Good Day Google+ - Feeding the Body and the Mind

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Good Day Google+. And as I always say, it's always a good day when you get to spend it with your friends. And today we've got a great group for you and we're going to have a lot of wonderful conversation and enlightening topics. And feel free to ask your questions in the comment bar, say hello, or just shout out if you'd like to have us pull your comment up and we'll be happy to say hello to you. So I'm just going to run down my panel real quick and say hi to everyone. And coming to us Live from France, we have Michel Rebelle from Webkiss.

Hi, everyone. Yeah. Yeah? Can I go on?

Yeah, say hello. Say hello.

Webkiss and Cuisine et Cigares, a very popular food blog here in Europe and worldwide, I should say it. Hi folks, I'm glad to be with you, Chef, and with Manny, also Maggie and Crystal, beautiful first name.

Got a great panel today. And where in France are you, Michel?

Well, I'm in Strasbourg. Strasbourg is just next to Germany, you know, World Cup Germany, you know, you see. So I'm from here, 10 minutes with the car or my bike, and it is the northeast of France.

So you're right on the border then, or close to it. Sounds good. All right, and then next to Michel, on my screen anyway, I have Dr. Manny St. Victor. So how you doing today, Manny? It's great to see you.

I'm doing great, Dennis. I'm Manny St. Victor. I'm chief neuroscientist at Mindful360. Our main message is about developing your brain to its most potential, to its greatest potential, so you can get more out of life through mindfulness, self-awareness, instead of a focus on mental illness and recovering from an illness, just more about getting the most out of life, eating right, exercising right.

So those of you from Facebook that have come over, we're going to be talking to you today because you'll be recovering from an illness, a mental illness.

That's good.

So we'll dwell— we'll talk more about it. You're in Hotlanta?

Yes, I am. It is hot.

It is indeed.

I got you on that one. I'm feeling your pain, brother. It's been a warm summer, but not quite as bad as I expected in Florida. I'm still okay. I expected a lot worse. So we'll move on now to my little sick little girl here today, Maggie Unzueta. So sorry that you're a little under the weather.

Thank you, I found a doctor. I didn't even ask for one and he's here with me, thank you. I'm feeling better, I'm telling you. If this had been Tuesday, there was no way I would be here right now. Tuesday and Wednesday I thought I was gonna die. It was one of those things where I was in bed going, "Someone save me." But I'm better today, thank God. I'm still a little just like ewy here, you know what I mean? It's just like, ugh. I've got some soup, and I'm going to talk about soup here in just a little bit.

Sounds good. We'll come right back to you. And then rounding out our panel, we have Crystal on today. And Crystal, I was going to try and say your last name, and I thought I'd let you—

Kassane?

Kassane, you got it.

Oh, okay.

Woo-hoo! Where's my little cheering? Oh, it's going to take too long to get to it.

Okay, so woo-hoo! So I'm happy to have you.

Where are you today?

I'm in Austin, Texas.

Oh, my home state.

Oh, really?

God bless Texas.

Yeah, I love Texas, and Austin is definitely the lighthouse of Texas. This is my favorite place I've ever lived, and I've lived almost coast to coast.

Well, I'm from San Antone originally.

Oh, nice.

That's how you know a Texan, because they say San Antone, not San Antone.

You know what's funny is I was born outside of Houston, and I You know, I think most of my family pronounces San Antone, and I've always said San Antonio. I'm like, that's how it's spelled. Come on.

It's just like when you're from Baltimore, you don't say Baltimore. You say Baltimore. Baltimore. OK, so it's all about where you live and all about how you pronounce it. And I'm sure Michel is there going, listening to us pronounce where he lives, just cringing.

It's not that I'm feeling like a stranger, but nearly. We also have these funny names. Well, you know, I'm living just next to Luxembourg, Belgium, Switzerland, and I forgot— oh yeah, Germany, and of course Austria.

Austria.

So we have a lot of same, you know, words, funny terms, etc. So it's okay for me.

It's okay. Good. And you're in a great place for traveling then because you're just a hop, skip, and a jump from everywhere.

Well, I must say I have a bike since 20 years, a Japanese one, and I have done a lot of road with my wife, yeah, since 20 years. It's a great place, a lot of mountains. As I always say, here in Strasbourg we have everything but not the sea. We just missed a little bit the sea, so we have to go to Italy and go in the south. 6, 7 hours from here, and so we are on the Mediterranean Sea.

See, I can go 6 and 7 hours and I'm just hitting Georgia.

I go 6 and 7 hours and I hit California.

Maggie's still in California, she hasn't left the state yet.

I was going to say, in 6 to 7 hours I'm still in Texas.

There you go. You're in a good spot, so we'll be happy with that. But since we got you, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you what you do, on and off the Plus.

All right. Well, I'll start with— my life on and off the Plus is actually pretty similar, so I'll just tell you both at the same time. My husband and I have a couple of different companies we run. One is Juicing for Fat Loss that most people on the Plus are familiar with. The other one is Blending for Beauty. I have my new little lower third up. I'm so excited. We're going to be starting this program really soon where the other program obviously focused on juice. This one focuses on blended smoothies and elixirs. I'm excited. This is a— it's very accessible for a lot of people, and it's just a fun way. I was telling Chef earlier, you know, healthy has to taste good, otherwise it's not fun, and life needs to be fun, and You know what, I love this panel today and I love Manny that I finally get to talk with you and see you. Our life philosophies are so similar, I'm like, oh, so excited. And then Maggie, I've been watching your stuff. I mean, you have the most beautiful food photos. I keep thinking I'm going to call you, do a Hangout or something, can you teach me how to do that? Like, you know, I brought some fun little foods today. Chocolate, chocolate superfoods, salad, you know, it's good stuff. Anyway, and Michelle, this is really my first time meeting you, but I'm enjoying you very much. So thank you, everybody. I'm supposed to be talking about myself, but I'm just so excited to see you guys.

We're happy you're excited. I just want to pull this up real quick since you are Kevin Burns is saying he notices your shirt color matches your lower third. Like you're a healthy chocolate treat. Thanks, Kevin.

Can I just say you have great skin.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

We women, we notice these kind of things.

You know what's funny is that's actually why we created this program, Blending for Beauty. People, every time we did a hangout People would tell us, "You guys have amazing skin. You glow. What are you doing?" I'm like, "Okay, we're going to tell you what we are doing." You can tell when people have healthy habits, great lives. Look at Manny's skin. He's like a radiant being. Thank you very, very much. He has the sun. I have the water behind me, so we're good. Uh-oh.

Somebody gave me a call.

Someone's calling. I thought Dennis Littley was calling me.

Hang up.

You can call him back.

I love the idea of your blending for beauty. We were talking about how it has to taste good. Tell us, now, will these be recipes that you're going to be giving us to make our own, or are you going to be selling the product?

There's 5 recipe books. They're recipe manuals. One is Fruit and Vegetable Smoothies. One is Decadent Smoothies. One is Elixirs. The Fruit and Vegetables kind of gives you the basics of how to how to make a smoothie. In fact, there's a free report we have just to gift people that tells you the one green smoothie master formula. You can make thousands of recipes, you know, thousands of smoothies with this one recipe. It's very cool. But the thing that we're really good at is not just telling you about recipes, but about each, each ingredient, what it's good for, what it does, why did we put it in a program called Blending for Beauty. And what are its benefits. Then there's a whole other report, additional report, that talks about our top 22 favorite superfoods and how to incorporate those. This isn't smoothies for getting some vitamins and minerals in. This is smoothies for nutrient saturation. This is smoothies for filling in the gaps and taking yourself beyond energy and beauty and memory retention and recall beyond what you thought was possible for yourself.

Now, I had a green smoothie once, and I say once because it was not good.

That can happen.

I felt like I would have been better off chewing the grass outside.

You probably just didn't have enough pineapple in it.

There wasn't enough something in it, that's true. Everybody else was loving it around me, so I thought there's something wrong with me. I had to put it down and go back and find the chocolate.

Yeah. You can always do the green chocolate smoothies, too. That's an option. I have to say, I personally prefer chocolate smoothies when they're either straight-up chocolate, or my favorite smoothie right now is my chocolate cherry smoothie. Ooh, that sounds yummy. That's delicious.

That sounds very good. Well, thank you. We will definitely have to— I'll have to look into some of your recipes. I do want to try some of them. I have a blender that's just been sitting there begging to be used.

It's saying, "Help me!

Help me now!" I actually had two. I gave one away because I felt bad. I had two new ones that had never been used. I said, "This is just terrible. I feel awful, so I'll give one away." Yeah, it sounds good. I know there's got to be a way to drink that green stuff and get the benefits from it and not just hold your nose the whole same time. Absolutely.

Just like any cuisine, there's more than one recipe. You'll find one you like. If you don't like the first one, just try some more.

Is the trick really then adding things that you like to it?

You know, one of the biggest tricks is making sure you have a good fruit combination with it. You don't want to overdo the fruit and give yourself a sugar kick, but at the same time, when you're new to green smoothies, that really is the secret because you're accustomed— most people are accustomed to fruit smoothies, so you're accustomed to tasting, you know, pineapple and banana or strawberry and banana. So the trick is initially to add greens to your fruit smoothies and ease yourself into, "Oh, okay, that's how it tastes. That's what's going on." Then you'll actually get to a point where your palate develops a liking for green. Yeah, no need to shock yourself. I mean, some people, in fact, a lot of people love it on the first try, but if you're a person who tasted it and everybody around you is loving it and you're like, "I don't know what's wrong with you people." And you know, you just try something a little different and ease into it.

I know, they were all so excited.

I'm like, really?

Good to know.

I love your castings. I should say something, Chef Dennis Littley. I love your castings because listening to Christelle, I'm looking, I'm watching at Manny's, you know, on the film strip, and I love his mustard wall behind him, you know. So feeding minds and feeding bodies. Well, Manny, your mind is stuck on a mustard wall like that. That's great. You have an interesting costume today. Where did you get this one? Did you paint it yourself or what happened? Did you use your mustard pot?

Yeah, this was my son's playroom, so my wife wanted it to be a bright color, and we painted it with what I thought of as sunshine in a paint can when I saw it initially. And we had primary colors on the ground and everything, but with my daughter coming in November, his playroom is now my studio, and my former studio is conveniently across the room from the bedroom, is now Imani's nursery. Yeah, but I figured I'd keep the color because it energizes me.

I think it's great, and it's a really colorful background, that's for sure. So while we have you now, why don't we talk to you a little bit about— let's do some mind probes. Let's do the Manny mind probe, not the Vulcan mind probe.

Cool.

Well, what do I do? I, uh, off the Plus, I help doctors use the skills that they have to transition from the traditional approach to medicine to an approach that puts patients, and not even patients, puts relationships and other humans first. So even clients to a certain extent. So when you don't label someone and you work with them, you just get to know the person without the judgment. You can— what you do is you, uh, we call it core value alignment, where you align what you're good at with what someone else is good at, such that you guys are covering each other instead of the usual power dynamic when someone waits 8 months to see me and I'm across the table after a nurse has, you know, taken the main info. You build a relationship because the relationship is what gets you healthy. And as far as when I was practicing psychiatry, a lot of times we saw people in acute situations. And the reality is that every day in life you're accumulating stressors that eventually tip you over. So if you have someone who is a trusted coach, a trusted friend, someone you can go to outside of your situation and bounce stuff off of, exchange ideas, In my case, a lot of times I can help someone pull out of a thinking situation. With doctors, you can pull them out of the functional fixedness of diagnosing everybody, pull them out with all that same knowledge, and remember in medical school we learned how a healthy body works. Guide people, go to the core meaning of doctor, which is teacher. Teach people the things to avoid, when during your day to step back from your desk and go for a walk instead of coming home and downing a gallon of whatever it is that erases your memory. So helping people, helping doctors get to where they're thinking about the person they're helping, how they can help them without prescriptions, without judgment, and make a good living from it is what I do off the Plus. On the Plus, I meet people that I like and just kind of accelerated advancement of my brain through meeting really great people.

You know, Maddy, sorry, I'm going to interject. What's funny about this is that I've heard so much about you from different people. Different people have told me, have you met this Dr. Maddy guy? And I'm like, oh, and it's got to the point where I'm like, oh yeah, Maddy. And here you are with me on a Hangout. Love it, love it. Yeah, you've got a reputation on G+.

Thank you.

I'm blushing.

It's the purple shade.

See, Manny, I have a question. Now, you were talking about times that we start to really push ourselves towards the wrong direction.

Yeah.

What can we look for in ourselves that give us those little hints that that's happening? When you say get up and walk, you know.

Yeah, well, you have to start at the at the tail end where things have gone badly and work your way backwards. One of the things that people try to do is willpower, which doesn't work. Your subconscious mind, your unconscious, is designed to keep you on track to your goals. So when you set a clear goal, and that's what core value alignment is about, you say, like me, I'm about interpersonal relationships more than about self-enhancement. So if I'm doing something and I find that I'm in a conversation with someone and I'm saying something that's more about bringing them down than about enhancing the relationship, then I kind of realize that I'm off from my core goals, my core values. So the first thing someone wants to figure out is what they call a death meditation. You spend 5 minutes a day thinking to yourself, okay, I'm on my deathbed, I'm looking back. What do I kind of wish I had done and had not done? And then you use that contrast to kind of realign your life based on the things that you want to accomplish. Now, during the day, you'll find that you'll get temptations, and they call it environmental dependency syndrome. You know, a milkshake, a blinking sign that says, you know, whatever you're addicted to—cocaine, smokes, whatever. If you, at that moment, get in the habit of popping into your values—they call it changing levels of construal. Pop into flash forward to the future and remember that that morning you did your death meditation. It gives you, it gives your whole brain this thing where you get in the habit of ignoring— they call it distraction implementation intentions— you get in the habit of ignoring the distractions. You get better at it unconsciously. Your attention is just on your goals, your life goals, and all your energy goes towards executing instead of avoiding after a while. So that's sort of a broader view instead of thinking of it as when do I know it's gone badly? It's easier to start with the things that you want to accomplish and focus on when you know it's gone well and what to do to continue making it go well. To continue to make it go well.

So do you like that deathbed meditation in the morning then, at the beginning of your day?

I tend to like the 'what do I have to do today' meditation in the morning. Death meditation I usually do at night. And the reason, I'll tell you why I do it at night, because when I was at Harvard I was depressed, and because my life was on track to endless medicine, which, you know, labeling people that made me want to medicate myself. So at night I used to have a lot of thoughts, just like depression-related thoughts. I wonder how many people died here. You know, just stuff like that. And so along the way I realized that if I spend that time instead of worrying, if I spend it in what the Now Habit calls doing the work of worrying, where the thing I'm worried about, how do I make it a positive thing? Well, if I hit my deathbed and I've accomplished the things I want to, then you can kind of reverse calendar your whole life to accomplish what you want. So that's why I put mine at night. Okay, that makes sense.

That's really awesome, Money. That's like, um, There's a practice I love doing and sharing with people. It sounds like it might fit in really well. I call it the what-if. The what-if exercise is usually— what if is a negative thing. What if this happens? What if that happens? But if you what-if in the positive, well, what if this turns out better than I thought? Well, what if that person's not thinking what I think they're thinking? Well, what if, you know, What if I'm making this whole thing up, all this negative stuff, and actually the only thing that's left for me is something amazing? So I like your thinking, man. Thanks.

I'm also going to butt in here. Just because I love meditation, it changes, it really changes you. And when I first started, you know, it was like, oh, this is so hard. But I do it in the morning, first thing. The first thing I do when I get up, it's like, okay, let's meditate. Because I'm in this groggy state where I'm not really alert. I'm still half asleep, half awake. And it seems to keep that momentum of a positive momentum. It keeps it going longer. And I also do it at night, too, where I'll listen to some meditation CD or something, because it kind of just soothes me into sleep. And I get these great dreams. The other thing I do right before I go to sleep is I tell myself that I want to remember my dreams, just because I think it's cool. It really does give me that, that bit of, you know, it keeps me positive, keeps me positive longer.

It's good to be positive. We have— I'm gonna throw a few comments up here. Death meditation at night just in case you don't wake up in the morning. Manny Harvard, that to people. Okay, nice. Thank you for that one. And then we had a comment here from Charles Payette. He says, so what's the psychological foundation of this visualization and affirmations, Manny?

Okay, the concept sort of at a high level is what's called counterfactual thinking. And to simplify it, it's what Crystal says, it's what-if thinking. Your brain panics when it doesn't have choices. It's called unavoidable threat, and you go into sort of a knee-jerk response and you just basically start swinging wildly at life. We call it amygdala hijack, where you're on autopilot. Even if the thing wasn't there, the second you think it's there, you're swinging. There's no threat, you've burnt up all the energy, you've escalated escalated. This happens a lot in marriage, you'll see, where the person didn't say what you thought they said, but you're running the scripts anyway. So the psychological structure of that is what you imagine, what you expect to be there, is what you tend to have a confirmation bias to find there. So if you're a pessimist, you're looking for, you're anchored in finding bad things and preventing them from happening to you. If you're an optimist, you're looking for the opportunities, which you end up— your brain autopilots as challenges instead of, oh, another thing to do at work. It's another chance to shine. It's another chance to grow. It's another chance to learn. You feel less threatened, and you're less identity threatened. So hopefully that explains it without overexplaining it.

OK. Works for me. Here's Mark Barris has said something to Manny. Excellent point about looking back from the end and asking yourself, what you would change. It's a good one. And here Crystal popped up. I love what-if. I never thought of it as negative. Thanks, Sarah. Always happy to have your comments. Yeah, and now I, you know, I'm listening to you and I hear what you're saying about— and I heard you say something about how we sometimes strike out against people and not understanding why we're doing it. And I have to say, I was in a very bad place for a while And I had that kind of mentality. I felt like it. And I knew I didn't want to do it, but I couldn't stop myself. And that was really— and it made me feel worse knowing I couldn't do it. And then, you know, the doctor did prescribe a very small dose of an antidepressant, and it seemed to, like, change my whole outlook on life. So, you know, I'm a firm advocate, you know, and I never deny that I'm taking it or that it didn't help me. And before, up to that time, I was like, No, I'm a warrior, I'm strong, I don't need that, that's bullshit, you control yourself, stop whining and stop complaining, you have to be an adult and just do your job. But after I took that and I saw the change in myself, I was like, poof.

Yeah, neurochemistry is everything. You have the feeling and then you paint the feeling on reality. So if the feeling that you have is learned helplessness, which is what depression is, Sometimes the medication combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, the medication gives you the little boost so that you can start looking at choices, and then from there you realize, hey, there's a different way to think, and with the energy you can start what they call reappraisal. You look at a situation and you're like, okay, let me put a little energy in and look at how it could be possibly different, and just flicking that switch to think about a positive reframing of the situation allows your brain to then start looking at evidence for evidence of that, and usually you can find evidence of the positive framing.

So it's the psychological version of adding fruit to your greens.

It makes it better.

Well, you know, I always go back to the saying I remember from my youth was, "A better way of living through chemistry." That was DuPont's slogan, because they didn't mean it that way at the time, but So Maggie, let's jump to you right now because you've got something for us. You've got chicken soup for the soul, or what kind of soup do you have?

Well, this is a great transition because I completely relate to what Manny's talking about. This is something that I practice every single day, you know, just constantly. And the more you think about something in a positive direction the more momentum, you know, it picks up and you just keep going into this like happy, you know, kind of thing. And if you think into, you know, the positive, negative, blah, blah, blah, kill me, shoot me now kind of thing, you're gonna go there. So, so yeah, where am I going with this? Chicken soup. I'm not big on— I need to get to the freezer actually to return this here pretty soon because it's starting to get defrosted here. But my mother, oh my God, my mom makes this soup called caldo de res. Do you know what that is, Chef? No, I don't. Caldo de res, okay, chicken soup has nothing on caldo de res, and if you want the recipe, it's in my Mexican cookbook. Caldo de res is a Mexican spicy beef stew with chamorro. Chamorro is a beef shank. Okay. And it is fabulous. Oh my, I mean, you're talking spicy. She'd give little pieces, like whole pieces of corn and put them in there. And oh yeah, cabbage and just, oh, vegetables galore. And then you sit there and just chewing on the meat. Oh, the best part is, okay, this is gonna sound terrible, but the meat that's inside the bone, you just suck that out. The marrow. It is so good. Delicious.

My grandmother made that. I remember that so vividly and introduced me to marrow at an early age. And you're right, you just suck that marrow out of there. Oh my God, it's beautiful.

The best thing in the world is marrow. I love marrow. In France, when I was living in France, I had this— they had— it was almost like a jam. And you put— it was, I want to say, apricots, like an apricot jam that they paired it with, and maybe some grilled onions, and I remember thinking, this just takes it to a different level. I'm like, I'm in love. But since I don't have my mom here, I've, oh, so I'm not big on medicine. Going back to medicine, that's where I was going with the whole Manny thing. I'm not big on medicine. In fact, in this entire week, I've not taken any medication. I just kinda try to let this, do its own thing. And I just really watch what I eat and what I drink. And I haven't had any alcohol, Chef. Call the presses. Call the presses. Google+, note Maggie has not drank any wine in a week. It's just been water and tea. And oh, here's another one. I'm a juicer, if you can't tell. I don't have a blender. Chef, you should have sent me one. I know, I know. But anyway, so I juice. So when I get sick, I start juicing. And I make soup. So going back to caldo de res. I don't have any. But chicken stock, or chicken broth, chicken broth. You see, it's getting— yeah, I need to go put this back. But I buy an organic, a whole organic chicken. I can't stress enough organic chicken right now. Organic chicken, buy, buy, buy. Subliminal messages here. But anyway, so organic chicken, and I, it's like $12 for a whole chicken, organic, in San Diego, people. This is, to me, it's, oh, I priced this. It's cheaper to buy an organic chicken, ask the butcher to chop it up for you and give you the back too. That's, it's important here, this whole thing. Than to buy non-organic chicken separated. It's cheaper than if you just have the butcher do it for you. And trust me, they do it for you and they don't ask for any extra money. It's still $12 and each of these little pieces, you know, it's a big score. It's a big score. So what I do is I bring it home, I put it into their own little packages, stick them in the freezer. I have a bag just full of chicken bones. And so what I do is, you know, when I need to make stock, I just take them out, defrost them, and I make— and it's so easy. And then I put— you can't see it right here, but you see the 4 on there? This is just 4 cups. And I make myself my little soup, and all is well. I need to do that with bones too, with beef bones. The chicken seems to be much more— accessible. Who's talking?

Sorry to butt in, Maggie. I have a question for you about the price of the chicken. Is there a difference between chicken with or without a G+ account?

Yeah, they charge you more if you're on G+. So— I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Organic chicken, a whole organic chicken for me costs me $12. Again, I live in expensive, super expensive Coronado, San Diego.

That's about the going price for most of them, even here in Jersey. There you go. It just is the price of a whole chicken. Sometimes you can get them at a big box club.

You can find the organic chicken broth. You can find it. But it's cheaper if you do it yourself. It's just water. Yes, we have a drought in San Diego, which is ridiculous. Don't drink water. It's like, drink water. I'm sorry, it's just going to cost you. But this stuff is cheaper, and it tastes different. Oh man, Chef, come on, talk to me.

There's nothing like fresh chicken broth. Here, I just want to pop this up. Carmen Mandich says, way to go, Maggie, bringing up some of my favorite foods with such enthusiasm. When is Google+ going to put in the capability to capture aromas? And we did talk about that last week. Apple's working on it, but the fact that they're going to call it iSmell is just not a—

I confirm, it's coming, it's coming. That's why, you know, in Texas, Christophe, you have oil. We don't have oil, but we have ideas. And this I smell is coming from France. Yes, indeed, chef.

Yes, that was mostly from the lack of deodorants that you guys use tonight.

For the audience, you can soon smell by SMS what's happening on HOA, and I'm not kidding. It's a really innovative project. I love this transition, Chef Dennis, because your casting, as I told you before, are fantastic. But think about it. Maggie Nzuetu is talking about chicken, and you have the smell some few seconds after. You have a smell from your iPhone coming in your nose, and you're smelling this chicken when she's talking about it. So this is a startup from Paris. Well, I do think they are now in the USA because you have a lot of startups. It's perhaps the best place to establish a startup. And it's a French idea to build this iSmell and not a uSmell, Chef Dennis. Don't forget that.

On Microsoft, it would be we smell.

Yeah, so as I told you, your castings are great. We're talking about food, how to, well, how to feed bodies and minds. And I was making today my, you know, my curriculum vitae. Well, I need 20 minutes to summarize what I've done since 1997. And it's amazing. But I wanted just to say a few words about one person. Manny, I'm really happy to meet you because I never said that before on G+, but my very first blog in 2012 is talking about neuroeducation. And neuroeducation is the marriage born in 2007 between neurosciences and the science of education. And I started food blogging because I wanted to know at first what was happening with pictures and words collaborating when posting. Okay, so I started with food with an anonymous profile with a— well, it's a business page, but it's not really a business. And we became a famous and a very popular food blog. And then I started to ask myself, well, why shouldn't we put neuroeducation in web information? So for the audience, what does that mean? That means that today the OECD says that our brains, when you hit a keyword in your— in Google. Our brains will be able to manage the information on today's pages only in 20 or 30 years. OECD is also expecting that information will be multiplied by 50 by 2020. So my idea, Chef, was, okay, let's start showing pictures about food and let's put some recipes and some stories and some words and let's try to build other kinds of stories and kinds of websites and kinds of information because I am in knowledge management since 1997. So this is the main point. I love your, really, your, your, your casting because We are really between fooding our bodies and our minds. So I have started this blog called mappingrama.blogspot.com. It is a Google technology, and now I am the CEO of WebKiss Revolutionary Methods and Web for Entrepreneurs. That means that we use this technology to build business models. I, in fact, my blog is talking about visual thinking for learning and business, all about visual thinking. And I do really think that neuroeducation is a key for the future because we must at first learn more about our brains And that was the main question in this OECD program called Neuroeducation. It is also taught now in Cambridge and other great high schools and universities. And the key is to use one question: if we learn more about our brains, can we teach and learn better? And the answer is Yes. So the visual— should we be and how can we be more visual, Manny? That is my question, and that's what I'm working about with WebKiss because we are doing the same. When we build a business model, we use visual techniques, and they are very powerful, and we have powerful tools online today for building this business model. So we can— this gives sense to what we build with websites and web content. So my question is, what is your point of view about using neuroeducation in the internet?

I think it's, it's key because the way that I see the internet, and especially with the semantic web, is that all brains in all situations What they're trying to do is create a model of what is outside and around them. Now when you put someone on the internet, you have a person who's able to build a model that has a much larger scope. Now, you take it even further, when someone can control what sites they go to and they can put something out there and see something come back, then you're creating a full feedback loop, which is the mechanism of agency. So something like Google allows me And I always take it back to when I was in undergrad. In undergrad, I would have to go to a basement, photocopy stuff, then take it home, read it, and highlight it. If I found something missing, although I was curious right then and there, that curiosity usually faded by the time I took a 45-minute bus ride to go photocopy some more stuff. Now, on the internet, the way I do my research now is I Google a concept. When I hit related concepts, I can immediately see pictures of other people thinking of it. I grab a video on YouTube and someone shows me a series of pictures and I could pick up the passion of that person. Now, what everything I've read indicates that we mirror each other, and when you see someone else is enthusiastic about something, you develop what's called mimetic envy. Like when I'm watching someone happy with their iPhone, I'm like, I don't even call people, but I want one of those. You know? So finding other people who are passionate about neuroscience, finding other people who are passionate about spaghetti, Whatever it is, when you find other people who have developed a degree of mastery that they're able to appreciate the details, the fine points of something, that usually you were limited geographically as far as appreciating something, you were talking to yourself about it. Like I used to neuro geek by myself and with books, but now I hop on and I can find 10, 20 other guys around the world who are way deep in some hole, some rabbit hole, thinking about some concepts. And they can see it from their perspective, I see it from mine. And we kind of go to a level of abstraction where we're able to create sort of a synchronous model of the universe from different points of view. From a European point of view, which is more intersubjective, versus the American view, which is more— I won't say narcissistic— we're I-centered over here, you know. So when you're able to take both points of views and you say something that you're proud of and you're confident about as someone who has another education, very advanced education from somewhere else, maybe in Narratology or even Mythology, and they're like, "No, that's dumb because of this." And you see that they spent so much time and mastered it that they have the model. You can't help but to get smarter faster. You're like, "Wow!" And you just sit and you listen, you suck it in and you take it in with the same passion as the person puts it out, and we do social learning explosively faster.

Yeah, I agree. I should say that for our audience tonight, the main points— I'm working on a very important program here, an international program from France about a training center for managers, and we are working on our first tool, and this is called the brain. But we should say to our audience that we all have 3 brains, the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, and the cortex brain. And the 2 first ones have priority on the third one. So when we talk about education, if your kid is hungry or scared, the brain doesn't work very well. But over that, the real problem is to be able to make understand now, and now all our projects that we have two parts in our brain, the left and right one, and they must collaborate. And the problem— and I must say something, Chef, quickly. I've prepared a surprise for all our audience. I have one more brain than you all, and I'm going to show it to you now. It's this one. We all have two parts of the brain and the problem is that we have in the right side our creativity, well, let's say it like that, and in the left side we have our rules. And the problem is that we want to ask everybody to do every time the same things with our right brain. And the problem is that we have to learn more about our brain and make it collaborate so the creativity is a process. And we need pictures and we need words and make them collaborate together. Chef, we are also involved both in the PYB Academy since the month of May. We are now going on the next step, next level, and the big deal is now to reveal you something. In this program for training center, the big thing that we discovered recently, and I'm not kidding— Manny, I would love your word on this— the problem when we are on the web, also on G+, a fantastic platform, is when you build content, when you reply to content, If you ask yourself why you are doing it, it should give sense because in fact the problem we have is that we are mixing too much our 3 curves of life. I mean, we all have 3 curves of life: a personal curve, a professional curve, and a social curve. And I'm talking about satisfaction. If you mix these three ones, this gives burnout. This is a real problem we have here in France and worldwide. Manish should talk about this, I think he agrees, that if we don't separate these three curves, what happens? When it's coming down, when you're running down the hill, well, you burn out. But if you don't have satisfaction on one of these curves, you can get satisfaction on another one. So we must separate why we do and how we do things about these 3 curves of life. What do you think about that, me? I absolutely love it.

I love it. Um, and taking a step further, and this is a large part of what I'm pushing when I'm telling people, uh, about core value alignment— you have to have your core values. You have to have your core values for family, you have to have core values professionally, and you have to have your core values for your social interactions. When you're with your family, activate that identity. Be focused on getting the most out of that situation. Don't be thinking about work that you have to do and bring that stress into that arena. When you're with your family, the set of values that you want prioritized are spend time with, you know, the ones you recognize during your death meditation. Honestly, when you're at work, you don't want to be thinking about the argument you and your wife had and, "I should call her at lunch and tell her whatever." You're losing your focus. You're misaligning your energy because you can't do anything about it during that time. You activate the work-based core values. When you're with your friends evening after work on Friday, you don't bring with you the stress of the other two. You activate the core values that match that identity and you perform in that moment maximally effectively. You immerse yourself in that moment, those goals, those friends, that time, that pleasure. So I, I'm very much aligned with that.

Now, isn't that the problem that we have now as a society in the United States specifically? I, because I know that, is that we carry our work with us everywhere we go now because of these phones, these damn phones that we love and we hate at the same time. So we can never leave that part of our life unless we just turn it off.

Yes, Jeff, you are right. The last statistics from the United States, Jeff, is that over 60% of managers want to change their lives. And for these reasons, many, and you, Jeff, what you said, Webkiss is building a big project for individuals, and this is called Webkiss for New Careers. Once in our lives, we all must reinvent our careers, and the real problem is to at first visualize what we do really capitalize in our brain. And if you visualize it It will pop up, you know, and when I'm with my clients, with business owners, managers, and very important personalities, they look at me and they say, "I didn't see that like that." Of course, because you have to watch it, so you have to visualize it, you have to draw it on a wall. And of course, we now have organized around the same process And I have called this on the step 1, the show program. And you know, Manny, what this means? Start here and open wide. So if you, if you show yourself what you are, who you are, and if you separate these, these 3 curves, people can really reinvent their careers and they can define their value. What value am I bringing and what viability? Is it— am I able to do that and can I live for that? So I can be a food blogger, I can be a business owner, I can be a creative, but we have organized this in 3 branches: Webkiss for Branding, because the same way too much advertising kills advertising, we must build intelligent advertising. On the second branch, we have started a webcast for startup and fundraising. The same way we are promoting startups with the same process on the step 1, show program, and after that we can build. And this gives sense, which gives sense from the first step to the second step, which gives sense to the, the web content. And the third a branch is WebKiss for new careers. I am in touch with sportsmen. You know, it's very difficult for a footballer or a basketballer to change his career. And the guy, you know, playing with the ball the whole day for 5, 6, or 10 years, when he has to change his life, It's a drama for himself. So when we place him in this process, but when we divide these three curves of life, it gives sense for all the people. And this is the way that we engage them on the web. And this includes, of course, G+. Yeah.

I saw Zera Altair had a great statement there. Now let's see. If I press on the I, it shows up, right? Okay, let me press on it again.

Oh, sorry, I didn't see it.

Yeah, so Zara says, um, where is it, let me get it again, sorry. Michael and Manny, lots of current talk about integration, love this concept of separate channels. Now, what I want to kind of underscore in this case is that you have to differentiate before you can integrate. Now if I have a hammer, I have a saw, I have, I don't know, a blender, and I have all 3 and I'm always using all 3 anytime something comes up, I'll never take the time to learn what that tool does. What we do at Mindful360 is we introduce the concept of, based on Jungian functions, we introduce the concept of cognitive functions. It's a metaphor for which part of your brain should be using, you'd be using, but it's also on a less abstract level, it's what wiring are you reinforcing and call it myelinating. Whatever you put your attention on connects a specific synapse. If I'm in a room and I'm paying attention to the relationships in that room, the part of my brain, I think it's the TPJ, but the part of my brain that does relationships, it's lighting up. And by lighting up, I mean the highway between that part of my brain and my prefrontal cortex, the front part of my brain, is getting wired so that it's a better relationship. 10,000 times faster, eventually. So if you're always using every tool and just throwing them in there, you end up burnt out, you end up frustrated because you didn't create 3 clear channels that you mastered each one and learned when to wield each one. You became clumsy with 3 tools all the time, flinging them around. So hopefully that clarifies that. Mm-hmm. That's how I understand it.

Well, I should say that what's coming out very new is the way that we modelize. The way that we are modelizing, we begin at first at learning to be a people. Who learns us how our brain work? I remember when I was a kid, don't do that, don't do this, don't do this like that, or And people were not talking to me about me and how I was born with a brain. So when I speak with managers and I talk about their main tool inside their head, and when we, with Basics, when we come on these Basics and we start defining or rectifying their business model, it's like magic. And that's why I found a very precious partner on G+. I must say it now, and I want to make a big shout out, big shout out, because you know her, Chef Dennis. I'm talking about Aslin Brewer. She is the owner of AZ Entertainment. She really understood the way we need to build value, and even about branding. What we need to do now is to define what value and its viability. But the first thing that we do is modeling, and we don't forget that we have a process about our main tool. We, us managers, we have a tool, and people have not time to study your website or to watch all this content on the web. It's amazing. Remember, multiply this information, will be multiplied by 50, by 2020. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that? So if you make it more visual and if you bring people just to look at a screen and in 60 seconds they get it, the brain does the rest. What we have to do is to build an information, not a knowledge, not a knowledge, but an information for also managing the knowledge. And this is the real, the real way that we are working on it now. Wibkis is consulted, I saw this last week, by the worldwide, and I was surprised with such success about the way We are releasing these two steps. The first one is start here and open wide, the show program. And the second one is no show, no go. So that's what you Americans say, and I know since 30 years, no show, no go. So if you show it to people, but you must use your brain, and we must learn people how to use their brains for building content. That's what I really think.

Now I want to anchor this concept while we're on it on food, because this is so super important. Very. When you show someone a piece of visual content, the value of that content is based on what they know about it. So by introducing someone to not just juicing, but sub-elements where there are different flavors, there are different scents, there are different— you make that you make the eating experience semantically dense. Not only that, you make looking at the food more appealing, more interesting. It's the whole pearls before swine sort of in reverse. By educating people about the variety of choices, you create bigger, denser categories. And literally, when you're eating something, you're taking in information. If you swallow it down fast, you don't get the pleasure out of the food. If you slow down and you learn, okay, check for the mint, Check for the parsley, check for whatever. You're literally getting more information out of the food through mindful eating. You're getting healthier, and by surrounding yourself with people who enjoy their food, you end up less likely to be obese from compulsive eating because each bite is more information. It's more filling in like 11 channels, in all 11 senses.

And, uh, you're talking about pleasure, you're talking about experience, you're talking about I remember way earlier you mentioned the amygdala, and then, you know, Michelle, you were talking about how important is what people see. So what I hear you both saying, only maybe not verbally, is how important it is to connect with people's feelings and emotions, because that's what— I mean, the amygdala is your emotional— you know, that's what— that's the mechanism that determines within fractions of a second how you feel about something, how you judge something. —how someone judges your website if they're looking at your website. So what—

food pictures, I mean, it's interesting because as soon as I took professional food photography lessons, like I changed my camera, and as soon as I did these little tiny changes and I started, I mean, I practice a lot on my food photography, and I sit there probably more tweaking and highlighting and adding a little bit of contrast here. I think about how I'm going to position, how I'm going to take my pictures just because I know that the better the picture, the more the person who's looking at my website is going to be able to relate to it. I was on Ammon John's show this last Sunday and he made a point. He said, "Don't be afraid to talk about smell." It's true. People totally forget to mention smell. And for me, when I look at a picture, I look at a food picture, the first thing that I think of is taste and I think of smell. And usually it's taste, you know, I'll mention it, but when I'm talking about wine, usually I mention smell. But food is one of those things. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make here is that visually, my blog just jumped, like double, double the amount of traffic just from the food pictures.

Well, anyone who can make chicken nuggets look like you did this morning, Maggie— oh my gosh, I'm seriously going to call you, like, come on.

And those are, just so you know, those are made with Goldfish. You know what I'm talking about, the little snack? Oh my gosh. They have like, it has like 5 ingredients and it is so, they're so good. Organic chicken.

That's hilarious. I agree with both of you, but Manny, you said something very important. Important, and we are all involved in that. I was talking with David Amlan this year about one thing. We have latecomers on G+ here in France, and we have a strategy now. This strategy in two parts. The first one, if I start talking about Hangouts in France, people won't watch. But if I talk about food on Hangouts, people are watching us. And that's what we have done with Savor the Flavor, the 18th of May with Aslinn Burr, her first episode. It was amazing. We have connected Australia with California. You were there, Chef Dennis Littley, I think so. And we had a little bit less than 1,000 people watching us from my blog cooking and on G+, because people don't really know here in France how to manage a G+ page. So instead of talking about technology, let's talk about food. We all have to eat. It's very important now. We must educate ourselves about eating and educate our children about eating. So I think that we have food bloggers Many, sorry for you, but food bloggers have a lot of value to bring to the audience, not only about food, but the way that we bring it. And that's very important, and that's what we have done here with Webkeys. We have built a business model that didn't exist between brands and food bloggers. With WebKiss, we have defined a business model which gives power for each food blogger. Because each food blogger has your circles on G+, you have people following you. So the way to connect all these food bloggers together is the way that we have built the business model for the brand. The brand has a message to deliver. For consumers. We build value with influence but with credibility. And we talk about food, and this is the way that we provide also technology to people to take part of this message. And this is very intelligent, and many— this is the way that we combine the two parts of our brain. And if we talk about food with technologies, we will also provide technologies which will change everything, of course, and that's what we are living, I think. So thank you, Dennis, for this invitation. It was really great to meet Manny and of course other food bloggers.

It was my pleasure, and thank you all for coming. And actually, we are coming to the close today, so I'm just gonna run down everyone real quick, and if you have anything you'd like to share with us right now for where you're gonna be or where we can find you? Let's start with Manny real quick. Where can we find you?

I'm at mindful360.com, and you can usually find me on the Plus. And I try to pump out videos on YouTube covering— I do what's called a walking meditation, where I just start walking through the neighborhood and capturing thoughts, just to put them out there, see if anyone else benefits from them, I guess.

That'd be something to do a live Hangout on. You ought to try that. We'll have to get you a GoPro or something. Meditation. Yeah, Dr.

Vogelman, Christopher Vogelman suggested that. He's like, you need a GoPro, because I'm like doing this, and he's like, no, you need a GoPro.

Well, Candy Javier Sakai kind of rigged one up with her phone, and she doesn't use a GoPro at all. She just has a couple straps, and she does bicycle tours that way. That's kind of cool, you might want to look at some of her stuff. And Maggie, anything you have coming up or anything you'd like to leave us with?

Yeah, I have a show, I have the bilingual show, Cuentos de Nuestra Comida, that's on Sunday, that's at 10:30 AM Pacific, 1:30 Eastern Atlantic. What else do I have going on? Just check my blog out, I blog almost every day, there's something on there every every day.

Well, that's good, especially when you start posting those chicken nuggets you had today. They were very tasty looking. Thank you. And of course, Crystal, thank you so much for being here today, and congratulations again on your upcoming birth of your child. And when is it again?

Um, she'll be joining us towards the end of December or beginning of January. I guess we'll know what year when When we know what year.

You know the sex yet? Have you checked?

I'll confirm when she's born that she's a girl. Okay, good to know.

All right, and Manny also has one coming up soon, and yours is about a month sooner.

And November 30th is the predicted date for Imani.

November 30th. So let's watch those Thanksgiving plans, right?

Yeah, yeah, we're not traveling but so far.

Yeah, mama don't want to unstuff that turkey. At the dinner table.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure.

So anything new you have planned then, Crystal?

Yes, we are releasing Blending for Beauty, so the free report I talked about earlier with the superfood smoothie recipe, the one recipe that gives you thousands of smoothies, that's at blendingforbeauty.com, so please go and enjoy that free report. And also tomorrow, Artemis and I are having a Hangout on our Juicing for Fat Loss channel. It is actually about blending. We're introducing our new blending program with our top 5 beauty supplements for more energy and vitality and looking and feeling good. We always have fun on our Hangouts. People come and ask great questions. Join us. Interact. Engage. It's fun. Great. Sounds good.

I have to say, when you say Artemis, the first name that comes to mind is Artemis Gordon. And do you know who that is?

Wild Wild West. Oh, Wild Wild West.

Yeah. Make sure that was— so say hi to Artemis for me.

I will. Thank you.

And Michelle, so nice to have you.

Yes, just— thank you. One challenge— do you hear me, Chef Dennis? One challenge, if people want to live a real experience, very— I don't know. By the weather, I'm going to try to make an HOA outside. I have a wood oven. I've built a 2-ton wood oven, and I'm going to make some food in my wood oven, and it should be great. So if you want to follow us, just hit Savor the Flavor and follow AZ Entertainment with Aslinn Bloer, and you'll see me Sunday— Sunday? This Sunday?

This Sunday. And make sure when you do get that wood oven fired up that you invite me to that event. I want to be there.

—for that. You got a deal, Chef. If you come, don't worry, you'll see.

Sounds good. All right, so thank you all for coming to Good Day Google+ today, and I hope you enjoyed our show, Feeding the Mind and the Body. We had a lot of great content and of course some great friends on here. And the best part about Google+ is learning about some of your favorite plusers and meeting new friends along the way. So have a wonderful weekend, and I'll see you soon. Bye, everyone.