. Never look at any
Speaker 1: light so bright that it's painful to look at. You can,
Speaker 1: of course, blink only takes a few minutes on a
Speaker 1: cloudless day. If you're in the UK and the depths
Speaker 1: of winter, you're still going to get more light coming
Speaker 1: through cloud cover by going outside than you would indoors
Speaker 1: with bright lights on, And it can take anywhere from
Speaker 1: two minutes to thirty minutes, depending on how dark or
Speaker 1: bright it is outside. Sunglasses and excuse me, eyeglasses and
Speaker 1: contacts perfectly fine. If you think about if anything that
Speaker 1: just focuses light onto the retina, don't try and do
Speaker 1: this through a window or a windshield because it filters
Speaker 1: out a lot of the light that you want. So
Speaker 1: the sun is a key symbol. I think if people
Speaker 1: could adopt that there, I'm certain their physiology and psychology
Speaker 1: will benefit. Then in terms of physical symbols, I find
Speaker 1: it very useful and that they're good data. If you know,
Speaker 1: if a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie
Speaker 1: is worth a bazillion pick. So having an image of
Speaker 1: something that makes you feel good and seeing that early
Speaker 1: in the day tremendously powerful. Having a mental image of
Speaker 1: something in your mind is equally powerful because you also
Speaker 1: carry that with you. And then if you do have
Speaker 1: a meditative practice, or even if you don't, being able
Speaker 1: to try and bring the mind and the body into
Speaker 1: that experience. So taking a moment to look at a
Speaker 1: photo of someone that you love or appreciate and or
Speaker 1: the actual person right, and being able to actually sense
Speaker 1: that and feel it at a complete nervous system level.
Speaker 1: It might sound like kind of woo science, but it's not.
Speaker 1: The nervous system extends through the whole body. So the
Speaker 1: extent that you can make that a truly whole body
Speaker 1: somatic experience, yeah, that it leads to an outsize effect
Speaker 1: on the just the ability of the nervous system to function.
Speaker 1: And then of course we are bombarded all day with
Speaker 1: negative symbols. There's just no way around that. But we
Speaker 1: can buffer ourselves against those negative symbols by very strongly
Speaker 1: associating with certain things. And here I'll just that great
Speaker 1: neurologists and writer Oliver Sacks had this obsession with minerals
Speaker 1: and stones. He felt they had personalities, and he used
Speaker 1: to say that he had developed such a strong relationship
Speaker 1: to them, their touch, especially as he started to lose
Speaker 1: his vision later in life, the way they felt, and
Speaker 1: they made him feel safe, They made him feel good.
Speaker 1: So these could be inanimate objects. So find things that
Speaker 1: you love and associate with them on a regular basis,
Speaker 1: and you are literally shifting your nervous system towards this
Speaker 1: place of buffering yourself against negativity, and you are reinforcing
Speaker 1: the very circuits that trigger the release of neurochemicals that
Speaker 1: make you feel better. And some people might say, well,
Speaker 1: then you're just kind of doping yourself up with your
Speaker 1: own chemicals. But as a last point here, the neurochemical
Speaker 1: dopamine is a very important and very misunderstood molecule. First
Speaker 1: of all, it is the substrate by which epinephrin neural
Speaker 1: energy is created. And people think of it as dopamine
Speaker 1: is just feeling good, But dopamine is not about feeling good.
Speaker 1: Dopamin is the molecule of motivation and the desire to
Speaker 1: pursue additional things in a particular line of life. So
Speaker 1: when we positively associate with a song, a person, a face,
Speaker 1: an object, the sunrise, we don't just benefit from those
Speaker 1: activities based on the effects of those activities. It's also
Speaker 1: what we believe about those activities combine and the release
Speaker 1: of dopamine makes you more capable of then leaning into
Speaker 1: life and going and doing other things and so. And
Speaker 1: this are not small effects, right, The effect of a
Speaker 1: small even you know, half a percent increase in dopamine
Speaker 1: transmission in the brain is the difference between feeling like
Speaker 1: your life is bleak and you can completely attack the
Speaker 1: day in the positive sense. So fill your life with symbols,
Speaker 1: you get. What's wonderful is that you get to curate
Speaker 1: what those are. If you don't have access to them
Speaker 1: in your physical environment, they can be entirely internal. And
Speaker 1: when I think about the great stories of the Victor
Speaker 1: Frankels and they, you know, and people who have just
Speaker 1: overcome tremendous challenge, they've internalized symbols such that the tiniest
Speaker 1: of things can actually evoke this dopamine release system. And
Speaker 1: dopamine is just a generic neuromodulator. It doesn't know anything
Speaker 1: about your experience. It only knows what you believe about
Speaker 1: your experience, and it's deployed according to what you believe
Speaker 1: about your experience. So in theory, I could train my
Speaker 1: dopamine system to release dopamine every time I raised my
Speaker 1: right hand if I genuinely thought that that had if
Speaker 1: that has meaning for me. And this is the art
Speaker 1: also of superstitions, right, This is why you know people
Speaker 1: will engage in superstitions because they've built positive associations with
Speaker 1: outcomes according to a certain behavior. So what you start
Speaker 1: to realize is that the brain is making predictions about
Speaker 1: the external world. Who's Jay, when's he coming back? You know,
Speaker 1: what objects are going to be in the room this
Speaker 1: time versus next time. If I suddenly walk out in
Speaker 1: that painting over there, which I've happened to love, is
Speaker 1: now on a different wall, my nervous system would notice
Speaker 1: that because it's but it's also making as about internal state,
Speaker 1: and a lot of depression and anxiety is about people
Speaker 1: feeling like, oh, when they feel lousy, that that lousy
Speaker 1: feeling is going to go on forever. The way to
Speaker 1: rewire this is to understand that making and controlling predictions
Speaker 1: about how you feel internally gives you a sense of agency,
Speaker 1: and that sense of agency, at the end of the
Speaker 1: day is just purely neurochemical. So these are pretty straightforward
Speaker 1: things to master. I mean, that's mind blowing to me
Speaker 1: because I've never heard dopamine be explained that way. Well,
Speaker 1: domine everything about dopamine release is learned. Yeah, there are
Speaker 1: a few things, like all at all the ones that
Speaker 1: evolved for us to be here. Okay, so associated with
Speaker 1: reproduction food sugar, there's a very powerful dopamine pathway in
Speaker 1: the brain and in the gut too, because sugar has
Speaker 1: a nutritive value, right, we should all probably be ingesting
Speaker 1: us of it. But you know, it's a hard wired system.
Speaker 1: Food when we're hungry, warmth when we're cold. Those are hardwired.
Speaker 1: But the dopamine system is designed to be trained up
Speaker 1: to associate with anything. Yeah, and this is how a
Speaker 1: guy like uh, you can meditate for long periods of
Speaker 1: time and feel I'm guessing there were times in which
Speaker 1: it felt brutal and there were times in which it
Speaker 1: felt incredible. This is how a guy like David Goggins
Speaker 1: can um, you know, punish himself with running it, you know,
Speaker 1: over and over and over. And yet somehow he's inverted
Speaker 1: that dopamine circuit so that it feels like something he
Speaker 1: either wants to do or that by overcoming that the
Speaker 1: resistance to doing it, he gets a dopamine release. So
Speaker 1: dopamine is entirely a learned release system. There are a
Speaker 1: few things that trigger it's release no matter what. But
Speaker 1: and I should highlight drugs of abuse. I was just
Speaker 1: about to say, a cocaine amphetamine um excess, you know, pornography,
Speaker 1: excessive dopamine release, and that the diabolical thing about dopamine
Speaker 1: under those conditions is that the higher the dopamine release,
Speaker 1: the big amplitude dopamine, the bigger the crash. Always it's
Speaker 1: the way the circuits are designed. Now Here, we're talking
Speaker 1: about self training in healthy amounts of dopamine, yes, non
Speaker 1: addictive amounts of dopamine release, or you could say mildly
Speaker 1: addictive patterns of behavior that serve us and the people
Speaker 1: around us well. And in that case, I think of
Speaker 1: that as kind of an adaptive addiction compulsion yea, and
Speaker 1: not one that we should necessarily avoid. Absolutely. I think
Speaker 1: that for me, the way I differentiate that, and I
Speaker 1: think that's such a good distinction that you're raising there,
Speaker 1: because what you're basically saying is we could commence ourselves
Speaker 1: through the release of dopamine that anything's good for us,
Speaker 1: and hence it can lead to addiction or it can
Speaker 1: be these aspirational positive habits for us. And I think
Speaker 1: the way I've been able to at least differentiate is
Speaker 1: that which is good for me, that which makes me
Speaker 1: feel good after I do it, because that's that release
Speaker 1: of dopamine that I'm experiencing after I do it is
Speaker 1: more important than that which makes me feel good before
Speaker 1: I do it. I love that. So I don't feel
Speaker 1: good before I go to the jim or maybe before
Speaker 1: I meditate, or before I eat a healthy bowl of
Speaker 1: protein and food that's good for me, but I always
Speaker 1: feel good after it. I love that. And when I
Speaker 1: feel good before I stay up late at night and
Speaker 1: hope that we're going to have a great time. I
Speaker 1: feel good before I eat a pizza. I feel good
Speaker 1: before I have loads of sugar because I have a
Speaker 1: massive sweet tooth, but then afterwards I feel the pangs
Speaker 1: of it. I love that. And it proves that in
Speaker 1: your heart you're a neuroscientist. Because there's something called dopamine
Speaker 1: reward prediction error. This was defined by getting rule from
Speaker 1: Schultz and others, and it's an incredible thing and it
Speaker 1: can be made very simple, which is when we positively
Speaker 1: anticipate something, there is dopamine release. I mean, just tell
Speaker 1: kids that you're going for ice cream and you're seeing
Speaker 1: what is I'll now explain as reward prediction error. Now
Speaker 1: you get to the ice cream shop and it's closed.
Speaker 1: What happens is there dopamine drops below baseline before they
Speaker 1: were told they were going for ice cream. If they're
Speaker 1: going to the ice cream shop and they have ice cream,
Speaker 1: you might think then they get even more dopamine. But
Speaker 1: guess what, the ice cream isn't as good, or if
Speaker 1: one kid that the ice cream cone falls and they
Speaker 1: don't get another one. What ends up happening is that
Speaker 1: dopamine is relative to where you were just feeling, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel that great. And so this is the diabolical
Speaker 1: nature of addictive drugs. People get a dopamine surge in
Speaker 1: anticipation of using, and over time they get less and
Speaker 1: less of a dopamine surge. But the punishment signal, as
Speaker 1: we say, that comes afterwards. The trough afterwards goes lower
Speaker 1: and lower and lower. So it's like a asymmetric seesaw.
Speaker 1: It's not just back and forth. It goes dopamine, but
Speaker 1: then it goes punishment signal. Now you've figured it out
Speaker 1: because dopamine reward prediction error says that if you have
Speaker 1: less dopamine heading into something, then you do afterward. That
Speaker 1: tells the synapses, the brain connections that were involved to
Speaker 1: reinforce themselves and to engage in that behavior. Again, and
Speaker 1: this is also what happens with surprise. If you go
Speaker 1: someplace you're not expecting, you know what likes. Let's go
Speaker 1: to this place for dinner out and all looks good
Speaker 1: and it's amazing. You create a much bigger dopamine signal
Speaker 1: than if I tell you Jay, I got to take
Speaker 1: you this place. This is the best sushi in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. That actually sets you up to not enjoy
Speaker 1: the meal as much. So we all should learn to
Speaker 1: kind of control this dopamine. NB. You've done it beautifully
Speaker 1: by simplifying it into making sure that you get enough happiness, thrill,
Speaker 1: excitement in retrospect. That's the way to wire in healthy behaviors.
Speaker 1: And I've never actually heard it put as succinctly as
Speaker 1: you because academics are not trained to be succinct, as
Speaker 1: you can tell. But I think if everyone kept that
Speaker 1: in mind, they would do themselves a great service, which is,
Speaker 1: try and ask whether or not there you had as
Speaker 1: much or more pleasure in the aftermath of something as
Speaker 1: you did during and you will. You get two benefits,
Speaker 1: one as you can avoid addictive type behaviors and the
Speaker 1: other because you avoid that crash if there's a dopamine
Speaker 1: release after there's no crash, and the other is that
Speaker 1: you'll have a tendency to return to that behavior over
Speaker 1: and over again. There's also I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people enter new relationships there is a well established dopamine surge.
Speaker 1: With the early phase. Everything feels possible. People feel like,
Speaker 1: people go out and make purchases. They're kind of manic, right,
Speaker 1: and it's a very exciting kind of mental illness that
Speaker 1: we all enjoy from time to time. But then people
Speaker 1: start to enter the phase of real challenge or oftentimes
Speaker 1: real challenge, and if they can't make that transition seamlessly,
Speaker 1: and they constantly focus back on how great things were
Speaker 1: and they look at the differential, it can be a
Speaker 1: kind of a dark picture, and then people have to
Speaker 1: start working on trying to reignite, so to speak. But
Speaker 1: the bigger the dopamine surge at the beginning, the bigger
Speaker 1: the crash. So I think that a wonderful model for
Speaker 1: relationship is also to temper that dopamine release, spread it
Speaker 1: out over time. Try and spread it out over fifty
Speaker 1: years any your home free. Now, I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: in relationship, but it is absolutely clear that dopamine is
Speaker 1: the hallmark of human bonding, then you know early on anyway,
Speaker 1: then come the oxytocin and all the feel good, warmth molecules,
Speaker 1: because dopean fundamentally is about accessing things that are outside
Speaker 1: your immediate experience. It's reaching for things beyond the confines
Speaker 1: of your skin, a degree, money, a relationship that you're
Speaker 1: worried that's developing and that you're working on. Whereas the
Speaker 1: serotonin and oxytocin system, which I think most people have
Speaker 1: heard of, are feel good molecules. They're associated with things
Speaker 1: We already have, knowledge of how wonderful our partner is,
Speaker 1: knowledge of how much we love something, or how much
Speaker 1: we appreciate the meal that we had. So neither it's
Speaker 1: not that dopamine is bad and serotonin is good. These
Speaker 1: are molecules that have built up in our system over
Speaker 1: time to allow us to establish new relationships of all
Speaker 1: kinds two things end people and to ourselves, and then
Speaker 1: to sustain them. But that those big dopamine peaks early
Speaker 1: on are very very dangerous, and we need to learn
Speaker 1: to temper them and just spread that out over time.
Speaker 1: It's a resource, and we need to learn to calibrate
Speaker 1: that resource. Andrew you, honestly, you just blurn my mind
Speaker 1: again and again and again, because is there are so
Speaker 1: many long held beliefs that I have, or techniques or
Speaker 1: tools that I've built, or mindsets that I've created and
Speaker 1: that I share and coach and pass on from the
Speaker 1: studies that I've done. But I get so much joy
Speaker 1: out of seeing deep study support those ideas. I think
Speaker 1: I want to unpack a lot of the things you said.
Speaker 1: The first thing I want to say is my new
Speaker 1: claim to fame is that you said I'm an honorary neuroscientist. Now,
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna you think like a neuroscientist because to
Speaker 1: be able to batch things in time that way is
Speaker 1: a unique skill. I'm not saying this for flattery, but
Speaker 1: it makes you feel good even better. But the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is funny, but I'm grateful. But most
Speaker 1: people think about experiences as one thing. You know, we
Speaker 1: went to Costa Rica. It was amazing, ah and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it was. And when dopamines flooding through your system,
Speaker 1: there's also something really cool. Is it distorts your perception
Speaker 1: of time. It feels like time goes by very very fast,
Speaker 1: but in looking back, it seems like a lot happened.
Speaker 1: I think about when you're bored in the doctor's office
Speaker 1: waiting room. It feels like it goes on forever and
Speaker 1: you look back, Guess what happened? Nothing, it's low dopamine state.
Speaker 1: So dopamine actually acts as a It's like shooting a
Speaker 1: film at high frame rate. Yeah, okay, so it feels
Speaker 1: like a lot's happening. You look back and it goes
Speaker 1: by very fast. But you look back, a lot happen.
Speaker 1: So you batch things in time. And this is fundamentally
Speaker 1: important to how we work. If we look at experiences
Speaker 1: only in terms of how we experience them and not
Speaker 1: the aftermath, we miss a huge portion of life, and
Speaker 1: more importantly, we miss the opportunity to access the right
Speaker 1: behaviors and thoughts. Yeah, we can be very misled by
Speaker 1: things like dopamine. It's it's a it's really a tricky
Speaker 1: molecule to work with, and we're all working with it.
Speaker 1: No one is immune from this, right, But yes, you
Speaker 1: are absolutely a neuroscientist. That's my new that's my new tagline. No,
Speaker 1: I such a fascination with neuroscience, and I hope that
Speaker 1: at one point in my life, I create the time
Speaker 1: and space to deeply study and study, should do an experiment.
Speaker 1: It's genuine a desire in my life. So I'm not
Speaker 1: Jefford has a mind body Lab, Ali Crum's Lab, which
Speaker 1: is all about beliefs and how beliefs shape our physiology.
Speaker 1: My colleague David Spiegel and psychiatry studies hypnosis and brain
Speaker 1: states and beliefs in mind body. So Stanford of course
Speaker 1: does all the hardcore, rigorous stuff around moleculobiology, genetics, it's
Speaker 1: deep sequencing. But we also have a collection of people
Speaker 1: there that are very interested in mind body, so we
Speaker 1: should design an experiment. Yeah, definitely, I'd love to. That
Speaker 1: would be that's music to my ears. I'm backing more
Speaker 1: of what you said. What I find so interesting is
Speaker 1: that you said, obviously this this painting that you like
Speaker 1: behind me, and then you said if it was in
Speaker 1: another place, then you know it takes a bit of
Speaker 1: time to reconfigure and recalibrate, you know what's going on here,
Speaker 1: and when you look at our lives today, so much
Speaker 1: of the anxiety that we experience is based on change
Speaker 1: or or the lack of being able to predict as
Speaker 1: we talked about or unpredictability, and we've long known kind
Speaker 1: of like what you were saying before, We've long known that,
Speaker 1: you know, things will not always stay the same. We
Speaker 1: realize that change is the only constant, that uncertainty is
Speaker 1: the only certainty. Like we know these truths, yet we
Speaker 1: love holding on to predict, even for me, Like when
Speaker 1: I walk into this room, I do predict that these
Speaker 1: things will remain on the wall, and the mics will
Speaker 1: be here, and Homer will have set up the lights,
Speaker 1: and there's some predictability there, which creates security. But as
Speaker 1: we all know, shifting and being good with change is
Speaker 1: so integral. What do we do with that? Like, how
Speaker 1: do we start opening up and being more comfortable in
Speaker 1: the discomfort of change, not just growth, but just change
Speaker 1: and shifts that we don't expect and predict. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think two ways. One, I'll just go back to this
Speaker 1: fundamental feature of the nervous system, which is it's trying
Speaker 1: to make predictions. So the reason why change is stressful,
Speaker 1: even positive change, believe it or not, is quote unquote
Speaker 1: stressful is because of this and the release of adrenaline
Speaker 1: and associated molecules with anytime things change, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you look at the psychologists have worked this out, there's
Speaker 1: a hierarchy of stressors, and of course at at the
Speaker 1: top of that hierarchy are awful things that we don't
Speaker 1: you know, I think at the top, to be honest,
Speaker 1: I think death of a child is perhaps the greatest
Speaker 1: stressor divorce, death of a loved one, these kinds of
Speaker 1: horrible things that we wouldn't wish on anyone. Then as
Speaker 1: one goes down not too far below, you see things
Speaker 1: like moving to a new homer apartment. You think, well,
Speaker 1: that could be a great event, right, birth of a
Speaker 1: new child, and you think, wait a second, I thought,
Speaker 1: that's supposed to be one of the greatest choice in life,
Speaker 1: and indeed it is. But it's stressful to the nervous
Speaker 1: system because so many things have to be reconfigured, not
Speaker 1: to say anything about the lack of sleep with a
Speaker 1: new born and this kind of thing. So change is
Speaker 1: always going to force our brain to make more assessments
Speaker 1: of our environment. One of the things that we can
Speaker 1: say about the brain for sure is that once it
Speaker 1: learns something, it likes to not have to think about it.
Speaker 1: When you walk, because you already know how to walk,
Speaker 1: you don't think right left, right, left, right left. But
Speaker 1: when you learn how to dance a new step or
Speaker 1: something of that sort, or a new skill sports skill,
Speaker 1: you have to think about it, and it's work. And
Speaker 1: anytime we have to think about behaviors and they aren't
Speaker 1: simply reflexive. That work, as we call it, is in
Speaker 1: it's a combination of the release of things like adrenaline
Speaker 1: ephron in the brain and body, I should say, from
Speaker 1: the adrenals in the body, but also in the brain,
Speaker 1: from a little brain area called locus ceruleus. That is,
Speaker 1: X is kind of a sprinkler system for the brain
Speaker 1: and kind of wake up all brain areas saying okay,
Speaker 1: let's pay attention to a lot of stuff here. Very
Speaker 1: basic system, but very fundamental system. It's literally a wake
Speaker 1: up system for the brain works in parallel with the
Speaker 1: release of adrenaline into our body. Now, one way to
Speaker 1: deal with change is to know this right, to understand
Speaker 1: that if one feels stress or agitated around a new move,
Speaker 1: or you have a partner who's really stressed about a
Speaker 1: new move, even though it's exciting it should be exciting,
Speaker 1: that that's perfectly normal because what they're experiencing is this
Speaker 1: increase in agitation and alertness, and it also makes it
Speaker 1: harder to enter deeply relax states because the brain is
Speaker 1: in a mode of predictions, making predictions, what's happening next, thinking, thinking, thinking,
Speaker 1: And one of the things that's key to falling asleep
Speaker 1: each night and replenishing our ability to think and make
Speaker 1: predictions is the ability to turn off thinking. This is
Speaker 1: why I'm such a fan of what traditionally was called
Speaker 1: yoga needro, which literally means yoga sleep lying down. It's
Speaker 1: a form of meditation, as you know, and with breathing, etc.
Speaker 1: I certainly I want to point out that I have
Speaker 1: no desire to rename any of these ancient practices. These
Speaker 1: are beautiful practices. They've been built up over thousands of years.
Speaker 1: The reason I call sometimes batch yoga nidra with so
Speaker 1: called NSDR non sleep deep rest is that, unfortunately, both
Speaker 1: in science and intradition cultures around some of these behaviors,
Speaker 1: the language has become a barrier for people to try them.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to wash away any of the wonderful
Speaker 1: culture and tradition around these I want to be very
Speaker 1: clear about that, but ultimately it's about accessing a state
Speaker 1: of mind. As for anyone that's listened to a yoga
Speaker 1: Niedra script, and I should say I do niitra every day.
Speaker 1: I have for almost a decade now. It's without question,
Speaker 1: along with viewing morning light, sunlight, the most powerful practice
Speaker 1: I think I can recommend anyone. It is about, as
Speaker 1: you always hear in a classic Kneedure script, you move
Speaker 1: away from thinking and doing to being and feeling. Now
Speaker 1: what is that If we take a neuroscience lens of me,
Speaker 1: what is this thinking and doing, being and feeling. It's
Speaker 1: about shutting down of the prefrontal cortex, which is making
Speaker 1: predictions what's happening next. Right as we move into sleep,
Speaker 1: you enter that kind of liminal state where things become disjointed. Right,
Speaker 1: a cat flies through the room and then you might
Speaker 1: jerk yourself awake, and it's kind of odd, but that's
Speaker 1: the state of not thinking and doing and just being
Speaker 1: and feeling being in one's pure somatic experience. So I
Speaker 1: would say, in order to move through change, designate twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes each day to put the brain into
Speaker 1: a state of non thinking, non doing, and into a
Speaker 1: state of quote unquote being and feeling, so not making predictions. Now,
Speaker 1: the tricky thing is when one is stressed. That's especially
Speaker 1: hard to do. And this is why I think, what
Speaker 1: is it? Technihan said, you know, what is that? Who said?
Speaker 1: You know? Um? When stress? You know, I meditate every day,
Speaker 1: but when stress, meditate twice as long as something like that,
Speaker 1: when I don't think I have time. It's a skill.
Speaker 1: And so this ability to turn off thinking enhances one's
Speaker 1: ability to enter sleep, which is vital for mental and
Speaker 1: physical health. Obviously, learning, et cetera. For reasons we discussed,
Speaker 1: So develop the ability to deliberately disengage from thinking and
Speaker 1: doing and do that during periods of low stress, right
Speaker 1: twenty to thirty minutes a day, even ten minutes a
Speaker 1: day of just learning, teaching oneself and practicing the art
Speaker 1: of turning off prediction is an incredibly valuable skill. And
Speaker 1: then the other one is to just understand that we're
Speaker 1: being bombarded with contextual change all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: I love Instagram. I teach science on Instagram. I see
Speaker 1: you there daily, and so scrolling on Instagram is an
Speaker 1: interesting experience because in five minutes you can look at
Speaker 1: a thousand different contexts. The human brain has never dealt
Speaker 1: with that kind of change before. Even when television when
Speaker 1: I was growing up, there were three or four good channels,
Speaker 1: then it went to cable, and then now you get
Speaker 1: onto an airplane or something, you got two hundred and
Speaker 1: forty channels. That's a drop in the bucket compared to
Speaker 1: what we can get in a social media feed. So
Speaker 1: I think we just need to be aware that the
Speaker 1: brain can work with that. But then what you're turning
Speaker 1: on is an ability to walk into a new context
Speaker 1: and figure it out the statistics. Imagine if an Instagram feed.
Speaker 1: And I'm not demonizing Instagram, I think they're wonderful. I
Speaker 1: think they provide a wonderful resource. Truly. Imagine if we
Speaker 1: walked out of this room and it was a completely
Speaker 1: different landscape. It was a jungle. Then we turned the
Speaker 1: corner and go into what I would think was the kitchen,
Speaker 1: and it was the kitchen of the you know, of
Speaker 1: some Thomas Keller restaurant in New York. Turn the corner
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, we're underwater. That's social media
Speaker 1: and we can cope with that. So if I think
Speaker 1: about it that way, then I think if we can
Speaker 1: cope with that then we can cope with transitions in
Speaker 1: so called real life with ease. Now, some people have
Speaker 1: more situational awareness than others. They walk into an environment
Speaker 1: and they're sensing all the things other people walk into
Speaker 1: an environment, and they're very good at narrowing their attentional spotlight.
Speaker 1: The latter group actually has a bit of an advantage.
Speaker 1: They probably wouldn't be so good as a special operator
Speaker 1: in the military that has to develop a situational advantage,
Speaker 1: or a police officer or a teacher, but they're going
Speaker 1: to be immensely good at one on one interactions because
Speaker 1: they can make the room disappear. And so, but we
Speaker 1: need both kinds of people, and we all need to
Speaker 1: learn how to sort of brighten and broaden these attentional
Speaker 1: spotlights and narrow them as well. And I'll just briefly
Speaker 1: say we are old world primates, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: and we have the capacity to do what's called covert attention. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I can pay attention to you, but I can also
Speaker 1: notice that in my periphery there's something else going on.
Speaker 1: So I've got two spotlights now, but I am dividing
Speaker 1: my attention. We can't do three simultaneously. But what I
Speaker 1: can also do is decide to merge those two spotlights
Speaker 1: and intensify them and narrow the aperture of my visual
Speaker 1: window and my auditory window. So we should always think
Speaker 1: of our our attention is two spotlights that can be
Speaker 1: very broad or it can be very narrowly focused, and
Speaker 1: that we can overlap them. Yeah, and I think I
Speaker 1: think we should all know how to do both. We
Speaker 1: should learn how to narrow the aperture of our focus,
Speaker 1: deeply engage, but also deliberately disengage. And the process of
Speaker 1: falling asleep that we were talking about before is the
Speaker 1: practice of learning how to take that attentional spotlight, move
Speaker 1: those two apart, and then not dim them, but extend
Speaker 1: that same luminosity out more broadly, more broadly, and then
Speaker 1: we're off to sleep. So it's about deliberate control of
Speaker 1: the nervous system. And unfortunately, we all know how to
Speaker 1: focus on something if we're very stressed or excited by it.
Speaker 1: Most people don't learn how to turn off this focus
Speaker 1: and learn how to deliberately disengage. And one of my
Speaker 1: great hopes for humanity is that children and adults will
Speaker 1: learn how to deliberately disengage because it benefits sleep, which
Speaker 1: benefits mental and physical health. And also, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, most of the bad things that we do
Speaker 1: to ourselves and others, and that people do to one
Speaker 1: another most, not all, but most are from a heightened
Speaker 1: state of reactivity where we're just not conscious. And that's
Speaker 1: because our aperture, our window of attention is too narrow.
Speaker 1: We're not taking in to account the full space end
Speaker 1: time of what we're thinking about. And as a last point,
Speaker 1: space and time are linked in the brain. If you
Speaker 1: have a narrow visual focus, you tend to have a
Speaker 1: narrow time slicing right, which makes sense if you think
Speaker 1: about like a little kid watching ants on the ground
Speaker 1: and then gets called into dinner and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the way you batch time is different. When you're sleepy,
Speaker 1: you tend to batch things in big blocks okay, or
Speaker 1: when you're bored, big blocks of time. When you're very excited,
Speaker 1: stressed or happily excited, you're in that fast frame rate.
Speaker 1: You've gone from sixty frames per second, which I think
Speaker 1: is a typical smartphone to a thousand frames per second. Wow.
Speaker 1: So you're catching all the micro nuances, but you're missing
Speaker 1: everything else. And what I find most interesting about that though,
Speaker 1: And I want to study a few years ago and
Speaker 1: I don't know if it I don't know, I can't
Speaker 1: remember where it's from, but it said something along the
Speaker 1: lines of that Today, in twenty four hours, we're exposed
Speaker 1: to more tragedy through the news or pain or stress,
Speaker 1: whatever word we want to label that as. Then we
Speaker 1: were in my entire lifetime twenty five years ago. I think, sadly, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I have to agree. Yeah. And what I
Speaker 1: found also was that what you're saying, and I love
Speaker 1: this idea of we have these two points of focus
Speaker 1: and putting it together or bringing out, which I think
Speaker 1: is fantastic as a visual too. There's an element though
Speaker 1: that really draws us in of judgment and criticism, like
Speaker 1: I find judgment. I'm using judgment as the overall word.
Speaker 1: Criticism is a very specific word. But what really makes
Speaker 1: something harder, like when we're processing thousand posts on Instagram,
Speaker 1: the most difficult part is when judgment comes in, whether
Speaker 1: it's positive or negative, because that's what draws you in.
Speaker 1: And I find that we have more things to judge,
Speaker 1: and to make that many judgments in a day is
Speaker 1: quite exhausting, and then to be exhausted by the number
Speaker 1: of tragic or stressful moments that we experience. And like
Speaker 1: you said that, you know, it's okay if we're on
Speaker 1: Instagram we're seeing multiple things or where it's seeing this kitchen,
Speaker 1: into this animation, into this world. But when a lot
Speaker 1: of it is painful to deliberately disengage, but the main
Speaker 1: connected to reality, I feel like that's somewhere where people
Speaker 1: feel like they're in Nomad's then yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a particular challenge now with the number of
Speaker 1: images and movies that can come at us. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that here, I I'm not one to usually
Speaker 1: talk like this, but I think much of building a
Speaker 1: good life is about both honoring and challenging the asymmetries
Speaker 1: of our nervous system. What I mean by that is,
Speaker 1: you know, everything we've talked about up until now are
Speaker 1: wired into us from birth. We have dopamine, F and
Speaker 1: FER in these circuitries. We can attentional spotlight that all
Speaker 1: we show up in the world with that, and we
Speaker 1: have to work with them. We also need to acknowledge
Speaker 1: that there is an asymmetry to learning. You know before
Speaker 1: we talked about the gap effects and the two stage
Speaker 1: process of neuroplasticity. There are exceptions. The exception is learning
Speaker 1: of negative things. You only have to touch the hot
Speaker 1: stove once, or the metaphorically speaking, the hot stove only
Speaker 1: has to touch you once before it changes you. So
Speaker 1: there's one trial learning of negative experiences. Now, once we
Speaker 1: understand that asymmetry, and once we understand that negativity actually
Speaker 1: has a bit of a stronghold on our nervous system,
Speaker 1: then we accept I would hope we would accept the
Speaker 1: idea that then we have to work a little harder
Speaker 1: to counter that, or maybe a lot harder. In the
Speaker 1: same way that so called highly palatable foods, which is
Speaker 1: now because it kind of signs geek speak for unhealthy,
Speaker 1: highly processed foods, because there's some you know, I do
Speaker 1: love fruits and vegetables, and there's some wonderful baked goods.
Speaker 1: Let's I love croissants. So I don't want to highly
Speaker 1: palatable foods. But but I think we could all do
Speaker 1: well to eat healthier foods, and they are not as
Speaker 1: rewarding in the short term as some of these highly
Speaker 1: palatable foods, right and especially to the young nervous system.
Speaker 1: You know, there's you know, a milkshaker or candy just
Speaker 1: taste better to these kids than vegetables for reasons that
Speaker 1: are hardwired into the nervous system. But we know that
Speaker 1: kids need their fruits and vegetables probably more than they
Speaker 1: need candy. Okay, So we have to all learn to
Speaker 1: counter these built in asymmetries in our nervous system. And
Speaker 1: as adults, we probably thought we had it made, but
Speaker 1: then now we're bombarded with all this negative imagery. And
Speaker 1: so the key is really the symbols that we were
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, to really build in positive symbols and
Speaker 1: internal symbolic representations. What I mean by that not just
Speaker 1: physical things in our environment and people, but also how
Speaker 1: we hold those things inside is so important. I think
Speaker 1: this is what comes to this notion of intentions. It's
Speaker 1: work right right life and right action and all these
Speaker 1: things that we hear about. It's work. It's working against
Speaker 1: the tide that is pulling us toward negativity. That's in fact,
Speaker 1: there's a study that was done in the sixties. It
Speaker 1: was published in the journal Science. There's an excellent journal,
Speaker 1: and the Apex journals had people with stimulating electrodes in
Speaker 1: their brain for reasons related to neurosurgery. These people could
Speaker 1: stimulate multiple areas of their brain one at a time,
Speaker 1: and they reported how they felt. So that the human
Speaker 1: would stimulate and they'd feel drunk, where they'd stimulate another
Speaker 1: area and they'd feel happy. They'd stimulate another area they'd
Speaker 1: feel sad. The fascinating We learned a lot about the
Speaker 1: human brain from these studies. The brain area that people
Speaker 1: preferred to stimulate the most. This is really gonna upset
Speaker 1: a few people was the one that led to anger
Speaker 1: and frustration. And you think to yourself, well, that's just terrible.
Speaker 1: Are we just doomed? Right? No, It turns out the
Speaker 1: anger and frustration is a signal to the brain and
Speaker 1: body that you need to do something in response to that.
Speaker 1: Usually move away or move forward and sort of enter
Speaker 1: an aggressive state. Knowing that trained, right, that's like habit
Speaker 1: that probably comes through and habit. I think this is
Speaker 1: why people I'd spend more time on Instagram than I
Speaker 1: do on other social media platforms. But listen, I'm not
Speaker 1: embarrassed to say you go on Twitter and it's a
Speaker 1: more combative zone. It's just the nature of the beast
Speaker 1: there it's a more combative zone, in part because there
Speaker 1: are a lot of academics on there. It's more combative.
Speaker 1: So I notice if I log on to Twitter, I
Speaker 1: already get a little bit of an adrenaline surge, just like,
Speaker 1: all right, you're ready to fight, and just knowing that
Speaker 1: we have this innate bias towards frustration and anger and
Speaker 1: that kind of friction. Hopefully, my wish is that it
Speaker 1: will allow people to relax around that and to realize, ah,
Speaker 1: this is sort of like the food that I immediately
Speaker 1: want to reach for. That's the kind of dopamine signal
Speaker 1: that you were talking about early on. But how am
Speaker 1: I going to feel afterwards? Yes? How am I going
Speaker 1: to feel afterwards? And I would say that ninety nine
Speaker 1: percent of online interactions where people end up in these
Speaker 1: ridiculous battles, later both parties probably think, well, how did
Speaker 1: I get wrapped up in that? It's absolutely crazy. You know,
Speaker 1: you think you're scoring slam dunks on each other at
Speaker 1: the time, but it's ridiculous. So I think the thing
Speaker 1: to understand is that we have these asymmetries, but that
Speaker 1: we can learn to work with them the way that
Speaker 1: a really I think a really incredible psychiatrist. He's done
Speaker 1: a lot of work on trauma. Paul Conti describes it
Speaker 1: in a different context. Is that um and he's like,
Speaker 1: into my mind, the expert on trauma and just just
Speaker 1: done beautiful work. Is that it's like those little kids
Speaker 1: toys where there's a little ball bearing moving around in
Speaker 1: a maze, he describes to me. So this is all
Speaker 1: Paul Kanti's an MD, and this is his work, not
Speaker 1: mine his words. You know, there are times in which
Speaker 1: we are like that game where just a slight shift
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden the ball bearing goes down
Speaker 1: the shoote. And what we should all be striving for
Speaker 1: is for you know, slightly concave and for it to
Speaker 1: kind of maybe move around a bit with the with
Speaker 1: the events of life and what we hear and see.
Speaker 1: That's what we should be striving toward. And that takes work.
Speaker 1: Some people are naturally there, but very few people are
Speaker 1: naturally there. But this is the power of meditation. This
Speaker 1: is the power of non sleep deep rest. This is
Speaker 1: the power of good sleep or most nights. This is
Speaker 1: the power of excellent social relationships. This is the power
Speaker 1: of mindsets and intentions, that stuff, gratitude practices, none of
Speaker 1: that stuff is weak. All of that stuff acts as
Speaker 1: a kind of a foundation from which we can approach
Speaker 1: things and go, Yeah, the pulses to get pretty upset
Speaker 1: about that, but I'm going to lean away from that.
Speaker 1: Very hard to do when we're not tending to that.
Speaker 1: Those foundational elements actually quite easy to do over time,
Speaker 1: because it gives us the perspective. And I think that
Speaker 1: if we understand that we're being bombarded with this, it's
Speaker 1: like being at a buffet of junk food. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: understanding that somewhere in that buffet is really nutritious food,
Speaker 1: and that's what we should be aiming for and learning
Speaker 1: to kind of override the natural signals of oh, I
Speaker 1: really want that, and I really want that by thinking
Speaker 1: about exactly what you said earlier, which is how am
Speaker 1: I going to feel afterward being and what's that that's
Speaker 1: dilating our perception of time. We're getting out of that
Speaker 1: slave to dopamine mode and we're starting to think about, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to let dopamine control me. I'm going
Speaker 1: to control dopamine. And that's powerful. Yeah, Well that sparks
Speaker 1: for me, is Also, this idea that I've been in
Speaker 1: love with for a while is fragility and strength and
Speaker 1: how not being exposed to something doesn't protect you, but
Speaker 1: it makes you. Weaka, it absolutely does. And you know,
Speaker 1: nowadays there's a big interest in so called dopamine fasts.
Speaker 1: I think they have their place. You know, if people
Speaker 1: have been engaging in things that are high dopamine evoking behaviors,
Speaker 1: there is a place for this. This is one of
Speaker 1: the routes to sobriety. Beautiful work by my colleague at Stanford,
Speaker 1: doctor Anna Lemky. She wrote Dopamine Nation, incredible book about
Speaker 1: dopamine in the context of addiction, but all kinds of addiction.
Speaker 1: She talks about this, there is a role for dopamine fast.
Speaker 1: Really moving away from intensely pleasurable activities for about thirty
Speaker 1: days is necessary for some people to reset. But it's
Speaker 1: naive for any of us to think that then you
Speaker 1: go back into the world and you're not being bombarded
Speaker 1: with temptation of different kinds. I mean, the whole idea
Speaker 1: is to bring the system back into balance so that
Speaker 1: you can notice the subtle inflections, right, I guess the
Speaker 1: meditators and Yogi's I always loved the language they use,
Speaker 1: would be the kind of subtle after meditation, you can
Speaker 1: notice the kind of subtle ripples in life, right, Whereas
Speaker 1: if you're just hard charging all the time, you miss
Speaker 1: so much. Again I'm using in the yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I think that so dopamine fast have their place, but
Speaker 1: better to have your hands on the steering wheel, accelerator
Speaker 1: and break of all these mechanisms and to go through.
Speaker 1: It's only when you know the car has been wrecked
Speaker 1: that it needs to go into the repair shop. Most
Speaker 1: of us don't need a dopamine fast. We need to
Speaker 1: understand how dopamine works. We need to do exactly what
Speaker 1: you described earlier, which is to extend the time domain
Speaker 1: so that we think about am I getting dopamine later also?
Speaker 1: Or is this just a quick up and down kind
Speaker 1: of event. Then I think we can move through life
Speaker 1: in a much more adaptive way. And then you mentioned
Speaker 1: obviously when you're talking about relationships. You know, we talked
Speaker 1: about how dopamine is there at the beginning, but then
Speaker 1: we talk about serotonin and oxytocin these inner feelings, which
Speaker 1: I love that description also of like how dopamine is
Speaker 1: the pursuit of external things and oxytocin and serotonin about
Speaker 1: how we feel what we have. I think that was
Speaker 1: another great visual And I love how you speak in
Speaker 1: symbols more than you know, like there you know it's
Speaker 1: I really everything you've been sharing today, I can visualize it,
Speaker 1: and I really enjoy visual learning. And so when you
Speaker 1: were speaking earlier about how you can visualize a symbol
Speaker 1: even if you don't have it physically, and even when
Speaker 1: you said that to them, I'm like, Oh, that's really
Speaker 1: fascinating that dopamine is that oxytocin and serotonin. Is this
Speaker 1: with oxytocin and serotonin, we know that a lot of
Speaker 1: the habits you just mentioned they are what create this balance. Right.
Speaker 1: So the reason why people doing about decreasing dopamine, I guess,
Speaker 1: is because we've noticed that dopamine is shooting through the
Speaker 1: roof and often what we do for oxytonin, oxytocin and
Speaker 1: serotonin and not really that balanced across the board. What
Speaker 1: are Let's look at relationships and go is there a
Speaker 1: need to have dopamine in long term relationships or are
Speaker 1: serotonin and oxytocin enough and not just relationships That applies
Speaker 1: to Korea. It applies applies to everything I feel. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: There's a wonderful book about this written by a psychoanalyst
Speaker 1: in a slightly different context. The book the title of
Speaker 1: the book is Can Love Last? And it's an interesting books.
Speaker 1: It operates on the premise that when we first meet
Speaker 1: somebody and we want this in the context of romantic relationship,
Speaker 1: and we desire romantic relationship with them, it's very much
Speaker 1: about objectification of the other person. And I don't mean
Speaker 1: objectification in the traditional sense. But we don't rely on
Speaker 1: them yet, right, We only rely on the ability to
Speaker 1: pursue and get them right or for them for us
Speaker 1: to pursue them exactly, But we don't rely on them
Speaker 1: for safety at all. If that evolves to become a
Speaker 1: romantic relationship right with trust, then what happens is there's
Speaker 1: a true dependency there. If one person were to leave
Speaker 1: for any reason, die or leave or cheat or break up,
Speaker 1: it is truly devastating to the safety mechanisms of the
Speaker 1: brain and body. Right. It's a reactivation actually of a
Speaker 1: lot of the machinery that was designed for attachment between
Speaker 1: infant and parent. Right is it just as an important
Speaker 1: aside all the work on an attachment that was done
Speaker 1: by Bowlby and Maine and others in psychology of taking
Speaker 1: deliberately taking babies away from their mothers and then reuniting
Speaker 1: them and evaluating the responses batching them into different All
Speaker 1: that circuitry isn't lost as we grow up. It's repurposed
Speaker 1: for a romantic attachment. There's no question about that, no
Speaker 1: question about that. We just operated into different domains of
Speaker 1: anxiety becomes about waiting for a text message as opposed
Speaker 1: to mother to come back in the room or nursing, etc.
Speaker 1: So same circuitry reapplied. As we advance into relationships, we
Speaker 1: become more dependent on people. But the idea, and that
Speaker 1: it's touched on quite a lot in this book Can
Speaker 1: Love Last, is that there is a need from time
Speaker 1: to time in some relationships to bring the dopamine element
Speaker 1: back in. Now certain cultures have actually built this in
Speaker 1: in a very strategic way of actually having men and
Speaker 1: women not physically contact one another for several weeks out
Speaker 1: of each month in order to maintain the kind of
Speaker 1: quote unquote excitement of a relationship. Nowadays, we tend to
Speaker 1: have this model of lover and best friend and sometimes
Speaker 1: even business partner right, which for some people can work
Speaker 1: and for other people can quash all the excitement. Right.
Speaker 1: It really depends, and especially nowadays where people are working
Speaker 1: a lot more from home, there isn't a tendency for
Speaker 1: people to spend much time apart and to miss one another.
Speaker 1: Missing one another the yearning for the other person is
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing. It's a painful, but beautiful thing. What
Speaker 1: is that yearning? That yearning is the pain of the
Speaker 1: lack of dopamine and serotonin. Actually just came back from
Speaker 1: a trip and we were visiting a couple friends of
Speaker 1: ours and they said it was right beautiful. They said
Speaker 1: they've been together a long time. They said they've had
Speaker 1: three nights apart in their entire relationship, and one of
Speaker 1: them got sick during that time apart. And I thought,
Speaker 1: that's beautiful. Now, for some people, that's a beautiful model.
Speaker 1: For other people that would be excessive, and it actually
Speaker 1: could eliminate a number of the positive neurochemical features of
Speaker 1: the relationship. And there's a lot of variation around this.
Speaker 1: So dopamine is required to quote unquote re up the
Speaker 1: excitement in a relationship. How is that achieved well? Dopamine
Speaker 1: is the molecule, as you recall, of reward, predictionary of novelty.
Speaker 1: So doing things that are not expected is great. Routine
Speaker 1: is great for serotonin and oxytocin predictability, Routine predictability, same thing, safety, routine, predictability,
Speaker 1: serotonin oxytocin system, no question about it. Dopamine is the
Speaker 1: neurochemical of novelty and pursuing new things. So for couples
Speaker 1: that are very set in their ways and feel very
Speaker 1: safe and homey together wonderful, but creating ways in which
Speaker 1: they miss one another, or creating new experiences for them
Speaker 1: to kind of re up, the dopamine in the relationship
Speaker 1: can have a tremendously positive effect. And I look forward
Speaker 1: to a day where neuroscience is actually incorporated into relationship
Speaker 1: design and an intelligent and respectful way that they're respectful,
Speaker 1: meaning that their differences. But we see a lot that
Speaker 1: people will just go out and get a new relationship, right.
Speaker 1: I'm of the mind that us you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: dangerous situation, better to probably avoid divorce, right, certainly for
Speaker 1: sake of children. Sometime I've heard, of course, that divorces
Speaker 1: can rescue relationships too. I understand there's a lot of nuance,
Speaker 1: but I think everyone would prefer emotionally, financially, etc. To
Speaker 1: be able to be in a great relationship for a
Speaker 1: long period of time. And so I think that understanding
Speaker 1: that the push pull between dopamine and serotonin is key.
Speaker 1: And just to remember that missing someone 'earning for someone
Speaker 1: is the anticipation of how great it's going to feel
Speaker 1: when together. I think that that could that could go
Speaker 1: a long way. And also for people that get very,
Speaker 1: very very excited about the new person the new thing,
Speaker 1: just be wary that not everyone's dopamine system works the
Speaker 1: same way. And with dopamine, it's great to have increases
Speaker 1: in dopamine, but where it passes a threshold and it's
Speaker 1: very big peaks. Where there's a peak, there's a crash,
Speaker 1: and the crash is always asymmetrically deeper than the peak.
Speaker 1: There is no way around this. And learn to temper
Speaker 1: the excitement if you're an excitable person, yeah, and I
Speaker 1: would say learn to ramp up the excitement a little
Speaker 1: bit if you're somebody who's not so easily overwhelmed. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: I mean me and my wife, we've been married for
Speaker 1: six years, and nearly together for ten which you seem
Speaker 1: to have an amazing from the X from the album Yea,
Speaker 1: I would say I always like to clarify that I
Speaker 1: don't think you know. I grew up wanting a Hollywood
Speaker 1: romance and my views of love were defined by movies
Speaker 1: and music, and I realize that is not what love
Speaker 1: looks like at all. And my wife has been a
Speaker 1: great teacher to me in that space of showing me
Speaker 1: what a beautiful relationship can look like. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like how we think it is. And I think
Speaker 1: often when people see me and my wife, they may
Speaker 1: think we have that version two and I would just
Speaker 1: I'm very careful about the idea that we have a
Speaker 1: fantastic relationship, but it isn't fantastic for the reasons that
Speaker 1: TV or movies has convinced us that relationships are good.
Speaker 1: But we spend around three months apart every single year,
Speaker 1: not by design or it's just by work and life.
Speaker 1: And I haven't seen my wife for the last three months.
Speaker 1: It will be one more month before I see it.
Speaker 1: So the yearning is real. I cannot wait to see it.
Speaker 1: But at the same time I get to focus on myself.
Speaker 1: I get to have a loan time. I get to
Speaker 1: refill and refuel myself. I get to discover new parts
Speaker 1: of my identity. I get to learn a new skill
Speaker 1: like so many healthy And of course we don't have
Speaker 1: children yet, so we don't have that responsibility. But going
Speaker 1: to what you said, I see so much value in
Speaker 1: in how we can be open to these ideas. I
Speaker 1: think that's the point that it's not about there's one
Speaker 1: size fit soul or one right way. But I want
Speaker 1: to shift Andrew with our conversation to something you brought
Speaker 1: up earlier, because and if you don't feel comfortable to talking,
Speaker 1: why we don't. But I heard and I've become aware
Speaker 1: that you are. You have tattoos, have symbols. Yeah. Tim
Speaker 1: Ferris outed me on his podcast. Yeah, thanks to Tim,
Speaker 1: Yeah I do. I UM. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: a child of an academic and um. But then when
Speaker 1: I was a teenager, I got involved in skateboarding, punk
Speaker 1: rock music. I saw a lot of friends in that world.
Speaker 1: So the photographer for our podcast is from DC and
Speaker 1: Nike Skateboarding, Mike Blayback. Of good friends in that world,
Speaker 1: become friendly with guys like Danny Way and you know,
Speaker 1: it's amazing, one of the greatest skateboarders of all time,
Speaker 1: by the way, I mean, he and I aren't close friends,
Speaker 1: but we become friendly, and for me that's you know,
Speaker 1: I grew up in that, and yeah, those were cultures
Speaker 1: that made a lot of sense to me given where
Speaker 1: I was at the time, and they have always felt
Speaker 1: to me like my first non biological family. So I
Speaker 1: started getting tattooed pretty young, too young. And I will
Speaker 1: say to all of those out there they're thinking about it,
Speaker 1: think carefully, Yeah it is they are permanent. Things have
Speaker 1: changed around this. I always cover up my tattoos for
Speaker 1: the following reason when when doing public facing work, which
Speaker 1: is that generally when I'm trying to teach in roal science,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to download ideas and transmit them. So I
Speaker 1: just want to avoid any distractions about the symbols that
Speaker 1: are meaningful to me because they just aren't relevant in
Speaker 1: that context. I have a good friend who explained it
Speaker 1: this way. He said, well, you know, maybe tattoos should
Speaker 1: be an important part of the hiring process because rather
Speaker 1: than covering them up, if you have a lot of tattoos,
Speaker 1: it is evidence that you can sit still for a
Speaker 1: long period of time while in intense pains. I'll also
Speaker 1: say this, I was fortunate to know good tattoo or
Speaker 1: its a good tattoo. There are there's a range out
Speaker 1: there and and along the lines of them being permanent.
Speaker 1: I will also say that black and gray lasts longer,
Speaker 1: doesn't fade than color. So so what's your most h
Speaker 1: what's the symbol on your body? And I'm sure you
Speaker 1: have many, but if you were to pick one, not
Speaker 1: your favorite, but one that feels really meaningful right now
Speaker 1: in your life. Yeah. Well, first of all, it's funny
Speaker 1: because people often will say, what are you going to
Speaker 1: do when you're like sixty or sixty five? You got
Speaker 1: all these tattoos, and I just think, okay, Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, and I'm incentive to stay in shape. And
Speaker 1: the second of all, um, you know, I actually worry
Speaker 1: about them disappearing because then I have to have them
Speaker 1: all redone and they're pretty painful. A long time, I
Speaker 1: got a lot of them, so a long time. It's
Speaker 1: been twenty five years or more of getting tattooed. So, um,
Speaker 1: I can't pick just one. But I do have a
Speaker 1: picture of my bulldog Mastiff Costello and a pop print
Speaker 1: of his life size or actual size. And I loved
Speaker 1: that dog. I had to put him down. Um while, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it was just you know, the last line in
Speaker 1: the contract of good dog ownership is that you're going
Speaker 1: to put him down before there and suffering. And it
Speaker 1: was a It actually turned out to be a beautiful transition.
Speaker 1: I did it, you know, in a beautiful location. He
Speaker 1: went easy. And I don't want to talk about too
Speaker 1: long because I'll cry out of love. I noticed I
Speaker 1: still cry when I think about him, but it's not sadness.
Speaker 1: It took me like three months to realize. I was like,
Speaker 1: I always cry when I talk about Costello. Where I
Speaker 1: want to cry, and I realize it's because I love him.
Speaker 1: The feeling isn't sad. He just he had such an
Speaker 1: incredible that's that symbol, that physical and anyone that knows me,
Speaker 1: I loved that dog like crazy. So there's that one
Speaker 1: and then um and I don't want to focus on
Speaker 1: negative things, but again, it's a feeling love. I talked
Speaker 1: about these three advisors that I had earlier. I was
Speaker 1: blessed with amazing advisors, and sadly first one died a suicide,
Speaker 1: second one cancer, who I was very close to my
Speaker 1: third one cancer, so that the morbid joke among people
Speaker 1: that know me is you don't want me to work
Speaker 1: for you. Now I can make that joke because all
Speaker 1: three of them had an incredible spirit about life. So
Speaker 1: I actually have all of their initials or symbols of
Speaker 1: them tattooed on my body and I miss them every day.
Speaker 1: But I also, you know, I think there is something
Speaker 1: powerful to embedding something in your body. Some people wear pendants, obviously,
Speaker 1: some people decide to get tattoos, and you know, I've
Speaker 1: been encouraged at times people like, you know, just show
Speaker 1: your tattoos, be out there with them. I want to
Speaker 1: be very clear, I'm not ashamed of them at all.
Speaker 1: I'm proud of them. But yeah, but for me, if
Speaker 1: I'm teaching or I'm trying to be an educator, I
Speaker 1: really want to emphasize the information. I also think, listen
Speaker 1: to the world's a complicated place and we can't always
Speaker 1: control people's interpretations of why we do things. So for
Speaker 1: the young people they're thinking about getting tattoos, um just
Speaker 1: understand that's the world we live in. Although I think
Speaker 1: nowadays people are more accepting. So, yeah, thank you for
Speaker 1: sharing both. Yea, thank you. I wanted that more. I
Speaker 1: I just appreciate hearing about because we spoke about symbols
Speaker 1: and yeah, and that for that reason, I really wanted
Speaker 1: to understand the symbols that you know, Yeah, for me,
Speaker 1: something about having you know, um, having experiences that I've
Speaker 1: externalized to the surface of my body. It feels right,
Speaker 1: it's weird. They feel like my skin now. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like birth marks. I never look at and I
Speaker 1: know we won't get up in the morning look at
Speaker 1: the mirror and go like there's a tattoo, and there's
Speaker 1: a tattoo. Normally I just think like, oh, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it's just it just kind of becomes part of you,
Speaker 1: as you know, because obviously you Yeah, I already have three.
Speaker 1: I had a plan. It's not the number, it's the
Speaker 1: I hadn't plan to have my whole upper buddy tattooed
Speaker 1: when I was younger, and then I became a monk.
Speaker 1: So I haven't had any since. Yeah, but up un
Speaker 1: cycle my first when I was sixteen, second when I
Speaker 1: was eighteen, and then lost one when I was like
Speaker 1: twenty one, Okay, and I did them all and then
Speaker 1: I would gave them monk and then I haven't had
Speaker 1: any since. And my wife's been the other way around,
Speaker 1: Like since we've been married, she's had like she had
Speaker 1: one before we married. I had like seven more. So
Speaker 1: she's Yeah, it's like I don't wear any jewelry except
Speaker 1: to watch. But yeah, tattoos for me have been. UM,
Speaker 1: it's been a fun journey. And I'm forty six years
Speaker 1: old now, so I plan to keep going. You know.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, there's there's at this point, it's um,
Speaker 1: it's I suppose it's neuroplasticity. It's built into me. Andrew,
Speaker 1: you have been so kind gracious with your time. I
Speaker 1: am you know, I've always known how phenomenally intelligent and
Speaker 1: smart and sharp and deeply studied you are. But I'm
Speaker 1: really grateful I got to experience your heart today in
Speaker 1: so many ways, and to me that that beautiful synergy
Speaker 1: you have is really meaningful to me to experience. I'm
Speaker 1: so grateful to you for being here, for taking the time,
Speaker 1: for for being We've been in touch for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, maybe even it's been or you know, through messaging,
Speaker 1: but to really experience you in full today has been
Speaker 1: been a treat for me. We end every own Purpose
Speaker 1: episode with a final five. These have to be answered
Speaker 1: in one word to one sentence maximum, which for this
Speaker 1: academic might be a bit but we will try so
Speaker 1: Andrew hum and these are your final five. The first
Speaker 1: question is what is the best advice you've ever received
Speaker 1: in any area of life? Know thyself? The oracle said that,
Speaker 1: and it's absolutely true. We have to be good scientists
Speaker 1: of ourselves and understand where we have talents, competency, end
Speaker 1: or challenges and then work with those beautiful all right.
Speaker 1: Second question, what is the worst advice you've ever received?
Speaker 1: Ahead that everything is just experience, you know, the idea
Speaker 1: that all experiences are equivalent. I would love to think
Speaker 1: that all our steps leads us to enlightenment kind of thing,
Speaker 1: but we have I do believe that we, or at
Speaker 1: least I need to be far more intentional than that,
Speaker 1: and that we can be beautiful. Question number three, what
Speaker 1: is something that you didn't value before but you've learned
Speaker 1: to value now? Almost embarrassed to say it, but um, family,
Speaker 1: you know I've relied very heavily on friendship as a
Speaker 1: deep source of reinforcement in my life. I've leaned hard
Speaker 1: into that for many, many decades. I think recently I've
Speaker 1: become quite moved by the supports within my family that
Speaker 1: I hadn't realized that really set me up so well
Speaker 1: to to do what I want to do in life. Beautiful.
Speaker 1: I love hearing that question number four, what's the first
Speaker 1: thing you do in the morning and the last thing
Speaker 1: you do at night? First thing I do in the
Speaker 1: morning is get outside and get sunlight, and if the
Speaker 1: sun isn't up, I flip on all the lights and
Speaker 1: then I go get sunlight. Also drinking a glass of
Speaker 1: water before I go to sleep at night, Yogendra, you
Speaker 1: know doing that night you do? I actually I think
Speaker 1: about those three people I was talking about before. I
Speaker 1: do every night think about them. I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: been a long time now, that accumulated over several decades,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, I think about them every night. Love
Speaker 1: that I don't even think to do it. I just
Speaker 1: do it. Yeah, I've I lost one of mine mentors
Speaker 1: of the others is still alive right now. Wanted them
Speaker 1: to Stage four brain against and just a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago and I when you said that, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, I know that feels like so yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. Fifteen final question. If you could create one
Speaker 1: law or set one had it that everyone had to
Speaker 1: do every day for the rest of their life, what
Speaker 1: would it be. I think, I know it's going to be,
Speaker 1: but I have to ask you, well, since most people
Speaker 1: will assume it's sunlight viewing and I'll just I'll just
Speaker 1: assume they're doing that anyway. I would die a happy
Speaker 1: person if people would adopt a practice of learning to
Speaker 1: deliberately calm down, whether or not through non sleep depressed
Speaker 1: or a couple deep breaths, find a tool, because I
Speaker 1: really believe that much of the misfortune and pain of
Speaker 1: life could be avoided if people learned to calm down.
Speaker 1: I also know that there's a lot more joy to
Speaker 1: access when we do. Andrew, You're phenomenal. You blew my
Speaker 1: mind multiple times today. I hope this is not going
Speaker 1: to be the only time that we hang out. We
Speaker 1: agreed the first and we spoke that the podcast was
Speaker 1: an excuse to build our Friendship's right, I feel like
Speaker 1: there is This is a podcast episode that I would
Speaker 1: highly recommend that everyone listens to. Again. Takes notes. When
Speaker 1: you make those notes, try and find those elements that
Speaker 1: you want to put into practice. I would highly recommend
Speaker 1: that everyone who's listening to this episode go and subscribe
Speaker 1: to and listen to Andrew's podcast, which is a wealth
Speaker 1: of wisdom and everything we've discussed today today tip of
Speaker 1: the Iceberg. We've dived into so many different areas. You'll
Speaker 1: find episodes on every single aspect of what we've discussed
Speaker 1: on his podcast. Highly recommend that you go and check
Speaker 1: it out for the episodes that really connect. We didn't
Speaker 1: even dive into you incredible work deeply on vision or
Speaker 1: on sugar and diet, and you know, we haven't even
Speaker 1: we didn't even get to go. Then we'll do that
Speaker 1: hopefully another time. But please make sure that you tag
Speaker 1: Andrew and I on Twitter, maybe on Instagram to let
Speaker 1: us know what connected with you, what resonated with you,
Speaker 1: What is something that you're going to try this week
Speaker 1: because of this episode, how those habits are going. I
Speaker 1: love seeing you put these ideas and insights into practice.
Speaker 1: That is the whole goal of living a life that's
Speaker 1: on purpose. Andrew, I thank you from the bottom of
Speaker 1: my heart express my deepest gratitude for doing this. And yeah,
Speaker 1: any final words anything you want to share that's on
Speaker 1: your mind or heart that you want to put out
Speaker 1: there in the world. Over to you. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: want to genuinely say thank you again. We've known each
Speaker 1: other somewhat a distance for a long time now. It's
Speaker 1: been a tremendous pleasure. You know. I look to social
Speaker 1: media and a lot in science and a lot of
Speaker 1: different landscapes for inspiration. It's been a remarkable thing to
Speaker 1: see what you've done. And it's so great to meet
Speaker 1: in person because I knew you were the real deal
Speaker 1: but there but you know, I'll just say this. I
Speaker 1: know many people already feel this, but I just want
Speaker 1: to say that to meet you in person is a
Speaker 1: real honor for me, and I just so admire what
Speaker 1: you're doing and I know the intent behind it is
Speaker 1: real and the way you show up to it is incredible,
Speaker 1: and so I'm just I'm floating on the gratitude of
Speaker 1: being able to be here today face to face. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, Andrew, Thank you so much. Everyone. Make
Speaker 1: sure you share this episode, pass it a long term
Speaker 1: frand who needs to hear it. As I said, you
Speaker 1: can obviously go and subscribe and listen to Andrew's podcast
Speaker 1: which is called Huberman Lab, which you will find on
Speaker 1: all podcasts platforms. It makes you do that, and of
Speaker 1: course follow him on Instagram. As you can tell, he
Speaker 1: loves to be there too, highly active, very present. Make
Speaker 1: sure you follow him for more insights and more intelligence.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for watching this episode. Please do
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