Unlocking Inner Happiness: The Mammal Inside You | Podcast Interview with Dr. Loretta Breuning

If you're thirsty in the desert and you see an oasis in the distance, you're just ecstatic. But if you live at the oasis, then the water doesn't make you a bit happy. So it's only the unmet need that triggers your happy chemicals.

That's one reason people love traveling, you know, I mean, they're deprived of home when they travel. They're deprived of a lot of conveniences. I've experienced that, you know, in the sense of being ecstatic, because it's like, wow, life is so good. Life is so easy. And it's, you know, the weather is amazing, beautiful here.

Variety triggers dopamine. That's part of it. And part of it is all of your negative thought loops are triggered by cues at home. And when you travel, they're not triggered.

Okay, welcome, everybody. I am so happy today to talk about one of my favorite subjects, which is happiness and the human brain and our human motivation and just how we work in the world, and we are a perpetual mystery. So when I heard Dr. Bruning talking about how to tap into our knowledge about mammals and then how that can translate into how we can enhance our own happiness, I was all about it. So I reached out to her, and I'm so happy that she is on our podcast. Can shed some light on this very important subject that I'm sure everybody is interested in. Who doesn't want to know how to be more happy and who doesn't want to understand a little bit more about ourselves. Dr. Bruning, thank you so much for being here.

It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, so I want to introduce to our audience a little bit about you. So Dr. Loretta Bruning, she's a PhD, is the founder of the Inner Mammal Institute and and the professor emerita of the management at California State University, East Bay. She's the author of many personal development books, including Habits of a Happy Brain. Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphin levels. So that's a great title, and I love the name of the Inner Mammal Institute. She's a teacher and a parent and was not convinced by the prevailing theories of human motivation. Then she learned about the brain chemistry we share with earlier mammals, and everything made sense. So she began creating resources that have helped thousands of people to make peace with their inner mammal. Dr. Bruning's work has been translated into 12 languages and is cited in major media. And before teaching, she worked in the United nations, in Africa, and she gave zoo tours on animal behavior after serving as a docent at the Oakland Zoo. So I can't wait to hear all the interesting tidbits that you can share with audience and how everyone can learn to be happier. Maybe you can shed light a little bit on just how you. Just your path of how you were interested in animals and what did you learn in the process?

Sure. Well, you mentioned about how our emotions have always been a mystery to us, and I just want to say that there's a simple reason for that. The part of the brain that controls our emotions is inherited from earlier animals. And animals can't talk, so they can't verbalize why they're turning on an emotion. The verbal part of our brain is looking for a verbal, verbal conscious explanation of, I'm happy about that, or I'm sad about that, but that. That's just not the way it works. And I got a great example of that from Steven Pinker. He calls it the Swiss army knife theory of the brain, which is that the brain has, like, a lot of different tools, but there's no one centralized control over them. So that was very helpful to me. So. So, like, meeting people, I grew up with a lot of unhappiness around me, so I was always interested in what's going on. Why is everybody so upset? And I searched and searched for answers, and like many people, and like you, I started with academic psychology, and I thought, oh, now I'm going to have, like, the secret to everything. Right? And then as the years went by, I saw more and more things that it didn't explain. So I started reading more and more, and I would. When I wrote about the brain, I'd read one little mention of animal brain and another little mention of animal brain and specifically a chemical, how it affects an animal. And because animals can't cover up and resist or spin their responses, you see how these chemicals affect animals, it's so obvious. And animals have the same chemicals that we have. So to me, that was like the Rosetta Stone of understanding our emotions.

Right. And we all came from animals. So before our language developed, probably we were fairly similar in how we respond.

And yeah, so the limbic system, so as you know, we have the big human cortex, which is the pink fluffy thing that we see in pictures, but underneath that, we have this core brain called the limbic system, which is made of a lot of bits and parts that often get mentioned in the news, like the amygdala and hippocampus. But what really matters matters is not the Individual bits and parts. But the fact that taken together, they control our emotions. And taken together, they're basically the same as animals. So whenever you're doing something an animal could do, you're using your limbic system, which includes, like, breathing and interacting with others and making decisions about where to invest your energy. So you're always using your limbic system. And it's crazy when people give you the impression that you shouldn't let your emotions control you, because in fact, your emotions, your limbic brain controls your body, and your cortex can only access your body through your limbic system. So you can only do something if you get your animal brain on board. You can't just circle, you know, cross circuit and, you know, circumvent it.

Okay, so do you think animals experience happiness?

Oh, good question. So the simplest answer would be to say that if a hungry monkey sees food, the happy chemical turns on and says, yay, that's going to meet my need, that's going to relieve my hunger. And that's the feeling of dopamine. And that's that feeling we have, like all day that we're looking for is that, yay, that's going to, that's going to meet my needs, that's going to fulfill me. And we don't only have that about food because our food needs are met so easily that we have all this energy left over after we meet our needs. And also, in the monkey world, if you watch nature videos, you see that monkeys are quite picky about who they mate with. And so those chemicals are involved in motivating action to improve their social alliances.

Okay, so I mean, I definitely, I could see how my cats are happy when I mean that you definitely see the behavior. So I, I assume they will have some complex emotions as well. And so how, how do we learn from how they experience the emotions? And how does that translate into whether or not humans are happy or how can we get happier?

So we have how our verbal brain defines happiness and how our limbic system defines happiness. And as you know, you can philosophize all day, but if you're not having the chemistry, then you're not feeling it. So it's all about what it takes to trigger the chemicals. And we know that the chemicals are controlled by neural pathways built from past experience. When I say we know that. In fact, nobody says that in academic psychology, that's what baffles me. And that's why I focus on that so much. And I explain it in all of my books. The bottom line is that the things that turn on our happy chemicals are a mystery to us because they're not what we would consciously choose to get excited about, but it's whatever got you exc when you were young. And this is why we're all challenged to navigate life with these old neural pathways leading us toward things that made us happy in the past, but we know may not be good for us today. So the way we usually deal with it is by putting too much faith in our verbal brain and believing some grandiose philosophy about what should make us happy, but because that's not connected to. To the actual happy chemical circuits, and if it's not, then it doesn't feel good. So what I talk about is making your two brains work together like a horse and rider. And first, that means that the rider has to accept the horse and the horse has to trust the rider. So the. So that sounds very abstract, but the bottom line is, if I'm telling myself, oh, well, I don't really care about this, and I don't really care about this. I only care about that. So you have to be a little more honest with yourself and know what makes animals happy, which is this is another whole subject we could go into is animals care about their social position, and no one wants to admit that with their conscious brain. And that is where we get to the two brains having to work together.

So a couple things. One is that you said, you know, this idea of should, what should make me happy. And that could be one of the biggest roadblocks to happiness. So the should is the left brain idea. Right Is what we think should make us happy.

So I don't talk about left brain, right brain. I think about, like, the upper brain and the lower brain. So the upper brain maybe has some, like I said, grandiose philosophy. What about what should make you happy? But I'm not saying that you should go all with the lower brain either, because then you would be like a toddler who's just grabbing toys from other kids. So that's why it's such a challenge. Like, neither the horse or the rider has the right answer on its own. And that's why it's such a challenge. Like, it's really, how can I satisfy this inner monkey that wants to grab toys from other monkeys in a way that still gives me the feeling that I got the toy, but in a way that my adult brain knows is going to be good for me in the long run? And that's a challenge. There's no easy way to do that, which is why it's good to know that your happy chemicals are not designed to be on all the time. They're only designed to motivate positive survival behavior in short spurts. And so we only have them in short spurts. And it's just absolutely normal to be in neutral when you don't have them.

I think that's one of my biggest challenges, is that I think I'm supposed to be happy all the time. Hey, my name is Joy, right? My Chinese name has the same meaning, so I'm kind of hung up on it. I'm supposed to be happy. So where's the happiness? What about now? What about this moment? If I'm not feeling happy all the time, am I failing myself? Am I not enlightened or not together? You know, that's. That was. That's what I've been struggling with, that I'm not happy all the time. Maybe I haven't reached the level of, you know, wisdom.

Yeah, that's a great question. So there's two things. So one is that when our happy chemicals are not flowing, we may surge into stress chemicals. We often use happy chemicals to mask distress. So the simple example would be, let's say a young child is in a bad situation and they rush to their video game to block it out. And so we build that habit of I have to rush into something to block out unpleasant thoughts. So if that's the case, then we can all build new. First, we have to become aware of that pattern, which is a real physical pathway, and then that we can rewire it so that we can reduce that surge of negative thoughts without rushing into the unhealthy happy habit. But the other is to know that there's a neutral, like a neutral gear in a car, between happy and unhappy, where you don't have to rush into the next happy thing, because neutral is actually a higher state in the sense that when an animal is making a decision, should I go toward food or should I run away from a predator before it can make that decision, it has to take in information in order to make the correct decision. With our big brain, we take in more information. Some people take in too much information and never make a decision. Other people act before they take in information. But in between is, well, I'm just going to pause for a while to take in information, and then I'm going to decide where is the next best investment of my energy. And that's the job our brain evolved to do.

Interesting. So that almost sounds like somewhat Zen state that you are an observer. Yeah, that may be A place of great wisdom, I guess.

Yeah, yeah. But also, I can see how people have been sold this idea that you should feel great all the time. Other people are feeling great all the time. You could possibly have pressure from someone to feel great all the time or a sales pitch like, if you only go for this or this or this, that you'll feel great all the time. So it is hard to resist that. But even harder to resist, I think, unfortunately for young people, is to jump to the conclusion that you have a disorder if you don't feel great all the time, and if you're sold that idea at a young age, then it's even harder to. To accept this neutral gear, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. And you just reminded me of my. My medical school days. Boy, were we all competing for how great our weekends were and just how happy we all are. And I. It's. I mean, I really didn't want to participate, but I could see just everyone. Guess what I did this weekend. I had a most am amazing time. Oh, it was incredible. Everybody is just showing off how great life is.

That's such a good example. You know why? Because when people do that today, everyone blames social media. And I always say, no, this existed long before social media. So that's such a good example.

I know. And I'm sure a lot of people who are in neutral states, they will be like, well, I seems like I'm deficient. I didn't have an incredible weekend.

Right.

I'm not, you know, so exuberant that I'm, you know, I'm just overflowing with happiness. Then they may feel like less than, you know what.

And I'll give you a great idea. And this relates to aging. There was a certain point in life where, like, on a Saturday night, all I wanted to do was go to bed early with a book. And I was so glad that I had the power to do that. And. And yet I, you know, you have a little bit of leftover feeling that, you know, you should be doing something else. And then I thought, what greater reward is there for aging? Then you could just do what you actually literally want to do rather than feeling like you should do something that might impress somebody.

Right, Right. I love the idea of this, you know, neutral state. So what is. But I mean, you're saying we only have little spurts of what's called happiness. And the most of the time, it's a normal. It's a normal way of existing to just be neutral and just taking in information and What? What, what is it? 95. Over 5%. Is that.

Oh, okay, that's great question. So I don't know if I could quantify it, but let's look at the hunter gatherer example and then it will be obvious. So our hunter gatherer ancestors, they never knew where their next meal from, so they're hungry, so they look around for food. When they see food that they think they could get dopamine turns on, it's like, great, wow, look at that delicious fruit in the distance. Once they get to the fruit, the good feeling stops because it has already done its job. And it actually would not be good for them if the good feeling continued, because then they just hang around at the same fruit tree forever and wouldn't go out and meet other needs. Then they wouldn't get protein or water and they would die. So the value of dopamine is that it stops once that particular need is met, and you have to then meet another need to get more of it. And this is why people complain about feeling like they're on a treadmill. So all of those people, the way they got to be in med school was by achieving one goal, achieving another goal. So nothing is going to make them happy until they actually learn how the brain works. And then they could just be sort of satisfied with some small little thing and not to expect some big high. Now, if I can mention the other chemicals, because it's even more so with them of the short spurts. Oh, the other thing about dopamine, so it habituates to whatever reward you have. So the simple example would be if you're thirsty in the desert and you see an oasis in the distance, you're just ecstatic. But if you live at the oasis, then the water doesn't make you a bit happy. So it's only the unmet need that triggers your happy chemicals. And I use the example all the time that when I walk into a coffee shop and it smells really good, like roasting beans, I'm like, so excited that that sparks my dopamine. But if I just got a job in the coffee shop and spent my whole life there, then it wouldn't make me happy. Because your brain habituates to whatever rewards you have.

Have. I'm wondering if that's one reason people love traveling. You know, I, I mean, they're deprived of home when they travel, they're deprived of a lot of conveniences when they travel. And what. That's just part of it. I, I think I've experienced that, you know, feeling the sense of being ecstatic because it's like, wow, life is so good. Life is so easy. And it's, you know, the weather is amazing. It's beautiful here.

Absolutely. So part of it is because all variety triggers dopamine. That's part of it. And part of it is all of your negative thought loops are triggered by cues at home. And when you travel, they're not triggered. For a person who loves travel, which I do. Other people hate travel. And I've noticed, like, for example, I actually enjoy getting lost, whereas other people hate getting lost. So it's all very individual and depends on your past experience.

Yeah. And another point you mentioned was this social position and how that affects our brain chemistry. So I would love to hear more about this.

Sure. So there are two different social chemicals, oxytocin and serotonin. So oxytocin is the one you hear about in the news where people idealize this thing that you should have support, and support will make you happy. And everybody hugs and loves each other, and then you'll be happy all the time. If you don't think about yourself and just think about your support group. This is very unrealistic. And when you study how animals live together, they have tremendous conflict. And I explain this in all of my books. And my new book, why youy're Unhappy, goes into even more of it. It won't be out till next year. But bottom line, oxytocin is the good feeling that it's safe to lower your guard. If you hugged people you didn't trust, you would not get oxytocin. It's not just about hugging people, but it's about carefully understanding what you need to lower your guard and then finding safe ways to give it to yourself. Then, even when you succeed at that, then you'll habituate to that and look for. This is why when a person has support, it's not enough. Then they want some new support. That's how the brain works. It motivates a monkey, for example, to groom the fur of another monkey to build that social alliance. And we're always looking for more ways to do it. And because that's what works in the state of nature, you keep looking for ways to strengthen that social support. Now, that's very different from serotonin, which is the idea that once a monkey has a social troop, if you find a new troop, you're at the bottom of the hierarchy. And the monkeys at the bottom don't get mating opportunity. So they have to raise their position in the status hierarchy in order to keep their genes alive. And, and that's all our brain cares about. It's always looking for opportunities to do things that will spread your genes. Raising your social status spreads your genes. So this is why people go crazy over minutia, to raise their status, because that's the brain we've inherited. And it's so clear in the nature videos of David Attenborough, especially his old ones. And as you know, it's like not polite to talk about this, and that's why I've written so many books about it. So this is what triggers our serotonin, and this is not at all what is explained in the popular literature or the academic literature on serotonin. But it was widely discussed in the 80s and so I put that on my website and I've collected all those books and I've written a lot about it.

You said it's not polite to talk about social status and how we haven't in our nature to raise our social status.

And it's not polite to say that raising your status makes you happy, which everybody knows. And everybody does it in their own way. So everybody says, well, my way of raising my status is much better. And those people who raise their status in that bad way, I don't do that. Right?

Yeah, right, right. So everybody, it just, it is better to accept that's. That's nature that we've inherited from just being mammal. That's what drives animals to, to be happier, is to build a social connection and partially is to raise their own status.

Be interested in, like, how I learned about this. It's, it's an amazing story. So of course I was reading books and I was watching nature videos, but part of my journey was I discovered these monkey zoos in France that are monkeys only and they have a docent talk. I worked as a docent at a zoo, so, so I know about these things. But in France, they have a docent talk twice a day at each monkey and they tell you all the stuff that, like, is not talked about here, including this social hierarchy. So the first time I went, it was all in fren. And like, I speak French, but like, there was this certain thing where they said that the bottom monkey will never reproduce. So I thought, is that possible? Like, how does that work? So I went afterwards, after the talk, I assumed it was my problem with my French. And I said, how come the bottom monkey will never reproduce? And, oh, I said to her, how. How come the bottom monkey doesn't get to have sex? And she says, well, he does get to have sex, but he won't be a father. So I thought, whoa, how is that possible? That, like, really complex biology. So my French was not that good. So I went home and I researched it and it's this really. Oh, I wish I could remember the books, but this is in any evolutionary biology book. So in monkeys, and it differs by species, but in most mammals, they are only interested in sex when the female is actively fertile. And so there's a lot. And that rarely happens. So there's a lot of competition for that moment. And for chimpanzees and baboons, like, they're. Instead of, like courting the female, they're fighting with each other to be in the top of the hierarchy in that moment. That's like a short version of the story.

Yeah. So. So you said they do get to have sex, but they won't be a father.

How do they know when the female is actively fertile? So she releases certain pheromones so you can smell it, but is it a little smell or a lot of smell? So the experienced males at the top, they know when the smell is like the full meal versus just the preliminary. So they don't bother fighting over the preliminary because then they might get injured and ruin their opportunity when she's actively ovulating.

Interesting.

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah.

And this works in, like, a number of different species this way.

I don't think humans have gotten into that.

Well, that's why there's so much talk about bonobos, because they're the only species other than in humans that is interested in sex. When the female is not actively ovulating or actively releasing the pheromone, Isn't that mind boggling? And the reason for that is mind boggling is the visual cortex, because we're stimulated visually rather than just pheromones. And this all happened at the same time that our olfactory cortex got smaller and our visual cortex got larger in evolution. Isn't that mind blowing?

That's fasc. Okay. So we lost touch with some of our capabilities. Yeah. To really detect when it's important to get into action. Yeah. So you talked about various chemicals. So we talked about serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin. And you also mentioned endorphins. So can you talk a little bit about endorphin and endorphin levels and how that affects us?

Sure. So endorphin gets a lot of attention because it was the first of the chemicals to be researched and understood. And because of that, many people use the word Endorphins as a synonym for happy chemicals in general and then ignore dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. But there's huge problems with that because endorphin is actually the body's natural opioid and it's only designed to be released when you're in pain. And it masks pain with a good feeling, which allows an animal or a hunter gatherer ancestor to take action to protect themselves when they're injured by masking the pain for 15 minutes. As a result, we're not designed to create pain to stimulate endorphin. We're designed to seek the other chemicals, but only have endorphin for emergencies only. That's why I think it's unfortunate that we have this cult of pain in various ways, but particularly with exercising to the point of pain to get the chemicals and then not understand the other chemicals.

But I wonder if that endorphin high what the evolutionary advantage is. I assume when the animals are running from the predators, they get a high too.

Yes, but even worse, if you see on some this what the first person explained to me. You see, the lion gets his jaws and his huge teeth into the zebra's flesh and the zebra is ripped open and yet it can still run. So how is that? And that's because endorphin masks pain. So the zebra has a few minutes to try to save itself and then either it dies in an endorphin haze or it escapes the lion and then it protects itself. And you could also imagine a hunter gatherer who's out hunting and breaks their leg and falls into a hole. And like they have a few minutes to call for help with the endorphin.

So how do you think that informs us of what we can do about endorphin and what does it teach us?

Sure. Well, like I said, the first lesson is really not to rely on endorphin to make you happy, but to understand dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. So a simple example would be if a person can do 10 push ups and they're pushing themselves to do 15 push ups. That's dopamine whenever you approach a goal. But if you're exercising to the point of self injury, set a different goal. So that's the first thing. Now if you're getting oxytocin at the gym, but you're exercising to the point of pain, then understand that you're getting oxytocin from the social bonding and find a different way to do it, which also applies if people are getting oxytocin at a bar and they're drinking too much to understand that it's not this, it's that. And finally, if you're getting serotonin by feeling like my muscles are bigger than your muscles, but you're ruining yourself to do that, to know that you can get pride in many other ways. So that's the main answer. But it's also useful to know that you get a little bit of oxytocin from laughing. So I always like to watch some comedy every day, and especially when I have something challenging in my life to have some comedy planned and saved for afterwards so that I know that I always end up up on a happy note when I might be stressed.

Oh, that's a great trick. Yeah, that sounds really good. So I'm interested in knowing because I, I love animals and I think they're so fascinating. They can teach us so much about who we are. So. And for you to have worked in a zoo and to have studied animals, I would love to hear some of the interesting stories that you've, you've, you've had, you've seen, you've observed. Anything you can share with us of interesting behaviors?

Okay. Yeah, I have one that I'll share with you privately. Okay. Because I think they get upset with me if I spoke about behind the scenes information in public. But I'll tell you two great stories. When I take people on a trip, a tour of the zoo, and we look at these squirrel monkeys and you watch their eyes. They are looking for food every second, like watching, watching, watching on the ground. And they're fully fed by the zookeeper, so they're not hungry, but every second they're watching for like a little bit of movement that they can leap at an insect. And so this explains first, like, why do I get up and go to the refrigerator when I'm not really hungry? Because my brain is designed to look for food all the time. And the other thing is, although they're not really hungry, they're quite competitive. So when they see another monkey get an insect and it's like, oh, darn, I could have gotten that one. So that motivates them to really, you know, so it's so useful to understand yourself and really to free yourself from that thought loop.

Yeah. I remember you mentioned a story where you were talking about how animals are so similar to humans. They crave social connection, but when they get together socially, they get easily annoyed. They're annoyed that someone is taking the space and someone is doing something that they don't like. So that, that just sounds really.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's a little harder to see that at the zoo when you see it in a nature video. They are watching longer and they're in a little more natural settings, but they, they do like compete for food so vigorously that what the zookeepers do is they feed the more dominant animals separately because that's the one that's going to attack and potentially injure the others if they go for food and they're like afraid to eat. Like they pull back when the big one's. So the zookeepers have one pot of food for the alpha and another pot of food and often one staff person feeding the alpha and another staff person feeding the rest of the group. Now what bugged me about this is that when they did this, they would call it cooperation or sharing. What? That's not cooperation. They would have all these euphemisms because they couldn't acknowledge the reality of what was going on on, even though they understood it and worked with it.

Yeah.

Now another fascinating story is when most people have like a bad habit that they've just tried to change for years. And this story helps you understand that a little bit. So they had this male elephant that they got when he was young and then when he turned 16, they wanted to have a big party because a 16 year old male elephant is, it's a big deal. Male elephants are the only species that the males get a period which is not, it's not blood, but it's a hormonal cycle and it's actually, if you've ever seen or heard of this, it's a little opening on their cheek and their testosterone increases 50 fold and it dribbles out of their cheek. And while this is happening, they are so violent that all the other males back off. And this is the animal brain solution to avoid inbreeding because in most species the strongest individual gets most of the mating opportunity. But elephant gestation takes two years and if the same guy got all the mating opportunity, then there, there would be all, all of those elephants would have the same father. And then they die from inbreeding in later generations. So this assures some their variety of paternal genes. It's amazing. So, but here's what happened. So at the zoo, they had a birthday party for this 16 year old elephant. So they purchased two shake, they purchased two sheet cakes. One of them for the whole staff and the other one for the elephant. So this elephant, he takes his trunk, you know, and he eats the whole sheet cake in like 30 seconds. Now, you need to know that elephants have a very poor diet. So they actually eat tree branches. And it takes. They have to eat for 16 hours a day in order to get enough nutrition from the tree branches. And they have a very inefficient reproductive system. So half of what goes in goes out. And so in order to get the amount of calories in that 30 seconds, they would have to eat for like a week. So it's really like cocaine in the sense of getting, like this huge surge of dopamine all at once from this enormous reward, which is like a week's worth of reward in a few seconds.

Yeah.

So that big rush of dopamine, it wires the brain. So our dopamine is not wired by conscious analysis. It's wired by linking all the neurons active at that moment. So that means whatever's going on in the moment when I have this great jackpot reward, I link those neurons. And in the future, when I see anything linked, it turns on my dopamine. I'm like, I want that. So this is how we're all wired.

Yeah. So. So what happened to the elephant?

After people debate with me about that, but. So two things. One is, let's just say that if, if that was. If there was a supermarket logo near that cake, I bet the elephant would recognize that logo. But in the reality of their daily life, they're just responding to the cues they have. However, there's a once a year celebration where the public is invited to bring special treats to the elephants. And what they do is they. They pen the elephants up in a corral and they allow the public into the elephant area to set down their treats. And people bring all kinds of things. Sometimes they bring a bag of vegetables and things like that. Well, then the people leave, the elephants come. So the elephants, sometimes they just hog, like the whole bag. They eat the paper shopping bag and everything and just gobble it in all at once. And there's one of them, so they're picky. Like they. First, they go for the sweeter things. So then once all the sweeter things are done, they don't want to waste time because then another one will get it. When all the sweeter things are gone, they go for the less sweet things. Things. Well, one of them, the bigger, stronger. It hogged three watermelons. One in its mouth, one in its trunk, and one under its foot, because the watermelons are the major sweet reward.

Oh, my goodness. That's so funny. Very cute.

Yeah.

And you mentioned something about us having wired Our brain when we were young, the reward. We're responding to the kind of rewards that we responded to when we're young. And this is hardware wired. And how do you think that affects our adult life?

Sure. Well, the simple, most common example that I hear from so many people, they say my mother would give me candy when. Either when she was in a good mood or when I cried or when I studied. So then your brain is wired to either for crying or studying or looking or like, wanting candy, because that's like, the only time you associate with getting love. So that's just a very simple example. For most. Most of our circuits, it's not that obvious, so we have to put in a little effort to understand. I'll just tell you a funny example I use in my book. I. I like color. And I learned. I. I realized, like, how that was, like, something that I got rewarded with when I was young in the sense, like, my mother didn't give me very many choices. Like, in my life, like, I was forced to do a lot of things, but she allowed. She allowed me to choose what color I wanted to paint my room and certain things like that, that. So. So I had, like. And then when she got to buy a new couch, she brought me with her and. And showed me all these color swatches and asked me which one I liked. And it was, like, the first time she ever asked my opinion and, like, respected my opinion. So it's like all these little examples, like, oh, wow. So it doesn't have to be something good or bad. It's just a pattern.

Okay, so in our adult life, you're saying that if I was given a candy when I cry or cried, I may be crying, Using crying as a way to. To get some kind of reward.

Yes. And of course, it's not conscious. And as an adult, you probably are capable of. Of withholding the crying, but it's that. That feeling like you're about to explode, that maybe comes more easily than you want it to in the same types of situations that your mother would have responded to.

And how can we broaden the type of stimulus, you know, the type of things that can bring us happiness, that can make us seek or feel happy, you know, comparing to, you know, not to be locked in by what we had when we were kids.

This is the huge challenge, and this is the reason I created the Inner Mammal Institute for people to better understand their power to build new pathways to their happy chemicals, which nobody talks to you about in the whole, like, therapeutic culture. And it's not easy and yet, on the other hand, in a way, it is easy. So it's really. Anytime you expose your brain to new rewards with repetition, you can build new pathways to seek new rewards. But in a way, that's sort of a catch 22, because you're like, well, but if I don't enjoy that reward now, why am I going to repeat it? And why am I going to think that it's going to feel good later on if it doesn't feel good now? So there are a whole variety of complications. And I explain in all of my books how to transcend this. But the simple answer is the method that animal trainers use, which is how do you get a dog to do a flip? Is you give it a tiny reward for any tiny movement toward doing a flip, and eventually it doesn't flip.

Right. That's kind of like building good habits. You can reward yourself to build good habits.

Yes.

That's interesting. And. And, well, I can't think of a better habit than positive thinking, than thinking positively. Right. And that will bring you probably more happiness than anything else.

Yes, yes, yes. But on certain level, you have to actually get the reward in order to stimulate your dopamine and in order to pave a new dopamine pathway. So positive thinking that says, I'm going to be a rock star. I'm going to be a rock star. I'm going to be a rock star. If you never actually see yourself, or I'm going to climb to the top of this mountain. If you don't see yourself getting closer to the top of the mountain, you don't get the dopamine. So that's another one of the challenges in this whole rewiring method.

So actually accomplishing goals.

Realistic goals. Realistic goals, yeah.

I'm just wondering in real life if someone wants to nurture the habit of, you know, having a. A good feeling, having a, you know, positive attitude instead of negative thoughts. You know, maybe every time when they can stop their negative, negative thoughts, they can reward themselves somehow. I'm not sure what kind of reward will be best. Chocolate.

Oh, well, thank you so much for asking that because I was just working on that chat before today in my, My new book. So each of my books talks about this, but, you know, my new book goes in more detail about generating your reward structure. But I have a book called Tame youe Rewiring your Brain for Happiness that talks a lot about how to shift your focus from threat chemicals to reward chemicals and developing a healthy reward structure pressure.

Wonderful. Yes. So people can go and find Your book.

So the core introductory book on this, it's called Habits of a Happy Brain. Retrain your brain to boost your serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin levels.

Wonderful. So what are some of the parting wisdom that you can, you know, nuggets that you can give the audience about, you know, what you have found to be really helpful for people to improve their level of happiness knowing that we came from this long history of being mammals?

Well, I think self acceptance is so important. So we always hear about self improvement. But when you talk about self improvement, you're focused on your own flaws. So self acceptance through watching nature videos, in my opinion is very valuable. And it also helps you accept the people around you rather than getting upset with them all the time. And of course we can improve. But like a horse and rider, if you're always angry at the horse inside you, you're not going to do the best job at guiding it to the beautiful waterfalls that you're trying to get to.

So self love loving who you were born to be and just be at peace.

Yes.

Yeah. Wonderful. I love it. Thank you so much for a very interesting conversation and I hope the audience, you know, find very useful, you know, bits to help enhance their own lives. And what's the best way that people can reach you or can, you know, be enlightened by your knowledge?

Inner mammalinstitute.org is my website. Inner mammalinstitute.org and if you leave your email, you get a free 5 day happy chemical jumpstart that explains each of the chemicals in one email for each chemical for five days. And it explains all of my books and all of my resources, which mostly are free.

That's wonderful. That's a lovely gift.

Thank you.

Dr. Bruning, I really enjoy speaking with you and thank you for the great stories.

Sure. You're welcome. Thanks for the great questions.

Oh, thank you.