Hey, it's your friend Mel and welcome to the Mel Robbinspodcast.
Today, you are talking with one of the top psychology experts and professors in theworld.
And he's going to reveal six things that are present in your day-to-day life that have a huge role in yoursuccess,happiness, andhealth.
Infact, they might even be around you in the room that you're in rightnow.
But because you don't know the researchyet, you're not tapping into theirpower.
Forexample, if you go on a first date and you want it to gowell, what color should youwear?
Well, based on theresearch, there's a correctanswer.
And did you know that a mere not only reflects yourappearance, but it impacts your behavior in very surprising and powerfulways.
But the most shocking thing of all is one tiny change that will give you 20 years of your lifeback.
Yep, you heard thatright.
Based on theresearch, one change 20 years of your lifeback.
Hey, it's your friendMel.
Andtoday, you and I are talking with one of the top psychology experts and professors in theworld.
And he's going to reveal six specificthings, the play huge role in yoursuccess,happiness, andhealth.
Now, these are things that you interact with in your day-to-day life that you probably don't think about atall.
But after our conversationtoday, you're going to know what theyare.
And moreimportantly, how to use them to youradvantage.
Dr. Adam Alter is here in our Boston studiostoday.
He is a renowned researcher and professor at NYU's Stern School of Business and the Robert Stansky Teaching Excellence FacultyFellow.
He received his PhD in psychology from PrincetonUniversity, where he also completed twofellowships, which means he's reallysmart.
And he's the author of three New York Timesbestsellers,Irresistible, Drunk TankPink, and the brand new bestselling book Anatomy of aBreakthrough.
Now,Dr. Alter is here today to break it alldown, share his research with you about the unexpected forces that shape how youthink,feel, andbehave, including one change today that based on the research will give you 20 years of your lifeback.
So please help me welcomeDr.
Adam Alter to the Mel Robbinspodcast.
Thank you so much for making the trip toBoston.
Thank you for havingme.
It's good to behere. It's terrific to be withyou.
I'm so excited to learn from youtoday.
And I wanted to start off by asking you if you could just speak directly to the person who's listening and tell them what they're about to learn and how their life could change if they really apply what you're going to teach themtoday.
Sure. So I think there are twothings.
The first thing is I think we sail through life generally not really understanding what's shaping how we feel and behave and what's guiding us in the the directions that we happen to bemoving.
So the first thing is I think you're going to understand the number of the things that are guiding you that you don't recognize arethere.
But the second thing is because you understand what those thingsare, you're able to act onthem, you're able to use them to yourbenefit.
Maybe the ones that are pushing in the wrongdirection, you can kind of stave themoff.
So I think it's a combination of both of thosethings.
What made you want to research things like colors and theseenvironmental, I don'tknow, like things outside of us and within us that shape our experience oflife?
Yeah. So I think like a lot ofpeople, I'm sort of fascinated by this idea that so much of what goes on is hidden from us that essentially life is kind of like the iceberg where there's a little bit above the surface of thewater.
But a lot of really interesting stuff isunconscious.
It's hidden fromus. And so I wanted to try to understand as much of what's going on under the surface of thewater.
And a lot of it is these things that are shaping us in ways we don'trecognize.
So a lot of my research has been about trying to uncover those and then figure out what we can do aboutthem.
I lovethis. Allright. So let's divein.
There is so much tolearn.
So much of your research focuses on the environment around us and how that can influence all differentoutcomes.
Can you share some of that withus?
Yeah. So it's huge numbers of differentfactors.
But around us all thetime, there arecolors.
Sometimes we're in a builtenvironment, like a room and sometimes we're in a naturalenvironment.
And so a lot of my work focuses on how these different cues shape how we think feel and behave and ourwelfare, ourwell-being.
A lot of the focus for me recently because I've been very interested in the effect of spending huge amounts of time in front of screens is what happens when you go as far from screens as possible to naturalenvironments.
Which we all sort of havethe, Ithink, general sense that that's good forus.
It's good to be in a naturalenvironment.
But the effects there are among the most profound I've ever seen in any research that just spending a bit of time near a body of running water or hearing wind rustle through trees or spending 12 hours driving to theeclipse, which is what Idid.
It's a huge amount of energy that you put in perhaps to get to those kind of environments that they have a huge effect on your welfare and it's worthdoing.
What effect does it have on yourwelfare?
So one thing about the way we live our lives today in the modern era is that we are constantlysapped.
Our attention issapped.
We're asked to pay huge amounts of very focused attention all thetime, whether we're looking atscreens, whether we're having extended workconversations, whether we're doingwork.
And so by the end of theday, you're kind ofdepleted,depleted, if you wear one of those watches that tracks your bodybattery, you see it just kind of goes down and down anddown.
And that's that's a good metaphor for the way we live ourlives.
It sums it up prettywell.
The thing about nature is that apart from actually beingasleep, being in a natural environment isreplenishing.
It basically turns that dial upside down and so your energy starts to climbagain.
So it gives you back a lot of what is sapped by that very focusedattention.
Because when you're in a naturalenvironment, your attention is still grabbed bythings.
You might hear abird, you might hear the runningwater, you might look attrees, whatever it might be looking at theocean.
But that kind of less focused attention is reallyrestorative.
And there's actually a whole body of research called attention restoration therapy that focuses on exactly this idea that being in natural environments is one of the best forms of medicine wehave.
So let's unpackthat. Because I could feel the person that is listening to us right now literally stop on thetreadmill.
Or hopefully they're out here outsidewalking.
Or you just stopped loading the dishwasher and you're knowing that what Adam is saying istrue.
But there were a bunch of things you talked about that I would love for you to dig infurther.
The first one was this idea of the I think you said something about attentiontherapy.
The attention restorationtherapy.
What isthat?Yeah, it's basically this idea that your attention is constantly beingsapped, it's being takenaway.
And the kind of attention you have in a naturalenvironment, which is notdemanding.
It'sreplenishing. It'strue.
It restoresyou. It brings youback.
It gives you something that you don'thave.
I think the single most profound example of this for me was a study that was done at a hospital on people who were recovering fromsurgery.
And they were randomly assigned to differentrooms.
And some of the rooms looked out at a naturalenvironment, the beautiful green lawns andtrees.
And some of the rooms just where they happened to be in the building did not have thatview.
They were looking at another part of thebuilding.
And they wanted to track how these people recovered from identicalsurgeries, depending on which room they happened to be assignedto.
And they found they needed like half as much painmedication.
They spent three days fewer in hospitalrecovering.
Just looking out at that natural environment was the best form of medicine therewas.
So it'strue. I run maybe four or five days a week and I try to do it outside when Ican.
And I know on some level it just feelsgood.
But there's a huge amount of science behind that aswell.
So what do you recommend for us to put into ourlives?
Because we've had neuroscientist medicaldoctors, sleep experts come on the show and talk about the importance of getting natural light first thing in themorning.
We've also had someone talk about if you're kind of burnt out and you are having one of those moments where you just feel your energy draining even looking off at the distance out the window can help you restore yourenergy.
What are some of the takeaways or the science back things that people can implement in their lives to tap into thisresearch?
Yeah. So I think the biggest thing is I ran yesterday in a forest and it was wonderful and there was runningwater.
There were all these ingredients and it was incrediblyrestorative.
But as arunner, my instinct is to just keepgoing, which is how we live ourlives,right?
You're doing something and you want to keep going till it ends till you finish doing it till you can check itoff.
And I had to push myself to stop for five minutes to sit on a rock and just let the water goby.
And I was by far the mostrestorative, wonderful part of theday.
And I think there's something tothat, this idea of purposely stoppingyourself.
So I would say whether you're in a big city or whether you're not in a bigcity, find a little patch of naturalenvironment.
And by theway, if you're in an apartment in a big urban environment and you don't have thatoption, even littletrees, little plants that you have in theapartment, the sound of a little fountain that you have with runningwater, that stands in for that experiencetoo.
Is just spend say five minutes a day doing absolutely nothing but takingin, drinking in that naturalenvironment, even if it's a tiny one in yourapartment.
If you can get out all thebetter, but it's very important to dothat, Ithink, as a sort of dailypractice.
And also as your researchshows, a countermeasure to the fact that modern life is requiring this intense focus that is just sapping yourenergy.
You mentionedcolors. And there is so much that you have uncovered that is fascinating about how colors influence so much in terms of ourmood, ourbehaviors, our physicalstrength.
Let's unpackthat.Yeah.
So some of this is myresearch, some of it's other people'sresearch.
And I got interested in color because I can't see color verywell.
I'mcolorblind.Oh, youare.
I'mcolorblind. So I'm sort of fascinated bycolor.
How did you figure out that you'recolorblind?
It took awhile. When I wasyoung, I would get colors right because all the colors in little picture books are so bright andobvious.
So that was never aproblem.
But as I gotolder, it seemed like I lost the ability to distinguishcolors.
I think my parents were a bitconcerned.
They werelike, what's goingon?
There's something going on in Adam'sbrain.
We need to figure thisout.
So I did a series of tests and they identified that I had certain kinds ofcolorblindness.
And so it made totalsense.
But it's kind ofsubtle.
So you can't pick it up when kids are very youngsometimes.
It takes a little while to figure itout.
But it made me really interested incolor.
And inparticular, in the question of whether the way I see the world is whether it's different from how youdo, do we all see the world the sameway?
And then assuming that there is some uniformity tothat, is that exposure to color influencing us in any way that'spredictable?
And the answer isyes. There are all sorts of interestingeffects.
Let me ask aquestion. So given that you're colorblind and you are researching the impact that color has on ourmood, ouremotions, even things like physicalstrength, it also can influence the actions that youtake.
Is the color influencing all of us the sameway, even if your colorblind and the color appears slightly dulleror, youknow, if you're if you'recolored, you see what I'msaying?
Yeah,100%. So there are two ways it could affectyou.
So one of them is justassociation.
So I see maybe I see the color yellow and it makes me think of the sun andfire.
And I see green and I think of naturalenvironments.
It's just theassociation.
It reminds me of other things that are green or yellow or blue orwhatever.
The other one is as yousay, maybe it doesn't matter if you can actually see that it's green oryellow.
Maybe it's something about thewavelength, it hits youreye, it hits yourretina, and your brain is doing something with that information that whether or not you can see that it's yellow or green or red orwhatever, you're responding the sameway.
I think most of it is association for us that there are certain things that have certain colors and then that reminds us of thosethings.
So a lot of us talk about blues and greens being moresoothing, reds and yellows being moreactivating, which can be good or bad depending on what you're lookingfor.
I think if I didn't know that a color was red and I couldn't see it and it looked washed out tome, it would have less of an effect forme.
Gotit. So what colors affect ourmoods?
Well, all colors have someeffect.
Okay. They have someeffect, not just onmood, but on on all sorts of different outcomes forus.
There's a really interesting research looking at how the colors that that competed is where in sports affect how theyplay.
So there's some work looking at Olympic athletes in combat sports like judo and wrestling andplaykwondo.
And in theOlympics, what they did a while ago was they decided that they were going to randomly assign each competitor to either where blue or red before eachbout.
As a way to just befair. We're going to randomly pick red and blue and you're going to get your color in and you're going to go into thebout.
One of the things the researchers discovered was when we wearred, we feelstronger, we feel moredominant.
And when you see someone else wearingred, you perceive them as moredominant.
And there are very lower order reasons forthis.
Like if you look atanimals, the animals with more red are more dominant ingeneral.
So if you look at 100 birds from the samespecies, the ones with more red feathers or a red of face will be the alphabirds.
And that's going to be true for apes and other animals aswell.
So the color red has a really big effect and it's it's associated with sort of how how well your blood throws flows through your body and things likethat.
And it's it's a sort of signal that someone is strong anddominant.
And what you actually find is in these OlympicBouts, when the competitors are evenlymatched, if you are assigned to wearred, you win about two thirds of the time despite being evenlymatched.
Really? It has a huge effect on on theseoutcomes,yeah.
Wow. SoDr.Halter, does that mean if I'm going in for a like a negotiation for ajob, I should be wearing red or an interview or adate?
Yes, with acaveat.Okay.
So the yes isyes, it will dothat.
It'll make you seem moredominant.
It also turns out to make people more attractive toothers.
Really? Which is interestingtoo.
Yeah. So this research looking at dating profiles where you have the samepicture, you just change every two months the color of the shirt you'rewearing.
Uh-huh. People get much more attention online when they're wearing it's the samepicture, but when they're wearing red rather than any othercolor.
Wow. So there's there was also it's a good reason to surround yourself withred.
It'strue, even if you have a border around your picture and it happens to bered, border rather than blue or green or anothercolor, but red also has other meaningtoo,right?
It's not it's not a color that we don'tnotice.
So you're signaling something beyond just I'm dominant and making yourself look moreattractive.
It's a it's a consciouschoice.
And so if people are seeing that and making other drawing other inferences from the fact that you've chosenred, then maybe it's a it's something you don't want to do if it's very unusual in thatcontext, forexample, but beyond that as long as that's not anissue, there is very good reason to wearit.
Wow. And what colors calm usdown?
The most calming colors are generally blues andgreens.
And I think a lot of that is the association we have withnature, which we wediscuss.
So natural environments are verycalming.
Water, thesky,trees,leaves, things likethat.
And so I think a lot of the comes from from just the sort of calmness you get with the association with thosecolors.
So one of your internationalbestsellers, drunk tankpink, very interestingname.
And there's very interesting research about that sort of bubble gum Pepto bismopinkcolor.
Can you explainthat?Yeah.
So the name is it's drunk tank pink is a name that was given to this very bright bubble gummy pink color was used for a whileinside.
They were called drunk tanks where you put people who are kind ofaggressive, oftendrunk, you're trying to calm themdown.
And researchers found that if these drunk tanks were painted pink in theirwords, you could calm these people down much more quickly within 15 minutes theybecome.
And did itwork? There's some evidence that itworked.
I think the the research is a little bitshaky, but there was some evidence that this pink color did calm peopledown.
It was it got a huge amount of attention in the80s.
There was a 60 minutes episode aboutit.
Wow. They really got a lot ofattention.
And so I thought it was just a sort of fascinating emblem of the kinds of effects you might see from cues that you might think would have a smaller effect onus.
But by being surrounded by thosecolors, there are hugeeffects.
Infact, the visiting locker room at the University of Iowa is painted drunk tank pink in an attempt to calm down the opposition when they spend time in that lockerroom.
So they've it's been used in a lot of different contexts morerecently.
Yeah.Well, and I think what where my mind goes is both to the Miami soccerteam,right, but they're a little bit morebright.
And also to the beautiful trend of athletes wearing pink for breast cancerawareness, which obviously is signaling somethingelse.
Yes. I think that'sfascinating.
If you're put in a bubblegum pink room that it just sort of dulls your mood a little bit if you're a bitaggressive.
Yeah. Regarding intoMiami, there are people who when they they box they all only wear pink boxing trunks because they think it'll make their opposition a little bit lessstrong.
And so there's I don't think that's why into Miami's pink and they have that pinkuniform, but that's that's one of thetheories.
Wow.Yeah. This is sofascinating.
I cannot wait to keep learning more about theresearch.
ButDr.Alter, this is a great place to take a quick pause and hear a word from our amazingsponsors.
And when we comeback, I want to ask you more about the research on other things that you can hack in your environment to cue certainbehaviors, including the most impactful one atall.
So stay withus. We'll be waiting for you after a shortbreak.
Welcomeback. It's your friend MelRobbins.
And you and I are here today withDr.
AdamAlter, professor from NYU Stern School of Business and an expert in how our environment impactsbehavior.
SoDr.Alter, can you talk about mirrors and how you can use them to change yourbehavior?
Yeah. There's a lot of research looking at what happens when we see a humanface.
So one of the things that happens when you see aface, particularly eyes is you feel that you're beingwatched.
And when you're beingwatched, it changes your behavior in certain predictableways.
Okay. So if you think about a store that has a lot ofshoplifting, one of the things these storesdo, if they can't afford constantsurveillance, is they put up more mirrors because we are less likely to behave badly when we have to look at ourselves doingit.
Really?Yeah.Why? Because it basically forces you not justmetaphorically, but to look into your own eyesliterally.
And you have todecide, is this the right way tobehave?
It makes us much more introspective and thoughtful about what we'redoing.
So there are these really interesting experiments where you say topeople, privately you can toss acoin.
And if you getheads, you get a delicious jellybean.
And if you gettails, you have to eat something that's not verynice.
And if you let people do that without amirror, they allreport, ohyeah, I gotheads.
There are a lot of people who report getting heads more than50% which you wouldexpect.
Okay. So people are kind of fudging the numbers a littlebit.
When you get them to do that same task in front of a mirror where they're looking atthemselves,50-50.
So they become honestagain.
Really?Yeah.So, youknow, there aresome, I think interestingimplications.
One of them that's that I've always foundquite, quite useful is ifyou, a lot of people might have like a cupboard in their homesomewhere, maybe in the pantry where they keep their chocolates and things that they want to eat onlyoccasionally.
Mine's at adrawer.Right?
Or adrawer. And when you open that cupboard or when you go into thepantry, wanting a lot of people do now is they'll put up a littlemirror.
What? So what happens is you'relike, I'm reaching for thechocolate.
I have to look at myself in myeyes.
I have to scrutinize thisdecision.
And sometimes it'sfine, but other times maybe I look at myself and I'mlike,okay,fine, I'll leave that chocolate sitting there for a little bitlonger.
So it basically forces you to be a little bit more thoughtful about yourdecision.
Well, I could see how that would happenbecause, youknow, if you think about opening up afridge,yeah, if there was a giant mirror inthere, I'd belike,Oh, youagain.
Okay, shut thething. So I might actually have to try this putting a mirror in the bottom of thedrawer.
Yeah, there youare. I have all of our snacks we call it the snackdrawer.
So could you use a mirror to kind of cue yourself when it comes to badhabits?
Is that like an environmental trigger that can be effective in making you stop andthink?
Yeah, I thinkso. So I think what the mirror does is it makes you think more deeply and it especially makes you think more deeply about doing the wrong thing where it's something that's contrary to what you think you should be doing because you have to do it in your ownpresence.
It's like you're watchingyourself.
And so it's a very powerful cue in all thosecases.
I lovethat.Yeah, that's areally, I can think of a lot of implications forthat.
Like if you're somebody who's trying to cut down ondrinking,yeah, having a mirror sitting there when you open up the cabinet where theokay, I seeyou.
That's so fasttoday. I understand there's some interesting research about how a simply looking at money can changeyou.
Yeah, there's this sort of interesting evidence that it can do lots of differentthings.
So one thing it seems to do is it makes you a little bit moreindependent, makes you feel a little bit stronger and reminds you of resources and having more ofthings.
The other thing it can do is though it makes you a little bit less helpful towards otherpeople.
Makes you a little bit lessgenerous, makes you a little bit moreindependent.
Yeah, so there's some research where if you show people money or you showthem, youknow, dollar bills or things like that and then you have a task where they have to behelpful, they're going to be a little bit less helpful if they've just seen money than if theyhaven't.
And I think that's because one thing you get from money is you can stand alone a little bitmore.
You don't need other people quite asmuch.
That's at least thetheory.
And so it makes you more independent and less communal minded and it might make you a little bit lessgenerous.
Well,Dr.Alter, maybe that's why I'm such a generous person because I never have cash in mywallet.
There yougo. It's all about creditcards.
So do you have favorite tweaks based on the research that you either recommend or use in your own life that help you to be your best or to make behavior changestick?
Yeah, I've talked about the one the biggestone.
Six yearsago, I left New York City with my wife and two kids and we moved to a town where it was natural and beautiful and we could go less than a mile in any direction and we would have either a beach or we would have a forest or we'd havesomething.
Where is theShangri-La?
This will work in NewYork.
The Shangri-La is in Connecticut just outside NewYork.
Wow.Okay. So it's beautiful and it means that on any day I can drive for 10 minutes or even walk for 10 minutes and be somewhere that does all of thisrestoring.
So I think being around nature for me is a hugeone.
Different people have different things that matter tothem.
That was very important tome.
Italso, it drew me back to my childhood because being growing up in First South Africa and thenAustralia, naturalenvironments, and especially the beach in Australia was a big part of what I was used to and I missedthat.
Yeah. And so being near abeach, the sand and the water was really important tome.
So I think picking the location that does the best for you most of the time is really important that it's worth sometimes sacrificing other thingsfor.
And that's something that I've alwaysfollowed.
Youknow, that makes a lot ofsense.
I remember this was decadesago, but when I had just graduated from law school and I moved to New YorkCity, I basically spent all of my punyincome.
So I could live walking distance to CentralPark.
Yes. And so that I could also get to the West Side Highway because just being able in the big city to get to some green space wascritical.
And youknow, you said that thing about it also has a sort of nostalgia thing of being able to beoutside.
Anything about your insideenvironment, like the way that you think about your workspace or you might think about the kitchen or places where people want to be primed or prompted to be theirbest.
Yes. So we mentionedearlier, especially if you're in a bigcity, it's useful to have something natural inside thatenvironment.
It could be hopefully a realplant, but if it's notreal, a fakeplant, anything that gives you the sense of that greenery and thatnature, maybe even like a little fountainfeature, just a little thing that you plug in and maybe has a light and a little bit of runningwater, even the sound of running water reminds you of all thesethings.
And I have the same experience in NewYork.
I was always in Central Park or running on the WestSide.
And so to the extent that you can bring these features into yourhome, there's a huge amount of benefit tothat.
I think for mepersonally, and thisvaries, but I think the lack of clutter that you create in a place is really an important source ofwell-being.
So forme, trying mybest, and this doesn't alwayshappen, but trying to remove clutter from anenvironment, especially where I'm trying to think is reallyimportant.
I think that's a really good way to think about doing your best work ingeneral, that having blankness in front of you and just moving forward and pouring out your ideas is the best way to go without being infringed upon by other things that are in the environment aroundyou.
Why does lots of stuff around the environment where you're trying to work or focus impact your ability to do your bestthinking?
Every singlething, even if it's in a smallway, isdistracting.
Everything draws you out of the here andnow, something's more thanothers.
A smartphone massively distracting for all sorts of reasons that areobvious.
Even otherobjects, like if you have a memento that's inview, that's reallynice.
A picture of a lovedone, that's reallynice.
But ofcourse, if you stare atit, it's going to take you out of the here andnow.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't have photos of loved ones on yourdesk, but you should at least recognize that if there are a thousand different nice mementos aroundyou, the clutter of that while it's lovely and it brings back goodmemories, that's probably not the time and place to doit.
So having clarity in front of you as youwork, I think is a really important driver of good ideas and creativity ingeneral.
I'm sitting here thinking about my workspace at my home and it is NickNacketech,everywhere.
Little stuff that I really love and means a lot to me and I can tellyou, this is probably an indication of just how distracted I am because I could look at my computer and I've got four little Mason jars with all the pens in one and cherpies in another andpencils, and then I got a photo of my mom and my grandmother atthe, and then I've got a little compass my parents sent me and then I've got a mug that Chris gave me and thenI, Imean, itjust, it's like a little zoo ofobjects.
If it makes you feel greatthough, so if you know itdoes, I just feel like holycow, even though I'm not staring at all thisstuff, you're saying that subconsciously your mind is still pulling it in to someextent.
To someextent, it's processing things around youconstantly.
So to the extent there are things around you all thetime, you might ignore themconsciously, but they're alwaysthere.
They're always the clutter is always there and on somelevel, even if it's on a smalllevel, each little thing is pulling you away in some smallsense.
And that's the opposite of what youneed, especially in the world that we live in now where everything is sodistracting.
We're actually getting 10 minutes of good hard quality work is vanishinglyimpossible.
That'sit, 10minutes. Imean, it'svery, very hard for a lot of people towork.
If you track them across the day to get10,15, 20 minute bursts of good hardwork, it's tough for a lot ofus, especially if your phone isnearby, ifyour, your computer's digging you with emails and things likethat,it's, it's really hard to do the same task for 20 minutes in arow.
Well,Dr.Alta, you are one of the most renowned and respected researchers when it comes to the impact of screens on ourbrains, on ourhealth.
And so let's talk aboutit.
You have written a huge book onthis.
You are somebody that people look to for expert advice onthis.
And we've talked a lot aboutnature.
Yeah. But nature iscombating.
Yeah. What has become the reality for all ofus, which is we spend most of our waking hours staring at ascreen.
Yeah.Yeah. That'sright.
So the way I think about it is when you sit in today's age and you look out at whatever you're lookingout, almost all the time you can tell that it's thisyear, it's 2024 or roughly2024.
You seescreens, you see all sorts of signs that we live in this particular modern age that we livein.
I think one really useful thing and why nature is so great is because it'stimeless, that I think one way to measure how well you're living is are you spending at least some of your day in an environment that istimeless, that is not attached and tethered to the here andnow, that is not about the latestscreen, the latestdevice, the latesttech, the latestgadget.
So when you are sitting in aforest, you could have been doing that a thousand years ago and seeing exactly the samething.
And I think there's some value to living at least part of our lives every day in an environment that istimeless.
What are some examples of how I can step into a timeless environment if I can't get out into the foresttoday?
Yeah, so closing your eyes is really good forthat,right?
Because you can then think of anything you like and people have been able to do thatforever.
That's what makes us human is our ability to imagine outside of the here andnow.
The other thing is I think just having a conversation with a lovedone, which is again screens make that more and moredifficult.
We spend so much time in front of them that we spend less time with people we we really connectto.
But having a face-to-face conversation withsomeone, that's alsotimeless.
That was going on thousands of years ago aswell.
Our species has been doing thatforever.
We do it less now than we ever havebefore.
So I think timelessness doesn't have to be about nature or even the environment you're in it can be the activity that you'redoing.
And so anything where you're connecting with another human being is timeless aswell.
This is so important because so many of us and I'm going to include myself are searching for deeper meaning inlife.
Searching forpurpose.
Searching for a sense of being connected to self and connected to something beyond just that sort of day-to-day autopilot mode onto the next headline onto the next deadline onto the next thing on your to-dolist.
And I love how you phrase this as how do you take a break from modern life that is always going to pull you to the nextthing.
Yeah. And step back into these things that you have described that escape a sense of what decade you'rein.
Yeah. And what age youare.
And that have always beenaround.
Right. And so nature conversations with somebody else closing your eyes and escaping into your thoughts to remind you that there is something so much more important than the here andnow.
And is there anything else that you wouldrecommend?
Yeah. I think physical activity is a bigone.
Right. Because a lot of the time we spend in front of screens issedentary.
We're notmoving. We'resitting.
Maybe we're standing if you're at a standingdesk.
But it's very tethered to a particularplace.
It doesn't involve a lot ofactivity.
So I think there's a timelessness to physicalactivity.
Our ancestors have to do much more of it just to stayalive.
And so they had to find food and they had to negotiate differentlandscapes.
We don't have to do thatanymore.
It's easy for us to get by and notmove.
So I think exercise picking up heavythings, moving out bodies for certain periods of time everyday.
All of that is also consistent with this timelessness that I think isimportant.
And I just think it's a good rule ofthumb.
I've realized this over time that when you're trying to figure out am I living the way I'd like tolive, a lot of it is those timeless activities that go back to things that we were doing a long timeago.
There were very good for us as a species that brought us to where we aretoday.
It's a lot of the things that are kind of incredibly new anddifferent.
I lovetechnology. I think it's wonderful in manyways.
But a lot of the aspects of it that we've kind of put as a gloss over our livestoday, I think leave us impoverished in somesense.
Very muchso. Anddisconnected.
Anddistracted. And not feeling like you're doing something that's actually meaningful toyou.
Dr.Alter, you are soright.
And this is the perfect time to take a quickbreak.
Your word from our sponsors who allow me to bringDr.
Alter and all this amazing research to at zerocost.
Please share this with anybody that you know could use thisinformation, which is basically everybody in yourlife.
And when we comeback, I want to go more into distraction and specificallyscreens.
And wait till you hear about the groundbreaking research thatDr.
Alter has done in thisarea.
Stay withus. We'll be rightback.
Welcomeback. It's your friend Mel Robbins and you and I are spending time today learning from the amazingDr.
AdamAlter. SoDr.Alter, let's talk about the thing that you say impacts us more than anything else in theenvironment.
And that'sscreens.Yeah.
So you've done extensive research on screens on digitaldistraction.
And also just kind of this constant need to beoccupied.
It's almost like the state of distraction that we've gotten usedto.
What's some of the most shocking things that you have come across in yourresearch?
Yeah. So I've spokento, I don't know how manydozens, hundreds of audiences of the kids themselves who usescreens, the parents of thosekids, teachers inschools, school districtheads, people in policy ingovernment, people in all sorts of different areas about the effects ofscreens.
And the most striking thing to me is that when you speak to kids inparticular, so especiallyteenagers, you get this incredible difference between how much they feel they have to use these devices and how much theyenjoyed, how much it is good forthem.
So when you eatcandy, you might say toyourself, that'sdelicious.
I kind of know it's not great forme, but I'm going to do itanyway.
Withscreens, it's like a differenttone.
It's this toneof, I wish I and all my friends stopped doing thisthing.
I wish we didn't keep returning to the same social media platforms because I know it's not good for any ofus.
But if wedon't, if I'm the only one who says I'm going to drawback, then I'misolated.
And so it's this very collective problem where unless you can get lots of people to do the same thing at the sametime, it's not going to be easy tosolve.
And you hear this from a lot ofkids, theysay, if only I could get everyone else in my class or at least a certain number of people not to dothis, I'd feelbetter.
And the parents say the samething.
Theysay, I wish I could be the parent who says we're going to be much more careful about exposing our kids to these devices and social media and soon.
But we can't be the only ones because then our kids arejust, that's a differentproblem.
They're the onlyones. So a lot of the work that I'm doing now is on trying to push not just individuals to change how theybehave, but to work with say entire classrooms or entire schools or entire school districts so that the entire district pushes parents and the kids of those parents to delay how long it takes them to use thesedevices.
Well, youknow, it'sinteresting.
I remember reading a big write-up of Deerfield Academy inMassachusetts, who you probably know have this new policy headsup, which is no phones oncampus,period.
Like they can be in yourlocker, they can be in yourbackpack, but they are not on yourperson.
Yeah, so there's a movement called okay todelay, forexample.
And there are some others as well that are trying to deal with this at that collectivelevel.
For exactly the reason youmentioned, there are very few benefits to having phones atschool.
Maybe a flip phone so you can get in touch with someone in anemergency.
They can call the frontoffice.
Like I'm personally one of thesepeople, it's like get the freaking phones out of theschools.
Parents can call the front office if there is anemergency.
It's a hugeproblem. There is no need to have a phone on your person when you're supposed to be atschool.
Imean, that's just myopinion.
And I think it's fascinating that a lot of parents who can afford to love sending their kids to summer camp becausewhy?
They take their phonesaway.
Yeah. And they love giving their kids that break and the kids loveit.
But I do think it's interesting that the shocking piece of research that's come out of it is we all know we need to dosomething.
We all know it's bad forus.
And we all wish there was analternative.
And yet my entire social life is on thisthing.
Yeah. Imean, the way I opened this book was talking about how years before the rest of us were aware of this Steve Jobs with his ownkids, he wouldn't bring the iPad into hishouse.
And then you look at other techtitans.
There's a school in the Bay Area that doesn't let kids near phones or use phones or use screens until about ninth grade until they learn tocode.
Yeah. Thatschool,75% of the kids there are the kids of Silicon Valley techexecs.
So they are sending theirkids.
The people who know the most about what this tech is doing are keeping their kids as far away from these products aspossible, especially in the schoolenvironment.
Imean, it makes perfectsense.
So do you think we're all addicted to thescreen?
Yeah. So this term addiction is I use it in the book as a sort of shorthand to describe a lot of what I think is going on in this case because the definition that I use is it's something that you want to do over and overagain.
You want to return to yourscreen.
You want to keep using it despite recognizing that you're not enjoying it and that it's not very good for you on balance and that it has negative effects in the long run for your socialwell-being.
Youknow, your relationships are degraded forit.
It means you're moresedentary.
So it's not good for youphysically.
It exposes a lot of us tobullying,anxiety,aggression,loneliness, other negative psychologicalconsequences.
It's also a way tooverspend.
A lot of people spend too much money usingit.
I feel like Instagram has turned into the home shoppingnetwork.
Exactly.Yeah. It's a very powerful way to sellproducts.
Wow. You said earlier this interesting metaphor that forexample, we all know candy isdelicious.
Yeah. But if you just pound a gigantic like five pound chocolatebar, I love Tony'schocolate.
I just wantto. And I also loveMr.
Beast's newline. I are all I just lovechocolate.
AndHalloween. Go out trick ortreating.
Yeah. I'd fill that pillow case upman.
I would comehome, served all the candy and I would just startmunching.
But then I would have a huge stomach ache and I wouldn't want to look at candy again for anothermonth.
And it's almost as if that Halloween candy hangover is what's happening every single day where we wakeup.
We know we don't want to spend ninehours.
What is the average amount of time that people are spending on theirphones?
It's hard to get really good definitivedata.
But it's many hours aday.
I had a high school class that I was teaching at NYU for a while oversummers.
I'm not doing it at themoment.
But I did it for severalyears.
And at the beginning of that six weekclass, I would ask the students to download an app that would track theirusage, which now most phones doanyway.
And the numbers I was getting were absolutelystaggering.
Some of the students were on their phones like10, 12 hours aday.
Their average was something like six or seven or eight hours aday.
And this was a number of yearsago.
I think it's only gone up sincethen.
I've heardthree,four, five hours described as the average for adults aswell.
So it's a huge amount oftime.
One of the things it's doing is it's changing your tolerance for spending a long time doing something that involves hard deep work andthinking.
What does thatmean? What do youmean?
What does itmean? What does itmean?
If you're getting 2,000 messages aday, each one lasting maybe a second or twoseconds, that's how your brain starts to process information in these bite-sizedchunks.
And they're all also chosen to be maximallyenjoyable,interesting.
They bombard you with interestingcontent.
And so what happens is you assume the rest of the world is going to be likethat.
Youknow, we get into an elevator for five seconds and that's toomuch.
That'shard. So we pull out our phones to be entertained in thatmoment.
And that's how the rest of the worldbecomes.
So if I say to a seven-year-old kid who's on a screen allday, it's time to learn toread.
The amount of energy and intense concentration you're asking for there is so different from what that kid is usedto.
If it's been about sort of scrolling through videos that that's deeplyproblematic.
You can't expect people to just suddenly turn on this muscle that they haven't beenusing.
So it makes us less used to having to try reallyhard.
And so that's I think one bigproblem.
The other thing is if if you look at how many hours a day we're doing thisfor, there's a huge amount of otherstuff.
The opportunity cost there is so great that we're leaving this other stuffbehind.
So I could be spending that time having a conversation with a loved one or afriend.
I could be spending that time in a natural environment or I could beexercising.
I could be doing lots of differentthings.
But I don't do any of that stuff because I'm spending time mindlesslyscrolling.
So there's a huge amountthere.
Can you explain the mindlesslypart?
Like why do we doonscroll?
There's so many of us Adam that come home fromwork.
You cookdinner. You've gotkids.
You'remarried. You know you're doing all thestuff.
You're packing up thebackpacks.
You're cleaning up thedishes.
You let the dogout. You're hopefully like having a moment of quiet yourself and you say toyourself, I'm going to go to bed early tonight or I'm going to work on that project and next thing youknow, two hours have gone by and you've just wasted your evening doonscrolling.
Why do we dothat?Yeah, there's this interesting theory about gambling that I think a lot of people have this naive idea that when people aregambling, they're just like this is amazing and this is so much fun and I'm getting all this feedback and I then I hit ajackpot.
People don't gamble because that'strue.
They gamble because they get into this kind oftrance.
Like there's something about sitting in front of a slot machine that is deeply soothing and numbing and that's what the screendoes.
At the end of a hardday, what you don't want is to be massively excited most of the time you'reexhausted.
You just want to have this kind ofcomfort, thislull.
It's like taking a bath in the screen and it brings this sense of comfort and reliability and I'm nothing is being asked ofme.
I don't have to doanything.
I just move my finger and that's all I have todo.
It soundslovely. It soundslovely,right?
And what else gives us that sort of really uncomplicated dose of calm at the end of a longday?
Verylittle.Alcohol, that's the other option and so there aren't that manyoptions.
It's substances or it's screens and many of us just turn toscreens.
So that's I think what's happening for most ofus.
I hate that you put it likethat.
Yeah, I don't love that it's true but I think that's what's goingon.
How do youstop? It's verydifficult.
Imean, I think the biggest thing when we try to stop doing something is we don't replace it with somethingelse.
So the first thing to think about is if I want to stop doing thisthing, whatever this thingis, whether it'sdrinking, using asubstance, scrolling throughTikTok, whatever itis, when you would have done thatthing, there needs to be something else there and preferably something else that you enjoy that's not bad foryou.
Something that you feel better about doing and it's going to be different foreveryone.
You've got to cultivate thathabit, thatchange.
So justsaying, I'm going to not do this thing and I'm going to use mywillpower.
No one has that muchwillpower.
That'sexhausting. You can't expect yourself to besuperhuman.
But figure out what else you could bedoing.
That's more enriching but that also makes you feel good and do that otherthing.
Plaster over thatgap. This is a patheticquestion.
Given that you are a renowned guy that is doing the research onthis, do you have somesuggestions?
Because even my first thoughtwas,well, I've been loving this fantasyaudiobook, Corta Thorn andRoses.
I am living in a different land and it's on myphone.
I thinkabout,oh,okay,well, I could just slump on the couch and watch something onTV.
There's anotherscreen.
So in theresearch, are there things that have come up that could offer just a spark of a suggestion for those of us that would really like to not have this be a habit and not be lulled every night into giving our evenings away to ourphone?
Yeah. So I'll say onething.
I think this is a good moment to say that screens are not onething.
Right. It's not like looking at a screen is automatically a badthing.
Right. You could be reading a really enriching book on the screen and that'sgreat.
It makes you feel good or you could be watching a show or a documentary orwhatever.
It doesn'tmatter. There's nothing wrong with spending hours in front of the TV at the end of thenight.
If that's mindfully what you want to be doing with yourtime, there's also nothing wrong with briefly scrolling through a social mediaplatform.
The problem is none of us have the willpower to just do it for twominutes.
Right. So I don't think you have to find something that's not screenbased.
You just have to find something that's not making you feel hollow andunhappy.
That doesn't make you feel like you've kind of been robbed of your self-control and youragency.
So if that means you're going to watch an episode of your favorite show on Netflix and then you're going to go and read five chapters of your favorite book and then you're going to have a conversation and then you're going to try a new recipe that you wanted tocook.
Whatever itis, it doesn't really matter what itis.
It just should be something that doesn't leave you feelinghollow.
That's the only thing to askyourself.
Do I feelbetter, happier like my life is more meaningful afterthis?
Or do I feel worse off like I'mempty?
And that's what people say when they spend huge amounts of timescrolling, they feel kind ofempty.
So just find something else even if it's on a screen that doesn't leave you feeling thatway.
It'strue. I do feelempty.
Yeah. And it then makes you feel stupid for wasting that muchtime.
And if you add it up cumulatively over theyears, it's a large part of yourlife.
Twentyyears.Wait,wait,what?
Yeah.That's... Twenty years of your life is spent just scrolling on yourphone.
I'm looking at yourphone.
It'll be about for most of us 20 years onaverage, something likethat.
Fifteen to 20years. We'll be doing this just looking at 20 secondvideos.
Yeah.Dr.Alter, Imean, what it as aresearcher, what do you think when you hear thatfigure?
Well, I think one thing to think is imagine it's the end of yourlife.
You've hopefully lived a very fulfilling longlife.
You get to that point and then someonesays, would you like 20 extrayears?
And the answer isno, I'd rather have spent 20 years scrollingmindlessly.
No one's going to saythat.
So I think whenyou... The first step to fixing this problem is having peoplesay, I really want to changethis.
That to me is a good place tobegin.
That idea that you are shortening your life effectively by 20 years or 15 years or however long it ends up being because you spend all this time consuming sort ofeye-candy, mental-candy byscrolling.
I think almost everyone would say when you zoomback, assuming you have theself-control, I think there were better things I could be doing with thattime.
Maybe I'll save a year or two for thescrolling, but then that leaves me still15, 18 years to do otherthings.
You just basically dropped a grenade on any excuse that somebody would have that they don't have time or it's too late or I couldn't possibly fit this thing in because you have all this foundtime.
Is there a difference between the screen on your phone and the screen on the television in terms of the impact yourbrain?
Yeah, so the way you interact with those screens is verydifferent.
Right? So when you watch TVcontent, it's just something that's kind of being visited uponyou.
You're not interacting withit.
Yep. So there are good and bad parts to interacting with thescreen.
If you're learning alanguage, you're going to learn it less well on a TV than on a phone because you can interact with thephone.
Okay. If you are using a social mediaplatform, no one uses that social media on a screen like a TV because you can't have that bidirectional relationship where you act on the thing and then it acts back onyou.
Right. That'scritical.
That's what goes on on phones that make it soimmersive.
So a TV screen is less kind of weaponized to draw our time and attention away fromus.
It gives us a little bit moreagency.
That doesn't mean it'sperfect.
Youknow, if you're watching ashow, there's a cliffhanger and someone says toyou, just sit here for 10seconds.
The next episode willbegin.
That's where binge viewing comes from and we almost all dothat.
Right. But what we do with our screens when we're on phones is I think much more difficult for us toresist.
Youknow, I think it just got something that I'd never thought aboutbefore,Dr.
Alter, which is that your brain is getting so many fast signals and messages from the ads to thepop-ups, to thenotifications, toyou, yourself switching between the texting and the email and search and what is getting fused together is a brain that now is constantly expecting thisgo,go,go.
And I had not thought about the fact that because if you're using your phone and you can interact withit, so now you've also got your hands involved and there's that whole body of research around aerobics and marrying the physical movement and particularly movements of your hands with new thought patterns and how that fires and wires your brainquicker.
That to me makes so much sense that because you're actually typing and you're interacting withit, you're programming your brain faster almost to expect shortform.
I hear people also talking anecdotally like there's a rise in ADHD but it's actually a rise in your brain getting trained to bedistracted.
Yeah, so I think what's happened is we live in an age of timecontraction.
Everything happens in really briefchunks.
Everything's five secondslong, ten secondslong, it's time iscontracted.
If you go on a vacation to a beach and you spend a week doingnothing, you get timedilation.
Time suddenly works on a differentscale.
You think of five minutes as no time atall, whereas in the way we live ourlives, many of us most of thetime, fiveminutes, you could do a hundredthings, you could look at a hundredvideos.
There are a million things you could do in five minutes and that creates a sense of massive urgency for what purpose I don'tknow, probably not a good one for most of us most of thetime.
So I think there's some value in changing the scale of things in going for a four-hourdrive.
I drove 12 hours there and back to see theeclipse.
Where'd yougo? I went to northern Vermont and it wasincredible.
I drove six hours with afriend.
Yeah, we got out of the car for fiveminutes.
Watch theeclipse, go back in and drovehome.
So it was 12 hours of driving for three minutes ofmagic.
It changed how I feel abouttime.
There's a hangover period where I'm like a fewhours, noproblem.
Not a problem atall. I can focus on things for a fewhours.
I did it for 12 hours the otherday.
When do we ever do one thing for 12hours?
It's just veryrare. So I think doing things that are extended and protracted is really valuable because it resets what you think of as a kind of meaningful chunk oftime.
Well, and this goes back to something that you also talkedabout, which is I guarantee that those five minutes that you probably spend at BurkeMountain,right?
Youknow, up in thatarea.
Yeah,exactly. That there was something about those five minutes that fell like fivehours.
Yeah. And you use the word timedilation, which means that you're stretching your own perception of being in themoment.
And you gave us a list of things like being innature, having plants or some sort of water element in yourhouse,meditation, a conversation with somebody where you're really in the moment is a way for you to actually slow down time and get important timeback.
Right. So you also have thisresearch.
It's veryinteresting.
It's this concept called stoppingcues.
What does thatmean?Yeah.
So stoppingcues, if you think about how we consumed information in the 20th century and the early21st, everything had a natural endpoint to it that these are known as stoppingcues.
So you'd read a book and you'd get to the end of a chapter or the wholebook.
You'd watch a TV show that credits wouldroll.
Yes. These were all gentle signals that you probably wanted to do somethingdifferent.
Move on to the nextthing.
And they were built into everything wedid.
So those are called stoppingcues.
Now, the thing about a lot of the tech we use is that tech companies have systematically eradicated those stoppingcues.
They've removedthem. They've weeded themout.
So the bottomless feed that you get on social mediaplatforms, that is a good example of the absence of stoppingcues.
So because we are humans who are creatures ofinertia, we just keep doing the same thing over and over until something pushes us to the nextthing.
In the absence of a cue thatsays,hey, maybe you want to move on to the nextthing, we just keepgoing.
And that's a lot of why once we start using a social mediaplatform, there's no cue to moveon.
The same way when you're on a slotmachine, there's no cue to moveon.
So we just keepgoing.Wow.
So some of my favoritecookies, averagefarm.
Yeah. And they come in these stacks and thesetrays.
And when I clean out a wholetray, the empty trays ofstuff, it's not to keepgoing.
What is kind of your biggest takeaway after researching so much about how distracted we've become by ourphones?
Yeah. So I think the biggest one is that the simplest solution to this problem is actually an analogone, which is to cultivate habits where there are certain parts of the day that are sacred and free ofscreens.
I think that's veryimportant.
And it's different for differentpeople.
So it couldbe, youknow, everyday, dinnertime, noscreens, we all put our phones in a cookiejar, we put a timeron, we're not allowed to go into that jar for 30minutes,maybe.
That's oneexample. It seems kind of psycho that we have to dothis.
It's totallyridiculous.
The we are in this position as consumers of this tech to have to doit, but wedo.
But in it'sbecause,though, and I think this is a really important piece of the research that you're explaining tous, this isn't because you'reweak.
It's because this technology is designed to keep yougoing.
That sort of emptiness that you described when somebody's sitting in front of the slot machine where you're just sort of lulled into thisstate, that that's why you have to have these stopping cues and you have to have theseboundaries.
Youknow, one of the things I'm curious about because you've researched this and you're also a father of two and you're married and you'reteaching.
And so you're seeing students of different ages and you've seen these platforms change sinceyou, youknow, have been writing all of these books and doing thisresearch.
Dr.Alter, what is your morning routine looklike?
So one thing I try very hard to do and I'm better at this some mornings than others is to spend as much time after I wake up not looking at a screen aspossible.
It's really useful to kind of easier way into the day by not immediately picking up the phone and looking at whatever's on thescreen.
So that's one importantthing.
Ihave, there are different days where I'm doing differentthings, but usually the very beginning part of the day is with my kids and often mywife.
And so that's obviously a deeply connected time where you're discussing what we're going to have forbreakfast.
And youknow, there are little conversations thathappen.
They themselves are not necessarily full of meaning and philosophy andrichness, but there's a richness just to the kind of routine of connecting over that period of theday.
And I think that's reallyuseful.
If you live with someoneelse, that is a time when some of us need a little bit of time to wake up in acoffee.
But once you get past that toconnect, I think is reallyimportant.
And I try to do that as much as possible in themorning.
Gotit. So if you could speak directly to the person who's been listening to this who's now panickedstricken.
Yes. That they're going to lose 20 years of their life looking at theirphone.
And they're thinking about stopping cues and they're thinking about all of the amazing things that you've made us think about and want totry.
What do you think the one action if you had to say there's one thing I really want you todo?
Yeah. What would itbe? So I think the easiest thing you can do that will give you back years of your life is to take your device for an hour aday.
You pick thehour. It could be in themorning, could be in theafternoon, could be in theevening, put it in a drawer or a cookiejar, put itsomewhere, make sure it's roughly the same time everyday.
So it's ahabit. And if you do that for enoughdays, you will literally give yourself back years of your life where you would have spent that time mindlesslyscrolling.
You're going to be doing something moreenriching.
Just do that one small thing tostart.
It'll have a massive effect on yourwell-being.
Wow.Dr.Adam,alter. Thankyou.
Thankyou. Thank you for being here withus.
Thank you for havingme.
You heardhim. I want you to get 20 years of your lifeback.
And I want you to use that time to create a more meaningful life for yourself because you deservethat.
And in case no one else tells youtoday, let me be the one to say I love you and I believe inyou.
And I believe in your ability to change your life and to use all of these amazing things that you learn today to help you dothat.
Alrighty. I'll see you in a fewdays.
I don't know what the hell happenshere.
You guys can go ahead and count iton.
I'm just make sure this isokay.
You gotit.Three,two, one audiorecording.
One,two,two,three,two,one.
Here wego.Start.Awesome.
Yes, you'reon.Okay, allday.
Myname,Ulta, for somereason, is often pronouncedatler.
Wait, Iknow. Holdon. Did you just call itUlta?
Yeah, because that's myaccent.
So Ulta is how I'm supposed to sayit,Dr.
Ulta.Ulta. You can sayUlta.
Yeah, Iknow. That'sit.
You can just slip into the USaccent.
No, youdon't. AdamUlta.
I see now I'm panicking about thename.
See, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety that I'm going to mispronounce yourname.
Ulta,right? Am I Ultaenough?
Okay. I'm backhome.Okay, you're back homenow.
Nature is ananecdote. You're not and I don't even know what thehell.
Soyeah, I can't pronounceanything.
We don't have any funhere.
I seethat.Yeah.Ulta, not atall.
Tough,tough,proud, tough workingenvironment.
It'sterrible.Yeah, absolutelyterrible.
Oh, and one morething. I know this is not ablooper.
This is the legallanguage.
You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read toyou.
This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainmentpurposes.
I'm just yourfriend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of aphysician, professionalcoach, psychotherapist or other qualifiedprofessional.
Gotit?Good. I'll see you in the nextepisode.
