How to Stop Overthinking: Train Your Default Mode Network

What they found is that happiness equals love, full stop, right? That the more love there is in your life, the more you flourish, the more successful you are in your career as well. And so the connection system has really important systems in there that allow us to actually collaborate effectively, to have high-performing teams, to create psychological safety.

Your boss sends you a message. Can you talk? One part of your brain assumes you've done something wrong and you're about to be fired. Another starts hoping they have picked you for a prized project and it's going to help you get promoted. A wiser part of you pauses and asks, what is actually happening here? Those three reactions sit at the heart of today's conversation. My guest is Zui Kwok, founder of Calm Clarity and author. of her book, Calm Clarity, which was named one of Fast Company's best business books of 2018. Zuey grew up in poverty as a refugee in inner-city Philadelphia, graduated from Harvard and Wharton, and went on to leadership roles in consulting and private equity. In this episode, you'll learn how to recognize which one of the 3 brain states are you operating from: the survival-based Godzilla state, the dopamine or craving-based Teen Wolf state, or the wiser inner sage Brain 3.0 state. Zwei shares simple practices to, one, recognize where are we operating from and shift in real time from reactivity to clarity. You'll also learn simple team rituals that can help you operate your teams to ensure that your team members are operating from their highest capacity, even under intense pressure. Let's dive in. Zwei, I am so excited to have you on our Flourishing Edge podcast, my dear friend.

Oh, I'm delighted to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

So look, I had the pleasure of reading Calm Clarity. For those who haven't heard about it, its subtitle is A Mind Hacker's Guide to Shifting into Brain 3.0. So we're gonna talk about that framework of the different states of the brain in which we can operate and the power that we actually all have to not let the stress, dysfunctional systems, organizations in which we might operate not let those systems take over and get inside us and shape who we become. And I love the tools you offer, and I love your framing and that promise that that is a capability that's actually available to everyone. So I wanna get into that a little bit and talk about, Zue, what is that capacity inside all humans that allows us to engage with dysfunction without internalizing it? And why does it matter? So urgently right now?

Well, it matters now because so many of the systems around us, it feels like they're crumbling and they're not serving us anymore. And so it's time for us to create better systems. And I think that's what we're all being called to do. Now, all of us were born, you know, we're all human beings with this capacity to make an impact on our environments in a way that no other species can. Right. And there are things in our brains that are similar to that of all other species and things that are slightly different that enable us to elevate our consciousness and connect to a greater purpose. And some people call this an inner wisdom, an inner sage, a higher self. Some people attribute it to a spiritual divine being, however you think about this, right? And so, but when we learn how to build the neural systems that enable us to embody this higher self that we can be, we are able to elevate our performance. We elevate the way we connect. We elevate the way we see the world around us, the way we navigate the world around us. And we no longer just react. We come out of this reactive state of survival and we take on this agency that we can steward what we have to create something better.

Yeah. You know, it reminds me a little bit, takes me back to the Siddhartha story of the Buddha, this notion that, you know, Buddha was just another You know, human being. He was a prince. He was raised in the most ultimate of the luxuries, guarded from all sufferings till he decided to wander and recognized and saw somebody who was sick, somebody who was old, somebody who had died, and was quite dismayed to realize that there was so much suffering in the world. And all of those 3 things were going to happen to him. And no amount of money and no amount of guards and no amount of palaces weren't gonna protect him from him. And his inner journey to figure out a way to develop a capacity to get past that suffering to a higher state, that's what I've loved about that story. And I think that's a little bit of what you're pointing to, is to say life has suffering, but we don't have to suffer through it incessantly. We can build our capacity. We can build the capacity to enlighten our inner Buddha, our ability to not just not survive the dysfunction, but to actually start to affect the system around you.

Yeah, I love that you brought up the Buddha because he was a great inspiration for me. My family ancestry is Buddhist, but I never really understood the teachings. And, you know, someone who grew up in inner city Philadelphia who was a refugee, I was more practical. I was like, how do I get a job? How do I get an education? How do I figure out how to achieve financial stability and security? And so, and it was important for me to make a difference, but I saw it in more practical terms, like go get a good job, get an education, support nonprofits, maybe build a nonprofit one day. And that journey of wanting to make the world a better place through building skills, right? It led me to Harvard. It led me to Wharton to get an MBA, to do management consulting like you did. It led me to go into private equity and social impact investing. But then I was like, you know, now I don't really know how I can make the world better just with these skills. It felt like something was missing. And in 2012, after working for a social impact investor who was doing a lot of things that was really toxic, I realized having wealth wasn't the answer necessarily. And there was something missing. And I think I heard the Dalai Lama say something like, there can be no world peace without inner peace.

Yes.

And I knew he was right because I had been working with people who were just so toxic to be around no matter how much money they had. And so I was like, well, let me experience more of what the Dalai Lama's talking about, 'cause I don't know inner peace either. And I decided to walk away from that job, buy a one-way ticket to Dharamsala, sit through all these different meditation retreats in silence, and then go to the Buddhist pilgrimage trail and see what this historical figure, the Buddha, wanted us to understand, 'cause I didn't really know who He was, I knew the legends and the stories, but when you actually walk the path that he was on and you see the monuments, you're facing this real human being and wondering who he really was, what he actually experienced, what he actually taught, and trying to make sense of that in the contemporary context, right? And what occurred to me as I went through this journey was he was a scientist. He observed himself. He practiced this thing called mindfulness to build what scientists now call meta-awareness. What was hijacking his attention? What were the stories, the mental models he had of the world? Did they serve him? Did they not? How distracted was this thing called his default mode network? How quickly did it scatter? Would it go to the things that are rewarding, right? Where we experience pleasure, we experience status, or how quickly it would get hijacked by thoughts of worry and fear and threat. And the Four Noble Truths that he finally gave to the world was Often translated as there is suffering in life, but he basically said there's dukkha, and dukkha isn't necessarily suffering, it's just unsatisfaction. No matter what you go through in life, you're never really happy. There's always something that could be better. You know, this is perpetual state of not being fulfilled and having something bother you. And then he said the sources or the origins, the causes of this is that we are ignorant of how the bigger picture, what's actually happening, who we really are. And then we have these illusions of what's going on, right? And we have this thirst, these cravings, the dopamine system that makes us chase things. And if we don't get them, we experience the afflictions, agitation, agony that we didn't get what we wanted, right? We beat ourselves up and so forth. So he unpacked that. Then he says, well, but there's a solution to this. There is a remedy. There is a medicine for this condition. And the path out of this, they call it the Noble Eightfold Path, was to change the way you see the world, to have a view that is higher, right? More noble, a view that's more elevated, to live for a greater purpose, to have positive intentions like compassion, to want to serve people, to not to cause harm, to take ownership of your livelihood so it doesn't create damage, right? And so, and so forth. And then to practice exercises that give you discipline, That make you aware of your thoughts, align yourself so that what you think, what you feel, what you say are all in harmony, what you do, they all create a positive impact, a virtuous impact on the world. And he basically taught people how to steer their brain development, how to become the best version of them. And that's what the Noble Eightfold Path does for people who understand how to decode it and how to follow it.

Yeah. And you know, Zwei, what I love about your work is you've really taken all of that wisdom both studied but lived and combined that with your deep neuroscience studying and experience and brought it from the ivory tower or brought it from the wilderness into our day-to-day practical settings. And that's been the basis of your work on calm clarity. That's been your Brain 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 system structures. And so I want to go there next because I find it is so accessible. It's accessible To both those who might not be as scientifically inclined, but it's also accessible to those who might not be as spiritually inclined and wanna go that down that path either, which I think between the two captures a lot of people. And so let's go there. Let's bring to life, you know, what are these 3 states of brains that we all go through? What each one of them, how they help us, but most importantly, how they can hold us back. And so let's start with Brain 1.0.

Well, first I just wanna give a little bit of background that what we're unpacking is what scientists call the default mode network. So this is a part of the brain that is continuously self-activating. When they put people in fMRI machines, they realize the brain never really rests. There's something always going on. And they studied what does this default mode network that's always active do? They realize it's constructing a mental model of reality. It's helping you then engage with your mental models to plan your life. To look at the past, to look at the future, to navigate social relationships or awkward situations. And so it's evolved and it's to be, to serve a critical purpose of having us be social species, right? We can live in tribes, we can live in cities, we can go to schools and have friends. You know, we can have what they call the Dunbar number, about 150 contacts that the default mode network can actively track, right? With all these relationships. But the downside of the default mode network is that it gets so easily scattered. It can make you ruminate. It can lock you in cycles of endless worry, doom scrolling. It can lead to self-sabotage, right? And so the default mode network allows us to function if we train it. And if we don't train it by building 4 critical neural systems, then it just gets pulled by— it just reacts to the environment around us and it goes into survival mode, right? Yeah.

And that's the power. It's the default mode network. And the default doesn't have to be one state. You can train it to be in different states.

Exactly. And so where I grew up in inner city Philadelphia, where you have intergenerational poverty, you have crime, drug abuse, you have all these under-resourced communities that are suffering, that are in despair, that are marginalized, that don't have the opportunities they're looking for, that they need. The default mode network of a lot of people go into what I call brain 1.0, which is— these structures are fully formed when we're born. People describe it as the threat system. Some people call it the amygdala. But the amygdala is much more complex than that, cuz it can be the threat system and the compassion system, right? Extreme altruists have a larger amygdala than everyone else. And so with the people being trapped into brain 1.0, it's because when you're constantly under-resourced, right, your body battery can never generate itself so that it can allow functional brain development. So a lot of times the networks for emotional intelligence, for executive functioning, for metacognition, don't fully develop if you're growing up in that state as children. So when you have trauma, you have dissociation, you have the impairment of your brain, and so you can get locked into brain 1.0. Now the next state I call brain 2.0, which is your dopamine system.

So before we go there, right? So just let's for a moment, you know, you talk about when you grow up in these impoverished environments that are under-resourced, marginalized, You can grow up to become hypervigilant. You're in survival mode. You're in a contracted state. But I think what I wanna bring to our listeners is even if you don't grow up in that place, right? You're like, well, I didn't grow up in an inner city school. I didn't grow up with a single mother. I didn't have an alcoholic father or whatever those things are. Even in our day-to-day lives, in the world that we are living in, I think this is becoming more and more normal. Whether it is the shootings that are, you know, that we hear about in the news, whether it is hurricanes and fire events, right, that so many parts of the US and the world right now are kind of experiencing. There is so much happening around us. And when we grew up in those states, I think these are— people think about trauma as the big T, but there are also microtraumas that, you know, people experience in their day-to-day states that can put us and strengthen our brain 1.0 system more than we would want it to.

You're right. And I'm glad you brought that up because, you know, during the pandemic when I reconnected with people who are in leadership positions who supported Calm Clarity, they saw it more as a nonprofit program for people in need. For the first time, they had to live in Brain 1.0 on a constant, chronic, daily basis. They said it was really hard and it had this very negative effect on their wellbeing.

Yeah. And I, that's why I wanted to highlight for our listeners, this is not just if you grow up here, you need to think about this. I think The reality is, so I was looking at this work at the firm, and what I found often was 70%, 80% of people are operating in a sympathetic fight, flight, freeze nervous system. They're constantly on. There are multiple things going wrong in the world. And often then they're operating in 2.0. They want something that's not happening. It's in their OKRs. And so they're struggling from that place. And I think this is very much a lived reality for people. So I wanna go into the Brain 2.0 system, but I wanted to just make that point to our listeners. This is applicable to all of us. It's applicable to our children who are growing up. And that's the power of this work around really taking control and saying, I actually wanna shape the default mode network. I wanna change how I experience the world.

Yeah, definitely. And when leaders are going about making decisions in Brain 1.0, it impacts hundreds of thousands of people, right? And so Brain 1.0, those structures are fully formed when we're born. And then as You know, the brain develops through adolescence, the structures of Brain 2.0 become more prominent and often start to drive us. And I'm talking about the dopamine system, right? So this idea of needing to take risks to experience excitement, you know, the thrill-seeking, the popularity-seeking, the FOMO, like if all my friends have something, I need to have it too. You know, this all-or-nothing way of thinking. If this one person I have a crush on doesn't like me, I'll be single the rest of my life. I'll— no one will ever love me. You know, this way of thinking all or nothing being so rigid and fixated. That's definitely like the mark of adolescence, right? And so Brain 2.0 starts to drive people and we evolved that way for a reason. Like in tribes, like the adolescents take more risks, go on more exploration and discover new things, right? So it's important that we have Brain 2.0, but the question is if it hijacks us, if it's dysregulated, then we have addiction. We have alcoholism, we have what people are talking about, social media addiction. And when it gets fully dysregulated, people become depressed and suicidal 'cause they can't experience those thrills anymore.

Yeah. I love, you know, the work you've done with inner city schools. I've loved your shorthands for these. So you call it the Teen Wolf mode, right? And I have a 16-year-old and I've seen him as he's grown from, you know, over the last 4, 6 years. And yeah, you start to kind of see this system start to activate. All of a sudden, peers and what they think about you starts to matter in a really big way. By the way, and it continues on even much further along the way. When we study adult development theory, which I've done a lot of work around, you move from a self-sovereign state to a socialized state. But both of those states, you're predominantly operating From a 2.0 system, right? In self-sovereign, it's all about me and how I see the world. But in a socialized, you're trying to fit in and really you're starting to conform to the norms. And that's where, frankly, 80% of the people operate in those brain 1.0, 2.0 states, unless we actively work to shift away and operate differently and learn to move beyond just the reward dopamine system driving everything or a fear system driving everything.

Exactly. And so this next state for the default mode network, this next mode, I call it Brain 3.0 cuz it comes later. And for many people, it doesn't fully mature until your mid to late 20s. But by that point, Brain 2.0 and 1.0 have become our default. They're so strong. And it will be a long time before Brain 3.0 neural pathways become as strong or stronger than Brain 2.0 and 1.0 unless there's some type of deliberate practice, some deliberate exercise. And so across the world, you know, in all these different cultures from ancient times until now, there have been spiritual practices and rituals. Teachings have given us many tools to build Brain 3.0, right? The teachings of Moses with the Ten Commandments was one attempt, right? You have the rishis, the sages of India with the Vedas. You know, giving us some tools. Patanjali gave the Yoga Sutras, you have the practice of the asanas. The Buddha gave the Eightfold Noble Path. Christ gave his teachings, love your neighbor as you love yourself, right? And then indigenous practices also have different ceremonies and rituals to honor and build Brain 3.0 in community. Yeah.

Union, you know, this notion of union. We are not self. I think 1.0 and 2.0 to a large extent are built on the ego and the separation of the self from the other, which is important for self-preservation. It's important for procreation and growth, but often becomes the limiting factor because it also can disconnect us from a fundamental state of interbeing.

Well, so then I wanna bring up the research of Lisa Miller. So her book is right there. It's called The Awakened Brain. And what she found is that when people awaken, right, to the sense of spirituality, and doesn't mean religion, it could be atheists, you have this Experience of all nature, but whatever it is, when we have a spiritual experience, there are 3 commonalities, right? We feel loved, we feel guided, and that we are not alone. The sense of separation between self and other kind of blurs, and we experience a sense of oneness, right? This interconnectedness with everything. So there are brain regions that activate and they are the opposite almost of a depressed brain. So when someone's going through depression, they feel alone, they feel unloved, and they feel disconnected, right? That they're totally separated and, you know, there is no connection to something bigger than themselves, right? And in her research, she found that depression is kind of a vehicle. As you question things, it pushes you to activate those networks, to build those networks, to move from what she called achieving awareness to awakened awareness.

Hmm.

And when you shift into awakened awareness, your mental models move from brain 2.0 to brain 3.0, right? So the mental models of brain 2.0 is you gotta get things done, you got to achieve things, you got to get all the credit, you have to fight for it. There's a scarcity driving brain 2.0 and 1.0, the dog-eat-dog world. You have to run the rat race, things like that, right? But as you move into awakened awareness, the mental models change. Like, I'm here to serve a greater purpose. I'm here to create a positive impact. I'm here to leave the world better than the world I was born into. And something is guiding me. If it's my inner wisdom, if it's my higher self, if it's angels, if it's ancestors, if it's whatever you call it, there's something guiding me to become a better human being, to grow and evolve. And when bad things happen, I might actually realize they were opportunities inviting me to change who I am, to grow a skill, to get out of my comfort zone, to grow into the person I'm meant to be.

So let's take a real scenario to make this specific for our listeners, right? And this happens all the time. Let's say you're working and your boss sends you a message, hey, can we talk? And you have no context. Walk us through in the next 30 seconds, if you are experiencing this message from a brain 1.0 or a brain 2.0 or a brain 3.0, how might each one— how would we feel? What would we tell ourselves? And frankly, what would we do?

Sure. I mean, there is the context of your past relationships with your boss and whether your default mode network is predicting based on past experience, something that's probable versus improbable, right? So for instance, my parents like to call me during emergencies and have me fix their problems. So whenever they call me, a part of me thinks, is it an emergency? Do I need to take it? Even though it's only 1 out of 100 calls that it's the emergency, I'm still wondering how bad it is. And it's usually like, can you help me fix this app so I can get a coupon? You know, it's not urgent at all. But coming back to this, so someone's default mode network, its job is to try to predict and make sense of what's about to happen. And so they can respond accordingly. So that's a very important job. In Brain 1.0, if you're in a sense of threat, you're like, oh, did I mess up? So is he calling me in because I destroyed a project or I did something wrong and he's upset at me?

There is something going on that, you know, I'm going to get fired. What did I go wrong? We go into our worst case doom scenario.

So you start catastrophizing, right?

Yes.

That's in our assessment. That's one of the items, like how often do you catastrophize? That will tell you how often your brain won't— you're navigating the world in brain 1.0. And then in brain 2.0, you're just like, maybe I'm gonna get promoted. Maybe he's gonna congratulate me. He's gonna— she wants to tell— talk to me and tell me something, gimme an important project, or I need to make sure my boss is happy. I have to say, if I have to say yes, I'll come right by, like I have No, I have to drop everything, do exactly what he wants or she wants, make the boss happy, and then I'll be OK. No pushing back whatsoever, right?

So here, you're not operating from, I'm going to get fired, but you're operating from, oh my God, he needs me. Let me drop everything. Let me make him happy or her happy because that's— I'll get promoted and something good will happen from it, right? So it's, again, that reward. I love that. And what would a Brain 3.0, if that person was operating in that moment from a Brain 3.0, How would they interpret and move?

Well, then that person would be like, okay, my, if you have a reasonable relationship with your boss, like you, your supervisor, and you do talk often and you have a sense like, okay, they just want to chat about something, then you can write back and say, I've got these things on my plate right now. Here are times that work for me. What times work for you? And if it's more urgent, just let me know.

Yeah. You know, it's funny. I had this thing happen with somebody who was, who I was working with. last year, and this was a real scenario. So I had called. There was something that had happened on that Friday, and she had to take care of something. So I knew there was something going on personally. So, you know, I was driving back on Saturday, and I just called her, and I got her voicemail, and I left her a voicemail. And really, the call, I mean, I was just calling to make sure she was okay. Things had settled down. Things were fine. But because we had a supervisor Relationship. She called me back on— she called me back and she said, you know, when I first heard your number, my heart jumped because I'm like, oh my God, what does he need? What does he want from me? Why is he calling me on a weekend? I know I kind of couldn't work in the second half of the Friday, but is he expecting something else to be done? And when she said it, when I heard your message, it was just really just all about— in fact, I actually said, hey, listen, no need to call me back. I just want to call and make sure you're okay. Things are fine. If I can be helpful, just reach out to me. And she said, I've never had anybody do that, but my brain immediately went to, you want something. I never actually thought you would call to check how I was doing. But this notion of our brain can always go to the worst case. We hear something, we can go that way. And it depends on the relationship with the person, right? Of course, and the context. But I think it's an invitation to recognize that we have different set of choices. And I loved your 3 states that you described. One is I'm gonna get fired. Second is I'm gonna get promoted. Third is, hey, there is, there is, he needs to talk to me or she needs to talk to me. Let's go have a conversation, see where it goes and what, you know, how does it fit and where you can do to be helpful, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think so many scenarios in life, if we're able to unpack like, what is the brain 1.0 part of me saying? What is the brain 2.0 part of me saying? And what is the brain 3.0 part of me saying? If you can write it down, that's actually one of the exercises in our program to build better awareness, then you can step back and say, All right, so which one is more helpful? Like, if I listen to each of these voices, what could the outcomes be and what would most serve me and the people that I'm interacting with?

This conversation is brought to you by Happiness Squad, where we help leaders build new mindsets, new habits, and transform their ways of working to truly flourish. If you're ready to unleash the untapped human potential In your organization and operate at your best, come visit us at happinesssquad.com and start your journey today. That I'm interacting with. So the other concept you talk about in the book, which, you know, you and I are exactly on the same page, our Rewire program is built around the same concept, is you talk about building the Brain 3.0 muscle, right? So if you want to strengthen a muscle, you actually have to practice. Neuroscientists would say neurons that fire together wire together. So talk to us a little bit, Xue, from your work, are what are some ways in which we can learn to shift from 1.0 and 2.0 to 3.0? Sure.

And there's been new research that's come out since I wrote the book that shed light on the findings from contemplative neuroscience over the past like 18 years or so. One of them being Altered Traits over there by Daniel Goleman and Richie Davidson. And what they share is when they look at across the body of contemplative research, Contemplative neuroscience research, what they find is that mindful mindfulness practices shape and grow and strengthen 4 specific systems. So one is attention system. Can you focus without having your attention pulled away by your default mode network or other distractions, right? The next is your meta-awareness system. Can you just see what your attention system is doing, where it is that is not doing what you want? Right? Can you, are you aware of what you're aware of, what you're paying attention to? Can you see your stories? Can you step back from your patterns, right? The next system is the resilience system. So as a result of being able to monitor yourself, can you change what you're focusing on so it's less arousing? So if you can learn how to focus your attention away from things that are causing stress, for instance, right? And, or if you know a story is causing you to be more agitated, to not focus on that story anymore. Right? So it's just like being able to monitor yourself, but also this interoceptive awareness where you can read your body and whether the signals are coming in that brain 1.0 has activated or brain 2.0 has activated, and you now need to take steps to calm your body, to take care of yourself, to recover, right? So that's the resilience system. And then there's the connection system and the resilience and connection system are intertwined. So people who have strong, meaningful social support networks, are more resilient than people who are isolated. Of course, a lot of the research will show, like the Grant Study at Harvard, where they follow people for like 60+ years, what they found is that happiness equals love, full stop, right? That the more love there is in your life, the more you flourish, the more successful you are in your career as well. And so the connection system has really important systems in there that allow us to actually collaborate effectively, to have high-performing teams, to create psychological safety. But it really requires that you first have some degree of attention, meta-awareness, and resilience to build these relationships that you don't self-sabotage, right? To build trust.

And it's really, really powerful, right? Attention, we only take in less than 2% of all the stimulus that we are, that our brain is processing, you know, because the brain is the most energy-hungry organ that we have. And so knowing what you're paying attention to and what you're not, I think is an important one. And if you want to test how little we pay attention to, my favorite video to watch, we use it for many of our trainings, is the video where you have a bunch of basketball players who are kind of passing the ball. And I'm curious for you to go watch that video and see if you can count how many times a player passes a ball from a black ball from one to the other. Go watch that video and see if you can actually count The number of times that happens and then reframe that. I love meta-awareness too. Most people just know what's happening in their heads. They're disembodied. They actually don't know what's happening in their bodies, but they also are not aware of their own awareness, their own stories, their own beliefs of what they're actually, how they're making sense of it, right? So this notion of—

Yeah. They, so they're not aware that the default mode network is simply spinning a bunch of memories out there that are associated somehow with what's happening in front of them. So we call it the associative activation cascade. So if I start talking about my grandmother, more or less likely you'll start having memories of your grandmother come up and you start thinking about her and things like that. So we can all trigger each other's associative activation cascades, but that's not necessarily what's useful right now. And so the met-awareness is a way of saying, hey, what is, what do we really need to talk about? And are we covering that? Or what do I really need to focus on right now were the stories that would actually help me move forward to making this decision, right? And so we don't really realize how the default mode network can just kind of spiral into something else, go down rabbit holes, and we're just constantly distracted. And social media is a way to keep the default mode network totally distracted.

So I love those 4 capacities, right? Attention, meta-awareness, resilience, and connection. If I had 10 minutes every day to focus on this because I'm incredibly busy and I've got too much things going on. How would you train these 4 capacities?

Well, I guess the important thing is to build the awareness of what those capacities involve. So we're building an assessment app, an app where you can use it to track the patterns that bring you into Brain 1.0, the patterns that bring you into Brain 2.0, and the patterns that bring you into Brain 3.0. And then we can also in the app help you assess like how strongly developed are the competencies of your attention system, meta-awareness system, connection system, and resilience system. And now you have an idea of what are your strengths and weaknesses. So what are the specific patterns that are pulling you into Brain 1.0 or 2.0, and what are your strengths in Brain 3.0? 'Cause for every person it's gonna be different. And so this idea that there's a one-size-fits-all is one of the challenges where everyone has their favorite go-to practice, but it doesn't necessarily resonate for someone else because of neurodiversity.

For sure.

Right? And so what we recommend people do is to assess themselves, find out what are those patterns, and then think about what are the ways to shift their specific patterns.

But I'm curious, right? So there is always customization to fit to the particular neural, the way an individual is. But having said that, there are certain ones that work for a large number of people. So I'll give you an example, right? In our program, we have 32 micropractices. Almost everyone, that has gone through our programs find one of these 3 to actually have a big impact on them, right? Starting their day mindfully or ending their day mindfully through either a gratitude or a positive things practice, and then integrating some recoveries. I think there are other ones, like for some gratitude works, for some positive things works, right? For some, they can't meditate just sitting down, but a walking meditation or an eating meditation is actually a much more easier accessible thing for them. So that's what I'm curious through the programs. And now you've worked through so many students, you've done this work in organizations. Are there certain go-tos? Like, what are the top 3 that a large number of population and our listeners could say, hey, go try this, go do the assessment, but this might be a good place to start because our pattern recognition suggests that it might actually work for you? Sure.

Well, the first is that we recommend people practice building their meta-awareness system, cuz everybody has challenges with meta-awareness. And so it's like a breathing meditation, but your goal is actually to observe what your default mode network is doing and being able to note it. So is it thinking about lunch? Is it planning for a meeting? Is it, you know, so just to get an idea and is it sticky? So if it keeps coming back to the same thing, then that, that's a signal that Brain 2.0 is activating and kind of fixated on something, right? And so you have to get to know what your default mode network is doing and whether what it's doing is helping you and do you have to direct it to another topic. And what people don't realize is you can actually talk to your default mode network and say, it's not helpful right now to keep thinking about food. I need you to help me study for this test. So help recommend ways that has worked for me in the past and turn your default mode network into an inner sage or inner coach, right? So you can actually ask it questions and say, And give it feedback and saying this is helpful or not helpful, you can actually train it. It evolved as your personal assistant in some ways, like your concierge system inside your brain. So I advise people to just get to know it and you'll see patterns. Like if you just had a breakup, it's gonna ruminate on all the things that went wrong or if you could have fixed it. Or if you're preparing for a presentation, you're gonna, it's gonna tell you all the ways you might bomb if you're in Brain 1.0, or it's gonna just make you memorize tips again in Brain 2.0 to nail things. And then Brain 3.0, it's basically helped remind you of the outline. Here's the big picture. Here's the definition of success. Don't sweat the small things, right? So there are different ways your default mode network can work. And so first is just to get to know it and befriend it. And in Tibetan, the word for meditation is gom, just means to become familiar. And the word for meditation hall is gompa, the place where you befriend your mind, basically. The second practice I recommend everyone do is a body scan, like a quick body scan to get to know Where in your body are there signals that Brain 1.0 activated and where in your body are the signals that Brain 2.0 activated? So for instance, for Brain 1.0, there's clearly too many, for many people, a contraction. So you're pulling in, sometimes you're trying to become invisible, right? There's like this clenching of your fist or your jaw. You know, there are signs of Brain 1.0. And then for other people, Brain 2.0 becomes like this rigidness. You have to have things done one my way or the highway. There's a restlessness to it. There's a sense of impatience, right? Like, why can't it be done now? Like, why do I have to wait?

Yeah. Why isn't it moving fast enough?

Exactly. So that's a clear signal of brain 2.0. Like things start racing. So it's still a sympathetic state. It's still a survival state. Brain 2.0 is how we cope with the things that trigger brain 1.0 by taking action. So long as there's still energy in your battery, I like Lisa Feldman Barrett talks about Your body budget battery. And if it's full, it's easy for us to be in Brain 3.0, but then it starts to drain. And then what the body is now compensating in Brain 2.0 by making us get resources, get things done. As it drains further into Brain 1.0, we're just overwhelmed. We're scattered. There's no more cognitive capacity to process things or problem solve, right? So if you don't give yourself a break and you rest and recover, you're gonna create a mess if you keep working in Brain 1.0 most of the time. And that's where a lot of leaders end up doing things they regret. It's 'cause they pushed themselves and everyone too far. The team's now interacting in conflict. There's aggression, there's bullying because people are just like under-resourced and drained. When you can set up workplaces so that they nurture Brain 3.0, they develop Brain 3.0, they encourage Brain 3.0 interactions, engagement, problem-solving, collaboration, that team is gonna outperform themselves.

So you have a beautiful story when a whole team starts to operate in 3.0, and you shared the story of Eric. Share that with our listeners because I think it is really beautiful, and it is an invitation to consider what becomes possible when we go and make this practice, take it from a personal practice to an organizational practice to drive the change that we want.

Sure. So this was a few years ago. We wanted to prototype and pilot an organization-wide organizational intervention. It was the first time we tested the assessment tools with a real team. And so, this is a mass transit authority in Philadelphia, and Eric had come in as the head of innovation, did well, and then was promoted to leading the budgets teams, the operating budgets, the capital budgets, and the head— and the transformation team. So, he's like, okay, not really a finance person, but he said yes to this. And And the teams had never really worked together before under one person. So he brought me in to do a retreat and help them gel. So as they got to know the concepts of Brain 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and how differently they are, they interact, they talk to each other in those states and how important it was to support each other to be in Brain 3.0, right? And to talk to each other in Brain 3.0 and what exercises helped them. And they took this assessment and for 6 months I checked in with them and talked about what was working and how they were changing their dynamics just by assessing it, by seeing their patterns and seeing for each person what those patterns were that were bringing them into Brain 1.0 or 2.0 and how to shift those patterns into Brain 3.0. And each team had a different dynamic. So they got data and they saw that data change from red to green, from orange to green, right? Their team transformed. They became so much more collaborative and effective working together. They communicated across other functions more effectively. They no longer stewed when there was conflict or bad attitudes, 'cause they realized, oh, that person's just stressed in brain 1.0. He didn't mean necessarily take it out on me. So how can I respond to this person in brain 3.0? And then they'll be more helpful in giving me the data I need, right? And so they saw that impact cross-functionally as well. And he did so well that when this organization then went through a major fiscal crisis, he got promoted to interim CFO. So now he went from running a team of 20 to, I forget, like a team of 1,000. And when I checked in with him, he was like, if it wasn't for the Calm Clarity training helping him operate in Brain 3.0, make decisions in Brain 3.0, he would've not been able to handle this promotion. Like, it's so chaotic. There's so many fires to put out. He would've collapsed in Brain 1.0.

Were there certain team rituals that Eric and the team adopted, things that they started to do together? to more proactively make sure that they were operating from Brain 3.0, especially when things got tough?

So they would celebrate wins, right? So they would say, here are the things we have to celebrate and focus on the positive, right? They would take time to breathe before meetings to help increase the blood flow to Brain 3.0. Yeah.

And just calm and regulate your nervous system down. Right? To a different state.

And then a common thing we teach people is a compassion meditation. So there are different versions, but we try to provide wishes that are— they're suitable for secular environments. So our version is to wish, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be safe, may you be peaceful, may you be prosperous, may you live in harmony, and whatever, like, other things the team wants to wish for each other. And so we can say, may we all be with these different blessings. But when you begin a meeting, before you talk to someone, you say that to them, your ability to engage with that person elevates to Brain 3.0 because instead of seeing this person as an obstacle, you see this person as a human being that you want to be as happy as possible.

Yeah. 3 really simple practices, but that make a big impact, right? I love those 3, and they're easy to do no matter how busy you are. Focusing on gains versus the gaps, focusing on regulating our nervous system. We can do it through a minute. We always talk about most oil and gas companies have safety moments. Why can't we actually have a mindfulness moment where we can just ground and kind of start to get present and regulate our nervous system? And I love this invitation.

Yeah.

You know, Zoe, what's coming up for me is, and for those who might find compassion a little too soft of a word, it's not. Or this notion of like, hey, I don't feel I'm going to start and wish well to all the people in my team. I think here's an alternative for you to consider. Every organization, you're serving somebody. You are doing something to serve somebody. If that makes you feel better, think about all the people who you interact with, which are your teams, the customers you serve. Whose life are you trying to better? You're a food company. You're an industrial company. You're a pharmaceutical company. Send good wishes. And just even this notion of reminding that collectively, you are all working towards the same, and everyone in the end wants to be happy. They want to be healthy. Might work for you. So this is not just, you know, it is not just, and really what you're trying to do is exactly break that divide that I want this and you want something else. And your invitation is, this is something if you practice continuously, we can start to pierce that divide that exists between us.

Yeah. This illusion of separation when we are really working towards a common goal, common good, a common outcome. Income and common definitions of success, right? And flourishing. So, and when we work with organizations, we do say, visualize everyone at this company, all your clients, the community that you impact, and say this, these wishes for everyone, right? And that also helps them to, to see this bigger picture and realize that it's just one big team.

Yeah. Look, this has been fantastic. I want to end with some questions which are rapid fire for you. I wanna ask you, what's a belief you've changed your mind on?

So my first attempt at meditation, I was like, I couldn't do it. So my mind was racing. I was fidgeting. So I was like, meditation's not for me. And I didn't wanna touch it again. And so when I finally did, after the neuroscience came out, when I was watching the Mind and Life Dialogues, I was like, maybe I can give this another shot because I can look at the what's happening in the brain and then practice more accurately or precisely. And I realized, I was like, oh, I can totally do this. I just had bad instructions. If someone tells me to clear my mind, that is impossible. But if someone tells me to watch my default mode network, I can totally do that.

Yeah. And you know, I love Jon Kabat-Zinn's definition, right, of mindfulness. He says it's the awareness that arises by paying attention on the present moment without judgment, on intention, right? Intentionally you're choosing. So it's not about not having thoughts, which is the most common definition of people of, I can't meditate. My brain doesn't stop racing. Your brain never stops racing. The only person's brain who's stopped racing is the person who's dead. So unless you wanna be dead, don't assume that to be the case. But I love that. I had the same Zwei belief that I've changed. What's something you rely on, a habit or a ritual when life gets hard for you?

So I learned this in India, the 4 immeasurables, to just make these wishes. And for me, they ground me into this bigger picture. Like the Four Immeasurables have been recited for at least 2,500 years. It's like, may all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May all be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all never be separated from this state of Sat-Chit-Ananda bliss that is beyond suffering. And may all beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion, free And I add this part, free from karmic entanglement, free from the noise in their mind, right? Their ability to make the world a better place. And so just by saying that and meditating on that, when I went to India in 2012, was what led to Calm Clarity.

Beautiful. What's a book research finding that everyone in this space should know?

Well, I mentioned it earlier, the awakened brain, that we can all shift and become happier and more fulfilled by from achieving awareness to awaking awareness. This idea that you have to get things done versus you're being guided to fulfill your purpose, to learn, to grow. And you're in this journey with a lot of other people and make space for each other, support each other.

You know, I love that book too. It was one of the books I read of my 450 books towards writing my book. And what I loved about that book also is it's a great book for all those who are are, you know, who are not so spiritually inclined, or they think that spirituality is about, it's just woo-woo and it's for somebody else, not me. The first part of her book really talks about how our brain changes for those who are spiritual. And spiritual does not mean believing in God. Spiritual believes being in, you know, a higher order and of something bigger than yourself.

Well, it's not spiritual beliefs. She talks about spiritual experiences.

Experiences, right?

You don't need any spiritual beliefs to have a spiritual experience.

Yeah. our brain becomes more resilient, our heart, our fundamental qualities, less chances of us being in depression, more chances of us being able to bounce back. And I loved that research from a neuroscience point of view and her ways to say, hey, and here's how you can develop that. And so I think I found that to be just beautiful. I love that that had such a big impact on you too. What's a question you wish more leaders asked?

So it's a question I ask myself, what does my higher self want me to do?

Yeah. Beautiful. And just what does that question do for you when you ask that question?

Well, it takes me out of brain 1.0 or 2.0 where I'm like, oh, I can't get this done. Why is it so hard? How come everything is so hard? You know, and where I'm like complaining and moaning and, you know, upset about not having more resources. And then if I ask that question, I'm like, okay, It's this faith that my higher self knows all the obstacles and constraints that I'm under, and it still put me in this situation, right? Like I'm still in this situation because I can still do something. So what does my higher self want me to do?

And my last one, what's a playlist or a song that turns your frown upside down?

I love Jon Batiste. I saw him in concert a few years ago, and I love how he takes classical music pieces and makes them jazzy with improv. So one of my favorite albums is his Beethoven Blues, and he just released Black Mozart, which I'm loving as well.

Amazing. Well, my friend, thank you for the powerful work you're doing. I think I have loved reading your book. I have loved seeing some of your assessments that you shared with me and how you have translated really deep technical scientific research and deep spiritual practices that have existed from generations, just married them together. and made it so accessible, both in language, but also in practice, to allow more and more of us to operate in a Brain 3.0 state as individuals, but more importantly, build organizations where those states are more the standard state versus 1.0 and 2.0 states. So thank you for the powerful work you're doing.

Thank you. And I am so grateful that you appreciate what I'm doing and that you want to explore collaborating together to bring this work to organizations. And, you know, it's gonna be so powerful when leaders, when people who command all of these resources, right, who have so much ability to impact the world, no longer see themselves in Brain 1.0 and 2.0. When they see themselves in Brain 3.0, like, I think the acceleration of transformation is gonna be amazing for all of us. And the more leaders can come into Brain 3.0, the more people can flourish.

Yeah. Yeah. Take care, my friend. Have an amazing rest of your day.

Thank you.

Thank you for joining me on The Flourishing Edge. If today's conversation inspired you, share it with someone who's ready to flourish too. Subscribe, leave a review, and stay connected for more tools to achieve breakthrough performance through flourishing. Until next time, keep learning, practicing, and growing into your fullest potential.