Transform Your Anxiety Into Your Greatest Strength | Dr. Wendy Suzuki

90% of the population identifies as suffering from anxiety. >> Okay, so 90% are affected by anxiety.

“Is it possible for us to change the way we think about anxiety?”

And start to heal our brain, heal our mindset around the topic of anxiety. So it doesn't affect us or consume us, is that possible? >> Absolutely, it is possible. And I think the first step is to realize that anxiety and our stress response, which is causing all those negative feelings.

Evolutionarily, that is a protective mechanism, it is necessary for our survival. It was and it is necessary. So it was evolved so that if there is a line common at us or dangerous situation that you automatically have that increased heart rate, that increased respiration, all the blood goes to your muscle so you can run away.

Our problem is that in this day and time, there's not a lot of lines coming at us, but there's all the worry that we see every single day when we look in the newspaper and look at our Instagram feeds, and that worry of a possible terrible thing that might happen that also activates our stress and anxiety systems.

“So, but it is there for protection. How do we harness that and bring it back into submission?”

So it can help us in the way that it was developed or evolved to help us. That is to put us into action. I want to use that energy to go into action to try and check out all those things.

I don't know when your anxiety hits you, but it always hits me right before I'm going to go to sleep.

And then being, you know, what have this happens tomorrow? Did I do that? What have that happens? What have that happens? And so that action, the way I use it is, I say, that's okay. That is going to be my two-do list for tomorrow. I'm going to take action and knowing that I can and will take action helps me go back to sleep.

Because it still happens. I used to be extremely difficult for me to sleep until I hit about 30, 31 years old. And I would sit in bed for probably an hour to an hour and a half, almost every night. Anxious worrying, thinking, judging myself. Whatever it may be, stressing about something I haven't done yet or really just kind of beating myself up emotionally.

And what I've learned, there's two things that I've learned. What were the three things that I've learned of helped me go to sleep extremely fast in the last eight years? That has been like an automatic switch for me. One is going through a transition of fully sharing and starting to heal the process of my shame from the past. So finding a therapist and talking about what I'm ashamed, shameful about.

And really, reviewing the parts of myself that I never wanted anyone to know about.

There are so many things that I didn't like about myself that was ashamed of or felt insecure around, and it made me feel like a prisoner to my own thoughts. Because I felt like I was in a sense hiding myself to the world and to the people closest to me. Like certain people didn't even know who I was. So I felt like an imposter at times. I was still a loving, fun, generous human, but I felt like there was a few things that people didn't know about me.

And when I started to open up about those things, I felt inner peace. It didn't all go away, but I felt like a lot more peace. Number two was I started to focus on everything at night when I was grateful for from the day. I was like, okay, if there was anything good today, what was it? If it was all bad, for how to be something, I'm alive.

You know, I'm healthy, whatever, maybe I have a roof. So it's just focusing on anything and I do that every night where things about two things can be grateful for. That brings me another level of peace.

“And then I think about what am I going to do tomorrow to help people?”

How am I going to serve? So it's like healing the shame, focusing on gratitude and thinking about how am I going to serve. Not just, what do I need for me, but how can I show for other people? That kind of three-part combination gives me so much peace before I go to bed. Oh, that's so beautiful.

And it's a practice, you know, it's like a constant practice.

It's not always perfect, but it's a practice, yeah.

I love the thinking about something you're going to do for somebody else tomorrow coming from this practice of healing your own shame. One of the superpowers in good anxiety that comes from your own anxiety. This is a beautiful example that you just told me is the superpower of empathy. For yourself or others. For first for yourself and recognize you to in yourself and then giving it out to others.

Because just as you described your journey, a lot of our own anxieties have been with us since we were a little. Say you anxieties.

For your lifetime sometimes. What was yours? So I have many, but the one that I talk about here is shyness and kind of social anxiety. And I've learned because I'm a teacher and because I want to become an author, I've learned the skills not to have those kinds of anxieties,

but I was painfully shy as a young girl. And even into college, I found myself in social situations and wanting to join in not feeling comfortable or even in class. And so I realized that that has become my superpower as a teacher. Because I know when I'm standing at the front of the screen. My shyness.

Why is that?

Because when I'm standing at the front of the classroom, there are always those students.

They say, "Oh, I know the answer. I know the answer." And I know that there's many more that want to talk to me that want to show me what they know, want to have that interaction, but can't do that. And so what do I do? I make sure that I am there 15 minutes before I stand there.

I talk to the students before I stay after class. Anybody that wants to come up for a casual conversation where you don't have to be the one raising your hand. And I didn't even realize it until I wrote this book. But that is a superpower of in-class empathy. And I have that particular form of empathy because of my particular form of anxiety.

My social anxiety. And so imagine the 90% of people that have their particular form of anxiety. They know what it feels like. They know what's going through many of others of our minds. And what if you turn that around?

And you do what you do.

“How can I help somebody else in this way that I know I've struggled?”

But I also know what can help. Sure. Okay. So that's when my favorite superpower is. How do we know how to turn anxiety into something good?

Like, if 90% of the US or the world feels anxiety. I think the actual study was about the US. 90% of the US said claims that they have anxiety at some level, right? Exactly. And what does anxiety do for us when we don't have attacks coming our way?

Like, if we're constantly in a state of anxiety, what does it do the brain? And what does it do to our immune system into our body and our emotions? Yeah. So that's a great question.

The answer is long-term anxiety.

We'll have terrible effects on all of the physiological systems that are being activated.

“So what's happening when you have a stress response?”

Your heart rate is going up. Your respiration is going up. The long-term effects of anxiety and stress are heart disease. The other thing that's happening when you're in a constant state of stress is that blood is being shunted from your digestive and reproductive systems to your muscles because you're supposed to be running away from the lion

and you're sitting there worrying about your taxes instead or whatever, the Delta variant instead. And so long-term effects, ulcers, reproductive problems, long-term reproductive problems with long-term anxiety. And that's just the body. So now we get to my favorite body area at the brain.

And so long-term stress will literally start to first kill off the dendrites of your neurons, the input structures of your brain cells in two key brain areas.

The hippocampus critical for long-term memory in the temporal lobe and the prefrontal cortex critical for decision-making.

Focus and attention. And so for example PTSD, if you have PTSD, classic example of long-term stress, your whole temporal lobe gets smaller. Why? Because you first start to degrade the size of your individual brain cells and then you start to kill them off. And so that is not memory problems in sue.

So it is not-- Long-term also the same as chronic, is that so long-term stress, long-term anxiety is chronic anxiety and stress. Exactly. Which, what's the definition of chronic?

“Does that just mean something that's consistent over a period of time?”

Over months, over months and years. And of course there's different levels of intensity. Also, I should say that this book Good Anxiety is not addressing clinical anxiety. That is a different animal. For clinical anxiety, just as you would do if you had a broken leg, you need medical treatment.

This is not a medical treatment for somebody that has chronic anxiety. This is the 90% of people say, "Yeah, I have some anxiety every day. I call it every day anxiety." So these are some of the approaches and mindsets that you can use to start to shift that negative effect of anxiety and shift it in to the basic brain. The basic brain activation that it is and start to help motivate yourself to address the things that you are afraid of.

You know, generally this is before the pandemic.

Yes. Another of public speaking is one of the most common fear of money fears, another big one. I'm just thinking about all the my own anxieties that I talked about in the book. Let's see here. Early on, social anxiety is, you know, they mirror the clinical levels of anxiety.

Okay. One is general anxiety disorder is just kind of life in situations and interacting with anything come to my start to produce anxiety. Yeah. Social anxiety, obsessive principles of disorders, one can start to worry obsessively about whatever that thing is that worries you. And of course, the thing that is on everybody's mind right now is the uncertainty around the coronavirus and everything that's in the future. We can't predict we don't know what's going to happen in the fall with schools or work for that matter.

And that uncertainty is the key driver for a lot of anxieties.

Well, uncertainty in general is is uncertainty about my money uncertainty if I go to the social event and my, you know, I'm going to fit in.

It's just kind of the uncertainty of life. Yes. Around different topics. Yes. It's uncertainty about my parents.

“I think it is they healthy years just the uncertainty of life.”

Yeah. So that sounds like it's one of the main causes of daily everyday anxiety. Yes. Absolutely. How do we get comfortable with uncertainty so it doesn't consume us?

Yeah. That's a great question. How do we embrace it and enjoy uncertain and have fun and play and connect with it in a different relationship? Yeah. Yeah.

So that is a great question. And the answer that I provide in the book is a multi-spot kind of strategy. And one strategy that's easy to understand is how do you create more joy in your life to kind of counteract all of these negative things coming. Coming out. And so one of my favorite, this is in the toolbox part of the book where I go through immediate medium-term and long-term tools that you can use to flip your anxiety from bad to good.

And my favorite, one of my favorite ones is called Joy Conditioning. Joy Conditioning is mining your own memory banks for those joyous, funny, pick your favorite positive emotion events in your life. And consciously bringing them back up and revivifying them and bringing up those emotions. And my little trick for that is try and find a memory that you would love that has an all factory component to it.

I want component. All factory. A particular smell associated with it. Why because smells are really evocative of memories is very easy to bring up everything associated with that memory if it has a smell. It's okay if it doesn't. But the one that I use is, I love this one because everybody might have an example of this.

“I remember particularly yoga class I went to in New York City and I was doing so well.”

You know, up dog, down dog, I flip my dog and I'm really well. And then I was doing the posts that I do the best, which is Shavasana. So it's in Shavasana. It's the one we just laid down. Yeah, I do that really well.

Just laying your back for your child's posts. Like that. I do that even better than child's posts. I lay on my back, Shavasana. And I was feeling really good about myself, had this great class.

And then on top of all of that, the teacher came around and she put some lavender lotion on her hand and she waves it under my nose.

And she gave me the most luscious five second neck massage that I've ever had in my life.

Because you know, I worked out hard as feeling really good about myself. And so I literally in my purse out there is a little vile of lavender essence.

“And when I need a little pick me up of remember the time I just felt so good.”

It was just this relaxing, feel good moment. I smell that lavender. And that memory, that is my joy condition. I'm joy condition myself with that memory. But you can do that with whatever memory you want.

Joy conditioning. Joy conditioning. Is that a scientific term or something? That is Wendy Dr. Professor Wendy Suzuki's term. And it's based on my 25 years of studying how memory works.

And applying all of my knowledge to addressing anxiety. And it's really a direct antidote to fear conditioning, which we all experience automatically.

Was robbed.

And I walked around the corner, my door was the only one around the corner.

“And I still remember walking around the corner and seeing my door crowbarred open, hanging open,”

when it was supposed to be locked. And I walked in, which was not the smartest thing. Nobody was there. But every time I walked around that corner for months and months, I felt that.

That's your condition. I didn't flip it. So that didn't go away. And I didn't move. Yeah, I didn't have to move.

It went down slowly. But I, you know, to counteract that with something like joy conditioning is, you know, invite friends over, create wonderful memories, wonderful safe events in that same space.

It never went away and I'll tell you why.

Because that is a safety mechanism. You don't want to, you know, the brain doesn't allow us to obliterate anything. This isn't like that movie. Um, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Yes.

So, um, we can't do that. But we can counteract that very protective mechanism. Actually, I don't want to eliminate that. I want to be wary of areas and situations that were really, really bad for me. That is, you don't eliminate it.

I don't want to eliminate it. What if it's been something traumatic though, or someone breaking in or sexual assault against you? Yeah. Something traumatic.

How do we learn to heal the memory and the emotion of that fear of that trauma?

Yeah. To live with ourselves or to live in the environment of a home that we can't leave yet. Yeah. Is it just more joy conditioning or other things? Yeah.

So, this is where we get to that boundary between clinical levels and what this addresses. I'm really not addressing, you know, I went to Afghanistan. I have, you know, terrible PTSD. That's not that.

“This can help a little bit, but it does not substitute for you need to go to a physical session.”

Therapist. Therapist. And so, yeah, that is not a substitute. However, you can use these in addition to your, you know, therapy approaches. Any tool, I think, is a good tool to try.

Yes. What's another tool we can use in order to quiet some of the negative anxiety that keeps us from joy. That keeps us from feeling good about ourselves. That's another tool you like. Yeah.

I mean, we already said this, but I think this is one that so many people can use. And it was really inspired by a really good lawyer that I happened to meet at a party one day. And I told her, I ran this book about anxiety. And she said, I am the lawyer that I am today because of my anxiety. And I said, oh, tell me that.

And she said, you know, I use my anxiety for all the different arguments that the other side is going to put up against me or all the things the judge might say that becomes my to do list. Like what if the judge says that what if the other side brings this up, that up. And I turn that into actionable items. And so because I do that on a systematic basis, and I've gotten really good at that. I plug all the holes in my case.

“And I think you could apply that to anything in your life.”

And I love it because it is an act of turning the energy of just worrying. Oh, what if this, what if this into an action? That is really at the core of this book. And you turn that inner turmoil into an action that is positive. And this is one example that's easy to understand how I do that.

Even if you get to the top three things on your list and do something about that, there is a satisfaction that comes from that. And you can feel that anxiety coming down with every checkmark that you do. People don't turn their anxiety into a positive action. What happens if they stay in it?

Yes. This is just what happens. Well, then we go back to what are the chronic effects? They get sick. Part disease long term stress.

Right. And they stay in this, in this negative emotional state. They stay in the state of pure worry, no action. And that is that is difficult to maintain. And it starts to interfere.

It's exhausting. It's exhausting emotionally draining to be in a constant state of stress anxiety and worry. Yes. Rainy. It's got to make you look older, feel tired.

I mean, I'm not sure what the research says about longevity. If someone has a lot of stress and warnings, I do.

Yeah.

“You probably die younger than you should.”

Yes.

What have you studied anything about the blue zones?

What about the people that live in the blue zones? Yeah. How they manage anxiety or if they have anxiety. And is there some benefit to having some anxiety? Or is it better to just have this kind of worry-free life?

Yeah. Happy go lucky. I'm not going to let anything bother me. I forgive everyone. Just a matter of what you do.

I'm just a happy human being. Is there some benefit to that or now? Yeah. So I think that I think about anxiety now and all that worry and anger and all these other things that come. With anxiety.

“I really think of it as kind of the wind in my cells.”

That is the little fire under my back side that gets me to do things. Get me excited. Get me to go towards the fear and get through it because I know there's something good on the other side. And without it, I mean, that is, I think there's certain perhaps times in your life if you are retired and aren't in this situation where you're dealing with the world that that could be great.

That is the, you know, the happy go lucky. No worries. But for most of us, I think it is very beneficial to learn how to take that fear that is depleting us. It is exosiness. It's making us look older and turn that into something that makes you feel better about yourself.

It decreases the overall stress in your life. And frankly, it is more practical to say, look, I'm not going to be happy go lucky all the time. Nobody's happy go lucky all the time. I'm, but I'm going to use that bad stuff that that is inevitably going to come in. And I am going to learn from it.

I'm going to use it to my best advantage. And one thing we haven't talked about yet, I'm going to learn about myself to thinking about my anxiety. Rather than just trying to say, I hate it go away. What does it tell us about ourselves? And like for me, my social anxiety told me how much I love and I appreciate deep friendships.

Because I didn't have them, because I was too scared to start them. I was so shy and it kept me isolated. And there's something wrong about that.

I mean, that that contributed to the isolation in the first place.

And so the realization, and because part of the time it's like, I'm alone wolf. I'm like being alone, you know, it's okay. But actually the truth was I love being with people. It motivates me. So I had to get through that shyness to get that joy on the other side.

And so that was a learning that I went through.

“When someone says they like being alone wolf, what does it mean?”

No one likes to be alone. I mean, we like to be alone in moments, but no one's to be alone and not have close friendships, right? Yeah. What do we really say when we say, you know what? I just want to be alone or I want to be alone wolf is that we don't.

We've been embarrassed in the past by social settings where people made fun of us. So what does that mean kind of in general do you think? You know, I think trust people. Yeah, I'm it's difficult to deal with, you know, reading the cues. And it's just confusing or overwhelming.

You know, a criticism of, you know, the monk lifestyle. There are alone all the time. They don't have to deal with, you know, what if I don't like? Yeah. The other monk, you know, I'll just go off to my cave and I'll be all alone.

And then you don't have to deal with it. The real test comes when you do have to deal with that and disagreements. What if somebody doesn't disagree with somebody to disagree with you? That brings up all of these things that humans were evolved to do. We're social animals.

And I think that, you know, there's, there's, there are social butterflies.

I was never a social butterfly.

We'll never be a social butterfly. But it is not true what I told myself that, you know, I just love to be alone. And I, you know, I'm better on my own. No, I'm much better with people. So I think there's, it is that that difficulty.

Social interactions. We were, we were evolved to be social, but it is scary. And some of us are not that, that fear. So I think it can be terrifying if you don't know how to handle the emotions of it. If you haven't learned the tools, yeah.

On how to navigate when someone lets you down or when someone, Yeah. Talks behind your back or when someone lies to you or when someone breaks their commitment.

It is. And we could wall ourselves up and protect ourselves.

“But I think that creates more stress and anxiety.”

It's like feeling alone and feeling disconnected of people. Yeah. I think it's even harder. Yeah. But that's, it seems safe for the moment.

So it does. It does. And I do believe that, you know, you give, you get what you give. And so, you know, put out there. I could tell by your evening ritual that you like to put out there.

What can I give? Absolutely. To other people. And the more you do that, it's not to say that nobody will ever turn around and try and, You know, go behind your back about something.

We do, yeah. But you, you are building so much good will in the people that do appreciate it. It is like this like protective cocoon. So the more you do go out there and give to people, the more protected. And that is going back to vulnerability.

The more vulnerable you are. You know, I want, I like you. I want to help you.

Here's, here's what I can do.

This would make me feel good. That's a very vulnerable thing to do and to offer. And I think that that, but that pays. Mm-hmm. Even though sometimes it's hard and, and it's scary to reach out.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Adam Grant talks about that in his book. I think give and take. I think it's called. It's like there's giveers and takers.

And you want to learn not to just constantly give to the takers. But make sure you're going to give and take. Yeah. I love you said that the word you feel should, should help you move towards your fear. Yeah.

So if you're worried about being a social setting,

“you should think about it and say, okay, what can I do to help me overcome this?”

Yeah. How can I, I really like to create exercises and kind of games when I'm afraid. Yeah. And I say, okay, I used to be one of the teenager. I was afraid to talk to girls.

I think like most teenage boys, I don't know. Maybe I was the only one. But I was afraid to talk to girls. And I remember I was, I told this on my show many times. But I was sick and tired of being, I mean, so much anxiety.

Getting rejected by just saying hello at 16. And I said, okay, for this summer, I am going to. Every time I feel butterflies when I see a girl. Yeah. I'm going to go right up to an have a conversation.

And I need to go up to her. I can't, I can't walk away. I have to put myself through this. Yeah.

And the first couple of weeks was horrible.

It was terrifying. Because I got rejected. I was stuttering. I was stumbling over myself. I was like, girls were running away.

I like the whole thing. But then eventually you gain more and more confidence. You get a little win. Okay. She talked to me for 10 seconds.

And so now it's you build your confidence. Yeah. And I think if you create a game or an experiment for yourself. And so you know, I'm just going to do a social experiment around this. I did this with public speaking as well for a year.

Yeah. I went every week. And it was terrifying. I went to public speaking class. Wow.

And I was like, I'm going to do this experiment and see what I can prove every week. Yeah. I think if you do that, it becomes more. We go back to joy. How do you create joy around the anxiety?

Yeah. How can you make it a fun game? Mm-hmm. Not something that's like this terrible, fearful thing. But I kind of make a game out of this.

Yeah. Yeah. For me, that is word wonders. Mm-hmm. By creating experiments, games.

Yes. And trying to throw some joy in there. Even in so stressful. Yeah. Yeah.

No. I love that idea. I love that idea. And bringing friends in to help you. Absolutely.

Because you were saying that you shared these parts of yourself, presumably with close friends. And I had that same thing. You know, I wanted to project. I was that 10 percent. That's what I'm not anxious.

Really? I am happy all the time. You know. It's my face. Yeah.

And the truth was that I wasn't.

And it was fear of, well, if they saw real me, then they never want to.

And I'd be, you know, with fewer friends that I have right now. And that's terrible.

“But you have to learn how to share your authentic self.”

Or else you get in authentic friends. That's true. I learned. Gosh. Why is it?

You said that we both said this. You know, if people actually knew this about me, then they wouldn't love me. Yeah. Or they wouldn't like me. Yeah.

Or I'd be alone. Or they wouldn't want to spend time with me. Yeah. Is that something you think is a fear for a lot of people? People actually knew this about me.

Yeah. What I was most afraid of. What I'm most ashamed of. Yeah. I'm not going to care about it.

They actually knew this is how I felt. Yeah. They wouldn't love me. You think that's a common theme in the world? I think every single person, I think that same 90% that are suffering from anxiety, has

that about something in their life. Because it's hard to share, even the most, I'm sure Oprah, even the things that, you know, although she's obviously shared, shared a lot. Yes. Very difficult to do.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure everybody has something like that.

of friends where they feel comfortable or family members, where they do feel comfortable

“enough to let that guard down and let it slip out.”

You know, what's happening if that really comes out and it's a yearning that gets suppressed, I think. Yes. Yeah. It's funny when I started to reveal the things I didn't like about myself or I wasn't

proud of myself about eight years ago and started to really incorporate that on a more consistent basis in my life.

And I have this platform where I'm always talking about my insecurities and doubts.

My audience knows all my, my darkness. It gives me, it's funny. The more I started, before I did it, I had so much anxiety and worry and stress. Yeah. Thinking about sharing things.

Yeah. Yeah. Two close friends, family members, and then eventually I started to open it more on my podcast here. But since I've done that, it's like the worry and stress goes away. Because I'm like, oh, I'm still alive.

Yeah. I have friendships and my family didn't abandon me. Yeah. And in fact, it brought me closer to people. Yeah.

It strengthened the bonds and connections with my friends, family. It created new relationships I didn't have because people trusted me more. They could see me better. Yeah. They could understand and empathize with me.

They could, you know, they just felt like I was more real. Whatever might be. Yeah.

“And I think that also allows me to sleep better at night.”

Okay. I am being a hundred percent authentic to who I am. Yeah. Revealing myself, opening up, being vulnerable in conversations. Yeah.

It feels great. You know, I feel like, and people still like to have great friendships. Yeah. Yeah. So what do I need to worry about?

Yeah. People know all my stuff that I don't like about me. Yeah. And they still like me. You know, it's like, they're my friend.

You know, and the people that don't like me, okay? They weren't meant for me. Yeah. Exactly. It feels more peace.

Yeah. It's out of no. I know exactly what you're feeling. And what you're saying it, it really opens up this new kind of communication route when you are vulnerable and honest.

And it gives permission to the other person to be vulnerable. Yeah.

Honest or just be there to listen because that's also very, very powerful.

One of the experiments that I did in my lab this last year was trying to find the most, the easiest, shortest intervention that we can do with students that would decrease their very high levels of anxiety. What was that? And so we tested many things just to walk outside, chair yoga.

All these things that can do online, this was all virtual. But one of the things that was very effective that I was so excited about is a mindful conversation. So what we did is we didn't go deep. We didn't want to have them reveal some, you know, deep dark secret. But what we did is my student researchers had a script.

They shared a real story about the favorite vacation. Why it was favorite? It was real. They were really trying to share this experience with them. And then invited the student who they didn't know who was our experiment.

To share the same thing. And in that year, where everything was virtual and it was, you know, professors just said, okay, now learn this five chapters, go ahead and do it. And to have somebody there listening to their story, listening deeply and asking real questions because they were, it was only 10 minutes completely decreased their anxiety.

Really. By them sharing and someone listening or by them also listening to someone else's story.

“You know, I think it was really the sharing and have somebody else listening because the first part,”

my, my student is always went first.

They didn't know what exactly was going to happen. So that was just to lay the groundwork. And I think the interaction and the good feeling started to develop when they started to open up, sharing this story and seeing, oh my God, somebody is really listening to me. They're asking me a question about about the event that meant something to them.

And that it just shows how powerful social interactions are. And even this short 10 minute thing between, we were, we were, we thought about, should we get two friends to try and have a conversation that was too hard to control. But I could control, we could control exactly the protocol of this stranger student and the kind of interaction. Interesting.

Yeah. Do you, is there any research on if men or women are more anxious to, is there any research around this?

I think this, I should know this. Or we just all messed up equally. I think we're all messed up equally. There's more women with depression.

“Depression and anxiety are related, but you know, have different systems.”

Um, but I think it's pretty equal. Okay. The reason I was, I'm curious is because when I was studying about masculinity, usually I wrote a book called The Mask of masculinity, which is kind of the, the mass that men wear to project and protect themselves from showing emotion and showing,

revealing themselves. Mm-hmm.

Um, and when I was on tour talking about it, I would always ask in every city.

And about 50% men and women would show up and I'd always ask, like, okay, for the, for the ladies here, raise your hand if you have a girlfriend or girlfriend that you talk to once a week about your stress, your worry, your challenges in life, your work issues, your, your body issues. Whatever it might be dealing with, that you have someone one or multiple girlfriends you speak with on a weekly basis. Yeah.

And pretty much the entire room of women raise their hands and say, yes, every week, I have at least one person. Uh-huh. And I say, keep your hands up if you do this every day. You call a girlfriend on the phone, you have lunch, you're just talking about something for a few minutes. Yeah.

“And I go, I doesn't make you feel to be able to talk about these things.”

I'm like, it feels great to be able to share this. Yeah. Okay, for the men in the room, raise your hand if once a month, you get together with a guy friend and you talk about your vulnerabilities, your insecurities, your body issues, your, your, your challenges at work and you really open up to this other male friend. Yeah.

Maybe one or two guys and out of hundreds would raise their hand. Yeah. And the, and I would say, you guys are part of a church group, right? Or you meet once a month and it's like in front of an hour and you do these things. Yeah.

Yes. And I say, okay, I go back to the ladies and I'm going to say ladies, imagine not being able to do this once a month. The only doing this once a month, how to make you feel? They're like, I feel more anxiety, more stress. Right.

And I go imagine these men who never do this in the room.

They never share these things. Yeah. Not saying all men, but a lot of men don't feel like they have one guy friend. They can open up and reveal to you. Yeah.

And I feel like maybe there's another symptom, maybe it's just like they just walled themselves up and don't share emotion, and there's, there's other internal factors or physical elements that they're caused from that stress. Yeah.

“But I think it's, yeah, either way, I think it's important for everyone to learn how to share these things.”

Yeah. Based on that, study you did, I think it's when we share whatever it is. Yeah. Even if it's five to ten minutes, it decreases the stress and the anxiety seems like it goes down. Yeah.

And I feel like we've got to create better friendships or relationships or therapists or whatever that we can connect to. And have that consistent communication stream. Yeah. Because otherwise when we trap, when we hold onto it, just bad things happen. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. So how does that work? What is the, what is the change that we need in raising boys and working to boys? This is a whole, I mean, this is a, I mean, I grew up in the 80s and 90s.

I was born in '83 and it was just not accepted to show emotion in elementary school middle school high school. It wasn't acceptable, especially as an athlete, growing up in Ohio. And it just wasn't maybe in some, you know, part of Beverly Hills, you know, or some like post school in New York City. I don't know, maybe in pockets. There's some more acceptability of younger boys showing this type of emotion.

Yeah. I don't know what it's like in 2021. But I just know that you were laughed at, you were made fun of if you cried, if you showed emotion. Yeah. And so you learned in order to fit in to wall yourself or to not share the things that people

want like about you. And I'm not saying that's okay. And we all have our responsibilities. Yeah. But as young boys growing up when we're conditioned that way, it was hard to break that for me personally.

Yeah. I mean, a long time until I realized like, wow, this isn't working for me. Yeah. I have more stress in anxiety. It was really decades of stress in anxiety and not be on a sleep at night.

That was the, the thing that the catalyst that you talked about, there was like enough is enough. Yeah. Maybe for you as a social anxiety.

But finally there's a teacher like, okay, I've got to show up differently to not stress all the time.

Yeah. So eight plus years ago, I finally started to reveal myself. I was just like, okay, I can't live like this anymore. Yeah. So everyone can know everything about all my shame.

Yeah. Because I'd rather that happen and be alone because I feel so much stress all the time.

And then it gave me a lot of peace.

Yeah.

“And then I learned the process of healing and therapy work and workshops and all that stuff.”

But and just healthier relationships in general. Yeah. I don't know the solution. I don't know the solution. But I know I'm trying to be a better model for other men to witness.

That's beautiful. I'm trying to bring other men on. Yeah. Have these types of conversations. So that younger men could see like, okay, here's someone that maybe I like what he does or what

He's verys an athlete and I can understand and relate to that. Yeah. And hopefully I can start to do this with my own life. Maybe with my girlfriend or my guy friend. Yeah.

Try to have some of these conversations. But I just think it's challenging in general. Yeah. It's challenging when you're younger. And you're trying to have a few friends and they don't accept it.

Yeah. Exactly. That's tough. Yeah. Because no kid wants to be alone.

No. No. They want to just hang out and go on the playground and just be with their bodies. Yeah. So it's really challenging.

Yeah. Do you have kids? No. I don't have a solution.

“But I think as a, you know, I don't have kids either.”

But if I was a parent, I would just encourage. Showing emotion with my, with my sons or daughters. And be the example, be vulnerability with them. Yeah. Allow myself to feel.

Allow myself to cry. If I'm watching a movie or something happens in my life. And I'm feeling it to not wall up. Mm-hmm. But to allow myself.

Yeah. This is, I mean, we're going off another topic. Yeah. We're going off another topic here for another conversation. But as an academic, as a neuroscientist and a study of psychology and the brain and all these things.

You've come from a very academic approach to your research. Mm-hmm. But a year ago, you, unfortunately, lost your father and your brother around the same time. Yeah. And while you were writing the book and see how to kind of shift some of the stuff writing the book.

Yeah. Because you were experiencing an emotional level what you were kind of researching. Yeah. Yeah.

“Can you share more the biggest lessons you learned from these types of losses for yourself?”

Yeah. Fortunately, I had to navigate it when maybe you didn't have the answers. Yeah. And what did you learn from those, that experience? Yeah.

So it really was the week that I was about to dive in and start writing the real chapters of this book. Good anxiety. And that was when my younger brother passed away completely unexpected. Younger brother. My younger brother.

Um, just three months after our father had passed away. So we were just healing, still raw from losing my father, our father. And then he had an unexpected heart attack. Really? And so first just that pain and grief that I was experiencing, it's not the same as anxiety.

It shares some of those negative emotions. This was just grief sadness. It was so painful. Like, how could this happen? It feels like a different reality.

Everything looked the same, but it just felt so different. And it forced me to explore these feelings that I'd have had inclines of in the past.

But never to this extent.

And kind of in this wave of first my dad and then my brother. And I slowly came back from it. And I used some of the tools that I talk about in the book that were already in place for me. Morning meditations. I do a morning team meditation.

Team meditation. A team meditation, which I described in the book, which is a meditation over brewing and drinking tea. For me, that was the magic bullet for meditation because there's a sequence for brewing tea. Boil the water. You put it in the tea leaf.

You let it seep and then you pour it out and drink it. And that kind of sequence kept my meditation going. So I always had something to do. I was waiting for the tea to brew. I get to drink the tea now.

I get to be mindful about how does the tea feel. How does it? How hot is it? How does it taste? And I really came to appreciate that there is this moment.

And yes, everything on the outside of my meditation feels like it's different. But this moment still feels like every other moment that I enjoyed my tea meditation. So that helped me come back to I am alive. I'm so lucky to be alive. Yes, perspective.

Yeah, so lucky to have the family that's still with me. Yes, yes. And exercise.

My first book Healthy Brain Happy Life was all about the transformative effects of exercise on the brain.

So after I meditate, I do my workout in the morning.

It's a video workout and the trainer said it was a hard workout.

“And she said, you know, in working out with great pain comes great wisdom.”

Oh, I love that. And I was like, oh my God. That is what I need to hear, not just for working out. I have just gone through the worst pain in my whole life. And I do have more wisdom.

That wisdom is based in the love that was left behind. Yes. And not just left behind that sounds like it's leftovers. The love that that is here. Yes.

You know, that that's still here from from my brother and my father. And that's when I started to think about this book, Good Anxiety in a different way. Because anxiety is an everyday kind of pain and suffering that we all go through. And what if that leads to wisdom? What what does that look like? And I needed as much wisdom and power that I needed.

“And so the book became searching for the power and the wisdom in everyday anxiety.”

And never would have been that if I hadn't had this prevent happen.

And so that's where the six superpowers or gifts of anxiety came from. I needed them to be superpowers. We ended up kind of them gifts. Yes. Same thing.

And yeah. So that is the real origin story of this book. That's crazy. I always talk about the importance of experiencing some type of structured pain on a daily basis. And for me, that's just the workout.

Yeah. It's like something that makes you uncomfortable. Yes. That's like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to push a little harder, but when we do that, I feel like everyday healthy pain is going to help you a long time.

Yes. I'm happy here. I'm happy here. Right of the positive effects on the brain. When we deal with physical, healthy pain.

Yeah. So physical activity and we know the most about aerobic activity. Any activity that gets your heart rate. Yes. The last way I know how to convey this is that every single time you move your body, it's like you're giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals.

Really? Yes. Those neurochemicals include dopamine, serotonin, nor adrenaline, growth factors. And the dopamine and serotonin. What does that do?

It makes you feel good. It makes you feel rewarded.

“That's why just going out for a walk outside when your things are going up to here.”

You can't handle it anymore. It immediately makes you feel better. The growth factors that get released in your brain with every workout doesn't necessarily do something immediately. But it leads to one of the biggest wow that I have to this day about the effects of exercise on the brain. So growth factors that you are releasing every time you work out.

It helps brand new brain cells grow in your hippocampus. Did you know that all of those workouts that I know you've done all your lifetime is actually growing you a big that fluffy hippocampus? hippocampus. Not a brain, but a hippocampus. And there's only two brain areas where new brain cells are born in adulthood.

One is the all factory bulb that helps with smell. And that doesn't grow with more exercise.

But the second is the hippocampus critical for your long-term memory function.

That grows, new cells grow with more growth factors that come with exercise. And it's not going to cure aging, it's not going to cure neurodegenerative disease states like Alzheimer's. But it'll give you the biggest fattest hippocampus that you could have. When you get to that age where the neurodegeneration might start happening if it's in your genes. So it'll take longer for the you know brain cells too.

Interesting. Okay. So working out how many times a week helps you with the hand-bechanis growth. Yeah. So here's what I've found in my lab.

So for low-fifth people that haven't started their regular workout, I took low-fifth people and I found significant improvements in mood in their prefrontal function and hippocampal function. With just two to three aerobic workouts a week. It's not nothing. It will make you sweat and especially if you're just starting, that is a challenge.

But that is the minimum that I found that will give you the more long-term improvement in your hippocampal function.

You work out. I'm sure very, very regularly.

And so what we found is first thing to know, your regular workouts have improved your brain.

You have a bigger prefrontal cortex. You have a bigger hippocampus. The prefrontal cortex is bigger because the synapses, there's more connections, not because there's more cells. And your circulatory system. You're actually stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in your brain with every workout.

And that is fantastic because the brain uses a number one user of oxygen. It's an entire body. The brain is. The brain is. The brain is the number one user of oxygen and the blood, you know, brings oxygen.

And so I want my brain to have as much oxygen as possible so it works the best. So that's what you're doing. So working out brings more oxygen to the brain. Working out will stimulate new blood vessels that get to bring more oxygenated blood to the brain.

“And if we don't work out on a consistent basis, what does that do to our brain?”

Yeah. So you don't, you don't get any of those benefits. You don't get the burst of good feeling from serotonin dopamine. You don't get the big hippocampus. You don't get the blood vessels.

And then the next question that everybody asks me is, "How long of vacation can I take without working out?" So that I don't lose it. And you know, what comes up goes down. It's true in the brain.

True in muscles. How long do I don't lift those weights so that my bicep goes down? There is a time frame. We don't have the exact amount of time. We know that it takes between three and nine months for these new hippocampus cells

to grow with regular workouts. And yeah, if you go on a two-year vacation, it's okay. Yeah, it's going to be hard. What are some of these, so there's six superpowers, is that right? Yeah.

Can you explain the superpowers?

“We've already talked about a couple of them, but can you explain the rest of them?”

Sure. Sure. The first one is resilience. Yes. And that really comes.

I started the superpower book with that origin story that we saw. Being resilient. Being resilient. Because that is one of the first things that I realized came from that terrible experience. I had to write and give a ulog for my brother, my brother, is the social butterfly of our family.

There were 200 people and more that wanted to come. We had to keep down his celebration to just celebration of life to just 200. Not that I mean, I speak to large audiences, but it was, it was his ulog. Wow. It made me definitely anxious to know that all his friends and our family were there.

What are these? These are these down front. You don't want to mess it up. You want to make sure you did them justice with his life. I wanted to make sure that I did him justice.

And there was a lot of guilt there because it's like, I wasn't a good enough sister. How come I didn't, how come I didn't visit him more? How come I didn't talk to him on a more regular basis and talking about vulnerable conversations. The vulnerable conversation that I had with my parents being Japanese-American, third-generation immigrants. I call us kind of the Japanese-American version of Downton Abbey, very proper, you know, not a lot of hugging.

We don't do a lot of, you know, exuberant kissing. Yes. Not affectionate. Not affectionate.

“And the truth is, even though my brother and I knew that my parents loved us,”

we never said I love you to each other.

It's interesting. I think a lot of people have experienced that as well. Yeah. I, at some point, my father had developed dementia and I thought, you know, I, I, I feel like I really want to say this. But it was, I got stuck.

It's like, I don't know if I could actually just start saying it out of nowhere to my parents that would never say it. I'm being never said it. Never said it as an adult. Never. Wow.

So you said it's a child, when I was adult. I think I said it as a child. I mean, we got kissed good night and stuff. Right. Right.

But I don't exactly remember, you know, it had been so long. It's like, but I had this desire to say, say this to both of my parents. And so I decided I had to ask them permission to say and love you. And so I, I, how did that work? Well, I'll tell you.

I was living in New York. They live in California. And I spoke to them every Sunday. And I decided, I built up my courage and said, this Sunday is going to be the, the big day. The day is, I asked them whether I can say I love you.

My goodness. To, to them. And I know this, how this happens.

My mom always answered the phone.

And I tell her about my week.

And I tell him about all the same stories.

“And then that's how the telephone call went every Sunday.”

And so, you know, I called. My mom answered. I told her about my week.

And then somewhere in the middle there, I said, hey mom, you know how we never say.

I love you at the end of these telephone calls. What do you say if we start to say that? Silence. Silence. Is this a pretty time?

No, no. Is this just a regular, you know, cell phone call to my phone call to my mom? Silence. Silence. For a long, long, long time.

I can't tell how long it was because I felt like forever, probably. I felt like forever. And then she said, I think that's a great idea. And I was, I was trying to keep it, you know, keep it light. No, no, no, no.

I don't believe it. I've never said that. Yeah, I've never said that. Yeah, I've never said that. Yeah, I've never said that.

I don't believe it. Well, let's do that. Okay. So we finished off our conversations. But then the moment.

But then, yeah, we both are realizing that, oh my God, it's the end of the conversation. We're actually going to have to say it. And so, and it was clearly, it was like, I felt like there was two lines, certainly, each other. It's going to happen.

Who's going to go first? It's okay. Well, I asked, so I thought, I need to initiate this.

“And so I still get nervous when I tell this story because I remember that the fear.”

And I said, because my theme was keep it light. I said, okay. I love you. It's like big Disney. I love you.

I love you. And my mom said, I love you too. And then she went to go get my dad. Dad, when he's on the phone, I said, let's go. She wanted to get it over.

We were both secretly thinking, oh my God. Thank God, that's over. That was so hard. And then I talked to my dad and I explained it to him. It was easier.

It was harder with my mom for some reason. And you my dad would say yes. Right. And so he said, yes, we said, our awkward. I love yous.

And then we hung up. And I start crying. You know, at the end of that call. Because it's beautiful. Yeah.

I had never said that's beautiful.

I love you to my parents before. So I felt really good. Wow. My father had dementia. The next week, I called back.

And I said, I love you to my mother slightly less awkwardly. And, you know, at this point, my father really. He couldn't tell whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas that I was visiting at. So, so I was prepared to remind him that that we had made this agreement. But he said, I love you first.

Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. Yeah. He had dementia the time. He had dementia.

You remembered it. Oh, man. Because, you know, emotional resonance.

“We remember the happiest and the saddest events of our life.”

Yeah. And his daughter had never asked him. Wow. Good. Whether she could say, I love you.

And he remembered. And he remembered every single week through his entire. Including the last time I spoke to him. Oh, my goodness. Yeah.

So, that was really beautiful.

But, I never said, I love you to my brother.

Going back to the eulogy. And, you know, that was a big source of grief of guilt. I couldn't do it. I should have done it. I knew.

But it was weird because he was not my parents. He was my brother. And same thing. He broke on a guy. Not, not that.

I'm sure he would have said it. But it was really hard to have that conversation with him. So, yeah. Lots of things like that going through my mind. Yeah.

Of course. Preparing and getting ready to give this. But I got, I got through it. And it had funny parts in it. It had parts that I made.

Everybody crying, including myself. And I was very proud that I was able to get through it. And that I really, really felt for the first time in my life. As I could get through that, I could get through anything. So, that most horrible thing really gave me the most resilience that I've ever felt personally in my whole life.

And again, that's the origin story. And every single time we're able to get through that anxiety. Even if we get through and we don't feel so good, you've gotten through, you made it to the next time. And that can help you build your resilience. Yes.

A little by little. And that was part of the gift. And I know that grief wasn't anxiety. But going through these hard times. That anxiety kind of gives us a little bit of a gift.

It gives us lots of, you know, challenges to get through.

Well, anxiety gives us the ability to experience courage. Yeah.

“Because you didn't have that fear anxiety.”

You wouldn't have to bring the courage out to prepare, to show up, to know, like, okay, I'm going to cry at some point in the front of 200 people. Yeah. And I'm a shy person. I don't like people seeing me this way.

It gives you the courage to become something you've never become before.

Yeah. And step into a different version of yourself. Yeah. Or step into who you truly are. That you've been holding back.

Yeah. That's true. So, you know, it's not fun. But it allows us to access certain characteristics and skills that maybe we don't utilize. Yeah.

And that courage is a skill that is so beautiful. And, you know, so how do I get more courage? How do I do it?

“And it really is going back to that action.”

That anxiety and that activation was designed and evolved to put us into action, including to act in that courageous way. That phone call to my parents to say I love you was a very courageous act. It was huge. How many years were you thinking about that?

Many months, because it was during the development of my father's dementia, that, that it's like, it was building up building up. No, I don't want to deal with that. That's too hard. And I can't tell you the number of people that have come up to me.

That said, oh my god, I don't say I love you to my parents. And you gave me the courage to do it. And a lot of Asian people, because it comes from our culture. But also, lots of other cultures don't have that in their natural way of talking to each other. But it taps our social element and our need to express what we truly feel which is love.

Where does, so that's the first superpower?

I want to talk about love though for a second. Where does love play into overcoming stress worry and anxiety? If we have more love in our life with the people who connected to us and love for ourselves, does anxiety stress and worry diminish? Absolutely.

I think that is one of the things that we can help balance this anxiety that has gone up significantly since the start of the pandemic is one way is to work on those events that cause you anxiety, which is a great thing to do. And the other thing is to build up the positive emotions to counter anxiety. So we talked about joy conditioning, bringing more love into your life through social interactions.

“The number one predictor of a long life is the number of positive social connections that you have.”

Yes. And I thought it's going to be exercise. It's going to be exercise on top because of my first book. But no, exercise is, I don't know, three or four or five. It is social connections.

And it doesn't have to be that, you know, girlfriend that you've had since third grade.

It can be positive interactions that you have with the barista at your coffee shop. Having that positive banter, giving them, you know, giving them a little punch in the arm. And they get it, give it back to you. That counts, which I love thinking about that. So that happiness and joy that you can bring, it costs nothing for you.

And it is giving you a longer life. Interesting. So, but love in general is their researcher of science behind what love does for. Yeah. Like a happy brain, a happy heart like.

So love is a natural counteraction to the stress that you were talking about. And in fact, so the part of the nervous system that is controlling all of those stress responses that we talked about. The blood going to the muscles, the high heart rate, the high respiration is called the sympathetic nervous system. Luckily, we have an equal and opposite part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system. Not stimulating to love specifically.

But it helps calm everything down. It decreases the heart rate. It decreases respiration. It brings blood back into our digestive and reproductive systems. It's called the rest and digest nervous system.

Yes. And parasympathetic. Parasympathetic. Rest and digest. Parasympathetic, rest and digest.

Sympathetic, fight or flight. Okay. Okay. And so. So we want to be more in the parasympathetic.

Yes. Yeah. You want to be able to control. Yes. Being that state.

Yes. So that when we need to, when we need to take on something scary. Right. We lean into the sympathetic, but we're not staying in the sympathetic all day long.

The best way to lean into parasympathetic when you when you start to feel that really bad

anxiety come on is deep breathing. Yes. Deep breathing.

“Because that is the only thing in that list that I gave you that we have conscious”

control over. I can't make my heart rate go down. I can't bring blood into my digestive tract. But I can breathe deep and long. And people would be, if you haven't tried this before, just deep, for part breath, where

you breathe in for four counts, hold it for four counts, breathe out for four counts, hold it out for four counts, easiest way to bring some of that calm back in because you are actively stimulating the parasympathetic system. Absolutely. Yeah.

But love can also stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system in the sense that it decreases

your heart rate. But mainly, it's kind of a different animal. My most popular lecture of all the lectures that have ever given in my entire 23-year career at NYU is called the Neurobiology of Love. It's like, "Ooh, I want to know, I want to know about the Neurobiology of Love."

Is this online also, yeah? Yes.

“Actually, it is easy to go to the website, all my lectures for my brain and behavior”

class were videotaped. Okay. I get to tell the intriguing story in my Neurobiology of Love lecture about the Prairie Vols. Have you ever heard of it?

Prairie Vols. Vols. Prairie Vols. Prairie Vols are these little rodent-like animals that live in the Midwest. I'm probably seeing them.

You probably seen them. But they're one of the-- No. Different from Prairie Dog. These are Prairie Vols.

Prairie Vols are one of the few mammals that form lifelong pierbonds. Really? And the way they form it is fascinating. So they live in large multi-generational family units. And so all the Prairie Vols have a particular area, a territory.

And a pierbond forms when and almost mature female Prairie Vols, that isn't Prairie Bondiket, is walking down the trail and she smells the urine of a male Prairie Vols, not in her family unit. Well, that is like Love Potion number nine to her, that urine. And if that depositor of the urine is around, they meet for 40 hours.

It's pretty impressive. Yeah. It's a lot of energy. Yeah. It's a lot of energy.

You know, they have that small body height.

They need it, 40 hours is amazing.

And what happens in that 40 hours, well, in the female Prairie Vols, oxytocin, that hormone of love and connection, gets released like a toddler wave in their brain in the males. It's vasopressin, that gets released as a toddler wave in their brain. And you can show in the lab if you artificially mate them, that if you block oxytocin during this mating period, they will not form the pairbond in the females.

And if you block vasopressin, you won't form the pairbond. So is it the case that, you know, what if I mate for 40 hours, well, I form a lifelong pairbond? It doesn't quite work that way. But it identified these key hormones that are those connecting bonds that we know is

something's happening, right? And when we're forming that first connection, that keeps us, that, that, you know, finds us apart. Absolutely. And so that was the start of the real neurobiological study of love and connection.

“Because before that, it's like, oh, that's too mushy, we can't study that, right?”

But now they had a hormone and they can look at the genes behind that hormone, they can delete the hormone and they could image people when they were, when my favorite studies was, they imaged a group of people that had just fallen in love. They were in that honeymoon phase of falling in love. And they identified a set, a complex set of structures, of course.

It wasn't just one that lit up when they were in love. But reward systems, dopamine systems were very highly activated in love. And interestingly, after, then what happens after you're together for five years, does that to sit down? Yeah, have you seen the research that shows you can sustain that for decades?

It evolves, it evolves. And what happens is that those people that are still in love that still have a strong relationship. Yes. The pattern of activation is different. It's not the same activation as in that honeymoon phase.

It's, you know, in the modality that was measured, it was brain activation. So we were just looking, they were just looking at the networks that were activated. But what it comes to evolve into is that kind of activation that you see in parent and child. So that strong family connection, you not only see it in parent and child, but between long-term partners.

And it makes sense, our relationships evolve.

“I think it would be hard to sustain that honeymoon, for years and years, 20, 30 years”

down the line, but it involves into a different kind of social connection that has a different brain signature. And they've shown that that brain signature is similar across cultures, which is interesting. And it's at only in the United States, or they've done these studies in China throughout Europe, and it's the same patterns that are quite unique in the early throes of love and

it evolves into something different later on, if you, if you stay together. Have you studied a lot of, I guess, the brain science around relationships and love and intimacy long-term, or, you know, that area of research is still pretty new.

And so I always keep an eye on it because I know it's my most popular lecture, and I want

to update the students. Is there anything you could share around what to look for in a relationship around the neuroscience of a partner, like meaning a partner, is there certain questions you could ask if, see if they have the right brain chemistry? I don't know, is there anything else you think we could look for from research or studies

“or examples that you've seen around understanding, like, is this a potential good partner?”

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have one warning from an experience that I had, which was I did an event with the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, that the acting school, and we were talking about the neurobiology of emotion and the neurobiology of love, and we were doing it with the graduate

acting class. Yes. And these are the students that are going to go on to be the moral streeps of our time. And they said, okay, we're going to do an exercise, everybody, come up. And for some reason, I went up on stage to do it with them, so I got partnered up with

one of the actors. And they basically took us through, you know, those 36 questions that you ask a stranger to get to see if you were, like, fall in love with something. Were you like, staring their eyes and asking questions? Yeah, but no, no, no words.

They let us through exercises like that, and they let us through things like, now you have a choice. You can step closer to your partner, or you can step away. I didn't know this guy.

He's like, oh, my God, it became so critical.

“What is he going to do when it was his turn to make these choices?”

And I kind of fell in love with this person. Wow. You know, ten minutes or something? Yeah. It was ten minutes.

And it made me realize that kind of the system can be hot. Was this, you know, random student, the love of my life? No, I had enough, you know, pre-fund the project to know that. Yes. But it was such a powerful, powerful experience.

And you know, I, I, I, I had wondered about doing those 31 questions. Like, yeah, you know what, I'm not going to do that, because I need to have those questions come up organically to test out other things, because you can almost trick the brain and put them chemically connected. Exactly.

But when, when there's no connection there, so that's my lesson.

You can quickly have those or I quickly developed very powerful feelings.

It meds. Yes. It's a stranger. With a stranger. But could have, there could have been other red flags or values or something that

maybe wasn't aligned to your term, right? But our brains can create such, so it's a connection, right? Yeah. Yeah. Body's an emotion.

Everything combined. What it, what happens with, when someone is sexually connected early on, say within the first week, you have sex with someone, what does that do to the same kind of brain chemist? Yeah. Is it more powerful than these kind of 31 questions of intimacy and love?

That would be an interesting experiment, right, to compare and contrast. But what does that do when you sexually bond with someone, whether you've known them

supposed to be together? Yeah.

Well, that's where we can turn back to the studies of the peripherals.

We know that, well, we don't have exactly the same brain chemistry or a brain response. There is release of those love hormones, oxytocin and visor present, and that does give you that feeling of bonding. The more sex you have, the more kind of physical connection that you have.

“So, you know, I think our goal is to step back and think, do I need more physical”

connection or do I need to get to know this person a little better? See what their values are, have more verbal conversations before I get myself bonded to this person. Because it's good to un-bond, it's harder to un-bond. You feel more and more connected, and you might oversee certain behaviors or actions because

you feel the connection. Exactly. Yeah. I think that's where a lot of problems relate. Not that we're relation by experts here, but definitely not here.

But it's just curious to know that the neuroscience and the psychology behind intimacy, whether you're having a diet in front of someone talking about vulnerable things or answering vulnerable questions. Right. You've created intimacy and connection quickly, and also sexual connection that bonds

people. It's interesting. So, yeah, to be careful with what type of questions you're asking someone. You got to be careful, and it really heightens the importance of your prefrontal cortex, which is that decision-making brain area.

You don't want it clouded, and two things we've talked about today can cloud the prefrontal cortex. The levels of anxiety literally shut it down, we know the neurochemistry and the molecular biology of that that absolutely happens. And so, when you have too high of levels of anxiety, it depletes your decision-making

process, and you default to the automatic, just whatever's most common, I do in my body,

“that's what I do, because I've lost my ability to evaluate.”

And similarly, those, you know, that connection that could happen through sexual encounters can also block off your decision-making processes. I think that lots of people have this, like, yeah, I think I wasn't making the best decision there. Sometimes, right?

And so, yeah, so preserve your prefrontal cortex, use that part of your brain.

And that is the antidote to my warning there, I think that is a powerful tool in relationships.

And another superpowers about opening the door to flow. What does that mean? Yeah. I can't see your performance and open the door to flow. Yeah.

So, I wanted to talk about flow, because one of the things that anxiety does beautifully well is it shuts flow down. So, flow? You can't get into flow when you're stressed. No, exactly.

You gotta be fully in the moment and feel freedom essentially, right? You've gotta feel free. Yes. Exactly. And so, first of all, I was depressed because I read the definition of flow.

“And it's, you know, you have to be this world leader and then you have to be at the height.”

It's like, what?

I can never have flow in my life.

And then, I get stressed about that and then it goes even further, which is why in the book, I coined another term, which is microflow. Look, I may not have the flow that yo-yo-ma or Serena Williams gets in that beautiful moment right before they're going to, you know, win the prize. However, I can tell you that I do enjoy flow in my life, going back to my joy

condition, I have microflow when I'm in Shavasana at the end of a yoga class, I felt really sweaty, all that sweat is drying, I feel so good. That's one minute. For one minute, it is flow. And, you know, we're talking about building up those positive events in your life.

And just the realization that we have many moments of microflow that might flip by, we didn't even recognize them. That is like, oh, I love microflow of having a wonderful cup of tea right before I need it or at the end of the day. It is that appreciation, it is the savory, learning how to saver is a wonderful antidote to

anxiety. So many moments in the last three months, I just stop, I say, man, what a beautiful moment. Yeah. When I look, I'm just being more aware of my surroundings and the people I'm with

When I saver these multiple times throughout the day, I just feel better. Yeah. And I think that's important.

“You're saying that because a lot of times we're just on to the next, on the next,”

on the next, on the next, on the next, on the next, on the next, or not thinking about this moment. But let me look in the sky and just be like, oh, do you ever imagine, like, we are in the middle of a, we're a dust of sand, yeah. Putting around in an infinite universe.

This is unbelievable. Yeah.

You know, just the awe of what this is, is amazing.

It is. Yeah. That's a moment of microflow. Right. Just that appreciation and I, I found myself, I'm not a good picture taker.

But I, it messes up my microflow if I try and take a picture of it. I just went, I'm staying with friends and we took the little girl to her very first day of kindergarten. No. First grade.

Sorry. First grade today. And it was so sweet to see her. She found a little friend and so she went skipping down with the, holding her, the hand of her little friend and I was cried and I, I was trying, and then I was too late

to take a picture. But I got that moment of, that is such a beautiful thing to witness. She's excited to go to her first day of first grade.

She's never going to have this day again, never the moment again.

That's cool. That's really cool. The microflow. I love that. The next thing is nurture and activist mindset.

What does that mean? Yeah. So this is really about the power of mindset. And we've been talking about it all along. Yes.

Is this an, an experience that's going to batter me down because anxieties out to get me, or is it a challenge that I can do an experiment that is you're talking about to see whether I can do it and it really doesn't matter if I fail, I win or lose, I learn so much from the failure. Okay.

I'm not going to do that again. And I do it the next and that shift of mindset. I just have to remind myself and there's so many things that can put you into that bad anxiety. If I'm hungry, if I'm hungry, you know, all those things, it's hard to pull myself out.

And it reminded myself of what a positive mindset can do. It not only shifts your brain networks, it shifts your whole physiology, it decreases cortisol. It, the beautiful experiments that the psychologist, Alia Cromett, Stanford has done

“has shown that all you have to do is tell hotel workers that their level of physical activity”

in changing the bed sheets, the surgeon general said, is actually above average, you are getting a good workout. When they said, no, I don't work out at all, I don't have time to busy, I'm too tired. That change, that change their mindset, it made them lose more weight than the controls that we're not told that they were working out and it increased their job satisfaction.

And so that one belief, what is that belief, that idea that will change your day? That is a wonderful thing to ask yourself every day that you go in to a difficult situation or just your regular situation. That is beautiful. And what about we, we talked about love on helping you, I guess, eliminate some of the stress

anxiety. Yeah. What about purpose? And having a meaningful purpose in your life, how does that, if you know that you're on a mission to a for a purpose, whether it be three months a year or your, you know, decades

you're on the same mission, how does that help decreasing anxiety and stress? Yeah. For me, I feel like when you think about your purpose, it, it's like this tunnel vision all of these things, all of those obstacles go away. And I feel personally, I was meant to do that.

I know I'm going towards that. So let's just see how I get there and, you know, you can throw anything at me. I got through my brothers' eulogy, so I got through that, I can get through anything. And, and that is a wonderful reminder and finding your purpose and really sticking to it and being playful with your purpose.

“So despite the fact that I was always a very shy young girl, I always had this secret”

desire that I knew it would never happen, a bean, a Broadway star.

So I wanted to be Julie Andrews, I wanted to be Shirley Jones, I watched all the Hollywood musicals, I dream of myself, you know, on stage doing that big number. And, um, and it turns out that that, that feeling, that secret feeling that I harbored

That's cool.

Which, by the way, is on Broadway.

“So I, in fact, I have a program, and that I, I am a secret performer and I've, I've used”

that. And I feel like that is part of my purpose. Like I, I end up ended up doing neuroscience and I have all that science and I could explain science to people so that they understand it. But I also have this kind of performers' secret, you know, desire to break out into song.

And it absolutely comes when I get in front of large audiences and the bigger the audience, the bigger the secret diva comes out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, something weird happens and it's, it's, I've discovered it since I did the first book and, you know, did more talks and bigger talks. It's like, wow, that, that, that, and that is part of the purpose.

It is, it is part of the skill set that I know that I have that is bringing me towards that purpose. It is that ability, my, my way of communicating and part of it is a science and part of it is that secret Broadway, the performance and that love of the talent.

I always had this huge appreciation of the talent that it takes to act and sing and dance.

Such a talent. Such a talent. It's so hard. Oh, I wish, I wish, if I could only sing, I would have, you know, gone out for the Broadway plays.

But it's out there, I can't sing. It's out there, you had to heal the people's hearts and brains instead, so to help people heal. So, yeah. What about the alter ego?

If you studied alter egos and how they support overcoming anxiety, stress and worry, especially being in a performance setting or speaking at a eulogy or speaking on stage or performing at a big event or performing in athletics or speaking in front of a class. Have you done any research on alter ego? No.

You're going to be in for the brain. No, I have it, but I think that would be a fascinating study. Somebody asked me once, how do you give, how do you give your talk? You know, what is your process? And for me, it goes back to my science training.

Science, it turns out, it's all about the story. What is that story that you're going to tell in this science experiment that you did? And I had a very great speaker and a great scientist that was my early mentor that encouraged me to think about that story. What is the story you're going to tell the audience?

Because they don't want to hear all those boring details. They want to hear what the origin is, how you got through it, what is that hero's journey, and then what is your conclusion? And so I got hooked on telling the best science story.

“And then it takes a while to get the next story, because you have to do all these experiments,”

and it's really, really hard, but I got really excited about building that next, what is that story going to be and how am I going to tell it? And that has informed, it turns out that that's what storytellers do, and that's what actors do to get through their, their things.

So I, I came out in a very different way, but I was always about trying to get people

that like, I know you may not be interested in this part of science, but let me try and pull you in and tell you why this is so cool, because I really have something cool to tell you. That's based on science. So ultra egos is that an ultra ego, that is my strategy, and I guess it's kind of my secret energizer bunny that that maybe it comes from my people pleasing natural disposition.

It's like, I want you to be as fascinated as I am, as I want to show you how fascinated it is so fascinating, just give me a second, let me explain it to you. And that's how I always approached my teaching, and that's what evolved into my speaking, that I do.

“Yeah, the answer to cool, I think there's a, you know, I love studying athletes who”

will have an ultra ego, Beyonce has an ultra ego, I think it's Sasha Fears when she steps on stage, she becomes this persona, she allows her to kind of overcome maybe the stress or fear, maybe she doesn't have that anymore, but when she was coming right, it's rising in fame. That'd be interesting study to do ultra egos and see how that supports people in overcoming

anxiety, if they believe they were another person, right? They believe they stepped into something, but they had to help them overcome that anxiety. Yeah, and how it evolves over time, because she does not have the same fear that she had

Right, exactly. So, what do you do? What do you do? Yeah, I do. Yeah, I do.

Yeah, that's interesting.

“There's so many other questions I want to ask you, but this has been an amazing couple”

of hours here, and I want to ask you the final few questions, but before I do, I want to make sure people get the book, you can go pick it up, it's called Good anxiety, harnessing the power of the most misunderstood emotion, make sure you guys pick up a couple copies and give them to your friends, I see you've got my friend Daniel Amon on here as well, we've had on here and made some videos on here as well, so lots of great people have endorsed

this book, make sure you guys pick up a couple copies. I feel like this is one of the biggest challenges today is anxiety, people dealing with stress anxiety around many things, the uncertainty of the future, their own identity and life, why we're here, relationships, money, career, just so much anxiety that people are consumed by, one of the things that I appreciated about how I was raised my father, one

and allow me to watch the news or commercials, because you didn't want me to be consumed by negative programming of, okay, you're going to get sick, you're going to be unwell, so you're going to need this drug, you need this thing, you're going to need this solution,

always sound like something that I don't need.

That's smart.

“He would mute the commercials or turn them off and he wouldn't let us watch the news because”

it was always based around fear and conditioning that there's more, more and more anxiety and fear in the world that I need to be consuming, and I am a happier, healthier person. When I don't consume storytelling of the worst of moments in that are happening in life, like it's happening everywhere, you know, it might be happening somewhere, but it doesn't mean it's happening next door to me or when I walk across the street, and so learning

to find these moments of joy, learning to find these moments of beauty like you talked about and being in the moment, learning to create the social fabric of great connections with friends and staying in a positive environment for me has been really helpful, and you've got 40 other strategies for making anxiety work for you in this book, so make sure you guys pick up a few copies of this, give them the friends, my doctor Wendy Suzuki.

This is a question I ask everyone at the end called The Three Truths Question, so a hypothetical scenario, imagine it's your very last day on Earth many years away from now. You get to, you know, live as long as you want, but eventually it's the last day. Yeah. You have accomplished all of your dreams.

You've done all the research, the science, you've had all the fun, the joy, everything you want to do, you've done it. Yeah. Before whatever reason, you're work that you've created in the world is no longer in the world. It goes with you to the next place or it goes somewhere else, but we don't have access

to your information anymore. Uh-huh. Your speeches, your videos, this content is gone, but you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three things that you know to be true from all of your experiences, and this is all we

would have to remember you by, of these three lessons or three truths. Yeah.

“What would you say would be those three truths for you?”

For me, it would be that we were evolved to move our bodies, and so learn how to bring movement into your life in a regular basis, so that it's not hard, it's automatic, and your life will benefit from that. Absolutely. Number two is that your brain is the most complex structure.

It is so unique, it is the most amazing thing in the universe. And so, use its powers to make your life better, use that mindset to make your life in

the world a better place, and the third is that social interactions in love is the most important

thing to make our lives both longer and happier. So use that statistic for yourself. Oh, yeah, so true. I mean, I was interviewing a doctor who he had mentioned that there were a couple moments in his life where he was going through a depressed state. It was a couple of years of depression or some sickness and some poor health that was

happening in his life, different decades apart. I said, "How'd you get out of that?" And he said, "Love." He said, "I met someone and it created like this journey for me of like feeling better and I've loved healing myself and love was the anchor that supported the healing, the growth,

the peace of mind." Yeah. And he's like, "Both times it was love that helped him heal." So I think that's fascinating. It's the love we have with our friendships and our family, the love we have.

I want to acknowledge you when before for the commitment you've had to this for what

three decades now, you've been doing this work and putting your life's mission into creating practical, inspiring tools for us to improve the quality of our life.

“I think it's so valuable that there are people like you in the world who make this your”

mission because it can seem daunting to overcome anxiety and stress and worry. It can seem like there's no way out for a lot of people. The statistics of people going through deep depression and suicides and just hard learning themselves, addictions are rising. And so for you to make this your mission and to be able to teach it in a way that we

can understand it is very inspiring. So I really acknowledge you for your work, for your efforts. And for the growth that you've had to experience in the last few years to put these things into practice, unfortunately, but I think it makes you even better teacher of these things and more empathetic to the world.

So I really acknowledge you for that.

And where can we connect with you online? Where do you spend the most time? I guess social media, your website, where can we go? Yeah, my website, www.wondicesucci.com.

“You can go there to participate in the great good anxiety social experiment.”

So you can go and do test your own anxiety and test the effects of different tools. Okay. In the ones in the toolbox on your anxiety. Okay. So you can take a quiz.

Yeah, you can see how anxious you are. A stress and anxiety experiment surveyed before and after different interventions that we're testing and you get back the immediate effects tools on how to implement it. Yes. That's cool.

So you can see kind of wearing your life in the most anxious and then which tool to implement

for that right now. Yes. I like it. And that's your website, right? Yes.

Exactly.

“And what social media you want the most?”

I'm on Facebook and Instagram. Okay. Facebook and Instagram. Like that. Suzuki on Instagram and then Wendy Suzuki of fine years as well there on Facebook.

Anything else we can do to support you, besides the book, the quiz, social media, anything else we can go to? Gosh. That is, you can see your videos online. Yeah.

Videos online. I'm so excited because that, that story that I told you about saying I love you to my, to my parents was a math talk. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

So that, that was such a joy to be able to, to share with people. But I'm doing another one on good anxiety and it will be out in December. Okay. Cool. So that stay tuned for the origin story of good anxiety.

I love it. I'm excited. Okay. Cool. This is the final question.

It's what your definition of greatness. My definition of greatness is using your unique brain to its full potential, whatever that means that is great and great is so many different things, in so many different people. And everybody has a beautiful and different brain. So it's my definition.

No, but Wendy, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Louis. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's

episode with all the important links. If you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.

I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you of no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.