#1 Memory Expert: The No. 1 Thing That Weakens Your Brain

People need to change their way of thinking that it's not about remembering more, but remembering what matters. And that's what you need the prefrontal cortex for. Once you realize and you really accept that you're going to forget most things, then you have to ask yourself, what's important to me to remember? And what are the memories I want to carry with me, right? Professor Charan Ranganath, a psychologist and neuroscientist at UC Davis.

Author of the new book, why We Remember. Charan Ranganath, thanks so much for being here. What is the number one health issue that causes the brain to be the weakest.

It's major depressive disorder.

Depression.

Depression. The people with depression on paper could look even worse than the people in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Really?

Yes.

What is the memory research saying about using devices, cell phones and watches that have constant notifications or reminders?

It definitely reduces memory performance. for whatever it is you're doing. But there's even work suggesting that heavy media multitaskers, that they actually even have some thinning in parts of the brain, including parts of the prefrontal cortex.

Thinning? Yeah. How do we imagine a future to create more abundance, joy, fulfillment, and happiness in our lives and alchemize anything we want?

Well, one thing that I really have gotten into and I just don't do it enough, but I really try to, is.

Welcome back to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Charan Ranganath in the house. And today we are exploring the topic of our memories. And you are the author of a fascinating book called why We Remember Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold On to what Matters. You are a renowned expert in neuroscience, and you're here to share with us really how our memories shape our identity, guide our choices, and enrich our experiences. And there are a number of things I want to cover with you today, including enhancing memory retention, the impact that emotions have on what we remember, and also some practical tips on how to keep our minds and memories sharp throughout our life. And the first thing I wanted to start with is a stat that I saw online. and I don't know if this is 100% accurate or not, but according to the National Science Foundation, an average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. And of those, 80% are negative and 95% are repetitive thoughts. I don't know how accurate that is, but you say that memories shape our identity. On this show, I'm all about Empowering people to have the tools and the strategies to enhance their identity because I believe identity dictates the quality of our life. It's one of the key factors. When we have a negative identity or an identity that is more suffering status or suffering states, we tend to suffer in our life. When we have a more empowering identity of ourselves, we tend to have a more abundant life. And my question to you is, how do we use our memories to shape our identities so that we create more abundance rather than have more suffering?

That's a great question. And what I'll tell you is that the key to answering this question is that you got to understand that your memories are selective. And the memories that we find depend on how we're searching, right? So imagine you have a particular lens like You ever heard the phrase like, you view the world with rose colored glasses?

Yes.

Right? And so that affects the colors that you're going to see, right? And likewise, when we're searching for memories, we have a mood, we have an emotional state, we have a context, this inner landscape that is permeating our thoughts. And that's going to affect what we can find. And we used to actually do, it was, I mean, my first study, that I talk about in my book was when I was doing depression research, actually, not memory research. And what we used to do was to get people, we would play this sad music and then ask people to recall sad memories from their life. The music made it either easier to recall sad memories from their life. And the more, when they recalled those sad memories, they felt terrible.

Interesting.

And then we had to get them out of it. And that was a whole part of the thing. So it wasn't unethical. But the interesting part of that is the power of our moods to affect our ability to mine the past. And then the memories that we pull up, the power of that to change the way we look in the present. Right. So the cool part of it is, though, you can, if you try, you can go in the opposite direction. You can say, let me think about a time, even though I know I'm gonna bomb this interview and I'm gonna, Lewis is gonna walk out of here and say, like, God, this is a school of boringness. Yeah, whatever. Right. Then I go like, no, I remember I had this great the other day and I just have to bring that out of myself. And once I remember that and I mentally time travel back to that moment, I can become a little bit of that person. And people have shown you can become more altruistic if you do this. You could become more sad if you pull sad memory, become happier if you pull up the happy memories. And it all depends. And I think it's like everybody can kind of relate to this, right? Because it's like you're having a fight with someone who you love. You can think of nothing But all of the times that they've made you mad. But now a week later, you've made up, everything's great. You can't even remember what you fought about, right? So it's interesting. This weird trick that we have. And I think that the thing that people need to keep in mind is you are going to have a biased sampling of your past. You can't remember everything. And what you pull up will be reflective of how you feel in the moment.

Really? So if you're feeling good in the moment, you'll think of more positive memories.

That's exactly right.

And if you're feeling negative or depressed or anxious or stressed in the moment, you'll think of more negative memories from the past.

That's right. And not just that. Not just that. But when I'm feeling negative and depressed, I will tell the story of these past events in a more negative way.

In a more dramatic negative way.

Yeah. And if I'm in a positive state, I'll actually remember myself better than I might have really been. And I'll remember things of having been better than they really were.

How much of our memories are accurate?

I like to say that memory is not photographic. It's like a painting. And what I mean by that is, you know, I'm trying to make a painting of you now. And imagine I have a decent bit of artistic talent. I'm more of a musician than a painter, but go with me on this, right? So as they're painting your picture, I'm gonna get some parts completely right, like the color of your shirt, the color of your eyes and so forth, the shape of your head. But it's not gonna be perfect. I'll make some mistakes. I'll also leave some things out that I might not have paid attention to. And there will be some parts of the painting that are not really right or wrong, but they're more my interpretation, my perspective that I'm bringing to this piece of art. And that is how I want people to think of memories, not in true or false, but a construction. And just like if you go back to those old Renaissance paintings when they're poor, they have to redo paintings over the same canvas, that's what happens with our memory. So when we pull up a past memory, we actually can change the memory and it opens up the box again so that we can sometimes strengthen it and make it easier to access, but you can also end up messing with it and create all sorts of errors in the memory from the time of remembering.

Now you're getting me into a fascinating thought process here. When we, I truly believe that the energy we have in the present will support us in making either conscious or unconscious decisions, empowering or disempowering decisions, and decide whether we show up with a good energy towards others or negative energy towards others based on the energy we have in the present. what I'm hearing you say is when we're time traveling constantly into the past and remembering things in a negative way, it's going to make us feel more negative as well. But also, if we're in a negative state to start with, we're going to be thinking about negative things from the past and our identity and why we're not good enough for all these different things. My question is, how can we use mental time travel to reverse A memory from a negative one to a meaningful one to support us in the present so that we make better decisions now and in our future.

That is the big question. Let's go. So we've got, I give you a hundred answers, but I'll give you like the shortest version, which is to keep in mind that that moment of mental time, when I recall something, right? Hear a song and it just brings me back to my childhood and I just flash back to like, I don't know, the summer of 1984 or whatever. I'm like 13 years old. Let's say it's not high school, junior high, but go with me on this. Right? So I flash back to this period, terrible time in my life. I'm feeling bad. But then I keep in mind that that sense of mental time travel is just a few bits and pieces. It's a set of fragments. And then I'm making a narrative out of it. I'm making a story out of it. and that story is going to be shaped by my beliefs, right? You know, I'm not going to construct a story about things that were impossible that just could never have happened, right? That pigs were flying around, whatever, unless I'm at a Pink Floyd concert or something, but, you know, I'm not going to construct all these things that couldn't have happened. So we impose our beliefs and our knowledge in the present, right? So if you go into this with the sense that I'm a failure or nobody likes me. You can certainly find that, find evidence for that in your memories. Yeah. And you can build that story. But you can also find things that are inconsistent with that. And that was a big part that, I mean, that's why therapy, when I was doing, I only spent a few years doing clinical work in my graduate training. It was like six years, but it just dramatically influenced my way of thinking about things.

Therapy work.

Therapy work. Yeah. Because it's all about sharing memories. Interesting. And no matter what we were doing, what people, I had somebody, my first patient came in with a driving phobia. But even after he was okay to drive, it wasn't really until we processed this big, big memory of his that we really made progress. But it's not about just recalling some traumatic memory because you can wallow in these memories and feel worse, right? It's about being able to see it from a different perspective to look at the same event but ask, instead of going with your beliefs, challenging your beliefs, right? So in science, Adam Grant talks about this, right? It's like you try to find the things that disconfirm your hypothesis, and that's what we do in science. And so you can find that in memory if you look.

But if someone is so wrapped into a self-loathing identity based on a story, they keep telling themselves this failure I had, this mistake I made, this, you know, this person abandoned me or treated me poorly, or I did something horrible that is unforgivable, and I'm so ashamed of and you live in that story and that self-belief and identity, and you're like, all the evidence is there, I did this thing, or this person did this to me, and it was horrible and wrong, and no one should have to experience this. How does someone shift the story so that they don't feel stuck in the past of traumatic memories, but they can distance themselves and see themselves from a distance, from afar, without them feeling the pain, but actually remove themselves and look at the situation and start to change the story for themselves. How do we start to do this practically? Is there any strategies or process that we can actually do?

Well, it's really hard. And I never want to tell, because every time I talk about memory, four out of five people will say, oh, I have such a terrible memory, or this is really reassuring. I've been worrying about my memory. One out of five will say, How can I forget something? So there's a lot of people you're talking to with this question. And I never, I've, when I talk to people face to face, it's always, it's hard because, you know, people will say, well, that's easy for you to say. And I agree it is. It's, but not that I don't have my own horrible memories that I get stuck in. Right. But I think one key that you can try to do is context can be very important because context is a big cue for memory. so, for instance, when you go back to your childhood home, you would probably recall information from your childhood that you wouldn't recall in your house.

Right.

So maybe you can keep your environment one that has reminders of things that actually would be countering these beliefs.

Right.

So, like, I did this. I mean, and I, this is not at all, like, I'm a brag. It's just like, but I got interviewed by the New York Times for the New York Times magazine, so my wife took the pages from it and got it framed professionally. And so it's on my, on a wall in our hallway. And I was thinking to myself, God, this, people would probably walk by to the bathroom and say, this guy's such a jerk or something.

So much into his ego or something.

Yeah, exactly. But then I was thinking, it would be, that's a really good reminder that when I'm feeling down, hey, some people thought that what I did was interesting, and it counters, it gets me, and I can remember a specific event. that is key.

It's not just- It's very specific of that.

Well, I can remember being interviewed by him and actually talking to him on Zoom and that whole experience in connecting with this person who I've never met before, who's interviewed, like he just did interviewed Bono and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he's talking to me, right? And that feeling of being engaged and connecting with the person, which you don't always get, right? and it's like, and that happened to me in this one moment. And so having these reminders, I think can be very potent. And likewise, you can surround yourself with negative reminders. I talk about how addicts, when they're going to the same places and they're hanging out with the same people, those are triggers for memories that will literally activate the goal of getting drugs or alcohol, right?

Interesting. It's almost like evidence of proof or belief in yourself by creating an environment with different reminders to support you that, Hey, yeah, someone was interested in me or I did something good or all that hard work did pay off.

Yeah.

As opposed to having nothing to remind yourself of all the good that you've done. I have a kind of similar feeling like that. Like I have some stuff hanging up in my office, but I'm always like, some stuff I've taken down because I'm like, is it too much about me? Is it too much like, look at my success in front, you know, It feels kind of awkward sometimes. Like, I literally have a photo, a cover of me on Success Magazine, and I took it down and I put it on the ground because I was like, Just too much of me. It's like, Is it too much? So I think there's a balance there to be like, Make sure you're not, Look at me how great I am all the time.

Well, a lot of people have that bias. On average, people tend to be, remember themselves more positively than they really were, actually.

Is that a bad thing or is it a good thing?

It can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing. I mean, there's nothing wrong with feeling good about yourself and having optimism. And as people get older, they become, on average, more optimistic.

Really?

Yeah. And they remember themselves and their past more positively.

Why is that?

We don't know. My colleague, Mara Mather at USC studies this, and she'd been pondering this for a long time. And she has this idea about the way different chemicals in our brain change as we get older. causes these tweaks in brain systems that bias us more towards positive information. And I have yet to read the paper in depth sufficiently to, it came out pretty recently and so I need to read the paper in depth to give you more, but there are these changes that happen. And I think one thing I'll also say is as you get older, the brain changes in ways that make it so that it's less about you.

The prefrontal cortex survival in the beginning or age days, I guess, right? Yeah. How do I survive and I don't know how to defend myself. cause I need others to help me.

That's right. That's right. It becomes more about like, so there's an area of the brain called the prefrontal cortex that I talk a lot about in my book. And it's so important for memory because it's what allows us to say, Hey, this is my goal. And based on this goal, here's what I'm going to do. As opposed to saying, well, this is what's in front of me based on this, what's in front of me, I'm going to do this. Right. Those are two different things. and so somebody with frontal damage might know what they want to do, but they can't use that knowledge to guide what they actually do. And as we get older, the frontal cortex starts to decline in its function. So we become a little bit more, it becomes harder to inhibit ourselves, but we're also a little bit slower when we have to do effortful things like searching for memories and so forth. And you might ask, well, why is it we spend such a huge chunk of our life? I mean, it starts after 30, believe it or not. So why do we have spent a huge chunk of our lives with the frontal cortexes Declining and Function. And eventually I came to the realization that, well, you need that when you're in your, you know, 20s to 30s because you're in prime parenting years and it's about keeping track of the big picture so that your kid who has an immature prefrontal cortex can play and explore and learn. And you have to be thinking about the future and you have to be thinking about this little nuclear family's future and going out and, you know, foraging and hunting or whatever it is, right?

But now you become- Providing and protecting.

Yeah, now you become older, you're not having kids anymore. It's not about you anymore because you're biologically just the likelihood is going down, especially for women past a certain age, right? And you get menopause. So now it becomes about the collective and really your kin especially, but the collective. And if you look at most of human history, older adults were occupying very high positions and very engaged with younger people in passing on traditions of culture and language and so forth. And I talk about this at the end of the book as one of the coolest discoveries that I had made while writing the book was another, there's not a whole lot of species that live long enough, let's say, to get menopause or long enough so that they're infertile for a large chunk of their life. But another one is orcas and orcas. if you look at a pod of orcas, who do you think leads the pod?

Between men and women or youth and older?

Anything, take a guess. Throw it out.

My gosh.

Okay, I'll spare you. Postmenopausal females.

Really, though?

They're the ones who lead the pod.

Why?

Because they have the knowledge of the culture that they pass on. And that's at least from the, now I'm not a marine biologist, but from the readings, I kind of went down this little rabbit hole.

Sure.

And from the readings that I did, it was essentially they're teaching everyone in the pot about the language and about the culture and so forth. And that really rings true for me because I look back at my Indian family and that was the way of thinking that it's like the grandparents were really the ones who were playing this big part in their children's lives. I had much less of that because my parents were in India when I was growing up, so I kind of missed out on that and more of a American style childhood, but it sounds.

Like what I'm hearing you say is that as humans age, the part of the prefrontal cortex starts to remember less and weaken. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

Yeah, your ability to recruit it and use it weakens.

So how does someone, are there any ways that we can strengthen the prefrontal cortex so that as we age, we actually remember more as opposed to recall less?

Yeah, I think I have a few things to say about that. One is what I, what I like to say is remember better, not remember more. And the reason is, is that overwhelming majority of the details, what you experience will be forgotten. Right. So the key is, how do you focus that part that we do remember on what matters to us? Right. It's not about trying to remember everything, and nobody should. Right? I mean, I wouldn't go to your house. I'm imagining just from looking at you, I bet if I went into your house, it'd be beautifully decorated. It would just be like nice and neat. And if I went there and I said, God, this is, what have you done with this place? You should be, you've got all this open space. Why don't you just fill it with junk? I'm sure you must have had stuff from all the years that you had growing up. Why is not all, why aren't you using every square inch of the space, right? And you say, well, of course not. I'm not a hoarder. Right. But I think people have this intuition we're supposed to hoard memories. We're supposed to keep every experience that we have. And so that's, that's how I think, people need to change their way of thinking that it's not about remembering more, but remembering what matters. And that's what you need the prefrontal cortex for.

How do you remember better and what matters as we age?

Yeah.

So is it letting go of other memories so that we can just have fewer and better ones?

Well, one thing I'll say is that, I mean, there's many, many tips that I can give for it. I mean, the first step is once you realize and you really accept that you're going to forget most things, then you have to ask yourself, what's important to me to remember? And what are the memories I want to carry with me, right? So in the short term, you can say, okay, I want to remember that I put my phone here. And if you start with the assumption that I'm probably going to forget that, I can teach you strategies. You can go on YouTube, find a hundred of these strategies online. But the key is, is that no matter what strategy I teach you, if you don't have that moment of stopping yourself and saying, Hey, I'm going to forget this, so what am I going to do about it? You've lost the game already. I can't help you, right?

So it's acknowledging you're going to forget.

Things and then saying, How can I prevent this from being forgotten? But I have to focus on what matters.

So what's an example of like if you lose your keys or your phone or something that you matters in the short term to have like utility and be resourceful. Maybe not a long term, but short term is like, I need to know where I'm going. I need to know where my money is, my passport, my keys, my cell phone, my wallet. Is it more just about, okay, I'm always going to put it in the same place every time and that's so I don't have to remember where it is. What's the strategy?

I mean, putting it in the same place is very good because that's a form of learning that we would call habit memory. And it's related to other kinds of things like skills and so forth. So you get on a bicycle, for instance, that's a little bit different than a habit, but it's like you get on a bicycle, if you start remembering, Hey, what did I do the last time I got on a bike? You're gonna be screwed. You just wanna get on and ride, right? And so once you get into a habit of like putting your wallet in the same place all the time, You can do it mindlessly, which is what most of us do. And that's why people lose their wallets in the first place is because we're somewhere else mentally. Right? So one strategy is you put it always in the same place every time. But let's say you're like me and you can't do that. Well, the next thing you could say is, okay, so now you have to be mindful. What are the ways I can be mindful? Well, one thing you can do, and some of this is unfortunately tips that are like, don't do this. And I wish I could give more positive tips, like do this, but I think this is very important. I talk about, I like to think about memory hygiene. What are the factors that are preventing me from being able to remember things around me? And a big one is our phones, let's face it. And I don't mean to be like a Luddite about our phones are making a stumb or whatever. I'm, as a memory researcher, I will give you carte blanche to say any dumb memorization task, let your phone do it, right? So it's like your phone has a photographic memory.

We don't.

So let your phone just do the work. But for the things that we really, like remembering where you put your phone, that's on you, right? So for those points, what you have to be able to do is you have to be able to divorce yourself from the device. So there's the kind of the server, the top level of stuff that kills you, which is the alerts. The alerts just kill you because every time you're alerted, what happens is whatever it is I'm doing now, I've shifted and I've shifted my mindset towards whatever I'm being alerted to. Right. And how many people have Apple watches, for instance, that alert them every time they get an email? Buzz it, buzz it constantly. You know, I have a friend who has ADHD and I said, I do too, actually.

But he has- It doesn't help you.

When you're constantly getting buzzed probably. Exactly.

Right.

And it's just like, I can't have a conversation. with it because of this, you know? But it's like, what happens is there's a real mental cost to this. And I think a lot of tech Bros will be like, oh, I can totally manage all these streams and do all these things.

And what is the memory research saying about using devices, cell phones and, and watches that have constant notifications or reminders?

Well, it definitely just, it definitely reduces memory performance for whatever it is you're doing. And it also can, I mean, I wanted people to take this with a grain of salt because I think there's a lot more research that needs to be done on this. But there's even work suggesting that heavy media multitaskers, like people who switch back and forth between looking at my phone and looking at my iPad or whatever. Yeah, they're doing multiple things at the same time. That they actually even have some thinning in parts of the brain, including parts of the prefrontal cortex.

Thinning.

Yeah.

So is this like, if you multitask every day, this could cause some thinning in the brain or it just maybe.

People who have a thinner prefrontal cortex multitask more.

Right, right, right.

Because they're more easily distracted. It could go either way.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's not something I think we want for ourselves either way. And it definitely reduces, it changes brain activity in bad ways. And the reason is it's actually pretty intuitive because what happens is when I switch, even if, and I'm telling you this in full honesty because that I do this, is that as soon as I got my iPhone years ago, I immediately became attached to email. And the moment I have a long conversation, my mind shifts to like, I should check email. In that moment, my goal has changed. So the whole prefrontal cortex is shifting the program. Once my goal changes, now my brain has to load up a new program of what I'm supposed to, what would I need to do to check email? Why would I be checking email? what am I looking for? What am I worried about? And so there's a period of time where you're just catching up, and that's called a switch cost. There's actually, psychologists found a bunch of different costs of doing this, but, but, so I switch over and then I'm like, oh, no, I gotta focus on this conversation. This is going on, you know, to millions of listeners. So I come back to you, but now I'm like, what were we talking about again? And I'm trying to catch up. And so I'm already behind schedule. Now, what's happened in that little bit of time within like about 30 seconds is I've gotten a little memory for what happened right before I lost my train of thought. Then I have a little memory for this bit of when I lost my train of thought, but it's really nothing. Then I come back and I have memory for this new event, but it's like I'm behind schedule, I'm catching up. And so mentally I'm not really there. I'm not here nor there. and I'm getting a bunch of little fragmented memories instead of one coherent memory. And what you find is when you have overlapping memories that are fragmented, they compete with each other and cause forgetting. But when you have a bunch of little bits of a conversation, say that you're integrating, you're constantly looping back and saying, how can I think about what he just told me and understand it in that context? It helps you remember everything better. And we've even shown how this happens in the brain. It's like you can actually see these little reactivations of past things in real time that you're using to understand the present. So there's a positive aspect of, of unitasking, and there's some real negative aspects of multitasking. Um, so that's one way in which devices hurt us and at the risk of going on and on, I can tell you another big one, which, yeah, so, so think about the proliferation of Instagram walls. So you go to a place now and everybody takes a picture on the Instagram. I mean, I hope we do by the school right now.

Sure, sure. We will.

That I got to be at the school of greatness.

Yeah.

So, but there's this proliferation of these walls. And so what happens is people go there, some cafe or restaurant, they take a picture by the wall, and they feel like they're going to remember it better as a result. But the research shows that on average, that actually makes your memory worse. Taking pictures, trying to document everything actually can make your memory worse. And the reason is, is that people will mindlessly document, right? So another example is you go to a concert and everybody's got their phones up and you're younger than me, I'm sure, but it's like, you might remember the days when people just watched concerts.

Yeah, they put their lighter up back in the day, right?

They put their lighter up, exactly right. And so now it's like you got the phones up and the idea is, oh, I'm documenting this so that I'll remember it later, but people don't go back to it, which is like your big mistake right there. But then on top of it, the camera is only grabbing what the performer is doing, let's say, at the concert. But what do you wanna remember about the concert? Do you wanna remember the song or do you wanna remember the feeling that you had when you were immersed in the music. Do you want to remember the people that you were with? Do you want to remember the sights and the sounds and the smells of this place? And what happens is that when we mindlessly document, it takes us away from those parts that create a distinctive memory and one that will basically rise above all of the interference, right? So you can go like, and I, this is one good thing that I do that I practice, is I'm very strategic about documenting that I'll go like, here's this moment we're eating, you're in a glass of wine, you're laughing, I'm going to take a picture of this candid shot of just you being goofy. Cause that's going to remind me of that feeling and of this moment and bring back something in me. But it also forces me to pay attention to this moment and the wackiness and the stuff that's just kind of random, the randomness of this experience. Because that's what makes episodic memory, that ability to remember events. That's what makes it tick, is the uniqueness of the moment.

This is powerful. I'm curious, what are, in your mind, what are three of the most common things we are doing today that are negatively impacting our brain health and our memories?

Oh, okay. Well, I told you one, which is multitasking. I would say that's, that's multitasking is.

Hurting our brain health and our memories.

I would say it. Okay. It's maybe a little exaggeration to say brain health, but it does increase stress.

It increases stress.

It does actually increase stress responses. So we can say chronic stress is a big one.

Yes.

That definitely chronic stress over long periods of time can be very bad for brain health.

Okay. So multitasking would be one of things.

You could contribute to it. Yeah. And I want to be careful not to just be catastrophic.

If you do it once in a while, it's not going to destroy your brain. But if you do it every day, all day, it's not good for your memory.

Yeah. Yeah. Another thing that I think we do is we, I mean, and again, I'm suffering from this myself, is sleep deprivation. There's so many reasons why sleep is good for us and good for our brain health. One is, is that we know now that A lot of the amyloid protein that our brains build up naturally over the course of the day are flushed out at night. And the amyloid proteins, you might know this word because these are the proteins that build up in people with Alzheimer's. And according to some theories, many theories actually, that it's kind of the trigger that basically starts the chain of events that leads to Alzheimer's disease.

And a lack of sleep increases that trigger.

Exactly. You're not getting enough, maybe you're not getting enough of that clearance.

Interesting. So it's like a flushing of these proteins. It's a flushing of the proteins. When you sleep well or sleep better, it flushes these proteins that trigger either dementia or Alzheimer's or memory loss.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So a lack of sleep would cause someone to be more forgetful.

Yeah. Well, and then there's other parts of it too, which is there's a lot of work to suggest that memories are reactivated during sleep. and according to some theories, what happens is you reactivate these memories and they just stick around longer. One theory that I describe in the book, and we have a computer model of this, is even more powerful, which is that the brain may reactivate memories because I have this experience of you here. I have this experience of you when I run into you at a cafe. I have this experience of you like when I run into you at the airport or something. But those are all different events in my mind. But if I start to randomly reactivate these memories and let my brain just sort of reassociate, I can find some link that makes you go, this is what makes Lewis Howes tick. And that may be what happens during sleep is that we can start to get the big picture. And so we're missing out on that part when we don't sleep, we're missing out on this chance to take all these individual memories and create a big picture out of it. Another and make it actionable. to there is definitely work to suggest that whatever we're trying to memorize, like you're trying to learn a new language, after sleep, people are better able to incorporate those words into their spoken language, into the mental dictionary.

Interesting.

So there's a lot of work like that. Um, and then finally, and again, it's somewhat obvious, but you don't get enough sleep. You're feeling like hell the next day. You are stressed out. You are, your frontal cortex is shot. You're not able to focus on anything. your efficiency just goes down, right? So it really is just, you're just damaging yourself in so many ways.

And when you're in a bad mood, you're going to recall more painful memories than positive memories.

Yeah, yeah.

So if you get a lack of sleep, you're going to wake up groggy, you're going to wake up stressed, overwhelmed, forgetting things behind, and therefore not feeling as good, and therefore recalling negative memories. Yeah. And which make you feel emotionally negative.

Not only that, but it makes you pessimistic about the future. Because that's what memory is really all about. It's saying what's coming up next, right?

Wow.

I got attacked by this bear in the cave. Next time I go to the cave, there's gonna be a bear there.

Watch out here.

Yeah, exactly.

I wanted to ask you about repressed memories in a moment. So hopefully I remember this about repressed memories, because I think a lot of people, I've had a lot of different therapists and trauma experts on talking about healing memories, healing the past so we can live more, I guess, healthy environments of peace in the now versus recalling the past consistently. I want to ask you that in a moment. But I'm curious, since we talked about the three things that are kind of holding us back, what would you say are three habits you'd recommend people implement every day to have stronger memories and healthier minds?

Okay, that's a good one. So one thing that I think people should really keep in mind is that your brain is a part of your body. So people will say, oh, is there some. Should I take Ginkgo? Will this help me remember or whatever? Should I buy this? Like, should I do these brain games or whatever? And it's like, I hate. I almost hate talking about it because I was very researcher. It's so non-psychological but it's like. You have cardiovascular disease, you have diabetes.

You are- It's gonna impact your brain.

It's gonna impact your brain big time. I mean, really, I have seen, I.

Mean, and- your brain is not separate from the rest of your body.

No, no. I mean, diabetes is a- you- can't.

Be 100 pounds overweight and think you're gonna have like a perfect brain.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's really, health issues are just a dramatic you know, they dramatically impact your brain function. Right. And it's, it's not just things like weight. Right. It would be things. I mean, you know, I don't want to speak to weight particularly, but as much as the factors that are associated with it.

Right.

Like hypertension, high cholesterol, things like that. But there's also, you know, I, I know people with long covet, and it's just disastrous. Right. The, these brain fog conditions are very, very real. and.

What is the number one health issue that causes the brain to be the weakest or memory to be the weakest? Is it a link to obesity? Is it a link to high cholesterol? Is it a link to something else that people might have that causes the brain to be less effective?

I'm gonna go with the first one that comes to mind because it just came to mind, but I think it also rang true with my experience. It's major depressive disorder.

Depression.

Depression.

What is the main cause of depression? And does depression start with a weakened immune system or a weakened brain system?

Oh, this is a really tough question. I think a lot of mental illnesses are now seen as neurodevelopmental, meaning that it's something where there's some sensitivities that you might be born with, but then there's a developmental trajectory that affects it a lot, right? And so what happens is your brain is being shaped over the course of even the adolescent years, which is when a lot of these issues, like the anxiety and the depression, really emerge, you know? So there's a sort of shaping of brain circuits around these times. And for depression, attachment systems are a real part of the story. And so when there's a disruption in these attachment systems, that can really affect.

What'S an attachment system? What does that mean?

Well, I don't study it, so I'm gonna give you like very dumb things, but basically if you think about our brains need to have some kind of a mechanism that allows us to care about, you know, at least relatives, right? Like, you know, you have a kid, you want to protect that kid, right? You have a mate, you want to be able to be, you know, want to affiliate with that mate and connect with that mate. And everybody differs and some people have different things than others, but these attachment styles that people have, like some people are very kind of securely attached. And you know these people where it's like, they kind of go, yeah, I love being around my parents.

Yeah, I had such a very healthy relationships. Healthy relationships.

Those are anxious or avoidance. That's right. That's right. Yeah, I'm sure you've talked to people who are experts in this topic, right? And those factors can really, you know, if you have these kind of anxious attachment styles that can be really predisposed you to depression, for instance. Now, there's a lot that, frankly, we don't know about it. There's memory is a part of it. that essentially people with depression have more negative memory biases. And that kind of leads to this vicious cycle of recalling negative memories, which reinforces the depressed mood and so forth. So there's all sorts of things. And the immune system is affected by this. There's inflammation that is triggered by mood and stress, for instance. Stress is a part of that too. So it's I, I, when we talk about what's the cause, it's all connected, right? Yeah. And likewise, the, when you do interventions like exercise, well, it can reduce inflammation, it can enhance mood, it can improve sleep. And so everything is, is so connected. But I brought up major depressive disorder mainly because I was thinking about how when I worked in the clinic, I would test people, test people who are coming in saying, I have some kind of a problem with my thinking or whatever. the most common thing by far was people complaining about memory. And with older adults, I found that half of the time that someone was complaining about memory, it's not quite, these numbers aren't quite exact, but about half the time it looked like it was early stages of Alzheimer's or maybe even less than that, but a good chunk of the time sometimes is just you're anxious, but it's fine. And then there was a chunk of the time where it was depression. And the thing is, is that the people with depression, on paper could look even worse than the people in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

Really?

Yes. Because they had the memory deficits, but they also, their frontal cortex was just completely dysfunctional. They couldn't focus. They're just out of it in their heads and they just lack this initiative. Yeah.

Negative loop.

Negative loop. So it's like your attention is messed up, your mental flexibility is messed up, you get stuck on things and you can't, shift efficiently. And so they looked worse than somebody who just had a memory problem. And that was the telltale sign, one of the telltale signs.

So if someone is experiencing either depression, depressed thoughts, looping negative thoughts, or experiencing early stage Alzheimer's, is there a way to reverse depression or early stage Alzheimer's? completely? If so, how does someone do that?

I don't know of any to completely reverse either. I mean, if I did, I'd be very rich to completely reverse early stage Alzheimer's or depression. What I'll tell you is that there is. Let's talk Alzheimer's first. So Alzheimer's, when people start to see memory deficits, the problem is you've already had significant brain and once you lose neurons, you can't really get them back, at least with current treatments. So the best thing to do is nip things in the bud before you get there. Prevent these things. And so there are a lot of-.

That'S why we're talking about these three habits. The first one being exercise, which I cut you off early on, but you were talking about exercise.

Exercise.

Being a thing that can enhance brain function. enhance mood, positivity, probably diminish depressed thoughts, right? Is what I'm hearing you say.

Yeah, yeah.

That would be the first thing.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

What would be the second habit to support us?

Oh, this kind of flips against the negative, which is, you know, make sure to get enough sleep is one exercise. We can talk about social engagement, I think, doesn't get enough attention. Again, this is related to depression too, because that really cuts off people's willingness and ability to engage socially. But in older people, you see these real positive effects of social engagement. And I think it's no coincidence if you look at, I don't know if you've talked to, I think it's Dan Buettner, the blue zone guy, but you look at these blue zones and it's like older people are really engaged socially and they have a community. they're plugged into. And that really can have a positive effect on memory, having healthy relationships. And, and, yeah. So that would be a big one, too. I would say we talk about diet can play a role. You know, having a healthy diet, the Mediterranean diet has shown really good promise in terms of, of, uh, preserving brain health. But none of these things in and of themselves are going to be the cure. But collectively, I mean, let me just put this, make this in the most concrete terms. There was a study that was done in China that they followed like 29, 000 people, and they looked with, you know, when I look at this as a memory scientist, I was like, these are the most crude measures of memory possible, very gross assessment. Right. So they just said, we're going to look at six lifestyle habits. Two of them are just like not drinking and not smoking. Then there's things like being socially engaged, being mentally active, having what they called a healthy diet, and then they had physical exercise. So they looked at these six lifestyle factors, and then they said, here's some people who have like four to six of these factors. Here's people who have three to four of these factors, and here's people with zero or two to four. Here's zero to one, right? So these are the unfavorable. We can look at the favorable, follow them up over 10 years. 10 years later, the memory scores for the people who were in the favorable category were almost twice as high as those who were in the unfavorable category, even though they're roughly about the same in the beginning, right? So if I were to tell you, here's this drug that you can take every day, it's going to have some really bad side effects, but you will be in that zone of preserving your memory over time. You might be tempted to take it, right? But what if I told you, well, here are these things that you can do, and they will improve your quality of life in the present and improve your brain health long term. It's kind of like, why can't we do that?

Right. And what are the six factors again?

It was no alcohol, no smoking, there was social engagement. And I don't know how they measured some of these things. Right.

Having certain amount of friends or groups of friends or activities with friends.

Yeah. Yeah. There was maintaining cognitive stimulation. And again, I don't remember. I don't know how they measured that. I didn't read that.

It's like activities or Hobbies or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, some people say, oh, is it playing sudoku that could do it? And. Yeah, sure. If that's what excites you and keeps you.

What did they call that? What did they call that one?

Cognitive stimulation, something like that.

Five and six.

There was a healthy diet.

Exercise.

Exercise. Yeah, I think that was it.

So they studied 29,000 people.

29,000 people.

And people who had more of these had better memory and I'm assuming better brain function and health.

Yeah, yeah.

Probably healthier, happier moods as well.

That's right. That's exactly right.

And those that had less of these, had, you know, worse attitudes, worse moods. Yeah. You know, not as good quality of life.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, I mean, and just to hit this home even further, there's some really new research that that's come out and I need to find out more about it, but they're starting to study these so-called super agers. So these are people who go into their 80s and they seem to just be as sharp as ever.

Super sharp. They remember everything. They've got it all down. They can still drive perfectly. All this stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And the estimates are anywhere between 5 to 15% of older people are like this, depending on who's measuring and how they measure it.

Now, are super agers, is that more of a genetic thing or is it more of other research proving otherwise?

I think nobody knows for sure, but it's probably all of the above, like most things in psychology and neuroscience. It's all of the above, I'm guessing. There's definitely some genetics that play a role in healthy brain aging. but there's a lot of it has to do also with the context that you're in. And I think like one of the things that people had observed, the researchers had observed in these superagers, and I need to learn more about this, so this is a big caveat, but that a lot of these superagers weren't necessarily great on all these six characteristics, but they were really socially connected and engaged.

So it sounds like social engagement is one of the key things for longevity as a neuroscientist, memory researcher, but also from the blue zones, the blue zones, people that age the longest. Yeah. Or live the longest. They have a lot of social engagement. They're not isolated.

Yeah.

And they feel like they have a purpose within the community, within family roles, status.

Yeah.

As they age.

Yeah.

Their importance is still there.

Yeah.

And I think that's an important factor to think about from all these different things.

And it's about that kind of like, I think you said at best, healthier relationships, right?

Not just in a negative relationship and screaming at each other every day. We stayed together, but it's like actual peaceful, harmonious relationships.

Yeah, I think the stuff that makes you feel connected.

Interesting.

And you can even, one of the coolest things that I learned about was this research on memory in couples and couples who are in these long term relationships. What they found was that in fact, They could also remember better because they shared the burden of remembering.

Shared memory.

Yeah.

Interesting.

And so what would happen would be like, the husband would, in the research, they have transcripts of this. It's really beautiful to see these things because like the husband will go like, do you remember when we were at this like, theater production? What was the name of it? And they go, oh, it was Cats. And you go, yeah, and I was, I thought this was so ridiculous. And you love this thing. and then the woman will say, no, I, I, I was, I had some moments where I liked it, but, and together they put together this story. And, and there's even research to suggest that people can actually, when you have someone you can lean on like that, it can, it's not clear whether they actually show better memory performance over time or they just appear to be non-demented later on because they've got this person that they can lean on.

This is fascinating. So staying in a healthy long-term relationship, the research shows that you'll be able to hopefully have shared memory support as opposed to having to recall everything on your own.

Yeah.

There are some benefits to sharing the memory with someone else that you care about.

Yeah.

That's beautiful.

Yeah.

I want to go back to what I said that I'm curious about. I think this might be one of the most important things that we talk about today. is on the topic of repressed memories and traumatic memories. I think a lot of people are starting to open up more in society about their past. They're starting to have open conversations and dialogues with therapists or consultants or coaches or priests and feeling more accepted in sharing their shame. Although I hear two different sides to this opinion. that expressing the pain of the past is a good thing, but also reliving painful traumatic moments over and over again creates a negative energy within yourself, creates a negative mood. Is it better to repress our thoughts and keep them blocked and, you know, away from our memories the best that we can? Although I feel like they'll always kind of come up in some other way. Is it better to do that? or is it better to talk about our traumatic memories? And if so, how do we do it that it empowers us instead of reliving a traumatic event over and over again?

That is a really rich question and there's a lot here. So let me break it down.

Yes, please.

So first of all, you just mentioned repressed memories. And so this is a big, big topic in my field because there's a lot of ideas out there in this sense that the brain has an automatic defense mechanism that when you've had an experience that's so traumatic, the memory becomes suppressed deep down within the dark reaches of our unconscious mind. And Freud had proposed that as part of an extension of his general idea of repression, which is more about urges than memories. Now, from what I understand, he actually rejected that later. but other people definitely latched onto this idea. And it became big in the '80s because there was a book that was released called Michelle, I think it was like Michelle Remembers or something. And it was this book that talks about this woman who had therapy and then recovered all these memories of like, you know, ritual abuse and so forth. And she ended up marrying the therapist, you know, something's wrong with this story. Yeah, that's interesting. So it was like, and at the end, I think Satan comes out. it's just a really crazy story. And so this became a big thing in the 80s, this repressed memory therapy. And so what happens is that a lot of memory research was done on this topic. And it turns out if you want to implant a memory in somebody that they, so Beth Loftus at UC Irvine did some beautiful work on this, but many other people since then, where basically if I want to get you to generate a memory that you for something that never happened to you. What I do is I get one of your relatives and they say, Hey, you remember that time when you stole that beer from the liquor store?

And- you-'re like, I don't remember that.

You don't remember that, right?

She's like, no, I was there and this happened. And you're like, Start to doubt yourself.

You start to doubt yourself. And then it starts to- you- start to imagine it. Well, how could it have- Wow. And then suddenly you start to think, and then I come back to you again tomorrow and I say, so did that memory pop into your head then? Do you remember it? And now what happens is, well, you tried to remember it and you imagined how it could have happened. And on day two, you're remembering your attempts to remember it.

Interesting.

And so now you create a richer story about it, right? And so I keep asking you over and over again and I say, hey, tell me more about that. What were you thinking at the time? How do you think you would get away with this. And so then you start going into it more and more. You create this whole story about how you really wanted to impress this girl by getting beer or whatever it was, right?

For sure.

And so you start doing, you create this giant story. And so they've done this in the lab many, many different ways, I think.

Really? Yeah.

It's very, now not everybody, this doesn't happen to everyone, but on average it happens when you have someone you trust. I ask you, try to imagine these things. Recall it. You really, this must have happened to you. We do it over and over and over again. We have you dig into the past and maybe I can even go further. I could say, well, let me hypnotize you. Let me give you some medications to help you remember. Right? Wow. And so if you look at all of those ingredients, they're exactly the ingredients they use for repressed memory therapy. there's somebody who you trust who's convinced often with very good intentions. They're convinced that because you're engaged in self-harm, because you have low self-esteem, something happens. Something happened to you. And we just have to figure out what it was. And it's some kind of sexual trauma, usually.

Is it important to remember what happened to us in order to heal the self-harm or limiting beliefs or negative talk that we have or the depressed thoughts that we have? Do we need find something to heal or can we just heal?

Well, I just want to finish because I do want to be clear about something, which is people can recover memories. And this is the crazy thing is that, and the reason why I just had to close this, the book on this one thing is because I just want to make it clear that not everyone who says I have a memory of being abused is lying. That's not true. In fact, people who've been abused will remember it really well often. And that's the problem is that this gets us back to the next- Reliving it. They keep reliving it. But sometimes people can have a recovered memory and sometimes that happens because maybe they've been trying to suppress it and there's some research that shows if I try to suppress it over and over, the memory can become kind of blurry and harder to access.

Like eliminate or something.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Can you truly eliminate a painful memory?

No, I don't think, well, we don't know. Nobody's shown it completely that you can.

I mean, let me give you a personal example. You know, I've talked about this publicly on here, so a lot of people have heard this, but if this is their first time here, they'll hear it for the first time. I was sexually abused when I was five, and for 25 years, I never told anyone. But it was like a movie replaying in my mind. I wouldn't say every day, but it felt like weekly for 25 years. maybe some weeks it wasn't as often, maybe other weeks it was more frequent. And it was something that I would just try, it would come up in my mind, I would remember it vividly, and I would just try to like distract myself from the memory, right?

Yeah.

Until I, 11 years ago, started opening up about it for the first time.

Yes. Yeah.

And created a very painful open up about it. It was probably the hardest thing I've ever done emotionally because it felt like it was going to die.

Yes.

It felt like death. It felt like my life was over. If people knew this about me, I started to open up about it and was terrified, but actually had a lot of relief because I was in a safe environment where I felt seen, accepted, and not shamed for the experience I went through. And then a process of a few years of allowing me to process it, feel like I was reclaiming my power as opposed to allowing this abused moment to be my story.

Yes.

And reclaiming my identity, my power, and creating meaning from the painful event, creating meaning in how I could use this of service.

Yeah.

How I could benefit from this and how I could not that it's a benefit thing, but how I could help others.

Yeah.

In this process. and that has given me more relief and more harmony and peace in the last 11 years since starting to tell this. But for 25 years, I don't know if I tried to repress it or just more block the memory. The memory was there, but I tried to like, ah, get away from me. Get so pressed and get away from me. I don't want to think about this. Let me just go make more money or, you know, chase girls or whatever it was.

Yeah.

I was like, get bigger, stronger, so that it won't happen.

Yeah. It's a very poignant story and I think it captures so much of what I talk about in the book because really, I mean, so let's go back to this idea of the traumatic memory. What do you do with it?

Right?

So there's insight-oriented therapy is all about basically if I open up the box and I remove the memory, I'll be relieved of this burden. And I don't think it quite works that way.

You can't remove a memory, really.

Yeah, not just that, but it doesn't reflected, I mean, you brought this up yourself, which is if you just recall something that's painful and you just wallow in it, that does not help. That actually can be re-traumatizing you. And if you look in PTSD, what happens is people recall these traumatic memories and they get the physiological response like they're back there. They're back there, exactly. And they relive the trauma in all of these new contexts. And so what happens is these memories become generalized and updated to all of these different contexts. So now nowhere is safe. safe everywhere you go.

Because everywhere you go, there you are. Exactly.

In that traumatic memory. Exactly.

Exactly. You're still there. Even if you're in a safe environment and home with someone that loves you, you're still traumatized from 10, 20, 50 years ago. Yeah.

Yeah. That's exactly right.

By recalling the event. Yeah.

Yeah.

That's exactly. So it's almost like recalling or suppressing.

Doesn'T work for you.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

What can someone do then?

Well, so recalling is part of the story.

Yes.

It's the first step.

Yeah.

So the key things to keep in mind are our memory for what happened is both driven by a lot of beliefs and, you know, driven by the way we construct the story. It's driven by our perspective.

Yes.

And it's also different than the feelings that come with remembering biologically different, meaning that there's different brain areas involved, but they interact with each other and they're connected. Right. So you have the feeling of going back in time and then it makes you feel like this kid again and there's shame or there's fear. But then we can engage with that in a way that magnifies that feeling, right?

And amplifies it.

And amplifies it based on getting into that mindset and into that perspective, and we reconstruct the story in a particular way.

So- which creates a deeper sense of feelings emotionally and physiologically in the body, which makes you feel unsafe.

It makes you feel unsafe. And now the memory becomes updated because you've recalled it in this new place and you take this part of the present and you glom it on, you associate it with those past memories, right?

So what can someone do when they recall the memory? And a lot of people don't have a safe environment to even recall it.

The safe environment is key, but it could be a safe person. And the reason why people, I say, are so powerful is not necessarily because having a person is special. I mean, who knows? Maybe AI at some point will be useful for this. I don't know. But what I could say is, is that having a person is really valuable because if I tell you my story, and I mean, I'd really love to know if this resonates with your experience, because I don't want to be telling people a bunch of BS, but I feel like if I, when I was on the other side, when I was doing work with people who were, had PTSD from Vietnam, I ran a therapy group. And so these guys would come in for the first time and they would tell their story. and they were just so terrified and nervous and you could just see it in their eyes.

Sobbing and crying and emotional, yeah.

But then they tell their story and just the act of telling the story in a way that makes sense to someone else is changing your perspective. You're no longer talking to yourself, I'm talking to you. So this is transforming the story. It's transforming the memory itself. I think that's part of the memory is the story tell.

Do you think someone can heal the traumatic memories or the emotions that come up from the memories we have that were traumatic without sharing with another person by just internalizing and journaling only? Or do you think part of storytelling with another human, that social engagement factor which helps us live longer and be healthier and happier is part of the healing process?

I won't say that you can't do it without that. And I think journaling is a great example of something that can really help. But what I would say is that having another person is very powerful because once I share that memory, now it's a memory for you. I've created a memory in your head of something you've never experienced, but you're looking at it from your perspective, not mine. And if you can tell me back your impressions based on your views an outsider, I can see the same experience from a different perspective and look at it from the perspective of you because you've communicated that to me. And this allows me to separate the storytelling from the actual information. And now maybe I can go back and recall things in a different way. And basic, basic research has shown that if I change your perspective, you can actually recall different information. Right? It's why if you're a fan of one, like a football team and another person's fan of an opposing team, you both watch them playing in the Super Bowl, you'll walk away with different memories of like, you're talking about all the heroic plays of your team and they're talking about all the bad calls they.

Got from the ref.

Right. But if you can change that perspective, it's very hard for people to do that on their own.

Yes.

But it's natural for someone who's caring and doesn't have that experience. to be able to do that for you. And through that process, you can now update the memory. And it's not about, you don't want to, I mean, as much as, I mean, this is a risky thing for me to tell you, but I would tell you, I don't want you to lose the memory of what happened to you, but I want you to be able to change your relationship with it. Yes. Because the perspective is very different and What I mean by this is you're a survivor, you're resilient. That's part of your story.

Yes.

You've also learned a lot about how people work in a way that other people don't know about. Right. And you've, it's sent you on this path that is doing a lot of good for a lot of people. It's given you this mission, you know, so it doesn't define you in the ways that might be associated with shame and guilt. It defines you in a way that emphasizes these parts of you that you want to keep, right?

Yes, yes.

And so they give you, and it's just like what I was talking about with the, you know, I mean, I don't want to be trivial here, but it's like, it's what I was, it goes back to what I was talking about with the cell phones and watching the concert, right? There's the concert and there's your feelings about the concert and your re-experience of it. Right. And it works the other way too, that there's sort of the what happened, But the shame, the guilt, the fear is stuff that you experienced, but it's not necessarily inherent to the what happened part of it, right? It doesn't have to, you can view these from a different perspective, just like you can view, and again, I don't want to trivialize this, but just like you have this great relationship and then you find out your partner has been cheating on you, you can look back on all those things from a very different perspective. Different perspective. So you can do that in a positive way too.

Absolutely. so when you're, I mean, there's so much you're sharing here that I love, but it sounds like, you know, the story or the memory and the story you tell yourself about the memory ties to your beliefs plus your feelings plus the perspective that you have, if I'm getting that correctly. And the perspective you have is the meaning you give yourself on that story and the beliefs about it. so when you're working with, you know, Vietnam War veterans who come in and share for the first time their traumatic experience about losing a brother or watching something horrific happen next to them or whatever might have happened, and they share this repressed feeling or memory or stressful memory that they've been suppressing, whatever it might be, and they share it for the first time or maybe one of the first times, and they relive the traumatic experience and they have a physiological reaction and response, as if they're living that again from 5, 10, 20, 50 years ago, whatever it might be. What is the next step in the process after someone shares with another the story of the memory on how they can start to integrate healing, wholeness, perspective, meaning, and transmute that into a mission? that is service based rather than depression focused. What are the next steps?

Oh, I mean, it's so hard, right? But it doesn't happen overnight.

It's not like one session, okay, I'm healed and I can create meaning from this horrible thing that happened in my life or this traumatic moment.

Yeah.

Or series of events. It's really hard to do that overnight, obviously. It doesn't work like that.

But what's- I really look at your story that you told me, and I can see a lot of facets in it. One is, that you engaged with this with different people in different contexts. So what do you see if you look at, and I feel a little silly making this comparison, but if you look in studies of animals, let's say when they get an electric shock and they learn that some sound is associated with a shock, well, if you put it in a box and you just play the sound over and over, their fear response will go down over time. So their brain's saying, you,'re safe. But it turns out if you put them in a different box, they'll get scared again. So they're learning this context is safe, right? So I'm with this therapist, I'm in this group, and this is a safe space.

You need to get out of that and do it in multiple spaces.

You have to do it in multiple spaces.

Otherwise there's only one safe space you can go back to.

Yeah, it's just like what we talked about. When you just experience the trauma in many places, now it generalizes. But the safe safety can also generalize too, and it can become more of something that you can think about in a way that is associated with an outside perspective.

This is fascinating. I'm so glad you're saying this because you're, you know, based on, I guess, your neuroscientist perspective and research, you know, I feel like I did these things intuitively because first I did it in an environment of a group setting where I felt safe. and intentionally went there to try to transform and find some type of healing opportunities or letting go of certain things that were holding me back. So I did that in a group setting. But then afterwards I said, oh, okay, I feel safe here because other people were also vulnerable and opening up about stuff in their life. But I could never tell this to my friends or family. And then I was thinking, oh, this traumatic event or memory has power over me still then. If I'm unable to share with another person, it therefore is controlling and consuming my energy. Yeah. And therefore blocking my abundance, my peace, my harmony, my ability to love myself for all of me. So then I said, okay, let me tell my family members one by one. Terrifying.

Yeah.

Horrific experience for me. leading up to it because I was like, what if they don't love me? What if they don't accept me? What if they whatever, all the scenarios of the future events that might occur. Yeah. But doing that process one by one gave me more safety processing with each one of them. And it's by sharing the story.

Yeah.

I felt safer with each one of them. Then I said, okay, well, they're my family. They have to love me, but my friends, they're gonna disown me.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, but this event still has power over me. It still is controlling me then. so I started to tell my friends one by one. Terrifying, because I don't want to be alone and want to lose my friends, all these things. But one by one, I felt like, oh, I felt seen and accepted and, you know, they're not going to leave me because of this traumatic thing I felt and dealt with when I was five. And the more I did that, and then I eventually was like, I felt the need to do it publicly. So I talked about it on my show many times. I don't think everyone needs to share something traumatic publicly or whatever, but I felt like, I don't want this to have power over I want to have an identity where I feel I am safe no matter anyone accepts me or not, but I feel safe. I am the safe environment. Not needing one or two places to go to to feel safe, but I am safety inside of me. And that process of doing this continually, not re-traumatizing myself by recalling the event, But sharing from an empowered place of here's how I'm transforming and here's the meaning I'm giving the event gave me purpose and peace. And again, I go back to should people continue to talk about the traumatic event because it's gonna re-traumatize them or is there a way to talk about it where it doesn't traumatize but supports them?

Yeah, I think it's really important to get a different perspective and not reinforce your perspective. The perspective is huge because it's like, if you, I mean, everything you're talking about in your example was so characteristic of how our memories shape our predictions of the future. So you have this traumatic memory and your prediction is, if people knew the truth about me, they would not like me.

Yes.

Just disowned me, right?

That was the fear.

That's the fear, right?

That was the story I was telling myself.

And so the critical part is being able to violate that prediction so that you can change the way that you think about the. That's terrifying though.

It is. Or it was for me, I should say.

I mean, I work with enough patients during my training that I get it. It's not just you. It's a lot of people.

But it sounds like that is the necessary step of the process. is what did you say, violating the fear of people abandoning you in the future?

Yeah, basically getting counter evidence to these predictions that you have and these beliefs that you have.

And if you only do it with one person or a therapist or a pastor or a priest or a psychologist or whatever, if you only do it with one person and not at least the closest people to you, what happens to the brain or our memories or our feelings around this past event?

Well, it's likely that what happens is you one possibility, and I never reverse engineering these things, like it always works in the averages or in these animals who you have in a lab. But basically the general answer would be that you would learn that in this context, I'm safe, not in the box.

Yes.

Yeah, exactly. I'm like the rat that's in the safe box, but when I go to this other box, who knows what's out there, right? It's like I told this in the context of the sacred confession and the church is the sacred safe space. But when I go out in the real world, anything can happen to me, you know?

And so it's not only just doing it in confession and feeling like, okay, I'm safe in this little box with the priest is saying, like, I forgive you of your sins or whatever. But it's like when you go out of the real world outside of the church, do you feel safe?

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I mean, if you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, right? I'm trying to keep you alive.

Yes.

If you remember that time that you got attacked by the bear at a bunch of random moments where you, there's no possibility of a bear being there, maybe it's okay. It's better that than forgetting that you saw the bear, right?

We're not talking about physical safety, we're talking about emotional safety, psychological safety.

And as social beings, social animals, a lot of those basic systems are recruited into our social interactions and become part of our social interactions and things that are, and we all know that many times, like, you know, feeling like rage can be triggered by something that you've seen online, which is evolution did not shape that.

That's just so interesting that somehow sometimes our emotional or psychological fears can feel like physical fears. And like we have to defend ourselves, it'll cause a scream or do something that's like erratic, I guess, when really you are physically safe. Yeah. But you feel psychologically or emotionally unsafe.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And it may not even be real, it may just be based on a trigger from a memory.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And I mean, just to keep in mind the physical thing, I think in neuroscience we tend to get focused on the chemicals, right? But it's like if I'm, if you just pulled a knife on me right now, my fight or fight or flight response will go off, right? But if I just decided to like, go bungee jumping after this, my fight or flight response will also go off. Two very different emotions, but very similar physiology, right? So the way we frame these experiences can shape our emotions. And it's not just about the chemicals that are being released, right? I mean, everything's connected, don't get me wrong. I mean, the chemicals are part of how we feel and how we think and they shape, you know, when I get these things going on, my brain gets mobilized into activating memories that are consistent with threats. But that actual physical response doesn't necessarily mean that I'm under threat. Just like if somebody like goes off on me on a, you know, on a tweet that I had or something like that, I'm not physically being- In danger.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And in fact, this person, there's almost no consequence if I'm, you know, I mean, in many cases, there's almost no consequence of these things.

Sure.

And yet, we still feel that threat. And that's based completely on our mental construction of the situation, the narrative that we piece together.

This is fascinating. Now, again, what I'm hearing you say is that the more we can focus on creating a positive attitude and energy state in the present, it sounds like the better our life will be. because we'll be recalling more positive or empowering memories from the past, and we'll be predicting potential future abundance and positive possibilities in the future. But if we ruminate, if we think negatively about others or think lower energetically about ourselves or identify lower than we're capable of, or if we're gossiping or stressed or ungrateful versus grateful. It sounds like that energetic state will recall more negative memories or painful memories from the past and will predict more negative outcomes in the future from that energetic attitude state of being. Am I accurate here?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like to say that memory can give you more options in life or it can give you fewer options.

Interesting.

And so it's like the key is if we can get out of our, you know, I mean, sometimes people are, as we've talked about, incredibly narcissistic and unable to see their weaknesses and overconfident in their ability to do certain things. And remembering these times where you were overconfident and things didn't necessarily go as well as you thought can be very helpful in allowing you to learn from those mistakes. But likewise, if you wallow in the mistakes, then it's like you don't see, yeah, maybe this didn't work out in hindsight, but at that time I couldn't have known that. Or maybe there's something I could have done and I can learn from it and take it in a positive way. But basically you want to be able to mine these memories in a way that gives you more options and not less.

Interesting. Now you mentioned the idea of mental time travel in the past. going back to these memories. Have you explored or researched the ability to mentally time travel in the future, to predict, to put ourself in a state of being, in an environment of abundance, and then be able to draw that future closer to us now in the present?

Yeah, yeah. And we've done a little bit of it and other people, we've done more in this kind of like prediction kind of thing in a more concrete sense, but there's other people who've gone even farther and said, imagine you are going to meet President Barack Obama or imagine that you're gonna go like complete a triathlon or whatever it is, right? You can imagine. And if you look at the brain activity, it turns out that that brain activity is very similar to what happens when people are remembering something that did happen. So if you asked me one year ago, Imagine having a conversation with Gwyneth Paltrow, right? And you scan my brain while I imagine that story. Now, it's a day after I just had this crazy fig that I never thought would have happened to me. And if you ask me to recall it, the activation patterns in my brain would be very hard to distinguish from my memory of what happened versus my imagination of what happened. Because to our brain, all you're doing is you're reactivating these concepts essentially. You're reactivating these percepts and these concepts. There are some differences between memory and imagination, but a lot of it is the same because a lot of memory research, and this is a very old idea actually, goes back to a psychologist named Bartlett in the 30s. He proposed that we don't replay the past. We imagine how the past could have been.

Right?

So it's like you're an archeologist. You get a few like fragments of pottery. And then you say, this is what this society was like.

Ancient civilization. I saw the whole thing.

Exactly. Right. And this is what we do with memories. We use these bits and pieces that are pretty good indicators of the past. But then we use it as fuel for our imagination. And likewise, if I'm imagining the future, I'll take my memories of the past, use those bits and pieces of different things that have happened. and imagine something. And so some researchers have found that people with memory disorders actually have an impoverished ability to imagine the future.

Wow.

That it's like, they'll just go like, imagine that you're on a beach and they'll go like, yeah, there's sand.

Right, right, right.

It's in water. That's it.

I mean, this is a fascinating concept because in, in our world, Everything that is physically constructed is based out of one person's imagination.

Yeah.

To create that, this book, you know, this pen, this, these cameras, this slice, this room, this building is all of these clothes is all someone's imagination that was alchemized into the physical world, the three-dimensional world. But it didn't come from three dimensions. It came from mental imagination, which is fascinating. that we can imagine something, come up with a memory of the future, and then actualize it. It is fascinating to me that this is what human beings can do. So how do we imagine a future to create more abundance, joy, fulfillment, and happiness in our lives and alchemize anything we want in the material world?

Well, one thing that I really have gotten into, and I just don't do it enough, but I really try to, is gratitude practice. And I know it sounds like a real, like, sort of, I'm not a wellness guru or anything like that, but I tried to do this stuff early on, and I just never, I would tell people, it's like, I'm really bad at gratitude. I suck at gratitude. And then one day I decided to be very concrete and minimal and say, let me just recall three things that happened to me that are specific events, episodic memories. They can be as trivial as I want, but they're things that that gave me some happiness. I got an email from a friend. I saw a story from someone on Facebook that was a friend of mine and something good happened to them or something. I mean, anything, right? Like I found a shirt on sale. My coffee was better than usual, whatever it is, right? And I found that when I started to do this, initially it would be hard. I would go, I'd be tired. I'm in a bad mood. I just had a bad day at work, whatever. and it would be really hard. And I just had to get into that mindset. But once I pulled up something tiny, it made it easier to pull up something else. And then next thing you know, I'm like realizing, boy, something, I really had a great week and I just had no idea about this, right? So once you start getting all those memories, now you have the fuel to imagine things that could have happened because memory is the fuel for the turbocharges imagination.

Say that again.

It's like the fuel that turbocharges our imagination allows us to put all sorts of unique possibilities. It's like you and I, we may have very similar cultural knowledge that we've all soaked up, just like ChatGPT has. But at the same time, you live next to somebody in the dorms at random in college, and I live next to different people. I just happened to walk in, I just happened to listen to the song one day that got me curious about something. and so far that we all have these unique experiences in our lives, right? And that's what allows me to imagine things in different ways than you can. But it all is about basically having these, first of all, just giving yourself a diverse range of experiences, exposing yourself to things that are maybe sometimes even outside of your comfort zone, right? Like, here's this music and it seems kind of weird to me, but there's something makes me curious about it, right? And you get curious about something else. And the next thing you know, you have all of these diverse episodic memories that you can call upon when you're trying to imagine something new. So some of this imagining this abundant future is being able to see things that are not obvious, right? And one of the things I find in research is that it's like there are these great scientific questions and approaches and experiments that are right in front of us but we can't see it normally. And I sometimes have to go to some talk that's completely outside of my area of research, and then boom, it just comes up. Right? And so sometimes you need to allow yourself to make these random connections to visualize or to basically just see possibilities that don't appear there.

Yes.

Because you're stuck in this more narrow mindset. Yes.

How do we, I mean, it sounds like freeing our minds up with positive memories of the past gives us a better opportunity to have playful imagination in the future, right? Like more open-minded imagination and exploring the imagination of possibilities as opposed to limiting our imagination. How can someone on a daily basis set themselves up to open their minds to imagination? Is it giving time for play and activities and social engagement? Is it not only thinking about work, but also giving yourself downtime to just allow for randomness? How can we unlock our minds for imagination to attract more of what we want in our lives as opposed to things we don't want?

I mean, definitely downtime is good. There's a friend of mine, Sarah Mednick, who wrote a whole book called the Power of the Down State. And it's amazing giving yourself downtime can be enormously helpful. And in fact, we've even shown and other people have shown this too, that when we're resting, like if you just ask people, just lay down there, don't do anything, you can actually see evidence. It's not super strong. You can see this in studies of rats too, where memories kind of bubble up and you can get kind of a glimpse of what happens during sleep, but just even while people are resting. And that rest can actually sometimes allow for memories to be reactivated and strengthened or recombined in interesting ways. And so there is something about that opening up of yourself and turning off some of these turning off the goal directed brain to being able to allow these memories to just sort of bubble up and recombine in interesting ways. I mean, some sense that's, that's the core of D-dreaming Right? It's like dreams are basically most likely, I would guess, memories that are being recombined in ways that don't make sense.

Right.

And you're not trying to force them into any particular story. They just kind of collide with each other and you're just trying to make sense of it.

Yes, yes.

And that's kind of, I think that's a core part of it is that, and also really just diversifying your training data, right? It's like, ChatGPT, in my opinion, is never going to produce interesting art on its own because it's just getting this homogeneous junk that it's gotten from the internet. You and I have these opportunities to just be curious about things that are just bizarre. Actually, just as in praise of curiosity in general, one of the cool things that one of my post-docs, Matthias Gruber, did in our lab was He did a study where he was just really interested in the role of curiosity and memory. And what we had found was that when people get a question that they're curious about the answer for, the question in and of itself is sufficient to trigger a spike in activity in the dopamine processing areas of our brain. And dopamine is thought to be this reward chemical, but it's actually more about chasing rewards and motivating us to get rewards and learning about rewards. Right. It's that feeling of like energized that you can get when you want to get a slice of pizza or something and you're like, oh, I can't wait to get this, right?

Yeah.

Or something like that. And so that energizing, we could see a little neural signal related to that in these brain areas that process that are involved in reward processing and motivation and involved in processing dopamine. When people got the question, not just getting the answer, not just getting the easy solution to the question, but really the question itself when they were curious. And when they were in this curious mindset, there was a little window where people could be exposed to just a face that they weren't interested in, nothing to do with the question, and they would get better memory for the faces. So curiosity can open up this little window of plasticity. And other researchers and rats and humans have shown that novelty can also do this. Like if you're exposed to something that's very new, like you put a rat in a new box and let it just explore the box at random. That can actually save or cause a release of dopamine that actually can cause plasticity and save memories for things that happened before they were put in a box.

Wow, interesting.

And so there's this whole literature on the way in which these chemicals in the brain can enhance plasticity. And so curiosity is a big part of that. But, you know, when people and I think this is a real decision point that people have is that you can have something unexpected or novel or unfamiliar and be threatened by it. I mean, how many times do people see an idea or, or they, it.

Doesn'T follow their beliefs.

It doesn't follow their beliefs. Right. And it causes discomfort.

It causes, like, a separation, not a bridge.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, I mean, we often in science get people talk about innovation all the time. And I can tell you from hindsight that, you know, an innovative idea when half the people listening say, we already knew that, and half the people say, this is obviously wrong. Basically, it's like they have that discomfort and they're like, I don't know. Make this go away. We knew this or- Interesting.

Yeah, we dismissed this a long time ago.

Yeah, exactly. And it's like, if you can make the flip from, instead of anxiety to curiosity, It opens up all sorts of opportunities for new learning.

That's so interesting. My fiance, she's really good at this because she says, when you say something or when someone in my life says something that I don't maybe agree with or associate with, or it's not part of my belief system, instead of judging them and making them wrong, she says she really tries to come from a curious perspective first.

Yeah.

Like, wow, I'm really fascinated that you think a completely different way than me. as opposed to being like, you know, you're bad and wrong. And something I really appreciate and love and respect about her because I don't think I've always done that until in the last few years, I've been like, okay, let me be more curious about this person and why they think the world is flat or whatever it might be, you know, whatever thing they think of. And I think it when you come from a place of curiosity, you're also less judgmental and a judgment energy is a kind of a lower state energy also. It's less imaginative.

Yeah.

And it kind of, it just shrinks your ability to think more openly. So this is fascinating. I'm curious about, you know, as a, as, as a memory doctor and a neuroscientist, do you think we can.

Learn.

More from our mistakes or our failures or shames versus our successes and wins in life? Which one do we learn better from or have more you know, opportunity for imagination and growth from.

Well, we can definitely learn more from our mistakes. And this goes at the most basic level. And I say learn more as opposed to master. There's a really interesting distinction there, but it's like in our research, and, I mean, there's a number of different ways of looking at this, but basically if you look at the way learning happens in the brain. If you just were to just passively record everything, what happens is that you kind of run out of space pretty quickly, at least in computer models of the brain. And so one way to get around this is you actually tweak the brain to say, Hey, look, rather than just trying to grab everything, let me strengthen the connections between neurons that were helpful in getting me the right answer and weaken the ones that promoted the wrong answer. Right. But you can only get that when you allow yourself to actually generate the wrong answer. And so I'm kind of dramatically oversimplifying this, but we have like a whole computer model of how this happens in the brain. So like this, the simplest example is something called the testing effect. Right. So let's say that I were to say, okay, so name one function of the amygdala. Right. Let's say if you knew nothing about neuroscience, you might say, well, I don't know, reading. And I would go, no, that's not correct. Actually, one function that you might think about is it's been implicated in studies of fear conditioning. I don't know, whatever. I just said something. Right.

By getting it wrong and then being corrected, then I'm more likely, oh, I don't want to get that wrong again, so I'm going to remember this.

Well, it turns out you do remember the answer better, the right answer better, when I've given you the opportunity to get it wrong even before you knew what the answer was.

And if- Because I'm like, I don't want to get it wrong, so let me focus on the right answer.

There's probably some of that, which is what we would call a metacognitive thing. It's a change in your way of looking at the learning that it humbles you. So you're a little bit more focused because people tend to be dramatically overconfident in their memory. But there's another thing, which is that we think in the, when you generate the wrong answer, and then you're confronted between the difference between the reality of the right answer and the wrong answer, the cell assemblies, so to speak, the sets of neurons that activate the wrong answer will be less likely to be activated the next time around. And so you're more likely, because memories compete with each other in this big ecosystem. And so if you have these set of neurons that are gonna activate the wrong answer and you can wipe those out, you're more likely to activate the right answer. And so that's why people learn most under the conditions where they're struggling. like if you test yourself as opposed to if you restudy the material over and over again.

Or restudying without a test doesn't allow you to remember as well.

It doesn't allow you to remember as well because you've recalled, because when you recall the information, your memory is never going to be as perfect as the actual answer. You're always going to be getting a noisy bit of recall. Even if I recall the right answer, it might take me a little time. I might have to struggle with and then when I get the right answer, there can be this comparison between my prediction, so to speak, and the reality. And what I can do is I can learn from that difference so that the next time around, I'll be more likely to produce the right answer. It's just like if you're trying to learn a new neighborhood and you're actually driving, you will do better than if you're in the passenger seat. Right?

And you got to take the wrong turn once or twice so you can know where to take the right turn.

Exactly. Exactly.

So for someone, you know, as a memory doctor and a neuroscientist, for someone like myself who has been attempting to learn Spanish for 25 years, what practices could I start to implement more regularly that would allow me to retain the language of Spanish or any language better than the less?

Well, so there's a lot of people who actually use foreign language words in these studies, and we have two. And so one thing that you want to do is even before you see it, try to guess what that word could mean. Then you get the real English meaning and then you go, okay, now that's the real answer. Then test yourself on it, but also revisit these things after some time. You know, so space out your learning technique, learning experiences. That's another powerful technique.

Don't exhaust yourself constantly with it.

Don't exhaust yourself constantly with it. Don't cram either. Really try to space it out. And then another thing is that try to use it in context. Try to give yourself opportunities to speak to people and give yourself the opportunity to be bad at it.

And fail.

And fail at it.

Interesting. Yeah.

And again, do it in different contexts. So it's one thing to sit in your house.

Not in a safe environment.

Not in the safe environment. Because what happens is in your house, in front of your laptop, you're great at speaking Spanish.

There's no consequences.

Exactly. Exactly. Then you kind of like walk off the plane in Madrid and you're like.

All your learning was based in this.

One context so you can generalize it. And you know, I'll test that because.

I've been practicing more and more because part of my thing is like, I don't want to look stupid. Yeah. So I'm not going to attempt it. So my fiance who speaks Spanish perfectly, she's from Mexico, you know, I'm always like, okay, you go ahead and do it. And you order, you speak for me and all these different things. But now I'm attempting more and more in unfamiliar situations, not just with her, not just with their family, but in social settings where I feel completely out of the box. And I'm just attempting to at least practice a little bit, little phrases here and there, and just like to fail consistently. The more I fail consistently, the less afraid I am to fail. Because it doesn't hurt as much when I do it more frequently. if it happens once and someone's like, oh, no, that's not the word. You're like, oh, I'm an idiot. I forgot this thing. And how, I'm not ready for this. I'm not going to try it again.

You don't feel emotionally safe. And you also learn more from it. There's actually more learning that's taking place, better learning that's taking place. This is fascinating. I mean, could you imagine you're an actor, you're about to go onto the set, and you just decide you're going to read the script, but you don't actually rehearse it? Right? I mean, or you're doing a play, right? If you didn't rehearse the play and you just thought, okay, well, I'm here, I'm reading these lines, this is great. And I'm just, I, I'm seeing all my blocking stuff. I'm just gonna do it, right? I mean, it's insane. Why would you do that?

Yes.

And it's like we don't use, I think our educational system, education's hard, but I do feel like we could do something differently, which is to change people's attitudes about learning. that learning is supposed to be easy, that we're supposed to be able to just memorize effortlessly, as opposed to saying, isn't it nuts that we ask kids to memorize so much and we don't teach them how to learn?

So hard.

I mean, it's nuts that we don't do memory 101 in, you know, for the first three years of school.

Expect people to learn how to remember.

Yeah, exactly. And then it's like we use tests as a way of saying, how good are you? as opposed to using tests to get people to learn in the first place. So if I'm getting like straight A's on every test, I'm not really learning nearly as much as if I'm actually trying and I get the wrong answer. And then I've learned from that test. Now, it may be that I've mastered whatever it is I'm being tested on. That's why I'm getting a perfect score, but I'm not learning any more from There's no point in my taking this class anymore.

If you already mastered it.

Exactly.

What's the point? Not growing beyond it. So everyone should be getting like a B+ constantly then.

This is actually, yeah, I mean there's actually, even in machine learning, this is true, is that there's kind of a sweet spot of learning. I think they call it, I think it's the 80-20 rule or something. You want to be right 80% of the time, 20% of the time, this is interesting.

This is fascinating. I've got a bunch more questions for you, but I feel like this has been a good start to this conversation with you. You've got an amazing book called why We Remember: Unlocking Memories, Power to Hold On to what Matters. And there is, I don't know, 40 or 50 pages of kind of citation and research. Maybe it's 100 pages, I don't know, that's kind of backing all of the different things that you've researched and talked about in here.

I think it might be 100 pages of research.

It's about one-third notes and research. It's unbelievable. So you're a professor of psychology and neuroscience and the director of the Dynamic Memory Lab at the University of California at Davis. You've been doing this for over 25 years. If someone wants to understand their memories themselves better and how to create better imagination for their future, I recommend people get this book, why We Remember. If someone is having trouble unlocking their memories, check this out. There's lots of different practical of tools and advice and wisdom and research in this book. And I'm just so grateful that you are doing this work. So I want to acknowledge you for the efforts you have, for the studies, the research, and your ability to kind of try to simplify a complex thing, the mind, the brain, the memories, the past, the future, all these things. And I acknowledge you for creating this work and for sharing it so openly in this conversation. This has been really beautiful. So many more things that I want to ask you about, but I want to give people this first to start. So maybe we'll have you come back on in the future.

Happy to do it.

And there's so much I'm sure that will unlock for me. If someone has a question or a follow up to anything we've talked about here, leave it in the comments on YouTube or post about it on social media. You are the Memory Doctor on Instagram. Also your website, what's your website again? CharronRanganath.com CharronRanganath.com But get this book. It's online, it's in bookstores. Make sure you get a copy for friends. This will just be a powerful resource for you in your life. And again, for me, the School of Greatness is all about helping people improve the quality of their life in different areas around health, relationships, money, mindset, purpose, mission. And I think the neuroscience, understanding our minds, who we are, our identities and our stories, all those things can either hurt us or help us based on the tools we use to empower ourselves. And so I just think this is a beautiful resource to empower ourselves if using these tools appropriately and not sinking back into the past negatively. So many more things I want to ask you, but we're going to save this for another part two with you. I do have two final questions. Before I dive into it, is there anything else we can send people to or anywhere else we should send people to besides the book, Instagram, the website?

I also have a Twitter account, @ChRanRanganath as well.

ChRanRanganath on Twitter.

And if you just look me up, you can find it too.

Perfect.

Yeah, and that would be another way too, but the website is a great one and we're going to set up a mailing list and- and so I'll be able to hopefully, if I can find time or maybe use this. Sure, sure.

So yeah, I love this stuff, man.

This is great, John. Thank you.

This is a question I ask everyone towards the end of our conversation. It's a hypothetical question. It's called the three truths. So I'd like you to imagine again, we're talking about imagination. So I'd like you to imagine the last day on Earth for you, but you get to live as long as you want to live. So, you know, AI and science extends our lives, you know, as long as you want, right? And you get to imagine, you get to create the exact life you want from this moment until the last moment. Friends, family, relationships, work, career, passions, hobbies, they all come true in a beautiful way. But for whatever reason, on the last day, you have to take all of your work with you. This book is gone. Anything you've researched and talked about publicly or you know, this conversation is gone from this world. Hypothetical scenario. And on the last day, you get to leave behind three lessons or three things from everything you've learned in life, whether it be from career, personal, professional, whatever it might be, spiritual, you get to share three final truths. And this is all we have to remember you by. What would be those three truths from you?

God, this is such a deep question. I'm feeling so not great, but no, I'll try. So number one is just kind of a life lesson that I've learned, which is sometimes the worst thing that can happen to you is to get what you want when you want it. And I've learned this so many times because I've had times where I wanted to get into this particular grad school. I wanted to get this particular job. I wanted to have whatever it was when I wanted it. And it turned out that I didn't get it. And some other door opened up that was far better than anything that I had anticipated or imagined. Right. So we've been talking about imagining this abundant future. But let's face it, the world has endless possibilities. Right. And so sometimes I think it's like the world hits you in the face, but it points you in a particular direction when you're done. And so I think that's been something I never, ever would have thought. become a scientist. Really? Never. Yeah. Yeah, never. I mean, it was like, to me, science was just a bunch of formulas and laws and rules, and I don't like laws. I don't like rules. So it wasn't, yeah, but it just kind of happened and it happened through a series of, of random coincidences and things that opened me up to a lot of the world that I never would have thought of, you know, random.

Coincidences or purposeful synchronicities.

Yeah.

However you want to look at it.

However you want to look at it. But that's the thing. It's like you can find meaning in these things after the fact, right? Yes. And I guess that's the second thing I would say is cultivate curiosity in your life. Maybe you can. I can even go further than that. I will say be curious about things that make you uncomfortable or. maybe just be more comfortable with discomfort. What I mean by that is if you look in the field of memory research in general, what you find is if you want to remember, if you want to learn more, if you want to remember more accurately, if you want to inoculate yourself against misinformation, you have to, or if you want to overcome even traumatic events, part of the process of learning involves being able to challenge your beliefs, challenge your assumptions, but also giving yourself the time to do these things. It's like Kahneman talked about thinking fast and slow and a lot of what you need to remember accurately, a lot of what you need to use memory to make better decisions involves giving yourself the time and likewise these things that we've talked about error driven learning, giving yourself the opportunity to make a mistake and actually test yourself on what you think you remember as opposed to just assuming that you remember. So there's so much about when I wrote the book that came back over and over again about becoming comfortable with discomfort was like another big one. Yep. And then the third thing I'll just say is your hypothetical scenario notwithstanding, all we're left with is memories. So what I mean by this is this moment is over, right? The moment I said moment, that's over. All we have left is what I talk about it based on a term that Danny Kahneman came up with is the remembering self. It's not the person who experienced these events, but the person we have when we look back on them. I've really taken as part of my life this idea of saying, what are the memories that I want to have one year from now? And really use that as kind of a signpost for, Hey, I've got some time off. I never really get time off, but I've got some time where my wife and my daughter have some time off. What do I want to do? Well, I know it's going to be a pain to look up airbnb. I'm going to kill myself to get the best airfares, blah, blah, blah. But a memory of taking a week to go to some river and hang out is going to be far more memorable to me than sitting and watching TikTok videos or whatever it would be that I would do, right? And I think it's like if you look at it from the perspective that when we look back, we'll remember the highs and lows and everything else is just noise, you know? And so what are the highs that you want to take with you as opposed to just thinking about everything.

That is a beautiful third truth and kind of point that you just said. What are the memories I want to have a year from now? I think that's a question if everyone asked that to themselves right now, they could start to imagine and get intentional about decisions they want to make over the next three, six, 12 months.

Yeah.

Okay. I wanna, a year from now, I want to have this memory. I want to have this memory of going on this trip with my family. I want to have this memory of taking time off to go work on this hobby or project or write this book. I want to have this memory of these shared interactions with friends, family, whatever it might be. I want to have this memory of doing a random adventure across the country, whatever it might be. I want to have this memory of being uncomfortable and how much I learned about myself in this process of discomfort. For me, I want to have a memory of going through Mexico City and being able to talk to people that don't speak English and being able to have somewhat of a conversation and be like, wow, I'm so proud of what I overcame and I was able to connect with people with a different language. All these things. I would have people put in the comments also, what are the memories that you want to have a year from now? Put that in YouTube or wherever you are watching or listening to this. Jaron, this is fascinating. I've got one final question for you, and that is, what's your definition of greatness?

Oh, man, that is a really tough one. I guess for me, I would say someone who really can inspire and make everyone around them better. you know, when I think about all the, I mean, one of the cool things about what I do is, you know, I'm not a big believer in genius. I think there's somebody out there who's better than me at something. Everyone's better than me at something. No one's better than me at everything, right? And so it's like, but I'm especially fortunate to be in a field where there's people who I can get in the room with and I know nothing about what they're talking about. and that they'll tolerate me and help me become better in the process. And I can think of a thousand people in my life like that who I would say, this is a great person because every time I spend with them, I come out feeling both that I come out more knowledgeable and feeling better about myself in that process.

Yes. That's beautiful. Dr. Chiron, thank you so much.

Thank you.

This is amazing. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple podcast as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.