If You FEEL LOST In Life, Watch This To CHANGE EVERYTHING! | Lewis Howes & Caroline Leaf

When I feel stuck or when I feel like, man, I'm really struggling in this relationship, I have coaches in every area of my life. So for me, I want to have accountability and support on different levels of my life. And I think the emotional and mental level is the most important because I.

Think you got to have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

Lewis, I've been looking forward to this interview. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I'm going to have so much fun letting you answer the questions. And every time we have a talk to each other, that's always these amazing in-depth conversations. And you're really one of my favorite people to talk to and interview. I appreciate it.

Yeah, the last couple of interviews we've had, people are fascinated. They want more from us. So I'm excited to chat more.

I'm so excited as well. Well, Louis, people have heard your bio and it's phenomenal. And you just are one of those people that really touches other people's lives. you, there's so much to ask you, but I want to start right at the top with your, you know, your school of greatness. And just let's, and there's so much to unpack from there. You've got some great stories and you've got the story about your dad and I know your childhood and football and morning routines and there's a million things I want to ask you. So, but let's start at the top that you've got the school of greatness going and I know everyone asked you that, but I think it's really worthwhile exploring, you know, what is it? Why did you do it? What What was the thinking behind starting the School of Greatness?

My mind wasn't right as a kid. I felt a lot of stress and anxiety, worry, fear, uncertainty. Loneliness was something that I always felt. I was always seeking answers. I was seeking the reason why I was here, seeking the reason why things were the way they were, why there was injustice in my life, why I felt like, why am I suffering? Why do I feel these things? and how come I don't know how to get out of them? Sports became an outlet for me early on to get the emotions out of me. The anger, resentment, the fear. I felt like it was a place I could channel my emotions in a contained, structured, healthy place. Because without sports, I was exploding my emotions everywhere around me. I was reactive as a child. I was lashing out. I used to steal a lot. I used to lie. I used to, you know, cheat on homework. I mean, I was just doing things that I wasn't, that I'm not proud of now, but as a kid, I was doing things to because I didn't know how to channel the emotions. I didn't know how to feel properly. I didn't know how to find my own sense of peace. And I think I was just constantly seeking truth, seeking the answers. And sports became an outlet for me to like learn discipline, learn about showing up on time, learn about consistency, learning about setting goals, learning about getting feedback from coaches, learning about working with a team. in interacting with the team, learning about overcoming challenging moments, overcoming losses and how to do that. And it taught me a lot, but I felt like there was still much more missing in my life that school didn't educate me on. You know, school teaches us so many skills, but not the skills of life necessarily. Maybe you learn them throughout by interacting with friends and this and that, but it didn't teach me the things that I felt like were the hardest to understand. which is how to overcome loss, how to overcome heartache, how to deal with being humiliated and embarrassed, how do I get myself back up, how about how to build confidence, about how to deal with the uncertainty of life, about how to get my mind right, about how to be selfless, about how to be of service. Like it didn't teach me the things that I wish I would have learned. And so when I turned about 30 years old, I said, I want to create a school for myself, a school that I wish I would have learned these things growing up. School of Greatness. And that's kind of became my mission over the last eight and a half years was how can I started in kind of the sports mindset, how can I find the greatest athletes and coaches in the world and learn more from them and teach it to myself and to others? But then I became fascinated by spiritual leaders and business leaders and neuroscientists like yourself that I was just like, I need to learn about the mind, about the emotions, about the heart, about things to really help me heal the past, not just ultra performance, but also healing, which was a big part of my story as well.

Oh, I love that. I love the fact that it was performance, but it was healing as the foundation and how you've sprungboarded from as a place as a child and you raised that relevant point of you didn't get taught that at school. And if you think of it, Louis, how many, this is something I've been advocating for for years. And then when I was working in school systems and training teachers and things like that, I would bring in sessions, but it was such a fight to get them in. But to try and bring in a regular weekly or couple of sessions a week where you teach children about emotional health and all the things you've just described. It should be part of, like you go to math and you go to, you know, learn social studies and things. You learn emotional health. It's so important.

Amazing. It can be amazing.

Yeah, but so important. It's such an, and you've interviewed so many people. I've interviewed so many people and there's always that consistent line, I wish I had learned this as a child. So it's like we know it, why aren't we doing it? So yeah, so your School of Greatness is really dealing with helping people that have probably everyone listening to you, I'm sure is feeling, Hey, I needed that.

I wish I'd got that at school.

Yeah.

And I think healing is something that it's funny, I was interviewing Dr. Wendy Suzuki. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her. She's a neuroscientist at, I think, New York University. Yes, I've heard of her work.

Yeah.

She's got a book that's coming out called Good anxiety. And she teaches, she works in the neuroscience department in psychology, I guess, at New York University. And she was talking about how for, I think, her, she was talking about for her entire adult life, she never said, I love you to her parents. And they never said, I love you to her. It was kind of this Japanese cultural thing. Grew up in this kind of dynamic. And she was like, I remember as a child, you know, they would put me to sleep and they would kiss me. And I think they said, I love to you. But as adults, we just didn't do it until eventually my father had dementia. And I thought to myself, you know, I really want to say I love you to my father and my parents. And, you know, I think there are certain things that we are taught culturally or we're just taught by friends that shut us down in school or we don't feel like because of societal challenges, we can't do certain things that maybe she didn't feel like she needed to heal from that. But that's really like, you've got to learn how to heal something from the past that wasn't there. and start something new that takes courage. For her, it took me so much courage to just ask them, Can I say I love you after I call you every week? And then have the courage to do this. And I think we've got to learn how to heal certain things in order to have that courage. Because otherwise, I know for myself, without having the ability to heal, I lack the courage to reveal myself, to share my shame, to talk about insecurities, fears, doubts, because I really hadn't healed those things yet. And when I really started my healing journey eight and a half years ago of the different parts of my life that I wasn't proud of, the things that I was so afraid, I was like, if people knew this about me, no one would love me. No one would accept me. No one would want to be around me. No one would like me. And those fears were really traumas that I felt like I needed to heal. And I just didn't know how to. I didn't know the process. of will I still be accepted when I start to share these things? Will my family and friends still like me and love me when I start to reveal the parts of myself that are the darkest, ugliest parts? And in fact, the opposite happened when I started to overcome that and start to talk about it and heal, I had stronger connections, stronger relationships, and I had more peace in my heart than ever before. It's definitely been a journey. And I think it's important for all of us to be lifelong learners. And for me, this is just as much for helping others people as it is for me learning. Like when I have you on, I learn so much about, you know, the way my brain and mind works and how it's all connected. So I think that, that this process has been an incredible journey for me to just have more love for myself. And I think that's, we don't, we're not taught how to love ourselves the right way, I think.

So you've hit the nail on the head there. You said so many profound things now that I've been taught to love ourselves and. that healing, how you had fear that people wouldn't accept you, that they would reject you once you started talking about your story and what happened and how you felt. And look how you started off so eloquently explaining that because of that root and that's what you were trying to do. And then when you accepted it and you went to a whole process and this, and you've now channeled all of that into your School of Greatness and your books and your podcast, and now you reach millions and help people and your message is so profound in that you're telling people to... Because everyone's saying love each other, love yourself and love your dendi. But people don't know how to do it. So you obviously did it. And so here's my big... Very, okay. So here's my big question. What did you do?

What did I not do? I've tried everything to continue to learn. I think if I kind of analyze.

It... That's a good answer. Sorry, Louis, that's a great answer. What did I not do? And you emphasize the learning. Sorry, I didn't want to interrupt you.

But I wanted to just hone on that. The learning side. So good. Absolutely. I'm constantly still learning. You know, there's things, there's different seasons of life that bring me back to a place of like maybe frustration or a little bit of stuckness or a little bit of like, oh, this anxiety or low level energy or whatever you want to call it, negative states that I have to constantly learn, okay, this is a different level for me. And I'm feeling this. I need to learn how to go back to the basics. I need to learn a new strategy, a new technique for this season of my life, for this level of pressure or situation or whatever it might be, or relationship that I've never been in. I've got to learn now how to overcome this, how to step back into peace, into acceptance, into self-love, what my values and my vision are, and lean forward into that, not based on a reactive state or a suffering state. And so the process has been many things. many different emotional intelligence workshops, working with different therapists throughout the years based on different situations that I've needed to learn how to heal and break through, whether it be the past, whether it be inner, what is it called? Inner child? Yeah, inner child.

Inner child. So something you said as you've had as an experience as an inner child and going back as the adult to that point and giving yourself permission. Oh, that's cute.

I've got a photo of myself when I was like five or six because I started doing this one in about six months ago when I started working with a new therapist. that helped me reconnect to my inner child of just like not abandoning myself in certain situations in my life and like, what would my younger self need in this moment? And so it's just constantly evolving and trying new strategies and not being afraid to explore these things. You know, if you had asked me 10 years ago, would I want to do these things, I would say, no, I feel like I, I know this stuff already. Like, I've got results in my life. I'm achieving, I'm making money, I'm accomplishing. But it's really because at this level I've accomplished so much, I feel like I need to continue to go back to the basics and learn even more. And I can learn from anyone and learn from everyone. And so I'm constantly, I'm always like, there's nothing that I haven't heard that I don't need to re-hear again or need to relearn again or be reminded of again. So I'm constantly in a process of learning growth and application and implementation or integration. So eight and a half years ago, I started the journey of healing and talking about being sexually abused as a child. And for 25 years, I didn't tell anyone because I was so afraid that if anyone knew this, I thought I was the only one, the only guy in the world that had ever been sexually abused because I didn't see it anywhere, I didn't see men talking about it. And I didn't know I would ever be accepted or I'd belong anywhere if people knew this about me. So I think I was just afraid. and I didn't know a strategy on how to talk about it. Once I started kind of sharing the biggest shame and thing that I wanted to heal, it became easier to start talking about everything else that I was not proud of or ashamed of in my life. And that has just been a constant process of workshops, therapists, experiences, just being open to learning from different people. and it's been a beautiful journey. So, and the podcast has been a great therapy for me because I'm constantly learning how to improve and, and putting myself on the line and holding myself.

Accountable and responsible for growth as well.

Oh, I love that.

You've, you've just given, you've just poured out, like, buckets of wisdom there. And, you know, you've, you've touching on the, the sexual trauma. I remember in one of our interviews, we interviewed me, you brought up a little bit of that. You were talking a little bit about that, and that's, it's, you say something there, there's a couple of things I just want to hone in on. you talked about how once you started sharing that story, how then it led to you being able to share other parts of your life and how it helped people to so. And that's so important that we, it's volcanic in nature. And that's something that you and I discussed. Remember, I showed you my toxic tree. Yes. And that's the trauma and it when she builds up and, and it's so often the interpretation of the trauma is that you look at yourself as I'm the only one and I deserve the pain or whatever.

All these distortions that one has. I'm not worthy of love or I'm.

Not going to be good enough or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And how that invades, like a virus will spread. It spreads into so many areas of your life. And that you spoke earlier at the beginning of the interview about your behavior patterns as a child. Now, when did the sexual abuse occur? What age were you at when it was five?

It only happened once and it was five. Yeah. Wow.

And it was, that's when your life started changing as well. You started, you had all this energy.

And, I mean, it was one of the first memories that I have, you know, it's like I have maybe like A handful of memories before then, but that was one of the first memories. I'm not sure how, you know, I know that we remember the positive moments, like the big moments in positive way and the negative moments in a big way, obviously. But I feel like we are probably more connected to the negative moments because of the trauma that they build or the pain and the scars they leave. And so for me, it was something that I thought of every single, I think I thought of it every single day, if not every other day for 25 years. until it's, I felt like it was spreading like a virus in my body and also spreading emotionally and energetically when I felt like I was being abused, when I felt like there was something unfair against me, when I felt like someone was taking advantage of me, when it felt like that type of abuse was reoccurring. And it could have been something so small and insignificant to someone else, but to me it felt like someone was trying to kill me. And again, there wasn't a strategy that I learned as a child on how to cope and heal. And I'm assuming this is why I channeled it into sports. I channeled it into an obsession of being the best I could be as an athlete. I'm grateful that I actually had examples in my life of people that had done drugs or done alcohol that their life didn't turn out well, bad things happened. And so I saw that and I was like, okay, I don't want that, so I need to figure out something else in my life. So whether it was an obsession or an addiction to be an athlete, I channeled it there in a healthier version, but it still wasn't coming from a place of love. It was coming from a place of anger and let me prove people wrong and let me protect myself. So I'm, I'm of the believer that anger is the second most powerful fuel in the world. It can have you build and create incredible things, but it's so destructive internally that I never felt fulfilled when I would accomplish all these big goals. When I'd prove everyone wrong, I was like, but why am I so unhappy? Why am I so unfulfilled? Why do I feel like I'm suffering inside? It was never enough, no matter how much I accomplished. And that's why I'm such a big believer that service and love is the greatest fuel above anger or hurt pain. There's this fuel and the desire to serve at a higher level and create from a place of love and inspiration is this renewable energy that I have now where I can sleep at night easily. I can wake up and feel refreshed because I have a more meaningful mission and purpose as opposed to I want to prove these five people wrong in my childhood that hurt me. mentality. It's been a great, I'm so grateful for the awareness that I had when it took 30, when I turned 30, and I'm going to need lots of more awareness, you know, every season of my life. So I want to continue to evolve. So I'm just grateful for it all.

Yeah, it's incredible how you've taken that experience and you've managed to, to understand it, but, and to chance. So initially you channeled it, and you said that, like, as a child, you know, without the training, we spoke about this earlier on, what do you do with that? And one in 12 children are going through things that, and it's being undetected by parents and leaders, teachers, pediatricians, one in 12 kids. So every 12 kid is, and that doesn't mean that the other 11 aren't suffering. They're all suffering as well. And, and, but it's like the big stuff and they literally not going to, it's not being detected. So kids are going into adulthood with these traumas and not knowing what to do with them. And as you quite, you know, you said there's this excess energy because it's volcanic in nature and it's toxic and it's exploding in all these wrong areas. And yes, you achieved as a football player and you did brilliantly and you were doing well, but inside the piece wasn't there because the volcano was still... Yeah, so it was just a volcano keeping you going, but it wasn't... The volcano eventually had to finish erupting and then the lava had to cool down so that the grass could be enriched by the minerals and then grow back again. And that's what you've done. You're kind of in the stage of your life now where the volcano has finally stopped exploding. and you now, when the larvae cool down and there's all this green grass growing over because the soil is more enriched than it was before, which is what happens with volcanoes. And that's an analogy, but in your brain as well, you actually really did reconstruct and deconstruct. But look at how for years you were, this thing generates the wrong fuel, it's the wrong energy, and energy's never lost, it's transferred. So you naturally, as a child, just transferred it. But you saw, I'll transfer it there, I won't do the drugs, I won't do the, which can so easily happen.

Yes.

But you still didn't have the peace. And the peace came once you recognized, you had to recognize the source and reconstruct that. So it was your reconstruction, if I'm hearing what you're saying, is through the learning that you've done. You were aware of your incorrect interpretation. You were aware of the trauma. You knew where it came from. You could analyze the behaviors. You could see what you were doing. But it wasn't until you actually reconstructed, deconstructed and reconstructed, and kind of left the past behind because you couldn't change what happened to you, but you changed what was in you and you moved into a new future. And now that new future is filled with wisdom. Because when you spoke earlier on about the fact that you keep learning, it's like literally the wisdom cycle. The wisest people recognize, I really need to learn more. And, you know, there's that, I need more knowledge to get more understanding. And it leads to another level of wisdom, which is, oh, wow, I need more. And you've reached, you know, you're in that cycle and that cycle is in itself healing. And then because you're overflowing, because your, your brain and your body, and I know we've discussed this before, but your brain and your body or neurophysiology or psycho neuro biology is wired for love. So all the structures, the proteins, the, the optimism, but we, we, we drawn to fixing the imbalances to, because they, they are threatening our survival. They're threatening that love. And that's what you, you had drawn in that full circle to, to restoring that balance. And you recognize all your warning signals, which were telling you, hey, volcanoes exploding, there's the smoke. And you took those signals and you actually deconstructed and reconstructed and it's led you to this point of I need to learn more, which is amazing. I mean, that is really, I'm saying everything that you said because I really want, I hear it myself because I teach it, but hearing it from you, it's just been amazing. But people need to hear this. It's not just gonna go away. And at some point, you have to leave the past behind. You have to honor that it's happened. I mean, there's no lesson to learn from being raped. as a child, there's no lesson, but there's healing that needs to take place. And there's a point where if you're going to move into the future in a constructive way, you have to immerse yourself in the reconstruction process, which is love is. And then, and eventually then exudes love. So you've wired, you've reconstructed it into, into the healthy tree, and it's now changed. And now you're operating in the foundations of love, which is bringing all that healing back into your brain and your body and goes with the wisdom. So I mean, I just, it makes me excited. When I, when I hear you talk like that, I just get so excited because you're You just explain what what we need to do. It's just amazing. It can be done.

And I think some people might say, well, you know, if we wanted to question ourselves and ask, well, why is this pain happening or why did this trauma happen? I just try to find the meaning on how I can have deeper empathy and compassion and channel it and channel it through me, through my heart into love, into service.

What you've just said is so powerful.

Yeah.

That's that's what I try to do. There's there's no There's no reason why we need to go through these certain things, in my opinion, except for pain brings us wisdom if we are willing to recognize it and be aware of it. And hopefully that wisdom gives us more compassion and empathy for others that we could then help and support others through something like that is really all the meaning I can think of for it.

You know what? That is Mike Drop stuff because that is a profoundly simple truth that you have, but it's so profound that if people get that, that is because that you said three things that are profound. Number one, if you ask, why? Why did that person rape me? Why did I have that experience? Why me and not someone else? Why didn't I get protected?

Why, why, why?

We, yes, we, to a certain extent, need to ask those questions, but you're.

Never going to get those answers.

You're going to suffer.

Yes.

It creates so much trauma itself because you're not going to get the answers. So the next thing is to, that's the deconstruction, to reconstruct it and to say, okay, well, how can I take what do I want to do? How do I want it to look in my future? And you've said empathy, compassion, helping others, learning more, getting wisdom, sharing your knowledge, which is so you've reconstructed, you've done a complete conceptualization. And as you said, there's not a lesson to be learned from that pain. I mean, you can't, how do you learn from a rape, but you can, you can, you've got to heal from it. And then the healing is the lesson.

Yeah, the healing, the forgiveness, the, the acceptance of the past and saying, what can I do to have a greater future for myself and to help others have a greater future around me. And I think that's why I feel like I sleep so well at night now is because, whereas before I wasn't able to, before I started healing and started talking about these things, because... Talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, until I was 30.

It would take me an hour, hour and a half to sleep at night. I would sit there, I would lay there, I would try to go to bed early, I would go to bed late, I would do all these things. And I just felt like I was constantly in this anxious state of mind of, and I wasn't even thinking about, like, childhood trauma, but I was just more, like, anxious. Yeah, I was just, like, stressed, anxious. I was, like, beating myself up. I was thinking I was not worthy. I think I needed to do more to, like, gain love from people or whatever. Whatever it might have been or just analyzing the day of what I did wrong or what I could have done differently. But now I. I really think about a few things at night.

I.

Well, first I have a foundation now of healing because I've been doing the work, so I. I've healed the past, I've forgiven everyone in my past, and I've forgiven myself, which I think is the most important person to forgive. And then I think about, I just try to keep it so simple. Because I have that foundation, I try to think about three things I'm grateful for from the day. Even if it's a horrible day, I'm like, what are the three things I'm grateful for? And I know we've talked about this before, but that gratitude allows me to have perspective at the end of the day, as opposed to focusing on all the horrible things or the bad stuff. It brings me back to perspective that my life is amazing, even if it's horrible. My life is amazing, even if it's the worst day ever and everything's against me and I lose all my money and something else bad happens, it's still incredible compared to most people. Or I can always find someone who's got a worse off life than me. I'm a physical, I'm able bodied, my mind is here, I've got people in my life, I've got a roof over my head, Even when everything is against me, my life is amazing with the right perspective. And so it's finding those three things every night to be grateful for. Then I think about what am I going to do tomorrow to serve people? How am I going to make someone's life better tomorrow? And that puts me into just a positive state of mind of like, okay, I'm not ruminating on the past and I'm not uncertain about the future. I am like, okay, I know what I'm going to do because I have a meaningful mission in my life right now. And if you don't have a, you know, if you're not in the career or the relationship that you want right now, or if you're not in a place where you want right now, you can still think about like who's my friend or my family member that I want to give a call and be a good listener to or a supportive individual to tomorrow. And when I focus out, when I focus on service, it just brings me more peace and joy. And so most in the past, I used to be thinking about myself. what do I need more for me to feel good? What do I need for this? Like, what am I not getting as opposed to how can I be of service to someone else? And that level of service brings me a lot more joy and fulfillment and peace. So it's just things I think about.

Wow, that's amazing. When did you make that transformation from the healing of what do I need.

For me to the shift of how.

Can I pay it forward?

This is about eight years ago. Yeah, eight years ago that started. that process. And it's been a game changer for me because I remember within the first few months of starting this process, I was like, wow, I can now sleep at night. I can put my, I never used to be able to put my head down and sleep in five to ten minutes. It always take an hour, it felt like.

And did you wake up during the night? Ah, did you have disturbed sleep or nightmares?

I can't, I can't remember if I wake up a lot or not. I think I Once I fell asleep, I think I was asleep, but I would wake up anxious too. And I don't wake up anxious, I wake up excited and peaceful. You know, it's like, it's like a transformation.

Yes.

Yes. So my body would sleep, 'cause I also worked out very hard. So I was like, I was tired, but my mind was racing. And so now I feel like I'm able to calm my mind and sleep when I want to.

And that's come from the healing. It's come from facing the stuff.

Yes, absolutely.

Looking at the volcano, getting the volcano to finish exploding and doing a complete reconstruction. So that healing work took you from, and when you were, sorry to interrupt, but when you were in that healing work, were you very absorbed in what do I need or were you, as you were healing, did you find the shift happening from, okay, this is what I need, but how can I pay this forward? Because there's a definite shift that has occurred.

I think that evolved in a process of months. It wasn't like overnight. I remember when I started the healing process, I would say I was analytical and emotionally analytical, I guess, as well. I was feeling, I was processing, I was journaling, I was writing letters.

Yeah, I was getting it all.

Yeah, I was getting it all up. And so it was a process of self-reflection, of therapy, of interaction, of experiences. It took months of processing and integrating it. into practice. I would say that whole process probably took for me 9 to 12 months to the point where I would speak about it every other day to either a friend, a therapist or a peer because I wanted to integrate it and not just do it once and be like, okay, I'm done because I knew that was going to work for me. I said, I need to talk about this as frequently as often Until it doesn't make me stutter or doesn't make my heartbeat or doesn't make me cry. Because I felt like, you know, I can still have a tender feelings around, you know, what happened to my child itself. But when I talk, yeah, but when I talk about it, it doesn't consume me and make me, like, shut down or make me, you know, scared because. So it took probably 9 to 12 months of processing.

Shifted agency back to yourself.

Yeah, and I was committed though. I was like, I'm willing to take feedback. I'm willing to learn. I'm willing to look stupid. I'm willing to do whatever to find peace. And I think my willingness was a big factor in seeking out the right advice, seeking out the right counselors to people to really guide me, and then showing up and doing the work and being like, okay, who do I need to talk to? and having conversations with all my family members to help me process it. Okay, now my family has to accept me and love me, but I don't feel comfortable telling a friend. So I was like, okay, I got a lot of work to do. So it's starting to tell my best friends and then, okay, well my friends like me, but, you know, I couldn't tell an industry peer because they would never work with me again. And then I was like, okay, well that means I gotta lean into it. And I started talking to it, to Pierce. For me, this was my process. I'm not saying this needs to be everyone's process. And then I was like, okay, I can talk to anyone about this, but I felt afraid to open up on kind of my platform, my podcast about this. And I went back and forth on this. I was like, well, maybe it's not the place for this. And I didn't feel like I had to, but I felt like for me, it was a bigger part of my process. If I wanted to be a leader in the world, if I wanted to inspire more people, I was like, I really need to be extremely vulnerable for myself to take myself to the next level. and I was like, okay, and this may ruin my whole business and my career if I share these things. It was the fear was, well people.

Like- and the dominance.

Yeah, well people listen, you know, or are they gonna just laugh at me or something? And things actually accelerated and grew from that point when I revealed myself because people were like, oh, I trust you more. I feel like you're more real. You're not hiding something. And that was a big eye-opener for me where vulnerability became something that connected me to friends, family, you know, people who are listening or watching, I connected more, didn't actually hurt me. It actually supported both of our ability to grow. And that's been a, so that's been a beautiful journey, but I wasn't taught that as a kid to be vulnerable and to share your shame, you know, as young boys in our society, we're not taught those things. And in fact, when you show any type of emotion around those things, or like you're going to communicate some of that stuff with your friends in elementary, middle, or high school, It's kind of like you're shunned and you're shamed and you're pushed away and you're called names.

And you're- Man up and all that kind of toxic masculinity.

Exactly. So, you know, whether or not we're taught these things, our friend groups in general don't accept or tolerate these things. So we're taught not to from our peers. You know, it took me years of peeling back and unconditioning to kind of realize, well, that's not the way.

You just unpacked like neuroscience 101 with your whole story. As you're talking, I'm just thinking, wow, you know, there's just such a great way of explaining everything that you've done was just so, first of all, the time. I'm so glad you said it took time and for you, nine to 12 months, but that was just the catalyst. That was the foundation.

And now I'm still doing it.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So you're still going. So there's the time factor because that's one of the things that a lot of people will feel when they're going through stuff, this is ever going to end. you know, so the time and then also the willingness to do the hard work. I mean, you've put in hours upon hours upon hours and you gave you were okay with recognizing, okay, this is who I am. This is and you started that process of looking at the signals and looking at all the data and all the emotions and all the how you interpreted your life and you did all that hard work to find the source and the roots and the origin and what it meant. And as you did that, you weakened that in your brain because as soon as we are aware of these things, as soon as we do the work you've described, you're pulling this thought, this protein structure up from your brain. You're pulling the DNA. You're shifting the DNA in every one of the 37 to 100 trillion cells of your body. You're changing all the energy waves in your brain, and you're giving yourself agency. You're shifting from this controlling you to you controlling that. But the deconstruction that you describe and the reconstruction was time consuming and hard work. There was no five steps, magic steps.

There was no.

Energy, different people, different mediums, different ways of doing it, different processes, different. And it's just to never give up. You just. And you kept on progressing forward and giving. And that. I'm not saying this because people need to hang into the fact that maybe you're in the middle, maybe someone listening is in the middle or the beginning of this process. It's encouraging to know that it's. It's.

It's a process of keep on learning. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's been the key for me. It's like. When I think I've mastered something, go back to the basics. I've been salsa dancing for the last 16 years pretty intensely. And I've traveled the world. I've been to the best salsa clubs. I've danced with the best people. And it's been an obsession. It was an obsession for many years when I got started because I lived above a jazz club in Columbus, Ohio. And I was 22 years old. And once a week, they would have a live salsa band come down and all the salsa dancers in Columbus would come out and and dance to the live music. And I would go down and I would be mesmerized by these, mostly the mostly Latin community that were dancing. And I was just like, this is unbelievable. I don't think I could ever do this. But I was so fascinated by the way these people moved and the way they connected to the music and the way the energy. So every week I would go down, I would go down every week and watch and sit in the corner and literally, well, I was the tall, white, creepy dude that would just stand there and like watch. But I would never dance because I was so scared and so intimidated. And a lot of the regulars got to know me and I got to become friends with some of the individuals and some of the women would be like, well, come dance with us. Come dance. I was like, no, I don't want to make, I don't want to make you look bad. But after three months of doing this, I went, I started dancing. Someone finally dragged me on the dance floor. I started to dance. I was humiliated, embarrassed, not because anyone was laughing at me, because I just felt so incapable compared to everyone else. But that's when that's when things is very hard on myself. But that's when things switched. I was like, okay, I got through the humiliation phase. I went out there. No one cared that I was looked like a fool. They're all just dancing. No one looked at me. No one cared. So let me go all in on this. I went all in on this for, I don't know, a few years. I was taking lessons. I was group classes, traveling, just learning and dancing. and I would do this. And then I went through phases. Some years I was doing, I was dancing for six months, then I wouldn't dance for six months, and I kind of hit or miss some years. But for 16 years, I've been pretty passionate about it. For two years, though, I didn't dance until about six months ago, partly because of the pandemic and, and I just kind of fell out of it for a little bit. And I said to myself a few months back, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go and become a beginner again, because even though I've you know, at a certain level, Mastered Salsa. I'm gonna go back and take one-on-one lessons from a top Pro. And I went back and started taking lessons from someone here in La who's amazing. And I felt like I didn't know how to dance. Like, she was teaching me Basics, and I was so off. I was just like. And so for me, whenever you feel like you've mastered something, this is my analogy here. But whenever you feel like you've mastered something, I think it's always important to go back to the basics, the foundation, and. And relearn. The basics, because now it's making me a better dancer, not by learning the advanced strategies, but by going back to the basics.

I absolutely love what you've said. And it's a principle that I apply in my scientific work, too. And as soon as I think, okay, now this is what I understand, I realize, oh, gosh, back to back to the go back to the beginning and start again and reevaluate. And I'm so thank you for bringing that up. That's such an incredible analogy. And, and the beauty of that is that we should do that because that's how we learn. We are like researchers. We don't know, we scientists, we are constantly hypothesizing and changing and growing. But if you think you've known it, you've blocked off a whole learning experience. So it's going back to the null hypothesis, basically the null hypothesis going right back to square one and starting all over again. And you know that that's a tactic that's employed by the CIA intelligence as well. It's one of their thinking strategies that when you're trying to solve something and you can't solve it, you actually have to throw everything out, everything that you've done, and you've got to go back and assume that you know absolutely nothing. And then you build from there again, and that's your analogy. That's what you basically did. And that principle as well, when you talk about detoxing on mind, which is what you did, you also basically applied that. If I listen to everything you've said in our previous conversations, you've basically applied that in your life too, because you looked at, you thought, okay, I've got to start from the beginning. What is the root? You went right back to the to that starting point and reconstructed your life. So that is amazing, which is, and that's a principle that's very difficult to do. Look at the effort that's gone into that. And in this quick fix mentality age that we're in, people want a quick fix. And what we both saying over here to all of you listening and watching is there is no quick fix. If you're looking for one, you're not ever going to feel peace. And that's another thing you stress a lot, Lewis, is that sense of peace. And I love that about you because it's something that I believe so strongly in as well. When people say, and it's for ultimate happiness or whatever. I always say peace is the key thing for me. I want peace and peace is that measure because from peace you can then recognize whatever, because life is never going to be one big walk in the park. It's not utopia. Life is real and things happen. And so that sense of peace in the midst of chaos is the ultimate what we want to achieve. The ultimate.

I think it's the ultimate in relationships. It's the ultimate in your career. It's the ultimate in life. If someone's cutting you off in the street, it's like, Learning to become peaceful in your authentic power and not to shy away from something, but to observe situations has been an incredible gift that I've learned and I want to keep learning and mastering it. But it's been powerful to not react in situations, but rather observe and say, okay, yeah, how do I want to respond to this? And how is my reaction going to help me or the situation? And it's a constant practice.

It's becoming a master of self-regulation, isn't it? I mean, that's the It's, and it's really managing one's mind constantly. And that's when we get to that point that you find, I don't know if you've, I mean, as you say, it's an ongoing thing. So it's not like you and I have made it, but that's, both of.

Us, I believe, are striving for that. I feel like you've made it. You've had kids, you've dealt with all this stuff.

You've been married with kids.

I haven't experienced this part of life yet. And I'm 20 years older than you.

So I'm 20 years older than you, sir. No, no, you didn't. Sorry, go ahead. I act like I'm this peaceful person, but parents are probably like, oh, wait till you have kids and see how you can apply that, right?

Yeah, that is another challenge completely. When you kids rock your boat, when you think you know everything and you think you're applying everything correctly, I tell you a lot of things go out the door. Even when you've got all the knowledge.

In the world, the desire for peace.

Will bring you full circle back again. That desire to love, to communicate, to get back to the knowledge, to start from the beginning, to talk it through, I tell you, one day when you have kids, talk things through. Don't ever keep, just be honest. Just talk it through no matter what. Let them talk, let you talk, get it out there. It's one of the things that has been a big principle in our family is teaching my kids to think and to challenge and to talk it through. And you may not always like what you hear and you may not like being challenged because you'll get things like my kids will say, Hey, Mom, you know, when I was X age, you said this and that really rocked my world and messed me up completely. And Here I am, all these years.

Later, how did I do that?

I know all this stuff. How could I have done that to this child of mine? How could I have, yet that's a gross... So if my kids are teaching me, I am still learning, Louis. And it's like they'll tell me this, oh wow, I definitely didn't mean that.

But look at my impact.

Look what it did. Isn't it crazy that one thing we.

Say could stick with someone for decades? Let me tell you, your kids will teach you that. I have four, as you know, and they're adults, all of them between the age of 23 and 30. and I tell you, they, we have the greatest relationship, but they are very open to tell us, hey, you did this. And you said that. And that's what it did to me. And thank God, because then you can see, wow. You know, those that, as you say, one word can shift. I, I never meant that. It's not even how, it's not a, but, Mom, this is what it did to me. This is the, you know, that's part of being a human being. You talk about being authentic. You talk about being, getting on your mic, on your platform, and telling people about what you went through and how you thought they would. That's as I can see from my side here, I'm in mental health, but I've messed up some of my kids' lives in terms of when I say messed up, we mess up, we have to mess up. And listen to what I'm saying here is because that's the only way you can repair and grow. So by the same breath, I have the most phenomenal relationship with my kids because I can own my messes and I can look how to fix up. And that's something that I'm getting better at doing. It's not always easy, but I'm getting better at doing. And it's that learning process we talk about. It's that mason repairing and growing, but you're doing it and you've got that foundation. And at a young age, you've learned such wisdom that is so powerful. And I love that. And one of the things I know you're really good at, and I'd love to pivot to this, you touched on it. You spoke about the cultural upbringing and how you're the friends, you know, man up and you don't show your emotions and this terrible culture we have of what a male should be and what a female should be. And you've written about this in your books. You know, you talk about the rigid ideas of culture in terms of femininity and masculinity. And, you know, you've intimated that a few times. Can we talk a bit about that? Because I think you really have a good handle on this of a good understanding. And I think you've helped so many people get free from culture. Culture imposed.

I mean, yeah, of course. I mean, I've, I've obviously interviewed a lot of the experts on this who have a lot more research and knowledge than me, but I speak for myself from Experientially. Yeah, from a young boy growing up in the 80s and 90s in Ohio and the Midwest, and I lived in St. Louis, Missouri as well. I just didn't see an environment of cultural or peer acceptance where it was okay to express emotions as a young boy and as a teen boy. It wasn't okay, wasn't accepted, it wasn't celebrated. and it was kind of rejected and made fun of. And for me, I never really saw a model of boys or men that showed something different. And so if we don't see models, if we don't see that it's accepted or celebrated, it's hard to embrace and say that's something I want to become. When we see things that are celebrated, we want to become those things. And if the things that are celebrated are maybe not driven by a moral compass or that are rigid or emotionally unavailable, then we're going to become more of those things. that's why I think it's, you know, unfortunate that the world seems to be dealing with anxiety, stress, depression, and mental challenges and are talking about it openly more and more, but at the same time, they're talking about it and more men are opening up and sharing these things. More athletes, actors, you know, activists, artists who have platforms are starting to say, hey, I'm not doing well mentally. Hey, I'm feeling anxiety. Hey, I'm stressed. I'm overwhelmed. I'm depressed. And so when we can see models of people that were inspired by that are opening up about these things, I think it's making it more acceptable in culture, which I think is really cool to see. So there's some pros and cons to it obviously, because obviously, you know, with social media, it's becoming more and more anxious and stressful as a society. Comparison mode and the desire to want more and the desire to never look and feel good enough when you're comparing to everyone else. But at the same time, you're seeing these people that you maybe look up to talking openly about their depression or anxiety. and hopefully that's allowing some people to evolve and grow and be more vulnerable. But everyone's got to do the work. Everyone's got to do their own work. And that's, it's, it takes courage and that's something that is hard to tap into, but it's needed.

You're one of the 3%, I don't know if you're aware of this, but you're one of the 3% of leaders that are actually talking about what is the most basic human thing, which is mental health. and, you know, and it's every single human, if you're alive currently today, you are going through and have gone through and will go through stuff. And this whole thing of women are allowed to be emotional, men aren't emotional. It's not even scientific. It's not in brain science. It's not in, no, it's just been this, like this, these laws that have come into, into play in cultures across the world. It's not even, it's not even just.

Why do you think that is?

It's such an, you know, that is a good question. I'd love to understand why there've been such distinct roles between males and females and what people should and shouldn't do. I think personally it's come from a multitude of factors, but it's trying to understand what we don't understand. This need to also to control and to sort of set boundaries of how people should be. You should be like this, you should be like this, you should be like this, because then we can control it. So it's desire to control the uncontrollable. Meanwhile, the whole part of being a human is this multitude of expressions. And I often teach when I do lectures on this sort of concept is it's not about whether you are whoever it's first of all, it's you as a unique person. Forget what your gender is. Forget what your culture is. It's you and there's something unique about you. And Lewis, it's so fascinating because our brain and I'm holding up a lot of the brain has got 200 specializations and yours are different to mine. So there's I need you because there's a role that you play that I can't play. and by us connecting and that paying forward thing that you talk about, the empathy and enhancement and love, that is activated. That activates the best in me and the best in you. And then it's like two waves coming underneath each other that lift up and.

We can move forward.

But there's this threat of uncertainty, this threat of, I don't really understand you as a female. I don't really understand you as a male. So let's simplify and categorize. Males do this and females do that.

And this culture does this and this.

But even across cultures, it's male female. and it's, thank God it is changing now that it's every human, if you're human, you have emotions. Every, when you, when you think, when you, your mind is thinking, feeling, choosing, thinking, feeling, choosing. Humans think, feel and choose. You build thoughts with thoughts, feelings and emotions and choices. So in other words, whether you're male or female, you're doing that. So how can you eliminate a whole portion of, of who we are? And, and we're all processing a child who's kicking that ball out of anger, who's a little boy, that is an emotion. And to tell that child, don't cry, be a man, or you're acting like a girl, you're acting like a sissy, it's shocking. I don't know. Why do you think? Why do you think it's like that?

Yeah, I think you're right where it's like trying to control and maintain a level of like emotional stability. I remember being having a lot of energy as a young boy and feeling deeply. I remember crying probably every day, you know, until I was like five, six or seven. I mean, something would happen where it would make me react and cry for a few minutes. And then you felt guilty for it.

Did you feel guilty? Yeah.

Or if I fell down and scraped my knee or something, I would cry. I would feel pain. I remember crying in the middle of the night a lot for my mom until I was probably like seven, eight or nine. I come kind of a long time.

Did your mom die when you were young?

No, no, she would, I would scream for her.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah. And she would sleep with me until I was probably like, I don't know, once or twice a month until I was like seven, eight or nine. and I look back at it now, it's probably a lot of the.

The.

The fear and anxiety around the sexual abuse that I. That. That I was like, I didn't know how to handle these things and the. The feelings, but I used to do that a lot.

And then.

And then it's kind of, like, stopped. Like, when I got to school, it was like the classmates that were, like, would make fun of you when you cried on the playground. So that's when. Shame.

Yeah.

It became, like, shameful. And if I came like, oh, I'm gonna be alone if I show emotion. in this way. So I need to toughen up and not express this. Otherwise I won't have friends and I'll be alone and no one will love me and I'll die. You know, it's like kind of this fear.

So I think it's a lot of.

Like just fear of being alone, not accepted. Yeah, absolutely. And I think- Putting in your tribe- Or not belonging, yeah. I don't know if girls do that on the playground where they're like shame you for crying. But I know that happens with young boys, at least it did for me. So that was the early process. I don't think my parents ever told me like, don't cry, but It wasn't cool in school. And so I just adopted that mentality, which protected me, but also left me feeling like I was suffering.

Like you're suffering because you couldn't post- Couldn't express.

The only thing I could express was anger. And then that would get me into trouble, and then that would cause a lot of other problems. And so that was like, well, I need an outlet, and sports became the outlet to express it.

Express that. but that wasn't enough because it didn't give you a sense of peace. It was a way of channeling that. So thoughts are real things, and these things are generating energy and these energies got to go somewhere because energy is never lost. So it goes in. So until you process, this energy just becomes toxic and then this internal lack.

Of peace comes and eventually just explodes as you, as you've described.

So happy.

That's why it's got to be. Step one is heal. Step one is heal.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's how we have to face that stuff. We have to look at what we're doing and we have to be able to embrace, process and re-conceptualize it. And we should be teaching our kids from young. I mean, that's part of the work that I've done, as I've you before is to get people to encourage their kids. The best thing to be with a parent is to model your own emotions in front of the kids. If you're having a bad day, you tell them, hey, I'm very irritable. Sorry if I screamed at you and I'm frustrated, but this is what happened and this is who I am and.

This is what I'm doing about it.

So you give them permission to model. Now, I didn't grow up with that model. I grew up with you hide it behind closed doors and you bury your head in the sand like an ostrich and you just don't Yeah, which is not healthy at all. So I always determine I'm not going to bring up my kids like that. I'm going to encourage them to express the emotions and, and get it all out. And we use this loud Italian family that does it all, you know, but so I'm, but what you bring up there is so relevant in terms of the, you know, that not males not being able to express themselves and how I thank God it's now changing, which is so important. There's a million questions I want to ask you still, but I'm very respectful of your time. I want to just ask you if we can pivot over to to talking about your morning routine. And I know that this is something that's very important for you and you've got a, and the reason I want to is because part of the scientific work that I've done is that your sleeping patterns at night are begun how you wake up in the morning. So the way that you actually wake up in the morning and what you do in that routine sets the bar for how you're going to sleep at night because your mind never stops. It goes 24 seconds. So that, as you said, as a child, when you called your mom and the anxiety from the sexual trauma, it hadn't been processed at the night, your mind is trying to sort out what's unresolved and that results in our dreams and all that stuff. And if you don't deal with it, it explodes and so on. But the morning routine is so vital. If you wake up complaining, you actually damaging your brain. And so, I mean, I'm fascinated with all that area. So I'd love to hear your take on your morning routine.

Yeah.

I would say my morning routine is not sexy. I would say I try to keep it as basic as possible and just do what I know is going to work and make me feel positive and ready to take on the day in a loving way. And I don't have some type of biohacking strategy, but what I do have are practical things that have worked for me over many, many years. And the first thing I do is wake up and say, thank you. Thank you for another at-bat, another moment, another opportunity to live life. Thank you. Because I could have not woken up. Thank you. It's an appreciation. And when I start with appreciation and gratitude, I already feel abundance coming my way. I feel a positive energy towards what's happening that in the morning. Even if I feel like a little tired or like I didn't get enough sleep or whatever happened, I say thank you for another opportunity and that shifts my energy. So thank you is a big thing. I'm a big believer in hydrating. You know, you know the science behind the what water does for the brain and how it activates the brain. So drinking a lot of water first thing in the morning. If you want to do, you know, I go through seasons of life where I mix it up a little bit. Sometimes it might be a celery juice, but mostly it's just been water for me right now. And my goal is to work out first thing in the morning. Depending on what I'm doing in the season of my life, I might need to work out in the afternoon, but I always feel like this morning, I got up and I did a boxing session, one-on-one session with my trainer, and I feel like, man, I started a Monday with a very hard workout. I feel like I completed something I feel proud of myself. I feel like I'm taking care of my health, I take care of my health. I sweat out any toxins that I need to sweat out. I feel more confident. I feel like I'm growing, I'm improving, I'm consistent to my vision and my goals all before the morning is over. And I also came back, I made my bed, so I have a clean space. So when I come home at night, I'm proud of what I did for myself in the morning. My future self thanks me for my current self. And I really just try to keep it simple. if I can, and I'll add meditation in there as well, not always as consistent, but if I can do 12 to 15 minutes of a meditation that I like, then it's an even more of a bonus. But if I can do those three, four or five things and keep it simple, don't try to overload your morning with all these tasks to do in your morning routine and then you're tired for the day. It's like just do the things that bring you the most peace, the most joy, the most gratitude. If that's 10 minutes of journaling, great. Journal about what you dreamt about last night. Move your body in a way that works for you. Drink some water, clean space, and really express gratitude. I think that will set you up to have energy, clarity, and peace for the day.

Oh, I love that. I can't agree more. It's so interesting as you go from sleep to wakefulness, you've got the whole way that the energy and chemicals move through your brain changes. from when you go to sleep and when you wake up. So there's this whole shift happening. And as the shift is happening, you're so vulnerable. So if you, if you don't grab that vulnerability, you can land up down, you know, in that toxic pattern for the day. So when you said there, you know, just thank you, the gratitude and ending your day with it. So you've book ended your day with, you know, you book in your day, the morning and the evening. Yes. With that gratitude, which changes your neurophysiology and immediately, like, it's so, because I, for years, Louis, I would wake up complaining. I'd wake up, like, thinking of the day. Fortunately, I haven't done it for years because I've learned the science behind it. But I was in this habit of waking up and thinking, I've got so much to do and, like, this and, and seeing, like, the negative. And, you know, the whole day would just get, like, terrible. So this is why I'm so hot on, you know, morning routines and getting the chemistry correct. And, and the complaining actually damages your brain.

You're creating brain damage, and then you've got to try and deal with it.

During the course of the day. What is complaining? What does complaining do to the brain? What's the science behind complaining? Well, basically, if you complain as you waking the chemistry is vulnerable. So if you go into a toxic state, you create- It's harder to get out of it.

Yeah. Very.

So you create the whole delta theta alpha gamma, all the different frequencies of the brain start getting, you get more what we call high beta. So you get a very high kind of heavy going hit hard hitting like a wave hitting a beach kind of energy. And in that in itself, it's going to trigger and bring up a lot of toxic thoughts that you actually may, which is not a bad thing to bring them up because you can deal with them, but if you don't, if you bring them up and then shove them back down again, they go back stronger than they were before. So the wave brings up a wave, the wave energy, that complaining brings up a wave of energy that brings up drags with it like a whole lot of debris, which you want to deal with, but if you don't immediately and you push it down, the day can get worse. Then you also upset, you create some damage in different parts of your brain where this as you join that up, the hippocampus, the middle part of your brain, is where we start doing our existing memories through. So it moves. We have this movement through this one part of our brain, and it can get damaged. So you, you can repair it, but it makes you feel awful. And then your body, your telomeres start changing because every, every second you're making a million seconds.

You're getting old.

Yeah.

Your body. So it just leads from one thing to the next. So if you, but if you capture that, so by your neurochemistry also is like a milkshake. If you don't go as crazy, it becomes like a milkshake. So the Gratitude, the. The slowness, almost like the way you're using your hands, the way you described it, there's a. There's this whole transition where you're giving yourself space. And you said certain things like, you know, it was very calm the way you said it. And I noticed that that is so important because there you gave yourself time to let your chemistry settle in, to let your brain waves get into wakefulness. you gave yourself a transition moment. The thankfulness gave yourself a bridge to get everything aligned so that you can be more wise and say, okay, well, this is what's coming up. How am I going to step out of bed and face the day? You said things like, I'm drinking hydrating. So you immediately gave a neurophysiological boost. And then you did maybe a little bit of meditation or you went into a workout. You made your bed, you created space. Everything is all very peaceful and. Yes. Organized. And that's what your brain needs in the morning. So it's like it's super. Well, your mind-brain connection, not just your brain, the mind-brain-body connection. so I love that you did that. I thought that's just fantastic.

So always learning, always learning.

Oh gosh, always learning. I love to hear people's routines because for me, the simple and the peaceful are the whole goal. As you and I keep saying, the ultimate thing is peace. So you are big about taking care of your emotional health. And you've really started that. You've really literally started out almost like a movement amongst men. to help them to take care of their emotional health. And you've written books about it. And you've been saying this all the way through this interview. But what sort of tips could you give to the males that are listening now and the females that have got these males in their lives, fathers, sons, husbands that are co-colleagues taking care of your emotional health? How would you summarize kind of everything we've been saying into some pearls of wisdom?

I'm a big fan of therapy, to be honest. I'm a big fan of having some type of therapeutic experiences and accountability and support, whether that's group therapeutic experiences, whether that's one-on-one therapeutic experiences. For me, the mechanism isn't important. It's what works for you to help you open up, to help you heal, to help you share, and have someone holding you accountable to you not hurting yourself and you're not beating yourself up and you're not being stuck in the past, but working towards progress of a greater vision for your life, of greater peace, of greater relationship connections, you know, and feeling a deeper sense of mission and purpose. And I think unless you're able to, like, I feel like for the most part, I'm able to do that for myself a lot of the times, but when I feel stuck or when I feel like, man, I'm really struggling in this relationship, I have coaches in every area of my life. I've got a great coach that I've worked with on a weekly basis for a year and then now I work with him maybe once every month where I call him and just does like check in because like everything feels pretty good. Yeah, it all feels pretty good right now. So, okay, but I'll call when I need something. I'll call and just to like, okay, here's what I'm thinking of doing. What are your thoughts as a check in about my emotions or something? I've got a therapist. I've got a therapist I'm working with right now. for a few years, I wasn't working with a therapist. Now I went through a transition and a breakup a few months back, and I wanted to work on the transition of integrating the lessons, of integrating the healing so that when, so I don't repeat these, the pattern that I was repeating in that, but I may not have that continually for years. You know, I think it kind of depends. I've got a coach when it comes to my, my financial situations that help me in my finances. I've got a fitness and body coach, you know, health coaches. So for me, I want to have accountability and support on, on different levels of my life. And I think the emotional and mental level is the most important because our mindset, our emotions kind of dictate like.

Our, they drive everything first course.

Exactly. So it's like if you're not learning about your emotions on how to navigate them in a healthy manner or your mindset in a healthy manner, then those things will be driving you in an unhealthy way.

That's so exactly correct.

And so I'm a big fan of having support and having people that you just reflect with and talk about things who can give you some tools and exercises and try them on. Maybe they work, maybe they don't, but being in the practice of integrating healing and integrating growth is for me a lifelong mission. And I think if other men and women learn this process, by listening to our shows like ours or the programs that we have or finding a therapist or a coach or just an accountability buddy to get started. I think that's a huge plus to get started with.

I love that. That's incredibly important and so healthy because it's not about us, it's about us in the world. And we need that support. No one can walk your journey, but we're supposed to walk, support each other through the Journey of Life. And to get perspective, you said that right at the beginning is how talking to someone gives you perspective. And that's something that we get so, when we get so caught up in the toxic thoughts of seeing life, there's no perspective when you're staring through a toxic issue and just going to someone saying, I'm so mad about this and this happened and that happened and getting it out. If it doesn't go out, it goes in. And as you've explained so eloquently throughout this interview, I mean, you didn't know how to get it out. It came out in all the wrong ways. It exploded. It goes inside and then explodes in the incorrect way. So to have that account and to encourage people to do that.

Yes. And as an athlete, I understand and value coaching. And I think if people weren't athletes, I didn't have that in a big way in their life, they may not understand the power of coaching.

Talk about that for a moment. Talk about the power of coaching. I think that's a very important, because there's so much coaching, coaching language around. But what does it really mean to what you've just said, because you said a big statement. What does that really mean? Because I think it's very important.

Well, I think it's, you know, I've had coaches that were extremely effective for me and that I've had coaches that were ineffective in sports. And so I think one, it's finding an effective coach that works for you. I was talking with a very, a pretty well-known entrepreneur and personality online, I'd say. I was talking with him recently about this, and he was like, I've never really had coaching. And I go, there's one thing. And I was like, you probably don't need it because you're, you know, he's had this billion dollar brand and have this big personality. And I was like, you've had a lot of great results. It's not like you need a coach, but there's one thing. There's one thing a coach will give you that could support you in acceleration of your vision and your goals that is hard for you to do on your own. Even if you've already accomplished so much, there's one thing that a coach could, a really effective coach could give you and that is helping you, you know, seeing your blind spots. So good.

That's brilliant. So the coach helps you see your blind spots.

Just having that and maybe you're so self-aware that you can see a lot of your blind spots and maybe you're analyzing it all day long, but Typically, you're so focused and driven if you're a high performer, it's hard to take a moment back and reflect without communicating with the coach, really letting them assess it and seeing it from a different perspective because your perspective is your way. It's not someone else who's also had experience and sees thing and maybe is working with lots of people that can connect the dots and give you a different perspective. And maybe it's going to be effective that time or it's another time. It's not always going to work, but I think having a consistent coach that you respect, who has been there, done that before, can give you different options, different ideas to support you in accelerating that growth that you're looking for or eliminating pain faster or whatever it is that you need. Help you save time, help you improve, help you heal, all that stuff. So for me, I'm a big fan of finding coaches that work for you, that make you feel good, but also that you'll respect and they'll take action on with their suggestions. And I think it's foolish for us to think we can do everything in our life at the highest level all the time. I think it's foolish for us to think that with the responsibilities we have in life, the distractions, the limited of time, all these things that we might have to be dealing with, I think it's foolish for us to think that we can do it all on our own. and as an athlete, I remember thinking, huh, in order to become a better athlete, I needed a great coach to guide me, to coach me, to teach me, to help me accelerate, to see things, to see things in me that I never saw myself, to pick me back up when I got down, whatever it is, and to hold me accountable consistently throughout the season. And I look at the greatest athletes in the world, and when they reach the top, they don't say, you know what? I don't need this coach anymore. I got it myself. They say, I need to go harder with this coach. I need to find a better coach to stay at the top or to get to the next level. And when I transition from the sports world playing arena football into just life and not having coaches anymore and that structure, I was like, I need a coach. I was like, I need a coach in my life. Like, what am I gonna, you know, if I know that having great effective coaches will help me accomplish my goals in sports, why would I not look for this in business and health and relationships and emotional healing? Why would I think I can do this on my own and excel at every area without a coach, without someone? So for me, it was a natural progression because I understood the value of coaching and having accountability and support and reflection time. And I'm not saying you can't accomplish great results and feel happy and joyful without coaches, but I just feel like with coaches, I know how power, how much more powerful we can all be.

Oh, I love that. That's brilliant. And just last question, how would you, second last question, how would you compare that to the therapeutic intervention that you've had? So coaching versus therapy.

I think therapy is coaching for me. It's like I'm having an emo, I'm having an emotional coach that's guiding me in an emotional boot camp and an emotional work workouts and I'm in and for a season of my life, that's okay. Here, I remember when I started this current therapy program back in, I guess it was end of January, February when I was doing couples therapy we were doing together. And I was also doing individual therapy with her and couples therapy. So I was getting like a double boot camp. And I remember she said, okay, what's your goal?

If you wanted to have a goal.

And I was like, I want peace and clarity. I want peace and clarity because the relationship was unclear of where it was going. And there was a lack of peace. And I said, I want clarity to know whether we're going to continue to grow together or to move apart. And I want to create peace in the relationship while we're doing this process. And after we commit or we move on, I was like, peace and clarity. And so every time I met with her, which was weekly for the first few months because I felt like I needed to go all in faster and dive in. She would always say, what's our intention today? I'd say peace and clarity. I'm looking for peace and clarity. And so she would guide me with her exercises, with her questioning, with her homework, with her, you know, all these things together, she would guide me to support in finding peace and clarity. I don't think I would have been able to find it on my own, maybe eventually, but all the exercises, all the questions, all the therapy, all the sharing, all the different feedback, she was able to see things and continues to see things that I can't see. Or maybe I can see them, but I don't know how to move through them in a healthy way. So it's something, there's something there. And I think it's foolish to me to think I could do everything on my own when there's so many blind spots and so much to learn.

Oh, what a brilliant way to end part one. There has to be a part, a part two and a part two. We always say this when we talk to each other because I wish we had hours.

Yes.

I know.

Well, we will have. We'll do, we'll do a part two soon because this is the, this has just opened another whole, you, a whole lot of questions I want to answer, ask you. But I love how you've described that. And, and I really want to honor what you've said because it's vitally important that we get that, that that we have those goals of clarity and peace. It's been a consistent message throughout every time I talk to you, that clarity and that peace. And that is beautiful. And talking to others and that whole way you undergird the whole concept of it's not just about Lewis, it's about Lewis in the world and learning from others and having that openness, Hey, I need your help. I don't know it all. That's just so, so amazing. And I believe one of the reasons why you've just soared and why you touch so many people's lives is because you really are walking in love. I mean, I know that sounds so cheesy, But you seriously are, really, that clarity and peace is oozing out of you. So I just want to honor you and thank you for sharing your phenomenal wisdom. And I have such fun talking to you. I learned so much.

I appreciate it.

Cannot wait for part two. It's going to be fantastic. And where can people get a hold of you?

Find me Lewis Howes online or just my website, lewishowes.com or School of Greatness anywhere online.

Beautiful.

Next time around, I want to talk about relationships to dive into relationships.

I've learned so much in the last eight months, so I've- well, I cannot.

Wait to do it. So, well, let's do it because let's talk about relationships and how it relates to emotional healing and just the whole connection and life and goals and all those things, having all the experience you have now and it'll be so amazing to do that. So, thank you once again for your invaluable time and it's been such fun. Thank you.

I appreciate it, Caroline. Thank you. If you enjoyed that interview, then I.

Know you'll love what we have coming coming up right now.

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 weeks later, months later after the last podcast on how they loved 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 to know the real food, the whole, what?

Yeah.

And you. But you're in a, 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, 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've probably 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. a lot to do with our intelligence and how serotonin 95% is in the gut and 90% of dopamine. And so all these things is 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 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. we're down the lining of the gut. I mean, it's just creates inflammation. The gut bacteria get affected. Your good bacteria go to hiding and it's like a million different things. So that is so important. So I like to talk 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 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 results?

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 wear the body down, those excess chemicals, they cause leaky gut. They do all the 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 in 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 an aspect that people don't recognize. It's not spoken about, it's not studied enough. 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 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 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 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 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 qEEGs 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 if 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 coming from, 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, we 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 and experimenting and we make mistakes, but that's okay because in a mistake, if you're managing 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 long in everything that you do, relationships work, 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 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 and 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.

So it's really interesting. So in other words, messy mind, messy. brain, messy body. So that's really vital.

So that'd be the first thing. The second thing, messy mind, messy brain, messy body.

Yeah.

So it's— 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 the environmental substances.

Exactly. So for example, if you go and do a workout, but you go and do 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. And if you 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 do have to eat properly. 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've just come out of hot yoga two hours ago and infrared saunas. I do it all. something 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 between them, which we've got.

Has there ever been a time where you, I mean, you've been studying this for decades.

38 years. Yeah.

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 they're 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, it's a great thing to discuss. 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 energy.

Yeah.

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 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 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 does 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'm kind of like, I'm not sure what I'm doing. I don't know if this is right. If this is okay, if this is the, 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 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. And that's messy mind. 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 normal. We're 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, this starts telling something. It's the wisdom 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, your kids and your, your, your partners or your friends and you say, hey, this happened. What do you think? And they give you advice. Wise mind. So wise minds in all of us, but we tune into it sufficiently. And it's at our core for being in 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. We, 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. I mean, 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 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?

And I would do the way that I explained that is you do it in step five of the 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 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 life and so on. So what I have found from my research is that if you have an issue in your life and there's something that you're battling 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, worked up in the morning and I got that under control and it changed my life completely because it ricks your brain. Totally ricks your brain, ricks the day. and you can chat about that too in more detail if you want. But that's so what you've got to do is you've got to recognize that if you are in, if you are, if there'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 have 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 slapping a Band-Aid on a bullet wound or you're chopping the head off off the weed and it will grow back. As we know, if you go chop the head off the weed, they will grow back.

So 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 full of 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 things. You see that in the, that literally the quantum physics has shown us that the immersed in 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. I'm showing up for a reason, there's a reason why I'm doing this at my core, I'm this wide full of 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? like, 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 that's 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 our marriage. And I remember as a, at high school, to wake up in the morning, like on edge and anxious and. So for years. And I remember one day my husband saying to me, we've been married for about, I have maybe 10 years or something. And he turned around and said to me, 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, I'm 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'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 brain, 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 brainwaves 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 pattern. And if you don't manage that moment, you can set yourself up for failure for the whole day or a miserable day and everything just becomes so much harder. So it's just a matter of mind managing. 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, 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 was, I used to say if only to everything. And I used to lose 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, only and one day, one of my daughters and I've got four kids and my second daughter to two, three of my daughters actually work 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 only as we were leaving the holiday. And it was once again, it took a person in my close to me to actually turn on, 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 or the NeuroCycle app. And it's on iTunes and Google Play and it says, 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 feature 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.

That's exhausting.

It's exhausting. You constantly can't see what you've got because you're always thinking what you just I 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 my sisters were 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 met up to her and said, Mom, don't you love mommy? Don't. 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. 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, because she said, 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 to come from and now it's sorted out. 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 do, 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 to do with identity. 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 great. 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 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 can't, 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 it's, it's, 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, and because we, it's nature, nurture and I factor. There's the nature part of identity that is you have your genetic makeup, 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 the black 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 their own thoughts, feelings and choices around the content we'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 idea of what we look like.

In What we look like in the.

Mirror and how we perceive the world. 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 to get to grips with. 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 brain health. We never got to that point. So we need to do that. You better keep a note of all these things.

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.

We'll see a difference in the energy.

Flow in the brain.

What's the common, what's the common ways it shatters?

Sorry to interrupt. No, no, no problem. Break up. Yeah.

Environment experience.

Something happens.

A death in the family. Those. Those will shatter. But it's. It's more when.

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. 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 they who've experienced suicide in their family and the core is identity. Because if you don't feel you're 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 QEEG. QEEG 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 the 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. So you can't keep going your brain. So you can't do everything. Well, can I? So there's something you can do that no one else can do. And that's. That's within these 200 specializations of our brain. But it creates a need because there is this stuff you could 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. 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, what we would love to know, we would 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, it's inevitable. So in order to what does the.

Identity check look like for you? You say Do you do it once a year or?

Yeah, I do once a year whenever I feel that I'm out of sync, whenever 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 go and gather awareness of all the signals signals that I'm starting to see like this. Okay, there's a lot more imposter syndrome than normal because you'll get a level of it. So it's okay. It's when it becomes an invasive pattern. 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 and discuss with yourself what's happened to get myself to this point, and then I'll take time to 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 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 non-conscious 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 those 200 areas of specialization, the different structures of the brain, the neurons, the neurochemistry, the endocrine. 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, you know, 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 mood, energy, exercise, diet, everything.

So step one is reflection of your identity is what it sounds like. 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, 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.

Yeah.

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 possible. And I remember saying vividly, like, I wish I were dead. Like, 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. And I hearing you say this now, I feel like I just never felt valued, you know? 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. And I think, thankfully, I never said that after those. Those years, but. 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.

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 lot of, I guess, compassion for people that feel that because you can kind of get sucked into it. And you could easily get sucked into it 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 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 call 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'm trying to read as many as I can, but I don't. and 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're not good enough and you have a bad attitude. It was just 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 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 was conscious of not saying it's you that's bad, you're amazing.

This 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 that they've done something wrong that they good? It's because they are good. They're cool, they're just learning. they're just experimenting.

They just, 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, you, the adult in their life, you, the, the caregiver, you, the person that they look up to the most, and you're shaping them. And so they 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 deal 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 shattered that child's in and they'll.

Just think, oh, what's the point?

I may as well live up to what they're telling me 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.

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, Liz, 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 ourselves grace. If someone in your environment or your work environment or your family are 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. 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, you know, get through this? Is there something that's going on? And that shifts things totally because you're missing 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. 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'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 parented me in a very different way where it was very much, you know, 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. Hide your emotions. Don't show the emotions to the world. That's so hard when you're developing.

Oh, my God. Child 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 that on with our own kids and hopefully I didn't, 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's, that has created a whole breed of people. And if you 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 was 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. 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 will 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 so adults, a sad adult means that I'm the bad person, the adult's 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 at you, I'm sorry, that was wrong, it's my bad, I did it because of this. So then you model to the child, that's 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. Yeah.

So it's 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 I'm just kind of feeling sad. I don't 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, relationship, I can still be sad for the loss of 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 sorry, I didn't answer your question. You just did a neuro 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 that's so good because it's really okay to be sad. It's such a totally normal. Then you reflect it. So you gather So you're aware of that awareness, you then reflected on why you maybe didn't do the writing steps.

But you visualized it.

So this is the first step. I was talking with someone, I was talking with someone about this. So you did, so there we go. So there's kind of the writing, if it comes up again, you could maybe try and do a mediacog and we didn't get you 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 that 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 processed and you re-conceptualized. 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 in like a little virus, you know, just starts spreading. And so you caught it there and you allowed yourself, but you also limited it. and it'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, 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 conscious and the unconscious. So we have to tell our wise mind is saying, okay, if I stay your wise mindset, stain sadness. I'm going to get drained. You instinctively recognize. 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 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, yeah. Good job.

Thank you.

Yeah.

You know, I just feel like so many years of my life where I would stay in sadness, anger, resentment, what if statements, where I just ruminates on these emotions for days, weeks, months, years. And it only left left me with a lack of sleep, with stress, frustration, overwhelmed, never feeling good enough, 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 I did it too. 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 meaningful 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 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 aging our body, we aging, we just stop doing everything we shouldn't be doing and we don't have to. That's staying in the mess.

Mind.

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. It's weeks. And if you have breaks, it's 2019 months.

Yeah. Back in the day when I had to go through 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 that I never expressed, 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 I would have ever found that ability to create that peace within 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 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 totally turbulent in terms of trying to survive.

My whole life was turbulent, but until 30. I mean, it's still my 30s. There'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 not. 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'd 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 presents toxic thought as opposed to the healthy green tree. The roots over here, this whole thing is forming a patch. 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 along with it, 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 interpretations. So you said things like shame and what were the other words you used?

You used insecurity, resentment.

Resentful. Or and seeing yourself, your identity was broken because you didn't see yourself as having value, all those kinds of So these things because of that complete distortion. 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 fuel to it. 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 to do with it. So you just keep going on and you just keep hoping for the best and you keep that kids seem to be so resilient, but they this is building and building. So in your non-conscious mind, this whole, 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 cellular 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 in us. It's a whole body.

Experience.

So when you do things like EMDR therapy, did you ever do EMDR therapy or.

I've heard great things about it. I haven't tried that yet.

So when you, 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 trauma. I'm not sure what age you were.

At when you started facing that. Every day I remembered the trauma and thought about it, but it wasn't till 30 when I had the courage to.

Start talking about it. Okay, so it was in the okay, so what you had was a situation of some people completely hardened. They don't even know what happened.

Then it suddenly comes back.

You were constantly, I was always, you.

Were living it all the time. Okay, so it was in the daily or maybe, maybe not every David at 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.

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 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 channeled for a time into that energy. You also got things like anandamide being released in your brain, which would have given you the bliss hormone, would have given you a sense of excitement and you would have had dopamine rushes and all the things that would be 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 and.

Well, then sport ended.

So I was like, well, what?

Now what?

Channel my energy. And 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 me. And it wasn't fun anymore to be around me for, you know, 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. Like, I don't have a range of emotions. Like, how do I learn? 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. I'm like, when you've never been taught how to express yourself without being shamed, without being made wrong, without being like, don't do that, that's not okay, you can't show this emotion, you're supposed to be a man or this, whatever it is.

Toxic masculinity.

Yeah, for women as well. you need to be this, this and this, and 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 that's volcanic in nature because like a volcano will bubble eventually explode and the lava will pour 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 in these, that was then signal. So all of those behaviors the 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 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 to eject and get rid of this thing that's causing imbalance. And it comes out in our emotions and our behaviors.

Well, it also comes out physically. I mean, I was going through a challenging scenario where I knew a relationship that I was in needed to end. But I was staying in this certain relationship for longer than it needed to be. And I started to get, I never in my life have 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? Is it dairy? What is it?

Yeah.

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 and transitioned, my body had it's going away. And I was just like, this is crazy. Like the physical symptoms is gone. This eczema outbreak or whatever, which I thought was going to keep spreading all over my body is now gone. And it's crazy. When we, like you're saying, 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 need to be aware of our physical symptoms. Absolutely.

Am I drained?

Am I emotionally tired? 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? vision, like something. Am I getting heart palpitations? Like, 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 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've my whole clinical trial, but I talk about some of those impacts. But there's so many, 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 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, that's eczema, autoimmune response. So everything was, so you've all got genetic weaknesses and generally 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, it's not the allergies, because we immediately think purely physical, but the physical is dominated by the mind. The physical, you don't have any, you can't have X-Men, you dead, you can only have it if you're alive.

And generally, if it's not a food.

Allergy, there is a mind, an undetected mental allergy. Yeah, exactly. literally mental allergies. These are literally mental allergies and they threaten your survival. So that eczema was your body saying, Hey, Lewis, please pay attention. There's something in your mind that you need to deal with.

And it's interesting because I take full responsibility for my thoughts and staying in something that I know I'm not supposed to say in something or for not speaking up or for abandoning myself. Like so, as I reflect and throughout the entire time, you know, 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 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. 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 could 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 enter as a victim, there's only healing that needs to take place. And so then you, that's what you are responsible for 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 difference. 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, 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, you, you, you, 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 and person or persons, you know, they, they need to be punished and that, those are facts, those are facts. But for you to be disengaged from that 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 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 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 there, which one have I left out? This is the physical. Emotional is for emotional, physical perspective. And why am I blanking on the fourth one? There's four different areas that we look at. But I'll come back in a moment. So once we gather awareness of those signals, 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, warning signals, they Clues.

So you become a detective in your own mind.

Why is this happening?

Okay, let me start doing 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? You've got to start it. Did you go to stop with your. so these, these are the four emotional, what you're doing, behavioral, physical, what's in your body and perspective. Okay? So emotional, physical, behavioral, 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, 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 that stuff. And your mind, brain and body know it's going 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.

Wow. They could decide I am not I'm depressed.

I am depressed. 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 was they they were at the end of their rope. Within 21 days of mind management, they were no longer saying, I am depressed. They were 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. They said, I'm even more depressed and even more anxious than I was when I started the 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 their 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 just 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. 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 or that anxiety or 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 is shattered. 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 unbuy, 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. And I'm holding up the wiring 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, Liz, 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 taught 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 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 tried to cope. So your behaviors are simply coping signals, you know, 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 you, 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, you know, brain studies and 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 neuroplasticity 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 to self, 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 and weaker and weaker and weaker. And you're building a 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 crush. 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 T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes. and macrophages and treated in the same way as the COVID virus, which is damaging the 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 virus is. 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. to 42 days of work because habits are only forming those cycles. And I'd have patients, nurses that would sometimes take two years to get to the point where they were kind of had sorted out all this stuff. Some people do one cycle, some 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 narrative, 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 will 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 us and then again to the point, okay, I can cope, I can move forward now, I can start, which is what you did. Right?

Yeah.

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, and. Oh, yeah. It's like, it's like messy grow. It's like messy. Repair, grow. Messy, repair, grow. Give ourselves permission. It's okay to be messy. It's okay to depressed and anxious. It's not an illness. You're not a broken brain. You are just those are all signals. Be Pyro, be Sherlock Holmes, you know, be your own detective.

There's so many things I want to make sure we go over still.

But I want to go into relationships in a future episode, in 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.

Success for a day.

But I also, and, and I also want to go back into identity check and figure out what is, 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 there.

What, what do you do 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 noticed 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, 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 I 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 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 to 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 normal to have those. 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 I 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 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 the bathroom that they ever knows that's leave 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 today one, I'll say, okay, those are I'm seeing I'm doing imposter syndrome. I see that whatever the four signals, they're not going and 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 behaviors, so emotional warning signals, behavioural 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 low 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 very toxically stressed. Like, like it really feels like pain, pain. It's so I can feel it. So I noticed those things. 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 boosty, but I'm also kind to myself. It's really okay. It's really not. You're not the first person who have done this to be feeling 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 responses 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 app called? Neurocycle. It's called Neurocycle. And it's on, and I've got it one for identity in there. So it's, it's the whole 63 day process. I literally give you therapy. And then we have many neurocycles, many neurocycle guides. So, like, if you're feeling imposter syndrome, you can press that. I'll give you. neurocycle, a density check, anxiety. So, yeah, it's really cool. We're growing it all the time, and I'm building in a neurocycle 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. difference. I breathe in very deeply for seven counts, but like, I mean, three counts, 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 breathing 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 like 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 ex, the actual physical. So now I've coordinated, I've created not just a physiological response, but I've bought mind, brain and body. I've bought all three responses together. So I've calmed down neurochemistry. I've calmed down blood flow. I've increased that put to the brain. I mean, I've done. I can go 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. Every. 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 calmed 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, and 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 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 seem 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 on 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 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 are to 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 build. 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 had developed a system about 38 years ago and I've constantly improved it. I would do this with my patients. I would work with people, for example, with personality disorders and using the mediacop 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 your non-conscious, 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, it's a mess. It's just like words all over the place. And you literally vomit it on your page. 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 a state of antidote or reconceptualized statement earlier on when you spoke about this morning the sadness that you felt and you said you to give yourself permission to feel the sadness and your antidote to 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 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 had 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 for 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, I like being the entity is being knocked. I'm feeling this energy. 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 each 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 trying. transferring, you're weakening this and you're getting the healthier one stronger. So you're weakening the toxic, making the healthier one stronger. So I'm now re-energizing and I'm just discipline. 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 line grass to grow over the worn pathway. And that's what I force myself to hang on to. It's all I'm allowed to think of the rest of that day. I always like to have a visuals. as well. I love white roses and I love the sea like most people do. So 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 rose. And then tomorrow I'll go further and that's how I do it. So over 21 days I will do that and then on 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?

That's massive. And I think identity check is something I all of us should be doing and 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. 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 different. 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'm not. 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 they... 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 that that we don't believe. An identity check takes the words that.

You'Re saying that you believe.

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 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 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, I'm 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 a minute, then I'll say it again. Okay. I really am genuinely happy that they got a new times best seller or they got on the whatever publishes weekly or whatever 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 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're operating in something that they can do that no one else can do. So if I celebrate that, that's gonna, they're generating a whole bunch of success energy and love energy that's gonna 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 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 we've got a relationship going through our connection, et cetera. So we're 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 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 kind of smiling but you just know there's something wrong. You can cut the atmosphere with a knife. That's what I'm talking about. It's real. 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 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, 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. threatened by that. I'm not competition for anyone. That person's not my competition. That person's my, my, what's the word I'm looking for? My, my aid, my support, my collaborator or collaborator. Yeah, they're on my side. Everyone's on my side. You, everyone, no one is a competition. If we got into that mode, and there's been so much science showing this in, in the, in these, like, these ancient science on this, you can go. go back thousands of years and find teachings on this in the ancient, in the ancient, ancient sort of 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 60 studies, so it's very interesting. But it, and more quantum physics, for example, is huge in this. And it's one of the most accurate and fundamental of 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 so driven by Darwin and there's 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 and it's 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 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 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? seating 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, little bars going or a podcast. That's what the memory looks like in your mind. So in your mind area, it's these waves. So a love wave is generally like a sine wave versus any kind of enemy and jealousy. It's a very erratic wave. And when 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 burst 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 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 damaging our brain and cumulatively over the years, we change the neurons, the neuronal structure, the levels of good and bad protein, amyloid beta, 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 flowing 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 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 that. 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 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 and love. design for enhancement. You can still get to the top, but then also you'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 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.

This is fascinating. I'm curious about, I'm just 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 you.

Each other.

Yeah, that's that's enhancement. That's not even competition. That is okay, let's enhance each other. Let's see who can 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 to say, okay, we've got a competition here for someone who's going to build the best new version of quantum computers, because they was 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, COVID, if we had more enhancement versus competition, we would have had a vaccine earlier and distributed to the poor 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 do each of the...

So it's not... What's working with everyone?

Exactly.

So you've got something to bring to to the table, 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.

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. 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 in pre-apart, in the product 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 as 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 put your mind to stuff, it's just incredible. It's School of Greatness. I want to see 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 teaches 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 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. Leaf, 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 that. He really went on. It was like a whole mouth full 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. 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. You're also bringing 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 this. When, what should we do the moment we realize we're being triggered 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 will that happen for you?

It's less and less now. I used to get very, I used to get very easily thrown because I, I think that's 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 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 and others that have done this, that in this field that get your 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 kind of move forward? And then I do brain building. And I would do this with all my patients, just as an aside note, I never started a session without an identity check and 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 do the work, hard work, before we did any 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. 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 I, as you know, interested in brain science. So I'll take every day. I mean, I do this every day. You see, what's my routine? But in that moment, I'll take something like I'll, I'm always creating podcasts like your soft soda podcast and things. So I'm always writing books, I'm wasting 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 either 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. 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 app. Then I'll go, then I'll stop and I literally look up and I talk out, I ask 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 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 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, 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 sentence. 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 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 meditacog, the Vipassana, 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 unsolve the 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 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 these things I do in the morning, so. And I do it today. 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 get, 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 day. So it really does start. I mean, I wake up and I check immediately, self-regulate immediately mind, 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 neuro cycle in my bit. That 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. Then during the course of the day, I'll take periods where I'll do thinker moments. And thinker 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 thinker 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 to the 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. Sorry.

It sounds like an American.

Over here.

Yeah. There we go. I have to go American.

Thinker. I'm gonna go to the Dallas.

Dallas. Yeah. I'll have to get the. I did two English.

Instead of thinker.

Thinker. Yeah.

Thinker.

Thinker. So that's the. 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 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. They did this 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 of? 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. speech 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. It's 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 starting setting up a research study on dreams and how you can actually there's a lot of researching 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 night terrors and and night terror and nightmare paralysis and nightmares. And because it's all just your mind processing, because your mind's processing during the day. So it's to try to help people find more information there, whatever. But I always find that helps to prepare myself for sleep.

That's beautiful. And if, 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. I'm, 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 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 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 20% more empowerment. that on the pathway to health.

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. It's getting updated. And, it's NeuroCycle.

And, it's updated. So, yeah. 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 well. 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 in it's 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 and acknowledge you 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 of you. 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 finding easy ways to explain this because I just know if we can get people understand the 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. That's really, I'm so driven to get that message through. So thank you for being able to help me to 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 and 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, it's hard. That's hard. This is easy.