EAT THESE FOODS To Heal Your Body & Mind TODAY | Dr. Caroline Leaf
In this extensive interview, Dr. Caroline Leaf (cognitive neuroscientist) and host Lewis Howes explore how the mind—not the brain alone—drives physical health, especially digestion and overall body function. They explain that thoughts and emotional states generate neurochemical waves that activate the enteric nervous system, influencing nutrient absorption, inflammation, and disease risk. The conversation moves from the importance of mindset over diet alone, to the concept of a "messy mind" versus a "wise mind," and how toxic positivity can hinder genuine healing. Dr. Leaf introduces her 5‑step NeuroCycle system for mind detox, which includes awareness, reflection, metacognitive mapping (metacog), re‑checking, and antidote/affirmation. They discuss identity checks, perfectionism, childhood trauma, and how unmanaged mind creates physiological stress, immune activation, and even genetic effects. Practical tools such as breath work, daily active‑reach reminders, and the NeuroCycle app are described. The dialogue also touches on enhancement culture versus competition, the role of quantum/energy fields in interpersonal influence, and the need for authentic celebration of others' success. Throughout, personal anecdotes illustrate how mind management transformed the speakers' health, relationships, and performance.
Chapters
Understand the concept that your mind is not your brain and your mind changes your brain. And that based on that, mind management becomes absolutely essential in us being able to cope with anything that we've gone through.
I think you gotta have a dream.
The School of Greatness. Really? Yeah.
Please welcome Lewis Howes. How important is food when we are looking to detox our brains in general? How important is the foods we put in our body for our brains.
I'm so glad you asked that question and just quickly to pick up on, I was telling you just before we started how people are still commenting after nothing, but like weeks later, months later after the last podcast on how they love your show and how they loved our conversation. So thank you for the opportunity. No, really, you're a great interviewer and it's just wonderful chatting to you. Food is such an important thing. So basically we know that and, but it does have a massive impact. What's so much so, what for me is so interesting about the food side is the fact that our mind controls the digestive system. So our mind is our aliveness. So the difference between you and I and a dead person is our mind. So for our gut to function and to be able to digest all the parts of our gut to be able to digest food, our mind's actually running the show. And most people don't actually think about it like that. But if you're eating a really healthy, organic, sustainable, farm to table, local, all the right, you know, the real food, the definition of what, yeah. And you, but you're in a, in a mood or you're not dealing with something to, you know, you're not dealing with an issue that's like a relationship issue. You're just in a bad state of mind as you're eating. You will, you could lose up to 86% of that nutrition just by the state of your mind because your mind is driving your, your is that your mind is basically that whatever you're thinking about is activated in your mind, in your brain and in your body. And then your enteric nervous system, that the whole thing is activated. And your enteric nervous system, which is the connection between the mind and the brain, this feedback loop is driving the whole process. So they're being driven by your mind. So it responds very, very quickly. There's a very quick direct link between mind, brain, gut, very, very fast. It's throughout the whole body, but it's extremely fast to the gut. And the gut has as many neurons in as the spinal cord. So we have about 300,000 neurons in our gut as we as, which is about the amount we have in our spinal cord. So you probably, you would have heard of it, the gut-brain connection. And these in the last 10 years, it's become a huge field of research in the microbiome and all that stuff. And how that's very good, lots to do with our intelligence and how serotonin 95% is in the guts and 90% of dopamine. And so all these things, there's such a relationship. But what we don't always think about is that that thought that you're thinking in your mind is actually activating and growing that whatever you're thinking about and whatever you're adding on changes are happening in the brain that's going to your gut and everything involved in the process of digestion, including the pancreas and the gallbladder and the different parts of the intestine, the stomach, everything is being driven by these energy waves from the mind. So if our thought is toxic, you can, for example, let's just take one of the organs, the pancreas. The pancreas secretes 20 different neuropeptides that are required for the assimilation of food. And if you are in this mood or worried or anxious or not dealing with something or having a fight with someone, those 20 neuropeptides won't be secreted properly or maybe only a few of them. And that's going to impact everything else. And then you just don't digest. The bloating people get, the gut issues, the sore stomachs, or leaky gut, constantly not dealing with our stuff. weighs down the lining of the gut. I mean, it just creates inflammation. The gut bacteria get affected. Your good bacteria go into hiding and it's like a million different things. So that is so important. So I like to talk Louis about the mindset behind the meal as opposed to just the meal. And we focus so much on the food and diet that I think we've forgotten the most important component, which is mind. So I think that should be, we should manage that first and then use that to manage so can you, so.
Can you eat bad foods and still have a good mindset around it and process those Foods in a healthy way? So you actually take the nutrients out of it or it doesn't affect you, your gut or your, you know, building fat cells or whatever with this greasy, fried, you know, sugary processed Foods. Could you still have a healthy body with the right mindset or do you also need the right nutrients and the right mindset to get the weight off?
You need both. You need both. Eventually that junk food is going to accumulate in your body and we know that we are eventually going to create an environment because our brain and body are the environment for the mind to operate in. So if the environment of the brain and the mind are affected physically by junk food and as you said, the processed foods and things, it is going to weigh the body down. Those excess chemicals, they cause leaky gut. They do all those things to the cardiovascular system. I mean, we know there's just so much research around that. So it's both. It's both.
What I'm hearing you say is you could have all the healthiest foods and be thinking toxic thoughts or abandoning yourself over and over or staying in the wrong relationship or not speaking up for yourself or not forgiving something from your past and holding on to that. And it won't do much for you to have those healthy foods or it might create inflammation still or have leaky gut. because of the mindset.
Is that what I'm hearing? Exactly. That's exactly what I'm saying. And that's, that's an aspect that people don't recognize. It's not spoken about, it's not studied enough. It's, you know, we always talk about four pillars or three pillars. People talk about diet, exercise, managing stress as though they're three separate components. Meanwhile, the driving force is your mind because if you did, none of those other things matter anyway. So your mind is your aliveness and it drives the drives all the others. So we've got to focus on the mindset because you may be how many times do we hear of people that they are in their early 50s and they've been exercising and they've been eating well and they seem to have they're always smiling and they seem to be fine and they drop down dead or they can't.
They have a heart attack or something.
Yeah, they have a heart attack or they, you know, they, yeah, something like that and think how I mean, they're so healthy. So your mind overrides that benefit. So you've got to think of mind creates the changes in the brain, which then which and the changes in the body that are either strengthening, strengthening the environment of brain and body or weakening. And if you cumulatively don't manage the toxic issues in your life, your body is slowly but surely changing the The brain body environment slowly but surely changing in the wrong direction. So we move between this percentage of 35 to 98% increase in vulnerability to disease, the more we unmanaged, the more we'll have an unmanaged mind.
So I have two questions. The first one I ask is about what are the most important practices for first detoxing the brain? And then I want to talk about the mind afterwards. But what are the the actual practices for detoxing the brain.
So the mind is going to do the detoxing. So the primary thing is that the mind detoxes. So the brain isn't self-generated generating. Like genes aren't, there's a fancy terminology for it, but basically it means that the genes can't switch themselves on, the brain can't change itself. And we often hear the brain, we often hear in the media things like the brain can change itself. But if you did Give me a dead brain and show me a change and it doesn't change. But if I put qEgs and fMRIs on you and I right now in this conversation, we'll see massive changes happening inside of our brain. So the first aspect is brain health is very reliant on mind health. And that is very primary. And so mind health is very much around keeping a messy mind managed. So I'm not sure we spoke about this in the last interview, because we spoke about so much stuff. But how I explain it is that we've got a messy mind and a wise mind. And that's like coming from and we can define each of those. But basically your messy mind is it's experimental. Every moment is an experimental moment in the life of a human when you're awake. Because if you don't know what's happening next, you can't control people, events or circumstances. So everything is chance that's coming up in the next few moments. We can predict to a certain level of accuracy what's coming up. And the more familiar you are with an environment and people, the more accurate your prediction. But it's still a prediction. It's not an accurate fact. So based on that, we are very experimental. And that is okay. We have a psycho neurobiology mind, brain, body is very geared to experimentation. It's very geared to hypothesizing. So we live a very hypothesizing type lifestyle. It's all happening very fast on an unconscious level. And so we hypothesize in experimenting and we make mistakes, but that's okay because in a mistake, if you're managing it, you'll take the messiness and you'll repair it and you'll grow. So it's kind of experiment, mess, repair, grow, experiment, succeed, don't then you grow and you're kind of doing this all day and everything that you do, relationships were relaxation, sport, whatever. So that process is something that we are designed to go through. The problem is that brain health is and that's right, that'll be brain health and that'll be body health because it's mind, brain, body. But if we are have a messy mind only and we don't manage it or we only manage it intermittently, it's because our mind's always working, it never switches off until you die. So it's working at night, you dream with your mind, you can even train yourself to dream differently. I mean, that's how powerful the mind is. You can, and I'm about to do a research experiment on that, where you can train your mind to train your brain to actually change things like nightmares and things like that, which is super interesting. It's really interesting. So in other words, messy mind, messy main brain, messy body. So that's really vital.
So that's the first thing. The second thing, messy mind, messy brain, messy body.
Yeah.
So it's, you can't, you can't detox the brain. Or, well, I guess you could detox the body a little bit by not by the physical environment, the substances you put in your body. But what I'm hearing you say is if you don't learn to detox the mind first, you won't get the optimal benefits of environmental substances.
Exactly. So for example, if you go to a workout, but you go into a workout with an attitude of I just got to get it over and done with or I hate this or I wish it's over. Never let yourself do that when you're working out because as soon as you do, you send a message to every DNA, every part of every cellular body to actually go into like almost like a freeze mode. You know when people are starving and then their body hangs onto food. If you send that message to your body that you don't want to be here while you're exercising, you actually reduce the DNA's functionality and your benefit drops in the exercise routine. So you may be doing the most amazing workout but your mind will determine the effectiveness and the benefit of the workout. So it's got to be mind but we you do have to eat properly. I mean, I've written books, think and eat yourself smart. I am an avid believer in eating healthy and we can talk about that real food and exercise. Every day I just come out of hot yoga two hours ago and infrared saunas. I do it all. I do everything that I can do possibly because I am looking after the organs through which my mind works. So I'm trying to create a very compatible relationship between them because there's a magical relationship has there ever been a.
Time where you, I mean, you've been studying this for decades, 38 years.
Yeah.
I mean, when you were like six years old, you started studying this.
So.
Was there ever a time during your intense research where you knew this, but you were practicing something different? Maybe you're eating clean and you're working out, but you're like, gosh, I don't want to be here or I'm stressed out by this or my work or whatever it is. and you, you saw the negative effects of that. And then was there a time when you switched it? I'm assuming there was, and you'd never went back and you started to see other benefits.
Definitely. It's been up and down. I've always been very driven. So I've always been very into exercise and, and throwing myself into everything. So everything I do, I throw myself into 100. But as I, as I've gone through life experiences, you know, having, I've got four children and the adult children, and that comes with its own incredible Joys, but incredible challenges. And as you would know. And so there's been times where you, you know, even like, I've been married for 34 years and we have an incredible marriage, but we've had our ups and downs. So whenever there's been, it's the relational.
Stuff that's grabbed me the most.
Really?
It seems like relationships are the things that bring people the most joy and the most pain.
It's because we are enhanced by each other and that's something we should talk about, enhancement versus competitive culture and the whole deep meaningful relationship thing. That is such a cool, incredible concept. It goes beyond Darwin, back to Lamarckian theory and that kind of stuff, but it's really, and it does impact. So to answer to you, it's great to discuss. So in terms of, I mean, also there's been over the years business stuff and things, but I think the thing that's affecting me the most, I find myself maybe working out at Orange Theory or something, and something's happened in the relational situation. And I find myself so absorbed with that that I'm exhausted on the treadmill. I can't.
So then I focus. You don't have the energy.
Yeah. And I'm just not able to do what I could normally do. So then I immediately will switch back and say, okay, I'm here now for myself, for this. I need to. I need to. I can't help others unless I'm actually building my own body up and I can. discipline my mind, I catch it, push it back into that mode of totally focusing on what I'm doing. And it shifts completely. My suddenly I have all the energy.
In the world and there's a difference.
Is that part of getting rid of the messy mind? It's managing the messy mind. We never get rid of our messy mind. We need to be friends with our messy mind.
It's a very nice concept.
What is the messy mind? What is it? What's it feel like? The messy mind is the experimental mind, as I was mentioning. So basically it feels like I don't know what I'm doing or somewhere I can kind of like, I'm not sure what I'm doing. I don't know if this is right, if this is okay. It's also things like someone says something to you and you react and you realize, oopsie, I said the wrong thing or I misheard or I made an assumption or you see a pattern in your life where you keep on reacting to certain things or you see that you're waking up in the morning complaining all the time. That's messy minds. It's where we find ourselves feeling discomfort, feeling like something's just not right, feeling ourselves irritable, worked up, all those emotions, those are messy mind and those are totally fine. I hear this is so fascinating because those are fine if they're managed. So what we need to do is own them, give ourselves permission to experience them because you cannot grow unless you understand what they feel like. So get irritated, I'm not saying choose to get irritated, but if you get irritated, own it and then say, okay, well why did I do this? What can I learn from this? How can I grow from this? That's a managed mind. That's what our psychoneurobiology is designed to do. We're not designed to be these perfect toxic positivity creatures. We are very, very normal. We are not supposed to be these. It's okay to get, it's okay to, it's way better to actually get frustrated and say, I'm so sorry, I got frustrated because of, I'm not going to do it.
I'm going to do it less next time or whatever. That's so normal. What's the difference between toxic positivity and wise mind?
Okay, so wise mind is the ability to recognize. I don't have. I don't know everything. I need other people. I. I recognize I've hurt other people. I recognize it's okay to cry. It's okay to be sad. It's okay to be depressed. I recognize that anxiety, depression, these are signals. And when my body aches, that's telling me something. It's the reason to stand back and see another perspective. It's the. It's having deep discussions like this, where you explore philosophy and explore. that's wise mind. It's if you ask me for advice on something, or I asked you for advice on something and you gave me advice, wise mind. When you talk to your kids and your partners or your friends and you say, Hey, this happened, what do you think? And they give you advice, wise mind. So wise mind's in all of us, but we don't tune into it sufficiently. And it's at our core for being and we see this playing out in the neurobiology because we don't have any proteins or Right, let's take it from the organs to the cells to the parts of the cell down to the subatomic particles. We have nothing in our entire physique, physical body and brain that is for toxicity. What we have is for managing it. So that's so different. So in other words, we have grace to make mistakes. And toxic positivity is all about that kind of almost putting a band-aid, it's like a band-aid on a wound. It's one of my friends says band-aid on a bullet wound. You can't put a band-aid on a bullet wound. And that's what toxic positivity is doing and things like gratitude statements and affirmations, if used incorrectly, are very much tools of the toxic positivity movement. But if you're not dealing with your issue, you can't just slap a positive affirmation on or a gratitude statement or practice. It's not going to do anything.
So how do you-? So should we use mantras and affirmations? Is there a way to use them in a positive way, an effective way, I should say, or-?
Oh, definitely.
So how do we-? Use mantras, tools, affirmations, positive attitude without it being toxic positivity.
I would do the way that I explained that is you do it in step five of the NeuroCycle. So the system I've developed for over 38 years, which is basically a delivery system for how to, it's not a technique, it's a delivery like Amazon. Amazon's a delivery system that works brilliantly. even if you don't like Amazon, it works. The system works. It delivers anything, anywhere, anytime. Then the concept of the neuro cycle is, is a system of how we can directly manage our mind, get a wise mind talking to a messy mind to direct the neuroplasticity of our brain to be able to then move in the right direction and accept the ups and downs of life and get that sense of peace, which is not toxic positivity. It's actually a sense of peace. It's an acceptance of the uncertainties of so on. So the, the, what I have found from my research is that if you have an issue in your life and there's something that you're backing with, so maybe it's just that you wake up complaining every morning or something, I'll take something like that because it was discussions recently I had with someone and something I used to do, I used to wake up, like worked up in the morning, and I got that under control. And it changed my life completely because it rakes your brain, totally rakes your brain rakes the day. And you can chat about that too, in more detail if you want. But that's so what we, what I, what you've got to do is you've got to recognize that if you are in if you are, if it's something you're trying to work on, so let's say that there's a complaining thing just by saying, okay, I'm going to wake up in the morning and I'm going to say 10 gratitude statements instead of 10 complaining statements. That's going to work for a time. It will not be sustainable because all you're doing is setting a band-aid on a bulletproof or you're chopping the head.
Of the weed and it will grow back. As we know, if you go chop the head of the weed, they will grow back. So it's not, it's not getting to.
The root of why don't you just feel appreciation at all times, not try to act appreciation. That's it. It's not a being, it's a doing. And so you've got to find out why whatever you're doing is a reason. Because at your core, your identity is this wired for love nature in our neurobiology and in our mind. We see that in the love waves of the physics of the mind and the gravitational fields and things. We see that in the, that literally the, the quantum physics has shown us that the immersive gravitational fields that are, and they change when there's negativity. so when people are angry and fighting, it's different. When there's a lot of war, you can feel it. You can walk into a room and you can feel that stuff. So essentially, our environment is very, it's all very, this is all very deep stuff, and it's all very real stuff, too. And it's, and it's not something that we can ignore because it's very, we all experience this. So, yeah, you can't just go and say, 10 gratitude statements. You have to find out why I am complaining. These, these, I'm showing up. for a reason. There's a reason why I'm doing this at my core. I'm this wide for love person. So if I'm waking up complaining, I'm always irritable in certain situations. This triggers me all the time. Or if I have certain patterns, there's a reason. Don't be hard on yourself. Be kind to yourself. Give yourself Grace and just find the reason. And it's such an easier way, so much of an easier way to live, Lewis, than, like, beating yourself up or forcing yourself to be something else. Just say, okay, I wake up complaining. Why? and then go and solve it. And that's where you can then work through the process of solving it. And it's a very sequential time process. That's why there's five steps you do over time. And when you find the root, then you can do the positive affirmations. It becomes the step five. Then it works because you actually do it in the right place.
What was the biggest challenge for you to overcome mentally with your messy mind that was holding you back? You know, something that was took a long time for you to finally like, okay, I know the science, I know the research. I've been teaching this, but I still haven't been able to do this myself.
What's that been for you? Two things. The complaining in the morning, waking up.
Very negative in the morning.
And how long were you doing that for? Oh, for years. I, I remember from, I remember the what? It was like all through the first few years of my marriage. And I remember as a, at high school to wake up in the morning on edge and anxious. And so for years. And I remember one day my husband saying to you, we've been married for about, I have maybe 10 years or something. And he turned on and said you are always so negative in the morning. And he wakes up bright and happy and go away, you're too happy for me in the morning. You know, it's like, it was, and he just said, you're always negative in the morning. And I didn't, until he pointed that out to me, I hadn't realized I was doing it. But it affected the first half of my day and would keep me in a kind of negative state. And here I'm doing all this brain research. And as soon as I did the research on like this, I would go into a high because it immediately, as soon as my work immediately changed things because it's brain building and that that's really important for mental health. Brain building is something that we definitely need to explore in this discussion because it's phenomenal. Anyway, so complaining was set because it basically creates neurochemical chaos. Now when you wake up in the morning, as you're going from sleep to wakefulness, there's a massive shift in neurochemistry and brainwave activity. And literally things that were flowing this way now flow that way and the brain waves all that Delta is very high and now suddenly it drops down and theta will change and beta comes on board. And so there's a whole shifting and if you don't manage that moment, you can set yourself up for failure for the whole day or have a miserable day and everything just becomes so much harder. So it's just a matter of mind managing it. And I trained myself, it took me multiple cycles of 63 days using the neuro cycle to train it. But it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. It actually took me, it honestly took me about, I think it was two cycles if I can stand corrected, two cycles. So it's 18 weeks, which is not that long. If you think I've been doing it for maybe 20 years. And the other thing that held me back, which I've been doing from a child as well, was if only. I used to say if only to everything. And I used to live in this.
If only I would have got this opportunity, if only this wouldn't have happened to me, if only, whatever.
If only I said it this way, if only I did it that way, if only we had this much more time on this holiday, and one day one of my daughters and I've got four kids and my second daughter, two, three of my daughters actually worked for me. The one who's my producer, Dominic, turned around to me and she said, Mom, you are spoiling this holiday because I was going on about all the if onlys as you were leaving the holiday. And it was once again, it took a person in my close to me to actually turn on and say, you know, I wish it stopped. And it was a child. I thought, gosh, I'm having this impact on my child. And I went into a, and that took me much longer because I had been doing it for so long. And that was, I even now on my, I have an app called the NeuroCycle app, and it's, it's on iTunes and Google Play. And it's, oh, it's literally me giving you therapy, taking you through the NeuroCycle. I use that every day. I mean, literally, I mean, I know the system off my heart, but I use the active reach reminders because you can type it in and every day, seven times a day still, it pops up on my phone. Remember your if onlys. So I no longer do it, but I still remind myself. And I now can just glance and remember and I can catch myself like that. So I've become 81% more effective in managing something that was so toxic to my mental health. that it has completely revolutionized my life. I cannot tell you how that's changed my life.
I can imagine when we come from a place of if only, what is that saying about us and our life?
Nothing will ever satisfy you. Nothing will ever give you peace. You will always be looking for the grass is greener on the other side.
Man, that sounds exhausting.
It's exhausting. You constantly can't see what you've got because you're always thinking what you just lost. and how it would have been better. I think a level of, you know, once I did the work, it came from a desire to be perfect, perfectionism, which comes from a very poor identity, basically. And me to prove myself, I was the youngest of four kids. I had a pretty... Me too. Okay. So I had my two elder sisters, I mean, my family are amazing, but like any family, every family has crazy things going on, which is very normal too. That's something that we all need to kind of realize. Obviously not the extreme stuff, that's not normal. But my two elder sisters really battled a lot. And they just, and I was the youngest and I was kind of had to prove myself, you know? And so I went out in every aspect from academics to sport. And I was always the top academic in the top sports. And I drove myself to a point where it was just too much. And it was, I was always trying to please. And my mom was very British and very, you don't compliment children. You don't give them a big head. You don't. So I remember going up to her as a little child and she knows the story, so she's good with it. We've talked this through and I have a great relationship. with her. But I was maybe six or seven, and I drew this picture, and I went up to her and I said, Mom, don't you love mommy? Don't you love my picture? And she said to me, that's vain. Don't ask me. Don't look for compliments.
And it shattered me.
And from six or seven, that's. Yeah, it shattered me. It completely. And she wasn't intending to shadow me, but it shattered me from that day. I never asked. I just proved and I drove myself, and I was never good enough. nothing was ever good enough because she never complimented me. Now, as a, as an 85 year old, she never stops because she's changed and she's apologized. And she said, I realized I didn't, because she started doing it to my kids and being hard on them. And I said, no, I said, but she said, you, you compliment your kids too much. I said, you, never complimented me enough. I said, my kids, when they do something, that's great. I am going to be their biggest cheerleader. And she saw that and she, we had, we had this whole discussion around that, but that's where and that's what it's all about. Now she's, I mean, she makes a point of, of like everything. It's like really sweet now she's trying to make up for it, which is great because you do, you can forgive and forget. You can't change what's happened to you, but you can change what's in you. But that's where it came from. And once I had made peace with that, it definitely, once my mom and I had that discussion, it freed me.
It was definitely a massive part of my healing. Wow. How impactful does perfectionism or how impactful is perfectionism on the brain in holding people back? And how does someone let go of this idea to be perfect when they feel like maybe they had something similar with you or they feel like that they need to be perfect to be loved or accepted or get an acknowledgement or attention or affection or whatever it is. What does perfectionism do to the brain? And how do we let go of it?
That's really, that's an excellent question. It's very distorted because it goes against your natural wide field of nature. Because when you are, and it's all, all to do with so it's, and it's all to do with, and, and when we talk about identity, we've got to talk about it as, as a verb, as opposed to a noun. It's something that's organic and growing. So you are Lewis, but you're constantly growing and changing from life experiences. When you're growing into yourself and you're growing. And as we go through messiness and the pre and growth, it's, it's enhancing and growing and getting better and better all the time. And perfectionism is, is, is a sort of non-acceptance of that. It's like I haven't had a chance to really see that my identity is good enough. And so it's like you've got to always do something. And there's something that's happened. It's generally, you know, everyone's got their own narrative, but at some point in our lifetime, we've had something that knocked us. And I, it seemed to be for me that that was where that knock happened. And so that in growing up in that kind of environment when there was never any compliments and not in a child needs that sort of thing. So you, you, it affected my identity. I always felt like I had to prove myself in every instance, and it became a very big thing. I was, like, living for approval until I could accept who I was. So perfectionism, what it does to you.
You never accepted yourself probably.
No, not totally. And I think a lot of us battle with that. Identity is one of those very, I always recommend that people do regular identity checks that you go and at least once a year you do a full-on identity check and just find out that you haven't been, because it's so easy to be shaped by experience and because it's nature, nurture and I factor. There's the nature part of identity that is you have your genetic I have mine. You have your own unique way that your proteins vibrate. They don't vibrate the same way as mine. Even though we have the same brain structures, we have different protein vibrations and the way that their proteins fold. I mean, I held up this tree before. The thoughts that you build look like trees, the roots are the source, but the branches are your interpretation. So every listener listening to this now, they're hearing the same source, so the same roots that they grow in their brain. But every single person is growing their own interpretation, their own thoughts, feelings and choices around the content you're talking about. And that's identity. So those are proteins and the vibrations are different. So our wiring is unique nurture-wise, nature-wise. Nurturing we have our environment impacts us, whether we like it or not, culture, religion, where we live, the philosophies of the day, all of that impacts us. But overriding both of those is the I factor. And that's your growing identity. The perception we have of ourselves.
Yes, the I factor. What we look like in the mirror.
What we look like in the mirror and how we perceive the world. And that can, that is very malleable. It's very strong, but it's very vulnerable too. And it gets very influenced by, very, very strongly influenced by nature, nurture. And that's why it's so important that we build an identity. So people that are confident, people that seem to get, like no matter what happens, they just seem to bounce back. Even they will have identity issues, but they've reached a point in their life where they can bounce back quicker, maybe than someone else who's got more identity issues who gets crushed. so for me, that was when I was practicing, still practicing, I would spend a large portion of my work with my patients on identity because most of the time, they first would be the first sort of thing that I'd work on. And then I would do brain building, and then I'd do emotional work, you know, so it would be to first build the person. This, you're amazing. This is how we get resilience in your brain. And you asked earlier on about how do we make brain health? Brain building is one of the most powerful ways of brain, using your mind to get brain health. We never got to that point. So we need to do that. You better keep a notable. These.
I've got. I've got the notes here. I've got the notes here. I'm curious about the identity check, then. What does an identity check look like? And how do we build our identity to become more confident, resilient, loving, energetic human beings?
Absolutely. So when we. When we. When identity shatters, we start. We'll see a difference in the vibrations in the brain.
You'll see a different in the energy.
Flow in the brain. What's the common.
What's the common ways it shatters? Sorry.
No, no, no problem. Break up, environment, experience.
Something happens, death in the family, something. Those will shatter, but it's more when you are told you're broken in some way, even if it's not direct.
So it's like if someone tells you, you know, you've gone through an adverse circumstance and you're feeling depressed and someone tells you you've got a brain disease, that will shatter your identity because now your identity is, oh, I'm broken, I'm a broken brain, I'm a useless person. Or if someone feels they're not valued, a statement is made, that the core of their humanity, who they are, is not valued. They're not valuable enough. We see this a lot with gender issues, people that aren't allowed to identify with what they believe their gender is. Tremendous, tremendous attack on identity. That's why there's such an increase in suicides in that kind of environment. Generally, I've worked with a lot of suicide survivors and a lot of families of suicide victims and those who've experienced suicide in their family. the core is identity. Because if you don't feel you valued, if you feel that what I can bring to the table isn't enough, no matter what, why should I even be alive? And that for me is so important. I did a whole podcast recently on identity and the importance of identity, and it looks different in the brain. When your identity shatters, your energy, we can pick that up on the qeg. Qeg technology doesn't read detail. It's very crude, but it does give you an idea of the level of anxiety it creates. So when you're not being yourself, or you feel that you're not valued. We will see asymmetry, for example, in the brain. We'll see a lot of low energy in the front of the brain, very, very low energy in the front of the brain. We see it with people that have been labeled their energy, blood flow. It's asymmetrical and it's very low in this, particularly this part of the brain. And then we have 200 specializations across our brain that are unique to each of us. So it's designed because your brain's only limited in size, your skills limited in size. You can't keep growing your brain, so you can't do everything. Well, can I? So there's something you can do that. else can do. And that's, that's within these 200 specializations of our brain. But it creates a need because there is stuff you can do that I can't do. So therefore I need you and you need me because of what we can, because that's enhancement. And, and, and when that's, when people think, okay, there isn't something I can contribute, they, the identity gets broken. So we see that in those changes. And when you get that change in the brain activity and inflammation and blood flow, we're going to see. an increase in the immune system inflammation, the immune system will respond and react because now your survival is threatened. So you're going to get inflammation. Then that has a downstream effect in your endocrine system. Then your telomeres and your chromosomes start getting shortened, which then ages your body. And I mean, it's, it's, it's, I can go on and on. It goes on and on, yeah. The neurophysiology, neurophysiological effects are enormous. So an identity check is critical because the only way you're going to bounce back from what is going to happen because life is traumatic no matter what we would love to know, we love the world to be perfect. The reality is no matter what you've had traumas that you will have trauma. That's just it's inevitable.
So what does the identity check look like for you? You say you do it once a year or?
Yeah, I do want to hear whenever I feel that I'm out of sync, if I start feeling like a very quick recognition of identity check is if you're starting to feel envious and jealous of others. And if you're starting to feel that something, you know, that you're just not good enough, imposter syndrome, you know, the typical, those, those are very key that, hey, I'm a stop and do an identity check. So then I do it with a neuro cycle. I'll go and look for all the, I'll, I'll go and gather awareness of all the, the signals that I'm starting to see like this. Okay, there's a lot more imposter syndrome than normal because we all get a level of it. So it's okay. It's when it becomes an invasive so you look for the invasive pattern signals that are affecting how I feel about myself. And so I recognize, I know how to recognize the general unease, and then you'll start working through from the signals and then start reflecting why, what's happened? You know, ask on some discuss with yourself, what's happened to get myself to this point? And then I'll take time to write it down. The third and fourth step, it's describing the neuro cycle now, the third and fourth step we're writing. The third step you write in the form of a metacog. And a metacog is one of the most powerful beautiful things out there to get into your non-conscious mind and find out what's really going on, to really tap into the wise mind. You want to get your conscious and unconscious mind talking to each other. And if you go through these five steps that I'm describing, the neuro cycle, sequentially, you are training and forcing blood flow, those 200 areas of specialization, the different structures of the brain, the neurons, the neurochemistry, the endocrine, you, you are forcing it to actually work for you. You're kind of making all the ducks line up in a row, if that makes sense. And when you're in that state, you're much more intelligent, you're much wiser, you have more clarity and more perspective. So that's the objective of the five steps to really give you that level of clarity that can help you dive down deep into an unconscious mind and find out to find the toxic issue that's caused this identity issue, because it's going to affect everything. Your identity starts shattering. It affects your work, your relationships, your view of life, mood, energy, exercise, diet, everything.
So, step one is reflection of your identity is what it sounds like.
Very important.
A lot of these things. It's interesting you were saying this because when I was younger, I've said this on the show a few times, but when I was younger, probably like seven, eight, nine, I would get in elementary school, I would get in trouble a lot. Or at least this is the stories I remember. I remember getting in trouble and being sent to the principal's office. Maybe not that much. maybe, I don't know, half a dozen times or something in a couple of years, for whatever reason, acting out or saying something or. And I remember kind of being scolded or being told that I was doing something wrong by the principle. And I remember saying vividly, like, I wish I were dead. I just remember saying this as a kid over and over, like when I would get in trouble. I was like, I wish I were dead. hearing you say this now, I feel like I just never felt valued. I'm sure people valued me, but I think I didn't know how to receive it or I didn't feel it. And I think, thankfully, I never said that after those years, and I don't feel that anymore. But I remember if I would have went down that path of never feeling valued for 5, 10, 20 more years, I don't know why I would, I don't know why I'd still be here.
Here.
I don't know why I wouldn't. I'd be building a case of what's the point of my life? Why should I be here? No one cares about me. No one values me. No one sees me. No one acknowledges me. I'm pointless. I'm worthless. I have no meaning. So I might as well end it. And so I have a. I have a. A lot of, I guess, compassion for people that feel that because. Yeah, you can kind of get sucked into it and you could easily get sucked into. from a major breakdown or breakup or heartache or something, you can get kind of sucked into this. Well, I don't matter if this person doesn't love me and I don't matter if I'm not good enough for this job and I don't matter. We can kind of get sucked in if we're not taking care of our mindset from what I'm hearing.
That is, that's, I'm so sorry that happened to you and it's, it's, you reflect so many people that have gone through that and you managed to kind of adjust, but the fact that you could actually to recall that incident shows you that it's still, you know, maybe now there'll be more healing, but it impacted your life. And how many kids, yeah, and how many kids go through that. In fact, there was a post that I just happened to, I put up a couple of days ago, and I just happened to scan through because you get so many comments. I want to try and read as many as I can, but I don't, but one caught my attention. And it was literally what you're saying now, it was someone saying how they were as a child told that, you know, you're not good enough. And, you know, you have a bad attitude. It was it's like disciplining a child without. And what we don't realize is when you do that to a child, you're actually breaking them. And I remember my mom saying to me again, my mom comes up with this thing, saying to me that when I would tell my kids, hey, listen, that's not right, but you do this right. This is the good, but this is what. And it's not you, but what you're doing. So it wasn't. And. And I was so emphatic on trying to. And I don't know if I did it every time, and I'd have to go ask my kids, but I really. conscious of not saying it's you that's bad, you're amazing.
The action that you did, the behavior.
Is not good, but yes, there's separation. And I remember my mother watching me doing this one time and she said, why are you doing that? Why are you telling them if they've done something wrong that they're good? It's because they are good. They're cool, they're just learning, they're just experimenting.
If you're constantly telling a child all.
The things they're doing wrong, they're going to believe they're wrong. Exactly, that's the perspective that they're building because you the adult in their life you the caregiver, you the person that they look up to the most, and you're shaping them. And so they're relying on you to model behavior. So if you are modeling back to them all the time that they are bad, instead of saying, okay, you're doing this, there's a reason why. And that's what I used to always do with the patients in my practice when parents and I was helping with behavior, because I worked with a lot of adolescents that were behavioral juvenile delinquents and that kind of thing. We would always look at, I'd always explain it like this, the way you turn up, or the way you are, what you're saying and what you're doing are simply signals of an underlying issue. It's not the person. You can't say little Johnny is a behavior problem. That's a terrible thing to say because you've shattered that child's image and they'll just think, oh, what's the point? I may as well live up to.
What they think I am, you know.
And more of that. Exactly. So we've got to be so careful that maybe a person, oh, you're always so aggressive. You know, when you say you always, you never, those, you actually, you're building an identity.
Exactly. You're shaping an identity and the person's.
Becoming more of that identity. And you're not giving them any skills to change. So. But if you rather say to them, okay, what you've done is actually pretty aggressive. I know that's not who you are. Let's see why you did that. Because why you did. There's a reason why you did that. And honestly, there's, I cannot tell you how many times I've been saying this recently. We've got to keep, give people Grace. We've got to give ourself Grace. If someone in your environment or your work environment or your family of being impossible or difficult or whatever. Instead of getting mad at them, remove yourself, create a boundary, but change your perspective. There's a reason. There's a reason why they're like that. So get yourself in a safe place that you can actually process it and that you get your own mental health under control and then go back in and try and say, okay, look, that really hurts me the way you do this, but I understand that this is not who you are. Can I help you get through this? Is there something that's going on? And that shifts things totally because you're immersing people in kindness, which is something I did a podcast on recently. It changes that kind of thing, changes the way that the brain functions immediately in both parties and you can get to the core issue. And that goes back to the child. You can do the same thing with the child. You don't have to then break the identity. So kids are growing into adulthood. There's so many bad behavioral issues that have come out of Generations of bad parenting and we do I mean I don't I'm I'm much older than you I think I don't know how old you are but I'm 57 how old are you?
I'm 38.
I'm 20 years almost older than you okay so my parents parented me in a very different way where it was very much you know he had Ostrich in the sand mentality children are seen and not heard you know don't you pull yourself together get up and keep going high joy Don't show the emotions to the world.
It's so hard when you're developing a child's brain that is developing. It's hard to... It's very, very... emotions.
Exactly. So I'm part of the baby boomer generation and we grew up like this and that's where you see a lot of issues in the baby boomer generation. And a lot of us have carried that on with our own kids and hopefully, because I recognize and I'm doing the work, thank God I'm doing what I'm doing, so I could change that. But that has created a whole breed of people and if we don't change that, we then impact the next generation and the next generation. So we have to... But yeah, you've got to be able to express yourself. And one of the things when I was working in therapy with doing a lot of family therapy, I would tell the parents that you've got to be authentic. You've got to explain, Hey, I'm sad today. Mom's sad and it's okay to be sad. And this is why I think I'm sad and I'm working on it and I'll be better. So you've modeled now for a child that you said that a child, if your parent is sad or worked up or irritated or angry or snapped you and you don't explain to a child, the child would immediately think, I'm bad. Their identity gets attacked. So if you don't explain to the child why their identity is affected and then they think, okay, that they only adults are perfect. So adults, a sad adult means that I'm the bad person, the adults the good person. And that's the worst lie out. All of us are a mess, no matter what age you are, adult or child, you just happen to be an older version of being a mess and there's hopefully some growth. And what we should do is model authenticity and say, I am sad today or I am depressed today or yes, I yelled that you, I'm sorry, that was wrong. It's my bad. I did it because of this. So then you model to the child, they say, oh, okay, it's okay if I get mad. Then they start saying, Mom, I'm mad because instead of I am mad is my identity, it's not mad is my.
Identity, that's what I'm doing. So it's a doing not a being. It's interesting because this morning I woke up and I was feeling a little sadness and I didn't know why. And I remember thinking, okay, let me just sit with this for a minute and I don't need to stay here. but I can be here and reflect on it. And I remember it was just kind of like chatting with a friend. I was like, yeah, I'm just kind of feeling sad. I don't know really know why. Maybe I'm feeling like a little, you know, I went through a transition in a relationship lately. And I'm like, maybe I'm, you know, a little bit of sadness from that and missing this experience. And I was like, okay, you know, but there's a reason why the transition happened. and even though I'm grateful that, you know, for the lessons and the process of moving on from this relationship, I can still be sad for the loss of something. Yeah, something that's not there anymore that was there at one point. And so I just kind of sat with it for 20, 30 minutes, and I was like, okay, but I don't need to stay here because staying in sadness is not going to support my joy. my authenticity, my vision of helping people. So, I want to make sure that I don't like reject these range of emotions, but I also don't want to stay in the negative, not a negative emotion, but the emotion that might be will hold me back from helping people or having a positive attitude. So, I think it's so good.
You just, you just, sorry, I didn't answer your question.
Go ahead.
You just did in your cycle.
You basically gathered language.
Yeah, you did. You gathered awareness of your sadness. You embraced it. You were okay with it. You gave yourself permission. And it's so good because it's really okay to be sad. It's such a totally normal. Then you reflect it. So you gathered awareness.
You then reflected on why you, you.
Maybe didn't do the writing steps, but you visualize that. So this, I was talking with someone. I was talking with someone about. So you talk. So you did. So there we go. So there's kind of the writing. If it comes up again, you could. try and do a mediacog and we didn't get to finishing that, but the different types of writing just can take you deep if you need to. But you basically did that as a visual discussion. And then you got into it, you re-conceptualized it. You said, okay, there's a reason you said the breakup, you're moving on. And then it's okay to be sad because it's you grieving the loss and that's part of it. And now you're moving on. And so your first step was you've accepted it, but now you're moving on. And you're quite right that so you've given that sadness, you embrace process and you re-conceptualize. so you turned what if you didn't, if you pushed it down, it would have grown because whatever you suppress will get bigger and then it's going to permeate other parts of your life. And then there's confusion because you think, why am I sad when all this is happening? And why am I feeling this and it ended like a little virus, you know, just starts spreading. And so you caught it there and you allowed yourself, but you're also limited. And that's so important with any emotion that is, no emotion is bad. Every emotion is telling us a story. But there are certain emotions that make us tired. Our brain is, our brain, body and conscious mind are limited in energy. The non-conscious mind is unlimited in energy. So the non-conscious mind will keep driving us to just keep going. So we have to discipline. We have to literally create a discipline, almost like boundaries between the, you know, the conscious and the unconscious. So we have to tell. So a wise mind is saying, okay, if I stay your wise mindset, if I stay in sadness, I'm going to get drained. You, you instinct to be recognized.
Right.
Exactly. So that was your wise mind telling you. So you put a cap and you put a seal on it. And I always say that with the neuro cycle, when you're going through the process and you're working through a 63 day cycle, you sit for 15 to 45 minutes, not longer. And you limit and you have an active reach, which is then what you did. You re-conceptualize and you said, okay, well, this is, I'm moving on. I'm just, I had a moment of sadness because I'm grieving what's happened. And that's okay. So you, if you're during the course of the day, if you, if you found yourself going back to sadness, you can instead of allowing yourself to go and revisit the whole transition, you can go to that statement and you can build on that statement of it's okay to be sad, I'm grieving a loss and that's part of it and then you move on. So you're training your mind to discipline itself not to stay in something that will drain you, but to see how you made it work for you because you can't change what's happened to you, but you just change what happens in you. So you just did that. so. Good job.
Thank you.
Yeah.
You know, I. I just feel like so many years of my life where I would stay in sadness, anger, resentment, what if statements, where I would just ruminate on these emotions for days, weeks, months, years. And it only left me with a lack of sleep, with stress, frustration, overwhelmed, never feeling good. asking why me? All these things. And I never felt peace when I stayed in the emotion and I allowed it to consume me as opposed to be a momentary or an hour thing as opposed to exactly days, weeks, months things.
So you literally had to rewire your brain because you. Because we get into patterns of allowing ourselves to do that, that ruminating. And I can honestly relate to what you're saying. I did. to. And, you know, as I've learned more and more and done more and more research in this area, yes, I've got an advantage because I'm seeing it directly with the research I'm doing. But it's just so free. You get so much mental peace when you sit, recognize, okay, I'm in that state. And yes, you can, you can have a concern in your life. You can have a concern that is, I mean, you're not just going to not think about a transition in a breakup. You know, there's going to be a lot of time that you spend on that because it's different processing, but it's how you do it. You know, each little moment, is it a rumination on on a hamster wheel or is it a growth, a messy repair, messy repair, hypothesizing, messy repair, you know, are you moving forward? And that's what's so good because if you get stuck like in the if only, like you said, and those negative emotions, we're creating so much neurochemical chaos in our brain and our body and increasing inflammation, we're aging our body, we're aging, we just stop doing everything we shouldn't be doing and we don't have to, that's staying in the messy the wise mind catches that and disciplines and trains it. But it's also not going to happen overnight. And that's where people in this technological age think, okay, well, I've done it once. Why am I still doing it? No, you're going to have to. It's going to take you probably nine weeks. If you had to actually look at the time you spent to break that cycle, which meant that you rewired your brain, it would have. It's.
It's weeks. And if you have breaks and. Yeah, back in the day when I had to go through that.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Multiple cycles.
And that's why— you- know what's interesting? It was like eight years ago is when everything started to really shift for me when I turned 30. Because I don't know if I mentioned this in our last interview, but I've talked about it on the show a lot where I started to truly address and heal the root cause of a lot of my pain, anger, resentment from sexual trauma that I went through as a kid, from other things that happened that I never expressed, that I that I never brought to the surface that I always kept hidden with shame and insecurity and frustration or anger. And, when I started to process the root causes of a lot of my insecurity and shame, that's when everything started to rewire. So, if I would have just said, okay, I'm going to process these things on a surface level for a certain amount of days, I don't think it would have ever found that ability to create that peace within. in because I was always holding on to some type of trauma that I was unwilling to talk about. Whether it was a big tea or a little tea, I was unwilling to talk about it out of shame. And when I started to share it, it was freeing. And I'm not saying everyone needs to share these things publicly or whatever, but just talking to a friend or a therapist or a coach, it was allowing me to start rewiring, okay, I can.
Process.
These heartbreaks or these tragedies or these moments in life that bring me stress and pain and grief and sadness. I now don't need to hold on to this pain from my whole life and add to it. I can process it and move on.
That's beautiful. That's amazing that you did that. And it's interesting that you did that around your 30s and your 20s were pretty turbulent in terms of trying to survive.
My whole life was turbulent until 30. I mean, still my 30s, it's been some ups and downs, but it's been, I've been able to process and I've been able to emotionally have a more tools to experience and process and not hold on to. And I think I'm still learning because, I mean, I'm gonna be learning for a long time.
Oh, yeah. It'll be your whole life.
I'm definitely not perfect because I still make a lot of mistakes and I still stay in things longer than I should and want to make sure I give it my all and all those things. But I think I've gotten to a place where I know when to walk away from scenarios as opposed to be the perfectionist, make sure I do whatever it takes to work. I'm like, okay, if this situation isn't supporting me or the other person, at some point we gotta transition the situation.
That's incredible. And you've done so much incredible work then you've literally, I can explain to you scientifically if you're interested in what you've So you've actually done because I think what you've gone through the story you've gone through is especially having the sexual trauma. How old were you again?
Five.
Five. That's like you think of it like this as a five year old, you look at your caregivers, your environment, as your heroes, as your people that look after you. So the distortion is so absolutely, it's just such a distortion. So what's happened if I use my toxic tree and for those that are listening, I'm holding up the wiry toxic tree that represents toxic thought, as opposed to the healthy green tree. These roots over here, the whole thing is forming a part of the best of the root part over here is the source of the pain. So that's the source of the trauma. So that's the actual events, all the data, the emotions.
The memories.
Yes, the memories. So a thought is made of memories, root memories and branch memories. And so the memories are that all the things that actually happened and all the emotions that went along with it, So we get the full data. As it's happening, simultaneously, we interpret what's happening. And then if these repeated patterns that happen, you this part over here, the branches are your interpretation. So you said things like shame and what were the other words you used?
Security, shame, insecurity, resentful, resentful.
Or and seeing yourself, your identity was broken because you didn't see yourself as having value, all those kinds of things because of Now, as a five year old, you cannot process this. So this was the way you cope. This is this always is the balance to that. And even though this is a distortion, you do this to balance that. And when it's healthy, it's all great. It works out because the unis comes out. But here, this is all not the unis. So there that would account for when you're at school, maybe you were called to the principal's office, a lot of those behaviors would have come from you not valuing yourself. And then if them coming in heavy again, just added More filter. It was just another layer added.
More anger, more frustration, more everything.
Yeah. So instead of them looking at why Lewis is doing this, they just told you you were wrong and punished you. That would be the worst thing in your situation. And that would have just made it worse and worse. So that then we push that down because we don't know what it is, what to do with it. So you just keep going on and you just keep hoping for the best and you keep that kids just seem to be so resilient. But this is building and building. So in your non-conscious mind, and these thoughts that we have, these experiences that we have are building through our mind into our brain and into our body and into our mind. So this is not only a thought tree in your brain, it's also in the DNA of every cell of your body. And it's in the gravitational fields of your mind. So it's in three places. That's why it's this whole psycho neurobiological impact. That's why it's this whole effect that it has on us. It's a whole body experience. So when you do things like EMDR.
Therapy, did you ever do EMDR therapy? I've heard great things about it.
I haven't tried that yet. So when you, you mean you've done.
A bit of therapy over the years? I've done a bunch of different therapies.
Things to things, emotional intelligence and experiences and workshops and. Yeah, which have helped to pull the stuff from your body to your brain into your mind. So we work. So we work both ways. You get from body, brain, mind, mind, brain, body. And your net kind of all works back and forth. But if these aren't dealt with, they get suppressed, they get suppressed, they get suppressed. And then maybe only when you 30, like you said, then you started actually doing the work or maybe during your 20s. I don't know when you started first remembering the. The trauma. I'm not sure what age you were.
At when you started facing that. Every day I remembered the trauma. I thought about it, but it wasn't until 30 when I had the courage.
To start talking about it. Okay, so it was in the. Okay, so what. What you had was the situation of some people completely hidden. They don't even know what happened. Then it suddenly comes back. You were constantly.
I was always. Yeah, you were living it all the time. Okay, so it was in daily.
Maybe. Maybe not every day.
That once a week, I probably thought about it, you know?
Okay, so this was constantly moving from the non-conscious to the conscious. So the awareness was increasing. So when we have increased awareness, but.
No management and no processing, there's got.
To be a way to get it out somehow. Exactly. So it's coming up, but you're not processing. So it keeps coming up, down, up, down. Each time it goes back down stronger than before. And we see when you have increased awareness without processing, it increases anxiety in the brain. So if we had to scan your brain at that time, we would have seen a lot of red pockets of high beta energy across your brain, which would have made you be quite edgy, you know, like looking for things to constantly like keep you busy, distractions on the go, whatever. I don't know exactly what you did over that time, but you may have been just always trying to, you said perfectionism, always trying to achieve, you're trying to prove yourself in a way.
Just constantly. Yeah. I mean, I threw it in sports. So I was just playing sports, practicing.
Trying to, you know, get better and achieve my goal. And then that would have given you.
A lot of release of adrenaline. Absolutely.
Every anger, frustration, everything. you channeled into the energy. So it's almost like you use that to cope, almost like an addiction. But in a sense, it was a coping mechanism. Addiction is not a disease. It's purely a coping mechanism.
It's a coping signal that you're trying.
To deal with the stuff of something that hasn't been healed yet. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly what it is. Because in 86 to 98, 95 of addicts get out of addiction through Choice once they are ready to do the work to find the root cause. So it's. So you channel for a time into that energy. You also got things like anandamide being released in your brain, which would have given you some bliss hormone, would given you a sense of excitement and you would have had dopamine rushes and all those things that were being drained. So this was draining all of that. So you're doing sport to put it back, but eventually explodes.
It's like a volcano. If you think of a volcano, well, then sport ended.
So I was like, well, what?
Channel my energy. That's when everything started to come to the surface where I was like, oh, you gotta deal with this now. I'm not liking my personality in these scenarios when I'm feeling triggered and people aren't liking my personality around around me. And it wasn't fun anymore to be around me for a year or two when I was like, I don't know how to get, I don't know how do I get, how do I express myself? I know happy and angry. I don't have a range of emotions. How do I learn how to express? And I think a lot, and I empathize for a lot of humans, but I mean men in general who are kind of built and raised in the same type of dynamic. like, it's. It's. When you've never been taught how to express yourself without being shamed, without being made wrong, without being like, don't. Don't do that. That's not okay. You can't show this emotion. You're supposed to be a man or this or whatever it is. Toxic masculinity. Yeah. For women as well. Like, you need to be this, this and this. You can't do this.
It's just a challenge because then you're always suppressing something. It's always suppressing. And you have to go back and. And that's volcanic in nature because, like, a volcano will bubble, eventually explode, and the lava. will pull out. That's what these eventually do. They eventually, and it did explode, as you've just described, it was exploding in your behavior where it was now becoming very in your face and in people's faces. And that's, and these, that was then signal. So all of those behavior patterns, the emotions, the behaviors, the perspective on life that you had, the physical sensations in your body, those were all warning signals that your body was trying to restore balance. So your non-conscious mind was trying to draw your attention to the fact that you need to identify the source. Your immune system was sending out all kinds of signals signals to that, to this actual physical experience in your brain, this physical thought in your brain, your body, trying to get rid of it. So it's trying to eject and get rid of this thing that's causing the imbalance. And it comes out in our emotions and our behaviors.
Well, it also comes out physically. I mean, I was.
Yes, yes.
I was going through a. A challenging scenario where I knew a relationship that I was in needed to end. but I was. I was staying in this certain relationship for.
Yeah.
For longer than it needed to be. And I knew. And I started to get. I never in my life have had this, but I started to get, like, eczema breakouts on my skin in different parts of my body. And I was like, what is this? And I was like, never had this in my life. I started doing all the allergy tests. I had no allergies. I was like, maybe I'm having too much almond butter or freaking. I don't know.
Gluten.
What is it? Dairy. What is it? Eliminating all these foods, nothing is changing. And I'm like, well, maybe it's just, I'm just gonna live with this forever then. And okay. And literally, I kid you not, once this, the dynamic of the relationship shifted and transitioned, my body had, it's going away. And I was just like, this is crazy. Like the physical symptoms is gone. gone. This eczema outbreak or whatever, which I thought was going to keep spreading all over my body, is now gone. And it's, it's crazy when we, like you're saying, we, we need to be aware of the signals. We need to be aware of the emotions, the feelings, the frustrations, the thoughts, the sadness, the anger, and be aware of them. And we also be aware of our physical symptoms. Absolutely.
Yeah.
And, you know, am I drained? Am I emotionally tired? Am am I frustrated and triggered all the time? Do I have eczema? Is my hair falling out? I don't know. Whatever am I losing my vision? Am I getting heart palpitations? You've got to be noticing the physical symptoms as well from the emotional stress.
Exactly. That is so important what you've said and fascinating that you've got, you know, that you've highlighted a key psychoneurobiological link and in in my most recent book, the Clean Up Your Mental Mess, that one that you interviewed me about last time. I talk about some of the things, I didn't put my whole clinical trial, but I talk about some of those impacts. But there's so many studies around the link between unmanaged mind and unmanaged stress and the impact on our body. So it's directly like this. You were going through this relationship that was not good for you. You hadn't dealt with these issues yet properly. So that combination was your mind was an unmanaged mess. And that would generate a lot of basically toxic energy waves, gravitational fields, electromagnetic fields literally through your brain and your body. So therefore nothing, you would have had high gamma, too much high gamma, too much high beta, probably not enough oxygen and blood in your brain, constricted blood vessels around your heart. All things that The immune system would have been autoimmune because that's eczema is an autoimmune response. So you've got genetic weaknesses and generally when we're under toxic stress and it's come through the generations, it just happens as mutations that happen through generations and they dormant and this activated and the mind is the activating factor. So it manifests in so many different ways. So definitely you've kept the nail on the head. You go for the allergy tests, not the allergies, because we immediately think purely physical, but the physical is dominated by the mind. The physical, you don't have you can't have eczema dead. You can only have it if you're alive. And generally, if it's not a food allergy, there is a mind, an undel. Yeah, exactly. Literally, literally mental allergies. These are literally mental allergies. And they threaten your survival. So your, that eczema was your body saying, hey, Lewis, please pay attention. There's something in your mind that you need to deal with.
And so, yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I take full responsibility for my thoughts and my, and staying something that I know I'm not supposed to say in something or for not speaking up or for abandoning myself. So as I reflect and throughout the entire time, I'm in no place to blame someone else. I take responsibility for what am I doing to be a co-creator in this? What are my thoughts doing to manifest this physically and how am I responsible? for choosing something different. And it might be a hard decision. It might be a courageous decision that I've been afraid to make, but that's the one my body is telling me, you need to make.
Or you need to shift.
You need to shift something. You need to shift something within this relationship experience. You need to whatever it might be.
I'm saying. And.
And I think a lot of times people will blame others for their feelings, their emotions, their physical manifestations of their mind. and maybe they are a part of that experience, but you can't blame someone else for the way you're thinking and you're feeling or can we?
You can hit the nail on the head. You can't, there's two parts to that answer. Our environment affects us. So when you were abused, you were a victim. There's no lesson to be learned in that victim, that what you went through as a victim, there's only healing that needs to take place. And so then you, that's what you are responsible is your healing. And that's always sounds so hard when someone's been sexually abused to say that you're responsible for your healing.
No one else can heal me.
No, no, people can support you. That's the different. And that's the whole enhancement culture. We need each other. So you need someone cheering you along. You need the therapy, the coaching, the counseling, whatever version of that, whatever combination of that. But you also need to know how to manage your own mind because at the end of the day, you're not in therapy 24/7, you're not in coaching 24/7. People go to sleep, you're awake at night, you wake up with your mind, you're sitting with your anxiety, your thoughts, what do you do? So mind management becomes absolutely essential in us being able to cope with anything that we've gone through. And yes, that is our, we can't change, I keep saying it, we can't change what's happened to us, but we can change what's happened in us. So that abuse that you went through, there's never anything that can excuse that and you are not, there's no lesson to be learned and you were a victim and that person was wrong and needs to be an person or person ones, you know, they need to be punished. And those are facts, those are facts. But for you to be disengaged from that is extremely important. And the only way you can disengage from that is through embracing processing and reconceptualizing. So it's a deconstruction, reconstruction process. Otherwise, you keep this in your brain and this drives you and it controls you like it did for so many years. Every day, this was controlling you, coming up and controlling you. So until you did the work which you did to start recognizing those physical signals, the physical signals in your body, the eczema, whatever it was at that time, the hot palpitations, gut issues, the emotional signals, depression, anxiety, panic, frustration, whatever, worry, the perspective signals, how are you looking at life? What is your general view of life? And then also looking at the which one have I left out? The physical, emotional is four. Emotional, physical perspective and why am I blanking on the fourth one? There's four different areas that we look at. They'll come back in a moment. So once we gather awareness of those six Then what we do is we can then start, once we've gathered awareness, we can then start doing the reflection, the why. But you've got to do very sequentially. You first got to pay attention. So the signals are warning signals, they're clues. So you become a detective in your own life.
Why is this happening? Okay, let me start to do some experiments. Let me get some tests done and realize, okay, I'm eliminating this, I'm eliminating that.
Then where's the root cause? of that thing. So you've got to start there, but you've got to stop with your signal. So these, these are the four emotional, what are you doing, behavioral, physical, what's in your body and perspective. Okay, so emotional, physical, behavioral and perspective. And you've got to, you've got to find those first. As soon as you're aware, you then pull this up and you change your, you change 1400 neurophysiological responses in your brain and your body. You shift the resilience of your brain and you start now enabling yourself to be stronger to face to that stuff. And your mind, brain and body know it's going to be hard because treatment and healing is awful. It's hard. It gets worse. I put a case study in my book of one of the one of the subjects who was in the beginning of the study, they said, they literally said, I am depression. That was the identity.
I am not I'm depressed.
I am depression. I am depression. Yeah, I am depression. And I can't sleep. My life just the whole narrative was just everything that was terrible. They had tried everything, every drug. They were at the end of their rope. Within 21 days of mind management, they were no longer saying, I am depressed. They were no longer saying, I am depression. They were saying, I am depressed because of. And that is major. And then they said, so this is now, they understood now, they were saying depression is a signal. It's telling me something. Then they said something so interesting. interesting. They said, I'm even more depressed and even more anxious than I was when I started the trial. And I said, that's a good thing, isn't it? They said, Yes, because the depression and anxiety is different. Because the depression and anxiety shows me I've done the work because now I know why I was depressed. They had suppressed for nearly 30 years what had happened was also sexual trauma and a lot of physical abuse. And it had been so bad that they pushed it down and completely obliterated it from memories and that was coming up. So that just remembering what happened made them more anxious and more depressed. But it was a different kind of it was a controlled depression. It wasn't a depression of I'm hopeless, I can't do anything, there's no meaning. It was I now know why I'm depressed and this is what I can do. And then by 63 days, because it takes a full nine weeks to start changing behavior, they were sleeping again, they were able to get back to work, they were able to start seeing, okay, well, I found this part. Now I need to go back in and find this part, this part, this part, this part. So there is now a plan in place for managing their mind and knowing what to do during the day when it hit them that a terrible, and you can probably relate to this, that terrible, like how it grips you, that sadness with that anxiety, with that panic attack out of the blue, just an all-consuming or someone just says something to you that looks at you funny and your whole identity scattered.
Yeah.
Yeah. And you're triggered. So that, that is key. And, and that is why we've got a very, very, we've got to think, if we've been thinking a certain way for so many years because of an experience or accumulation of experiences, you're going to have to do the work of unwiring it. And to unwire, you have to get control. So by Gathering awareness of your signals, which is the very first step, you are then bringing this into the conscious awareness and you weaken it. And that's really key. What I'm holding up the wiry tree for the listeners. You then weaken the toxic thought. As soon as you weaken the toxic thought, you have now got agency or control. You still feel depressed, you still feel confused, you still feel all those things, but there's a shift. And the shift is that now you are taking control, you're empowered. And Lewis, I used to tell my patients, get two chairs, put two chairs next to each other, sit in one, and that's the wise mind. And the other one is you, messy mind. And you are talk to yourself and use the you, use the pronoun you. and give yourself therapy and create an environment that you would love, which is kindness, grace, acceptance. And it's okay. Everything you do and you keep telling yourself you really are at your, you know, I use that. I always give them the science of saying, listen, neurobiologically, you're wired for love. Your mind is an optimism bias. When you feel this negative toxicity, this is simply your body trying to restore balance. There's nothing about you that's bad. It's what's happened to you. That's an adverse circumstance, and you've just how to cope. So your behaviors are simply coping signals. So when you keep telling yourself that and then you work through very systematically through the five steps, you're getting more and more control. You're using mind directed thinking to direct the neuroplasticity of your brain that changes. So you rewire your brain slowly. And it's not a quick process. It's a slow, deliberate process over 63 days. So in the first 21 days, it's 40, 15 to 45 minutes. Then the second phase of 42 days, you're just going to spend one to seven minutes. And that cycle, and I've tracked this now all with brain studies and blood and DNA, and I've used so many different levels of studies and you're busy publishing all these papers at the moment, but there's a summary in the book and I've got a white paper on my website and we're doing a national study now. But what I wanted to show people was that taking this attitude, this kind of picture I've just painted of what you did with yourself basically, and I'm just giving you more specifics, you are actually directing the the gas city of your brain. You are taking this toxic tree. You are deconstructing it. You're taking the energy that is in vibrating in those branches, holding your interpretation of itself, which is not the truth. You're taking that trauma that happened to you and you're changing all of that. And energy is never lost. And this is all energy in these proteins, and it's only transferred. So you're taking that slowly every day, you're transferring. And this is getting weaker, weaker, weaker, weaker, and you're building. healthy, re-conceptualized version. So by day 21, you've got this beautiful, healthy green tree. Now watch, I'm going to pull a part of it out. I'm putting a tiny little piece of it out. There's a little piece of green that I'm holding. That is that converted into this. It's now shrunk into a green version, which is your very terrible, sad story. It still makes you sad, still makes you cry. Never have happened, but it did happen. But you've now changed what it looks like in you. It's no longer this toxic thing that's causing your immune system to send out lymphocytes and B lymphocytes and macrophages and treated in the same way as the COVID virus, which is damaging your brain and body, whatever. It's literally the same thing as a, it's not the same as COVID virus, but it's also protein. So you, it's recognized as a threat to survival by the immune system in the same way COVID viruses. And you are, you've changed that. And now no longer is it a threat to your survival. You now have a new coping mechanism. So you remember why. So when you triggered, this is what you revert to, not the, not that toxic tree. But to get to the point where you revert to this, the green tree, you have to do that extra 42 days of work because habits are only forming those cycles. And I've had patients, nurses, that would sometimes take two years to get to the point where they were kind of have sorted out all this stuff. Some people will do one cycle, there's no cookie cutter, anything. This is not a technique. All I'm giving you is how you get your mind under control so that you can unwire these things and rewire them. And it's different for everyone's But you can do it. It's hopeful. We can do this. And it's hard work and it's difficult and it's traumatic and you need support and these times where you're going to get so depressed where you maybe can't get out of bed for a few days because of just the awareness of what's happened, but you will keep that's all progress. I remember having patients that were like had gone from suicidal to ups and downs to seeming to cope to like back together then suddenly crashing into deep depressions and then everything is progress because every at every stage there's another level of awareness and then again to the point, okay, I can cope, I can move forward now, I can start, which is what you did. You know, you've done that. Now you've channeled all that energy into helping others.
It's all process. It's all a process and there's always going to be new lessons to learn, I'm assuming.
Oh, yeah, it's like Missy Grow. It's like Missy. repair, grow, messy, repair, grow, give ourselves permission. It's okay to be messy. It's okay to be depressed and anxious. It's not an illness. You're not a broken brain. You are just those all sickles.
Be, be pyro, be, be Sherlock Holmes. You know, be your own talk detective. There's so many things I want to make sure we go over still. But I want, I want to go into relationships in a future episode and a future interview. So if you want us to leave a comment on the YouTube channel and just put relationship. If you want us to do another interview about the brain connection in intimate relationships and how that affects our mood and energy and all those things, I think it'd be fascinating. So leave a comment there if you guys are interested. I want to go over brain building. I also want to go over what you do for the ultimate mindset training in your morning and evening routine to set yourself up for success for a day. And I also want to go back into identity check and figure out what do you do when you are checking your identity and how do you reprogram your mind to build confidence in your identity moving forward?
Okay, so where do you want to start? There's three things, right?
What do you when you're doing a identity check, what are you doing personally? What does that look like? For me, okay, so I tune into.
Once again the signals. So I'll be going along and I suddenly notice for me, I've got certain key signals that tell me I need to do an identity check. One is imposter syndrome. When I start feeling like, oh my gosh, I shouldn't be talking about what I'm talking about. I don't even know what I'm talking about kind of thing. Then I know that that's nonsense because I've got 38 years of research and I know what I am and I don't know everything, but so I have to, so as soon as I start feeling like that, that I will say, okay, that's, and if it, and I watch it, then I watch, so they, I watch for imposter syndrome, I watch if I start getting perfectionistic, if I'm feeling like this obsession to be perfectionistic, if I start feeling, if I like maybe here with someone's, if I start feel little bursts of, it's not like jealousy or envy or bitterness, if any of those, I mean, I own it all, I'm not scared to tell people if I have those, because it's so so normal to have those. It's what's not normal is to keep them. I never see imposter syndrome, perfectionism, jealousy, envy. I never see those as evil, terrible things and I'm now a bad person. I only ever see myself showing up as those because of something. And so those are my key things. If I start seeing twinges of envy or jealousy or imposter syndrome or perfectionism, then I know, okay, so there's this and then watch. Is there a pattern? How often am I doing it? Is it daily? Is it weekly? Is it just now and then? If it's now then I'm okay. But if I see, okay, hey, this is happening daily and I'm being triggered by everything. So I look for frequency. So I know my signals, then I look for frequency. Then I say, all right, now it's time. This is happening. This is happening way too often. I need an identity check. I need to sit down and then I will actually sit for 63 days every day. And I do it while I'm always working on something. So if I see it's an identity check, I'll finish whatever I'm working on and then I'll start and I'll start. And I always do my, my neuro cycle for anything when I'm getting ready in the morning. It's just the routine I've set up in my life. So it's. So then, while I'm getting ready, it always takes me about half an hour or so. So it's great time. No one comes in the, in, in the bathroom that they ever knows. That's the mom alone. That's leave, leave me alone. That's when I have my space. So I have a routine. So then I'll start with, let's say, it's day one. I'll say, okay, those are. I'm seeing I'm being imposter syndrome. I see that, whatever the signal, then I break it down. Okay, what are the emotional signals? What are my feelings? So I'm feeling a bit of envy, a bit of jealousy, a bit of frustration, whatever. Then I'll say, okay, behavior, what am I doing? I'm definitely not smiling as much. Maybe, so I look at my behaviors, I seem to be a bit short. I keep talking about this, it's coming into conversations. People are actually commenting, why do you keep talking about this? So I look at my behavior. So emotional my emotional warning signals and behavioral warning signals. Then I will look at my body. I'll look at, I'll sense my body. What's different? Wow, I'm getting more gut aches. I, my gut, we have such a genetic weakness in our family with gut. Very common. I'll notice that foods that don't really make me bloat, suddenly I'm bloating more. I'm suddenly getting incredible cramps in my lower colon. I know immediately there's a certain pain that I get in my colon that is related to emotions. Also, I get tremendous pain in my heart when I'm toxically stressed. Like, like it really feels like pain, pain. It's so. I can feel it. So I noticed those things. So I'm very aware. Then I'll look at my perspective, and my perspective is, why am I doing this or something? So it's kind of in a negative. It's moving to a negative zone. So I gather those. But I gather them loose, like I'm getting apples in a, in a, in an apple orchard. So I literally will do. Yeah, I do. I literally, in my mind, I am two chairs. I am using the U language. I'm very kind to myself. I'm very accepting. I set myself up correctly. So my whole mindset going into even before I gather those four signals is one of it's okay. You really are amazing. There's no one can do what you can do. So a little bit of, you know, motivational boosting. But I'm also kind to myself. It's really okay. It's really not. You're not the first person to have done this to be feel envy or jealousy. This is not that you're a bad person. There's a reason. So I just remind myself of those things. A couple of little prompts that changes my neurophysiology. I know from the science that I've done that I've now got 1400 neurophysiological response is working for me. Just before I start the process, I'll do the brain preparation. And in my app, I actually do this. I have to physically walk you through audio video. What's the alcohol? Neurocycle. It's called Neurocycle. And it's on. And I've got it. One for identity in there. So it's the whole 63 day process. I literally give you therapy. And then we have many Neurocycles. It's many Neurocycle guides. So, like, if you're seeing imposter syndrome, you can press that. I'll give you a Neurocycle identity. check. Anxiety, whatever. So, yeah, it's really cool. We're growing it all the time, and I'm building in a neuro cycle lab so people can actually get coaching and get coached through different issues, which is fun. So then I'll do. So I'll do a bit of brain preparation. So set myself up, the kindness, all that stuff, and then I'll do a bit of brain preparation. I love to do the 10 second pause. I write about that in my book, and that's just a very common breathing technique. But I do it with a bit of, quite a lot of difference. I breathe in very deeply for seven. three counts, but, like, I mean, three counts. It's very deeply, like, you know, the yoga kind of breathing where you really move your belly, Wim Hof type, you know, where your chest is. And then you breathe out for seven counts. But also that sort of yoga type reading where you push, you've got to really rush it out. The extended, extended, exhale pushes oxygen to the front of your brain and blood flow to the front of your brain. So I almost have to shake my head because I feel lightheaded. So that's how intensely I do it. Then while I'm doing, I'll do the first couple just reading, then I add a cognitive dimension and I start saying, think feel in the inhalation and then choose in the exhalation. And I do it out loud. So I add in the verbal component to the actual physical. So now I've coordinated, I've created not just a physiological response, but I've brought mind, brain and body. I've brought all three responses together. So I've calmed down neurochemistry, I've calmed down blood flow. I've increased blood flow to the brain. I mean, I've done, I can go on and on and on. I've just given my telomeres a boost, which are the ends of chromosomes. I mean, it's just my immune system is now primed. I've given my whole body the message, it's okay. You don't have to be now making stress work for me and not against me. So even my blood vessels around my heart would have dilated and that I would have got more blood flow to my brain. So immediately I'll feel this pain in my heart immediately because I've now calm my whole body down because that pain that I feel in my heart is coming from the trauma that's in my mind, the identity trauma in my mind. So then, then I go into the five steps. So then I'll go gather those things like I told you, the four different areas, emotional, physical, behavioral perspective. Then I go very distinctly to step two. And the Gathering is like picking apples off a tree. So I don't go stand under the apple tree and just let all these things fall on my head. That's totally overwhelming. I stand back. So you visualize yourself standing. back and selecting. And I do what I can on that day. Sometimes I can only pick maybe just envy that day and maybe just not smiling as much and maybe just perspective seems that I seem to be a bit down or negative things that I don't, I'm not as hopeful because I'm a very kind of positive hopeful person, but it's not there. So maybe I could just handle a bit. I don't force myself to do too much in one day. And then I'll go to once I've gathered, then I take each thing and I, okay, now I'm going to reflect. ask, answer, discuss. What does this mean? Why, why, why? And I discuss and ask. So I'm starting to find the meaning. Then I'll write it down. So either I do it in a metacog and a metacog I sort of talking about earlier on. A metacog is a way of organizing information that looks like a tree. I mean, literally, like a tree grows branches and another branch and another branch. Every branch is connected to something else. You grow branches on a piece of paper, and on each branch you write a word. or a couple of words or a little phrase, but nothing's floating on the page. This is so important. And you start in the center and you just built. You can either go clockwise or anti-clockwise, whatever you want to do. You can keep it all clockwise and turn your page, whatever you want. Lewis, I developed a system about 38 years ago, and I constantly improve it. I would do this with my patients. I would work with people, for example, with personality disorders, and using the mediacrob technique, we would actually, they would be able to see the different personalities and reintegrate them and find the trauma source and that kind of stuff. To get your conscious mind working with unconscious to find all the trillions of thoughts that are in your non-conscious mind where they stored to get that depth. Because your conscious mind is only working when you're awake, but your non-conscious mind is working 24/7. So it forces these five steps going into the metacog, which is the third step, force this integration and this connection between the conscious and the unconscious. So then I start writing down what I've gathered and what I've reflected on. But in this metacog, so it's a mess. It's just like words all over the place. And you literally vomit it on your page and you start seeing things. that you can't believe that you... I mean, every time I do it, I'm astounded at what I see. Then the fourth step is a recheck. And I'll go and stand and I'll look at... take color and I'll look at what am I saying here? What does this mean? And I try and get order. I look for triggers and patterns and antidotes. Big thing is antidotes. That's reconceptualizing. You said that's an antidote or reconceptualized statement earlier on when you spoke about this morning the sadness that you felt and you said you gave self permission to feel the sadness and your antidote, your re-conceptualized version was, it's okay, I'm feeling sad because this is a transition in my life and it's okay to feel that. And then you moved on to into the day. That's what you look for in step four. You look for what can you, what is the antidote? Yes, you're feeling this because of this. And you start, so as you go through those stages, you start seeing the reasons why, especially step three, starts pulling that reason, the root of why I have this identity thing. And you start seeing, wow, I thought I had dealt with it, but I haven't. This is still an issue. I still need that approval because of this. Why do I need that approval? Do I really? And then you start saying, actually, I don't because of this. So step five, then that builds into step five, which is then a little statement that I'll hang on to for the day. And that's where your gratitude statement or your positive affirmation or your whatever, a summary of what you've achieved that day. It could be as simple as, okay, my identity's been knocked. I'm feeling this empty. It's okay to feel that. And maybe that's your statement. It's okay to feel this. I'm finding the reason why. And that may be all that you do. So in the app, I would type in, it allows you to type in your active reach reminder. You set it to go seven times in the day because it takes, this research shows that if you can see something consciously be prompted seven times at least during the day, you then are putting energy to the positive and taking it from the negative. And so you're transferring, you're weakening this and you're getting the healthier one stronger. So you're making the healthier one stronger. So I'm now now re-energizing and I'm disciplined. Big thing is disciplining my mind not to go back and give energy to the toxic pathway, but to actually take energy from it so it weakens some lying grass to grow over the worn pathway. And that's what I force myself to hang on to. It's all I'm allowed myself to think of the rest of that day. I always like to have a visual as well. I love white roses or. And I love to see, like most people do, so I'll. I'll have some image, so it'll be. it's okay to feel envy, there's a reason, and then I'll imagine white roses. So each time my mind wants to go back to this imposter syndrome, this identity, this lack of value, whatever, I say, it's okay to feel envy, white roses, and then tomorrow I'll go further. And that's how I do it. So over 21 days, I will do that. And then from 442 days, I'll just go with my final active reach. And I find that I do a big one like that at least once a year. But if I need to do more, I. do more. And sometimes all I need to do in between is a quick one, five minute cycle. Yeah. Oh, hang on. There's a bit of an identity thing here I can run through and I remind myself. So in the course of the year, I probably do five or six times a year, if not more. Does that help?
It's massive. And I think identity check is something I feel like all of us should be doing all the time, constantly adjusting and. improving on because what I'm hearing you say is our belief around our identity is what shapes a lot of our mindset.
Oh, absolutely. And then what you're going to say and what you do. So what you'll do is once your identity is sorted out, once I do that kind of identity check, the big one and then the little ones in between, I'll immediately shift in my day to looking at something differently. So now I see something that I think changes. Yeah, absolutely. So something that I think I should have achieved in my business and I'm not achieving it and I compare myself to someone else. I suddenly look at that and say, no, I don't need to compare. I'm now enhancing. So I shift from comparison and competition, which is totally toxic. It's not at all human nature. And back to enhancement, which is, oh gosh, that is amazing what that person is doing. Wow, I love that for them and I mean it and I'm so excited. Now, I enhance them, how does that enhance you? What can I learn or what works for my life? What do I have? Do I need that exact thing? I can't have that exact thing because that's that person's thing. That's what they've got. That works for their life. That's their... I can't use my measure of success against their measure. So I tell them, we know all of that, but you're not going to believe those words. Be very good at saying words if you don't believe. An identity check takes the words that.
You'Re saying that you believe. We're very good.
We're very good at saying the kind of statements I've just said that we don't actually believe. And we try and convince ourselves. That's the Band-Aid approach. That's the positive affirmation approach. So I. I know when I'm saying those statements and I don't believe them, I know I need an identity check. If I can say those statements and I'm genuinely throughout my entire mind, brain, body, if I'm entirely, totally happy for that person's success, and I'm not. thinking, wow, I want it. If I start thinking, give me an.
Example of, like, feeling jealous or envious about someone else and saying, I'm happy for them, but not feeling it and believing it.
So let me think of something. So it's like, it's a whole body check. So I. There's been times where I've said, oh, I'm so happy that that person got a New York Times bestseller. And then I say, hey, but I can feel my body's not. This is out of alignment here. Then I have to go and do a little identity check. and I do it in a quick neuro cycle in them, and then I'll say it again, okay, I really am genuinely happy that they got a New York Times bestseller, all they got on the whatever, published weekly or whatever the case may be. And then I check my whole mind, brain, body and I can feel actually yes, I do, it's true. There's a whole like an alignment that I feel different and my body feels different. It's like I'm relaxed and I'm excited because I now feel that they, I can see that their success is their success and that enhances me whatever someone else succeeds in is only to my benefit.
Why is that?
Because that generates they operating in something that they can do that no one else can do. So if I celebrate that, that's going to be generating a whole bunch of success energy and love energy that's going to hit me and build me up. So I'm in and then I in return of building them up. So this is Einstein's work. Not that he spoke directly about it like I'm speaking about it, but he spoke about the he worked with a a few people on how we generate photons. And there's been tremendous advances in that work, especially in the field of quantum physics. So if you genuinely happy for someone else, you're going to generate photons. We always do, when you're alive, you're generating energy. You and I generating energy. Now, even though we separated technologically, we impact each other. We've got a relationship going through our connection, et cetera. So we entangled. So we're impacting each other. So, and it's positive because we're discussing positive things. But if you have a toxic relationship with someone, the photons that have been generated are toxic. So toxic energy waves, the electromagnetic light waves are toxic. They're different. And they can see that with experience, with research now. So that's the example of that is if you walk in a room and you know people don't like you, you can feel it. If someone's, you know, someone's, like, can't look you in the eye and you just, you know, the way they, they kind of smiling, but you just know there's something wrong. You can cut the atmosphere with, with a knife. That's what I'm talking about. It's those are actual toxic energy waves coming from that person's thought in their brain and their mind and their body. They are generating all this energy that is toxic and that's what you're feeling. It's like having a little BB gunshots at you or pain, painful. So that's how real it is. And so when we in our natural wide full of mode, in a non-destructive mode, we enhance. So it's like two waves. If you think of two waves in the sea, when they, when two waves hit each other, they cancel each other. and it's flatline. That's competition. No one benefits. But when two waves go underneath each other, there's an enhancement that the wave gets bigger. And that's enhancement culture. That's the real bond or connection, deep meaningful connection. So when I'm deeply recognizing my identity is, hey, I can do something that no one else can do. I don't have to be threatened by that. I'm not competition for anyone. That person is not my competition. That person's my. My. What's the word? my aid, my support, my collaborator or collaborator, yeah, they're on my side. Everyone's on my side. Everyone, no one is a competition. If we got into that mode, and there's been so much science showing this in the, in these ancient signs on this, you can go back thousands of years and find teachings on this in the ancient, in the ancient, ancient sort of different texts and different religions and just ancient texts. And there's been 150 years of research in this sort of area, but it's not very well accepted in sort of the more, what can I say, more physical based science where it's all about the brain body that's seen as woo-woo stuff. Meanwhile, it's more accurate scientifically than a lot of the current medical science that we see that is supposedly more accurate. So if you look at, and you really does see these studies, so it's very interesting. and more quantum physics, for example, is huge in this. And it's one of the most accurate and fundamental sciences. So the quantum experimentation is more accurate if you look at the rules of scientific research than a lot of the classical studies, which is very interesting. So essentially, what was I going to say now? What was I saying? Relating back to all the, in terms of identity, enhancement culture. So enhancement, we're so driven by Darwin and this obviously good in everything, every philosophy. But prior to Darwin, there was Lamarckian theory, and I don't want to go into any of this in depth because it's a whole huge area. But essentially, it was not that we need to compete. Competition is not really what breeds success or wiping someone out at the expense of someone else. That's never really worked. But if you really look at what's worked, it's if I enhance you, we don't specialize at the expense of others. We specialize at the the enhancement of others. And if you look at the research on bond research and that kind of thing, we build each other, we grow as a community. So communities, for example, that are very community focused versus individualistic, they're much more successful in helping people with mental health, with relationships, with peace in the community, with just generally happiness versus those that are very individualistic American society, which is one of the unhappiest societies in the world is not, there's not enough enhancement. It's all about if you're doing well, that's a straight to me. That's absolute nonsense. If you did well, that's great for me because that means you're enhancing me.
So what does it do when we, when we can see someone else and celebrate their success authentically? What does that do for our, our mind versus our brain versus envy and jealousy and resentment and frustration that they're winning or succeeding? and you're not at that level or something.
Okay, so the easiest way to see what it does in the mind is to think of like when you look at QuickTime, QuickTime has all the little bars going or a podcast. That's what the memory looks like in your mind. So in your mind areas, these waves. So a love wave is generally like a sine wave versus any kind of energy and jealousy. It's a very erratic wave. I mean, that goes through your brain, it creates neurochemical chaos. So first of all, you've got neurochemical chaos. So you won't have enough balance between serotonin, dopamine, anandamide, and the various different chemicals, which then affects the hormone balance, which then affects hot palpitations and cardiovascular function, immune function. So every system of the body becomes disturbed. That's why we feel disturbed throughout our entire body. In the brain, you'll see an increase in high beta. High beta, if you think of a wave, when the wave is breaking and you see the white, that's high beta in the brain. Now, you're only supposed to have a of high beta and then it should crash and settle into a more gentle wave. But if you have a constant tsunami of high beta, it creates tremendous and almost sometimes sharing of axons. It can actually damage, it can actually cause physical damage to the axons because you've got too much of this wrong energy, too much of the wrong chemicals. And that can create all kinds of distortions that eventually make things like tau protein, which is actually a good become a bad thing. And we hear that in Alzheimer's. And so eventually, if we have years and years and years of jealousy in the unmanaged mind, we're damaging our brain and cumulatively over the years, we change the neurons, the neuronal structure, the levels of good and bad protein, amino acid, which is a very important good protein, but in the wrong quantities, it can create memory loss and all that kind of stuff. So eventually, over time, we change the structural integrity of the brain. and so it causes brain damage. And Indian jealousy do that in a big, big way. Competition, that stress that it causes, it creates toxic stress very bad for your heart because it causes constriction of blood vessels. Then that's less blood flow to the brain. And if you don't have enough blood flow to the brain, you become impulsive. You don't use your intelligence. You lose your cognitive flexibility. You know, you'll have, instead of having lots of waves of high beta gamma flying from the back to the front of the brain in a balanced way, you're going to have a tsunami of gamma in unbalanced ways. That's not good. You're going to have an increase in delta too much during your conscious. You know, so there's a lot of different patterns that start emerging and you're learning more and more about this in as we, as science is advancing. So there's a definite impact, but you can change that. You can reverse it. That's the hope of neuroplasticity, of mind directed neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity can't happen on its own. It happens run by mind. So you direct it so you can change. so yeah, so it's changeable, but it really creates a mess and that isn't going to lead you, it's going to lead you to make decisions that maybe will get you to the top in a certain way, but the past price you pay in relationships, health, happiness, peace, so many people that have got to the top in a competitive way are not happy people. And people on their deathbed, you ask them what they'll say, I wish I'd worked on my relationships in love. Be designed for enhancement. You can still get to the top. Then also we've got to define what is getting to the top.
Right.
You know, there's a whole different redefinition needed of that too. You know, at this, at the moment, it's how many likes you have on Instagram, how many New York Times best sellers you have, how many, this, you know, we've got very, very toxic versions of what success is, and that needs to be changed as well. Absolutely.
They're very competitive based. I'm, this is fascinating. I'm curious about, I'm just thinking about a majority of my life where I was competition focused. And I actually like competition, but more of like toxic competition maybe where it's like, I need to be the best. I need to be number one. I need to win at all costs. Otherwise, I don't feel loved and supported and desirable or whatever it is. I'm all for competition and bringing the best out of each other.
Other. Yeah, that's, that's enhancement. That's not even competition. That is, okay, let's enhance each other. Can, let's see who could do the best, whatever. Exactly. And then it's like everything's to be celebrated. But as you are building. So if you shift your mind, exactly, we've got a competition here for someone who's going to build the best new version of quantum computers because they was he trying to do that at the moment. So if instead of it being a competition, let's talk about an enhancement. So everyone is throwing everything at it. Let's actually take the vaccine, the COVID If we had more enhancement versus competition, we would have had a vaccine earlier and distributed to the poorer countries quicker. But it's the competition and the desire for finance that has taken precedent over humanity. And that's an example where, you know, a lot of the scientists didn't want that. A lot of the scientists wanted to share each of the...
So it's not... What's working with everyone?
Exactly. So you've got something to bring to so do I. You compete a piece of the puzzle, so do I. So if we put our heads together instead of competing against each other, that's going to lead to success, global humanitarian type success, as opposed to because it takes one man to make a difference, you know, so it's just, it's how we look at it. It's just like a whole perspective needs to shift. Yeah. We're getting deeper. I love talking to you. We get into all these really excellent things.
It's called the School of Greatness, Caroline.
I love it.
School of Average. that's fantastic. Not that we're competing or needing to be the best.
No, we enhance each other. Greatness means a beautiful thing. Yeah, it means we are growing. What is it that you bring to the table that I don't? I must tell you a quick story about me just about that state. Years ago, when I worked in South Africa, one of the things I did was I trained teachers. I used to work in the apartheid era and the transition. I don't know if I told you this before, but I spent three days a week in apartheid South Africa working in pre-apart, end of part, transition and post when Mandela came to power. And I saw firsthand the impact of terribly evil social structures on humanity. And that's why I chose to do that. At the same time, I was doing my research and working in private practice with people that had a lot of money and could afford to see a therapist. And so I, that was one of the best experiences of my life. That's where I learned what I really know about life and about this field that I'm in, because I saw how humanity, when they, when you put your mind to stuff, you that's just incredible. It's School of Greatness, honestly, was that time period. And I used to train a lot of teachers in the education environment to try and help uplift the terrible education that the black population had been exposed to. So part of my team, we worked with over 300,000 people. We actually reached more, but we would work with teachers and students. And one of the projects was 300,000. What we would do is go in and train the teachers on how to use their brain and how to learn how to build their brain. how to manage emotions, how to just really get the most out of the mind brain connection, and then how to adapt this into the education system so that you could transfer knowledge more effectively. Because literally these schools would have one textbook, 100 kids, a piece of chalk the size, an old chalkboard that didn't work, and they would get the kids to literally repeat and regurgitate with no understanding. And I remember teaching one of these schools, and I'd always teach identity first was the first session when I trained teachers was identity. for themselves, identity for their students, and then I go into the techniques. And as I started this, one teacher stood up and he was so aggressive, I'll never forget, he just said, Dr. Leif, I'm sorry, but you have got it wrong. There is a kid in my class who is so stupid and so difficult that there's no ways that he could learn anything or he could change. And I mean, it was worse than if he really went on, it was just like a whole mouthful of venom. and I was so dumbstruck and I'm very seldom dumbstruck and one of the other teachers in the class stood up and said, Sir, that child that you say is so stupid can do something that you can't do and it's your responsibility to trigger that in that child. I tell you, this was nearly 25-28 years ago, it changed me forever and that's where I started researching identity in a big way in my work after that and that's what we're talking about here. When we recognize that in other people and that we, my role is to bring out the best in you. Your role is to bring out the best in me. We change society. It's not that I'm trying to beat you, it's that I'm trying to bring out the best in you. It's a totally different perspective.
Absolutely. I want to talk about brain building for a little bit before we wrap things up because I know this is something we mentioned a few times.
Yeah.
And I'm curious, what should we do the moment we realize we're being.
And.
Feeling a lot of emotions. Should we lean into brain building or is brain building something you do before that?
Such a good question. So when I'm very, very emotionally triggered, the first thing I'll do is that 10 second pause.
How does that happen for you?
It's less and less now. I used to get very, I used to get very easily thrown because I think that intense desire to please, I think you can relate. Things would throw me very quickly. and I would get things under control because I'm very energizer bunny. But yeah, I would get thrown very quickly. But I know now if I want to get, if I'm in a very challenging situation and I'm very emotionally triggered, I will brain, I will do the 10 second course because I've got to get my neurochemistry under control. I do it six to nine times. So it's about 60 to 90 seconds, which is enough time from the research that I've done and others that have done this, that in this field that get to neurochemistry. calm down and your blood flow and everything to a point where you're okay. And then I kind of check am I calm enough to, to kind of move forward and then I do brain building. And I would do this with all my patients. As in a side note, I never started a session without an identity check in brain building and then we would dive into the heavy stuff. So I always got them in a place in brain preparation. I always got them in a place where they were ready to do the work, hard work before we did any, any, you know, heavy stuff. So then I'll go brain build. So I'll go. And brain building is essentially using the neuro cycle. So it's the same five steps. But now, instead of detoxing, identifying and detoxing and reconstructing, you actually just building. So it's the same five step process because the neuro cycle is simply the science of thought. It is how we use our mind to grow stuff in our brain. And it's controlling the process and get stuff out of our brain. That's really what the neuro cycle is. That's why I say it's delivery system for doing. that. So then you take the take whatever you're interested in and I'm totally as you know interested in brain science. I'll take every day, I mean I do this every day you said what's my routine? But in that moment I'll take something like I'll always creating podcasts like your soft soda podcasts and things. So I'm always writing books, I'm always journal articles, writing a scientific article is an enormously challenging, extremely difficult thing to do. So anything, any project that I'm busy with like that, I'll go and dive into it. I'll go and prepare a podcast, do work on a journal article, because that requires brain building. It requires me to read complex stuff that I have to read a couple of lines and then I have to stop. So I have to gather the information, which is the read part. Where we spoke before about gathering awareness, now I'm talking about gathering awareness in terms of reading that information. I do it out loud and I do it with my pen, literally underlining it, because that brings all my senses together. I explain this in depth, by the way, in this book and also in the app. All the stuff we've been talking about is in the book and there. Then I'll go, then I'll stop and I literally look up and I talk out, I ask them to do the reflect step. So I ask answer and discuss, what have I just read? What does this mean? What's this stuff here? Because it's, you can just read and then I, until I can discuss it and I know, okay, it means this. And when I'm doing that reflect step, I go back in with my pen or my pencil and I circle, I don't underline. a circle. Because when you circle, you get to the key concepts. The concepts are where the information store. We don't recall 100%. We recall conceptually. So you want to build conceptually. Conceptually is where the core information is. It's about 30, 15 to 35% of information. So if you take a simple sentence like the cat sat on the mat. The cat sat on the mat. Seven words. What is it? Seven words, six words. The concepts would be around about two words. Cat mat with an arrow. That's what you want to get to. You want to get to the concept level. So in the Reflect Step, you are rereading it and circling and asking and answering and discussing and finding. So what you want to circle is 30% max. Then you write that down onto the metacog and you organize it. So you organize it and you write it down, and then you go back and say, okay, does this match what I've just read? And then you say yes and you discuss it. Then you go to the next. and that process, it totally puts your brain into one of the most highly resilient states that you can get. It calms down your brain, the neurochemistry, the blood flow balances the two sides of the brain, increases your gamma activity, which in the right way, which is what you want, because it pulls stuff from the non-conscious to the conscious, and it also gets you into a state where you are like a sponge to learn. And when you get into that state, your brain goes into a tremendous state of brain health. It's like your brain loves like literally your brain is in love with brain building. I should say that in the book. And so you now feel a sense of peace and excitement and wisdom. And as I'm brain building, suddenly I'll put my often happens as I'm doing the brain building, the metacog, the neurocog, as I'm doing that, suddenly I'll get to a point, ah, that's the solution. And I feel it's a sense of peace and I can go and handle that situation. So I've trained myself to do that. I don't, as far as possible, try and solve a crisis unless you have to solve it on the spot. But I try to always stand back and say, okay, I need a bit of time. I'm going to go and calm down. I'm going to go and do even this kind of thing that we do now is brain building.
Brain building. Learning.
It's learning. And it's very, and it's if, and if you look in my, in my book on to pick chapter 14, I actually have my daily routine. I don't even want to talk about that now in another thing, but brain building is one of the first things.
I do in the so.
And I do. Yeah. What is, what's the best thing to.
Do for yourself at night to, to clean out the mental mess? So the best thing to do at night is to start in the morning.
So when you wake up, it sets the tone for the day. So you want to keep, you don't have a negative attitude in the morning.
Catch it early. Catch it early and then catch it.
During the course of the day. So sleep prep starts in the AM and you've got to do a check-in at lunchtime as well. So I do that every So it really does, it starts, I mean, I wake up and I check immediately self-regulate, immediately mind my man, what's my mood, what's my mindset? And if it's complaining or negative or I'm worrying, I catch it immediately. I work out why. I do a quick neurocycling month. It takes me two minutes. I do it so quickly. Immediately go into brain with my coffee. Obviously, I will do some brain building, even if it's 15 minutes. And then I will start, you know, getting ready and doing the detoxing. during the course of the day, I'll take periods where I'll do Tinker Moments. And Tinker Moments are when you activate what we call the default mode network in your brain, which is very important to restore energy, restore balance, just to keep being reset. We've got to reset. And the Tinker Moment, you can reset in a few seconds. And it's great to have a 10-minute block if you can during the course of the day, preferably in the sunshine if you can. And all you do there is Daydream. You literally close your eyes, switch off external, switch on to the internal and just let your mind have a bit of a rest. And that is very, very powerful. There's tons more I can say about that. And it is in the book, but that's like another two hour discussion. But it is so powerful. Thinker moments are unbelievably restorative.
So I make. What do you call it?
What moments? Think.
Thinker moments.
Thinker moments. Thinker.
T-H-I-N-K-E-R.
Thinker.
Thinker moments. Thinker moments.
Sorry.
It sounds like an American over here.
Here. Yeah. There we go. I have to go American thinker.
We go to the Dallas. Dallas.
Yeah. I'll have to get the point. I did two English. Instead of thinker.
Thinker.
Yeah. Thinker.
Thinker.
So that's the moment. Yeah. It's basically switching off to the external, switching on to the internal, allowing thoughts to move through your mind, daydreaming. You find out then what's going on. What are you actually thinking about? What's dominant? What are the patterns? Phenomenally powerful. That's another whole long discussion, but I'll make sure that I do those frequently and I try and take a 10 minute break in the middle of the day where I do that. And then at night time before I go to sleep, I will, there's other stuff I do, it's in the book, but it's in that chapter 14. But just before I go to sleep, I will make sure I do a whole check, also using the neuro cycle. What are my emotions? What are my signals? What am I thinking on? What am I reflecting on? And get all done and okay, this is what worrying me, this is worrying me, this is worrying me, I'm feeling this and feeling that. So I do the neuro cycle and I get to the active reach. where, okay, I can't fix this now, but this is what I can do. Type it in my phone. I'll do this tomorrow. I'll do this. This is a solution here. That day. So I get my little solutions. Takes me five minutes and I calm down and I'll watch a movie, like friends or something. That's been my obsession lately. Watching it. Friends before bed or something. Fun, relaxing. And, you know, they fall asleep. And that. And then, as I said earlier on, I'm busy now with a. setting up a research study on dreams and how you can actually, there's a lot of research showing how you can actually prepare yourself for dreaming. Because dreaming is restorative and you're learning more and more about dreaming. And so I want to start doing that because you can actually, especially people that battle with nightmares and nightmares and nightmares and nightmares and because it's all just your mind processing because your mind's processing during the day. So it's to try and help People find more information there, whatever. But I always find that helps to prepare myself for sleep.
That's beautiful. And if you guys want us to do another episode on dream states, then leave the hashtag dreams below as well in the comments on YouTube, just so we can see how many people are interested in that. Again, put a hashtag relationships. You want to learn more about that. This has been fascinating. Hopefully next time we can do it in person.
If you're coming to LA, we'd love to have you.
Yes.
It'll be so nice in you know, and you've got to come on my podcast as well. We can just keep the series going. I mean, yours, mine, yours, mine, yours, mine. It's just so great. I have the best discussions with you.
It's been beautiful. We've covered a lot today, and I want to, I want to wrap things up here. But if we could, if, if someone could pull one thing from this, we covered a lot, but if we could do one thing where they can Implement moving forward, just one thing, or one thing they could think about differently, definitely to help improve the quality of life. What would that one thing be based on what we talked about?
I would say to understand the concept that your mind is not your brain and your mind changes your brain. And that based on that, what I've been saying throughout this interview, you can't change what's happened to you, but you can change what's happening in you. You have that power. And I think just that awareness, if people can start developing that awareness, they get a 20 minute empowerment. They're on the pathway. clean out.
That's beautiful. You've got an incredible book. It's been spreading all over the world in a beautiful way. It's called Cleaning Up youp Mental Mess, five simple, scientifically proven steps to reduce anxiety, stress, and toxic thinking that people can dive into. It's extremely practical, but it's got all of the neuroscience and the research backing everything on how you can apply these simple steps into your life under these stressful overwhelming moments that we all have faced and hopefully give you a lot more clarity and peace. So, make sure you guys get a few copies of the book. It's powerful. I really like it, cleaning up your mental mess. Also, I'm excited to check out your app, NeuroCycle. I haven't downloaded it yet, so I'm.
Going to download it right after this. Make sure you guys download the app.
That'S in the App Store, I'm assuming.
Yeah, iTunes, Google Play, yeah, it's all over the place. And, it's getting updated.
And, you're the voice, huh? You're the one who's... I'm the voice. It's my creation. It's my baby. I do all of it.
So, it's no one else. It's amazing. I have a team of engineers, obviously, but I do all the talking.
Do the content.
Yeah.
So, we can download NeuroCycle, the app, and also your podcast, which is cleaning up the mental mess.
Yeah, same name as the book.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Lots of more great stuff there. We also had another interview that has blown up over on YouTube and on audio. So, if you guys want to listen to that or watch that, we'll link it up as and I asked you your three truths and your definition of greatness the last time. So, if you guys want to hear what those are, make sure you go check out the previous episode as well. And, I want to acknowledge again, Dr. Caroline Leaf for showing up so brilliantly. You've got decades, almost four decades of wisdom and research and case studies and experience in this field and so powerful, the way you explain it, the way you articulate it, the way you simplify challenging concepts that seem so overwhelming with examples, with models, with, you know, props. You're just making it easier for, for people like myself to understand how to manage our mind and master our mind. So I appreciate any knowledge for the gift you are in this world. And I'm excited to do more of this with you and help more people together.
Thank you so much. It's very kind. Thank you.
Of course. My final question for you is.
What'S.
The thing that you hope to improve more on in your life the rest of this year?
I have to get a mastery of it being able to help people see the importance of mind and understand mind. So diving into more research studies, finding easy ways to explain this because I just know if we can get people to understand how their mind works and how to manage it, we're going to have a better world. We're going to start being able to give these social constructs and things that are damaging the world like racism and just the competitiveness and the hatred and the wrong narratives around mental health that are damaging so many people. I just want people to be able to shift. So that's really, I'm so driven to get that message through. So thank you for being able to help me to do that. So, and I, by the way, think you're amazing. I mean, what you've gone through and how you've turned that around how you express yourself. You're phenomenal.
Thank you. Thank you. Always learning, always growing. I appreciate it.
I see that.
Well, Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you so much for being here. I was always excited to have you back on. Thank you.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
It's just a practice of being thoughtful about what I put in my mouth.
What I put on my body, and people go, Isn't that hard?
And I'm like, Being sick is hard. That's hard.
This is easy.
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