How to Overcome Trauma, Mental Health Struggles, and Learning Issues to Achieve World Changing Results with Dr. Gail Saltz

In this episode we explore the link between trauma, mental health, learning disabilities and genius, look at a number of historical figures and how they harnessed challenges like depression and ADHD to achieve world-changing results, and examine the practical steps you can take to overcome struggles today with Dr. Gail Saltz.

Dr. Gail Saltz is a Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell School of medicine and a psychoanalyst with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is a columnist, bestselling author, podcast host and television commentator and one of the nation’s foremost go-to experts on a variety of psychological and mental health issues, having appeared on Good Morning America, Dr. Oz, The View, Dateline, 20/20, Primetime, Today, CNN, CBS This Morning, MSNBC, The Oprah Winfrey Show and more.

We discuss:

• How people like Vincent Van Gogh and Abraham Lincoln harnessed their mental issues to achieve success

• Deconstructing the “psychobiographies” of some of the greatest achievers in the world (DaVinci, Einstein, Lincoln, etc)

• Close to half of americans struggle with some sort of mental health issue

• What people who are embarrassed about seeking help can do

• Why “mental illness” is often a STRENGTH and the greatest achievements are a often a DIRECT RESULT of struggles with issues like dyslexia, anxiety, depression, etc

• How Abraham Lincoln struggled his whole life with depression and why it gave him the empathy to reshape history

• How Einstein overcome crippling ADHD to change physics

• Practical steps that someone can take who is struggling with anxiety and depression right now

• How to hone-in on your strengths and leverage them

• How we get caught in defeating stories that we tell ourselves

• How to identify and “re-write” self-defeating stories that we tell ourselves

• A few actionable insights into how to improve and build relationships from one of the best sex and relationships experts in the world

• How to LISTEN better, improve communication, and build better relationships

• And more!

If you think you have a challenge you can’t overcome - listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that).

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Website] Dr. Gail Saltz

• [YouTube playlist] Psychobiography

• [Book] Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson

• [Podcast] Dr. Gail Saltz

• [Website] The Gottman Institute

• [Amazon Author Page] Harville Hendrix

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:02:18.0] MB: Today, we have another exciting guest on the show, Dr. Gail Saltz. Gail is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell School of Medicine and a psychoanalyst with the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is a columnist, bestselling author, podcast host and television commentator and one of the nation’s foremost go-to experts on a variety of psychological and mental health issues, gaving appeared on Good Morning America, Dr. Oz, The View, Dateline, 20/20, Primetime Today, CNN and many more shows. 

Gail, welcome to The Science of Success. 

[00:02:53.8] GS: Thank you Matt for having me. This is such an important topic. People are very consumed with how to further themselves, but often lacking particular coping tools. So I’m really excited that you are having me today. 

[00:03:07.6] MB: Well we’re thrilled to have you on here. So to kind of get started, tell us a little bit about your background and how you embarked on this journey? 

[00:03:16.1] GS: Well, I am a psychiatrist. Actually originally after I finished medical school, I thought I was going to be an internist. So I did a residency in internal medicine and then I decided, “You know, I am really so much more fascinated with people’s minds,” that I decided to do residency in psychiatry, which I loved and then continue my training. I did a fellowship in treating of sexual dysfunction and then I did my psychoanalytic training. 

So woe is my poor parents that paid for many, many tuitions but I had many different areas of training all leading to being a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and then ultimately, feeling that it was really important that many people, not just people who decided to enter treatment or could afford treatment could have access to understanding the tools that psychiatry and psychoanalysts can provide for their everyday lives. So I started talking with the lay public I’ll call it or public education through writing, through television, through radio. 

Because it’s really, let’s put it this way: close to half of Americans do struggle with some sort of mental health issue and we can’t really afford to write off half and people are really limited in getting help for themselves often by stigma, feeling the embarrassed, they are not comfortable, they don’t want to acknowledge what’s going on or sometimes because they really don’t have access to it. So it’s really been my pleasure actually to be able to have methods of communicating with larger groups of people who are looking for ways to be emotionally “weller", let’s say. More intact, have more health, have better relationships, be better parents. 

So that’s a lot of what I did and continue to do and then that has led to other interesting areas for exploring this issue one of them being, for example, I have had a few series at the New York City’s 92nd Street Y, which is an amazing cultural institution with all kinds of educative programming going on and one of the things that I do there is this psychobiography series where we look at iconic figures and sort of what made them tick. 

[00:05:45.0] MB: And I’m really fascinated by the whole psychobiography series that you’ve done and I know a number of them are available on YouTube. Tell me about what is a psychobiography and what made you want to study these interesting and different people? 

[00:05:59.6] GS: Well psychobiography is taking the field of, I would say psychoanalysis, what do we really understand about what shaped someone from their early life and also from psychiatry from their biological genetic givens? What shaped them into the person that they ultimately became? And I think that while you can’t diagnosed someone who’s deceased or really diagnosed someone who you’ve not treated or met, you can surmise quite a bit about the patterns of their lives and influences. 

Of important people in their lives often from what they have expressed, via letters that we can find, via writings, behaviors that have been clearly documented. So I find historians for these different subjects. I try to choose people that I think people are very curious about because they have not only incredibly successful and changed the face of really history as we knew it in a particular field. So that could be the arts, it could be the sciences, it could be music. 

I’ve done psychobiography’s on wide ranging, Vincent van Gogh to Albert Einstein to Mozart to Jackson Pollock to presidential past leaders, FDR and Lyndon Johnson. The idea is sort of, “What made them who they were and then in turn what they did with that and how that influences the rest of us throughout time really?” So I get a historian who’s really the expert on that subject and then I try to provide the psychoanalytic understanding of what we can gleam from their past behaviors. 

It’s really fun, it’s really interesting and I think that an audience often can not only find it interesting but find some comfort in the idea that these people were far from perfect. In fact, what I found to be fascinating is that no matter who I look to as the subject, there is always some pretty major issues going on. A psychiatric illness or a learning disability or an early trauma but there is rarely someone who just had nothing going on that was really difficult in their past. 

[00:08:38.0] MB: That’s such a fascinating finding and something that I think people especially in our modern society of social media and instant gratification and the idea of presenting a perfect image of yourself all the time, don’t really think about is that many or if not most, if not all of the people who have had a huge impact on history, on shaping our culture. These people dealt on real challenging mental issues in many cases. 

[00:09:06.7] GS: Absolutely and it’s been really amazing to me how many audience members come up to me afterwards and say, “You know, this just really inspired me to think about, for example, my son who was let’s say is struggling with depression and I hear about Abraham Lincoln and his lifelong struggle with depression and the ways in which actually for example in that case, the features of say greater empathy when you’re a person who’s struggled with depression. 

The ability to really tap into what other people are thinking and feeling and be very sensitive to that and how that helped Lincoln to be the kind of president that he was. That people say “Oh gosh this makes me feel like there’s a potential real strength for my child, or for myself, and I have overlooked that and I want to think about how I can tap into that for that loved one of mine and that is a wonderful thing because we tend to think of these issues as being solely negative and horrible, which is why they’ve been so stigmatized. 

[00:10:21.9] MB: That’s fascinating and one of the things that I find really interesting is in many cases, people only hear about or concentrate or focus on the instances that somebody that’s had a serious breakdown or failure or whatever as a result of let’s say depression or anxiety or something like that. When in reality, many of these really important historical figures not only dealt with these major issues but overcame them and changed millions of lives, change the course of history, etcetera. 

[00:10:54.7] GS: Absolutely and not only did they overcome them, but they often whatever they did let’s say that we find so astonishing and amazing is in some ways a direct result of the thing that they struggled with, that they are often very specifically connected and that led me to start doing some research and speaking with many neuroscientists and many clinicians and so I’ve spent the last few years actually talking with many people who actually you may not know and some who you will know and even some kids who struggled with exactly this. 

Something really, really difficult but it’s clearly connected to some impressive strength for them and that has had me working on this book that will come out next March called The Power of Different: The link between disorder and genius, of which there is a significant link. So really look at the hard wiring, what’s going on there? Why that is? What do we know and understand about it? which is something that I explore on my current podcast, The Power of Different. 

And I think you would be surprised that it’s not hard for me to find people to talk about this. That we tend to be such a celebrity oriented, perfection oriented society and we think, “Oh all of these people just did it from the get go and they’re so together.” When you scrape the surface really they would tell you that that’s not the case. 

[00:12:34.5] MB: So I’m curious and I want to dig deeper into the whole idea behind the power is different, one of the things that you made a very important distinction that I did not make earlier is that it’s not just that they overcame these struggles. It’s that this in many ways, for example, Lincoln’s depression gave him this deeper empathy. It was the other side of the coin that this was their biggest strength and really shaped who they were as a person and shaped the great successes that they had in their lives. 

[00:13:05.3] GS: Exactly. Of course I don’t want to say that people who are struggling with a real mental illness should not seek treatment and have treatment because they should. But having treatment and helping yourself in terms of struggling less does not in any way diminish the particular strengths that are associated with having that kind of problem. So for instance, in Lincoln’s day of course there were no treatments and actually in Lincoln’s day, melancholy which was depression was called, was not viewed the way it is today. 

People with depression are often seen as kind of romantic figures or really pondering, really thoughtful let’s say and we now understand that that maybe true but it shouldn’t be romanticized. It really can cause terrible suffering. But on the flip side, Lincoln is a great example but I can give you a million examples but in his case say, his ability to tap into what other people were thinking and really be attuned to that, allowed him to bring in political partners and work with other groups and not erect a wall but instead extend himself and really get consensus by standing in other people’s shoes in a unique way, which is part of what made him such an amazing leader and president. 

And of course, empathetically understanding that slavery was wrong and be extremely motivated to do something about that and in addition, another feature of depression is actually realism, which sounds like, “Well, so what?” But really, those of us who are not depressed to some degree we tend to see things a little bit through rose colored glasses. which is nice and really pleasant and it’s not that far off of “real” but it does tend to be on the optimistic side. 

But people with depression, it’s not so much that they see things in a negative light that doesn’t exist. It’s that they tend to see things more realistically and in the case of Lincoln at a time when we were looking at a civil war that was hugely important. That made him able to anticipate things that were coming into view, which others might not have and again added to his being a particularly good leader at that time. 

[00:15:37.9] MB: I’d love to hear another example either from the psychobiography series that you’ve done or somebody else maybe besides Lincoln that struggled with a different issue. 

[00:15:49.4] GS: Sure, let’s see. Well Vincent van Gogh, obviously suffered tremendously. He obviously had a repeated apparently psychotic episodes which people debate with the diagnosis is. From my research into his various symptoms, it looks up from out here most like something called temporal lobe epilepsy, which is a psychiatric diagnosis. It means that you are having a seizure disorder but your seizure activity is in the temporal lobe, which is an emotional center. 

And therefore, you don’t see movement like you do usually when we think of people with epilepsy and we think of them having a convulsion. We think that they are moving and when you are having seizure activity with temporal lobe epilepsy, what you get is this what’s called stickiness where you have these intense relationships, you are very clingy and attached to people but you also tend to fight with them a lot. So they are very labile relationships and that obviously was a negative for Vincent van Gogh. 

You have mood fluctuations, which also obviously caused him a lot of pain and discomfort but what you also have is often visual and even auditory hallucinations and the visual hallucinations are often like intensely colorful and attached to emotional state and it is very possible that part of what motivated his painting in the way that he did had something to do with what he experienced, what he saw that he may have seen things in distorted ways, in unusually colored ways and that may have been very connected to his temporal lobe epilepsy. 

[00:17:33.8] MB: What about somebody like a Da Vinci and an Einstein? Did either of them struggle with anything in particular? What did you find from conducting a psychobiography of them? 

[00:17:42.1] GS: So Einstein of course is greatly argued about and again, I am clear that you can’t give a definitive diagnosis, but what is apparent is this: Einstein was an extremely poor student early on. By early, I mean through high school. He was often found to not be paying attention at all except to things that he really loved, which was physics and math and teachers often became very irritated and were punishing and he left school and ultimately come back to school at some point. 

And he had a lot of difficulty in his relationships, many things which sort of smacked of, I guess I’ll say attention deficit disorder meaning he would be very distractible about things that were not interesting to him but extremely hyper focused on things that were interesting to him. Hyper focus is something that is a side effect which if used well, I guess I’ll say can really be an incredible strength but unfortunately in today’s… 

For example, teenage boys struggling with ADD, they tend to hyper focus maybe on video games which are very rewarding and obviously not something that is necessarily going to produce a genius finding and so that is a difficult thing for parents but in the case of Albert Einstein, his greatest discoveries and greatest papers about the universe really occurred within a one week period. There were three different findings and they were three different papers. 

And they all happened while he was working in the patent office, a very menial job that he found to be boring and it brought in some money so that he could survive but it was not exciting as this other area and he sort of sequestered himself for this week and was so intensely focused that he produced this really extraordinary, I mean of course obviously Einstein was intellectually in this area clearly a genius. But his ability to daydream, he talked about that he started this study so to speak by just looking out the window and imagining that he was riding a light beam. 

And that was a big part of who Einstein was. His ability to daydream, to think creatively, to let his mind wander and something that annoyed the heck out of teachers who at that time didn’t want his mind wondering, they want him to be studying whatever they were teaching him but that’s what he did. That’s who he was and on the flip side was that it really informed his ability to think outside the box in these very creative ways, something that really is known to go along with attention deficit disorder and then hyper focus, when it came to an area that really interested him. 

[00:20:40.6] MB: And for listeners who are curious, I am a big fan of Einstein. One of my favorite biographies of his is the Walter Isaacson Biography, which I’ll throw into the show notes. 

[00:20:49.9] GS: Yeah, that’s an amazing and incredibly well done biography and I think that he really makes clear his early school struggles and many other features that actually are consistent with this kind of thing. 

[00:21:05.4] MB: Another psychobiography that you have done was one of my favorites and I am also a huge fan of his is Leonardo da Vinci. What was some of the learnings from that? 

[00:21:14.0] GS: Well we have much less available to look at obviously because it was so long ago. When you look at people, the farther you go back in history, often the less you can find because of course, less survives and so there is less people to say things but again, he was remarkably able obviously to think in these many different directions because we think of Leonardo da Vinci, we think of him being a great painter and of course he was. 

But he also came up with this many inventions that were related to military practice, flying and so he was a thinker in so many different directions but again, from an intentional perspective he was interested in solving a problem and that’s where the interest ended. So he is also rather famous for not completing things and painting projects, he would solve what he deemed to be the problem in the creation of the painting or the invention and then it was left. 

And so sadly for him, he had trouble getting paid for things. He had trouble in that sense making a living or completing things but he again, you wonder about his ability to attend or in that sense, buckle down but at the same time, it left his mind free to really be creative and out of the box in so many different directions that he was viewed certainly at least as extremely accomplished by those who noted what he at least started. 

[00:22:59.4] MB: Let’s zoom out a little bit, you touched on this earlier that you have a new podcast called the Power of Different, tell me a little bit more about that. 

[00:23:08.3] GS: So it’s trying to understand the same thing in the sense but with today’s people. Trying to understand and help people see the ways in which they may struggle earlier on weather that is something difficult that’s happened in their lives and maybe a mental health issue, it may be a learning issue but it might also be a loss that they had. Recently interviewed Stacy London who talked about her early struggles with complete body psoriasis, which socially made life extremely hard for her and also, synthesized her to the issue of body and beauty and ultimately probably contributed to having eating disorder, a body image issue. 

So a lot of her growing was really difficult and she had a lot of struggle but ultimately, that became very connected to the idea of in her mind of how can someone feel beautiful in their own way that isn’t necessarily directly connected to conventional beauty? Because this is something she really struggled with. 

That ultimately led to her movement into that field and her application of the thoughts that she’d struggled with to other people and certainly something she could sympathize and empathize with and so she has really made a highly successful career in television and in writing and into consulting and working for Vogue and so many things. All around this issue of body image and styling for anybody’s body. So anybody should be able to feel attractive and comfortable in their own skin and authentic and beautiful not related to just cultural standards. 

[00:25:12.5] MB: Who are some of the other guests that you’ve had on and what have you learned from their experiences? 

[00:25:16.6] GS: Well so, I am just getting rolling and it is fairly new but let’s see, Dov Seidman. He is the CEO of a company that’s made many, many millions of dollars. A highly successful company. It’s a legal company that helps other businesses with compliance, with how to be ethical and compliant and create that culture in their business, which is something as you can well imagine is very needed today. 

But Dov is a man who, and he’s been highly successful. But Dov is a man who has severe dyslexia and failed out of school, just had a terrible, terrible time and he really tells the story of this experience of feeling broken and repeated failure and how it has informed his movement along the way. Ultimately, he was able to make his way to Harvard Law School, which is really an amazing story and create this very successful business. 

But it was important to him that the business be around this issue of honesty and ethics and authenticity. That really came out of early struggles that he had and that’s what he’s been successful in. Actually up now is Steve Silberman, who you might know as the author of NeuroTribes, which is an award winning and bestselling book about autism and the particular strengths that come along with autism. So he is very, very extensively versed in this area and we talk about that. 

[00:26:53.4] MB: So for somebody who’s listening right now and maybe they are struggling with anxiety, depression, something like that, they see somebody like Lincoln who overcame some of these struggles but they still feel helpless. What sort of practical steps could they take towards applying some of these lessons and applying the concept of the Power of Different? 

[00:27:15.1] GS: So what I would say is this, when you are struggling with something, you should absolutely get an evaluation and potentially treatment depending on what that evaluation shows. Because there are many treatments, let just say depression for example. Some of which you can do on your own for example exercise greatly impacts depression and I’m not talking about a walk around the park. I mean 30 minutes of vigorous multiple times a week exercise, which is both preventive in terms of depression but also just as effective as medication for mild to moderate depression. 

And so there are things that one can do for themselves like mindfulness, exercise, eating well, sleeping well and then there are things that treatment can provide, psychotherapies that can be extraordinarily helpful and/or medications that can be helpful depending on how severe the situation is. So one should definitely treat themselves and because there is no reason to struggle. But at the same time, you want to spend some time on that. You also want to spend some time on trying to identify what you’re strengths are. 

So I think sitting with yourself and thinking about things that you do see that you are good at, let’s say, and you have been able to do in the past or sometimes people really have difficulty identifying this, therapist could help with that. Sometimes actually a career counselor could even help with that. There are particular self-test one can administer to look at what your particular strengths are. But you do want to hone in on those strengths and how can they be applicable in the world wide environment and you want to spend time honing those things. 

So if empathy is a strength of yours, you want to think about the ways in which you employ that in the world and have some focus on that as well and think about whether for instance are you in a job or career where you can use empathy? And if you’re not, do you want to move in that direction in some way to try to be able to use it more since it is one of your strengths? 

[00:29:28.2] MB: And this segues a little bit into a previous book that you have written. I am curious, how do we get trapped in defeating stories that we tell ourselves? 

[00:29:38.8] GS: Ah yes, well we all do and so I don’t want to say, “Oh there’s something wrong with the person who does.” It’s very common for early in life to have a narrative, your own story that you tend to say, “This is who I am and this is why.” It becomes part of our character really and when you play that loop over and over again, it reinforces it and it’s really hard to see your way out of it. So in that book, I try to detail for people the most common stories. 

Some people are very self-defeating or masochistic. Some people are very dependent on others and feel they must be or some people feel very inhibited and feel they can’t break out of that shell because there are so many things that they have to be afraid of in revealing themselves and feeling rejected potentially. You know there an infinite numbers of stories that one could tell themselves but it’s based in psychoanalysis or psychodynamic work to try to understand or self-analyze what your particular stories are and ways that you might measure them, let’s say, against reality. 

And consider the possibility that they are rooted more in your mind than in truth or in the outside world and ways that you might amend those stories. Because one’s self-perception greatly guides how you act in the world and then what you put out there, people tend to reflect back. So you can really change your trajectory, not to mention the happiness that you have because of how you feel about yourself by really reevaluating those stories.

[0:31:24.4] MB: So how can we go about amending or sort of rewriting some of this stories?

[0:31:30.3] GS: I think that the number one goal is to identify the stories that you have, even if self-observation goes a long way and sometimes when you really zero in and realize, “Oh yeah, I really do think that about myself,” sometimes even just the observation helps you to change it. I often tell people to sort of write down those scripts, those stories and you know, ponder them.

Give them some thought. Think about whether, you might want to amend some of them, you want to try writing a slightly different script. Maybe I feel like I always have to for example be subservient to my partner, they really should always come first because I don’t deserve to be coming first and then try on for size an amended story. No, I really, you know, I deserve as much as anyone, I’m going to put myself first half of the time and we’ll have to make compromises and you have to sort of embrace that story and go out and give it some test runs.

[0:32:39.0] MB: So that actually brings up another topic that I’m curious about. I know you’re a deep expert on sex and relationships and that’s something that we’ve spent very little time on our show but obviously, something that’s vital to living kind of a happy and productive life. For such a deep topic that I’m sure we could talk for hours about, with the little time that we do have, what are some actionable insights or kind of concrete take away that you might be able to share with our audience in terms of improving in that area of your life?

[0:33:09.8] GS: Well, it’s huge, let me just say. So I’ll obviously be scraping the surface but I think people often forget that relationships really are the number one source of happiness in life. It’s not money, it’s not fame even though a lot of millennials often feel like it is. But it really is the quality of the relationships in your life and those take work, they really do and they can never be one sided, that never ends up working even if you feel like you’re always on the receiving end. Ultimately the other person won’t stay and won’t be happy.

So it is about compromise and that means it is about a lot of communicating, it is about sitting down and being willing to listen. I would say, if you could add one thing to your relationship now, you would be that you’re really listening to your partner, your friend, you’re mirroring back what you heard so they feel understood, and then you’re asking for the same thing that they take a turn and listen to you. That they be able to express what they heard from you. That is usually the first step in really having good communication, which ultimately, because everybody has to compromise in relationships is what leads to longevity and stability in relationships.

[0:34:30.2] MB: What can we do to be better listeners?

[0:34:33.3] GS: Well, in short form, sometimes you got to shut up. It’s hard because we’re always feeling like, “I want to get my stuff out, I want to get my stuff out.” But sometimes you do have to just be quiet and put down your phone and your computer and what you’re reading and sit and look at the other person and hear what they’re saying and after you’ve listened for a little while, you want to say back to them what you think you heard so they can correct you if in fact you’re hearing through the prison with your own feelings and you didn’t quite get it.

You want to give it a few chances to make sure that you’re really listening and getting it before you have a response and in today’s world, we tend to be like, “You know, I’m listening to you for 30 seconds and then I got to answer my email and I’m looking at this, “Oh, this beeped.” We have trouble attending to the people who really actually are important in our lives. I would say that active listening is what I’m talking about and it’s very important.

[0:35:36.1] MB: For the topics that we discussed today, what are some potential resources where people can kind of do some research, find out more, kind of dig in and learn about this topics?

[0:35:46.9] GS: Wow, we talked about a lot of topics so if you’re interested in psycho biography and actually it so happens that as you pointed out, some of them are up on YouTube but most of them are up on the 90 second street wise website, 92Y.org and so if that kind of content interests you, you can find them all there, there are many. I will be talking about this concept of finding the strengths and our differences on my podcast, The Power of Different podcast. 

When it comes to trying to improve your relationships, I think there’s so many resources, although, some are better than others to be perfectly honest. There are I would say, I actually often write about relationships for health, magazine and health.com but there are many I think good authors in the arena of relationships. Carlo Hendricks is a wonderful write, has written numerous books on love and relationships and active listening and I think he’s very good.

The Love Lab, which is in Seattle, puts out a lot of great information about relationships and many wonderful writings, I think they’re very helpful and I think if you’re having a very particular kind of problem, it’s very reasonable to seek therapy, which is better earlier than later if you’re really having a struggle in your relationship.

[0:37:12.5] MB: What does one piece of homework that you would give our listeners?

[0:37:16.6] GS: For relationships, I actually would say, it’s wonderful to — two things I would say for your partner relationship, I would sayfo home, try to practice active listening with taking turns and doing that but I would also say that in our frenetic and emotionally charged lives, we often forget to just be affectionate to our partners, I’m talking about sex which is very important but I’m just talking about holding hands or putting your hand on your partner’s neck and give him a squeeze or giving your partner just a kiss because that can be so much of you know, I love you, I like you, I want to be with you, you’re important to me, we often just forget to do that, we just zoom in for just the sex or nothing. That in between affection can make all the difference.

[0:38:15.3] MB: Where can people find you online?

[0:38:17.8] GS: Well, let’s see. I have a website at www.doctorgailsaltz.com, they can tweet me, @doctorgailsaltz, I have a Facebook page that can find me there. So there are many methods of finding me. I love to get questions, I do answer them and I’m happy to do it.

[0:38:38.9] MB: Well Gail, thank you so much for being on this show, this has been a fascinating discussion and really, really interesting to kind of dig in and learn about a number of historical figures who have overcome — or not even overcome but really leveraged what many would consider sort of stigmatized problems or mental illnesses and achieved incredible results.

[0:38:58.4] GS: Thank you so much for having me, it was really a pleasure.

[0:39:01.0] MB: Thank you for being on the show.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck with Mark Manson

In this episode we discuss how to escape the feedback loop from hell, the paradoxical idea of embracing negative experiences, why struggle creates meaning, how discover the false values underpinning your worldview, and how to cultivate the ability to sustain and handle adversity with Mark Manson.

Mark is a blogger, author and entrepreneur. Most well-known for his site markmanson.net, where he writes personal development advice that doesn't suck. He also wrote a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck. It doesn't suck, either.

We discuss:

• Alan Watt’s Backwards Law (and why its so important)

• How to escape the Feedback Loop From Hell

• The paradoxical idea of embracing negative experiences

• How your mind invents problems for you every day

• Why Mark gives the advice “don’t try"

• How to release the judgement of your own emotions

• The difference between indifference and “not giving a f*ck"

• The biggest “false values” you cling to that create unhappiness in your life

• Why "entitlement" is the idea that you deserve happiness and don’t have to struggle for it (and how that causes suffering)

• How to cultivate the ability to sustain and handle adversity

• Why the key question to living a better life is NOT “what do I want out of life?"

• Why struggle creates meaning and its important to feel bad sometimes

• What champions and world class performers focus on every day

• Why you should listen to Disappointment Panda

• Why pain is required for growth

• And much more!

If you are dealing with a challenge and can't figure out what to do next - listen to this episode! 
Warning this episode has some profanity!

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SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson

• [Mark’s Website] markmanson.net

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	Today, we have another awesome guest on the show: Mark Manson. Mark is a blogger, author, and entrepreneur, most well-known for his site markmanson.net, where he writes about personal development advice that doesn’t suck. He also recently wrote a book called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. It doesn’t suck either. Mark, welcome to The Science of Success.

Mark:	Thanks for having me, Matt. It’s good to be here.

Matt:	Well, we’re very excited to have you on. So, tell us a little bit about your background. 

Mark:	So, I started in 2008, I believe. I started a couple internet businesses, internet projects, and at the time I was, back in 2008, 2009, blogs were all the rage, so if you wanted to have a website and you wanted to get traffic, everybody was always screaming at you to start a blog. Blogs were the way of the future. So, I started some blogs, and it turned out it took me about two years to figure out that I wasn’t actually very good at internet businesses, but I was really good at blogging, and so I just kept writing. And I soon kind of found myself in this weird situation where lots of people would email me for questions and advice. So, I started just kind of writing about life advice and tried to bring a little bit of a new take... I wanted to be a self-help site that wasn’t self-help, and that was always a weird, interesting challenge. But things started to take off around 2012, 2013, and here I am today, what I’m still doing.

Matt:	Well, I really enjoyed almost the irreverence of your book, and I started laughing immediately. Even the very first chapter, I believe, is called “Don’t Try”.

Mark:	[Laughs] Yeah.

Matt:	Tell the listeners that story.

Mark:	So, the “Don’t try”, it’s actually a reference to Charles Bukowski, and I open up the book with him because he’s basically...he’s, like, the worst life example you would ever want to give anybody. The guy was a total alcoholic. He wasted all of his money. He was constantly getting arrested and doing inappropriate things. He would famously get drunk at his own poetry readings and just start insulting people in the crowd. But it’s funny because he actually, after struggling as a writer for 30 years, he made it big. He sold millions of copies of his books and he because a quote-unquote “success”. So, I always found it interesting that kind of... His story has always fascinated me in that on paper, he’s this huge literary success, but as a person, he’s like... You probably wouldn’t even want to get coffee with him, because you would just be so repelled by his personality. But the interesting thing about him is despite this kind of classic American dream story of him persisting for 30 years and writing poem, poem, and poem and stories and stories and stories and finally breaking through in his fifties and becoming a huge success, his last message—and actually, it’s engraved on his tombstone—is “Don’t try”. And I wanted to put that out there in the book because one of the central points I try to make is that if you’re always trying to be happier, that simple act of trying is just reminding yourself that you’re not good enough already, and if you’re always trying to be more confident or you’re always trying to be more liked by people, then the simple act of trying is going to reinforce the idea that you’re not already. And so, there’s this weird paradox with self-help stuff where the more people chase a result, in many ways, the more they prevent their own psychology from achieving it. And so, I wanted to lay that out in the first chapter and basically introduce to people the idea that this book is going to be a self-help book that basically tells you, “Don’t go after more, but rather give a fuck about less. Let go of things. Stop trying so hard, and just focus on the few most crucial and important things.

Matt:	I love the idea, and I’m curious to kind of hear more about it, the concept that focusing on the positive reinforces the negative. Tell me a little bit more.

Mark:	So, there’s this idea. I originally heard about it from Alan Watts. He called it the Backwards Law, but you see it pop up in a lot of places, which is the more you pursue some sort of positive experience, that very act of pursuing it is itself a negative experience. So, if you’re always trying to be richer, like, make more money, then what you’re doing is you’re creating a state in yourself of always feeling like you don’t have enough. If you’re trying to be more beautiful or better looking all the time, then you’re always creating this state within yourself where you feel like you’re not beautiful or good looking enough. Conversely, the acceptance of a negative experience, like accepting some sort of pain and struggle in your life, is itself a very liberating and positive experience. So, that moment when you kind of realize, like, you know what? Maybe I’m not going to be the next billionaire, but that’s okay. I don’t need to be a billionaire to have a happy and successful life. That thought in and of itself, even though a big portion of our cultural narrative would call that failure or giving up, that is a very liberating experience, and it’s actually far more emotionally healthy, I think, than the alternative. And so, the whole book kind of starts out with this idea of a negative approach to improving your life. You don’t want to improve your life by gaining more positive experience. You improve your life through becoming okay with negative experience.

Matt:	I’m a huge Alan Watts fan, by the way, and longtime listeners will know that. So, changing directions a little bit, I’m curious: What is the feedback loop from hell, and how would you describe it and how can you possibly sort of short-circuit it or break out of it?

Mark:	So, the feedback loop from hell is... It’s this idea where... It essentially stems from when we judge our own emotions. So, let’s say you’re a person that gets anxious very often and you would like to be less anxious. Well, what often starts to happen with people who desperately want to be less anxious is they start to become anxious about being anxious. So, they start worrying about the fact that they worry so much. Or you’ll see a lot of people who...they’ll get angry at the fact that they’re always so angry, or they’ll start to feel guilty because they feel guilty all the time. And because we judge these emotions as bad and unacceptable, we start entering into this spiral where we keep just reinforcing that emotion over and over. And then, of course, modern society, it doesn’t really help in the fact that if you’re feeling a little bit insecure about your life or you feel like maybe you’re not living up to your potential or whatever, the second you go on Facebook or the second you go on YouTube, you’re just bombarded with all these people getting married and buying a new car and getting a new house. So, there’s this constant kind of reminder of “you’re not good enough” or “it’s not okay for things to suck sometimes”. And I jokingly say, I say, you know, the feedback loop from hell, I think it’s kind of reaching a fever pitch in our culture. There’s this constant focus on living up to these unrealistic expectations all the time that is really harming us and harming our emotional health. And I say that not giving a fuck, it’s going to save everybody. That’s the only way out of the feedback loop from hell. The only way out of the feedback loop from hell is being like, “You know, I’m feeling really anxious today, but I don’t really give a fuck. Being anxious, it happens. That’s just part of life and I’m going to go on and do the things I need to do anyway. It’s releasing that judgment of your own emotions so that you don’t fall into this spiral of just experiencing it more and more.

Matt:	So, the idea of not giving a fuck, there’s different ways that you can sort of interpret that. Some people listening might have a totally opposite opinion in the sense that, you know, well, no, I really think that you should give a fuck, that you should care deeply. You make a really important distinction in the book between the idea of indifference, being indifferent to everything, versus not giving a fuck. Can you explain that distinction?

Mark:	Yeah. The first impression people always have when they hear not giving a fuck is that it’s basically this really cool guy or girl who’s just kicking back, day drinking at work or something, it’s like, no fucks given. And it’s a cultural reference. You know, not giving a fuck, it’s a funny kind of linguistic term that is thrown around a lot these days. But one of the first things I try to point out in the book is I say, like, “Look. What we’re really talking about here is we’re talking about values and meaning.” I mean, I’ve been jokingly telling people that I really wanted to write a book about values and what people choose to care about and how that matters, but nobody would buy a book on values, so I decided to call it...to write a book about not giving a fuck. But it’s basically... It’s kind of like a trick. It’s like a Trojan horse to get the reader to start thinking about these deeper questions of, like, what am I choosing...what am I giving a fuck about in my life, and why am I choosing to care so much about that? One of the first things I’d point out in the first chapter is I say, you know, it’s impossible to not give a fuck about anything. We all have to care about something. The problem is that most of us are either not fully aware of what we’re caring about or where we’re finding meaning, or we’re not consciously... Like, we didn’t choose... Like, our values were given to us. They were just picked up from pop culture or whatever. We’re not consciously choosing what’s actually important in our lives. We’re just going along with what everybody’s always told us. So, the real meat of the book is actually...it’s a question of what do you value and how did you come to your values and are your values helping you or are they hurting you. Are they bringing more happiness and joy to your life or are they creating more misery?

Matt:	So, for somebody who’s listening out here and they’re unsure maybe even what their values are or how to discover them, what would be a way to kind of take the first step on embarking down that path?

Mark:	The first step is to always look at what you emotionally react to. Your emotions are essentially just feedback mechanisms for what you decide is important in life. So, if you are getting blindingly angry that, you know, your pizza came with the wrong toppings, that is a reflection of what you are choosing to find important in life, and perhaps that’s something that you should reevaluate and decide maybe, you know what? Maybe my pizza’s not that important. Or often, you know, what I talk about is that people who are extremely emotionally volatile around really superficial things, the problem is not that they’re superficial people. The problem is that they simply don’t have something more important to give a fuck about. I have a joke in the book about an old woman who screams at a cashier because they won’t accept her coupons, and that’s a true story, by the way. I know of the woman that that was based on. But I remember when I saw that, I was like... What really made an impression on me wasn’t the fact that this woman is just being really mean over some coupons. It was that this woman probably doesn’t have anything else going on in her life, and that is actually the problem. So, the first step is always look at what you’re responding to emotionally, and the intensity of the emotion is always proportional to basically how many fucks you’re giving or how important the thing is to you.

Matt:	So, from what you’ve seen, what are some examples of negative values that people cling to that might end up causing self-sabotage or unhappiness or whatever we’re looking to avoid?

Mark:	You know, there’s a couple big and obvious ones that everybody’s probably going to be familiar with. You know, so one of them is impressing other people. Like, we’ve all learned from many different places that if you’re trying to impress other people all the time, it’s just not going to... Things are not going to go well. Even if you do impress them, you’re not really generating any sort of significant meaning or happiness in your life. So, that’s a bad value that a lot of people adopt. Another one is chasing material success. We all know... We’ve all seen time and time again that being fixated on just earning a lot of money for the sake of earning a lot of money doesn’t necessarily bring a lot of joy and happiness to your life. There are a couple others maybe that aren’t as obvious that I tackle in the book. One is feeling good or pleasure or avoiding pain. I try to make a strong argument in the book that this constant needing to be distracted or pleased, whether it’s by just opening 20 tabs on the internet and looking at cat GIFs, or having a waiter at the restaurant who does absolutely everything you say. I think our culture is getting a little bit caught in a trap where we’re starting to feel very entitled and pampered, and this is a pretty harmful value to hold onto, this idea that you need to experience pleasure...like, feel good all the time. I think it’s important to feel bad. Like, feeling bad has...it has an evolutionary purpose, it has an emotional purpose, it has... Meaning and importance in our life requires there to be some sort of struggle or a sense of challenge. And so, if we avoid that struggle and challenge, then we’re always just going to feel a lack of meaning and purpose.

Matt:	The idea that it’s important to feel bad, tell me more about that and the concept that struggle creates meaning.

Mark:	So, when people think about happiness, there’s two things that they’re talking about, and these two things get confused a lot. You have pleasure and then you have fulfillment, and I believe that in positive psychology they refer to it as pleasure and fulfillment. And pleasure is just stuff that immediately feels good. So, if you want to experience pleasure, it’s actually very easy. You can just go buy a bunch of heroin and go crazy. But just because you’re feeling that pleasure, doesn’t mean you’re actually bringing any sort of lasting fulfillment or happiness into your life. In fact, oftentimes, chasing pleasure does the opposite. You bring short-term enjoyment but you sacrifice your long-term health and emotional health. Fulfillment, on the other hand, is not always pleasurable. So, fulfillment comes from a sense that you’re doing something that’s important, you’re doing something that is a really significant use of your time on this world. And so, a good example of something that’s fulfilling but not pleasurable is, say, something like raising kids. You know, if you ask any parents of a newborn child, like, how they’re feeling lately, they’re under-slept, they’re constantly stressed out, their whole life has been thrown into disarray. It’s not very pleasurable, but at the same time, it’s one of the most fulfilling and meaningful experiences of their life. And so, you get this kind of weird tension or this weird kind of feeling both things at the same time. The interesting thing is that pleasure comes and goes no matter what you do. You can always find pleasure very easily. It’s the fulfillment and meaning that’s very hard to find, and that’s what sustains us over the long term. That’s what keeps us feeling good about ourselves, feeling good about the world, waking up with a sense of purpose. But, to achieve that fulfillment, you need to be willing to feel bad. You need to be willing to struggle. There’s no such thing as a meaningful thing that is just given to you. For something to feel meaningful and important, there has to be some sense of sacrifice or that you went through something or that you overcame some sort of adversity. And so, that’s why I harp so much in the book about personal growth shouldn’t be about overcoming your struggles or getting rid of your struggles. It should be choosing the struggles that matter to you. Life is always going to be full of problems, so you should just choose the problems that feel meaningful and important to you. Because once they’re meaningful and important, you’re actually glad you have those problems. Like, you’re actually glad to take on them and work on them and do something about them. You’re not trying to avoid them all the time.

Matt:	I think that’s such an important insight, the idea that there’s no such thing as a meaningful thing that is given to you. In order to create meaning, you have to go through some sort of struggle, you have to go through some sort of challenge, you have to overcome some kind of problem or obstacle in order for something to truly be meaningful. If it’s given to you, then it essentially...you don’t really care about it. It doesn’t have any true meaning to you.

Mark:	Yeah. You take it for granted.

Matt:	So, going back to the example you used earlier of the old lady with the coupons, one of the concepts you talk about that I really enjoyed in the book was the idea that the mind invents problems when it doesn’t have any real problems or real struggles to deal with. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Mark:	That was actually... I heard this idea. It was from an artist who said that... And it was funny because I think he was giving an interview that had nothing to do with life or happiness. He was talking about something completely unrelated, but just as an aside he was like, “Yeah, when you don’t have any problems to deal with, usually your mind creates some for you.” And I think that is... It’s such a profound insight into our own psychology, and I think that’s something that we’re experiencing a lot today. We all kind of make fun of our parents’ generation or our grandparents’ generation that was like, “Oh, when I was your age I used to walk seven miles to school,” and all this stuff. But it really is a natural facet of human psychology to... We adapt very quickly to what makes us comfortable and we begin to expect it, and when we don’t receive it, we get cranky and we start feeling entitled to it. I think it’s an important thing to understand about ourselves, that we will always look... I mean, it’s part of our innate desire to have that meaning in our lives, so that if we don’t actually have anything meaningful to struggle for, we’ll go around and start looking for struggles to give us that sense of meaning. And if we haven’t picked something that is actually worthwhile, like, I don’t know, saving kids in Africa or something, we’ll start picking struggles like not being able to cash coupons at the grocery store or whatever. And so, this comes back to this whole idea of you have a limited amount of fucks to give in your life, and one of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself is, “Where are you going to allot those fucks? Where are you going to... You have limited energy to care about something, so what are you going to care about? Are you going to care about the coupons or are you going to care about something greater, more significant, more important?” And that kind of is the... I don’t want to say the ultimate question of life, but I just think that it’s... People don’t realize how much that questioning of their own values affects all this other stuff. It affects how you determine whether you’re successful or not. It affects, like, where you seek happiness. It affects your relationships. That was kind of rambly, but... [Laughs] I hope it came through there. 

Matt:	No, definitely. I think that makes a lot of sense.

Mark:	Okay.

Matt:	So, you’ve touched a couple different times on the concept of entitlement. Tell me about how people become entitled and what entitlement means to you.

Mark:	I believe that entitlement... So, I have a very broad definition of entitlement in the book. You know, when you hear the word entitlement, you think of, like, spoiled brats who have never had to deal with anything in their lives and they expect everything to be handed to them. That is certainly one type of entitlement, but what I see as entitlement and kind of the way I describe it in the book is the sense that you deserve to feel good, you deserve happiness without actually having to struggle for it. And this is one of the things that kind of worries me and I touch upon in different places throughout the book, about conventional self-help and the culture at large, is that we’re constantly being sold this idea that we all deserve to be happy without having to work for it, and that plays out in a bunch of different ways. It’s not necessarily just the spoiled brat. You get a lot of entitled people who start to fashion themselves as victims of everything around them, and so you kind of get this victimhood entitlement. You get a little bit of... You get entitlement in people who start exhibiting a lot of addictive behaviors. You know, maybe they get addicted to partying five nights a week, and the way they rationalize it to themselves is, “Oh, well, I deserve to be happy. I deserve to do this,” even though they’re losing their jobs over and over and they’re not able to pay rent. And entitlement, really, it just comes from this deep-seated inability to handle adversity. It’s the most important skill in life, is really just to be able to sustain adversity and move on despite it. And if people are being taught over and over that adversity’s not their fault, they don’t deserve to have to deal with adversity, they deserve to feel good, then they never develop this skill, and so when it happens, they’re just unprepared.

Matt:	So, how do you cultivate the ability to handle adversity?

Mark:	I mean, adversity is going to happen to matter what you do, so I think the first step is to just accept that. Like, shit happens. Things are going to suck sometimes no matter what you do, no matter... Like, one of my lines from the book is “A starving kid in Africa has money problems. Warren Buffet also has money problems. It’s just that Warren Buffet’s money problems are much better than the starving kid in Africa.” And that’s just true. The problems in your life will never stop, will never go away, and so I think the first step is accepting that. The second step is then to take responsibility for those problems, regardless of whether they’re your fault or if it’s unfair or if it’s unjust. We’re all victims at times. We all get screwed over at times, and we all deal with adversity at times, and there needs to be kind of a radical sense of personal responsibility in those situations.

Matt:	I love both pieces of advice, and they’re both ones that I’ve definitely taken to heart, that, one, kind of the acceptance that setbacks and failures are inevitable, and the second is taking total responsibility for owning those problems and facing reality and figuring out what you’re going to do next, and I think those are also really, really key lessons from a couple other books that you may have read as well that listeners may want to check out. One would be The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, and another would be Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. Both of those are great books that kind of dig into that specific idea.

Mark:	Yeah, definitely.

Matt:	So, one of the other things you talk about is is the idea of instead of asking what do you want out of life, you suggest that we ask a different question. What would that question be?

Mark:	The question is, what pain do you want to sustain? And this comes back to the idea that struggles, difficulties, they’re always going to be present in your life. And so, the key question of living a better life, and I guess this is... The subtitle of the book is A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life, so this is that counterintuitive part. Instead of saying, “How do I get rid of my struggles? How do I get rid of my pain?” the question should be, “What pain do I want? What struggles do I want? What difficulties excite me and invigorate me?” You know, I’ve met a lot of people who...maybe they want to start writing or they want to write a book, and they come to me for advice and they say things like, “Well, I try to sit down and I write and then I get really insecure about it so I delete it, and then I hate everything I write, and then I just procrastinate and it’s been six months and I haven’t written anything,” and they look to me for advice, and I always find it difficult to answer those situations because the same problems that they’re avoiding or they don’t like with writing are the exact same problems that I love. Like, I love sitting down for hours and just meticulously picking at a paragraph I wrote or a page I wrote. I get really excited about just spewing thousands of words out onto a page and seeing what comes out. There’s something about that that invigorates me. And actually, in the book, I talk about how originally I wanted to be the musician, and I discovered the hard way that I actually didn’t want to be a musician because I didn’t want to deal with all the problems and struggle that came with being a musician. It’s like, I wanted to be on stage, but I didn’t want to have to deal with practicing and hauling my gear around and playing gigs and not getting paid for them, and so I inevitably quit. And so, I think people look at the question of what they want to do with their life too much in terms of, like, what rewards to they want. Instead they should be looking at it in terms of, like, what struggles do you enjoy, what problems are you good at solving. 

Matt:	That was one of my favorite stories in the whole book, the story of you spending your childhood envisioning being a rock star, and I think you even said it wasn’t a question of if you’d be a rock star, but it was a question of when. And then you sort of slowly had this realization that you might have loved the result, but the process you did not like at all.

Mark:	Yeah, and it was funny. It took me a long... So, I stopped playing music when I was about 20 and I still held onto that dream for years. It wasn’t until I was in my late twenties and my business was doing well and I was loving writing. Like, in the back of my mind I was always like, “Oh yeah, I’m going to do this for a while and then I’m going to go back to music and I’m going to finally start that band that I haven’t started in the last ten years.” It was this story I kept constantly telling myself, and it finally was... You know, in my late twenties I realized, like, it’s just not going to happen, and it’s not going to happen... It wasn’t like a sad realization. I mean, it was a little sad, but it didn’t feel like a failure. It felt very liberating to realize that, to realize that I actually didn’t want it. I liked the fantasy, but I didn’t like the reality, and it’s important to understand the differences between those two things.

Matt:	And you used a great analogy in the book. You talked about the idea that it’s the people who enjoy the struggle are the ones who actually end up achieving the result, and I think... You gave a number of examples, but one of them was just the example of athletes. It’s the people who obsess over practice and are constantly...you know, they want to get out on the field, they want to practice every single day, every single little nuance of their game. Those people aren’t necessarily focused on the end goal of whether it’s winning a Super Bowl or a gold medal in the Olympics or whatever it might be. They’re focused, and what they love doing, is the struggle every single day of practicing and tweaking their diet and everything else.

Mark:	Yeah, and another thing I talk about in the book is this idea of greatness, this idea that...like, to be this great person. I try to bring back humility or being ordinary. I emphasize in the book that it’s important to embrace the fact that almost all of us are pretty average and ordinary at almost everything we do, and there’s another kind of backwards law thing here, where the people who actually do become huge successes, they usually just see themselves as very ordinary. I did an interview a few weeks ago with a guy in the athletics and sports psychology world. He works with coaches and actually with a bunch of Olympic athletes. He had some athletes at the Olympics. And one thing he told me is, he said, you know what’s funny about sprinters, like, even sprinters at the Olympic level, is that they all think they’re slow, all of them. Like, he had never met a single sprinter, even world class sprinters, who was like, “Oh yeah, I’m faster than everybody.” They all think that they’re not that fast and that they need to work harder to be fast again. And I find that absolutely fascinating. And you see this in all sorts of big figures that are held up. Like, Michael Jordan, even when he was winning all these championships, every interview he was like, “Oh, yeah, I need to improve. There’s still a lot of holes in my game. I need to get better.” You look at, like, people like Bill Gates. Even when he was the richest man in the world, he was like, “Oh, Microsoft can be doing so much more. We really missed some opportunities lately.” And I find... I think the outside would just looks at that and is like, “Oh, he’s humble. That’s nice.” You know, but I think there’s something deeper going on there, and that is these people, they don’t buy into their own myths. Like, the myths that are built about them. You know, like society looks at these people and kind of builds a myth out of them. So, it’s like, oh, this was a great person. He was the greatest basketball player who ever lived, or whatever. But the people themselves, they never buy into that myth. They never buy into this idea that they are somehow extraordinary in some way. Because if they did, then they would probably sabotage themselves psychologically. They would probably start becoming entitled and take it for granted and stop working so hard and stop being so curious and innovative, and I’ve always found that really fascinating.

Matt:	And is that the concept in the book that you touch on, you call, I think, the tyranny of exceptionalism? Yeah, the tyranny of exceptionalism.

Mark:	Yeah, and I tie that back into the stuff I was talking about earlier with the internet and social media. Like, one topic I’ve been really fascinated in this year... I touch on it in the book, but I’ve been writing about it more in my blog this last year, is the fact that the internet skews... So, the internet provides so much information for so many people, but because there’s so much information, we have to sort it somehow, and the way it’s getting sorted right now is that typically, only the 0.1% most extraordinary information gets passed around. And in some ways, that’s great. Like, you want to hear about the biggest, most important events. But the problem with that is that most of us spend all day, most of our days in front of a computer, and if all day we’re just getting bombarded with the most extraordinary information, the most extraordinary news, the most extraordinary events both good and bad, it starts to create...like, warp our perception of...I guess of the world, but also, it warps our expectations for ourselves and for other people, and I see this a lot. I get a lot of emails from my readers, and I see this particularly with younger readers. I get a lot of college-age kids who email me, and they seem to have these bizarrely unrealistic expectations for themselves and for life in general, and I just find it a little bit worrying, that effect that it’s possibly having on all of us psychologically, but I think it’s something that needs to be talked about more and people need to be more aware of.

Matt:	Tell me a little bit about the concept of the Disappointment Panda.

Mark:	[Laughs] It’s a superhero, man. [Laughs] So, Disappointment Panda is the superhero I invented in the book, and his superpower is that he tells people uncomfortable truths about themselves. And he literally goes door to door like a Bible salesman and knocks on the door, and the person opens it, and Disappointment Panda’s like, “You know, if you make more money, that’s not going to make your kids love you,” and then he just walks away. [Laughs] And the person’s whole reality gets shattered right then and there. But Disappointment Panda, he’s kind of just like a metaphor for, I guess, I think what we really need these days. I feel like all the classic superheroes, like Superman and Spiderman and Captain America or whatever, they were all created in the ‘30s and ‘40s, and if you look back then, it makes sense. The world was completely falling apart economically. World War II was going on. And so, I think people needed to escape into these ideas that there are these people who could save anything and fix anything. I think today we kind of have the opposite problem going on, where everything’s amazing and easy. We all have flatscreen TVs and can get groceries delivered. But, like, we’re becoming very poor at handling our own problems or just dealing with adversity. And so I feel like if there was a superhero that should exist today, it would be somebody like Disappointment Panda, who, like, just tells people the uncomfortable things that they’re avoiding in their own life, like the problems that are not being dealt with but need to be dealt with.

Matt:	And one of the things... I think we touched on this a little bit earlier, too, but you also talk about the idea that there are sort of biological limits on happiness, and that suffering is, from an evolutionary standpoint, sort of a practical and useful tool, and not something that we should necessarily avoid.

Mark:	Yeah. I mean, pain evolved for a reason. It’s, like, you pick the wrong berry and eat it, and it makes you sick and you vomit for three days. Like, that’s a useful... [Laughs] Like, it’s a horrible experience, but it’s useful. It’s... Pain is biologically or, like, evolutionarily kind of developed. It’s a feedback mechanism that keeps up alive and keeps us healthy, and I think it still operates that way. Like, if you something hurts you, it’s not just happening for no reason. Like, it’s happening... There’s something your body is trying to protect or, like, push you into doing something else or changing something, and for that reason I think people who... I mean, this is one of the big problems I have with all this kind of like positive thinking, or what I call delusional positive thinking, which I separate from just, like... There’s, like, optimism, which is like, hey, I think things are going to go all right, and then there’s delusional positive thinking, which is people who lose their job and convince themselves that it’s because they’re too smart for all their coworkers. The problem with this kind of more delusional positive thinking is that if you just push all of your pain out of your consciousness, then you’re basically eliminating some of the most important feedback mechanisms that your body and your psychology have for informing you of how to grow and how to change, and I think that’s why growth, it just intrinsically requires some degree of pain and discomfort. You know, people talk about comfort zones, and the way to grow is to get outside of your comfort zone. I mean, that’s one way to think about it. I think about it in terms of, like, growth is painful. The way you grow a muscle is it hurts. [Laughs] Like, you go lift heavy weight until it hurts, and then the muscle grows. You know, it’s like... It’s the same for our psychology. It’s the same for our sense of purpose and self-worth. Like, it needs to hurt. You need to go stress it and it needs to hurt for it to get stronger.

Matt:	That’s such an important takeaway, and one of the things that we’ve talked about previously on the podcast is the idea of embracing discomfort. And we... I think we have a whole episode about embracing discomfort and how to sort of expand your sphere of things that are comfortable and how to push past sort of the resistance points where you feel yourself getting really uncomfortable, and why that’s such a critical skill set for growing and improving.

Mark:	Totally.

Matt:	One other question I had for you, and this is something that I personally struggle with: Tell me about how you deal with setting boundaries and the importance of saying no.

Mark:	Ah. So, there’s a chapter in the book; it’s called The Importance of Saying No and it’s actually...it’s the relationships chapter. But, basically, I define, like, a healthy relationship as two people who are both a) willing to say no to each other, and b) willing to hear no from each other. And what’s interesting is I think most people are comfortable with one or the other, they’re not comfortable with both, and I think to have healthy boundaries in a relationship, you need both people to be comfortable with both. So, there’s a lot of people that are comfortable saying no, but they can’t hear no. They flip out and get angry and start blaming the other person. Then you have other people who are comfortable hearing no, but they’re afraid to ever say no because they’re afraid to...that they’re going to impose or that they’re going to hurt the other person or whatever. And the trick is to be able to do both because a relationship is only as healthy as the two individuals that are in it, and if one of the individuals in the relationship is not able to stand up for themselves, define what they need and clearly communicate it without blame or judgment, without holding the other person responsible, then they’re not...they’re not going to get their needs met and it’s going to devolve into kind of this, like, toxic, codependent thing where each person is reliant on the other for their happiness, which is not good. Boundaries essentially... It comes down to taking responsibility for your own emotions and your own problems, and not...not making your partner responsible for them, and then your partner also taking responsibility for their own emotions and problems, and you not taking responsibility for theirs. And this sounds like...really kind of cold and unromantic on the surface, especially with all what I call the “Disney narrative” of relationships. You know, it’s like, oh, I’ll do anything for you or, like, oh, my God, I’m so in love. That is actually not very healthy — like, that level of taking on all of your partner’s emotions and taking responsibility for them as your own. What you need is you need two strong, autonomous individuals who are constantly and consciously opting in to the relationship together, who are expressing their emotions unconditionally, doing things for each other unconditionally, and honoring each other’s feeling without being responsible for them. Like, that is ultimately what creates... Like, that’s... When I talk about boundaries, that’s what I mean, that kind of like...that line of responsibility between two people, and if you can maintain that, I think most relationship problems will resolve themselves.

Matt:	And I think one of the interesting things about that concept is that... You used the example of a romantic relationship, but I think it actually can apply in a lot of contexts — friendships, business relationships, even in many ways. You think about business negotiations. There’s a ton of kind of cross-applications of that framework and that thinking.

Mark:	Yeah, you can definitely have toxic and codependent friendships; you can definitely, definitely have boundary issues in family relationships, but in business as well. I mean, I think one of the things that business does well is that...the fact that you have contracts, is that is essentially, like, a boundary negotiation. It’s like when you enter into a business deal with somebody, you sit down and hammer out the contract, and it’s clear. It’s like this is this person’s responsibility, this is this person’s responsibility, and that is clear. Unfortunately, we’re human, so a lot of times we get lazy or cut corners or just don’t pay attention to agreements because we’re emotional and base a lot of what we say and do on our emotions. And so it doesn’t always play out that way, and so you do get a lot of these kind of, like, toxic situations where people are, like, forfeiting their own responsibility or forcing...blaming somebody else for their own emotions or their own sense of failure.

Matt:	So, what is one piece of homework that you would give to people listening to this episode in terms of sort of concrete steps that they could take to implement some of these ideas in their lives?

Mark:	One thing would be sit down and write down all of the painful things that you enjoy, [Chuckles] which that, like, scrambles a lot of people’s heads, but if you can sit with that and actually come up with some things, it’s pretty illuminating what you... And the funny thing is is that a lot of...a lot of what people enjoy, like, they don’t even realize that it’s painful. Like, they don’t even realize that most people... You know, take, like... It’s like one of my best friends. He’s an amateur bodybuilder and he’ll go spend three hours in the gym just wrecking his body lifting weights. And to him it’s very therapeutic and it... I imagine for him it doesn’t even really occur to him that what he’s going through is a lot of pain, but it is. It is. It’s a pain that he enjoys. And I think we all have something like that in our lives or, if we don’t, then that’s probably a red flag as well. 

Matt:	Where can people find you online?

Mark:	My site’s markmanson.net. Check out... There’s a link at the top for best articles, so you can start there. And the book is called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. It’s at all stores, retailers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble — everything. Check it out.

Matt:	And I can definitely say the book is awesome. I really, really enjoyed reading it. There’s a ton of great lessons in there, so I’d definitely recommend listeners check that out. We’ll also have a link to Mark’s website and the book on the show notes page, so you can get that as well. Well, Mark, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating interview and I loved having you on here. Thank you for being on the Science of Success.

Mark:	Thanks, Matt. Great being here.

Are You Being Held Back By Childhood Limiting Beliefs? With Guest Catherine Plano

In this episode we discuss how you have multiple limiting beliefs that you have yet to discover that, if uncovered, could radically transform your life. We go deep into limiting beliefs, look at how random childhood experiences can shape your worldview for decades, discuss how your outer world is created by your inner world, examine how to reverse engineer bad behavior and much more with our guest Catherine Plano.

Catherine is the founder of the I Am Woman Project and an International Executive Coach with more than two decades of experience working with top companies, having impacted more than 100,000 lives and whose mission is to aid companies and individuals in becoming aware of their limitless potential and in using their extraordinary abilities to achieve their desired outcomes. Catherine is also a certified Life Coach and a certified Master Trainer of NLP.  Catherine focuses on changing lives daily through her coaching and motivation speaking. She has also just recently released her new book Getting to the Heart of the Matter: The No-Nonsense Guide to Professional & Personal Transformation.

We discuss:

• How simple, innocuous things in our environment plant seeds that can dramatically change of our lives

• How we give meaning to situations without fully understanding them

• How your parents programmed many of your behaviors

• How limiting beliefs get planted into your mind from childhood

• How your memories can be completely false

• How your outer world is a reflect of your inner world

• Why your thoughts become self fulfilling prophecies

• Why 95% of your behaviors are not “who" you are, they are “learned behaviors"programmed by your environment

• And Much More!

If you feel like something is holding you back, but you can’t figure out what it is - Listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions on how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] The Super Mental Training Book by Robert K. Stevenson (see here).

• [Book] The Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton (see here).

• [Book] Evolve Your Brain by Joe Dispenza (see here).

• [SOS Episode] How You Can Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Under A Minute - The Science Behind Memory (see here).

• [SOS Episode] Limiting Beliefs (see here).

• Catherine Plano (see here).

• Rise & Thrive Course (see here).

• Heart of the Matter Book

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we have another great guest on the show, Catherine Plano. Catherine is the founder of the I AM WOMAN project and an international executive coach with more than two decades of experience working with top companies, having impacted more than 100,000 lives, and whose mission is to aid companies and individuals in becoming aware of their limitless potential and in using their extraordinary abilities to achieve their desired outcomes. Catherine is also a certified life coach and a certified master practitioner of NLP. Catherine focuses on changing lives daily through her coaching and motivational speaking. Catherine, welcome to the Science of Success.

Catherine:	Thank you very much. Thank you for a great introduction. Thank you, Matt.

Matt:	Well, we’re super excited to have you on here today.

Catherine:	I’m super excited.

Matt:	That’s awesome. And you’re coming in all the way from Australia, is that right?

Catherine:	That’s correct. In Melbourne.

Matt:	Great. Well, to get started, kind of tell me a little bit about your background and sort of share your story with our listeners.

Catherine:	Sure. My background goes way, way back -- maybe about 25, 30 years ago. I really got into the whole spiritual side of things, the energy. I was doing a lot of that kind of work, which, back then--say, 25 years ago--was probably looked upon as a bit woo woo. But, you know, what I did -- I actually used to have my own center, and what had happened is I had an epiphany one day. It was, you know, all these people coming in and very dependent on me, and I was thinking, this is not how you empower people! People have those abilities and those resources themselves. I just need to show them how they can tap into that. So, that’s when everything changed for me. I got into coaching neurolinguistics, neuroscience, and brain science, and hence why I’m here today -- to help people, empower them, and transform them.

Matt:	That’s fascinating. So, I’d love to kind of dive right in to some of the meat. Tell me about the concept. And we’ve talked a little bit about this in previous episodes of the podcast, but tell me a little bit about the concept of limiting beliefs -- you know, kind of what they are, how to identify them, and maybe even digging into how to combat them.

Catherine:	Oh, I love this one. Limiting beliefs. I think, limiting beliefs, we all have them, and because they’re unconscious, sometimes they’re hard to identify because we live them out and we play them out every single day. You know, 95% of the time we play them out. And so for an example, a limiting belief might be--and this comes up a lot in my clients--is the value of money, for example. So, if you grew up... And I know with my family, we... I was born in France. We came to Australia; started a family in a new country; didn’t know how to speak the language. You know, obviously money, all of that stuff. So, we saw our parents argue over money, and I’m sure lots of people see their parents argue over money. So, as we grow up and we see this happen in our environment and we see that it causes conflict... Or it could be as simple as, you know, your parent might say “Money doesn’t grow on trees,” or “This is too expensive! Why do you have to buy this brand?” So, we start having these beliefs that money creates arguments or money creates conflict. So, as you can see, these are learned behaviors. They’re not really our own beliefs. It’s the meaning we have given a situation without really understanding it. And so how this plays out when we get older is... For example, this is one of mine that I had to hack into -- was that I believed that I had to work really hard to make money because that’s how I saw my parents. They worked really hard to make money. And, you know, you’re working crazy hours and still chasing your tail. Or it could be as simple as when you do have money coming your way, you give it away because in your unconscious mind, you believe that money creates arguments or conflict, so "I don’t want any part of that." So, and you find that quite often people are saying "You know, I work really hard. I mean, what is it? I'm not making the money." And so we deep dive into those limiting beliefs. And how we find them out, it could be as simple as, you know, I ask them, like, “What beliefs do you see in yourself that come from your parents?”, for example. Or “What beliefs do you see in yourself that come from an authority figure?” And this is a great way because we are... You know, can’t blame our parents. They did the best they could with the information they had at the time. But there is this thing called parent programming. And even I know when I was growing up, I used to say, “There is no way I’m anything like my mum!” And over Christmas, I spent almost three weeks away with my mum. I am so much like my mum. So, limiting beliefs come from our past. 

Matt:	I think you said something really, really important, which is the idea that sort of simple, innocuous things that happened almost in the background of our childhoods can plant these seeds that can dramatically change huge portions of our lives.

Catherine:	Absolutely. And, you know, I think, too, it’s a matter of being more conscious in our mind and being the observer of our thought. And when I get this belief--it might be a silly belief--I just go, where does this belief come from and what does it really mean? Just by probing myself with a couple of questions, I’m actually activating the prefrontal cortex, which is that thinking part of the brain. And if you want to create change, this is what you need to do all the time, which takes practice. I nowhere near have perfected it, but I am still practicing it daily.

Matt:	And that’s so funny because, you know, I’m somebody that... I’ve been kind of digging into the concept and trying to understand how to uncover and remove limiting beliefs for a number of years. And still, to this day, I have a list of probably 20 or 30 limiting beliefs that I’ve uncovered in the last, you know, let’s call it two or three months that I’m still working through. And so, at least for me, personally, it’s been a journey where you never really find or remove all of them, but you just have to constantly kind of cultivate the awareness of, you know, what’s that thought that just crept into my mind? And, hey, that seems like a limiting belief, and that could be something that’s holding me back or preventing me from achieving what I want to achieve. 

Catherine:	Absolutely, because sometimes they do. They have consequences. Certain limiting beliefs do carry consequences. If I hang onto this belief for as long as I live, what are the consequences? Just even asking that question, you know. And I think that, too, it's... I call it "diffuse my beliefs". When they come up, I’m looking at it. I exhaust myself by saying “What else could it mean? What else could this mean? What else could this mean?” until I run out of different meanings. And it removes the boundaries of a limiting belief as well by just finding different meanings to it. 

Matt:	So, would you say sort of asking against and again “What could this mean?”, is that a method for diffusing limiting beliefs or is that a method for kind of breaking them down?

Catherine:	I think both. I think that unpacking it, so what else could this mean is you’re unpacking your limiting belief. You’re bringing light to it, and I think then you’ll actually break it down because then you’ll realize how a) it’s not yours. It may be a really silly one, and it could be something that happened a long time ago that you gave it a particular meaning that serves you no purpose any longer, won’t serve a purpose any longer.

Matt:	I think that’s a really important distinction, is that it’s not yours, right? It’s something that came from the environment. It's something that came from maybe a parent or somebody that you looked up to, or even a time before you can even remember, and it was planted in there by potentially sort of a random occurrence in your life.

Catherine:	Absolutely, and I call them “learned memories”. They pop up every now and then. Yes, when there’s little triggers or a stimulus in our environment that triggers us back to that memory, that’s when it comes up.

Matt:	That’s a great phrase. And it’s funny, kind of circling back to the idea of, specifically, limiting beliefs around money. We had Vishen Lakhiani on the podcast previously--who’s sort of a teacher of meditation and an entrepreneur--and he tells a story about how he struggled for years to make money with his company, and found out he had this sort of core limiting belief about teaching people -- that you always had to struggle as a teacher, financially. And when he finally uncovered that, his company radically transformed within 18 months. 

Catherine:	It’s amazing, isn’t it? And that's the same with me, that realization that I had to work hard to make money. As soon as... And it was a matter of tweaking the word. It was just working smarter. And it just changed. Just the fact that I said, "I've got to work smarter to make my money, not harder," everything started changing. New ideas came into mind and I became more savvy with the things that I was doing and I pulled everything online. It just changed everything.

Matt:	And so, when you’re talking about limiting beliefs, you mentioned kind of the idea of parental programming. What are some of the other sources of limiting beliefs or some of the other ways that limiting beliefs can kind of seep into your mind?

Catherine:	Oh, God, it could be so many things. From some of your experiences. It could be as we were growing up. We all go through a development phase, and the first phase is the imprinting phase, right up to the age of seven. So, anything that happened in your environment then, whether it was something you saw on TV; a book you read; stuff that happened at school; stuff that friends said to you; whatever that may be, it could be...you’re just downloading that information into your mind. It’s like downloading software into the computer. And then when you move into another phase from the age of seven to 14, this is called your muddling phase. And this is where we try to identify "Who am I?" and we seek externally of ourselves as to who do we aspire to be? So, this is the time when we start. I know back in my days, Duran Duran was quite big, with the big funky hairdos and the frilly shirts. And, you know, it’s really about who do I want to be and who do I aspire to be? And then it’s those people around you that have an impact in some way, shape, or form. So, these beliefs not just come from your parents; they come from our environment. They come from people that you looked up to or you aspired to be. They come from... It could be a TV show or a superhero that you were in love with at the age of ten. These beliefs come from all over the place -- very much from environment.

Matt:	So, to make this kind of concrete and to drill this home for people that are listening--and I think this is really important because it’s easy to talk about limiting beliefs in the abstract--but would you say that it’s a fair statement that every person listening to this episode right now has multiple limiting beliefs that they have yet to discover, that if they were to uncover them could have a radical impact on their lives?

Catherine:	Absolutely. Absolutely. And from an energy perspective, I look at it this way: As soon as you get to the source of your limiting belief, it’s almost like... I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of Gestalt Theory, but if you have a look at a pearl necklace, for example, and if you go back to that core or that root cause of that limiting belief, and you, with your adult eyes or with your understanding of and all the knowledge you have today, when you go back to that core belief and you actually give it a different meaning, it’s almost like pulling that bead away and you’re allowing all of these pearls to just fall apart. So, it’s like a domino effect. As soon as... It’s like you take that limiting, you pluck it out of your timeline of your memory--because we all have memories and they’re all in a timeline format--it just changes everything. It changes how you not just think, but how you behave and how you act. 

Matt:	That makes me think of two things. One, on the subject of memory, we’ve actually done a previous episode all about kind of digging into memory and what it means and what memories are. And one of the things we talked about is the idea that your memories can literally be false, and every single time you drag a memory back up, every single time you think about something, you’re reconstructing that memory and putting it back, and you’re changing it and tweaking it and modifying it to where literally what you remember... And we read from a study where a number of neuroscientists literally say, point blank, that what you remember could be completely false about something that’s happened in your life.

Catherine:	So true! Very true. Because it’s... You know, you have all this knowledge now. So, you know, for me, if I was to go back to a time when I was seven, when I first came to Australia, I have fond memories of what that was like. But obviously every time I go back to that memory, I might add more color; I might add more story to it; I might add more feeling to it. It can change it completely. And you hear this, you know... And I hear this even amongst my friends and my partner and so forth, you know. You might hear a story over dinner with your friends, for example, and it just always changes slightly. Have you ever experienced that? Like, the story just...

Matt:	Yeah, definitely.

Catherine:	...gets better and more funnier. That’s what a memory is. People just add to it all the time. So, when you’re trying to connect with the actual root cause of that memory, it’s altered so many times depending on how many times you’ve plucked it out and revisited that memory.

Matt:	And touching back on one of the things you said a moment ago -- the idea of kind of the pearls falling off of the string. The analogy that I’ve always loved is--and I love analogies about water and how water flow and energy flow and all of that relates--but the idea of water flowing through a hose. Basically, if you imagine a limiting belief as basically a kink or a bend in the hose, and every time you...if you have multiple bends, every time you break one bend, the water flow gets stronger and stronger and stronger. So, if you take more and more of these kinks out, take more and more of these bends out of the hose, the energy flow gets more concentrated, more focused, and gets even stronger every time.

Catherine:	Oh, I love your analogy. That's perfect. That's a perfect way of saying it. Because, you know, limiting beliefs are like little blocks and they sometimes stop us doing the very thing we want to do. So, it’s perfect what you’re saying because it’s exactly what you’re saying -- the kink in the hose or the block. And as soon as you remove those, everything just flows smoothly.

Matt:	And it’s really funny, even kind of tangentially related. For example, if your environment is really messy and you just spend a little bit of time cleaning up your environment, those little, tiny things can snowball into more and more kind of a positive focus and positive energy throughout your day.

Catherine:	Yeah, I agree. I’m like that with everything around me, whether it’s my wardrobe or my office. It has to... I know a little bit about Feng shui, but, just intuitively, it has to feel right for my work to flow through. And when it’s not, I just...I might stand up and tidy things up again, and just the fact that I’ve done that, I feel like I’ve cleaned my space and I’m ready to work with it.

Matt:	So, shifting gears a little bit, I'd love to talk about the concept of visualization and how you can use visualization to achieve your goals and how you've used visualization in the past in some of the work that you’ve done.

Catherine:	I’m big on visualization and I think if you look at how we speak and if we were to speak the language of the unconscious mind--which is 95% who we are--it speaks the language of pictures. So, visualization, it's very much tied in with the vision boards as well. When you’re creating goals, I always encourage the people I work with to actually create a vision board. And it might be just a simple vision board, but just so that they see it. But it’s not just about seeing it; you have to have emotion attached to it. So, visualization, you’ve actually got to be associated in your visualization because the mind cannot tell the difference between what is real and what is not real. And so if you can actually see yourself as if in that moment, then your mind will believe it. And if you keep practicing it over and over again, you will create it or manifest it. And there’s this great book--it’s called The Super Mental Training Book--and there's lots of stories. There are hundreds of stories in there about, you know, different people using the technique of visualization. So, it talks about there’s a gentleman who was in jail for many years and he visualized playing golf, and he got out of prison and was a professional. There’s another story in there where there’s these Russian athletes and it was during the winter Olympics in something like 1986, and they did an experiment with visualization and they separated the athletes into four groups. The first group had to train physically 100%; the second group had to train physically 80% and visualize 20%; the third group was 50% physical and 50% visualization; and the last group had to visualize 80%, but 20% physical. And who do you think did the best?
 
Matt:	The group that visualized the most?

Catherine:	That’s correct, yep. The group that visualized the most. So it just explains to us that A. We’re tapping into that deeper part of our mind. And if we practice visualization, and it can be as simple as working on a goal, you know and I do this a lot with people with public speaking. Visualize yourself standing there on the public stage. Visualize the people in front of you. Have a really - get involved in your emotion, how your feeling, all of that stuff really build it. It’s almost like visualization is like starting with a blank canvas and then you’re painting it - adding color to it, adding sound to it, adding feelings to it. To make it come to life. 

Matt:	And I think a really key point that you made is that you have to anchor the emotion to what you’re visualization.

Catherine:	Absolutely. The feeling is that they always say the feeling or emotion is the field to your thought. So if you want to create a strong visualization and you need to give it that drive so that to make it - to manifest, you need to have as much emotion as possible. 

Matt:	So, for somebody who’s listening now, how could they sort of as a simple first step start practicing some form of visualization?

Catherine:	I think the best way is to understand first what you want to visualize. So plan first. What is it that I want to visualize? And it could be as simple as you might aspire to be a certain way. It could be public speaking is another one. It could be that you want to achieve a great relationship for example. As long as you know what it is you want to visualize to manifest. That’s the first thing - plan it. Then I would ask you to do is obviously - what kind of picture do you - what kind of emotions do you want to bring out in this visualization? So for example, if it was public speaking, it’d obviously be confidence. And if it was something to do with bringing or manifesting a relationship, it would be love. So, really, one strong emotion and focus on that. And you can suck on other emotions. And then what I would do is then start your visualization. You’re very clear about what you want to do, and you know why you want to do it, and then the how is you’re painting a picture. So, I would then spend my time almost visualizing my picture. So I would visualize, for example, public speaking, I would visualize the room, I would visualize the audience, I would visualize what the stage would look like. I would visualize myself walking onto the stage. I would stand there and listen to what’s going on around me, what do I see, what do I feel, really connect with it. And then what I would do is I would associated - I would be as if I was looking through my own eyes. And I would stack those emotions on you know, I’m feeling confident, I’m feeling proud, I’m feeling happy. I feel inspired. Just keep feeling those. Then once you’re done with your visualization, move away, dissociate it from yourself. And you know, I even like to you know if I like to add a bit of specific time to when I want to achieve my visualization. So, for example, if I want to say I want to be in a relationship in six month time. I would have a date. So what I would do is once I’ve created this massive visualization, when I stand away, I actually have it - you can visualize whatever you like, but I like to visualize it as in sitting, my visualization, in that balloon, going forward in time to that date, and a balloon pops and drops into that time. And so what I do is every time I keep doing that, I’m reinforcing my visualization but also I’m giving it a specific time to when I want it to manifest. 

Matt:	And so for somebody that maybe, and I mean I’ve done a lot of work on positive visualization, and sometimes I feel like I struggle with making images feel real, or being able to tap into them or kind of feel them fully. What’s a way to kind of breakthrough that or if you’re struggling with visualizing the image, what would you recommend doing?

Catherine:	I have had some people say “well I can’t visualize.” I believe, this is my belief, that everyone can visualize. And I think that if you say you can’t, you’re just not allowing that to flow through. Then I say, find some pictures on the internet that are inspiring for you to manifest, whatever that might be. So, if it’s public speaking, find someone that you really look up to. What is it that you want to create? So create like a mini-vision board, so that when you are actually physically manifesting your visualization, and then what I would do is have it - you’re sitting in front of it, then I would look at it, stare into it, and you can connect with it that way once again. You can - What am I hearing? - Close your eyes as if now. What am I seeing? What am I feeling? All of that stuff. So you can do it that way as well if you feel you can’t paint that visualization in that mind. 

Matt:	Got it. So, another concept I wanted to talk about is the notion of the outer-world versus the inner-world. That’s something I’ve heard you talk about before. Can you share that idea?

Catherine:	Yeah. I always talk about it. I always say that our outer-world is a reflection of our inner-world. And it’s the way that we perceive things for example. So if I hear people saying they’re not happy with their work environment, they’re not happy with their relationship, they’re not happy with blah blah blah, whatever that may be. Then that gives me a hint that there’s something going on inside of them. So, you know, our outer-world is a reflection of what’s going on inside. So if we want to change our environment, then we need to change inside. And inside meaning our inner-world. How we’re thinking. How we’re seeing things. What are our perceptions? What are we projecting with our perceptions? What are interpretations of the environment? So, it’s, to me, we are everything around us we reflect because of what’s going on in our inner-world. 

Matt:	That’s fascinating. Can you give me maybe an example from some of the people you’ve worked with or some things you’ve experience and how you’ve kind of seen that take place?

Catherine:	You might say—and I actually have had this actually happen—I was boarding as a mediator for two women, two executives, they were at heads with one another and neither of them were going to leave because both of them had a really good job, cushy job, great money, and they loved their job. Just couldn’t stand one another. So, really, the thing that was going on was one particular lady that I worked with. I said to her, “You know, all I’m asking you to do is find one positive thing towards this person.” And she’s like “No. There’s no way I could find anything positive about this person.” And this took us about three weeks. So I said “Okay. Let’s nip this in the bud. And let’s really chunk this all the way. Let’s have a look. You’re both women. Yes. You’re both mothers. Yes.  Now let’s have a look at that. When you’re at home with your children, how do you behave? Are you the same person as you are at work?” She goes “Oh no, of course not! When I’m at home I’m on the ground with my children, I’m playing with their toys, spend some quality time with them before they have dinner and go to bed.” And I said - “Do you think there’s a possibility that this lady does the same thing in her own environment?” She went “Oh, yes.” I said “Okay, just focus on that. That one thing, just focus on that one thing that she is a mother.” So, for her, unconsciously, she was seeing this woman as being whatever that label she wants to call it. And therefore she was behaving that way, and was getting those results. The moment she changed the way she was seeing that women, started seeing this woman as a mother, nine days later, I got a phone call. She said, “You know what? She’s actually really good with numbers.” So basically what was starting to happen, and this is why I say shifts do happen, it’s a shift of mindset. She started seeing this woman in a positive light, and therefore what was happening is she was behaving differently because she was seeing her in a different light, and getting those results. They are now really good friends. So that’s an example of what the whole outer-world, inner-world stuff. So, she changed her inner-world the way she was seeing or thinking about this person, and therefore changed her outer-world.

Matt:	So, in many ways, our thoughts and our beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies in the sense that the way we feel or react to someone actually may be creating the exact kind of belief or feeling that we have about them.

Catherine:	Absolutely. We are the creator of our inner-environment. We are the creator of our domain. And I know sometimes it’s really hard for people to accept that, because it’s like, “No way! I haven’t created this bad relationship! No way! I haven’t created this horrible boss!” It’s - if you want to believe that, it’s fine. Anyone can believe anything they want to believe. But I believe that I do create these things. And you know when things happen in my environment, it’s so much more empowering for me to go “How did I create this? And how did I manifest this?” Rather than blame. That way I know I can work with it. 

Matt:	I think that’s so important, to take responsibility for our environment in the world around you, as opposed to just being a victim. 

Catherine:	Absolutely. Accountability is key. Absolutely.

Matt:	Another thing that I’ve heard you talk about that I really enjoyed was the idea of - and this ties into what we’ve been talking about - the idea of reverse engineering that behavior. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Catherine:	Yes, absolutely. So, we are not our behavior. And I love this one because quite often, especially in working with lots of corporates, the talk about - they get you to come in and they say “this person has bad behavior, we need to change this behavior.” If we’re looking at the whole mindset and our behaviors it’s 95% of our behaviors is actually not who are, they’re learned behaviors. We are a byproduct of our past experience, parenting programming, environment, other people’s fees, limiting beliefs, decisions - you name it. And quite often, these behaviors have no purpose and actually sabotage the things that we want. So, as long as we understand the behavior is not the person, we can work with that. The behavior is the meaning they have given a situation. So, for example, if I have a look at the difference between attitude and behavior, the attitude is the way that we think, and the behavior - so once we think a certain way or go through the whole process to maybe help understand it, if we have an event happen in our environment, we think of it a certain way, we might see it a certain way, and what happens is we create what we call an internal representation. A picture of that event. And in that, what happens then, we create a state. Which is our emotions or feelings. This plays out in our physiology, which is our behavior. So, a lot of the times if we want to reverse engineer our behavior, it’s about going back and understanding what is this person thinking about this environment, or this event, or this person? To change the thinking and therefore change the way they see it, change the way they feel about it, and the behaviors will be completely different. So, the behavior is the meaning of the communication or situation at hand. And we can change that by being more conscious - and it takes 21 days - now there’s neuroscience that says it takes 21 days to create neural pathways and we can actually, and neuroplasticity is change our brain. So, if we say, just for the next 21 days, I’m going to be conscious of my thoughts. We can change our behavior. 

Matt:	And for listeners who are curious about digging in more to the science of neuroplasticity, we’ve previously had Dr. Rick Hanson, the author of a number of books about that, but specifically kind of digs in to sort of happiness and productivity and everything else, so that’s a great episode to check out if you want to dig in more to that science. But, Catherine, for the people who are listening here, is there one piece of homework or something simple you would ask them to do?

Catherine:	I think that - I always say that we can reinvent ourselves. That’s the exciting part. It’s like - what do you want to create for yourself? Life isn’t about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself. So, I think that piece of a big piece. Just, I think it - it doesn’t mean like, it doesn’t have to be reinvent the whole self, it could be tweaking. But I think to be more conscious is the thing. Because if we’re looking at - and you hear about it all the time, that we only use 10% of our brains. Well neuroscience says it’s actually 5% of our conscious brain. Which means that 95% are learned behaviors, past, parenting program - all of those things that some way, shape, or form, stop us from doing those very things that we want. So when we talk about even unconscious bias - the things we really want and desire, are they the things we need? Are they things really are going to line up with where we want to go? When we’re talking about that 5%, that conscious mind, when we want to manifest and create new things. We need to start - really - stop to think what we’re thinking about. Think about it, how often do we do it? Never. Well. I’m not saying never. But it’s a practice, you have to practice it. Even 5 minutes a day, just sit there with your thoughts. “What was I thinking today? What was I feeling like today?

Matt:	I think cultivating that awareness is such an important step.

Catherine:	Absolutely. I believe that too.

Matt:	So, for somebody who wants to kind of dig in, do some more research about some of the things we’ve talked about today, what would you recommend as other books or resources for them to check out?

Catherine:	Ugh, geez, so many books. I love, The Biology of Belief with Dr. Bruce Lipton. I love also Dr. Joe DeSpencer, he talks about how you can change your brain. There’s so many great authors, but those are the two that come to mind.

Matt:	Awesome, we’ll put links to both of those notes in the show notes. Catherine, where can people find you online?

Catherine:	Sure. They can find me under CatherinePlano.com And you can have a look at that, or I Am Woman project is the project that I work on and we’ve also just launched Rise and Thrive which is all online. So basically as I was saying, I’ve become more savvy - working smarter is putting things online. So, I have this mission of helping as many people as I can to empower themselves and the planet, and so I’ve put all my work online, which is a 12-week online course for 19.95 a week. Which, when you think about it, I don’t know what it’s like in your side of the world. But in Australia, they charge anything from 300-500 dollars an hour for coaching. And not everyone’s got that kind of money. So I’ve put these programs online for teenagers and leaders as well to work through some of the stuff we’ve been talking about.

Matt:	Great, well, Catherine, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. I know the listeners are going to get a lot out of this interview.

Catherine:	Thank you so much, Matt, for having me. It’s been an amazing time, thank you.

How to Master the Superpower that Builds All Other Powers with Dr. Rick Hanson

In this episode – we go deep on mastering the superpower that underpins all other powers, how your brain’s automatic survival mechanism tilts you towards unhappiness, growing the mental resources to deal with the biggest challenges of your life, and down the rabbit hole of exploring the idea of the self, ego, and much more with Dr. Rick Hanson. This was one of the most profound conversations we have had on this podcast.

Dr. Hanson is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and New York Times best-selling author. His books include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha’s Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nurture. He’s also the Founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom, he’s been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities.

We discuss:

-How to master the SUPERPOWER that BUILDS ALL OTHER POWERS
-How to grow the mental resources inside yourself to deal with the biggest challenges in your life
-We reverse engineer the olympic athletes of the mind to learn their secrets
-We discuss how your thoughts change the physical structure of your brain
-How your brains 5 core survival strategies create suffering in your life
-How reality is continually constructed by the underlying hardware of the brain
-How to disengage from stress and suffering
-How to let go of attachment to your ego
-How to stop being defensive and taking things personally
-Why your “self” doesn't have an independent existence outside of the totality of the universe
-And MUCH more!

If you want to wire your brain to be happier - you can’t miss this episode!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• [Book] Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson (see here).

• [Book] Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson (see here).

• [Poem] Late Fragment by Raymond Carver (see here).

• [Book] The Dhammapada by Eknath Easwaran (see here).

• Rick Hanson’s Website (see here).

• Foundations of Wellbeing Website (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Matt:	Today, we have another incredible guest on the show, Dr. Rick Hanson. Rick is a psychologist, senior fellow The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkley, and a New York Times bestselling author. His books include Hardwiring Happiness, Buddha's Brain, Just One Thing, and Mother Nature. He's also the founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom. He's been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and many other major universities. Rick, welcome to The Science of Success.

Rick:	Matt, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Matt:	Well, we're very excited to have you on today. So, to kind of kick things off, tell the audience a little bit about your background and how you kind of became fascinated with the connection between neuroscience, psychology, and some of the Eastern religions like Buddhism.

Rick:	Well, I think what got me into it... So, I'm a psychologist and I've been around the block for a while, so I got interested in this stuff actually in the beginning of the '70s, and it just seemed to me logical, I guess, that if you've worked at the intersection of brain science, psychology, and the great contemplative traditions of the world, where those three circles overlap had to be where the coolest stuff was, right? You know, you understand the hardware of the brain, then you're tapping into 100-plus years of good research on psychology, and then you're bringing to bear thousands of years of people doing really hardcore practice training their minds, really exploring the upper reaches of human potential. And just to finish here, it's like if you... I've done a lot of rock climbing, and if I want to get better at rock climbing, I want to watch people who are better than me, right? So, I want to kind of tune in to what are those people doing who are moving like human geckos over the cliffs, and then internalize that, at least my next step in their direction. Well, in the same way, the people who have really explored what it is to be deeply resilient, happy, peaceful, and loving, even in really tough conditions, those are the great contemplative traditions of the world. So, I do a lot of reverse engineering. I try to imagine plausibly what could be the underlying neuropsychological foundations of people who are deeply strong, happy, successful, creative, and so forth, and then work backwards to how can I use the mind alone, no medication, no surgery, the mind alone, to stimulate and therefore strengthen those circuits in the brain, building up muscles, in effect, inside yourself that then you can draw upon everywhere you go, because even though it's certainly good to improve the external environment and improve your own body, you know, those tend to change a lot. But you take your mind with you wherever you are, and by being committed to skillful, self-directed neuroplasticity, I call it, you have an amazing capacity, no matter how tough your life is or what the past has been, to actually build inner resources inside yourself for the future.

Matt:	And you touched on something, which is a phrase or a word that people often kind of use interchangeably, which is mind and brain. But you make a really important distinction between the two of those. Can you share that?

Rick:	Sure. If you think about it, so we're all having experiences, right? You know, squirrels are having experiences. I think lizards are having experiences. I know my cat is having experiences. I'm having experiences. You're having experiences. We're hearing, tasting, touching, and smelling, thinking, remembering, and so forth. That realm of experience, if you look at it, is immaterial. You cannot hold a sound. You cannot measure a piece of information. Well, so, we live in this world of phenomenology, if you will. It's a virtual reality, and it is continually constructed by the underlying hardware of the brain embedded in the nervous system, embedded in the whole body, embedded in life altogether. So, the point is that when we use a word like "mind" or "mental" or "cognition" or "psyche" or similar kinds of words, they all refer to the realm of immaterial information processing in the nervous system. And that might sound kind of weird to think about, but that's actually the real bottom line. The function of the nervous system is to represent information, including very basic signals like a sound landing on your eardrum, a cascade of changes proliferated through your nervous system, carrying the information of the sound of a car honking or a bell ringing or a baby crying or, you know, your lover murmuring in your ear, whatever it might be. And so, we have then two process happening simultaneously, and this has practical implications. We have mental activity unfolding; conscious experience, which is inherently intangible; and then we have very tangible cushy, molecular, neurotransmitter-based synaptic neural circuitry-based process underlying that flow of immaterial experience. So, the two are going together. There might be supernatural or transcendental factors at work. Personally, I think there is spooky stuff outside the natural frame of science. But that's it. Just inside the natural frame of science, there's an utterly tight correlation, a co-relating, a co-arising of mental and neural activity, and the practical takeaway of that is by shifting or altering what you pay attention to and then what you do with what you're resting your attention upon. By doing that, you can deliberately use mental activity to stimulating the underlying neural activity in various skillful ways we'll probably get into, so that you can grow and internalize more inside yourself, more confidence, more commitment to exercise, more understanding of other people, more skills with other people, more healing from your last--fill in the blank--job, relationship, childhood. You really can't do that from the inside out, which I think is extremely important for just ordinary coping, healing, and wellbeing, but also in terms of adapting to a future that is very dynamic, very changing, very uncertain in which we need to deal with all kinds of new things. Being able to maximize your learning curve from the inside out, through everyday life experiences, is the superpower, in effect, that builds all other powers. And by drawing upon that superpower through learning how to learn... And when I mean "learn", I really refer to social, emotional, motivational, attitudinal, even spiritual kinds of learning, learning how to learn those good things, not just learning your multiplication tables. If you've learned how to learn, that's your superpower, because then you can learn how to learn anything that matters to you.

Matt:	And you touched on this, but dig a little deeper into the idea that what happens in your mind can actually change the physical structure of your brain.

Rick:	Yeah. It's because neural activity is required for mental activity, and repeated patterns of neural activity change neural structure and function. You know, the classic saying from the Canadian psychologist Donald Hebb is, "Neurons that fire together wire together." And on non-human animals, you know, just acknowledging the ethical issues in that territory -- that said, research on non-human animals that can be extremely invasive has really drilled down literally to the molecular or epigenetic processes, which are also molecular, going on inside individual neurons, all the way up to large scale structures. And then related human studies have shown that repeated patterns of thought or feeling, for better or worse... And one of the things you know about my work is that I have really explored the implications of what scientists call the negativity bias of the brain, the ways that, as I put it, it's like Velcro for the bad but Teflon for the good. We have a brain that's designed to be changed by the experiences flowing through it, especially negative experiences, especially especially when we were young. So, the point being, or kind of the takeaway, is that research has shown that if people more positively, let's say, practice mindfulness routinely or tune into their bodies routinely or do some kind of practice that helps them become happier or more compassionate or more loving or more self-compassionate, then, let's say eight weeks after some program and that, you can see changes in the brain down at the cellular, even synaptic level with MRIs and so forth. And, if people do things over the long haul, for better or worse, you can see major structural changes. Like, literally, people who meditate routinely tend to have measurably thicker cortex, the outer layer of the brain, in regions that regulate attention or help people become self-aware of themselves. It makes sense, you know. You work that muscle, it gets bigger, it gets stronger, and because it's bigger and stronger, making the analogy here for building up tissue and circuitry and functionality in your brain, you then become more able to do various important things like remain mindful, even when the oatmeal's flying all around you. And there are many examples of this, what's called experience-dependent neuroplasticity, including funny things like London taxicab drivers who, at the end of their training, memorizing those spaghetti swirl streets, have a measurably thicker cortex in parts of the brain--in this case, the hippocampus--that are involved in visual-spatial memory. So, they're working the function of some part of the brain, building up structure there. So, a lot of people, it's really jaw-dropping to appreciate that, to update a traditional term, your mind takes this shape from it routinely rests upon. And people can just feel this in their everyday life. Are you ruminating about what's irritating, what worries you, how you feel hurt or let down, or are you really caught up in a feeling of stressful driven-ness? You know, gotta get all this stuff done, tense and uptight? Or, is your moment to moment experience much more dominated by feelings of calm strength, feeling already connected to other people, already fundamentally contented, even as you dream big dreams and aspire without attachment, I put it, or feel, even though you're grappling with challenges and even threats, that deep in your core, you're not being touched by this stuff that's happening. You know, where is your attention resting, and how deeply can you take into yourself those beneficial experiences, knowing that your brain is designed to fast-track irritating, stressful, hurtful, anxiety-provoking experiences, deep into your neural structure? I mean, that's the negativity bias of the brain. That's the Velcro for the bad of the brain. And one of the, finishing up here, things that I really work on, and people can check out my freely-offered resources on my website, rickhanson.net, one of the things I’m really interested in is helping people, number one, learn how to learn, right? That's the superpower. And then apply that superpower to growing those particular inner strengths, those psychological resources, mental resources inside themselves that will help them deal with whatever they've got to deal with. Maybe they're trying to really rise in their job. Maybe they're really trying to find out what do they need to develop inside themselves to be happier in their intimate relationships or more successful there. What do they need to grow inside themselves to compensate for feelings of hurt or mistreatment from their childhood or past as an adult, let's say? If you think right now, listening to this, what, if it were more present in your mind routinely, would really help you these days? What would help you be more effective, happier, more healed, more able to contribute to other people? And then, you know, I use my methods for helping people grow that particular muscle, as it were, inside their nervous system, that then they can draw upon any way they want.

Matt:	I love that description, and I think that... I love the phrase "Neurons that fire together wire together". It gives people a very concrete and kind of simple way to understand that in a very physical, biological, real sense, your thoughts shape and change your brain.

Rick:	Yeah, that's right. And don't underestimate. I mean, a lot of the major research is on how chronic stress changes the brain, right? Or depressed mood or irritation or holding onto grievance with other people or feeling helpless or defeated. You know, we're very designed to be very affected neurologically by those kinds of experiences. And, to be clear, nothing here is about denying what's bad or rose-colored glasses as a way to look at the world or positive thinking. I don't believe in positive thinking. I believe in realistic thinking. I want to see everything. But, you know, honestly, even though I'm a little bit of a touchy-feely kind of guy as a longtime therapist, I'm kind of tough as nails. I really feel like, number one, life is often challenging, and the whole fundamental thing is help is probably not coming from the outside very often, you know. We've got to deal from the inside out with our own life. And the question of it comes, how do you be self-reliant? How do you really autonomously develop inner strengths of various kinds to deal with your own real life? And then, second piece of hard-headedness in my part is about this negativity bias. It's really gutting that what matters most in life is learning, is growing, developing, healing, figuring stuff out and so forth. Because you can't do anything about the past. The only question is, are you growing, learning, developing, improving from this point going forward? And when you really, really kind of get from the inside out that it's on you, no one can make you learn, right? Only you, whoever you are--in this case, me, Rick Hanson--only oneself can help oneself learn from life's experiences. And we have a brain that's designed to cling to the negative or chase the positive, you know, or this sense of internal driven-ness and discontent, you know, is where we come from. And it's really profound to realize that in your day-to-day, five, ten times over the course of the day, ten, 20 seconds at a time, there will be opportunities to really register beneficial experiences and, therefore, heighten the encoding process and the consolidation process that converts in your body, converts that beneficial experience into some kind of lasting change of neural structure and function. And most people blow right by those moments. They waste them. I certainly have, you know. They're nice in the moment, you know. A feeling of accomplishment, let's say a work or hanging out in the lunch room, kicking back with people, nice sense of camaraderie, maybe, or you step outside and, you know, there's something that beautiful that catches your eye, or you remember someone who cares about you, or you feel caring yourself. Whatever it is, we're having these moments. But are they making any difference? Or are they flowing through the brain like water through a sieve, which is what routinely happens, while negative material gets caught in that sieve every time. And five, ten times a day, people have an opportunity to take into themselves, to accept the good that's potentially available here, take it into themselves. They have that opportunity multiple times a day, and one of the, for me, most practical, grounded in science, and positive things a person can do is to look for those five, ten moments a day, usually a dozen or two dozen seconds long at a time, not a big deal, but then use them. You know, bring a big spoon. Bring a vacuum cleaner. Suck them into yourself as a way to fill yourself up from the inside out. And that's a phenomenal opportunity to have, especially at a time when so many of us feel pushed around by external forces. At least inside our own heads, we're the boss, and there are things that we can do.

Matt:	So, going back to the idea of what creates this negativity bias, can you touch on how the brain's survival strategies kind of lead us to suffering?

Rick:	Yeah, starting with a practical example. You know, you're in a relationship, let's say. 19 things happen in a day, or 20 things happen in a day. 19 are positive, one's negative. What's the one you kind of think about as you're falling asleep? Or your boss gives you a performance review, right? Ten items of feedback. Nine are positive, one is room for improvement. What's the one you think about? It's that negative piece of information. So, you know, we all have a feeling for that from the inside out. You know, we're in a meeting, we make ten points, right, and nine of them are really good and one of them we use the word incorrectly. What's the one we obsess about as we're going down the elevator, you know, after that meeting? It's the negative thing. So, we're designed to do that. It's not personal. It's not a character flaw. We're designed to do that because negative experiences, over the 600 million year evolution of the nervous system, you know, negative experiences of predators or pain or natural hazards or aggression inside your band or between bands, those negative experiences usually had more urgency and impact for raw survival than positive experiences did of finding food or hanging out with your little rat family or your little monkey family or caveman family. They're nice, but they don't matter as much for our survival. So, we have a brain today that's designed to do five things. I'll just go through them fast. One: Scan for bad news. You can watch that in yourself. You're always kind of looking. What's the threat? What's the thing that I've got that I might lose? What's uneasy or unsettled in my relationships? Scan for threat. Second: When we find that threat, when we identify that one tile in the mosaic of reality or our experience, that one tile that's flashing yellow or orange or red, whoosh! The brain over-focuses down upon it, losing sight of the big picture, to deal with the immediate reality. Friend or foe, right? And then the third thing that happens: The brain's designed to overreact to negative stimuli. If you play sounds for people or pictures for people that are equally intense, equally loud or bright, et cetera, the brain reacts more to the negative content, because again, that's what we're designed to do. And then fourth: Now that we've scanned for bad news, over-focused upon it, and overreacted to it, whoosh! That whole package, number four, is fast-tracked into emotional memory. Never forget. Once burned, twice shy. Lots of examples of that. For example, in relationships, negative interactions are more memorable than positive ones. Thus, attack ads in politics, negative advertising, people remember bad information about others more than positive information or good information about others. It's really easy for people to be trained in helplessness. You need many, many counter experiences to feel like a hammer instead of a nail. So, that's the fourth thing that happens, that fast-tracking, new emotional memory, while positive experiences, which tend to predominate in the lives of most people--unfortunate exceptions, of course--those are nice. There's a quantity effect for positive experiences but a quality effect for negative ones. So, that's number four. And then last, number five: The brain is designed to be sensitized to the negative through the stress hormone cortisol that's released when we're super stressed, running for our lives from saber-toothed tigers. But also, cortisol's released when we're stuck in traffic late for a meeting, or trying to get something done and the emails keep landing in our inbox, or someone is giving us that weird look across a dinner table, or dissed us in some ways, or we're worried about something. Hormones are released like cortisol, and then cortisol goes up in the brain, sensitizes the alarm bell of the brain, the amygdala, so now we're more reactive to the negative, and cortisol overstimulates and gradual kills neurons in a nearby part of the brain, the hippocampus, that puts things in perspective, inhibits the amygdala, calms down the alarm bell--the hippocampus does--and the hippocampus also inhibits the hypothalamus, a nearby region of the brain, that calls for stress hormones. So, in effect, the hippocampus tells the hypothalamus, "Enough stress hormones already. We don't need any more of that stuff." Well, that creates a vicious cycle, because stress today, releasing cortisol, sensitizes the brain to the negative and weakens our capacity to bounce back to become resilient in the face of the negative, which makes us more prone to negative experiences tomorrow, which sensitizes us further and makes us even more vulnerable to negative experiences the day after tomorrow and the day after that, and so forth. And there's no comparable process of neurohormonal sensitization to the positive. We have to work more at it. And you can kind of watch those five things happening inside you.

	Now, the key, of course, is to be able to watch them, to be able to observe them, and help yourself on three things. One: observe it when it's happening and step back from the process of being upset, irritated, frazzled, anxious, hurt, or blue; two, disengage from that process as fast as you can. Don't suppress it. If you go negative on negative, you just have more negative. But the trick is to step back from it and quite putting fuel on that fire. Quit looping through that resentful case against other people. Quit looping through that self-critical pounding on yourself, in part internalized from maybe your childhood. Stop doing that. And then third, you know, relatively quickly, pull out of this negative crud storm and start looking for, okay, all that negative stuff is true. Whatever's true about it is true about it. And also what's true... What are the positive things that are also true in the world around me, inside of my own character, inside of my own heart, the positive opportunities in the next moment? What can I do about this situation? What can I recognize in the bigger picture? What can I be grateful for? How can I feel loved and loving, even no matter what has happened for me today at work? You know, and then turn to those beneficial things, which are usually enjoyable, and really, really take a minute. For me, that's just a way to practice multiple times a day, any single time you do those three things, you know. Observe the upset, step back from it, second, disengage from it and stop fueling it, and third, replace the negative that you're releasing with some positive alternative to it that's authentic and legitimate. You know, every single time you do that, you know, it might take 30 seconds or three minutes, usually, or less at a time, it's not going to change your life. But the gradual accumulation of those moments of practice a few times a day, a handful of times a day, day by day by day, rather than doing what is typical for people, which is just marinating in the acid bath, if you do what I'm describing a handful of times every day, you'll feel different at the end of that particular day and you'll feel really different at the end of a week, and definitely different at the end of months of this kind of practice.

Matt:	So, changing gears a little bit, but I think this ties into what you were just talking about, share with me the concept of these two wolves.

Rick:	Oh, sure. This is a metaphor borrowed from a Native American teaching story, and it really speaks to the importance of what we do each day. I think people tend to focus on macro stuff, giant, you know, winning the lottery, getting the big promotion, like the huge stuff. But most of what life's about is the little stuff. So, in this teaching story, a woman is asked toward the end of your life, grandmother, "How did you become so happy? What did you do? How did you become so successful, so loved, and so wise? What did you do?" She paused and reflected and she said, "You know, I think it's because when I was young like you, I realized that in my heart were two wolves -- one of love and one of hate. And then, most important of all, I realized that everything depended upon which one I fed each day." That's the story, you know, and it speaks, of course, to the presence of the capacity, or even inclination toward, metaphorically speaking, the wolf of hate. You know, resentment, envy, ill will, aggression, even war, right? And what it also speaks to, though, more generally important, is the power of little things. In other words, we're constantly feeding the brain, in effect, one experience or another, right? And the question is, where do we rest our attention? Because neurons that fire together, that wire together, are absolutely turbocharged for what is in the field of focused attention, you know, in the larger background of conscious experience. There's lots of information processing in the nervous system that's unconscious, outside of awareness by its very nature, such as, you know, the deep software, as it were, for moving your arm to reach and pick up a cup of coffee, bring it to your lips without spilling it instead of down again. You know, we have no direct access to that underlying sensory motor software, as it were. But there's not much learning that happens, not much change, not much development or healing or growth in terms of the information flows in the nervous system that are outside of awareness. But we're designed to learn, as other animals are designed, we're designed to learn from our experiences, especially the experiences we bring focused attention to. That's, in part, one reason why it's so important to get regulation over attention, you know, rather than letting others around us grab it and pull it one way or another, or letting our attention be controlled by our habits. You know, if you think about it, the primary puppet masters in our life live inside our ears, you know, right between our ears, live inside our head, and that's where we're being controlled, you know, dragging our attention in one direction or another, much of which is negative, in terms of negative preoccupation. So, instead, I think it's really important to disengage from feeding and fueling the wolves of hate or hurt or anxiety or irrational worry or feelings of inadequacy or woulda-coulda-shoulda, second-guessing oneself, Monday morning quarterback. You know, stop feeding those wolves. If you attack those wolves, you just feed them, right? It's not about attacking them or suppressing them. It's about just not feeding them anymore, or stopping feeding them when you catch yourself feeding them. And in particular, feed the wolf pack of love or the wolf pack of resilience, grit, determination, feelings of self-worth, happiness, well-being, feelings of meaning and purpose in life, you know, taking the big picture of life into account. At the end of the lifespan, as others have pointed out, very few people think to themselves, "Damn, I should have worked more hours", "Darn, I should have improved my quarterly metrics." You know, that's not what people are thinking in the last years of their life. They're thinking about the people they've loved and the people that have loved them and the contributions that they've made and the good times that they've had and the meaning that they've been able to cultivate inside themselves, the meaning of life, sense of fulfillment in life altogether. That's what really, really matters most. So, let's feed those wolves and let's also feed the factors inside ourselves, the psychological, mental resources inside ourselves that help us feed those wolves and help us, you know, accomplish big things, helping ourselves and our career and our personal life, and helping the larger world as a result.

Matt:	I think that's such an important statement, that it's not about attacking or suppressing necessarily the negative feelings or the wolf of hate, but it's about kind of... What would you say? Acknolwedging them or just accepting them? 

Rick:	Yeah, that's right. That's that first thing I was saying of the three practices, you know. The first one is to be with what's there, but not identify with it -- in other words, not glued to the horror show on the movie screen, but popped back 20 rows, eating popcorn, sympathetically going "Whoa, that sucks!" But just that alone! Popping out of the movie, stepping back from it, observing it mindfully, being able to name it to yourself. "Wow, I'm so irritated right now. Wow, you know, I'm obsessing about this stupid little thing. Wow." You know, knowing for yourself what's really going on. That's critically important. And then stop fueling that fire, you know. It's not about fighting it or suppressing it. You gotta feel the feelings. You gotta experience the experience, you know, including the deeper, more vulnerable, often younger layers. But that's not enough. That's not enough. A lot of people overvalue just witnessing their experience, you know. They could give you a master's thesis on their neurosis, but they're as unhappy as ever. We also need to not fuel the negative and we just need to release it, and then, in particular, grow the positive. Yeah, I find that path to be one that I walk multiple times a day. Recognize that I'm irritated or contracted or driven or feeling "ugh", glum in some way; and then, second, not fueling it any further; and then, third, as appropriate and authentic, shifting, shifting into, turning toward the positive alternative, which is where I really want to sink my roots and make my home.

Matt:	Shifting the direction a little bit, Buddha's Brain...your book Buddha's Brain has an amazing and fascinating discussion of the concept of the self and whether it exists...

Rick:	Uh-huh. Going hardcore, Matt! This is good!

Matt:	[Laughs]

Rick:	You're not messing around here.

Matt:	Oh, definitely not. We like to dig deep on the Science of Success.

Rick:	Yeah.

Matt:	But, you know, kind of the concept of the self, whether it exists, and what its true nature is. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Rick:	That's a profound topic, obviously, and one that philosophers, mystics, psychologists have been really preoccupied with. I'll just say that... Maybe I'll just offer sort of the short version because it's huge. You know what I mean?

Matt:	Yeah, absolutely.

Rick:	For me, the short version is to, first of all, like a lot of thorny topics, get real clear about what the words mean. What do we mean by that deceptively short and simple, four-letter and one-syllable word "self", right? And I think, basically, there are two meanings of it, and it's very important to draw this distinction. The first meaning is the person altogether. You're a person, Matt. I'm a person. We're distinct from each other, you know? You're... The totality of your body-mind over time -- that's the person. It exists. It's real. It has duties. It has rights. It has responsibilities. It has moral standing. We're persons. There's no question about that. The other way, though, that the word "self" is defined is, in effect, to refer to a kind of entity inside us; a somebody looking out through our eyes; the agent of actions and owner of experiences; the "eye" behind the eyes, right? And then the question really becomes... There's no question about what the person is and the fact that persons are separate from each other, they have continuity and so forth. But is there actually such a being inside us looking through the eyes? That's a deep question. And in ordinary life, in Western...predominantly Western culture, there's an ongoing assumption that, yeah, there really is that little homunculus inside, that little entity inside. And yet if you look really closely at it in your own experience, you'll never find the complete package of the presumed eye. You will find many experiences in which there is a presumption implicit in the experience or the litte movies running inside your mind, the little inner chatter, that there is such an entity inside. You'll find presumptions of that entity and you'll often encounter a kind of sense of an eye, a sense of a subject; an intact, unified, enduring, independently arising subject somewhere inside yourself. You have a sense of it, but the sense of it is really different from it itself, and if you look closely, you'll never find the complete package. And if you look at the brain, neurologically, well, you can find a lot of localization of function for many, many things, you know, like moving your left little finger or recognizing the face of a friend or being able to comprehend language or, in other regions, produce language. There's a lot of localization of function for all kinds of things. There's no localization of function for that...for an eye inside ourselves. It's widely distributed, the neuroprocessing that supports the sense of eye, and you can do different...give people different things to do inside MRIs. And, you know, there's a lot of research literature about this. The basis for the sense of self is widely distributed in the brain and, second, it's throughout parts of the brain that do all kinds of other things, too. In order words, there's nothing special about the sense of eye, even though we feel we're so special, right?

So, what's the practical takeaway from all this? It really helps you take life less personally and move out of a contracted sense of being an ego and defending yourself or trying to glorify yourself or, you know, hold on to the status of this "me" inside, this eye inside; and instead of being so attached to the eye inside or defensive about it, taking things personally, you know, ruminating about, oh, how could you do that to me? What do you think about me? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And instead of doing that, just relax more, lighten up more, come into the fullness of your process as a person, person-ing over time, while, yeah, for sure, standing up for yourself, standing up for your person, yeah, taking responsibility as a person for your impact on others and inheriting the results of the stuff you did, good or bad, back in the day, yesterday or a year ago or when you were in college as a person, living with the results of your own actions as a person, sure. But meanwhile, you know... This is kind of summarized--I'll finish on this point--in a Southeast Aisan monk. It kind of makes more sense when you see it in writing, but you can get it just hearing it. He says, "Love yourself; just don't love your self." In other words, that's two words. And I think that summarizes a lot of teaching here. You know, stand up for yourself, but don't take life so personally.

Matt:	And one of my favorite concepts relating to the self that you discuss, and I know Alan Watts has talked tremendously about this concept as well, but it's the idea that the self does not have an independent existence.

Rick:	Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, if you think about it, everything inside ordinary reality arises due to causes. Now, maybe those causes can be traced back to arbitrary quantum-level processes in the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second of the Big Bang, right? Okay. But at that point, after the Big Bang-ed, you know, it's been causal and deterministic inside of ordinary reality ever since. So, you know, your body arises due to causes, and those causes are, you know, embedded in 600 million years of the evolution of the nervous system, embedded in another prior three billion years of life on this planet, you know, and in a universe that's about 13.7 billion years old.

So, the takeaway from that for some people can be a sense of despair. You know, like, there's no independence. Everything is interdependently arising. And yet what seems to happen... And this goes back to what I said in the very beginning about reverse engineering awakened mind or working backwards from very, very high levels of self-actualization and trying to understand what in the world is going on in the brain of somebody who's a peak performer at work and who also has a lot of inner peace, or is deeply realized in some remarkable sense. Enlightenment is more rare than an Olympic gold medal as best we can tell throughout history, certainly over the last hundred years, and yet it's clear that there are some people who really are enlightened. And they're different, but they still have bodies, right? They still have a reptilian nervous system...brain stem. What's going on in those brains?

So, my point about all this is that as people in their own movement down the path of awakening or personal growth over time... And definitely it's a report of people, ordinary human beings like us who are awakened or close to it, that as you come more and more into the felt recognition that your person-ing over time is a local ripple in a vast network of causes, you know. You are definitely... You, the person, are a unique wave in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to be sure, and yet what's happening in your life over your life span--you know, three score and ten years or hopefully even more than 70 years altogether--your local wave of livingness, Rick-ness over time, Matt-ness over time is just a local expression of a vast ocean of causes. And when people really get that in a felt way, it often starts intellectually. You realize, yeah, that is true.

But what's the feeling of it being true? As you come more and more into the feeling of it being true, you don't get despairing and depressed; you actually get kind of ecstatic, and it's really interesting. It's joyful and peaceful and you realize, wow, man, what's happening here locally is almost entirely outside of my control. I'm just doing the best I can in this moment of waving, right, of being a wave in the middle of the ocean; trying not to hurt other waves as best I can; trying to learn and grow from the currents moving through me in this moment; trying to help useful residues stick around; you know, keep some foamy lace, keep some seaweed that's really useful for me and this wave that I am in this moment. But what happens generally is people lighten up enormously. I certainly have. People start to feel when they relax this sense of being a brick somehow in life, you know, struggling with other bricks, [INAUDIBLE 00:43:12] as they go through their days, and instead realize, wow, we're all in this together. We're all waves in a vast ocean of causes. Yeah, I'm going to take care of my wave. Yeah, I want your wave to quit stealing my parking place or mistreating me in my relationship or my job. You know, there's a place for that. But when you start to hold on to this bigger picture... My expression is: Love the wave; be the ocean. You know, when you start experiencing more and more life as the whole tapestry of causes, as the whole ocean of causes, honestly, you get less stressed. You lighten up. You get less irritated with other people, and you start getting taken more and more profoundly into an underlying, unconditional inner peace. You're not... That's the observation, clearly, of people who have deepend in this form of practice over time, and it's clearly the case of people who are reporting back to us what it's like for them to feel completely identified with the ocean altogether while also recognizing that they have a body, they have a unique personhood and personal life, but it's embedded in the felt sense of being the whole ocean.

Matt:	That's so powerful and I really, really enjoy hearing that wisdom.

Rick:	That's great. Well, a little bit of it's my own. Most of it's not. Most of it is stuff I'm just passing along through me. But you're right. Maybe we're finishing up here, Matt, and I'll just say that I think that it's important to deal, obviously, with the needs, the demands, the ambitions of everyday life, the situations, the issues and so forth. Okay. But then the question becomes: Are we just treading water? Or are we using these experiences to learn and grow along the way? Are we exercising our superpower, as it were, of learning along the way? And, really, the super superpower is learning how to learn along the way. Are we applying those lessons as we go? And, really, along the way, treating yourself like you matter, you know. This life is rare and precious. As best most people know, this is the only life they're ever going to have. What's the line from Mary Oliver, the poet? Tell me, what shall you do with your own wild and precious life, right? And, you know, I think... Also, I was at a commencement recently and the dean was quoting from a poet who was quoted in the memorial service for a roommate of his in college who died young, and the poem comes from Raymond Carver, who also wrote detective stories, I learned. But anyway, I think the poem is very short. It goes: Did you get what you wanted from this life even so? I did. What was it? To call myself beloved, beloved on this Earth. That's an almost exact quote, and the opening question is so profound. Did you get what you wanted from this life even so? Right? And I think it's important to do that, to not just mark time, but to actually look for opportunities to feed yourself and grow yourself from the inside out along the way.

Matt:	Thank you for sharing that. That was amazing. And we'll include a link to that poem in the show notes as well.

Rick:	Oh, great. It's called... I think it's called "Late Fragment". Well, hey, maybe I can finish by quoting the Buddha or...

Matt:	Yeah, absolutely!

Rick:	...[INAUDIBLE 00:46:55] what the Buddha said, and it was very short and sweet. I think about this a lot and it's very central to our conversation about feeding the wolf of love and turning lots of ordinary, little experiences--you know, half a dozen of them or so over the course of the day--turning those into some kind of lasting value woven into the fabric of your nervous system. The quotation from the Buddha from the Dhammapada is: Think not lightly of good, saying, "It will not come to me." Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise one, gathering it little by litte, fills oneself with good.

Matt:	That's awesome. As we wrap up, one last time, where can people find you online if they want to learn more, if they want to find out more about everything that you've written and all the things that you've shared?

Rick:	Sure, my pleasure. Yeah, rickhanson.net. That's S-O-N, rickhanson.net. It's just a big treasure chest, honestly, of tons of freely-offered resources of various kinds. Talks, videos, slide sets and workshops, both short and long that I've taught, links to really good scientific papers in the public domain that are kind of like greatest hits, tons and tons of practical stuff. Also, I do a program online that is offered for free to anyone with financial need. Obviously, of course, if people can afford it, I'd love for them to pay for it, but it's an online program called The Foundations of Wellbeing, that is really about the fundamentals of applying positive neuroplasticity, the superpower, the "how" of self-help, applying those to growing 12 key inner strengths inside you that you can draw upon every day, hardwired into your own nervous system. So, check it out. Rickhanson--S-O-N--.net. And particularly check out this program, The Foundations of Wellbeing, that anyone can do online from anywhere in the world.

Matt:	Well, Rick, this has been a fascinating interview, and I know personally, I've learned a ton, and I've really enjoyed hearing from you, so I just wanted to say thank you so much for being on the show.

Rick:	Matt, it's been a pleasure and an honor, and hopefully what we've talked about will be of some use to people.

How To Put Your Body In Relaxation Mode, Reduce Stress, and Develop Body Awareness with International Yoga Expert Tiffany Cruikshank

In this episode we explore the boundary where eastern and western medicine meet with international yoga expert Tiffany Cruikshank – we discuss how cultivating body awareness can put your nervous system in “Relaxation mode,” how meditation impacts your metabolism, the lessons Tiffany has learned from more than 25k patient visits, and how to jump in and start yoga TODAY as we demystify and examine some of the science behind the practices of Yoga!

Tiffany is an international yoga teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years, an author, health and wellness expert, the founder of Yoga Medicine, and she is internationally known for her focus on fusing the two worlds of eastern and western medicine together and apply it to the practice of yoga in an accessible and relevant way. We discuss:

• How to put your body in "relaxation mode"

• The science behind the parasympathetic nervous system (and why its so important)

• How to cultivate a mind-body connection and develop body awareness

• How to get started simply and easily with yoga today

• The impact meditation has on your metabolism

• The differences between yoga and meditation

• The lessons Tiffany has learned in more than 25,000 patient visits

• And more!

If Yoga has interested you and you don’t know where to start - or you just want to learn how to become more relaxed - listen to this episode! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!). 

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• Tiffany Cruikshank's page on YogaGlo (see here).

• Tiffany Cruikshank's website, "Yoga Medicine" (see here).

• [Book] Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship) by Paramahansa Yogananda (see here).

• [Book] Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing by Yoga Journal and Timothy McCall (see here).

• [Science of Success Episode] Unleash The Power of Meditation (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we have another awesome guest on the show, Tiffany Crookshank. Tiffany’s an international Yoga teacher who has been teaching for over 20 years. An author, health and wellness expert, and the founder of Yoga Medicine. She’s also internationally known for her focus on fusing the two worlds of Eastern and Western medicine together, and applying it to the practice of Yoga in an accessible and relevant way.  Tiffany, welcome to The Science of Success.
Tiffany:	Thanks for having me, Matt.
Matt: 	Well, we’re super excited to have you on here. To kind of kick things off, I’m curious, tell me: How did you get started in the field of Yoga?
Tiffany:	I was actually really young. I was a little bit of trouble maker in my early teens and my parents sent me off to a wilderness rehab program, kind of to get me back into shape. It was a really empowering experience for me; learning how to survive, and there were herbalists out there that took me on plant walks and kind of taught me how to use the plants around me, and it kind of began my investigation into holistic health and really wanting to help others in health and wellness.
As soon as I got home I saw this little sign that said “Yoga” and a phone number. At the time there weren’t really any Yoga studios, and eventually I remembered, and I went. And, being an athlete- growing up and being really athletic- the physicality was really interesting to me, but there was always something kind of “more” that I don’t really know that I knew, or was really even conscious of at the time, but there was something really intriguing to me. And, as a fourteen-year-old girl at the time, it was these moments of also just being comfortable in my skin, but also being able to explore with my background. 
And in healthcare, as well, is kind of this intermingling of how Yoga can also be really an adjunct to our healthcare. 
Matt:	And, kind of dove-tailing off of that, tell me a little about how your unique blend of sort of Western science and Eastern medicine helps inform your study of Yoga.
Tiffany:	Once I got really interested in Yoga and herbal medicine, I quickly finished up my high school and started college at sixteen, and went off to college and did my premed in nutrition, and then went off to Chinese medicine school. I was really intrigued by how the art of Chinese medicine, and this kind of ideal balance and health; and did my Chinese medicine and then went off to do a specialty in sports medicine and orthopedics.
When I started seeing patients, one thing I noticed really quickly was that the people, the patients who came and saw me- I had many of them who were Yoga students as well- got better so much quicker than my patients who weren’t Yoga students. And so one day, finally, a light went off and I was like, “Well, maybe I should start giving some- what I called at the time- Yoga prescriptions to my patients who were not Yoga students”. And I did, and it was usually only one to three poses that they would do each day on their own for a few minutes, and found that their response was really great. Their response to my treatments improved and things seemed to be going a lot easier. So I… over time, over the past twelve years or so of running teacher trainings, I’ve slowly integrated that into what I do training other teachers.
One thing that I’ve always enjoyed as a healthcare practitioner, as well as a Yoga teacher, is for me what’s really important is people understanding how things work. We know now the power of the mind and how important it is in health and healing, and then being able to bring that into our work, whether as patients or students, just in this understanding in how East and West meet. How we can kind of look at this Eastern philosophy of Yoga, or Chinese medicine, in a Western mental context, and kind of bring in anatomy and physiology. Not only to make it more effective, potentially, but also really so that our students and patients are- or my students and patients at the time could really make sense of it. I really think that’s an important part of your body’s ability to integrate, and also respond to treatments. 
Matt:	So, I’m a total novice about this. I’ve taken like one Yoga class in my entire life. What kind of differentiates Yoga from other forms of exercise?
Tiffany:	You know, I’d say the biggest thing is… especially now because Yoga’s changing and there’s so much that’s getting pulled into this modernized Yoga, which is great, but I think the big over-arching theme is this “mindfulness”. You know, that it’s not just calisthenics or cross training- which we do see a lot of cross training stuff in Yoga now, and Pilates and calisthenics- and it really is a mindfulness that’s over-arching it. There’s a purposeful awareness of the body and the breath. And, this kind of “orchestration” of how the mind and the body connect, and reconnecting that awareness in the body. And, as a healthcare practitioner, I think it’s really big part of using Yoga in the medical sci- kind of, communities, because it’s, for me, the foundation of working with patients. You know, it’s really difficult, as a healthcare provider, to work with people who have no body awareness. Right? To come in and be like, “I don’t know, my shoulder just hurts,” and not be able to answer any questions. One of the great things, if nothing more- and I think there’s a lot more to it than this- that Yoga just gives you this body awareness that I think is helpful both within your context of your relationship with your doctors, but also as kind of like an owner’s manual to your unique body. Whether that’s finding a diet that works for you, or finding an exercise protocol that works for you, or so many other things, you know? So that we can really notice, “What is this mindful awareness that is Yoga?” in some context, outside of our Yoga practice as well. 
Matt:	Tell me more about the concept of body awareness.
Tiffany:	Yeah, I mean, it’s just a general phrase that we use to talk about really becoming intimate with the experience of sensations that happen under your skin. Which, really isn’t very different form meditation. I’m a huge fan of meditation, and I think meditation can be- it is a part of Yoga, it is a branch of Yoga as well, but it’s this ability to translate that into movement; into how we are in our world and our relationships; to be able to feel the sensations in my feet when I’m standing or hanging out in the grocery line; or to be able to feel this experience in maybe my back even, while I’m sitting at my desk. And, you know, body awareness to me also implies a lack of judgement. Yes, you know, obviously we want to be able to take these cues in Yoga and be able to move away from pain, and stay safe in our world and our lives, but there’s also this ability just to observe and to notice how these things influence us. 
One of the pillars of Yoga philosophy is this ability to kind of… what we talk about is soften the fluctuations of the mind. These ups and downs. You know, the high points and the low points, so that we can find some place in the middle where we can really just be reflective and be able to notice. Whether that’s body sensations, or meditating, or playing with our family.
Matt:	So, meditation is something that I’m a huge advocate of, and we’ve had a number of episodes and guests in the past talk about meditation. One of the questions- or one of the things I’m really curious about- and you just touched on it is: How does Yoga sort of relate to meditation? And also, how is it different from meditation.
Tiffany:	Well, I think, first off, most people in the Yoga world would agree that meditation is a part of Yoga; is a type of Yoga. Though, now-a-days meditation can kind of live in its own world sometimes, as well. I don’t think you have to- many people think of Yoga as the Asanas, or the physical postures that we put our bodies into, but meditation is, to most people in the Yoga world, considered a branch of Yoga. 
In really traditional Yoga, the way it’s been taught in the past, is that the first step is really learning the Asanas. These physical postures: downward facing dog, or upward facing dog, or triangle pose. With Yoga medicine we do a lot of training our teachers of how to apply this as more… not physical therapy per say, but more of a physical practice to be able to tune the body in a way that’s more therapeutic. The whole purpose of the Yoga then was to create this sense of body awareness, but also comfort in our bodies. Which, you know, is a constant fine-tuning process as our bodies change depending on the circumstances we put them in, but it allows us to kind of train the body to be able to sit. And, the next step would be the breathing practices. So, the breathing practices are made to train the nervous system so that eventually the final practice is meditation. 
Traditionally the Asanas, the physical postures, are really kind of like… you could think of them like the gateway to mediation. Some traditionalists might say, “If you’re able to meditate and sit, great! Maybe you don’t need the physical postures. Maybe you don’t need the Yoga.” I think, in our modern world, that all of it has different important things. You know, this was back in a time when the purpose of Yoga was to become enlightened. I think there’s many translations of what that might mean in a modern day context as well, but I think the different branches of Yoga- the physical, the breathing, and the meditation- all provide us with very different things that all feed off of each other as well. 
Matt:	And that reminds me of the book, Autobiography of a Yogi, which he kind of talks about the concept of Yoga, which was written many, many years ago and really today seems more like he’s talking about meditation than Yoga. I guess I’d never really conceived of it as that meditation’s essentially a type of Yoga. In which case, then I practice every day. 
Tiffany:	Yeah, that’s an old school text. I mean, there’s some far out stuff in there. My first [00:13:03] was actually from the yogananda lineage, which is “Autobiography of a Yogi”, and I think a lot of it’s still very relevant as well, but it is looking at the meditation, and a lot of the older practices. The oldest practice of Yoga they can find really is around meditation. Before they started to see the Asanas- the physical postures- coming about.
Matt:	So, focusing a little bit on the Asana side of the equation, what are some of the health benefits that you see from people who practice Yoga on a regular basis?
Tiffany:	Well, I think in a modern context the physical practice is really relevant because… one big thing, I think many of us are sitting in desks for long periods, or maybe in cars, or maybe that’s carrying babies around, or kids around. We have very awkward scenarios that we do, and maybe your job is very different from that, but we have repetitive movements that we have to create, whether you’re an athlete or a desk worker, that have our bodies really changing to accommodate this. And you know, this experience in our body, the sensations, really change how we see the world around us. They change our perspective. They change how we both interact with ourselves as well as the people around us. So, I think just the physical postures themselves, if nothing more than to just feel more comfortable in your body, is a really important part of that.
We look at this ability to have balance of both elasticity of the soft tissues. The ability to be pliable and have the right amount of range of motion, but also strength in the tissues to stabilize and support the joints for the integrity of the long-term health of the joints. To me, I think Yoga for most people, because whether they’re an athlete or a desk worker, we have very repetitive movement that we do, or stationary postures that we take, that Yoga kind of challenges us to move in new ways. Which, when we look at it from a physical medicine standpoint is really important. That our bodies are moved and challenged and stretched and strengthened in different ways so that the deeper structures of the joint aren’t getting worn, or irritated, over time from constant movement in the same patterns. I think there’s a lot more to it, but I think that’s one big part of it for the physical practice.
Again, I’m sure as a meditator yourself, there’s this sense of when you can sit more comfortably, and a lot of the Yoga postures are focused around hip openings so that there’s this ability to sit comfortably so that you can meditate. So that you’re mind’s not constantly going, “Ah my back! My back! My back!” There’s these moments of just being able to sit comfortably.
Matt:	And I think that… going back to the idea of many people today are sort of knowledge workers, or desk workers, there’s a phrase that gets thrown around that “sitting is the new smoking”. So, it seems like Yoga may be a really beneficial tool to help your body recover from the fact that you’re sort of have these repeated stresses again and again of sort of sitting, typing, that kind of thing. 
Tiffany:	Absolutely. One of the things we really love- I love to teach our teachers, and we really specialize in with Yoga medicine, is really fine-tuning it for the individual. So if there are physical injuries, or repetitive motions, or illnesses, that the practice really should be applied in a very different way for each person. That really not only helps with the physical therapy side of things, but also really this mind-body connection.
The breath, the nervous system, the ability to kind of retrain how the nervous system perceives both stimulus, as well as our awareness of ourselves in our bodies, and our awareness of ourselves in the world around us. And this regulation of parasympathetic tone, which is so- I mean, gosh we could talk another hour just on that- and how important that is in the Yoga, both in the effects we see so much in the research now in Yoga- a lot of it is really looking at how it affects the parasympathetic nervous system.  We know that the parasympathetic nervous system really has effects on this global system of the body, whether we’re talking organs, or muscles, or cognitive function. And, so we see pretty potent effects from that work as well.
Matt:	Dig in a little bit more about the concept of the parasympathetic nervous system. That’s not something that we’ve talked about before on the podcast, and I’m sure listeners would love to kind of understand that concept fundamentally. And also, maybe some of the research behind how that’s related to Yoga. 
Tiffany:	Yeah, it’s actually something we’ve known for a long time, and many people probably have taken anatomy and physiology in college, or otherwise probably have learned about it at some point. These simple such systems of the nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is broken down into parasympathetic and sympathetic. It’s getting a lot more hype in the media, on the internet now, but this idea, the sympathetic is really more of the fight-or-flight, and the parasympathetic is this relaxation mode. What’s important though, is the fight-or-flight was really designed to get us out of trouble. When there was a bear coming we would run really quickly, or maybe in a modern day context lifting a car off of someone, potentially. These really serious significant situations where our body releases stress hormones to really help us respond to significant situations by putting more energy and blood in our muscles. By taking it out of the organs to really deal with this acute stressor. What that means though is that all of the other functions of the body are really put off for a while; they’re put on hold. So, it’s really helpful at the time, but when our bodies need to slow down and do things like digest our food, extract nutrients, sleep at night, heal, repair, detoxify. All these really important processes that happen inside the organs, inside the body that we don’t see, that we don’t really feel so much, need to happen in that parasympathetic mode, and do happen during that parasympathetic mode. 
So, it’s an interesting conundrum, I think, because in our modern world we’re so focused on our to-do list, right? We all are. I am the same. We’ve got things we’re trying to accomplish each day, or maybe our goals even potentially for the year, or our lifetime. We’re constantly checking off what we’ve done, and it’s really difficult to check off- who puts on their to-do list, “Today I did nothing?”; “Today I just sat and relaxed”, but  the reality is that time when we slow down, that time when we’re relaxing a little bit more- whether that’s still doing a little bit of work on our computer or not- but those times when we can find that relaxation mode is when our bodies can actually take care of themselves and start to process, not only nourishment, but also elimination of waste or toxins in the body that you need to get rid of. So it’s a really malleable part of our bodies that happen internally that we don’t see, and so it’s hard to put a value on them. You know, it’s hard to say, “Gosh, I really need to spend more time just relaxing.” I think many of us are getting that now as we start to understand how important stress is, but when we look at the nervous system and this parasympathetic versus sympathetic, being able to relax is really important. I like to think of it like a light switch, it should be something where our bodies can flip back and forth just like flipping a light switch from going and doing and creating, which is also a very important mode- sympathetic mode is still also significant- but then we should be able to flip right back into parasympathetic. That’s where we often run into trouble is we lose what we call “parasympathetic tone”, which is just like a muscle in the body that needs to be built up through learning, and training, and really experiencing this relaxation mode over and over again so that our bodies can flip back and forth from our worktime day, to being able to sleep at night, to slowing down to eat, to slowing down during our day for those moments of relaxation where the body can really nourish itself. Just a simple Yoga practice can be great at that, it doesn’t really need to be anything fancy.
Matt:	So, Yoga is a potential tool that you can use to kind of build that parasympathetic muscle…
Tiffany:	Absolutely, and I think just having body awareness. It starts to tune the nervous system in to what’s happening inside of the body versus all of these external stimulus. Which is part of the traditional path of Yoga is to take your mind away from all these distracting stimulus to be able to draw it to one point so that whether you’re trying to focus on your work and improve cognitive function, you’re able to focus on the one thing at hand, or be able to relax and allow your body to digest. There’s this sense of pulling our body awareness into itself so that our bodies can focus on what’s important. 
The body awareness within a Yoga practice of just being able to show up to Yoga class- whatever class that might be. Or, maybe you’re working with a teacher and lie on your back and go from- maybe you’ve gone from a long day at work and you lie on your back and all of a sudden you notice it: “Wow, I was really tense.” It’s not so much about having to relax, but part of it is just noticing those sensations, “Wow, I really hold a lot of tension here all day long.” Before the nervous system can change it has to notice that there’s something wrong. So, the body awareness is the foundation of that, and then learning what it feels like to relax; learning this parasympathetic response-this relaxation response- through even just gentle Yoga practices, restorative poses, yin practices, breathing practices. Meditation, obviously, is a part of retraining the parasympathetic nervous system. However, for people who are maybe more tense, or stressed out, or unable to relax, it can be much harder to start in meditation, for many people. 
Matt:	So, that dovetails into another question I had about the different types of Yoga, and I’ve done a single bikram Yoga class before, for example. I’ve done one or two sort of regular Yoga classes. What are the different sorts of Yoga practices, and are there different benefits from the different types? Or, I guess, could you kind of go into that a little bit? 
Tiffany:	Absolutely, I mean there’s a lot of difference from one style to another. There’s the more vigorous styles of “bikram” or “hot Yoga”, “vinyasa Yoga”, “power Yoga”, ashtanga Yoga, which are really more movement based, definitely more strength based and, and more active, I guess, then some of the other forms. Definitely within those they’re going to have different attributes. I’d say, for someone who’s looking for more active practice, who feels like movement is really helpful for them… I like to teach my teachers a brainy understanding of why and how to use things, but with my patients and my students, and my teachers as well, I think one thing is really important- of utmost importance- is that you recognize how your body feels both during and after these practices to know how to apply it. 
So, if you go to an ashtanga or a vinyasa class, or one of these more vigorous classes; bikram class; and you feel really tired afterwards, it might be that your body really just needs something more mellow. People who need to move, who’ve got to let some energy out and need to exercise, often feel really invigorated after a really vigorous movement based practice. But, obviously there’s differences between teachers and levels, and each one of those. So, if you’re new to Yoga and you just want to start with it, find a place that offers some beginner’s classes to help you learn the proper alignment and form and things… and just trying one out to find one that you like. 
There’s the other side of it, which is more the relaxation side of it, which is more mellow practices for people who need to destress, who need to relax, who need, in many ways, more of the parasympathetic stuff that we talked about. Restorative Yoga is one where you’re using a lot of props to support the body so that you can really relax and notice the breath; notice the sensations. Yin Yoga is a type of Yoga where poses are held for three to five minutes in order to really affect the connective tissue. Which is really great for range of motion; for people who are really tight. And then there’s pranayama practices that really focus on the breathing. And then all sorts of combinations in between there. 
There’s many different styles. Iyengar’s a great one; Iyengar’s also very alignment based. Kind of more of a set system developed by a man named “Iyengar”, and is very alignment focused. Hatha Yoga is kind of a general term for really any of the Asana practices, but also can be used as a term for more moderately paced that have some movement, and also some relaxation and body awareness, which can be like a nice middle ground if you’re not sure where to begin. But, I really recommend that people sample out; not only teachers because every teachers going to be slightly different, as well as styles. And if you’re new, to try and find beginner friendly classes because it is helpful to get a little extra insight. There’s so many people practicing Yoga now days that the intermediate classes often skip over a lot of the beginning stuff assuming that people know that and have heard it. Then you ever really feel like you understand it. It’s nice to kind of understand what you’re doing first in a beginner class, or even just working one-on-one with a teacher for a little while, but there’s a lot of variation out there within those as well. 
Matt:	And that’s something personally, I’ve felt a little bit of… almost “overwhelm” of being interested in Yoga, but also being like, “Well, I don’t know if this class, or that class, is the class I should take.” I’m curious, for someone who’s listening… or someone like me, even, who maybe wants to get started, but hasn’t really ever done it, what is the best first step for somebody to take?
Tiffany:	I would say just to be really simple. If you’re looking for something more active, I’d look for something that’s vinyasa based; that’s kind of a very big category of Yoga that you can find in most places. If you’re looking for something more mellow, looking for more restorative or yin. Then just searching Yoga in your area and reading the descriptions. I think you learn a lot from someone’s bio. The beauty of Yoga now days is in most places there’s a lot of options, so you can find a teacher who sounds interesting to you. But, it should be enjoyable to some extent, though it might be more difficult and challenging, whether that’s to relax or to,  in the more vigorous classes too; in a physical sense.
Find something that feels helpful to you, which is going to be very different from one person to another, and to kind of let your gut guide you on that one.
Matt:	In terms of other exercise styles; other types of exercise; would you say there’s certain things that maybe work well in conjunction with Yoga? Or certain things that you might want to gravitate towards?
Tiffany:	There’s a lot of different takes on that. I think, you know, I do a lot with athletes and training teachers to work with athletes. I think it’s – for any sport- can be a really great adjunct because most sports have repetitive motions, or injuries associated with them, and working through different ranges of motion, restoring range of motion, as well as working the smaller-maybe deeper-muscles that really help to stabilize a joint in a different way than they would in their sport-kind of like a cross training mentality- can be really helpful. We see a lot of help with Yoga as cross training for athletes.
You know, if you have a specific sport, especially if you’re high caliber athlete, or you have a really specific injury, I think you really should be working one-on-one with a teacher so that it can really be accommodated to your unique body. If you can find someone who can work with you one-on-one that’s always preferred, especially for specific things, but you get a lot out of a group class as well. Being able to just go through a general practice; that can be helpful too. 
As far as specific exercise, I think it’s nice to find what you like. Something I really believe in as a healthcare provider is that I always encourage my patients to find something they enjoy. I think exercise is more valuable, in a health sense, if you can enjoy doing it. The benefits of it will be much more than if you’re one of those people that just feels like they’ve got to go pound the pavement for however any miles a day, and they feel like that’s just what they have to do to lose weight. But, there is some benefit from the enjoyment of something. Whatever that exercise might be. 
Matt:	As an experienced Yoga instructor, when you see people starting out, what do you typically see people struggle the most with?
Tiffany:	I think the hardest thing is the unfamiliarity with it. Most people come and do Yoga class, and especially nowadays that Yoga has become so popular and common; most people, when they’re new, they go into Yoga class-and maybe even a beginner class-and they’re surrounded by people who know the words; they know the names; they’re comfortable. They have their Yoga clothes on and they’re comfortable. Someone who’s new might come in in shorts and a tee shirt and not really be able to move so well. It’s finding clothes that are comfortable to move around in, which doesn’t really necessarily have to be spandex, but something that’s comfortable for you to move around in. You know, it’s getting comfortable. 
If it’s a vigorous class-sweating-not everyone loves sweating. And then most people who come to Yoga are a little bit tighter, and though it’s really not about being flexible, it’s kind of being okay with not being the best in the room, and not having to touch your toes. Not having to do the pose this perfect way, but being able to just kind of not worry about what the people are doing around you, and listen and tune in to your body, and breathe, and be in the experience rather than be distracted by all of the things around you. To just allow yourself to enjoy it as it is; to not have to be able to do the poses a certain way, but be able to really appreciate the experience for whatever that might be as a beginner. Whether that’s even just starting to understand what they’re saying and looking around and kind of figuring it out, and then getting more comfortable with it. That takes, for some people, a few classes, for some people, many classes. For most people, though, even just after one or two classes they’re starting to get the hang of it and feel more comfortable there. 
Matt:	Tell me a little bit about the concept of Yoga medicine.
Tiffany:	For me, as a healthcare provider, I saw a really big gap. I really wanted to- I saw a lot of other healthcare providers wanting to provide Yoga to their patients. I think it’s a great adjunct to so much. I think our medical system is so overwhelmed by people with pain, in particular, but also ongoing care. People, even with a physical therapist, often only go for four to ten visits, and that’s a lot more than they go to their doctors or anyone else they see, potentially. Even as an acupuncturist, there’s something really great about having continuous care with people as a Yoga teacher, or sending them off to have continuous care with a Yoga teacher- with someone who can check in with them on knowing that Yoga is really great because our health is not an endpoint, it’s a constant state of fluctuation depending on the circumstances we’re in, our environment, our work, our families; emotionally. So it’s a nice kind of ability to have these tune-ups for our lives; for our health.
As a healthcare provider I saw the biggest missing link there was for people to be able to find Yoga teachers that they could refer to. In the Yoga world, it’s fantastic now, we have so many different types of Yoga and so many great things out there, but as a healthcare provider I’ve always wanted to send my patients to someone who could talk to them on a- in a Western sense. Who understood the anatomy and the physiology, and was going to be able to work with their unique body rather than- maybe as a doctor you might send someone to a Yoga teacher, they might end up going and chanting. Which could be great too, could be very helpful, but I think as a doctor you want to have some idea of who you’re sending them to.
My whole purpose with Yoga medicine was to create some kind of continuity; of reliability; for a resource for doctors to be able to refer their patients to; to work with them on an ongoing sense. Especially now that we have so much research around the effects of Yoga on the nervous system, on disease and illness and injuries, and the body in general. For me, the really big missing link was them being able to have a referral source. 
So, on our website we’ve got our “find a teacher” site where people can go and type in their zip code, and it’s really transparent. They can see all the teachers around them; they can see exactly the training they’ve completed with us so that if they have a shoulder injury, or their patient has a shoulder injury, they can find a teacher who’s done the shoulder module. They can see exactly what they’ve studied and how much they’ve trained with us, and where they are, and how to get ahold of them. We’ve got over a thousand teachers on there, or so now, all over the world. So, o it’s a really great resource for people to connect with teachers more one-on-one. Which, in a medical sense, as a healthcare provider, it’s really difficult to be like, “Just go to a Yoga class”, because as you know now, from this talk so far, there’s a huge expanse of differentiation between different types of Yoga practices, and one might be really helpful for your patient, and one might be not helpful- it might even make things worse, potentially. I think for the most part Yoga’s going to help many people in a general sense, but when you have a significant injuries or illnesses, or high caliber athletes really wanting results and needing help, I think it’s really important to have someone you can work with one-on-one who also is really familiar with the body from both an Eastern and a Western perspective.
Matt:	Within your practice, what results- or maybe some specific examples, or stories, of things that you’ve seen- from prescribing people Yoga, for lack of a better term?
Tiffany:	I’ve used it for a lot of different things. Most of my specialty is in sports medicine, so most of what I’ve worked with has been injuries. I was at the Nike World Headquarters for six years or so and started their acupuncture program there, and taught Yoga there. So a lot of it has been with orthopedic injuries, physical injuries, but definitely seen people with long-term sleep problems; I’ve worked with people with fertility issues; athletes. I lived in New York for a while and saw all sorts of interesting celebrities and things. I would say 70% of my practice, though, is orthopedics. People with back pain is a big part. Anything from herniated discs, to chronic lower back pain that’s been undiagnosed; hip issues; surgical patients who have had a lot of surgeries and not been able to find any relief there. I’ve seen, I think, 25,000 or so patient visits over the past 12 years or so.
Matt:	Wow!
Tiffany:	Yeah. It’s been a big mix.
Matt:	You also touched on-a moment ago- the research, and some of the science behind the effects of Yoga on the body. I was wondering if you could share a few of the findings, or some of your favorite examples that you’ve seen…
Tiffany:	A lot of my current res- the work that I’ve been doing really looking at research lately has been really around meditation; because of my latest book on meditation. Really, to be honest, the research that we see around the actual physical practice is actually much less. Most of the research is around really simple things like breathing practices and meditation, and really its effects on anything from eating disorders, to people’s experience going through cancer protocols- really more of the side effects, to  eating disorders-bulimic, bulimia- anxiety, depression… there’s a lot of them. 
I think recently I’ve been looking-and really interested in- a lot of the research around how meditation really affects our relationship, both to food and to metabolism. My book, “Meditate Your Weight”, is really about how meditation affects the metabolism, and not just the obvious one. I think the big part is looking at how it affects the nervous system for the parasympathetic mode. That stress response is a big part of the cortisol release, and really intimately influences the metabolism and how our bodies hold on to fat, or release fat, in the body. But also, a lot of the research that we’ve seen around people’s relationship to food and how we eat, and how we feed ourselves. Looking at research around people who have eating disorders like bulimia and their ability to do a really simple practice like meditation, where they’re just simply noticing, without judgement, without any desire to fix or change. Just starting to notice our natural tendencies. Research around people’s food choices and how having the regular meditation practice can really influence that.
There’s a lot around meditation. In fact, you’re probably familiar with it. I definitely would say there’s less around the physical practice, which is coming. We’re actually starting. We’ve just hired someone at Yoga Medicine from Brown University who is leading our own research branch within Yoga medicine where we’re running our own research experiments looking at more the physical practice of Yoga because that is definitely an area where research is lacking comparatively to meditation. I think it’s time for it to come of age.
Matt:	For listeners who are curious about meditation, we have done a very in depth episode on it in a podcast in the past so that’s definitely something to check out. We also had a great interview with a meditation teacher and entrepreneur, Vishen Lakhiani. So, if those are things that you’re interested in, I highly recommend checking both of those episodes out.
I’m also curious, Tiffany, tell me a little bit about how meditation impacts metabolism. That’s something I’m fascinated with. 
Tiffany:	The first part was what I was just mentioning around the connection to the parasympathetic response, and the stress response, and the cortisol release. You would see a lot around the cortisol and insulin response, and how our holds on to fat. How it really tells our body how to process the food that we take in. There’s a big part of it around that simple response that I’ve already talked quite a bit around, the parasympathetic response, which is really tied into that stress response, and the cortisol, and the hormonal response of stress, in both an acute and a chronic sense. As we start to get into more of that stress response, which is the sympathetic response, the fight-or-flight mode that I talked about before, we see this release of cortisol, this release of insulin, and how our body then starts to hoard fat and hold onto fat. It has a very difficult time releasing fat. And by fat, I’m talking about adipose tissue, not to be confused with the fat that we eat, but also how we process the fat that we eat. So, by really teaching the body to kind of steer clear of that stress response; that chronic stress response. I found for myself- my first book was on optimal health, it was called “Optimal Health for a Vibrant Life” and it was really looking at Yoga and nutrition home remedies, and a lot of the things I’d used with my patients, and one thing I found afterwards-after working with people for a while with that- was that there was a pretty good segment of people who were seeming to really do all the right things. With the internet, and media now, we have so much access to eating well and exercising, but that weren’t really changing; that weren’t able to lose weight; weren’t able to feel healthy. I think, for me what I noticed was that a big part of it, in my experience was one, the stress- there was this common theme of stress in many of those people- with most of those people- and their ability of then to kind of slow down and relax and integrate this parasympathetic response.
The beauty of meditation for me is that it’s not just that. There’s this very physical, chemical component to it of looking at the regulation of the nervous system and the stress response, and cortisol and insulin, but what we’re looking at, really primarily, is not just that but really how we relate to food. How we nourish ourselves. This mindfulness that meditation allows us to really examine, “Why am I eating this?” You know, to even just to take a second before you sit down for a meal and notice how you feel. Notice what you need in your body. It sounds kind of esoteric and vague, but to be able to check in and notice, “Do I need to eat this plate of sugar or bread”, or whatever it might be? “Is this going to feel good?” “How do I feel after I eat?” Again, the key is really without judgement. They have actually done a lot of research around this ability to slow down and savor food, and feel more satisfied connected with a meditation practice, and helping us understand what real physical hunger and fullness feel like. Dealing with things like cravings; helping us just look at those cravings that come up and notice what it is our body is actually needing.
To me, meditation also really helps people- there’s so many diets out there, and it really helps people understand for themselves what’s really helping. This concept of eating the right diet is really more of a brainy mentality versus actually experiencing what feels best in my body, because there’s a diet that works for everyone. Knowing which one to choose can be a lot. So, really understanding not only that, but our relationship to food, our relationship to our body image; how we see ourselves. This concept pf people that have been really overweight for a long time, and lose weight. Maybe they had to shift to go through a doorway or move differently in their day, and they still move in those patterns. The counter side of that is people who can’t lose weight, who can’t wrap their head around this new concept of change; this concept of them in a different body weight. So, looking at our self-concept, how we see ourselves, what we expect of ourselves… and it’s very different than going through counseling- which is fantastic; I think very helpful; but it’s this common thread of being able to observe without judgement, without having to fix. Without even having to change, but being able to see how our habits- how they reflect on our bodies and our minds, and our spirit. To have the option to change if we want, or not, if it feels like it’s something we don’t want to change, or isn’t helpful. But, the option just to be able to observe.
I think there’s multiple layers to how meditation really influences us. Not only for our metabolism, but for health in general, which is always to me of the utmost importance. More important than anything is just: How do we feel better? How do we allow ourselves to be healthier and more functional, and more connected to the people around us?
Matt:	Really insightful, thank you so much for sharing that. I think that was an amazing description of not only the power of meditation, but also specifically in the context of health, and body image, and eating.
What would one piece of homework be that you would give to somebody listening to this episode? 
Tiffany:	I think, with our understanding, we’ve talked a lot about the nervous system on this call. With our understanding of the nervous system that we’ve talked about- with the parasympathetic mode and the sympathetic- one of the most important things we start to learn now with this concept of neuroplasticity-which is simply the concept that the brain and the nervous system can change. We used to think that once they were created- the neural connections were created in the body that was it. Now we know that they can change, what’s really important to that, whether you’re practicing Yoga, or meditation, or just starting to be more mindful in your day, is that we do it really regularly. So, whether you find a Yoga pose that you like, or a meditation practice that you like, the small things that you do really regularly- meaning every day, even if that’s for three or five minutes a day- are going to be much more significant, much more powerful in whatever kind of change or transformation you’re looking for, or healing process you’re looking for, or health, will be much more impactful than the things that you do for long periods of time infrequently. So, whether it’s something really simple like lying on you back for a few minutes every evening when you get home from work, and just taking a few minutes to just breathe deeply. To maybe count inhale for four counts and exhale for four counts, and just take a moment to relax and allow your body to kind of slow down.  Maybe it’ll help with your sleep, or just your ability to relax, or how you feel in your body; or maybe that’s meditating. But, to find just a few minutes that you can tap into that a day will be much more helpful than just going to one Yoga class a week or a month. But, the Yoga class once a week or a month can be a great way for you to learn that process, as well. So, small things done regularly make a big impact. Finding something that you can daily is really helpful.
Matt:	And what are some other books and resources you’d recommend listeners check out who want to dig in and do some more homework about this topic?
Tiffany:	There’s one that’s a really great book called Yoga as Medicine, which is a great book. There’s an orthopedic doctor who talks about using Yoga for different remedies. There’s- gosh, there’s so many Yoga books, I’m not really sure even where to begin, but that’s probably a good one that comes to mind. One of the things I really like to reinforce with people is that there can be this barrier of feeling like you have to learn a lot, or know a lot, before you start things. I’m such a big fan of the “just do it”-not just cause I worked at Nike- like, jump in and start trying it and see what works for you. I wouldn’t say there’s any specific books that stand out. There’s so many now, I’d kind of go and kind of graze through the shelves and see what you like, but more importantly I would go and experience the classes and find something you like so that you get out of the brainy mentality and really into your body.
Matt:	It’s all about that body awareness.
Tiffany: 	Yeah, I think its key. We spend a lot of time at our computers, and in our brains, and I’m such a huge fan of books and reading- I’ve got so many- but, I think for many people in the modern day world, getting away from that and just getting into your body can be more helpful. 
Matt:	Where can people find you online?
Tiffany:	All of my information is on justtheyogamedicine.com website. Most of our social media’s under Yoga Medicine as well. They can follow us on Instagram, or Facebook, or… mostly those two, I guess. On the Yoga Medicine website we’ve got a “find a teacher” tool there for patients, or students, or doctors, as a reference, and all sorts of information on there as well… articles and things for people.
Matt:	Awesome! Well, Tiffany, thank you so much for being a guest on the show, and I know listeners are going to have a ton of really informative takeaways about Yoga and meditation from this interview.
Tiffany:	Thank you, Matt. It was great to chat.

How to Get Rocket Fuel for Your Success, Bend Reality, and Achieve Happiness, With Vishen Lakhiani, Founder of Mindvalley

Learn to think like some of the greatest creative minds of our time - to question, challenge, and create new rules for your ideas of success, happiness, and much more with Vishen Lakhiani. Vishen shares incredible strategies to redefine your life and success on your own terms in this episode of The Science of Success.

Vishen is an entrepreneur, best-selling author and speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, a learning experience company serving three million students, subscribers and followers worldwide.

His book, The Code of The Extraordinary Mind, a New York and LA Times best seller, blends evolutionary biology and computational thinking, providing a new framework for identifying, questioning and redefining beliefs to understand and enhance the human self. The book also draws knowledge from the world's leading thinkers such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Peter Diamandis, Ken Wilber, Arianna Huffington and more.

If you’re looking for something to take yourself to the next level, break through barriers, and achieve your dreams, listen to this episode immediately.

Vishen and I discuss:
-How language shapes reality and controls your understanding of the world
-How to uncover the “bullshit rules” making you unhappy in life
-How to set “ends goals” instead of “means goals"
-How to cultivate “rocket fuel” for your success
-How to live a life of “Blissipline” (and why that’s important)
-How to set and accomplish huge goals without having you happiness anchored to them
-How to combat the fear that “I Am Not Enough"
-How to live life as though everything is rigged in your favor
-And Much More!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

• The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms by Vishen Lakhiani (Amazon Link here).

• Free Lessons From The Code of the Extraordinary Mind (see here).

• If you want to learn more about discovering and breaking down Limiting Beliefs, listen to that episode below or click here.

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, we have another amazing guest on this show: Vishen Lakhiani. Vishen is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, and speaker. He's the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, a learning experience company that publishes ideas and teachings by the best authors in personal growth, health and fitness, spirituality, productivity, mindfulness, and more, serving three million students, subscribers, and followers worldwide. His book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, which is a New York Times and L.A. Times bestseller, blends evolutionary biology, computational thinking, and provides a new framework for identifying questioning and redefining beliefs to understand and enhance the human self. The book also draws on knowledge from the world's leading thinkers, such as Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Peter Diamandis, Ken Wilber, Arianna Huffington, and more. It's an incredible book. I recently read it. Huge fan. And I just wanted to say, Vishen, welcome to The Science of Success.

Vishen:	Thank you, Matt. I'm honored to be here.

Matt:	Well, we're super excited to have you on. I'm a huge fan of you, Mindvalley, the six-phase meditation, and love the new book, which I have sitting right here. So, you know, to kind of start out, I think most people are probably familiar with your background and who you are, so I wanted to dive right into the meat of some of the cool topics from the book that I really found fascinating.

Vishen:	Thanks good. I think that's a great idea. Let's dive straight into the meat.

Matt:	Let's do it. All right. So, tell me the story of the tribe that could not see the color blue, the sort of thing with the blue squares and the green squares. I found that totally fascinating.

Vishen:	So, in this book, I like to bring in information from a wide range of different media out there, right, and so one of the things I absolutely love listening to are podcasts. And there was a particular podcast. It was called Radiolab. It's a wonderful podcast. I recommend it highly. And Radiolab had an episode that spoke about the Himba tribe. The Himba tribe are a tribe in Namibia, and one thing that's unique about them is that they have 19 words for the color green but no word for the color blue. So, this Radiolab episode was exploring the idea that what language delineates, we can see. In other words, when you don't have a word for something, we cannot see it. It doesn't exist in our frame of reference. So, the speakers in that episode were citing a book that spoke about how when historians go back to ancient cultures, the ancient Chinese, the ancient Greeks, they find that there is no mention of the word blue. There's no mention of the color blue. Even in Homer's Iliad, he refers to the Aegean Sea as the wine dark sea. To us, it's not wine dark; it's blue. It's clearly blue. But they refer to it as the wine dark sea. Go back to ancient Chinese texts. No mention of the color blue. Red, green, yes, but no blue. And so, this Radiolab episode wanted to investigate, could it be that the word blue did not exist until just several thousand years ago and, prior to that, people couldn't see blue? So, again, to explore this theme, what language delineates, we can see, they went to Namibia and an anthropologist there studied the Himba tribe, and she showed them a series of squares, green squares, and one of these squares was clearly blue. The rest were all green. And she asked them, "Pick out the square that's different," and they could not. They really could not see the blue square. To any of us it's obvious. Then she tried a different experiment. She showed them a circle of squares. All of them were green, but one was a slightly different shade of green. Most of us cannot pick that out, but the Himba people, it was obvious. So, the question here is, what is it about language that gives us the ability to perceive certain things? Now, I used this in the book. I coined different words to allow people to see different structures in the world around them, in terms of how they're functioning in the world so that we can remove ourselves from structures that are no longer serving us. So, I used this analogy to coin the term the "culturescape". The culturescape is that tangled web of human rituals, beliefs, habits, that come together and define how we see the world. You see, we simultaneously exist in two worlds. There's a world, the physical world of absolute truth. This is a cup. It's white, and in it I have tea, which is hot. But then there's the world of relative truth. When you think of words such as happiness, success, meditation, religion, God, none of these things are absolute truth. Different cultures define them in different ways. And so, what I'm trying to teach people is to not place too much legitimacy on singular words, because so much of our communication in so many ways, we misunderstand ourselves. We get into dumb political arguments or fights because words mean different things to many people. And, at the same time, words and these constructs can shackle us, can hold us, confined to who we are. Think about the word "marriage", right? What exactly is it? From culture to culture, it's completely different, yet we have these ridiculous, pointless political fights over concepts such as gay marriage. So, I coined another word called "brule" to help us see the ridiculousness of all of this, and a brule is simply a bullshit rule. So, we live in a culturescape filled with brules, and when you can learn to identify which rules are lifting you up versus which rules are restricting you, you gain ability to free yourself from that tangled mess of useless constructs in the culturescape that keep so many people trapped in an ordinary life.

Matt:	I love the concept that language shapes reality, and I think that's something that you hear about sometimes in philosophy textbooks or whatever it might be, but the fact that there's this incredible research study that literally... You know, people can't see a color that, to us, is so obvious. It's amazing how we often really don't understand how language truly does underpin the way we perceive the world. And limiting beliefs is something I know you talk a lot about and we've talked about in previous episodes of the podcast, but I'd love to dig in specifically to one word that you created that I love and has actually helped me reshape my daily architecture in many ways, and that's the concept of blissipline. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Vishen:	Sure. Sure. So, blissipline is a word that has been used by many different people, including Reverend Michael Beckwith, Brian Johnson of PhilosophersNotes, so I wouldn't say I coined a word, but it's not in the English language yet and I thought it was a cool word. Blissipline's the discipline of daily bliss. It is the idea that the number one discipline you can have on a day-to-day basis is to put yourself in a state of bliss. Happiness, you see, science is now showing, happiness is rocket fuel towards your success. We grow up in a world where we're told to chase certain goals, that it's about the career ladder. And, again, all of these are just words. Really, what you want to seek are feelings. We chase words to get to feelings. We chase the nine to five. We chase the safe corporate job. We chase money. We chase being an entrepreneur, whatever the hell that means, because we're actually pursuing a feeling. Feelings of freedom, feelings of being happy with yourself, feelings of being able to contribute. Now, blissipline is simply the idea that, look, stop the chase. Get to the feeling first. And those feelings are typically feelings of bliss, of joy, of happiness, hence the word blissipline. Now, we can hack those feelings. You do not need, for example, to grow your salary 25% or to have 25% more sex to be 25% happier. Studies have shown that the simple practice of morning gratitude 30 days in a row, science says, will make you 25% happier. So, blissipline is looking at the simple mental hacks to get to the feelings that you want to get to for which more people are taking a really long, painful, brule-based thought. And that's what it's about. It's about understanding how to hack joy, bliss, happiness to get you there now.

Matt:	I think that's so important, and I'm curious. Obviously a daily gratitude practice is one tactic that listeners might be able to employ to integrate blissipline into their lives. What are some other examples or strategies that you implement?

Vishen:	Well, there's a whole ton, right. So, I invented something called the six-phase meditation. Okay, so when I was a kid, I loved computer games, probably like any one of our generation. And I used to play this game called Rings of Zilfin, where the hero, Reese, would travel to this horrible land filled with ogres and weird dinosaur-like creatures, and he had to gain certain skills to battle these creatures so that he could kill the evil lord and save the princess and free up the land. So, I was 14, so those kinds of things appealed to me. So, Reese had to up-level and, like many video games, he had to up-level his amount of gold, his amount of endurance, his amount of charisma, his amount of skill in archery. And life is often like that in a certain way. There are certain core areas in which we need to up-level. And I identified six, and I believe that if you can up-level yourself in these six areas, everything else you want in life starts coming to you really easily. So, I looked at these six areas and I found that there was a lot of research behind it. The first is connectedness. It's a feeling of connectedness or compassion with your family, but also beyond your family, beyond your tribe, with the world around you. It's an ability to have empathy for other people. When you build this connectedness, you move from nationalism to the idea of seeing the world as a unified whole. You see beyond race, beyond religion, beyond culture, and you realize that we are all human beings having human experiences in our own way. So, that first skill is connectedness. It creates a feeling of love and appreciation for the world around you. It's a really powerful feeling. So, I created a meditation called the six phase, where the first phase is about applying certain practices from Zen Buddhism to create feelings of compassion. Now, the second phase is happiness. It's bringing happiness into your life immediately. That is obviously. Gratitude, one of the biggest hacks for happiness. That third feeling, that third thing that we have to up-level, is actually forgiveness. A lot of people don't get this, but forgiveness improves your physical body. Studies now show that forgiveness can reduce back pain. Forgiveness can increase your vertical jump. Forgiveness can increase your insurance. It's insane that forgiveness does so many different things to your body. I've done experiments where I've seen that forgiveness can improve dramatically my alpha brainwave amplitude and brain coherence, which is a powerful skill that people get to with years and years and years and years of meditation, but you can do it with forgiveness much, much, much faster. So, forgiveness is that third thing, but it's not just forgiving other people. It's forgiving yourself from past shame, from past guilt, from past mistakes. It's a process of self-healing. Now, those three initial phases are all on the idea of bliss, on the idea of blissipline. I do this every morning. So, I woke up this morning. That was the first three things I did. 

But then, while still in my meditation, I do an additional three things. You see, I believe we need a certain balance in life. You need to be happy now. We need to be fully immersed in the present. But that's not the entire thing. We do live in a world where we are encouraged to go out there, to build things, to be a success, and that's important, too. It's a game that we enjoy playing, and it's a game that pushes the human race forward. So, the next three things are about getting out of this passive state of meditation and actually using your mind to do things. And so, phase number four is about visualizing your life three years into the future. You could call this future vision, and I recommend exercises people can do. Phase number five is crafting your perfect day internally in your head before you start the day, and phase six is basically creating a sense of internal support. It's creating this sense of inner drive and stability where you know that whatever higher power you believe in or whatever inner mechanism you have is there to support you in your quest for the day. When you put all of these together, you have a really powerful meditation practice. A lot of entrepreneurs who say they cannot do meditation, a lot of people who say, "Oh, I'm too ADD to do meditation; I can't clear my mind," well, that's the wrong kind of meditation for you. This is designed, the six-phase is designed specifically for these kinds of people, and this is how I spend my time every single day.

Matt:	And longtime listeners of the podcast will know that I'm personally a huge fan of the six-phase, and I do it every day as well. I did it this morning.

Vishen:	Matt, sorry, I just want to say, the meditation is completely free. You can download the app Ombana--o-m-b-a-n-a--and the app, you can get it on Google Play or the Android store, the IOS app store, and on the app it comes with the meditation pre-loaded.

Matt:	Awesome. That's perfect. So anyway, what I was going to say is you touched on the idea of the balance between happiness in the now and setting goals or striving to achieve things in the future, and could you talk a little bit about something you mentioned in the book, the notion of the intention paradox? It's sort of, you know, how can we have goals in the future but also still be focused on just happiness in the present.

Vishen:	Well, it's because we accidentally mesh the two, don't we? We say we'll be happy when... I call it the "if-then" model of happiness. If I get this, I will be happy. If I get that, I will be happy. Problem is, if you are placing that condition for happiness on a future, as soon as you hit that future, what happens? You're not really happy. You're just thinking about the next future and the next future and the next future. Happiness always stays on the horizon. As you keep running towards the horizon, it just gets further and further and further away. That's what happens you have an if-then model of happiness: you never catch the horizon. And so, people waste all their time chasing things, thinking it's going to make them happy. That's why so many people wake up at the age of 40 one day going, "Holy shit, I can't imagine. How did I get my life to this level? I'm miserable." And that really is what you want to avoid.

Matt:	And that ties into the concept that you talk a lot about in the book, sort of the distinction between a means goal and an end goal.

Vishen:	Yeah. The way to really understand if you're chasing the right goal is to know the difference between a means goal and an end goal. Now, means goals are what the culturescape tell you that you have to chase. Means goals are often brules, okay. So, a means goal might be six pack abs. A means goal might be a job where I get to go to work every day and earn a living paycheck. A means goal might be marriage. A means goal might be "I need to lose five kg". A means goal might be "I need to get to a certain salary level". Problem is, many of these means goals we chase because society makes us believe it is important, and then when we get to the goal we realize we don't really have that feeling that we initially wanted. You see, you want to go from goals to feelings. The thing is to ask yourself, "If I got this goal, then what? If I got that goal, then what? If I got that goal, then what?" And you keep asking yourself this question, you start to arrive at what I call end goals. End goals are those things that your soul really, really, really craves. End goals are things that truly bring you happiness. You see, you want that six-pack abs? No. You want that six-pack abs so you can feel healthy. But there are better ways to do it. You don't want that nine to five job with a steady salary. No, you want security, and there are better ways to do it. You don't want to be an entrepreneur, because most entrepreneurs are facing anxiety, stressed out, and simply bought themselves a new nine to five job. What you want is freedom. So, when you aim for those feelings, when you identify what are those feelings that you crave, you start to understand that you can hack life to get you those feelings much, much faster. And when you do that, you don't fall into the means goals trap. Here's a classic example of the means goal trap. So many Americans decide that they want to become lawyers because it's one of the highest-paying professions when the average American kid graduates from college, yet... And so people spend all of this time getting student loans, studying hard, taking their LSAT, joining a firm, becoming a lawyer, but I used to work in the legal industry and studies show that 50% of lawyers are clinically depressed, especially female lawyers. 50% clinically depressed. And it's crazy people make this their goal, but a big reason is they were following the rules of the culturescape. They were chasing a means goal. Why did they become a lawyer? And I asked this to a couple of my friends who are lawyers and who had quit, and they became a lawyer because, really, what they were seeking was "I wanted a good income so I could have a good home, so I could raise a family, so I could be happy. I wanted to do something to contribute to the world." And the point is, don't follow what the herd tells you to do. Understand what is it that your soul craves and chase that. That is the end goal. It gets you off the hamster wheel. So, here's the thing. End goals fall into three buckets. The first bucket is experiences; the second bucket is growth; the third bucket is contribution. All end goals fall into these three buckets, so you start by identifying what are the experiences you want to have in the world. These are things such as waking up next to the man or woman I love, being able to backpack across Southeast Asia. Then you ask yourself, to have these experiences, who is the man or woman I need to be? And this might be, well, I need to be really fit. I want to speak this extra language. I want to be able to be confident in the way I carry myself. And this is good. Growth is a goal in itself. Now, the third bucket is, if I had those experiences, if I evolved to be this incredible man or woman, how can I give back to the world? And here you come up with your list of how you can contribute to your fellow man. Now, when you chase these three things--experiences, growth, and contribution--it is a much surer path to happiness. Experiences bring us happiness because they let us experience all the wonders of the world. Growth is one of the surest parts to happiness. As Tony Robbins said, as souls, we crave two things: growth and contribution. And that brings us to contribution. Contribution is, according to the Dalai Lama, you want to be happy? Make other people happy. Contribution is one of the quickest ways to hack your levels of happiness. So, when I teach people goal setting, I ask them to toss away the goal setting models of past generations and instead aim for experiences, growth, and contribution. This, I believe, is a much, much, much better path to a life that's wonderful, that's full of meaning, that actually gives you what your soul craves.

Matt:	And this kind of duality between present happiness and end goals and kind of blissipline, how does that tie into another concept you talk about, which is the idea of bending reality?

Vishen:	Ha. So, firstly, in the book I lay out ten different laws, right. Ten different laws that I think really help us advance in terms of our scale of human evolution, and bending reality is one of those laws. It's an understanding that our consciousness, to some degree, shapes what we experience. And that's what I mean by bending reality. There are certain people out there--I'm sure you've met people--who feel really lucky, who talk about coincidences and synchronicities entering their lives. I can't explain it, don't know how it works, but I believe it's real. And what I suggest in this book are a couple of models that help you get there, a couple of mental constructs that help you get there. And again. I'm not talking about that mumbo-jumbo stuff from The Secret, which I don't buy into. I'm talking about something quite different and a process that is quite different.

Matt:	You know, it's really funny. In our previous episode, actually, we had a neuroscientist on here and we were talking about how to create an upward spiral to escape from anxiety and depression, and he talked about the fact that beliefs shape reality and that truly, you know, your conscious experience can remap your brain, can change your neurochemistry and literally shape what happens in the world around you. And so, it's not mumbo-jumbo. It's not hokey. And for listeners that are skeptical, if you check out that episode, you'll hear a neuroscientist explain the process behind how and why this takes place.

Vishen:	Right. And what I say is, "Look. Is it the mystical law of attraction? Maybe. Is it our brains reticular activating system where our thoughts help our brain recognize objects in the world that help facilitate those thoughts? Maybe. But the fact is we don't have to know how it works to let it work for ourselves."

Matt:	That's totally true, and I think that dovetails a little bit with another concept, even maybe just a phrase that you kind of mention in the book which I love, which is the idea that live life as though everything is rigged in your favor.

Vishen:	Right. I love that model of functioning in the world.

Matt:	I think it fundamentally kind of shifts your perception and the way you experience events, and I think it's something Tony Robbins talks about, too, sort of the notion that shift your perception to think that everything in life is happening for you, the notion that I think you also use the phrase, or I maybe quote somebody, that the world sent you nothing but angels, right.

Vishen:	Right, right. That's Neale Donald Walsch who said that. 

Matt:	Well, I'd love to talk a little bit about the concept of digging into a sort of... going back to brules and limiting beliefs, one of the most kind of damaging and insidious limiting beliefs that almost everyone suffers from is the belief that I am not enough, right. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Vishen:	Right. So, one of the interesting things... We were just talking about how our thoughts create our reality. That's not true. Your thoughts do not create your reality. Your thoughts are constantly changing and shifting. It is your beliefs that create your reality. People get this mixed up, and that's why...

Matt:	Very good point.

Vishen:	Yep, because your beliefs run your thoughts. If you believe you are not enough, you will have thoughts related to that thing. If you believe that you are smart, that you are intelligent, that you are powerful, you have thoughts that relate to that. Your beliefs shape your thoughts, which create and craft your reality. So, the idea here is how can we adjust our beliefs? How can we make sure that we have the right beliefs? And it's really a process called belief hacking. It's maybe a little bit too complex to explain in the short timeframe we have, but it's understanding that your beliefs, like hardware in a computer, are swappable. If you want your computer to function better, well, you can swap out an outdated hard drive and swap in a better hard drive. You can upgrade your monitor. You can change certain things about your computer. You can go from an old mouse to a more modern, sleek Apple magic mouse, too. Just like that, your beliefs are also swappable, and people don't get that. People cling to their beliefs and believe that their beliefs are them. They are not you. You feel that your religion is holding you back? You can swap that out. You feel that have a negative belief about a certain way of functioning in the world? You can swap that out. Now, I learned about this through a phenomenal teacher called Marissa Peer, who I mention in my book, and she's the hypnotherapist for many successful famous people, including the U.K. royal family, the who's who in Hollywood, and so on. I did this hypnotherapy session with Marissa once. She's also a Mindvalley author, so you can check her out on mindvalleyacademy.com. And I was trying to wonder, why is it that I had this big ed tech company, but I never seemed to have as much money as I wanted. And she regressed me into my past, and I had this memory of this school teacher whom I really, really, really adored. He was my favorite teacher. And I adored him, I loved his classes, at the age of 13 I wanted to be like him, but the thing is he was always broke. His wife had left him. He just led a really sad life. He was a great teacher but a sad life. And in that moment, while under hypnotic regression, the belief popped up. I was carrying the belief internally within me that said, "To be a great teacher, you have to suffer". And I realized that the belief had been holding me back, and so when I cleared that belief, so many things instantly shifted in my life. It was unbelievable how fast these shifts happen, but that's the thing about how our heads work. We carry with us beliefs that we do not know we're carrying with us. Think of this little circle. This is the amount of beliefs that you know you have. But this is the amount of beliefs, this giant circle over here, that you're carrying with you that you do not know you have, and life is that process of discovery where you discover these beliefs and you uninstall them as you go on. The six-phase is a great way to do it. As you meditate more, as you practice mindfulness, realizations come to you, and many of the realizations come in the form of new beliefs that push out outdated ones.

Matt:	And the thing is, everybody has these limiting beliefs, right. Even if you're not aware of them, even if you're listening and you think, oh, I don't have any beliefs holding me back, the reality is, just like that regression, that something that happened 15 years ago is still shaping and having a very material impact on your life. And for listeners who are curious or want to kind of dig into how to root out and uncover limiting beliefs, we have an earlier episode on The Science of Success where we kind of dig into the whole process of how to kind of uncover and break those down. But, you know, as we're wrapping up I'm curious: What is one piece of homework that you would give to somebody listening to this episode?

Vishen:	Sure. Well, what I'd say is go to mindvalley.com/extraordinary, and there you can sign up for a free course that takes you through many of these ideas. Now, if you buy the book, that's phenomenal, because the book helps you understand the free course and vice-versa, but if you don't buy the book because you can't afford the 13 bucks, just go and sign up for that anyway. Because in that course, I take you through a whole process of identifying your goals in different dimensions of your life, and to move past the rules into true end goals. And the process is really interesting.

Matt:	And for anybody out there listening, you know, personally I've read The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. I think it's an amazing book. I highly recommend everybody checking it out. I read it and literally--I'm not even joking--I changed my entire daily architecture. I was already doing the six-phase, but I added on some other kind of exercises and strategies that have already, in the few weeks that I've been implementing them, I've seen dramatic changes in my happiness, in my excitement, and it sounds kind of woo-woo but, you know, even in the way that the universe suddenly sort of... you know, things start to go your way. You start kind of experiencing luck and bending reality and shaping the outcomes around you. It's pretty amazing.

Vishen:	Thank you. That's really good. I'm glad that's working out for you.

Matt:	Absolutely. Well, Vishen, thank you so much for being on the Science of Success. We're so glad to have had you on.

Vishen:	Thanks. Likewise. I'm honored to be on your show. So, good luck there, Matt. Thank you so much.

How To Break Free From Depression & Anxiety By Changing Your Brain Chemistry with Neuroscientist Dr. Alex Korb

In this episode we discuss how you can battle depression and anxiety and break out of a vicious downward spiral by literally changing the chemistry of your brain using very simple and straightforward tactics that you can start applying right now. 

If you've struggled with depression or anxiety, or you want to understand how we can reshape our brains with our actions, listen to this episode immediately!

Dr. Alex Korb is a neuroscientist at UCLA, is the author of The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time, and author of the Prefrontal Nudity Blog on Psychology Today.

Alex and I discuss:

• How people get stuck in a loop of anxiety or depression

• How to strengthen and grow new neurons to literally change the structure of your brain

• Why nothing is wrong with your brain when you get stuck in a loop of depression or anxiety

• How the same action can have an entirely different impact on your brain at a different time

• How your own choices and actions change your brain in real time

• The difference between depression and anxiety

• How 10 mins of exercise can dramatically change your brain chemistry (and the study that shows it)

• How your actions can determine your perception and shape your reality

• The Neuroscience behind “The Secret” and why it really works

• And much more!

Learn more about Alex at http://alexkorbphd.com/ and his blog https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/prefrontal-nudity.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS, & RESEARCH

[Book] The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time by Alex Korb (see here).

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we’ve got another awesome guest on the show, Dr. Alex Korb. Alex is a neuroscientist at UCLA, and the author of The Upward Spiral: Using Neuroscience to Reverse the Course of Depression, One Small Change at a Time. He’s also the author of Pre-Frontal Nudity, a blog on Psychology Today. Alex, welcome to the Science of Success.

Dr. Korb:	Great to be here, thanks for having me.

Matt:	We’re super excited to have you on. To kind of kick things off, tell us a little bit about your background, and how specifically you got kind of fascinated with people who struggle with depression and anxiety.

Dr. Korb:	Well, I’ve always been interested in Neuroscience. I majored in neuroscience at Brown as an undergrad, and perhaps that originally came from my own examination of myself wondering why I was very emotional sometimes, or why I could be productive at sometimes and found it very difficult to get things done at other times. That probably drove my initial interest in neuroscience. Then I started working at UCLA at the brain mapping center and saw a lot of the great work they were doing there, and that really expanded my interested into neuroscience. At the same time, I was coaching the UCLA women’s ultimate Frisbee team on the side. I really enjoyed that, trying to figure out how to motivate people and unlock their peak potential. Unfortunately, one of the girls that I coached suffered from major depression and had been depressed for three years ever since she was in middle school I think. She was a freshman at the time. And, so, she went through a lot of attempts to get better. She was in therapy, she was on medication, she was getting the best treatment. At the beginning of the sophomore year she ended up committing suicide. And it was extremely tragic, but that really led me to try and want to understand what exactly is happening in the brain in someone with depression that could lead them down that path. So, I decided to pursue a degree in neuroscience, get my PhD at UCLA, and try to figure out what's happening in the brain in depression and what we can do about it. 

Matt:	Wow. That’s - that definitely hits home. So one of the things you talk about, one of the kind of key components of Upward Spiral is the idea that somebody with depression and somebody with anxiety, can literally remap and sort of change the neurochemistry of their brain. One of the underpinnings of that is kind of the idea of neuroplasticity. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Well, your brain is constantly being reshaped by the actions that you take and the environment around you, and the degree to which it’s being reshaped varies from time to time. As you’re growing up, it’s very what we would call plastic. Meaning plastic in the sense that something that is easily shaped, or molded. And that process continues as you get older, although a lot of aspects settle and harden and become more rigid. That’s why you say “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”, but it turns out, the brain is continuing to grow and be reshaped throughout your life. So, through key changes or even unintentional changes in the activities you do or the interactions you have, or the environment that surrounds you, can cause changes in the regions and the chemicals that contribute to either happiness or depression. 

Matt:	So, can you describe how someone can sort of get stuck in a loop of anxiety or depression?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Well, it can happen in a bunch of different ways. Like, asking that question is similar to saying “how do traffic jams start?” Anxiety and depression happen in the brain because the brain is a complex dynamic system, like traffic flowing down a busy set of freeways. Now, that analogy I like to use because there’s no one cause for depression. There are many causes that can interact with each other. And that also exposes - there’s no really one big solution, though oftentimes we would like there to be. There are often many small solutions. So, if all you know that someone is depressed, that doesn’t necessarily tell you how they got there, OR what the path forward is. Just says, if you know that there is a traffic jam, that doesn’t tell you how to solve the traffic jam. Because one traffic jam could be caused primarily by weather, whereas another traffic jam could be caused primarily by an accident. So we know the key thing to keep in mind is - what are the forces that are shaping this traffic jam, this pattern of cars being stuck in this certain ways. And what are the different ways to influence the system and get it out of there? In depression or anxiety, it’s this dynamic system of the brain is stuck in this sort of particular pattern of activity and reactivity that it can’t quite get out of. And there’s a whole bunch of different reasons for why it could get stuck, and it’s a whole bunch of small little life changes or medical approaches that we can enact in order to break up that pattern and get people better.

Matt:	And in the book you use this amazing analogy which is kind of like - essentially describing how a microphone can get caught with feedback and it just gets loud and louder and louder. Can you elaborate on that idea?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, well, when I was talking about the brain getting stuck in this pattern of activity and reactivity, that’s sort of abstract. And sometimes the traffic analogy works well with people, particularly if they live in place like LA where they have a lot of experience with things like that. But the microphone and speaker analogy because it simplifies it to one simple circuit. So, your brain is composed of dozens and more of circuits that control each aspect of your life. You have a circuit that's devoted to decision-making, and planning, and habits, and every other aspect of your life. Hundreds of different circuits that are often overlapping. Now, if you look at any individual circuit, that’s sort of like a microphone and a speaker that are connected to each other. Because circuits in the brain are dynamic and they have feedback with each other. And we can look at the microphone and speaker and say “oh those are each different independent components”, but when you put them and connect them together, they create this feedback circuit. And if the microphone is oriented in just a particular way, or the speaker is turned up a little too loudly, then just even a soft whisper or a slight tap of the microphone could create this screeching feedback. And that’s important to understand, because a lot of times when people find out I study depression they ask me “ugh, so what’s wrong with the brain and depression?” or they're depressed and they ask me “What’s wrong with my brain?” they want to know what’s wrong. And I don’t think that’s quite the right way to think about it. Because if you look at the analogy of the microphone and a speaker, yes, you’re getting this output, this screeching feedback that’s terrible and undesirable and nobody wanted that intentionally. But there’s nothing wrong with the microphone. There’s nothing wrong with the speaker. Both are working exactly as they're supposed to. It’s just in the dynamic interaction, the elements of that circuit, that it gets caught in this runaway activity. And we might, even though it’s a terrible outcome that’s hard to bare, the solution could be starting with very small changes of moving, reorienting the microphone just a little bit. Or turning down the volume, just a tad on the speaker. And this big problem suddenly disappears.

Matt:	You describe the brain as a complex, adaptive system. Which basically, you know, one of the concepts you mention in Upwards Spiral is the idea that the same stimulus can actually have a  completely different effect on the brain, based on sort of the kind of mental state, and the kind of place that you’re in. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. It’s relayed to you - this notion of “you can’t step in the same river twice”. All of the actions that you take are causing different changes in the brain, and as you’re moving forward in your life, your brain is constantly shifting and adapting to the previous choices that you made and your current life circumstances. So, a good example is thinking about how setbacks or frustrations can affect us differently at different times in our lives, for a whole number of reasons. That could be including the environment that surrounds you, or the goals that you’re working towards, or the support, the social support that you have. So, for example, if you make a mistake or fail a test in college, where you still have a clear path towards graduation or and you still are living with a bunch of your friends. Then, maybe that wouldn’t have quite the same effect as if you made a big mistake at work when you are in your late 20s, and living by yourself. Because how your brain reacts to that failure is different as your brain chemistry changes with age, it can be different based on you social relationships, the environment around you, the different habits that you’ve continued to develop or strengthen over the time that you’ve been living. So, just because something wasn’t enough to push you into depression early on, doesn't mean that it couldn’t be the reason now, or the primary reason because the reasons are always complex. And similarly, just because you are depressed, one attempt at a solution didn’t work the first time, doesn’t mean it won’t work at another time. And here’s where the analogy to traffic works well. Something that could be used to ease traffic such as a traffic light, or something. Might be very effective, sometimes actually slows people down. But it wouldn't be effective at other times during the day when there are too many cars or things like that. I don't know if that made any sense.

Matt:	That makes a lot of sense. Basically the idea that, you know, if you’re struggling - for example. Someone who’s struggling now with depression or anxiety, that just because something hasn’t worked in the past, it may actually be effective now because the brain is so complex and constantly changing that the stimulus might have a completely different effect. It took, to use the traffic analogy, basically the same idea is if you take a route at some time in the day, it might take you five minutes to get somewhere. And if you take it at the wrong time of the day it might take you half an hour. 

Dr. Korb:	Yes. That’s definitely true. And the thing that’s different from traffic, which makes it even more dynamic, is the fact that your own choices and actions change the actual activity in those brain circuits. So, just because something didn’t work the first time, well, when you do it the second time, the actions you made the first time already had an effect on the brain, so the context in which you’re attempting at the second time, is a totally different context where those brain circuits are now being activated for a second time. Instead of for the first time. And so, that might be enough to be the difference.

Matt:	So, for listeners who might not kind of grasp the difference, can you explain the difference between depression and anxiety?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, well, depression and anxiety are very related in terms of their neurocircuitry, but they can have very different effects and appear very differently, and they’re very different syndromes even though they oftentimes occur together. What’s a more common question is I think what people wonder what the difference is between depression and just general sadness, or what the difference is between anxiety and just normal worrying. And it’s not just a matter of degree, because I think a lot of times people think of depression as just being really sad all the time, or anxiety as just worrying a lot. But they both involve a lot more symptoms than that. And I really focus on depression a lot, and it’s, I think it’s even more complex than most people grasp. And so that’s why I like to explain things from that perspective. For example, a lot of times people with depression don’t necessarily feel sad all the time. They can often have an emptiness where emotion should be. They feel like nothing is enjoyable, they don’t have any energy, they have trouble sleeping, often anxiety is a symptom, things feel like they lack meaning and oftentimes it appears like it’s not worth living. And it’s very difficult to understand from the outside because you could look at someone’s life and think “Oh! They have so much going on in their life, what do they have to be depressed about?” But really, the problem with depression is that it robs the brain, it robs the person of their ability to connect or feel a close connection with the people around them, or to enjoy the things that maybe they used to enjoy. And this symptom of anxiety which is often included in depression is a terrible disorder, even when it’s experienced on its own because it’s a lot more than just simple worrying. In fact, worrying and anxiety, they’re sort of related concepts, but worry is thinking about problems, whereas anxiety is much more feeling them. Anxiety is like a trigger of the brain’s fear response, and it includes a lot of physical symptoms that people don’t quite realize. For example, a racing heart, or a queasy stomach, or tense muscles. A lot of times people have these feelings of anxiety, but they’re not even consciously aware that that’s what they’re feeling. 

Matt:	One of the things you talk about related to that, is kind of the idea that sometimes you can be worried about something or a number of things, but that worry is sort of a surface-level symptom of a much deeper anxiety that may be about something completely different. And that’s something that personally, I found or when I’m feeling really stressed out, when I’m feeling really worried. I’ll often kind of pull back and ask myself ”what’s really stressing me out, what’s really the cause of this anxiety?” and sometimes you have to go to very core fundamental things in your life that are happening as opposed to sort of that surface level thing that it seems like “Oh, I’m stressed out about X”, When really it’s something much deeper that maybe happened, even months ago that you’ve never really dealt with. 

Dr. Korb:	Right, yeah. I’ve actually experienced this early on in my life. And perhaps it’s useful that my mom is a psychiatrist so she sort of pointed these things out. Not in any mean way. But I realized that I had a lot of stomachaches as a kid, particularly when I was in line at an amusement park for like a scary rollercoaster. My older brother would be like “Ha, you’re scared of going on this rollercoaster?!” and I’m like, “No, I’m not scared! I have a stomachache, I have to go to the bathroom.” I didn’t see a connection between the two. And at another point, when I was learning long division, I just started crying because I couldn’t get it. I just didn’t understand why I couldn’t get it. My mom asked if I was feeling overwhelmed. And it was a strange situation because it didn’t make sense to me why I was crying because I wasn’t sad about anything. I just couldn’t get this mathematical concept. And usually, math had been quite easy for me. And when she asked if I was feeling frustrated or overwhelmed. It took her asking that to have me actually look inside myself and ask myself, “Oh! How am I feeling?” and that’s a very important skill. And I started to realize, “OH! Yes, because I can’t quite grasp this concept, that’s what’s making me upset. It’s not this math problem per-se, it’s this larger problem.” I didn’t fully realize that at the time, but it wasn’t that particular math problem that was making me upset, it was the larger concept of feeling competent in - I was taking a more advanced math class, and feeling like I was able to succeed at it. And you know, that’s an example from childhood, but we have these things going on all the time. For example, you might be worrying about one aspect of a party. I use this example in my book of - for example, when you go through a wedding. Sometimes you obsess over the invitations and all these different aspects of the wedding. But what you’re really worried about at heart, is the social approval of your friends, and they’re about much deeper issues, or any worries that you express about the wedding ceremony per-se, may be reflections of a deeper anxiety that you have about the relationship with the person you’re getting married. So, just because our mind focuses on one aspect of, and thinking “oh this is the problem”, oftentimes that is because dealing with the deeper problem, or acknowledging the deeper problem is more difficult. And so we prefer to focus on these superficial aspects that are actually stand-ins for the deeper problem.

Matt:	And that’s something that really hit home for me. In the last six months or so I actually lost both of my remaining grandparents. I found myself struggling and experiencing huge amounts of anxiety with these that were totally normal, totally kind of not an issue for me at all before that. And it really took me a little while to kind of figure out, “Hey this is something that, maybe I haven’t really dealt with, that I need to really think about and kind of go back and drill down a little bit more on.” And so that really resonated with me and hit home deeply, and was the most poignant parts of Upward Spiral. 

Dr. Korb:	Thank you, yeah. I think a lot of times when certain events happen like that, then we find ourselves at work and we’re trying to finish a report that we’ve done quarterly for the last five years, and just can’t quite seem to finish it or having a lot more difficulties - we realize “oh! Once I finish this, then I’ll have to deal with whether I’m going to get that promotion, and am I really at a job that I value because my grandparents worked at the same job that they valued for all this time”, we don’t like dealing with thinking about those deeper issues but when we, ignoring them doesn’t necessarily make them go away. It just means that we can’t appropriately deal with them. 

Matt:	Absolutely, yeah. It’s like burying your head in the sand isn’t going to fix the problem. 

Dr. Korb:	Right.

Matt:	We actually have a whole previous episode we did about kind of accepting reality and sort of, you know, really kind of being present and mindful and accepting the way things are. So, for listeners who might be struggling with that, that’d be a good episode to go back and potentially check out.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. And what’s interesting is the very act of introspection, of just asking yourself how you feel and trying to figure out what it is that’s really bothering you. That can actually help reduce its emotional impact. There’s a great study, neuro-imaging study, on people where they were shown emotional pictures and you’re brain has an automatic emotional response when it sees different emotional pictures. But if they ask the people “Name the emotion that you’re seeing”, or “Name the emotion that you’re feeling”, that simple act of introspection actually decreases the brain’s emotional response. 

Matt:	That’s fascinating. And I think that’s a great segue into some of the strategies for kind of breaking out of that cycle. For somebody that is sort of trapped in a situation of depression or anxiety and they feel like there’s no way out. What are some of the things that you would recommend? I know there’s obviously a broad list that you talk about in Upwards Spiral, but maybe as an initial starting point, or an initial step to sort of make the first shift, or kind of get that upwards spiral started to where they can kind of slowly pull themselves out of it.

Dr. Korb:	Well, one of the first things is to recognize that there’s nothing quote-unquote “wrong” with you. A lot of times when people feel stuck in depression or anxiety they spend all this mental effort, chastising themselves for that they’re- or they feel like they can’t address it because there’s something wrong with them, or wrong with their brain. And it’s really just simply recognizing that, now you have different regions of your brain that are supposed to feel anxious, or they’re supposed to make you question your decisions and be indecisive. Those regions are working exactly as they’re supposed to, just as with the microphone and the speaker analogy. Or, there are regions of our brain that are supposed to notice your mistakes and we just need to tweak the activity in those regions a little bit, or change your environment a little bit to tone it down, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with having any of those traits on an individual level or there’s nothing wrong with your brain. And the second thing to realize is that, through intentional action, through - making small life changes in the actions you take, or  the interactions you have or the environment around you. You can actually start to shape and change the activity and chemistry in the brain - in the very brain regions that are contributing to you being stuck. And the number of life changes that you can make fall into a whole bunch of different categories. And I’m happy to expand on any of them. But they include small things like, just exercising more, going for a little walk outside because not only does the exercise help, the sunlight absorbed through your skin has benefits, the sunlight absorbed through your eyes has different benefits on a different pathway. Changing some of your habits around sleep can help make it even more restful. Reaching out to people close to you, or even talking to strangers, or getting a massage. These are all small little life changes that have measurable effects in the brain and they can start to change the dynamics i.e., turn down the volume of the speaker of that particular circuit a little bit and push you towards more positive emotions, and feeling more in control. 

Matt:	So let’s drill down a little bit. One of the first things you recommend is exercise. And I’d love to kind of share with the listeners how exercise can both change your neurochemistry and produce more BDNF, I forget what that stands for but I’m sure you know

Dr. Korb:	Neurotropic factor.

Matt:	Exactly. So tell us a little bit about that and drill into how exercise can literally change the chemistry of your brain to wire you to be happier.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, well, I’ll start with BDNF since you brought it up. That is a chemical that is sort of like steroids are for your muscles. It helps strengthen and grow new neurons. In a particularly vulnerable part of the brain called the hippocampus which is important in forming new memories, and it’s also part of the emotional circuity of the brain. If you have depression, that can actually start to decrease cell production and kill neurons in the hippocampus. But if you take anti-depressant medication it can increase this chemical BDNF which helps strengthen neurons, keeps them from dying, and grows new neurons. And it turns out that exercise has a lot of the same effects as anti-depressant medication specifically on BDNF because it can actually start to grow new neurons in this key emotional circuit.

Matt:	Some of the other neurochemicals that it helps produce are things like norepinephrine, and endorphins, etc. Talk a little bit about why those are important and how those can be mutually reinforcing in terms of improving your brain strength.

Dr. Korb:	yeah, so, the three main neurotransmitter systems targeted by anti-depressant medications are serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine. And exercise can modulate the activity in all three of those neurotransmitter systems. It can increase the production of serotonin which helps improve willpower and managing your emotions and connecting your present actions to future goals and rewards. The norepinephrine system can help manage stress and help focus. And the dopamine system helps with habits and overriding bad habits and maintaining good habits, and it also is important in a certain spark of joy in life; the enjoyment that you get from eating a chocolate bar, or giving someone a hug. Well, the hug has a lot of other neurochemical effects as well, but, anything - anything that’s naturally pleasing releases dopamine in the brain, which is what makes it rewarding, such as eating or sex, or things like that. Exercise can modulate the dopamine system as well. In fact, a great example of that they took a study of smokers. And one of the reasons smoking is so addicting is because it activates that dopamine system. But they took people who are smokers, they didn’t let them smoke for a day, so they’re really on edge, really wanted that cigarette. One group exercised on a stationary bike for just ten minutes. And then they scanned their brain and see how their brains responded to pictures of cigarettes. And the people who hadn’t exercised had a much bigger drive in their brain for wanting that cigarette. They had a much bigger dopamine response. Whereas the people who had just exercised, that exercised had provided some more dopamine, it modulated the dopamine response so that they didn’t crave the cigarette quite as much.

Matt:	So, just ten minutes of stationary bike was able to kind of create some of those changes. So when you talk about exercise, it’s not necessarily going out and running four or five miles. This is something that, you know, can be relatively easy to implement in your life.

Dr. Korb:	As I say to a lot of people. The exercise that you do is infinitely more valuable to you than the exercise that you don’t do. And it doesn’t always take a lot because it’s really compared to - well what were you doing in the first place? If you’re feeling depressed and you’re just laying on the couch all day and someone says “Ok! Well run a 5K!” That’s not really going to seem possible. And if that means then you’re not going to do anything, then you’re not going to be able to start to turn things around. So, it really depends on where you are. If you’re just sitting around not doing anything, well, just standing up and walking outside, or walking around the block, that’s going to put you off in a better position than doing nothing at all. And that small amount of exercise will start to put your brain in a better position to make better choices, or it makes it easier to exercise more. That’s why I call my book The Upward Spiral, because these small little life changes, these small little actions, cause changes in the brain which make further positive life changes more possible.

Matt:	That’s great. And one of the other topics you talk a lot about is the idea of making decisions, and how making decisions can create sort of some other “upward spirals” and change your neurochemistry. I love the example that you used of - it’s more about making a good decision than making the best decision. This is something that I’ve insistently been trying to teach my wife. I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear that on the podcast. But can you,

Dr. Korb:	You should try writing a book about neuroscience then trying to teach your wife every chapter of it. That doesn’t go over as well either.

Matt:	Oh I’m sure, I’m sure there was a lot of struggles there.

Dr. Korb:	I’d say “You should just read chapter 7 again!”

Matt:	yeah, exactly. Well, can you talk a little bit about how decision making can change neurochemistry and specifically why it’s important to sort of settle for a good decision quote-unquote?

Dr. Korb:	Well, that has a lot of different aspects to it. One, this notion of trying to pick the best decision causes problems because oftentimes there isn’t a best decision, or you certainly don’t have enough information given where you are right now to be able to decide what that best decision is. And so, we can often feel paralyzed because we don’t actually move forward in any direction, and when you’re given - when you’re not actually moving in a direction, moving in ANY direction feels equally plausible and we can just sit there and do nothing and then gain no more information and therefore we’re not accomplishing anything. Whereas if you just start to move in a particular direction, for example, there’s a study on people who couldn’t decide what job they wanted. What career path they wanted to take, and that can feel very overwhelming. If they just started to research any job, that reduced their anxiety and make it easier for them to move forward. And it didn’t have to be the job that they ended up wanting to take. They just had to start - pick something to start reading about, and then that would give more guidance and more information because now they could say either “oh yes!” from learning about it, “I think that’s a better decision, so I’m going to keep moving in that direction”, or from learning about it, “I realize, eh, that’s the wrong way, I’m going to do something else.” But moving in one direction realizing it’s the wrong thing and coming back to where you started, that is much better for you than sitting there and doing nothing at all. The other aspect of your question that’s important for people to realize is that having a goal, and making one small step or intention towards that goal actually changes the way your brain perceives the world, and is going to start creating opportunities for your brain to just notice solutions all on its own. And that can maybe sound abstract, but think of the feature on your camera that maybe highlights faces when you hold it up to a group of people. It knows that you’re trying to take pictures of faces, so it puts a little box around the faces and it focuses on them. And your brain has that same capability to focus on the parts of your environment, or the parts of your life that are actually important to you and ignore all the rest of the irrelevant details. But in order for your brain to rely on your brain’s automatic processing to do that, you just have to create an intention or a goal and take one little step in that direction, and then that - you start to get the benefits of that brain circuitry.

	So the study that’s related to that that’s really interesting, I think, is they asked a group of people to get ready to either point or grab a certain figure, they’re going to show them. Then when they flash an image up on the screen of things that were either easier to point to or to grab, the activity in their visual cortex was actually different based on what their intended action was. Now, the visual cortex, that’s a very low-level thing. That’s the kind of thing that you would think - oh, that should just automatically process the image of whatever is coming in. But based on your intentional and the goals of these people were setting out, the region of their brain that controlled the goals are actually increasing the game sort of in the visual cortex to look for things that were relevant to the goal that they were doing. So, once you start having this idea, once you commit to a particular goal or moving down a certain path and having a specific intention, then these lower level unconscious parts of your brain will start changing your perception of the world to help accomplishing, to make accomplishing that goal easier.

Matt:	So one of the things you mentioned is taking that small step, and you talk about a little bit in the book the idea that following through is a critical component and actually has a different impact on your neurochemistry than just sort of deciding you’re going to do something.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, actions speak louder than words. Your brain knows and interprets your goals based on your thoughts, but also on your actions. I experience this myself the first time I signed up for online dating. When I was in my early 20s I felt like “Ah, I don’t have — there’s no one to meet, I can’t get a date with anyone” So I signed up for online dating, and I immediately started going on more dates. But the interesting thing was that the dates that I was going on, wasn’t necessarily through the online dating. But through the act of signing up for the website and paying the money, I sent a signal to myself saying that, “yes, this is something I’m actually interested in”, and that starts to change your perception of the world, and awareness, and the parts of your brain that sees opportunities in everyday situations. On the bus, I would see, make smile with the girl sitting next to me. Then I’d strike up a conversation, and by taking a certain action down the path and committing myself at least somewhat down this path of “oh yes, I’m actually going to try to meet someone”, I was starting to see possibilities in everyday life. And the actual truth is that those possibilities had already been there, but since I hadn’t made a concerted action and to tell myself that “yes, this is, I want to try to meet someone, this is something that’s important to me”, then I’d been missing all of the signs that were around me all along. 

Matt:	I think that’s so important, it’s one of the reasons that visualization is such a powerful tool as well. 

Dr. Korb:	And yeah, the problem is it can sound very hokey, I think a lot of that sounds like “The Secret”. Like you send your thoughts out to the university and you change what comes back. But your prefrontal context is responsible for goal-directed actions. And another deeper region, the anterior cingulate cortex, sits as sort of the intersection between your prefrontal cortex and your emotional brain regions. And one of its jobs is to notice goal-relevant stimuli in the world. So, if you don’t have a particular goal, your brain has to spend most of its time ignoring most of the stimuli around in the world, because there’s a million more things than you can ever consciously process. But, if you have a particular goal, then those two brain regions are communicating with each other so the they know, “okay what are the kinds of things I should be looking for”, so when something happens in the world that is close to something that could benefit you, then - boom - the anterior cingulate fires and brings your attention to it, saying “oh this is important, we should pay attention to this”, and by creating those goals and intentions, and moving down that path in a particular path, we’re giving our brain the opportunity to be able to focus on these parts of the world that are important to us. We can’t naturally change the world, per-se, but we can start to change our perception of it and that’s just as important. You can think of the police chief - he can give orders to the lower level officers on patrol, like, ignore drug dealers and start focusing on speeding tickets. And boom, the number of speeding tickets is going to increase. There were just as many people speeding before, but the police department wasn’t paying as much attention to them. And that’s the way a lot of these perceptual systems in the brain work. Your pre-frontal cortex is that police chief that can give the orders to the lower level officers to say “Okay, this is the things that we want to pay attention to, and go out there and look for them.”

Matt:	So, everybody who’s listening out there, you heard it from the neuroscientist. That what you perceive in reality can change based on what you tell yourself, and the beliefs that you put into your mind, right? That’s actually something we did a previous episode on as well. About the reality of perception and how literally the world and your world can shift. It’s kind of the same idea that like you said, it sort of sounds like “The Secret”, but the reality is actually rooted in neuroscience, and it’s rooted in the way that your brain is structured.

Dr. Korb:	Yeah, and I think, though, starting to take action - even if it’s a small action. Shows that you’re actually committed to that idea as real. Rather than just - you can’t completely change your perception of the world simply by thinking about it. But by taking action as if this thing were true or to show yourself that this is the goal that you are pursuing, then that’s sending feedback to your brain that “oh yes, actually I do believe this is true!” and that’s going to start to have a bigger effect because your thoughts are one thing, and your actions are another thing, and those ideally should be able to support each other. But if you’re trying to have one thought but your actions don’t reflect the thought that you’re having, then they’re going to compete with each other, and you’re not necessarily going to get the same benefit. To continue, very simple actions in your body, in your posture, can have effects on your feelings and your thoughts. You could tell yourself that you’re happy and everything is fine. But if you’re have an anxious facial expression and a sad withdrawn posture, and you’re sitting on your couch not doing anything. Then your brain isn’t going to fully believe those thoughts. Whereas if you tell yourself that everything is fine and you sit up straight and relax your face and you put on a little hint of a smile, take a deep breath and go outside, well then those actions are feeding into those thoughts and those are going to support each other and actually start to make you believe yourself. 

Matt:	I think that’s incredible piece of advice and wisdom, and something that everybody listening should really take to heart. Changing gears slightly, and something that I’m incredibly passionate about - something that I frequently advocate, is the power of gratitude. I know that’s something you talk about in the book, can you expand on that a little bit, and maybe share some of the research about why gratitude is so powerful?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Gratitude can actually help improve the quality of your sleep, for example. And that’s a big one because I have a whole chapter in my book on sleep and how important it is, and so many people say to me “Yeah yeah I know, I should get more sleep, I don’t have time for that, give me something else that I can do that doesn’t take up more time.” And the important thing to understand there is - if you just take a couple of minutes before you go to sleep and just write a journal of the things you’re happy for that day, or maybe the things that you’re excited for tomorrow, the things in your life that you’re grateful for, it actually improves the quality of your sleep and makes it more restful, even if you can’t necessarily get more sleep. And focusing on the positive parts of your life can actually, and particularly happy memories, can actually increase the production of serotonin in key regions of the brain such as the anterior cingulate cortex that I mentioned before, which sits at the intersection of the sort of rational and emotional brain. And serotonin as I said before is one of the key system targeted by anti-depressant medications. So, thinking happy memories can actually boost that system. And there are other studies, there was one study that looked at people who underwent psychotherapy. If prior to their psychotherapy they wrote a “thank you” letter to someone they’d been meaning to thank but hadn’t gotten around to yet, then the therapy was actually more effective and there were regions of the brain that had included this anterior cingulate cortex that had changes many weeks later, even from this small act of gratitude. 

Matt:	That’s amazing. And I know there’s a few other studies too that just demonstrate the incredible power of gratitude.

Dr. Korb:	And part of it is because your brain only has a limited ability to focus on things. There’s - the world is so complex that you have to filter out 99% of the things that are floating around you bombarding you every day. And intentional act of gratitude is important, because it tells yourself, it tells your brain that, “Yes, I want to focus more on the things that make me happy”, because evolution didn’t necessarily - wasn’t designed to make you happy. It was designed to make you live and have sex and reproduce. That’s what got us here in the first place. But now that we’re here and we have consciousness, most of us realize that “Oh I actually prefer to be happier”, so evolution didn’t actually design your brain to be the happiest it could be, but through intentional action you can start to shift your perception towards focusing on more positive aspects and therefore increase your happiness.

Matt:	Can you elaborate a little bit on the concept of biofeedback? What it is, how it’s important in combating depression and anxiety?

Dr. Korb:	Yeah. Biofeedback is simply the idea that the brain changes it’s activity based on what the body is doing. So, I referenced it before, I just didn’t use that name. There’s, for example, when you are feeling anxious, you may have fast breathing, and tense muscles, and a racing heart, if you can slow down your breathing, and stretch out your muscles, then your breathing will not only slow down but deep breathing can also slow down your heart as well. Then that will send different signals back to the brain. We often think of emotion as a one way street, “oh I have this anxiety, and that’s why I’m having all these sensations in my body” such as the breathing, muscle tension, and so forth, but your brain is constantly monitoring your body for how it should feel. So, yes, maybe you felt anxiety, or you had a worried thought or whatever that triggered this anxiety and that caused these bodily symptoms. But now those bodily symptoms are feeding back and making you feel more anxious. And if you can disrupt that feedback cycle by decreasing the body’s anxious response, then you can make yourself feel calmer. Now, it won't necessarily eliminate all of the anxiety, but it’ll keep you from making it worse. And that’s why deep breathing can be so powerful if you’re feeling depressed if sad, if you’re having withdrawn posture and stooped over posture, that can be a feedback signal to your brain saying “oh yes, I’m feeling sad”, or if you have a worried facial expression. You can improve your posture, sit up straight, open your chest to the world, take a deep breath and smile, then that’s going to be sending different signals back to the brain where it’s going to think “oh! Maybe things aren’t quite so bad, because the body is behaving as if I’m happy.”

Matt:	So, for listeners out there that might be struggling with depressions or anxiety, or maybe even listeners who aren’t. What would be one piece of homework that you would give them? 

Dr. Korb:	I think one of the simplest things that I recommend is just going for a walk in the morning, ideally with a friend. That captures a lot of aspects of the upwards spiral including sunlight at the right time, and exercise, and making a habit, and possibly some social inputs as well. And that’s just a very small change that most people feel capable of making. Other simple changes include, the act of introspection. Just, momentarily throughout the day, checking in with yourself and noticing how you’re feeling. Not necessarily making a judgment about it that it’s good or bad, just saying “oh, okay, this is where I’m at”, and that act of introspection can help you feel - can help reduce the emotional impact of your emotions. And, lastly, I would say be present. Whatever you’re doing, just do that at 100%. Pay attention to the things you’re doing, and don’t pay attention to the things you’re not doing. And that - the introspection that I mentioned previously is actually related to that. Because if you’re feeling anxious or if you’re feeling sad, that’s part of who you are at that moment. And being present includes recognizing “Oh, I’m feeling anxious, okay, I’m going to continue to work on this, or focus on that, even though I’m anxious.” 

Matt:	Where can people find you online for people that want to learn more or do some more research about this?

Dr. Korb:	I have a website, AlexKorbPhD.com. I’m including a lot of my blog articles and I offer personal coaching and consultations for people who are interested learning how - more about the brain, or how better to apply it to their life.

Matt:	Well, for anybody out there who’s listening that struggles with depression or anxiety, I highly recommend checking out The Upward Spiral. There’s so many different tactics and strategies in the book, we only barely scratched the surface. And we could talk for hours and hours about all the different things that you can do that are often very simple, very easy steps to take to kind of break out of that vicious cycle, break out of that downward spiral and, you know, get into an upward spiral. So, Alex, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. This has been some great feedback and conversation and I really appreciate having you on here. 

Dr. Korb:	Thanks, it was great to be here and hopefully we reached some people that could use it.

How You Are Sabotaging Yourself By Setting The Wrong Goals - And What To Do About It - With Emmy Winner & Bestselling Author Scott Halford

In this episode we dive into how to activate your brain, create and sustain momentum to make your goals a reality, how goals can often be self-sabotaging, and the neurochemistry behind how and why all of this happens with our guest Scott Halford.

If you are feeling stuck or want to make progress on a goal but can’t figure out why you’re not – listen to this episode!

Scott is an Emmy Award winning writer and producer, acclaimed public speaker, and the author of Activate Your Brain. Scott is also a long-time educator of Fortune 500 executive teams on topics including achievement psychology, brain-based behavioral science, and more.

We cover some incredible topics including:

• How long term goals can self sabotage by triggering a “disgust” response in your brain (and what to do about it)

• The ways to “erase” cortisol and other stress inducing neurochemicals

• How to create momentum towards your goals and put yourself in an achievement state

• Simple strategies to “activate” your brain

• The “three brains” inside your head and what each of them is responsible for

• The truth about multi-tasking and why its impossible

• And Much More!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Science of Success. Today, we have an exciting new guest on the show, Scott Halford. Scott is an Emmy Award-winning writer and producer, acclaimed public speaker, and author of Activate Your Brain: How Understanding Your Brain Can Improve your Work and your Life. Scott is also a long time educator of Fortune 500 executive teams on topics including achievement psychology, brain-based behavioral science, emotional intelligence, and the principles of influence. Scott, welcome to The Science of Success. 

Scott:	Thanks, Matt. Great to be here.

Matt:	Well, we're excited to have you on. 

Scott:	I'm thrilled. You guys do all this psychology stuff. It's pretty interesting, huh?

Matt:	Absolutely. So, to start out, Scott, tell me a little bit about how did you kind of get into this field and start doing some research and kind of talking and writing about neuroscience and psychology?

Scott:	Yeah, I think I've been interested in what makes people tick for a long, long time. Never from a disease state, but mostly from an achievement state, which is a very different kind of path, and when I was in television... I had a TV career, as you intimated in my introduction. When I was in television, I had the opportunity to do a number of different documentaries on a number of different topics, and met some people in really very, very difficult and trying situations, all the way from people on death row for capital punishment to people who were burned on 90% of their bodies and lived and just the kind of trauma and drama that ensued after that and the kind of life that they had to deal with. And, you know, just meeting them, following them, understanding their plights, really just kind of always resonated with me, and as I got into the corporate world, I really wanted to kind of apply some of the lessons that I learned and to really help them to understand, you know, what is it... We know a lot about what makes people not work well. We even have a huge diagnostic manual on it called the DSM, that tells us all about the mental normalities, but we don't have that much out there that is actually published and rigorous and specific about achievement states. And so, I just got really interested in it and worked in corporations with executives and began just speaking a lot about it, writing a lot about it, and that brings me to kind of where I am.

Matt:	So, when you say achievement state, what does that mean?

Scott:	Well, so, when you look at... For instance, let's go back to disease states. When you look at paranoid schizophrenia or any kind of neuroticism or any other kind of psychopathology, you're typically trying to bring people to homeostasis, or normal. You're trying to fix something that they have that doesn't fit into the typical nomenclature of an average, normal human being, because of either brain chemistry or brain architecture that's gone wrong or, sometimes, substance abuse and physical and emotional abuse that creates that. So, there's all that work around that, and the achievement state is, if you're taking someone who's basically got kind of a normal profile, what is it that they can do to be exceptional, to push themselves, to drive harder than the typical person would, to stick with things longer than the typical person would, and to achieve kind of extraordinary results by the habits that they create and the kind of thinking that they have and the way that they go about paying attention to the world.

Matt:	Fascinating. So, is that sort of the same thing as positive psychology, or is there a difference there?

Scott:	Yeah. So, positive psychology, for sure, is a big piece of it. I actually did a semester of the Authentic Happiness with Martin Seligman, who is considered the father of positive psychology, now offers the master's in applied positive psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. And yet, you know, what they're really looking at are things like happiness and things like flourishing and really taking a look at the things that allow us to have a higher sense of wellbeing and applying it to counseling, applying it to coaching, applying it to just everyday kind of work. It's the same. I'm really interested in achievement states through the lens of the brain. So, I love being able to see it proven through science, and to see that gives it teeth. A lot of the executives I worked with, as well as I do a lot of physician leadership programs, and these doctors and highly analytical and cynical executives, quite frankly, they'll listen to it and they'll understand the emotional intelligence. They'll understand that's an important thing. I get that. I read that. It makes sense that it's important. But they're kind of like, well, it's really secondary to my business acumen or my understanding of financial spreadsheets, and so on and so forth. So, it doesn't always feel like they have teeth because there's no data. Well, neuroscience gives it data, and all of a sudden they can see it in the brain. They can see that their ability to make decisions is impaired by their stressors. They can see that their ability to interact with people in a positive light that actually brings out positive outcomes is predicated on how they manage themselves on a moment-by-moment basis throughout the day, and that you can actually see that in the brain. So, there are a variety of other examples. So, that's where I just get very switched on about the whole thing, is to be able to say, you know, take that cynical person and kind of show them a picture of what's happening in the neuroarchitecture and, with the endocrinology in the brain, the hormones, and say to them, "There's your data. There's the teeth. This is not soft skills. These are the hardest skills you will ever learn." The softer skills are business acumen and financial acumen. You can learn that in a book. You can go through a course, semester, go through an MBA in two years and get all that done and then go out there and experience it, but understanding humans is a lifelong process that has so many variables that we'll never, ever achieve that state. We'll just always be on the journey of it.

Matt:	That's such a great point. One of the things that set me on that journey many years ago was a speech by Charlie Munger. I don't know if you're familiar with him or not.

Scott:	Mm-mm.

Matt:	But he has this amazing speech. He's Warren Buffet's business partner.

Scott:	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yep.

Matt:	And he's a fascinating guy. He has this incredible speech called... I forget how many exactly, but it's like the 21 standard causes of human misjudgment, and he basically goes through all these things that cause people's decision making to go haywire. And that kind of got me on this rabbit hole of digging into all these different pieces of the puzzle.

Scott:	Fantastic. So, why did you... Why are you so interested in it?

Matt:	Like I said, I mean, I think it started with that speech and I really just wanted to figure out, you know, what drives people to make decisions, and I think in many ways, and I get a lot of listeners, actually, who send me questions sometimes that kind of fall into this category. I think a lot of people's interest in psychology, understanding humans, understanding decision making, all of that sort of stems from initially almost like a very naive place of, you know, I want to figure out how I can influence someone to do what I want, right. It's like, I want A plus B equals them doing what I want them to do, basically.

Scott:	Right, right.

Matt:	And once you kind of get into it, you know... I mean, I started in that place. There's nothing wrong with being in that framework or that kind of thinking about things that way, but once you actually dig into it, there's so many more layers deeper than that, and you really have to kind of start understanding the building blocks and the fundamentals and how those fit together, and then once you understand a lot of that and you really start to build that deeper framework, then these sort of surface level tactical applications of everything from "Why am I making a bad decision?" to "What is this other person making this particular decision and what are the factors going into that and how can I potentially influence them in a more positive way?" Those sort of flow naturally from a deeper understanding of it.

Scott:	Mhm. Yeah. And the variables become really difficult, not to understand but to maneuver around, and so when people have relatively good principles that work, they can work most of the time. Where the A plus B equals C falls apart is that A has a variable, B has a variable, and then the environment affects C as well, and so mood affects it, the timing of the day, positive or negative effect, what you ate, you know, prior decisions, the environment, so many different things. And so, I get that a lot from executives. Just tell me, what's the one line that will get everybody to do what I want them to do?" Like, wow. If it was that easy, I'd be out of business, but it's not that easy. And so, I think that it's so incredibly cool to be able to think about it from a not only personal perspective, but in helping other people. And for me, a lot of people will think because I teach it that I have all my stuff together, and nothing could be further from the truth. I just teach it. And again, we're all on that journey as unfinished human beings trying to figure out how do we go about in the world with high well-being, being effective, feeling successful, feeling meaningful, all of those things that allow us to be who we are. And I think the other thing, too, is that at our very basest, I think a lot of people are interested in psychology because they want to understand their own, number one, and I think when we look at our species, again, through brain architecture, we have brain architecture that allows us to contemplate about ourselves and reflect on how we fit in with the person sitting across from us. So, if you'd go to an airport and you sit around and you're not buried in your iPhone or other device and you just watch people, you watch people watching people. Not very many other species are as interested in each other as we are, because we have so many variables. And so, that's why people watching is so incredibly fascinating, because we can be stunned by each other every single day throughout the day, and I think that that's kind of at the crux of it all, in terms of why people are interested. We inherently should be interested in our own species.

Matt:	You know, one of the things that it took me a little while to realize was that understanding your own decision making and why that can go haywire, why that can go wrong, and understanding other people's decision making, are essentially two sides of the same coin. And so, once you kind of dig into either one of those, you really start to get to those core principles.

Scott:	Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I think that, you know, we become better when we watch other people, and it's typically not in a book. You know, none of this is... It's all written about. We all ponder it, but no one's ever pronounced the truth just yet. I think that we do our best when we are aware, and not just of ourselves but of other people, and I meet countless executive after executive. And I mostly work in corporations, and I meet countless person after person who can't figure out why all the bad stuff in their life keeps happening, but when I ask them deeper questions and they come to a realization that they're just not looking up. They're not paying attention to the people sitting across from them. They're not interacting, and then understanding their own impact in that relationship. They don't question it. They don't take responsibility for their piece in it. They just kind of have a sense that something went wrong. Huh, what did they do wrong out there, you know? So, the successful ones are looking up and they're watching and they're interacting.

Matt:	That makes a lot of sense. So, kind of changing gears slightly, one of the core concepts that you talk about in Activate Your Brain is the idea of activation. What does it mean to activate, and how does that tie into kind of what we were just discussing?

Scott:	Well, so, from a neurophysiological standpoint, you can actually see activation in the brain. It's what we look at when we're looking at PET scans and we're looking at fMRIs, which is a functional magnetic resonance image. Allows us to look in your brain as things activate while you're doing something. And when we activate, in the book when we're looking at activation, we're talking, really literally, about activating momentum around doing what it is that you want to do that pushes you toward more what you believe to be your own successful state and your own state of wellbeing. And activation is a place in the brain. It's in the medial orbital frontal cortex, so in the middle. So, if you put your finger in the middle of your forehead and just to the left of that middle, you're on that left side of the medial orbital frontal cortex, orbital meaning around your eye, and right under there is a place that, when it activates by you doing something, and typically it has to do with something that you've accomplished... You know, like you just got something done on your to-do list and you cross it off. When you do the crossing off, that literally activates that left medial orbital frontal cortex. We'll just call it LMOFC for short. It activates it, and what it does is it energizes the reward systems in the brain, and the reward systems include a neurotransmitter called dopamine, and dopamine makes you feel like you want to do something again and makes you feel excited and gives you pleasure, and it says, "Do it again, do it again, do it again." So, when you activate, activation preceeds motivation. Motivation is a psychological construct that really looks into and determines on why are... Really, the why. Why do you want to do something? And looks at desire. We all have those things that we don't desire to do but we have to do, and we have to be the one to do them. And we don't ever get motivation around them, and so what we have to do is activate around them. You just do it. You just begin. Start small but start now is a mantra throughout the book. And once you start and you get that one little cross off, you go again. I mean, we've all had that, where we're like, oh, you know. You're looking at your emails and you've got in your inbox, even though you've looked at them, you just haven't cleaned it out. I have this going on right now. I've got 3,000 emails that they're all dealt with, but it really needs to be cleaned out. And you go, okay, I'm going to spend some time. I'll just do a few. Well, once you start doing it and you start kind of checking off, either mentally or physically, around it, and you activate around it, pretty soon you've cleaned out the whole thing. You've done it with your office. You've cleaned your house, right. We've all done that.

Matt:	That's totally true.

Scott:	Yeah. That's the activation. You know, and to be certain, the activation portion of the brain is also implicated in addiction at all, because it's within the same neurotransmitter and receptors as addiction does. But it's a great message to understand. That's the achievement side, is that you can become addicted to positive things. So, that's what that's all about, and really, it's the dance between that right side, which is on the orbital frontal cortex on the right side, is your no button. The left side's your go button. The no and the go. And the right side says, you know, when you wake up in the morning and you're supposed to go work out and you lay there and you think, oh, no, I just want to sleep, and the sleep wins, the no button won. And so, that's the part that keeps you on the couch. But, as with the left side being both positive and negative, having the positive attributes, the right side does, too. So, the right side, says, "No, stay on the couch," but it also says, "Don't eat that food. Don't go and gamble again." So, it's the dance between that left and right side that actually help us to navigate and negotiate our conscience, our guilt, our morals, our values, our ethics and beliefs. And that drives our behavior and really allows us to achieve what we want to achieve in the world, and that dance back and forth is what we're really looking at.

Matt:	That's fascinating. It reminds me of, I think, Josh Waitzkin. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but he's a world champion martial artist, a national chess champion who's now kind of a performance coach, but he talks about the idea of unkinking your energy flow, and it's kind of like a hose that has a bunch of kinks in it, and you know every time you move one kink, the flow through the hose gets stronger and stronger and stronger. And it's the same thing. You know, when you activate one thing, then that sort of cascades into multiple different activations of doing and executing all kinds of different things. You know, you start with your one email and then you've cleaned your inbox, cleaned your office, et cetera.

Scott:	Yeah. I 100% agree with that, and that would be exactly what our goal is. Because when you look at drivers, you know, Hertzberg studied drivers in the 1960s when he created hygiene therapy. I don't know if you know about that, but... Hygiene theory, rather, not therapy. Hygiene theory basically says that the things that demotivate us are not the same things that motivate us, so the things that demotivate us are pay, the environment, fairness, that kind of thing. Well, when all those are taken care of, if you feel like you are being paid well enough, it's not consider a motivator. So, it will demotivate you if you're not paid well enough but, once you're paid well enough, it's not the motivator. The things that drive you to motivate are things like achievement, personal growth, the job itself, earn recognition, so on, so forth. And really kind of unkinking, to your point, unkinking to get to those places and making sure that those demotivator things are taken care of, are really kind of what it's all about and really important, and I think that when people pick up my book, or any other kind of book like that, what they're really looking for are the tactics and the ways to get out of the way of themselves and to unkink and to... You know, most people are looking for an easy kind of way to go. I think success is never easy. It's always rewarding, but you have to make sacrifices. You've got to get up early. You have to work harder than you typically might want to. But, you know, when you look at a pathway that says, "All right, so what do I do to kind of feel excited about doing this hard stuff?" part of it is just the awareness of, number one, what it is that you're going after, number two, what's in your way. Those are the kinks. And number three, having the gumption to get rid of them, and actually, not only get rid of them but to create things that keep you activated, keep you excited, keep that energy going and making sure that you stay on that achievement side, as opposed to falling back into what Hertzberg would call the maintenance side, which is the demotivators. So, you know, again, it's not a destination. It's just always the journey. That's what you will do for the rest of your life if you want to be successful.

Matt:	So, I'm sure it's a lengthy and complex answer, but how would you say people should go about keeping themselves activated, or even starting, kind of jump-starting, activation?

Scott:	Well, you know, it really kind of boils down to a couple of things. First off, really kind of beginning to live under the adage, getting away from the old, you know, do more with less. What a crappy adage that was. I mean, what a bad theory. And we're discovering now how bad it was. In the '80s, '90s, even... you know, some organizations still live with it. Do more with less, right. Why should I multitask? We know that actually is such a bad idea. It's not only a bad idea, we physiologically cannot do it, number one. Number two, we also know that it degrades the gray matter of your brain over time, so it's hard on your head. But we know that people do better when they do fewer things. They just pick fewer things. They do them better. And so, first off, it's figuring out what you want and not having... You know, you can have anything you want. You just can't have it all right now. And the thing that people get really overwhelmed with is when they put too much on their plate. I know I do. I've done that several times where I just get too much on my plate, got to accomplish things around them, and now what I'm just doing is just maintaining them, just getting them done, not having enjoyment going toward them. So, if I have something I really want to go toward and I figure out what those are, two or three things, and I'm going toward them, I don't become overwhelmed. I can activate around them and I can start small but start now. Just start, you know, doing a little bit around each one and allowing the activation momentum to kind of take over and just rely on myself to push myself. I also think we all need people who help us be accountable, whether it's a coach or a mentor or a good friend, significant order, who, when you say, "All right, so I want to accomplish this and I need you to help make sure that I'm sticking to my goal here, and so I want you to hold up the mirror every once in a while and say, 'Hey, you know, you said you wanted to...' da-da-da-da, 'but you just didn't do this this time. You said you wanted to lose weight, but look at that big old triple-decker cheeseburger in your mouth.'" Whatever it is, right, that we have somebody who we're willing to listen to, to kind of hold us on the path. You know, my philosophy... And I don't have any data around this, but I do have a lot of experience. I've been in my... I've had my company, Complete Intelligence, for 26 years. I've watched people for a long time, and I think about 75% of the people I meet are not self-starters. Only about 25% are self-starters. About 75% are kickstarters. They need a little kick in the butt. I'm one of them. I mean, I self-start on some things and I kickstart on others. I need somebody to go, "Okay, come on. Come with me." Like, all right. I'll go. We need that, and really getting an awareness around that allows us to get into the activation. It's a habit, you know, and I think people get really hung up on the whole idea of, you know, am I accomplishing everything I want to accomplish and am I doing it fast enough? And look at what... You know, we have these yardsticks that are crazy, quite frankly. You know, we look at... I'm looking at a picture of you and you look really young.

Matt:	I have a very young face.

Scott:	You do? You look pretty young. And people... In my business, you know, the speaking world, we have an award that is the National Speaker's Hall of Fame. Well, people get it at different times in their lives, but you know what people brag about? Is how young they got it. And I think that's a ridiculous yardstick. Okay, so you got it when you were 30 as opposed to when you were 50. Is that the goal? Is the goal to get it done fast? And then what? And what does it get you? What does it bring you? So, I think we fall into this trap of saying, I need it all, I need it fast, and if I do it fast then that's... wow, yay. And I ask people... I have a really good friend. When he was inducted into the National Speaker's Hall of Fame—and he really, really, really wanted it bad for a long time, many years—and he started kind of getting bitter about it. And he's a great performer and an awesome speaker. Well, once he got it, we were having a beer, and we were just chatting about it. It was a couple of years afterwards. I'm like, "So..." I'll just call him John. That's not his name. "So, John, so has your life changed since you got inducted?" He goes, "No, not really." So, "Did it change how you feel about you?" He said, "For a small amount of time it did, but I needed to get it checked off and I needed it now," kind of thing. So, I think, you know, when people look at what they want to accomplish in their lives, I think being measured about it, understanding that, you know, obviously we're not living forever, so there is that time element to it, but this whole idea of "I want to make $30 million by the time I'm 40 years old." I know people like that. It's like, why? But, you know, it's different whys for different people, for sure. I just think that when we put ourselves on the journey that says we have to have it all right now, we create an anxiety that actually causes us to not perform as well, increases our anxiety, increases our stress state, our wellbeing is reduced, and then they accomplish it and it's kind of like, wow. You aged yourself. Your brain is worse off. You got what you wanted. It didn't change anything. You're not healthier because of it, right? So, my own little soapbox. Pardon me.

Matt:	Oh, no. It's all good. That was very interesting. So, kind of circling back a little bit, what are some things that someone listening to this podcast could do...? Let's say they have kind of a challenge or a goal. I think, one, the idea of addition by subtraction, i.e. cut down, focus on fewer, more high-impact things, I think that's a great piece of advice. What are some other things they could do to maybe create that momentum or to take that small step right now to get started, if they're struggling or they can't quite get the momentum they want and they feel like they're not motivated?

Scott:	Yeah. Well, you know what? I always like to use the weight metaphor. Weight. A lot of people relate to the idea of losing or gaining weight, or getting fit. And, you know, you're not going to lose 50 pounds between now and tomorrow, and when you put that as your goal and you lay that out, it's a great goal. You know, if you have 50 pounds to lose, it's a fantastic goal to have. But your brain doesn't see you as losing 50 pounds between now and tomorrow, and so what we typically do is we put it off. And there's some research that shows, actually, in an fMRI, that shows that the part of our brain that lights up that registers disgust is the same place in our brain that registers when we have a goal that is longer than 90 days out.

Matt:	Wow.

Scott:	Yeah. So, it's kind of fascinating to see that when we have this long-term goal, what we see is that... You don't see yourself as accomplishing it. You see it as somebody else's thing. It's an out there kind of thing. Because if you think about a goal that you have, like if I say to your listeners now, think about something that you have to accomplish between now and next week. So, just think about that right now, and whether it's your email or getting your proposal done—whatever it is, right—you think about that. The part of your brain that lights up is called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, almost near that orbital frontal cortex on the left side. It's right in the middle of your forehead and right behind it, and it's the place where you see yourself. It's the place where you self-reflect. And that lights up when you think of short-term goals. And, again, it is a reward radiator and it allows you to kind of create momentum. So, all of that architecture's interconnected. But, when I say, all right. So, Matt, think of... It's right now May. What do you want to accomplish by December? What's one goal that you don't have going right now but you know you want to accomplish by December? You think about it and then you might write it down. If I looked in your brain and had you think about it, the part of your brain that would light up would not be the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. It would likely a part called the medial parietal lobe, and what happens there is it does radiate to discuss and it does begin to become something where we push it off. So, that's the science behind it, which says it's real. So, what we need to do is take a larger goal, that 50 pounds, and bring it down to, I'm not losing 50 pounds between now and tomorrow. Not even now and the end of the month. Not even now and the end of two or three or four months. However, what I can do is I can lose about eight ounces a day and keep it off. Or, if you want to look at it in terms of a week, a pound a week or something like that, or maybe two, but it needs to be sustainable and reasonable. And then what would I do every single day...? So, you would have the piece that would be... Okay, what's the big goal. Then what would I do to bring it down to a manageable goal? What would be the amount I could actually lose? And then ask yourself, there's the goal. Now I have to have two other things. I have to have a how and why. And they're two separate operations in the brain. So, the how is, what would I do? I would exercise more. I would take the stairs. I wouldn't eat carbohydrates after seven o'clock, cut out bread, don't drink wine and beer as much, and so on and so forth. Those are all the hows. The why needs to be all the benefits. Well, I'll feel better about myself. I'll look. I'll have better self-image, my self-confidence, so on and so forth. Those two networks in the brain are two different networks, but you need them both in order to accomplish motivation, if you will. So, it really is... Kind of reducing it down is this, is: go ahead and have a big goal. Understand that it could take you a year or longer to accomplish. And, if you really want to accomplish it, you really want to be able to break it down into bite-sized pieces that you can check off to get that dopamine bump, if you will, check off at least a few times a week, if not every day, and then have a why. Why are you doing it? And that's the big thing that a lot of people are missing. I have a good friend who was a client. He was joking that it was the $40 million by the time he was 40. And he did it, but I kept asking him, why? I mean, it sounds ridiculous. We'd all love to have $40 million by the time we're 40. But it doesn't take disease away. It doesn't make people happier. We've seen the research around that. You know, how many cars can you have? How many houses can you have? And, as a matter of fact, achieving those in a state where you don't have to really work hard to earn it, there's not as much happiness. When you go buy your first house, that's huge. It's so exciting, because you work at it, and it's a lot of bump. But when you can just do it any time, it's not as exciting. So, you know, the why. Why is so huge, and really figuring out what's the benefit to yourself. And earning $40 million, you could have a fantastic why, but if you don't articulate it, kind of the wellbeing part of it kind of gets compromised.

Matt:	That was great. That's super helpful. I love the idea of really breaking things down into bite sized kind of weekly or even daily activities towards that longer-term vision. I think that's super important. 

Scott:	Yeah. And you want to make sure, for sure, that it's got some frequency to it. When I was writing my book, when I was writing Activate Your Brain, it's an evidence-based book, so it's a harder book to write than... Like, my first book, Be a Shortcut, which is more... You know, there's evidence in it, but it was more me expounding on my philosophy about things, right, or my influence in emotional intelligence. So, when I had to write that book, I would stare at it and go, oh, God, I just don't want to. I was on a deadline and I didn't want to write it, and so I would just take my own advice and literally take out an old chapter that I'd already written and just kind of read through it. That was my activation, was just to get out a chapter I'd already written and read it, and you know, what do you think would happen from that? Well, I would start editing it, and I'd add to it, and pretty soon I had written 15 or 20 pages. And that's what it looks like. It literally is... I'm not writing the whole chapter. I'm not writing the whole book. I'm actually not going to even write. That wasn't even my activation. My activation was to get out an old chapter and read it and, knowing exactly what would happen, is that I would begin to edit it, add on, think of new things, and then just bam, just go.

Matt:	That's awesome. So, you've touched on, in some of that extrapolation, kind of the ideas of brain structure, neural networks and everything. One of the things we've talked about in the past on the podcast are kind of the biological limits of the mind and how biology constrains and sort of structures our thinking. One of the topics I know you've talked about in past is the idea of the three different brains and how that ties into neuroscience and sort of our brains themselves. Would you talk a little bit about that?

Scott:	Yeah. So, it's kind of a simplistic way to look at the brain, but when you look at kind of architecture in a larger, macro format, and you look at what developed when in the brain, the first thing that came online was the reptilian brain. It's ancient. And it's kind of at the base of the brain. It's what we call the pons or the brain stem. [INAUDIBLE 00:35:28] is also in there, and it's really the ancient part. It's implicated... You know, the whole brain interacts with each other, but this one is on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, reptilian, pays attention to things that are automatic and autonomic, that they just have to happen and they need... Like, body temperature, perspiration, respiration, aspiration, salivation, any of the -ations it's doing for you. And basically, it turns those on and off. You don't really have a choice about it. And it also helps to activate around certain motivations, as well. The medulla, that is at the very base of the brain that kind of looks like a second brain, that's where we lock all of our consolidated behaviors like riding a bike, brushing your teeth, buttoning a shirt, tying your shoes, things that were really hard when you were a two-year-old and spent a lot of sugar to be able to do, a lot of glucose, because that's what the brain uses to energize itself, and it used to take you lots and lots of energy, and that's why kids have meltdowns if you push them too hard. But over time, what happens through repetition, those behaviors consolidate, and now the glucose expenditure reduces, and that's all in the medulla. And so, it allows you to operate in the world without having to spend a lot of sugar. We want to use that for other things. Then the second brain is what we call the mammal brain, and that's kind of locked right in the middle of the brain. It's the mid-brain. We call it the limbic system and it harbors lots of architecture. We store behaviors, we consolidate and store behaviors, in that part. It's also where we harbor our memory, most of it, in a place called the hippocampus, and the emotional danger-detecting architecture is there, as well, and we have several times, about seven times more danger detecting architecture in our brain than we do for a reward. It allowed us to survive the world. And that's the emotional part of the brain. It's what puts you on high alert. It's what makes you kind of pay attention to things in the environment. And we put rewarding things on the bottom and we put dangerous things on top, and it gives you a lot of clue about behavior. You know, people who are constantly seeing the negative are in their danger-threat response quite a lot. And that mammal part of the brain si 24 hours a day, seven days a week, scanning the environment for danger and threat in the environment about three to five times per second, even while you're asleep. So, it's a busy, busy, busy brain. The problem with it is it has no logic. It's messy and it's the part that says, you know, if you hit me, I'm going to hit you back. It's that part that says, you know... If all we had was our mammal brain and we were executives sitting across from each other and I vehemently disagreed with you and I wanted to choke you, I actually would. And so, we have to bring online the human part of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex, and that's the last part to have been added to the brain, about 30,000 years ago. That's the part that is the executive reasoning, thinking, innovating part of the brain, and so it gives intelligence to our emotions, thus emotional intelligence. It's the dance between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system. That's emotional intelligence. Because, again, if we acted on all of our impulses, all of our emotional impulses, especially the stronger ones—to hit, to bite, to scratch, to yell, to scream—we wouldn't be very effective as a species. We'd be effective as other animals is what we'd be. And the intelligence, that prefrontal cortex, says, no, no, no. Let's modulate that. You might be really angry right now, but is that anger going to help you get what you want, or do you need to just slow it down, take a deep breath, and restate and reframe your needs in a way that's not going to cause somebody else to become defensive and not get what you want? So, that's the emotional intelligence piece, and those are the three parts and pieces that kind of interact. So, that's what they look like right there.

Matt:	And I think that... We've talked about this in a previous episode. It's fascinating that the brain is sort of geared towards it via the process of evolution, focusing more on threats and danger and, in many ways, that's kind of maladapted to modern day society where, oftentimes, the threats that you're facing are not an animal jumping out of the bushes that's going to eat you, but it's somebody across the table or in a board room or whatever it might be that is not actually a physical threat to your life, necessarily, and so our response is often inappropriate or wrong, kind of rooted in these biological nature and structure of the brain itself.

Scott:	Yeah. And, you know, exactly. The architecture is the same. The dangers have evolved. And you're right. It's no longer the saber-toothed tiger or the poisonous plant. It's the missed deadline. It's you disagreeing with me. It's you telling me that my baby's ugly, right. It's that back and forth. That's the danger in the environment. And the architecture is still useful. We just have to manage it, and when our prefrontal cortex... You know, before that prefrontal cortex became fully developed, we were still a pretty nasty species. All you have to do is look back at the history of our species, especially in the last 5,000 years. We've been pretty mean to each other in a lot of different ways. When you add language and some of the sophistication that comes with a prefrontal cortex, wow, that's another layer that you have to deal with, right? I mean, confusion really became part of who we are and how we interact. When you add language in... Because we've all had that, you know, when you say to someone, "Hey, you want to go have Mexican food?" and they look at you like, oh, sure. You know, you can't see my face right now, but if you saw it you'd be like... you'd look at it and go, he really doesn't want to go. Well, because we play games with each other, we might be passive-aggressive, if you will. I might look at you and see your face saying no but decide not to pay attention and say, "Well, you said yes, so okay. Great. Let's go have Mexican food." And now you have conflict, right, and so we're constantly dealing with these little teeny papercuts of dangers. Cortisol is your stressor hormone that is activated when you're paying attention to all those dangers. So, as we look at the health of the aging brain, we look at cortisol and the implications of it, in terms of the integrity of that brain, because we're all shrinking after we're 25, 25 to 30 years old. You're either shrinking or you're growing. You're not going to stand in place, your brain. And, in order for it to grow, you have to proactive. It's going to just shrink on its own, and if you are paying attention to all of the dangerous threats that you interpret as a danger in the environment, something tardy, an email that you get that is upsetting, and myriad of things, if your lens is always about danger and you can't reframe it, which is what the prefrontal cortex allows you to do, then your brain health is... you're going down a nasty path. And you feel bad, and other disease happens because now your immune system, your immune function is battered from all that cortisol in your system. So, it's a circular kind of thing that happens. Our danger detection system is there for a very good reason. It's just that because we have evolved into a modern world, we need to kind of say to our danger response, really, that email, it didn't make me rageful. It made me frustrated. That's a different set of neurohormones, but we keep telling ourselves that, oh gosh, we get really mad when it really requires not such an outsized emotion that is filled with all kinds of... not only negativity from a feeling sense, but also from a neurochemical sense to the brain.

Matt:	So, along with cortisol and dopamine, which we've touched on, what are some of the other key neurochemicals, and how do we control or manage their impact on our behavior?

Scott:	So, fun with neurochemistry is what we're talking about. Yes. [Laughs] So, there's a set of catecholamines that include dopamine and epinephrine, and then you add oxytocin into it, and those are the three I like to focus on, along with cortisol. And again, cortisol's not all bad. You don't want to get rid of it. It's actually a very positive thing as you're learning something. It focuses you. That along with norepinephrine. Norepinephrine's your focuser. That's the thing that actually causes you to pay high alert and attention. In a positive state, it's exciting, and when you're learning something... Say you're going to go out and learn to play golf or any other thing, and you go out and you start playing and you start getting positive feedback. Well, norepinephrine plus the cortisol, which is, again, focusing you, those two things cause you to learn rapidly. It's just that when you're pushed too hard and somebody starts to criticize and then the danger becomes danger, you know, the threat response becomes dangerous as opposed to positive, then we crumble, because we're spending way too much glucose. Cortisol doesn't travel alone. It travels with glucose, because glucose and cortisol, along with adrenaline, come together to make you fight, flight, or freeze. Well, you know, you just don't want to be in that space all day. It's exhausting. And that's what happens when you're in a state of learning where you've been pushed too far. So, on the positive side, norepinephrine focuses you, makes you interested, makes you engaged, makes you excited, and we know that things that actually activate it are things like novelty, learning something new like I just explained. You know, a new language, a musical instrument, going and learning something you've never done before. Paint a painting. Do mosaics. Do something you've never done, and it's not about achieving mastery but just about... and not only about exciting your brain, but when you are in novelty, you're actually in neurogenesis as well as neuroplasticity. You're causing your brain to grow. You're binding neural pathways that are there that have never talked before and now they are, and you're creating new growth in your brain, and then neurogenesis, which is brand new neurons in the memory center of your brain as well as the motor center of your brain, the medulla and the hippocampus. So, those... norepinephrine is really positive that way, so learning something new, getting hobbies, and that kind of thing. Dopamine comes from winning. It comes from accomplishing things, that check mark. It comes from achieving mastery and feeling like, somewhere in your world, you have some chiefdom, some little corner of the world that you know you do really well, and that sense of wellbeing is part of what happens with dopamine. And then there's oxytocin, which is your bonding hormone, and that is that state of feeling like you're part of a social group. It's pro-social. It makes you feel included. It makes you feel loved and it makes you feel liked, as well. And things like collaboration, laughter. So, if you're laughing a lot. We love people who we laugh with, and that's an oxytocin bump. If you like somebody, you're just hanging out with them, going and having a coffee with them or a beer, whatever, and you just feel simpatico. That's an oxytocin. That's that feeling. When you fall in love with someone, you're going to get a bunch of oxytocin. And then being generous. You know, being benevolent and going out in society and doing something for people that you don't have to do something for. That creates oxytocin. We know that, actually, to that end that volunteering and helping people, where you don't have to do it, right, but doing something for other people has about the same palliative effect on your depression, mild to moderate depression, as an anti-depressant does. So, volunteering's a really great kind of therapy for yourself, if you will. And so those three, dopamine, norepinephrine, and oxytocin, kind of combine to give you that overall sense of peace, wellbeing, excitement, mastery, control. All the positive things in your world. We kind of dive deeply in the book into, you know, what are the things you want to put in your place that create those, and I just mentioned some of them.

Matt:	Yeah. No, those were some great examples. So, for example, if somebody has too much cortisol or they're constantly in that fight or flight danger response place, what are some of the things that they might be able to do to calm themselves down or to reduce their cortisol levels or to kind rebalance some of their neurochemicals?

Scott:	Yeah. I call them erasers. I call these things erasers. They erase the cortisol. They rebalance it, set it to homeostasis. And they're everything we all know about, and yet you've got to do them. And here's the thing: got to do them every day. And not all of them, but some of them you have to do every day. Some of them, you just do it when you're starting to feel stressed out. The everyday things are, number one, and by a long shot, is sleep. We are so under-slept, and we're seeing inflammation in the brain, which is a bad thing. It's making the brain stickier. We're seeing that being implicated in Alzheimer's, where the beta amyloids can't be flushed because of the inflamed brain, and the lack of sleep will inflame your brain. It's why you can't think. You gotta get your seven to nine hours, and on average, that's where we are as an adult human being. So, sleep. If you're having frenetic sleep because you're so anxious, you've got to go figure that out. Go work with a sleep doctor. Work with somebody, but read the chapter in the book on sleep. You've really just got to pay attention to this. So many people: "Oh, I don't like to sleep. It's a waste of time." It is the most important time you have all day. If you're not sleeping, you're not consolidating, and that's where we consolidate our memories. It's not happening while you're awake. While you're awake, you gather. While you sleep, you learn. And so, you might think it's a waste of time. It's the most productive time your brain has, and if you're not doing it, you're headed for an early grave. Just really pay attention to that. That's number one every day. Number two is exercise every day. Gotta walk, faster than a typical walk. 30 minutes a day is what's being recommended. About 150 minutes a week. Cardiovascular's where we see both neurogenesis and neuroplasticity be affected in a positive light. Plus, BDNF, the brain-derived neurotropic factor, which is like Miracle-Gro to the brain, causes the brain to have the neural pathways to connect, as well as neurogenesis. So, it's a brain grower. Sense of wellbeing happens, brings down the cortisol levels, brings up endorphin, which is your natural painkiller. So, exercise, you know, and cardiovascular's the big thing. For those of you out there just lifting weights and not doing any cardiovascular, we're not seeing the same kind of positive implication in the brain. It's great for your bones. Gotta have that, right. So, it's great for the pressure on the bones, but I really want you to get out there and do some cardiovascular stuff. It doesn't have to be crazy. Just get a Fitbit and get 10,000 steps in a day. You know, Fitbit or something else that's a step counter, and make 30 minutes of those a day something that are faster than walk and make you breathe a little heavier and maybe get you a little sweaty above the lip. So, that's exercise. The third thing every day: your brain needs downtime that is not asleep. We call it a wake rest in neuroscience, and that means mindfulness. It means meditation. It means just wandering, mentally wandering. Sit in your office, sit in your home. Just look out the window and untether yourself from electronics. Literally untether from electronics. And give yourself ten minutes of that three times a day. The recent research shows that your brain is best from a work, productive, and quality standpoint, best at sprinting for a maximum of about 57 minutes with a 17 minute break, and in that break you're doing downtime things. You're laughing. Maybe you go and do a deliberate distraction. Maybe you just mentally wander. Maybe you do some mindfulness where you just think about a thing. There's lots of stuff out there, Headspace and other kinds of apps out there that you can really just take that cortisol level down. So, sprint 57. In my book I call it 50-10, because I like even numbers. So, sprint for 50, take ten off. Also during that ten minutes, by the way, is to hydrate. An under-hydrated brain doesn't think as well. Your brain needs about ten times more water than the rest of the cells in your body. So, during your ten minutes, go... You know, every time you hit that ten minute mark, go get a glass of water and drink it. So, 50-10, 50-10, throughout the day, to the degree you can. Obviously, nobody's on that exact schedule, but you want to introduce it at least three times a day, and during that ten minutes, during at least three of those, really have that downtime awake rest. Not where you're sleeping, but awake rest. If you want to take a nap in your office for ten or 15 minutes, awesome. Awesome, awesome. Really, those reset everything in your head, and if you can do it and close your door and figure out how to accomplish that, it's highly encouraged. Lots of research around the benefits of napping. Laughter is... We talked about that, but laughing, finding lightness, going to websites that make you laugh and make you giggle, and don't discard all those things that your friends are sending to you. Put them in a file, and when you're feeling a little in energy, get them out and giggle. Watch what happens. You feel awake. It's not an accident. Gives you stamina. And then the final thing is being moved. Tears of joy or just being moved, feeling emotionally positive. You know, the underdog videos or movies. One of the websites I love is values.com, and it's a non-religious, non-political website, and you can't give it money. It's a great of entrepreneurs and philanthropists who came together and created a thing called the foundation for a better life, and it's literally public service announcements that are 30, 60, and 90 second long videos about doing the right thing. It's anti-bullying and it's just about doing the right things, and if you watch those and don't feel something, you've got ice in your veins. You need to go do something about that. And that sense of... That's where we feel that oxytocin and that towardness toward our own species, where we feel like, oh, look at that. See, how cool is that? So, we've all seen all those videos, and you want to see those a few times a week. I just encourage you to sit down and find those things in your world that make you laugh, make you feel, make you feel energized, and the five things I just outlined for you are the great erasers for that.

Matt:	Those are some excellent things, and we've talked a bunch about the importance of sleep, meditation, and several other of these topics on previous episodes, so I think you're echoing what our listeners have heard before, but it bears repeating, definitely, that these are absolutely critical things to be doing every single day.

Scott:	100% every day. And you know, the thing is people get all into a regimen. For me, mine is like, okay, when am I going to get this in? It's like I'm going to go work out right after we're done. And I have a personal trainer, by the way, and I put that person in my life because I know I won't go push myself like he will, right? So, it's that accountability. It's that person and, you know, I look at that and I'm like, okay, a few times a week I'm going to go work with him when I'm in town. Not in town a lot, but and then in the off time, I'm going to go get on a treadmill. Don't love it, but I'm going to do it, not necessarily for my body but definitely for my brain.

Matt:	So, what is one piece of homework that you would give to our listeners?

Scott:	Well, I would have your listeners take stock of their open order list, what I call an open order list. What are all the things that you've told yourself that you will do that, you know... kind of think a month out. What are all the open orders that you have? Gotta get this anniversary gift. Have to finish this email. Got to get this proposal out. Have to go look for venture capital money. Got to finish the basement. Got to do yard work. All those go on there, because it's what you're asking your brain to pay attention to. I would detail them out, write them down, and think as many as you possibly can. It's kind of like a to-do list, but it's even bigger, because you wouldn't put "Call Mom" on your to-do list, usually. Maybe not. But I want you to look at everything that you're telling your brain to pay attention to, and then what I would like for you to do is start to discard stuff. Get rid of the things that you know you're not going to do. Stop telling yourself you are. When you're ready, you will. And start focusing on a few things, big chunky things. I would really look at what is putting you in a towards state. What are you moving toward? And that typically has to do with a goal. We know that people who are moving toward a larger goal and, breaking it down into the smaller, bite-sized pieces, start small but start now, they have better wellbeing overall. And they accomplished their goals. They just have more effectiveness in their lives. So, it's really about cleaning out the attic of your life, and get rid of the mental boxes that you're not going to do anything with and just discard them. Start to discard. Really look at that list. That would be from a piece of homework I would have people start with.

Matt:	That's great advice. So, what are some other books and resources, obviously other than Activate Your Brain, that you would recommend people check out if they want to learn more or dig into some of these concepts?

Scott:	Yeah. I really like Flourish, as well as Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman. Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson. I like Charles Duhigg's book on habit. I like Shawn Achor, A-C-H-O-R, on happiness, the Happiness Factor. I think he's great. Written some really cool things on that. You know, there are so many tomes and books out there that really... Oh, here's one that I really love, is a book that kind of got me really deeply interested in some of the intricacies. It's called Rewire Your Brain. I don't have it in front of my right now and I would misquote the author's last name, but Rewire Your Brain is the name of the book, and a really great... Written by a PTSD neuropsychologist who really understands the intricacies of bringing the science down to a place where people can eat it, consume it, and do something with it. Really great book.

Matt:	And where can people find you online?

Scott:	They just go to www.completeintelligence.com, and that's my website. You can find my book there. Both my books are on Amazon.com, Activate Your Brain and Be a Shortcut. Activate Your Brain was the one that came out about ten months ago, and it hit the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list in September, so I'm proud of that. 

Matt:	Congrats.

Scott:	Thank you.

Matt:	Well, Scott, this has been great, and I'm sure the listeners are going to love a number of the insights and tactics that you've shared here. So, I wanted to say thank you very much for being on The Science of Success.

Scott:	Great to be here.

Unleash The Power of Meditation

This episode we are going to talk about Meditation – we’ve had a lot of listeners ask about this and I am really excited to cover this topic!

It’s something that I’ve done nearly every day for over 2 years and something that has a ton of research-proven benefits.

In this episode we will talk about the myriad benefits of meditation, look at a few different ways to meditate, discuss a simple and easy way to get started on meditation – that finally got me into a daily meditation practice- and much more! 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

SHOW NOTES, LINKS & RESEARCH

• Meditation Improves Your Ability to Be Introspective (see here)

• Meditation Decreases Depression (see here)

• Meditation Decreases Anxiety (see here, here, and here)

• Meditation Decreases Stress (see here and here)

• Meditation Increases Compassion (see here and here)

• Meditation Increases Immune System Function (see here and here)

• Meditation Improves Your Ability to Regulate Your Emotions (see here)

• Meditation Increases Grey Matter (see here)

• Meditation Increases Brain Size In Areas Related to Emotional Regulation (see here and here)

• Meditation Increases Positive Emotions (see here and here)

• Meditation Increases Cortical Thickness In Areas Related to Paying Attention (see here)

• Meditation Increases Your Ability to Focus & Multitask (see here and here)

• Vishen Lakhiani's Envisioning Method (Description + Guided Meditation here)

• Vishen Lakhiani on Mixergy (see here)

• The Reality of Perception Episode (see here)

• The Power of Compassion (see here)

• Understanding e=mc2 (see here)

• "We Are All Connected" (see here)

• [Meditation Music] Zen Garden (pt 1) by David & Steve Gordon ( see here)

• [Meditation Music] It Shall Be Beautiful by David & Steve Gordon (see here)

• [Meditation Music] Ravi Shankar Sitar Music (see here)

• [Meditation Playlist] Matt Bodnar's Zen Garden Spotify Playlist (see here)

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I'm really excited today because we're going to talk about meditation, which is something that I am really passionate about and something that, as I mentioned in the intro, I've been doing for more than two years on an almost daily basis. And I wanted to kind of open with an old Zen proverb that I really like, which is: If you don't have 20 minutes to meditate, you need two hours. That's something I think we should all think about. Meditation, as we'll discuss on the podcast and I'm sure that many listeners are already aware of, is something that is incredibly beneficial to you. There's tons of research about the benefits of meditation, but a lot of people get sometimes kind of caught up or confused by the fact that there are so many different ways to meditate; there's so many different methodologies; there's so much noise. It's hard to kind of distinguish the signal from all of that. So, what we're going to talk about today: I'm going to give you the way that I got started meditating. I'm going to give you a really simple method. It's very easy. It takes between five and 15 minutes to do, typically in the morning or at night right before you go to sleep, and it's something that really... You know, I kind of intermittently meditated for a year or two when I first became interested, and I'll kind of tell my whole story about how I got started on meditation. But once I discovered this methodology, it gave me sort of the framework and the guidelines that enabled me to meditate on a consistent and ongoing basis, and start to really reap a lot of the real benefits of meditation.

So, let's start out with a couple of my personal favorite reasons why meditation is so important. I think, in a meta sense, meditation enables you to view your own thinking and capture and be aware of what's going on in your mind; being aware of the dialogue that's constantly running; being aware of the things and the thoughts that sometimes kind of appear in your mind almost on autopilot. And that awareness, that self-awareness of your thought patterns, of what's happening in your brain, being aware of that gives you the ability to effect so much more change in your life. And, you know, going back even to the last episode where we talked about NLP and we talked about the software running in the back of your mind with Andy Murphy, meditation is the tool, in many ways, that enables you to kind of pause to see those patterns, to see that language in your mind that's telling you that you can do something or that you can't do something or that's kind of a script on autopilot from your past. Another episode, we talked about limiting beliefs. One of the best ways to kind of catch limiting beliefs in your mind is with meditation. When you meditate, you're able to kind of pick up on that chatter, that mental...those mental messages and you're able to say, hey, hold on. What was that feeling? What was that thing that I just had, that I just felt? That sort of twinge of doubt or that little phrase that just fluttered through my brain. And you can say hold on a second. That's something that I need to write down. That's a limiting belief, something that's been lurking in the back of my subconscious, that's been stopping me from doing what I really want to do. And the episode we did on limiting beliefs really drilled down into that, so if it's something you want to explore more, I highly recommend checking that episode out.

Another incredible benefit of meditation is, and the way it kind of ties into being able to grow and to challenge yourself and to push yourself... We talked a lot more about this in the episode on embracing discomfort. But one of the ways that you grow and improve is by expending and playing in the edges of your comfort zone, playing in the places where you're uncomfortable. And meditation gives you, again, that same kind of mental ability to sort of flag a thought and say, you know what? This is me hiding from this uncomfortable situation and this is an opportunity, instead of hiding, to step up to the plate and say, I'm not going to let...I'm not going to back down from this situation. I'm going to force myself to do something that's uncomfortable and push myself outside of my comfort zone.

So, here are a few more benefits of meditation. And, trust me, there's literally a laundry list of things, and all of these are research-backed and we're going to include a bunch of them in the show notes. But meditation has been proven by psychological research to reduce stress, reduce depression, and reduce anxiety. I know that that comes as a shocker to many people. Another interesting benefit is that meditation has been shown in research to actually boost the function of your immune system. Another one: Again, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but meditation improves your ability to regulate your emotions, right, to control your emotional state. Meditation increases the gray matter in your brain. This is a pretty amazing finding. It literally increases the size of your brain and, not only your brain as a whole, but it increases the volume and specifically in areas related to emotional regulation, positive emotions, and self-control. Meditation also increases the cortical thickness of your brain in areas specifically related to paying attention, which yields dividends and increase in your creativity; increase in your ability to focus; increase in your ability to multitask; and so many other things. Again, I'm not going to drill down into all that research. We could spend hours talking about every single one of the studies that showed how powerful and beneficial meditation is. But I think you already know, deep down, how important meditation is and how powerful it really can be.

So, let's dig into some of the different kinds of meditation and some of the different ways that people meditate. One of the biggest misconceptions that I want to clear up is that there are many different meditation methodologies. There are many different ways to meditate and there's no right way. There's no right way to get started. You don't necessarily have to sit in a Lotus Position. You don't have to have a mantra. You don't have to have a certain kind of breathing. Part of the reason people get intimidated and don't start meditating is because they get overwhelmed with the deluge of information on the internet. You know, you can google how to meditate. There's 15 different methodologies or more in any given blog post that you're going to look at. The key is to just find something simple, find something easy that can help you get started. You know, that is always the hardest part. You want to just figure out what's the easiest, simplest thing I can do to begin on this path.

And I'll tell you the story of how I started meditating. It was kind of almost on a whim. It had been something that I'd been interested in for a long time, and even when I was when I was in high school, I was fortunate enough... I traveled to Southeast Asia and I randomly bought this book on Buddhism and I read it cover-to-cover. I didn't really understand most of it, but it was just something that was really fascinating to me. I've always had kind of a fascination with Zen and East Asian religion and Buddhism and all that stuff. And I read about meditation--that book--and I tried it once or twice, but it really didn't take hold. It didn't really have any effect and I kind of forgot about it. That was when I was 16 or 17. Years and years and years later--it was probably four or five years ago--I was just sitting in my office, working, and I got this urge to search for something on Pandora, and I just searched for the phrase "Zen garden". I don't know why, don't know what prompted me to do that, but I searched for the phrase "Zen garden" and just created a Pandora station that was sort of this chill, like, spa music. And I was just working, kind of listening to it. It was early in the morning and, you know, that's of my favorite time of day. And I listened to three or four songs and then suddenly I just got this really powerful urge to just sort of sit down and sit in kind of a Lotus posture and meditate. And I didn't know what I was doing, but I just started doing that and it was really enjoyable and I kind of started seeing... I didn't do it every day. I would do it once a week, couple times a month. Whenever I sort of got this urge, I would just pop on some kind of chill spa music and I would meditate. But I couldn't really establish a daily practice with that. I was... Sometimes, it felt really fruitful, it felt really engaging and enlightening in some ways, but oftentimes I would just feel like, what am I doing? What is this? What going on? And it wasn't really until I stumbled upon the particular methodology that I use to meditate now that I really was able to build it into a daily practice.

But before we dig into that, there's a couple just rough considerations I want to talk about. One of the biggest buzzwords that gets thrown around a lot when you're talking about meditation is the difference between guided meditation and unguided meditation. And, again, there's no right or wrong answer here. The best way... The best analogy that I've ever heard for thinking about the difference between guided meditation and unguided meditation is that guided meditation is like riding a motorcycle and unguided meditation is like riding a bike. Both will get you where you need to go, but only riding a bike you actually build the muscles that you need to get there yourself. So, if your focus is solely on the destination--you know, anxiety relief, stress relief, that sort of stuff--guided meditation can get you there. And there's a ton of apps and YouTube videos and all kinds of stuff based around guided meditation, which is essentially someone walking you through each phase of some sort of meditation process. I'm sure many of you have either used some of these apps or heard of these things, or tried guided meditation at one point or another. And, again, there's nothing wrong with guided meditation. Actually, guided meditation, in many ways, is how I started down the path of getting a daily meditation practice.

Unguided meditation basically means meditating on your own. Now, you can still meditate with sort of a framework that's been predetermined, or you can focus on what's called mindfulness meditation. That's another buzzword. That's another thing you hear a lot when people talk about meditating. Mindfulness meditation is essentially the idea of focusing your thoughts on one particular thing. The reason people talk about mindfulness meditation or the things that people think about when they talk about mindful meditation, a lot of times, it's focusing on breath, right? We've heard that again and again. Focus on your breathing, that kind of thing. Another thing that people think about or do when they're talking about mindfulness meditation is focusing on either a single thought, a single word, or a mantra. That's where you get into things like transcendental meditation, et cetera. Again, if you want to do mindfulness meditation, it's totally fine. It's a very valid form of meditation, but you don't have to do that. There's other kinds of methodologies, other ways that you can meditate that don't have to be just focusing only on breathing, focusing only on saying "om" over and over and over again. But, you can also incorporate parts of mindfulness into another meditation framework or another meditation methodology.

But one of my favorite sort of quotes about meditation, specifically around the idea of focusing on breath, that... I think people get really, really discouraged when they try to meditate. They sit down five minutes, ten minutes, and their thoughts are just racing, things pinging back and forth. Oh, I've got to do this. I've got to call so-and-so. Oh, I've got this thing to do. Oh, I need to write this down. And it seems very stressful. And then, you know, maybe eventually they'll kind of come back and be like, oh, I'm supposed to be meditating and I'm terrible at this. I can't clear my brain. I can't get all these thoughts to stop bouncing around. And this this quote really helps kind of clarify that. If you sit down and you do that, you haven't failed at meditating. Meditation is the return to breath. That's the quote. Meditation is the return to breath. Think about that. It's not focusing on your breathing. It's not focusing on that thought or whatever it might be. It's returning back to that after you've been distracted, after you've had your mind racing and running around. It still happens to me to this day. I've been meditating for years and my mind will drift, it will wander. Even this morning when I was meditating, I started thinking about all this stuff, and then [deeply inhales and exhales] returned to my breath. I just returned back to that place. So, meditation cultivates kind of that ability to not be frustrated. Remember, we talked about this, actually, in the episode about dealing with setbacks. It's not about being frustrated and angry that your thoughts kind of went astray; it's pulling back, it's remembering to just return to breath, return back to the methodology that you're using.

So, with that in mind, again, it's about getting started as easily as possible. Pick something, start something, and just begin there. And I'm going to give you a methodology that we're going to talk about now that can help you get started, and this is the methodology that I used, that helped me get started with meditation. The method that I use to meditate is something called the envisioning method. This is a meditation framework that was created by a guy named Vishen Lakhiani. He's the founder of the company Mindvalley, and I originally discovered his framework from an incredible talk that he gives on the website Mixergy. If you've never listened to it, I would highly recommend checking that out. This framework is also very similar to the daily meditation routine that Tony Robbins follows and many other people recommend. And we'll include a link to this in the show notes as well, but if you look Vishen Lakhiani up on YouTube, you can find him. There's about a 20-minute clip where he actually walks through every piece of the envisioning method and then does, at the end of that clip, a 15-minute guided meditation where he actually walks you through each of those steps. And, remember, guided meditation is a lot like training wheels It's something that can help you go through the various pieces of a meditation practice with someone else walking you through. And once you've used guided meditation to kind of get started to follow the process, eventually you can build the muscles, build the skills to meditate on your own without some sort of guided practice.

The envisioning method is a six-part framework. The total time it takes to meditate using the envisioning method is approximately between five--if you're really in a hurry--and 15, maybe 20 minutes. It probably takes 10 to 15 minutes on average if you do sort of a normal run through of each of the six pieces. So, if you're thinking 10 to 15 minutes, six pieces, it's approximately two to three minutes on each different piece of the framework. The first piece of the envisioning method--the first one which I honestly think is the single most important piece of the entire framework--is a focus on gratitude, is a segment about gratitude. So, what does that mean? Basically, you take two to three minutes and you focus on a few things that you're really, really grateful for in your life. You focus on maybe some big things in your life. You focus on even the smallest things, you know. Just tiny, little things. One of my favorite quotes from Tony Robbins is: The key to happiness is to trade your expectations for appreciation. But the crazy thing about gratitude... And, actually, the majority... Not every piece of the envisioning method... Again, it's a six-part framework. Not every piece of it is it scientifically-backed and totally rooted in research and we'll talk about that when we get to the piece that isn't, but the majority of the sort of legs of this framework are rooted in the science and the research of positive psychology.

So, gratitude, for example. This is one of my favorite studies they did a research study where they had two groups of people. They had the research group and the control group. The research group, they had them write in a gratitude journal for seven days. They had them write three things that they were grateful for for seven days. That's it. After the seven days, they stopped. They didn't do anything else. The control group did nothing. Six months later... And they measured them for a six-month period. Six months later, the people who had spent one week writing down three things they were grateful for each day were 10% happier than the people who had done nothing. Think about that. That was one week. They stopped after a week of doing that. That's the power of gratitude. Again, it's research-backed. And I think everybody knows, fundamentally, gratitude is one of the most important pillars to happiness, one of the most important pillars to living a fulfilled life. And gratitude is something that is, to me, the single most important piece of the envisioning method and the thing that brings me back to doing it every single day. Now, if you think about that, if you think about somebody doing that for seven days, it has an impact on their happiness six months later. Imagine if you do it every single day. Imagine the compounding effect of that focus on gratitude every single day. You start your day. The first thing you do is focus on how incredibly grateful you are to be alive, how incredibly grateful you are to have the blessings that you have in your life. There's no better way to start your day. There's no better way to begin your meditation, either.

The second piece is compassion or connectedness, and, to me, there's a couple things that I focus on in this segment. And, again, these things are actually more rooted in kind of the ideas of physical science, physics, and biology, but they're things that, to me, just sort of resonate very deeply. The goal of the compassion segment or the connectedness segment of the envisioning method is to cultivate a deep sense of care, a deep sense of empathy, a deep sense of compassion for the other people in your life, for those around you, for everyone that you interact with. We talked about this a little bit in the episode on perceiving reality. We also talked about compassion and how important it is in-depth in the interview that we did with Chris Cook. It's an incredible episode. But compassion is so important and the idea is, basically, you think about how interconnected all life truly is and it really kind of ties you back into a deep sense of compassion for others and for those around you.

And I think about a couple different things that sort of root and really ground this for me. And, again, these...all three of these, as crazy as some of them may sound, are rooted fundamentally in physical science. The first is an incredible quote by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and I'm sure many of you know who Neil deGrasse Tyson is. If you don't, he is the narrator of the most recent edition of the TV show Cosmos. He is a very prominent astrophysicist and scientist. But this quote really resonates deep with me and it's something that I focus on every time that I come back to the idea of compassion and idea of connectedness. And the quote is: We are all connected to each other, biologically; to the Earth, chemically; to the rest of the universe, atomically. If you really think about that at each of those different levels, that's a fundamentally true statement from a scientific standpoint, right. We are all connected to the universe atomically. What does that mean? If you really think about it, at an atomic level, the atoms in your body are the same as...the components of the atoms in your body are the same as the components in the sun; the components in the planets in our solar system; the components in the stars throughout our galaxy.

Another thing that I think about is energy-mass equivalence. E=mc2 -- everybody's heard that equation. What does that actually mean? Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. That's a core component of physics. It's an equation that's incredibly well-known. But what it actually means is that mass is energy. All mass is nothing but energy. Everything around you. You. It's all just energy and, to me, that really helps kind of ground me and connect me to not only other people in my life, but the entire universe.

The last is one of my favorite quotes. It's from Carl Sagan, who I'm a big fan of. "The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies, were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff." Again, this is something else that's rooted in physics, rooted in physical science, and is a true statement. Every atom in your body, except for the helium and the hydrogen, was formed in a collapsing star, and the reason that's the case is because helium and hydrogen--which are the two most common elements in the universe--can only fuse together at such great temperatures to form other elements that it has to be in a supernova--it has to be in a collapsing star--for those elements to form together and form everything else on the periodic table. So, the vast majority of not only your body, but everything around you was formed in the explosion of a collapsing star. You and everything around you is literally made from stars. You were born out of a star.

Again, this stuff sounds kind of crazy. It sounds a little bit woo-woo, but all three of those things are fundamentally true, scientific statements. And the reason I like those statements is because they're true, they're scientific, but they really kind of create this sort of unique feeling that makes you kind of think about the universe. It ties you back in. You know, whatever your religious beliefs are, those statements kind of tie you into the idea of, hey, there's an underlying connectedness here. There's an underlying kind of need for a root cause of compassion. And we talked about how important compassion is on the episode where we interviewed Dr. Chris Cook. But, you know, that's why you have this compassion segment as part of the envisioning method.

The third component of the envisioning method is forgiveness. One of my favorite quotes about forgiveness is a quote from Gandhi. "Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong. The weak cannot forgive." And one of the things that took me a long time to come to grips with about the idea of forgiveness is that the reason forgiveness is important is not because someone else deserves to be forgiven; it's because it's bad for you to hang on to that bitterness, to hang on to that anger. They actually did a research study at Johns Hopkins. Dr. Karen Schwartz says, "There is an enormous physical burden to being hurt and disappointed. Chronic anger puts you into a fight-or-flight mode, which results in numerous changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and immune response. Those changes then increase the risk of depression, heart disease, and diabetes, among other conditions. Forgiveness, however, calms stress levels, leading to improved health." Again, this stuff isn't made up. This is backed by research. It's backed by medical studies. The reason it's important to forgive is not because someone else deserves it if somebody has wronged you; it's because the only way to truly move forward, the only way that you can ever really reach happiness, is by letting go, is by forgiving. It's because you will benefit from forgiveness, not because they deserve it. If you think about people like Gandhi, people like Nelson Mandela, their incredible power for forgiveness is what enabled them to create such incredible results. It's what enabled them to achieve so much. And that's why... The part of the forgiveness practice is basically not only to forgive yourself, which often is the hardest part--it's often the hardest to forgive yourself--but it's to forgive other people who have wronged you even for this smallest things. You want to forgive somebody who cut you off in traffic. You want to forgive somebody who was rude to you. I'm reminded of, again, another Tony Robbins story that he tells or a thing that he talks about is the idea of it's easy to be nice to people when they're nice to you. The way you build the muscle of compassion is to be nice to people when they are mean to you, when they are rude to you, because we know that the vast majority of the time, the reason that they're being mean, the reason that they're being rude -- it has to do with them. It doesn't have to do with you. It has to do with the situation they're in. It has to do with the mood or the state that they're in. It has to do with a lot of things, of which probably none of that has to do with you.

And so forgiveness... And the reason you practice this every day is because, you know, when you start getting into this practice, you're going to be really searching and thinking for...thinking about forgiveness for things that maybe are some big things in your life that you've been really holding on to, some grudges, some things you're angry about from your past, et cetera. You want to slowly work through all that stuff. But you once you've done that, you can start forgiving people even for the most minor, trivial things that happen in your daily life. And the ability to let go of those things during your meditation practice also enables you to let go of them in real time. In your life, when something happens, you can step back and be like, you know what? I forgive this person. It's not worth...It's not worth it for me to hold on to this anger, to hold on to this grudge, to hold on to this bitterness. I'm just going to let go because my happiness is more important than being right or than being bitter or angry at this person because of some sort of wrong that they did to me. And I think the forgiveness segment is, in many ways, one of the hardest parts of the envisioning method, but it's something that I think is incredibly important. And, again, all three of the segments we've talked about so far are rooted and backed in research. These are not made up, woo-woo ideas. All of these things are grounded in research or science that shows how this is practically beneficial for you.

The next two parts of the envisioning method--part four and part five--are both around the idea of positive visualization. The first--part four--is about positively visualizing your day, visualizing how the day is going to unfold, and kind of really creating a vision in your mind of everything going perfectly, everything going the way that you want it to go, everything going...everything being ideal. The second part, five, is about visualizing your life three years from now. And Vishen Lakhiani talks about the concept that we can accomplish less than we want to in one year, but we can accomplish much more than we believe we can in three years. And so the idea is to look three years in the future and envision your perfect like, envision everything that you want, all of your dreams coming true, your goals coming true, everything that you're working towards--the best-case scenario--and then double it. And the reason you do this both with your day and with your kind of ideal future is because positive visualization has been shown by research to open up new neural pathways, to open your mind's eye to the possibility of some other alternate route, some other journey, just the same way that... And we talked about this in-depth in the episode about the reality of perception and how the way we perceive reality doesn't necessarily mimic, don't necessarily actually represent what reality really is. We also talked about this in the episode about limiting beliefs. But the concept that the way...the map that you use to understand reality, the belief structure that you have that tells you what reality is can be flawed. It can be based on faulty assumptions or imperfect assumptions, and that map interprets all the information that you get from the world. And so positive visualization helps reshape that map in a positive way, in a way that opens the door for new opportunities, new possibilities, and things that you might never have seen before; doors that you might never have thought about before; paths that you would never have taken before. That's why it's so powerful.

There's an incredible study around the idea of exercise. There's a doctor named [INAUDIBLE 00:31:05], who's an exercise physiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, and he did a study where he had one group of participants actually lift weights and do physical practice. He had another group simply mentally visualize that they were lifting weights, that they were doing practice every single day. The group who actually lifted weights had a 30% muscle increase. The group who only conducted mental exercises of weight training increased their strength by 13 1/2%. Think about that. This is three months after the experiment, when they took these measurements. By never going to the gym, only visualizing the fact that they were going to go to the gym, that they were lifting weights, they increased their muscle mass by 13 1/2%. It's incredible when you think about the fact that just using your mind can physically reshape your body, just visualizing physical training can grow your muscle mass. If you think about that when you apply that to the rest of the areas of your life, positive visualization can help you improve, can help you grow, can help open up new doors and new possibilities for your reality.

The last part of the envisioning method is something called the blessing, and this is the one...this is not scientifically-based, but it is something that Vishen recommends and something that I think is a worthwhile component of the envisioning method. It doesn't matter necessarily if you're religious, if you're an atheist, but the idea of the blessing is that you sort of imagine a positive energy flowing through your body and supporting and healing you. And it sounds kind of woo-woo, but, again, think about the fact that we talked about earlier, that energy is mass, right. Everything around us, including ourselves... We are nothing but energy. So, the idea is you envision...you sort of visualize a positive healing energy flowing into your body to heal you, to support you, to bless you, and to kind of help you along the journey, help you along your path. And, again, if you want to get more details and you want to get an actual guided walk-through through the entire envisioning method, Vishen has a YouTube video where he does the entire thing and we will link to it in the show notes, or you can just search his name or you can search the envisioning method on YouTube and you can find all that stuff.

The last piece I want to talk about is the environment, that how do you meditate, through some of the sort of specifics and the logistics. Personally, I like to meditate first thing in the morning when I get up, and I think that, to me, either first thing when you get up or right before you go to sleep are the two most important times to meditate. And either or. I mean, you can do both if you want as well. But the reality is the day gets so busy, it gets so hectic that if you don't carve out and set a time and really say, I am going to do this every single day at...you know, as soon as I wake up, you're not going to do it. And it's not a huge time commitment--again, 10, 15 minutes; five minutes if you're really in a rush--but the power of meditation is that doing it every single day is what builds that mental muscle. It's what increases physically the gray matter in your brain. It's what changes the structure of your brain -- building that practice every single day. Think back to the gratitude journal, the idea that just doing it for one week has that powerful of a benefit. Imagine stacking that every single day for years. It can completely transform your life.

In terms of what I physically do when I meditate, I, personally, typically sit in a Lotus posture, but it doesn't really matter. You can sit in a chair. You can lay on the floor. Most people recommend that you don't meditate laying in bed simply because often you'll just fall asleep. But sometimes I'll just lay on the ground. But, you know, I like to sit in a Lotus posture and one of the things that really kind of helps me get in-state, helps me get into my meditation zone and block out whatever might be going around--I've meditated on a plane before; I've meditated all kinds of places--is having a sort of meditation playlist, and I have a couple songs and artists that I recommend personally that I love to listen to when I meditate. But it really helps me kind of get in the zone and get to the place of being calm, being centered, and get back to that kind of meditation state of mind. One of them is the song Zen Garden by David and Steve Gordon. I absolutely love this song. There's a couple different versions of it, but there's about a 30-minute version, so you're not going to run out of time, you're not going to run out of song if you're only meditating for 10 or 15 minutes. But it just, to me, personally, it really centers me, brings me to that kind of place and that space I want to be when I'm meditating. The next is there's an album by the same artists, David and Steve Gordon, called Gratitude that's incredible. That really helps me kind of get centered and meditate. And they're some of my favorite artists kind of in this segment that really have some awesome music. Another one is sitar music by Ravi Shankar. And if you're not familiar with Ravi Shankar, he's a fascinating guy. But if you kind of have... If you're in the mood for something to kind of get a little bit more of an Indian vibe, that sitar music is really, really cool to meditate to. And, actually, I meditated to sitar music this morning. But if you want to find some of this stuff, I created a Spotify playlist titled "Zen Garden". If you want to follow that, you can get all those songs. You can just look me up or look that up on Spotify. You can find it. All the music is on there or you can find a lot of it on YouTube, SoundCloud, something like that.

But, again, the key about meditation is just get started. The benefits are there. You know the benefits are real. The question is: Can you commit 10 minutes a day to all these amazing benefits? Can you commit 10 minutes a day to this kind of framework? Find the easiest, simplest way for you to get started and just do it. Try it for a week. Try it for two weeks. You'll start to get addicted to it and realize that it's awesome and that you look forward to it and it's something you really enjoy.

The Surprising Power of Compassion with Dr. Chris Kukk

In this episode of The Science of Success, we dive into what it’s like to have breakfast with the Dalai Lama, the difference between compassion and empathy (and why it's important), and how you can harness compassion to achieve more and be a better version of yourself with Dr. Chris Kukk. 

Dr. Kukk is a former counter-intelligence agent, the founding Director of the Center for Compassion, Creativity, and Innovation, a professor of Political Science at Western Connecticut State University, and author of the upcoming book The Compassionate Achiever.

In this episode you will learn:

• The physical and chemical differences between compassion and empathy (and why that matters)

• How compassion can help you achieve your goals

• How to avoid emotional quicksand

• How compassion fuels creativity

• How to cultivate emotional resilience

• What we can do to widen our circle of compassion

• And much more!

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today we’re excited to have another great guest on the show, Dr. Chris Kukk. Chris is a former counter-intelligence agent, the founding director for the Center of Compassion, Creativity, and Innovation, a professor of political science at Western Connecticut State University. And author of the upcoming book, The Compassionate Achiever. Chris, welcome to the Science of Success. 

Chris:	Thank you for having me, I love the podcast.

Matt:	We’re so excited to have you on here. So, to start out, obviously you have a very deep and kind of fascinating background. Tell me, how did your interest at the intersection at neuroscience and social science emerge initially?

Chris:	As a political scientist, I wanted to understand why people would want to cooperate, or why would they fall into conflict with one another, or why do they just ignore each other? And I think if you exclude neuroscience, what’s happening in people’s brains, what’s happening in their perceptions. How they perceive reality. You’re never going to get to an answer if everything stays superficial. So, I wanted to blend both the neuroscience - what happens inside - to what happens inside. You know, in science, it’s not nature or nurture - it’s nature and nurture. I think we need to understand that more deeply when it comes to the social sciences. When it comes to the social sciences neuroscience hasn’t been there, and so I decided to jump in.

Matt:	I think that’s so important, and actually one of the people that we’ve talked about on the podcast, I’m a huge fan of is Charlie Munger. And he kind of explores the same thing which is basically the notion that psychology fundamentally underpins any phenomenon or any endeavor that involves human beings. Whether it’s business, psychology, economics, whatever it might be, and any understanding that doesn’t incorporate psychology is a fundamentally flawed understanding.  Fundamentally imperfect or incomplete picture of whatever that field might be.

Chris:	And I think that’s the case and I think with psychology, there’s this cool dialogue going on between psychology and neuroscience, and now the social sciences. You know, you have fields now called neuroeducation. And you have Paul Zack, who calls himself a neuroeconomist. And so, I think it’s a combination of different disciplines and I think if we take those disciplines and treat them like a combination lock, and combine them together in different ways, I think we’ll come out with not only new ways to move forward in resolving issues, and overcoming problems, but to also give us new ways to go back to research, to get a better understanding what’s happening inside the human brain. 

Matt:	So, one of the kind of core defining characteristics of everything you do is the notion of compassion. And that’s something we haven’t really talked about on the podcast. Tell me a little bit about how you were drawn into the study of compassion, and how do you even define compassion.

Chris:	Let me start with the definition of compassion. Since I found the debate team on campus, you always have to define your terms.

Matt:	I was a debater in high school, for the record, so…

Chris:	So then you know! You know! You have to have topicality, we call it. 

Matt:	Exactly.

Chris:	So, I define compassion as a 360 degree understanding of a problem or suffering of another. So it’s two parts here. That’s the first part: 360 degree understanding of the suffering or problem of another. Then, number two, is you take action to alleviate that suffering and address the problem. So that’s how I define compassion. From my counter-intelligence days all the way through my work on international water issues, to my work here on various educational settings, it’s about working through problems that I think for the most part have divided people. And where I’ve seen compassion come into it - it acts as a glue to unite people to move forward. And I even saw this in my military unit. The units that always try to find a way through a solution without leaving anybody behind were the most successful units. We still have that model, right? Leave no one behind. And we’re willing to sacrifice anything. We’re willing to do anything to get our fellow trooper back. 

	So, this is not something that’s a surprise, it’s just something that’s been sitting in front of us, and you’ve had it in a previous podcast before. It’s one of those invisible gorillas, right? And we sometimes just don’t look at it. It goes by us. So, all I did was slow down, and my kids help me slow down a little bit and ask me all those types of questions. And it’s one of the advantages of being a dad. You get to slow down and answer a lot of questions. And that was one of the questions I had in my mind. Then I was always told “Oh you’re too nice!” And by that saying - you’re always going to not succeed. You’re going to have problem getting ahead because people are going to take advantage of you. That hasn’t been the case. People come together and we resolve problems and overcome things. Building an honors program at Western Connecticut State University and a very successful CEO just donated one million dollars. So I didn’t see it that way, but other people did. They would give me that line that people like to say all the time about Charles Darwin. “It’s survival of the fittest.” And Charles Darwin did not say that. He hypothesized that in the Origin of the Species, but most of his work - a good chunk of his work, over 90% of his work, including The Descent of Man, shows that is quite the opposite. It’s really survival of the kindness. Especially in chapters 2, 4, and 5 of Descent of Man, he literally says, Matt, that “the species that has the highest number of his members” - and this is words, “that are sympathetic”, meaning altruistic, generous, or compassionate, “will move up the evolutionary ladder more efficiently and effectively than other species.” And when you take that idea and you overlay it on problems of water, and you overlay it on problems that have political and economic ramifications, you change your perspective. Survival of the fittest - it’s just survival of the kindness. You find new answers, and new doors that you can jump through. To not only help you succeed, but the people around you succeed. 

Matt:	That actually reminds me of the book called The Moral Animal. I don’t know if you’ve ever read it but it’s by a guy named Robert Right. But it basically talks about a similar idea which is essentially that evolution sort of preprograms us to be geared towards compassion because it actually has a positive survival benefit.

Chris:	It’s science. It’s inside us, too. When we think in a compassionate way, we actually activate release - outside hormone called oxytocin. Now, oxytocin activates two neurotransmitters, called dopamine and serotonin. And dopamine is that reward type of feeling we get. For me, it would be when I drink chocolate milk. I love chocolate milk, I get a high off of it. Or when I see my wife. I release a lot of dopamine. Serotonin is the calming level. If you think about a successful environment or successful person. Are they optimistic, happy, and calm? Or are they mad, angry, frustrated? Which one is going to create more success? This is not rocket science. OK, so it may be neuroscience, but - it’s in us. And we can choose to activate that path by the choices we make. We can choose to be compassionate. Or we can choose to be apathetic, or callous. That’s up to us! Then we create that environment. We can talk a little bit more about that science, especially when it comes to education. There’s a lot of great research out about what happens in compassionate positive environment in learning environments like school classrooms. What they do to a gene called DRD-4, it’s pretty awesome. I think you combine all the science together then you can see what’s happening in the real world. You combine it together you get these really amazing new insights into what we should be doing to achieve more success.

Matt:	So tell me a little bit more about the hormonal - chemical reactions that take place when we feel compassion. Talking about oxytocin and dopamine and all of that stuff.

Chris:	A lot of the work started with Antonio Damasio, one of my favorite books called Decartes Error and when we can go back a little bit further and review that in a moment if you’d like, but then I think really about five years ago, Dr. Tonya Singer from Germany did a number of studies using MRI scanners to show what happens when people thinking an empathetic way, compared to a compassionate way. And when we think in an empathetic way, when you have empathy on your mind. She found that the brain areas that light up are the same areas as pain. So your brain doesn’t know the difference right? It’s lighting up the pain areas when you thinking an empathetic way. But when you think in a compassionate way, you light up different areas. It’s the same areas as love. The reasons why this is so important for reality, for practical purposes, is that we’ve been talking about burn out in important fields, like first responders. Nurses. Teachers. Firemen. Policemen. You name it - those professions that help other people constantly. You have these higher rates of burnout. Since the 1980s, it started in the nursing area, we called it compassion burnout. But Dr. Tonya Singer’s work is really a misnomer. If anything, it’s called empathy burnout. Because in empathy you’re feeling the same emotion as someone else. You’re stepping into what I call the emotional quicksand of another person. And you can get stuck in that. You can get overwhelmed by that emotion. But compassion, I think, helps you ride the wave of emotions. You have this 360 degree understanding. This kind of multi-disciplinary look at a problem, so you can stay out of the quicksand, or you have branches to grab to get you out of the quicksand. So, the science is showing some really cool insights, especially Tonya Singer. I think we need to start applying it to the real world to help those people who are helping other people.

Matt:	So, I think a lot of listeners might basically think of compassion and empathy and synonyms. How would you distinguish between the two of them? Obviously, we’ve defined compassion. On a chemical level it sounds like you’ve talked about this, but tell me a little bit more about the distinction of compassion and empathy. 

Chris:	So. Empathy is basically, in simple terms, feeling the same emotion as someone else. So if they’re sad, they’re depressed, you’re going to be sad, you’re going to be depressed. You absorb that feeling. And compassion is this kind of understanding, it’s this acquiring of knowledge or learning of why a person is down, why they’re going through specific incidences. You can have compassion without empathy. I think empathy can help at sometimes, but empathy is not necessary for compassion. Compassion is one step - it’s this emotional absorption. You’re feeling this same emotion. Compassion you’re feeling kindness towards someone else. Not sympathy. Sympathy is something completely different. In compassion you want to try to help. You want to try to assist. We all know where good intentions could leave, right? They could leave to more problems. So, you have to want this understanding - this learning. And you want to ask these questions about why someone’s down. You’re going to address them in a way with respect that tries to move them forward so that they don’t get stuck, and you don’t get stick. And empathy that one step absorption - compassion is two step. Understanding and then you take action to resolve the problem.

Matt:	So compassion is much more action-oriented than empathy. 

Chris:	Correct. And I think we see that constantly. Compassion, I think this is one of the reason the Dalai Lama says compassion is not religious. We have a lot of people who confuse compassion with some type of religious notion. No. An atheist can have compassion, and I know plenty that do! This idea of compassion is a building process. It helps not only people get up when they’re down, but it moves towards success. And we see this in teams when those guys on baseball - Wallstreet Journal article had this great piece about - they called it “The Glue Guys” on baseball teams. They’re not the guys with the high stats, they’re not the guys that the media is looking after to interview after the game because they want the big name. But they’re the guys that keep the team together. They’re the guys that do the simple things that back each other up. So the second baseman isn’t a star, but he’s backing up a first baseman. So, if the first basemen misses the ball, he’s there to scoop it up. The stats are not really going to show up, but he’s helping his team out, and he’s always there for everyone else. The “Glue Guys” those are the guys helping everyone else, making their team succeed. And I think you look at some of the sports teams that have won the big games, especially in the NBA recently, it’s not necessarily the teams with the superstars on it. It’s the teams that play together and help one another. They know where they’re going to be at.  And I think we seem to overlook that fact a lot and so compassion, not only helps people when they’re down, but it builds success. 

Matt:	So, at a chemical level in your brain, compassion triggers the hormones that are more aligned with sort of the feelings of love and happiness as opposed to empathy which triggers feelings more about pain and suffering? Is that a good way to think about it?

Chris:	I think that’s a great description of it, yes. And basically if you look at it a little sideways equation. You have compassion to your left, compassion activated oxytocin to your right, oxytocin activates dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine and serotonin creates happiness and optimism and this calmness, right? What usually leads to success. People thinking in a happy, optimistic, in a calm way.

Matt:	So, do you think that compassion is something that is innate, or is it something that can be learned, can be trained?

Chris:	Matt, it’s both, and let me explain that. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, famous for The Social Contract, he wrote that we have, in his words, “Natural compassion”, but in society, we tend to unlearn that natural compassion. And think about what we teach on the playgrounds. This really came home to me when I was teaching over in Europe in 2007-2008. I was teaching international relations class, and I was explaining realism, the theory of realism in international relations. Using the “king of the hill” metaphor that we have for kids out in the playground here in the United States. So I say “When you’re on the King of the Hill, top of the hill, what are you supposed to do?” And a hundred and nineteen European students were looking at me like “What are you talking about?” And so, I had to explain. One young lady from Poland breaks her hand and she said “Dr Kukk! What’s king of the hill?” And that explained to 119 European students that when you get on top of the hill, what our kids do in playground is push each other down so they’re on top of the hill. They don’t play king of the hill. They don’t play kill the carrier. So it was a wakeup call to me about “What do we teach our kids in society?” Do we teach them to reach down and help people up, or do keep people from pushing people down? These are practical matters. And we can change that, but we decided to focus on survival of the fittest, instead of survival of the kindness. I think it’s natural and we can unlearn it. And if we can unlearn it, we certainly can learn it. And there have been plenty of studies out there showing that we can learn it, and the United States Marine Corp has also moved in on that as well. They’ve had two studies, two different years now, one million dollars donated to each on mindful training for Marines.

Matt:	That’s fascinating. So, how can we - how can the listeners and how can the both of us kind of move towards being more consciously compassionate?

Chris:	There’s a lot of different ways to do this. Let me just go through cheap practical ways that I think made news, or even headlines recently. But I want to talk to people about it like, I didn’t see that. Cover of Time Magazine not too long ago had “Mindfulness” on the front of its cover. And I think if we take time out and for some of us, I do meditate in the morning. And I do compassion meditation. It’s quick, takes no more than ten minutes, and you’re off and you kind of just registered yourself to look at yourself to look at the world in a way that, you know, “I’m going through it, and I can help others.” But I always start with someone, for example, my grandmother, who has always helped me.  And when I’m out driving, I’m not the guy when someone cuts me off, I’m not the guy who flips them off. I actually bless myself; my grandmother raised me catholic. It’s those guys who think the guy who cut me off was like - that’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever did, and it was a great conversation afterwards. It’s those little things. 

	In schools, there’s a thing called social and emotional learning that funding for it just passed with the “every student succeeds” act. Senator Blumenthal of Connecticut was a major writer of that section of the bill. That means in learning of values, such a courage, compassion, that help students become more emotionally resilient, and to also recognize and to understand the emotions of others around them. That the world just doesn’t revolve solely around them. That the world is really a combination of relationships and interconnections, and we should start learning that right in Kindergarten all the way up. So those are just two very different ways. Everything from mindful meditation to social emotional learning in school, and let me go to the business world. General Mills, this past year they were a 17.9 billion dollar company. They are famous for a mindful leadership program that they have. Google has it, too. A lot of the successful businesses know that compassion and mindfulness raises the bottom line, it makes their employees have higher intention, employees stay, employees want to stay. Because in the environment it creates more productive employees. This is not something that’s soft, something that - did you hug your dolphin today idea? This is real, this is just real ramifications, consequences, and the effects helps everyone around you. And I think it leads to success in a much more constructive way than the “king of the hill” “survival of the fittest” mentality. 

Matt:	You touched on so many different things that I want to dig into. One of the meditation obviously, I’m a huge believer in meditation personally I meditate every day for the last couple of years. And we just did a podcast on meditation where we dig into a bunch of different pieces of it. And one of the kind of core components of my personal meditation is sort of very similar. It’s kind of a forgiveness component. And that reminds me of one of my favorite quotes of all time which is from Gandhi, which is “The weak cannot forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.” Kind of the notion you’re talking about when you get cut off by someone when you’re driving, the idea that you should forgive people not because necessarily that they deserves it, but because for your own emotional wellbeing and there’s research that backs a lot of this up, it’s bad for you to hold onto grudges. It’s bad for your blood pressure, it’s bad for all kinds of things. The more you can go through life kind of forgiving people and even when we talked in an earlier podcast episode about how to, not necessarily understanding or seeing every piece of reality, right? You might not understand why that person might be in a bad mood today, and so there’s so many different reasons that I think forgiveness is so important. It’s not just about being right or getting revenge or whatever, it’s like you gotta forgive them for your sake, not because, not for their sake necessarily. 

Chris:	That’s so true and I also just want to build up that you’re right, Matt. The other is self-forgiveness, or self-compassion as well. And there have been plenty of studies as well on self-compassion and how that boosts creativity. So you’re right. I always think when there’s an older woman or older man in front of me, that’s someone’s grandpa, that’s someone grandmother, and you know I can be a minute or two late to where I meant to go. I should have left earlier, it was my issue. But it also builds compassion. And when you step into a place that has compassion flowing through its halls and in its rooms, you can feel it. You can feel the energy. You can feel the electricity and the creativity that’s flowing around. 

	And speaking of flowing, this is another thing that gets me that I had one mom when I was speaking to a school saying - she literally said this, I don’t want my son to learn compassion, because I don’t want him to be weak. So I asked her, we were in the state of Washington. We’re surrounded by rocks here. Washington State has a lot of rocks. So it’s one of the hardest elements that we have, but the softest element can actually cut through rock. And that’s water. Water with its perseverance and it’s gentleness can still cut through some of the hardest materials we have. We just have to sometimes do some intellectual judo on our own selves to look at the world in a more constructive way. It’s right in front of us, but a lot of times we don’t either see it or want to see it because of the thing that happened to us. Your idea of forgiveness is really key for that. I think it moves us all along and then people are quite surprised when you do do it, and then it leads to better relationships and a better community. 

Matt:	I love the analogy of water and I think there’s so many I don’t want to go down this road at all but there’s so many different ways you can think about the power of water and energy flow and all of that stuff. It’s such a powerful metaphor for so many different things. But I want to change directions and actually touch on something you brought up a little bit earlier. Tell me a little bit more about the idea of emotional resilience and how can we teach children to be emotionally resilient. We talked about dealing with setbacks and embracing discomfort and some of those other topics in earlier podcast episodes and that’s something that I think is probably one, if not the most important traits that someone can have is kind of the ability to deal with hardship. Tell me a little bit more about that whole kind of concept and how that ties in with compassion as well. 

Chris:	I think what we’ve done throughout society, is we created this fear of failure. And failure, as you know, [INAUDIBLE 00:25:28] businesses. Some of the major successes come from failures. Right? Because they failed and then they see another door and they’re like “OH!” When they’re down, they can look up and they see the door differently and they can walk through that door and it becomes highly successful. Well, the way we have our focus on tests in schools, kids are afraid to fail. And if we create a place where — most business fail and then they succeed! But when we do it in school? The kids are - they’re just flattened by the idea. Even the idea that you can fail. And have projects that don’t work the first time, but then maybe you have a secondary plan to teach them to look for a secondary way to achieve whatever goal they want to achieve. That’s going to help them in life. In many different ways. 

	When I was growing up, only the top team received a trophy. And you worked for that trophy. But our coaches didn’t put us down, he’ll build us up. And one of the things that I do with my kids is I have them try things first, and if they don’t succeed I talk - I ask them, I don’t talk. I usually question them, I use a lot of questioning. I question them - how are THEY, not me, how are they going to solve the problem? The more they do that, the more practice they have in finding new ways, new solutions. I tell you, our conversations around the dinner table are awesome because they’re always challenging me from different perspectives. I have so much fun trying to field their questions because they’re constantly coming at me from up, down, sideways, diagonally. And that skill will allow them, I believe, to become resilient in any situation because when they’re down, which they inevitably will - we all get down - I’ve taught them to literally, when you’re down on the ground you look up for that door. Because now you see something different. And that is so much fun to see my kids, my oldest now, he gets excited when something goes wrong because something better is going to happen. You know, maybe that’s a little too far on one side, but that’s what we’re looking to do. 

	And compassion, if you look at compassion. Dopamine. Oxytocin starts dopamine. And dopamine, in cognitive terms, you know John Medina in his book Brain Rules he has this great analogy for dopamine. He called it the Post-It note for memory. When you have a lot of dopamine flowing around, you tend to remember whatever it is that you’re studying. It’s a brilliant metaphor. I use it all the time with my kids and my students. So, generating oxytocin, generating that compassion creates neurochemical systems in their brain that all of a sudden starts bringing back memories that they think, wait a minute, that’s the answer that I can move forward on to the next thought. And that dopamine increases their feeling of reward. So all of sudden you’ve created - by establishing compassion in an environment - not only something that’s better for them cognitively, but something that will make them more emotionally resilient in finding ways forward. And then serotonin kicks in so it keep them calm so they don’t go flying off the handle or flipping out. That’s how it happens! That’s how it moves forward. That’s how I think you can create emotionally resilient kids. This is something that, I remember my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Peck, this is exactly what she did, her classroom - I couldn’t wait to go to school even when I was sick. She made me love learning just because of the environment she created. She might get arrested now though, nowadays. She used to massage every one of us for ten seconds during a test. I don’t think she’ll be allowed to do that right now in our day and environment. But I couldn’t wait to go to school because she made learning a life-long love of every student she ever touched. That’s what we need. We need more Mrs. Pecks around the world. 

Matt:	It’s amazing that, when I think about some of the stuff we’ve talked about on earlier episodes whether it’s the growth mindset. You know, earlier before we started recording, Chris was showing me the book Mindset which we’ve talked about on the podcast. Whether it’s stoicism, these two thousand year old lessons. There’s this - the more you study a lot of this stuff, and it’s amazing that the more you find, it’s all rooted in Science. It’s just these fundamental lessons that span thousands of years in human generations that you know, it’s sort a core kernel nugget of truth that you have to be resilient and you have to be focused on overcoming your failures.

Chris:	Yes. And life’s about that. If you think about it — I love white water rafting. Life is a lot like white water rafting, or surfing. There are different rocks, different bends in the river, or in surfing - the waves come t you. You can’t choose what waves come at you, but you certainly can choose which waves you’re going to ride. And helping people find those waves that they want to ride to the shore of life? Oh my God, it’s a beautiful thing. Watching them choose their own waves as they get older? That’s what it’s about. And creating an environment where they feel safe enough to do that. Where they’re willing to take chances. If they’re willing to take chances, they’re willing to fail. And if they’re willing to fail, they’re willing to get themselves back up. They’re willing to get themselves back up - watch out for the society that that’s happening in because it’s going to take off.

Matt:	I totally agree. I think that stuff is so important. So, I’m curious, in your Ted-X talk, you talked about - again, this ties in a little bit back into the idea of parenting and dealing with children. You talked about the idea of - I think it was even about talking to your kids about why there’s so much evil in the world, right? And how can we kind of widen our - I think you used the term “circle of compassion” to sort of deal with that, or counteract, or — you know, I don’t remember the exact terminology. But tell me a little bit more about that concept and how from a broader perspective we can start to widen that circle of compassion.

Chris:	Yeah, thanks for that. The Sandy Hook town is less than 15 minutes away from our house. And so they knew what happened. And I came home early from school so I made sure I took them off the bus and we just sat in the living room and talked about what happened. Even though they were very young, you can’t hide it, they know. They’ve heard. And so I wanted them to talk about it and their concerns about it. But that comes from a visit from the Dalai Lama at Western Connecticut State University, we hosted His Holiness for two days of talks here. And it was pretty amazing, hopefully we’ll get him back again. And what I wanted, and what we’ve done, I didn’t want just a one-and-done event, I wanted an event that would carry on and have ramifications and effects and consequences in a good way after he left. So we started putting together - there were quite a few - the Center for Compassion, Creativity, and Innovation. And he loved it so much, saw what our mission was, what we wanted to do. And he donated the first $107,000 dollars to move the center along. And basically what the center does is widen that circle of compassion. Because we go around and help towns and cities and universities and schools become school and university and towns of compassions. And what we try to help them do. We help the chart for compassion which was started by Karen Armstrong, she wanted that Ted Talk one year, I’m forgetting - I think it was around 2006. For the charter for compassion, creating charters all around the world and - we thought that was a great idea. But we wanted every single community to tailor-fit that charter of communication for them. Because every community had its own issues, its own problems they need to solve. So there’s no kind of one compassion suit to fit all. There’s different ways to get there. And so what we do is, we help those schools and universities and cities and towns move forward in that direction. And that is one way that we do it. 

	We also do it on the practical on a very local level. I’ve combined high school students with college students to address the homeless problem in our area. So, in the past year, we had 50 backpacks that the students, high school and college students, found donors for. Getting dental clinics - got toothpaste and toothbrushes. Went to the hotels in our area. So everyone else pitched in and they see the kids try to overcome the problem. And so they donated more than what we asked. It just kind of rolled. And became bigger. It’s kind of like when you create a snowman, and you’re rolling that little snowball becomes the base. That’s exactly what happened - we created this whole compassion base and we can build whatever snowman we want, and by the way, it gets pretty cold here so it won’t melt away. And it’s so awesome to see that it started with kids helping adults find their compassion. So everything from helping policy happen, to helping address the homeless issue. Now we even have a project - we convinced the Mayor of the city of Danbury to give us the land all around city hal to create a compassion garden, representing all the ethnicities in the city of Danbury. So, high school students now even elementary school students, we got women’s gardening club wanting to help. Some corporations are donating the flowers and the whole areas are going to have a walk-in path representing all the ethnicities in that city. And they’re calling it a compassion garden. So, everything from gardens, homelessness, to creating policies to move policies along. That’s how we’re doing. That’s how we’re widening the circle of compassion.

Matt:	That’s fascinating. And you kind of spoiled one of my questions - I was going to ask you, I was very curious. About how you had met the Dalai Lama.

Chris:	We invited him to come to campus, and we thought he was going to come for a day - but he stayed for two! Which was amazing. It’s up, recorded, on our website. And the Center for Compassion, Creativity, and Innovation are linked to those hour - little over an hour long presentations by His Holiness. 

Matt:	Well, I’m curious, for listeners that are really interested in compassion and learning more about this, what are some of the resources or books that you would recommend that they check out?

Chris:	Wow. There’s so many. Just looking at my bookshelf right now. I have - one of my favorites. I used it quite a lot, was the Dalai Lama’s The Universe in a Single Atom. 

Matt:	I love that title.

Chris:	It is a great book, as well. The Compassionate Instinct is another good one. Buddha’s Brain is a great one. Anything by Dave [INAUDIBLE 00:36:51] fantastic. On the more social learning side, the newest book out, it was published this year, 2016, Emotions, Learning, and the Brain by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. Fantastic book. The forward is written by Howard Gardener, and the afterward by Antonio Demasio. So, you have this great education in neuroscience book out there that I think moves it forward. How to be Compassionate by the Dalai Lama, another good book. Mindfulness, with Nurture Effect. There’s so many great ones out there, I think those are some of the top book that 

Matt:	So, what is one piece of sort of actionable homework that you would give to our listeners in terms of maybe applying compassion in their lives?

Chris:	Okay. One it to understand, to listen. The first step in compassion is to be a great listener. What I mean, listeners - you don’t listen to reply, you listen to understand. And if you want to be compassionate, you have to understand that person that you’re trying to help. We have a culture that listens to reply right now. And I think if we take a little bit longer to simply listen to understand, we’d be able to move forward together in a much more constructive way. 

Matt:	I love that, I think that’s great. There’s actually a bunch of research on the communication side that you build report much better with people when you listen with the intent of understanding as opposed to listening just so you can say whatever you want to say after that.

Chris:	Exactly!

Matt:	So what is the best place for people find you online?

Chris:	My website. It’s chriskukk.com You’ll see there also, there will be a new book coming out called The Compassionate Achiever that will address a lot of these steps and show you practically how to get there. But the first step is listening.

Matt:	Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being on the Science of Success. The audience is going to absolutely love all of this stuff. I think compassion is something that we don’t talk about enough and it’s so important. And it’s scientifically validated as kind of a chemical, neurological level, something that can create positive results in your life, and it’s something that can spread out into your community. So, thank you so much for being on here, Chris. 

Chris:	Well, I can’t thank you enough, Matt. I’m a big fan of the podcast so this is an honor for me to be on the Science of Success. Thank you. 

Matt:	Thank you very much. 

Chris:	Bye. 

Limiting Beliefs

On this week's episode of "The Science of Success", Matt explores the subconscious' role in our ability to be successful. Looking at powerful core beliefs--beliefs that could be holding you back from your true potential--he walks us through ways of re-drawing everything we think we know about ourselves.

Thank you so much for listening!

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

This is some incredibly powerful stuff and I want you to pay close attention. I want to start with the idea of a pyramid of behavior. There’s really four levels. The first level is results. One level below that are actions. One level below that are thoughts. And one level deeper below that are beliefs. So beliefs are at the base of the pyramid. What this means is that your beliefs impact your thoughts, and your thoughts lead to your actions, and your actions create the results that you see in the world. So, most people focus the majority of their energy on changing their actions, on the very top level of the pyramid. I’m sure we’ve all had an experience - I know that I have, of reading something - this new strategy, this new productivity hack, whatever it might be - and you go about implementing it into your life. Then a few months down the road it kinda slips and you stop doing it and sooner or later you’ve sort of given it up, right? Then you’re just back to doing what you normally do. The reason that that happens is because you’re focusing on making the changes in your life at the action level of the pyramid. But the actions come from the thoughts, and the thoughts come from the beliefs that you have about the world. And these beliefs are subconscious stories that we tell ourselves. This is what our subconscious really thinks and feels and believe about the world. And so when you focus all of your energy on changing your actions, you’re fighting the tide. You’re not really making long term changes. You’re only changing things at the surface. The highest leverage and biggest impact place that you can make changes in your life is at the belief level. 

Remember when we talked about the biological limits of the mind? The subconscious drives the majority of our behavior. And it puts us on auto-pilot in many instances in our lives and we don’t even realize it. But when you make a decision in many cases, your subconscious has already made that decision for you, and you’re consciously finding a reason or a justification for why you’re making that decision. But here’s where it gets really interesting - your subconscious doesn’t care if you’re happy. Your subconscious doesn’t care if you’re fulfilled. It doesn’t care if you live a purposeful, meaningful life. The only thing your subconscious mind cares about, and this was programmed into it by millions of years of evolution. Remember we talked about that. The only thing your subconscious mind cares about is survival. And not just physical survival, not just keeping your body alive, but the subconscious mind wants to keep your identity alive. And so, the subconscious mind locks you into behavioral patterns again and again and again that are sometimes destructive, that are sometimes behavioral patterns you do not want to be in, and the behavioral patterns at a conscious level you desperately want to change. We’ve all experiences or somebody with struggling with something, struggling with a life change, you make some new year’s resolution says that “this time is going to be the time I’m really going to do it; I’m going to make a change.” And of course, a month or two later, they break down, they had that chocolate cake for dessert, they eat an unhealthy lunch, whatever it might be, and suddenly they just give up and they – “I’ll never be able to do that, I’ll never be able to eat healthy, I’m never going to be able to lose weight I’ll never be able to start a business.” Whatever it might be, they give up on their dreams. Even though they don't want to do that, the subconscious is extremely powerful, it overwhelms change at the action level, because change at the action level are not permanent and don’t matter. 

Your subconscious doesn’t care about you being happy. The only thing your subconscious cares about is keeping you alive and keeping your identity alive. Now let’s look at the way that that manifests itself. The subconscious will lock you into a behavior cycle because the subconscious uses a very simple method for determining what is an effective survival tactic. It doesn’t look at the long run health implications of eating a cheeseburger every day for lunch for twenty years. All it says is, “Did I eat unhealthy in the past? Yes. Did it keep me alive? Am I alive right now? Yes. Alright keep doing that.” That’s the whole cycle of thought and action that your subconscious programs in. So whatever your identity is today, however that’s evolved, the people in your life, the stories in your life, the actions you’ve taken, your subconscious runs a test and says “is this keeping me alive?” again, it’s not looking. It doesn’t have the ability to forecast out using actual tables whether the decisions you’re making are best for your health or happiness in the long term, all it’s thinking about “is this keeping me alive today? Yes? Alright keep doing that.” And that’s why you see people get locked into behavior patterns, even things like smoking where they keep doing the same destructive thing over and over and over again. The subconscious sees change as dangerous, and again this has been programmed into our mind. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Change is dangerous in many cases in a hunter-gatherer society. And these decisions are much different than they are today where we have much longer term implication where we have some of our systematic decisions we have to make. 

But what this means is that change is resisted by the subconscious because it’s dangerous and because it’s unknown. Even if you know consciously that this change is incredibly beneficial for you- that you need to make it, that your health requires that you make it, that your business requires that you make it, whatever it might be - your subconscious doesn’t care. Remember, your subconscious doesn’t care about you being happy, it doesn’t care about you being successful. What it does care about is not doing things that it things are unknown and things it thinks are dangerous. And changes to your identity are perceived by the subconscious as extremely dangerous. The subconscious will do whatever it has to, to keep that identity alive. And the way the subconscious makes these decisions, the filter the subconscious uses are your beliefs about the world. And that’s what we talked about when we talked about perceiving reality. But I’m going to dig into that a little bit more deeply. I’m going to share with you a few examples of limiting beliefs.

Let’s start with the idea of the fear of sales. That’s something that many people struggle with, many people are afraid of, especially entrepreneurs, people starting their business. And we’ll also talk about the fear of success. Here are some of the ways the fear of sales or even the fear of failure can manifest themselves in limiting beliefs. And we’ll talk about how to uncover and really listen to yourself telling these stories. But here’s some things you might say to yourself even in the back of your head, you might not even notice it but it’s underpinning a lot of your actions. If you have a fear of failure or a fear of sales and this is just an example. There are limiting beliefs pervading your life in many, many different areas, and I’ll share with you a number of limiting beliefs that I had in a few minutes.

One, I might get rejected. Two, I might look sales-y, Who wants to be that cheesy, slimy salesman, right? People might not like me. Fear of financial failure. Fear to start the sales call, and fear to close. I don’t want to jeopardize my relationship, I don’t want to be that rude guy who goes in for the sales close, right? These are all little beliefs, little feelings, little stories we tell ourselves - I’m not going to be the sales-y guy so I’m not going to make the sales call, I’m not going to be the pussy guy that goes in for the close. Again, I’m not a sales trainer, I’m not here to talk to you about sales, these are just examples of limiting beliefs of stories you tell yourself that cause you to self-sabotage.

Here’s some examples of fears of success. We have these beliefs, these stories about what is okay, what buckets are acceptable for us to live our lives in. How much money it’s okay for us to make. And if we get outside of those buckets, our subconscious will cause us to self-sabotage so that we stay within the buckets that we feel like are okay. Because your subconscious doesn’t care about how much money you make, your subconscious doesn’t care about how successful you are. All it cares about is repeating whatever cycle has kept you alive today. So here’s some examples of the fear of success. I’m already overwhelmed and I don’t want to work more. I’m afraid I won’t be able to deliver on the promises I make. I’m afraid of a loss of freedom. I’m afraid of not being able to trust people. These are all stories, these are all limiting beliefs that people have who are afraid of success. And some of these ring incredibly true for me, and I’ve spent countless hours working on them. The loss of freedom in particular is something that I am terrified of and is something that has caused me to self-sabotage in many instances and something I’ve constantly battled against.

I wanted to share with you a couple real life examples of limiting beliefs that I have suffered with, myself personally. This is actually… I put this together this morning. This is actually a new project that I’m launching, and I’m not going to get into too much detail about the project but it’s something I’ve been procrastinating on, not going to lie. And procrastination is usually a very good indicator that you haven’t identified and rooted out the limiting beliefs that you have about that particular topic or project, and I went through the exercise this morning and I realized that there’s a number of limiting beliefs that I have about that project, and that’s why I’ve been procrastinating. I should have made progress on this two weeks ago and I’ve done absolutely nothing. Here are the limiting beliefs that have stopped me from doing that. 1. I’m afraid people won’t buy it. 2. I’m afraid that I can’t execute it and that I don’t have the ability to pull it off. 3. I’m afraid that my business partners won’t see the strategy the same way that I do, and it’ll cause tension between us. 4. I’m afraid that I don’t have enough time to do it, does that one sound familiar? Does that one sound just like one of the fears of success? And lastly, I’m scared to put myself out there with this project. So those are all real beliefs about a project that I’m working on right now that I know that I have. And I’m going to work through the framework that we’ll talk about in a minute to break down and destroy these limiting beliefs, but just those beliefs lurking in my subconscious has cost me at least two weeks, maybe more, on a project that I know has the potential to revolutionize one of my businesses. That’s how powerful limiting beliefs are. That’s how damaging limiting beliefs are. 

Here’s another example of real world limiting beliefs. These are beliefs that I’ve had to work through, but the first time I ever went through the limiting belief framework, I identified a core belief about myself that I’m an introvert. And the number of sub-beliefs and what you’ll do when you go through this framework the first time, usually you’ll uncover a series of beliefs that are what I would call surface level beliefs. They’re beliefs that are kind of bubbling to the top. But the more you drill down, you’ll find that there are some really, really core beliefs about the world and about yourself that inform a lot more other beliefs. So, here the root belief here is that I’m an introvert. But here’s a bunch of limiting beliefs that manifested from that belief. I’m too shy. I can’t relate to anyone. I hate small talk. I’m awkward around people. I don’t like sharing myself with people. I feel trapped in conversations with people and just want to leave. I don’t speak up for myself in a business context. And I don’t want to talk to my customers in a business context. And so, think about that. Those are all extremely damaging beliefs. And those are all beliefs that I identified about myself about this core belief that I was an introvert. And it’s something that I’ve been able to reposition and change and we’ll talk about how to do that in a second but it’s something that I’ve been able to break down and the first time I went through this framework, I went to a cocktail party the night after I had done that with my wife, an she was shocked at all the strangers that I was chatting up and the people I was talking to and all the stuff that i was doing, but it was because I’d broken down these beliefs, and I’d uncovered what was really at the core of all this stuff like I’m not good at small talk and all these other things. These are just examples, again, I’m just trying to show you with some of my personal examples, how limiting beliefs impact your life in so many ways. And if you really dig in any particular area of your life, you’re going to find limiting beliefs there. And you’re going to find beliefs that have been holding you back, sometimes for years. And limiting beliefs that if you’d overturned them, you could have seen massive success in whatever you’re trying to achieve.

Some of the deepest limiting beliefs. There’s two really, really core limiting beliefs that rule people’s lives, and I’ve struggled with both of these, I’m not going to lie. But these are related to fear. And one of the deepest and you’ll probably uncover one of these two, maybe both of these beliefs, when you really dig into the framework, but one of these beliefs is that I am not enough. And that usually stems from early childhood, but it’s an incredibly powerful belief. People who believe that they’re not enough, so everything is about trying to be enough, trying to become - instead of just being. The other one is that the world is dangerous. This one for me was earth-shattering and it pervaded my life and my need to control things around me for the vast majority of my life, 25+ years. That was a belief that I did not write down when I was going through my initial inventory of the most damaging limiting beliefs in my life, and I uncovered it after a series of beliefs that I realized that that was the root of all of those beliefs. And when I went through the four question framework to break that belief down, I broke down into tears and I was bawling crying because it was such a core, powerful belief rooted in my subconscious. This is really intense stuff but it’s incredibly important, emotional work to do and you will see a dramatic change in your life when you break down these beliefs.

So how do you break down limiting beliefs? There’s a three step process. The first is to become aware of your limiting beliefs. The second is to challenge the truth behind those beliefs - and there’s a tried and true framework for doing that. Then the third is to implant and normalize and pattern new beliefs and a new identity into your subconscious. 

So how do you become aware of your limiting beliefs? I gave you some examples and if any of those ring true to you or sound like something you would use to describe yourself, you’re probably struggling with some of the beliefs that I just shared with you. But there’s a couple different ways to cultivate the ability to be aware of your beliefs. One of the most powerful ways to do that, which we’re going to have a podcast on soon, is on meditation. Meditation is an incredible tool for really becoming aware of your thoughts and becoming aware of what is going on in your mind and catching yourself when you have these thoughts that you can then peg and say, “Hey wait a second. That was a limiting belief. I’m sitting here working on a project and this thought just flashed into my mind - ‘I can’t do it, I can’t execute on that, I’m not the right guy for that.’” Whatever it might be. The meditation trains your mind to capture and see your thoughts with sort of an impartiality that lets you then write them down and address them later.

So meditation is a start. The second way to do that is to look at negative fears and emotions you have around what you want to do. Write those down. You know, I love to use something like Evernote and I just keep a running list of limiting beliefs that come up. That I know, hey, that was a limiting belief, boom, and the thing about it is the more you do it, the more you cultivate the ability to see those thoughts flashing across your mind. You have to catch them and write them down, then put them through the framework. But it really requires a brutal self-honesty and cultivated reflection to be able to do that, which is what we talked about on the podcast about accepting reality. You have to accept reality as it is. You can’t wish away your limiting beliefs. They’re there and ignoring them is only going to cause self-sabotage. 

So, how do you challenge the truth behind a limiting belief? There’s a four-question framework that you can run these beliefs through that will obliterate your limiting beliefs It’s an incredibly powerful framework - it is simple, but super effective. And the four questions were developed by Byron Katie in her book The Work, incredible book. Definitely recommend checking that out if you really want to do some deep, self-digging and really put in the heavy emotional work necessary to truly understand some of the stuff. 

But the four questions, the first question is: Is it true? Is this belief true? And just ask yourself that on a surface level. Do you think it’s true? And many times you’ll say “Yes, I think it’s true, yes - I don’t want to be sales-y, yes I don’t think I have what it takes to execute this project. Or sometimes you know even at a surface level, that’s just not true, you know? It’s not really true that I don’t like talking to people - whatever it might be. But the first question is just simply, is it true?

The second question is: Can I absolutely know that it’s true? This is a much different question than the first one. The first question is only about your surface level perception. This is much, much deeper. On the fundamental level: can you know that this is true? What is truth? Can you unquestionably know for absolute certainty that this is the truth? I think that’s a much tougher question to answer, I at least personally feel that there’s very few things that I really know are absolutely true about almost anything. But this is really a deeper, more metaphysical question about, you know, what is the nature of this truth? Is it really true? Has anybody ever in history proven this wrong? Done something different? Have I ever proven this wrong in the past? Has there ever been an example that’s been different than what I believe? And if that’s the case then you cannot absolutely know that it’s true. 

And by the way, one of the things that I should mention about this - I think the most effective way to go through this process is to take out a word document, pen and paper, whatever works for you, and write out your answers. Just write, you know what I mean? I wrote when I was going through some of the really, really powerful beliefs in my life. I wrote a page or more on every one of these answers to these questions. But here’s where the questions start getting really powerful. 

The third question is: How do I react when I think that thought? And you have to really feel into this, feel the emotions that it makes you feel. How do you feel? How do you react when you think that you can’t be successful? That you’re not good with money? That you’ll never lose weight? How does that make you feel? Really dig in, feel the thoughts. Feel what it feels like. Feel the anger, frustration. The rage, whatever it might be. Feel it. Really - let it well up and live in it, write about it. 

The last question is the most powerful question. Who would I be without that thought? This question is beautifully phrased. Who would I be without that thought? It’s not saying that you can get rid of that thought - it’s just a thought exercise. Who would I be without that thought? It’s almost like a weight is lifted off of you. Who would I be without that thought? You would be a better person, you would be more successful, you’d be crushing it, you’d be killing it, you’d be achieving everything you want, you’d be Elon Musk, whatever it is you want to be. As soon as that belief is gone, you can be that person. And that question enables your subconscious to visualize a reality where that belief is no longer true.

So I really want you to spend a lot of time on the last two questions especially. Really dig in, really feel the emotions about what it feels like. And then after you’ve gone through that framework, take the belief that you had, whether it’s the world is dangerous, or I’m not good with money, or I’m afraid to lose my freedom. Whatever the belief might mean. Take that belief and I want you to create a new belief. Not a negative belief - it can’t be the world is not dangerous. Because the mind doesn’t really respond at a subconscious level. The negative doesn’t really mean anything, it’s the world is dangerous and it creates these disassociations. You need to create a new belief like the world is full of love and joy. Or, the more successful I am the more freedom I will have. Has to be a positive belief. Create a new belief, and then that’s where we move into part three. That’s how you plant that new belief into your subconscious. And you do that through a process known as identity patterning. So there’s a couple steps that are necessary to identity pattern. Once you have that new belief, let’s just use the example of: the more successful I am the more freedom I will have. Take that belief, center yourself, and really get present in the moment. Pu your hand over your heart, really center yourself. Really feel it. And then state the belief out loud. The more successful I am, the more freedom I have. Whatever the belief is for you. And then imagine it in your mind, as richly and as powerfully as you can. It’s like the fourth question- imagine the world, your life, who you would be, how it would be without that belief. And feel those emotions. The more emotions you feel, the more gratitude, joy, excitement, happiness that you feel - the more powerful it’s going to be at a subconscious level. You really have to ground those emotions in. Feel it. Really soak it in.

Something else you can do. You can use imagery, you can use photos, you can use music to bind and speak that particular belief, that particular language, to your subconscious. But this process, it’s called identity patterning. It’s not just a one-time thing. You want to do it every day, you want to do it maybe twice a day for a week or two after you’ve really uncovered this belief and you really want to anchor it in. It sounds kind of weird, it sounds kind of goofy, oh put your hand on your heart and all this stuff. The reality is that is speaking to your subconscious at an emotional level. It’s giving your subconscious a new choice. So that when your subconscious faces the same situation, it doesn’t have to choose the choice of “I’m going to self-sabotage this time”. Instead it has this new emotional reality that it has felt, that it knows is possible, and so you can then make a proactive choice and the fear, the anxiety, the struggle, melts away. I really think you should try this out, even if it’s only with a single limiting belief. This will change your life dramatically. This is some really important, extremely powerful, really relevant information and if you execute this, if you try this even with a single belief, I think you’re going to see a lot of change in your life. 

Fixed Versus Growth Mindsets

On this week's episode of "The Science of Success", host Matt Bodnar discusses the difference between the fixed and growth mindsets. Which do you have? Have you even ever heard of it? If you haven't, listen in: It could make all the difference between whether or not you're successful at what you're doing.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Today, we’re going to talk about the concept of mindset. Specifically, we’re going to talk about the distinction between what’s called the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. The fixed mindset and the growth mindset are known by some other terms a little more technical—one is the static or the entity view of intelligence, and the other is the dynamic or the incremental view of intelligence—but we’re just going to use the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to make it a little bit easier to understand and a little bit more simple. And, honestly, you don’t really need the fancy technical terms to really understand what’s fundamentally kind of a simple yet powerful concept. And this concept was really popularized by the author and psychologist Carol Dweck, which she has a fantastic book. I highly recommend everybody to check it out. It’s called Mindset. And she goes into great detail about this, but the fascinating thing about the distinction between the fixed mindset and the growth mindset, which I’ll tell you all about each of those in a second… But the fascinating thing is that the difference in people’s mindset is detectable as early as age four. And they’ve actually done studies with children before kindergarten and they’ve seen that people start to exhibit traits in certain mindsets at such an early age. And, of course, the distinction continues to manifest itself throughout people’s lives the older that they get.

So, what is the fixed mindset? We’ll start there. The fixed mindset is a belief that people’s basic qualities—such as their intelligence, or their talent, their character, their abilities—are fixed traits. They’re unchangeable. It’s the belief that you have a natural level of talent; you have a natural level of ability that cannot be changed no matter what you do. And so people in the fixed mindset spend the majority of their time trying to document and prove and show everyone else how talented they are. They want to show everybody how smart they are. They want to show everybody how successful they are. Because if you have a fixed, static quantity of something… Let’s just use intelligence as an example. And you can actually have a different mindset for different areas of your life, which you’ll probably find once you understand this distinction. But the fixed mindset is just this belief that you and your abilities are fundamentally static. And that has a bunch of manifestations in the way that you behave, the way you interact in the world, the way you deal with challenges, and many other things. Let’s contrast that to the growth mindset. In the growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities—their intelligence, their talent, their skills, their character—can be developed through hard work, through process, through training, through dedication and focus.

In the growth mindset, where you are today, your current abilities, are just the starting point. So, this seems like a relatively trivial distinction. Okay, so what? So, what if I have a belief that people have fixed abilities or people have malleable abilities? Why does it really matter? Well, before we dig into that, I want to ask you…or I want to read to you four statements, and these are from Carol Dweck’s book Mindset. But just take note yourself. See if you agree or disagree with each of these statements. The first statement: “Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.” Statement number two: “You can learn new things, but you can’t really change much how intelligent you are.” Statement number three: “No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.” Statement number four: “You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.” And here’s a bonus question as well: Would you rather have lots of success and validation, or lots of challenges? Is success to you about learning and improving, or is success to you about proving that you’re smart, that you’re better than people? Now, clearly statements number one and two were fixed mindset statements, and statements three and four are more growth mindset statements. There’s nothing wrong with being in either mindset. In fact, I was a fixed mindset about many, many areas of my life, including success, sports, athletics, all kinds of different things, and the reality is that limited me and that held me back in many, many ways, which I’ll tell you about in just a second. But there’s nothing wrong with being a fixed mindset because you can always change your mindset, and we’ll talk about how and why to change your mindset towards the end of the podcast. But take stock and really ask yourself. And, again, you maybe…you may have a different view, a different framework or a different belief for different areas in your life. But ask yourself: In the areas that are most important to you, would you rather have success and validation, or would you rather have challenges and opportunities to grow?

So, what are some of the implications of each of these mindsets? The fixed mindset—the belief that my traits, my abilities, my intelligence are unchangeable—leads to a number of behaviors which are often destructive or counterproductive. The first is how people with a fixed mindset approach challenges. In the fixed mindset, challenges are scary. You don’t want to face challenges. And, believe me, I know because this describes me to a tee in so many areas of my life, it was unbelievable. But challenges were always something that would put you on trial. They would show who you really are, and if you failed, you were a failure, and that leads to a deep avoidance of challenges. People on the fixed mindset are scared of challenge because challenge could show them to be a failure, or show them to be not gifted or not good at whatever they want to do, or whatever they have constructed a story that they’re good at. And you can see this behavior manifest itself when people sometimes will intentionally handicap themselves or won’t give it their all, and they hold on to this excuse that, oh, well, I was just playing around; I didn’t give it my all, because it’s a psychological defense, protecting their identity from the fact that if they failed at this challenge, because they believe their abilities are set in stone, their intelligence and talent is fixed, that one failure means they are a failure. It’s a state of being. It’s not a particular outcome.

So, challenges are scary things and they don’t want to be challenged. And the crazy thing about this is that children in the first grade have been given a math test. And they give them a test. You know, everybody… They have two control groups. Everybody gets just a simple math test, right? It’s essentially that kind of grade level. And then they offered the students a choice: They can either take a similar math test, or they can take a much more difficult math test. And this is really when you can start see people breaking out into the fixed versus the growth mindset. Because in the fixed mindset, remember, you have a static view of your mathematical abilities or your intelligence or your smarts, and so people will shy away from the scary, hard test. They want to get another A. They want to thrive and feel successful and feel like they’re smart, because success in the fixed mindset is when things feel effortless and easy, and so they opt for the easier test because they want to be the student that has two As on both of their quizzes so that they can brag about how smart they are. The students with the growth mindset opt for the more challenging quiz because they want to challenge themselves. They want to see new opportunities. They want to learn and they want to push themselves out of their comfort zone and into a place where they may not know the answers, but they know that that’s going to make them better. That’s going to improve them. That’s going to increase their skills and increase their abilities, because they’re not worried about where their abilities are today; they’re worried about improving and getting better.

And that’s a very small example but, if you think about it, you can apply that across people’s lives. People constantly opt for the easy, safe, risk-free, failure-free path because they don’t want to fail, because failure means being labeled a failure. It means your identity is that of a failure, and that’s one of the most dangerous parts of having a fixed mindset. And so that manifests itself in the way that people with a fixed mindset deal with obstacles. Obstacles are a definition. It means I have failed. I have hit a roadblock. Now I have to give up, because if I was good at this naturally, I wouldn’t have any obstacles; because success, to me, is something that’s easy and something that’s effortless, so as soon as I hit an obstacle, I’m going to give up. I’m just going to do something else that I’m gifted at and not something that’s hard. And, again, that describes my behavior in so many areas of my life until I discovered this distinction and really discovered the book Mindset. But it’s a really unfortunate method of behavior for somebody that wants to be successful, that wants to achieve their goals, and so it’s a very dangerous mode of thought.

Similarly, the fixed mindset—the belief that my abilities are set in stone—leads people to view effort very, very differently. Somebody once told me an example of a lacrosse player who told his coach, “I’m not a practice player; I’m a game player,” because people with a fixed mindset don’t want to practice. They don’t need to practice because they’re so gifted that practice is unnecessary. And so people with a fixed mindset see effort as worthless. They see effort as for the lesser people who have to work hard, when they’re naturally gifted and talented. But, of course, we know that even the most…the greatest, most successful athletes—people like Michael Jordan—worked tirelessly, practiced endlessly. The idea that effort is fruitless or for the people who are not as well-endowed as them is a terrible way of thinking, but that’s the world of the fixed mindset. Because if you have to exert effort, you’re not naturally gifted. Similarly—and this one, to me, is maybe the most important—people with a fixed mindset really can’t handle criticism. They can’t deal with negative feedback. And it makes sense. In a world where your abilities are completely static, criticism means it’s literally a degradation of who you are. It’s a degradation of your identity, especially if it’s something important to you. The more important it is, the more likely you are to ignore the criticism, the more likely you are to subconsciously reject the criticism because you cannot accept that redefinition of your identity as someone who is good at x or someone who is successful at y. And so people with a fixed mindset shut down when they hear criticism.

And this is the crazy thing. They actually did a study at Columbia where they measured brain waves, and they found that people with a fixed mindset, when they were receiving feedback, their brain showed increased activity and excitement when they got the results of what they had done. But as soon as criticism and feedback were offered, their brain activity showed complete disinterest. It’s pretty amazing if you think about it. Again, it makes sense and it’s validated by psychological research. People with a fixed mindset do not want to hear criticism. They cannot handle the criticism because their belief is that their identity is static, and so they cannot accept that redefinition of their identity. And one of the last ways this manifests itself negatively: The fixed mindset cannot handle or cannot cope with the success of other people. They view others as a threat. They view other people—and this is a critical distinction—as judges. They feel like they’re being judged. They feel a burning need to prove something, to prove themselves to people. Other people are these threats, these judges, these people that are casting judgment down on them, and it really sabotages a lot of opportunities for them. And as a result, all of these different things cause people with a fixed mindset to plateau. It causes them not to be successful, causes them to self-sabotage. It negatively impacts their ability to achieve what they want.

Let’s contrast that to the growth mindset. Again, the growth mindset — the idea or the belief that intelligence, talent, skill, or ability can be developed; that what you are today is only a starting point. Now, let’s go back through that same list and see how the growth mindset thinks about it. People with the growth mindset embrace challenge. It goes back to the kids taking the math test. They know that taking the more challenging test, while you may get a lower grade, you’re going to be objectively smarter. If you learn, if you try, if you take test with the more difficult problems, you’re improving yourself; you’re challenging yourself. Challenges don’t label you in a negative fashion. All challenges do are enable you and empower you to become better and to improve, and they know that no matter what—any task that you embark on—you’re going to have challenges, and the only way to get better is to embrace and to face those challenges head on. Similarly, the growth mindset approaches obstacles as something that they need to persist and that they need to conquer, and they know, no matter what course you’re going on, you’re going to encounter dozens and dozens of obstacles, and giving up is absolutely the worst thing you can do. And an obstacle isn’t a bad thing in the growth mindset. It doesn’t mean that you’re not successful. All it means is, just like everybody else who’s trying to learn, who’s trying to improve, you’ve encountered an obstacle. Guess what: Everybody encounters obstacles. We’ve talked about that on the podcast before and we’ve talked about how to overcome obstacles, too.

But the growth mindset really enables you to view obstacles as nothing more than a learning process. It’s not about your identity. There’s nothing at stake. Your core definition of yourself isn’t at risk, and so there’s no fear. There’s no need to clam up and give up. Instead, you just persist and you know that, of course, if I’m a beginner, if I’m a novice and I know that hard work and effort and training and practice are necessary to get better, of course I’m going to have obstacles; of course I need to seek out challenges. And that’s how the growth mindset feels about effort. Instead of viewing it as something for the weaker people or something that naturals don’t need, they know effort is the path to mastery, and that’s proven. If you look at Malcom Gladwell’s book Blink—the 10,000 hour rule—effort is the true path to mastery, and people with a growth mindset don’t view effort in a negative light. They know that effort is what you need to exert. They know that training, that practice is how you get better, and there’s no stigma around that. There’s no fear. There’s no ego attached to: [Gasps] If I practice, that means I’m not as good, that means people won’t perceive me as a natural, people won’t perceive me as being talented. That all melts away and they simply approach practice as a necessary step on the path to mastery.

Similarly, criticism. The growth mindset — criticism is a blessing because criticism is what empowers you. It’s what gives you that critical feedback that you need so much to get better. And you’re completely transparent, completely open to criticism because it doesn’t…there’s nothing wrong with being criticized. Criticism only makes you stronger. Feedback only makes you stronger. If you don’t completely believe that, you really, really need to rethink your relationship to criticism and feedback. People who hide from feedback, who hide from criticism, are most definitely locked in the fixed mindset, and they’re doing it because their identity is tied up in the fact that they cannot accept that criticism. But if you let go of the belief that your identity today is a permanent, unchangeable definition of who you are, and you realize that through work and improvement and criticism and feedback about what you’re doing so that you can get better, you can achieve what you want, suddenly criticism…the fear of criticism washes away and you openly seek it out. And if you look at successful businesspeople, successful entrepreneurs, in most cases, they want to be criticized. They need criticism because they know that that’s the only way that they will get better.

Lastly, the success of others. The growth mindset — you view other people as allies on the journey, allies on the path. There are no… There’s no jealousy; there’s no judging; there’s no looking at other people as threats, because other people can help you and you can help them and you can improve. Again, it stems fundamentally from what is your identity? What defines your identity? Is your identity something static? Is it something fixed, that’s unchangeable? Because if it is, that’s a very scary place to be — a place where every little activity, every conversation, everything is about proving “I’m smart. I’m successful. Oh, I have to look good. I have to be good right here.” But in the growth mindset, there’s no fear, there’s no anxiety about that because you know that what I am today can change, and the way to change it is through work and it’s through effort and it’s through practice and it’s through seeking out feedback.

So, here’s an awesome quote from Carol Dweck from the book Mindset: “Why waste time proving over and over how great you are when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it even—or especially—when it’s not going well is the hallmark of the growth mindset.”

So, I wanted to share a real-world example with you. In the journal Child Development, Carol Dweck and some of her associates published a study called Implicit Theories of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across Adolescent Transition. It’s a pretty wordy title but, of course, most scientific studies have wordy titles. But the research was pretty fascinating. They looked at a New York City junior high school and they found that the mindset of the students… And, again, they can use psychological testing to validate the various…whether people fall into a fixed or growth mindset. They found that the mindset of the students predicted how they would perform in math class. And over a two-year period, students with a fixed mindset had a downward academic trend, while students with a growth mindset had positive upward performance trend in their math skills. So, this is not something… This is not mumbo jumbo. This is backed by scientific research. It’s an incredibly powerful, validated concept.

And if you want to think about the fixed versus the growth mindset… You know, it can be even an organizational mindset. Or if you’re an executive in a company—you know, the CEO, the executives’ suite—those people’s mindsets fundamentally impact the direction of the company. One of the greatest business meltdowns of the 20th century—the Enron collapse—is a textbook manifestation of the fixed mindset. And it’s funny because once you truly kind of understand the distinction between the fixed and the growth mindset, once you really have internalized that difference, it’s as plain as day when you meet somebody, when you spend a little bit of time with them, what mindset they’re in. You can see immediately if somebody is hiding from criticism, if they’re concerned about constantly proving and showing to you how great they are and smart they are, versus if they’re concerned about learning and improving.

Back to Enron. Enron was obsessed with talent—they worshiped talent—and they were obsessed with proving how great they were, showing how smart they were. If you remember the documentary, which is awesome—on Netflix—about the collapse of Enron… It’s called The Smartest Guys In The Room, right? Enron was obsessed with their image. They were obsessed with their fixed perception in the world so much so that the internal pressures eventually snowballed into an epic collapse. Contrast that to the growth mindset and how that impacts businesses. Carol Dweck references the classic business text Good to Great in showing how the most successful business leaders epitomized the growth mindset. Here’s a quote: “These were not larger-than-life, charismatic types who oozed ego and self-proclaimed talent. They were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the most brutal answers, that is, to look failures in the face—even their own—while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the end.” So, this not only impacts your personal performance, but this can impact your business. This impacts your life. The difference between the fixed and the growth mindset is all pervasive.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself… You may be concerned: What if I have a fixed mindset and I can’t change it? And I’ve heard that from people. People have told me that all the time, actually. Funny thing is: People who think that, who think they can’t change their mindset, have a fix mindset about mindsets. And I know that sounds kind of redundant, but there is a fascinating field of research called neuroplasticity, which shows just how much the brain can change itself. There’s a PhD psychiatrist named Norman Doidge—D-O-I-D-G-E—and he’s studied the brain deeply. In his book The Brain that Changes Itself, Doidge talks about the science behind neuroplasticity and how brains are constantly evolving, changing, and remapping themselves.

Your brain is not a static entity. It’s not a fixed thing. It can change and it does change, and the way that you think and the thought process that you have remap and change your brain. The science of neuroplasticity proves that you can change your mindset. You can switch from being in the growth mindset…from being in the fixed mindset to being in the growth mindset. You can change the way that you perceive reality, that you perceive yourself, that you perceive your fixed abilities or your ability to learn and grow. And, really, at its core, fundamentally, it’s a shift from proving to improving. I think those two words, that’s the simplest way to think about it. Instead of worrying constantly about validating who you are today, focus on learning, focus on improving, because in a world of learning, it’s not scary anymore. There’s no fear of challenges or obstacles. There’s no fear about criticism. In a world where you’re optimizing and focusing on learning and improving yourself, you know that you’re going to have setbacks and you know that you’re going to ask dumb questions and that you’re sometimes going to look stupid, but you realize that the process to learning, which everyone goes through, is filled with those roadblocks and challenges. But if you’re focused only on proving yourself, on demonstrating how great you are, and you’re scared of feedback, you’re scared of what you might look like or what people might think of you, you’re sabotaging yourself. You’re holding yourself back.

The difference between the fixed and growth mindset is a critical distinction to understand. And, again, the book Mindset by Carol Dweck is an incredible read. Highly recommend checking it out if you really want to drill down on this. She also has a TED talk where she talks about this that I would recommend digging into if it’s something that you want to learn more about. But, to me, this is one of the most fundamental shifts that I’ve made in my life, and really understanding this. And, again, this is something… This is not mumbo jumbo. This is not hearsay. This is validated and backed by tremendous amounts of psychological research and studies. This is something that’s been validated, tested, shown, and proven in the research, all the way up to the fact that you can change your brain and you can change your mindset with the science of neuroplasticity.

So, I want you to really think about this. I want you to internalize this. If you go back to the questions at the beginning of this podcast, if you are in a fixed mindset; if you’re stuck in a fixed mindset even at certain areas in your life; if it’s an area that’s important to you and you want to change and you want to improve, it’s fundamentally essential that you transition into a growth mindset and that you start thinking about the world differently.

Personalizing External Events

It's hard not to look at things that happen in your life and think, "That's not fair." It's even harder not to look at them and think, "That's great!" or "That's terrible!" But that's human tendency.

On this week's episode of "The Science of Success", host Matt Bodnar discusses the act of personalizing events in our lives, and letting ego have a say in how we should feel about things. He also explains why it's important NOT to do this--and what to do instead. 

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

We’re going to open today with a story of Amelia Earheart. This is an excerpt from the book The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holliday which I highly recommend. I’ve about it a little on the podcast, but we’re going to talk about it more later. 

Amelia Earhart wanted to be a great aviator, but it was the 1920s. People still thought that women were frail, and weak, and didn’t have the stuff. Women’s suffrage was not even a decade old. She couldn’t make her living as a pilot, so she took a job as a social worker. Then, one day her phone rang. The man on the line had a pretty offensive offer, along the lines of: “We have someone willing to fund the first female Trans-Atlantic flight. Our first choice has already backed out. You won’t get to actually fly the plan. And we’re going to send two men along as chaperones. And guess what? We’ll pay them a lot of money, and you won’t get anything. Oh, and you very well might die while doing it.” You know what she said to that offer? She said yes. Less than five years later, she was the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic, and became, rightly, one of the most respected people in the world. 

This episode in many ways are going to serve as a bridge between the conversation we had before about the reality of perception, and the podcast about dealing with setbacks. I wanted to open with that story, I think it’s a really powerful story about acceptance. Really, what this episode is about is about acceptance, accepting things not because they’re right or because they’re fair, but because it’s the best thing you can do at the time. I want to share one more quick quote from Ryan Holiday.

“There is no good or bad without us. There is only perception. There is the event itself, and the story we tell ourselves about what it means. Through our perception of events, we are responsible for the creation as well as the destruction of every one of our obstacles. “

And so there’s a couple key points to really understanding why Amelia Earhart’s story is so important, and why acceptance is so important. The first is that events are external to us. Events are not good or bad. Events simply are. They’re simply things that happen. They don’t have anything to do with us. They’re not happening because of something we did, in many instances. They’re not happening because we’re being punished for something. They just are. They just happened to have taken place. It’s our perception of events that creates meaning. We assign a meaning to something that’s completely external to us. We say, “This happened and it’s good. This happened, and it’s bad.” But those events don’t actually have any meaning outside of us assigning us and saying “this is good because it helps me, or it hurts me, or I like that, or I don’t like that.” The reality is these events are so completely unassociated with us until we insert ourselves and we say that it’s good or we say that it’s bad. That’s a process called personalization. What that really is is the ego inserting itself into a situation and saying “This isn’t really external, this is about me. It’s about me because it’s — it’s fair, or it’s right, or it’s just. Or it’s unfair, or it’s not right, or it’s not just.” And there’s an amazing quote, and I would recommend this book actually as well especially if you’re in the financial world. What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars by Jim Paul. This is an excerpt from that book where he talks about the process of personalization, and what happens when you assign your ego, and when you tie your ego to events that are outside of your control. And by the way, this book, What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars, is a story of how Jim Paul built a million dollar fortune and then lost all of it, largely because he personalized external events. So this is one of the most important passages in the book, and I’ll share it with you now. 

“If you say “I’m right”, or “I’m not wrong”, you have implicated your ego. Which invariable you will try to protect. Taking either successes or failures personally means by definition that your ego has become involved and you are in jeopardy of incurring losses due to psychological factors. Edison didn’t take the failures or losses personally and he succeeded brilliantly. If, unlike Edison, you take the failures personally. Or like Henry Ford, you take the successes personally, you are setting yourself up for disaster. Having tied your self-worth to the vicissitudes of factors beyond your control, you will be primarily concerned with protecting your ego, rather than trying to determine the appropriate course of action.”

That’s an incredible and powerful statement. It goes back to the story about Amelia Earhart. When she accepted that offer, that offensive, insulting, rude offer - that demeaning offer, was her ego involved in that decision? I think it definitely wasn’t. She knew that despite the fact that that offer was insulting, rude, sexist, whatever it might have bene. She said, “You know what? This is my chance. This is the opportunity that I’ve been waiting for. This is the time that I can say yes, and I can seize this chance, and I can take the first step. I can get the same toe-hold in the journey that I want to take.” She let go of her ego, she let go of the personalization of “what’s this going to say about me? These people are telling me that I’m inferior, that I can’t do it by myself, that I need babysitters, that I’m not going to get paid.” All of these things. If she had let her ego rule that decision, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation because none of us would know who Amelia Earhart was. This is an incredibly powerful thing that you can apply to your every day life. 

When external events take place, you absolutely have to take your ego out of your perception of reality. And I think where people really get tied up in this is when they get caught up in why things are the way that they are. The most damaging perceptions that people have, the most damaging personalizations of external events are when people say things like “Why is this happening to me?” “This isn’t fair.” “This is unjust.” “This is bullshit.” “I shouldn’t have to deal with this.” “I shouldn’t have to go through this.” “It’s unfair that I’m the one who this always happens to.” Those are watchwords, those are trigger phrases. If you ever hear yourself saying anything like that, you need to be incredibly vigilant because you are personalizing an external event, and you are putting yourself in serious jeopardy of being able to achieve what you want to achieve, being able to accomplish the goals that you want to accomplish. 

The key, the answer, the way to approach this in a much more thoughtful way - the way to approach this is like a Buddhist Monk. Is like a stoic. You need to approach it with an acceptance. Let go of your ego, let go of trying to assign meaning to what happens externally to you. And accept what happens. Accept the external event. Whether it’s good, whether it’s bad, whether it’s fair, whether it’s right, whether it’s just. It doesn’t matter, it already happened. You getting caught up in why it happened, why it happened to you, why it has to be this way, is not going to change what has already happened. All it’s going to do is cause you a bunch of emotional anguish. It’s going to waste a bunch of your time, it’s going to waste a bunch of your energy, and you’re going to end up frustrated and angry. This goes back to the conversation we had about dealing with set-backs. It’s the same thing. If you’re dealing with a set-back, and you personalized it, you’re going to feel a lot of frustration, you’re going to feel a lot of anger, you’re going to be really mad. This is unfair, why is this happening to me? You have to pull the ego out of that. It doesn’t matter why it’s happening. It doesn’t matter why it’s happening to you. It doesn’t matter why it’s fair. Did Amelia Earhart care if it was fair, or if it was just, or if it was an insulting offer? No. She took it, because she knew that was the next step. She knew that that was the thing that was going to leapfrog her into the history books forever. 

So, in your everyday life, when things happen, don’t personalize them. Don’t say “Why is this happening to me?” The sooner you can cultivate the ability to accept things as they are, not as you want them to be, doesn’t matter if you’re right, doesn’t matter if you’re wrong, all that matters is the way things really are. The way things have happened. What is really taking place? The sooner you can recognize how things are, and not get caught up, not bring your ego into the perception of how you think they should be. The sooner you can take the right action, the sooner you can take meaningful steps to really getting what you want. To really going where you want to go. And that’s critically important. 

The Reality of Perception

On this week's episode of "The Science of Success", host Matt Bodnar explores how we perceive the world and how this affects our ability to navigate everyday life. Are you positive and upbeat? Or do you complain about everything? If you're not happy with the current way you view the world, or how the world "treats" you, there are ways of changing both. Find out how on "The Reality of Perception".

Thank you so much for listening!

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

What if you were driving somewhere really important? Say to a key business meeting, or an exciting date, or to pick up your kids from school, and you get cut off from somebody in the rudest possible way? What are you going to think of that guy? “Hey asshole, what’s your problem? Why are you cutting me off?” Now, what if I told you that person’s wife had just been in a near-fatal car accident, and they were rushing to their side to spend the last hours of their life with them at the hospital. Did your stomach just drop? Did your perception of the event just change? You see, before you didn’t have all of the information. Whether you believe it or not, your perception creates the world around you. That’s why so many self-fulfilling prophecies are real. It’s a cliché quote, but Henry Ford once said, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” But I’m not here to talk to you about mumbo jumbo pseudo-science. Why don’t we look at the research and see what it says.

Scientific studies have shown, as well as I’m sure your personal experience has also, that we suffer from a serious amount of information overload. And if you go back to episode one of the podcast, we talked about the biological limits of the mind and how your mind has evolved over the course of human history to deal with this information overload. And a number of psychological studies, textbooks, whatever you may want to look at, have talked about the idea or the concept in psychology. The attention is a spotlight, and whatever you focus your attention on, that gets all the attention, but everything outside of the spotlight is forgotten, or lost, or not really recorded in your mind. And if you look at it in another way, there’s an infinite amount of data available to you at any given moment. Right now, there’s an infinite amount of information that you could be collecting. There’s so much going on and your mind literally cannot handle and process all of it. Within a single second, there’s so much information that your brain would explode if you tried to process all of it. But what our brains do because of the way they’ve evolved, because of the massive amounts of information overload, which by the way, is getting worse and worse and worse. Our brains cut down infinity into a number of finite data points that it then stores, and the rest of that data ceases to exist. And the psychologist and performance coach, Peter Shallard, talks about an idea from Mathematics; that if you subtract a tangible number from infinity, that number has no relationship to infinity. It cannot describe infinity in any meaningful way. And that’s a principle of Mathematics. But now when you think about that, in the context of your perception of reality, your perception, by definition, is a subtraction of finite data points from an infinite amount of data. In many ways, what you really perceive in everyday life is not an accurate description of what’s really happening.

I want to show you one thing that’s really a powerful way to explain this. If you need to pause a podcast to do this, I think it’s fine. But I want you to go to YouTube.com and I want you to search the phrase “Selective attention test”. And we’ll put a link to that down below as well. But I want you to search that. Pause the podcast, the video’s about a minute long, and I want you to watch it. Watch it now, because I’m about to spoiler what happens in the video. 

But this video, the selective attention test, now that you’ve seen it, many of you may know it as “The Gorilla Experiment”. And basically what this video shows is that your mind can easily be tricked into missing something that is completely obvious. You’re told in that experiment to count the number of times that the white team passes the basketball back and forth. While you’re doing that, you do not notice at all - or may not notice, some people do, but most people don’t notice somebody in a gorilla suit walks into the frame, pounds their chest, stares right at the camera, and then walks off the frame. And people who don’t see that for the first time are completely blown away. It’s a really powerful way to experience personally how your perception can lie to you, and how you can see something with your own two eyes that’s not something that actually happened. Because that data was deleted out of your brain, it was deleted because your focus beam of attention was on the basketball players in the white t-shirts, it wasn’t on the people in the black t-shirts, or the person in the black gorilla suit that walks out, pounds their chest, then walks off stage. 

So there’s a couple of ways that information is lost, or transformed, or distorted that are measurable and validated in psychological research that show how often our perception of reality is not what really happened or is an incomplete representation of reality. The first, the most obvious, is kind of the deletion of data, that’s the concept we just talked about. The idea that your focus or attention ignores, or limits out information because it has to. Because evolutionary we’ve been designed to filter out everything our brains tell us isn’t relevant and only focus on the really important, really relevant things. The selective attention test is a perfect example of that. Because you’re told what’s relevant in this test is that you watch the players in the white shirt pass the basketball around. Your attention completely ignores the people who are in black t-shirts. So you miss the gorilla.

The second thing that your mind does, is that is distorts reality via cognitive biases. There is a laundry list of cognitive biases and we’re going to dig into a lot of them in future episodes of the podcast. But there are so many cognitive biases. Things that kind of shift your perception or you see an event in a certain way. A very, very limited micro-example of a cognitive bias is the example at the top of this podcast, the idea of - until you really perceive everything about that situation, your cognitive bias of “this person cutting me off is rude” is kind of something that is an example, something rooted in your mind that you perceived somebody cutting you off as a rude behavior. So, your perception of that shaped your reality about that situation. But there’s tons of cognitive biases and I’m excited to tell you all about lots of them, but for the purpose of this I can’t get into too much information about them. But your beliefs and cognitive biases about them shape your perception of reality. What you believe about the world shapes the way that you perceive events. 

The third way that your brain distorts information, is that your mind generalizes things. You classify people, things, experiences, into certain buckets based on your expectations. We talked about that a little bit when we went into the biological limits of the mind. But your mind will generalize things. You’ll put these classifications when you see someone wearing a certain set or clothes, or behaving a certain way, you’ll automatically make a bunch of assumptions about that person, or about that event or whatever it might be. And that’s an incredibly useful skill, and most of the time it’s super powerful. Occasionally, you will create a memory. You will perceive a reality that isn’t true - it isn’t necessarily the way things really are. It’s only the way your mind with it’s generalization has classified this given event, or person.

And the last, and possibly most insidious way this happens - is that your memories are not real. They’re not fixed. They’re reconstructed by your mind every time that you remember something. This is a quote from Oliver Sacks. He’s a renowned neurological anthropologist. He has a really cool TED Talk about visual hallucinations. But he wrote a book called Hallucination where he talks about many different things. One of which is how memory and remembering are not necessarily factual, or fixed things. I’ll read you this little excerpt.

“Remembering is not the re-excitation of innumerable fixed, lifeless, and fragmentary traces. It is an imaginative reconstruction, or construction, built out of the relation of our attitude towards a whole active mass of organized past reactions or experience. It is thus hardly ever really exact.”

So if you think about that. There’s these four processes, and there’s more processes than that but these are the main ones that are shaping your perception, shaping your reality. That take this infinite world, the infinite reality right? The infinite universe unfolding before you, and your mind, your perception of that world, is really nothing more than a rough sketch of what is actually happened. It doesn’t contain all the information. In many ways, it doesn’t actually represent what truly happened. It doesn’t necessarily represent how someone really felt about you, or what that event really meant. The really fascinating thing, though, is this imperfect sketch that doesn’t really represent reality, that is constructed by a biologically limited brain, is something that can be changed. Your perception of reality can be changed. All you have to do is change the sketch. You can change the sketch in a couple different ways. 

The first is by deleting different things from your focus beam of attention. Which means focusing on different things. When you think about that, I’m sure you know somebody in your life who is always kind of upbeat and happy, and whenever something bad happens, or good happens, they’re upbeat about it. “Things will get better, things will get back to normal”, whatever it might be. And then you probably know somebody else who’s always angry, or always frustrated. It doesn’t really matter what happens, they always find a reason to complain, they always find something that’s wrong with XYZ. And that’s because those two people that might experience the same event and have completely different perceptions of what happens. And that’s because those people, at a subconscious level, are deleting and focusing on different things. They’re focusing on different bits and pieces. So their perception of that event is completely different, even though the event itself, which is external to both of them, was identical.

The next thing you can do to change your sketch, is to distort different things. By that I mean, change your cognitive biases. Change your beliefs. And the third thin you can do is to generalize different things. This is very similar to the second one in the sense that if you change the patterns, and change the filters that you recognize in reality, by definition, you’re changing the mechanism that you perceive and record. Your perception of reality. So, changing your perception changes reality in a real way. And when you dig down at it, what is the criteria that really impacts the perception process? Your beliefs about the world shape your reality. Your perception of reality. The way that your memories are encoded into your brain. Are shaped by what you believe. By the things that have impacted you in your childhood, when you were growing up, what the examples that you’ve seen in your life. All of these things, all of these beliefs that exist not at the conscious level, but at the subconscious level, shape an impact your perception of the world in a very real, very physical, very scientifically validated way. Because your beliefs are the filter. The past, the reality that you’ve constructed in your mind. The sketch, that rough pencil sketch that you have of the vast infinite reality in front of you, is not always perfect. It’s not alway accurate. It’s shaded by your biases, by what you focus on. By what you think is important at the time. By what your life has told you is important at a very visceral and deep subconscious level.

Sometimes there’s a belief nettled at the core of your subconscious that has shaped your perception of reality. Has skewed it in a certain way for your entire life, that has shifted your ability to achieve what you want. That has impacted your ability either negatively or positively to get what you want to get. To be successful. To help the cause that you’re helping, whatever it might be. In a very real way, the limited beliefs that you hold in your mind in your subconscious that have been shaped throughout your life impact the filter, impact the sketch that you have created about the world and impact the story that you tell yourself about what is real, about what your experiences mean. About what happens to you every day in your life. We’re going to talk a lot more about limiting beliefs and how you can uncover some of the limiting beliefs within your life in future episodes of the podcast. 

I want to leave you with a thought. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Inception”, Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, goes into his wife’s dream and opens this safe where she holds this totem, takes the top, and spins it. You can do the same thing in your life. You can take an idea that you’ve held dear. Something you’ve believed to be true. Something about your past that you’re certain of. If it’s not an idea that empowers you, that helps you, that pushes you forward, you can plant a new idea in your mind. The reality that you perceive, the reality that you think you live in today, has been constructed by your beliefs - has been sketched out by your biases and your perceptions of reality. And you can plant a new belief in your mind. That’s something that I want to tell you more about. But I’m going to tell you about it in the future podcasts. 

Moving Through Setbacks

On this episode of "The Science of Success", Matt delves into the debilitating affect of setbacks. You've got a goal. You're working towards it, then BOOM: Something gets in your way. What do you do? Do you give up and try something else? Or do you brush yourself off and keep moving forward?

How you answer this question will make all the difference.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

I wanted to start out by introducing you to somebody, and I’ll tell you who he is at the end of this, but I want you to guess. At the age of nine his mother died. At the age of 22 his first business failed. The age of 23 he ran for state legislator and lost. The age of 23 he also lost his job, and he was denied entry into law school. At the age of 24 he borrowed some money from a friend to begin a business, and by the end of the year he went bankrupt, and spent the next 17 years of his life paying back that debt. At age 25 he ran for state legislature and finally won. At age 26 he was engaged to be married when his fiancé died. At age 27 he had a total nervous breakdown and was in bed for six months. Between the ages of 29 and 34 he lost three more electoral bids. Age 37, he ran for Congress for a second time and won. He finally went to Washington and he did a great job while he was there, but when he ran for reelection two years later, he lost. At age 40 he sought the job of land officer in his home state, and he was rejected. At age 54 he ran for Senate of the United States and lost. At age 47 he sought the vice presidential nomination at the party national convention, and got less than 100 votes. At age 49 he ran for the Senate and lost again. And, at age 51 Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. 

So, I think that’s a pretty powerful story if you think about all of those failures, and all of those setbacks, and the fact that somebody who’s one of the most impactful historical figures in the history of our country has a laundry list of epic, heartbreaking failures again, and again, and again. The death of a loved one, the failure of his business, personal bankruptcy, crushing defeats in election after election after election, and yet this guy picked himself up again, and again, and again, and became the President of the United States, but not only that, he became one of the most respected; one of the most high-impact people in the history of our country.

I tell you the story of Abe Lincoln because I think that too many people, and honestly I feel like in many ways the portrayal of success in popular media is part of the problem that continues to make this worse, but I feel like too many people think that success and accomplishment are sort of effortless and easy, and that the people who really achieve huge impactful things never have any setbacks, and never have any challenges. I think that that victim-esque mindset of, you know, “Oh, why can’t I be successful? What- how come every time I try something I fail and it doesn’t work?” I think that mindset is incredibly damaging and poisonous and dangerous, and that is part of the problem about why people don’t know how to handle setbacks. So, I’m gonna go back to the question I pose at the very start of the podcast: What do a Roman emperor and an NBA superstar have in common? I’m gonna tell you the story of Marcus Aurelius. 

Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor. He was widely considered one of the best, most successful, Roman emperors of all time. He was also depicted in the movie Gladiator. He was the guy who, unfortunately, gets killed right at the beginning of the movie, but in real life Marcus Aurelius was incredibly well respected. He governed over, you know, one of the largest empires of… of all time, and he had a personal, sort of, diary journal, whatever you wanna call it, where he would write to himself, and he never knew that anybody would ever see this journal. It was a journal he kept for himself, and he kind of wrote his thoughts about setbacks and challenges, and what was going on in his life, and how he should approach the operating system of life. Marcus Aurelius was a stoic. Now, the modern day perception of stoicism is a little bit skewed, and what people think when they hear “stoic” or “stoicism”; they have a lot of associations with that that aren’t necessarily accurate when you think about the description, or really the methodology, of sort of the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy of stoicism. There’s an incredible book about stoicism written by a modern-day author, Ryan Holiday, called The Obstacle is the Way. If you’re interested in really actually learning about and understanding stoicism I highly recommend checking out The Obstacle is the Way. It breaks down and kind of delves into, really, the core tenants of stoicism.

Another book that’s an incredible read is actually the journal that I was just mentioning that Marcus Aurelius wrote, is the book Meditations. Meditations is a personal journal by Marcus Aurelius where he talks about how he applied the philosophy of stoicism to dealing with the challenges of governing one of the greatest empires of all time. 

I asked you before: What do a Roman emperor and a Buddhist have in common? Well, you’d be surprised to learn that stoicism has many philosophical characteristics that are remarkably similar to modern day Buddhism, and I wanted to share with you a quote by Marcus Aurelius, from the book Meditations, that kind of encapsulates the idea of how stoics deal with setbacks and challenges: “Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions and dispositions because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes, the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way,” and I think it’s incredibly powerful that this wisdom, from somebody 2,000 years ago, is still so pertinent and so relevant to understanding today, and living our lives today, and trying to achieve things and to be successful in modern day society. It’s really interesting, 2,000 years later a guy named Michael Jordan said something very similar: “If you’re trying to achieve there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them, everybody’s had them, but obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.” It’s pretty fascinating that both Marcus Aurelius and Michael Jordan are sharing this lesson with us, right? But, the reality is this is a timeless lesson. It’s not something that’s going to change. This isn’t the latest productivity fad. This is something that is sort of a kernel truth of human experience, and human existence. This is how to really, at a fundamentally deep level, understand and cope and deal with setbacks, which is an incredibly important skill. No matter what you’re trying to achieve, no matter what goal you want to get, you have to be able to cope, and deal, and overturn setbacks.

There are three phases that people go through in their evolution of how they deal with setbacks. Phase one is giving up, and this ties in many ways into the concept of the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset, which is an incredibly powerful framework for thinking about your life, that was pioneered by the psychologist, Carol Dweck, and I’ll go into that in much more detail in a later episode, but in the framework of giving up so many people- we talked about this at the top when we were talking about Abe Lincoln- but so many people, when they encounter some sort of challenge, or hurdle, or roadblock, or whatever it might be, they just throw their hands up and they say, “Well, it didn’t work out,” you know, “Uh, that wasn’t for me. I’m not meant to do X. I’m not supposed to do Y,” right? People just give up, and honestly I know that’s true because probably the first… you know, twenty-odd years of my life, that was how I lived my life. When I encountered some sort of challenge, when something didn’t go the way I wanted it to go, I would just throw up my hands and I would go do something else. That’s a terrible way to live your life. If you’re trying to achieve something, if you’re trying to build a business, if you’re trying to build a team, if you’re trying to solve some of the world’s problems; whatever it is that’s important to you, whatever you’re focused on, giving up is absolutely not the right approach to dealing with setbacks on that path.

The second phase that people go through is the phase of anger and frustration. Anger and frustration fundamentally stems from a refusal to accept reality as it is rather than as you want it to be. That’s also another topic that I’m gonna go much deeper on in a future episode. That’s something that’s incredibly powerful, and actually rooted in many ways, both in stoicism and in ancient Buddhist philosophy, which is amazing to see sort of two completely different thought doctrines that have such similar core penance, but this is also a really disempowering way to think about setbacks, and this was probably the next third of my life I spent focused on. Every time I would hit a setback I would immediately get frustrated, I would immediately get angry, and I would immediately sort of refuse to accept reality as it was, rather than as I wanted it to be, and that takes a form of many thought constructs such as saying things like, “Why is this happening to me? This isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have to deal with this. This is ridiculous.” All of these phrases, and all of these thought patterns. These are incredibly destructive thought patterns to have, but the reality is, not only is it really just not fun, and it sucks having to be really angry and frustrated, but when people are going down a path, when they’re trying to achieve their goal and they hit this roadblock of anger and frustration; one, that takes up a tremendous amount of time and emotional energy dealing with it, and the second thing is a good chunk of the time that results back in bucket number one, which is just giving up. 

Now, occasionally you’ll kind of work through this anger and frustration, and eventually get to a place of accepting the situation as it is, and you’ll actually move forward. The challenge there is that it takes a lot of time and energy to work through all that stuff, and you might of lost weeks or months of time in that process, but the even more dangerous thing is that now you’re back on the path and you’ll hit another setback, and then you have to go through the entire cycle again of anger and frustration and potentially giving up, and all of these other challenges, but ultimately truly successful people, and this the place that Marcus Aurelius and Michael Jordan are both coming from when they talk about dealing with setbacks, is sort of the third phase of this evolution, which is the acceptance of the inevitability of setbacks. This is whenever you go down a path, you know from the very beginning not only will there be setbacks, but you are prepared for them mentally, and you are not going to get upset, you’re not going to get angry, and you’re going to kind of accept them as soon as they present themselves. Figure out a way to work through them and overcome them. This is an incredibly powerful shift in the way that you perceive obstacles because now when you go down a path, and you set out at the very beginning and you say, “I know that I’m gonna have setbacks. I know that I’m gonna have obstacles. I know there’s gonna be challenges. I’m not gonna get frustrated. I’m not gonna get angry, and most importantly I’m not gonna give up.” It’s a much more powerful place to be in when you’re not fighting the world; you’re not fighting reality, right? You’re flowing like water around any obstacle and you’re getting to where you want to be. There may be even a level beyond that that I’m not aware of yet, but that’s kind of, to me, sort of the third iteration of how people deal with setbacks, and how they ultimately reach this sort of Buddhist slash stoic acceptance of the fact that no matter what path you set out on, you will be beset with setbacks, and you have to be ready and willing to accept that. Accept those setbacks and figure out a way, without frustration and anger, to move beyond them and to achieve whatever results you ultimately want to achieve.

There’s a couple different stories that sort of highlight the acceptance of inevitability of setbacks and how to use those to your advantage. One of them is a story; we talked about him in the last podcast, Josh Waitzkin. I’m a huge fan of his, and again, I highly recommend checking out his book, The Art of Learning. For those of you who didn’t hear episode two, he is an eight-time national chess champion, and a two-time world champion tai chi push hands fighter, as well as preeminent expert in Brazilian jujitsu. 

There’s actually a story where Josh was competing in the U.S. national championship for tai chi push hands, and seven weeks before the national championship competition he broke his right arm in another tournament. Now, for most competitors breaking your arm in a martial arts competition seven weeks before the national championship is pretty much game over. You’re not gonna be able to compete. You’re not gonna be able to recover from the injury in time, and you’re not gonna be able to train effectively after you’ve recovered from the injury to even have a chance at competing in the competition. This is where Josh flipped this obstacle on its head and completely transformed the way that he approached this. He writes in his book- I’ll share a brief excerpt with you: “When aiming for the top your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve. You should always come off an injury, or a loss, better than when you went down.”

So, how did he do it? How did he deal with this obstacle, seven weeks before the national championship, that should have completely knocked him out of competing? He made the determination that he was going to train every single day leading up to the national championship without using his right arm at all. So, Josh trained for seven weeks, he got his cast off four days before the national championship competition, and had been training for seven weeks completely without the use of his right hand. He described it as almost so easy that it was like cheating to be able to compete in the national championship with full use of his right hand because he’d been training for the last seven weeks only using his left hand. He ended up going on to win that national championship competition. That’s an incredibly powerful way to think about dealing with a setback. Something that most people would take as a killing blow to your national championship bid. A broken arm weeks before the tournament he uses as a lever to propel himself into an even more incredibly powerful competitor, and becomes even better, becomes even stronger, and takes his game to a completely different level, and ends up winning the tournament as a result of an injury that would of knocked out almost anybody else that was competing. That’s a really, really powerful way to think about how a setback can actually be something that can empower you to become even better, even more successful, and to get where you want to go. He talks about, within The Art of Learning, he talks about a very similar process to the evolution that we talked about, or the three phases of dealing with setbacks, and he says he uses the lens of his chess career to describe how he learned to put his emotions in a place that they fueled peak performance. As I mentioned in the previous podcast, he actually quit chess for a number of years, and took a break from the game, because his mindset wasn’t right, and his mental angle wasn’t right on the game. He spent all of that time really cultivating, and learning, and understanding at a psychological level what was going on in his mind that was limiting his performance, and ultimately came away with an understanding of a three part framework for thinking about how to deal with setbacks, or dealing with tough emotions at the levels of peak- and we’re talking national world champion level competition. 

The first was learning to roll with distractions. Learning to accept distractions. Learning to accept your emotions as what they are instead of fighting them. Sounds very similar to the stoic and Buddhist philosophies that we talked about earlier. 

The second was learning to use your emotions to your advantage, and actually leveraging them as fuel to become an even better competitor, and to put you in a peak state that you would not have otherwise been in.

The third phase is learning to create and replicate that peak state in a way that you can do it at will, you can do it on demand. He tells another story about: He was in a different competition, and he was actually in the tournament. In the semifinal round he broke his hand. His competitor hit him so hard that it shattered his hand. He described the injury as almost jarring him into a place where time slowed down almost to a halt, and he said his competitors punches were coming at him as if they were clouds. You can actually go on YouTube and watch the footage of this fight, and in real time this guy’s pummeling him, you know, his fists are more like bullets than clouds, and he said that breaking his hand enabled him to see the match in a slow motion that was not attainable had he not had that shock to his system. He actually ended up winning that match despite breaking his hand in the middle of the fight, but later he kind of came around and learned and really started studying the idea of: “How do I put myself in a place where I can slow down time at will instead of having to have my hand be broken?” That’s sort of the art of mastering, and really learning and understanding how to first accept setbacks and then ultimately use them to your advantage. We’ll talk more about that process in a future podcast, and we’ll really drill down into some of this stuff.

I wanted to tell you one more quick story about Erwin Rommel and the Allied command in World War II, in the battle for North Africa. As you may know, Erwin Rommel was sort of a German commander who was notorious. His name was The Desert Fox, and he was feared, and he would destroy anybody that went to battle with him. Despite the fact that, to the outside observer, the British and American forces were hitting setback after setback, and were getting demolished by Rommel and The Desert Fox in the African theater, this was actually part of a broader plan, put together by Churchill and the Allies, to anticipate the fact that there would be setbacks, there would be a learning curve, in combatting the Germans, and really understanding the Germans, and their tactics and their strategies. So, what looks like one of the biggest challenges for the Allies in World War II, one of the biggest setbacks of the entire campaign, was actually something that they used as part of their process to become more powerful, to become better strategists, to achieve their goals of ultimately taking back Europe and defeating Hitler. 

So, those are a couple of examples to really contextualize for you how you can take something that seems like a setback and use it to your advantage, and how you can take the knowledge that you will have setbacks and use that as a powerful tool to plan and to prepare yourself, and to ready yourself psychologically to deal with whatever may come.

Embracing Discomfort

On this week's "The Science of Success", Matt explores one of the most crucial elements to leading a successful life: moving through discomfort. It's human tendency to want to avoid things that make us feel awkward, and most of us do. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right thing. 

Matt discusses two tricks that can help you move through discomfort and, if practiced enough, ultimately embrace it.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

	I want to start out today by having you visualize something that you really want, something that’s super important to you. I want you to take a second, pause the podcast if you need to and really think about something that…a goal in your life, something that’s super important.

	All right, good, you’ve had a second to do that, to pause and reflect on something that’s really, really important to you, something that you visualize this thing and really feel it. Now I want to share two quotes with you. The first is from Jack Canfield, the author of Chicken Soup for the Soul: “Everything you want is on the other side of fear”. The next one is from Tim Ferriss, the human guinea pig blogger. I’m a huge fan of Tim. If you haven't checked out some of his stuff, he’s awesome but, he has a quote: “A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations they’re willing to have”.

	So, today we’re gonna talk a little bit about discomfort and how to deal with discomfort and to cultivate discomfort in your life. And I wanted to start with a story of Josh Waitzkin. You may not know who Josh Waitzkin is but, he is an eight-time national chess champion and he’s a two-time world champion Tai Chi push hands fighter, and he’s one of the foremost Brazilian jujitsu experts in the United States, and Josh has a fascinated story. He was actually a child chess prodigy and he was the subject to the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher, and he had some sort of meteoric rise in the chess world starting at a very early age, and Josh’s experience in chess taught him a number of things. He actually wrote an incredible book which I highly recommend checking out called The Art of Learning, that's all about all of the lessons about sort of performed psychology and his journey from a chess prodigy to then transitioning into martial arts and other things. But, what’s really fascinating about Josh’s sort of success and his meteoric rise even as a child chess prodigy was that he actually had a total breakdown and ended up quitting chess for a number of years, and  that was in many ways was because he was psychologically frail, he was brittle, he hadn’t cultivated mental toughness, mental resilience, he hadn’t built and developed that really critical mental  strength. And so, I’m gonna actually just give you an excerpt from Josh’s book were he talks about cultivating mental resilience and how important that is to him. “My whole life I’ve worked on this issue. Mental resilience is arguably the most critical trait of a world class performer. It should be nurtured continuously. Left to my own devices I am always looking for ways to become more and more psychologically impregnable. When uncomfortable my instinct is not to avoid the discomfort but to become at peace with it, when injured, which happens frequently in the life of a martial artist, I try to avoid painkillers and to change the sensation of pain into a feeling that is not necessarily negative. My instinct is always to seek out challenges as opposed to avoiding them.”

	This type of internal work takes place in the little moments of our lives. I mentioned how my style over the board was to create chessic mayhem and then to sort my way through the chaos more effectively than my opponents. This was a muscle I built up by training myself to be at peace with the unclear and tumultuous. And, most of the training was an everyday life and I think that’s a really, really critical take away from that piece of text, most of the training was an everyday life.
In fact, there’s all kinds of different ways that you can cultivate and embrace discomfort in your daily life and it’s an incredibly important skill to constantly… instead of sort of fleeing from uncomfortable situations, to lean in and embrace and kind of face and really become at peace with things that make you uncomfortable.

 	And cultivating discomfort is kind of like building muscles. It’s one of the tools that you can use to develop mental resilience, to develop mental toughness and to become psychologically impregnable. And the first step to cultivating discomfort is to be aware when you’re uncomfortable, right? You have to be present of your discomfort. Most people when they encounter something uncomfortable they almost at a subconscious level, they sort of move away from it, they push away from it, they go in the different direction, they don't want to have to deal with whatever this thing that’s really uncomfortable is, and so you have to be able to intercept that message. You have to be present enough to your own thinking and your own thought patterns to be able to say, “Hey, I just felt uncomfortable. I just felt discomfort,” and then, “Should I continue to act in this path of moving away from the discomfort or is this is an opportunity potentially to lean into this discomfort to really embrace it or to force myself into a situation that I know is going to be really uncomfortable?” And the way to cultivate that mental presence... There’s a lot of different ways to do it, one of the most effective is with meditation, which is something we're not gonna talk about today. But something that we can delve into and give you a really practical and simple and easy toolkit to use if you wanna start meditating without having all of this sort of confusion about what is meditation and all this woo woo stuff, there's really simple ways to get started that are rooted in science but that's a discussion for a future podcast.

So, being really present to your discomfort is the first key piece of cultivating it. The second step is, once you're aware of this discomfort you're have to catch yourself, and you have to push into it and you have to embrace it and the reason that being present is so critical, as Josh said, is not…you know, there's not this... There are sometimes water ship moments, but what really builds up the ability to embrace discomfort is having all these little experiences in your life where you gotta catch yourself and say, "Mm, that’s really uncomfortable", and instead of running away from it you push into it head on and you really kind of accept it.

And I'll tell you… I'll give you two specific kinda tools, or examples, or ways that you can lean in it discomfort. One of them is a really simple test. It’s from a guy named Noah Kagan. Some of you are may be familiar with Noah. He's an entrepreneur internet market genius. I highly recommend checking out some of his stuff. But, he has a test that's called the coffee test, and it’s really simple and it sounds really easy and I guarantee you, if you go try to do it, it is terrifying. And all you have to do is go into your local coffee shop or any coffee shop and whatever you order ask them for ten percent off. 

Don't give them a reason, don't justify it just go on and say “Yeah, I'd like a large coffee and can I take ten percent off on that?" And you're probably thinking right now, "Oh, that doesn't sound so hard." But, as soon as you step up into the counter it’s a completely different sensation of fear, and discomfort, and "Ugh, I don’t wanna do it." And most of the time you back down and it takes two or three tries to really try, to really cultivate that. But, that's a very micro example of a way to kind of simply and easily in your own life, cultivate discomfort and kind of implement the ability to actively go out and seek things that are uncomfortable. 

The second way to do that is through a process called social skydiving. You may have heard of that term but if haven’t basically what social skydiving is, is just walking up to a conversation specifically, usually with a group of people that you don't know at all. And the more intimidating the conversation looks, the less it looks like you should barge in, the better it is. And you just barge into the conversation not in a rude way at all, but in a way where you just kind of join the conversation and, immediately insert yourself into it and start talking to people engaging them, you know, introducing yourself all this kind of stuff.

And the key to social skydiving is that when you're entering into this situation, you don't know what you're going to say, you don't know what they're talking about, you just throw yourself into this situation where most people are sort of mortified of walking up into a circle of strangers that are all talking about something, bursting into the circle and just injecting yourself into the conversation. And it’s really hard to do it but, the more you do it, the more you sort of cultivate and build this muscle and it’s something you could do anytime. You could walk on right now and go social skydiving on somebody's conversation and continue to build and cultivate that muscle of being able to tolerate and kind of handle and…you know, what ultimately you become sort of immune, or resilient to uncomfortable situations.

So, those are two very practical ways that you can cultivate this discomfort, and I challenge you to implement or try at least one of those within the next week. And I bet you're probably not going to do it, but I think you really, really should. And it sounds really easy but when you're actually gonna do it is going to be really hard, but pushing into and really leaning into that discomfort you'll start to cultivate an immunity to it where you can social skydive in all kinds of situations and actually like… I'm an introvert and so, it was something that was sort of terrifying to me to do for the first time. But, having done it many times I can tell you now that Is almost a fine activity Is almost enjoyable. 

And that's kind of a segue into the next keys of understanding discomfort that I think is a critical thing to understand, and this is the idea of what I call the sphere of discomfort, and this goes back to Jack Canfield's quote about everything you want is on the other side of fear. So, everybody sort of lives in a comfort zone, right? Is sort of a bubble that surrounds you and it’s everything you are comfortable with, everything you are comfortable doing, everything you're comfortable talking about, all of this things and whenever. And this is usually a subconscious process, which is why sort of being present and aware is so important. But whenever you bump up against certain walls of your comfort zone, you subconsciously and kind of intuitively turn away, you turn back, you leave from that discomfort, and so what happens is most people live their lives in sort of this little bubble where anything that's uncomfortable to them they never do it, right? They never want to do it. And a really simple way to think about that would be of somebody who's afraid of flying, right? And everybody knows somebody probably. Think about all the things they're kind of limiting out of their experience in their life by being afraid to get on an airplane.

If they would become comfortable with that, pushing to that discomfort they’re literally opening up the world for themselves to experience. And so, what happens is similar to sort of social skydiving or the coffee test, every time you get to the edge of your comfort zone if you just push into that discomfort if you just kind of step into it and really go headfirst, the first time you do something that's really uncomfortable it’s scary, right? The second or third time it’s still nerve-wracking but you know that you've done it once before and it gets a little bit easier.

The hundredth time that you do something it’s almost...you know, it starting to get fun and easy and it's almost enjoyable because you've done it some many times. The thousandth time that you do something its boring, right? You know there's people who fly every week for work and, to them, flying is nothing, it’s not scary at all. So, you see these patterns again and, again and again with all kinds of experiences in people's lives but, so many people wants you sort of build that muscle, right? Whether it’s flying, or social skydiving, or selling, or whatever it might be, whatever...once you build that muscle, things that once seems scary and uncomfortable now become…first sort of less scary, less scary, you become good at it and then almost  becomes boring ultimately, and what happens is that bubble around you that comfort zone? It grows and expands. And once that comfort zone has kind of bubble up and expanded, and you broaden your comfort zone beyond it what you ever thought it was possible.

At the frontiers of your new fear of discomfort you now have all of this other things that seemed uncomfortable. But, these are the kind of things that you'd never could have seen or perceived in the world where you were sort of limited by your original fears, your original things that made you uncomfortable and it's kind of an iterative process because now you have all these new frontiers you can explore, you have an even broader array of things that you could do, right? And that goes back to the Tim Ferriss quote that we opened up this podcast with: "A person’s success in life can usually be determined by the number of uncomfortable conversations they're willing to have", right? And the more you have those uncomfortable conversations, the sale pitches, the tough business negotiations, whatever that may be, the better you get and the broader that sort of sphere of comfort expands to, and to tell a story within my own life even about this podcast, this podcast started out as a PowerPoint presentation that I had made for one particular friend who wanted me to share some of his ideas with him. 

He knew that I loved psychology and performance and all that stuff and he said, "Hey Matt, can you just take some of this stuff and share it with my corporate team?" And you know I was a little bit hesitant because some of this stuff is kind of out there and, you know, they're gonna think I'm a weirdo or whatever but, I pushed into the discomfort and made the PowerPoint and I shared with them and I had a great time. And then about six months elapsed and didn't tell is all or show is all anything about this PowerPoint, and eventually one day I was talking to someone and they were like "You really have to share this," it was like "Do you think these ideas are really important?" And I was like, "Absolutely." He was like, "You have to share this with the people that you work with, you have to share this with your team and your employees, the key people in your business." and I was like, "[Laughs] Absolutely not! They're gonna think I'm a weirdo. I'm gonna sit down and talk to them about…you know, about their subconscious and this fear of discomfort and all of these things and they're gonna say ‘Man, I thought he was kind of out there but, now I know he's out there,’ right?” But eventually, I overcame that sort of uncomfortable emotion and cultivated…you know, a series of one on one, really, really enriching conversations with all of my key team members and it really took our relationships to a level that I never thought was possible, and we can now have conversations about things that I couldn't even imagine before, looking back to having...you know, been terrifying sharing this all, let alone to all this other people. 

Fast forward another six or eight months and I started to say, "This is something that I need to share with people who I value and people who I think would really enjoy some of the lessons in this presentation". Eventually I stumbled across sharing this with a friend of mine and that led ultimately to this podcast to what I'm now sharing this with everybody who is listening. Which is amazing to me that it’s a very sort of small example but, it’s also a very concrete example of leaning into that discomfort. Something that I was very terrified of sharing even with one or two people has now kind of morphed into something that I'm thrilled to be sharing with an audience of people and really helping them to understand all of these concepts that I think are so critical and so important.

So, that's kind of the lesson for today, is understanding and embracing discomfort and leaning into it and being aware when you feel something that's uncomfortable and actively cultivating, and embracing of discomfort instead of a fear and running away from discomfort.

The Biological Limits of the Human Mind

On this episode of "The Science of Success", we explore one of the fundamental underpinnings of psychology: the brain itself. 

Your brain is a roughly million-year-old piece of hardware, designed to operate in the world of hunting and gathering, where dangerous animals and competing humans may lurk behind the nearest bush.

While our society has changed massively in the last 10,000 years (or even the last 500 years), our brains have not had time to catch up.

As a result, you and I are equipped with a tool that is riddled with shortcuts and processing errors, which can manifest themselves in mistakes, calamities, and all around terrible decisions.

To find out how you can get around these and make life a little easier, listen to this week's episode "The Biological Limits of the Human Mind".

 Also, continue the conversation by following Matt on Twitter (@MattBodnar) or visiting his website MattBodnar.com.

Thank you so much for listening!

Please SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE US A REVIEW on iTunes! (Click here for instructions how to do that!).  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

We’re going to start our discussion today with a story of a turkey. A mother turkey, to be precise. Turkeys are very caring parents. Research has actually shown that there’s a certain sound - a “cheep cheep”, or a “chirp chirp” sound that’s an automatic trigger built into turkeys by evolution. What happens is when a turkey hears this sound, it’s almost like a switch goes off in the turkey’s mind. And it immediately goes to nurture and take care of its young. That makes sense, then. The vast majority of the time, that works out perfectly. But here’s where it gets really interesting: If you take that sound and you record it, and you put it on a stuffed polecat. A polecat is an animal that’s one of turkey’s natural predators. The turkey will immediately go out to the stuffed polecat and begin to nurture it, just like one of its baby chicks. Which is a pretty surprising reaction, especially when you consider the fact that if you don’t have a recording of the “cheep cheep” sound with a stuffed polecat, the turkey will go absolutely insane and ruthlessly attack the stuffed polecat with its life. Why is the turkey doing that? The biological shortcuts are programmed into the turkey’s mind by the process of evolution. This is called by psychologists a “Click, Whirr” response. 

The famed psychology professor Robert Cialdini, author of the book Influence, has shown us that this sort of Click, Whirr response, which sounds kind of ridiculous, right? You know, what, how are these turkeys so dumb that they’re literally taking care of their arch nemesis one day, then if they don’t have this particular sound, they’re suddenly flipping and attacking them. But what happens is, as Robert Cialdini has shown, and many other psychology researchers, this phenomenon is actually a biological shortcut that’s programmed in the turkey’s mind, and humans have many of the same biological shortcuts.

So, let’s back up a million years. I want to talk about the selective power of evolution, and really understanding the mechanics of evolution and what it means. A lot of people when they hear, or when they talk about evolution, they think that “the strong survive”, or “the best survive”, whatever that means. But really what evolution is talking about is that the most well-adapted to their environment happened to survive more often, and thus happened to reproduce. And so, the environment selects, kind of the optimal characteristics for survival. So, through evolution these turkeys happen to - the turkeys that happen to have sort of a natural trigger that when they hear the “cheep cheep” sound, they go and take care of their young. Those turkeys took more effective care of their young than turkeys that had other behavioral patterns. So, those turkeys reproduce more often and more frequently. And thus, that trait, over hundreds of years, over millions of years, over thousands of years, was slowly embedded into the turkey’s behavior. Similarly, human beings have many of the same biological Click, Whirr responses as turkeys. And if you think about it, human beings most of our evolutionary history has taken place in a hunter-gatherer society. And within that hunter-gatherer society, or even pre-hunter-gatherer society, evolution naturally selected a number of behavioral traits that are embedded in the human mind, into our psychology, that are completely non-optimal for living and existing in today’s society. In fact, if you were to compress the four million year evolutionary history of human society into just twenty four hours, the advent of agriculture would take place at 11:55 p.m., just a shade before midnight. So, if you think about the fact that the evolutionary time scale of our development was nearly four million years, and that agriculture, which was even thousands of years ago, was only at 11:55 p.m., on that 24-hour window. You really get a sense of how much time we’ve sort of had to adjust to the constraints and stresses of modern day society. What happens is the things that are naturally selected in a hunter-and-gatherer environment were you’re, you know, foraging for food. You’re living in a small tribal society, you’re dealing with predators, you’re dealing with all different kinds of dangers. The behavior patterns that are selected by evolution that are optimal for survival in those circumstances are not the same behavior patterns that are optimal for succeeding in today’s society and in today’s world.

Society has changed massively in the last two or three hundred years, let alone the last several thousand years, let alone the last several million years. So there’s a couple key ways that these changes manifest themselves. One of the first examples is the idea of seeking explanations for things. Wanting to understand, wanting to put an explanation to something that isn’t necessarily always right, isn’t necessarily there, doesn’t necessarily fit. This is kind of a pattern recognition which humans are incredibly effective at recognizing patterns. So much so that sometimes we recognize patterns that don’t even exist. 

Another way that this manifests itself is through fear and anxiety. When you think about it, if you’re living in kind of the world of the hunter-gatherer, if you have all of these stresses taking place, if you have a predator lurking behind a bush, if you eat these berries and they’re poisonous, you may not live, right? All of these different things in that world – it pays to be very cautious, it pays to be very skittish, it pays to avoid taking risks and to be very anxious about what might happen to you if you were to take a certain course of action. In reality, that sort of behavior is deeply engrained into us. Some people use the term “lizard brain” to describe that type of behavior. 

Another way this manifests is in fast classifications. If you’re living in a world and you see something, hunter-gatherer sight, and you see something? You need to be able to classify it immediately and people that work really quickly at classifying “that’s a threat, that’s dangerous, this is safe.” The most quickly they could do that, the faster they could make a decision, and the higher probability they have of surviving. But the reality is a lot of times those fast classifications in today’s society, we end up making the wrong classifications, or are evolutionary programmed mental shortcuts end up short-circuiting. 99% of the time, those shortcuts are designed to be incredibly effective, right? To the point that there’s so much information that deluges us every day that we get hit with. Nonstop ads and e-mails and all kinds of things, that we have to have an ability to filter out a lot of that junk. But the reality is, occasionally, these fast classifications and these mental filters, will let something in or classify something in a way that’s completely inappropriate, and you have this sort of outsized event takes place there a massive mistake happens, that you never could have foreseen because your mental shortcuts essentially misfired.

Another thing that was preprogrammed to us in this hunter-gatherer world is the focus on society and the tribe. If you think about, you know, from a reproductive standpoint, somebody who gets exiled from the tribe, loses food, lose potential mates, lose – it’s pretty much a death sentence in many ways to get exiled from a tribe in a hunter-gatherer world. So, people naturally develop the traits that led them to wanting to please others, and many of these traits are incredibly beneficial. Occasionally they misfire. But focusing on not wanting to – not wanting to do something that’s not socially acceptable. Wanting to get the approval of other people. All of these things were essential in survival in a world where being exiled from the tribe means your death. 

But the reality is all of these different filters manifest themselves in a way that is completely counterintuitive and unproductive in many of the contexts we find ourselves today in the modern world. The same sort of Click, Whirr psychological shortcuts that are essential to survival in the hunter-gatherer world, in today’s high-pressure business and social situations, can give us exactly sort of the wrong impulse, exactly the wrong way to think about how to handle these situations. And so this idea that there are sort of hard biological limits on your mind, your subconscious, your mind, your ability to process things, your innate, built in biases and the way you perceive the world. Every single human has a ton of inherent challenges and problems inside their mental machinery. It’s been pre-programmed to us for millions of years where, evolution, the hunter-gatherer society, has essentially sculpted the human brain into a tool that, while perfectly optimized to survive and reproduce in the world of a million years ago, has a number of shortcomings in today’s society. 

This is kind of one of the most critical first things to understand if you really want to understand the psychology of peak performance. You have to understand what the physical limits of the brain are. You have to understand that these limits exist so you can start to realize and see the patterns in the ways that it plays out where your biological limits within your mind naturally cause you to make certain judgements - to feel certain ways - to think about things in a certain fashion that are not the right ways to think about it, that are not the optimal ways to think about it. And so, throughout the course of this podcast, I’m going to teach you a bunch of different cognitive biases, a bunch of different ways that you trick yourself, that your mental circuitry short-circuits and give you the tools and capabilities to be able to overcome these problems, be able to understand and see your own mental limitations so you can achieve the goals you want to achieve, so you can be successful, so you can master your own psychology. 

Warren Buffett has an analogy where he talks about the mind as a motor. Your IQ, or your innate intelligence or talent, represents your horsepower. Right? Say, an engine has 500 horsepower, whatever it might be. Your IQ sort of represents that raw potential. But your output is what actually counts, right? Do you have the toolkit mentally and the mindset and the ability to use that 500 horsepower engine to go 10 miles an hour, or to go a hundred miles an hour? And the biological limits set in place by evolution over millions of years of human history are going to naturally constrain in many ways your ability to do that, and without the sort of self-awareness and knowledge of what those biases are, you’re inherently limiting your ability to maximize the output of your engine. So, I want to teach you the tools. I want to give you the framework to think about all of these different pieces of the puzzle so you can really understand how am I lying to myself? How is my mind tricking me? What are the shortcuts that are naturally misfiring in my mind, that are causing me to have these challenges, or issues, or preventing me from achieving the goals that I want to achieve?

And so that’s what we’re going to talk about throughout this series, Science of Success. And this is really one of the cornerstones, kind of fundamental pieces of understanding what is necessary to sort of grasp the depths of the human mind, and grasp and understand how performance really functions, and how the mind truly functions.