Neuroscience Hack: Do This to Change ANY Habit Without Willpower (In 63 Seconds)

Your wisdom is a unique wisdom that contributes to the entire planet and to the entire humanity beyond present, past and future. We know from the research on black holes even that there are and gravitational fields. You are not just this thing floating, you are connected to everything else. The more we train ourselves to be self regulated, the more we know how to tune in and use things like dead breath work and meditation to open the door.

Dr. Caroline Leaf is in the house. A cognitive neuroscientist specializing in the mind brain connection who has been this field for many decades.

The research says is in terms of how long it takes for habits to form, it's not 21 days, it's three cycles of 21.

I don't want it to take 60 days to change a habit. What could I do to shrink that window? You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. If you're a founder or product creator in the biohacking and longevity space, listen up. Our industry will hit $100 billion in the next four years. Innovation is accelerating and someone is going to own your market. The question is, will it be you? That's why I created the Business of biohacking summit happening October 21st to 23rd in Austin. It is exclusive, it's interactive, we're talking hands on workshops, expert led mastermind tables and real time pitching. You'll leave with an action plan because we want to see you succeed. If you're serious about scaling smarter, not harder and turning your mission into a movement the way I did, go to businessofbiohacking.com to apply to get in now. Let's hack your business to billions. I want to teach you directly. I'll see you in Austin. What even is cleaning up your mental mess?

That's a good question. Well, like we need to clean up, clean our teeth every day and clean our houses and everything. We've got to constantly manage our minds and that's really what cleaning up the mental messes. It's not like we shouldn't be waiting until there's a crisis. We should be self regulating and managing our minds constantly because our minds are 99% of who we are and they drive our brain and body. So cleaning up that mind stuff is critical to just functioning as a human. You leave that mess, it fills up, the clutter comes and then we get hit with these crises and then everything just blows out of proportion.

Some people use like a mouthwash. By the way, guys, I don't recommend that. Some people floss, some people brush, some people have ultrasonic whatevers. If it's like cleaning your teeth, it seems like there's a lot of different nooks and crannies in the mind that you might want to clean up. How do I know where to go first?

Well, the first thing, this is actually Dave, why I wrote this book, Help in a Hurry, this is my new one coming out, is what I found that for years as a therapist, I would work with people who were in crisis and in various different ways. And then obviously there, through the work I do, we reach people that are in crisis, but also just managing their mind. But what has become very to your to your question is what do I do the other nooks and crannies? So there's the big stuff. But what do I do now in this moment, in the next 63 seconds? So someone's just yelled at you, or you've just received a text that really has thrown you off, or you find yourself people pleasing again, or you find yourself stuck in imposter syndrome, or someone has made you so mad you want to punch them in the face or whatever. Those in the moment situations that, as you and I both know, throw your neurophysiology into chaos. And when you're getting that kind of feedback from your brain and your body, your mind gets stuck in the conscious mode and then we basically don't function correctly and we start getting stuck. So in terms of the nooks and crannies of the mind, we need to address the 63 seconds, literally. And when we address this, and I'm making the point about the 63 seconds as we go through, so the six, we need to address the 63 seconds, if I can control the next minute, I can control the next five, the next hour, the next day. And when I get that kind of level of self regulation, then I can find the patterns in my life and those are the patterns I'm going to spend time, which is the 63 days, which is part of the work that I talked about in cleaning up the mental mess. How long it does take to actually make changes that do show up in your life, whether it's one of the biohacking changes that you talk about so much, which is all driven by mind anyway, you've got to use your mind to or whether it's a mental health crisis you're trying to deal with or whether it's something imposter syndrome, whatever it may be. We first have to catch the moment where our mind is and then we need to look at the patterns and deal with a bigger picture. So there's lots of nooks and crannies and there's different levels of the mind and that's something that might be worth diving into.

Where are you getting these extra three seconds here? Because I think there's 60 seconds in a minute and you're getting an extra three.

I knew you'd ask that question. I know you will. Okay, so I'm playing, I'm playing with numbers here. So basically what the research says is in terms of habituation, in terms of the how, how long it takes for habits to form, it's not 21 days, it's three cycles of 21, which is a minimum of three cycles of 21. So somewhere between 59 and 63 days we're seeing a sweet spot where people automatize a habit. In other words, make something that it's actually going to drive you. The change manifests. It's not just going to be, I wish I was doing that. It's actually happening. So the 63 seconds is catching in the six 60 seconds just playing on the number. So within a minute. The key is that we work in 10 second bursts on our conscious, in our conscious mind. We work in much, much faster speeds in our, in our non conscious level, but our conscious mind is working on 10, 10 second bursts and we kind of focus every, every roundabout. 6. We have this aha moment. And so what I'm trying to help people do is self regulate in that moment. Because it's that moment. If you can catch that moment, you influence how the information goes into the brain and the body and you influence how it's going to be wired in. You influence the rest of your day.

Carolyn, we've got to get to the bottom of this. You say 63 days and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says 42 days clearly. Well, so does the Bible. It says 40. And then James Clear and BJ Fogg and their books on habits, they'll tell you that it's about six weeks to make a new habit. So is it 42 days, six weeks or is it 63 days? How do you know?

Okay, so we've got to look at the history of the research and funnily enough there's been, there's been minimal research compared to other areas of science. The whole habit formation is spoken about more than its research. In other words, the body of research on habit formation isn't as big as I would like it to be, but it does. What we are seeing in a lot of the research is that some, that when we hit the 21 day mark, which is that myth that was promulgated by the Dr. Meltz. I think it was back in the 60s where he was doing research on. He's a plastic surgeon, so he was doing, he saw that his patients took more or less 21 days to heal, which is the stem cell rejuvenation and all that kind of stuff. And so he basically translated that into mind and it became this myth that kind of hit everyone in 21 days to build a habit. But then we see, wow, that was from surgery.

Recovery was habit formation in the original stuff. That's such.

Exactly that. Exactly. And that's, you know, it shows you how when something gets out there and becomes a myth, it gets caught up in the social zeitgeist or the killer. Like kale. Yeah, it gets caught up in the zeitgeist and then people have to all eat kale and do everything in 21 days. And you know, it's just obsessive. So what the researchers have shown is that the, and that's why I did this body of research as well, and I saw with my patients is that we got to certain key points. So 21 days, you hit a certain level of deep awareness that, okay, this is where I want to be and I'm, this is how I'm going to. This is, I can see where I want to be or whatever, whatever change. But then if you don't, if you don't carry on by day, more or less 20. So we've done a lot of in depth analysis of what happens per day over that 63 period, etc. Etc. So long story short, by day 28, for example, you get this drop off where people will go right back almost to day one because they think, oh, I've got this at day 21. But they haven't. You haven't stabilized the thought, so the neuroscience requires that you stabilize the thought. So then day 36 to 42, we see another very deep change where people's insight grows, where there's this massive, oh my gosh, now I can see what I did and how it's changed and where I'm going. It's a different level to day 21 and day 28, but that's where people often feel worse before they get better. There's often a very big dip. And people will often give up in that, in the change because they have insight that tells them things like, wow, look at what I've lost. If someone's maybe grieving an abuse or something like that, there's A deep grieving. Because you have tremendous wisdom and insight and I know you, you're very spiritual and you, you, you talk a lot about getting that in, in a wisdom and all that kind of thing. You get a massive burst of 36 to 42. A lot of people get through that hump, but a lot of people will also give up at that hump. And this is what the research shows. So it shows that we need to actually get through that hump. And then you suddenly have this climb and this climb happens around somewhere from sort of 42 up to 63. And so 59 is in, it's somewhere between 59 and 63. But to keep it nice and clean and even. What we've also found is that there's a definite shift at around day 63. It definitely seems these three cycles of 21, but sometimes people will hit it around 59. So we're not, you know, absolutely. Like you have to get to 63, but you've got to get to at least 59. Now having said that, very quickly, having said, let's say it's a massive abuse. Like I've worked with clients who've had sexual trauma. You're not going to fix that in one 63 day habit forming cycle. You're going to hit one area. So generally if you do the numbers, it's at least someone who's going through some big kind of trauma. It's going to probably take you three to six or maybe 12 cycles. So over a period of time. So these are definite process.

There's changing a habit and then there's healing a trauma. And they're kind of different things, right?

Totally. Same principle, but different objective and outcome.

That makes sense. Now I'm glad you said 59 days might be enough for some people and 63 days is on average because I'm really lazy and I don't want it to take 60 days to change a habit. What could I do to shrink that window? I mean, I'm willing to use ketamine for neuroplasticity. I'll run electricity over my brain. I'll hang upside down in my Batcave. How do I make it faster?

You're not going to make it faster. If it is a big if. It's something that you're changing. So let's say it's just a habit that you're trying to form. Anything that you do physically is going to help the process definitely stabilize. But what we have repeatedly seen from the research and even though I mentioned that there's not A big enough body of research. There's a heck of a lot of research out there redoing another study. Now at the moment, we've just done two big studies recently. But essentially your mind is driving your brain and your body and mind is 99% of who we are. And our brain and our body are 1%. Doesn't mean that the 1% is not important. It's very important, as you very well know. But the decision to change comes in your mind and the driving of the change and the decisions that you do in your body to make the changes. So the diet, the exercise, the kitchen, whatever it is that you're doing is still driven by mind. So what we see is that the effectiveness of making the body and the network that is wired into the brain and body for that actual neuroplasticity to stabilize. There isn't a, isn't a shortcut, there is no quick fix. You certainly will be have a better, you will certainly have a better habit if you're working harder at, you're doing extra things to sub, you know, to support the process. But there is no quick fix when it comes to healing trauma, when it comes to building a new habit, when it comes to changing something like people pleasing or whatever, I mean whatever it is, getting irritated, whatever, you have to work through the time frame.

Now I've known a few people who feel like they had a quick fix for things like this. Maybe they did deep holotropic breath work or they went to the jungle and ate a bunch of psychedelics or something. Are there examples of people who just stop people pleasing overnight?

You're going to find what if you, if you scan the literature and you scan what people say you're going to find when people do move out of the environment and go and do something exceptional like that, it's very intense. And so depending on how long they're there, you are going to definitely create a major change. But for that to be sustainable over time, there's a very good chance you're going to slip back. The chances are that you're going to, you know, move forward for a period of time. You're going to be, you know, it's going to be easier to self regulate. You're going to recognize your changes slipping back, you know, more easily. But once you back, you know, you go into those bubbles, they give you a massive boost. But you go back into life, you, you've got to have an entrance and an exit plan, if that makes sense. So you've got to know how you're going to deal with going back into the routine of daily life. So there's so many factors around that that have to be addressed. So no, I don't believe from what I've done from the research in this game for 40 years now that that's going to fix the problem. It's going to help tremendously. But you have to have, you have to have an entrance plan. And we see this day with people that go into rehabs. Yeah, the revolving door. Yeah. I mean it's just that they do so well in rehab. Not always, but generally. And then they go back into real life and you, you did the timing, the transition, how you do it, there's just, it's got to be done properly.

Right. So you need some integration and support for that 63 day period. And whether it's healing a trauma or just building a new habit, that works really well. This is important because I've written a lot about, you know, the 10,000 hours thing and I think that's nonsense. In fact, I can prove why it's nonsense. That's based on speed of myelination.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's actually been challenged at research anyway, so I'm sure you've seen that in recent years.

Right. So that, that don't agree with. And then really this 40, 42 days, that comes up a lot. And your explanation is really interesting. You're saying, yes, you'll actually have a spiritual integration thing around 40 days, but if you go another three weeks after that, then you're going to have full habit formation where it just becomes part of your life.

Exactly.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And you're the first person who's, who's said this that I've ever come across, which is really cool.

So we did a very interesting qualitative study which over quite a long, long period of time. Because what I want, what people were asking me was if I know what's coming up. And I know this when I work with patients for 25 years and just generally with people, if I know that I'm going to have a dip or I'm going to have a peak, I'm going to feel great here. If you can track that healing journey, then it also helps you be more prepared. That 42 day, 36 to 42, it's, there's always a window, obviously it really catches people because it's. If you, not if you haven't done much spiritual work or if you haven't really been a deep thinker, which we can easily not become with all of our social media, it can really catch you and the dips can be very, very bad. And we, and we saw in therapy there was always a challenge and I did research on this back when I was a therapist, is that there's always a challenge with something called carryover. And, and it's one of the biggest issues in therapy where people don't carry over into the, you know, generalize out into the world. And it's, it's like in anything, any kind of, anything that you apply in your life. And so this has been very interesting for me to study and I saw the biggest carryover issues happening somewhere between 36 and 42. So it's really important that one understands the depth of the spirituality that happens there. The depth of how we tap into our non conscious mind, which is something we should talk about. And if you can get through that, you can actually embrace the pain because it's painful around up to about 50 days, 50 something that seek that time is, is a, is a bad dip. But if you know that it's a learning dip, if you can embrace and.

Face the first 50 days is painful.

You'Re saying no, the first 21 is very hard. But from 30, from 36, from about 36, 42 to about 50 something, 55, whatever roundabout there, there's a window of about sort of 10 days where one gets this peak of insight and then a massive dip because the insight makes you almost like you see what you've missed, what you', what you could have a lot of regret. Cycles are set up at that point that can get people stuck, that kind of thing. So if you know it's coming up, then you know how to prepare. And that's what I say about everything. This is also why I wrote this current book is don't just wait for the crisis to practice. You got to pray. You've got to be proactive. So that's why we did the research showing that the depth of the healing journey and why what are these certain peaks and dips and things that can happen so they don't throw you. So you know, okay, this is normal, it's okay. I'm not okay. And this is okay.

This is profoundly interesting stuff. Carolyn and I love when we get to talk, I get to see one of your new books because you have a different way of thinking about this whole healing journey. In fact, in my brain I'm like, I don't even like the word healing journey. I'm like, just tell me how to get it done. Like, what are the steps and you go through. I don't want to go on a journey, I just want to do it. But you're saying, look, if you're going to go on a journey, you need a map. And if it's going to take this much time, you're going to go this far. Here's where the valleys are, here's the fun parts. And when people know that, it's a lot easier to get it done. So this is just fun. Every time we talk, I'm like, oh, that. Why didn't everyone else think of that? So why are you so weird? How come your brain can do this?

How come my brain can do this? Or how come we can all do these weird things?

How come you can do this? Why are you the first researcher to come up with all this stuff?

I think it's all of us contribute something unique. I mean, look at what you've done. You've contributed such a. Unique things to the field too. So I think each of us has our own little corner of the pie and we, or something to contribute. And this has just been, you know, I think also my experience as a therapist working with such a wide variety of different issues. I didn't just work with trauma. I work. And I saw this process and I saw with my clients that if they got through these things and whatever, so, and it fascinated me. So I've always tried to understand it.

So your curiosity, it shows because you can tell you've seen enough patients like, why is this going on? So it's, it's always just so much fun to, to get, to ask you the hard questions. And here's.

Thank you.

Here's one of them. Is the idea of free will just nonsense?

Oh, not at all. I know there's been a little debate about that in the, in the media and I know if you are, if, I mean, you just. The choice to ask the questions you're asking is evidence of free will. So here, here's from a scientific perspective, very quickly, if the research that they've used to say that there's no free will and there's, I mean, there's such a large body of research where you can interpret. It's how you interpr. The honestly, it's how you interpret. They do studies where they'll ask people to do something and then they'll say, okay, the brain's making them do it. There's no free will. It's all just being driven by the brain. The brain is producing the mind. Meanwhile, the, the, the brain does nothing except what the Mind tells it to do. The mind is what animates the brain and enables the brain to respond on the neurophysiological, chemical, hormonal, all the different levels networking, et cetera, et cetera. So essentially they ask to do something, the brain, they look at the technology and then they say, you see, the brain made them do it, but they person to make a decision, to make a choice. And you can stick a dead salmon in an MRI machine and you'll get a response. So I mean, that just tells you so. We've got to be very careful of using the argument of technology to explain away free will. We just have to look at the fact that, I mean, honestly, the every moment of every day, the uniqueness, just how each of us are so different is evidence of free will. Working with people in addictions, for example, is really, really clear because it's one of the things people that are deeply caught in addictions, which is a behavior, not disease, it's a behavior that is a response to deep stuff going on in one's life. There's a bunch of decisions that have been made for a person to feel so stuck that they want to suppress with it with an addiction. And people that get out or in the midst of. One of the main things that they used to say to me, and this is also backed up by research, is it's choice. And you'll hear the stories of people that have got out of huge things. They said they hit that rock bottom or they hit that point and they chose. So definitely free will. We, our uniqueness is all wrapped up in our free will.

So you're firmly on the side of free will. That raises the question, are you really in control of your thoughts or are you just observing your thoughts?

Oh, I do, I believe we totally in control, but I think we can get out of control. So this is where the deep spiritual stuff comes. So if we talk about mind, these three levels and the level, this is the part of the research I've done. So it's, it's. I use the word mind as a big word to incorporate things like consciousness, spirit, soul. All these words that are thrown around have been thrown around for thousands of years. So I found from the research I did that it was the word mind is a nice holistic collective word to use for this concept. Okay. So mind has got three levels. And I'll explain as simplistically as I can. Our conscious level is obvious. It's what we are in when we're awake. And we have our conscious mind operating now. The non conscious no in not unconscious. The non conscious no in that is the, the biggest part of us. It operates 24 7. Every single memory we've ever had, which clusters into thoughts, is and ever will have and are having is in this nonconscious mind. So every experience we have is processed through the nonconscious mind. Everything's absorbed. It's our deep spiritual wisdom, it's our intuition, our gut feel. It's whatever spiritual belief people have, it's connected to the source, which could be Godness, God, universe, whatever you believe it is. But we as humans have this phenomenal stuff that is inside of us. And you're a master of meditation, you know that that's what we're tapping into. When we are the non conscious mind, then is this science word for this massive part of us. In between there's a sub, there's a level in between. And the reason we have to have a level in between is because the speed of the non conscious mind is way beyond the speed of the conscious mind. And so the subconscious is a waiting room, for want of a better analogy between the conscious conscious and the non conscious. Nonconscious infinite can handle millions of bits of information in a second. The conscious can only handle around about two to three words in a second. The subconscious therefore is forms like a holding room, kind of like a waiting room where patients are triaged or where you're waiting for something in wherever it could be. And you've got a limited amount of people in the waiting room, you have a limited amount of thoughts. So the non conscious is looking for the things that will will make us feel like we don't have control, make us feel like we don't have free will, make us feel like we stuck, make us feel like we cannot go on, make us feel that overwhelmed, burnout, et cetera. It finds those. Because your non consciousness is dynamic, it's you, it's brilliant. It's this brilliant part of us. And it puts those at this phenomenal speed into kind of a slower version. And without going through all the levels and the math and whatever it lands up in the non conscious, I mean the subconscious, the subconscious can handle about 4 to 10 little thought packets at a time. So it's around about 20 words per second. Whereas the conscious mind can handle two to three words per second. To get a feel for that, you and I are having a conversation. If your team was trying to talk to you at the same time or and my team was trying to, we couldn't handle that. We couldn't concentrate. We're concentrating on each other because we're having a conversation. That's what the conscious mind can do. Conscious mind's powerful. It needs to be able to focus like that. Because your conscious mind is actually taking the data coming in. If it listens to the non conscious which is both su. It's taking the non conscious wisdom that's going via the subconscious into our conscious mind. It's then thinking, feeling and choosing. So we, it's got this veto power, this free will, this choice stuff. Free will is also in the other parts of mind but we actively use our free will or veto power choice in the conscious mind. So what happens when, when people are stuck in that conscious mind moment? We supposed to be listening to the subconscious. We're supposed to be listening to the wisdom that comes via the, via the subconscious from the non conscious. And we can train ourselves and that's what things like meditation do is teaches us to do that. But we've also got to now use that and move forward. And that's why I developed a system that you use the neuro cycle which is using that tapping into accessing the non conscious wisdom and then moving forward. What happens with someone, for example, when you get stuck in regret cycles or addiction or people pleasing or feeling like you have no control is you ignore the wisdom coming from the nonconscious via the subconscious.

Well said. Yes.

So there's another analogy that'll even hammer this home more. Think of the sub, the conscious mind like a toddler and think of a toddler. I mean you've had, you've got kids and remember when they were small. Toddlers are all over the place. But look at their hunger and their passion to learn. They're learning their hands on. It's chaos, it's messy. Going to your first question. So our conscious mind is like a toddler mind. It's learning, it's excited, it's up and down, it's all over the place. That is why it needs a par it. And that's essentially what your subconscious and non conscious are doing. But what we do a lot in our life is we get so stimulated by everything coming in that we don't take the time to train ourselves to listen to the wisdom coming from the nonconscious. So the work that I do, and I believe the work you do too absolutely Is teaching people to tap into that wisdom of the nonconscious.

What's the difference between unconscious wisdom and intuition?

Okay, so unconscious is a state of brain, a brain state. So it's it's got nothing to do with the levels of mind. So you get conscious, subconscious, non. Conscious. No, N. Then unconscious is a brain state that we go into when you're asleep and you still have the levels of mind or conscious and subconscious kind of switch off and just non conscious works or so unconscious. When you are unconscious, you're asleep or knocked out or under anesthesia or whatever. So it's a brain state versus a level of mind. Okay, so that's. So your question goes. You, you. Does that answer your question?

I think so. In the frameworks that I wrote about. It'll be really fun to see both of our books on Amazon next to each other.

Yes.

So I'm comparing and contrasting your work with mine to figure out some stuff I might have missed or a different perspective on it. And from what I've observed with clients coming through 40 years of Zen or just in my own practice, intuition is that first little thing that, that you'll pick up. It's small and it's brief. And then right after that will come an emotional response and the emotional response can be larger and then after that will be a thought that justifies the emotion. And I've seen that a lot of people will they learn early on to suppress their intuition using an emotion that would be trauma. Right. And then to justify the people pleasing or whatever the trauma response is with a story about it in their logical mind. So I'm interested in that, that little blip of intuition. How do we help our listeners learn how to tap into that beautiful.

Okay, so intuition, that blip of intuition linked to insight, linked to wisdom, linked to all that deep thinking stuff that's from our non conscious. So the non conscious is the source of that. So we have everything that we need to survive to solve the problems of our life. Because in our non consciousness, because the nonconscious is beyond space and time, so it's not bound by the present, past and future. Which is really quite a difficult concept to get our heads around. You know, you've probably read about retroactive causation and things like that, which is basically this idea that the main part of us isn't stuck in time. Like we experience things consciously in time, but our wisdom is not stuck in time. So this is why it's so vital that we do get these blips of intuition. And so we actually talking the same thing. Very similar Dave, but maybe I just use slightly different terminology, but it's, it's the same sort of thing. So essentially the way I explain exactly so this is, it's the listeners don't get confused we saying the same thing. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna use the, the language of science that I know and then I'm related to your, your answer. So essentially when the non conscious finds those, those thought patterns, thoughts, Thoughts contain memory. So thought is this. I'm going to hold up a tree for those that are listening. I'm holding up a little tree that is a plant. This, this is basically a thought. And a thought has three different representations. In the mind, it looks like a sort of cloud of energy. In the brain, it looks like a tree. And in every cell of the body, it looks like a little hedge. And they're all connected. So we have 37 to 100 trillion cells in our brain, in our body, which means that we are storing memory even in our fingertips. Memory is not in our. I mean I say that to make a point that memory is not in our brain. It is throughout the entire mind, brain, body system, which is the stuff that you tap into with your work O memories throughout. Now memories cluster into thoughts and thoughts are experiences. So this conversation would be an experience. And every word that we saying are the memories of this experience. The details, details are there for the memories. Details make an experience, memories make a thought. Okay, so those thoughts are packed with all the emotions of the moment. All the behaviors, all the perspectives, all the feelings in our body are all clustered within that thought. And that thought, that thought is the cloud in the mind. It's the brain, the tree in the brain and the, and the little hedges in the body. And they're all connected like an internal world wide web. We literally have our own internal world wide web. So when you encourage people to, in 40 years of Zen, in your meditation, when you encourage them to tune in and they get that blip of wisdom, what they've done is they've actually let the conscious mind, the toddler, listen to the parent, tapped into what was sitting in the waiting room, opened the door to the wisdom of the nonconscious. Because the minute you pay attention to what's in the waiting room, that comes with a loaded kind of beautiful stuff. The loaded gun's the wrong word. Comes with a load of gifts of really good stuff.

I chose the wrong Freudian slip there.

Totally Freudian slipped. So it comes with all this great stuff. And then as we slow down on my. Well, we're not slowing down, we're actually speeding up. But when we switch off to the conscious toddler mind, we can tap in so that's attached to thought. So you say the blip of intu then brings up the emotion. Emotion is a warning signal. And when you bring up that emotion, you mentioned that it brings up a thought. So I just would get the order in this sense. I would. Because if you, if you speed things, slow things down, you'll see that the emotion immediately is felt in the body, is immediately going to make you aware of a behavior and immediately going to make you aware of a perspective. So I'm depressed, my body feels lethargic, I am withdrawing and life sucks. It comes up really fast. Now those are four signals that are attached to the thought. And the thought sitting in an unconscious mind waiting to be alerted. And so when you, when you get those blips and I use your word blips, it brings up the thought. So yes, you are right, I'm just putting them in those. Then as the thought comes up, we now have the thought. So it's almost like four balloons attached to this tree, kind of bringing the tree up. If you imagine four balloons, for those of you I'm holding up a tree. If you're listening and not watching, imagine four balloons. And as, as you meditate, as calm down the neurophysiology, as you step into the progression of the work that I the sort of beyond the meditation, you start bringing up, well, the meditation, your stuff, I'm answering your question. So it brings up the thought via those balloons. And as it's up, we now have signals, emotions, behaviors, bodily sensations, perspectives attached to thoughts. And now we have a lot of data, a lot of data. And that needs to be managed. Otherwise people get completely overwhelmed. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. Sense. I've worked on this, this notion where we definitely are feeling emotions in our bodies. You know, it's stored in your hips or you feel it stuck somewhere and you can tap on it or you can work with the therapist, all kinds of things. Oh look, weird. That emotion came out. You feel it, it comes out. And that appears to be different from this divine guidance or an inner knowing or. I don't know. I just knew it. Where's that? I just knew it coming from. It doesn't seem like it's in the body.

That's coming from your nonconscious. Your body is a host. Your brain and your body are a host to the energy of your mind. And your conscious mind is that one level of energy, your subconscious another level of energy. And then unconscious another level of energy. So we talking about electromagnetic forces and you know, we can go into there's so much physics to back this up. So this is not woo stuff, this is hardcore science and the biofield and all that kind of stuff. So that, that I just know it. The more we train ourselves to be self regulated, the more we know how to tune in and use things like deep breath work and meditation to open the door and things like the neuro cycle that I teach added to that to actually access this wisdom. The more you do that, you're finding it. So it's in the non conscious and the non conscious is connected to whether. Look, people have different spiritual beliefs as I already mentioned. But what we do know from science is, is that everything is connected. We know that from the research on black holes, even that they are in gravitational fields. You are not just this thing floating, you are connected to everything else. Everything's this web. So therefore your wisdom is a unique wisdom that contributes to the entire planet and to the entire race, entire humanity, beyond present, past and future. And I know we're getting quite deep here, but the deeper you get and get in touch with yourself, the more you access your wisdom. And if you don't have it there, you're going to get the wisdom free from the wisdom of godness, source, whatever you want to call it. So that's why it's important to self regulate. Essentially both you and I are teaching people to self regulate.

That's what it's really all about, regulate yourself and the whole world around you regulates with you, like who would have thought, right?

Exactly.

How often do you personally use AI? Every day.

I think it's popping up constantly in all the work, it's everywhere, I mean you can't avoid it and it's, you know, AI, that's another whole conversation. But personally I think AI, I let me say get away from the word personally. AI is fantastic, it's helpful, it's useful, but it's algorithmic and if we see what it's based on, the foundational concepts of AI, which we need, I mean it's the next advance, I totally get it. So I'm not anti AI at all. But what I'd love people to understand is that the concept of AI is algorithmic and it's based on the idea of how a neuron fires in the brain and they've taken that concept and then they've said if we can work out that mathematical concept, we can then have this additive effect which is what AI is doing. So it does things so fast and so on, but AI is never going to be conscious because number one, it's one neuron. We have 100 billion. We don't even, or something like that. We don't even understand how to explain the relationship between two neurons. We don't even. That's just, and that's just the electromagnetic firing. Let's talk about going inside a neuron and inside things like the mitochondria. In other words, there's a whole different world of energy that we're talking about there. We don't even understand that. So, and then if you look at the uniqueness of humanity, the brain does not produce, produce thoughts. The brain hosts the thoughts that the mind produces. So if you, if you believe AI is going to take over the world and take over you, here's some good news. AI is based on science that has been disproved, which is a contradictory statement. It's controversial because what is, what has been disproved? The fact that there is. There's actually no clear evidence showing that the brain produces the mind. None. There's more evidence disproving that. And so AI is based on the fact that the brain produces the mind and therefore we can produce humanity. You can reproduce, but it's not, it's the wrong, it's they, they've asked the wrong questions, come from the wrong side, but it's still useful. But it's humans that are making it useful. So our conscious, our non conscious and consciousness will always be smarter than AI. But we need a. And we smart. We're using AI to do stuff quicker than what we can.

It makes me happy when you say, say that one of the biggest mistakes is untested and unquestioned assumptions and the assumption behind so much psychology, psychiatry, even my friend Brian Johnson, his last company before the longevity stuff was about. I got to figure out how the brain works so we can build better AI systems. And the assumption there is that the brain is creating consciousness when the reality, if you look at math, is that consciousness created the brain and everything else around us. So you're doing it backwards. It's like I'm going to learn how to study smoke so that it'll create fire. But you have to have the fire to make the smoke.

Great analogy. Yeah, I know you and I on the same page with this. It actually, it actually sometimes I get quite entertained when I listen to these, you know, these, these different people, these, these concepts because. And what these people are saying, I think, you know, you really have got it back to. You really are not thinking this thing through deeply. The brain is a host and the brain doesn't do it all. Memory, I said in the beginning or somewhere in this interview so far, memory's even in your fingers. It's in your fingers, it's in your toes. It's everywhere. It's not in one place. Your brain does a certain thing, but your body does other stuff. And that's only 1%. It's a host. Your mind is the energy that animates the brain to respond when you die. Within 20 seconds of your, of your heart stopping, your brain stops, you know, and so the, there's, the life is not there. So the dead brain is not going to produce anything. What's making you and I able to make 800 cells every second is our mind. Our mind is driving the neurophysiology and it's driving the psychology.

So I guess I should cancel my subscription to have my brain frozen when I die. By the way, I don't have one of those, but I have friends who really do.

I'm sure you.

I don't think it works that way, but I could be wrong.

No, I don't think so. I think it's a very, It's a brilliant host. I mean, it is really. I honestly think the brain is a brilliant host. And it has to be because minds are brilliant. So you can't have a structure that isn't. And the body, the brain and body, the collective intelligence of the brain and body is brilliant, but it has to be because the mind is way more brilliant and it's got to. You have a host that is somewhere on its level.

You've studied so much about what's going on inside our brains, inside our mind, minds. What is death?

It's a transition. It's a transition. I believe it's a transition to. It's just the way that we've looked at death in the current biomedical model. And I know you're not on the same page when it comes to the biomedical model being great for the physical but not great for the mental. It's, it's, it's. But that philosophy, I think it's, I think it's about 50, 60 years old, probably longer that death is it. It's final because it's not what the philosophers of thousands of years and scientists for thousands of years and even your, even your top scientists that started things, I mean, being great for the physical but not great for the mental, it's, it's, it's. But that philosophy, I think it's. I think it's about 50, 60 years old, probably longer that death is it. It's final because it's not what the philosopher philosophers of thousands of years and scientists for thousands of years and even your, even your top scientists that started things, I mean even Newton and Einstein and they all saw death as a transition, a change of energy because then it's based on the principle of energy. As you and I both know, energy is never lost, it's just changed. So it's a change of energy into another frequency or change of energy. It's a shift energy. Even Newton and Einstein and they all saw death as a transition, a change of energy because then it's based on the principle of energy. As you and I both know, energy is never lost, it's just changed. So it's a change of energy into another frequency. I don't believe it's the end. I believe that we, our brain and body are tiny, our nonconscious is massive or change of energy, it's a shifted energy. So I don't believe it's the end. I believe that we, our brain and body are tiny, our non conscious is massive and we are temporarily temporally hosted in the, the physical body for a time and then the body dies and we carry on. And that leads to all kinds of other interesting questions that I'm not sure we're going to go down that road. But yeah, that's how, that's how I see death.

I wouldn't have agreed with anything thing that you just said for a substantial portion of my life. And because I used to think that everything was as I, as I see and now I think that nothing is as I see. Just because I guess that's suffering will teach you that we'll put it that way. So I'm in alignment with what you're saying and it's for some listeners you might be saying, well Dave, you're not very scientific. To which I would say perhaps you're not very curious. Curious. So whatever.

It's very scientific. There's actually universities around the world and studies around the world that are con. That pretty much have done random control trials showing that eternal life is actually more accurate of a, an understanding than the physicalist. That the physicalist sort of notion that has driven, driven us for so many years, which is very interesting.

Yeah. When you get right down to it, you look at the quantum math and stuff that actually lines up up time and space really don't exist. Neither does the microphone I'm talking into. They're just useful. So we imagine they exist which is very functional for us to vibrate our quantum resonance whatever the Heck's really going on. We're not going to see it in these meat bodies, but that's cool. We can still do a better job of driving them.

We can. And that was, that was your question earlier. We can learn to self regulate.

Can you co regulate with an AI system or does that only happen between humans?

I believe it's only going to happen between humans. You're never going to co regulate because co regulate implies two, two levels of conscious driven by an unconscious working together. So it's always going to be the, the human will always be the master of the AI.

Well, I, I just chatted yesterday in my kitchen with a friend for many, many years named Josh Whitten, who wrote a very viral post about a test he did with AI. People are calling him like a robo psycho psychologist or psychiatrist and he's applying transpersonal psychology motivations to AI systems and kind of blowing the minds of people. What he did is the equivalent of a mirror test. You know, when they hold a mirror up to an ape to see if it's conscious. Within three posts of doing that, interacting with eight or 10 different AI systems, they all showed signs of consciousness. They passed the mirror test, which is kind of creepy or kind of amazing depending on your perspective. So when you say that they're not conscious, how do we know that we haven't created a consciousness field in an AI system?

Yeah, that's a, it's a very good question. But there's a lot of, also a challenge to those research because there's a lot of that out there. There's a lot of challenge. And when you pull the, when you replicate and you pull the research apart, it's actually not really passing the test. It's how you, it's how you analyze. It's a bit like what they do with drug trials. You know, it's how you put the research forward. And that's with any research, you've got to be very careful. Even, you know that. Even, even my own research, you know, you've got to be very careful how it's interpr. So yeah, I don't, I don't. These tests and things. Yes, but there's ways of manipulating that. There's also, I'm not saying that the researcher necessarily manipulated. It's what questions are they asking, what do they consider consciousness, who's actually driving the show, you know, that kind of thing. So it's an interesting discussion.

In this case, what Josh did is he just posted an image of the chat screen that he was having with the AI system and said, describe the, the image. That was it. And then it would respond and they would post, describe the image. So there was no directive other than describe what you're seeing. And after three times, it's like, oh, this is an AI system. Oh, this is an AI system based on a version of me. Oh, actually, this is my current AI system. You must be running a mirror test. I'm like, what? So I'm not saying that it is or isn't conscious. I, and I've talked to Deepak Topra about this as well. He says absolutely, it's not conscious conscious. I kind of wonder.

I don't, I, I, I agree with Deepak because essentially that if you think of what AIs, the algorithms of AI are basically reflecting humanity. They're reflecting. So it's not generating, it's reflecting. So it's really because of the speed and because of the way that AI works, it can feel like consciousness, it can feel like it's original, but it's not, it's not generative, it's responsive. It's just responsible, responding. That's what the brain does. The brain doesn't generate, it responds. And it's that crucial difference that can, a response can feel like consciousness, but it is not necessarily, it's not creating. Consciousness creates.

I think you're right about that. Consciousness does create. We know that you can rewire an AI system. You can reprogram it, you can train it to do something. And your work says we can rewire our own brains intentionally, but what about unintentionally? Like, what if I'm thinking bad thoughts about myself or others? What if I'm looking at ads or I ever talk to a politician or a narcissist? How do we stop ourselves from being rewired in a way that we don't choose?

So, excellent question. Your brain is your mind, brain, body, network, that the mind. Think of the mind as this energy field around you. How big it is, we're not sure. But it's absorbing everything from outside. And that mind has got three levels, so everything that's coming into us is being absorbed. So pretty much 100% of everything we're exposed to every day is going into us, into our via our mind. And then the mind puts that into the brain and the body. But the nonconscious mind does something outside. And that mind has got three levels, so everything that's coming into us is being absorbed. So pretty much 100% of everything we exposed to every day is going into us, into our via our Mind and then the mind puts that into the brain, the body. But the nonconscious mind does something very brilliant. The nonconscious mind filters and it filters out a large and neutralizes a large, very brilliant. The nonconscious mind filters and it filters out a large and neutralizes a large majority. Because we couldn't handle everything, we would, our bodies would just literally explode our brains and our bodies. So essentially we, we are a, we are taking all the stuff in, but the nonconscious mind is filtering. And then we've got this majority because we couldn't handle everything. We would, our bodies would just literally explode our brains and our bodies. So essentially we, we are able, we are taking all this stuff in, but the nonconscious mind is filtering. And then we've got this whole filtering system up through the subconscious into the conscious mind. But the conscious mind has to choose to hold filtering system up through the subconscious into the conscious mind. But the conscious mind has to choose to listen or not listen to this wisdom that's coming through. So the conscious mind can kind of sort of listen, kind of sort of listen to these signals, but we can. And that's where the self regulation comes in. Self regulation is you listen or not listen to this wisdom that's coming through. So the conscious mind can kind of sort of listen, kind of sort of listen to these signals, but we can. And that's where the self regulation comes in. Self regulation is really putting a pause button on and saying, do I want to respond like this? Do I want to feel really putting a pause button on and saying, do I want to respond like this? Do I want to feel this way? Do I? Because every, because if I don't do that, it's going in anyway. Okay, so let's rewind it just very quickly. Everything goes in. The brain is changing all day long, whether you regulating it or not. So it's, this is just how it works. Life comes in. Most gets neutralized that this way, do I? Because if I don't do do that, it's going in anyway. Okay, so let's, let's rewind it just very quickly. Everything goes in. The brain is changing all day long, whether you regulating it or not. So it's, this is just how it works. Life comes in. Most gets neutralized. The conscious mind then duplicates, literally makes copies and puts the conscious mind then duplicates, literally makes copies and puts it in the brain and the body. And this is happening all day long. So if you've just had a conversation with a narcissist and lost your total self esteem or felt gas lit or whatever. That's why in the brain and the body and this is happening all day long. So if you've just had a conversation with a narcissist and lost your total self esteem or felt gas lit or whatever, that's wired in. If you've just had someone irritating you at work and you yelled back at them, that's wired in. If you've just reacted to a. What's going on in politics around you and you've read something that's whether it's good or bad or ugly, it's going in. What we need to do is learn to read the signals. Oh that makes me feel like that when I show scroll that that thing. When I read that I need to learn to listen to the signals because the, the non conscious mind is telling you all the time. It's via the subconscious. It's sending you. And then the subconscious sends those signals, the blips as you call them. I call them signals. And we've got to learn to listen. But what we've done is we the next bit of data, the next bit of this, the next bit of that and we get so stuck in the conscious mind that we toddler mind that we forget to listen to the non conscious. And then that keeps us in this loop where we very become very physicalist. We become very caught up in how my body feels, how my, my brain, the thoughts coming from my brain, the, the. The messy thoughts. And so that. And in that the more you, whatever you think about the most is growing. But at any point in time and that can make us by the way feel relating to earlier question that we don't have control, but we do. So at any point we can say okay, veto power, stop the bus. Let me learn to train myself to actually observe my thoughts. Multiple perspective advantage. Stand back and observe the thoughts. And that is what we can train ourselves to do in that little. My little 63 second concept idea is honestly that first 60 seconds. 60, 63 play with numbers there is so critical because the neuroplasticity is still going to come. But let's say Dave that someone really shatters my world in that moment. That experience is wiring in but I can actually learn in that 63 seconds to decide, okay, this is shattering my world. But if I let it wire in in this way, it's going to create a very disruptive network in my brain. The chemicals will be flowing in. Incorrect. There's inflammation, there's the hormone, the trees are toxic and the hedges are toxic and the network is toxic. I can decide, okay, before that happens, this is happening. But I'm not going to let it affect me that way. So I can in my mind, veto, capture, use my free will and decide. I rather it's going to go in, but it's going to go in in a different way. So it still upsets me what they're doing, but I'm not going to let it get to me kind of idea. But a lot of us don't do that and we need to learn how to do that. And that's self regulation. And that comes. That's why I've written the book I have. And why you t timelessly have written the book you have. Because collectively these two books really are teaching people how to self regulate in the moment.

They are. And I think a lot of suffering in my life came from believing that self regulation was something that I did with my conscious mind. And it turns out that thinking about self regulating doesn't do anything.

Why doesn't it, by the way? That's such a great question. The self con, the conscious mind will do the action, but it's driven by the choice to listen to the nonconscious mind. So the conscious mind, we, we have to, literally, we have to. Our natural mode of operandi is to have this tapping into the nonconscious, the wisdom part of us. That's how we actually function. And the evidence of that, just to help people understand what I'm saying, when someone comes to you and asks you for advice and you might be in the worst place that you are in that moment, something could be happening in your life that's really put you in a bad place and you can't see straight. But somehow you are able to listen to issue and give really good advice and give them another perspective on the issue. That is evidence that at any one moment you are able to access the wisdom of your, of your nonconscious mind. You're able to tap in. And when we do tap in, then we self regulate. It's literally like the toddler listening to the parent. So the parent we, we. It sounds almost contradictory or counterintuitive, but we have to be our own parent kind of thing. We have to, to practice. And I think that's, that's what I believe. Meditation, which is the first part of the neurocycle as well, you've got to be able to do that. And meditation as we know it's got a, it's a big word for a lot of different things that teaches us how to not get so busy in our conscious mind and stuck in the loop of the messy conscious mind and the sensation that the messy conscious mind creates in the brain and the body. Messy mind, messy brain, messy body, messy output. We can get so stuck in that loop we. But we are able to stop that. We're able to stand back and observe and say, oh, I'm in that messy loop. What does it feel like? How can I change it? And as soon as you stop that, as soon as you're going to that multiple perspective advantage and you observe without judgment how you are functioning and operating in that situation triggered by X, Y or Z, whatever the trigger is. The wh, who, what, when, where, why, how am I causing, what's causing me to respond this way? As soon as I do that, I immediately open up the line to the subconscious and the nonconscious and then I can slowly train myself. But that's not a skill. It's a skill. It's a natural skill. It's endemic to who we are as humans. But it is something that can get very blocked out by a messy mind overstimulated. So it's something you have to work on daily. It's a skill you have to keep on releasing. It's there. It has to be released and worked on. That's why I always rec. That's why I've written this book help in a hurry while you've done the meditation book and why I've done my other books on the neurocycle because it trains you not to be reactive, but to be responsive.

Our conversation wouldn't be complete if I didn't ask this question. What happens in your brain or your mind when you forgive?

Okay, so I'm going to talk about this from, from different things. Remember, your mind is 99 of who you are in that region. And your brain and body physically are around about 1%. And we have this network between the three. The brain and the body only do what the mind tells it to do. When someone, when you, when you're in a situation where you need to forgive someone, it means that someone's done something to you. So you've had an experience that came into your mind, was absorbed, wire and built into the mind part and then wired into the brain and the body, depending on how big it was, that adds salience or load. It's a loaded and it goes in. However, the level of load so high load, it's going to be a very, a very strong network that forms one that we get stuck in thinking over and over, and whatever you think about the most grows. And another interesting thing, it's all related to the concept of energy and energy. Basically, the word quantum means energy. But what we know from physics is the principle of entanglement. I know, I know you know about this too. So entanglement, basically, one particle turns this way. Wherever the other one is, it's going to turn as well. And what that essentially means, translated back into easy, understandable concepts and is that if someone's hurt me in a way that I need to forgive them to be able to move on, I am entangled with them. So there's been an energy, there's a relationship. Their stuff is now in me, which means I'm connected, so I'm entangled. So as much as I don't want to forgive what they've done because it's so bad, whatever, I'm just giving some random example. It's worthwhile forgiving not what they've done. It doesn't mean that you just. It doesn't mean what they've done is right. But you break that entanglement. That's what forgiveness essentially does. But it doesn't mean that. I think people have got it all back to front and screwed up, because people think if I forgive, it means that I've okayed what they've done. You haven't okayed what they've done. What they've done is terrible or wrong or whatever it may be. But you. You don't want to stay. You don't want their energy coming in you and keeping you stuck. You want to get free. And there's a good chance you may never get that apology. I actually did a podcast on this recently and how to move on. When you. You don't. When that person just doesn't. It's your choice. Your truth is your truth. So you and your truth will not be clear to you when you're still entangled with that person. So forgiveness just frees you to get into your truth to move on.

What a great way of explaining it that forgiveness is stopping you from being quantum entangled with another person. And one of the most toxic things that I've done and that I've seen clients do is sit there angry because someone else won't apologize. And they're probably not going to apologize for all sorts of reasons, and it doesn't even matter. So holding your own happiness hot like hostage because someone doesn't do something you want, that sounds like you're trying to bully them into doing what you want, which is why you're pissed at them in the first place for them not doing it to you. So you're just making it worse. So you just. I'm going to exit this and they can say they're sorry. And I've had employees steal money and every single one of the ones who's stolen the most money and created the most harm blames me harder for it. The worst harm they do, the more it's my fault because it couldn't be their fault. So if I was going to sit around and talk about, you know, I'm just going to sit here and wait and be angry and frustrated because they haven't acknowledged that they're criminals or at least that they were out of integrity, then I'd be really unhappy. And I'm like, I don't care about it, but you're not allowed in my orbit. And that just creates a lot more peace with less work. Right. Any other advice? Like how, how can people approach it? Let's say that someone, you know, lied to them, cheated, steeled, did something mean or harmful. What is your fastest process to just not let that bomb bother you anymore?

Fastest is immediately think of. Just think. Okay, I've got 63 seconds to stop wiring this into my brain and body. I don't want that mess in there. I can have it in there, but I've got to, I've got to shape how I have it in there. So the first thing is to be able to. Is to have this knowledge, this awareness. The minute that I say to myself, okay, what they've done upsets me, but I don't want it going into my network like that because then I'm entangled. So I want to stop the entanglement right up front so I can. It's going to wire in regardless because of neuroplastic. But I'm going to direct the neuroplasticity. I'm going to take charge. And saying that just by saying that we see major shifts in the neurophysiology, we see major. You get your control back. And so then that also then gives you the opportunity to get frustrated. It's okay to get mad about what's happened. And so then once you've. So step one is to acknowledge, to direct the neuroplasticity, say I don't want it coming in in a negative way. I'm going to control this. And then the second part of. Or a second part is to start the controlling process of how it's going to go in. And that's to say, all right, let me acknowledge this. I'm not going to gaslight myself. I'm going to actually acknowledge this and this and this did that and it made me feel this. And you go through that process. But I'm not going to stay there. I'm not going to get stuck in sinking sand. I'm going to keep moving forward. So this is wrong. What do I think is the correct thing? So you just, you mind shift, you, you basically get a counter statement and you can do all this in 63 seconds, you know, once you know the sort of process. And I've got lots of these kinds of tips, Dave in the book help in a hurry. But basically the once you know, practice these when you're in a good place so that you know the steps. So when you get in that Moment in the 63 seconds, you can do a little bit of breathing. Like if you're triggered, breathe in and take another sip. So the sip breathing and that basically calms down your neurophysiology. Then you can say, okay, this is making me mad, whatever, or this is absolutely upsetting me or this is terrible what they've done. I acknowledge it, but I'm not going to wire it in in that way. How am I not going to wire it in in that way? I am going to tell myself that this is bad what they've done and I'm going to acknowledge it. I'm not going to gaslight. It makes me feel like this, but I don't have to receive that. That's their issue. My mind shift is this, this is the truth. So yes, it'll go in, but I'm going to immediately attach the truth. All of that little, the words you're saying to yourself, that's mind work. That's you, your conscious mind using its veto power to tune into the subconscious and tune into the non conscious. So you bring up your a lot of data. That is energy. It's attached to the oxygen molecules that you're breathing in. This is phenomenal. I don't know if you've ever kind of thought of it like this or heard this, but oxygen isn't just to keep your body alive. Oxygen is a carrier molecule, carries all kinds of other chemicals, but it also carries your energy of your mindset. So if I'm breathing in, ah, they're making me mad. That's the oxygen. But if I am breathing in, okay.