0
SPEAKER_02
Anxiety and our stress response, which is causing all those negative feelings.
0
SPEAKER_02
Evolutionarily, that is a protective mechanism.
0
SPEAKER_02
It is necessary for our survival.
0
SPEAKER_02
How do we harness that and bring it back into submission so it can help us in the way that it was developed or evolved to help us?
0
SPEAKER_02
That is, to put us into action.
0
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to the School of Greatness.
0
SPEAKER_00
My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
0
SPEAKER_00
And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
0
SPEAKER_00
Thanks for spending some time with me today.
0
SPEAKER_00
Now let the class begin.
0
SPEAKER_00
Welcome to today s special episode.
0
SPEAKER_00
Over the last 1300 plus episodes, there have been so many impactful interviews that I ve been lucky enough to have.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I always like to reflect on some of the most powerful.
0
SPEAKER_00
And this episode was one that resonated with most of you guys in the past.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I m excited for the value it s going to bring you today as well.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I hope you enjoy today s episode.
0
SPEAKER_02
90% of the population identifies as suffering from anxiety.
0
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so 90% are affected by anxiety.
0
SPEAKER_00
Is it possible for us to change the way we think about anxiety and start to heal our brain, heal our mindset around the topic of anxiety so that it doesn t affect us or consume us in our life?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is that possible?
0
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.
0
SPEAKER_02
It is possible.
0
SPEAKER_02
And I think the first step is to realize that anxiety and our stress response, which is causing all those negative feelings, evolutionarily, that is a protective mechanism.
0
SPEAKER_02
It is necessary for our survival.
0
SPEAKER_02
It was and it is necessary.
0
SPEAKER_02
So it was evolved so that if there is a lion coming at us,
0
SPEAKER_02
or a dangerous situation that you re in, that you automatically have that increased heart rate, that increased respiration, all the blood goes to your muscles so you can run away.
0
SPEAKER_02
Our problem is that in this day and time, there s not a lot of lines coming at us, but there s all the worry.
0
SPEAKER_02
that we see every single day when we look in the newspaper and look at our Instagram feeds, and that worry of a possible terrible thing that might happen, that also activates our stress and anxiety systems.
0
SPEAKER_02
But it is there for protection.
0
SPEAKER_02
How do we harness that and bring it back into submission so it can help us in the way that it was developed or evolved to help us?
0
SPEAKER_02
That is, to put us into action.
0
SPEAKER_02
I want to use that energy
0
SPEAKER_02
to go into action, to try and check off all those things.
0
SPEAKER_02
I have this, I don t know when your anxiety hits you, but it always hits me right before I m gonna go to sleep.
0
SPEAKER_02
It s like, oh, almost there, and then bing!
0
SPEAKER_02
You know, what if this happens tomorrow?
0
SPEAKER_02
Did I do that?
0
SPEAKER_02
What if that happens?
0
SPEAKER_02
What if that happens?
0
SPEAKER_02
And so that action, the way I use it, is I say, that s okay.
0
SPEAKER_02
That is going to be my to-do list for tomorrow.
0
SPEAKER_02
I m going to take action.
0
SPEAKER_02
And knowing that I can and will take action helps me go back to sleep.
0
SPEAKER_02
Because it still happens.
0
SPEAKER_00
It used to be extremely difficult for me to sleep until I hit about 30, 31 years old.
0
SPEAKER_00
And I would sit in bed for probably an hour to an hour and a half almost every night.
0
SPEAKER_00
anxious, worrying, thinking, judging myself, whatever it may be, stressing about something I haven t done yet or really just kind of beating myself up emotionally.
0
SPEAKER_00
And what I ve learned, there s two things that I ve learned, well really three things that I ve learned that have helped me go to sleep extremely fast in the last eight years.
0
SPEAKER_00
That has been like an automatic switch for me.
0
SPEAKER_00
One is going through a transition of fully sharing and starting to heal the process of my shame from the past.
0
SPEAKER_00
So finding a therapist and talking about what I m shameful about and really revealing the parts of myself that I never wanted anyone to know about me.
0
SPEAKER_00
There were so many things that I didn t like about myself that I was ashamed of or felt insecure around.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it made me feel like a prisoner to my own thoughts.
0
SPEAKER_00
Because I felt like I was, in a sense, hiding myself to the world and to the people closest to me.
0
SPEAKER_00
Like certain people didn t even know who I was.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I felt like an imposter at times.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was still a loving, fun, generous human, but I felt like there was a few things that people didn t know about me.
0
SPEAKER_00
And when I started to open up about those things, I felt inner peace.
0
SPEAKER_00
It didn t all go away, but I felt like, you know, a lot more peace.
0
SPEAKER_00
Number two was, I started to focus on everything at night, what I was grateful for from the day.
0
SPEAKER_00
I was like, okay, if there was anything good today, what was it?
0
SPEAKER_00
Even if it was all bad, there had to be something, I m alive.
0
SPEAKER_00
You know, I m healthy or whatever it may be, I have a roof.
0
SPEAKER_00
So just focusing on anything, and I do that every night where I think about three things to be grateful for, that brings me another level of peace.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then I think about what am I gonna do tomorrow to help people?
0
SPEAKER_00
How am I gonna serve?
0
SPEAKER_00
So it s like healing the shame, focusing on gratitude, and then thinking about how am I gonna serve?
0
SPEAKER_00
Not just what do I need for me, but how can I show up for other people?
0
SPEAKER_00
That kind of three-part combination gives me so much peace before I go to bed.
0
SPEAKER_02
Oh, that s so beautiful.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it s a practice, you know, it s like a constant practice.
0
SPEAKER_00
It s not always perfect, but it s a practice.
0
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
0
SPEAKER_02
I love the thinking about something you re going to do for somebody else tomorrow coming from this practice of healing your own shame.
0
SPEAKER_02
One of the superpowers in good anxiety that comes from your own anxiety, and this is a beautiful example that you just told me, is the superpower of empathy.
0
SPEAKER_00
For yourself or others?
0
SPEAKER_02
First, for yourself, and recognizing it in yourself, and then giving it out to others.
0
SPEAKER_02
Because, just as you described your journey, a lot of our own anxieties have been with us since we were little.
0
SPEAKER_02
Same anxiety, over and over.
0
SPEAKER_00
They stay.
0
SPEAKER_02
For decades.
0
SPEAKER_02
For your lifetime sometimes.
0
SPEAKER_00
What was yours?
0
SPEAKER_02
So, I have many, but the one that I talk about here is shyness, and kind of social anxiety.
0
SPEAKER_02
And I ve learned, because I m a teacher and because I want to become an author, I ve learned the skills not to have those kinds of anxieties.
0
SPEAKER_02
But I was painfully shy as a young girl.
0
SPEAKER_02
And even into college, I found myself in social situations and wanting to join and not feeling comfortable or even in class.
0
SPEAKER_02
I realized that that has become my superpower as a teacher, because I know when I m standing at the front of the classroom.
0
SPEAKER_00
Shyness is a superpower.
0
SPEAKER_00
My shyness.
0
SPEAKER_00
Why is that?
0
SPEAKER_02
Because when I m standing at the front of the classroom, there are always those students that say, oh, I know the answer, I know the answer.
0
SPEAKER_02
And I know that there s many more that want to talk to me, that want to show me what they know, want to have that interaction, but can t do that.
0
SPEAKER_02
And so what do I do?
0
SPEAKER_02
I make sure that I am there 15 minutes before.
0
SPEAKER_02
I stand there.
0
SPEAKER_02
I talk to the students before.
0
SPEAKER_02
I stay after class.
0
SPEAKER_02
Anybody that wants to come up for a casual conversation where you don t have to be the one raising your hand.
0
SPEAKER_02
And I didn t even realize it until I wrote this book that that is a superpower of in-class empathy.
0
SPEAKER_02
And I have that particular form of empathy because of my particular form
0
SPEAKER_02
of anxiety, my social anxiety.
0
SPEAKER_02
And so imagine the 90% of people that have their particular form of anxiety.
0
SPEAKER_02
They know what it feels like.
0
SPEAKER_02
They know what s going through many others of our minds.
0
SPEAKER_02
And what if you turn that around and you do what you do and say, how can I help somebody else in this way that I know I ve struggled, but I also know what can help, right?
0
SPEAKER_02
So that s one of my favorite superpowers.
0
SPEAKER_00
How do we know how to turn anxiety into something good?
0
SPEAKER_00
Is this the U.S.
0
SPEAKER_00
or the world feels anxiety?
0
SPEAKER_02
I think the actual study was about the U.S.
0
SPEAKER_00
The U.S.
0
SPEAKER_00
90% of the U.S.
0
SPEAKER_00
claims that they have anxiety on some level, right?
0
SPEAKER_02
Yes, exactly.
0
SPEAKER_00
And what does anxiety do for us when we don t have attacks coming our way?
0
SPEAKER_00
Like if we re constantly in a state of anxiety, what does it do to the brain and what does it do to our immune system and to our body and our emotions?
0
SPEAKER_02
So that s a great question.
0
SPEAKER_02
The answer is,
0
SPEAKER_02
long-term anxiety will have terrible effects on all of the physiological systems that are being activated.
0
SPEAKER_02
So what s happening when you have a stress response?
0
SPEAKER_02
Your heart rate is going up.
0
SPEAKER_02
Your respiration is going up.
0
SPEAKER_02
So long-term effects of anxiety and stress are heart disease.
0
SPEAKER_02
The other thing that s happening when you re in a constant state of stress is that blood is being shunted
0
SPEAKER_02
from your digestive and reproductive systems to your muscles because you re supposed to be running away from the lion and you re sitting there worrying about your taxes instead or whatever, the Delta variant instead.
0
SPEAKER_02
And so long-term effects, ulcers, reproductive problems, long-term reproductive problems with long-term anxiety.
0
SPEAKER_02
And that s just the body.
0
SPEAKER_02
So now we get to my favorite body area, the brain.
0
SPEAKER_02
And so long-term stress will literally start to first kill off
1
SPEAKER_00
the dendrites of your neurons, the input structures of your brain cells in two key brain areas, the hippocampus, critical for long-term memory, in the temporal lobe, and the prefrontal cortex, critical for decision-making, focus, and attention.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so, for example, PTSD, if you have PTSD, classic example of long-term stress,
1
SPEAKER_00
Your whole temporal lobe gets smaller.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because you first start to degrade the size of your individual brain cells, and then you start to kill them off.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so that is not memory problems ensue.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it is not good.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is long-term also the same as chronic?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
So long-term stress, long-term anxiety is chronic anxiety and stress.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
What s the definition of chronic?
1
SPEAKER_01
Does that just mean something that s consistent over a period of time?
1
SPEAKER_00
Over months and years.
1
SPEAKER_00
And of course there s different levels of intensity.
1
SPEAKER_00
Also I should say that this book, Good Anxiety,
1
SPEAKER_00
is not addressing clinical anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
That is a different animal.
1
SPEAKER_00
For clinical anxiety, just as you would do if you had a broken leg, you need medical treatment.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is not a medical treatment for somebody that has chronic anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is the 90% of people that say, yeah, I have some anxiety every day.
1
SPEAKER_00
I call it everyday anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
So these are some of the approaches and mindsets that you can use
1
SPEAKER_00
to start to shift that negative effect of anxiety and shift it in to the basic brain activation that it is and start to help motivate yourself to address the things that you re afraid of.
1
SPEAKER_01
What are the common things that most people have on a daily anxiety basis, I guess?
1
SPEAKER_01
What is it?
1
SPEAKER_01
Fear of what?
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, generally, and this is before the pandemic, fear of public speaking is one of the most common.
1
SPEAKER_00
Fear of money fears, another big one.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m just thinking about all the, my own anxieties that I ve talked about in the book.
1
SPEAKER_00
Let s see, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Early on, social anxiety is, you know, they mirror the clinical levels of anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
One is general anxiety disorder is just kind of
1
SPEAKER_00
life and situations and interacting with anything start to produce anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
Social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders, one can start to worry obsessively about whatever that thing is that worries you.
1
SPEAKER_00
And of course, the thing that is on everybody s mind right now is the uncertainty around the coronavirus and everything that happened in the future.
1
SPEAKER_00
We can t predict.
1
SPEAKER_00
We don t know what s going to happen in the fall with schools or work for that matter.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that uncertainty is the key driver for a lot of anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_01
So uncertainty in general.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is uncertainty about my money, uncertainty if I go to this social event, am I, you know, am I going to fit in?
1
SPEAKER_01
It s just kind of the uncertainty of life.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Around different topics.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s uncertainty about my parents.
1
SPEAKER_01
Are they going to stay healthy?
1
SPEAKER_01
It s just the uncertainty of life.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that sounds like it s one of the main causes of daily, everyday anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, absolutely.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do we get comfortable with uncertainty so it doesn t consume us?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s a great question.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do we embrace it and enjoy uncertainty and have fun and play and connect with it in a different relationship?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that is a great question.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the answer that I provide in the book is
1
SPEAKER_00
a multi-spoked kind of strategy.
1
SPEAKER_00
And one strategy that s easy to understand is how do you create more joy in your life to kind of counteract all of these negative things coming out?
1
SPEAKER_00
And so one of my favorite, this is in the toolbox part of the book where I go through immediate, medium-term, and long-term tools that you can use to flip your anxiety from bad to good.
1
SPEAKER_00
And one of my favorite ones is called joy conditioning.
1
SPEAKER_00
Joy conditioning is mining your own memory banks for those joyous,
1
SPEAKER_00
funny, pick your favorite positive emotion events in your life and consciously bringing them back up and revivifying them and bringing up those emotions.
1
SPEAKER_00
And my little trick for that is try and find a memory that you love that has an olfactory component to it.
1
SPEAKER_01
A what component?
1
SPEAKER_00
Olfactory, so a particular smell associated with it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Why?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because smells are really evocative of memories.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s very easy to bring up everything associated with that memory if it has a smell.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s okay if it doesn t, but the one that I use is, I love this one because everybody
1
SPEAKER_00
might have an example of this.
1
SPEAKER_00
I remember a particular yoga class I went to in New York City, and I was doing so well.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was, you know, up dog, down dog.
1
SPEAKER_00
I flipped my dog.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, yeah, I m doing really well.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I was doing the pose that I do the best, which is Shavasana.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I was in the Shavasana, feeling really good.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that the one where you just lay down?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I do that really well.
1
SPEAKER_01
You just lay on your back, or you re like child s pose.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
I do that even better than child s pose.
1
SPEAKER_00
I lay on my back, shavasana, and I was feeling really good about myself, had this great class.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then on top of all of that, the teacher came around and she put some lavender lotion on her hand and she waved it under my nose.
1
SPEAKER_00
and she gave me the most luscious five-second neck massage that I ve ever had in my life.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because I worked out hard, I was feeling really good about myself, and so I literally, in my purse out there, is a little vial of lavender essence.
1
SPEAKER_00
And when I need a little pick-me-up of, remember the time I just felt so good, it was just this relaxing, feel-good moment, I smell that lavender
1
SPEAKER_00
And that memory, that is my joy conditioning.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m joy conditioning myself with that memory.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you can do that with whatever memory you want.
1
SPEAKER_01
Joy conditioning.
1
SPEAKER_01
Joy conditioning.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that a scientific term or is that something that s?
1
SPEAKER_00
That is Professor Wendy Suzuki s term and it s based on my 25 years of studying how memory works.
1
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And applying all of my knowledge to addressing anxiety.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s really a direct antidote to
1
SPEAKER_00
Fear conditioning, which we all experience automatically.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that s my example is my apartment in Washington, D.C.
1
SPEAKER_00
was robbed.
1
SPEAKER_00
and I walked around the corner, my door was the only one around the corner, and I still remember walking around the corner and seeing my door crowbarred open, hanging open when it was supposed to be locked.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I walked in, which was not the smartest thing to do.
1
SPEAKER_00
Nobody was there, but every time I walked around that corner for months and months, I felt that.
1
SPEAKER_00
That is fear conditioning.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do you flip it?
1
SPEAKER_00
So that didn t go away.
1
SPEAKER_00
You had to move.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I did have to move.
1
SPEAKER_00
It went down slowly, but I, you know, to counteract that with something like joy conditioning is, you know, invite friends over, create wonderful memories, wonderful safe events in that same space.
1
SPEAKER_00
It never went away, and I ll tell you why, because that is a safety mechanism.
1
SPEAKER_00
You don t want to you know, the brain doesn t allow us to Obliterate anything.
1
SPEAKER_00
This isn t like that movie Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yes, so We can t do that, but we can counteract that very protective mechanism actually, I don t want to eliminate that I want to be wary of
1
SPEAKER_00
areas and situations that were really, really bad for me.
1
SPEAKER_00
That is... You don t want to eliminate it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t want to eliminate it.
1
SPEAKER_01
What if it s been something traumatic though or someone breaking in or a sexual assault against you or something traumatic?
1
SPEAKER_01
How do we learn to heal the memory and the emotion of that fear, of that trauma?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
To live with ourselves or to live in the environment of a home that we can t leave yet or how do we... Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is it just more joy conditioning?
1
SPEAKER_01
Are there other things?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so this is where we get to that boundary between clinical levels and what this addresses.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I m really not addressing, you know, I went to Afghanistan, I have, you know, terrible PTSD.
1
SPEAKER_00
This can help a little bit, but it does not substitute for
1
SPEAKER_00
need to go to a therapist and So, yeah, I that that is not a substitute.
1
SPEAKER_00
However, you can use these in addition to your you know therapy Approaches any tool I think is a good tool to try.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yes, any tools a good tool to try What s another tool we can use in order to?
1
SPEAKER_01
Quiet some of the negative anxiety that keeps us from joy that keeps us from
2
SPEAKER_01
Feeling good about ourselves another tool you like.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean we already said this but I think this is one that so many people can use and it was really inspired by a Really good lawyer that I happen to meet at a party one day and I told her I m writing this book about anxiety and she said I am the lawyer that I am today because of my anxiety and I said Oh tell me
2
SPEAKER_00
And she said, you know, I use my anxiety for all the different arguments that the other side is going to put up against me, or all the things the judge might say.
2
SPEAKER_00
That becomes my to-do list.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, what if the judge says that?
2
SPEAKER_00
What if the other side brings this up, that up?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I turn that into actionable items.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so because I do that on a systematic basis, and I ve gotten really good at that,
2
SPEAKER_00
I plug all the holes in my case.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think you could apply that to anything, anything in your life.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I love it because it is an act of turning the energy of just worrying, oh, what if this, what if this, into an action.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is really at the core of this book.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you turn that inner turmoil
2
SPEAKER_00
into an action that is positive.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is one example that s easy to understand how I do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
Even if you get to the top three things on your list and do something about that, there is a satisfaction that comes from that.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you can feel that anxiety coming down with every check mark that you do.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and if people don t turn their anxiety into a positive action, what happens?
2
SPEAKER_01
If they stay in it consistently, what happens?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, then we go back to what are the chronic effects of anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_01
They get sick, heart disease, long-term stress.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, right.
2
SPEAKER_00
And they stay in this negative emotional state.
2
SPEAKER_00
They stay in the state of pure worry, no action.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that is difficult to maintain.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it starts to interfere.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s exhausting.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s got to be emotionally draining to be in a constant state of stress, anxiety, and worry.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s got to make you look older, feel tired.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m not sure what the research says about longevity if someone has a lot of stress and worry and anxiety, but I m assuming you don t live long.
2
SPEAKER_01
You probably die younger than you should.
2
SPEAKER_01
Have you studied anything about the blue zones, about the people that live in the blue zones who live the longest in the world, about how they manage anxiety or if they have anxiety?
2
SPEAKER_01
And is there some benefit to having some anxiety or is it better to just have this kind of worry-free life?
2
SPEAKER_01
happy-go-lucky, I m not gonna let anything bother me, I forgive everyone, it doesn t matter what you do, I m just a happy human being.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is there some benefit to that or no?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so I think that, I think about anxiety now and all that worry and anger and all these other things that come with anxiety, I really think of it as kind of the wind in my sails.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is the little fire under my backside that gets me to do things, gets me excited, gets me to go towards the fear and get through it because I know there s something good on the other side.
2
SPEAKER_00
And without it, I mean, that is, I think there s certain perhaps times in your life if you are
2
SPEAKER_00
retired and aren t in this situation where you re dealing with the world, that that could be great.
2
SPEAKER_00
That is the happy-go-lucky, no worries.
2
SPEAKER_00
But for most of us, I think it is very beneficial to learn how to take that fear that is depleting us, it is exhausting us, it s making us look older, and turn that into something
2
SPEAKER_00
that makes you feel better about yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
It decreases the overall stress in your life.
2
SPEAKER_00
And frankly, it is more practical to say, look, I m not going to be happy-go-lucky all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Nobody s happy-go-lucky all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I m going to use that bad stuff that is inevitably going to come in.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I am going to learn from it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m going to use it to my best advantage.
2
SPEAKER_00
And one thing we haven t talked about yet, I m going to learn about myself through thinking about my anxiety rather than just trying to say, oh, I hate it, go away.
2
SPEAKER_00
What does it tell us about ourselves?
2
SPEAKER_00
And like for me, my social anxiety told me how much I love
2
SPEAKER_00
And I appreciate deep friendships because I didn t have them because I was too scared to start them.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was so shy and it kept me isolated.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s something wrong about that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that, that contributed to the isolation in the first place.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so the realization, and because part of the time it s like, I m a lone wolf.
2
SPEAKER_00
I like being alone, you know, it s okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
But actually the truth was, I love being with people.
2
SPEAKER_00
it motivates me.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I had to get through that shyness to get that joy on the other side.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so that was a learning that I went through.
2
SPEAKER_01
When someone says they like being a lone wolf, what is it?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, no one likes to be alone, really.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we d like to be alone in moments, but no one wants to be alone and not have close friendships, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
What is that really, what are we really saying when we say, you know what, I just wanna be alone or I wanna be a lone wolf?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that,
2
SPEAKER_01
We ve been embarrassed in the past by social settings, or people have made fun of us, or what does that mean kind of in general, do you think?
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t trust people.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s difficult to deal with, you know, reading the cues and it s just confusing or overwhelming.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, a criticism of, you know, the monk lifestyle.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re alone all the time.
2
SPEAKER_00
They don t have to deal with, you know, what if I don t like...
2
SPEAKER_00
The other monk, you know, I ll just go off to my cave and I ll be all alone and then you don t have to deal with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
The real test comes when you do have to deal with that and disagreements.
2
SPEAKER_00
What if somebody disagrees with you?
2
SPEAKER_00
That brings up all of these things that humans were evolved to do.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re social animals.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think that, you know, there are social butterflies.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was never a social butterfly.
2
SPEAKER_00
I will never be a social butterfly.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it is not true what I told myself that, you know, I just love to be alone and I, you know, I m better on my own.
2
SPEAKER_00
No, I m much better with people.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I think there s, it is that difficulty, social interactions.
2
SPEAKER_00
We were evolved to be social, but it is scary.
2
SPEAKER_00
And some of us have that fear.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it can be terrifying if you don t know how to handle the emotions of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you haven t learned the tools on how to navigate when someone lets you down, or when someone talks behind your back, or when someone lies to you, or when someone breaks their commitment, or whatever it is, it s hard to learn these things.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we can wall ourselves up, we can protect ourselves, but I think that creates more stress and anxiety.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like feeling alone and feeling disconnected of people.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think is even harder.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but that s it seems safer in the moment.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it does it does and I do believe that you know, you give you get what you give and so You know put out there I could tell by your evening ritual that you like to put out there What can I give to other people and the more you do that?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s not to say that nobody will ever turn around and try and you know, go behind your back about something.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but you you are
2
SPEAKER_00
building so much goodwill in the people that do appreciate it.
2
SPEAKER_00
It is like this like protective cocoon so the more you do go out there and and give to people the more protected and that is going back to vulnerability the more vulnerable you are and say you know I am
2
SPEAKER_00
I like you.
2
SPEAKER_00
I want to help you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Here s what I can do.
2
SPEAKER_00
This would make me feel good.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a very vulnerable thing to do and to offer.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think that that pays, even though sometimes it s hard and it s scary to reach out.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, absolutely.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Adam Grant talks about that in his book, I think Give and Take, I think it s called, what s like there s givers and takers, and you wanna learn not to just constantly give to the takers, but make sure there s give and take in relationships and stuff like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
I love you said that the worry you feel should help you move towards your fear.
2
SPEAKER_01
So if you re worried about being in social settings, you should think about it and say, okay, what can I do to help me overcome this?
2
SPEAKER_01
I really like to create exercises and kind of games when I m afraid.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I say, okay, I used to be when I was a teenager, I was afraid to talk to girls.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think like most teenage boys, I don t know, maybe I was the only one, but I was afraid to talk to girls.
3
SPEAKER_03
I remember I was, I ve told this on my show many times, but I was sick and tired of having so much anxiety, getting rejected by just saying hello.
3
SPEAKER_03
at 16, and I said, okay, for this summer, I am going to, every time I feel butterflies when I see a girl, I m gonna go right up to her and have a conversation, and I need to go up to her, I can t walk away, I have to put myself through this.
3
SPEAKER_03
And the first couple weeks was horrible, it was terrifying, because I got rejected, I was stuttering, I was stumbling over myself, I was like, girls were running away, like the whole thing.
3
SPEAKER_03
But then eventually you gain more and more confidence.
3
SPEAKER_03
You get a little win.
3
SPEAKER_03
Okay, she talked to me for 10 seconds.
3
SPEAKER_03
So you build your confidence.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I think if you create a game or an experiment for yourself and say, you know, I m just going to do a social experiment around this.
3
SPEAKER_03
I did this with public speaking as well for a year.
3
SPEAKER_03
I went every week and it was terrifying.
3
SPEAKER_03
I went to a public speaking class and I was like, I m going to do this as an experiment and see what I can prove every week.
3
SPEAKER_03
I think if you do that, it becomes more, we go back to joy.
3
SPEAKER_03
How do you create joy around the anxiety?
3
SPEAKER_03
How can you make it a fun game?
3
SPEAKER_03
Not something that s like this terrible, fearful thing, but how can I make a game out of this?
3
SPEAKER_03
For me, that has worked wonders by creating experiments, games, and trying to throw some joy in there, even when it s so stressful.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, no, I love that idea.
3
SPEAKER_00
I love that idea.
3
SPEAKER_00
And bringing friends in to help you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because you were saying that you shared these parts of yourself, presumably with close friends.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I had that same thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wanted to project I was at 10% that so I m not anxious really I am I am happy all the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, I smile your face Yeah, and the truth was that I wasn t and it was fear of well if they saw the real me then they Never want to and I d be you know with fewer friends that I have right now and that s terrible But you have to learn how to share your authentic self or else you get in authentic friends.
3
SPEAKER_03
That s true I learned
3
SPEAKER_03
Gosh, why is it, you said that, we both said this, you know, if people actually knew this about me, then they wouldn t love me, or they wouldn t like me, or I d be alone, or they wouldn t want to spend time with me.
3
SPEAKER_03
Is that something you think is a fear for a lot of people?
3
SPEAKER_03
If people actually knew this about me, what I was most afraid of, what I m most ashamed of, what I m most insecure about, if they actually knew this is how I felt, they wouldn t love me.
3
SPEAKER_03
Do you think that s a common theme in the world?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think every single person, I think that same 90% that are suffering from anxiety has that about something in their life.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because it s hard to share even the most
3
SPEAKER_00
I m sure Oprah even thinks that, you know, although she s obviously shared a lot.
3
SPEAKER_00
Very difficult to do.
3
SPEAKER_00
And yeah, I m sure everybody has something like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I have this vision that people are just searching for
3
SPEAKER_00
the right configuration of friends where they feel comfortable, or family members, where they do feel comfortable enough to let that guard down and let it slip out.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like, oh, what s gonna happen if that really comes out?
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s a yearning that gets suppressed.
3
SPEAKER_03
I think too much.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s funny when I started to reveal the things I didn t like about myself or wasn t proud about myself about eight years ago and started to really incorporate that on a more consistent basis in my life and I have this platform where I m always talking about my insecurities and doubts so my audience knows all my darkness.
3
SPEAKER_03
It gives me, it s funny, the more I started, before I did it, I had so much anxiety and worry and stress thinking about sharing things.
3
SPEAKER_03
Two close friends, family members, and then eventually I started opening up more on my podcast here.
3
SPEAKER_03
But since I ve done that, it s like the worry and stress goes away.
3
SPEAKER_03
Because I m like, oh, I m still alive.
3
SPEAKER_03
People like me.
3
SPEAKER_03
I have friendships.
3
SPEAKER_03
My family didn t abandon me.
3
SPEAKER_03
And in fact, it brought me closer to people.
3
SPEAKER_03
It strengthened the bonds and connections with my friends, family.
3
SPEAKER_03
It created new relationships I didn t have because people trusted me more.
3
SPEAKER_03
They could see me better.
3
SPEAKER_03
They could understand and empathize with me.
3
SPEAKER_03
They just felt like I was more real, whatever it might be.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I think that also allows me to sleep better at night, knowing, okay, I am being 100% authentic to who I am, revealing myself, opening up, being vulnerable in conversations.
3
SPEAKER_03
It feels great, you know, I feel like, and people still like, I have great friendships.
3
SPEAKER_03
So what do I need to worry about?
3
SPEAKER_03
People know all my stuff that I don t like about me, and they still like me.
3
SPEAKER_03
You know, it s like, they re my friend, you know, and the people that don t like me, okay, they weren t meant for me.
3
SPEAKER_03
It feels more peace.
3
SPEAKER_03
It s, I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know exactly what you re saying.
3
SPEAKER_00
It really opens up this new kind of communication route when you are vulnerable and honest.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it
3
SPEAKER_00
gives permission to the other person to be vulnerable, honest, or just be there to listen, because that s also very, very powerful.
3
SPEAKER_00
One of the experiments that I did in my lab this last year was trying to find
3
SPEAKER_00
the easiest, shortest intervention that we can do with students that would decrease their very high levels of anxiety.
3
SPEAKER_03
What was that?
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we tested many things just to walk outside, chair yoga, all these things they can do online.
3
SPEAKER_00
This was all virtual.
3
SPEAKER_00
But one of the things that was very effective that I was so excited about is a mindful conversation.
3
SPEAKER_00
So what we did is,
3
SPEAKER_00
We didn t go deep.
3
SPEAKER_00
We didn t want to have them reveal some deep, dark secret.
3
SPEAKER_00
But what we did is my student researchers had a script.
3
SPEAKER_00
They shared a real story about a favorite vacation, why it was favorite.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was real.
3
SPEAKER_00
They were really trying to share this experience with them and then invited the student, who they didn t know, who was our experimentee, to share the same thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in that year where everything was virtual and it was, you know, professors just said, okay, now learn this five chapters, go ahead, go do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And to have somebody there listening to their story, listening deeply and asking real questions because they were, it was only 10 minutes, completely decreased their anxiety.
3
SPEAKER_00
Really?
3
SPEAKER_03
By them sharing and someone listening or by them also listening to someone else s story?
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, I think it was really the sharing and have somebody else listening because the first part, my students always went first.
3
SPEAKER_00
They didn t know what exactly was going to happen.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that was just to lay the groundwork.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think the interaction and the good feeling started to develop when they started to open up sharing this story and saying, Oh my God, somebody is really listening to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re asking me a question about this event that meant something to them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that just shows how powerful.
3
SPEAKER_00
social interactions are.
3
SPEAKER_00
And even the short 10 minute thing between, we thought about, should we get two friends to try and have a conversation?
3
SPEAKER_00
That was too hard to control.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I could control, we could control exactly the protocol of this stranger student and the kind of interaction they have.
3
SPEAKER_03
Interesting.
3
SPEAKER_03
Is there any research on if men or women are more anxious?
3
SPEAKER_03
Is there any research around this?
3
SPEAKER_03
When men have more anxiety or stress or women have more anxiety or stress?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think the stat, I should know this.
3
SPEAKER_03
Are we just all messed up equally?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think we re all messed up equally.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s more women with depression.
3
SPEAKER_00
Depression and anxiety are related but have different symptoms.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I think it s pretty equal for anxiety.
3
SPEAKER_03
The reason I m curious is because
3
SPEAKER_03
When I was studying about masculinity years ago, I wrote a book called The Mask of Masculinity, which is kind of the mask that men wear to project and protect themselves from showing emotion and showing, revealing themselves.
3
SPEAKER_03
And when I was on tour talking about it, I would always ask in every city and about 50% men and women would show up and I would always ask like, okay, for the ladies here, raise your hand if you have,
3
SPEAKER_03
a girlfriend or girlfriends that you talk to once a week about your stress, your worry, your challenges in life, your work issues, your body issues, whatever it might be you re dealing with that you have someone, one or multiple girlfriends you speak with on a weekly basis.
3
SPEAKER_03
And pretty much the entire room of women raised their hand and said, yes, every week I have at least one person.
3
SPEAKER_03
And I said, keep your hands up if you do this every day.
3
SPEAKER_03
You call a girlfriend on the phone,
4
SPEAKER_03
and you have lunch, you re just talking about something for a few minutes.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I go, how does it make you feel to be able to talk about these things?
4
SPEAKER_03
And you re like, it feels great to be able to share this.
4
SPEAKER_03
And say, okay, from the men in the room, raise your hand if once a month you get together with a guy friend and you talk about your vulnerabilities, your insecurities, your body issues, your challenges at work, and you really open up to this other male friend.
4
SPEAKER_03
Maybe one or two guys out of hundreds would raise their hand.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I would say, you guys are part of a church group, right?
4
SPEAKER_03
Where you meet once a month for an hour and you do these things.
4
SPEAKER_02
And he s like, yes.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I say,
4
SPEAKER_03
Okay, I go back to the ladies in the room, I say, ladies, imagine not being able to do this once a month.
4
SPEAKER_03
Only doing this once a month, how would it make you feel?
4
SPEAKER_03
They re like, I d feel more anxiety, more stress.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I go, imagine these men who never do this in the room.
4
SPEAKER_03
They never share these things.
4
SPEAKER_03
I m not saying all men, but a lot of men don t feel like they have one guy friend they can open up and reveal to.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I feel like maybe there s another symptom, maybe it s just like they just wall themselves up and don t share emotion and there s other internal factors or physical ailments that they re caused from that stress.
4
SPEAKER_03
But I think it s, yeah, either way, I think it s important for everyone to learn how to share these things.
4
SPEAKER_03
And based on that study you did, I think it s when we share whatever it is, even if it s five, 10 minutes, it decreases the stress and the anxiety, it seems like it goes down.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I feel like we ve got to create better friendships or relationships or therapists or whatever that we can connect to and have that consistent communication stream.
4
SPEAKER_03
Because otherwise, when we hold on to it, just bad things happen.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_00
So how does that work?
4
SPEAKER_00
What is the change that we need in
4
SPEAKER_00
Raising boys and talking to boys This is a whole I mean, this is a dynamic.
4
SPEAKER_03
I mean I grew up in the 80s and 90s.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was born in 83 and It was just not accepted to show emotion in elementary school middle school high school.
4
SPEAKER_03
It wasn t acceptable Especially as an athlete growing up in Ohio.
4
SPEAKER_03
It just wasn t
4
SPEAKER_03
Maybe in some part of Beverly Hills or some like posh school in New York City, I don t know, maybe in pockets, there s some more acceptability of younger boys showing this type of emotion.
4
SPEAKER_03
I don t know what it s like in 2021, but I just know that you were laughed at, you were made fun of if you cried, if you showed emotion.
4
SPEAKER_03
I remember wanting to put my arm around like guy buddies of mine and them pushing me away and saying, don t be gay.
4
SPEAKER_03
or just don t be a little girl.
4
SPEAKER_03
Don t be whatever the term is that was associated around something negative for them.
4
SPEAKER_03
And so you learn, in order to fit in, to wall yourself or to not share the things that people won t like about you.
4
SPEAKER_03
And I m not saying that s okay, and we all have our responsibilities, but as young boys growing up, when we re conditioned that way, it was hard to break that for me personally.
4
SPEAKER_03
And it took me a long time until I realized like, wow, this isn t working for me.
4
SPEAKER_03
I have more stress and anxiety.
4
SPEAKER_03
It was really decades of stress and anxiety and not being able to sleep at night.
4
SPEAKER_03
That was the thing that the catalyst that you talked about that was like, enough is enough.
4
SPEAKER_03
Maybe for you as a social anxiety, but finally as a teacher, like, okay, I ve got to show up differently.
4
SPEAKER_03
to not stress all the time.
4
SPEAKER_03
And so eight plus years ago, I finally started to reveal myself.
4
SPEAKER_03
I was just like, okay, I can t live like this anymore.
4
SPEAKER_03
So everyone can know everything about all my shame, because I d rather that happen and be alone because I feel so much stress all the time.
4
SPEAKER_03
And then it gave me a lot of peace.
4
SPEAKER_03
And then I learned the process of healing and therapy work and workshops and all that stuff, and just healthier relationships in general.
4
SPEAKER_03
I don t know the solution.
4
SPEAKER_03
I don t know the solution, but I know I m trying to be a better model for other men to witness.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s beautiful.
4
SPEAKER_03
I m trying to bring other men on and have these types of conversations so that younger men could see like, oh, okay, here s someone that maybe I like what he does or he s an athlete and I can understand and relate to that.
4
SPEAKER_03
Hopefully I can start to do this with my own life or maybe with my girlfriend or my guy friends.
4
SPEAKER_03
try to have some of these conversations, but I just think it s challenging in general.
4
SPEAKER_03
It s challenging when you re younger and you re trying to have a few friends and they don t accept it.
4
SPEAKER_03
That s tough.
4
SPEAKER_03
Because no kid wants to be alone.
4
SPEAKER_03
They want to just hang out and go on the playground and just be with their buddies.
4
SPEAKER_03
So it s really challenging.
4
SPEAKER_03
I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_03
Do you have kids?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, I don t have kids.
4
SPEAKER_03
I don t have a solution to that, but I think as a, you know, I don t have kids either, but if I was a parent,
4
SPEAKER_03
I would just encourage showing emotion with my sons or daughters and be the example, be vulnerability with them.
4
SPEAKER_03
Allow myself to feel, allow myself to cry if I m watching a movie or something happens in my life and I m feeling it to not wall up, but to allow myself.
4
SPEAKER_03
I mean, we re going off another topic here.
4
SPEAKER_03
We re going off another topic here for another conversation.
4
SPEAKER_03
But as an academic, as a neuroscientist and a study of psychology and the brain and all these things, you ve come from a very academic approach to your research.
4
SPEAKER_03
But a year ago, you unfortunately lost your father and your brother around the same time.
4
SPEAKER_03
And while you were writing the book, and so you had to kind of shift some of the stuff writing the book because you were experiencing on an emotional level what you were kind of researching.
4
SPEAKER_03
Can you share more the biggest lessons you learned from these types of losses for yourself and how you emotionally had to navigate it when maybe you didn t have the answers?
4
SPEAKER_03
And what did you learn from that experience?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it really was the week that I was about to dive in and start writing the real chapters of this book, Good Anxiety.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that was when my younger brother passed away, completely unexpected.
4
SPEAKER_00
Younger brother?
4
SPEAKER_00
My younger brother.
4
SPEAKER_00
Just three months after our father had passed away.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we were just healing, still raw from losing
4
SPEAKER_00
my father, our father, and then he had an unexpected heart attack.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so first just that pain, and grief that I was experiencing, it s not the same as anxiety.
4
SPEAKER_00
It shares some of those negative emotions.
4
SPEAKER_00
This was just loss, grief, sadness.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was so painful, like how could this happen?
4
SPEAKER_00
It feels like a different reality.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everything looked the same, but it just felt so different.
4
SPEAKER_00
it forced me to explore these feelings that I d had inklings of in the past, but never to this extent, and kind of in this wave of first my dad and then my brother.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I slowly came back from it, and I used some of the tools that I talk about in the book that were already in place for me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Morning meditation, so I do a morning tea meditation,
4
SPEAKER_00
A tea meditation, which I describe in the book, which is a meditation over brewing and drinking tea.
4
SPEAKER_00
For me, that was the magic bullet for meditation because there s a sequence for brewing tea.
4
SPEAKER_00
You boil the water, you put it in the tea leaves, you let it seep, and then you pour it out, and then you drink it.
4
SPEAKER_00
sequence kept my meditation going.
4
SPEAKER_00
I always had something to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was waiting for the tea to brew.
4
SPEAKER_00
I get to drink the tea now.
4
SPEAKER_00
I get to be mindful about how does the tea feel?
4
SPEAKER_00
How hot is it?
4
SPEAKER_00
How does it taste?
4
SPEAKER_00
And I really
4
SPEAKER_00
I really came to appreciate that there is this moment, and yes, everything on the outside of my meditation feels like it s different, but this moment still feels like every other moment that I enjoyed my tea meditation.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that helped me come back to, I am alive, I m so lucky to be alive.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, perspective.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so lucky to have the family that s still with me.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yes, yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And exercise, my first book, Healthy Brain, Happy Life, was all about the transformative effects of exercise on the brain.
4
SPEAKER_00
So after I meditate, I do my workout in the morning.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it was really one day I was doing my workout.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a video workout.
4
SPEAKER_00
And the trainer said – it was a hard workout – and she said, you know,
4
SPEAKER_00
in working out with great pain comes great wisdom.
4
SPEAKER_03
Ooh, I love that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, oh my god, that is what I need to hear, not just for working out.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have just gone through the worst pain in my whole life and I do have more wisdom.
4
SPEAKER_00
That wisdom is based in the love that was left behind.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And not just left behind, that
5
SPEAKER_01
sounds like it s leftovers, the love that is here, that s still here from my brother and my father.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that s when I started to think about this book, Good Anxiety, in a different way.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because anxiety is an everyday kind of pain and suffering that we all go through.
5
SPEAKER_01
And what if that leads to wisdom?
5
SPEAKER_01
What does that look like?
5
SPEAKER_01
And I needed as much wisdom and power that I needed.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so the book became searching for the power and the wisdom in everyday anxiety.
5
SPEAKER_01
It never would have been that if I hadn t had this event happen.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so that s where the six superpowers or gifts of anxiety came from.
5
SPEAKER_01
I needed them to be
5
SPEAKER_01
Superpowers we ended up calling them gifts.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, but same thing and Yeah, so that that is the the real origin story of this book.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s crazy.
5
SPEAKER_00
I always talk about the importance of Experiencing some type of structured pain on a daily basis and that for me that s just a workout You know, it s like something that makes you uncomfortable.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and
5
SPEAKER_00
that s like, oh, I don t wanna do this, and I don t wanna push a little harder, but when we do that, I feel like everyday healthy pain is gonna help you long-term.
5
SPEAKER_00
Make happier, healthier.
5
SPEAKER_00
What are the positive effects on the brain?
5
SPEAKER_00
when we deal with physical healthy pain.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so physical activity and we know the most about aerobic activity, any activity that gets your heart rate up.
5
SPEAKER_01
The best way I know how to convey this is that every single time you move your body,
5
SPEAKER_01
it s like you re giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, those neurochemicals include dopamine, serotonin, neuroadrenaline, growth factors, and the dopamine and serotonin, what does that do?
5
SPEAKER_01
It makes you feel good, it makes you feel rewarded.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s why just going out for a walk outside when things are going up to here and you can t handle it anymore, it immediately makes you feel better.
5
SPEAKER_01
The growth factors that get released in your brain with every workout doesn t necessarily do something immediately, but it leads to one of the biggest wows that I have to this day about the effects of exercise on the brain.
5
SPEAKER_01
So growth factors that you are releasing every time you work out
5
SPEAKER_01
It helps brand new brain cells grow in your hippocampus.
5
SPEAKER_01
Did you know that all of those workouts that I know you ve done all your lifetime is actually growing you a big, fat, fluffy hippocampus?
5
SPEAKER_00
Hippocampus.
5
SPEAKER_00
Not a brain, but a hippocampus.
5
SPEAKER_01
Not a brain.
5
SPEAKER_01
Hippocampus.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there s only two brain areas where new brain cells are born.
5
SPEAKER_01
in adulthood.
5
SPEAKER_01
One is the olfactory bulb that helps with smell, and that doesn t grow with more exercise.
5
SPEAKER_01
But the second is the hippocampus, critical for your long-term memory function.
5
SPEAKER_01
That grows.
5
SPEAKER_01
New cells grow with more growth factors that come with exercise.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it s not going to cure aging.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not going to cure
5
SPEAKER_01
neurodegenerative disease states like Alzheimer s, but it ll give you the biggest, fattest hippocampus that you could have when you get to that age where the neurodegeneration might start happening if it s in your genes.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it ll take longer for enough brain cells to...
5
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so working out how many times a week helps you with the hambrick tennis growth?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so here s what I found in my lab.
5
SPEAKER_01
So for low-fit people that haven t started their regular workout, I took low-fit people and I found significant improvements in
5
SPEAKER_01
in mood, in their prefrontal function, and hippocampal function with just two to three aerobic workouts a week.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s not nothing.
5
SPEAKER_01
It will make you sweat, and especially if you re just starting, that is a challenge.
5
SPEAKER_01
But that is the minimum that I found that will give you the more long-term improvement in your hippocampal function.
5
SPEAKER_01
Let s say you re somebody like you.
5
SPEAKER_01
You work out, I m sure, very, very regularly.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so what we found is, first thing to know, your regular workouts have improved your brain.
5
SPEAKER_01
You have a bigger prefrontal cortex, you have a bigger hippocampus.
5
SPEAKER_01
The prefrontal cortex is bigger because the synapses, there s more connections, not because there s more cells.
5
SPEAKER_01
and your circulatory system, you re actually stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in your brain with every workout.
5
SPEAKER_01
And that is fantastic because the brain is the number one user of oxygen in the entire body.
5
SPEAKER_00
The brain is.
5
SPEAKER_01
The brain is.
5
SPEAKER_00
Overall muscles and the heart and everything.
5
SPEAKER_01
Way, way more.
5
SPEAKER_00
Blood.
5
SPEAKER_01
the brain is the number one user of oxygen and the blood brings oxygen.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so I want my brain to have as much oxygen as possible so it works the best.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so that s what you re doing.
5
SPEAKER_00
So working out brings more oxygen to the brain.
5
SPEAKER_01
Working out will stimulate new blood vessels that yes, bring more oxygenated blood to the brain.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if we don t work out on a consistent basis, what does that do to our brain?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so you don t get any of those benefits.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t get the burst of good feeling from serotonin and dopamine.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t get the big hippocampus.
5
SPEAKER_01
You don t get the blood vessels.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then the next question that everybody asks me is,
5
SPEAKER_01
how long of vacation can I take without working out so that I don t lose it?
5
SPEAKER_01
And what comes up goes down.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s true in the brain, true in muscles.
5
SPEAKER_01
How long do I don t lift those weights so that my bicep goes down?
5
SPEAKER_01
There s a time frame.
5
SPEAKER_01
We don t have the exact amount of time.
5
SPEAKER_01
We know that it takes between
5
SPEAKER_01
three and nine months for these new hippocampal cells to grow with regular workouts.
5
SPEAKER_01
And yeah, if you go on a two-year vacation, it s not gonna go back.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s gonna be hard.
5
SPEAKER_00
What are some of these, so there s six superpowers, is that right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Can you explain these superpowers?
5
SPEAKER_00
We ve already talked about a couple of them, but can you explain the rest of them?
5
SPEAKER_01
Sure, sure.
5
SPEAKER_01
The first one is
5
SPEAKER_01
Resilience.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, and that really comes I started the superpower book with that origin story that we being resilient being resilient because that is That is one of the first things that I realized came from that that terrible experience.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah that I I had to I had to write and give a eulogy for my brother my brother and
5
SPEAKER_01
is the social butterfly of our family.
5
SPEAKER_01
There were 200 people and more that wanted to come.
5
SPEAKER_01
We had to keep down his celebration of life to just 200.
5
SPEAKER_01
Not that, I mean, I speak to large audiences, but it was his eulogy.
5
SPEAKER_01
It made me definitely anxious.
5
SPEAKER_01
to know that all his friends and our family were there.
5
SPEAKER_00
And- Where did the anxiety stem from?
5
SPEAKER_00
You don t wanna mess it up?
5
SPEAKER_00
You wanna make sure you did him justice with his life?
5
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to make sure that I did him justice.
5
SPEAKER_01
And there was a lot of guilt there because it s like, ah, I wasn t a good enough sister.
5
SPEAKER_01
How come I didn t visit him more?
5
SPEAKER_01
How come I didn t talk to him on a more regular basis?
5
SPEAKER_01
and talking about vulnerable conversations.
5
SPEAKER_01
The vulnerable conversation that I had with my parents, being Japanese American, third generation immigrants, I call us kind of the Japanese American version of Downton Abbey.
5
SPEAKER_01
Very proper, not a lot of hugging.
5
SPEAKER_01
We don t do a lot of exuberant kissing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Not affectionate.
5
SPEAKER_01
Not affectionate.
5
SPEAKER_01
And the truth is, even though my brother and I knew that my parents loved us, we never said, I love you to each other.
5
SPEAKER_00
Isn t that interesting?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of people have experienced that as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
And at some point, my father had developed dementia.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I thought, you know, I feel like I really wanna say this, but it was, I got stuck.
5
SPEAKER_01
It s like, I don t know if I could actually just start saying it out of nowhere to my parents.
5
SPEAKER_01
That would be really good.
5
SPEAKER_01
Never said it as an adult, never.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wow, so you said it as a child, but not as an adult.
5
SPEAKER_01
I think I said it as a child.
5
SPEAKER_01
I mean, we got kiss goodnight and stuff, but I don t exactly remember.
5
SPEAKER_01
It had been so long.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I had this desire to say this to both of my parents.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so I decided I had to ask them permission to say, I love you.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so I- How did that work?
5
SPEAKER_00
What did you say?
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, I ll tell you.
5
SPEAKER_01
I was living in New York, they live in California, and I spoke to them every Sunday.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I decided,
5
SPEAKER_01
built up my courage and said this Sunday is going to be the big day.
5
SPEAKER_01
I asked them whether I can say I love you to them.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I know how this happens.
5
SPEAKER_01
My mom always answers the phone and I tell her about my week and then she passes it to my dad and I tell him about
6
SPEAKER_01
all the same stories and then that s how the telephone call went every Sunday.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so you know I called, my mom answered, I told her about my week and then somewhere in the middle there I said, hey mom you know how we never say I love you at the end of these telephone calls?
6
SPEAKER_01
What do you say if we start to say that?
6
SPEAKER_01
Silence.
6
SPEAKER_01
Silence.
6
SPEAKER_03
Is this FaceTime?
6
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, this is just a regular, you know, cell phone call.
6
SPEAKER_01
Phone call.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, phone call to my mom.
6
SPEAKER_03
Silence.
6
SPEAKER_01
Silence.
6
SPEAKER_01
For a long, long, long time.
6
SPEAKER_01
I can t tell how long it was.
6
SPEAKER_01
It felt like forever.
6
SPEAKER_01
It felt like forever.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then she said, I think that s a great idea.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, whew.
6
SPEAKER_01
I was trying to keep it, you know, keep it light, no big deal.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I said, oh, great.
6
SPEAKER_03
Oh, I ve never sat on a lobby table before.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but whatever, whatever, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I said, oh, great, Mom, let s do that, okay?
6
SPEAKER_01
So we finished up our conversations.
6
SPEAKER_01
But then.
6
SPEAKER_01
The moment comes.
6
SPEAKER_01
But then, yeah, we both are realizing that, oh my God, it s the end of the conversation.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re actually gonna have to say it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And,
6
SPEAKER_01
So, and it was clearly, it was like, I felt like there were two lions surfing each other.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, what s gonna happen?
6
SPEAKER_01
Who s gonna go first?
6
SPEAKER_01
And I, well, I asked, so I thought, I need to initiate this.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so I still, I get nervous when I tell the story because I remember the fear.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I said, because my theme was keep it light, I said, okay, I love you.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like big Disney, I love you.
6
SPEAKER_01
I love you.
6
SPEAKER_01
And my mom said, I love you too.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then she went to go get my dad.
6
SPEAKER_01
Dad, Wendy s on the phone.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s over.
6
SPEAKER_01
She wanted to get it over.
6
SPEAKER_01
We were both secretly thinking, oh my God, thank God that s over.
6
SPEAKER_01
That was so hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then I talked to my dad and I explained it to him.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was easier.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was harder with my mom for some reason.
6
SPEAKER_01
I knew my dad would say yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
And so he said yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
We said our awkward I love you s and then we hung up.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I started crying at the end of that call because I had never said I love you to my parents before.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it felt really good.
6
SPEAKER_01
My father had dementia.
6
SPEAKER_01
The next week I called back and I said, I love you to my mother, slightly less awkwardly.
6
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, at this point, my father really, he couldn t tell whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas that I was visiting at.
6
SPEAKER_01
So, so I was prepared to remind him that, that we had made this agreement, but
6
SPEAKER_01
He said, I love you first.
6
SPEAKER_03
He remembered it.
6
SPEAKER_03
That s beautiful.
6
SPEAKER_03
He had dementia at the time.
6
SPEAKER_01
He had dementia at the time.
6
SPEAKER_01
He remembered it.
6
SPEAKER_03
He remembered it.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, man, that s beautiful.
6
SPEAKER_01
Because emotional resonance, we remember the happiest and the saddest events of our life.
6
SPEAKER_01
And his daughter had never asked him whether she could say,
6
SPEAKER_01
I love you.
6
SPEAKER_01
And he remembered and he remembered every single week through his entire, including the last time I spoke to him.
6
SPEAKER_03
Oh my goodness.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that was beautiful.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I never said I love you to my brother.
6
SPEAKER_01
Going back to the eulogy.
6
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, that was a big source of grief of guilt.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s like, how come I didn t do it?
6
SPEAKER_01
I should have done it, I knew.
6
SPEAKER_01
But it was weird because he was not my parents, he was my brother.
6
SPEAKER_01
And same thing, he bro kind of guy.
6
SPEAKER_01
Not that, I m sure he would have said it, but it was really hard to have that conversation with him.
6
SPEAKER_01
So, yeah, lots of things like that going through my mind when I was preparing and getting ready to give this.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I got through it and
6
SPEAKER_01
It had funny parts in it.
6
SPEAKER_01
It had parts that I made everybody cry, including myself.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I was very proud that I was able to get through it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that, I really, really felt for the first time in my life, I could get through that.
6
SPEAKER_01
I could get through anything.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that most horrible thing really gave me the most resilience that I ve ever felt personally in my whole life.
6
SPEAKER_01
And again, that s the origin story.
6
SPEAKER_01
And every single time we re able to get through
6
SPEAKER_01
that anxiety, even if we get through and we don t feel so good, you ve gotten through, you made it to the next time.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that can help you build your resilience little by little.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that was part of the gift of,
6
SPEAKER_01
And I know that grief wasn t anxiety, but going through these hard times, that anxiety kind of gives us a little bit of a gift.
6
SPEAKER_01
It gives us lots of challenges to get through.
6
SPEAKER_01
That is what ultimately builds up our resilience.
6
SPEAKER_03
Well, anxiety gives us the ability to experience courage, right?
6
SPEAKER_03
Because if you didn t have that fear and anxiety, you wouldn t have to bring the courage out to prepare, to show up, to know like, okay, I m going to cry at some point in front of 200 people.
6
SPEAKER_03
And I m a shy person.
6
SPEAKER_03
I don t like people seeing me this way.
6
SPEAKER_03
It gives you the courage to become something you ve never become before and step into a different version of yourself or step into who you truly are that you ve been holding back.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s true.
6
SPEAKER_03
So, you know, it s not fun, but it allows us to access certain characteristics and skills that maybe we don t utilize.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that courage is a skill that is so beautiful.
6
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, so how do I get more courage?
6
SPEAKER_01
How do I do it?
6
SPEAKER_01
And it really is going back to that action, that anxiety and that activation was designed and evolved to put us into action, including
6
SPEAKER_01
to act in that courageous way.
6
SPEAKER_01
That phone call to my parents to say, I love you, was a very courageous act.
6
SPEAKER_01
Huge.
6
SPEAKER_01
It was huge.
6
SPEAKER_03
How many years were you thinking about that?
6
SPEAKER_01
Many months, because it was during the development of my father s dementia, that it s like, it was building up, building up, it s like, oh no, I don t wanna deal with that, that s too hard.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I can t tell you the number of people that have come up to me
6
SPEAKER_01
that said, oh my God, I don t say I love you to my parents, and you gave me the courage to do it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And a lot of Asian people, because it comes from our culture, but also lots of other cultures don t have that in their natural way of talking to each other.
6
SPEAKER_01
But it taps our social element and our need to express what we truly feel, which is love.
6
SPEAKER_03
Where does, so that s the first superpower.
6
SPEAKER_03
I want to talk about love though for a second.
6
SPEAKER_03
Where does love play into overcoming stress, worry, and anxiety?
6
SPEAKER_03
If we have more love in our life.
6
SPEAKER_03
with the people connected to us and love for ourselves, does anxiety, stress, and worry diminish?
6
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think that is one of the things that we can help balance this anxiety that has gone up significantly since the start of the pandemic.
6
SPEAKER_01
One way is to work on
6
SPEAKER_01
those events that cause you anxiety, which is a great thing to do.
6
SPEAKER_01
And the other thing is to build up the positive emotions to counter anxiety.
6
SPEAKER_01
So we talked about joy conditioning, bringing more love into your life.
6
SPEAKER_01
Through social interactions, the number one predictor of a long life is the number of positive social connections that you have.
6
SPEAKER_01
Really?
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I thought it s going to be exercise.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s going to be exercise on top because of my first book.
6
SPEAKER_01
But no, exercise is, I don t know, three or four or five.
6
SPEAKER_01
It is social connections.
6
SPEAKER_01
And it doesn t have to be that girlfriend that you ve had since third grade.
6
SPEAKER_01
It can be positive interactions that you have with the barista at your coffee shop.
6
SPEAKER_01
Having that positive banter, giving them a little punch in the arm and they give it back to you, that counts, which I love thinking about that.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that happiness and joy that you can bring
6
SPEAKER_01
It costs nothing for you, and it is giving you a longer life.
6
SPEAKER_03
Absolutely.
6
SPEAKER_03
Interesting.
6
SPEAKER_03
But love in general, is there research or science behind what love does for a happy brain, a healthy heart?
6
SPEAKER_01
So love is a natural counteraction to the stress that you were talking about.
6
SPEAKER_01
And in fact, so the part of the nervous system that is controlling all of those stress responses that we talked about, the blood going to the muscles, the high heart rate, the high respiration is called the sympathetic nervous system.
6
SPEAKER_01
Luckily, we have an equal and opposite part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system, not stimulating love specifically, but it helps calm everything down.
6
SPEAKER_01
It decreases the heart rate.
6
SPEAKER_01
It decreases respiration.
7
SPEAKER_01
blood back into our digestive and reproductive systems.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s called the rest and digest nervous system.
7
SPEAKER_00
And parasympathetic.
7
SPEAKER_01
Parasympathetic.
7
SPEAKER_00
Rest and digest.
7
SPEAKER_01
Parasympathetic, rest and digest.
7
SPEAKER_01
Sympathetic, fight or flight.
7
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so we want to be more in the parasympathetic.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
You want to be able to control
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, be in that state.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes, so that when we need to stress when we need to take on something scary, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
We lean into the sympathetic staying in the sympathetic all day long, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Right and the best way to lean into parasympathetic when you when you start to feel that really bad anxiety come on is
7
SPEAKER_01
Deep breathing.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
7
SPEAKER_01
Deep breathing.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because that is the only thing in that list that I gave you that we have conscious control over.
7
SPEAKER_01
I can t make my heart rate go down.
7
SPEAKER_01
I can t bring blood into my digestive tract.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I can breathe deep and long.
7
SPEAKER_01
And people would be, if you haven t tried this before, just deep four-part breath where you breathe in for four counts, hold it for four counts,
7
SPEAKER_01
Breathe out for four counts, hold it out for four counts.
7
SPEAKER_01
Easiest way to bring some of that calm back in because you are actively stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system.
7
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
But love can also stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system in the sense that it decreases your heart rate.
7
SPEAKER_01
But mainly, it s kind of a different animal.
7
SPEAKER_01
my most popular lecture of all the lectures that I ve ever given in my entire 23-year career at NYU, it s called the Neurobiology of Love.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s like, ooh, I wanna know.
7
SPEAKER_01
I wanna know about the Neurobiology of Love.
7
SPEAKER_00
Is this online also?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yes, actually it is.
7
SPEAKER_01
You can go to the website.
7
SPEAKER_01
All my lectures for my brain and behavior class were videotaped.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so I get to tell
7
SPEAKER_01
the intriguing story in my Neurobiology of Love lecture about the prairie voles.
7
SPEAKER_01
Have you ever heard of them?
7
SPEAKER_00
Prairie voles?
7
SPEAKER_01
Voles.
7
SPEAKER_01
Prairie voles.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what that is.
7
SPEAKER_01
Prairie voles are these little rodent-like animals that live in the Midwest.
7
SPEAKER_00
I m from Ohio.
7
SPEAKER_00
I ve probably seen them.
7
SPEAKER_01
You ve probably seen them.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like a prairie dog or something?
7
SPEAKER_01
No, different from prairie dog.
7
SPEAKER_01
These are prairie voles.
7
SPEAKER_01
And prairie voles are one of the few mammals that form lifelong pair bonds.
7
SPEAKER_01
And the way they form it is fascinating.
7
SPEAKER_01
So they live in large multi-generational family units.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so all the prairie voles have a particular area, a territory.
7
SPEAKER_01
And a pair bond forms when an almost mature female prairie vole that isn t pair bonded yet is walking down the trail, and she smells the urine of a male prairie vole not in her family unit.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, that is like love potion number nine to her, that urine.
7
SPEAKER_01
And if that depositor of the urine is around, they mate for 40 hours straight.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s pretty impressive.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s a lot of energy.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s a lot of energy.
7
SPEAKER_01
You know, they have that small body high metabolism.
7
SPEAKER_01
They need it.
7
SPEAKER_01
40 hours is amazing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And what happens in that 40 hours?
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, in the female prairie foals, oxytocin,
7
SPEAKER_01
that hormone of love and connection gets released like a tidal wave in their brain.
7
SPEAKER_01
And in the males, it s vasopressin that gets released as a tidal wave in their brain.
7
SPEAKER_01
And you can show in the lab, if you artificially mate them, that if you block oxytocin during this mating period, they will not form the pair bond in the females.
7
SPEAKER_01
And if you block vasopressin, you won t form the pair bond.
7
SPEAKER_01
So, is it the case that, you know, what if I mate for 40 hours?
7
SPEAKER_01
Will I form a lifelong pair bond?
7
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t quite work that way.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it identified these key hormones that are those connecting bonds that we know something s happening, right, when we re forming that first connection that keeps us, that, you know, finds us a partner.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so that was the start of the real neurobiological study of love and connection.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because before that, it s like, oh, that s too mushy.
7
SPEAKER_01
We can t we can t study that.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right.
7
SPEAKER_01
But now they had a hormone and they can look at the genes behind that hormone.
7
SPEAKER_01
They can delete the hormone and they could image people when they were.
7
SPEAKER_01
One of my favorite studies was they imaged a group of people
7
SPEAKER_01
that had just fallen in love.
7
SPEAKER_01
They were in that honeymoon phase of falling in love and they identified a set, a complex set of structures, of course.
7
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t just one that lit up when they were in love, but reward systems,
7
SPEAKER_01
dopamine systems were very highly activated in love.
7
SPEAKER_01
And interestingly, then what happens after you re together for five years?
7
SPEAKER_01
Does that disappear?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, have you seen the research that shows you can sustain that for decades?
7
SPEAKER_01
It evolves, it evolves.
7
SPEAKER_01
And what happens is that those people that are still in love, that still have a strong relationship,
7
SPEAKER_01
of activation is different.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s not the same activation as in that honeymoon phase.
7
SPEAKER_00
Which is more what, the sexual attraction, the chemistry, the chemicals of the attraction?
7
SPEAKER_01
It s, you know, in the modality that was measured, it was brain activation.
7
SPEAKER_01
So we were just looking, they were just looking at the networks that were activated.
7
SPEAKER_01
But what it comes to evolve into is that kind of activation that you see
7
SPEAKER_01
in parent and child.
7
SPEAKER_01
So that strong family connection, you not only see it in parent and child, but between long-term partners.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it makes sense.
7
SPEAKER_01
Our relationships evolve.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think it would be hard to sustain that honeymoon feeling for years and years, 20, 30 years down the line, but it evolves into a different kind
7
SPEAKER_01
of social connection that has a different brain signature.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they ve shown that that brain signature is similar across cultures, which is interesting.
7
SPEAKER_01
Is it only in the United States?
7
SPEAKER_01
Or they ve done these studies in China, throughout Europe, and it s the same patterns that are
7
SPEAKER_01
quite unique in the early throes of love and it evolves into something different later on if you stay together.
7
SPEAKER_00
Have you studied a lot of I guess the brain science around relationships and love and intimacy long term?
7
SPEAKER_01
You know, that area of research is still pretty new.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so I always keep an eye on it because I know it s my most popular lecture and I want to update the students.
7
SPEAKER_00
Is there anything you could share around
7
SPEAKER_00
what to look for in a relationship around the neuroscience of a partner.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like meeting a partner, is there certain questions you could ask to see if they have the right brain chemistry?
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
7
SPEAKER_00
Is there anything else you think we could look for from research or studies or examples that you ve
7
SPEAKER_00
scene around understanding, like, is this a potential good partner?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, I have one warning from an experience that I had, which was I did an event with the Tisch School of the Arts
7
SPEAKER_01
at NYU, the acting school.
7
SPEAKER_01
And we were talking about the neurobiology of emotion and the neurobiology of love.
7
SPEAKER_01
And we were doing it with the graduate acting class.
7
SPEAKER_01
And these are the students that are gonna go on to be the Meryl Streep s of our time.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they said, okay, we re gonna do an exercise.
7
SPEAKER_01
Everybody come up.
7
SPEAKER_01
And for some reason, I went up on stage to do it with them.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I got partnered up with one of the- An actor.
7
SPEAKER_01
One of the actors.
7
SPEAKER_00
The students, yeah, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
One of the student actors.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they basically took us through, you know those 36 questions that you ask a stranger to get?
7
SPEAKER_00
To see if you like fall in love or something?
7
SPEAKER_00
Where you like stare in their eyes and you ask the question.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but no words.
7
SPEAKER_01
They led us through exercises like that.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they led us through things like, now you have a choice.
7
SPEAKER_01
You can step closer to your partner or you can step away.
7
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know this guy.
7
SPEAKER_01
He s like, oh my God, it became so critical.
7
SPEAKER_01
What is he going to do when it was his turn to make these choices?
7
SPEAKER_01
And I kind of fell in love with this person.
7
SPEAKER_00
Wow, what, like 10 minutes or something?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it was 10 minutes.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it made me realize that kind of the system can be hacked.
7
SPEAKER_01
Was this random student the love of my life?
7
SPEAKER_01
No, I had enough prefrontal cortex to know that that wasn t gonna happen.
7
SPEAKER_01
This 21-year-old is probably not right for me.
7
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, no.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it was such a powerful,
7
SPEAKER_01
powerful experience.
8
SPEAKER_01
you know, I had wondered about doing those 31 questions.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like, yeah, you know what?
8
SPEAKER_01
I m not gonna do that because I need to have those questions come up organically to test out other things because- So you can almost trick the brain to feel chemically connected.
8
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, when there s no connection there.
8
SPEAKER_01
So that s my lesson.
8
SPEAKER_01
You can quickly have those, or I quickly developed
8
SPEAKER_01
Very powerful feelings.
8
SPEAKER_00
In minutes?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
With a stranger?
8
SPEAKER_01
With a stranger.
8
SPEAKER_00
But there could have been other red flags or values or something that maybe wasn t aligned to you long term, but our brains can create such connection, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Or our bodies and emotion, everything combined.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_00
What happens with
8
SPEAKER_00
when someone is sexually connected early on.
8
SPEAKER_00
Say within the first week you have sex with someone.
8
SPEAKER_00
What does that do to the same type of brain chemistry?
8
SPEAKER_00
Is it more powerful than these kind of 31 questions of intimacy and love?
8
SPEAKER_01
That would be an interesting experiment, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
To compare and contrast.
8
SPEAKER_00
But what does that do when you sexually bond with someone, whether you ve known them for a day, a week, a month, how does that accelerate the feeling of love and like we re supposed to be together?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s where we can turn back to the studies of the prairie voles.
8
SPEAKER_01
We know that, well,
8
SPEAKER_01
we don t have exactly the same brain chemistry or brain response, there is release of those love hormones, oxytocin and vesopressin, and that does give you that feeling of bonding.
8
SPEAKER_01
The more sex you have, the more kind of physical connection that you have.
8
SPEAKER_01
So, you know, I think our goal is to step back and think, do I need more physical connection or do I need
8
SPEAKER_01
to get to know this person a little better, see what their values are, have more verbal conversations before I get myself bonded to this person.
8
SPEAKER_01
Because it s hard to unbond.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s hard to unbond.
8
SPEAKER_00
You feel more and more connected.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
And you might oversee certain behaviors or actions because you feel the connection.
8
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
I think that s where a lot of problems relate.
8
SPEAKER_00
Not that we re relationship experts here.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no.
8
SPEAKER_01
Definitely not here.
8
SPEAKER_00
But it s just curious to know that the neuroscience and the psychology behind intimacy, whether you re having a dyad in front of someone talking about vulnerable things or answering vulnerable questions, you created intimacy and connection quickly, and also sexual connection that bonds people.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s interesting.
8
SPEAKER_00
So, wow, you gotta be careful what type of questions you ask someone.
8
SPEAKER_01
You ve got to be careful.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it really heightens the importance of your prefrontal cortex, which is that decision-making brain area.
8
SPEAKER_01
You don t want it clouded.
8
SPEAKER_01
And two things we ve talked about today can cloud the prefrontal cortex.
8
SPEAKER_01
High levels of anxiety literally shut it down.
8
SPEAKER_01
We know the neurochemistry and the molecular biology of that.
8
SPEAKER_01
That absolutely happens.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so when you have too high of levels of anxiety,
8
SPEAKER_01
depletes your decision-making process and you default to the automatic.
8
SPEAKER_01
Just whatever is most common I do in my body, that s what I do because I ve lost my ability to evaluate.
8
SPEAKER_01
And similarly, that connection that could happen through sexual encounters can also block off your decision-making
8
SPEAKER_01
I think that lots of people have, it s like, yeah, I think I wasn t making the best decisions there.
8
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes, right?
8
SPEAKER_01
We ve all done that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
So preserve your prefrontal cortex.
8
SPEAKER_01
Use that part of your brain.
8
SPEAKER_01
And that is the antidote to my warning there.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think that is a powerful tool in relationships.
8
SPEAKER_00
And another superpower is about opening the door to flow.
8
SPEAKER_00
What does that mean?
8
SPEAKER_00
Enhancing your performance and open the door to flow.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I wanted to talk about flow because one of the things that anxiety does beautifully well is it shuts flow down.
8
SPEAKER_00
You can t get into flow when you re stressed.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, exactly.
8
SPEAKER_00
You got to be fully in the moment and feel freedom, essentially, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
You ve got to feel free.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes, exactly.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so, first of all, I was depressed because I read the
8
SPEAKER_01
definition of flow and it s you know you have to be this world leader and then you have to be at the height it s like I what I can never have flow in my life and then I get stressed about that and then it goes even further which is why in the book I coined another term which is micro flow
8
SPEAKER_01
Look, I may not have the flow that Yo-Yo Ma or Serena Williams gets in that beautiful moment right before they re going to win the prize.
8
SPEAKER_01
However,
8
SPEAKER_01
I can tell you that I do enjoy flow in my life.
8
SPEAKER_01
Going back to my joy conditioning, I have micro flow when I m in Shavasana at the end of a yoga class, I felt really sweaty, all that sweat is drying, I feel so good, that is flow.
8
SPEAKER_00
For one minute.
8
SPEAKER_01
For one minute, it is flow.
8
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, we re talking about building up those positive events in your life.
8
SPEAKER_01
And just the realization that we have many moments of microflow that might flip by.
8
SPEAKER_01
We didn t even recognize them.
8
SPEAKER_01
Recognize them.
8
SPEAKER_01
That is like, oh, I love microflow of having a wonderful cup of tea right before I need it or at the end of the day.
8
SPEAKER_01
It is that appreciation.
8
SPEAKER_01
It is the savoring.
8
SPEAKER_01
Learning how to savor is a wonderful antidote to anxiety.
8
SPEAKER_00
So many moments in the last three months, I just stop and I say, man, what a beautiful moment.
8
SPEAKER_00
What a beautiful moment.
8
SPEAKER_00
I look, I m just being more aware of my surroundings and the people I m with and just little moments.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m just like, what a beautiful moment.
8
SPEAKER_00
When I savor these multiple times throughout the day, I just feel better.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s important you re saying that because a lot of times we re just on to the next, on the next, on the next.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re not thinking about this moment.
8
SPEAKER_00
But let me look in the sky and just be like, oh, you ever imagine like we are in the middle of a, we re dust of sand.
8
SPEAKER_00
floating around in an infinite universe.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is unbelievable.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, just the awe of what this is, is amazing.
8
SPEAKER_01
It is.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s a moment of microflow.
8
SPEAKER_01
Just that appreciation.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I found myself, I m not a good picture taker, but it messes up my microflow if I try and take a picture of it.
8
SPEAKER_01
I just went, I m staying with friends and we took
8
SPEAKER_01
the little girl to her very first day of kindergarten.
8
SPEAKER_01
No, first grade, sorry, first grade today.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it was so sweet to see her.
8
SPEAKER_01
She found a little friend and so she went skipping down holding the hand of her little friend and I almost cried.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then I was too late to take a picture, but I got that moment.
8
SPEAKER_01
That is such a beautiful thing to witness.
8
SPEAKER_01
She s excited to go to first day of first grade.
8
SPEAKER_01
She s never going to have this day again.
8
SPEAKER_01
Never this moment again.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s cool.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s really cool.
8
SPEAKER_00
The micro flow.
8
SPEAKER_00
I love that.
8
SPEAKER_00
The next thing is nurture an activist mindset.
8
SPEAKER_00
What does that mean?
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
So this is really about the power of mindset.
8
SPEAKER_01
And we ve been talking about it all along.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is this and and
8
SPEAKER_01
experience that s going to batter me down because anxiety is out to get me, or is it a challenge that I can do an experiment, as you were talking about, to see whether I can do it.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it really doesn t matter if I fail, I win or lose.
8
SPEAKER_01
I learn so much from the failure.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I m not going to do that again.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I do it the next time.
8
SPEAKER_01
And that shift of mindset, I just have to remind myself and
8
SPEAKER_01
There s so many things that can put you into that bad anxiety.
8
SPEAKER_01
If I m hungry, if I m hangry, you know, all those things, it s harder to pull myself out.
8
SPEAKER_01
But reminding myself of what a positive mindset can do, it not only shifts your brain networks, it shifts your whole physiology.
8
SPEAKER_01
It decreases cortisol.
8
SPEAKER_01
The beautiful experiments that the psychologist Aaliyah Crum at Stanford has done has shown that all you have to do is tell hotel workers that their level of physical activity and changing the bed sheets, the surgeon general said, is actually above average.
8
SPEAKER_01
You are getting a good workout.
8
SPEAKER_01
When they said, no, I don t work out at all.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t have time.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m too busy.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m too tired.
8
SPEAKER_01
That changed their mindset.
8
SPEAKER_01
It made them lose more weight than the controls that were not told that they were working out.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it increased their job satisfaction.
8
SPEAKER_01
And so that one belief, what is that belief, that idea?
9
SPEAKER_01
that will change your day.
9
SPEAKER_01
That is a wonderful thing to ask yourself every day that you go in to a difficult situation or just your regular situation.
9
SPEAKER_00
That is beautiful.
9
SPEAKER_00
And what about, we talked about love and helping you, I guess, eliminate some of the stress and anxiety.
9
SPEAKER_00
What about purpose and having a meaningful purpose in your life?
9
SPEAKER_00
How does that, if you know that you re on a mission to
9
SPEAKER_00
for a purpose, whether it be three months, a year, or decades, you re on the same mission.
9
SPEAKER_00
How does that help decrease anxiety and stress?
9
SPEAKER_01
For me, I feel like when you think about your purpose,
9
SPEAKER_01
It s like this tunnel vision, all of these things, all of those obstacles go away.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I feel personally, I was meant to do that.
9
SPEAKER_01
I know I m going towards that.
9
SPEAKER_01
So let s just see how I get there.
9
SPEAKER_01
And you know, you can throw anything at me.
9
SPEAKER_01
I got through my brother s eulogy.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I got through that, I can get through anything.
9
SPEAKER_01
And that is a wonderful reminder.
9
SPEAKER_01
finding your purpose and really sticking to it and being playful with your purpose.
9
SPEAKER_01
So despite the fact that I was always a very shy young girl, I always had this secret desire that I knew would never happen of being a Broadway star.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I wanted to be Julie Andrews.
9
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to be Shirley Jones.
9
SPEAKER_01
I watched all the Hollywood musicals.
9
SPEAKER_01
I dream of myself on stage doing that big number.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it turns out that that secret feeling that I harbored all through my shyness
9
SPEAKER_01
comes out when I teach in front of the classroom.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s cool.
9
SPEAKER_01
Which, by the way, is on Broadway.
9
SPEAKER_01
So in fact, I am performing on Broadway.
9
SPEAKER_00
There you go.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s great.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it is.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I am a secret performer.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I ve used that.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like that is part of my purpose.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like I ended up doing neuroscience and I have all that science and I can explain science to people so that they understand it.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I also have this kind of performer s secret, you know, desire to break out into song.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it absolutely comes when I get in front of large audiences.
9
SPEAKER_01
And the bigger the audience, the bigger the secret diva comes out.
9
SPEAKER_00
You re like this ultimate performer.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Something weird happens.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I ve discovered it since I did the first book and did more talks and bigger talks.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s like, wow, that is part of the purpose.
9
SPEAKER_01
It is part of the skill set that I know that I have that is bringing me towards that purpose.
9
SPEAKER_01
It is that ability, my way of communicating.
9
SPEAKER_01
And part of it is the science.
9
SPEAKER_01
And part of it is that secret Broadway.
9
SPEAKER_01
The performance.
9
SPEAKER_01
The performance and that love of the talent.
9
SPEAKER_01
I always had this huge appreciation of the talent that it takes to act and sing and dance.
9
SPEAKER_00
Such a talent.
9
SPEAKER_01
Such a talent.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s so hard.
9
SPEAKER_01
I wish if I could only sing, I would have gone out for the Broadway plays.
9
SPEAKER_01
But sadly, I can t sing.
9
SPEAKER_00
But you had to heal people s hearts and brains instead.
9
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
9
SPEAKER_00
You had to help people heal.
9
SPEAKER_00
What about alter ego?
9
SPEAKER_00
We studied the alter egos and how they support overcoming anxiety, stress, and worry, especially being in a performance setting or speaking at a eulogy or speaking on stage or performing at a big event or performing in athletics or speaking in front of a class.
9
SPEAKER_00
Have you done any research on alter ego and developing it for the brain?
9
SPEAKER_01
No, I haven t.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I think that would be a fascinating study.
9
SPEAKER_01
Somebody asked me once, how do you give your talks?
9
SPEAKER_01
What is your process?
9
SPEAKER_01
And for me, it goes back to my science training.
9
SPEAKER_01
turns out is all about the story.
9
SPEAKER_01
What is that story that you re going to tell in this science experiment that you did?
9
SPEAKER_01
And I had a very great speaker and a great scientist that was my early mentor that encouraged me to think about that story.
9
SPEAKER_01
What is the story you re going to tell the audience?
9
SPEAKER_01
Because they don t want to hear all those boring details.
9
SPEAKER_01
They want to hear what the origin is, how you got through it, what is that hero s journey, and then what is your conclusion.
9
SPEAKER_01
And so I got hooked on telling the best science story.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then it takes a while to get the next story because you have to do all these experiments and it s really, really hard.
9
SPEAKER_01
But I got really excited about building that next – what is that story going to be and how am I going to tell it?
9
SPEAKER_01
And that has informed, it turns out that that s what storytellers do and that s what actors do to get through their thing.
9
SPEAKER_01
So I came at it in a very different way but I was always about trying to get people that like I know you may not be interested in this part of science but let me try and
9
SPEAKER_01
pull you in and tell you why this is so cool, because I really have something cool to tell you.
9
SPEAKER_01
That s based on science.
9
SPEAKER_01
So alter egos, is that an alter ego?
9
SPEAKER_01
That is my strategy.
9
SPEAKER_01
And I guess it s
9
SPEAKER_01
It s kind of my secret energizer bunny that maybe it comes from my people-pleasing natural disposition.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s like, I want you to be as fascinated as I am with this.
9
SPEAKER_01
I m going to show you how fascinating, because it is so fascinating.
9
SPEAKER_01
Just give me a second.
9
SPEAKER_01
Let me explain it to you.
9
SPEAKER_01
And that s how I always approached my teaching.
9
SPEAKER_01
And that s what evolved into my speaking that I do now.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think that s cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
I love studying athletes who have an alter ego.
9
SPEAKER_00
Beyonce has an alter ego.
9
SPEAKER_00
I think it s Sasha Fierce when she steps on stage, she becomes this persona which allows her to kind of overcome maybe the stress or fear.
9
SPEAKER_00
Maybe she doesn t have that anymore, but when she was rising in fame That d be an interesting study to do alter egos and see how that supports people in overcoming anxiety if they Believed they were another person right they believe they stepped into something.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah that they had to help them overcome that anxiety yeah, how it evolves over time because I
9
SPEAKER_01
she does not have the same fear that she had that I m sure drove her to create that and to have that energy.
9
SPEAKER_01
She s Beyonce now.
9
SPEAKER_00
So what do you do?
9
SPEAKER_00
That s interesting.
9
SPEAKER_00
There s so many other questions I wanna ask you, but this has been an amazing couple of hours here.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I wanna ask you the final few questions.
9
SPEAKER_00
But before I do, I wanna make sure people get the book.
9
SPEAKER_00
You can go pick it up.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s called Good Anxiety, Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion.
9
SPEAKER_00
Make sure you guys pick up a couple copies and give them to your friends.
9
SPEAKER_00
I see you ve got my friend Daniel Amen on here as well, who we ve had on here.
9
SPEAKER_00
Lisa Billiard s on here as well.
9
SPEAKER_00
Lots of great people have endorsed this book.
9
SPEAKER_00
Make sure you guys pick up a couple copies.
9
SPEAKER_00
I feel like this is one of the biggest challenges today is anxiety.
9
SPEAKER_00
People dealing with stress, anxiety around many things.
9
SPEAKER_00
The uncertainty of the future, their own identity in life, why we re here, relationships, money, career.
9
SPEAKER_00
just so much anxiety that people are consumed by.
9
SPEAKER_00
One of the things that I appreciated about how I was raised, my father wouldn t allow me to watch the news or commercials, because he didn t want me to be consumed by negative programming of, okay, you re gonna get sick, you re gonna be unwell, so you re gonna need this drug, you re gonna need this thing, you re gonna need this solution, like always selling something that I don t need.
9
SPEAKER_01
So smart.
9
SPEAKER_00
And he would mute the commercials or turn them off and he wouldn t let us watch the news because it was always based around fear and conditioning that there s more and more and more anxiety and fear in the world that I need to be consuming.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I am a happier, healthier person when I don t consume
9
SPEAKER_00
storytelling of the worst of moments that are happening in life like it s happening everywhere.
9
SPEAKER_00
It might be happening somewhere, but it doesn t mean it s happening next door to me or when I walk across the street.
9
SPEAKER_00
And so learning to find these moments of joy, learning to find these moments of beauty like you talked about and being in the moment, learning to create the social fabric of great connections with friends and staying in a positive environment for me has been really helpful.
9
SPEAKER_00
And you ve got 40 other strategies for making anxiety work for you in this book.
9
SPEAKER_00
So make sure you guys pick up a few copies of this.
9
SPEAKER_00
Give them to friends by Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths.
10
SPEAKER_00
So a hypothetical scenario, imagine it s your very last day on earth many years away from now.
10
SPEAKER_00
You get to live as long as you want, but eventually it s the last day.
10
SPEAKER_00
You ve accomplished all of your dreams.
10
SPEAKER_00
You ve done all the research, the science, you ve had all the fun, the joy, everything you wanted to do, you ve done it.
10
SPEAKER_00
But for whatever reason, your work that you ve created in the world is no longer in the world.
10
SPEAKER_00
It goes with you to the next place or it goes somewhere else.
10
SPEAKER_00
But we don t have access to your information anymore.
10
SPEAKER_00
Your speeches, your videos, this content is gone.
10
SPEAKER_00
But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three things that you know to be true from all of your experiences.
10
SPEAKER_00
And this is all we would have to remember you by, are these three lessons or three truths.
10
SPEAKER_00
What would you say would be those three truths for you?
10
SPEAKER_01
For me, it would be that we were evolved to move our bodies, and so learn how to bring movement into your life in a regular basis so that it s not hard, it s automatic, and your life will benefit from that.
10
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
10
SPEAKER_01
Number two is that your brain is the most complex structure.
10
SPEAKER_01
It is so unique.
10
SPEAKER_01
It is the most amazing thing in the universe.
10
SPEAKER_01
And so use its powers
10
SPEAKER_01
to make your life better.
10
SPEAKER_01
Use that mindset to make your life and the world a better place.
10
SPEAKER_01
And the third is that social interactions and love is the most important thing to make our lives both longer and happier.
10
SPEAKER_01
So use that statistic for yourself.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, so true.
10
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I was interviewing
10
SPEAKER_00
a doctor who he had mentioned that there were a couple moments in his life where he was going through a depressed state.
10
SPEAKER_00
It was a couple of years of depression or some sickness and some poor health that was happening in his life, different decades apart.
10
SPEAKER_00
I said, how d you get out of that?
10
SPEAKER_00
And he said, love.
10
SPEAKER_00
He said, I met someone and it created like this journey for me of like feeling better, of love, healing myself.
10
SPEAKER_00
And love was the anchor that supported the healing, the growth, the peace of mind.
10
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, both times, it was love that helped him heal.
10
SPEAKER_00
So I think that s fascinating.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s the love we have with our friendships and our family, the intimate love we have.
10
SPEAKER_00
And those connections, I think, are extremely invaluable.
10
SPEAKER_00
I wanna acknowledge you, Wendy, for the commitment you ve had to this for, what, three decades now?
10
SPEAKER_00
You ve been doing this work.
10
SPEAKER_00
and putting your life s mission into creating practical, inspiring tools for us to improve the quality of our life.
10
SPEAKER_00
I think it s so valuable that there are people like you in the world who make this your mission because it can seem daunting to overcome anxiety and stress and worry.
10
SPEAKER_00
It can seem like there s no way out for a lot of people.
10
SPEAKER_00
The statistics of people going through deep depression and suicides and just hurting themselves, addictions.
10
SPEAKER_00
are rising.
10
SPEAKER_00
And so for you to make this your mission and to be able to teach it in a way that we can understand it is very inspiring.
10
SPEAKER_00
So I really acknowledge you for your work, for your efforts, and for the growth that you ve had to experience in the last few years to put these things into practice, unfortunately.
10
SPEAKER_00
But I think it makes you an even better teacher of these things and more empathetic to the world.
10
SPEAKER_00
So I really acknowledge you for that.
10
SPEAKER_00
And where can we connect with you online?
10
SPEAKER_00
Where do you spend the most time, I guess,
10
SPEAKER_00
social media, your website, where can we go?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, my website www.wendysuzuki.com.
10
SPEAKER_01
You can go there to
10
SPEAKER_01
participate in the Great Good Anxiety social experiment.
10
SPEAKER_01
So you can go and test your own anxiety and test the effects of different tools, including the ones in the toolbox, on your anxiety.
10
SPEAKER_01
So you can take a quiz, essentially.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you can take a stress and anxiety experiment survey before and after
10
SPEAKER_01
different interventions that we re testing, and you get back the immediate effects of... The tools on how to implement.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, that s cool.
10
SPEAKER_00
So you can see kind of where in your life you re the most anxious, and then which tool to implement for that right now.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
I like it.
10
SPEAKER_00
And that s at your website, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
10
SPEAKER_00
And what social media are you on the most?
10
SPEAKER_01
I m on Facebook and Instagram.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay, Facebook and Instagram.
10
SPEAKER_00
Wendy.Suzuki on Instagram and then Wendy Suzuki you ll find you as well there on Facebook.
10
SPEAKER_00
Anything else we can do to support you besides the book, the quiz, social media, anything else we can go to?
10
SPEAKER_01
Gosh, that is... I can see your videos online.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, videos online.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m so excited because that story that I told you about saying I love you to my parents was a moth talk.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s cool.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so that was such a joy to be able to share with people.
10
SPEAKER_01
But I m doing another one.
10
SPEAKER_01
on Good Anxiety and it will be out in December.
10
SPEAKER_01
So stay tuned for the origin story of Good Anxiety.
10
SPEAKER_00
Love it.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m excited.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay, cool.
10
SPEAKER_00
This is the final question.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s what s your definition of greatness?
10
SPEAKER_01
My definition of greatness is using your unique brain to its full potential, whatever that means.
10
SPEAKER_01
That is great.
10
SPEAKER_01
And great is so many different things in so many different people.
10
SPEAKER_01
And everybody has a beautiful and different brain.
10
SPEAKER_01
So that s my definition.
10
SPEAKER_00
I hope today s episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
10
SPEAKER_00
Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today s show with all the important links.
10
SPEAKER_00
And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on apple podcast.
10
SPEAKER_00
If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend.
10
SPEAKER_00
Leave us a review over on Apple podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes.
10
SPEAKER_00
I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better.
10
SPEAKER_00
And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness Newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.
10
SPEAKER_00
And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
10
SPEAKER_00
And now it s time to go out there and do something great.