Tools to Bolster Your Mental Health & Confidence | Dr. Paul Conti

right and if we're listening to educational material we want to better ourselves

there's so much more that's going right in us and it's a good place for us to start because it helps us to be able to look at what's not going the way we want it to be what we where we want to bring change in our lives but we should start from a position of strength Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for every day life I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine

My guest today is Dr. Paul Conti Dr. Paul Conti is a medical doctor and psychiatrist and an expert in recovery from trauma He's also one of the foremost public educators on how anyone can build a greater sense of agency, confidence and well-being in their life Today we discuss the practical aspects of building and maintaining mental health

In particular how to identify your natural strengths and the often unseen opportunities to improve your reflexive mental framework and relationship with self and others Dr. Conti's approach to building mental health and overcoming challenges with mental health are very different than most of the information that you'll find on the internet and elsewhere He has decades of clinical experience and he draws on that end data

to explain the specific questions that we all need to ask ourselves when we're facing things like lowered motivation, mood or challenges overcoming bad habits Today we discuss all of that as well as how to balance action and introspection

“This is very important because I think a lot of people think about mental health as merely an”

introspective process but as Dr. Conti points out it's really a balance of thinking and doing and often involves more doing than thinking So during today's episode you'll get a specific framework of questions to ask yourself repeatedly That is every day or every week and specific action steps to take so that you can truly become the best version of yourself and derive the greatest sense of meaning along the way

I'd like to point out that Dr. Conti also has a new book coming out which is aptly entitled

What's going right a powerful new method for optimizing your mental health and I've read the book

from front to back and I have to tell you it's a wonderful resource that includes both information and simple worksheet like prompts that can help anyone through sticking points as well as to build on what the title suggests what's already going right So if you're currently suffering or if you're doing well and you want to level up your mental health further Today's conversation is definitely for you

Before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme today's episode does include sponsors and now for my discussion with Dr. Paul Conti. Dr. Paul Conti. Welcome back. Thank you. Thank you for having me back. Congratulations on your book what's going right

of a powerful new method for optimizing your mental health is an amazing book and you also hold the

“record not incidentally I think for the most viewed and downloaded episodes of this podcast ever”

So you know you got a lot of human podcast listener fans out there so they'll be reading if they're smart and they want to appreciate you better they want to feel enriched in all the ways So let's talk about let's talk about individuals first and then I also want to talk today about interactions between people which we probably haven't talked quite as much about at least not here the self we all have a name a self concept we wake up thinking and knowing

essentially who we are what bothers us what we're excited about and the question I've been living with for a long time is how malleable is our self view and our relationship to ourselves and and we can define those right if we're not super comfortable or completely happy with our relationship to ourselves how much flexibility is there on the on that whole picture I think it's very malleable I think there's a lot of flexibility but we have to be willing to look at ourselves you know

very often we're not looking at ourselves we're afraid of what we're gonna find or we don't know how to understand or how to bring change so so we don't look at ourselves and then we can see ourselves as inflexible and and and think that we're just stuck in the same place over time but if we're willing to look at ourselves and we bring this compassionate curiosity to ourselves of hey what what can I learn about myself and what might I be interested in changing in myself or in emphasizing

“in myself I think we can bring a lot a lot of change in the title of your book what's going right”

is that a good lens to start looking through when we look at ourselves like what what works you know 10 fingers 10 toes in my case I'm is that a good place to start you know that I feel some sense

about self I think to start off with what's going right it's not just a way of looking at it

“because it feels better but but it's consistent with truth I mean there's far more going right”

in any of us and all of us then there is going wrong if we're here right and if we're listening to to educational material we want to better ourselves there's so much more that's going right in us and it's a good place for us to start because it helps us to be able to look at what's not going the way we want it to be what we where we want to bring change in our lives but we should start from a position of strength and the mental health system really tells us to look at ourselves

in the opposite way to look at ourselves through what is going wrong and to put labels on ourselves

that that often just make us feel worse or make us feel more helpless or hopeless in

understanding but but if we start with what's going right and we bring curiosity to ourselves then their processes we can follow to understand and to bring real change. What are some of those processes

“that people could use to explore and if you would what are some questions that people can”

or thoughts or landscapes to explore where people can ping themselves with specific questions. So good places to start are they looking at yourself talk you know what are you saying to yourself in quiet moments when no one else is listening or when there's there's a pause in the action in your life what are you saying to yourself what messages are you giving yourself and oftentimes we're telling ourselves things that about about ourselves that are often negative or often

critical and we're not aware that we're saying these things over and over to ourselves so

so that's just one strategy and another strategy can be to think about the life and narrative that we're telling ourselves so if you just tell yourself about yourself or if you're telling someone else about you what what is it that you say what is it that you that you say in a reflexive way and doesn't match what's real and true about your life you know we both all people have these two foundational pillars and and in the first part of the series that we did in

2023 we really sort of hash this out and it was the first time and really put together hey there's a structure of self and we all share this and I had been thinking along these lines but that our talk helped me to pull together here there's something that applies to all of us just because we're human and we have a human brain and a human mind there is a structure of self and a function of self and these foundational pillars are where we can look to understand ourselves

better and to bring better health so if we are aware of where to look and how to look and we're willing to look because we're not afraid of what we're going to find and we have we have a belief that we can bring change and this is how we we bring flexibility and maliability and and we can approach ourselves feeling really good that hey if I do this I am going to be able to make things better there's so much hopefulness to that and it's it's reasonably grounded hopefulness

I have a question that might seem like a leap somewhere else but I promise it ties back to what we're talking about in your experience with psychiatry and the brain and patients and interacting with people in your own life do you think that there's tremendous variation or little variation in how state dependent people are you know some people it seems you know they're so affiliate of that when they're in relating to somebody else they they think and feel completely differently

than they do when they're on their own necessarily even extroverted for that to be true but that when they're suddenly alone that the internal state is very different almost like it's two different lives there's a reason why I'm asking this but I'm wondering about the role of state dependence and how we think and how we feel and how we think about the things around us that and think about

“ourselves for most of us life is moving very fast and life has a lot of stressors in it and”

what ends up happening is we're kind of rushing just to keep up with ourselves and and when that happens we become very state dependent as opposed to being able to observe ourselves to so to be able to see okay I'm here and this is what I'm doing and this is the people I'm with and how I'm feeling and how I'm behaving to be able to observe ourselves is how we knit together one self across situation so we can be aware I'm different in one situations and another right so so some of the

behavior then in the sense of self estate dependent but there's a whole self that's riding above all of it's observing us and knitting us together what sometimes gets called an observing ego and this is how we can both be state dependent but also have a self that that is true across all of those states. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep

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award-winning mattresses. Again that's HelixSleep.com/Huberman to get up to 27% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by Better Help. Better help offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing therapy for a long time and I can tell you that it's a lot like physical workouts. There are times when I want to do it and there are times when I don't want to do it. But whenever I finish a therapy session,

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to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's BetterHelp.com/Huberman. When somebody sits down to

think about their strengths or to think about their self-talk or to just think about what they're made of and how they want to change or not change certain things, build on certain strengths.

“When and how should they do it? I think all we need to bring is curiosity. That's all and”

curiosity doesn't have to be overly serious or worried. It doesn't have to have a gravity to it. It can, but it can also be very lighthearted. There's so many things that we're curious about. So many things we want to learn about. This is great. It's great for our brains and it's great for our health to be curious and to want to learn. But so often, what we leave out of that equation is being curious about ourselves. That can be a sort of a high-spirited

thing to do. What is there in me that runs through all the things that I do? How is it that I feel so different doing one thing than another? What are the common threads of me that run throughout my life? This is a great way to approach what's going right in us. To be curious about ourselves and it's from there that it's easier to see in one certain kind of situation. I'm really not doing as well. Or I'm not as happy. Then we can think about that and we don't have to be afraid

of it. So bringing curiosity to ourselves, what runs through everything we do and also how we're different in different situations can help lead us to all sorts of answers about what makes us happy and what doesn't. When we're presenting a true and honest self, when we're presenting

“a false self that even we know is false. So I think the only crucial ingredient is curiosity.”

And then we can approach with serious this in gravity or we can approach with light-heartedness, we can be alone or we can be thinking with someone else. There's all sorts of good places that curiosity can take us. It's interesting that you talk about true self versus false self. I think the more state dependence we have, the more confusing that becomes, right? And I think perhaps even more so in this day and age, there seems to be not a complete but at least to me

a kind of partially erosion of etiquette. I'm not saying that's to encourage people to be more rigid. It just seems to me that I'm 50 now when I was growing up. It seemed like people would dress in act one way in one context and dress in act one way in a different context and there's some overlap obviously. But now there's this sort of propensity for not just oversharing but there's

putting out information about many facets of their life all the time. Even people I went to

high school with who aren't public facing in the traditional sense are putting out pictures of the kids and what they aid in this and the winds and the losses and it's a very odd thing to do when in fact we evolved for so long just kind of experiencing our self separate from all the other activities that we were doing and certainly that other people are doing. In your clinical practice are you seeing more challenges with people creating separation between kind of aspects of

self and aspects of life because of all the information coming at them and maybe even that they're

“putting in the world? I think it can be different depending upon what the person is doing,”

how they're using that information. So if you think of falseness of self it's possible a person can be engaged in something that even they themselves know isn't real. So wanting everyone to see what's best in my life and to think that I'm doing really well and maybe I'm doing that to hide something. Why am I doing that? If I want to appear externally differently than how I am, there's a good place for curiosity about the falseness of that. What am I trying to protect

against? Why is it that I want people to see me in a certain way that might be different from how my life actually is if it has not just all winds in it right but but you know stressors too that might not be as glamorous. So that's one way we can use those resources. Another way can be to engage in ways that are more true to self. So someone who has an interest or a passion that it's hard to find people you know right around them but they can find that more distantly or

or people who have a lot of sensibility and compassion for some of the difficult things in the world

“who can find kindred spirits through social media. So I think we can use or misuse anything around”

us to either be we can use it to be closer to ourselves and and to have a stronger sense of self. Right or we can use it to distract from who we really are and to maybe find solace somewhere else or find accolade somewhere outside of us because we're protecting again something. So I think

the the important point is always to be honest with ourselves and if we bring compassionate curiosity

then we're not mattered ourselves and that we're not coming at ourselves of what's wrong with me or why can't I do this thing better or that thing better or why don't people like me more? Whatever it may be right that there are ways that we can we can guide ourselves away from from honesty and truth and if we look at ourselves we don't have to be afraid of what we find. Maybe if we're worried people aren't liking us we're spending time with not a healthy group of

people right or maybe there's something in in myself I need to change if I'm feeling that. So the key is just bringing honesty and curiosity and not being so afraid or so negative towards ourselves that we're going to hide from what it is that we can find to knit us together. Yeah I'm not trying to demonize social media but we are in a strange new version of humanity where let's say somebody's sitting by themselves chances are their experience is vastly different

than it would have been 30 years ago because they are most likely getting a lot of information about what other people are doing could be good information could be interesting but none the last is very very different alone state and or they are doing things that hopefully they enjoy but there's this additional layer where it's put out into the world. This is very unusual. So the reason I'm asking about this in the context of addressing the self, exploring the

self is that I wonder to what extent being really happy with oneself at some level involves being able to be curious and explore different ways of being and ways of thinking without the impulse of sharing that and without the feedback comparison of what other people are doing because the moment we see something else there's more sensory input or the moment that we think what we're doing needs to be shared it changes the experience it's not truly an alone experience

and I don't think it matters if you put it out to one follower or to a billion followers it's

it's still externalizing this thing that for thousands of years was just us with our thoughts,

“us with our emotions and so processing time alone has become I believe a very very different”

thing all together. Yeah I think that's true I think there's a sweet spot of connectedness to others right and we know that it's not good to have too little right that isolation isn't good for us but but where the modern world has gone is it is offers us too much the opposite right where

we even like or prefer how we feel about things we're looking for external cues right so that

“sweet spot of having some external check-ins how does the world around me feel how do people I”

like and trust feel how do people who seem like me feel how do people who seem different from me feel it's good to have those tests outside but to have enough aloneness that I am still thinking about myself and the questions right of of life the questions of my own life I'm thinking about on my own before I'm pinging outside of me for you know for information or validation or even guidance I'm willing to bet that many people will find just the being alone introspective process to

be pretty anxiety provoking in fact there's been a little bit of a semi comedic exchange online recently

because actually our mutual friend David Cenerat and David Cenerat has a podcast with this

very podcast production company he sat down with Mark Andrewson of you know founded next escape a 16Z investments and Mark made the statement that was very provocative which was you know great men of history didn't sit around thinking about their thoughts you know and of course

“I knowing Mark and he's a friend of mine I think that was a bit tongue-in-cheek I think he was”

I think he was pointing toward I don't want to speak for him but I think he was pointing toward the idea that too much thinking and not enough doing can be self-destructive of course the media ran with it and in classic and recent in fashion he just doubled down and tripled down on that message which was fun for a while actually because it got people thinking about the role of introspection versus the role of doing and I have to say I think what he contributed with those

statements however provocative um we're useful and thinking like how much thinking how much doing when exploring the self we don't want to spiral into a tunnel that we can't get out of but we also want to make sure that we're putting things out into the world so when you have a patient that is not depressed is maybe struggling right so no no clinical issue that needs

dealing with first how much do you encourage them to explore the self through doing versus thinking

about their thinking? It depends very much on who is that person right and where do they need to face to sort of break new ground of self and you know I mentioned that most people would find the

“idea of just being with themselves to to be anxiety provoking and I think that that's unfortunate”

I think that comes from a lack of leadership in the mental health field and then the stigma of mental health and our fears those black box fears that we don't understand so we're afraid of what we don't understand what we don't understand is ourselves so then the idea of being with ourselves becomes very anxiety provoking and I think that's not good I think there are ways that we can go about being with ourselves that we don't have to be afraid of and say if I do that it's interesting

what I'm going to find right and the reflection and the thoughts and the ideas the learning that comes from it is going to guide me towards the best balance for me right so there are some people who are very assertive right and they want to have high levels of doing in the world but they still need some reflection right there are other people who are going to be very reflective and they're going to be doing less so we need to understand what profile works for for one person it's not one

exact place but we kind of have a profile of reflection and of doing and if we are well balanced where we're asserting ourselves in the world that levels that work for us and we're finding pleasure and gratification in ways that are healthy now we're finding balance if there's too much doing and not enough reflection not not a lot of goodwill come from that we will find that there's diminishing returns we feel unsatisfied right because we're doing too much and we're maybe

taking less pleasure in what we're doing but if we're doing too little then you know we can feel idle and there can be a sense of learned helplessness so it's finding what is the optimal range for a person to be asserting themselves in the world and then finding gratification in what they're doing and if that's going well we'll see that there's a happy balanced person and if not we'll be able to figure it out of what is going on in that person is there an issue

somewhere saying the unconscious mind right are they asserting more and too much and reflecting too little right so by looking at the person and going through these steps we can figure out what serves that person best and how might they adjust from where they are now to get there is it true that there are just some people who just don't really think about their thinking very much they just like do stuff I mean I've had friends say that like I don't I don't want to

speak for me I I'll speak for them they'll say that they don't think about their thinking they just

their day and they they're not very introspective they're they're not they're not called to think

about their thinking and in some cases these are people who are extremely busy so maybe that's one reason but in some cases there are people who just you know for whatever reason that the mirror doesn't pop up in their cortex it's they're as he doing and observing and they seem functional are they missing out on on something fundamental or is that maybe even the goal I asked this from a very selfish perspective because growing up I thought how cool would that be to just like go through

life just do stuff not think about stuff from the past too much not reflect too much just like

“get stuff done and and I'm a get it done kind of person but I I think like most people I also”

I also forced to think about my thinking from time to time and you say forced what then forces sorry it just spontaneously happens I reflect like and the reflections usually I'll try and generalize these because it's this is not about me the reflections generally come from like is that something I should explore like is that a problem is the way I'm thinking about or doing that a problem or is the way that they're thinking about and doing something a problem this

us them thing is it is kind of what it boils down to and it's either positive or negative I confess I don't really sit around a lot and think about all the things going right I should have a gratitude practice I generally don't sit around and think like oh like the walls are open the ceilings intact and I'm fed and I'm healthy of course until something bad happens and then we start doing we do our inventory right but yeah I just kind of wonder whether or not there's a

spectrum of of of reflexive self exploration people have different reflective capacity and people have different reflective interest so there are people who have more and that could serve them well to be more self aware but but also people may have less reflective capacity but be more naturally generative and then they're just moving forward so the question is even though we have different natural levels of reflective inclination right are we happy our lives going well if

“life is going well and that person is you know their healthy they have good mental health and”

secure relationships and and life is going well they're not reflecting very much like that sounds good how I would characterize that as they're living through the generative drive right they're being productive contribute to a people in the world they're making the world better they're learning they're growing so they're making themselves better and they're just moving forward that's a great way to be for most of us in order to get there we do have to be reflective and and some of what will

happen is it will come to us you said you're not kind of planning maybe to sit down and be reflective but but then it comes to you how I should think of this possibility at hand and what are other people thinking and if how's that impacting what I'm thinking so you become reflective because your brain is leading you there right because it's it's saying hey we need to we do need to stop and

“think about things that's how we're going to make better decisions so our brains will lead us to”

reflection but if we're moving so fast or we're defended against it right then we're not reflective

and that's not good for us and that's how you could see for example someone who's always busy

so they don't have time to reflect but but the the big question is is that person happy right if that person is not happy and they're complaining and they feel like they're working and never getting anything out of it or never getting any reward then it's not good that they're not reflective right they're blocking themselves from something that they need there are spectrums that that apply differently to different people and we all reside on different parts of the spectrum whether it's reflective capacity

or it's assertion or it's pleasure but in terms of what we're doing and whether it's healthy for us is it's different for for we're each and all unique so we have to stop and look at ourselves like hey how's this going for me right how am I functioning it is it working for me right is it

am I pausing and thinking enough maybe the answer is yes maybe the answer is no maybe I'm not sure

but but if I'm not happy let me go back and revisit that question so this curiosity of self can lead us to oh how am I built to function my functioning in a way that really works for me if not why not what change might I bring and and here again we're using the ability to understand and to go through a process to to make our lives better I realize these aren't clinical terms but someone recently said about themselves that they are an external processor they need to talk

things through in order to understand what's going on for them and make decisions and that implies that some people are internal processors is that true do you see that in your practice that some people do best by thinking sitting and thinking and walking and thinking and driving and thinking

to their friends or family some trusted person is that really are those two probably not

“completely separate but at least semi separate bins of people I don't know that there's separate”

bins of people I think that the ability to think and and to be objective in our thinking differs among people what happens often is we get stuck in our own minds so then we're thinking but we're not thinking productively because we get stuck in our own loops and and when we take the thought process outside of us so if we write the words down or if we say the words and we say the words to another person then we're bringing different grain processes online different error-checking

processes online so some of us can do more of this insight and say hey you know I've been thinking about this for a while and nothing's different or nothing's going better like is there

a different whack is a whack and think about it that's new or that's different right sometimes we

can do that but a lot of times we just get stuck inside of ourselves and we have to bring different brain processes online like making words and putting those words out there in writing or in speech

“is different it's to hold the brain more accountable that's why sometimes we'll just say something”

out loud or we'll say something to someone else and say oh I figured that out or thanks for helping me figure it out and you might realize all you did was listen right it's just by being there the other person is forming words we know we do more due diligence inside of ourselves that way I must confess I'm fascinated by this notion of people differing in their tendency to work things out internally and then bring that forward into the world maybe for more

help or you know some additional solutions or maybe just they've figured it out so they're bringing a version of self into the world that is vetted by them I know as I tend to respect that picture

but I realize that's not necessarily the way it always works I had a conversation with my sister this

morning and I love my sister we're we're quite close and what there was no friction but the direction she was taking what we were talking about and the direction I was taking they weren't aligned and so we kind of did a little bit of our brother sister push back and this kind of and then at some point we both realized that we we weren't aligned with the other person and we kind of arrived at this overlap in the venn diagram and that's when it was like okay there was some real

clarity that came to something important I thought like how cool is that right she has her way of doing things I have my way of doing things I don't think I could have gotten there without that conversation and yet it for the two thirds sorry I won't say her name him for her own privacy but for two thirds of the conversation I'm thinking myself like this is like this is an already difficult thing made more difficult by the fact that there's this other picture of it and then

version of it that she's extra and but then boom you hit this convergence and that's real synergy right I certainly couldn't have come up with that on my own so while I say I place value on the internal processor I know with certainty I could not have gotten there if I hadn't actually felt and met the friction of what she was bringing forward and her willingness to bend a bit am I willingness to accept a bit right because you are doing something together right you are doing

“something together that that involve real and open communication so you have to be able to say”

this is how I think and feel and put that out there and test it and bounce it off the other person and take inside with the other person things and said there's a really complicated process there which is how human beings come to understand one another or come to agree or come to a place where where there's a way forward even if there isn't complete agreement right we have to do these things outside of us most often if we're going to be at our healthiest we do want to be

able to do some of it inside right so good place to start and we can do that alone with ourselves and you know we're talking about reflective capacity and inclination but none of us knows how to do something we haven't been taught to do right so so very often what we haven't had a way of going inside of saying well I'm going to think about myself and I want to do that productively and part of what I'm trying to bring to the floor is that there are ways of going about

being with yourself thinking about yourself thinking within yourself that can lead us towards progress at least and sometimes answers and if we're doing that we can probably all do more of that than we're doing and if we're given a way to do it where we think okay this works for me I'm actually learning about myself while I'm doing this and I'm bringing a vetted self I'm bringing my best self to what I'm going to find outside of me and that may be collaboration

with another person right it may be talking with another person and coming to some middle ground when there is an agreement so if we start with ourselves and we're able to reflect and to bring

we're going to force our way through things but we're much stronger in terms of both self knowledge and ability to be flexible when we're out in the real world meeting other people yeah

“I think it to me the picture of internal processing people is one that and maybe I've seen”

too many movies and shows from my childhood but the picture is one of okay people who internally process bring the best version of themselves forward they don't burden other people but I think by now we understand as a culture that that person well traditionally was kind of revered this is a kind of a male centric phenotype here picture that I'm drawing it could be about a woman as well there's also this idea that they're a little bit disconnected from all the

chatter but in my mind I have this belief like if people are externally processing a lot that they're also revealing their uncertainty and that that's not a good thing to reveal to the world and again this probably reflects my age in the times when I was raised and a bit about the

culture and my family etc but but I think in general that's that's like we never really talk

about like strong silent type but lazy right we're thinking strong silent and therefore getting stuff done right like the the the the the the tacit message there is strong and silent so they're not burdening other people with their internal stuff we also assume that people who process internally are actually processing that they're not just sitting there I used to joke you know what's my bulldog Costello thinking about and I I know this isn't true but I used to think it was

like noise like maybe it was just sitting there white noise and white experiencing the world is white noise I mean I don't know what he was thinking about so it could have been quantum physics I doubt that but it could have been quite and if it was you know it's good of keeping a secret exact right yeah and the picture actually works because he he was a big kind of stoic dog he had his joyful expression but there's something about this notion of somebody that processes

internally that gets a lot done and maybe even serves others although more than somebody who's processing externally and it's hard to probe this area without kind of setting up natural gender

“stereotypes here you know I think the stereotype is that women externally process more than men”

I don't know that's actually true it just might be that men process less overall I mean who knows I don't know how knows what anyone else is thinking I have to tell my I don't know what I'm thinking so do you think that people who hold it in more are coming to a greater understanding and get more done in the world than those that externally process I think not not necessarily I think what's best for us is a balance and again it's going to be different for each person but

there has to be a balance of things that I know and understand inside of myself that aren't up for question that I am sure I've been resolved about so it might be a line not to cross because because it's a certain moral boundary I know how I feel about it and I know where I am I know how I feel and I know where I stand so it's just one one example there are issues of self that we want to feel very resolved you know how I want to treat people in the world and how I want to

be treated you know for example it's good to know those things inside of us but it is good to then test externally about how we're interfacing with the world if too much internal processing can be too self-referential and now I may think that how I think it should be is actually how it should be because I haven't tested outside of me and I haven't done enough of that testing to see all a lot of other people feel differently than me and this isn't a moral point where I feel sure

about how I feel is actually more gray and that then I might have thought as an example so

there has to be a balance I mean it's always been this way for humans a balance of what we

we discern and know inside but bringing that vetted self to the world means that the vetted self also knows that it doesn't know everything right and it's testing in the outside world to learn what is it that other people are thinking can I learn from that so so bringing an open this is also

“very important about a lot of things so I think that no one way of being is better I think we all”

need a balance so that balance is going to differ and it involves knowing things about ourselves and feeling resolute and also having the humility to face the world with openness and realizing there's a lot of things I may think I know I think I know exactly how something is or how something

should be but let me hold on for a second and kind of check that with the outside world so that

I mean that those can be outcomes or we can just just step a little bit into it ignorance that

“there that there's more in the world than our own opinions. As many of you know I've been taking”

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and how it relates to all this but I want to just peel back one more layer on this kind of admittedly extreme example of kind of I don't want to use strong silent. I want to be internal internal processor external processors and I actually right now I'll try and disintegrate the strong silent type because people immediately default to mail and I'm not doing that for political

“correctness but I think about my graduated advisor Barbara Chapman, incredibly smart person”

and our chair of department years ago my chair of department years ago described her perfectly when he said she's quiet but not shy. She could sit in being a room and observe and pay attention when she spoke you really did get the sense that it counted high signal the noise because she wasn't one to chatter much right there does seem to be this assumption that if people are talking a lot that there's a lot going on in there all the time and some of

it's just getting out and that if people are quiet that it's either more regulated or there's not a whole lot going on in there right and I think my chairman's mention about my graduate advisor really woke me up I thought you're right she's really quiet but she's not shy she's not afraid to

speak she's very organized and deliberate in what she says and I can't say it was always a value

forgive me Barbara and she's passed away but like it sometimes it was just you know casual talk but you did get the sense like she's a thinker it's not white noise in there and you do sometimes get the sense that people who are constantly you know sending words out into the world that it has an anxiety component doesn't necessarily seem that organized but you and I have both men I'm sure many people know people who are hyperverbal but very structured in their hyperverbalness

so I guess I'm asking this because I want to break down the notions of quiet versus verbal introspective necessarily means calm I mean so many assumptions around all this none of it

“is necessarily true in the reason I'm I'm so genuinely curious about this is I think that most of”

the world is confronted with this Mark and Dreson provocative question like how much time should we spend in here and how does it serve us when we're out here in the in the rest of the world and vice versa like they could we're just talking talking talking talking doing all day maybe we are processing and we can be peaceful inside layer head down and that's it it's all out there for better or worse for us it's great yeah but there's a assumption that there's there

were constant whatever we see is also happening internally I think we have to just be very very wary of of either mapping some stereotype this is good and that's not good and applying some

things you know being internalized speaking less or being hyperverbal they could mean anything

you know anything under the sun that has to be who is the person and what is the context so if you're describing Barbara Chapman in meetings right I interpret that as she's she's communicating judiciously right she's in a place where maybe sometimes people say excess things because they're self-aggrandizing or they want to bring something up or they you know they're trying to guide a conversation one way or another and you think know that that's a place for where less is more

right we're not doing that and just communicating about something that matters when it matters

“like while that's speaking judiciously that's what it tells me about her I don't know for mine”

is going a mile a minute inside or if there was you know a common equanimity but but I think

who that person was and what that situation was was very was adaptive right same thing if there's

someone who's speaking a lot but you know they have a lot of ideas and they're really constructive ideas and they're talking to people about those ideas and they're enthusiastic and it's helpful well that sounds good to me that sounds very different than someone who's hyperverbal and they're talking but you know you can tell they're saying the same thing becoming from a different angle and they're anxious and they may want validation right so so the person and the context makes all

the difference I mean we want to be able to identify you know when a person might fit a certain profile right you know there are people who are quiet because they said they're strong and they're silent and there's not a lot going on inside but they're resolute okay that's a kind of person right

but we shouldn't assume that that someone is that way until we've looked at who is that person

and what is the context in which we're assessing them we're human so we fit patterns right but we're all unique so you won't know what pattern we may be fitting until you really look at us one thing I love about your book is you have probe questions you you have questions for people to

“ask themselves thank you to explore the self and I think for me that was it is a huge gift of”

of the book and the work in it you know when I got to see an advanced copy I was like you know obviously you understand the theory and the science and your clinician but for me like okay what do I ask myself and how do I go about doing that how do I figure out what's going right as a at least it's a stepping stone to maybe exploring what's not going right but certainly it's a really understand where my strengths might lie and I think that's it's a really unique gift

because I think that we don't have enough of that I think we have a lot of what's going wrong where the friction points what's wrong with me kind of stuff and what's wrong with the world and I think starting from that place of really knowing what the questions are to ask oneself is I just personally found it immensely useful and I realized we're mainly discussing theory

“and and up until now although I'm about to ask you a very practical question which is”

assuming no pathology no like crippling anxiety or depression or panic how much do you think people should try and adjust their what I call the autonomic set point they some people are just more you know expressive with their hands with their words they they want to move a lot more and if they don't it makes them anxious right other people are more still and we again assume that if they're physically still that things are probably a bit more still internally and that's not

necessarily a bad thing but there is a lot of emphasis including on this podcast on learning to sit with stress learning to sit with anxiety and not just letting it out or experiencing it and sometimes I wonder despite knowing the immense value of those tools I mean I've benefited so much from things like non-sleep deep rest and meditation and things like that and I know others have as well but I mean how much are we be trying to control our states I do wonder if it's good for

us to think that there's something wrong for us if we feel a certain way period and in controlling our states in order to help us be at our best is different from trying to control our states so that we change ourselves right so so if you you're finding you know a deep state of peace that's not sleep right you find oh that helps you be a better you right that finding that piece you say it gives you some groundedness and you feel healthier for it and you're better able to solve

problems so you know you're learning something and doing something because it serves you well and it helps you be at your best right that's different than thinking oh I need to be different right if a person thinks why I need to be different and I need to be calmer or more more peaceful what does that what does that mean and is that person imposing something external on themselves so there are people who are very active and yes you could they can sit quietly

them to be active and they may be quite meditative when they don't seem to be quite meditative right

they can be doing something and we see a lot of movement in them but but inside they can be in a meditative state so it's it's so easy for us to what it's well meaning and that we're trying to understand right we're trying to understand ourselves we're trying to understand others and we're trying to find patterns but but it's so tempting to think that we know something right because we're just observing someone in a certain state or observing someone talking or not talking

right to go what does that mean and we have to ask the right questions right in order

“to get there so so the only way we really know the answers for a person is we have to understand”

that person and we have to understand their context so we must ask the right questions you know you had talked about trying to write practical routes of approach to ourselves in the book right I'm doing that because you know think of if someone wanted to learn physics would you say well just stop because one think about physics right like no there there has to be a route of a approach of saying well we hear some of the basic knowledge you know we think about this approach that way

read from this book and then that book right they're there ways that we're guided in and how to

learn things and it's interesting that we don't have these guides for what's most important

which is learning about ourselves so it brings us back to why it can make us so uncomfortable so anxious is okay we're going to sit with ourselves like saying we'll sit with yourself and you know learn horticulture is like oh I don't know like I'll sit with myself but but you have to help me

“you have to help me figure out how to learn that or I'm going to feel anxious about sitting there”

if I don't know how to go about it right so so if we have the prompts to look at ourselves now what we're doing is we're making it real we're asking the right questions of ourselves to think oh what how do I function what does work well for me you know how do I think of myself how to others think of me am I introverted or extroverted my combination of both do I sometimes feel in one state and sometimes in another is it working for me right is it working for me in the big

picture are there parts of the small picture that work for me or things I really don't like or things where I really don't feel uncomfortable now we're bringing curiosity and yes we we want to learn from patterns and and learn from all the knowledge we have of the world but we're taking that and saying hey none of that actually means anything until it's directed towards me if I'm the person reflecting about myself or if it's a helping process we're helping a friend or you know

we're in a therapy process you know we have to take everything that we know and then it's all seeing through the lens of that person we we have to do it that way or we'll lead ourselves astray if you're willing I'm curious about throwing out a sort of a generic clinical session example let's assume you know something about the family background of a patient and there's nothing glaringly obvious in the background about trauma or maybe there is but you know that there's

nothing really to dig into there just yet and the person comes to you and says yeah I don't know I'm like I'm like work is okay but this and someone's going to work at that and I guess this is good and you know and they're they're dating they're in their life and I swear I'm not trying to get a free therapy session here I'm just trying to imagine so someone says you know and then like the news is really bothering me and you know and just kind of reporting right you observe human patterns

I mean your pattern recognition is presumably oriented towards where there's emotion where there's patterns in them how it matches the templates that only you could harbor the same way that

a really amazing neurosurgeon would look into the brain and see a pattern of epileptic seizure

and would be like okay this is even without remembering those specific cases I know which direction to go at this to explore when you hear all that stuff and the stuff I'm talking about here is deliberately meant to reflect what you see a lot of on social media upset about that political team

“upset about that politically my life is as but this but what does that tell you and what is it”

tell you specifically about where that person should invest effort into thinking or doing I realize it's impossible to give a pan prescriptive here but like what does that mean when somebody's just really absorbed by all the things going on around them and things feel good but where do you start to probe and where do you start to encourage them at least until the next session? The way to probe is to encourage reflection right because with what you said I think while I'm

hearing somebody reporting right it's like they're just telling me the news right of what went on I'm doing this I'm doing that. It's kind of an inventory or a laundry list right so what it makes me think is I wonder how much of that you're really choosing right or how much of that is

they're choosing or how or the reporting know the behaviors how much of what they're reporting like how

“much of that are you really choosing right how much of that is what you want to be doing how much of”

that is working for you right what we're trying to do then what I want to do then is is encourage like to have some interest in examination of like well why am I doing all of this right maybe some this I really like and I am interested in and others of it I'm just doing because it's habit or it's routine I don't even know why I'm doing it or you know if I'm dating but who am I dating why why am I dating how am I choosing is that is that also just something that I do how much of

I just kind of along for the ride of what I'm doing that just has forward momentum versus what am I really choosing now if we stop and we look at it that way what are you really choosing and and also what's working for you now we're off to the races of an examined life and you know we see this as I know you know we do a lot of intensive work we do it with individuals we do it with couples where we try and move this process forward very very very rapidly of looking at

one's own life and it's very interesting that sometimes you know by midway through the second

day of an intensive process the person wants to revisit almost everything they realize you know 10 to 20% of all those things I just said this is what I do right that I really I really value and and I want to be doing more of the others I'm not so sure of right I don't know why I'm doing some of those things now and we are we're really along the process of change because we're looking at ourselves and it may seem strange that someone would see the 80% of what I just told

you I do I don't know if I want to do or if it's working for me but that happens all the time when we're not examining our lives they just kind of run forward and we accumulate what we accumulate right and and it's like well this is what we we are because this is what I've accumulated by you know grabbing and carrying with me as I'm moving through life and there's not an organization to it so so this idea that we must examine our our lives is at the the heart of all of this that's

how we we keep mental health and our structure of self and our function of self we keep our our drives and balance we set ourselves on a path where we are in a place to meet future challenges from the best health we can have and also to meet future opportunities so just like we want to do with our physical health right we want to build good physical health likewise we want to build

“good mental health when that's the best way to be when life throws us whatever curveballs are”

going to come our way and it's also the best way to have a good life to be on the front foot of life but we need to examine ourselves and we need a process and a structure in order to build good mental health the way we build good physical health and ultimately that's how we build good health so what I'm hearing is in order to gain more agency over any areas of our life we have to ask the why question why am I doing what I'm doing now and why aren't I doing this other thing that

perhaps would serve me better they get the it starts with questions of self what do you do and this must be incredibly frustrating at least it would be to me what do you do if someone you say well why aren't you on the personal I know I should work out but I don't and you say well why not you know they say well I don't know I'm tired I know I should then you say well you know why do you

still hang out with Sharon when you always come back from it feeling totally exhausted and feeling

like you just had all this stuff done you know you know I don't like what do you how do you work past that the person who's just like this is just life this is just this is just what life requires I got to work I got my friends like what am I going to do overhaul my life you know and uh and I this probably varies by region and by generation the extent to which people are willing to like look at things and think and kind of spin them around like rotate the cube as I like to call it

and look at it from underneath a bit and just as a practice like to some people that's okay cool you know I'll you know play the no one listens to albums anymore but uh the same way they used to but I'll play the album in reverse for a bit maybe it'll give me something different maybe what maybe we're like that's the album like that's just how I do it so how do you get somebody to do this and of course I'm not asking you to tell us this so that people can play therapist with others even though they they

naturally do I'm asking this because hopefully this is what people will do for themselves well if someone is talking in the way of the person you described right I would say well this is just

“what I do and and it iscribing I think you said every time they go out with Sharon they come home”

and they feel kind of drained and they don't feel good then they move on to something else and and to something else and they might talk about their job and you know something that's frustrating them all the time and and they just keep going forward then I might say well what you're what you're doing is you're showing both of us where the X's are you know the X's mark the spot right to dig right so you're you're showing us hey here's where there's some treasure right let's dig where

and you feel a sense of letter G and you feel a sense of time wasn't well spent and you kind of

“feel hopeless well it's really important to to think about why you're doing that right and I”

would link it to something else so I might say so you know you'd said earlier on or a couple of sessions go that you really want to find a partner and you really want to find a good relationship so so that's important to you told me that it was and now you're telling me that you need you keep seeing this person where you know every time you go out the front door then nothing good is going to come of it and you're going to come back feeling worse then then when you left like we should

look at why and and we don't have to be scared to look like is this is where the fear comes in like oh my gosh what is wrong with me why would I be doing that right somewhere inside of them that person knows that's not working for me but I'm still doing it so there's some fear of looking at that so if we say hey no harm no foul like let's just let's think about why you know it may be that that person really wants that that person in this case I can think of Sharon I want Sharon to like

“them right and and maybe they they feel in need to be liked so they don't like this person but they”

think they need this person to like them maybe maybe their person who always takes too much care

of others versus themselves and they don't like Sharon but Sharon likes them right so they don't really want to end that relationship but there's something going on there because the person is saying I'm doing this thing that absolutely won't get me what I want and I'll keep doing it I say well that's not really what you want if you if you if you are doing it over and over again you think you're going to keep doing it it's just because you know you haven't felt empowered enough

that hey I can understand myself and I can bring some change so that so that my behaviors my choices are actually in line with my wishes you know with my striving so now we get that person interested right we tell that there is an X let's understand why it is that you're still going out with Sharon

right there's got to be something to learn there and and there always is if if we dig where the

X's are we do get some treasure it might be a little it might be a lot but we learn from that and we bring that learning to life the rubber hits the road as that leads to real life change it makes really good sense and and thank you for the clarity of that answer it brings us back to asking why to develop more agency around possibly making different choices it's not always I mean it one I guess one could realize like they they really they want that kind of relationship

but with someone else or they want a completely different kind of relationship with the same person right and and to work on that but it starts with asking questions yes I realize I'm going backwards into this but it goes from inventories are a start toward informing what questions are useful useful questions probe understanding that hopefully develops more agency do you encourage people once they get to a point of oh yeah like maybe I want a different

sort of relationship to this person or thing or activity in life do you give them specific action directives like yeah like how about between this session and next session like you go to the gym twice you do whatever there maybe watch TV and just like pedal you know on the bike and or maybe you go and you like really take a course or or a class rather do you tend to give people clear directives about what could really help if you sense that that could really help

“sometimes but I think it's much more effective if it's arrived at collaboratively so so if we”

decide hey no it'd be really really good and we both agree we we talk back and forth now and if if you can get to the gym once before you come back next week right and then we talk about that back and forth like maybe that person wants to go to the gym five times you know before they come back but each time they do that they get frustrated with themselves they don't go at all right so we might say like we've been talking about this and maybe I'll say to maybe the other maybe

the patient will say right and to say look I do I do want to be going to the gym I want to be getting exercise and I see I go between too much and too little right I go between taking on too much and I get frustrated and I don't do anything have I something that's more measured okay maybe I'll try and go on Monday and Friday I'm making a way and we decide yeah you know it maybe twice as twice as okay or should it be once right because if you get once under your belt you can get twice

under your belt the next week so we're we're just trying to understand so there's no mystery to it and we we know what we're doing so someone who wants to have a different relationship and says well maybe I could have a good relationship with Sharon but I have to talk to her about A, B and C that isn't really going well okay how might you do that right like let's think about it right because that communication isn't going to happen unless you bring it and what's keeping you from that how

might you approach her in a way that you could really talk what's holding you back so we're trying to problem solve but we're doing so in a way that's that's open where we know what we're doing

it's one step at a time and we want to take those steps so we don't want someone to think

“often we want a process of change to a curse so fast that we can't possibly occur as fast as we”

wanted to and then we'll get frustrated in two weeks right so we have to set reasonable expectations of hey it might be you could really get somewhere with us in a couple of months it seems like that for more conversations what do you think we we make sure we're on the same page and then we say well one week after another like we could put one foot in front of the other and we can get ourselves

there and it's not easy so it might not be easy to say broach that first conversation with Sharon

or or get yourself to the gym that first time right but we can help you bolster yourself so all your hours are going in the same direction you set yourself up for success you know you're not going to try to go to to go the morning after a long night out and you know we set you up for success and you get a win and small wins and empower and embolden us to to to take a little bit more chances and get bigger wins and you know for our structure of self and our function of

self or in good places then what rests on top of that is empowerment there's a sense of empowerment in us and also a sense of humility that that lets us accept that we're human that things aren't perfect and maybe I have been making them same mistake over and over again like it's so okay I'm

human and if I have the humility to accept that and I have empowerment then I can meet the

world through agency and this active gratitude you know I'm grateful that Sharon still here and I can I can talk to her right I'm grateful that there's a gym for me to go to him healthy enough for me to get myself there and I've got enough agency inside of myself that I'm going to do these things that I've decided to do this is how we we make life change whether it be smaller big and how do we get the big life change it starts with small steps I'd like to take a quick break

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tremendously at what point does it make sense to try and think about the patterns that you were exposed to as a way to have more agency to ask better questions about why you know I think right now in addition to this you know little not so little debate about the value of introspection versus just doing and clearly it's both there's also a debate going on about how much to think about the past and traumas et cetera I won't go into why this is really of the times right now but

that the dilemma seems to be do you look at your life as something that's happening now and focus

“on the why questions so you do what you need to do to make your life better or is there real value”

and identifying patterns that you observed or were forced to participate in as a kid as a way of having more agency in other words if someone sees or just verbally hears a pattern does it actually help them make change yes it does yes it's it's insight that sets us free and it's insight that puts us in the driver's seat of our lives otherwise we're just reacting so so in the example that you gave so imagine a person who had a very overcontrolling parent so

they don't have insight and they become overcontrolling themselves they they they associate that

high level of control with being powerful they feel less vulnerable when they're being powerful

we can recognize that and we'll say pattern repetition or whatever words we want to put to it

“and we go oh gosh that person doesn't have insight right but but when the person is doing the”

opposite that's not necessarily good either so so a person could say well my parent was overcontrolling I'm going to be easy going right I'm going to be more easy going but if that person doesn't have insight then they can become too permissive right so now they're not they're not controlling things in a way that does make sense they're not exercising they're healthy control of a parent so they could they could identify with what the parent did and do the same thing or they could

push away with from it and do the opposite but by the opposite isn't good either right it's

insight that lets us say oh no my my parent or parents were were overcontrolling and maybe that even

they got to a place it was very very difficult maybe even abusive and I don't want to be like that right I'm not going to be like that but I'm not going to rush to the opposite pole either right

“and now I have to I get to I both have to and get to figure out what's a healthy level of control”

right how much control does it make sense to exert it to keep the child safe for example but also to allow the child enough latitude to be growing and making their own decision so it's inside that says oh I see I see what that was in my past and often we do need to do that often early childhood experiences especially experiences with in family units have a great impact upon us

and often we'll guide our behaviors and then kind of like automotons we're acting one way

we're acting another and we don't know why but it's inside that lets us gain the understanding here's how it was when I was growing up I can look at that I can see it good bad or otherwise right and then I can decide how do I want to integrate that information how the whole me is going to be in the driver's seat of being a good parent so there seems to be something fundamentally valuable about

“insights where we realize I want to push away from something a pattern or I want to get more”

like someone or something that that is you know would serve me better and and I realize that might just be a giant door based on what you said but I'm trying to think about what that means about the mind about the human mind I can imagine that there are instances where people are in patterns of behavior and they're struggling with them they they're not working for them and they know it and they want to make the change this this is the thing I hear all the time I want to

make I know I should do it I know I should do it but they don't do it what you're saying is when they when we can know that that pattern was something we observed or we're doing the opposite or something we observed doesn't matter which suddenly we have agency what do you think that is this is a different kind of question than I've been asking until now what is that because my clinician can tell me hey you know what it should really start to eat better and get to sleep on time because we both know

this isn't serving you well and the version comes back and they're not doing the behaviors they're not changing their behaviors they're not changing and then you ask them hey like what is this about and you get to a place where it reflects something in childhood they're either going against or they're going with that pattern you're telling me that that realization gives them a sense of agency aha it's it's comes from me but I didn't program that it like what is the insight like what allows

that what is the wedge that lets people change their behavior simply by understanding that some or all of it is inherited from a pattern when we realize that there's something whether it's external or internal controlling us right it it diffuses that tension and part of why diffuses the tension and let's us see clearly and gives us control is because we don't like it you know none of us want to be like in the the Manchurian candidate right where there's a sound and then we behave in a

certain way and you know we're triggered in a certain way and then we just do something and we do it automatically like we don't like that and and if we realize oh that's happening in me so if I realize you guys I've been programmed right and and if someone is disagreeing with me like it makes me feel so bad or so vulnerable or insecure you know it makes me feel like I felt when I was a kid right so now what I'm doing is I'm being just like the parent was I'm not giving

my child a chance to have his or her own opinion and now because I won't let myself tolerate that feeling so so what's happened is it's just been automatic and from when I was a kid and it felt so bad and now I'm in the position of trying to make myself feel good by imposing that on my own child I don't want to do that right wow I see that or realizing that because that happened and

wild and ways that aren't even safe for them and and wow okay I pushed so hard against that right it's this realization that that something inside of us is being triggered and then we just do something automatically that we haven't thought about or decided to right that is a very very strong effect on humans we really don't like that so if we can combine that with with compassionate curiosity like if if one of us were really really really hungry and there's food right outside the door but

we're not getting up to get it it's a reasonable question to ask why right I mean it's got to be

something very powerful to keep a person who's so hungry from just going and getting food what are

these forces within us that are exerting such control over us now we get the person to be on the wrong side instead of saying I want to do a b and c but I just can't or they're just not enough times like whoa that's not you know I know why is it that I'm telling myself do I really want to do it if I do what's keeping me from doing how am I keeping me from doing it now we bring our gumption we know we bring our our resources internally and externally to the problem and and the whole

thingships oh man that helps a lot not just me I have to say people not feeling motivated people not being able to break a pattern that isn't serving them whether or not it's action or in action is probably the most common question I get is the most common theme it's probably the reason why podcasts like this can exist I mean I think people have a natural curiosity about the science and the intellectual aspects and you know circuits and hormones and all that kind of stuff but

I think ultimately people want more agency over their behavior they want to feel that yes and I think

what you said is like layering in the room at least for me that people don't like to be controlled so much so that we know that we got kids to quit smoking back in the you know in the 90s or 2000s by advertisements of rich old white men riding their hands cacling about the health problems

“that people are getting while they're getting rich that's what stopped teams from smoking”

right it was you're not going to control me it wasn't they didn't like smoking nicotine's incredibly reinforcing right the moment that you have an enemy you feel the sense of agency they you you said no you're on your own side so realizing one is being controlled

is I realize I'm just saying what you're saying but I want to make sure there's really

resonates in my own mind and for the listeners that's the essence of of agency you have to be on your own side and to get on your own side it's helpful to not necessarily have an enemy but to say oh this was this is all about my parents and I'm going in the opposite direction in ways they're defeating me I'm they're controlling me even though I think I'm controlling me boom right right behavior changes or oh shit this is just like my mom or just like my dad or just like

the environment I grew up in and now you can somebody can advocate for themselves yes I also see this in the in the media nowadays I mean that there's so much of social media is about us them and gosh people are like perfectly happy for understandable reasons to be like you're not going to control me we saw this during the pandemic we see this at every level what is this human thing about not wanting to be controlled that in this context is very positive right yeah we there's

something about the human primate brain yeah like we we don't like to be controlled and that

“sense of agency can can blossom out of that yeah I think that's incredible yeah we don't want to think”

or know that that someone or something is putting one over on us like you know humans don't want to be dupes we don't we don't like that right it makes us upset and here the magic realization is that there is no enemy right that that we can get in our own way and who's most likely to for my efforts towards being healthier it's absolutely me right so I can get in my own way but it doesn't mean on my enemy so if I if I do really I want to be healthier and I want to get to the

gym to be healthier okay who's standing in my way then it will be me that but it will why am I standing in my way I secretly hate myself and I want myself not to be healthy no it's not that if I'm standing in my own way there's a reason I really think that that I have so much to do and and it's for other people and it means more than me so really I don't think I deserve the

“time and energy it would it would take I'm not gonna spend it on myself maybe that's why I don't go”

or maybe I don't go because I'm trying to protect myself right because I'm worried the last couple times I tried it didn't go well and I felt worse so I don't even want to start so I'm standing in my own way because of fear of failure right there's a lot of reasons there's many many many

of like why am I doing this I don't have to do this actually there's one me and I could say well

if I both if I really want to go to the gym but I'm not going I want to go and I don't want to go and must be true right be there right why is it that I don't want to go am I not worth the time

“and energy maybe do I think there are more important things to do really I do really think that”

right and I'm not admitting it to myself am I afraid that if I try I'll fail right there's got to be a reason for that so let me get on the same page as I've often said to further the example would be hey you get to decide if you if you go to the gym or not we just want you to be on the same page with yourself like you can decide not to if you say actually there are more the things that are bigger priorities for my time now someone else is sick I'm taking care of that person

it really that is what I'm choosing now okay so I'm not going to go now and the whole me decides

that but on the other side of this when this drain on time my time and energy is different then I am going to go right now the person's on the same page and they're not making themselves feel worse by wanting to go and not going or I might say I really do want to go but I know I'm standing in my own way because I'm afraid I'll fail okay and then maybe I get upset the last eight times I try it I failed right now we're really digging you know where the money's at right

because we go and look and say okay you're protecting yourself how do we how do we try and set you up for success so so you'll want to go forward this time because you'll see there's different from the other times and you won't just be repeating something that just made you feel bad so that's how we get our all our arrows pointing in the same direction we realize there is no enemy here there is me standing in my own way but like that's okay I can look at that and I can figure that out

and now we're at that simple goodness principle where you know we're all on the same page with ourselves and we accomplish our goals we wouldn't wish trauma on anybody but how is it then that people who had reasonably healthier trauma-free childhoods how do they operate in the world are they moving toward things from a genuine place of curiosity and they're not pushing off anything in this you know idyllic example that they're not countering a childhood example

does that represent the ultimate goal that we're moving towards things because we want them and we're not resisting anything nor are we copying bad patterns from our childhood yes in the sense

“that I think that's what I would map to living intentionally right to being as self-aware as we can”

be while also realizing we can't be completely self-aware and then living intentionally so yes that's what we're trying to get to and the presence of trauma of real trauma that overwhelms our coping skills and leaves our brain function different going forward it does make it harder to achieve these things which is why we want to look at trauma if there are traumas in our lives and how they they may have changed us but it doesn't prevent that I mean people can have significant

traumas and still be on this path and have some insight into how the trauma is affecting them and and even inside that the trauma needs more work maybe to really get our arms around it but that person can still get there like why someone who hasn't had trauma might have real difficulty getting there if I haven't had major trauma but you know just circumstances or my own maybe overly ambitious with not enough time and energy hey I did try and get to the gym for five times and it didn't

work out and I really do feel down on myself and it's not linked to any prior trauma it's just

“I've gotten in this cycle and every time I think about being healthier now I'm telling myself”

oh you'll never be able to do it or you messed it up three times and so I'm inadvertently

making it harder for myself and and without any pre-existing trauma that person can end up having much more trouble you know than someone who does have pre-existing trauma or how do you respond to the words I get tired just thinking about it like something that would be good for somebody the entire just thinking about it and it involves energy right I'm not giving you a very full picture but I'm guessing you've heard those words before well I want to understand a lot more about that

there's a little what that tells me is there's a lot of brain space and a lot of energy right that's taken up in the thinking of it so for a lot of people they get so tired of thinking about trying to go to the gym because thinking about trying to go to the gym takes more energy from them than actually being there right because it's running around in their head how they failed and how bad they're going to feel and how they really want to do this and maybe they will

maybe they won't and there's so much going on inside of them that they're making something very very complicated so I want to understand why all that energy inside right and is their way that we can simplify that that's a marker that there's something going on that that we we want to be able to get at because it's not the healthiest process you know to say that there's a lot of internal turmoil about something that almost certainly can be better understood and

simplified so that statement represents ten mental workouts that is exhausting them at least that's the the the sense it might give you yeah we with no improvement in physical health so the

let's take those ten mental workouts and figure out you know how can we turn that into one physical

“workout that person's going to feel a lot better physically and mentally I want to table a couple”

of common statements about the mind and psychology I'm perfectly willing to accept that they're true but I have a feeling they're at least not entirely true okay one is however you talk to others that's also how you talk to yourself is this just like nonsense I mean there's some people that are very harsh with other people are they walking around being harsh to themselves are they like just a peaceful in there and they're like externalizing all I had a former colleague let's just keep

him anonymous a former colleague and he used to say I don't get stressed I give stress I feel

true to me you know he gave up all his cards by telling me that but that's always grateful for

that statement but he he was very proud of it I don't get stressed I give stress and I thought I bet you he's pretty stressed in there and then I realize I don't know what the hell's going on in there maybe he's just absolutely right so can we make that assumption that how people treat others is really how they treat themselves no sometimes that maybe true but sometimes that may not

“be true so the statement has no validity maybe yes maybe no you have to look at the person”

and look at the situation for most people when when there's a difference between the two it is not the person who say is externalizing all that stress giving everybody stress but they feel calm inside right that is not a healthy way to be and there's something going on there that's different right that that is that is an issue that once we're looking at and address is a problem there for most people if it's different it's the opposite where people are treating others

much much better than they're treating themselves and they may say well that's okay you know maybe we each made a mistake and I get it everyone makes mistakes right I may say that to you but then go what's wrong with me or you know I'm I maybe act very differently inside and that's mostly what good people do is we'll give other people a kind word or a benefit of the doubt but we get very harsh and our language and our tone inside of ourselves can be

“can be very different and you know this idea of if you're going to make yourself special don't”

make yourself special in a negative way right I mean it's it's you know partly in jest but but it is saying most of us who are making ourselves special it is in a negative way other people can can you can get um and get a pass about that something they made an honest mistake or you know we'll give them another chance whatever it may be but for us we may use much harsh or language you know it's wrong with me or I'm an idiot I mess that up again and there's a lot of that going

on inside of us so so no if we're if we're treating other people kindly it may be that we're treating ourselves kindly inside but but that is certainly not a given and if we're being unkind to other people that most of the time there is some real turmoil and and that person is not feeling okay inside the person who's making other people unhappy and they themselves feel okay that's a different kind of problem and it's not a common one in your book you talk about

intrusive thoughts and things that people can do to deal with intrusive thoughts if you wouldn't mind could you give us a few you know a few examples of things that people can do to

deal with intrusive thoughts well the first is we have to identify it and there are people who have

intrusive thoughts something they may say to themselves hundreds of times a day and they're not aware of it until they stop and think like what am I saying to myself over and over again what's running around being aware of our self-talk right the idea that like we're not gonna we're not safe or worried about ones children and safety or worried about them I'm gonna get fired or there's not gonna be there's not gonna be enough you know these things can come to us over and over again

without us being aware of it so so the first thing is we must be aware and it may sound strange to say we could say something to ourselves hundreds of times over and not be aware of it but absolutely that happened so so we have to be curious what is it that I'm saying to myself in these quiet moments and then what purpose is it serving so if I keep telling myself that nothing's gonna be okay why am I saying that you know my so afraid that nothing's gonna be okay that I'm

trying to save myself from the shock of nothing being okay maybe right maybe that's going on am I just so afraid about something you know something happened in the past someone was hurt or there was a loss and and now the intrusive thoughts tell me that things can't be okay but what it's telling me is I haven't processed that loss like there's there is is going to be a meaning there is

a meaning to intrusive thoughts there always is so we want to recognize them we want to look for

that meaning and then there's strategies of what we can do and and they can range from thought re-direction sometimes we think something because we're thinking it over and over again and if we thought re-direct it gives us greater control sometimes we diffuse some of the energy in it by understanding

I'm not safe and things aren't gonna be okay maybe I'm letting myself be in an unsafe situation

“right and I need to change that situation this is a place sometimes medicines can help”

so that there are a lot of things that we can bring to bear but we first have to recognize

that they're happening and then running counter current to modern mental health of things we have to actually understand why if we want that to change for the better if we want to really get you know get into the engine and figure it out instead of just trying to polish the hood and you know not look at where that problem is coming from and keeping with commonly discussed themes out in the world that I question

are our dreams informative and is there anything that we can know about ourselves like patterns of thinking when we're awake that make our dreams more informative for example if I tend to think in analogy or parallel construction and will the content of my dreams be more meaningful to me to understand through the lens of analogy or parallel construction. I'm not sure about the last point I don't know you know I just don't know and my clinical

experience has been people's dreams can have a lot of meaning you know regardless of what kind of thinker they are so someone who might be for example a very concrete thinker may have dreams that are really telling us a lot because what the unconscious mind wants to bring to the surface doesn't have a lot of room to do that right because that person is you know it's thinking concretely and they're not thinking in analogies or parallel processes and they're not

opening up their mind that way so the dream is expressing something there's no other way of getting to the surface or it may be people who are very expressive and cultivate routes of

“expression you know having informative dreams I I think the one the one factor is being curious”

about ourselves right because then we tend to remember more what went on inside of us you know we tend to then either think through enough or write down and and become curious about ourselves I think being curious about what our brains are telling us during sleep can be very helpful I haven't known of another quality or characteristic of a person that really points strongly one way or another and sometimes dreams don't have meaning or they don't have meaning we can we can clearly discern

so we have to be careful we have to be respectful of how complex our minds are and and sometimes we're looking to read something in to a dream or you know we want to see it as a marker along the path where we know our thought is going so so we have to be very careful and very sort of level

headed but if we approach that way it can be remarkable amazing what dreams can sometimes tell us

and how and now something can come out allegorically in a person you know that is you know speaking to events that have unfolded across a year as you know in a large family system and you find in a very simple way an allegorical way the brain is capturing that so curiosity about ourselves in our dreams can really give us a lot of insight but we have to be we have to be careful about it and be respectful of our own complexity it's an unfortunate reality but tap water often

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and it sleek design fits beautifully on your countertop in fact I consider it a welcome addition to my kitchen it looks great and the water is delicious if you'd like to try Rora you can go to Rora dot com slash huberman and get an exclusive discount again that's Rora RRA dot com slash huberman in your previous book on trauma and you know our previous discussions about trauma you've said that anxiety trauma stress doesn't know the clock or the calendar time is erased

the negative feelings that one feels in those states seems like it's going to go on forever which is why it's so scary it's sort of suggests that you know the way that we thread

“ourselves through our life is by kind of segmenting time like that was then this is now”

like that's a healthy version you know that the past doesn't necessarily dictate the present the present doesn't necessarily dictate the future but I think for many people the fear

in those states we can't imagine feeling any differently but we cognitively know that we yeah

like this is just a state it's just like a thing what sorts of tools do you offer people to try and anchor themselves in those states should they just feel them perhaps just let them pass through or is it useful perhaps for them to anchor to some sort of thing outside the experience so

“that they they don't get carried by like it's like get out of the stress and and I think what I'm”

trying to do here is get to a fundamental question feel your feelings or be careful of feelings that that put you out of sense of time passage because those are tend to be dangerous feelings it has to start with understanding we have to be able to shine the light everywhere and look it what's true so as I found myself saying many times you know you can say that was then this is

now but your limbic system doesn't care right in our limbic system of the emotion systems in us so

so we can say well well the past is in the past right so I'm going to put it in the past we can say that but we're saying that through logical mechanisms in us so if there's logical mechanisms in limbic or motion mechanisms it's a simplification but you know we can look at the brain that way and say well the logic mechanisms are telling me that and are declaring that it's true because

“the clock says that it's in the past but the limbic the emotion systems have a very different”

reality it doesn't see it that way they don't know that there's a clock or the calendar so so it's not that that was then this is now a trigger in the now can make then now so we want to be aware of the emotions that are going on inside of us and the strong emotional states that we can

get into right because they're telling us something you know if something happens just in going through

life and something that might even seem small from the outside but I'm triggered or I'm queued in a way to be in a very deep emotional state of a fear of vulnerability like and I can map that to like I felt you know when X happened or like I felt 20 years ago in this happened right that's telling me something right it's telling me time is not like a steel rod going you know in one direction that's the logic systems in the limbic systems is like a string

“right and something just made me feel right now exactly the way took the string from now”

to this thing that happened say 10 years ago and it put the two parts of the string together that's real for me and it's telling me there is emotion and something from that time that I have not worked through right it was it was I aware of that am I kind of aware of it but I'm pushing it down under the surface if I'm having strong emotions where I'm lost in the past while in the present it's a marker of something and very often we get afraid of that we turn away

from it we're worried that that it's telling us we're not healthy or we're going to go crazy like these are the things that people say right when this happens and so for us to know like well that is not what's happening this is normal and human right that this is what will happen these these emotion systems that that pay very strong attention right to negative things that did the negative emotions you know fear and loss and terror and despair inside of us they don't know

the clock or the calendar so they're going to bring to our present right things from our past that that are then markers are saying go dig there because that is not just in the past they emotionally it is still in your present at this point in time what do you think is the most efficient way to root out and heal childhood traumas bringing compassionate curiosity to ourselves what we just look at our past and we look at it without sort of having a dog in the fight so to speak where

like I don't I don't have to see it a certain way right I don't have to look at this and sometimes people will say they have to make it less bad than it was because they they feel otherwise they won't be okay if they see all that was bad in it you know others might feel they have to look at the worst of it because they're they're trying to anchor to things in their in their life now that they're not happy within why that might be right so what it ends up doing is it brings so much

emotion into it that we can't look in a way that has equanimity right because we're living in the emotion now we can't feel no emotion if we're thinking about difficult things that have happened to us but to be able to have that observation of self of like what is going on inside of me what do I feel about it where does my own mind want to go do I want to minimize it do I want to take it and dial it up so that it'll explain why I did X or Y didn't do Y right so what we're trying to

observe our own motivations as we look at our childhood and and if we can gain more equanimity that way then we can come to understanding this idea that we don't have to be afraid to go and do that and to say okay I can look at this and I see this part of my childhood of this person in my

right we can look at that and say okay what what what am I going to do with that now it doesn't

“define who I am it doesn't determine any one single thing about me right if I can look at it with”

a calmness of mind and I can see the realness of how it's affected me right now I start talking about malibility kind of where we started with with malibility of ourselves and how we see ourselves and then I can start to make progress but we have to be able to look at ourselves and very often we just don't want to do that because we don't bring compassion you know we bring fear and criticism right but if we can just observe ourselves now we can get in touch with what

what did happen in childhood what am I making of that now right and then now maybe I might want to put those words outside of me in writing or in speech I might want to talk to a trusted

other or I might want to see a therapist about it so it's taking the strong emotion that can

keep us from understanding right which can get very complicated right if we bring fear to our past we're going to see it through the lens of fear if I know I can look at my past and I don't have to be afraid even if it raises difficult emotion in me a much more likely to keep a calm presence of mind than to learn some things about myself do you think that people look back and think about good things that happen to them often enough no I mean it's just a clear no not

often enough the the answer then is no we tend to have a bias in us towards the negative and we don't stop and think hey you know I did that really well or you know that didn't come out the way I wanted it to but I learned from it or I didn't come out the way I wanted it but I really tried and we tend not to do that and this bias towards the negative means we then start making stories of ourselves about the negative or we feel like well if I look at what I've done right you

know it's gone right in my life or what is going right then I'll get complacent or like what is there to be gained from that I'm gonna look at what's not the way I want it to be and really quite the opposite is true right if we're looking at what's gone well in our life at our successes and even things that weren't successes maybe from the outside but hey I I grew I learned something to the school of hard knocks taught me something you know then then we are bolstering ourselves

we're empowering ourselves by doing that so no we should all do a lot more of that and we wouldn't become complacent right we would become happier healthier more effective in our lives

“I think when we talk about looking backward most of us including myself just kind of”

reflexively go to okay my family growing up or elementary school middle school high school so on I have a colleague from the past that Larry Squire is a kind of a luminary in the field of of memory and it worked out a lot of stuff about human hippocampus and when I was visiting UC San Diego some years ago there were a bunch of photos on his office wall I was like oh cool like I was looking at some meetings and I figured if they're on his wall I'm allowed to look

at them so I'm like pro boner I know there's so and he said you know having photographs on your wall of times that were really good is very good for your for your adult memory and it cues up emotional states for you and this is where got interesting because he studied explicit and implicit memory the ones that were aware of versus the ones we're not aware of just to be to be cleared of people and he said even if you don't look at them deliberately each day when walking past them

if you have some you know implicit understanding about what those are you're surrounding yourself with positive memories yes and I thought that's pretty cool and he's not just somebody saying this right here this wasn't some you know just thing thrown out into the world this is arguably one of the people who knows more about human memory structure function than anybody last 200 years or so now that's cool and so I said you know so it should be party should be

and he just said just things and people and experiences that you liked he just put them up and I said do you find yourself looking at them on your wall and he goes yeah from time to time but he's like I'm basically in a vessel of awesome memories and doesn't you know solve all my

“problems but but why wouldn't you and I think that's such a cool idea and these days we spent a”

lot of time looking at other people's experiences a lot of news coming in and things like that

I wonder if we're just doing a lot less of this and as a last point I've always liked I mean

who knows what's really going on behind the scenes but I've always like you go into somebody's home and they you'll walk down a stairwell or up a stairwell sometimes and they've just got the wall lit with all these photos not necessarily big family sometimes yes sometimes no and you're like wow like they're like post in all their experiences and I think it's kind of cool I don't tend to do it but this is a version of thinking about and exposing one so kind of basking in the past

in a positive way I think it's kind of kind of cool maybe we should do more of it absolutely I think what he's talking about and what you're talking about here is actually being able to have control

foundation or unconscious mind and the unconscious mind sets parameters for us it's kind of the

“climate in which we're living and if that climate is being predisposed it's programmed right to”

have a bias towards the negative because we're thinking negative thoughts a lot of the time we're thinking about what we did wrong what we should have done differently what's going to go wrong then we're biasing the unconscious mind to throw to the surface the negative answer we should I might be able to do that no right we're biased towards the negative now we don't know why why did I say no instead of yes right that arises from the climate inside of me which is my unconscious

mind so he's saying hey you can sort of pre-program a bias into you towards the positive and it's

not a false bias those memories that are up on his wall are real right and whether he's looking

at them or he's just kind of glancing and he walks by and there's a registration inside you know that he that he's not even aware of right he's he is priming the unconscious mind to to see the

“positive side of things if you think so can I do that or yes I can right it changes things inside”

of him and he's then able to exercise control over his own climate and we can do that too and often what we're inadvertently doing is creating a climate of fear and a climate that is that lacks confidence right inside of us because we're just looking at the negative all the time whether it's about us or the world around us and that's a reason why the title of that book is what's

going right because there's way more going right in all of us and there is going wrong or we

wouldn't be here so why not primor cells with that the way that he was doing with the photographs on the wall that absolutely makes sense and it's not a polyanic concept it's not saying well just look at what's going right it's saying no this is consistent with what's real and true and it's good for you too it helps you be effective in the world it helps your mental health helping your mental health helps your physical health it everything about this aligns with truth

and it sets us up to be in better control of our lives and to be on the front foot as we're approaching life I'm going to start printing out some photos and posting them because I don't do enough of that because of all the online stuff I just I have photos but I just feel like it's just remembered this Larry Squire thing now as we were talking about this but I'm definitely going to do that yeah I'm going to do more of it too it's a good reminder to do that yeah our physical space is

you know to impact us so much and yeah there a lot of a lot of good memories and some hard ones too but I put up the good memories you know that it makes perfect sense to me why one wouldn't want to do that earlier we were talking about the sense of internal control that we feel the sense of being on one's own side when we're pushing off against something and I have to ask I I'm fascinated by scripture and my spirituality and notions of God and devil I mean

if people are told I'm not telling people what to believe but we are we are told many people are told that there are evil forces out there or perhaps even in us and there are positive forces out there and in us typically this is presented as God and devil just for sake of conversational stay with that do you think that it helps people choose better behaviors by being told and believing that there's a devil out there or inside of them to push against and therefore to be more on their

own side and of course if it's internal it's it's an aspect of their own side that is better than the bad decision maker in them right so the way I'm wording as a little complicated but I can't think of a simpler way to get there if so this seems like a brilliant idea right if it's true or not

“it's not up to me to tell people but one has to choose for themselves but if the best way to come”

to change one's behavior is to be on one's own side and the best way to be on one's own side is to not be controlled by something else and to actively be resisting that seems like this God devil thing is pretty rational I think maybe from the psychological perspective yes and no I think if we get too over reductionist you know there's a single force of good and there's a single force of evil I think our major religious tenets I think do see the world we live in is

more complicated than that that there's more than just a single force of good and a single force of evil because then I think what we tend to do is over identify either I want to be the good force but I can't be good enough and I've done something wrong and now I feel that I feel bad about myself because now I feel evil because I don't feel good enough or I feel that the evil in the world is clearly coming for me and it's directed for me it's a force directed

it may we can tend to personify then good and evil and and either over-identify or

wrong we feel bad right that that there can be a push towards self persecuting or really not

understanding ourselves if we oversimplify if we think in a broader way which I do think is

“consistent with with spirituality and I think it's consistent with the spirituality of major”

religious traditions and we see there are forces for good there pushes towards good in the universe around us and that includes within us and there forces towards what is not good towards looking the other way for example from someone's needs right not something that's pure evil like most of us aren't going to step on someone when they're down but could we be tempted to look the other way right if we see there's a lot of subtlety and nuance to how good and evil

plays out in the world around us and inside of ourselves then I think we're viewing ourselves

and the world around us much more consistent with what religion says and I think also we're science

guides us and is more and more guiding us as we have more and more knowledge and understanding now we feel that we're part of something greater than us right there forces the push towards good and forces the push towards evil forces the push towards construction and towards destruction and and we know how we want to be and where we want to be in that spectrum we want to be generative and we want to be making the world better than we left it we want to be bettering

“ourselves you know now we're being I think much more true to the reality that we”

experience as opposed to being so reductionist that we see one good one evil and where we're going to be you know in in that polarized opposite is it a reasonable goal to want to be happy go lucky

can I aspire to that and also be a productive person unfortunately no right happy go lucky

to me it implies that there's not an awareness that either difficult things in the world and the fact that they're difficult things in my own life right I think happy go lucky implies that we're not aware of how difficult life can be or maybe life has at times been so I don't think that you can be happy go lucky and I think it's good that you can't be because who who wants to lose the grounding of the things that are real in life that might take away the go lucky

part right I think that you can be happy right and I think that that's better than happiness that includes some turning away or some forgetfulness right so if we take away the go lucky

“which is I think not desirable or possible I do absolutely believe that you can be happy because”

what we want and I think there's studies that show us this and and just thinking about how humans have written and literature and philosophy across time of what do we mean when we say happy we do want to find peace contentment and the capacity for delight you know we just want to be able to just be and not have so much going on inside or coming at us right we all said we just want a little bit of peace I you know I want to just sometimes walk around and be able to look

up at the trees around me and and see that the trees are pretty right does that for me that's peace and and I think yes we we can all find our way to peace we may not be able to have it every moment we don't have to have it every moment to be happy so so we need some peace and we need some contentment then and contentment means that there's awareness of our lives of the things that have gone well and the things that haven't so I can find contentment in my life not every moment but I can

find it even holding in my mind awareness of tragedies that have happened in my life or things that I haven't done or performed about the way I would have ideally wanted to I can be aware of those things inside of me but be aware of the whole arc of my life and feel good about it you know as there was a thought about embracing our fate and embracing what we've created for ourselves in early humanist Nietzsche this was sort of written about of the faith that we create for ourselves

can we can we embrace it and want to live it over and over again even knowing the things in it that may be tragic or not great yes I think we can find peace we can find contentment and we can find the capacity for delight we all had it as children and if we don't have it now as adults there's something we can do about that we all need to be able to see something that just makes us light up so I think you and and all the rest of us it may be different how we're going to find it and how

much of it and how much time we live in happiness but I think the answer for you and me and everyone else is we can find happiness because we can weave peace contentment and delight into our lives so is it the case that the things that bring us delight make us for moments feel very joyful what I'm hearing is that has to be on a backdrop of some hard things and some strivings that the goal is not complete peace in ease I think in complete peace in ease isn't

possible right I think for most of us you know life has brought difficulties for everyone in one way

to think that we need to not have that anywhere in our minds in order to feel good in order to be happy

I think tells us that we can't be happy being human and often times it leads us to say well just I want to not worry about anything I don't have anything weighing on me you know we start listing about your things that sound like death right when we're trying to talk about how we're going to be happy right and like that's that's not what we're going for right I do want to have times of peace when like I'm not thinking about bad things that have happened I'm just at

peace and I'm looking at the tree or the birds sitting up in the tree or you know the log floating down the river which which made me probably a lot of peace not that long ago so we can have these moments it has to also be an awareness of our lives and we have to at times be able to have in

our minds the things that are not the way we want them to be and the things that are tragic and

“still feel good about our lives I think that's how we find real happiness and we're not just looking”

for escapes because often the happy go lucky part is we're we're looking for an escape and it's kind of easy to to to feel that way sometimes if a person chooses an escape and it could be even in a substance where okay it felt good for a couple of hours but at what cost right we're not looking for a escape what we're looking for is is the ability to apprehend our own lives feel enough in control of our own lives that I don't have to be really afraid of the future I know that

there may be scary things in and wrong in the meet them as best I can I don't have to be afraid of the future and I feel good about my life I feel enough in control and I have enough

understanding that I can say okay I'm I'm good with me at the moment and you know now that

moment has become another moment and I'm moving forward and I'm doing the best I can because these this sequence of moments are the only the only time I'm alive and I want to be really present for it there used to be a lot of articles written and you could still find the stuff online about you know regrets that people had close to the end of their life and you know no one ever said they wish they spent more time at the office I don't know I know some people that

loved their work and love their work did they love it to the you know to the detriment of their

“family in some cases yes in a lot cases no and so I don't like those lists I think those lists”

serve as prompts for asking questions am I over invested in one area versus another but I'm guessing you've spent some time with people who are close to the end of their life or at the end of their life yes have you ever encountered someone who like really nailed it you didn't think they were just telling you a story about how they really they felt really good about how they had spent their mental life and their energies um we don't hear about those people very often yes

but we just don't we hear though you know no one lies on their deathbed thing you know you know we we hear all this stuff you're not supposed to do um are there any insights or just and if you can't remember just just feelings that arrived for you when talking to these people that you genuinely believe or like if they didn't hit the bull's eye they were darn close yes yeah what does that what did that look like or feel like and what did they say it makes me think

“actually of a real example in my own life where a family member much older than me he would probably”

would be 120 so if you were still alive so he was very very old at the time who had really made something of himself he didn't have much in the way of education and and he'd been a successful member of the community he'd given back to the community he had no education he started a bank and you know the bank became international and he and he was so good and so helpful to the place he had come from and he'd had real tragedies in his life he'd lost a child and when he learned that I was

going to medical school a long long time ago he asked to see me and he was in his actually what have been in his early 90s at the time and he told me that he was happy with his life and that he realized that he could die at any moment and he understood and he accepted that that he tried to do the best that he could and he'd made something of himself and that there were sadness in his life and and things he certainly wished would have been different but that he was happy with his life

and he was okay with dying and and he wanted me to know that he thought that was a good way to feel right and and that it was tempting to to want to to be so much and put so much pressure on any self that you that you could achieve a lot and not be able to feel good about it and it's not it's not something I forgot I mean I do think of that with with fair frequency and it made me think of that here I thought that's now that's a person who's lived a good life and now I wasn't

thinking it at the time but he was clearly describing being up at a half piece and have contentment to feel good about his life even knowing the things that were not great and then the capacity for delight there were things still things he was very very excited about in his face would still light up and and I think that was probably earlier role modeling for me of oh like that

and it's really stuck with me that's awesome I I think we need to think a lot more about

what's going right what went right yes we were talking about that today yes what went right yes what's going right in my life what I've made go right in my life right what hasn't gone right and I showed up anyway right that's part of what's going right yeah we so easily default to the losses or it which can also be beautiful in some sense sometimes sometimes but we we so easily go to what's wrong what's wrong but I'm also hearing that happy go lucky and just

think about what's going right that's not the answer either it's just not it there has to be that contrast this is what I'm hearing you saying today yes yes we have to be living in an examined

life in order to live intentionally so so yes we do have to look at ourselves but the good news is

that's okay you know most of us don't want to be dragged kicking and screaming to looking at ourselves but that's just because we're afraid and if we know I'm not going to find anything there that's going to really shock me or probably not going to find anything I'm not already well aware of even if I you know even if I'm trying to hide it from myself and then there's a process I can go go go if I look at myself I can use the knowledge to make things better you know then that's

the simple goodness of it's okay to look at ourselves we have to but we also get to right and

“that's how we're going to live good lives it's how we live the best life we can get and and”

maybe we get to that point where we can look back and feel good about the choices that we've made and maybe feel okay about choices we've made even if they haven't let the places where we've wanted them to be that we can still embrace ourselves and the lies we've led if you don't mind I just want to ask a couple of questions that are a little bit different than the ones we've been exploring was writing the book informative for you about the mind about people in a way that

all the clinical work and and certainly the podcast you've done it was it was it different did it did it teach you anything and if you if so are you willing to share at one or two of those shows yeah I think writing about what we know helps us know it better right because because part of knowing something is also being aware that we don't know everything about it so then when we organize our thoughts and so I'm doing the best I can to put this down to other people can

understand and we just have to learn from that process so so yeah I do I do feel that I learned as part of writing it and incorporating clinical examples and just to incorporating events from life

“it helped me I think have a full review of how I do do you think that this says a lot about”

how we're being humans in the world and and you know how our mind is structured that there is this parallel to the body and you know and we can bring it to the fore and I feel very hopeful and optimistic that that it kind of holds together and you know in it and it leads somewhere so yeah I think I got I got a lot out of organizing my thoughts better in writing the book last question which is completely outside the world one for what we've been talking about has

Lex Friedman texted you back because he hasn't texted me back in a while I have not heard from Lex Friedman yeah despite multiple efforts there has been no response yeah there are rumors that he's in Dagestan and there are rumors that he's in Austin and he and Lex we we love you and you don't have to text us back but just maybe just throw up a sign that you're okay we're going to send a search party to Dagestan right and if you're not there then we'll really

really travel Dr Paul County this was awesome I have to say I'm not going to repeat everything I promise but I have to say what I love so much about talking with you is that you're like exploring these caverns of things and then these gems just pop out like this idea that we can

“be on our own side by seeing what we don't want to be controlled by I think I know that's really”

going to resonate with people because behavioral changes like the hardest thing and behavioral change when people realize they're not changing it's like a double whammy right so that alone is enormous in and the focus on what's right I'm not trying to just repeatedly you know state the title of the book I mean what's going right is it's just so vital I think especially in this time when you turn on the news and it's just like all these things that are challenging to the world

which certainly many of them need attention but focusing on what's going right what has gone right

is just it's so it's so essential right now and it's really what I've learned from you today that

it's really the lifeblood of what it is to be a joyous human being with the caveat that we also have to address the challenges and if they're there the traumas and and that there's really no

maybe that we can do that we have to do that we get to do that that there should be an excitement

“that we bring an enthusiasm and hopefulness that we bring to that process well thank you for being”

here today thank you for writing the book it's going to serve so many people and yeah thank you for taking your training and your clinical experience and putting it out into the world you know you don't have any obligation to do that and most everything that you know and that transpires in those sessions everything would not serve the larger world to the extent that it does where you're

not willing to you know get out here and there and I'm share with people so thank you you're

clearly one of the leading public educators on the mind and the self and navigating this life landscape so thank you so much for coming here today and come back again please say you're very welcome thank you for giving me the opportunity to do so and it's my pleasure thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Paul Conti to learn more about his work and to find links to his new book what's going right please see the links in the show note captions if you're learning

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this podcast if you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests or topics that you like me to consider for the human lab podcast please put those in the comment section on YouTube I do read all the comments for those of you that haven't heard I have a new book coming out it's my

very first book it's entitled protocols an operating manual for the human body this is a book that I've

been working on for more than five years and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience and it covers protocols or everything from sleep to exercise to stress control protocols related to focus and motivation and of course I provide the scientific

“substantiation for the protocols that are included the book is now available by presale at”

protocolsbook.com there you can find links to various vendors you can pick the one that you like best again the book is called protocols an operating manual for the human body and if you're not already following me on social media I am human lab on all social media platforms so that's Instagram, X, Threads, Facebook and LinkedIn and on all those platforms I discuss science and science-related tools some of which overlaps with the content of the human lab podcast but much of which is

distinct from the information on the human lab podcast again it's human lab on all social media platforms and if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter the neural network newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcasts summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep how to optimize dopamine deliberate cold exposure we have a foundational fitness protocol that covers

cardiovascular training and resistance training all of that is available completely zero-cost you simply go to humanlab.com go to the menu tab in the top right corner scroll down to newsletter and enter your email and I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Paul Conti and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science.