PNTV: Iconoclast by Gregory Berns (#336)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Iconoclast by Gregory Burns. Iconoclast Subtitle A neuroscientist reveals how to think differently. Gregory Burns is one of the world's leading neuroeconomists. He is a professor at Emory University's School of Business and their Department of Psychiatry and Economics. Fascinating guy. Great book. Philosopher's Notes, bunch of big ideas. Let's look at five of them now. First basic idea here is the iconoclast. What is an iconoclast? And then what is this book all about? Well, an iconoclast is, by the definition that Gregory operationalizes in this book, you can is someone who does something that others tell him or her is impossible. The literal meaning of the word iconoclast, from the ancient Greek, is a breaker of icons, someone who breaks the icons of tradition and dares to do something new. An iconoclast. What Gregory does for us is walk us through the neuroscience of the three primary elements of how an iconoclast brain differs from the average person's brain. It's fascinating stuff. He says there are three primary differences here. They are 1, 2, and 3. First, the iconoclast brain differs in perception, how they see the world. Two, they differ in how they deal with fear, AKA they have more courage or different type of courage. And then the third facet is social skills. They're able to interface with the world, interact with the individuals in the world, non iconoclasts, to get them on board with their vision. Right. So see things differently. They have the courage to move through their fears and they have deepened social skills. The successful iconoclast merges these three and he talks about the neuroscience behind this. So he kind of combines fascinating research that he and his colleagues and peers have done looking at the neuroscience of different behaviors with some great biographical sketches of modern iconoclasts. That's our first big idea how the brain differs. The second big idea is our first step. Step number one in this process is perception is seeing the world differently. He says there are two facets to this step. First, you need to be able to step back far enough to see how conventional wisdom is off to be able to notice, you know what, that's just not right. Just because everyone says this is true doesn't make it true. That requires the ability to step back and see where conventional wisdom may be falling short. And then we need to propose an alternative path. Those are the two facets of Seeing differently, perceiving the world differently. He talks about how we can do that. Some of the ideas include bombarding your mind with new novel stimulation. Our brains want to be efficient. They want to use as little and energy as possible, which we can use to our advantage by installing habits that serve us and let them run on autopilot the systems and routines we talk about. But it can also bring us into a rut where we're just doing what everyone else does. And if we want to be able to step back and challenge conventional wisdom, one way to do that is to bombard our minds with new stimuli. Now, we're not talking about push notifications. That's enervating and numbing your brain on useless information. We're talking about traveling and seeing different cultures and stretching your mind that way, reading broadly and deeply in different subjects and challenging your mind. You need to be able to do that. You need to be able to step back and doing that is a way to help us do that. Then you need to be able to focus your attention on the domain that you want to change. He says, there's different aspects of our attention. We talk about this in different notes and context, but you can't do that if you're constantly distracting yourself. So being able to perceive the world differently and presenting an alternative is step one. Step two is you better be able to deal with your fear. You need to cultivate courage. How do you do that? Well, you learn how to tame your amygdala. Says we've evolved to conform to see the world the way everyone else sees it and actually has very strong evolutionary benefits to it. But it's not going to be what helps us become iconoclastics. We need to see how our brains are triggered to experience fear of not conforming, of failure, making a mistake, looking silly, etc. And then use our prefrontal cortex to quiet down the amygdala. He says it's fascinating, but you can look at it. I find it fascinating that he says there are two facets to the amygdala, input and output. So you're still going to have various stimuli that go into the amygdala and trigger a potential fear response, but you can inhibit the output. So you can't get rid of all the unpleasant challenges and uncertainty that goes with taking risks. You can't, and you don't want to, but you can inhibit, you can change the output of that fear, the stress response, and whether or not it's you succumb to that and fail to take action as A result of that fear. So learning how to cool our amygdala is a huge thing. And the core practice among many that he shares is cognitive reappraisal, or reappraising what's going on in your life. He says it's a really simple psychological trick. And we've talked about this, and we described it as a seesaw, where basically, if you're PFC is up in the air and your limbic system or amygdala is down, right? Seesaw. This is. Let's say this is off and this is on, then you need to flip it. You need to make your pfc. Sorry, need to make your amygdala cool and your PFC strong, where all the weight is right. It's a seesaw. If your PFC is activated, your prefrontal cortex activated, then your limbic system isn't going to be going nuts. One easy way to activate your prefrontal cortex is to reappraise a challenge you're facing. So when your amygdala gets hot and you feel fear, you need to become aware of that. He says that's the first, most important step. Wow, I'm feeling fear right now. The iconoclast is able to notice that. Step out from that. And he says, don't make any decisions when you're under fear. He says, it's kind of like alcohol, right? You don't want to make any important decisions when you're under the influence of alcohol or of fear. And one way to step out of that fear is to turn on your rational brain. And he says, we need to reappraise what's happening to us so we can look at fear and we can challenge it. We can say, okay, I'm thinking, this is what's going to happen in my future. Well, you can reinterpret that and come up with an alternative explanation of what might be going on or what might happen in the future. Reappraising what's happening. One of the things we talk about a lot in these notes is the idea of when you feel the amygdala go off, when you're about ready to perform, right, and you're feeling that, you can say, something's wrong with me. I'm feeling fear right now. Or you can step back, reappraise it, turn on your prefrontal cortex and say, no, I'm just excited. That's a really basic reappraisal. Another one we talk about all the time is when you feel that fear, you can actually reverse your desire. Like the tools guys tell us and say bring it on. That fear I'm going to reappraise not as a negative thing I want to avoid at all costs, but as something that's the ticket to my highest potential. I'm going to turn on my prefrontal cortex, turn off the limbic system amygdala response and go do what needs to get done. Step number two is courage. This is a great way to do it. Another idea to turn our fear off how to deal with stress he says stress is not bad. We don't want to live a life where we try to get rid of all stress. Kelly McGonagall Upside of stress style but he says if you're feeling chronic stress, you're just kind of overwhelmed with big projects or social situations or whatever you want to. You could think about turning those chronic stressors into short term stressors. And paradoxically, by giving yourself more short term stress, you can reduce the chronic stress. He says two ways to do that. The first and most powerful way to reduce chronic stress is exercise. Exercise is basically a short term physical stressor. Go out for 20, 30, 45, 60 minutes and stress yourself physically. That's the most powerful way to deal with chronic stress. And if you are not exercising, you might as well be taking a stress pill as Tall Ben Shahar says, you might as well be taking a depressant. Actively taking a depressant pill. Right? We want to take the magic pill of exercise to deal with chronic stress. Short term deliberate stress reduces chronic stress. Right? Then we have the other side of it. Or another option is to create short term stress by having near term goals. So rather than having huge long term goals, we have a near term project goal that paradoxically reduces the chronic stress. We talk about this in Masterpiece Days 101 by having little goals that you can go after day in and day out to mitigate the long term chronic overwhelm stress. Final big idea is social intelligence. We need to develop our social skills. Short story here is be a good human being. He says that he shares some amazing research. Monkeys and humans are really, really tuned into a sense of fairness. We will do irrational things if we detect someone who is not being fair or is out of integrity. So if you want to cultivate your social capital and build social networks, be a good human being, be fair, be in integrity and be perceived as those things as you go out and try to win people over to your view. He talks about some other things we'll discuss. We do discuss in the note. But social intelligence got to build it. Got to deal with our fear. Cultivate our courage. We can do that by implementing short term stresses, cooling off the amygdala via reappraisal, and we got to take that first step of seeing the world differently if we want to offer an alternative solution and develop the brain of the iconoclast. Hope you enjoyed. Here's to becoming an iconoclast and using our greatest gifts in greatest service to the world. Have another awesome day. See you. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to live? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all. Then imagine that guy me connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101, meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom plus Modern Science plus Common Sense plus Virtue plus Mastery plus Fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.