Neuroscience Secrets to Happiness | Dr. Daniel Amen & Jim Kwik

All right, everybody, your question for today, how to be happy based on your brain type. I want to welcome you to the Kwik Brain Podcast. This is a show for busy people who want to upgrade their brains so they can learn faster and really live their limitless life. And we're going to talk about happiness today. I don't know many topics that are more important than that. And we're very excited to have back on our show, Dr. Daniel Amen. Hi, Kwik Brain. Physician, psychiatrist. He's done over 200,000 brain scans, including my own, my own Kwik Brain. Written about a dozen or so New York Times bestselling books, including his latest and greatest, You Happier: 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type. Thanks for being back on the show, Dr. Amen.

Hey, Jim. Always great to see you.

You and I have been on each other's shows. We have a longtime friendship and I wanna thank you for taking care of my brain and to help me to be able to love my brain, because I was experiencing brain envy, having had a few traumatic brain injuries. And so I wanna thank you for the care from yourself and also your amazing clinic, which people could find out more about online. We'll put all the links at jimkwik.com/notes. So this subject about happiness, I wanted to have you back on our show Because it seems like people are pretty unhappy the past couple of years. Is it just— is that objective or is this subjective? How are we talking about this?

It's so awful. Americans are the unhappiest they've been since the Great Depression. Before the pandemic, we were at epidemic levels of addiction, depression, suicide. Since 1999, suicide had gone up 33%. And then boom, the pandemic with the isolation, the fear, the social stress, the political divide, the vaccination divide. Families are mad at each other and people are sadder than ever before because we need connection. And all of a sudden what we have Is disconnection, fear, and anger, because there's a lack of trust in the people we want to trust, you know, like the CDC and the FDA and all of that. And Americans are just, you know, depression doubled. And worse, it doubled in children. And suicide dramatically went up. I've never seen anything like it in my 40 years of being a psychiatrist. And, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic, I lost my dad. I had to close my clinic in New York for 3 weeks. It was stressful. And when I thought about, well, what's my next book? I'm like, what do I want to think about? For a year. I want to think about happiness because we need it now more than ever before. And as I was doing my research, I came across a video by Dennis Prager. It's one of my favorite ones called Why Be Happy? And he basically says happiness is a moral obligation. And when I grew up, that idea was nowhere to be found. And He said, just think about it. If you were raised by an unhappy parent or married to an unhappy spouse or raising an unhappy child, whether or not happiness is an ethical issue because of how you impact other people, I guarantee you people will say it's an ethical issue. And I love that because people think it's fluff. Right. Oh, you're going to talk about hedonism. And I'm like, no, hedonism is the enemy of happiness. There are very specific things to do, but our society lies to us. Money will make you happy. Yeah, to about $75,000 a year. And then there's no relationship at all with happiness and money or open happiness. You know, the slogan from Coca-Cola. It's a lie. It's open illness, right? It's open obesity and diabetes, and those things go with depression. And, or one of my favorite lies is don't worry, be happy, because the research on Bobby McFerrin's, you know, Don't Worry, Be Happy song is the opposite, is that people who have low levels of anxiety actually die early from accidents and preventable illnesses. So let's talk about the right dose of anxiety rather than you shouldn't have any.

So these statistics can make somebody who's listening or watching on YouTube, which I encourage you to do that as we put the extended version of this conversation on there, it can make somebody unhappy. So is happiness— there's no pill for happiness, but a lot of people prescribe it as if it's— or advice as if it's one size fits all. And they leave out the most important thing, which is the human brain. So let's talk about— in the book, you talk about brain types and how it relates to happiness. Can we discuss that?

So the book is really centered around these 7, what I call them, neuroscience secrets of happiness. So there's a lot of books on happiness, but most of them actually don't talk about the physical functioning of your brain. And we just recently went over 200,000 scans. And one of the first big lessons we learned is everybody's got a different brain, that there are different types of brain. Some people are balanced, some people are spontaneous. Are spontaneous— that's sort of our ADD group. They love surprises. They need novelty. What makes them happy is very different than the persistent type, their frontal lobes work too hard. They're sort of worried and rigid, a little bit inflexible. And if things don't go their way, they get upset. They hate surprises and they love routine. It's like, okay, we're gonna have sex Tuesday and Sunday mornings, where if you do that with the spontaneous person, they're completely bored and it makes them very unhappy. And then there's the sensitive type who need connection, they're very empathic, they make great therapists. And the cautious type, they need safety, they need security, they need peace. They can't deal with a lot of conflict and chaos, where Type 2, or the spontaneous type, loves conflict, loves chaos. In fact, they play a game called Let's Have a Problem. You know, if they're in the middle of a heated argument, So what would you say for somebody in our community?

They're very into brain health and learning all the time. How do they start to generate happiness or protect their happiness? Where's the starting point for this?

So one, know your type. And if you know your type, then you can generate, well, what makes me uniquely happy? And being connected makes me— being connected makes a difference because I'm in part the sensitive brain type, then our conversation makes me happy. But write it down. Know what makes you happy. And then for the book, I did a study on 500 consecutive patients, Damon Clinics. I gave them the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, and then we scanned them and analyzed the scans. If you have low frontal lobe function, you're much more likely to be unhappy. And so Optimizing the physical function of your brain is crucial to happiness. And in it, I talk about things to do and things not to do. And one of the most important things I discovered is you want to supplement your brain because 90% of Americans do not eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day, the minimum required. And you end up with Deficits in things like omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, choline, magnesium. And so I love supplements because when I first started imaging, I realized some of the medications I prescribed, like benzos and opiates, were bad for the brain. And so I'm like, well, what are the natural things I can do to optimize your brain as a psychiatrist? And so I've been following the science of saffron for about 20 years, and there are 24 randomized controlled trials showing saffron, about 30 milligrams of a specific extract of saffron, is equally effective as antidepressant medication to boost your mood. But as opposed to Prozac or Lexapro or Luvox, which can help your mood, They often decrease your motivation and decrease your libido and your sexual performance. Well, saffron also has studies showing that it enhances memory, also has studies show that enhances sexuality. There's actually two studies showing it can reverse the side, the sexual side effects of SSRIs. And at the beginning of the pandemic, after my dad died and stress. I'm like, I'm going to take this. If people preorder the book, they get a new cookbook that Tana developed specifically for this book because you want to eat. That's one of the strategies. Eat for your brain type. You know, I say you only want to love food that loves you back. We are not loving food in this country that loves us back, which is why we're sicker. than virtually any developed country in the world.

People are watching this on video on YouTube as opposed to Spotify or iTunes. I'm wearing a shirt that says mental health. And you and I both believe that good mental health starts with good brain health. And the food you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. And if you're not getting it through your meals, then you have to be able to supplement. By the way, where can people— we want to add your book, We're starting a brand new book club and we're very excited about this. People have been asking about this for years and years. We know that leaders are readers, that if an expert like yourself has decades of experience and you put it into a book and somebody could buy your book and then read it in a few days, they could download decades of wisdom and experience and research and knowledge into days, which is the fastest way to fast-track your learning and also your life. And so we're going to read it with everybody. And we're happy to announce we're going to add you, Happier, to our book club. So we're going to spend a month reading it together and I'll show people memory tricks on how to remember what they read because nothing worse than reading a book and forgetting what you just read. And we're going to have you back on and do a Q&A. And so with all our authors we have, and we only choose one per month, and we're excited to add you, Dr. Amen. Where do people find out more about the book also as well?

So if they go to youhappier.com, it has all the ways to order the book and redeem the gifts. We're really excited. Thousands of people have already done it, and we are hoping to help people get happier. As you get happier, the people you love will be happier as well.

I love that. So make sure everybody gets their copy. And I still have another question for you. In the book, which I really enjoyed, you talk about different decisions that people can make or questions that they could ask themselves to be happier. Maybe we don't have time to go all of them, and I encourage people to get a copy of the book for themselves and also copy a book to gift to somebody else. But maybe let's talk about some of those decisions, a few of those decisions or questions.

So secret number 5 is master your mind and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head. The book is filled with tiny habits. What's the smallest thing you can do that'll make the biggest difference? One of my favorite strategies is notice the micro moments of happiness, right? Me just looking at your background, I love it. And that's like a micro moment of happiness. I just appreciate all of the work you do, right? I didn't have to win a Nobel Prize. I could just look at something and go, oh, that's so cool. But then notice that's a micro moment of happiness. I took a walk in Laguna Beach this morning and I saw a hummingbird, and it was just like a 5-second But it just made me happy. And I noticed, because one of the things I want to do is drip dopamine. I don't want to dump it. And when you win a Nobel Prize or you win the NBA or you win a gold medal, it dumps dopamine. But the more that happens, the more you actually wear out your pleasure centers. You never want to dump this neurotransmitter. That's why I said earlier, hedonism is the enemy of happiness. You want to drip it. So when I make eye contact with Tana, I'm dripping dopamine, or I see my granddaughter at the park and we're playing basketball, it's dripping dopamine. And it's beginning to really pay attention to the micro moments of happiness. I mean, write them down so that when you feel down, you can go, oh, This sip— I'd make a brain-healthy hot chocolate. This sip of brain-healthy hot chocolate every day drips dopamine. I'm like super happy about it. And, you know, I have this list of like 150 things that are just micro-moments of happiness.

You talk about in your work killing ANTs, these automatic negative thoughts, in You know, I, I would imagine some of those thoughts that people have, especially of recent, is making them more sad and taking away further happiness. What advice would you give to somebody in our community that's, you know, maybe struggles with the negative self-talk?

So there's 2 big strategies in the book I talk about. One is give your mind a name so that you can psychologically distance from the noise in your head. I love that. And I named mind after my pet raccoon when I was 16. And then whenever you feel sad or mad or nervous or out of control, write down what you're thinking. I call them ANTs, automatic negative thoughts, and they infest people's minds. And if you write it down and then take it through a series of questions I talk about in the book, pretty soon Your mind is really focused on truth rather than the negative, abusive chatter that's going on in your head. I'm a huge fan. There's a New Testament verse I like, John 8:32. Know the truth, and the truth will set you free. Too often, people lie to each other. I am not enough, and they hurt themselves. I adopted. I don't know if I told you, but I adopted my two nieces. They're now seventeen and twelve. Their parents. couldn't stop the addictive behavior they had. And the older one came to me a couple of weeks ago and she says, I need a Department of Homeland Security in my head. Like, thoughts just get in that don't belong there.

Yeah.

And so I'm going to hire Denzel Washington from The Equalizer and Rocky Balboa from the Rocky movies. They're going to be my TSA agents. And so I'm not letting things in. I'm not letting people in. Or bad thoughts in that damage my self-esteem and my sense of self. And I just love that. And she is working on disciplining her mind. You don't have to believe every stupid thing you think. And oh, by the way, thoughts, they come from all sorts of places, including thoughts that are written in your genetic code. If your parents go through trauma, Well, they wrote that in their genetic code that they then gave to you. It's this fascinating area of science called epigenetics. And so it's good to discipline our minds, much like you discipline a child, right? Discipline doesn't mean to punish. It means to teach. And you have to teach your mind to help you rather than just let it be the Wild West that hurts you.

And you could stand guard to your mind also in terms of what you're letting in. A lot of negative news, you and I have talked about this, if it bleeds, it leads. And it's not necessarily those platforms in the business of news as much as it is to get people paying attention, selling advertisements. And that's an algorithm that the more when your amygdala gets hijacked by things that are threatening and scary, it doesn't leave a lot of bandwidth for possibility and opportunity and what you could be grateful for. So it's Putting borders and boundaries around the things that you value, your emotions, your time, your heart also as well. I think I read somewhere in the promise of the book is on average, what is it, like 20% increase in happiness? 30%.

It was 30%. We did a happiness challenge with 32,000 people. And at the end of a month, 30% happier. And their energy was better, 30%, and their memory was better. Because, you know, when you're sad, when you're depressed, your memory is not as good. And in the book, I talk about— I've scanned hundreds now of COVID-affected brains. And what COVID does is it crosses the blood-brain barrier and it activates the limbic or the emotional brain. And that's one of the reasons depression has skyrocketed, because COVID negatively impacts the brain, not of everybody, but a lot of people. And doing things to settle your emotional brain down, you know, omega-3 fatty acids and quercetin and zinc and curcumin and an anti-inflammatory diet are so important because, you know, what we're going to be left with is millions of people with sort of COVID brain fog.

Many people in our community are talking about the long-term effects And aftereffects of that. Let's give everybody the website one more time for the new book.

YouHappier.com.

YouHappier.com. Make sure you get your copy. It comes with, with Tana's cookbook and also the saffron, which is very generous also as well. Dr. Amen, thank you so much for the work that you do. Thank you for being so supportive of me and our family and our team also as well, and taking such good care of our community.

Well, I adore you, Jim, and I am just so grateful for you and for, you know, all the people you touch. Like, you know, I love to have sort of a partner brain warrior making the world a better place.

Change your brain, as you said, change your life. Change your brain, we could change the world.

Hi, Kwik Brain, it's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number one, make sure you share this because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number two, make sure you subscribe to this channel so you don't miss a thing because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing, if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310-299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question. And I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.