5 Steps To DESTROY Negative Thoughts For BETTER HEALTH! | Joe Dispenza & Mark Hyman

Can you teach your body emotionally what the future reality that you want to live in feels like before it happens?

Nothing is true, humans. Nothing's fact over there. No one's stuck forever. Nothing's true.

I just want to share with people that this is something that it will change your life.

There's an unlearning process before the relearning process. There's a breaking a habit of the old self and a reinvention of a new self. You got to prune synaptic connections and then you got to practice sprouting new ones. You got to un-fire and un-wire, you got to re-fire and re-wire. You got to deprogram and reprogram. You got to lose your mind and create a new one. And you have to un-memorize emotions that keep you connected to the same familiar past and then recondition the body to a new mind and to a new emotion. So then, that process, if there's a formula to apply, let's just say, you sitting in your meditation, it means... -Because.

It sounds good, right? But how do you get from here to there?

I'm sure everybody's listening. -Yeah, yeah, yeah. -But everybody's done it.

They've done it.

They just haven't made it a habit. And so then, if you're sitting in a meditation and you have something to do and your body starts going, I'm angry, I'm frustrated, and it's my ex-wife, it's my whatever, and you go like this to your body, okay, okay, now listen, you settle down, know exactly what to do and you tame the animal, you tell it to stay and you relax it back into the present moment. What I want you to know, that's it. That's a victory. That's a victory. And then if the body starts going, I gotta get up, I gotta check my cell phone, I gotta go, I gotta meeting, I'm busy, and you notice that your body's habituated into the same predictable future and you settle your body back down into the present moment. Now you're executing a will that's greater than those unconscious programs and that's a victory. And if you keep doing this over and over again, just like training an animal, the body's going to stay, it's going to surrender to a new mind and when that occurs, there's a liberation of energy and the person relaxes into the present moment. That's the unknown. The familiar past is the known, the predictable future is the known. The only one place left is the sweet spot of that generous present moment. Now let's get the person so familiar with their unconscious thoughts that when it comes they don't respond to them, so aware of their habits and behaviors, so conscious of the emotions that they typically feel in a waking day they would never go unconscious to that emotion again. And you say to the person, Hey Mark, what thoughts do you want to fire and wire in your brain? And with intention and attention, if we showed you how to do that, nerve cells that fire together wire together. Just take a little repetition, a little presence, you start installing the hardware. Keep doing it, it's going to become a software program. What does that mean? That's going to be the new voice in your head that says, Mark, you can do it. If you said, okay, I can teach.

My inner voice to speak a different language.

Exactly. You can change the way you think. You can change your mind.

But then they want to talk Portuguese, 'cause I think it's a nice sounding language.

But he then said...

Very sexy language. I think Portuguese is very sexy.

But if you said then, okay, how am I gonna be with my co-workers? How am I gonna be with my employees? How am I gonna be with my ex-wife? What would greatness look like today? And you sat down and closed your eyes, and you rehearsed in your mind how you were going to be in every one of those situations. If you study the research in neuroscience, mental rehearsal installs neurological hardware in your brain to look like you already did it.

Yeah, that's what I think about my serve before I serve and I do it better.

Of course, because you produce that mind. So if you keep doing that, you install hardware, practice it and rehearse it, It becomes a software program, which means you start behaving that way. Now, here's the challenging part. Can you teach your body emotionally what the future reality that you want to live in feels like before it happens? Now, this is very difficult if you've been conditioned into believing something in your outer world has to change to take away the emptiness or the lack to make you feel differently. This is saying, actually feel the emotion before it happens, and don't wait for the experience to occur. teach your body what the feeling will be before it occurs. If the environment signals the gene and the end product of an experience in the environment is an emotion, you're signaling the gene ahead of the environment and genes make proteins and proteins are responsible for the structure and function of your body and the expression of proteins is the expression of life. So teach the body emotionally to self-regulate, to believe it's living in an environment that's flourishing. That's wonderful. Keep practicing it and it'll become familiar to you and the process then creates a new identity and it's not difficult once you understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. And the more you combine all those different branches of science and make it in a simple way to understand, if people understand the what and the why, the how gets easier because you can assign meaning to what you're doing and it becomes instrumental. So, get a group of people, a thousand people, 1500 people, 2000 people into a room, Teach them that information, whether they're coming for wealth, their health, their relationship, a new career, a mystical experience, get them all together and teach them and measure what can take place in a one week period of time. And I assure you that more than 75% of the people that go through and go all in and retreat from their lives and remove the same stimulation from their environment and not be in the same conditions and teach them that information and give them numerous opportunities to apply it and numerous opportunities to get beyond themselves. All you need is that first person that stands on the stage and says, Hey, I walked in here with Parkinson's disease. I have no idea what happened, but I'm not trembling anymore. And boy, that last thing just something clicked for me and the person in the audience was watching the four-minute mile right in front of them and going, Wow, that guy looks like he's not a vegan. He doesn't look like he's particularly in shape, but His Parkinson's went away and, wow, I mean, if he could do it, I could do it and somebody else changes their belief and now that's a footprint in consciousness. Get enough people doing that, by the end of the week you're going to see things... We've seen blind people, seen deaf people hearing, not once, not twice, we've seen people with strokes for 10 years, lift their arms up again, we've seen people step out of wheelchairs, people on crutches drop their crutches, I mean, you see the body literally recalibrates to a new mind and they're not intentionally trying to do anything. They're just becoming somebody else. But the process of overcoming is the process of becoming. And if you teach people that formula and you get just one or two people doing it, it's just going to become an infection and it's going to wellness and it's going to spread just like disease.

That's good. Yeah, I think health is contagious actually. So Joe, a lot of people all listening, oh yeah, this all makes sense. And I'm certainly having these thoughts, but taming the mind is hard. And a lot of us feel things and have really strong emotions. And we think that they have a existence of their own. But it's really the thoughts that create emotions, right? It's thoughts that create the feelings. Because we have a belief, we have perspective, we have a narrative, and it can happen in a nanosecond. Right, I'm going to end it in a second, but is that how it works?

Well, as you said at the beginning of the show, there's never a time where your body is an influence in your mind, and there's never a time where your mind is an influence in your body. You have a body in your mind and a mind mapped in your brain, and it's the same. So, to a person then who's become so happy being unhappy, that that familiar feeling in them is something that they enjoy feeling because they don't know who they would be if they didn't feel that feeling. Okay, let's talk a lot.

Yeah.

Okay, let's talk about it.

A lot of six people who see that without their illness or their is their identity and without it. And why?

Why? Because the suffering and I'm not saying this is for everybody, but that person gets attention from it, gets visit people to visit, gets whatever they need. But in a sense, they also have relationships. where they love to share the same emotions. And if you share the same experiences, you share the same emotions. So, Mark, let's get on the phone and let's complain for the next 30 minutes about how miserable life is. And then I'll try to top you and you try to top me. And we're using each other to reaffirm some type of conditioning, right? So that becomes the identity. So then, so then let's just say you, you decide to stop blaming, start, stop complaining, stop making excuses, stop feeling sorry for yourself, stop talking trash, stop commiserating. You just say, I'm going to quit that. In the first hour, you do really well. But the problem is the body's saying, Hey, Mark, this is where you've been.

Complaining in an hour.

You call Joe and you start commiserating. So what does the body say? The body starts influencing the mind and it starts calling up circuits in the brain that are connected to that emotion that you've been using all along. So then you start thinking about all the reasons you're unhappy. Now that thought leads to a choice. That choice leads to the same behavior. The same behavior creates the same experience and the same experience produces the same feeling and the same emotion and that same emotion starts to influence the very same thought. And now the person returns back to their same biology and the health condition will always be there because it's the environment that looks like it's signaling the gene. But it's the emotion. So then If the person all of a sudden says, okay, I'm going to do my meditation and you do your meditation at 11 o'clock in the morning and that's normally when you get on your emails and start judging people, your body's going to say you're out of schedule. So the process of change requires then not only addressing the mind, which is the thought, but also the emotion that's conditioned into the body. And if you break it down for people, they'll be able to distinguish in the process of change. Oh my God, like I'm fasting from a breaking addiction. You know, your body's craving, just I just gotta suffer a little bit with somebody and it wants to suffer. And you gotta be able to work with it. And not just to sit there and white knuckle it, to learn how to self-regulate, to learn how to make those changes with your eyes open. That's when it matters the most. you practice meditation with your eyes closed. You take your body out for a test drive during the day with your eyes open and you work on staying conscious.

Right.

The purpose of meditation is to get better at meditation, to get better at life, right?

Exactly, exactly, becoming more conscious, exactly.

Yeah, and so those four elements that you talked about a little bit, can.

You kind of recap what you said? Yes, so it's really simple. So the first thing is that people have this very strong belief that there was some innate intelligence within them that was giving them life. There was some energy, some force of life that made them more vitalistic and less mechanistic, whether it was spiritual, whatever they wanted to call it, that there was some power within them that they acknowledged that was giving them life. The second thing was they realized it was their own mismanagement of their thoughts, and their actions and their emotions that created their health condition. They realized I actually had a strong part in this and they started taking responsibility and really started they decided I got to break the habit of being myself. Now, they really said if I'm going to live the next part of my life with this health condition, I don't want to live like that person any longer. If I only have six months to live, I don't want to live that way. So they started becoming conscious. of their unconscious self and so conscious that they didn't want to go unconscious and then they started thinking number three, if I actually had a new lease on life, if I actually could heal, if I actually could live another year, how would I live my life? Now they didn't say I'm going to be the same person. They said, how do I want to think? How do I want to act? How do I want to feel? And exactly how I described, they went into an inward process, not even a meditation, just What do I want to tell myself? Let me repeat it. How do I want to live with my family? How do I want to eat dinner? What emotions do I want to feel? And they started changing their personality. They started reinventing a new self. And then the last thing that they had in common is that they started noticing when they would close their eyes and do this, they lost track of space and time. But they thought it was like 15 minutes that went by or 20 minutes that went by. And in actuality, it was an hour and 20 minutes that went by. They had no sense of space and time in their inner process. And I was interested in demystifying the process because I wanted to see if we could teach that process that worked with sick people on other people and it worked.

So, you're taking these ancient spiritual traditions and meditation and spiritual practices and you put a lot of structure and science behind it. to help the average Westerner who's not familiar with those practices to actually access it, which is really an extraordinary gift. And I'd love to sort of have you talk about some of the practical things that people can do, like gratitude. You talk about how there's 1,200 chemicals released in the body from the practice of gratitude. And again, I'd be scared to know how many molecules come out with the practice of stress and complaining? I don't wanna know that.

You know what I'm talking about?

I don't wanna talk about the gratitude, the biology of gratitude.

Yeah, so I studied this extensively because we actually did an experiment. We took a group of people that came to our event and we did all kinds of brain measurements on them and then we put HR heart rate variability devices on them. We asked them to trade emotions like fear or anger or resentment or impatience or frustration and stop feeling those feelings and just for a few times a day to feel gratitude and we would talk them through it just for 15 minutes, 10 or 15 minutes, two or three times a day. At the end of four days, we were looking to measure if there were any significant changes in their immune regulation and we found out that the body started producing 50% more of a chemical called IGA, immunoglobulin A, the body's natural antiviral, antibacterial, natural flu shot. And so if when you are receiving something favorable or you just receive something enjoyable, if something wonderful just happened to you or something really amazing is happening to you, you feel grateful. So the emotional signature of gratitude is something amazing is happening to you or it just happened to you, right? So it's the ultimate state of receiving emotionally. So if you can teach a person to truly practice gratitude, there'll be significant changes in the way their heart thumps, the way it beats, and what it starts to do to the brain. We've studied this thousands of times. So when you start feeling grateful, your heart starts beating in a rhythm that begins to influence or inform the brain that it's safe to create. It's believing in that moment that it's safe to be out of survival and practice that enough times, the body starts to regenerate. We saw changes in immune regulation, we saw changes in gene expression.

Why?

Because the body's believing it's living in an environment where the person's dreams have already happened. We only accept, believe and surrender to thoughts that are equal to our emotional state. We never accept, believe and surrender to thoughts that are not equal to our emotional state and this is why affirmations don't work. You could say, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm healthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm wealthy, I'm free, I'm free, I'm free. And your body's going, no, you're not. You're miserable. So the thought never makes it past the brainstem to the body. teach a person to change from fear and break that conditioning and practice with enough times creating the same feeling of gratitude as automatically as they did with fear. It makes sense then that in a very short amount of time you can see very significant changes in how the body regulates and how it functions and the heart then starts to beat in this beautiful, beautiful coherent state. And so we started looking to see if teaching people how to do that and sustaining it, if it made significant changes. And without a doubt, when we accept, believe and surrender to the thoughts that are equal to the emotional state of gratitude, that information programs the autonomic nervous system into a different destiny. So then teach a person how to be in a state of receivership and gratitude, they can program their brain and body a lot quicker than when they're feeling fear and anger because you get the diagnosis. The moment you get the diagnosis, you notice a change in your internal state. You're changed. When you notice that change in your internal state, the brain freezes a frame and takes a snapshot. That's called a long-term memory. The doctor says, you, have six months to live. You have this condition. This is what happened. All that information is going in because it's equal to the emotion of fear. and get the person out of that state because that's a state of survival and you're losing energy in the body and in gratitude you're regenerating energy. So get the person to a state of gratitude and then teach them how to program their brain and body, then you start seeing changes in their autonomic nervous system.

Yeah, it's like the biggest pharmacy is between our ears, right? And that you're teaching people how to access that. The challenge I see for people and I'm thinking about this very selfishly and personally is, okay, I meditate, but is that enough? If I meditate 20 minutes twice a day and I do sort of a mantra meditation, I still have this relationship to my thoughts that I struggle with. So, are there other practices that you teach that help people to really break that pattern? Because it's not just about sitting. It is something else that has to happen as well. Sure, sure.

And well, first of all, Absolutely. Meditation is not just to meditate and then get up and return back to the same person flipping people off on the freeway and judging your partner. That's going back to the old self. Meditation is to prime the brain and body into a new state of being, right? And then maintain that modified state of mind and body your entire day. You got to be able to practice it with your eyes open, that no condition. no circumstance in your environment, no person, no thing, no craving in the body, no wrong choice. You got to be able to sustain that state. And if you can, get ready because there's going to be changes in your outer world. That's the law. So when we started studying people that were healing in this work, that were diagnosed, a lot of them with immune-mediated conditions, Mark?

Like autoimmune diseases?

Yeah, autoimmune diseases from cancer to rheumatoid to everything in between. They noticed that when they started doing the meditations, they started their well-being came back, but their blood values and their markers never changed. And it occurred to them, My God, I have a great meditation. I feel amazing. But then when I get up, I return back to the same worrying person. Now I gotta step it up. I gotta make the changes with my eyes open. And when they started doing it with their eyes open, that's when we started seeing the blood values and everything changing. So in our retreats, you can sit as it and get really good at it, but then there's four types of meditation. There's a seated, there's a standing, there's a walking, and there's a laying down. So if you're going to become that person you want to become, you better be able to practice doing it with your eyes open. So we teach people, 1,000, 1,500 people on a beach or in a park, it's really cool to watch. Everybody get that, open their hearts, get in that elevated state and move into a new state of being. And then let's open our eyes and now let's practice walking with our eyes open as that person, no different than rehearsing for a play or rehearsing and becoming that person. And if you do it enough times and a person understands that if they could really, how would I walk if I could heal my body in an hour? Who am I going to leave behind here? and who am I going to walk as? And a lot of people just hit it. And when they do, you see dramatic changes in their health because they're actually embodying the energy of their future. So we practice sitting, we practice standing and walking, we practice laying down. We practice it all ways because we want the person to become that very person in one week. And if they do, our research shows there's dramatic dramatic biological markers that change, not small amounts, like thousands.

What are you seeing? What are you seeing?

Wow, oh my God. Just everything from methylated DNA to changes in cytokines, the changes in immune markers to suppression of ATP in cancer cells, to down regulating genes for Alzheimer's. Let's just see. dramatic changes in people's biology.

And you mentioned gene expression changes, too. Can you talk about genes? Because we don't really think about our thoughts changing our genes, right?

Yeah. So, I mean, again, I'd like to simplify it for the average person, for us, regular people. And it's really simple. I mean, your body's a protein-producing machine. And muscle cells make muscle proteins. They're called actin and myosin. Skin cells make skin proteins. They're called collagen and elastin. Stomach cells make stomach proteins, they're called enzymes, and every cell in your body except red blood cells makes proteins, and proteins are responsible for structure, holding it together, and function and physiology, how we work. It's messengers, right? But in order for a cell to make a protein, a gene has to be regulated. So they used to say genes create disease. Well, you know this, less than 1% of the people on the planet are born with a genetic health condition. Everything else is lifestyle, it's behavior, it's the stress. So then, is it possible then that if they say now genes don't create disease, it's the environment that signals the gene that creates disease? Take two identical twins. You watch one age dies at 54, the other one lives to 83. They don't even look like the same person, share the same genome. Well, the environment was signaling the gene expression to make certain proteins, and the person develops a different condition because it's the environment that does that. But here's the problem. But if the environment signals the gene, the outer environment of the cell is the inner environment of the body. And what is that? That's the emotions or chemical, physical and emotional balance that we have to maintain. So if a person's just constantly living in fear and it's even if the environment is wonderful and they're on vacation and they keep remembering an event or anticipating a future and they're bringing up the emotion of anxiety and fear, it makes sense then that the person's signaling the gene outside of the outer environment because they're making the emotion in their inner environment and there's no difference. And so if that happens, the constant effect by the hormones of stress downregulate genes and create disease. And if you can turn on that stress response just by thinking about your problems, then your thoughts are literally going to make you sick. So, if your thoughts can make you sick, can your thoughts make you well? And you cannot begin to see changes in a person's health until they stop regulating the same genes the same way and they start up regulating new genes and down regulating old genes. And if they do that, they start producing different enzymes and different chemicals and different hormones and their body begins to scale in a different direction.

How is it different from other forms of meditation or practice that people are doing?

Gosh, to be really honest, Mark, I don't even know what anybody else is doing. We're so immersed in the stuff that we're doing. Basically, what I am, I'm a pragmatist. You want to talk about quantum superimposition. To me, if it has no effect on my life, I'm not interested. But if it's a practical application, I'm interested in the practical application. So, we look at I was going to say we have over 13,000 brain scans now. We look at real-time brain scans. I'm looking at your brain in one hour, an hour and 10-minute meditation. At certain moments, I'm watching what you're doing if you can actually change your brain waves and if you can sustain those changes. Can you do it again and make it a habit? Can you make it a skill? Can you repeat it enough times that you can do it more automatically? I'm watching the words. We're watching the words that I'm saying. I'm not. I'm not studying any tradition, any ancient scriptures. I think that the moment you start talking religion or tradition or scriptures or spirituality, you're going to divide an audience. I think science creates Community. And so what we do is we look, we've actually created. When you see a person move into love or gratitude and you see what that does to the brain in an instant, It informs the brain to be creative. When you see that and you see this dance between the two, and you turn around and you look at that person and they got this big smile on their face, they're so in love with the moment, they don't want it to end. And there's very strong biological changes. So we're looking at scans of hearts and brains, we're looking at collective scans of people just to see if we can demystify the process. I don't want to shut an audience off with a word. I want to create new words that are science-based. So the meditations that we teach all have meaning behind what we're doing because we've studied the scans and studied the effects and it has certain intentions of why we're doing it. Whether we want to signal new genes, whether we want to create more brain coherence, more heart coherence. We want to create coherence between the brain and the heart. I mean, what is it that we want to do? So we have different meditations for different intentions, really.

So a number of years ago, I realized if you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it if it's headed to the dark place, you have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And Bright Minds is the mnemonic we came up with and the B is for blood flow. Low blood flow is the number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. It's also associated with addictions, it's associated with depression, it's associated with ADHD and schizophrenia. So you want to do everything you can to protect your blood flow. And 40% of 40-year-old men have erectile dysfunction. Do you know what that means? 40% of 40-year-old men have brain dysfunction. If you have blood flow problems anywhere, it likely means they're everywhere. So you know you have blood flow problems if you get a scan, because SPECT is a blood flow study. If you have hypertension, if you have any form of heart disease, if you don't exercise, So it just gives you some very simple things to do. The R is retirement and aging. When you stop learning, your brain starts dying. And, you know, I turned 65 this year and I've seen thousands of 60, 70, 80 year old brains. And the news is not good. It's sort of like, you know, as we age, our skin begins to fall off our face. The same process happens in the brain, unless you're serious about it, right? I mean, I have your scan 10 years apart, and as you got older, your brain got better.

Yeah.

Well, how exciting is that, that you are not very competitive with the brain. The brain you have. The eye is inflammation that. I mean, both you and I know it's a disaster. Inflammation is a disaster for every organ in your body.

That's true.

Including your brain. And so people can measure their Omega-3.

Index, see what you can do. It's important to underscore this. We know from the research today that depression is inflammation in the brain, that autism is inflammation in the brain, that ADD and dementia are inflammation in the brain. And if that's true, then the question is what's causing the inflammation? How do you stop it? how do you fix it? So tell us about that.

So if you have a low Omega-3 index, taking Omega-3s can be really helpful. You have to get your gut right because having this thing, and I'm a psychiatrist, I didn't know one thing about leaky gut until I read the UltraMind Solution. And then I'm like, oh, you have to get your gut right. Because if your gut's not right, your brain's not right. You're likely to have things get inside your body that have no business in your body, which causes an autoimmune or an inflammatory Immune system response, so food really matters. Sugar is pro-inflammatory and foods that quickly turn to sugar, bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, you want to, you often say, eat them like a condiment.

Recreational drug. They're not even a condiment. Sugar is a recreational drug. It's fine, but you- Didn't you say.

The four white powders?

Yeah, the deadly white powder.

Deadly white powder, white flour, white sugar.

Cocaine, and too much salt.

So diet really does matter. And our processed foods are loaded with pro-inflammatory omega-6s, so corn and soy, we're overloaded with them. I mean, not that they're evil, But they're not the right choice as primary staples in our diet.

But also things like infections and mold and other things.

We're gonna get there. So, the eye is inflammation and so get your gut right, omega-3 fatty acids, the G is genetics. And the big lie with genetics is I have obesity in my family. and that's why I'm fat. Well, the fact is I have obesity in my family. I have a brother and sister who are 150 pounds overweight, but I'm not. Why?

You're wearing a skinny suit.

Because I know the behaviors that make it likely to be so. So genes are not a death sentence. What they should be is a wake-up call and tell you what you're vulnerable to so that you get serious about prevention.

I mean, you're in better shape now than when I met you 15 years ago.

Sure.

You lost more weight, you get more muscle, and you're 15 years older, and.

I work on it.

Right.

But because I love what I do. I'm. And quite frankly, I have four children. I never want to live with them. I love them. I want to be independent for as long as possible. I don't want them being. I'm worried about taking away my driver's license. That means I have to take care of my body because my body will then take care of my brain. But that causes you to think ahead, which is, of course, a brain function. The H is a national epidemic that nobody knows. It's head trauma. Head trauma is a major cause of psychiatric illness, and nobody knows about it because psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family counselors, counselors, they never look at the brain. And so that fall out of a second story window that caused you to be angry and depressed, nobody's thinking about rehabilitating the damage that occurred. That's why you really shouldn't let your children hit soccer balls with their head, play tackle football, and if you've been in a car accident and then you got depressed, somebody should look at your brain and then you should go about rehabilitating it. That's what I did with the big NFL study. And we published a study, 80% of our players get better in as little as two months.

It's amazing.

By putting them on our Bright Minds program. So I'm pretty excited about that. The T is toxins. And when I first started scanning people, I mean, it was really clear that marijuana, alcohol, cocaine, methamphetamine, means heroin or bad for your brain. But then I would see these toxic scans of people who never use drugs. And I'm like, oh no. I had not one lecture on mold exposure when I was a psychiatric resident or heavy mercury or mercury poisoning or lead exposure, none of that. And so we often find ourselves working up a toxic brain. And did you know 60% of the lipstick sold in the United States has lead in it? So I think it that is the kiss of death. And so I know you know this app, Think Dirty. And when I downloaded it, you can scan all of your personal products. I threw out half of my bathroom because it was basically toxic. Things like parabens and phthalates, they're called hormone disruptors, which we're gonna get to in a second, but you don't want whatever goes on your body goes in your body and affects your body. So you have to get rid of the toxins and basically it's decrease exposure and support the four organs of detoxification. Kidneys, drink more water. God, eat more fiber. Liver, stop drinking. I'm just not a fan. I mean, we can talk about it, but it disrupts liver function and with exercise or take saunas. People who take the most saunas have the lowest incidence of Alzheimer's disease. So M is something I call mindstorms. It's abnormal electrical activity in your brain. So if you have a hot spot in your temporal lobes or cold spot, what we see, it's akin to seizure activity. So sometimes anticonvulsants can really help. A ketogenic diet has anti-convulsant properties. There's this great book, it's written in 1980 by Jack Dreyfus, who's the founder of the famous Dreyfus Mutual Fund. And he said, A remarkable medicine has been overlooked. And it was Dilantin, which is an old anti-convulsant. He'd been going to see psychiatrists forever. He said, Three days on Dilantin, he didn't need a psychiatrist anymore, because it had balanced his his brain. And so the second I is immunity and infections. If you look at a map of the United States and you look at the highest incidence of schizophrenia, overlay the highest incidence of Lyme disease, they're identical. Incredible. Anybody in the West or the Northeast or the northern Midwest should be screened for Lyme if they have a psychotic disorder. and just need to screen them for it because if they have it, treating it may actually treat their, quote, mental illness that is not mental. It's the brain.

You treat the brain.

Yeah. N is neuro hormone deficiencies. D is diobesity. You know, as your blood sugar goes up and your weight goes up, your brain gets smaller, as we talked about, getting your weight right, your blood sugar right, and S is sleep. This is how you keep your brain healthy.

I think the whole idea of our beliefs and our thoughts and our emotions being these things that you can unpack, right? Most of the times we're in this class reality where we have a thought, you know, based on a belief that creates an emotion and it all happens in a nanosecond. And it's almost like what happened for you is that it sort of slowed down so you could see, oh, this thinking may not be true, but I believe it and it's causing me to have all these horrible feelings and all this suffering and be miserable. Exactly. And how do I break that cycle where I'm constantly believing the stupid thoughts that I have, making them real, and putting meaning on things that are causing me so much pain.

Yeah, it would be like if I have the thought, like I ran into a old friend and she was in a hurry and sluffed me off and my feelings were hurt. Okay, and now I'm thinking, what did I say? What did I do? Why did she and she this and she that and all of that going on. So what is the cause of my suffering? what I was thinking and believing in that situation on standing on the corner when she did not have time for me. So now people can do what I did. They can download on byronkatie.com. they can download what I call a judge your neighbor worksheet. And there are six questions on that judge and neighbor worksheet. So because the ego is always in the past or future, and since that situation is up for me now, I look at the Judge youe Neighbor worksheet, knowing that the cause of my suffering, again, is what I was thinking and believing then. So there's six questions on the worksheet and I filled them in with what I was thinking and believing then. I just answered the questions.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to question what I was thinking and believing because that was the cause of my suffering. And then as I question it, there are four questions. And then I invite people to flip them, to try them on, to see what is as true or truer for them in that situation. So the first question is, is it true? she doesn't care about me.

Yeah.

No, clearly not.

And. And so I meditate in it. You know, the work is just pure. It takes Stillness. It's pure. It's purely a meditative process. It's. It is contemplation. And if I can do it, anyone can do it. So is it true? Is the first question. Can I really know that it's true? So there's a combination of. really two questions there. Is it true? Can I really know that it's true? She doesn't care about me. And then I meditate in that. I'm on the street corner with her. I see her face. I see her expression. I can hear her because when I'm believing the thought she doesn't care about me, I can't really hear her then. But I heard her. But the ego doesn't want me to hear it.

Yeah.

So now I'm there, I'm still in it. And then the third question, how do I react? What happens when I believe the thought? And then Mark moves into your field. How do I react when I believe the, of course, this is your field too. How do I react when I believe the thought she doesn't care about me? I get really still and I get in touch with my emotional. I see where I feel that. I feel how powerful it was, maybe on a scale from one to three. How much of my body did it take over? I think it's just one place, like in my solar plexus, or maybe only in my shoulders. But then I notice, as I sit and how I react when I believe the thought, it hit my shoulder, it hit my neck. And so I'm meditating in that. And then my chest, I see how much of my body is taken over emotionally when I sit and how do I react when I believe the thought. Now, all those emotions show up for a reason and it cannot be what she said and did. It can never be that. It's what I'm thinking and believing that is the cause of that emotion. Okay, so in that, how do I react when I believe the thought I continue with noticing the illusion the ego offers up?

Yeah.

It shows me the past where we were such good friends and it compares with, and What did I say or do? And then in the future where she's gonna talk to people about me, she's going to ruin my reputation. She's going to, she doesn't care about me. And that I know mind and in its past, future, all the proof is right here in my head that she is a threat. To my existence.

You just made it all up.

Yeah, a threat to my existence, meaning identity. That I want people to see me as kind and loving and a good friend and she's blowing it. And she's gonna blow it with, you see that identity, the ego is always protecting. So as I said in How I React When I Believe They Thought, all of this comes up. Now, this is where addiction comes in. When I'm thinking that on her, I feel guilty.

Yeah.

That's just a given. I don't have to like it. It's a given and guilt is, it's, it's an amazing thing. It says, look at your thinking. What are you thinking and believing? Something's out of order and it's not her. And I'm not letting her off the hook. I'm just doing my own personal work now. Okay, so I see she's going to tell people and they're going to this and they're going to and she's this and she's that. Just my judgments about her, I'm going to experience, I'm going to notice some guilt. Now guilt is the food. It is the food for addiction. it's where addiction is born. And so then I see, like, the chocolate ice cream. I mean, my ego's gone as far as it can. And then, boom, chocolate ice cream. I see it in my mind's eye. And then if you, you know, if I say the word apple, immediately you see an apple in your mind's eye. It's like I'm casting a spell on you. Yeah. Like banana. You saw it. I just cast words, cast spells.

Yes.

So I see that now. Chocolate ice cream. I said I'd never do it again. I said I was only going to have it once. I said, no. Now, if you imagine biting into a big, juicy lemon, right lemon, right now, you feel the physical effects.

Yeah.

Physical. You did not eat a lemon. That's the power of mind.

Yes.

Power of what we call ego. So that's addiction. If I see the lemon and it causes that thing in me, literally it's so powerful it could raise blood sugar. I mean, it could do a lot of things. So, you know, that's why pills are so popular for stress.

So.

So I notice the cause of my suffering on every level. Body, Mind, Spirit. Okay, so how do I react when I believe the thought? I see that I went into victim mode as I was standing there. It was not too much, but just a little. Yeah. okay.

Gil. Why does a guilt come from being a victim?

It argues with our true nature. And the proof of that is anything we think that is not understanding, kind, connected is a word I love. Connected with the human race and everyone in it connected. It doesn't mean I'm going to hang out with that person. It doesn't mean we're going to have tea. It's just, I'm connected. I understand. I understand. If I were thinking and believing what that person was thinking and believing that murdered another person, how could I not?

Yeah.

How could I not? So this is not a little thing. that we're inviting people to. It is, you know, that I can't even leave my bedroom into a person that loves people. I mean, that travels the world for more than 30 years. That's not a little thing.

No. So what you're saying almost, Marryn, is that in your mind you made up a story or a narrative. about what this person's actions meant.

But I can't claim I made up my mind. I can't claim I did it. Meaning, I didn't do it on purpose. It's the ego at work. I didn't do it on purpose.

So your higher self, when you say I, you mean your higher self didn't do it.

Well, it's like find a place where you said or did something that was, that you felt a little guilty over, you know, like a place where you, a little guilt, okay, you find that place where you said what you said or you did what you did that caused a little guilt, something that you had hoped you wished you hadn't done. Okay, so you said what you said, you did what you did, and you felt guilt. Now get really still and identify what you were thinking and believing just before you said what you said or did what you did. And then tell me, did you have a choice?

In that moment, to feel what you're feeling? I think it's automatic, right? We have automatic conditioning and patterning and beliefs that are sort of embedded in us. But what you're asking people to do is slow that down and start to look at the truth of it. And in this case, you're talking about your friend.

I have a choice. I mean, in that moment, you may.

Not have the choice to kind of not have that emotion, but then you can kind of look at it and stop, which is what your work is about. It's about, okay, I had this experience. Now what? and with this particular friend.

Yes. If, if I were thinking and believing, I've tested this many times. It's a way of life for me. If, if, when I consider what I'm thinking and believing, I can even justify the thing I said and did.

Of course.

Okay. And, and so why do I feel guilty about it? You know, even a little.

Yeah.

So, and it's not right or wrong. We're just looking at how we react when we believe a thought.

Yeah, well, that's a huge thing. And I think a lot of the times we have beliefs that create the thoughts that lead us to interpret something as bad or in a way that causes us suffering. Right. So you, you interpreted your friend Behavior as somebody who was, didn't care about you, wasn't interested in you, maybe. have negative thoughts about you, but you don't really know what was going on with that person. They could have been late to go visit their mother in the hospital who was dying, or they could have, you know, been stressed about blah, blah, blah. And you, you take that on as your own thing. And so I think we, you know, I had a friend once who said to me, stop looking for ways to be offended, you know, which is a great line.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because, or my mother used to say to me, you know, when, when you're driving the car and someone honks, says, what makes what makes you think that's for you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When a police car goes by, you're like, oh, you know, Phil. And I think that that is a very powerful concept in your work that I think is worth unpacking because, you know, most of us are so attached to our thinking and our thoughts and our beliefs that we don't have a space between those thoughts and beliefs.

Yeah.

And our interpretation of those. And we, and to believe reality.

Right?

That's why your question, is it true, is so important. Is it true? That's the first question, right? Is it really true that she hates you or doesn't care about you or that she's gonna go say bad stuff about you or...? No, right? And I think that's really a powerful insight.

It is. It brings us back to some sanity. Just the question, is it true? The other three questions and turnarounds aren't even necessary if a person just said, Is it through? Is it true? All of it would meet that question of a person got really still. Is it true? You'd be shown how you react when you believe the thought, what you said, what you did, how it felt. And the answer would reveal itself. And yes or no, when I ask myself, Is it true? she doesn't care about me, for example. I I I get still in that. And to find there. There's only one syllable to answer the question. Is it true? It's either yes or no. And they're both equal because let's. Let's put it here with me. I'm only looking for my authentic answer, and so that may take a while. But I can't answer what other people, how the world would answer it. Like the whole world could say, She doesn't care about you, but I'm dealing with me. I've got to know she doesn't care about me. Is it true? And then, you know, it's a beautiful thing, Martin, because when these things are worked through, I can just, it's nothing to pick up the phone and say, you know, as we were standing on the corner and, you know, I had the thought that, you didn't care about me, do you? And was I missing something? And that's not exactly a great situation to. But anyway, we're free. We can do our work and call and test it. And if she says, I don't. I didn't care about you and tells me why, then there is something I can do about me that I was. to that she opens me up to. So people grow me in the world. But we're too fearful to even call and ask. We just assume and then we feel bad, feel guilty, and then we maybe eat the ice cream or take the drug or the pill or snap at someone that we love completely and then we're guilty over that.

It's a so your work really is, is, is focusing on this simple idea that, that suffering, like our own emotional, mental, spiritual suffering, really is inside of our minds and is not real. And it's a story we tell ourselves that we torture ourselves with, and that there is a way to be free of those thoughts that make us suffer. And that's really what your work is about.

And waking up to, to what is real and what is not. So, what's the resolution?

How do you get people there? I mean, the four questions and the turnaround is really the simple process, right? And it seems so simple, but it really is very powerful. And maybe you can take us through what those four questions are again and what the turnaround is and how people can use this process to really get free.

Okay, so the first question is, is it true? So, she doesn't care about me. okay, is it true? Can I absolutely know that it's true? And I'm going to meditate in that and I'm going to be there in that time and place anchored there. And then how do I react in that situation when I believe the thought she doesn't care about me? I get really still, my eyes are closed, I'm meditating in that situation. I can see my body language. I see clearly my attitude. I'm in touch with the emotional I felt. I'm not just pretending it didn't happen. I'm present here now, seeing now what I saw then that I couldn't see then. I'm present. Then the fourth question. In that situation, standing on the corner with her. Fourth question, who would I be without the thought she doesn't care about me? So to test that, I'm going to get still, drop my story, and listen to her words. In other words, I'm not going to put meaning on it. I'm dropping my story, listen to her words, see her expression, her body language. So I'm seeing her without my story. Okay? So who would I be without the thought? Learning a lot, learning a lot, Mark.

About yourself.

I'm connected. I'm connected. And it's never too late because the next time I see her, I'm connected. I'm not seeing who I believed her to be in the original situation. I'm seeing her as from an awakened mind, from a more awake mind, the compassion is there and I'm not trying, I'm connected. In that case, self-compassion, unless I said or did something. Okay, so then the last part of the work is to flit it, to turn it around, and so she doesn't care about me, turned around. She does care about me. Now, I'm not going to just believe that. I'm meditating in the situation. She does care about me. Now, what you said earlier may show up for me. I may see that she was in a hurry, that she said something to tip me off, that she needed. Who knows what's going to show up, but I'm not going to make nice with it. I'm going to be there now. I'm going to be then now. And she does care about me. Let's see, she does care about me. She did stop to talk to me. I mean, I'm gonna see a lot as I witness that in the silence from here. And then another turnaround, she doesn't care about me. Another turnaround, I don't care about her. No, okay. In that situation, where was I uncaring? And so... And this work takes so much courage, Mark. Where was I uncaring? What did I say or do? Did I give her the look? Did I look like bothered? Did I... anything? Okay, now let's say I said something rude. It just came out of my mouth, which happens as a believer. She doesn't care about me. for example. Okay, so now the next time I see her, I might call her and I might say, you know, when we met on the corner, it looked to me like you were in a hurry and I'm sorry if I held you up. And, you know, I was a bit rude and I'm sorry for that. And.

So you get to clean things up if you made a mess?

I do.

And then I get to make it right. I don't do it with the next person. Maybe I'm a little more patient with the next person. And so these turnarounds, we're not trading one belief for another. We're meditating in the possibility of.

The person purpose of the turnaround is to kind of like look at other ways of looking at the same situation from a different perspective and trying it on and seeing if it's true or not true how it feels. And you're not necessarily saying it is true, but you're saying, you know, I don't care about me, but maybe that's true. And then you start to look at it.

Well, you know, I look at, I don't care about her. And then I sit in that and see, as I said earlier, anything that I I said or did that would lead anyone to believe that I didn't care about them. And then there's another turnaround on, I don't care about me. And in, she doesn't care about me, turned around, I don't care about me. So where is it that I was disrespectful of myself? That I didn't give it time? that I interrupted her. I was in a hurry. I was the one that pulled away. She didn't. And it shifts every relationship we've got because our identity is shifting every time we sit in inquiry.

Most of us understand, you know, we need to eat well. Most of us understand how to exercise and what that means. But very few of us understand how can we actually deactivate that stress response, activate what we call the relaxation response or the healing response in the body in a deliberate, methodical way, just like we exercise or eat well? And I think those are skills we never learn that are hard for people to understand how to incorporate, and yet they're pretty easy to do and they're actually fun and you feel amazing after.

Yeah, that's the beautiful thing about this, is that they're not as hard as we think. They're quite simple. Most of them, I think pretty much all of the recommendations in my book, I think are free. Like, literally, you don't have to buy fancy equipment or fancy apps. Actually, a lot of this is accessible to all of us. But just to put in context the scale of this problem, Mark, I mentioned what the World Health Organization say, but there was a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2013 It was, I think it was an editorial piece which suggested that between 70 and 90% of what a primary care physician like me sees in any given day is in some way related to stress.

Of course, of course.

These are remarkable statistics.

It's either caused by or made worse by stress.

100%. And I think once people understand...

I mean, if you're stressed, your blood sure goes up. Your blood pressure goes up. Well, your blood vessels get stiff and hard, right?

Yeah, I mean, I try and explain this.

Create more inflammation.

Yeah, I find that when patients understand what the stress response is, I find they're really engaged in trying to change it. So I say to them, look, your stress response is ultimately trying to keep you safe. It's when your body thinks you're in danger, it's trying to keep you safe. So let's go back two million years ago, and then you can understand what the stress response is. how it's evolved. So you are in your hunter-gatherer tribe and a wild predator is approaching, right? In an instant, your stress response gets activated and your physiology starts to change. So as you said, your blood sugar goes up, which is going to help deliver more glucose to the brain. Your blood becomes more prone to clotting so that if you get bitten by that lion, bitten, you're not going to bleed to death.

Yeah.

You're going to survive. you know, your amygdala, which is the emotional part of your brain, becomes more reactive. So you're hypervigilant to all those threats around you. That is an appropriate short-term response to a threat. The problem now, Mark, is that for many of us, our stress response has not been activated by wild predators. It's been activated by our daily lives.

By Twitter.

By social media. Email inboxes.

By CNN.

Fox News.

To-do lists, right? Elderly parents we're looking after, you know, two parents working in a family, one's trying to rush home from work to pick up the kids, etc., etc.

Yeah.

And for many of us, those short-term responses that are so helpful become harmful. So if your stress response is going up every day, right, and blood sugar going up for a short period of time, it's not a problem, right? But if that's happening day in, day out to your email inbox, Well, that's going to lead to fatigue, lethargy, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, you know, all from the stress response.

Now we have so many more stresses than we used to, right? We have the cultures we live in that stress, we have the toxic food system, we have the chronic amount of financial stress that most people feel. I think, you know, 40% of Americans can't withstand a $500 emergency, 100 million live in poverty or near poverty. which is hugely stressful. I mean, you know, one of the studies that I, I found most striking a number of years ago was that more than a poor diet, more than smoking, more than lack of exercise, that socioeconomic status and a lack of sense of control over your life, really, stress is the number one predictor of death and disease. And I think it's something we don't really appreciate, and we don't, as Physicians, really learn how to address it, how to measure it, and how to help treat people.

Yeah, I, I totally agree. And actually, the first part of my book is actually on meaning and purpose, and it's relevant to this because not having that control over your life, not having a sense of meaning, not having something to get up for every day, that is arguably the most stressful thing.

Yeah.

In your life, even if you're doing everything else right, if you don't have that and you know, a few years ago, I came across this Japanese concept of ikigai, you know, which I know you're familiar with. You know, this. I saw these four circles, and it's where these four circles intersect in the middle is your ikigai. You know, when you are doing something in your life that you're good at, something that you love, something that the world needs and something that pays you money. Yeah.

And I thought, sounds like you got that nail, Dr. Chatterjee.

Hey, I sounds like. Well, look, I'm very lucky. I have. I now have. in my life, my job, I absolutely love my job. That's for sure. But what's interesting for me is I saw that and I thought, yeah, I want some Mickey Guy in my life. That sounds brilliant. I started talking about this concept to my patients and for many of them, they found it a little bit intimidating. They thought, well, how am I going to find one thing in my life to tick all those four boxes? And actually, when I was giving a talk in London recently on stress, this Japanese student put her hand up at the end and she asked me a question. She said, hey, Dr. Chastin, I've grown up with this philosophy and I've got to say I find it really stressful. I find it too high a bar to live to. And what I did in the book is I created a new framework that I use for my patients. I call it the LIV framework. It's a much more achievable way, I think, for a lot of people to find their meaning and purpose. The L is for love, I is for intention, V is for vision, E is for engage. We probably can't go through all of that, but I sort of I use it with my patients to help them start to find meaning and purpose. And the first one I think is really important, love.

Yeah.

Right.

So the research on this is super clear. Regularly doing things that you love makes you more resilient to stress.

Right.

So you mentioned a lot of Americans are struggling that they don't have control over their life. And this is the interesting thing about stress, Mark, is that sometimes we can't as physicians change the stressors. in our patients' lives.

Right, no, no, you can't change what's.

Happening out there, you just change- But we can make them more resilient to it. Yes. And regularly doing things that you love makes you more resilient to stress. At the same time, being chronically stressed makes it harder for us to experience pleasure and day-to-day things. So one of my recommendations to my patients is have a daily dose of pleasure, even if it's just for five minutes. You know, can you each day, Give pleasure the same priorities you might give to the amount of vegetables you have on your plate or whether you go to the gym. This could be going for a walk, it could be reading a book, listening to a podcast, it could even be coming home from work, putting on YouTube, watching your favorite comedian for five minutes and laughing. Yeah, that is very important and very valuable.

And it makes a huge difference. I mean, I, you know, I'm now in California doing my public television show and I was at the hotel and I was right on the beach and I went out to the beach and I jumped in the water, swam a little bit and I came back and I literally just laid there in the sand doing absolutely nothing. And, I can't tell you how pleasurable that was to just be unplugged for a minute and stop. And, most of us just keep go, go, go all day long and distract, distract, distract.

Well, there's obviously the nature piece there as well which is very impactful for stress. But, let me talk about a patient. I saw recently, I think you'll find this interesting. 54 year old chap, I think he was certainly mid 50s. He was the local, he was the CFO of a local plastics company. And, you know, he was in a good job, earning good money, married with two kids. He came in to see me and he said, Dr. Chassy, look, I'm sort of, I'm struggling a bit. I find it hard to get out of bed sometimes in the morning. I find it hard to concentrate at work. You know, I just feel a bit indifferent to things. Is this what depression is? Now I started to chat to him. We did some tests. I was looking into all aspects of his lifestyle. But ultimately, one thing was quite clear to me is that he never did anything that he loved. So I asked him, you know, how's your job? He said, yeah, it's fine. You know, I don't really enjoy it, but it pays the mortgage, pays the bills, feeds the family. I said, okay, how's your relationship with your wife? Yeah, so-so, you know, I don't really see her much, but it's, you know, it's fine, I guess. Very, very indifferent. I said the same about his kids. And I said, do you do, you know, have you got any hobbies? I said, do you have time? My work's busy. At the weekends, I've got to do all the chores. I want to take the kids to their classes and their sports games. I don't have any time. I said, did you ever have any hobbies? And he said, yeah, sure. When I was a teenager, I used to love playing with train sets. I said, okay, fine. Do you have a train set at home? He said, well, yeah, I've got one in my attic, but I haven't played with it for years. And I said, what I'd love you to do when you get home this evening is get your train set out. Now, look, Mark, I appreciate this may.

Not be the ideal place to put that on your prescription pad.

Yeah, well, I'm all for lifestyle prescriptions, right?

And he play with train set three times a week.

But see what happened.

What was fascinating refills unlimited.

Exactly, but it may not be the advice that he was expecting from his daughter, but he said, yeah, okay, sure, I'll do that. Then this was in a conventional medical practice. These were 10 minute consultations. This is in the National Health Service in the UK. We don't get the chance to follow up all our patients. We see maybe 40 to 50 patients a day. We simply can't follow them all up. I didn't know what was going on with him. Three months later, I finished my morning surgery and I was in the car park about to go and do my home visits and I bumped into his wife and I said, Hey, how's your husband getting on? She said, Doctor Chashti, I cannot believe the difference. I feel like I've got the guy I married back again. My husband comes home from work, he's pottering around on his train set, he's always on eBay looking for collector's items and he's now subscribed to this, you know, this magazine. I thought, okay, that's incredible. I still hadn't seen him. Three months after that, he comes in for a well man check to my office, and he comes in with his blood tests. I'm about to go through them with him. And I said, hey, how are you doing? Dr. Satchi, I feel incredible. I've got energy, my mood is good, and I feel motivated. I said, how's your marriage? Marriage is great. I'm getting on really, really well with my wife. How is your job? Love it. Really, really enjoy the job. So why is that so powerful, Mark? Is this? Did he have a mental health problem?

Or train said deficiency?

Or did he have a deficiency of passion in his life? And when he corrected that passion deficiency, everything else starts to come back online. So I want to expand the conversation about stress to go, yeah, sure. Breathing, nature, meditation, exercise, these things are fantastic. and of course, I talk about them and I go into the science and the practical implications of people, but what about something about passion, doing things that you love? It's just as important. That's true.

You know, I often talk about what are the ingredients for health and one of them is meaning and purpose. And I was just shocked a number of months ago to see an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that people who lacked meaning and purpose had a higher risk of death and disease. I mean, it's just striking. It turns out in the research that that it's not just smoking or bad diet or lack of exercise, but lack of meaning and purpose that increases your risk of death. I mean, that's a very striking finding.

Yeah, it's amazing. And obviously, the way we look at health, we're looking at all of these multiple inputs that play a role in someone's health. And of course, I am just as passionate about food, physical activity, sleep, you know, all these things that are critical. But we've also got to think about those social pieces, you know, our community, the relationships we've got, you know, why do we get up each morning? Do we feel that we've got control over our life or do we feel, you know, do we sit in traffic for two, three hours a day in a job that we can't stand for a boss who doesn't value us? The reality is that that is the case. You know, we've got to have to think about with our patients how we tackle that. Of course, not all our patients can leave that job, right? So I'm passionate and I've used these tips that I've, you know, that the book is full of so many tips that people can literally choose the ones that are relevant for their life. But I have worked in deprived areas in the UK for many years, and these tips also work for people in deprived areas on low incomes, because the common criticism of Wellness is that it's just for the wealthy. It's for the middle classes. And I'm passionate to say it is applicable to everyone. You give people these tools. of nature, of passion, of a quick five-minute workout. Even if you're living in a lifestyle that you don't enjoy, that there are lots of stresses in your life, you can help process that stress. You really can, and it can make a huge difference.

Now, one of the things that people don't realize is they think stress is subjective, but it's subjective, right? It's the perception of how something impacts us. It's our beliefs about something. So I think if that's true, then how do we create a different mindset so that when something happens, it's not stressful. I was talking to my wife this morning and she's putting on a show, a comedy show called the Consciousness Show. And she had some issue with the tickets and she was getting stressed about it because she thought the one that were on the waiting list were actually given tickets and she was kind of freaking out. And I'm like, that is not really a big stressor. I mean, it's your belief about it. It's not a big deal. Like, there are things to really be worried about. And I think for most of us, we get caught in this vicious cycle of stress and worry about things that are not really worth worrying about. And I think it's our beliefs about it that make it seem so. And I think there are real things to worry about, you know, if you have income issues, if you have real trauma in your family, or I mean there are real things that are going on that are stressful, like my dad died last summer and that was very stressful for me. But I think there are ways of looking at changing our mindset. So can you talk about how that works?

Well, I think there's a couple of things to say there. I think when it comes to stresses, I think we need to think about what we can control and what we can't control. Many of us, I have for years spent time and energy worrying about things I have no control over. And that's something that I've changed a lot in my life. I've really had to work hard on that. And once you get into that mindset, it's amazing how your stress levels just come down because so many of those things, like traffic, I can't do anything about traffic. I just don't let it worry me anymore. I'm just, you, don't get road rage, Dr. Chatterjee. Hey, you know, I, I, if I'm honest, seven, eight years ago, you know, when I was a carer for my dad, When I was working a busy job, when my kids were very young and wasn't sleeping very much, you know what? If I was driving to work and someone would come in front of me or cut me up, I'd probably get quite agitated if I'm honest. But now I just don't. I'm like, ah, they're probably having a bad day if they're sort of screaming at me from the window and I'm.

Just a lot more chilled and relaxed.

I mean, you give your power over to other people if you let them affect you that way. Yeah, for sure. But it's something we have to work on. And I think the reason why many of us struggle with this is because of time. Now, let's mean what I mean by that. I think one of the biggest stressors in the modern world today, in the 21st century, is our lack of downtime. So the modern world has stolen downtime from us. It's. It's gradually being eroded out of our lives. I'll give you an example. We're here in Santa Monica, right? In California. I bet 10 years ago, if we were here and we went into a local cafe to buy a coffee. I bet people will be standing in line, they'll be looking around, they might bump into a friend, they might be looking at all the, all the sweet treats, and they might be thinking, which one am I gonna have? You know, they'd be daydreaming a little bit. Now, if you go to any cafe, what's everyone doing? Everyone on their phone, computer.

Yeah.

And look, to be clear, I'm not criticizing. I will do that as well a lot of the time.

Okay. But my point is, it's just to be, just lack of time. You know, it was fascinating. I just went to give a talk at the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency. And it's a highly secure building, Langley, and there's no technology allowed. So you can't bring in a phone, computer, nothing, not even a Fitbit. And what was striking to me is that everybody was present. I gave a lecture to 300 people and nobody was on their phone. I was in a room giving a talk to 30 or 40 doctors and health professionals. Nobody was on their phone. and everybody was focused in paying attention. It was the most remarkable thing. It was like going back on a time machine.

But only a time machine of 15 years.

Yeah.

That's how quickly things are changing.

I thought it was 2009.

Yeah, that's... And I don't think we've realized how toxic that is, because you may say, well, why does that matter? You know, what's the problem that we're using this downtime to get ahead? You know, we're sending an email, we're quickly updating our Instagram. Well, I'll tell you the problem with that. There's many problems with that, but we used to think that our brain went to sleep when we switched off, right? When we stopped focusing on a task in front of us, our brain went to sleep. Neuroscience shows us that's not the case. When we stop focusing on a task in front of us, there's a part of the brain called the default mode network or the DMN that goes into overdrive. Now, what does that part of the brain do? But there's many things. But two things I think listeners will find really interesting is that part of the brain helps us solve problems and helps us be more creative. So this is why so many of us get our best ideas when we're out for a walk, out for a run, or we're in the shower. I don't know if it's just me or you. Do you get my best ideas when I'm in the shower?

Totally. When I go for a run or a bike ride and I can just wander around.

And this is because, Mark, our brain is trying to solve problems for us. if we give it the down time to do that. And I think showers are one of the few places still where our phones haven't, you know, we don't, I don't know about you, I certainly don't take my phone into the shower with me. I'm sure that will change very soon. Yeah, now the new phones, they go.

Down to four meters underwater, so.

Yeah, I mean, this is why we keep trying to swimming, actually, because I think swimming is, again, one of those sports now where you can still do without technology, you know, even in the gym now, people are posting selfies of them, doing their workout, updating their feed, you know, and the DMN is a really important part of our brain. And I go into a lot of companies now to talk to them about employee well-being. And one of my top tips for them is take a tech free lunch break.

Digital detox.

Even if it's just for 15 minutes, take a tech free lunch break. And last year, actually, I made, actually, it was earlier this year, I made an ITV documentary on stress. And we got to take three or four people, we got to measure their stress levels minute to minute throughout the day for three days. And one chap in particular, he was a manager of his local company, he took his job seriously, he wanted to lead by example, but he was complaining of stress. He was thinking, he was complaining that he was drinking too much alcohol, his relationship with his wife was under strain, and he was always tired. Now, we measured his stress levels. It was HRV heart rate variability. And we could see that actually on his work day, his stress levels would climb throughout the morning. At lunchtime, he would work through his lunch and they'd keep climbing. And all afternoon as well, they were just constantly elevated. He would go home late, he would drink alcohol to unwind, he wouldn't be present with his wife. That would cause issues. He wouldn't sleep well and the cycle would continue. All I changed within Mark was I said, okay, look, I want you to take a 15 minute break at lunchtime. I want you to leave your phone in your drawer and go outside for a walk. He was very lucky he had a rivet nearby and we can maybe touch on why nature is so important. So all he did was for 15 minutes at lunchtime, he went for a walk in nature without his phone. Now, when we remeasured his data objectively, his stress levels were right down. But subjectively, what did he say? He said, Dr. Shashi, I feel like a different person.

Yeah.

I'm more creative in the afternoon. I enjoy my job more. I'm leaving early now rather than late. It's not just on time. I'm leaving early. I'm drinking less alcohol. And my relationship with my wife has improved. Yeah. So this is what I call the ripple effects, right? One small thing.

It's powerful.

So when we say that wellness is for the middle classes. Well, hold on a minute. Who doesn't have the ability to have a 15 minute tech free lunch break? Yeah. Right, that is free.

That's not asking a lot. It's true.

I'm not trying to underplay this, but I'm very- It's powerful.

I mean, I think the whole digital detox movement's really growing. And, you know, for my wife, for our anniversary, I got her a little box.

And.

I said, Here, honey, your anniversary present. And she's like, oh, this is such a nice little box. I said, no, no, that's not the present. The present is I put my phone in the box Friday night and I don't take it out till Sunday night. And she's like, started crying. Like that was the best present I could give her to be present with her, right? The presence of presence, right? And then I did it and I thought, oh, this is for her, you know? But my experience was so transformational. I was like laying on the carpet, playing with the cats, listening to jazz, just daydreaming, relaxing, not grabbing my phone every second. And it was the most wonderful experience for me. I love it. It's like a regular habit now. We leave our phones at home. We go for dinner. We don't.

On Sunday mornings, my wife and I will go out with our kids. kids and we'll both leave our phone at home. And, you know, I do it for the whole day, but often it's like four hours, four or five hours. And what's incredible is that you come home and I feel like I've been on holiday.

Yeah.

Like you. We don't realize how much this constantly checking our phones is draining us.

Yeah.

And I got called out by this, by my daughter a few years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I was playing with her in our living room. and I can't remember what was going on, but, you know, I kept nipping out into the kitchen to keep checking my phone. And she said to me, Daddy, you're not really here, are you? And that really, really struck me. I mean, kids really can teach us how to be present and live in the moment. And I thought, Wow, she's right. I'm not really here because, yes, I'm in the room playing with her, but my mind is actually not quite there. It's thinking about what's going on on my phone. And that really changed my behavior.

That'll get you.

That did get you. That got me big time.

Right from the mouth of babes, right?

Yeah, but I think it's a very powerful lesson for all of us. And I think people need strategies because these things are designed to be addictive. So, you know, I will not charge my phone in my bedroom anymore. If I bring that phone into my bedroom, I can't resist it. I simply cannot resist. It's too addictive, so I charge it in my kitchen.

Yeah.

And so I, I say to people, you need to try and create a bit of tech free time in your day. Sure, lunch break is a great time to do it. But if you can't have some time, ideally a golden hour in the morning and a golden hour before going to bed. If a golden hour is too much, start with five minutes in the morning, five minutes before you go to beds.

Well, if you can't figure out how to do it for five minutes, there's definitely a bigger problem in your life.

Yeah, there is. But, you know, and also when people commuting, right? That's a time when often people are on the train, on a bus, you know, what you want to do then is instead of trying to catch up on those emails, use that as a way of unwinding, you know, listen to some music, do 10 minutes on your meditation app, like Calm, listen to an inspiring podcast that feels good, like My One or your one or anyone that they like, right? Use that time really your mental space, what information are you feeding it? If you watch the news and you're putting toxic information into your brain the whole time, that is going to impact the way you feel your stress levels. I said take the news app off your phone. In fact, another tip I say to people, and this is probably one of the most impactful things, notifications, take them off your phone. And how did I guess? Hey, it's one of the most, it's one of the most powerful things, but Mark, I would We challenge anybody listening to this podcast for seven days to switch off their notifications, which simply means, you know, if someone likes your Instagram post, you're not going to get a notification. If you have a new email, you're not going to get a notification, et cetera, et cetera. Try it for seven days.

If you don't feel better, fine, go back to it. And then people are on their phone so much they don't realize there's a new screen app where you can look on your iPhone and see how many times you pick up your phone. And I was sitting next to this friend of mine who was at a lecture and she was picking up her phone, doing Instagram, whatever. And I'm like, Give me your phone. And I grabbed her phone and I'm like, showed her like, she picked up her phone a thousand times in a day. I'm like, that is a lot of time picking up your phone.

Now, the other thing that really drives people crazy, which I talk about way too much, is your inner dialogue. the way you talk to yourself. So if someone says, I don't love myself, right? And I'm like, no, the voice in your head is an asshole, right? Like, no, no, your higher self is muzzled. Where is she? Where is he? What happened?

Let's get it.

Like, nothing is true, human. Nothing's fact over there. No one's stuck. Forever, nothing's true. Truth is something you believe and that's very fishy, right? Because we whoa, right? And so what I start to unravel is that your thoughts create your feelings, create your actions all at once. Yes, they are. And you don't see them happening. But if you slow it all down and get conscious to what the voice in your head is saying, You can take on one area of your life. And funny enough, I love people taking on food. Because, especially on your diet, you're not hungry people. This is not a diet. This is not calorie management. So this is just eat damn healthy and you won't be that hungry soon.

That's true.

Right. Period.

Right? And so that's ideal to hear your inner dialogue chasing a drink, chasing a cookie, chasing why you deserve it, chasing... Like you have to get to know yourself and what the voice is saying in any area you're suffering or loathing or disappointed or feel depressed.

Well, sometimes your inner dialogue you think is actually you. That's the problem. It's like there's no separation between the story you're telling yourself and what you actually think is true.

So, you know, most people can't even tell they just said something to themselves. Like they're like, huh?

Right.

So we've been working on something for me recently around my sleep because, you know, my sleep gets disrupted. I travel 50% of the time in different beds here and there and I have a little story about it and tell myself all this nonsense. And I finally came begging to you after trying this many times with you and I was like, I just need help. And you know, you just-- well, no, no, no.

It was even cooler because your fantasy had a solution that if you ever stayed in one place, so it had a theory. You had a whole theory that it's all because of this, it's all because of this, it's all because of this, it's all that. Like, it's all because of these things. That if I ever got home long enough and slept in my bed long enough and my like cute wife was over there long enough, it'd be good.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah, no. Yeah, no. how about that?

Yeah.

So the voice is in a constant only if, only if. Yeah, but yeah, but like it's crazy.

Yeah, like last night I was like, oh, well, I went out to a friend's place for dinner and had some wine. We stayed up really late and I usually don't stay up that late. So I'm thinking, oh, the wine is going to make me not sleep. Oh, if I stay up late, I have to get up early to get somewhere. So, like, am I not gonna sleep? And then I'm not gonna fall asleep. And then if I wake up, am I gonna fall back asleep? And so I had this whole thing going on that was just BS that had nothing to do with anything even.

Before I even went to sleep.

And it's like an example of that in your dialogue. I'm like, oh, that's set up. Like, that's like. It's like. So it's. You have the ability to kind of recognize it and then notice it and then understand it's not true, and it's.

Just this voice that.

You need a different voice saying something else.

So then I just-- well, then I ask you to go-- so what happens is I get you to trail your negative inner dialogue, so at least you know who's-- sorry, everyone, I like to curse-- man of fucking with your life, right? Like it's seeing the future and you don't sleep in it, right? It's seeing the future, you don't make money next month, you're seeing the future, you don't, right? And it's negative. Over 80% of our thoughts are negative, so that's the work we have to do. and so once you start to hear the voice, huh, then I tell you that's your lower self.

Hi. Right.

And your, your higher self gets to respond to your lower self. And I, and I call it a talk back. Like, talk back to that voice. Like, HS, higher self, talk back to LS, lower self.

Right.

And we, and I get, and then all all of a sudden, you start to get that the negative inner dialogue is genius because it tells you what you actually want to say. Like your issue about sleep is likely not disappearing for your life, Mark. So if people overeat, if people don't like to exercise, if people overdrink, you will be signing up for that issue for the rest of your life.

People.

I'm sorry. You've been signed up. You weren't at the gate.

I did.

Sorry. But get over it. Get used to it. Let's win.

Right?

So then your lower self says something and you're like, Shut up. Here's what I really think.

I'll be so tired.

I'll sleep like a baby.

Right?

So then you can have another belief counter the lower belief.

It'S so powerful. I feel like I've sort of really broken that down when I didn't, I mean, I've known his work and I, and I, but I really didn't see how I was doing that to myself because I had a really, very, very convincing inner dialogue. And, and I think right now people are struggling, and I think it's important the narrative story we tell ourselves. And, you know, I think it's powerful, and I think right now we're we're shifting how we're doing things, we're shifting the way we're learning. And I think, you know, I just want to share with people that this is something that it will change your life. If you focus on working with your mind in the way that Lauren is talking about, it's transformational. If you love that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here.

Getting quality sufficient sleep on a regular.

Basis is without question the foundation of.

Mental and probably physical health as well.

No, I already knew. I mean, this is so huge. This is such a huge idea.

So sleep.