Master The Art of Mental Clarity - with Ned Hallowell - Genius Network #60

Mental clarity can be mastered. And the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world shows you how in this episode of Genius Network, the number one mindset that can put you on the fast track to achieving your dreams and more with Ned Hallowell. Edward M. Ned Hollowell is a child and adult psychiatrist who specializes in ADD and adhd. He's the co author of the books Driven to Distraction and and Delivered from Distraction. If you would like access to the full video presentation, the show notes and the special resources for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com 60 that's geniusnetwork.com 60.

Our next presenter, Dr. Edward Hallowell. He has been on more talk shows than probably anyone that I know. He's been on OPRAH at least six times, Dr. Phil three times, good morning America, Dateline, the Today show, numerous times. He's worked with some very famous people, lots of kids, lots of adults. He is the top ADD ADHD psychiatrist in the world. He wrote many, many books, including Answers to Distraction, Delivered from Distraction, Married to Distraction. How many of you are married to distraction or your spouse is married to you? Okay. All right. And he wrote a fantastic book. When I first met Ned, I read his book Crazy Busy and it was one of the best books I'd ever read. Overworked, Overstretched and About to Snap. I think Strategies for Coping in a World Gone AD isn't like add. Fantastic book. And I actually sent the book to Nightingale Conant and they actually created an audio program with Ned out of that. And his latest book is called Hocus Focus. There's no better person I know that can basically speak to the subject of overwhelm. The fast paced society that we live in. Information overwhelm and just how to actually not have modern life control you, but you manage it. So My dear friend, Dr. Ned Hallowell, he likes being called Ned. Awesome. Thank you, thank you.

Thank you so much, Joe. And you know, you really are such an extraordinary man. You try to disown it, but I think the force that really propels pretty much everything positive in life is the force of connection. I think that's really at the heart of Peter's message. And you're the best connector I know. You're amazing and you're also the most generous person I know and I know you don't like to acknowledge that, but. We are all so very much in your debt. And you know, you're mentioning all the brain power in this room. It reminds me of President Kennedy's remark when he hosted a party of many Nobel Prize winners. And he said this may be the greatest collection of brain power in the country, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. But certainly there's a lot of amazing brain power in this room, but also dream power and hope power. I think we often overestimate brain power and underestimate these other forces that Peter so brilliantly alluded to. And I just want to react to what he was saying a little bit. You were searching for the tubercle bacillus. There you go, you know, memories from medical school, you know, searching for those red bugs. And the choice. Yogi Berra nailed it when he said, when you come to a fork in the road, take it. And finally, the notion of mindset is extremely well documented. Carol Dweck spent her career proving that what she calls a growth mindset becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. The growth mindset says no matter what skills I need, I can get to achieve my dreams. And the fixed mindset says I'm limited by my iq, income, station in life, what have you. And it's like that old line, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So just start thinking you can. And very hard evidence proves you'll do it. And the question is, how do you do that? You know, it is in connection that we find pretty much everything that we need and in isolation that, that we wither. And the beauty of technology today, as Peter so brilliantly pointed out, is that it allows us to connect so much more powerfully than ever before in history. This really is the greatest time ever to be alive. It is not to say that bad things can't happen, my nephew Jake being just one example, but that as we work together we will be able to solve problem after problem after problem, achieve victory after victory after victory. And we're only limited by our capacity to dream big. And you know, I just, I couldn't agree with what Peter said more. And you all, you all are specialists in doing that. You all the entrepreneurs, the dreamers, you know, I know some of you so well and others I wish I knew better. You know, someone like Dan Sullivan is just a dream maker, you know, and all of you sort of have embodied the power to take whatever notion you have and turn it into something real that changes the world. How cool is that? And you keep doing that over and over again until you can't anymore. And what does it all mean? I don't know. But I know it's positive. And I know what drives the good is really at its most distilled. The power of love. That's what we all need and rely on. Well, with that as sort of an introduction and a frame, let me now talk about attention, because it fits so well into what Peter was saying. The resource that is diminishing in this world, the most precious resource in many ways that any of us has, is attention. Every day you have to decide where to focus your mind and when you have minds, like you guys do, by the way, I gave you a handout the. The mind of the entrepreneur. And it's short because you like short. It's just bullet points. And you can see. Don't read it now, please. But. I know, I know you guys, but exactly when you have the idea of foric minds that you all do, the big decision you have to make every minute, every day, is where to focus your mind. And if you're not careful, what I think of as a tin can surrounded by a thousand magnets. And your brain is like the tin can and you wake up in the morning and 1,000 magnets come on. And what does the tin can do? It just spins. Thousand magnets. It's attracted to every single one of them simultaneously. And you can spend a day, a week, a career spinning if you're not careful. So the skill now that we need to learn that really technology has brought us this opportunity. The great thing about modern life is you can do so much. The curse of modern life is you can do so much. So what you have to do is get really tough with yourself and prioritize, decide. Where do I want to focus? What do I want to put my precious mental energy into? And I'm not here to tell you where you should focus, but I am here to tell you it's one of the most important decisions you can ever make. And you know, you say, okay, I'll focus on my business. Well, what part of your business and where do you want to put your energy? And what do you need to delegate the magical letters C, D, E? Curtail, delegate, eliminate. What can I curtail? What can I delegate? What can I eliminate so that I will have sufficient focus to achieve my goals? You see, it's not infinite. Every day it gets depleted, really, in cycles, throughout the day. You cannot maintain a single level of focus throughout the day. And so one of the great skills for all of you to learn, for all of us to learn is, is how to first of all choose what to focus on and next. Maintain focus, regulate focus, manage focus. And I'm basically a focus doctor. I've sort of invented a specialty When I got out of medical school in 1978, I'd never heard anything about focus in medical school. And then I learned about this condition, so misleadingly named Attention deficit disorder. It's a terrible term. It's not a deficit, it's not a disorder. It's a trait that many of you have. And it's associated with having lots of ideas, lots of energy, thinking outside the box, being an inventor, a pioneer. It's really add people who colonize this country. If you think of it, who in the world would come over here in 1600 in a boat? You had to be some wacko, kind of risk taking, visionary, dreamer, pioneer. And that's all our gene pool, and that's a lot of you. And the doctors, the medical establishment that likes order decided to call it a disease. So it gets called attention deficit disorder. But quite the contrary, it's a tremendous asset if you manage it right. If you don't manage it right, it's the prison population. But if you do manage it right. And the way I explain it, it's like having a Ferrari engine for a brain. You've got this incredibly powerful engine. You're a champion in the making. Ferrari engine for a brain, but with bicycle brakes. So you got to learn how to control the power of your mind. Sounds simple. It's not simple. You need to learn to control the power of your mind and that Ferrari engine in order for you to win races. You need to learn how to strengthen your controls not to make you a normal corporate citizen. I quite agree with Joe. The life is sucked out of them, but to make you like Shakespeare and Mozart. Shakespeare and Mozart wrote within extremely confining structures, extremely iambic pentameter, Shakespeare, Mozart, very tight musical forms. And because of that structure, because of those breaks, those boundaries, they were able to create infinite variety. So make friends with the structure, make friends with the controls. It will potentiate your creativity. It will take your business 10 times higher, as Dan is helping people do every day. Well, let me talk about two functions. One, how to get someone's attention and hold it. And number two, how to manage yours. Now, getting attention. I summarize with the acronym search. You can get attention in these six ways. Peter already mentioned the s scare. This is what the media loves to do. You scare people, you get their attention. You go straight to the primitive brain. And oh boy, we are so wired to feel fear more than any other emotion. E excite. We do that through sensory stimulation. Speed. If you present something fast, doesn't matter, it can be vapid. You could read the telephone book fast. Someone will pay attention. We pay attention. We love speed. We crave speed. Speed is our drug of choice. So speed sex, you all know about that sex sells. And anything that is highly sensorily stimulating excites us, gets your attention. And another E word, educate, if you're interested. So if you're a stockbroker, you want to hear how's the market doing? So if it's information you care about, you will pay attention. So E is for excite or educate. A got four A's. Attack. If you attack someone, they'll pay attention. Annoy. Remember the Aniston commercial? You're too young for that. Maybe. But years ago, this guy got rich in advertising because he really annoyed people, showing what it was like to have a headache. So attack. Annoy will gain your attention, but also amaze, amaze. And think of how Peter amazed you in his presentation. That's riveting. And that's what a lot of the great books these days from Malcolm Gladwell, from Peter, from many of the folks who are bringing us insights from the brain sciences are amazing. And that is riveting. So good news, amaze also works. The third one, the fourth one, R Reassure. And we're actually at a place now, I think we're so saturated with bad news that actually reassurance is focusing. I love the company. Life is good. And we are so starved for good news that when you hear reassurance like Peter gave, like others are giving, it's really wonderful because it's startling, it's amazing, and it's reassuring. So as you reassure, you can also grab someone's attention. And the other R is Reward. Offer someone $1,000, they'll pay attention. Offer them an X prize, they'll pay attention. But as Peter said, it's really not about the money, it's about the reward. It's about the goal. When you have a goal, you tend to respond to it if it's something you think is worthwhile. See, charm. Charm. Charm someone. Joe is a master of charm. Don Rickles. Insulting is charming. You know, I mean, you can be charming without being cute and coquettish, or you can be cute and coquettish, but charming is also a wonderful way. And then H. Help. When you offer someone help that they need, they'll pay attention. You may have to frame it in such a way that you grab their attention. But we all need help. And if it's packaged in such a way, okay, so that's how you grab the attention. Now, how do you hold Their attention. Well, you have to sin. You have to sin. Structure, interaction, novelty. This is critical. You need the structure and you need the novelty. Too much structure, the presentation is boring. Too much novelty, the presentation is confusing. And if there's no interaction, people will tune out. That's why I'm not going to talk very long, because we're not interacting enough. If I were doing this for a long time, I'd be asking you questions, I'd be polling the audience, I'd be doing stuff to make us interact with you. Go to Dan's workshops. It's all interaction. Best example, you don't have to be with other people. A crossword puzzle is interactive. That's why it holds your attention. You're interacting with the puzzle, the new clue. And it's very structured and it's full of novelty. Video games also a lot of structure, a lot of novelty. It's interactive. The interactive screen is unbelievably focusing and that's its both great power and its great danger. That's why people become addicted to it. The dopamine circuitry gets involved. I call it screen sucking. When you can't log off, you go on and you just say, I'm just going to check my email. And an hour later you're still there sucking on this screen. It's a big time waste. Beware of screen sucking. But at the same time it can be a tremendous advantage because it's a way of really engaging the future of education. I want to submit for this X prize because the future of education depends upon using interaction. Depends upon the force of discovery. Depends upon getting kids from the stupid Memorize and Forget curriculum into the Discover and Produce curriculum. And all project based. And this is how to do it. Structure, novelty, interaction. You sustain attention until you need to take what my friend John Ratey calls a brain break. You can't do it indefinitely. So every hour or so you need to stand up and move around. Then you can go back and begin sinning again. Okay, now, how do you manage your own three variables? Emotion, energy and structure. Okay, this is how you manage your own attention. Ready, aim, fire. Ready, aim, fire. Ready is energy. Aim is emotion. Fire is structure. Energy. You see, a lot of managing your own attention has to do with prep work. It's not field work, it's not managing crises when you're spazzing out. It's getting ready for the project. So what goes into preparing your energy so you'll be maximally focused? What I call the sensational six. And these really work. It's just that most people don't pay attention to them. Number one, sleep. Your brain needs to sleep. We don't know why, but we know it needs to. We don't know really what sleep does, but we know if you don't get enough sleep, you're irritable, you're distracted. And if you do it for a long time and it increases risk of obesity, depresses immune function, increases risk of cancer, high blood pressure, all bad stuff just due to lack of sleep. So you want to get enough sleep. How much sleep do you need? That varies. A good way to tell is you need as much sleep as it takes for you to wake up without an alarm clock. And that varies from person to person. Sleep, exercise. Exercise is huge. My friend John Ratey's book the Spark. The revolutionary new science of exercise in the brain. Exercise is the greatest tonic in the world for cognitive function. It's not only an antidepressant, an anti anxiety agent, a focuser, but it generates all kind of chemicals and peptides and hormones and oxygen that just make your brain blossom. It grows new nerve cells. John calls it miracle grow for the brain. So work out as much as you possibly can. And how do you do that? How do you make it happen? Make it fun. Make it fun. I have a squash game that I've been playing with the same man for 30 years. Make it fun so you don't dread it. If you dread it, it's only a matter of time before you'll give it up. But make it fun, incorporate it into your life. And just think, this is so good for my brain. Sleep, exercise, nutrition. Nutrition is the whole new world. I mean, talk about Google nutrition and you'll get more recipes than you know what to do with. And I keep trying all of them on me. And at one point I said, if nothing else, I have the most expensive urine in Boston, you know, but there's a lot to it. And I'm sure when Ray Kurzweil gets here, he'll tell you about his supplements. And there's a lot to it. There's real science behind it. It's just we don't quite know yet what the perfect recipe is. But take nutrition seriously and certainly try to eat a whole foods diet. And, and then there is a role for medication. If you happen to have attention deficit trait, as I like to think of it, medication can be a godsend. These other things often make medication unnecessary. But don't be afraid of stimulant medication. Used properly, it's way safer than aspirin so nutrition, then meditation. Meditation and. Or prayer. So much evidence now that meditation is just a brain freshener, a brain enhancer, a brain booster. If you do the meditation every day, you will definitely increase your powers of concentration and focus. The fifth one is cognitive stimulation. Stretch your brain. Talk to people who know more than you do. Talk to people who disagree with you. Teach someone something that you find interesting. I'll never forget, I was at a party once in New York, one of these fancy parties, and sitting next to someone, he said he'd just written a book about de Kooning. And I said, who's de Kooning? Well, he looked at me like I was a poop on the floor, you know, he said, what? You don't know who de Kooning is? You call yourself an educated man? And I'd had enough wine where I said, you know, you're the kind of guy who gives intellectuals a bad name. If you think de Kooning is so cool, you should be throwing I don't know who he is, so you can share with me your great knowledge. Instead, you try to humiliate me and make me feel small. And he apologized. It was a great, great moment of victory. And by the way, de Kooning was an artist contemporary of Jackson Pollock. But anyway, teach other people what you know. That's also stimulating. In medical school, the rule was, see one, do one, teach one. And when you're able to teach something, it's really. It's an act of mastering it yourself. So. So cognitive stimulation is really good for your brain. Staves off Alzheimer's, keeps you young, keeps you excited, keeps you alive. And then finally, the sixth one is the one that I push that nobody else talks about. Positive human contact. Connection. Friends are really good for you. People, particularly men, fear it. It's the greatest drug in the world. It's free. It's infinite in supply. And psychiatrists are writing millions of prescriptions for Prozac and not prescribing connection. Lead a connected life. Have friends. Spend time with people you love. Spend time with people groups you care about. Get involved in causes you care about. That gives you the daily dose of what I call the other vitamin C. Vitamin connect. It is hugely important for your mental health and your physical health. Do you know that social isolation is as dangerous a risk factor for early death as cigarette smoking? Most people don't know that for some reason. We don't advertise it. For some reason. Connection makes people nervous. Well, get over it. You know, reach out. Let yourself be a little vulnerable. You know, it's really good for you. It's not good for you to walk around through life being appropriate. One of my most unfavorite words. Words be inappropriate. You know, let loose. You know, what's you going to lose, you know, you're just going to have some fun and give permission to other people to have some fun. And you will connect and you will remember the moment. Don't go through life being appropriate. On your deathbed, you'll say, why didn't I miss the chance to live? It's the most powerful drug we've got. It's free and it's infinite in supply. Use it. So those six for energy, then emotion, you want to work in what I call your sweet spot. Your sweet spot. I'll just give me two minutes and I'll finish up. Your sweet spot is where three circles overlap. What you love to do, what you're really good at, what Dan calls your unique ability, and what advances your mission or someone will pay you to do. Where those three overlap, you should work there because that's where your emotion will be highest, and that's where that'll drive you to success. And then finally, fire is structure. Create boundaries. Create boundaries. Have a target. Don't do the stuff that brings you down. Don't be with the people who bring you down. Don't be with the naysayers and the skeptics and all that. Be with people who are rooting for you and you rooting for them. Have structure and then microstructure. Have a timetable, have a break time. Have the kind of structures that maybe aren't easy for you to set up. So get a coach to set them up for you, an assistant to set them up for you. Ready, aim, fire. You can manage your attention, you can manage your focus if you use these basic principles. Beware of getting carried away by the seductions, the interruptions, the heady feeling of being very busy. It's not good for you. You want to do what matters most to you every day. And in order to do that, you need to have a plan that allows for both focus and hocus. Hocus is my word for the state of mind when new ideas come swimming in. When you get surprised by new ideas, you're all good at that. So you don't want to be so rigid in your focus that you exclude those. But you don't want to be so loose that you don't have the structure and you combine the two. Hocus and focus. And in a rhythm through your day, allowing for downtime, brain breaks and rest time, you can positively be far more productive with the brain power you've got than if you let it diffuse, as too many people do these days. The message is extremely positive. The message is take back control of your mind, your brain power, so that you can use it to best advantage. The principles I've given you this morning truly work and allow you to be bold, as Peter was saying, in achieving your biggest dreams and even beyond. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Genius Network. If you'd like to learn more about the Genius Network Annual event, please visit geniusnetworkevents.com that's geniusnetworkevents dot com if you would like access to the full video presentation, the show notes, and the special resources for this episode, please visit geniusnetwork.com60 that's geniusnetwork.com60.

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