These 13 SECRETS Will Heal Your BODY & MIND TODAY! | Caroline Leaf & Lewis Howes

Life and managing your mind doesn't mean that it's going to be one big rosy, you know, put on rose tinted glasses. That's crazy. It is actually the ability to.

We live a reactive life toward the environment. As in things happen in our world and I only react in the same way typically. And that's. It makes us feel.

The single biggest mistake that we make in any relationship, particularly romantic ones, but also work related ones, is.

How do we learn to reframe our mind or rewire our mind so that we can have inner peace when there is trauma or pain around us.

Brilliant question. It's a skill that we learn. So that's really nice to know. The sooner it is never too late to start, but the sooner we start, the better. So I have four adult children. They learned this, they grew up with this stuff and as I've learned new things, they've been my lab rats. So they've been trained and literally at my husband and they all work for me by the way.

They're either, they're either all amazing kids or messed up kids.

Totally. Yeah. Yeah, we'll have to ask that quick. Well, Dominique's my producer so I think she's sort of doing okay there. But yeah, the biggest thing with the mind and managing mind Lewis is to accept that depression, anxiety, even the scary words like bipolar and schizophrenia and then going to the more sort of things like that we can accept grief, anger, etc, these are not illnesses. This is the biggest message that I probably have. The second biggest, the first is that mind is the source and if you don't get mind right everything else, you can read all the great books you want and go to all the great seminars and self help but unless your mind is right, you won't even use that stuff. It's just data. And so you do these that there's another step missing. And it's understanding that autonomy, that sense of agency that we have to manage what's going on around us and to accept. Part of mind management is not to make the bad stuff go away, but to know how to live in the bad stuff because it's not going away. So despair, anger, depression, anxiety, these are all completely normal responses. In fact they're very helpful. They're helpful messengers and warning signals as opposed to being scary and illnesses. They are not neuropsychiatric brain diseases like we've been told. They are actually responses. And because they are responses of our mind in, in the world, we use our brain and body to express them because we've got the mind has to have the brain and body to, you know, build the thoughts. And then from, we use that to speak. We're using our physical to, to store what we've, what we've processed and to convert and then to speak. So obviously if our mind's a mess, our brain and our body will be a mess. But because our brain's neuroplastic and we, if we manage our mind, we can change our brain, change our DNA, literally. That's what I've shown in my research. You can literally change your DNA, your blood markers, literally, if you change your mind. If you change your mind, you can immediately influence your biomarkers. So for example, if you in acute trauma, for example, and you go just, okay, let me explain it in a very simple way. I'm testing, testing out a glucose, continuous glucose monitoring device. And for some research purposes. And I happened to, while I was wearing it, because you wear it and then, you know, you track your levels. And I wanted to see, for, in terms of mental health and the neuro cycle that I've developed, I wanted to see the input and I happen to be going through, experience a very acute trauma in our family over December. And in the moment of the trauma, I happened to see on my glucose monitor that my glucose had shot up to 240. Now that's heart attack level. And I immediately managed my mind through the neurocycle, which is the concept that I've developed, which is just a system, anyone can learn it. And I dropped my glucose levels within seconds, back down to a normal level. And as it cycled up, it cycled, I could manage it. And if glucose is at that level, your cortisol shot up at that level, your DHEA is dropped, your homocysteine. All that means is that your immune system is going crazy. Exactly. You've got a cytokine storm like we talk with COVID And in fact your brain's immune system and your body's immune system will recognize that traumatic event or that established trauma or that mismanagement of whatever, that it will recognize that as an invader, like a virus, like Covid. So you get the same response to a mind thing, a thought, which is the consequence of mind. Think, feel, choose, you build thoughts. Thoughts are made of roots and trees, branches, which are the memories. So thoughts are made of memories, like trees are made of branches. This is toxic. It will stimulate the same response in the immune system as if I had Covid or if I had a flu virus or if I had measles or something, or any kind of damage. In my body, the immune system sees that as threatening survival because we, we are wired for survival. So this is not survival. So your immune system says, hey, that's a threat, let's send out the army. T lymphocytes, B lymphocytes, macrophages, let's go fix this thing. And it creates inflammat, which is a temporary state of healing. So initially inflammation is to isolate and fix. Exactly, isolate. And then you're supposed to, you know, fix this up and sort this out and find the root cause and then this goes away and then the anti inflammatory factors come in and the inflammation goes away. But if we don't deal with the stuff and we don't deal with our past traumas and we don't deal with those patterns in our life that we are enacting, that the constant arguments or these certain, you know, we all have these toxic patterns, no one's immune. And the signals of those are things like depression and anxiety. And those are simply telling you, hey, there's a pattern. It's either a trauma based pattern or it's a toxic habit you've developed. But that pattern is actually putting your body under tremendous stress even to the point where your DNA is affected. And I showed in my research that, you know, if you think of the DNA ladder, if you pull out a chromosome, it looks like an X. And where you see my fingernails, pink fingernails for those of you that are listening, the pink fingernails would then represent what we call telomeres. And telomeres are a proxy for how you are managing your mind.

Very interesting, aren't they also based on how long you'll live as well if the telomeres are longer.

Exactly, totally correct.

So if you're under attack and dying, you're probably physically going to die as well.

Exactly, that's exactly what I showed. So we had subjects at the beginning of, in my clinical trial that I put in this book, we had subjects and I've actually got a picture of this person's, one of the subjects brains, this is inside, looking inside their brain. And the blue represents someone who's totally depressed. Flatline, brain, flatline, literally. And this person's, all their biomarkers were up there. Cortisol, inflammation, etc but this shows that the energy levels in the brain are very flat. Blue means a very, very depressed. And this person was, their narrative was tremendous torment. Their life, they were offline, they were battling with work, relationships, a lot of stuff.

Everything was off, everything was off.

Sleep, you name it, they were at like ready to check out what Page is this on? This is on page I should tell you, I should know the page of my heart 161 okay, cool. You've probably got it in black and white in that version that you've got there. So this person's telomeres, when we looked at their DNA and we looked at their telomeres they will tell you how that the shorter they are, the weaker your cells, the shorter your lifespan, the more vulnerable you are to disease. So they were sitting so that will show in terms of your biolog age. So their telomeres were short and unhealthy. They, their ages were in the of this particular subject and we had a group like this as well that similar. They biologically chronological. The actual age was in their mid-30s but their biological age 70 or something. Yes, a sickly 70 year old.

That's crazy within.

Crazy within nine weeks of mind management. Note I didn't work on. I don't use drugs. I didn't. I do talk about diet and stuff but in this particular clinical trial it was pure mind management. Just the neurocycle. Just get your mind under control. And that gray means that the brain stabilized that the brain waves that they were actually managing. So here they were saying I am depression, I am hopeless. All the biomarkers DNA here they're saying I now know why I feel depression. I'm not depression. I now know why. And depression is simply a signal of an underlying cause. It's not who I am. It's not an it, it's not an illness by 63 days. And these numbers are very significant. They were actually seeing behavior change in their life. They were okay, so I know I'll still get depressed but I know why and I know what to do. And there was changes in their behavior. They were back at work, they were back sleeping. 25% improvement in sleep. And I mean all kinds of like their relationships not suicidal anymore. And I mean that's. I can go on and on and on.

Wow.

This subject over here was in the control group. So they got no mind management. And what you'll see is a lot of red and a lot of chaos. And that red shows complete brain. That is like a tsunami in your brain which the biomarkers were terrible. This person's DNA telomeres were very short. And so with mind management in nine weeks we showed how you can literally change your telomeres which are your markers for aging and for health, mental health and physical health. That's pretty unusual because most of the work on telomeres has been done around diet and exercise, which are very small.

Like, you know, leafy greens and plant based.

Exactly. Which is significant. And also there's been some work on meditation, but there's been. No, I think this is the first study that's been done on actually doing deliberate, intentional mind work to change. And then we saw significant drops as well in inflammation markers and blood markers and. But the biggest thing was the narrative, the person's story. So if we go away from the biology for a minute and we listen to the person's story, that person was offline, they were online, they were living again. And even though. And they had also had this acceptance and this is what I wanted to kind of circle back to when you started was life and managing your mind doesn't mean that it's going to be one big rosy, you know, put on rose tinted glasses. That's crazy. It is actually the ability to be okay and at peace with having moments of depression and actually looking for the message and seeing them as helpful. We have this really weird philosophy, which has been about 40 years in the west now, where we look at depression and anxiety and those kind of things as illnesses and neuropsychiatric brain diseases and as bad symptoms that we must suppress, like cancer symptoms, you must suppress. So it's been lumped or misery of life has been medicalized, to quote brilliant psychiatrist and Joanna Moncrief. So we've got to really watch out for that. But actually, the real truth is that those depression and anxiety are not illnesses. They are just survival instincts. It's telling you, hey, pay attention, there's something going on. You need to go, and something's not.

Working, something's not working, something's not working.

And it's manifesting as a pattern that needs to be addressed and that'll block the greatness.

So are you saying. Am I hearing. Did I hear you say that there, there isn't a mental health disease? It's more of just a pattern or something that we should be mindful of. But it's not an actual disease.

No, it's not a disease. And I know this counters the current philosophy, but if you look at the science, there's a large body of science. In fact, if you interpret all the science around this field and you really look at what's being tested, you actually will see it's not a. They've been looking for the neurobiological correlative. You're looking for where in the brain is depression. And for years we've been told about the serotonin, imbalance causing depression. I mean that's not even a theory. Never proven, great for marketing, for, you know, for selling drugs. And also the simplistic way of telling someone, hey, you're depressed, don't worry, it's chemically imbalanced. Let me give you a drug to fix it. You know, we want this quick fix mentality. So with as medicine has advanced and technology has advanced, so we've become very caught up in the quick fix. But life's not like that. Mind is not like that. Mind is separate from brain and body. You can apply that kind of thinking, not quick fix, but you can apply a symptomatic diagnosis, treatment approach, approach to body, to physical brain and body. But when it comes to mind that, that there's this, this gravitational field, this force, this think, feel, choose thing, it's not going to go. You know, a medication is not going to change how you're thinking, feeling and choosing. It's not going to get rid of this. It's just going to numb your brain. So maybe you don't feel this for it while it's working, but at the same time as then when that drug weighs off, this is still there. This is still being recognized by the immune system of your brain as a problem. So this is increasing your bone. The longer it's there, the more you increase your vulnerability to disease. Oh my gosh, you know, and this is what gets you stuck and these are the patterns. So no, it's not an illness. It is a normal human response. Here we all know that everyone's going on about the next pandemic is mental health. We mental health has always been an issue. From the beginning of time. Mankind has battled with life, with issues with death, with fighting, with war, with whatever. So mental health's not on the rise. But the mismanagement of mental health, making it a disease has created a whole new problem. So here we sit with before the pandemic they started doing a population study in the mid-90s. And this is when I was still practice, early days of my practicing, sort of 10 years into my work and I started seeing this trend of and I was watching the study where people were the decades long trend of people living longer. So we know, we all hear this message. This is what we've heard. People are living longer because of the advances in medicine and technology. None of us question that. But something happened in 96 that did start questioning that. By the mid 2000s it was an established, researched fact that we don't live longer anymore. That the trend of people living longer has actually reversed and that we have a pandemic of deaths of despair where people are dying from preventable lifestyle diseases and the age group most being affected are between 24 and 65. So people at the beginning of their career, in the prime of their career and through that that age group are being, are dropping down dead flies and it's death considered deaths of despair by preventable lifestyle diseases. So we have to look at the lifestyle disease means that there's something in our body that's weaker. Why lifestyle which is mind driven. How am I eating, drinking, sleeping. But more than that is what's my mind behind all of that? How am I actually managing the day to day moments? How am I managing the patterns, the traumas, the established toxic habits? What am I doing about that stuff? And that's when we ignore all of that because this current trend of science is saying, oh those don't matter, what matters is the symptoms. Let's just look for the symptoms, checklist, diagnose, label. When you label someone, you chop up to 10 years more of their life. You know, it's like it's adding on. They've shown studies of people with a mental health diagnosis have a chop up to 20 years off their lifespan. People on psychotropic drugs because of all the complications and the changes in the brain and the body, chopping up to 25 years of their life. I mean this is serious. So here we have this already existing. Then the pandemic hits, now another year, they say that there's an additional year being chopped off people's lives. But there's such a contradiction because they're saying, hey, there's this adverse circumstance, grief of loss of people, uncertainty, medical and not knowing if you're going to live or die and how long is this isolation going to go on and economic impact and whatever, the whole lot that's trauma. And they saying that when they're saying, but this is the way to treat it, let's label it, let's diagnose this, let's medicate it. So here we've come into Covid with a problem with that stupid philosophy that's created such a lot of problems. And scientifically this has all been researched and shown and now we've got the pandemic and now they want to carry on that system that didn't work to this, which is going to make it even worse. So we've got to shift our narrative completely and we've got to stop saying that mental illness is on the rise and that There's 1 in 4 people on antidepressants who are depressed. 100% of people are depressed and anxious and concerned about this COVID pandemic. 100% of people in the world at some point in their life have and will be anxious and depressed and in grief and sadness and terror and despair. And one of the others, a large percentage of the population, and I'm not sure the exact percentage because no one's really done this kind of research, but estimates it's probably 30, 40% of people will have extreme trauma from abuse, war trauma, that kind of stuff, where they'll go down the continuum to sort of the minus 9, 10, 8, 9, 10. If you look at a continuum of 0 to 10, 0 to minus 10, and have things like psychotic breaks and hearing voices and extreme states of distress, mental distress, which are still not diseases. They are simply in that traumatic situation, you're having a traumatic response. Think of someone who's a war vet. I just interviewed a Navy Seal the other day who was trained snipers. And I mean, the things that he had to do and that his teams had to do, you know, they come back and try and we all know the problem of trying to, you know, reconcile back into civilian life after you've got, I mean, you know, this is what they'd be experiencing all day long stuff that's completely against survival, completely against our human nature. And now they, instead of them being allowed to process this trauma, they're coming back and being told that they diseased. And he would tell me that what they do with a lot of. We don't hear this sort of thing, but he told me this. They will inject things like risperidol, which is an antipsychotic, into the spines of war vets because they're a bit psychotic. And they, and they psychotic for a reason. It's their coping. How do you deal with this? Of course you're going to be angry, you're going to be frustrated, you're not going to be able to love like you did. You have to, to be able to embrace, process and reconceptualize. Giving them a drug is not going to make it, not going to help it. In fact, it constrains the brain, it restricts the brain. You can't. There's no chemical cure for that. That's not, that's just going to add fuel to the fire because your mind's got to work through the brain. So now you put chemicals in and now that's not going to, that's not going to facilitate change. We have to do something. So it's like a narrative.

Do you feel like there. I mean, is there such a thing as a chemical imbalance in some people? You know, when they say, oh, I have a depression, it's a disease, or bipolar, or I have this mental health disease, or I have a chemical imbalance, I was treated with this. Don't try to say I don't, because this is who I am. Is that. Do some people have that, or is that.

That's a result of.

Go ahead.

The narrative of I have a chemical imbalance and my depression is from chemical imbalance is a narrative that is the only explanation that people are being given. They're not given an alternative reaction. I mean, an alternative narrat. So the most important thing is that anyone listening to this podcast, I want to validate your depression, your anxiety, your grief, your despair, your ptsd. Whatever label you've been given, I want you to. I want to validate that. That doesn't need to be validated with a disease label. You're not diseased. You're not a broken brain. You aren't. Your brain isn't effective. You are going through something. So you aren't something. You aren't that. You are going through something.

You're experiencing something.

You're experiencing something, and you're experiencing. And you've coped in the only way that you could cope in that.

Mom.

So it created this adverse response because it was an adverse situation, and you were just trying to cope. So what we have to do is go through a process of embracing and processing and reconceptualizing. So the important thing here is to recognize that chemical imbalance isn't the cause of your despair. The cause of your despair is what you've gone through and what you're going through and learning how to. Not knowing how to manage it and how to deal with those thoughts that are driving you crazy and those flashbacks and the trauma of the flashbacks and going back into those situations of the rape or the abuse or the war trauma or the. That it could drive a person crazy. And that's not crazy in the sense of illness. It's crazy in the sense of your mind is like this erratic tidal wave around you, and it's going through your brain, and you've got these. And your immune system and everything screaming out you and saying, hey, let's fix this. So a disease label invalidates it. And for a moment, it might be nice to know, okay, well, there's a label to how I feel, because it kind of gives us a Bit of feels like we've got a bit of control. So initially that gives you comfort, but don't see yourself as that. It's better to say I'm experiencing post traumatic stress issues because of what I've been through versus I am ptsd, or I have the sickness of ptsd. It's better to say I'm experiencing symptoms of bipolar, these intense swings because of my whole story, than saying I have bipolar, I have a chemical imbalance. I mean, just researchers coming out the other day showed that we've got to stop saying this. The top psychiatrist that lead this field will tell you we've got to stop saying this, that there's no way that serotonin imbalance, you can't even measure that there's no gene for. There's no genes or serotonin imbalance causing it. It's what you've experienced that's the cause. And then that moves through your brain and your body. So obviously your brain and your body respond. So we will see changes in the brain and the body. We will see neurochemical chaos. Not necessarily serotonin imbalance. That's just one. Sometimes it's dopamine. And if dopamine's down, serotonin is often, then anandamides often. And then, I mean, I can give you a list of big chemical terms and that's going to change every function in the structure of your brain and your DNA and your telomeres and 1400 neurophysiological responses are off. So, you know, that's the response, though. And that doesn't mean that you have this thing hidden inside of you, the scary thing that's controlling you. And that invalidates. If someone comes back from war, someone's had a sexual trauma, to tell them that the depression or anxiety they're feeling is an illness is an insult to what they've gone through. But if I say to you, gosh, that's terrible, tell me about it, I want to hear your story, I want to support you. Your depression and anxiety that you're feeling is a signal that there's stuff going on, there's an origin story, there's a source. So can I listen? Can I help? Can I support you in trying to, to recognize the signals and go through the process to find the origin story and then to reconceptualize it. And that takes time. It's not a 15 minute appointment where I can give you a label that takes time. That's not also. And it's also not the conditioning kind of treatments that are in place that some of them work if they're used in the right place. But to try and. To try and put a veteran who's gone through something back into the situation to try and condition them. You can't condition. You have to reconstruct construct. So it's kind of like an algebraic equation. X is. Is the situation. Y is how you should want. You want to function for mental peace. So you've got X plus Y. And so here we are in our X situation where we, as a sort of human experiencing life, you're supposed to be at Y and you put the two together. And what the current treatment says is that, okay, now we're going to create Z, we're just going to ignore X and Y, we're going to create a new thing. And that new thing is you decide diseased. But that doesn't work. It's actually X plus Y equals xy. X is what you're going through. Y is where you want to find mental peace and you want to put the two together to live together so that you can change how the past plays out into your future.

Oh, man, this is powerful. Cash, What were the memories you had, experiences you had that created the limiting beliefs? So scarcity.

It's interesting you say this, because then there's another category, and this is where I fall and actually diagnosed myself with a memory impairment for quite some years.

Memory impairment.

Impairment based on the fact that I had no memories.

I dated a girl that said she didn't remember anything between before 18 one time. I was like, she was super positive and amazing and loving, and I was like, there's something off if you don't remember anything before 18. Nothing. I was like, how's that possible? There's got to be some serious trauma that you're right. And later I found out, like, there was incredible trauma.

But I think societally, so there is that, so society. So when I realized I had no memory, I had to. Two theories.

Working theories.

You working theories. One was that I had such a cataclysmic trauma, you know, that I can't remember, and that washed all my memories. And I spent a lot of time thinking and, oh, gosh, you know, what could it have been? And I keep coming up with, I don't. And then the other diagnosis that I gave myself was a memory impairment. So anyway, flashing forward, I've now come to realize that I started to share. When I got the Instagram platform, I started to talk a bit more openly about my lack of memories. I started to understand our nervous system and our stress responses a bit more. And I came to realize that more of us than you would realize are like this ex of yours and myself, that we don't have memories and it doesn't have to be, you know, a biological thing wrong in our brains and it doesn't have to be the big T. It is like the big T trauma that I think a lot of us talk about. The big cataclysmic event.

I feel like you'd remember the trauma bigger but right.

Yeah. So sometimes it's a low lie or a low level stress, chronic stress and inability to have emotions present in the home that results in that lack of memory. So anyway, to answer your question though, the way I came to know that I had a lot of my lack based mindset was because we still remember. So I have people who reach out to me like oh my gosh, if I can't remember, how will I heal? So I don't have a visual memory, I can't go back in time. And when I talk about inner child work and you go back to heal, you don't need the memory to heal the way that I see it. Because we all are a walking memory, whether it's in habits based on our reactions, our triggers, our patterns, the thoughts that we frequently think. So a lot of Maya would orbit around lack based or not having type of things, lack of consideration so we can see evidence of our past whether or not we see our past. Yes.

So you were being, you know, for example, you were like where's my food? My half is gone. Or you took three fourths and I only have a fourth. And so that's definitely like reflecting a memory of experiences or an experience you had that you held onto and said like I'm not deserving of enough or there's never going to be enough or whatever the story you said to yourself, right.

A lot of mine was based around this of kind concept of being considered. So for me it was a bit of emergence between lack. So when I attribute that to my dad, he very much was. My parents are much older. When they had me, My mom was 42 and my dad was 45.

How old are you now?

So. And I am third, I'll be 37 in September. So. So yeah, so my dad very much had a lot of the depression error based thinking. I mean my garage looks like a fallout shelter with literally twine wrapped up because enough twine put together, you have a rope. I mean that kind of so very direct ways and indirect ways. I'm sure my dad's messaging about money and holding and keeping. And then the consideration piece gets wrapped up in there for me.

You weren't being taken, you weren't being considered.

Not being considered, being seen or being thought about. And that comes to my mother, who was very much emotionally completely vacant, absent. And so not feeling seen, heard, understood. So for me, when items would go missing like my brownie that I really wanted, it was, it became not only do I not have enough for me, but the meaning that I was thinking about me was I'm not considered. And that would open up a really deep wound. So when my partner's looking at me like, what the hell is wrong with you? It's a brownie, Nicole. I'll go get you another one. You know what I mean? So. But inside I was like a little girl who was not being seen. It was being told that there's not enough for me. And I mean, so that's where that pain was coming from. When I was tearing around the apartment about my brownie, it wasn't about my brownie. And I think that's the way that, I mean, if we all look at ourself and our patterns and I'm always talking about developing self observation to do that, all of our clues are there. Our past is present with us and that's why we're stuck and that's why we can't. The way I see it, at least that's why a lot of us struggle to move forward. And that's why I hear the word stuck probably more often than I hear any word spoken.

So how do people get unstuck?

First, I think consciousness. We have to become conscious to ourselves because we're in our autopilot 95% of the day if we're not conscious. And that's going to be the program, I mean the computer analogy is, I think, the one that we all understand the most. That's going to be the program that we're running day after day after day. So without consciousness, there is no change. And then becoming conscious too, our patterns, we are incredibly habitual creatures as humans. Whether it's our daily habits, you know, behavioral habits, whether or not it's our patterned thoughts that a lot of us have. We all tend to think the same content type thoughts. And then the way I say is, they induce feelings, actual changes in our body's physiology and our neurotransmitters and our stress hormones and then that becomes our normal and that becomes our stuck place. So without consciousness, I don't think change happens.

So awareness, consciousness, Awareness, awareness of our patterns, of our triggers of our pain, pain of the trauma. Does that mean healing the past first and reflecting on all the past? Is that why people do therapy, talk therapy? Because you're talking about the things that created the pattern today?

I am always a believer and I explore this within myself a lot. How much is the past necessary? And I keep coming to the conclusion that it's necessary that becoming self observational, understanding. I think that developing through a mindfulness based meditation practice is incredibly helpful because it actually helps us to fire up our brain in a new way that then allows for self observation throughout the day. Because I don't think there's no magic cushion. There's no magic anything at the way I see it, we can't do something once and then expect my day to look different magically because I've meditated in the morning. Yeah, there's some gains and some peace. I mean a joke you made. Oh, I meditate in the morning so I can, you know, calm my mind. Yeah, that we get a little residual, you know, carry out, carry away from sitting and meditating. But if I'm not watching myself throughout the day and if I don't train myself to watch myself throughout the day, to watch my patterns, to watch the thoughts that are causing those emotional reactions, especially to see when I'm triggered. Just when I'm having a big feeling about a current event, typically the feeling is really big. It's about the meaning assigned to the event, the similarity of this now event based on my past experiences. And so there's always a reason why things are way bigger than they maybe ought to be logically in that moment. And then that's where we dive in and give ourselves some new either releasing the emotional valve, soothing our own emotional wounds in that moment, not looking outside of anyone or anything else to make us feel better. At least that's the way that I view it.

So you're saying no one else should be determining our happiness?

Yeah, big proponent.

Shocker.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I talk a lot about interdependence is the kind of term that I've been going back to a lot essentially being, you know, because we are, we are social creatures as humans. We actually benefited quite greatly from having tribes, you know, as we are evolving in terms of safety and division of labor. So as I see it, we all, we need quote unquote, little n. We little N need relationships. But I think what interdependence means to me is being able to be a, a self reliant and resilient you know, human meeting all my physical, emotional needs separately and then having that shared space of relationship.

How does someone become interdependent if they've been so reliant on the needs of other people? Especially, you know, under 18. The needs of parents for financial or.

Yeah.

Housing, food.

Yeah.

But if we're talking, you know, adults, how do you become interdependent? Well, you have a lot of trauma or pain or.

Well, I mean, developmentally, Louis, that is the reality up until a certain. At this point, I think, unfortunately, because of some of the financial struggles that many people are having, I think even now, adults are finding themselves much more compromised and dependent.

College debt.

Yeah, Place or living, you know, back to live at home to be able to pay for college debt. I mean, it's really, it's a shame, it's that because I think we're shifting back into that more just necessary dependence. So wherever you sit on that spectrum, I think it's, you know, about breaking those patterns of looking outside of ourself to show up for others, take care of others, get my needs met by, you know, relating with others. Whether it's because they make me feel better or they distract me or I've learned that I come by this really naturally myself. My family was. And a very large reason why I'm not able, or I choose now not to have contact with them them is they are so enmeshed and codependent where there's just no boundary. And direct and indirect messaging that I got growing up was that I was responsible for other people's feelings in particular. So for me, evolving out of that and starting to separate myself off and just see myself as a self contained human also meant then showing up differently in my relationships, putting up the word we all love to hate, which is boundaries, and learning how to carve out space, not only physical space where my needs might be different than another person's needs in that given moment, but more importantly, emotional space. And that's, I think, a struggle that a lot of us have.

Yeah, I mean, I've. I feel like there's a lot of people that struggle with family, family and boundaries. I've gone through this challenge myself with different people in my family throughout the years and on one end, and I have a lot of guilt tied to responsibility to make sure my family's taken care of at least basic needs. Right. On the other end, I'm like, okay, we've all come from the same place. We all have certain skills and the capacity to take care of our basic needs. It's not like we were homeless or something like that. Like, we all got college degrees. We're all very privileged in certain sense. Right. Sure. We all faced a level of trauma and have a level, our own level of limiting beliefs based on experiences and trauma that each one of us felt separately. But I still have this challenge with like, okay, do I just make sure everyone's taken care of all the time and then I feel taken advantage of or abused or not respected or whatever it is? Or do I set boundaries and have people potentially hate me and not want to talk to me? You know, you hear these catchphrases like, family is everything. Always be there for your family. Nothing else matters but family. But what about our own emotional well being? Doesn't that matter?

Yeah.

So how do we. How do we manage the guilt and pressure and the feeling responsibility of needing to provide for our family or take care at all costs versus having personal freedom and peace in our own heart?

Yeah, absolutely. It's tough. I made that noise when you said that first one, because family is everything. Might as well have been a plaque in my home. I mean, that was said as a mantra. Family is everything. Family is everything. Family is everything. It was under the guise of the Italian, you know, culture. My dad, it's very much, you know, kind of 100 Italian.

So.

And if you're not a part of the family is everything motto, you might as well not be in the family.

Yeah, it was really. So a lot of us, I do know, know that we get that direct. Some of it's a bit more indirect where you're just kind of not urged or things aren't fostered that take you out of that family unit. So there's a lot of ways that I see it that these messages are internalized and then we become the adult that begins to believe that ourself on some level. So the thing I will always say first and foremost is boundaries suck, especially when you're creating them with our families. I mean, these are dynamics that have been sitting set in place for as long as some of us have walked the earth. So when we change a dynamic that's already one way, it sucks even more. However, I say that because it's uncomfortable to put up boundaries and to start to define limits of what it will no longer work for you. But what I see that saving ultimately over time. So the immediate discomfort that's really uncomfortable.

For some of us, it might be immediate. For years.

It might be, yeah. But the way I say it on the other side is a much more sustainable relationship. Because even in the description you said, right. I start to feel resentful, taken advantage of. And the problem there is I then look to these people who are taking advantage of me or not respecting me or not giving me something back and I get mad at them and then the relationship suffers. But unfortunately I have to look at me and the role that I played in continuing to show up in a situation that wasn't working for me.

Wow. So when did you, I guess leave talking to your family or connect with them? How long has it been?

So it's been, it's been officially a year. But this started Instagram, right? When I started Instagram.

Right.

But this was, I mean it was several. I mean, one might say it was a lifetime in the making because tried.

To make it work.

I tried.

And so part of the situation with me, and again, I never prescribed my path as for everyone, we all have different journeys on this planet. So part of the situation that made it inherently more complicated was the fact that my mom, my dad and my older sister, who was 15 years older than me, I was a much later in life child live in the same home.

They all live together.

Live in the same home. Yeah, with my nephew as well, my sister.

Your parents are what, 70?

So my, my mom will be. She just turned 79. My dad I think is 82.

Wow. And your older sister, who.

And my older sister is 52.

Yeah, they all live together.

They live together in the home. And now my 12 year old nephew, so.

And he, he lives there.

They're all living the house. So. Talk about a living.

You don't live there.

So I, I escaped.

I've gotten out.

I actually got the hell out as soon as I turned. I think I was 17 when I flew right off to college and I was out of there. But I say that because I tried every version of separate relationships.

What are those versions?

You know, hey, my sister's name is Suzanne. Suzanne, you know, let me try to, you know, have a separate relationship over here with you where we don't talk. My mom is chronically ill. So another bit of my background around. My mom is chronically ill and has been my, my entire life. There's now a bit of a pain pill, not a full blown addiction. I mean, she just is really.

Yeah.

Tolerating. I mean, that's exactly what it is, Lewis, to be honest. But so pretty much my mom is the orbit around that my whole family kind of, you know, kind of. Yeah, she's the nucleus. So mom's health. Moms. And my mom has had when I was in my early 20s, which was probably at the height of my anxiety, where I might as well. I was living in New York. It might as well have been one panic attack after another that I was living because my mom was actually having a pretty serious heart surgery at the time. So, yeah, there's like micro health things, but it's always, how's mom doing? Is mom okay? Mom has this health thing. So one of the versions that I tried was having a separate relationship where we don't, you know, talk about mom and health.

How do you think we heal trauma if we don't have the resources to go to therapy or do workshops or whatever it may be? Even if we do have resources, we don't have the courage to put ourselves out there. How do we start to heal trauma within our body?

Excellent question. So we did a whole project for Audible Original called Take Control that was all about the thesis. Was this any area of your life that you're stuck? I am willing to bet everything I have that you have a trauma pattern from your past that you've never healed. You got a boss that is abusive. Guarantee you this has to do with a trauma pattern from your past. You can't succeed in the areas you want. You can't lose the weight. There's some pattern from your past. So the first thing is recognizing that you actually experience trauma. And I am a huge proponent, as so many people are, of widening the definition. Because I think up until about five years ago, most of us thought that trauma just meant, okay, you were in active duty or you were in a huge accident or incident that was highly traumatic, or you survived some sort of physical, sexual, whatever. Abuse. Trauma is just about any kind of experience that you witness or you absorb that has your nervous system light up on edge and start warning you. So if you've ever had, like you could have a critical parent and you just brace for them, you could have a parent that drinks like crazy and you brace at five o' clock because you know they're coming home. You could have been abandoned by a parent, or have a parent that was mentally ill, or have a parent that was so on your ass because they wanted you to be a pro football player and so you were constantly on edge. It's when your nervous system fires up to a state of alert that now gets programmed into your body as a response. There's a reason why so many couples at 5 o' clock at night start bickering. And it has to do with the fact that that at 5 o' clock is typically when a lot of parents 20 years ago were coming home from work and that's when the arguing would start. And so what happens when you witness that or you feel it is as a kid you're now in a state where you're on edge. I see you rocking in your chair.

Wow, that's crazy. Well, I mean, I just remember, you know, it's funny, there's a lot of good things that usually happen to our childhood, but we just seem to remember a lot of the bad stuff. And it's because it's, you know why?

Right?

Because it's trauma, just like in your nervous system.

And also your mind is wired in a way to prioritize the negative as a means to keep your ass safe from not experiencing. Correct. Which is why you got to work on your positive mindset. Because your mind defaults to negative. So you got to build up the programming to positive. This isn't just woo woo, this is actually science.

I know. So I remember, you know, my, the memories of the past. I always have to remind myself of all the positive stuff that, you know, my parents did all the time and what they were going through and giving them grace and all these different things. But I remember, you know, when my dad would get home, it would be, it was, you didn't know what type of day it was going to be for him. You know, it was like either a thunder coming through the wooden floors with his wooden shoes and like being angry and upset, or it was like the loving father that would take me out and play catch in the backyard. So I have to constantly remind myself of like the positive, which, which I'm certain it was 90% of the time was good. But those 10% of the time creates that clinching mode like you said.

Well, let me explain what happens. So there's really interesting concept called ghosts in the nursery. And so trauma patterns get automated because they're not experienced in your brain, they're felt in your nervous system. And so it's why you can have a pattern from your past, but be completely unaware that it's running your life right now. Because it's stored not in your conscious thought, but in your nervous system. And you feel it in your body before it even gets into your head. And so there's this concept called ghost in the nursery, which basically means there's all kinds of that goes on when you're little that you may or may not remember in your mind, but your body remembers it. So for example, if you had parents that were just stressed out out and they come home and they've been busy. And you're sitting there playing on the floor and there's toys everywhere. And mom or dad's reaction to a mess is to scream. That creates this kind of thing in your nervous system. Now, you may not remember that episode that happened on May 17, 1972, but your nervous system remembers what it's like. So fast forward, you're now 51 years old, and you walk in the house and there's a mess everywhere. And even though you have said, I'm not going to bulldoze and yell at anybody, my body recognizes the situation. So what do you do? You repeat the pattern you saw. And so what I'm working on right now is a pattern that is encoded in my nervous system. I was trying to create a video. Yes. Or two days ago for Share the mic. For share the mic now. Trying to create a video. And I'm like doing take after take because I want to get it right. And my daughter comes waltzing into the room and was like, how long are you going to be doing this? And I was like, you can't do it.

I'm working.

I literally, like screamed at her and she looked at me, Lewis, and she goes, you have a real problem.

Wow. How old is your daughter?

20.

And I said, I calmly said, you're right, I do. When I get interrupted, I lose control of the response. And I'm working so hard. And the way that you. And I'm clearly not mastering this yet, but the way that you do it is as you feel it rise up. You have to, you know, you can use the five second rule. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. You can use. Just take a quick break. You can notice the pattern. And you've got to create a pause between the emotion rising up and the reaction that gets automated. And for many people, the reaction, Louis, is to run away. It's to leave the room. It's to avoid the confrontation. The. It was just easy, you know, hold on, let me let the clock go.

Even though you, you hate being interrupted by anything, this is a great interruption.

See, I did like, I didn't do. I didn't do the bulldoze. I was, I was calm because it wasn't a human being. I'm only mean to human beings. A lot of people run away. They avoid conflict. They say it's just easier. But if running away and avoiding conflict continues to create a pattern where you feel invisible and your boundaries are tromped on, that's a pattern. And, you know, here's the other thing. About patterns. Running away and being quiet might have saved you when you were little because if you were quiet and out of the room, you didn't get hit, you didn't get yelled at, you were out of harm's way. So when you were little, it was a genius pattern because it protected you. But the issue for adults is that again, we walk around with the patterns that we created when we were 8 years old in different situations than we are in now. And now we are completely a robot to these patterns.

I love that you had of couple a great tweet the other day about boundaries because as, as individuals, both of us who try to help people break boundaries, try to break their mindset that's holding them back, try to get them to become greater than their past, all these different things. You wrote a post that said your boundaries are there to serve you. As you grow, so will your boundaries. What boundaries do you need to set up in order to help yourself grow? Why are boundaries important when we also have the mindset of like, you should be breaking your boundaries all the time?

Well, I wouldn't say that breaking your. Like I don't call the obstacles or I call them excuses. And so I think the hardest boundaries honestly are the ones to set with yourself. To not drink during the week, to not tolerate the bulldozing, immediately apologize and try to do better, to not waste hours on social media. Like all the things that the small promises you need to make in order to create boundaries with your old patterns and your excuses. To me, the hardest boundaries to set are those with myself. What was the question again?

You know, breaking. We encourage people to break boundaries. They feel like they're limited. But you talk about your boundaries are there served you. So obviously it's a different type of boundary.

But you know, so here's the thing.

What boundaries do you need to help yourself to protect yourself? And which ones do you need to grow past that are holding you back?

I think that the definition with boundaries that has helped me the most is understanding the boundaries are for me, they're not for you. And the single biggest mistake that we make in any relationship, particularly romantic ones, but also work related ones, is we do not express what we need.

That's so true. My girlfriend was telling me this the other day. She's like, I really want you to tell me what you need and when you want it and feel comfortable and confident saying it. And for me I go back into trauma of past. Like when I used to say what I want, need and it didn't get met, it would have get let down my expectations, I'd get hurt. So I was like, screw it, I'll just do everything on my own. Which leads to resentment or whatever else.

Yeah, how's that working out for you? It's like, so Louis, that's an example of 8 year old Louis created a pattern that worked when you were 8, but now that you're in your 30s and in a relationship that you really care about, you've got to identify the pattern and break it and replace it. And the good news is any pattern can be replaced. Change isn't personal, it just feels personal. Change is just about identifying patterns and replacing them with new ones. That's it. And it'll take a little while because they're encoded in your nervous system. And your default is to just do it yourself. But you have to, you cannot, as a rule, punish other people for. You didn't communicate. So I'll give you the perfect example. So Chris and I have been married for 24 years. And when I was before the talk show and I made my living mostly by doing 100 speeches a year, I would be on the road 150 days a year. And when I would come home, there was always something that pissed me off.

Like what? Like the trash isn't taken out, the clothes are here, or is it something else?

Oh, no, I'm way worse than that.

Are you kidding?

I would walk in after being gone for five or six days, and there on the island in the kitchen was a vase that had dead flowers, the ones that I had bought for myself a week before. And it was as if everybody in my family had been walking around the island for six days as if there was some dead flower sculpture in the middle of the island. And so I would come home, and first of all, the only person that's really excited to see me is a dog. And my family did sit me down at one point and they said, you know, you realize when you're not here, we have our own lives. So you don't put your lives on hold while, you know for us. And we're not putting our lives on hold. So it's not that we're not excited to see you, but we're not organizing our whole lives around when mom comes home.

Right. To be like the dog. To be like the dog, excited and running up and jumping in your arms and kissing you. Yeah, yeah.

No, no. But I think that's cool because that means that they're independent and doing their own thing. They've set boundaries, they've set boundaries with Me. Perfect. So for probably six months, I would get pissy, and I would walk in and put my bags down, and I grabbed the flowers and I demonstratively. How many times has everyone done this? Throw them out loudly.

Like, everyone hears you.

Communication. Yeah, I'm getting my communication. Just throwing these dead flowers out. Communicate to you that you should buy me flowers. Like, I'm not saying that, but that's what the body language is, right? How dare I have been off. I've been in four cities, and then you become a mart. Like, ugh, I'm disgusting when I tell this story, but this is it. This is, like, so.

Well, I see you've got some lovely flowers behind you that look alive. So that's good to see.

Aren't they flies? So I do love flowers. So finally I just said to Chris, you know what would make me feel amazing is if when I came home, you had just bought some flowers. Just go to the. Just when you're at the grocery store, you don't have to order. I'm saying, buy the $5 pack of half dead tulips. Just something. Okay.

And.

And then he said, why? And this is the most important part of expressing. And look, you don't have to give an explanation if you're trying to, like, cut off a toxic person, but if you want to express boundaries with somebody because you want them to understand you more deeply, give them the why. I said, because it makes me think that you are excited for me to come home and that you knew I was coming, because I'm starting to feel forgotten. So underneath the anger, Louis.

Wow.

Was her hurt and feeling like I didn't matter. And so I'll be darned. I walk in, and there they are. And I literally feel so seen. And, you know, the other thing to do is. And like, another thing for us, too, is, like, Chris. And I learned on my talk show, because Chris was on it, and we did a show all about men and what men think and the secrets they keep.

Oh, wow.

I learned for the first time that my husband prefers to have sex in the morning.

I get a lot of men do.

I didn't know that. Well, see, I didn't like it because I don't like bad breath in the morning.

My girlfriend says the same thing, but.

I'm like, why didn't you tell me? And the reason why is because we're so funky about asking for what we need. We're so afraid of getting rejected or denied or whatever, or being vulnerable in that moment. But the greatest thing that you can do is ask for what you need. Your friends need to know what you need. Your lover needs to know what you need. Your kids need to know what you need. Because then they can show up in a way where you feel seen, and then you're gonna. And they're gonna feel incredible.

Yeah. And you can't expect people to know what you need or then to know what you need by communicating it through anger and this frustration of, you know, whatever. Like, you're throwing away the flowers, communicating really unhealthy. I'm to blame there as well. And I think it's. That's not a healthy way of creating love within a relationship, whether it's a friend, a family member, or a loved one.

But here's the thing. You want to know why? Let me let everybody off the hook.

Yeah.

Because here's the reason why this happens, and this is what I want everyone to know, what we're up against. So, Louis, as you and I sit here talking about the flower thing, right. And you got to communicate your boundaries as we're having this conversation. We are present, and we're using the thinking part of our brain. When I walk into the kitchen, I am not thinking. I am in the emotional traumatic nervous system, robot part of my body. And that's where your feelings and your triggers take over. And if you can start to identify the bulldozing, the anger, all that stuff, you will literally change your whole life by just changing one or two patterns. The other thing. And you know, you asked me about the talk show. The single greatest gift of the talk show, content wise, is something called the word wheel. So I don't have it right here, but if you Google Word wheel or wheel of emotions, you will find that if you ask somebody, name as many emotions as you can, most people can name three. Happy, sad, angry. There's literally like 113 of them, from disgusted to hopeless to. And if you. If you start with a core, this thing allows you to start with a core emotion and go out. Because back to the flower example. I was expressing anger. That's not what I was feeling. I was feeling invisible and forgotten. And so the word wheel is something that we used several times a week to help people go from the thing that they are expressing to the roots to communicating what you're feeling, which is a lot like the work that you wrote about in your book, Wearing Masks, getting to the root of the core emotion you're feeling but not expressing. And that goes back to the pause thing. What have I seen that I am busy, that I am so have you ever wanted something so bad that you become paralyzed?

Yeah.

I so want to end the mental pain and suffering that people feel. I so want to help people heal their minds and to have the power to create a better future. And I get so overwhelmed by how much I want to see that happen in the world that sometimes I become paralyzed. And what happens for me a lot of the time is I feel insignificant in my ability to move the needle on that.

Yeah. Because there's billions of people who are struggling.

Yeah.

And it's like, what do you do to make the maximum use of your time to make the maximum impact and also create resources to create more impact?

I yell at my husband to buy me flowers. That's what I do.

I get to feel. Is this wheel of emotions, is this something you created or is this something.

No, it's in the public domain.

Wow. That's cool. I never heard of that.

That's really cool.

Tell people you gotta embrace the fear until the fear disappears.

Yeah.

Similar with the feelings. You've gotta live in the feelings until. What would you say?

Feel the feeling that it no longer requires to be felt. That's right. Because what you're really describing so eloquently is you had a massive fear of rejection. Talking to girls, speaking in public, asking, feeling enough. Yes. Someone asking to employ you or pay you. So we have a great fear of rejection, which is not surprising, because when we're born, we have two drivers. Find connection. Avoid rejection. After all, if a mother rejects a child, if a lion rejects the cub, it's not going to be adopted. It will die. Yeah. Or it just starves to death. And so we know innately that our survival on the planet is linked to not being rejected. And not that long ago, you would have died from rejection. You know, in a thousand years ago, when they banished you outside the walls of the city, or you marooned a difficult sailor, or you cast someone out of the community, you pretty much died. There was nothing out there but purgatory. So we have a wiring that says, rejection will kill me. And that's why you had the fear. But when you can dialogue with a no. It feels like it will kill me. It can't kill me because no girl can reject me unless I give her my permission.

Right. Give her my power.

You can't reject me unless I agree with everything. I don't like you because you got short hair. I don't like your shirt. I don't like you because you're white. Not white. Tall, Short, glasses. Not. But when you Say, you can't reject me. I can't be rejected because the only person you can reject me is me. You can talk to girls really realizing even if they say, no, you're not my type, I'm with someone, no thanks. Or even, ew, not no. They can only reject you if you let that in. And we look at someone like James Corden, who's certainly not gorgeous, but women love him because he's funny. So funny. And you know, we like warm people. You know, the packaging is all very nice, velosible, have a great packaging, a great wrapper, and it'll. But they're unhappy. And so our greatest fear is to be rejected. But the truth is, in 2018, you could live in this apartment, have Amazon deliver your groceries, never see a soul, and you probably live until you're 106. Wouldn't I advise it? But we don't die of rejection anymore, but we still feel like we will. And all schools should be teaching kids, you cannot be rejected. You, you can ask for a pay rise. You can ask for crowdfunding. You can go to someone and go, here's my idea. You can write a book, speak in public. Because I work with a lot of actors who say, I'm so scared of rejection. I'm like, well, how are you going to be an actor then?

Because you're supposed to be rejected.

So you and I write books for everyone who loves it. There's going to be the odd person who goes, I hate this book and I hate that writer too. But we don't let it in. We have to laugh about it. When you give a YouTube talk, I mean, I've got one of my shorts has got like 3 million views, and there's a few in there going, I hate her stuck up English snob. But they don't know me because that's not me at all. But I don't go, oh my God, I can never write another book. I'm okay, because I don't let it in. Because the only opinion that matters is my opinion. I know I'm not a stuck up English snob, so that can't hurt me because if it did, I wouldn't be sharing it with you.

Right? Yeah. So. So if everyone's giving you negative feedback or critical feedback on who you are, your performance, your work, how does someone not let it affect them? How does someone say, okay, it can't.

That's such a great question. So if someone just comes in and goes, I hate that shirt, or that that color is so not you or you should never have cut your hair. Or, oh, you've got a bit heavy. You just go, thanks for sharing that. Just a really simple thing which says, thank you for sharing your opinion, which I can choose to not let in. You don't have to do anything else when the minute you go, your shirt's pretty awful, or look at your hair, or calling me heavy, you look, you. You look anorexic. You've let it in and now you're trying to retaliate. And it's like a game of tennis. If you put down your racket and walk off the court, you can't volley. So the first thing to say is, thanks for sharing that. And it's very good for the little barbs we get from people, family, friends, sisters, cousins, exes. If someone is really mean and says, you know, I listen to your talk on YouTube, oh, my God, you stank up the place. I was embarrassed for you. Then you go back and you say, I missed that. Could you repeat that for me slowly? They were usually not bothered because they know that in you asking them to repeat it slowly, you're going to call them out on it. And they usually go, oh, me and my big mouth. I'm just having a badge. I didn't actually really watch it anyway, Just ignore me. And if they do, you must not go after them and go, no, I want you just repeat it right now. Say it to my face. Don't do that. Because a bit like a lion who bares the teeth, they're saying, back off, and I don't want to attack you. When a lion bears its teeth, you don't go up to it. You walk away. It gives you a chance to retract. So saying, could you repeat that slowly? Is giving the person a chance to retract. They almost always do, but occasionally they'll come back and go, no, I just said, you're so wooden as a speaker, as an insult to wood. And then you have your third reaction, which is, oh, are you trying to make me feel bad about myself? Amazing. They usually go to, no, no, me, no. I thought I should tell you how bad you are because you need to get help or never speak in public again. Or. I mean, I had a nanny once. It was so awful, I had to say to her, darling, you're wonderful, but you're not meant to be a nanny. And I didn't criticize her. I just advised her to go and do something else. And we're still friends. Sometimes people think that the criticism and the barbs and the humor are a good way to give you a message. So when you say you're trying to hurt my feelings, they often say no. When you're being bullied at school, if you say they go, yeah, I really am, I want to hurt your feelings. That's the point, dummy. Why? Because it's a domination. Bullying is just dominating. It's a bit like a seesaw. The bully feels they're at the bottom and you're above them and they can only diminish you or embellish themselves to be above you on this little seesaw. So if you feel inferior, bully's always feel inferior. So let's imagine you, you're poor, your dad drinks, you don't have any money, and there's this kid with new trainers and new backpack and they come up and say, you're just a faggot or you're gay. Because they want. They can't really embellish themselves. So the next option is let me diminish you. I mean the embellishment is no one in my family has been divorced, so when we fight it must be your fault. I mean you're from divorced people or well, I've got a degree and you haven't, or I've already raised a kid and I've got no problem with those ones so this must be your fault. So you can embellish yourself, but if you can't, you go into diminishment. And so when someone says, yes, I am trying to hurt your feelings, you simply reply, well, it's not going to work because I'm not letting that in. And I was in my garden last week filming Nancy anti bullying program which we're giving away to every school. And I had these kids and this little girl was saying, I'm not letting that in, that's not going to work. And I said, how do you feel? She goes, I feel so good because he's not hurting my feelings. I'm not letting it in. He can't hurt me because I'm just saying I'm not going to let that in. And then when it was his turn, he said, I'm kind of running. I'm becoming demotivated to bully her. I'm totally demotivated now. He's enjoying it because he got to the horrible things he said, I'm so demoted. I'm running out of stuff to say because she just won't let it in. And then they switched and she said the same thing. What's the point? He's not letting it in. I just want to Stop this now. So that's the fourth option. Well, that won't work because I'm not letting it in. And the fifth stage is to say, particularly with adults, like if you have a bullying co worker, do you know, since we're sharing here, you do know, don't you, that people who are critical have so much criticism reserved for themselves, they actively dislike themselves. And you're actually showing me and the entire office that you really don't like yourself.

By critiquing me.

Yeah, by critique. You're just showing me.

Yeah.

Critical people always have criticism reserved for themselves. They are full of self criticism, but they reflect it out. And superior people and happy people always praise. And people who feel inadequate always criticize. Because criticize withers you and praise builds you up. If you can use those five, thanks for sharing. Could you repeat that? Are you trying to hurt my feelings? Won't work. I'm not letting it in. Since we're sharing, did you know what is running your critical behavior? You don't let it in. And being able to not let in criticism, that too will change your life. It makes you bulletproof. You can't stop being mean and having a horrible day. And we now have trolling, which is becoming an epidemic. So it's actually worse. Our kids used to get bullied at school and go home to a sanctuary.

Now they're bullied online.

Now they're bullied online on the phone and it never ends. And they feel really attacked. And see, when you find trolls, they're usually really miserable and unhappy, but they love the power because they have no power. They live on their own or with their mum. They have no life. I mean, we had a terrible situation in England where somebody was trolling this person whose child had been kidnapped. And when they exposed her, she killed herself, which was a terrible thing for her. But obviously her sense of shame that she was angry it and to kill herself, but she must have felt terrible. I felt so sorry for her. But she was very vicious in her trolling. But that's a really unhappy person. She needed a lot of help. But when you can teach people to come back from criticism without fighting or going, well, I hate you too, or you're all shut up or crying when you can just teach them, look, I'm not letting it. It's like you, if I try to give you a gift, you go, and I don't need that gift. I'm holding the gift. I can't give you something if you don't take it. I can't serve papers on you unless you accept them. I can't serve a volley to you unless you volley it back. So when you learn that people can try and give you anything, but if you don't accept it, you haven't let it in.

What's the first step to overcoming the fear or transforming the fear?

To witness it to be, to be the non judgmental witness of it. To look at it and say, something's got to give.

Right?

So, so if you're unwilling to look at your fear head on and honor it and, and witness, I always say if you don't show up for what's up, it will keep showing up. So looking and saying, you know, I witness my resistance. And you see that fear as resistance. Resistance. It's right, it's, it's. Fear is a resistance to what it is that you desire. And in the absence of resistance, you become a magnet for what you desire. You know, when you let go of that fear and you transcend that fear, that's when you start to become a super attractor. That's when you start to let what is truly of essence for you into your life, what is truly of service for you into your life, what is true happiness into your life. And so looking at the fear, witnessing it, calling it by its name, and even if you don't have the tools yet, what happens is when you look at the fear and you're like, oh, I see this fear, I see this resistance, I see how it's blocking my life and I choose to see it differently. That's when you're listening to an audio like this, that's when a book like yours will fall off the shelf.

A catalyst.

Yeah, exactly. You open up your consciousness, pretty much you crack open your consciousness to find solutions rather than find problems. And so when you're not looking at the fear, you're just living in the fear and you're believing in the problem.

Problem.

But when you witness the fear and you're willing to see it differently, you start living in the solution.

So it's acknowledging that you're experiencing the fear, that you're being held back, that you're resistant to growth or whatever it.

Is you're looking for, not judging it. You know, look at the fear without any more judgment.

Don't beat yourself up. Don't say, oh, I see it. And what I mean, such an idiot. I'm such a loser.

No, be proud of yourself for looking at it. Be proud of yourself and being aware. And then start, you know, using an affirmation or a prayer that says I'm willing to see this differently. Show me what do. And that's when you're going to be led to the book or the author or the yoga teacher or the therapist or whatever it is that you need to transcend that fear. And I believe that the universe works through people. So when you say yes to healing, the healing is presented to you in very profound ways that you could never imagine. And. And they. And it comes through because you open up your awareness for it.

That's powerful. Is there anything you have yet to heal?

Yeah, I'm still healing this trauma stuff. I mean, it's like. Like I said, I'm in such early recovery. I'm in, like, the infant stages of this recovery. And while I'm out of the weeds, I've got, you know, stuff to deal with with people. And. And I have stuff to deal with with my physical body and my. And my sexual energy. And, you know, it's like, it's brutal as. And, you know, I mean, and speaking to anyone that's been through this, it's like I have so much compassion, and it ruins people's lives.

Yeah.

And so I have to rebuild my life. And so I'm. I'm gonna not be the victim. I'm gonna be the survivor and someone who's gonna thrive as a result of this knowing and heal people through knowing. But it's work. It's not like it's easy. So, you know, I had dinner with my friend Sheila Kelly last night at the founder of S Factor. We should get her on this show, actually. And she and I were talking, and, you know, it's like, here I am sitting next to this woman who's sort of embodying this freedom, this physical sexual freedom that I really long for. And she's like, I'm going to mentor you. I'm going to help you. And there was so much resistance.

I was like.

Like, I can't go, no, no, it's too scary.

And then I was like, wait, this is what I've been praying for. I've been praying for some healing, and it's right in front of me, sitting at dinner, offering to be my mentor and guide through this, I have to say yes. So that's the next step in healing fear is that if you, you know, ask for guidance, you say, I witnessed my problem and I fear and I need guidance. And the guidance shows up, you better say yes to it. You have to say yes to it.

Yeah. Once you. Once you see the tools or the teacher take action or people don't you.

Know, they can come in and they just say, no, it's too much.

I feel like we need. We need to be challenged more in life. You know, I feel like we need to be called to a challenge. And I think teachers or books or podcasts or whatever allow us to create that challenge where someone keeps you accountable to something. You should be doing a challenge for yourself. Some type of game. I like to make things into a game.

Yeah.

If I'm scared of something. I talk about this a lot in here. Like, when I was a teenager, I was scared to talk to girls.

Yeah.

But I wanted to have a girlfriend, right?

Yeah.

And I was just terrified because I didn't feel intelligent and I didn't feel like I was good looking. I was just like this goofy, tall, skinny kid with, like, acne or whatever. Just very insecure. And so I gave myself a challenge going into my junior year. I said, okay, I'm sick and tired of feeling scared around every single girl that I'm attracted to. I'm tired of this. I'm tired of this feeling of not knowing what to say. I was just, like, feeling like an idiot. Like, I'm over it. Like, enough is enough. So I said, every time I go outside during the summer and I see a girl that gives me butterflies, I have to go up and say hi to her. Just say hi. And then a high turn. Didn't. Asking for a number into, like, meeting up later. And by the end of the summer, I was like, I could talk to anyone.

Yeah.

You know, it didn't matter if they, like, turned me down or didn't talk back to me. I was just like, all right, whatever. On to the next. You know, I was able to transform my fear by just practicing, by doing it, acknowledging, okay, I'm afraid, and then practicing different things. Oh, that didn't work. Let me not be a complete idiot the next time and just be more happy or whatever, you know, and just try again.

There's a lot in the book about how to, you know, just show up.

Yeah.

Just start showing up and. And trusting in the process of showing up and trusting that there's. That there's. Even when you mess up, you're showing up.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Who was the most influential person in your life growing up?

Growing up? Well, you know, I have to say my mom. Because while my mom has. Has gone through her own personal healings and struggles and. And in some ways taught me a lot of the chaotic ways that I was living just by, you know, being in her presence, you know, some of what I witnessed her do was channel that frantic energy into creation. And so while I had all this frantic energy, I could have channeled into a lot of things. Yeah, I could. I mean, I did. I channeled into drugs, but. But I. At the. At the core, this. This channeling of the frantic into creative creating was a. Even though it was coming from a pretty wacky place, was a pretty powerful lesson to learn that I could do anything, that I could. That I could create anything. And so there's a lot of layers to what that was for me. And in retrospect, I can see how it was kind of detrimental in some ways, but mainly amazing.

Yeah.

Because I wouldn't be sitting here with you today, and. And, you know, I think back, like, would you change anything? Would I change anything about my traumatic past or anything? No, because I wouldn't be me right now. And I live for this life that I'm in, and I love what. Who I am, and I am proud of. Of everything I've done to this point, even though there may have been a lot of chaos in it. And then I'm really proud of who I'm becoming, so I wouldn't change it.

What was it like when you told your husband when you found out about the trauma? What was that conversation like? How did you approach it? How did he respond?

I mean, he. I have the most incredible husband in the whole world. World. And so he held me and continues to hold me in. In my transformation. And I think on a subtle level, I think he was relieved because. Not relieved that something had happened to me, but relieved to know because there was such a disconnect, you know, the same disconnect that you felt with me on, like, these random occasions that we'd see each other. Imagine being married to me.

Every day. Like, why is she so in control?

Why is she trying to control. Why is she so manic, you know? And living with that was very, very hard for him. And there was an energetic disconnect, and all he longed for was that connection.

And so I think you letting go, surrendering. Yeah.

And the moment of acknowledging what it was, I think was just this great relief for both of us.

Wow.

Oh, there's a reason. Okay. I'm not just. I don't. I'm not just. This isn't just a sentence, you know, I'm not going to just be this person. There's actually something to heal.

This is interesting. I'm writing a. I don't know if I told you this already, but I'm writing a book. Called the Mask of Masculinity.

Woo.

What a title.

Every female who comes on here gets.

The same masculine, fabulous.

Yes.

And it's about the. The masks that men wear that hold them back from living the most loving, authentic life they can have and actually living the life of their dreams and having it all. The relationship, the freedom, peace, everything.

Oh my God, I am so proud of you.

Thank you.

You're so fabulous.

Thank you.

You.

It's beautiful.

And in the process of this research, it's been unbelievable, the research that I'm. That I'm learning and the people I'm connecting with about this, because I feel like it's my own continual healing process. You know, I wore many masks growing up, you know, I. From the trauma and from other things. I just wore them, you know, to protect myself. And I'm curious to know, to hear your thoughts on this. Do you feel like you in any way hurt your husband from essentially wearing your mask for so many years that you're in a relationship with him and now finally starting to take it off? Do you feel like you affected his life?

Definitely, yeah. Yeah, I think that, Yeah, I think that, you know, if you're living with someone who has unhealed trauma or anyone, we all have unhealed trauma of some kind that we. That our wounds are a mirror of someone else's wounds or. Or can activate other wounds. And so I think that as a result of me taking down my mask, he's been able to take down his.

He probably had to protect himself or.

Absolutely. And also just the defensiveness and the sadness of not knowing why there's this disconnect and frustration, Major frustration. But there's a lot to be said for two people that are on a path of personal growth. And when they show up, miracles happen.

Right. How do you feel like he's transformed or has he? From you letting go and opening up.

My husband is the greatest transformation I've ever seen in my life. He is a miracle. He has completely changed his personality. He's changed his attitude about life. He's changed his hair, his beard. You know, and I say that he changes hair in his beard because he's like, you know, he left. He worked in private equity for a decade and then retired from this very big job to come run his wife's business. You know, that takes a lot of. That takes a lot of confidence for a man to do that.

Absolutely.

And because I'm now in this place where I let him shine in his greatness, he owns his masculinity while at the same time holding a tremendous amount of space for me to be who I am in the world and be proud of that, you know, standing in the back of my, you know, lecture halls and just like, like smiling and so proud, you know, and not feeling, Feeling like he is. Is creating this with me. And I know it's God's work. I know that he and I were placed together to do this work. And there's a lot of people in my field that have, you know, teamed up with their spouses. And I think it is. I mean, I think that there's, There is something about having, you know, it in all in the same home and trusting, Trusting the person that's behind you.

Absolutely. Did you feel like he ever felt emasculated through?

Oh, definitely.

Really?

Oh, my God.

God.

Poor God bless me. I was such. I was only in my masculine. That's all I knew how to do. Because in that running, like femininity meant. Meant vulnerability and vulnerability wasn't safe for me.

Yeah, I don't think I've ever seen vulnerable until now. I mean, being. Opening up.

I would be vulnerable on my stage. Like, when I would give a talk, I would let myself be vulnerable, you know, just let myself be moved by what I was sharing. Because all the while I would feel. I could feel God move through me. You know, God, universe, whatever you want to call it. I would let spirit move, move through me. And so there's, there's. There's sort of an undeniable vulnerability that comes through when you're letting yourself be a channel for that kind of truth.

Yeah. But then right when you jump off, you're back into like, control, masculine mode.

Second I get off that stage. But the one place where I did feel free was on stage and speaking and where I would really let go and I'd really let. Let something else move through. Or in my meditation.

Yeah.

But now I'm letting it happen in, in a conversation right here with you or you know, in, in. In a. You know, I had lunch, I had breakfast this morning with my best friend from. That I grew up with. I only have this one friend that is from childhood. And he, you know, I like these like, who, like, remember when we were the same and like he lives out here. And so I, I sat with him and I like, didn't pick up the phone. I said, you know, he share about what's going on with me. Shared about his mom's diagnosis. Like, we went deep and very fast. You know, we hadn't spoken in many about, you Know, a year, and we went right in. And so this capacity to be vulnerable and real, even at breakfast, you know, it's new.

Any moment. Yeah.

Yeah, it's new.

Interesting. How's it feel?

I feel so great. I'm so glad.

You look like you have so much weight off your shoulders.

It's amazing.

It's amazing.

It's amazing. You know, don't be afraid. I guess my message in this is don't be afraid to let go of the rope and don't be afraid to let healing occur. Even if. Even though it's so scary, because it's far more scary not to go there.

Right. What would you say was. Did you realize you were in your masculine energy a lot? Yeah, you realized it. You recognized it, but I had no.

Idea how to get out.

Interesting. What would you say is now your definition, or I guess then. But what's your definition of masculinity in general now?

What a nice question. Well, I think that there's fabulous. There's so much great about being in the masculine. Right. It's. For me, it was sort of the embodiment of creation and confidence and. And speaking up and having a voice and. Not that that's not feminine too, but. But. But in a sort of. Sort of loud and proud way. Right. Sort of owning my circumstances and. And. And not being afraid to. To show up.

Yeah.

And so there's. That. Can you can do that from a feminine place? Of course, sure. But there's a. There's a. There's a fierceness around being in that masculine energy, which. Which is, you know, most of my contemporaries that are women, some of which are on your wall, the key to their successes was being in that masculine. But I think the key to their greatest successes will be merging that masculine with. Or feminine.

You have to let me know, because I've never been married. When you're in a marriage and the female is being masculine a majority of the time, is it possible for the man to be just as masculine, or do they have to kind of default into their feminine to be able to just function?

Well, first of all, I think you should interview Marianne Williamson for your book.

I've had her in.

Okay, great. But for the book.

Yeah, yeah.

Because she's done a lot of work on this concept. But I think that we dance a lot. I think couples can dance between both. So my husband can be very masculine and, you know, take care of business and, you know, runs like my house, like, runs on a full, tight ship. Because that man is so, you know, he's got his. He's like getting his contractor's license. Like he is legit. Yeah. He's amazing. And, and then also like legal. He's a lawyer, so he runs legal. He's gonna run shit. You know. But then at the same time he can move into the space of the feminine and like, let me nurture and take care of him in that sort of feminine, softer, gentler place. So I think that we, that learning the dance and learning like these areas are when it's great when I'm in my masculine. And these areas are great when he's in his feminine and, and the vi. And vice versa. And, and, and that I don't think there's anything wrong with slipping in and out. As long as you go in and out. You don't just stay in these two head butting places.

Yeah.

And, and I think it's extremely important. This is what Marianne has taught me. It's extremely important that we as women make a commitment to being our feminine. Because you guys need it.

Like you, if you're masculine, we don't know what to do. Right.

It's like, yeah, you, your makeup. And there's a beautiful book by Lou Ann Brizendine, the book on the female brain. And she talks about how like the male brain, like just needs to, to like to help and support and serve and, and there's a lot of bodies of work on this, you know, Alison Armstrong, all this great work on, on, on the mat. The male brain. The man, the man is like hardwired to, to support, to fix, to make things. And so the woman's constantly doing that. You're. I'm not letting a man do his job.

Like if you're constantly fixing everything. Yeah.

You just got to let them, let them in, let them show up, let.

Them make hard time sometimes, right?

Yes.

Majority time, whatever.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Interesting.

It's crucial.

So you've, you've seen a huge shift then in, in your relationship because of.

This much deeper connection.

Yeah.

And respect for one another. And, and I've fallen in love with him again in a different way. And I believe it's the same for him.

Did you ever feel like the relationship. And maybe I'm getting too personal here, but did you ever feel like the relationship was going to not work out in your marriage?

No. I always had a lot of faith in our relationship because even the darkest times we were willing to do the work.

Yeah.

And so I think that you've been committed. Yeah. But, but rather than just beyond commitment and having A ring. I think if two people are willing to like, do the spiritual and personal growth work around being in a relationship, it can work. Yeah, it really can work. It can thrive.

What's it mean to have a spiritual practice this? What does that mean and look like? Does that mean praying every day?

What it means, what you want it to mean? I mean, this book, these books I write are helping people establish a spiritual relationship and practice of their own understanding. And so for me, what it means is having daily devotion to connecting to the universe, to source, to love. Right. To. To God, to million ways of calling it. I, I call it. All right, I'll call it God, I'll call it the universe. I'll call it spirit, but, or alignment. But, but, but having daily devotion to that alignment.

Is that considered meditation or just a period of time?

Prayer, meditation, devoting time. And sometimes that time may only be five minutes in the morning, but for me, I make a commitment at least 20 to just really listen. And then in the afternoon, I try to do it as well, because you just like, you get taken out all day long and then throughout the day being in. I live in a constant prayer. You know, every moment there's like some that's thrown at me and I'm like, how can I see this differently? Help me change my mind about this and just offering it up and offering up. And there's actually tons of prayers in this book.

Yeah.

Which I, which I'm so proud of. You know, I think that like, one of my special skills is like, prayer giver. Like, I just like to give prayer and I love to like, channel prayers. Just like, it's just like one of my favorite things to do.

What's one you're channeling right now?

I mean, all throughout the book, there's tons of prayers on surrender, and so that's probably one that I'm living in right now, is you. Thank you, universe, for taking this from me, helping me see this with love. Something very simple.

Right.

You just say that over in your mind or you say it out loud.

Or in my mind, if I'm with someone that's, that's highly level, highly spiritual, that wants to go there, I'll say it out loud. But just being in that conscious communication and being in connection spiritually, it is a conversation. It's constantly bridging your lower vibe self to your higher self through prayer.

How does the universe have people's back when they feel like they never have a break and they're, you know, people In Syria, I just watched a documentary In Syria about, there's just bombings every single day. I'm just helpless. People that are, is trying to live life have nothing to do with what, what's happening.

Yeah.

For people that just feel like, I never get a break, I never get a break, the universe does not have my back. How are they supposed to believe or feel that it does?

Well in those situations, that's when we need faith most. Because otherwise what are you living for? Right? And it's a beautiful question because it's very easy for us to sit here and let your Los Angeles department, it.

Was viewed selling books, be like, the.

Universe totally has my back. But you know, looking at this, refugees and, and looking at the bombings and looking at what's happening, you know, in the world, that that is, that is devastation.

Or even just single moms of three who are like, station, I have no, you know, I can't get the job, no time. I'm stressed. I'm just like overwhelmed.

So the, the answer in that is that we all, while some of our problems are far worse than others, others at the root we all have the same problem, which is choosing to lean into the fear, choosing to believe in the fear. Now, I want to be very clear. I don't want to offend anybody. So I want to take away anything from the people who are suffering versus the people who are thriving in, in first world countries. Right. So let's not take anything away from the real suffering in this world. But from a spiritual perspective, there's, there's one problem which is believing in the fear. And the more we believe in the fear, the more, the more, you know, that becomes an epidemic. Epidemic and that epidemic becomes a war, becomes all the division that we see in the world. It becomes racial injustice or becomes, and that's, you know, the root cause of all the problems in this world are based on our belief and fear. And so those people that are suffering and stuck in these very, very difficult situations, the ones that will thrive. And I write about many of them in the book, you know, Lema Gabawi and I write about, you know, Viktor Frankl and I write about the, you know, the people who in the midst of, of the darkest moments chose to see the light.

Yeah.

Chose to see with love, chose to lean into love and chose to lean into faith. And because of that, faith created movements. Gandhi, right? Created movements. And so because we have these divine powers of example, it's very easy for us to lean on them, you know, and say it's, it's, it's that many people are given, given a, a tremendous, of a tremendous amount of, of difficulty that will be far worse than the average person.

Right, right.

But in the same breath what are you going to do with it? It's a lot to ask of somebody who's, who's lost their home and doesn't have, you know, how do you find love in those situations? But at the root of it all it is a choice, it is a mental decision. And so they're probably. We should keep our eyes out for the, for the miracles that we hear from the refugees. Right. It's like people that, you know, through prayer and faith can have, you know, found maybe found their way into a home that was exactly as it needed to be or you know, there, there are miraculous stories. But I mean in the same breath it's also what I think is most important is for those of us who are in first world countries that don't have these problems. Right. Or, or people who are not suffering from, from war, you know, war, violence or bombing, it's really our responsibility to show up.

Yeah.

Show up in the greatest way that we can in honor of those who don't have the, the support and, and the resources that we have.

What made you fascinated in learning about happiness in the first place? Were you just not a happy person? Were you the happy person that no one else around you was? What was the reason?

Yeah, yeah.

No, it's a great question. I think the interest in the happiness was twofold. Part of it started in my role at Yale. So I live on campus with students, I'm ahead of college. So Yale is one of these strange schools like Hogwarts where there's like Gryffindor and Slytherin and these like weird colleges within a college. Right. So I'm head of Silliman College, no relation to Slytherin, despite the kind of similar soundingness. But that means I like hang out with students on a regular basis and. And what?

I feel like a big sister, almost kinda.

Yeah. Like an aunt. I call myself like an aunt.

Okay.

I'm too old, I'm too old to be the sister, sadly. But yeah. So living with them I got really up close and personal with the so called mental health crisis that we're seeing among our young people. I mean the stats nationally are just staggering. So over 40% of current day college students report being too depressed to function most days. Over 65% say that they're lonely or overwhelmingly anxious. Over 80% say that they spend most days feeling overwhelmed by all they have to do. It's Just like, it's just really tough right now. And so the happiness, the interest in the happiness science came out of that, which is I'm part of this community where I'm like, again, they're benevolent aunt. And I'm seeing them not be able to function because they're too stressed out about their midterm or just like having panic attacks about their summer internship applications. And I'm like, somebody needs to do something about this.

Like, we're teaching them how to be overwhelmed with science and math and all these psychology, but they're too overwhelmed to actually take it in. And if they're stressed and mentally unwell, what's the point of it all? It sounds like.

Exactly. You know, we act like we're being educators and we're teaching them like computer science and Chaucer and Shakespeare and all this stuff. And it's like they're not, none of that's going in if they're not happy, if they're. Yeah, they're just.

Or if that.

They're that mentally distressed. You know, maybe if you're having like a not perfect day, great, but.

Right.

You know, if 60% of the, you know, 2/3 of the kids in my college are overwhelmingly anxious during that class. Like, you know, it's just, it's. We're not educating our students in the way we thought. And so.

And it's hard to receive information and remember and assimilate the information when you're under extreme mental stress and emotional trauma or even if it's, even if it's not real and it's made up trauma, it's still hard to remember things and test well and, and write great essays. It's really challenging under that type of mental stress. Right.

Yeah. I mean, you know, like simulate, if your listeners can simulate the last time they were feeling overwhelmingly anxious, like, was that an awesome productivity day? Like, did you learn a bunch that day? Were you on your best, like, no.

Right.

I'm eating donuts and cookies and just watching Netflix.

Right, exactly, exactly. So. So, so I wanted to do something about it. But, but on your question about am I a naturally happy person? I like feel, feel like if I'm being honest, the other part of that story was, you know, I wasn't feeling like I was flourishing at the time. You know, I'm looking at these students feeling anxious and I could say, you know, I'm stressed about work, I'm worried about publications. I'm not doing the stuff that I need to do to be happy either. And so part of me Was excited to teach my students this class because I figured, you know, I get to practice what I preach. Right. Like, once I learn this stuff, I'm supposed to be an example to them about doing this stuff.

Right.

And so. So it was kind of a little selfish, too. And so basically I just.

When did this start? When you were like, okay, I want to learn about this and retrain myself for how.

Yeah.

So this was, like, early in. I started as head of college in 2016, and I'd say, like, basically through 2017 or so, I started reading more about this stuff. And In January of 2018, I hit go on this new class. I basically threw together all this material and created a new class for the students at Yale where you learn about kind of the science of what makes you happy, misconceptions we have about happiness, like money and the stuff we were just talking about, but also how to put those things into practice. Because it's one thing to know what you're supposed to do, but it's another to, like, actually do it, as you probably know. And I'm sure you talk about a lot on the podcast quite well, so. Yeah, so at the time, I didn't know it was going to happen. You know, it was a new class at Ivy League school, so I thought, you know, 30 or 40 kids will take it. You could imagine my surprise when we get this wonderful little tool on Yale where we can see how many students are looking at our class. They don't register ahead of time, so they're kind of only show up that first day of class. And most. Most of the classes had a scale from 0 to 100 students. But mine had this weird scale that was different than all the other classes where it went from zero to a thousand students. Oh, my goodness, that's weird. And what wound up happening is we got around 1200 students taking over the basketball arena. Well, that we actually, like, we joked about, you know, taking over the football stadium. In the end, we taught the class in a concert hall on the big. You know, this is like where Yo Yo Ma plays when he comes to Yale's campus. Wow.

How many people showed up?

Just under 1200. Which is. Which, just for reference, is like, about one out of every four students at Yale took the class.

Wow. And now is this underclass? Is this upperclassmen? Is this.

Yeah, it was. Mostly.

It was teachers are coming out of retirement and saying, I need to take this class.

Well, that was so interesting. I mean, it was an undergrad class, but because it was in this big concert, you Know, it's hard to, you know, it's not like we have somebody at the door keeping track. And, you know, I'd hear from, you know, the women's basketball coach that, you know, she was sitting in on it because she thought it'd be so helpful, or faculty colleagues of mine would be like, you know, I snuck in yesterday, great lecture, and I'm like, you know, who am I lecturing to? But it kind of became this weird phenomenon on campus, right. With so many people taking this class crazy now.

So you did this as an experiment, and then you've been continually doing it, and then you decided to launch a podcast and a course for people which they can take, I think, for free. Free right now. Is that right?

Yeah. So kind of what happened was that the class went totally viral on campus, but which I didn't expect, but what I super didn't expect was for the class to go viral off campus. Right? Like, here I am just, you know, professor, doing my thing, and now the New York Times shows up and is like, oh, my God, you're teaching this class to so many kids. You know, a quarter of Yale students are learning about happiness. What's going on? And so talk to the New York Times, but then it's, you know, Today show and NBC News, CBS News, and then international media, you know, people, you know, writing about the class in, like, Croatian and Thai. It was just kind of crazy. But what that press made me realize was, you know, this isn't just Yale students. I was framing this like, this is a mental health crisis among college students. Let me teach them. But what the press convinced me was, like, lots of us are feeling like we're not flourishing right now.

Right?

And I think people were looking at these Yale kids of, like, these kids are at Yale. They're 19. Like, their whole life is made. What do they need a class on happiness for? Like, give it to me.

It's so simple. Yeah, they simple. They just got to show up to class, and they are DADD money or whatever paying them to go and all this stuff, right?

Yeah.

Possibility. It's fake false responsibility at the moment.

And I think that, you know, that was what a lot of the coverage was like. And so it made us realize, like, this could really help a lot of people. And so. So we put it online totally for free on coursera.org it's called the Science of well Being. You could take it now and. But then we still get some emails and news articles that would, like, I'm overwhelmed. My life is falling apart. I Need a class on happiness, but I don't have time to take a class on happiness. Like, give me the Cliff Notes version. Like, I need it fast. And that's where. That's where the Happiness Lab podcast came in. We realized that, you know, as you know so well with this podcast, like, there's so many folks who are looking for insights, looking for good stories, looking for ways to learn about what to do better. And so we decided to just kind of give all the insights that we've given in the class and kind of short podcast, fun forum.

It's amazing entertainment so you can be entertained and learn and be educated. Now I'm curious. You know, people have been talking about happiness for, you know, in the last decade. I feel like I've seen lots of books out there. Gretchen Rubin's got an amazing book on happiness. There have been other, I guess, happiness educators, teachers, experts, whatever you want to call it, for over a decade. Why is this picking up in such with so much steam when, you know, happiness has been talked about for a decade? It seems like for me, in lots of different platforms.

Yeah, it's not entirely clear. I mean, one answer is like, nothing's new about this, right? I mean, Harvard had a class on the science of happiness taught by this guy Tal Ben Shahir over a decade ago. Also, Shawn Achar, another famous happiness researcher, was part of that class. And so in some ways, like, every time somebody does this, it kind of goes a little viral. You know, we've been worried about happy since, I think, since we've been human, right? Like, basically, you know, chimpanzees are out there worried about happiness, but probably we are. You know, it's in the Declaration of Independence. Like, Aristotle was talking about Eudaimonia back in the day. Like, it's. In some ways, this is super not new. I think what is new is that, like, a lot of us are focused on this right now because I think, you know, things are pretty good. You know, like, on the Internet, there's this idea of, like, first world problems, right? And that's the problem that a lot of us face, right? Like, we feel like, you know, we have food on our table, we have a roof over our head, we have good jobs and good families, you know, great Internet and Netflix, but something's missing. And like. And that when you're feeling those first full problems, I think it's even more profound because you're like, everything's supposed to be fine, right? Everything's supposed to be perfect. Like, why do I not feel like everything's right. Why do I feel like I'm not flourishing?

Why do we feel that way?

Well, I think the problem is that our mind kind of sucks. We have these really bad intuitions about what makes us happy. I mean, people who are in that state are also thinking, oh, oh, if only I could be like that 19 year old lottery winner, everything would be perfect, right? So people are doubling down, they're playing the lottery, they're spending more time at work, they're investing in all this stuff, thinking reasonably based on their intuitions, thinking it's going to improve happiness. But we're just going about it the wrong way. And that's why I think the class can be so powerful. It's not like we don't know what to do to be happier. We have these strong theories. It's just the science suggests they're wrong. Like it's not like you're not putting the work in. We're putting the work in, in the wrong stuff.

So imagine, I mean it sounds like you've had this experience with a thousand different students you've worked with. Imagine a student right now is feeling so overwhelmed and so insecure about everything they do in their life. They're mentally struggling, they don't feel like they fit in with friends, they don't feel like, they feel like they're got so much classwork and they're just struggling. And every day is a battle of how to find joy in the smallest things, but they can't find any joy. Where does a kid like that start of actually being happy? Like what's the even starting process when you're in that situation?

Yeah, well, I feel like step one is to just realize how not alone you are if you're in that situation. That's why I start this class with the stats, right? Like, oh, you feeling Overwhelmed?

Great.

87% of your college peers are feeling that way too. You know, feeling really depressed. Like actually probably a quarter of you are admitting that you're feeling that way. Way, right? Feeling overwhelmed. Well, that's three quarters of you, like. And so I think seeing the stats awareness, I think this is another spot where our mind lies to us. There's this wonderful study I share with the students in my class that has you predict how other people are feeling, right? Because we're constantly doing that. Like we're in our own heads feeling depressed and anxious or feeling inadequate. And then we project onto other people. And whenever we look at other people, we think they're doing fine. And so there's this one study that has college students predict how many good and bad events other people are going through? Like, how many other people out there, like, got their dream job or got a perfect grade or got invited to a cool party versus bad things. Like how many people out there, you know, got dissed for a date or feeling really homesick or something like that. And what you find is people consistently overestimate how many good things other people are getting. In other words, other people aren't doing as well as you think. But what's worse is people really, really, really, seriously underestimate the number of people that are going through bad things.

Right.

Almost by double digits. And so the problem is, like, we're all kind of suffering in silence and in stigma, right? Because we don't want to admit, like we're feeling like we're not flourishing, but everybody else seems great. And the fact of the matter is the data suggests that's just not the case. So that's kind of step one is like, you are not alone.

Okay, Step two, Step two, I think.

You know, not take the, take the online class, right? Like come, you know. No, but seriously, I think that what science suggests is that there's ways to intervene in small ways, in baby steps that can matter a lot. And one of those first steps the research suggests is to kind of reach out to other people is I think there's this kind of mistaken notion that happiness is all about self care and self, self, self, like treat yourself kind of Parks and Recs style. But what the science suggests is that happy people are really other oriented. You know, they're reaching out, they're making social connections, they're worrying about how they can help other people and other people's welfare. That's what seems to lead to a happy life. Which is problematic because as we get stressed, especially as we get lonely, we end up turning inward. We become more like me, me, me, focused. And it's kind of this.

The world is against me. No one understands me. All the bad things are happening to me. But when we, when I'm here, you say, and what I've been learning through my own experience is when we actually get out of ourselves and say, how can I help someone else? How can I be a listening ear to someone else? How can I show up to someone's event and show that I'm supporting them? When we take it away from us to others, that's when we get our greater joy.

That's exactly right. Yeah. Again, it goes against our intuitions, but doing nice for others is better than maybe focusing on Ourselves. One awesome study did this where they basically forced people to give money to others. So you walk up to somebody on the street and you're like, do you want some money? People are like, yeah, give me some money. So you hand somebody $20 and you say, by the end of the day, either spend this on yourself. That's the kind of treat yourself sort of condition. Or by the end of the day, spend this on somebody else. And, you know, we could predict, like, what's going to feel better. Most people think, you know, treating yourself is going to feel better, but it turns out that at the end of that day, the people who spent the money on someone else feel better.

I think. I mean, it's always fun, I guess, to get gifts, but I think it's way better to get give the gift. You know, for a birthday or Christmas or whatever you want to celebrate. Just giving a gift, to give it, to watch someone else light up is for me the greatest gift. It's more selfish to give because what you gain from it, as opposed to just, okay, give me things all day long. Am I right or is that. Is that.

No, you're totally right, but it's not. I mean, that's why you're such a happy guy. But I think it's not most people's. It's not most people's intuition, right? I mean, for me personally, I mean, I know all the data, but my. As I said, I'm not generally a happy person, which I think translates to my intuitions aren't normally great. Like, if I'm having a really crappy day, I'm not. Like, I'm like, I want to get a nice manicure for myself and treat myself. I'm not like, let me give a co worker a nice manicure gift card right now. But you're right. The data suggests I'm totally wrong. I'd be so much happier and I'd get so much more bang for my money buck in terms of happiness by spending it on other people rather than myself.

My entire, I would say teens, until now, earlier my life, I was very insecure and obsessed about what I wasn't getting. Once I started to shift into my teenage years and start to challenge myself by allowing myself to be rejected. The potential of being rejected by saying hi to people or, you know, just being nice in the line of getting a coffee or whatever it may be, just putting myself out there. It was always the fear of rejection and insecurity. Once I said, I'm just going to do this to give to people, And I'm going to be kind. I'm going to walk down the street, I'm going to smile and say hello, and I'm going to ask people questions. It was like everything started to shift and change because I became outgoing towards other people. And I try to look for in every situation I can. How can I give to someone else if I'm at Starbucks, how can I pay for someone for five bucks? If I'm in a grocery line and someone's struggling, how can I, can I just help them and get something, Something small? It doesn't have to be money, but just how can I show that people show people that I am thinking about them, that I see them, that I acknowledge them. And I think when we come from that mindset of giving, we feel more fulfilled and happier because we realize we contributed to someone else's life. Again, with your example of money, it doesn't have to be money, but how can you contribute and bring joy to someone else? And that contagion of positivity will reflect back and make you feel that spark of joy as well. At least that's the way I feel.

Well, that's exactly what the science suggests. I mean, it doesn't have to be money. It can be time or it can be a small amount of money. One thing about that study, they did different dollar amounts. So it wasn't always $20, sometimes it was $5. And what they find is the amount of money doesn't matter. Like it can, you know, it can be an incredibly small amount of money and incredibly small amount of time. It's the fact that you're doing something nice for somebody else and you.

Yeah, yeah. Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being you're happy 100% of the time, where was your happiness level five years ago or three, four years ago before you like got into this? Were you an 85 or was it kind of like most of the time?

Yeah, well, I actually have data, legit data on this, on like, you know, because. And it is a 1 to 10 scale. And basically I was probably like a, you know, like a six maybe. And now I'm pretty consistently at like a seven or eight, which kind of makes sense like that. I think doing these, doing these practices, all the stuff we teach about in the class, you know, from being other oriented to experiencing gratitude to mindfulness and all the stuff we talk about, it's not gonna like, it doesn't like immediately change your life. So you go from like zero happiness to like a million happiness.

It takes time it doesn't happen overnight. Is that what you're telling me?

There's some stuff that happens overnight. I mean, if you like have a really great exercise class, you feel immediately better.

I bet.

Even if you do the like nice Starbucks thing, you know, for like that day. That's what the research suggests for that whole day. You're feeling a higher that day.

But it's the consistency. Every day you've got to show up in order to rewire your brain.

I'm hearing, and this is the bad news about happiness is that like all good things, you have to continue to put the work in. It's like, you know, it's like working out at the gym, right? You can't just like go do your leg day one day and be like, I'm done. Good. Like legs are going to be great, you know.

The one thing I've learned in my research above all else is that in the absence of love and belonging, there's always suffering. So when I hear about your experiences growing up, that's suffering. That's real suffering. And for me, not making the drill team when I was, I think it was in 8th grade by itself is not a lot, but how my family responded. It was like when things changed for me and I didn't feel like I belonged to my family anymore. So I think that I still am trying to figure it out. I don't know that I've interviewed anyone, even spiritual leaders who have the belonging thing completely nailed because I don't think it is what we think it is. You know, I don't think that it's having a big posse of friends or having a crew or rolling with a bunch of people. I think I'm still trying to figure it out because I still feel lonely and alone and on the outside of things on a really regular basis.

Really. I mean, you're going on a book tour with thousands of people, 15 city tour, millions of fans around the world, and you still feel alone.

Yeah, I can feel really lonely.

Why?

And it's really hard because, you know, you talk about that book tour. I'm a severely introvert.

Yes.

Super private. And so I love that connection between me and an audience, but it can also be hard on me. And also I'm talking about things that no one. It's weird to me that people sign up to talk about them, but they're hard topics sometimes and we laugh and we have fun and we'll sing. But I think what I've learned in doing the research on to belonging. Belonging is that belonging is Being a part of something bigger than yourself, but it's also the courage to stand alone and to belong to yourself above all else. And so I think I spend a lot of time belonging to myself, and sometimes that makes other people uncomfortable. And so I think that's hard. I think I do feel. I'm always looking for. I don't know if about you, but I'm always looking for the roadmap. Like, I want to find the researcher, storyteller, Christian, lover of all people, fighter of the resistance. I want to find the blueprint of who's ahead of me, believing what I believe in and doing it really well. But there's not really a blueprint.

Sometimes we're all trying to figure it out. Yeah, we're all trying to figure out. Figure it out.

I don't get to copy anybody. And so it's hard. Yeah, it's still hard. But here's the thing that has changed everything for me. I belong to me. So even when I feel alone and I wonder, like, who's my crew and who are my people? I belong to me for sure. For the first time in my life, maybe.

Yeah. And I think we lose ourselves sometimes by trying to belong in groups that we don't fit in.

Yeah.

You know, I remember being in, you know, the youngest on these sports teams growing up. I was playing on the junior varsity as a freshman or the varsity or whatever. So I was the youngest. And I remember just wanting to fit in, just like you did in that team. And I wanted to fit in. I wanted to feel like they liked me, like I mattered, like I was a cool kid or whatever. And when they would do things that I didn't really agree with, or they would bully other kids or make fun of of people, it's like, I didn't want to not say anything, you know, I didn't want to stand against them because I wanted to belong.

Yeah.

So if I did stand up against them, then that means I was alone. And that was my biggest fear, was being alone.

Oh, yeah. Because that's what. That's what teams and groups deliver. They deliver this thing that you're not alone. The problem is there's just. I was so shocked to learn in the research that the opposite of belonging is fitting the in. Because fitting in is assessing a group of people and thinking, who do I need to be? What do I need to say? What do I need to wear? How do I need to act? And changing who you are. And true belonging never asks us to change who we are. It demands that we Be who we are. Because if we. If we. If we fit in because how we've changed ourselves, that's not belonging. That's not belonging because you betrayed yourself for other people and that's not sustainable.

Yeah, you start to lose yourself.

You start to lose yourself. Exactly what you said. And so I think it's hard. You have to show up as who you are.

How do we find out who we are?

That's the life's work. Right? That's frickin hard.

Do you know who you are?

Yeah, I do.

Who are you.

And what way?

If someone just said, who are you, Brene, what would you say?

Brene Brown. Mom, partner, researcher, storyteller, Texan. I don't know. I ask them how much time they have because, you know, the thing is that we want to. When we ask people who they are and we want to know, we'd like those really easy files to put them in. But I'm a complicated person.

Are you?

Yeah. And so I think I know who I am.

What makes you complicated?

None of them complicated, but I'm complex.

You're interesting.

I hope so. Some days. No, I think what makes me complex is. I think what makes everyone complex is the paradoxical nature of people. So, you know, like, I speak in public. I love doing that. But I'm incredibly introverted. I'm kind of a traditionalist around things. My kids say, yes, ma', am, no, ma'.

Am.

But I also raise them to challenge authority every time they get the opportunity to do that, but to be really polite when they're doing it.

Sure, sure.

Yeah. So I think I'm unapologetically earnest. Like, I believe in the goodness of people, but I believe it's hard work to stay out of fear and stay good.

Yeah.

And so I think I understand people. I think I have a lot of empathy, but I'm also not afraid of discomfort. So I think there's just a lot of push and pull.

Sure.

And I think that's true of all of us. I do not like to be defined.

I think that's.

Do you.

I. I was gonna say I feel like my entire life I didn't want to be defined as well. They were like, you're gonna be this jock in college, you're gonna be like this alcoholic. You're gonna be in the frats.

Yeah.

All my siblings said this to me, and I was like, no, I'm not. I made a bet with each one of my siblings, $100 each, that I wouldn't have one sip of alcohol in college. Because I was like, I'm gonna go against everything you think I'm gonna be.

Yeah.

I joined the school of musical because they were like, you're just gonna do sports. I sang, I played guitar. I salsa dance. I was like, I'm gonna do everything different than what people would expect of a tall white man. Right.

That's awesome.

I was like, I want to be different.

Yeah.

And I think in that process, I was, like, trying to discover who I really was, what I liked, my dreams, what, you know, what was fun for me as opposed to just trying to fit the box and the mold of everyone else. Because you can lose yourself in that fitting in.

I think you can lose yourself in the fitting in, and you can lose yourself in the rebuttal to the fitting in.

It's true. True. Trying to go against it all, too. Yeah.

Yeah. It's really hard. I mean, it's this thing that. It's a quote that is Braving the wilderness is all about. This starts with this quote from Maya Angelou that we're never free until we belong nowhere. We belong everywhere, which is nowhere, which is no place at all, which I thought was a terrible quote for many years. And I was like, why are you saying that, Dr. Angelo? You're pissing me off. But then I realized. Realized, really? And she says, the cost is high, but the reward is great. And I think that's the thing that I feel like I belong everywhere I go, no matter where it is or who I'm with, as long as I never betray myself. And the minute I. I become who you want me to be in order to fit in and make sure people like me is the moment I no longer belong anywhere. And that is hard.

Yeah.

I mean, that's a hard practice. That's an everyday practice.

Wow.

Yeah. Because I can. I can be whoever you want me to be like that.

You're like a chameleon, you said.

Oh, I can be totally like a chameleon. Like, sometimes it's really funny because, like, I always. Because I travel so much, I have all these miles, I always sit in business class, and I'm normally the. The only woman in business class. Every now and then there's one other maybe, which is a conversation we should be having, too.

Sure.

But it doesn't matter what dude sits next to me. Like, I can talk about whatever that person like. And it's so funny because we'll talk about sports usually first, or football, or we'll talk about politics. And he'll say, what do you do? I'll Say, steady vulnerability. Vulnerability and shame.

Oh, well.

Huh. Well, I'm gonna play some Angry Birds, you know, and write that moment like I can just. It's not that I know everything about everything, it's just.

So you're saying most men don't want to chime in and learn more about them?

No, that's usually if I want to go to sleep, I'm like, I'm a shame researcher.

What do you do?

Like, okay. But I think I can be anything.

Like, yeah, you're adaptable.

I'm adaptable. And adaptable is great, because anyone that comes to my home or here to work, I can make you feel comfortable, of course. But then if I get so adaptable that my goal, my intention of adapting is to make sure you like me, then that's when I betray myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

When would you say is the time in your life you've been the most alone.

High school.

Just the whole journey.

Yeah, it just sucked.

It does suck.

And, you know, my daughter just graduated from high school, and she had this amazing experience, you know, just. Just incredible experience, and it was so healing to watch.

Oh, that's nice.

Yeah. And I think it happened because.

She.

I think she had the confidence to put herself out there and, you know, student council president, you know, that kind. I think because we have a rule at our house that no matter what, you belong here. No matter how goofy, awkward, afraid, wrong, it doesn't matter. You belong here. And so I think when we give our kids a platform like that at home, it gives them the courage to. To take risks outside of home. Does that make sense?

Because they feel safe coming back. No matter what happens, they always have a place to come home to.

Yeah. And I grew up in a house where it was very chaotic. I'm the oldest of four, and fitting in and being cool was the most important thing. So I think without that pressure, I probably would have never tried out for that drill team. But in my world, growing up, you only did two things. You were a cheerleader or you were on the drill team. And preferably, you married a running back or a quarterback. I mean, that was the way it went. And so for me, I probably would have been, like, president of the French Club. You know, I would have been in debate or those kind of things. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Photographer of the yearbook.

Yeah.

But those things did not have a lot of value.

Really? Your parents didn't instill that as something credible or worthwhile?

No, it's just cool was the next number one value at home.

Cool.

Lots of Friends, popular. And that just wasn't my. I wasn't that thing. You know, I was. Yeah, I wasn't. And so what I did is I just started drinking, smoking weed, hanging out with, you know, I found. I found a place to be, you know, cool. And, you know, that just goes bad fast.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you ever had a conversation with your parents about this?

Oh, yeah, We've talked about all of it.

You have?

Yeah.

You've let it go? You've processed it all?

Oh, yeah, because they, you know, they read my books as I write them, and they're, you know, they're like, shit. This is exactly what every parent wants. A child who grows up to be a shame researcher. But no, they just. That's the miracle of my parents. Like, my parents, they've taught me the best thing about parenting that anyone I think could ever know, which is it does. It doesn't end when your kids leave. Like, they keep growing and exploring and learning. And however hard it was for me not being able to be vulnerable, we did not do vulnerability growing up.

Really?

No. No, no, no. Yeah. Our family motto was literally lock and load. Like, get ready family trips. You're in the car for five hours. That's all six of us. You really have to go to the bathroom, but the rest stop is on the other side of the highway. We're not pulling over. Like, suck it up.

Hold it.

Like, we were tough. We were tough. Like, we'd fall down and get hurt. You know, my dad would say, like, I got bigger scratches than that on my eyeball, you know, like. Yeah, like, we were tough. And so. And we were. And we were taught to outrun vulnerability. We were taught to suck it up. Soldier on, get her done.

Yeah.

And so however hard that was for me, growing. Imagine what it was like for my parents in the 50s, you know, my dad, who was the youngest of six, his dad died when he was 16.

You know, was he able to process that or.

No, no, he just did. The next thing you do. Played football, played college ball. My mom, who's my grandmother, who I named my daughter after, was an alcoholic, and she was drunk every other day of my mom life. But she was the most amazing person in the world. But everyone knew she was an alcoholic. So my mom wasn't allowed to have friends at our. At her house growing up because it was the 50s and she was divorced, you know, and so my mom became the head of the drill team and the valedictorian. And so however hard it was for me growing up, having to try to outrun vulnerability. It was a million times harder on my parents, and they didn't. They did what they knew how to do, and they loved us as much as they could love us with the tools they had. And so I don't have. I think the hard part comes from people that I've interviewed my whole life where the parents don't grow and change and they see anything a child trying to do differently as criticism of what they did, as opposed to my parents who lean in and say, tell me more about that. I have a funny story. You hear a funny story about my dad? Yeah, it's great. So we do a lot of choice theory with my daughter and my son. And so choice. My husband's a pediatrician, so, like, we know a lot about child development from our. Just from school. And so when Ellen was little, we used to do this thing where we would say, you know, you have two choices. Like, Louis, you have two choices. You can either hand me the water. I'm gonna have to take it from you. What is your choice? So that if you decide not to. To hand it to me and I have to take it, it's not my fault. That was your choice. Right. And so one night, I was talking to Ellen, and we were at my dad's house in San Antonio, and I was like, ellie, you need to turn off Dora the Explorer. It's time to go to bed. She's like, mm, mm. And I said, ellen, you have two choices. You can get up and turn off the tv, or I'm gonna get it up and turn it off for you. And if I have to get up and, you know, turn off the tv, you're gonna lose privileges to watch it tomorrow.

And that's your choice.

Yeah, that's your choice. So do you know. And I would hate that for you, but that will be your choice. And my dad was sitting in the recliner next to me. He's like, ah, damn, sis. What are you raising a hostage negotiator? I was like, dad? And he's like, seriously, Renee, we had four of y'.

All.

We didn't have time for that.

Yeah.

So the next day, I come home, I'm visiting friends in San Antonio, and he's watching Ellen, and he's in the driveway. It's like, 110 degrees in San Antonio, and he's sweating. He's like, ellen, you have have two choices. You can either put the bicycle up, or I'm gonna have to put it up for you. And the second one's a dumbass choice. So I was like, wow, you're so close.

You're getting there. You're getting there.

My parents are amazing in that way that, like, they're learning and changing. So I think it's harder when parents say, I'm done. What you got was what you got. No apologies, no change.

No, leave it.

Take it or leave it. And if you do it differently with your own kids, you're a sucker.

Who are we judging more ourselves, other people or God?

I think we judge ourselves the most. I really do. Because even when we're judging other people, we're actually judging ourselves.

Ooh.

Because we're just reflection. We're reflecting our judgment of ourself.

That's right.

On someone else.

That's correct.

That's correct.

That's right.

So when we reflect our judgment on someone else, we don't like something. We're angry at them, we're pissed off at them, whatever it is. How can we shift that to see the good in them?

Read Judgment Detox.

Okay.

Because I'm sitting sometimes I'm just like, yeah, I wrote a book about it.

Yeah, exactly.

But I'll answer your question fully right now, which is, like, when we are in judgment of somebody else, what's happening. Happening is that we're projecting onto them our own wounds. And so the second step of Judgment Detox is to. Well, the first step is to heal your wounds, is to honor your wounds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah.

It's so hard, you know, so hard to not judge other people, isn't it?

Gets a lot.

It gets easier when you practice it.

It helped me so much. And do I not judge all the time? Of course I still judge, but when I judge, I don't believe in it, and I get out of it quickly.

So do you say when you're judging someone else?

I witness my judgment without judgment. Step one. I honor the wound. Okay.

Oh.

I'm judging them because I'm feeling insecure. I'm judging them because they're triggering something.

Right.

And then I continue on the journey of the Judgment Detox, which, you know, just releasing and forgiving and seeing someone for the first time, choosing to see them through the lens of love. It's a fabulous book.

See them through a lens of Love.

Yeah.

Get that book, too. What you think is your greatest accomplishment in 40 years of life?

My greatest accomplishment in 39 years. Two weeks away from 40. Don't age me. I can't believe I'm 40. Oh, my God. So my greatest accomplishment is the freedom I'm feeling right now, today, here with you is my greatest accomplishment. Recovering from trauma is my greatest accomplishment. It will be the best contribution I can give to the world. I am going to help people because I. Even just being in this state of freedom will help people watching because they will see what they are capable of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's powerful. And do you feel like you. You'll be able to make a bigger impact in the world by being a mother or Already?

Yeah. So I've noticed myself in my talks. I would always have a really good boundary, which you have to have, as, you know, when we do the work we do. Because if I'm going to get up and answer questions, people, my audience is like, you know, coming up, being like, I have a brain injury or I'm suicidal or, you know, and I have to hold them in their. In their. In their transformation, but not take it on. But as a mother now, I don't feel that I'm taking it on, but I have a way deeper level of compassion for people that I never had before. Because you're experiencing all this innocent child in them.

Wow.

I don't see them as an adult who hasn't taken care of themselves or as an adult who's done stupid things. I see them as a wounded child, and all I want to do is just hold them into love. And that's. I mean, even at one of my talks, this one woman was so wounded, and I actually went as far as asking her to come up so I could just hug her. And that is so against everything I've ever done in my career. Why I would never, like, touch someone or, you know, have it. It doesn't mean that I wouldn't hug somebody, like, casually. But I held her like an.

I'm a hug.

You know what I mean? I was like, this is. And I kept holding. I said, you're safe, you're safe, you're safe. And I don't know what came over me. The other thing that's happening is I'm becoming more unapologetic about my mediumship. So we're all mediums. We all have the ability to listen to spirit and, like. But I can. You know, I, throughout my life, have always heard messages. And you. Now I'm just, like, giving messages to people. And I always have channeled throughout my talking, but now we're normally. I would say, you know, okay, this is the guidance. If I'm hearing it as a guide, I'll say, what I'm hearing for you is this, and I'll deliver it in.

A Different way so people can receive it. Not if they don't believe in some type of medium stuff. They can. They can.

Sometimes I'll just tell them, like, I think, you know, your grandmother is telling me.

Tim's telling you this.

Yeah, sometimes, not always.

I've never had a. Someone who calls himself a medium that does this practice on the show. I've been pitched, like, different mediums to come on, and I've always been kind of resistant, but lately I'm like, you know what? I think it'd be a fun experience for me, too. Is there someone that you think is, like, the best at what they do?

So many. I mean. Yeah. Let's talk offline, because I can sit here and tell you five, six different names, and I don't want to offend anybody out there. I know a lot of mediums. I don't want that one be like, why didn't you see me on the house? So I'll give you some suggestions. Yeah. All good, though.

It'll be fun.

Yeah.

What do you think is missing from you to get to the next level in your life? Whatever that looks like for you. What's missing?

There's. There's a little bit more trauma work that I've got to face. It's not missing, though. It's not like it's in perfect time.

Around what. What's the trauma around?

Just a lot of the sexual trauma. The shame around the sexual trauma.

Yeah.

Because you. You talked about it on our show a couple years ago. A couple years ago. And I know you've been doing a lot of work over the last few years with it, but do you feel like you're fully. You're not fully healed with those things yet? I don't think I am either. Even though I talk about it for the last six years.

You're more healed than ever before, but every.

I'm at peace. A lot about it, but there's still little triggers.

Yeah.

Emdr.

Yeah. So I keep hearing that.

I really recommend it to you.

Okay, I'll try that.

Yeah.

Where do you think you'll be once you have that final healing?

Freedom is my end game. Right. I hope to live for a long, long time feeling free. I did talk with Deepak Chopra yesterday, and I was on the plane with him coming here, and we were chatting about, you know, I was like, do you. Do you, you know, feel triggered or shamanized? You know, he's like, not at all the time.

And.

And it's because of his practice. It's because of his devotion to his practice. And so that's. I'm getting closer and closer to that. It doesn't mean I'll be enlightened. It doesn't mean I'll have bad experience. I won't have bad experiences. I mean, I won't be a human, but that I can feel free even when things are tough.

What do you think it is that he has or people like him have that allow them to have zero connection to or not allow the ego to affect them in a triggering way, in a reactive, defensive way, guarded, when maybe something bad happens to him, maybe a business.

He's the person who grew up being taught that the divine is the direction that, you know, God was the. I don't want to use language that's not his. But he had a very spiritual upbringing. So it was a foundational experience for him. And he's. He's devoted his life to. To being at ease and meditate. He's up very early. Meditates for two hours, I think, in the morning. And, you know, I think it's. It's his devotion and commitment that's let him be that way.

Isn't it amazing that when I am consistent with my meditation practice, I feel like I'm unstoppable? Like the longer I meditate, I feel like I see. It's like the Matrix. You'll see someone saying something to you and see someone cut you off.

You become a super attractive. This is what the whole book is about, baby, is that the more we practice being in alignment, the more that unstoppable experience occurs. But when we are just living out of alignment, we feel out of alignment.

So things don't work.

That's it.

We're pushing.

What do you think is missing from your point of view as a friend of me? What's missing in my life to help me attract more of good things that I want?

I think there's a little more trauma work to do. I can feel it. And you said it a few times.

Yeah.

And so I'm gonna hold your hand while I say this because I love you so much. And I will help you if you need any guidance and support just to be. Listen and be there for you because you have the potential for that same freedom that I'm talking about now. We all do. But particularly you're right there. But there's some. There's shame and there's places to go to that I think you're ready to go now.

Yeah.

And that it hasn't been. There's been no. No step along the way. That's been an accident. It's all been perfect order for you, and it's all been unfolding perfectly and, you know, humbling moments and difficult times and things that come up only to get you to the place where you're ready to crack open more and face some of the dark, the darkest stuff. And you need to do that with a. So I am hearing that you need to do that with a facilitator that you trust, someone that you feel safe with, and someone that will really give you that hold that space for you to go to the places that scare you.

Sounds good. I'm in.

Because you're. You're doing really big shit in the world. You know, big stuff, big work, and it's gonna be massive the more free you become.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm excited. Excited to continue to work.

I'm really proud of you because the fact that you even asked that question is so major. Because it means you're willing.

Yeah, definitely.

I'm so proud.

I love you so much.

Thank you. I love you. Yeah. And you said the first step is willingness. And what you said, willingness is the key for something before in one of our interviews.

Willingness is the catalyst for change, because the moment that we become will willing, it's like we invite the next right action. We invite God into our life to show us where to go and what to do. The willingness that you've developed over your life over the last 36 years got you into this seat right now with me while we're talking about things that we've both been through. For you to say what's next? And for me to honestly and authentically say, this is what I think is next.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

So I trust you.

I trust your willingness.

First word that I think most of us can relate to is the word stuck is being stuck in our lives, watching yourself live. Patterns, whether or not they're in your daily behaviors or patterns in your thinking mind or just being stuck in certain specific feelings. Maybe a lot of us, and a lot of us do, logically, we're insightful. Maybe a lot of us have been in treatment, in therapy, and we might know a way out or think we know a way out, yet we still feel stuck. I felt that my whole life, having clocked many hours in my individual work before, I shifted the way I practice, but with individual patients, clients, same thing. That word would come up time and time again.

You felt stuck.

I feel stuck. I feel stuck. I had maybe thought I had the tools to change, thought I had the insight to change, couldn't implement them. And you're a therapist and I'm a therapist.

Now fast forward.

I'm seeing same same stories coming in week after week with my clients. Quite literally the same stories. Here's the issue I had with my partner. Okay, we'll explore it insightfully. Maybe we'll even come up with a game plan of how to choose a new response in this future fight. That of course is going to happen. Flash forward to that next week.

Same fight.

Groundhog Day Barbatum.

So you would give. Because I hear this in therapy a lot. It's like, okay, when there's a breakdown or a fight, the therapist will give a two tool to try to like defuse a fight or to say, okay, let's take 10 seconds of a breathing together or let's step out of the room and then come back together. When we're calm. We love our timeouts, whatever it is, right? There's like different tools you can use in an argument or a fight with a loved one or a friend or anything like that. But why don't they seem to work most of the time? Why is it? Why don't they work?

When we're having that conversation about what to do next, we're in a part of our brain that we're consciousness lives. This is where we can be separate from ourself, our thoughts, our feelings. Where I do my little like spotlight, where we're like this little observational spotlight of ourselves. We have access to logic, to long term planning. You know, that's the part of our brain that makes us human. This ability to be conscious, to observe ourselves, to think about thought. Beautiful power and gift that we have.

But we're not able to do that in a stressful moment.

Those are the moments that we're having this kind of conversation. So a lot of therapy sessions take place very consciously. We're here calm. The ambiance of most therapy rooms is very calming. We're in that nice balanced place and so we get it. But you're right, when we get into the moments where we need to use it, we're now functioning from a lower part of our brain called the subconscious, which is part of our past. I talk a lot about the subconscious as the means in which we literally carry our past where all of our wounds live and what causes those emotional reactions. So even if I've trouble, if I know what I'm going to do differently, we're going to, hey, you're my partner. And we love this idea of timeout. So when things get escalated, we're going to time out. Chances are when an emotion is touched in one or both of us, we're shifting right back down to that emotional lower center of our brain. And that's going to dictate what we do. And we're probably going to do the same things that we always do when we're upset.

React, scream, scream, yell, run away, tantrum.

I dissociate. I love that one myself.

Is that what you do?

Oh, I used to be the queen. I used to call it my spaceship. I used to go away and I got very good at not appearing away so I could still continue. But emotionally I was so disconnected from myself the moment my feelings.

So you would be there, you'd be physically there, but not emotionally, mentally there. You would just disconnect.

Emotionally disconnect.

So I'd be very calm talking or an appearance, because I was.

I don't care. I don't care.

Down here, there might have been a whole multitude of feelings bubbling up, but that was too much, too overwhelming.

So how. What's the. Okay, so these tools can only work to a certain point. It seems like based on your experience of working with a lot of people one on one and seeing them come back. Okay, we tried timeout, we tried this. So it seems like they only work to a certain point of our ability to be conscious of the moment. Right?

Yes.

Is that true?

Yeah. Consciousness is where we are granted choice. Otherwise that subconscious is going to run those same patterns, behavioral, emotional.

And it's almost like we have no choice.

We have no choice. We are. We're disempowered. You'll hear me often talk about we become reactive to the environment. We live a reactive life toward the environment. As in, things happen in our world and I only react in the same way, typically.

And that's.

It makes us feel very powerless, very victimized. We are a victim of circumstances in that way.

So how do we change that powerless feeling that.

Yeah, we have to practice consciousness. We really have to. I mean, change begins when you practice being conscious, practice showing up, practice observing yourself, practice observing all of the patterns.

Not just when it's calm, but when it's chaotic.

I actually don't suggest you begin to practice when it's chaotic. Practice when it's calm.

Got you.

So that you can practice when it's. When it's chaotic.

So give me an example. Like when it's calm, how would you be responding in a certain way of love or peace as opposed to hysteria? What would that be like?

I reframed that because I Think it's really important.

If you're not being triggered, then how do you practice?

Exactly. And a lot of us wait because, oh, I only have an issue when I'm triggered. So I'm gonna wait to use this new tool then. So we can't just wait till then because we're not going to use something new then. Then we're going to do the thing that was familiar then. So I really am. I harbor on the point of consistency and of just developing a consistent practice of what we're talking about, of consciousness all of the time. So that when you really need to be observational of yourself to see why, you know, that dish that was left out was so incensing, and to create that space then, so that dish can still be there, I still can feel incensed by it because that doesn't go away right away. But I might not throw it at my partner or knock it on the floor. I might choose a different response. So it's really a gradual evolution, but it starts by practicing consistently all of the time, starting in small moments, of course, because I'm the biggest believer in too much change too quickly overwhelms us. So you're not going to. Your intention isn't going to be, oh, I'm completely unconscious, so now I'm just going to start being completely conscious starting tomorrow? No, you're going to start to. To be conscious in one moment in your day for a good long string of days, and then maybe you're going to try to do it for two moments in your day and then three.

I tell you what, my girlfriend moved in a couple months ago, and I'm so used to a certain routine every single day of the way I like things, right? And so when she moved in with our dog, it was like I had to learn so many new ways of living in my space, in our space now. And I. I love to make the bed right away. Right after I get up, she gets up, I get up early, and I go to the gym, and I like to make my bed right away. She likes to sleep in a little longer and doesn't like to make the bed as quickly. And I had to learn because we were making the bed quickly. And then it's like not being made.

Over top of our wash.

I know I want to be. I want to be, but I had to just learn to accept certain changes without reacting and being like, even though I'm used to a certain way all the time, am I okay with not doing this or it not being done the way I Want it to be. Now I'm in a new relationship. I've been able to observe and practice without getting upset or without getting mad, being like, okay, this is how it's going to be. And if I want it to be done a certain way, I can make a request, I can wait until she wakes up, and then I can do it myself, or whatever it may be. We can create some new type of relationship around it, but I need to be willing to evolve and change as well, where I'm not always going to get everything that I want all the time in an intimate relationship. Is that true?

Yeah, that's true. You also highlighted something very real, which is that it doesn't mean that right away you're right on board.

Right.

You know, right away you might wish that she was up and your bed was me, and that's okay. We shame ourselves as humans because if we have that old reaction or assign that old meaning immediately, we become shameful.

Oh, I shouldn't have done that.

I shouldn't. It doesn't matter. I mean, we're gonna have those thoughts. They're gonna stick around for a while. We're gonna have those feelings, even. They're gonna stick around for a while. But we can start to create new choices, and we don't have to feel badly, you know, about desiring to live those old familiar patterns. It's actually part of being human.

I have. I feel like I'm so proud of myself in the last few months because my girlfriend moved in and it was stressful the first couple months. There were so many beautiful days. But then there was, like, things that would trigger her that then would trigger me.

And typically, how it happens in the couple.

She's a passionate Latina, and she likes things her way, too. So I could have. I remember just thinking to myself, like, I could easily go back into a pattern of trauma, resentment, feeling abused, not feeling a sense of fairness, whatever my childhood traumas were. And there were a couple times where I did argue from that place, and I realized, this is not going to work. If I come from this place, this relationship will not thrive. And I'm not saying it's okay for her to come from that place. So we're working on things together. But I just realized, like, is it better for me to be right and try to prove my point and argue something, or is it better to just listen? Love come from a place of peace in that moment and then reflect and talk about it later, like, the next day. Even though I want answers now, I want to resolve this Right now. Here's why I'm right. I want to defend my point, but it's been a beautiful shift in my partner since I've been doing that and just letting my ego go of, like, needing to be a writer of a certain situation. It's up to amazing. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's amazing the amount of love, and I just automatically switch to appreciation right when there's a trigger or something. I'm just like, I appreciate you so much. You're right about that. I'm gonna work on this more. Even if she's not 100% right, I'm just like, you're right about this, and I can empathize with this. And it's been incredible. It's so hard to do unless you practice. And so what I do every morning is I just shower with a appreciation when it's calm. And I'm like, already in that mode. And I just think that's a game changer. And I'm not saying I have it all figured out and I have this, like, perfect relationship, but I hear so many people in relationships who struggle. And I asked them, I was like, when's the last time you texted what you appreciate about them?

Yeah.

Or when's the last time it's the.

Litany of what isn't appreciated could be done differently. Well, you said two really, I think, beautiful pieces and that. Which is that, I mean, first and foremost, I want to acknowledge you, Louis, because you changed, right? You didn't yet say partner change, right? You said, I'm going to experiment with how I can have a new relationship with this experience, so I can do differently. And a lot of us, when there's discomfort or conflict in a relationship, we do very quickly want the other person to change. This is back to that reactive way of living, right? If the environment is affecting me negatively that we were describing earlier. So if you're my partner and you are the environment that that's affecting me negatively, please change so that I can now feel better. But change comes within. I mean, so that was very beautiful that you owned the responsibility. I think there's also something to be said about this concept of right and wrong. I mean, not to go all esoteric, but we can make an argument for days about this concept of right. Is there anything right? And you said something beautiful. It's not necessarily a fight. We can shift from a need to be right or wrong to an attempt.

To understand that's it, and empathize with where the person's coming from where they're.

Coming from, why they see that perspective that they are. What about. And something else I think that is beautiful is your realization that somewhere wrapped up in here was that past that was very painful for you, but very much alive in this moment. It doesn't mean that this moment embodied the past in an objective way. It just means that it triggered that part of you that remembers that past.

Right.

So very, really beautiful. I mean, I love that illustration because I think that really touches on the work that needs or that we can all do for ourself in our practice.

I'm just practicing, like, I'm doing things I normally wouldn't do, but also the things I normally wouldn't do have never fully worked for me in a relationship. You know, I just. I'm always used to doing things my way because this is who I am and don't change me and don't try. Yeah, exactly. Right. And now I'm just like, okay, even though it may seem. Seem a little more time to do this thing or a little more effort here, or I have to sacrifice something else in my life to cultivate this over here, if that's what I'm calling out a sacrifice, it's just by doing and experimenting these things, even though I was resistant to them in the first couple months, I'm like, do I really need to go do this thing in my life that I did all the time that wasn't really adding value or spending that extra 10 minutes cultivating this relationship? Relationship more meaningful. So it's just shifting the awareness of my life about what I thought I wanted to. What's actually more valuable. So not to go off on this, but I feel like what I wanted to talk about is people practicing when you're not in conflict. And the reason why tools don't work is because I don't think people are practicing enough when there's not trauma or stressful moments. And is there anything else that could, I guess, make the tools work except for conscious practicing? I guess it's also healing your traumas. But how do we start to heal those traumas?

Well, that's it, actually. So the way I think about a healing journey, I kind of build it into a foundational pyramid with the bottom layer being our physiological body, our nervous system included. Because to speak to your point that you're very beautifully alluding to, which is that we do. We carry dysregulations, physiological imbalances, nervous system dysregulation.

What's the book, The Body Keeps the Score? I've Never read it by here. It's great.

Yeah, it's really. Anyone reading? It's dense scientifically, so I know it can kind of dissuade people away from it because it's an incredibly pivotal, impactful book, and I definitely suggest people give it a shot. But I know that it can be pretty dense.

But the overall premise of the overall.

Premise is that Trump, trauma is stored in the body. I'm a believer that most of us have some degree of a traumatic experience in our past. I'm a big believer in expanding the definition of trauma beyond the big T. The way we typically think about it.

It doesn't need to be a physical trauma. It can be emotional, psychological.

Sometimes it's emotional, it's interpersonal. It's not feeling seen, not feeling loved, not feeling accepted as the authentic being that we are by typically our earliest relationships, our caregivers, our schools, our things like that, our best friends.

Friends or whatever.

Yeah. So expanding trauma, I mean, I throw the net quite wide. Like, I really have yet to meet people that don't tick some of the boxes that are, in my opinion, traumatic.

What's the greatest trauma most people face or feel right now?

I think not feeling significant, not feeling authentic in themselves, which began not feeling seen and authentic as being a separate being in their earliest relationships. I think we all carry a version of that, really, because it's incredibly difficult for a human to show up for another human, an infant, their infant. So because we're modeling things directly, indirectly. So any conflicts, any struggles, any imbalances, any conditionings that's not so positive that caregivers and parents have struggled with, probably going to be modeled in the exact same way. And this is where intergenerational patterns happen. If you look back in your families, you'll see the same sort of patterns, you know, as you start to become conscious and as you start to observe these.

Your parents and their parents did this to them, and their parents did this to them.

And if you really want to go into the physiological layer that we're talking about now, I mean, you were grown, right? As a baby, as an embryo in a body, right. So that human's body that's housing this little developing fetus is in some version of physical regulation or dysregulation, Right. So if you really want to go back, you know, these imbalances are affecting you in development. So then you come out, and then all of your body and how it functions is affected by the food you eat, by the choices you make in terms of how much sleep you get, how do you handle stress? Essentially, what you do all day is going to affect whether your body is regulated or not.

The cool thing about the world today, and you talk about this too, is that all the information that you need is right at your fingertips. Hell, all you need to do is watch the show and you will get the secrets to creating the life that you want and being able to make that pivot so that you can let your passion direct you into a business that really helps you create the life that you want. Information is there, the guide, guidance is there. But the thing that's so difficult for most of us is how when you're alone and you turn off this show, do you push through the excuses, the habits, the fears, and the actual physical constraints that you have in your life right now so that you can make the pivot? And so I often say that I am not a what speaker or a why speaker, I'm a how. And that there's already incredible information about what you can do and why you should do it. And I find that the place that I get stuck is, okay, well that's great, and I do a lot of thinking, but how do I get out of here and make it happen?

Our thoughts are our biggest killers of our dreams.

Totally.

They're the biggest killers or our biggest cheerleaders. And if we don't know how to really, I guess, I don't know, not manipulate them, but to really hone in on them, then we can have a messed up life. And I've gone through many years of self destruction growing up just because I didn't know how to manage the thoughts. I didn't know how to. I was never educated on it really, on how to, how to not control it. But I don't know, what is it?

What is it?

What is it? Yeah, not control it, but what is the word I'm looking for?

Well, see, I talk about it this way, so I, I like to simplify things because it makes it easier. Easier for me. I'm almost 50, for crying out loud. There's only so much that you can remember when you get to be, you know, when he's 33, that's a whole different ball game. But I think about your brain as being in two modes. Two modes to your brain that you need to know about. There's autopilot. We've all experienced that. You know, you drive to work and get there and you're like, who drove the car? Oh my God, like, I don't even remember driving the car here. Well, you did Louis, you drove the car. But the thing is, is that you were in the mode of your brain that's called autopilot. Well, what is autopilot? Autopilot is the interior part of your brain. You'll hear neuroscientists and psychologists talk about the basal ganglia. Very important thing to understand is that there's a part of your brain that its entire job is basically to execute your habits. Habits, Big fancy word, means something very simple. Behaviors that you repeat without even thinking about it. When you pull your pants on in the the morning, I guarantee you, you either put your left or your right leg in first, and you have to stop and think about which one it is, don't you? But not when you're putting your pants on.

Right?

Because that behavior is what researchers call a habit loop. It gets enclosed as. It gets encoded as a closed loop system right here. Now, the problem for most of us is that half of the day we're on autopilot. And that's not me making a guess that that's what researchers that study habits and study psychology say, that half of your day you're basically kind of checked out and you're on autopilot. And when you're checked out and you're on autopilot, any behavior pattern that you repeat can take over and guess what are behavior patterns that we repeat. Thinking patterns. So self doubt, worry, procrastination, overthinking, analysis, paralysis, fear. Those are all thinking patterns that are habits. One of the most important things that I want people to understand is that you're actually not a worrier. You have a habit of worrying. Big difference. You're not a procrastinator. You have a habit of procrastinating. Big difference. And when you understand that any behavior pattern, whether it is a thinking pattern, like you doubt yourself all the time.

Time.

Or you get trapped upstairs noodling everything and you can never get started. Or whether it's a behavior pattern like you drink too much, or you snap at your kids, or you micromanage your team. Every one of those behavior patterns and thinking patterns can actually be interrupted and replaced using science. Now, let's talk about the second part of the brain drive. That's this puppy right here. This is what you want. This is your prefrontal cortex drive is the mode where you're in charge of your thoughts. Okay? It's where you are fully awake, you are present, and you are driving your thoughts and actions. When you're doing that, your prefrontal cortex is active. The prefrontal cortex Is the part of the brain that you need in order to learn new behavior, in order to do something difficult, in order to do something uncertain, in order to do strategic thinking. So I'm going to give you an example. So I'm a righty. If I were to try to write with my left hand, like Lewis is going to torture me and tie my hand behind my back and make me like do this, I could do would look like I was writing with my foot. And if Lewis came up to me and said, hey Mel, you want some bulletproof coffee? I'd be like, Louis, I'm trying to concentrate. I can't do this. My prefrontal cortex would be el fuego because it is, is firing on all cylinders to communicate to my hand new behavior. So the thing that's cool about that is that you can use a simple trick. The moment you feel yourself hesitate, the moment you've got one of those moments where you know that you need to. This is that moment that Lewis talks to you about where you got to step outside of your comfort zone and you've got to lean into your passion and you've got to really take some risks and you, and you got to feel the fear and you got to do it anyway. That's the moment where you just woke up and now you got a decision to make. Are you going to drift back into the habits or are you going to awaken your prefrontal cortex and drive forward and focus and do something new? And so the work that I've been doing and speaking about is all about the five second rule, which is a trick that I invented by mistake that helps you manually switch, no joke, your brain, it turns off and interrupts the part of the brain that is where all your habits and your behavior patterns are encoded. And it awakens your prefrontal cortex which in five seconds flat allows your brain to help you change. And so anyway, I love it. I was rambling on and on because you, you went on this thing about how your patterns can be destructive and nobody teaches us. And that's absolutely right. And what I want everybody to get out, out of this conversation between us is that you cannot control how you feel. You cannot control what triggers you. And the fact that you may rise up with anger, you may rise up with self doubt, you may have anxiety fill your body, but you can always control what you think and how you behave. And we spend way too much time trying to focus on manipulating how we feel about things and not enough time practicing the skills, skills of controlling your behavior. And Your thoughts.

Because if you can control your behavior and your thoughts and the way you feel will be different 100%.

And a lot of us are sitting around waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel courageous, waiting to feel confident, waiting for the right time. And that's not ever coming, ever, ever. You're not going to change your life up here. You only change it through action. And. And so to me, you know, I did this, this interview with you with your friend Tom, and we talked about how motivation is garbage. And this somebody memed it and went crazy. And so the point that I was trying to make is this is that, yeah, motivation is great if you feel like. If you feel motivated, but it's garbage. And it's a losing bet to wait to feel ready because it's. Your body's not designed that way, and neither is your brain. And so I want everybody to understand that, first of all, you can't control the things that trigger you. And the fact that you're going to feel afraid and you're going to feel doubt and you're going to feel uncertain, but you can always interrupt that feeling and take control in the moment and actually shift what you're thinking and shift how you behave.

Yeah.

And, you know, the bigger the dream, the more fear you're going to have. You know, even if you've conquered the fear of something, in order to grow, you've got to take. Take on some new challenge. And there's going to be uncertainty, there's going to be some stress, or there's going to be some worry, or there's going to be some ego checking, and there's going to be some identity crisis. So there's always going to be this fear that could arise.

Always.

Always. I mean, did you. Do you feel like once you've mastered this, that you have no more fear?

Me?

Yeah.

No.

The fear still comes, but I have 100% control of what I think and do. So one of the things that is important for me to put on the table is that a lot of times, you know, people look at your. Where you are now, and so they'll see me on television or they'll see that TED talk, or maybe you'll be in an audience of 20,000 people in the American Airlines Center. And I'm on stage, you're like, wow, that chick must have just been more incompetent. I hate her. The fact is, that's not at all how I. How I was. When I was 19, I started having crazy panic, panic attacks. And they got so bad that I Took medication and medication was a godsend for me. I took Zoloft for two decades when I had our first daughter who is now 17 years old. The postpartum depression was so bad that they put me on Ativan, which turns you into a zombie. And I could not be left alone with her. So when it comes to self doubt and to how we can torture ourselves with our thoughts, boy have I lived that nightmare. And as I started to use the five second rule which we're going to get into, and everything about my life changed. Because when people first learn the rule, what you're going to learn, what you're going to start doing is you're going to start using the rule to push yourself to do things that are annoying. You're going to push yourself to get up on time, you're going to push yourself to work on your business plan, you're going to push yourself to make calls that are scary. You're going to push yourself to get to the gym, you're going to push yourself to, to speak up more at work. You're going to push yourself to put the booze down, behavioral, behavioral, behavioral. And then you're going to start to actually use it to change the thinking patterns that are self sabotaging. So I four years ago wondered as I started to see myself go from facing bankruptcy to building eight figure biggest.

I.

What happened for me me is I started to say, okay, this is a really cool little trick to bring out the most powerful side of you, but can I use this to actually cure myself of anxiety? And the answer is yes, you can. And four years ago I went off Zoloft and I started using the five second rule which I'm going to explain in one second to interrupt the patterns of worry and self doubt, which by the way, anxiety is nothing more than the habit of worrying, worrying, spiraling out of control and body feelings triggering now the habit of obsessive worrying that turns into anxiety and then kind of escalates to panic. I started using the five second rule to interrupt my thoughts every time I would feel that kind of worry kick in. And because the prefrontal cortex is awakened when you use it, your mind is now ready to take on a totally different thought. It's a very different strategy than just trying to switch the channel on what you're thinking because you're actually inserting the step that nobody talks about, which is switching the gears in your mind so that your mind can actually take and believe the thinking.

What's the difference between feelings and thoughts?

Well, you could change your thoughts. So feel. It's a good question. So a feeling is something you feel it's come from the body. Suddenly I've seen a snake and I seen a rat and I feel repulsed. I remember seeing a rat in my house and I the feet. I felt a rat. Horrible. I mean, I could pick up a hamster, I could pick up a little gerbil. You know, I could hold a butterfly or I could hold a ladybug because the picture is, this is cute. But I wouldn't hold a cockroach or a dung eating beetle. I wouldn't hold a moth. And so when you get a feeling, you've got a picture and you feel scared. And the feeling is so instant that we think the feeling comes immediately. So a feeling, you have to talk yourself out of a feeling. Thoughts are also pretty instant, but you can change them very quickly. I'm going on a date. I feel terrified. No, actually I don't. I feel excited. I got a choice. Feel terrified, Feel excited. You know, one of my clients was a very famous rock star and he had to pay someone to push him on stage. So he'd get all ready, super excited. He's at LA bowl or the O2, he's got the guitar just about to go and he thinks, oh my God, I can't do this. Because he's got the feeling of absolute fear. And so up comes a guy whose job is to push him on stage and he begins to, to do that and then he feels great. But that feeling would have overwhelmed him if he hadn't decided, I'm just going to feel the feeling and carry on. So feelings, we think we're a victim of our feelings. We're not. You can choose to interpret a feeling and thoughts. You have to make sense of them. But here's an interesting rule. Your thoughts control. Control your feelings, your feelings control your actions and your actions control your events. Or you could say your thoughts dictate your feelings, your feelings dictate your actions and your actions dictate your events. So that actually says the thought comes first even before the feeling. Really, the thought comes first and then comes the feeling and then comes the action. So all the laws go back to change your thoughts. We try. I'm going to change this. I feel so sad. I'm going to change that. I feel so lonely. I feel so unhappy. But actually if you change your thinking, it will take care of the feeling.

You won't feel that way.

No.

It's like if you go and watch a roller coaster. People are Screaming you have. Are they screaming because they're terrified or happy? Who knows? But you get to choose what you think about that. It's a bit like, you know, I think I told you this story before about one of my clients who had breast cancer and she said, well, I feel so lucky because I don't need a breast, I need a leg and an arm and an eye, but I don't need that. And sometimes with the strangest things that happen, if you can look back and go, oh, well, how I thought about that event affected me way more than the event. It's always how you think about it.

Yeah.

The meaning behind it.

So we're taught that we can't change our feelings. Our feelings come upon us and there's nothing we can do. But we're taught that our thoughts, well, maybe we can run those, but it's not true. You can change your feelings and your thoughts. And if you change your thoughts thoughts, you change your feelings. If you change your feelings, it doesn't change your thoughts. So a lot of people go, you know, I'm really nervous. I'm going to like jump up and down and take some deep breaths and breathe into a brown paper bag because I heard that was good. And I'm doing all of that. So I'm controlling the feelings, but the thoughts come back. So let's say you said I'm, I'm terrified of birds or dogs and if I saw one, I'd have a heart attack attack a little bird landing on my table. Oh, no, I don't even go to outside restaurants because a little bird, that would kill me. Or dogs. I don't like cats. See, these are thoughts. Now if you try to say to someone, look, but it's such a cute little dog, it's such a sweet little bird. It can't hurt you because the feelings are going on. You believe that's not true. But when you change the of thoughts, the feeling does go away completely. Which is why again, people can have little pet gerbil and be terrified of a mouse. It's why you could eat lamb but not horse. I mean, I would never eat foal, I wouldn't eat donkey, I wouldn't eat pony, I wouldn't eat baby elephant. But I eat lamb. I don't eat lamb very often. But I'm not a vegan. I was for a long time and a vegetarian. Vegetarian, it's the thinking. So a vegan would go, I could never eat anything with a face, but the thought is there. And then they would feel sick. Of anything with a face. So if I had a big lump of meat in my hand now, what do you think about that? Well, if you're a vegan, you think that's disgusting. That was a living, sentient creature. If you're a Hindu, you think, that's so offensive. That's a sacred animal. Or if you were bodybuilder, go, great protein. If you're starving, think protein. If I had a syringe in my hand right now, what is that? Well, if you're having a tattoo, it's very exciting. It's the way to get inked all over your arm. If you're in immense pain, that's fantastic. It's going to take the pain away. If you're a drug addict, that's like, oh, yes, I'm going to get off my face now, now. And if you're scared of needles, it's like, oh, I. I faint at the sight of needles. I. I can't even look at. No, no, I could. I've got raging tooth. I'm not going to the dentist ever because I don't like needles. So it's not the needle, is it? It's not the lump of meat. It's what you think about. It dictates what you feel about it. So you don't have a feeling about the meat or the needle. You have a saw thoughts, and the thought dictates the feeling.

Is this why hypnotherapy is so powerful? Because if people can't change their thoughts themselves and you can get them to a relaxed state to allow them to think differently and say, oh, it's not.

That bad, it's really powerful. I mean, proper hypnotherapy, the kind I do, and, you know, all therapy is good, but proper hypnotherapy excites the imagination. It doesn't say every day in every way, you're getting better. It says you are elated and excited and thrilled and turned on by going to the gym and you love working. Then you come home and you choose to eat the right food and then you work on your business plan and you're so excited and the right ideas take root and develop and you formulate something amazing and you monetize a gift and you're just so successful. Because the mind loves exciting words. The words must be in the present tense. They must make a picture, and they must be powerful and dramatic and even better, have powerful words in front of the words. So I give my clients the words they've always wanted to hear. That's All I do really is the first time. I'm like a detective and I'm gathering information. They come in, or maybe I'm online or maybe I'm teaching other people. And the first thing you do is you're an investigator. A detective lays out pictures and goes, oh, look at that. If I look at those, I understand what went wrong. So I'm a detective and I'm understanding what went wrong. And then straight away after that. All good hypnotherapists do this, particularly rtt our Rapid Transformational therapists. Investing, investigate, they find an imprint. There's always an imprint, a scared child, an authority figure and something that goes on. But then the next bit, which most therapists don't do, is you interpret that with your client. If you go, look, you do this because of that. They go, well, really? I went home and told my mum, that's rubbish. Of course you don't. I went home and told my husband, I don't think that's true. And now I'm doubting it. And I used to do that. Okay, you do this because of that. Most of them said yes, but when I got my clients to do it with me. Let's work. Why do you think you did it go well, now you've mentioned it, of course. When I was four, these twin brothers came along and I now I can see that. I felt replaced, usurped. No longer. I lost my status. I didn't know who I was.

So it's allowing the patient. Patient to investigate as well.

Yeah.

And then.

So they investigate, find the imprint, interpret. But then you interrupt it. You completely smash side air out the part. Yes, I know. When you were two, when you were born, you weighed three pounds, you nearly died, your parents fed you with a dropper. If you broke your mind, tried hysterically and was on the phone to the doctor and your dad got to get this baby to eat. Otherwise going to be back into the preemie ward. But now you're 42, you weigh 300 pounds, you're not going to die anymore. So you interrupt it and you have to be funny and relevant and also quite tough. It's not a good enough reason to keep doing that. Going to all you can eat buffets is not a challenge. If you're not supposed to eat as much as you possibly can because it's rich, free, because there's no such thing as free. Take whatever you want and then pay for it. And when you eat all that food, they're losing it, but you're paying for it.

There's a price that you're paying.

Yeah.

So after you've done the investigate, imprint, interpret, interrupt, then you do what I call the installing. So you go from being a detective to like a doctor who's extracting all the toxins. So then you become a copy coder and you code in and you wire firing. Yeah. And the mind learns by repetition. The mind learns by repetition and it only responds to words like a picture. If you go, I'm not bad, me, I have good days and bad days. I'm all right. No, you have to go, I am the greatest. Muhammad Ali said, I told myself I was the greatest. I didn't even know I was, but I said, said it. Then I became it. He could have done, I'm not bad, me. Good days, bad days.

I didn't.

Sometimes I'm all right, sometimes I'm good.

I will win. I am the best.

No one can beat me.

He said that.

No a. No one can beat me. Which actually wasn't true. He was beaten, but he carried on saying it. Now we seem to think of him as the unbeaten Muhammad Ali, the person who never got it wrong. So when you meet people who say, I'm the best, I'm the greatest, I'm amazing, we forget that some of those actors, good movies that were dreadful, we forget that they did.

They lost a fight. Yeah, Conor McGregor's lost a few fights.

We just remember how good they were because they told us we were good. So the most important part of hypnotherapy, the two things. One is you must find the reason and remove it. And the second is you must put in really powerful, powerful, powerful words and a lot of therapists.

And do it repetitively, over and over.

Yeah.

About a 12 to 15 minute long audio. It's got to be really exciting. Listen to it every day, 21 days, if not every day. You can listen to it for three weeks and then it's gone in, it's wired in, it's fired in. You can. And then maybe a month later you've got some important interview play again. But a lot of people don't understand. They either go to therapy and they understand why, but they still do it because they don't do the new installation or they do the installation without finding out why. So they buy all these recordings. And I know they work because somebody said, oh, I bought your recording for examiners. And my kid, who was alive on the floor, hysterical, just said, oh, going to ace that exam. And she went in there and she did. So it does work. But when you do both, it works forever. And you know, therapy is such a strange thing. And I'm not anti any therapist, but there's no other profession where they go, bring me your pain and we'll talk about it. Nobody goes, hey dentist, I got this terrible infection. Why don't you come in and we'll have a conversation about it. Every Wednesday at 3 o' clock they go, get that infection. No one says to their doctor, I think I broken my arm. We can discuss that every week. How's the pain today? And I know I'm being facetious, but it's such a strange model. Let's discuss your pain every week until you get used to it, get to understand it, get familiar with it or get past it. I'm like, why don't you just get past it? Straight to wait. Because if someone came to me and said, I have a chronic, chronic headaches, I wouldn't ever say, let me get rid of the headache today. Right now we use hypnosis and we can certainly turn the pain right down and then we can find out why you have it. But I would never say, well, let's discuss it. And so hypnotherapy is more powerful I think, than any other therapy because, because it both removes the pain and removes the cause of the pain. It takes away the pain and it takes away the cause. They'll say, but surely if you stop someone smoking, they bite their nails. You stop someone drinking, don't they go.

Gambling, they do something else.

No, if you do it properly, they never ever do that because you take away the source of the pain and the pain. It's like you saying, I got weeds in my lawn, I mowed them, but chew, chew. Later they came back. That's so weird. It's not really weird because you left the roots intact.

What's the, what's the main cause of most people smoking that, that keeps them addicted for so long? Is there a common theme?

Well, it's, it's, it's like everything, whether you're smoking, drinking, gambling, it's your belief. Like a lot of smokers, I can't go to the bathroom if I don't smoke. What do they think? Non smokers do they go to the bathroom. Think about, I can't relax if I don't smoke. I can't focus if I don't. So I can't digest a meal if I don't smoke. I mean, I've heard every single reason why people must smoke. Because I mean, I worked with a famous writer and she Said, I can't write without cigarettes. I'm like, is that where your talent lies? In a packet of Marlboro Lights? I didn't know that. I thought you were gifted. You just said, no, it's not the marble lights. And she went, it's not the marble lights. Well, then stop telling yourself that it is. But it's the lies we tell ourselves. The smokers will say, I don't know what to do with my hands. Why don't you look at a non smoker? Do what they do. Drinkers will say, I can't relax without a drink. I can't focus. I can't enjoy myself. Say life. How could you live your life without chocolate? How could you enjoy. Enjoy your coffee without sugar? We lie to ourselves so much. And you know, I. I did opposite. Why don't you tell yourself a better lie?

Where did you go?

I love my life without sugar. It's thrilling. It's not true. I know. If you say it every day, you know what happens? It becomes true. No one was more of a chocoholic than me. No one ate more sugar than me. Yeah, until I decided to stop pouring poisoning my body and realize that it's a horrible thing. It doesn't mean it doesn't taste lovely.

It's almost like we're all hypnotizing ourselves every day throughout our whole life.

That's true. We are hypnotized every day based on.

What we're saying to ourselves and also.

The media, who, by the way, if you put on a computer or drive to work, you are invited to eat rubbish food about 500 times a day. Day. You know, you put on an advert. There's no adverts for broccoli or yummy pears. They're adverts of fast food. I mean, I went to the Olympics in London. I took my godson.

I was there.

And there were three sponsors. Cadbury's, McDonald's and Coca Cola. And you remember they were giving out. They had the purple trays, they were giving out Cadbury's.

And I'm like, this is.

Isn't that weird that chocolate is sponsoring the Olympics? But they have the money because they've made us believe that you can't have Valentine's Day without chocolate. You can't have Christmas without chocolate. How can you have Easter without Easter eggs? So we've got all of this stuff wired into our brain. It makes me happy, it makes me feel good. But, you know, you can unwire that. It's actually really, really easy.

Before we Continue this video. Make sure to subscribe. Subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. Based on all the science and research that you've seen, what would you say are the five things that if people did these five things every single day on a consistent basis, their happiness level would go up a point or two consistently over time.

Time.

And it doesn't cost any money and it doesn't take a ton of time, but if you did these five things, your life would start to be a lot happier.

Yeah, well, I think we just talked about one. I think this act of becoming other oriented, however that works for you, whether that's, you know, donating an hour of your time or just like holding the door open for somebody, you know, giving some money, like we all can probably, you know, have enough disposable income to spare a teensy weensy bit. And, and so what can you do to spend that money or that time or whatever on other people? So that'd be number one. I think number two would be another thing you just echoed in terms of how you were talking about changing your life, which is to show up for other people. So all the research suggests that happy people are really social. They tend to talk to random strangers, they tend to be around other people, and they really make time for the people that they care about in their life. And so I think this would be kind of big change. Number two and is like, how can you just be reaching out to people more often? And I think, you know, this is one of these things where like we kind of know it, but we don't often put it into practice.

Right.

You know, if you found out you were on your deathbed, you know, this week, and you know, you had a week to live, you might not like go to work. Like you, you'd probably like want to focus on those people you care about in your life, like whoever they are, you would see your friends, you would hang out with your family that you care about, you know, you put time into your romantic relationship, whatever, that's what you'd be do. But if you look at how we tend to spend our time, it's, you know, we're caught up in work, sometimes we're not even present with our family members when we're around them, you know, because we're like, you know, let me put the phone down kind of thing. And so, but, but happy people don't do that. They're prioritizing right now. And so whatever you can do to shift to being a little more social and a little more kind of social and again, connected with the people you care about. That's like.

So it doesn't have to be strangers, social media, or fake friends, but being social with people you care about on.

A consistent basis, it can actually be the strangers. In fact, there's one study by a researcher, Nick Epley and his colleagues, where he just like. I mean, psychologists are always forcing people to do stuff with money, but so he forces people with money to talk to strangers on the train. He does this on the L train in Chicago. So he says, you know, for the next half hour, you have to talk to somebody and make a connection. People predict this is going to be actively miserable and weird and cheesy.

That's amazing. You did an episode on this, too.

Exactly. Yeah. So that's one of our famous episodes. I actually got got hate mail after that episode because people are like, you're crazy. Telling people talk to people on the train. Like, you're gonna get people killed. But I think that's how strong our intuitions are. Right? Is that we, you know, we really think, oh, my God, talking to some random person in the coffee shop. I'd rather just pull out my phone and check my Instagram feed. But again, our minds are leading us in the wrong direction here.

Okay. All right. So the first two are others oriented and showing up for others.

Yeah. I think the third one would be to kind of focus on the power of gratitude. Again, it always sounds so cheesy when you mention these things, but, you know, sometimes science is cheesy. But, you know, I think our instinct when things are good and when things are bad is that it's funny to kind of gripe about stuff. Right. You know, like, it's funny to kind of complain. You probably even have people in your life that whenever you see them, you just start, like, the complaints fest, like happens. But that's not what happy people do. Happy people are spontaneously counting their blessings. And this is a spot where I think popular culture has gotten onto something with things like gratitude lists or gratitude journals, like, just taking time to count your blessings. Even if it's like 30 seconds at night. You can see statistical boosts in happiness within about two weeks of that practice.

I do this with my girlfriend every night before we go to bed. We both say three things we we're grateful for. And it puts our mind at peace. It gives us a moment of reflection, of even if, you know, there's a lot of stress in the world with the virus and the pandemic and everything. Even with all that, it's still good things to be grateful for. So it's just reminding ourselves to calm our mind down before we go to bed. And then when we sleep, we have a grateful heart. You wake up with a grateful heart as opposed to an angry heart. And I think the more you go to asleep, frustrated, angry and ruminating over things you don't have or you don't like about what's happening in your life, the sleep isn't as quality and you wake up more tired and you become more reactive the next day. And that's why I think you're right. The power of gratitude. This is something that I swear by, without it, I'd be unhappy.

Yeah, no, I think, I mean, again, it's all about also like kind of just being mindful of these things, right. I mean, sometimes I'll leave a like gripe fest with a friend and just notice and be like, I feel, I feel really crappy now, you know, like getting all that off my chest and like complaining about whatever. But no, no, I think, yeah. And there's lots of evidence suggesting that gratitude can have a specifically powerful effect on sleep. Even things like immune function, like it makes our immune systems work better. And so which is something else we need right now in the context of this virus.

How much does griping or talking about the things you don't like, how much does that actually affect your happiness? I mean, I'm all for. Or creating a container where I'm saying, hey, listen, for the next 10 minutes I just want to share things I'm frustrated about. But then here's all the things I'm grateful for to kind of get both of them out. Yeah, but is there science or research that says like, if you talk about negative things or you complain with your friends, or you talk about what you don't like gossip, it's going to bring your happiness level down. Or is this just a theory?

Yeah, I mean, it's more, it's less that. So I think part of it is how you're griping, right. And so you can gripe about like, everything's terrible, everything's terrible and therefore I'm going to problem solve by doing X, Y and Z. If you do that where you're kind of griping to problem solve, then that can be really powerful because it can be kind of identifying problems and then fixing them. But if you're griping just to like gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, and there's no like forward motion on it.

There's no solutions.

Exactly. That's not really helpful. And it comes at opportunity cost. You could be spending that time talking about what you're grateful for. Yeah, so. So what I try to do with friends now is, you know, because I definitely still have friends where, you know, they're in gripe head space, you know, you know, that's what they're gonna do. But, like, whenever we're in that space, either move it more towards problem solving. Like, oh, yeah, okay, that co worker is a pain in the butt. But, like, what can we do to make the situation better? What can we, you know, so try to move it towards problem solving or try to do exactly what you said, which is like, you know, you can fill up your frustration bucket, but kind of match it with a bucket that's equally filled with.

Yeah.

Blessings.

Okay, so that's number three, power of gratitude.

Yeah. Number four is kind of a smushed one, but it's basically.

Yeah.

It's like I'll throw together a bunch of things under the context of, like, healthy habits. And by what. By that, what I mean is, like, things we know are good for our physical health, but we often forget that our physical health and our mental health are intertwined. So, you know, getting some regular exercise and movement in making sure you're prioritizing sleep and having good sleep habits. So it's not just like you plop down for a certain number of hours a night, but you're really trying to do things before you go to bed and during your day to make sleep better. Even healthy eating, we forget the connection between our gut and our brain, between our bodies and our brain, between our stress levels in our brain. And so we really have to kind of make sure we're protecting our physical health because that has a huge implication on our mental health.

Yeah. I just had a doctor on today, actually on my show, Dr. Stephen Gunn, who talks about essentially how to boost the immune system, how to reverse disease, how to de age all these things about the body. And he was a heart surgeon for 40 years and stopped doing heart surgeries because he realized that wasn't solving the root problem. Nutrition and other things solved the root problem of disease. And he was saying all disease is stemmed from like a leaky gut. And the foods we eat create a holes in the gut where things seep through, and then it causes eczema and it causes different disease because the immune system is broken down, which attracts disease. And so it's all about the things we eat to make sure we boost our immune system and we feel better, we have greater energy, and it also connects to the brain, everything, the heart, the brain and the gut. So just like you said, I think that's a great, a great point.

So you're pushing, but I mean, the exercise and sleep connection is even, you know, I mean, there's evidence suggesting that like a half hour of cardio every day is as effective as a prescription of Zoloft for reducing depression symptoms. Right. So these psychiatrists, you know, might not make as much money if they're prescribing, hey, hop on the treadmill or your peloton, you know, for a half hour. But that's what the data suggests. And then same thing with sleep. I feel like we could solve most of the mental health crisis on college campuses if we just got, got these kids to sleep.

That's it. If they just weren't exhausted. Overwhelmed and exhausted is a combination for unhappiness.

Exactly. And not making good decisions and not learning and doing all the stuff we need them to do on college.

Yeah. And then just needing, needing the sugar fix to like stay awake and needing some adrenaline. So checking social media or whatever it is, doing the wrong choice to get the fix to keep them awake or have some attention because they're so distracted. Okay, so the fourth was a smush of movement. Healthy habits, healthy habits, healthy habits, sleep, all those things. And then what would you say the fifth one?

And I think the fifth one, I mean, again, I'm, you know, cutting off here, but I think the fifth one would be finding ways to practice being more mindful and being more present. And I mean that in a couple ways. You know, one is like, you know, the standard Buddha meditation y way to be present where you're like paying attention to the present moment, but it's also just like paying attention to your body and where you are with things. I mean, we mentioned this a little bit. When you're thinking about the griping of like afterwards, after that gripe fest session, I'm like, I feel kind of yucky. You know, maybe after you like, do something nice and give somebody something at Starbucks, you have a presence and notice, like, I feel kind of good, like my heart feels warmed, I'm breathing in a different way and so on. And so I think, you know, we constantly have these theories of about what we should be doing with our time, but if we actually pay attention to how our bodies feel and be present during it, we can see whether we're going in the right direction, in the wrong direction. For me this is so true on social media in general, but particularly right now during the virus. Right. It's like I have this intuition of, like, I'm like, bored or feeling a little anxious. Like, I'm gonna just do a quick Twitter check. I'm just gonna hop on Facebook just for a second. And if you notice. If I notice how I feel right afterwards, I. I'm like, I feel either apathetic or bored or my anxiety has spiked, or I feel kind of inadequate and sort of yucky about myself. Like, I want to buy something. Like, none of those are good feelings that I wanted. But if you're not present and you don't notice them, then you just act on those urges. You know, I'm kind of buying something because I feel inadequate.

I know. So consuming is what I'm hearing is one of the worst things we can do, especially if you're an anxious person.

Yeah.

And again, I think it kind of matters the kind of person you are. Like, I have a very nerdy husband who's a philosopher, and he can look at the stu and just not get blown up in it, you know? And so for him, it's okay. But, you know, we've had to work on kind of. Exactly what you're saying is that he'll tell me. And I'm like, my chest is pounding. Like, I'm not be able to sleep. And it's like, you kind of have to. This is, I think, an important thing for friendships and relationships is, like, different people are at different points with this, and you got to kind of regulate depending on who you're talking to and what they. I mean, there's probably some friends that you want the opposite. You know, I have other friends who are like, you know, not taking this seriously and not sheltering in place. And for them, I'm like, spring break. Yeah.

They're in Cancun with all their friends at the bars or whatever and saying, who cares if I get it right? That's not the way you want to be either.

And that's a good way to think about emotions in general, is that they're functional. Like, emotions have a purpose. Right. There's a purpose to. Why my chest freaks out when I see these statistics is like, I'm supposed to take. Take action. I'm supposed to wash my hands. I'm supposed to socially distance. But once you're already taking action, the anxiety is not really helping. And the good news is we have. We have tools to not get rid of it. Because let's be fair, this is an Awful grieving, sad, yucky time. We're gonna feel that stuff. But we can have some control over how much we feel it, when we feel it, when it's appropriate to feel it, and so on.

Yeah. And. And if we're seeking joy and happiness, you know, there's definitely times of our life where we may not feel that because of grief, because of loss, because of deaths, because of, you know, losing a career, losing a person close to you, breaking up in a relationship. There are grieving periods for sure, and this is one of them. And I think what I'm hearing you say is you can still find joy and not be exhausted all day long and useless as a human being. You can still find joy through just following through on a few of these things, which is getting out of self and what you're angry about and say, well, how can I be a solution by calling a friend, FaceTiming, someone, showing up and doing something nice for someone? How can I, you know, work out? How can I get. Try to get some little bit extra sleep? How can I eat a little bit better? Just make a better decision, the next decision. And it's not easy, but it's worth it if you want to be happy. It's the only things you can do to be happy, really. So.

Exactly. All of it reminds me of this wonderful parable. It comes from Buddhist tradition of the second arrow. And the way this parable works is, so Buddha's talking to students, and he's asking his students, and he says, you know, if you get shot with an arrow on the street, is that really bad? And people say, yeah, that's super bad, getting shot with an arrow. And Buddha asks, okay, would it be worse if you were shot with, like, a second arrow, too? People like, yeah, second arrow would be worse. You know, two times as bad as the first arrow. And so then Buddha goes on to explain, he's like, look, the bad stuff that happens in life is the first arrow. You know, we're living through a pandemic that is a big arrow that we're getting hit with. But our reactions to it is the second arrow. Right. You know, it is. You know, we might lose loved ones. We might be trapped in the house. We might. You know, my Yale students, for example, the seniors aren't going to have graduation. They've lost all their weeks of party with their friends. They're in mourning. But to, like, not eat healthy or not exercise or fight with your spouse or, you know, cry in your covers all the time, like, in some ways, that second part is on you. You know, you might not be able to control COVID 19, but you can control, you know, how much sleep you get tonight or what you, you know, again, the best choices you make. And you know, sometimes we're going to stab ourselves with those second arrows, but the idea is to reduce them as much as possible. A lot of those are in our control.

Yeah, I mean, disaster is inevitable. You know, pain is inevitable, bad things are going to happen. But it's a greater disaster to respond in a negative way, to fall down and pity yourself and hurt yourself more. That's the greater disaster is what I'm hearing you say.

That's right, that's right. And again, you know, within reason, because I always like to put in, you know, like with a little self compassion. Right. Because there are going to be. There are the ice cream Netflix days, you know, like that's the second arrow, right?

No, I get it. Yeah. But it's the consistency of it. Every day after day, you're in control of. Here's a question. Because I want to make sure that I'm very careful when I talk about control and mental health and mental illness and mental challenges, depression, anxiety. You know, there's different doctors and research that'll say, like, you can cure depression, mental health, like you have tools that you can apply. And then there's other people that will say, no, this is a chemical imbalance, that this is who I am, I can't be fixed, I need medication for the rest of my life. Where are you at with this in terms of mental health and depression, anxiety, the spectrum of it? You know, I feel like I went through more depression type thoughts and anxiety and suicidal thoughts when I was a lot younger. And now over time with practice, with improving myself every single day and going through challenges, I feel like I don't have those thoughts anymore. But I always thought something was wrong with me. What's your opinion on this? On is there a spectrum for mental illness and mental health health? Can you improve your ability to be less mentally ill or depressed? Or is this something we are born with and it's chemically unable to change?

Yeah, I think, I mean, it's worth remembering that there is a spectrum of this stuff and the kinds of interventions you want to take at different points in that spectrum might look different. And so the analogy I always would use is with health stuff. So imagine you come in, I'm a doctor, and you come into my office and you say, hey, doctor, I have high blood pressure. You know, I'm a little overweight, I'd be like, you need to hit the treadmill. Hit the treadmill every day for half hour. But if you walk into my office and you're like clutching your heart and you're like, I'm in acute cardiac arrest, doctor, what do I do? I'm not going to say, hey, get on the treadmill because like you need to hop on the treadmill today, right? Like you need something different. And I think, you know, if your listeners are feeling like acutely suicidal, you know, like you're in the midst of a panic attack, I'm not going to say, hey, you know, write a little gratitude, you know, list right now. Like you're going to need a different kind of kid care. You're going to need something that deals with something much more acute. And I think, you know, medications in those cases, you know, professional therapy, like those are tools we know empirically tend to work and there's lots of individual differences of who it works better for and so on. But like, those are tools that are there for acute cases. I think if you're just kind of feeling like, you know, I'm a little depressed and I'm not flourishing right now, or I'm feeling really anxious in the current situation. You know, that's when you're in the kind of crisis where a lot of these long term tools can really help. These tools that like build on themselves over time. So that kind of just like in the exact way you were sharing with your story, where it's like you start with baby steps and then these things become habits that you're doing all the time that are protecting your mental health.

What's the difference between mental health and happiness?

I think it kind of depends on your definition. I mean, I think, you know, mental health is all the things that kind of go into whether we're feeling happy, whether we're feeling flourishing, whether we're experiencing positive emotion and so on. I think there's a lot of fight about these different definitions, but we kind of know it, you know, like you both want to be mentally healthy and happy and there's some overlap. There might be some nuance around the edges, but you know, mostly they're good things to shoot for.

Yeah. And you talk about this in your class about rewirements. Is it possible for us to actually change who we, we are and rewire our minds, our thoughts and our level of happiness? Or is this.

Yeah, I mean, I think the answer to that is like, yes, but not maybe in the way you think. Right. It's possible to rewire our habits Just like it's possible to like, become healthier in terms of our physical fitness or lose a bunch of weight or something like that, right? You can do it, but it's not like you go to the gym once and then you're good and then you pack up your gym bag and that's it. Like, you actually have to put in constant effort. And so the research suggests that it's for sure possible to change your levels of happiness. Every single one of your listeners could achieve higher levels of statistical well being. It's not going to be perfect all the time. It's not going to change. But everybody can get better. But to do that, it takes work. You know, it takes like, you know, sleep and exercise every day. It takes being social even when you don't feel like it. It takes being other oriented when you're kind of in selfish mode. Like, you have to do those habits over time. The good news is as you do them more and more, and I think as you see the benefits, kind of like as you said in your own story, it becomes a little easier to do it both because it's kind of like a habit that you're used to, but also you've seen the rewards. So when you're kind of not feeling it, you're like, okay, you know, I'm really craving this ice cream right now. But like, you know, maybe it's better for me to just like, you know, hit my yoga mat instead, right? You kind of know a little bit what's going to work better.

I'm curious as a professor and with someone who's got all this spotlight on them right now, and all these people are taking your class at school and around the world podcast is blowing up all these things. I'm sure the book deals are in the works and all this stuff are happening. Do you ever feel like an imposter? And I don't want to say this to like in a negative way, but I've felt this way over my career, different times. I'm like, man, I'm saying these things, but am I living up to them at the highest level for myself? Is there ever moments where you feel like, gosh, I'm teaching this, but I'm just, I'm not happy with myself and what I'm teaching because I know I'm not living up to it fully, like, sometimes. But is there anything like that for you?

I mean, are there ever moments where I'm not. I mean, I think that's the real question. I mean, no, I think one of the challenging Things about this work is that just knowing the science doesn't change my intuitions, right? Like I know all the things I'm supposed to be doing, but that doesn't instantly mean that I'm doing them. In class we talk about this other fallacy that kind of gets back to 80s culture. It's called the GI Joe fallacy. I don't know if you know GI Joe. GI Joe is this 80s cartoon. Army dudes had this famous saying at the end that like knowing is half the battle. Go GI Joe and stuff, if you remember. But it turns out that this idea that knowing is half the battle is a fact. Like once I know what I'm supposed to do, you know, I read this management book, I read the self help book, now I know what I'm supposed to do. That is not, it's not half the battle. It's probably like not even 10% of the battle. It's most of the battle is putting it into effect in your own life. And so there are lots of times when I slack off and I'm not putting it into effect in my own life. I'm acutely aware of what I acutely aware of what I'm supposed to do. I acutely know what I'm supposed to to do, but I'm aware that I'm not doing it. And I think that's, I think honestly that's one of the reasons people like the class and the podcast is that they see that I'm kind of a screw up too. Like I'm an honest indication that like this stuff takes work and we're not going to be perfect and it takes baby steps and that's what you need to kind of feel better.

I mean, it seems pretty common knowledge that most of the world knows that you shouldn't be eating bad food if you want to lose weight. And yet we know, it's like you said, we know the knowledge. Like eat less and you'll probably lose weight and feel a little better. Don't eat the sugar all day long and you're probably gonna feel better. It's most people know this information, but we don't put it into action. Is it just because it's hard? Is it because we don't care enough about the desired result? Is it because there's a disconnect? Why is that?

Yeah, I think part of it's hard. Part of it actually is an accident of neuroscience that I'm totally fascinated with this accident of how our brains are hooked up. So it turns out that there are different Circuits in the brain for wanting something, like the craving that you get and like the amount that you want to go after something and really actually liking something, like how much you enjoy it when you actually do it. Super weird that the brain doesn't line those up, but they don't. The biggest case where you see that is in the case of addiction. So people who are heroin addicts, for example, incredibly crave the drug. You know, they're gonna steal from their family or do whatever, but then when they actually get it, they're really habituated to the drug, so they don't actually even enjoy it that much when they get it. Like, these circuits have totally dissociated. I think this is what happens with all this stuff. You know, I will, you know, crave a sugary meal or crave sitting on my butt watching Netflix or, you know, crave money or something like that. But those cravings don't map on to the liking. And then there's the flip side. There's stuff that I'll really like. Like, you know, doing nice things for others or like, really pushing myself at the gym or getting to bed really early, putting down the social media. Like, those are not things that I crave at all, but they're things that my body and my mind are really gonna like. And it's so stupid that the brain is wired up in this dumb way that they don't align up. But that's. That's the problem.

I mean, how do we change the craving then?

So one part is just awareness, right? And so. And you kind of talked about this just even in your own life, right? It's to kind of force the noticing and be present with the liking. Right? So when I panic scroll on social media, I notice like, huh, Didn't. Did not like that so much. Hey, brain, let's remember. Didn't like that so much. You know, when you do something nice for someone else, you're like, actually, this felt super good. You know, with exercise, I get this a lot. I feel like I'm slowly rewiring my craving for things like yoga and hard exercise, where it's like, I really try. I had this wonderful yoga teacher for a while who at the end of a really hard practice, would say, take a moment to notice what your body feels like after you just did that. Do you like that feeling? And again, it's sort of starting to rewire. Like, actually, I do like that feeling. Try to go after that. Yeah.

Again, coming back to mindfulness, coming back to presence, Coming back to awareness of how you feel awareness of your thoughts if they are serving you or not, or supporting you, and just trying to do more of those things that support you. Can you have a life partner and still have a love story?

Of course.

Of course you want the life partner.

To be a love story too.

But the love stories per se are not life stories.

It's different ingredients. It's different values.

There's some things that you don't need.

In order to have a beautiful love story with someone.