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How much do we actually know about the brain and its potential?
We have years of knowledge, but there is an enormous amount that we still don't know.
There are brain areas we have no idea what they do.
Every ping of the foam is anxiety -producing which then launches your stress response and that keeps us stressful for way too much of the day.
So many people are appreciating Being at a higher level of stress and anxiety and depression, a little bit of that is actually good for the brain.
You want to live a long, healthy, energized life.
Start paying attention to all the things you need to do to make your brain work beautifully.
It defines everything that we do and everything that we are.
The number one health and wellness podcast, Jay Shetty, Jay Shetty!
The one, the only, Jay Shetty!
Wendy, thank you so much for being here.
I'm so grateful to have you on On Purpose.
I was really looking forward to this.
Oh, thank you. And even just the few words we've exchanged now, I'm like, all right, click record ASAP.
We need to capture all of it.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
I'm thrilled to be here.
Oh, well, let's dive right in.
The first thing I wanted to ask you was, how much do we actually know about the brain and its potential?
That is such a great question.
We have hours and semesters and years of knowledge that we have gained about the brain since we've seriously been studying it.
But there is an enormous amount that we still don't know.
There are brain areas, we have no idea what they do.
My favorite is called the Clausstrom.
Somebody asked me, what's the most mysterious brain area that you know, Wendy, this is a brain area that connects to everything, cortically, subcortically.
It should be integrating something critical.
We have no idea what it does.
We have little idea of how consciousness works.
We know a lot about vision.
So it is a beautiful bag of information and mystery that our brain represents.
There's something about that, right?
That there's so much we've learned, but there's so much yet to uncover.
But I feel when we talk about the brain and what's relevant to us, I think about what does a healthy and unhealthy brain feel like.
And how do we know whether we have a healthy or unhealthy brain?
I think that the answer to that is so many people are appreciating at a higher level, their stress and anxiety and depression, a little bit of that is actually good for the brain.
Chronic all the time, it can't get out from under the cloud or the big rock around your neck that anxiety can feel like.
That is not good for your brain.
High levels of stress overall will start to first damage and then kill some neurons in your brain.
That is not good. So if you are at that level, that is not good for your brain.
What about someone who says, and I'm sure you hear this all the time Wendy, you know stress doesn't really affect me, I can just keep going.
I don't really notice it.
What would you say to someone who says that?
I would say, I said that a lot to myself.
And when I sat down to write my second book, Good Anxiety, I realized how much stress and anxiety that I was dealing with in my life.
And also, I think the key was there were simple tools that one could use to address not all forms of your stress and anxiety, but a lot of those forms of stress and anxiety.
And so the first step is awareness.
Yeah. So becoming aware, why are we in denial about our stress?
I think, well, I live in New York City.
People like to wear a badge of stress.
Every time you answer, how are you?
Ah, so stressed out, so much to do.
It's like a badge of honor.
So I think that that becomes, has become part of our individualistic society and that's not good.
I mean, what you should be able to say at least a good chunk of the time is actually, I'm doing well, I feel good.
I feel energized. And you don't hear that response all too often.
And that's not just in New York, but I think all over the country and all over the world.
Yeah, for sure. No, I think you're so right.
I think people are used to saying, surviving, surviving, just getting through this day.
I'm just moving forward.
And I think that's why we're doing this episode because we want people to be able to turn around and say, oh no, I'm doing well, I'm energizing.
Right. There's almost like we carry this guilt if we are about to say that, right.
There's a feeling of like, or there's a feeling of shame that I'm not working hard enough.
Right. Yes. So going back the other way with the badge of honor, there's a feeling of if I said, oh no, I'm actually doing okay.
That's me saying, I'm not working hard enough.
Right. I've noticed that as well.
I've noticed that in myself and my colleagues.
And it's about stepping back and realizing, I think one of the most profound pieces of advice that somebody gave me early on is making me realize how important and how complex my brain was.
It defines everything that we do and everything that we are, and making that work well should be high on our list.
Chronic stress and buying into that I'm busy all the time culture is not conducive to brain health.
So you want to live a long, healthy, energized life, start paying attention to all the things you need to do to make your brain work beautifully.
Yeah, no matter how much you think you've got to weigh with it up until now, it's not good to keep pushing that and testing how far the brain can go.
Walk me through the difference between anxiety and stress, and why is it important to know the difference?
They are intertwined in a really complex way.
So physiologically, the stress response is enacted by the sympathetic nervous system and it's all those feelings that we are very familiar with.
Increased heart rate, increased respiration rate.
Our eyes dilate, there's an upset stomach because actually blood is rushing away from our digestion and reproductive systems towards our muscles because the response is to get us ready to run away, to physically flee.
Now anxiety is the emotion of fearing something that is coming up in the future that could, that we don't like, that could harm us.
In his essence, it is protective.
So, you know, a woman three -point -five million years ago trying to protect her baby wanted to use those feelings of anxiety to keep that baby safe from those physical dangers that were there.
The problem is that in today's world, every ping of the phone is anxiety producing, which then launches your stress response, and that keeps us stressful for way too much of the day.
So the key, I think, is learning how to turn the volume down on those anxiety cues that then launch stress and learning what they are for yourself but also using the tools of science to turn that volume down.
It's a simple first step that everybody can take.
How do we do that? So the first thing that you can do is, first realize you said, you know, how do we know we're stressed?
You know, self -reflect for a moment.
Am I telling everybody I'm stressed all the time?
Do I not sleep well because of stress?
When you do that, there are my, number one and number two tools that I immediately go to.
And I know you've talked about this so many times on your show.
Number one, because it is immediate, is deep breathing.
Breath work. Why? Why?
Because breath work activates the equal and opposite part of that sympathetic fight or flight system, the parasympathetic system.
I told you all the things that stress activates.
Heart rate raised, respiration raised, your blood rushing.
I can't control where my blood rushes and I can't really control my heart rate, but I can control exactly how deep and found and frequent, my breathing is.
So that's why just deep breathing, just two or three times, can, you know, try it out, it can really calm you down, and if you practice it, it gets even more powerful.
That's my tool, go to number one, and it's number one, because if I'm getting anxious about this interview, I could actually do this in the background, you don't even know, and I can calm myself down, even in the heat of a, this is not a stressful conversation at all, but I'm pretending that, you know, it could be.
Number two is moving your body.
And so 10 minutes of walking outside or anywhere, up and down the stairs, down the hallway has been shown to decrease your anxiety and stress levels.
It's one of the fastest way that you can use physical activity to address your stress and anxiety levels.
Those are my No. 1 and No. 2 go -tos.
Anybody can use. You don't even have to change your clothes.
That first one, I'm so glad you brought that up.
It's a practice I do still till this day.
If I'm going on stage or if I'm doing something that's anxiety inducing.
Yeah. And I think people are always like, J, wait a minute.
You experience anxiety.
I'm like, of course I do.
It's a part of everyday life.
And if I'm about to do something that feels that way, I can notice the same thing.
But now that I've noticed that cue, which is, like you said, but it's easy for me to think, okay, well I know I need to breathe in for a 4 and breathe out for more than 4, which is a pattern I like.
Are there any patterns that you suggest or is it just deep breathing?
You know, the easiest is to just deep for three or four counts in, three or four counts out.
But I like box breathing, which I know you know about.
Deep breath in for four counts.
Hold it at the top for four counts.
Deep breath out for four counts.
Hold it at the bottom for four counts.
It's funny, every time I even say that and I often say that in these kinds of interviews, I feel myself de -stressing as I do that.
Because the muscle memory of when I do do that comes in, but yes, it is such a powerful technique that everybody can use.
And how do we spot our cues more closely because, so for a long time I used to say I don't get stressed.
And then I started to realize when I was actually still that all my stress was stored in my body.
So, I wouldn't get stressed mentally, I wouldn't experience it in my mind, and I wouldn't experience it in my chest or my heart, but then I started to notice that my upper shoulders or my neck is always tight.
And it took me a while before I started to recognize that stress existed in different ways, as opposed to this idea of, oh well it's not up here so it doesn't exist.
How do we get closer to those cues?
Because I think, there's two questions, one is how do we get closer to our cues, and the second is when you feel that cue or trigger, how do you remind yourself to breathe?
I think to get closer to your cues, the easiest answer is to spend time in open awareness of your own cues.
And just as you said, and it's the same for me, they don't suddenly appear on a list in front of you.
You have to go and seek them out because for you it wasn't in your head, it was in your body.
I'll never forget, multiple times I've had the experience of deep tissue massage in certain places that triggered just crying in me and I'm so sorry what was happening they said no I've just touched a point in your body that you store a lot of stress you mean like actually crying actual physical crying and it wasn't like I couldn't help it and and it's happened it's happened just twice, but that was my very clear cue that I also store a lot of stress and anxiety in my own body.
You have to go and look for that, and you have to notice it, and you have to remind yourself when you've been covering up your own stress and anxiety, which I am also a master of.
It takes a little exploration, and I think that listening to others and actually asking a friend, do you notice times when you think I'm more stressed than others?
And sometimes you might be surprised that might be a really good, you know moment of Realization and so then your second question was once you realize you're in this moment how do you remind yourself to breathe and that's a hard one and I think the best way is Don't wait until Say oh, I'm I'm I'm anxious.
I need to breathe but never having any practice with this breathing It is wonderful to take a class time and go to a breath meditation class, you learn so much because there are literally thousands of years of breathwork technique to learn and I've been exploring that as well.
But you don't have to get super fancy.
Sometimes it's just about, you said you like the inhale and exhale for a longer time.
That is a very basic but powerful one.
Explore that on YouTube.
that there are thousands of free meditations, you can do that.
I always send people there, practice it, see which ones you like.
Sometimes it's too long of a hold for people and you have to find the one that you like, practice it, get it comfortable with yourself and then it'll be easier to call it up when you do notice that moment coming up.
Yeah, I agree. I think that's great advice.
You can't have something help you.
It's almost like I remember being at school and they'd always train you with what happens if there was a fire.
So you're training when there isn't a fire.
Yes. So it's like, hey, when there's a fire, you're going to walk through this door, you're going to line up outside, you're going to do this.
And it's almost like we need that for when the fires appear in our mind.
Exactly. And you've got to do the routine before it happens in reality.
Right. And if you do, do it, really think about how that made you feel.
Do you feel that difference?
And it's important to keep exploring how different things make you feel.
Because maybe you chose just a bum -breath technique.
It doesn't work for you.
And there are those that just won't pack it for you.
So try other things but stay aware and that practice of self -awareness I think is so important for the rest of our lives, I think.
What's actually happening to the brain when we ignore anxiety and stress for long periods of time.
Stress very physiologically releases stress hormone, cortisol.
Cortisol goes through the blood -brain barrier, goes into the brain, and the danger is that there are key brain areas that you want to keep healthy and thriving and growing throughout your life.
That high levels of consistent cortisol will damage and then eventually kill cells.
And the first brain area I'll focus on is called the hippocampus, critical for memory function.
And here we know that long -term stress, for example, people with PTSD, monkeys that have low rank in the Peking order, male monkeys, have tiny little hippocampi because those cells have gotten damaged and then died.
And that is not good.
We need what I like to call a big fat, fluffy hippocampus for the rest of our lives.
this is the area that first gets attacked in Alzheimer's disease and you want to keep that beautiful and healthy.
The other brain area that is attacked in stress is your prefrontal cortex. Critical for decision -making, being able to shift and focus your attention, and so you are starting to damage two key areas.
You know, I lead 9 ,000 students.
The two brain areas I want to work best in these students are the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. And it kills me that during finals, all that stress that comes up is damaging their ability to show us all the beautiful knowledge that they learn.
Of course, not just my students, but all students around the world.
How can we de -stress that process?
And thereby help learning, help recall, help their professors know what they do understand about the topic.
Yeah. What are our daily activities that are damaging the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex. Yeah.
I mean, it is that every day stress, it's the anxiety provoked by scary news that we read every single day, by social media, and here I'm thinking about younger people, well known how much it damages self -esteem to spend too much time on social media.
All these things, we all know these stressors in our lives, but it's actually hard to put the newspaper down.
It's really hard to put the phone down, but that could be such a game changer for both adults and children.
And you just ask, well, what am I gonna do?
Have a conversation with the real person, which is what I always try and push people to do.
That is such a joy and a privilege in our lives to be able to do.
I've really found also that if we can just find a gap between when you wake up and when you pick up your phone, it just rewires the brain.
And I think we have to think about it physically where it goes, okay, well, if I don't put my brain in this, you know, noise in the morning, just cause I I would never wake up to like volume 100 on any song, or whatever it may be.
If I just allow my brain some time to like speed up naturally and catch up with the pace of the day, then actually I'll be better at doing everything else.
Rather than when I rush my brain from zero to 100 miles per hour with 50 emails and 30 notifications, I'm expecting so much of my brain, and no wonder I'm stressed out immediately because my brain's trying to compute and formulate.
It's like if your partner turned to you in the morning and said I want to have a really deep discussion about life first thing in the morning.
It's like you'd be like, well, I don't think I can handle that right now.
And it's shocking to me how many of us are putting ourselves in stress by looking at our phones first thing in the morning.
Yeah. I have a morning routine that I've come to love which is about a 45 minute meditation when I first wake up.
So that's the first thing that I do.
And I do a tea meditation which is meditation over the brewing and drinking of tea.
Because, not teabag tea, but loose leaf tea.
Or you have to seep it for a certain amount of time or else it doesn't taste it's best.
And then you pour it, and then you drink it, and then you reseep it.
So for me, that ritual really keeps me in meditation.
And what do I mean by meditation, just, I do body scans.
I have prayers that I go through every morning, which is I think the antithesis of looking at your email.
And then I do a 30 -Minute Workout, which is I do it online so I do open my computer but I'm not looking at the newspaper at the same time I'm doing my workout.
I'm focused on that workout.
And that really prepares me for the day.
And if I miss either one of those, I feel it the rest of the day.
Yeah, definitely. I love hearing that.
How long have you done that for?
I've done the meditation for 9 years straight and I've missed only a few days when I have those 4am and you have to get on the cab at 4am to get to the airport and exercise I've been doing for even longer.
I've gone through lots of habits with my exercise, but having the morning habit and really forcing myself not forcing, it's a habit, having the habit of even when I only have five minutes, I'll do some sort of stretch or something for that five minutes, every single day, and feel good about that.
In addition to my good 30 minute cardio strength workout where I really sweat.
So, I mean, I think we're both talking about the habits that we choose for ourselves that improve our mental health, strengthen our brain.
This is so important to choose for ourselves.
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the point is, you'll get so much more out of your day and your brain, I think often we think, well, if I skip that, I used to be like this with my wife, she was the one who kept drilling into me how important physical activity was.
Yeah. And I was just like, no, I'm fine.
And she was like, imagine how alert you'll be, imagine how focused you'll be.
And I didn't believe her.
And then when I started to do it, I was like, oh, she's right.
And it's such an interesting thing.
It's so easy to think I'll accomplish more if I don't make time for meditation, breathwork, and working out.
But you won't. You'll actually accomplish less.
You'll accomplish. Is that what you found?
Does a science show that too?
You know, the science shows that exercise improves your mood.
It improves your ability to shift and focus your attention.
Long term it will improve your memory.
and so compared to subjects or, you know, animal subjects that don't do exercise, there is better brain function in those people that are exercising.
So yes, the science is behind it, and there's beautiful science in meditation showing that there are brain areas that are enhanced with, in monks, for example.
That's going way – I'm never going to be a monk – but the act of meditation is a a act of learning how to focus better, so that I could focus on your questions and not be distracted by whatever is going on on the outside.
I mean, we have a nice, quiet room, but sometimes, you know, I live in New York, we're on the subway and there's so much noise.
And when you practice the meditation, you realize how powerful that is for your life, that I could choose to focus on you.
That's all I'm focused on, I'm listening to you deeply.
I'm thinking about it deeply and that is an experience that not enough of us are having on a very regular basis.
Yeah. Why does it feel like when we're trying to do that?
It almost feels like it hurts.
Like when someone's really trying to focus, it's like you're trying to pour the energy in.
You can feel like, oh god, it's so tiring or it's exhausting to be present and it almost feels like you're having to pull yourself in a certain direction But there's some tension and resistance back.
What are we experiencing?
What's going on? You know, I think part of that is our lives have been focused on getting pulled in 10 different directions at the same time.
We get used to that.
And so, no, I can't focus on you for a whole hour because I have 30 other things that I usually get pulled into, and that becomes your habit.
If that is your habit, I think you need to rethink that.
And it's a muscle that you build.
I remember my undergraduate advisor, the woman who made me want to become a neuroscientist.
She used to say that new learning, and this is a new habit that you're learning will hurt.
It'll make your brain hurt because it's those dendrites that are growing and stretching out and making new connections.
It's not an easy thing.
It's a metabolic load.
It is an effort to build new pathways but that's what we're doing when we're trying to focus and connect for longer periods of time than we were used to.
OK, so it's OK if it hurts.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
It's supposed to hurt.
Right, it's almost like you're walking through a path that doesn't exist yet.
Yes. And so you're having to pave that way.
Exactly. So you're the first person walking in, there's nothing ahead of you.
You're chopping down the trees and leaves in front of you.
Exactly. You're building the bridge, the pathway.
Yes. And that's why it hurts.
And it's so interesting when you think about it that way.
Yeah. But you go, oh, okay, so every time I walk over that bridge, it will become stronger.
And every time I step on that step, that path becomes clearer.
And now it's going to be easier for me every time.
Yeah, it's fascinating to me just how everything that's good for you seems hard.
And everything that's bad for you seems easy.
Well, yes. I think at a certain point of the journey, that is absolutely the case.
But at a different point of the journey, when you've cut down those trees with your machete, it feels glorious to be able to have these deep conversations with your friends and build that habit with your friends and your loved ones and build that habit of first thing in the morning, no phone and meditation.
And you know how much better you're gonna feel.
And that is the part of the gratitude, yes I have a gratitude practice, it is that.
It's like being grateful for all those good habits that I have been forming and throwing those away that I don't and being grateful that I threw that away.
Yeah, I talk to you a lot about going back to your point around Monks Brains I talked a lot about the science about Monks Brains in my first book think like a monk and I remember a simple practice that we used to do when I lived as a monk Yeah, it's really helpful to me.
So we would often meditate on beads yeah, and We were always told because we'd be meditating on those beads sometimes for two hours at a time four hours at a time even more Yeah, and so we were always told when you hear the word two hours, you're just like God How am I going to get through two hours?
And we're always told, just focus on one bead at a time, one mantra at a time, just one at a time.
And all of a sudden it became so much easier where it was just like, it's just about this bead.
It's just about this mantra.
It's just about this step.
It's not about two hours.
And I think sometimes when we're thinking, oh gosh, I've got to build this new habit.
I've got to work out five days a week, and I've got to, it's like, that just feels so insurmountable.
Yeah. Why does the brain work better with small?
Steps and habits and changes.
That's such a great question.
I think that it is part of the effort that goes into something new, the novelty of preying on a single bead and kind of fighting a way that is just like, oh, I didn't get through 100 beads, I'm a failure.
That's a lot of cognitive noise.
And I always say for exercise and meditation, those two things that could immediately decrease your stress and anxiety levels, it's great.
In fact, I tell you, I tell everybody to start small.
10 minutes of walking.
Don't even have to change your clothes or your shoes.
Just a minute of deep breathing.
Just put your phone on, just the clock and just so you know how much that minute is.
And just doing that is good enough, and the effort comes in batting away all those feelings of failure and the difference between your one minute and 10 hours that you really wanted to do.
Definitely, what's the difference between everyday anxiety and then having an anxiety disorder?
Yeah, so anxiety is a normal human emotion.
and everybody has anxiety.
I think it's been kind of clinical Iso, I have anxiety.
Yeah, everybody has anxiety.
But anxiety exists on a very, very large spectrum.
So we all have anxiety and yes, the highest levels of anxiety that prevent you from doing the everyday things that you need to do in your life and having a job and having relationships and going out and doing things, that's clinical.
And it is just kind of going down of that rabbit hole of anxiety and needing more help, clinical help, to get you out with cognitive behavioral therapy, so many different techniques that you could use.
It's all part of a spectrum, which I hope that makes people feel better because you can come back.
Everybody has it. Let's just pull you back from that highest level and let you take advantage of, I think One of the things I love the most from my book, Good Anxiety, is that it's not about anxiety is so bad, let me just tell you the tools to get rid of it in your life.
It is the acknowledgement that anxiety is a protective mechanism.
My invitation is, can I invite you to try and use your anxiety to help protect you, to actually give you some gifts or superpowers because there's a lot that we can learn from our anxiety and all our uncomfortable emotions.
I think when people hear that, they may think, oh, that's cool, but I don't believe it.
Like, how could I believe that anxiety could be my superpower?
How do I make that switch from going, I'm scared to actually unprepared?
Yeah, yeah. So I start with, I think, the easiest to implement, so this one is the superpower of productivity that comes from a very common form of anxiety that everybody has, which is the to -do list that comes up at opportune times.
It's like, oh, you get overwhelmed.
For me, it comes up right before I'm gonna go to sleep.
And so it prevents me from going to sleep, so annoying.
And so the flip for that is to take the to -do list.
And first I want you to notice that all of these things are things that you care about doing well.
They're usually about your job or your relationship or money, money things, all good to be concerned about them.
The trick is to take that what -if list and turn it into a to -do list.
For me, I don't do it in the middle of the night, I wait till the next morning, but I've trained myself that I'm going to take care of each one of those worries and do something active.
If there is an issue at work, I'm gonna talk to three people about it and try and get input for that.
There's something active that you can do for every single one of your worries.
And the more people you talk to about it, you realize that very productive people are already doing this.
So take advantage of that, of that trick.
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Yeah, I really like that and one thing that's really helped me is I always look at my anxiety as revealing to me a skill I haven't yet developed.
Yes. And I really believe that.
It's like it's a muscle that you need to develop.
So I go, okay, if I'm anxious about going to this event and having to do small talk, it's because I haven't built the skill to be able to do small talk.
So maybe if I read a book or I spoke to someone or I sat down with an expert or I listened to podcast with an expert on how to have good conversations, all of a sudden, now I know what questions to ask and at least it makes me feel comfortable.
Or if a, I'm nervous about the fact that I've been asked to do something at work and I know nothing about it, Hey, let me go in and take a course on it or a class on it.
And I feel I always look at anxiety as just a sign of what's a skill I don't have, a quality I haven't developed, an ability or a priority I haven't made.
And now let me do that.
It could be the skill of having tough conversations, the skill of learning to say no, the skill of setting boundaries, whatever it may be.
It's just this one skill away to not...
Not that I won't feel that anxiety ever again, but that I can actually better manage that anxiety when it arises.
All right. I love that, because you've just created a new superpower of anxiety, which is the love of learning.
So, can you turn your anxieties into the next learning project that you have?
And then get better at small talk or whatever you're anxious about.
I love that. Yeah. No, it's the only thing that's ever helped me for so many years subconsciously.
I've always experienced anxiety, but I've found that it just got less and less and less as my skills developed.
Yeah. And developing those skills was hard and that took time and effort and it wasn't easy but as those skills grew now it was just like oh i can manage this I know I can deal with this and of course there are always going to be things that surprise you and then you go oh God I have no skills for this one and that's okay too but even if the skill is resilience or even if the skill is learning to develop how to deal with grief I feel these are all skills and muscles, and if they look to that way, we can deal with them better.
Absolutely. I mean, those anxieties are really telling you what you hold dear in your life.
Wow, that sounds good.
I want to know what I hold dear in my life.
Because the flip side of your anxiety and the flip side of grief is deep love.
And so I think that all of these more difficult emotions when seen in that light can be embraced in a new way instead of trying to kick them out the door and never experience them again, that is not a full life if you don't have grief.
Because it suggests you didn't have that deep love that turns into grief when something goes away.
Not that I'm wishing people grief, but that helped me so much in my periods of grief to to realize that that grief would never be so deep that I could never even imagine it before it happened unless the love for those people were so deep in the first place.
And it's like, wow, I loved them more than I even realized, which was a gift to realize that and pulled me out of my grief.
Wow, that so beautiful.
Could you share more on that from your perspective of how you actually got to that realization and how was it before you felt that way?
So that realization really, really defined the way I wrote this book, Good Anxiety, because I started the book before these events and it was going to be a neuroscience based book on anxiety and I was going to explain the science of it so everybody could understand and it was going forward in an exciting way and then my father passed away.
and he was 85 and he had dementia and he had a sudden heart attack.
And it was just so, so sad.
And I remember being so grateful that my brother did the eulogy because that has been my biggest fear in life to have to do eulogy and have to stand up and talk about somebody who's just passed without crying uncontrollably.
He did such a beautiful job.
but the next tragedy was that three months later my brother, who's two years younger, also passed away of a heart attack.
Sudden, he was the most fit person and that you would ever know.
And that was devastating to lose both of them of the same thing within three months.
And I was trying to go through it and I stopped writing the book I couldn't because I was grieving.
And then I realized I had to do his eulogy because there was nobody else left.
It was only me. And so a lot of soul searching, how am I going to get through this?
And it was in that search that I realized that that grief was coming from a good place." And it actually was inspired by a workout that I was doing where the instructor said, trying to get us to work out harder, she said, with great pain comes great wisdom.
And I was like, oh my god, that's what I need to know right at this moment.
What is the wisdom that's coming from this huge pain that I've never felt before and I realized that the wisdom was that the deep grief was showing me how much I loved them.
And so it was still the hardest thing I've ever done to write this eulogy and stand up.
But I basically invited everybody to cry along with me at the one point that was hardest to get through and I got through it that way.
But it allowed me to approach grief in a very different way.
And I want to say I'm almost thankful for that experience because it made me search for the beauty that comes from the pain in our lives in a brand new way.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
So sorry for that period in your life, I can't imagine how challenging and stressful that is, talking about stress and anxiety, and I really appreciate how you connected the dots for us.
Because it's one thing, you're this incredible researcher, professor, you have so much amazing insight, but then to apply it in real life in extreme cases, is so hard.
What did you learn about the brain when going through that, that you didn't know already?
I learned that my brain was more resilient than I thought it was.
I expanded the range of my emotions that I had experienced in my life, which is a good thing.
I think that relativism is beautiful, that dark feeling of deep grief helps me appreciate the joyous moments better.
And I think about that a lot after this has happened.
It really, that was part of the gift that I got.
And yes, and it changed the way I looked at, Cause then I did the eulogy, I came out of it.
I was feeling better.
I have to go back to this book on anxiety, but I couldn't write it in the same way anymore.
I have to find the gifts or the superpowers that came from anxiety, which I've already shared that with you, but that's the reason why I never would have, like I don't know what the gifts are.
Well, I did learn, not trick, I learned that lesson through that experience.
And I applied it, to the emotion of anxiety, and I think it changed the book, well, I know it changed the book.
I wrote it in a completely different way, and I've used those lessons in a different way in my life since that experience.
Wonderful, and what did you know about the brain already at the time that helped you get through it?
Yeah. As a nerdy neuroscientist, I know all about the mechanisms and the receptors involved in stress.
And not that I studied grief per se, but grief is one that gives you a lot of stress when you have grief.
I think it… I think in my whole life has helped me bring my more academic study of neuroscience to life.
There is the lessons that I could teach and that I do teach to students about what we know about the stress system, the memory system, your prefrontal cortex, decision making, all these fascinating topics.
But then there is life that comes in.
And I think that what I've been doing more recently in my career – I did a very traditional academic career up to a certain point.
And then I started to try and apply, kind of, life's lessons to neuroscience.
And so what does that mean?
that means going off book and thinking about, you know, other ways to convey anxiety.
Not just the clinical part, but the useful part for your life.
So that's how I would describe it.
Absolutely. How do traumatic events like that, what you went through over a period of three months.
And I know so many friends, who've been through similar things and different things that may or maybe a not to do with grief in that way but even grief over life you could have had.
People who've had breakups.
How does emotional trauma actually affect the brain?
What's going on? Yeah, so you know, emotional trauma also, there's a relatively simple formula with what happens which is going back to the stress hormone cortisol.
Depending on the actual stressor and the duration of that, But it is going to first kind of alert your brain.
It's like, I don't want this to happen again.
This will not happen again.
And that's what it was supposed to do.
It's supposed to heighten your senses so you can escape from the burning building.
However in these other life circumstances, a breakup or death that, you know, the emotional effects linger for a long time.
They might actually cause what's called fear memories to develop.
These are memories dependent on a structure called the amygdala that again are trying to protect you, like don't have this happen again, and steer you away from events.
So I might have been steered away from eulogies or speaking in front of crowds, which I do all the time.
But yeah, I would have been steered away from eulogies.
When you have these broader realizations about what's going on, you could actually learn in a deeper way from them.
And instead of being steered away, instead of developing a fear memory that is very strong and hard to get rid of, you can have a deeper learning that sharing the very personal, very deep, very difficult emotions to feel.
Talk about new synapses forming is a deeply cathartic process that brought me closer to my family and to everybody that was there, including all my brothers, friends, many of whom I didn't know.
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Yeah, yeah. Is it possible to prepare for future trauma or is the only way to be prepared for it to go through it?
Can we build resilience before a traumatic event?
Yeah, I think, I wouldn't recommend that everybody goes out to try and prepare for trauma, but, you know, everybody has some form of trauma.
And I think going back to your superpower of anxiety and learning, learning from that, and also realizing, this was another big realization for me, you're not gonna get rid of that deep, negative emotion.
It's there for a reason to warn you against, this is a bad time.
If you didn't have this warning, you would be walking in the middle of the freeway with no care in the world.
So you're not going to get rid of that, but to focus yourself on the learning that comes out of it and that, yes, it might take some time and to give yourself that time.
Maybe what I'm trying to get at is the self -compassion that can come from any trauma that you have and learning to apply that to yourself, I think it's a really good thing that you can prepare.
Yeah, I think when you lose someone you love, that painful feeling inside is a reminder that life is sacred.
Yes. That you should tell the people that are close to you that you love them, that you should really value and prioritize time together and moments together.
It's a reminder that pain's just pushing you in the right direction, nudging you in the right direction to say, don't make the wrong priorities, don't set the wrong focuses in your life.
And if it went away, as it does, we also forget that.
As the distance grows from when you've lost someone.
And the distance from that pain.
It's not the pain goes away, but it gets less and less and less.
We also forget that.
And then all of a sudden something else happens again and we've re -prioritized, right?
Why do we forget lessons that we learn?
Well, if I could answer that, that would be the $64 million question.
And actually, part of the answer is, the brain evolved to help us remember those lessons around dangerous situations that we have, so we don't go in that direction anymore.
Yes, we might forget.
But actually, our brain has evolved to make those kinds of fear memories or difficulty memories the hardest to get rid of.
That is why PTSD is so hard to get rid of.
And those you don't want to be carrying around.
So I would ask a flip question, which is, how come we don't relive our most glorious memories more often in our lives.
And in fact, I think of that because that is my favorite brain hack from Good Anxiety, which are tools that you can use to decrease your anxiety.
And this tool is called Joy Conditioning.
And it is designed specifically to counter fear conditioning dependent on the amygdala.
Joy conditioning is dependent on another structure called the hippocampus, which allows us to forming routine, are everyday memories for events.
And so joy conditioning is simply using all the tools that we know about neuroscience that make those kinds of memories stick, which is reliving them.
I just went on a beautiful week long yoga breath work, it was actually not yoga, breath work retreat, and I completely unplugged.
And so what I'm practicing my joy conditioning on is what it felt to be in that circle every day, every morning, every afternoon.
I remember that the ocean was so loud, we were right by the sea, the heat was so hot.
The food, the fruits were so amazing, just the flavor of the fruits.
And those are the things that revivification of the what, where, why, when, the tastes, the smells, the sounds, that's what strengthens the memory.
I am strengthening this joyous memory, and I do that consciously, and I invite everybody to do this, to kinda counteract all those negative memories that are hard to get rid of.
Let's feel our brains with all the most joyous, funny, fun memories of our lives.
Yeah, I love that. Joy conditioning is such a great hack and habit.
When I went on tour last year, we went to nearly 40 cities across the world, and at the end of them I'd lead a meditation.
And I didn't have a name for it, but that's exactly the meditation I'd do.
I'd ask everyone to back to a moment where they experienced the most love and joy in their life and to relive it in the feelings.
And I was thinking about earlier this year, you reminded me as you were talking about your breathwork retreat, earlier this year I visited Bhutan and I'd never been before.
And for anyone who doesn't know Bhutan is this tiny beautiful country landlocked between India and China, right in between.
And it's got a beautiful culture, they're famously known for measuring GNH, not GDP, and GNH has gross national happiness.
And so the culture of Bhutan is very very much mindful and being present.
And I was asked to lead a session there, and I remember we'd gone inside one of these old Bhutanese buildings.
It was, we were in this beautiful courtyard surrounded by candles.
It got really, really dark, where even though I was giving a presentation, no one could see me, they could only hear me.
And before it got dark, when it was just the sun was about to set, I asked everyone to take a mental picture and I always loved that technique, the five, four, three, two, one technique.
And so I asked everyone to look at five things they could see, four things they could touch, three things they could hear, two things they could smell and one thing they could taste.
And I was like, this is how we take a mental picture.
And now, literally, if I close my eyes, I can go back there right now to that moment because I took in the colors, like you were just saying, took in the shade of the sky.
Took in the shapes of the Bhutanese architecture.
Like all of these...
And as you were describing, the fruits and the colors and the breath.
And I just feel like if we all...
I love what you're saying because I do think we have so much joy in our lives.
Yes. But we relive the negativity war.
So much. And if you had a tough journey coming here, or I did, we would talk about how tough it was the whole day.
Yes. But if we had the most beautiful journey coming here, we wouldn't talk about it once.
Exactly. And we just ignore it.
Yeah. And feel like, well, that's normal.
Yeah. And but what's become normal is us repeating our challenges.
Right. When does talking about our problems and our anxiety actually help our brain versus hurt our brain.
I think it depends on how you talk about your anxiety.
And I think, again, going back to this learning process, can you talk about your anxiety as what it brings you, what you learned from either the fantastic way you handed your anxiety or the non -optimal way?
And then think about, well, how will I do that differently the next time.
That is the classic growth mindset.
And if we can learn how to talk about our fear, our anxiety that way, that is beautiful.
In my meditation this morning, actually, it was an auditory...
I was listening to a guided meditation.
They asked me to think about four things.
And I just loved it.
I didn't know What brings you joy and what brings you hope?
And I thought, wow, what great things to ponder.
And it really kind of brought things into focus for me.
When I did, the first thing that came to mind, what do I fear?
Who do I fear? Losing more people, what am I scared of?
And there it was, you know, I get scared of people's opinions about myself.
What brings me joy?
All the friends that bring me joy, and what do I hope for when I want to build in this world?
So, it's about approaching and there's anxiety in that list that everybody will do if they choose to do those four things.
But again, anxiety is pointing you towards what you hold dear.
And all of those questions point out what you hold dear and what your aspirations are.
So to summarize, mindset is so critical as we are living, even as we're talking about our bad day, our bad parking experience or driving experience.
Is it to learn or is it to commiserate or just to, or you're not realizing you are focusing too much on a negative thing?
Mindset and awareness.
And also what you're saying is this over amplification as well of something that actually was quite insignificant.
Or if it was significant, you're talking about looking at our challenges or talking about them in a way that takes accountability and future accountability.
And that's what I love, this idea of, well, let me talk about what went wrong today and maybe I shouldn't take that route to work anymore or maybe let me talk about what went wrong in this conversation with someone I love and maybe I've got to set better boundaries.
It's always about a solution -oriented growth focus, as you said.
But so many of our conversations today, especially about anxiety and stress, are victim -based.
And how do we make that switch because when you feel like the victim, it feels so real to you.
And you do feel so hurt that if someone said, well, what could you do differently?
You'd be like, nothing.
I did everything the best I could.
Yeah. So how do we open up that switch from anxiety to growth?
Yeah. So I think that something that has really helped me is to pay attention to who you are talking to, who is feeding you information in your life and if it's too negative and if that, you know, you know, this person is the best complainer in the world and you join in because Because it feels good to complain, you know, with a friend about something, step back and instead choose somebody who has that growth mindset that can open up other possible ways to think about that.
Do it yourself. Think, OK.
You know, you can do an exercise.
Do the complainer mindset on yourself, by yourself and then do the growth mindset.
And ask yourself, how does that feel?
What does it feel if I just go down the road of the complainer versus what if like, oh, I actually like that idea.
What if I do that next time?
Can you inspire yourself?
So many different routes and coaches, therapists can, they're experts at doing this as well.
So that's another route to go, but podcasts are another, this is a common topic in podcast world these days.
Definitely. What does healing actually look like in the brain from trauma?
From a chemical perspective, what's actually happening when we're healing?
I must say I'm more of an expert not on healing from trauma, but on growth in the positive direction.
Here's what growth can look like based on the things that we've already talked about.
We talked about the effects, the fact that moving your body can have an immediate positive effect on your anxiety, also on your depression, decrease your stress response.
What's happening there, every single time you move your body, you're releasing a whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain.
I like to call it a neurochemical bubble bath for your brain.
I love that. And so, you're giving yourself this bubble bath.
What's in that bubble bath?
Well, you've heard some of these neurochemicals before.
Dopamine, I know you love talking about dopamine.
You and so many other people talk about dopamine in such interesting ways.
Serotonin, noradrenaline, endorphins, that's what's being released in this bubble bath.
And so, not surprisingly, you feel better after you walk.
That is why you're feeling better.
But the other thing that gets released is growth factors.
Growth factors get released and they go to the hippocampus and they actually build new brain cells in the hippocampus.
They help new brain cells grow in the hippocampus.
Now, you want as many shiny, new, hippocampal brain cells as you can get.
Which means that, and they don't pop up like mushrooms, it takes a while.
You need to keep up that physical activity.
And for that, the best way to get high levels of growth factors in your bubble bath is to do an aerobic workout, any workout that increases your heart rate.
Now, this gives you lots of options.
You like to dance, go dance.
Like to take your dog for a walk, go take your dog for a power walk.
I like to walk. Go for a walk.
Anything that gets your heart rate up, I don't care what it is, will help with this, but keep it up.
And it's like, I picture a watering can with growth factors going on your left and your right hippocampus, making it big and fat and fluffy.
And that is one of the harbingers to great brain growth.
The other brain area, which I'm sure is huge in you, is your prefrontal cortex. living a life of a monk and doing that deep practice of focusing your attention, keeping it there, makes your area ten, which is right behind your forehead, enhanced, enriched, not because of new neurons but likely because of new synapses.
And so basically what a healed brain looks like is a bigger, fatter, fluffier brain that is kind of flush with good neurochemicals and is building new synaptic connections.
That is kind of the beautiful picture of what I call positive brain plasticity.
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And would you rather not spend a ton of time getting it?
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That's it. It's the definition of a hack, and you can feel good about using it.
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Your skin will look and feel better and in case you missed it before, you don't have to work hard to make it happen.
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You make it sound so simple in terms of what we need to do.
When you talk about breathing and moving, like, it's as simple as that.
What if we're doing breathing and moving and we're still not feeling positive benefits?
What could be at play there?
Well, you know, I think that sometimes it's hard to appreciate what's going on.
It could be that you're not moving quite in the same way.
I think it's easy to get in a habit of moving and so sometimes you need to push yourself a little bit more.
If you're doing 10 minutes of walking, Maybe try 15 minutes.
There are some pillars that not just me, but so many neuroscientists have shown are so important for brain plasticity, which is actually what my undergraduate advisor discovered as she was a young neuroscientist in the 1960s at UC Berkeley, Miriam Diamond.
And so exercise was one of the pillars.
Stress reduction that comes from meditation.
Social interaction.
We are social beings.
I'm sorry, social media does not count, person to person interaction.
That is what humans were evolved to do.
Sleep, which we haven't talked about, but is so critically important.
And the fifth pillar is good nutrition.
Social interaction.
Sorry, I need to add that social interaction doesn't mean just conversations.
I include love there.
Having love in your life is something that neuroscientists don't often talk about, but it is absolutely critical for the health of your brain.
And how do you define love from a neuroscience perspective?
Well, so you can study the neurobiology of love and compare the brain areas that get active when you look at the picture of an acquaintance versus the picture of somebody that you might have just - What would you see?
You would see reward areas lighting up.
But other areas, social interaction areas as well, and one of the most interesting findings that I love from that neurobiology of love, fMRI study of love literature, is that they've also started to look at how does the brain response to your loved one change from the first throes of romantic love when you can't get enough of each other to a relationship that has evolved to something stable, but very, very loving.
And what happens is it goes from just lots of dopamine and lots of reward areas and kind of a suppression of the amygdala and kind of the fear, you're fearless when you are first in love.
And I know, you know, I've felt fearless.
I don't know if in a good way, but we feel fearless.
It starts to evolve into a pattern that looks like the maternal or paternal pattern, that is that protective element.
We can't see everything from fMRI, but I thought that's such a beautiful pattern to think about, that yes, I can't sustain that first flush of love for the rest of my life, but that deep love that you do feel for a child, that is what comes with long -term commitment.
I've never heard about that from a neuro Eurocensus.
That's so interesting.
Yeah. That's so interesting, that romantic love.
Yeah. But the way it looks afterwards is more paternal and protective, in that sense.
Not in every single, you know, morsel.
But when you look at the relationships that you admire, you know, those long -term relationships, There is the devotion that is there that of course you see what for you protection for your young child It's not identical.
But that devotion is is beautiful.
That's what's moving about those kinds of relationships Yeah, and I feel like today it's become harder and harder and harder even just in how people gather yeah, like I feel like I was just watching what I just said gladiator to and and I remember watching gladiator one and I was just while I was watching it I was just thinking about the fact that that the Roman Coliseum was so big and that people would gather every week.
I mean, they'd gather for the worst reason whatsoever.
But the idea that so many people would gather every week, or I think at one point it was every day, and I'm like, first of all, what is everyone doing in their spare time?
So many people would gather.
So many people would be together.
Of course, if we look at whether it's community centers, churches, temples, the places of gathering, today we have less and less places of gathering, Even though there's millions of people going to listen to this episode.
They're not in the same place listening to it.
And I know that if we did have a million people here right now, even if we had a portion of the people that listened to the episode here, they could then talk about it and discuss it and exchange it and they could look at each other's eyes and be like, oh, you feel that too?
Oh my gosh, I went through that grief and how amazing would that be?
And we're losing that.
And so the ability to create love and connection is becoming harder and harder and harder because our places of similar value are now digital.
If this is a place, I know everyone who listens to us has similar values, cares about similar things, but they're not meeting each other.
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we're trying to do that by, when I go on tour that's really one of my biggest goals.
Yeah, sure. Is I'm hoping when everyone walks out they're all gonna just talk to each other and ask each other questions.
Should we be forcing ourselves to have places together of similar value?
Should we make that a priority?
Absolutely. And I immediately think of the university.
And that is a natural place of gathering.
In person universities, you're gathering every single day, multiple times a day.
But sometimes I see the stress and the worry of do I, am I smart enough in this room?
Pushes people apart and then they go and they go on their phone and it's more comfortable to do that.
That is what I'm trying to shift so that we take full advantage of this person -to -person place of gathering at our university.
That they feel connected to each other, they feel like they belong there for whatever thing that you want to promote, I as dean want to promote.
The joy of learning, that is what I want to teach them, that is what I want them to feel like.
And so, yes, all of you university professors out there, you have this power to make your place of gathering one of these places where people are talking and interacting.
And of course, we all try that.
It's harder because of the pandemic and we're not used to being together as much in society or, you know, in our growing up.
So the answer to your question is yes.
It's our responsibility to do that.
How can we do that more?
Yeah, I love that example.
I saw, I read a study that said, 80 % of us pull out our phone in a crowd just to avoid conversation and contact.
And so I love what you're saying about building it on a college campus, and I think the same applies inside a corporation if people are coming to work, even if they're coming to work three days a week.
As a dean yourself, how do you do that when you've got targets?
I'm sure there's results you have to get to.
You have got things deadlines you have to meet.
You've got a ton of stuff on your plate as does a CEO of a major corporation or an organization.
How do you prioritize a love for learning and belonging and connection?
Not just as nice things that you say, but actually to do.
How do you do that?
Because I see it as very genuine from you.
It's real. And so how do I prioritize that?
I just make it a priority and I decide the actions that I'm going to do to get to that goal.
So, for example, I am literally strategizing about how I could get in front of as many of those 9 ,000 students that I have multiple times during their four years with us.
I see them all, every single first year student, I see.
Every single one graduating, I see.
There's a lot of time between that.
what can I do to have a meaningful, should I go on tour just like you do, but talk to the first years, the second years, the third years, I loved my college experience because I was imbued with the love of learning.
And so I do that through the coursework that I provide for my students.
That is, actually, I'm trying to develop it right now.
It is an online class, but with an in -person component so that I could kind of gut up to scale.
The first time I did it, it's called, it's called the Fluffy Brain course.
So I wanna give all the students in this course a fluffy brain, teaching them a lot about what we've just spent the last hour talking about.
But there's always gonna be an in person component, and the goal of this class is to inspire them to do, not inspire them, it's part of the class, that's the great thing about a class I could assign things to.
So your assignment is to do a personal experiment about exercise, how are you going to up your exercise for the next week, but first you're gonna just notice your mood, your regular mood state, so that self -awareness, and the next week you are gonna propose something, do it, increase your exercise, and then self -reflect about that, and we will explore that and talk about it together.
I love that, and they have to do it.
They have to do it, yeah.
I'm really happy that you're saying this, because I do think as leaders and different institutions and organizations, There's such a there's a responsibility, but there's also just a vision for what an amazingly happy fluffy brain community looks like.
And when I think about it coming from college, it's hard because people are coming from so many different motivations.
Yes. Right? Someone's coming there for the best job in the world.
Someone's coming there for an amazing social experience.
Someone's coming there to compete with everyone else.
Right? But you've got all these drivers and they kind of take everyone's drivers and point it in one direction is one of the hardest things to do in the world because everyone's got their background and their walk of life.
And I remember in the monastery, it's similar to what you said, our senior -most monk would always talk about three qualities above all qualities.
And it was humility, tolerance and compassion.
That was it. And so if you went to one of his lectures, that's all he was going to talk about and And what you realized slowly was that, at least for me, I found that those became qualities that I aspired for, because I recognized they were most valued in this place, even though I may have come from a different set of values before.
I would have come from ambition, drive, whatever it was, and all of a sudden it's humility, tolerance, compassion.
And then you saw those who accepted and those who rejected it as well.
There were some people who just went, yeah, yeah, whatever, who cares.
And then there were some that went no, that seems to be the truth.
And so what do you find is the healthiest way to encourage people in the right direction because people don't want to be told, and people don't want to be preached to.
Yeah. So how do you do it in a way that actually the brain digests?
So I start with the official greeting of the College of Arts and Science, which is, J, you have a beautiful brain.
And so I invite all the students, when they see me on the street, to come up and say, you have a beautiful brain.
And of course, I will say it back to them.
And I love starting from there because that is the truth, the neurobiological truth, that every single one of the brains of my students is beautiful, your brain is beautiful, my brain is beautiful.
And no matter what your motivation for being in this space with me, it has a beautiful brain.
And from there, we go from, which hopefully provides a sense of belonging, we go to, let's share.
Let's share what you have to give from your beautiful brain, because your brain has something to give that is different than what my brain.
And let's just provide a situation and environment that's open to all of that sharing.
And talk about the fact that, no, it's not about competition.
It's not about getting the highest mark.
It's learning the deepest for whatever class you are.
And I know these are hard priorities, but I'm building them over the last two and a half years.
And it's really a joy to be able to do that.
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They're so lucky to have you.
They really are. That's such a, you know, to leave college with that mindset, with a love for deep learning.
I think will set people up for so much more success than just a great job that eventually may end up being the job that they don't want to be in and a career that they don't enjoy.
And then when you realize that you don't have a deep love for learning, that becomes really, really hard.
And that's kind of what I see.
I feel like I speak to a lot of people who have kind of got the job that they thought they want out of college.
And then five years in, maybe even quicker, they're like, it's actually not what I want to and now I'm trying to find meaning in life, but the problem is, I didn't have that deep love for learning and so now I have to build it later on.
So, it's so lucky to have you.
Oh, thank you. It's really amazing.
I wanted to ask you, when you say that affirmation, I love that you have a beautiful brain.
Does positive thinking and positive affirmations, do they actually work?
Absolutely. I mean, there are studies showing that if you take a group of people and have them do positive affirmations, not just just saying them at a certain number of times every day versus people that don't do those positive affirmations.
Their affect is better.
It's higher, you know, less negative affect and more positive affect.
Yes, it does have an effect, which makes sense.
Our brain takes in everything that's happening to us.
So this is why we talked about looking at the people that you are, that's feeding you information.
Are they cynical? Are they negative?
Or are they giving you a growth mindset?
Are they giving you interesting new possibilities to go to?
Very important to ask yourself that.
I wanted to ask you, Wendy, if it's okay.
A couple of questions from your first book about memory.
Yeah. Because I just think it's such a fascinating subject.
And when we think about the brain and memory, I think there's just there's so much connection that I think would fascinate people.
I wanted to ask you, why is it that we can remember different things about the same event when you're there with the same people?
So, sorry to say, but our memory does not work very well, generally.
You think, I'm young.
I have a great memory.
No, our memory is not great.
And so, the reason why two people at the same event remember different things is that we are focused on these different things.
And let me just go over the four things that makes memory stick.
This works at all ages based on the neurophysiology and biology of the hippocampus that we talked about.
Critical for forming and retaining new long term memories.
So what makes memory stick?
Repetition. So you and I might be at the same event and you're focused on one thing and it's the same event but event is big.
I'm focused on something else.
So you're repeating something that I never saw and I'm seeing something that you never saw.
Repetition. Association, we remember things better when they're associated with other things that are in our long -term memory.
So we might be easier to remember a friend of a friend that we know really, really well and they introduce us versus somebody that you don't know at all and you trying to remember them from anybody.
Association, novelty, if it's really novel, you've never experienced this in your life, it tends to be more memorable because our brains are focused on novelty.
It's a danger kind of, you know, we have to pay attention to novelty.
And maybe there are things at the event that were really novel to you that like I've seen a million times and my brain just completely ignores them.
And the fourth thing that makes memory stick is emotional resonance.
So we remember the happiest and the saddest points in our life.
That's what this structure, the amygdala, helps with it, kind of helps those really emotional memories stick better.
And again, at this same event, you might be moved by something that either I didn't see or just I wasn't moved by because that wasn't in my life experience.
So there's lots of different reasons why two different people will have sometimes very different memories of the same event.
Yeah. And I have a friend who is very present, like, you know, in the moment, but if I was to say to them to remember something from one, two years back, that is, like, even from, like, 15 years back, they cannot recall it at all?
Is that an issue? You know, memory is also – there's a lot of variability.
And I remember at – I met somebody with something called highly superior autobiographical memory.
I don't know if you've heard of this.
They did this great show on 60 Minutes about people.
It was actually discovered by colleagues of mine, neuroscientists, at UC Irvine.
And these are people that have extraordinary memory for detail, so they could remember when they were eight years old, what was on TV at 7 p .m., 7 .30, 8 p .m., and this incredible memory.
It gets in the way, but there's on one end that form of memory, and then all the way to there's actually particularly poor memory in that same vein.
I'm not sure if two years ago memories don't stick as long as the person can live their lives and they have regular memory for the things they need to live their lives for, but there's a wide variety of memory levels that can exist in the world.
Got it. So that's not a sign of dementia or Alzheimer's?
No. How old are they?
No. They're young. Yeah, so, so many people have this fear of, I have dementia in my family.
Our memories also, here's a tip for everybody.
They get worse as we age because we know and we've experienced more in our life.
It's called interference.
So I didn't know anything when I was in high school.
My memory was better because I had nothing to interfere.
Now I have so much to keep track of.
I don't, I give myself some slack when I don't remember certain things.
That's why I have an assistant to tell me what I really need to remember.
But I'm not worried, because there is a lot of interference in my life and I take that into account.
Yeah, and if we wanna strengthen our memory, what would you suggest?
Yeah. So strengthening your memory is all about being present to what you really wanna remember, using those four techniques.
Now, you can't make something emotionally resonant unless you try and make it funny, so that's actually one technique that I've used.
If I really want to try and remember somebody's name or something, I try and create a funny image about it, but, sorry, repetition, repetition, repetition will help your memory, no problem.
Association can help, so if you can associate this person, or this name, or this concept with something that it reminds you of to help those kind of recall lines that you can have to this memory that can help as well.
You can't make something novel if it's not completely novel, but it's not, unfortunately, a magic bullet.
Wendy, you've been so kind and gracious with your time today.
I feel like I've learned so much.
We've talked about absolutely everything.
I really hope that everyone goes and grabs a copy of your book, Good.
Thank you. It's brilliant.
I think there's a need for us to use anxiety in the way you're saying, rather than this desire to avoid it.
We end every episode with a final five, so these questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
So Wendy, these are your final five.
The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
Your brain defines who you are, take care of it.
Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever had or received?
Put your head down and work as hard as you can until you reach your goal.
I'm the one that told me that, that bad advice.
I love that. Question number three, what's something you can't wait to discover about the brain?
I would love to discover how to enhance joyous memories more easily.
I love that. Question number four, what's something that you used to think was true about the brain, but now isn't?
Oh, well, we used to think back in the early 1960s that the adult brain had no capacity to change or grow.
And my whole neuroscience career has been showing how that could happen, how do you make it happen more, and what are those activities that you can bring into your life to do that beautifully.
Why did we believe that?
Where did that come from?
It came from the point in time we were in neuroscience.
There was just no evidence that there were overt changes.
We didn't have deep enough microscopes to see the molecular changes, even the structural changes that we can now see very easily with our more powerful tools.
And so, understandably, they said, oh, I see no evidence for change.
Once you reach adulthood, I see no change.
And so, of course, that was the dogma until somebody said, hey, I think let's look at this in a different way.
And of course that wasn't believed at first, but then with effort, that was the concept of brain plasticity, and now we know that so much can change in the brain.
Is there an age at which certain things can't change?
No, yes. For certain things, language, there's a language change.
I think it is—don't quote me on this—around 10 years old.
It's good to learn the languages before that.
That could be a little bit on the low side.
Also vision, it's really important to get bilateral good vision.
And so, if you have amblyopia, it changes your vision.
Those are things that change with age.
Alright. Fifth and final question.
We asked this to everyone who's ever been on the show, if you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?
You must make at least five deep friendships in your life.
That's beautiful. Thank you so much.
Dr. Wendy Sizigu you are incredible, that was so much fun.
I had a great time with you.
Thank you for being so personal as well with an open about your own journey with grief and I hope you'll come back onto the show.
I would love to thank you so much.
Yeah, thank you very much, thank you.
If you love this episode you'll enjoy my interview with Dr. Daniel Aiman on how to change your life by changing your brain.
If we want a healthy mind it actually starts with a healthy brain.
I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged.
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