Easy Tools to Retrain Your Brain for Better Habits and Healing: 51

Well, hello everyone. Welcome back to the Heal, Nourish, Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Dr. Eugene Choi, and he is a productivity expert. And I am really excited to have this conversation because he's also very focused on brain function, which used to be one of my favorite topics when I was in grad school for psychology. So, Dr. Choi, welcome. And if you could just tell people a little bit in your own words about your background, I'm sure they'd love to kind of get a sense of what you're going to be talking about today.

Yeah, absolutely. First off, thank you so much for having me. And a little bit about my background. Yes, I have a healthcare background. I was a clinical pharmacist turned into a filmmaker, which indirectly taught me a lot about marketing and business. And then I started my own business and I work predominantly with leaders, CEOs, sometimes political leaders to really— I use my healthcare background to teach a little bit about how the brain works. Based on science, right? We talk about brain science, how a majority of our adult life, it's the part of our brain that we need on isn't actually on, and just training people how to start rewiring certain parts of the brain to start, right, getting rid of bad habits, producing more, increasing their performance, etc.

Yeah, and that is very much what my audience is interested in. As we kind of chatted a little bit before we started recording, a lot of people come to listen to this show for things around overall health and wellness, but kind of more around their nutrition as well, kind of low-carb nutrition. And part of that is really changing habits. So maybe you could describe, you know, you mentioned rewiring your brain. So I think that would be very useful for people to know, bring some awareness to that, and how you can actually use some science-based techniques to help you change some of your habits just by kind of getting your brain functioning in a different way.

Yeah, 100%. So one of the things I realized, that's the big aha moment for me with the science, was it turns out your nervous system, your whole brain, it actually only operates in one of two states. So it's, it's either in what's called a survival state or what I call an executive state. So a survival state is the part of your brain that is reactive. It needs to be reactive because it's looking out for your survival. It's it's there to help you stay alive. So for example, if a tiger's in front of you about to eat you, you need to be in a reactive mode where you try to protect yourself because if you sit there and start thinking, you might die already. So it's a reaction without thinking. So the, the disadvantage with the survival state is the other state is turned off, which is your executive state. But this is where a lot of your amazing capabilities come from, your problem-solving skills, your your critical thinking skills, your creativity, your intuition, your empathy, that part is turned off because you don't need those things in the current moment if your brain thinks your life is in danger. And the crazy part is we're actually in the survival state based on research for about at least 70% of our adult life.

Yeah, that's so crazy to me. And I was, when you were describing that, I was kind of remembering back to some of the courses that I took when I was studying psychology. In your experience, would you say that really only one of those parts of your brain can operate at the same time? Because I think that's where people run into trouble, this overall stress level that people have all the time and cortisol, and your body thinks you're running from a bear, like you said, almost 70% of the time. Are you saying then that you really can't access that other part of your brain during that time?

Yeah, I mean, think about it. It's not needed, right? So for example, empathy. This doesn't come from your survival brain. If a tiger's in front of you about to eat you, you're not sitting there going, hmm, I wonder how this tiger's doing. Is he eating okay? Are his parents treating him all right? We're not empathetic, we're not creative when you're about to die. If someone's holding a gun to your head, you're not sitting there going, oh, what new creative endeavor do I wanna go into, right? So there's a lot of things happening in the brain and body. So that's the crazy part. If we're in a survival state for a majority of our adult life, these amazing capabilities that the brain has, we can't access it. And you're right, it's one or the other simply because it is not needed. If your life is in danger, a lot of these amazing capabilities, because if you're about to die, right, it's not a time to be creative. It's not a time to be empathetic. It's not a time to be sitting there and thinking things through when somebody is about to murder you. So that was the thing. It's the thing that I realized was, wait, hold on, a majority of our adult life, we're not actually about to die. We don't have a gun held to our head every day for 70% of our adult life. We don't have wild animals out there trying to eat us. Then why is that the case? It's because the brain is surviving from emotions that feel uncomfortable. And think about how often you might feel frustrated, anxious, impatient, depressed. And in addition to that, think about the culture or the environment that you live in. You know, being from the States, you watch the news, it's dramatic politics, school shootings, unfortunately, the pandemic, of course. And all of these things feel very scary for us. And your brain can't help but go into survival because research shows shows that emotional pain can be just as painful as physical pain in some people based on the way the brain processes. So your brain can't help but think, like you said earlier, like this is some bear ready to hurt me when it's something that can't actually kill you. And because on the daily basis we're running away and we're trying to get rid of these emotions because out of survival, we're not accessing the part of our brain that we need and we continue to be in a reactive state without thinking. And we're not able to usually find the solutions or develop the habits that we wanted in the first place.

So I assume this is where you come in and that first of all, bringing some awareness to the state that we're in most of the time and how people can start to recognize it, I think that would be extremely useful. And then beyond that, once you can start to recognize it, what are some of the techniques that you recommend and that you like to use for people to sort of get themselves maybe at least reverse it to 70/30 because there's always going to be some level of stress in your life., but maybe you can speak to first recognize it and then the techniques that you like to use.

Yeah, absolutely. So I, it's, it's a 3-phase process. And the first phase that's very, very important that you can't do anything else unless you get to this phase is just awareness. And think about it. If you have a piece of broccoli stuck between your teeth, how do you have the power to change it? How do you have the power to remove it until it comes into your awareness, whether someone points it out to you or you see it in the mirror? So the first thing I bring awareness to is if we're in survival for about 70% of our adult life and it's cutting us off from these amazing capabilities that the brain has, what does actual survival look like when you're surviving from an emotion? Because it's really obvious if your life's actually in danger. That part of your brain, the amygdala, it only knows how to do one of three things. It's fight, flight, freeze. So what does fight look like in the wild? If you're in danger, it's you're going to defend yourself. You're going to try to pick up a weapon and fight. What does flight look like? You're going to run for your life. And freeze is analogous to playing dead. So possums are famous for doing this because their predators like their food alive. So if they play dead, sometimes they don't get eaten. So it turns out as humans, we're doing this fight, flight, freeze response, this reaction, very often. A lot of us aren't even aware of it though. It just feels conscious for us, but it's an actual reaction that's been programmed into our brains because of our unique life experiences. So for example, fight response. What does the fight response look like in emotional survival? The obvious one ones, uh, there are more obvious ones like, you know, if you get cut off on the road and now you flipped your lid and you're angry and you're trying to cut that person back off because your ego got hurt a little bit and you have no cons— no empathy, right? No consideration of the danger you might be putting the other cars around you. Um, so that's a more obvious fight response. Or someone says something hurtful and you get defensive and you're arguing, you're fighting back, and it becomes an attack and defend the conversation. We all know where that ends up, right? All of us who have been in a relationship ever have gotten into an argument or two. So those are a little bit more obvious. The ones that I focus on too, to bring awareness on, are some of the more subtle ones. So things like having to prove yourself to yourself or someone else. That's a fight. The fight to prove yourself. Because where does that stem from? It's usually some sort of insecurity that you already carry about yourself. I'm not worthy unless I accomplish XYZ, or my life is not worth much unless I do this. It's very conditional. The need to be right. That's a fight response. Perfectionism, that's a fight response, right? The fight to be perfect, quote unquote, even though that's impossible. People pleasing is a fight response. And the list goes on on what these fight responses are. And to give examples, I always find examples are helpful to really solidify what this might look like. So a lot of us who deal with insecurities, anxiety, there's a lot of fighting that happens. And it's hard to see it. So I give examples sometimes. So I had a client once who was in his 60s and he achieved everything you could imagine. He had the multimillion-dollar business, the beautiful home, the beautiful family, the nice car, and he's still unhappy. He's still feeling a lack of fulfillment. He's feeling anxiety and he's like, why am I still feeling like this? And I talked to him about the fight, flight, freeze response and he has this realization. He's sitting there going, oh my goodness, I've been in the fight response for most of my life. And I'm inquiring, I'm like, yeah, tell me more. What are you noticing? He's like, well, I think I spent my whole life trying to prove to people that I'm better than my older brother. Because his older brother was an NFL football player. And in high school, his coach literally told him, stop trying, you're never going to be as good as him. So think about how much that hurts. And you spend your life fighting, fighting to accomplish more, fighting to do more. And the fight always leads to a lack of fulfillment and burnout. And that's something to just pay attention to. Are you fighting? Do you feel the need to prove yourself? Do you feel like you believe you've drank the Kool-Aid of that hustle culture that you have to be working your butt off or otherwise you're not worth much? And that's just something good to be aware of as a first thing, where what if you're just living in a reaction? You're just reacting without thinking to something that you're carrying that feels uncomfortable, an insecurity, a fear, and that's the fight response. The flight response, some of the more obvious ones are things like, I don't know, you might run into an ex that you don't want to see and you literally just run the other way, right? That's a classic flight response, like someone you want to avoid or the boss you don't want to confront, you don't want confronting you, right? Procrastination is a classic flight response. You're, it's a self-soothing mechanism where you're, there's some sort of insecurity or fear involved. What if I do this thing now and I do it wrong? Or what will people think of me if I screw up? Or what if I'm not ready? Like, All of these kinds of thinking are going behind the scenes, whereas a comfort mechanism, you decide to put it off till later. You flee from the task at hand. Where flight gets a little bit more subtle is when you start numbing yourself. So I have to make sure I say this before I talk about it, is that there's no judgment around any of this, okay? We all have our numbing mechanisms. Everyone has their poison of choice. This is more about awareness because if you start judging, by the way, that's a fight response too. It's the same reason why people gossip. I carry an insecurity, so I fight to try to put someone else down to make me feel better about myself. It's the same reason why we judge people when we're judging their character, right? So when we numb ourselves in flight, some people binge-watch Netflix, right, as a flight mechanism to distract themselves intentionally. Some people eat a tub of ice cream, right, food as a comfort mechanism. Some people overindulge in things like alcohol, sex, drugs to the point of addiction. And it's all a flight mechanism to avoid the uncomfortable feeling that we don't want to feel on a daily basis. So that's flight. And freeze is when— some of the more comical ones is when you literally freeze. Like if you're caught in a lie, you notice how people just kind of like their eyes widen and they freeze up. It's their brain playing dead, by the way. It's going, hey, if you pretend not to exist right now, maybe this person will stop interrogating you. But the irony is your guilt is clear when you're freezing like that because it's like you're caught. So The more subtle freeze responses are things like when you experience a trauma, when you're in shock, you literally freeze and then you flee and dissociate in some cases. It's also inaction. It usually happens when you're overwhelmed. You know, you wake up in the morning, you don't want to get out of bed because you're so overwhelmed by the stress or the anxiety. And that's a literal freeze response that happens. So we need to be aware that how much fight, flight, freeze is going on in our life. And I encourage clients all the time, make it a game, turn it into a game. You, you're driving on the road, you see that person getting really pissed off cuz he got cut off and he is trying to cut that person back. Oh, there's the fight response. Or you see someone that is very insecure about being wrong. It's like, oh, there's that fight response. And this person always fighting to be right. Or you see the procrastination happening, someone or yourself. It's really good to just be able to see it because I found this in itself is just a game changer. Like your eyes just open up to see how much survival exists in the world because of how unsafe we feel to some degree. And this is all programmed and wired into our brains. So that's the first thing is just how often are we in that fight, flight, freeze response? Crazy, isn't it?

I mean, you're just blowing my mind right now because I guess it's interesting because I think people always think of the overt ways in which we have that stress response. You know, you're getting yelled at at work or you're, like you said, you're on the road or something. But these more subtle ones where it's your I think you put it really nicely when you said it's our product of what we grew up with and kind of what, you know, your client with the brother that was always fighting. I mean, just about everything that you named off in these more subtle things, I recognize in myself, like all of them.

Yeah.

And it's no wonder that you have like this low-level anxiety all the time and you're thinking, to yourself, well, I'm not super stressed right now. I don't have this going on or that going on. But at the same time, you have those more subtle ones that you named going on, probably— my gosh, if I really say, it's probably more than 70%, quite honestly, if I really think about it. Absolutely. So then awareness was that first thing. So I think it's great because I think that you highlighted so many things that are not on people's radar, right?

And that's the first part because this is the mind-blowing thing, is if the subtlety of how often you're stressed or anxious behind the scenes and you're not even realizing it, your nervous system is still in survival. And it's not only affecting your brain, it's affecting your body. If your body thinks it's about to die, there's a lot of things happening in that body. Imagine the tiger's in front of you about to eat you. Your heart's working harder. It's overworking, right? It's beating faster. Your lungs are breathing faster. You know why a lot of stressed out people have digestion issues? Because if your body thinks it's about to die, this is not a time to be eating food. Or digesting food. So it literally shuts off. So a lot of people who are stressed have digestion issues. A lot of people who are stressed have sleep issues. When your body's in survival, you know what's pumping through your blood? Adrenaline. It's like you have a ton of caffeine pumping to your system. So that's why even though you get a full night's rest, you wake up feeling tired for people whose bodies have been conditioned to survival. So it affects our health in the long term. And, you know, cortisol long term, ask any doctor, right? It's a steroid. Long-term exposure to steroid damages your immune system. So people start getting sick. No wonder it's called this. If you break down the word disease, it's disease. How stressed are we? How anxious are we? And put your body out of homeostasis. It prevents it from wanting to reach balance. It's wasting energy instead of conserving energy. So, just at a holistic level, I've realized how damaging the survival state can be because you're not meant to be surviving for your life long-term. Why would we want to do that? Every single day your body is thinking it's about to die and it's trying to fight, flight, freeze, right? But that's actually what our bodies and our brains are doing. So when we become aware of this, it's, it's the next phase that you want to go into is just like you can build a skill, right? You can learn a skill. It's a skill to be able to start becoming more aware and starting to rewire networks in your brain to be able to start reprogramming things where certain bad habits of yours that are not serving you, you rewire them so that it's not working against you anymore. You can actually train your brain to work for you. So the first part of this is to understand that your brain is, it's a habit creation machine. It wants efficiency. That's why it creates these habits, by the way. Just like you're not walking down the stairs going, I need to put my left foot forward, my right foot forward. Your body does it without thinking anymore because you've done it so many times. But what most people don't realize is The same applies to your belief systems, your perspectives, your thoughts. We think 70,000 thoughts a day, and 90 to 95% of those thoughts are the same thoughts every day. And a majority of those thoughts are some negative thought about yourself. So what state are you going to go into if you're having negative thoughts about yourself? Survival, right? You're going to fight, flight, freeze. So we have to understand, by the time we're about 35-ish, 90 to 95% brain becomes subconscious. It goes on autopilot. For efficiency purposes, right? Because your brain has done certain things so many times now, you can do it without thinking. So we have to— the first thing that I want to let everyone off the hook is nobody's stupid, nobody's incapable. Our brains have just been programmed, like you can program a computer to do the same thing every day. The same thing happens to your brain. It's just a series of programming because of our unique life experiences we've had in life. And your brain has been working to try to protect you over the years. All we need to do is just develop that skill set of rewiring. So that's kind of what I bring people through. It's a combination of a couple of things. One of the things is simply just coaching, right? And training. So there are certain things, basic, simple things. We don't need to get too academic about like how the brain works and all of that, but it's just understanding some of these core principles. I train people in that, right? Like understanding some key things about the brain, fight, flight, freeze response, getting aware. Having conversations that help you start seeing things that were— that you thought were real and weren't real. And that's really the name of the game, honestly. Our brains are fooled, easily, very easily fooled into what it thinks is real. To prove a point, you know, have you ever been in a dream and you thought it was real when you're in the dream, right? So that's how you know your brain's so easily fooled into what's real. So who's to say that I'm not good enough? Is real, right? Who's to say that I can't accomplish XYZ isn't real? It's just simply because of whatever reality your brain has been fooled into. So we need to be able to develop the skill of seeing what's actually real, because most of the time it's just an illusion that the survival brain created. It makes you feel like there's something really dangerous here when it was never real, right? That's why I love that whole acronym people say when F.E.A.R. stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. That's, that's what it really is most of the time, because the brain doesn't like the emotional discomfort, it goes into that survival state. So through training and coaching, you can start seeing certain things. This is why, you know, perspectives are very important and your environment is very important. And there's also technology. I implement technology in my clients where there's an actual survival brainwave. So I use something called neurofeedback where the device can read in lifetime if you're in survival or not. And it'll signal to you when you're in survival. So, just like you can get physically fit, you can get mentally fit to develop the skills to snap out of survival more at will. And I also use something called biofeedback so that measures your body's state. How often is it in a survival state dominance, which is your sympathetic nervous system, or is your parasympathetic nervous system more dominant, which is your rest and digest, your executive state where your executive state can turn on? So, it's a series of training But in order for it to really work, 'cause I can talk all this and it's like, yeah, it sounds great, but one of the key ingredients I've seen in all of my most successful clients, it's actually before any of this, it's two main ingredients. Number one, it's willingness. So I have to highlight this and I have to share something about this 'cause this was what was life-changing for me 'cause I don't want it to just sound cliché because I know plenty of personal development talk talks about this kind of stuff. I got to briefly get trained by this amazing coach. Her name's Rhonda Britton. And I have to give you a quick context in like a minute about her story. 14 years old, her parents are in the middle of splitting up. It's Father's Day. They're going out for brunch. Mom and Rhonda are heading out the yard. Dad pulls up to the curb and he gets out of the car while Rhonda's sisters are still in the house getting ready. And dad's like, I have to get my coat from the trunk. He opens the trunk, doesn't get his coat, pulls out a shotgun instead. Walks over to mom, extremely upset, blaming her, and proceeds to, um, pull the trigger and shoot her. And then he points the gun at Rhonda, and mom was still alive, so she's screaming, don't do it, don't do it. And, um, he didn't know she was still alive, so he points the gun back at mom, shoots her a second time, looks over at Rhonda, points the gun at himself, pulls the trigger. 14 years old, Rhonda was the sole witness in her house, in front of her house, of a murder-suicide that happened to be her parents. So you can imagine a traumatic event like that. Unimaginable, right? So much survival going on. So she spent the next decade of her life in survival mode. How did she fight? She kept her grades up. She worked hard to keep her grades up, thinking maybe if I keep working harder, this pain will go away. How did she flee? She became an alcoholic, and she attempted to take her own life 3 times. Suicide is one of the most extreme forms of flight, isn't it? And how did she freeze? Plenty of times woke up in the morning, didn't want to get out of bed. And I share her story because she actually turned her life around one day. And in fact, she started thriving so much, she ended up becoming this famous coach. She ended up having her own reality television show in the '90s that won an Emmy Award. Uh, she's been on Oprah not once but twice. And I have to share her story because she said these words to us that shook me to my core. She said, until you're willing to be wrong about everything you know, Nothing's ever gonna change. And I'm highlighting the word willingness. I'm not here to say everything you know is wrong. I'm here to highlight the word willingness because Rhonda was willing to be wrong about certain beliefs and perspectives. She was willing to be wrong about nothing ever works out for me. She was willing to be wrong about I'm all alone. She was willing to be wrong about life sucks. And I think that's an important question to ask ourselves. Are we willing? Because a lot of us, we want to hold on to what we think is real. Because it just feels so real sometimes, doesn't it? The limiting beliefs we carry, the negative thoughts that we carry, to the point where it becomes programming. And so once you're willing— that's a question you have to ask yourself— then the second thing is, are you willing to take ownership, full ownership? And I know that's a cliché thing too, and I have to share a quick illustration around that. Is I used to say this phrase to my daughter, which is, you're making me so mad right now. And when she wouldn't listen to me. And now that I learned what I learned about the brain and the psychology, all that, I'm sitting there going, how might this impact the 3-year-old? How might a 3-year-old girl interpret my words? Well, number one, she's being told Daddy's— she's making Daddy mad. So she can start believing in her reality that there's such a thing as being the cause of someone else's emotions, which when you look at science behind this, it's actually not true, and I'll prove it in a moment. And number two, whoa, Daddy's really mad right now, and when he's mad, it feels very scary. So therefore I'm afraid— she develops a fear. I'm afraid of making, quote unquote, making Daddy mad. And I'm going, how might this impact the little girl as an adult then when she lives in this reality that she's created for herself? Well, what happens if she gets the unethical boss that overworks her and she won't hold her boundary because she's afraid of making him mad? So she'll overwork even though she's sacrificing her mental health and probably her physical health over time. You know what really got me? I'm like, oh my goodness, what if she ends up in a relationship one day, maybe with some boy and he's pressuring her to sleep with him and she doesn't want to because she's afraid of making him mad. She'll people-please as a fight response. She'll give in even though she doesn't want to do it. That one really got me, by the way. Like, I'm like, oh my goodness, I don't want that happening. So to the best of my ability, I'm trying to explain to a 3-year-old girl, baby girl, you can never make daddy mad. Daddy's mad, it's his— it's because of him. It's not because of you. He has his own stuff that he's scared of or dealing with. And if Daddy, if Daddy or Mommy ever yell at you again, you have every right to request that we please stop yelling at you. Trying to teach her how to hold her boundaries. And for me, I understood, oh, why do I get mad? I had a dad that left our family when I was a teenager. I used to be very resentful of him and angry. I used to think angry thoughts like, if I'm ever a dad, I'm never going to be a crappy dad like him. So what's my brain doing in survival when my daughter's not listening? Hey, she's not listening to you. It's because you're a bad dad, just like your dad. And because I'm so sensitive about that, I can't help but react in anger, right? Anger is a fight response. And the very thing I want to do with her, which is be deeply connected, your brain can't do because your empathy is not on when you're in survival, remember? So I'm disconnecting from her in the moment. So I change my language from, "You're making me mad," to, "I'm feeling mad." We have to understand that. That's what full ownership is, to take ownership over your feelings as well. Because when we're in survival, we think everything on the outside is the cause of what's happening on the inside. We don't pay attention to the inside because if your brain thinks your life's in danger, it's not a time to be self-reflecting and meditating or journaling or things like that. So, that's when I call out my leaders. If someone says in the conversation, "My team's pissing me off right now," and I share that story with them and I ask them again, "So, tell me again, is it your team that's pissing you off?" And they're able to take ownership. It's like, "No, I'm attaching some sort of meaning to what's going on right now. That's why I'm getting angry. Something's going on inside of me for me to get angry." Because when you take ownership, then you stop blaming. Oh, it's because of this thing on the outside, that's why I'm stuck. Oh, it's because of this why I have this bad habit. Because when you have a willingness to take ownership, that's when you're willing to start getting yourself what you need— the support, the training, the resources. And that's when true change actually happens. I just have to share that because I know in the personal development space, it's all like— there's plenty of times it's like all cheerleading, like, you can do this, you can do this, right? But I realized when you become aware of your own programming, when you're willing to be wrong about what you might think is real, and you're more importantly more willing to take ownership of everything, your experiences and the meanings you attach to your experiences, um, that's when true change happens.

Yeah, it's really powerful. And, and I wanna go back to one of the things that you said a little while ago because I think it's, um, I think it's where I sometimes get stuck when, if I'm thinking about this process because over the years of having been, you know, involved with yoga very heavily, this is something that we focus on about you're not your thoughts. And, and it really is helpful, um, all the meditation and all of the kinds of things that we do. But one of the things that you said really stood out to me, and that is by the time that you're 35, the things kind of go subconscious. So if you don't come to this work early in your life, you may not even be able to access some of these things very easily because they are so subconscious. And like when I'm thinking about your comments on, you know, proving yourself or constantly working so hard and so I can see that in myself and I'm trying to think, okay, what are these subconscious things that I've already buried long ago that I don't even remember how to access anymore? You know, again, I think the awareness is there, but do you have any thoughts on you know, how do people who come to this work later in life, they're older, these, these patterns are already very subconscious. How do they start to access those a little better? I mean, I certainly think in my experience, I think meditation has really helped with some of that. But maybe there are some more concrete neuroscience-based sort of, you know, you mentioned the biofeedback, which is more reading physiology, and then you mentioned the other neuro—

neurofeedback. So, yeah.

Yes.

Yeah. I mean, at a high level, the way to view it is the relationship you have with yourself. Right? Like, I use the biofeedback so that people can develop a relationship with their body because you can actually see metrics, results. I use the neurofeedback so that people can develop a relationship with their brain and their nervous system so that they're tuning into themselves more often. Because like you said, a lot of these subconscious programmings that happen, it's, it's, it's doing it without you telling your body and your brain to do it anymore because it's on autopilot. So, you know, the game-changing thing for me I remember this leader was asked a very cliché question about relationships, right? About how do I find the perfect partner? How do I find the quote unquote, the one for me? As if there's such a thing as this one person in the world that you can hold 100% responsible for your happiness, right? Because the reason why we ask that question, it's the survival brain going, hey, I don't want to take ownership over this unhappy feeling. How can I find somebody so that at least if I'm unhappy, I at least have someone to blame, right? It's right. I want to blame someone for me being unhappy versus me taking ownership over that. So anyway, It's a survival question because we carry an insecurity, right? I'm not loved, I'm not cared for, I'm not worth much unless I have something outside of me to complete me. That's why I think it's a toxic phrase to say people complete me, right? As if you're a broken person. So the leader understood this was already coming from a place of survival, and he asked a very powerful question, which was this. He said, would you go out with yourself? And I remember that hit me like a ton of bricks. Number one, because I immediately became aware of my answer being no. Because it's easy to see all the things you don't like about yourself, right? And but I had a deeper breakthrough, and I sat there and I went, oh my goodness, I can tell my wife that I love her and I do all these nice things for her because I can claim that it's because I love her. But if I don't have a good relationship with myself, if I'm not loving and caring and compassionate to myself, whatever I'm doing for my wife, I'm doing it in survival. You see what I'm saying? If I carry a limiting belief that I'm not good enough Why do I do those things for her? It's because I'm fighting to be good enough. Maybe if I do these nice things for other people, maybe one day I will finally feel good enough. I'm putting that responsibility on her when it was never her responsibility to begin with. So I'm not doing these things for her, I'm doing it for me. The same apply to my kids. I can claim that, oh, I do all these great things for them because I love them, but if I don't have a healthy relationship with myself, guess what? Doing it for me, not for them. Same applies to my clients. And this was a hard pill to swallow. Because I was a bleeding heart. I was one of those people that, that would overwork, saying, oh, it's because I care so much about people, that's why I work this hard, when the reality was no, I carry a deep insecurity that I'm not good enough. So that's, that's my brain in survival and reacting, oh, just keep giving, giving, giving, which is why I've experienced so much burnout for a lot of times in my life, right? We don't take care of ourselves. So that's why I call BS now when I see people who claim it's because they care so much and they overwork themselves to death and they're tired, they're burnt out. Like, you're not doing that for them then. You need to be able to take care of you first. You need to value yourself. You need to get yourself the energy and the recuperation. If you don't love yourself, you can't love other people. It's impossible because otherwise there's an ulterior motive when you're doing it for other people. So I have to take that to heart because that means I'm not connecting with my family. I'm not connecting with my loved ones if I continue to carry this belief about myself that's untrue. So, um, it's really, really important to prioritize the relationship with yourself, as cliché as it can get. But this is what self-love, self-care really is. It's not just go get your nails done, right? Like, or like, you know, go get a massage or whatever. Those are great things. Just bring all of yourself with yourself. Don't use it as a distraction, if that makes sense, in survival. And it's having this deep loving relationship with yourself because guess what? You know who we're surviving from most of the time? It's from some part of ourselves. You know how like Some people are embarrassed about their high school photo or something like that because they look like a geek in high school. It means there's a version of yourself that you don't like, that you're trying to get rid of. And the person you're really fight, flight, freezing from are these versions of yourself that you want to get rid of. But how do you get rid of that person when it's still you, right? So this is what it comes down to, is how is your relationship with yourself? Because then if you have a loving relationship with yourself, you'll treat yourself better. You'll treat your brain better. You'll treat your body better. You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, that's— I like this because it's kind of leading right into what is quite often a topic on here is people getting physically healthier. And it's probably some of these behaviors that they'd like to change, whether it's what they're eating or how they're not moving, because they're almost, you know, they realize that these are things that are healthy for them and that would make them feel better. And yet maybe they're still stuck in those old beliefs. Well, I'm not good enough anyway, so why Why would I eat differently? Or maybe they're gaining weight purposely to outrun the past version of themselves that they don't like. Yes.

Comfort eating can be a flight response. There's no judgment around any of it, but isn't that ironic? If you love your body, you will take care of your body. But the reason why we stay stuck in habits is because we don't love our body. So we go into survival and we fight, flight, freeze, right? How do we flee? It could be comfort eating, right? Because we don't love our body. We don't have that consideration for our body. And the deeper meaning behind that is, do you love yourself? Which is what you're bringing up. Yeah. Like, do you believe that you're priceless? Do you believe that you're free to be who you want? Do you believe that your worth is not measurable and that you actually have infinite value? There is no such thing as good enough. How do you even measure that? Right? There's no such thing.

This sounds silly.

It sounds silly when you say it out loud, but we carry that with us. I'm not good enough unless I accomplish XYZ. I'm not good enough unless I look this way, feel this way, act this way. We don't accept ourselves the way we are. We don't feel comfortable in our own skin. And when you don't love yourself, you're going to treat yourself like a person that doesn't love yourself. And the hardest part is when we do it on autopilot, isn't it? Yes.

Yeah, I think that is the most challenging part, and it I loved that you really brought that to the forefront so that now that people that are hearing this, they'll be like, oh, okay, I'm not seeing this obviously in myself, but maybe there are things kind of just on autopilot that are causing me to do these behaviors. So all that being said, say there's somebody out there listening to this and they're thinking, this is so interesting, this is the kind of work I'd really like to delve into. Number one, what are some ways that they could possibly work with you or look for people— you know, maybe this is not a paradigm that's very common, but how can you— how can people work with you? How can they begin to seek out these things where they can start to have some realization and then start to move forward out of some of these patterns?

Yeah, absolutely. If people want to get started in diving into this rabbit hole, right, which definitely transformed my life for sure, is I have a free training I offer on my homepage on destinyhacks.co is the URL, and there's just a free training you can sign up for. I give some more tips and tools on getting yourself out of survival. I I take that a little bit deeper. And I'm also releasing a course. It's going to be on neurohackingcourse.com where basically over this year, I just had my third kid, so my time is getting more and more limited to work with people one-on-one. So I decided to create a course out of everything. I literally bring you through everything I've brought some of the biggest leaders I've worked with, the high performers, and I just put everything in it for you to learn for yourself. And I've included that in there. I know a lot of people who are also interested in that. Once you find what that is for yourself, the meaning that you're looking for, the purpose that you're looking for, how can you make an impact out of it? So I also teach some trainings around how to create impact, whether it's you wanting to grow something of your own, like a business. Things I've learned from 7-figure business owners, I've put in that as a bonus as well. And that's all on neurohackingcourse.com.

Awesome. Well, any final thoughts for people? Maybe one concrete concrete thing that they could implement today that could start to bring some relief from this, you know, living 70% of your life in a stress response? Just a, a last final thought on anything people can do concrete, something, a takeaway from this conversation, like what can they implement today to start really bringing more awareness to some of these behaviors? Yeah.

So just like, like playing a game, see how how good you become at identifying fight, flight, freeze responses, right? Especially the more subtle ones, whether it's in yourself or others, because you become aware of it enough, at some point you're going to want to make a different choice. So I highly, highly recommend that. And then the other thing, like you said, is like when you're on autopilot, sometimes you're just in it. So one thing that you can do anytime, every day is label your emotions. UCLA did this study where they had brain scans tied to people's heads. They'd show you people pictures of people's faces in survival. Anxiety, frustration, anger. Immediately the survival brain turns on when they see that picture. But guess what? When the researcher asks, can you tell me what emotion you're seeing in this picture? They'd be like, oh, that's easy. That's anxiety. That's depression. That's anger, sadness. Soon as you label the emotion, guess what happens? Survival brain turned off, executive brain turned on. Why? Because to label something, you have to think about it. When you're in survival, you can't think. So, um, when you, you're literally calling on your executive brain to turn on when you just label your emotions. Right? So do that as a daily practice. I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling frustrated. I'm feeling— just getting in tune with yourself and your internal world because you're calling on your executive brain to turn on, which is the part of your brain that helps with emotional regulation, by the way. So that you can do that as a daily practice, whether it's out loud or in your, in your, in your head. The only distinction I want to share is around that that's important is a clinical psychologist friend of mine mentioned this to me. He's like, there's a difference between the way you describe it that's important yet subtle, which is there's a difference between I am sad and I feel sad. I am sad is presuming it's your identity. I am Dr. Eugene, right? I am a human being. I am sad. So it's important to use the word feel instead of am, because feelings, you're acknowledging it's something that comes and goes. How do you know this is true? Because feelings come and go, don't they? Right? Sometimes we're happy, sometimes we're sad. Um, so it's just, it's just to acknowledge that. So just as a daily practice, start labeling your emotions. It's a healthy practice to do cuz you're literally calling on your executive brain to turn on. And there was research behind this as well, which was really exciting.

Yes, love both of those. And I just wanna thank you again for sharing all of your knowledge today. And I encourage people to go check out your website, take a look at the course that you're talking about, because this is some things that can really impact not just your, you know, physical health, which is what we sometimes tend to put more focus on, but it's just overall well-being, which the more that you have of that, the more it just impacts all areas of your life. So thank you for sharing all of this, and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me. This is fun.

Thanks.