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Anything that works for you to get you to do
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the thing where your planner is able to be effective
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at getting your doer to, you know, take a chance
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and do something and not be judged, you know, is
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because you are protecting yourself from the habenula. You're either
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saying to yourself, well, tomorrow's a new day, or I'm
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going to give myself grace just now, or it doesn't
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matter if it's not perfect. All that matters is that
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I tried. Whatever those are, those are protective beliefs. and
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expectations that protect you from your habenula. Hello, and welcome
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to Unstoppable Brain. I'm Dr. Kyra, and we're here to
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translate neuroscience into behavior change and the life you want.
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And today we're going to do a special episode where
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I am going to mind dump all of the things
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that I accumulate by, you know, all these talks I'm doing, keynotes,
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various conversations I'm having, the pod, everything that is going
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on in the world. and allows me a way to
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convey to you the, I would say, counterintuitive science that
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I'm seeing and all the confusion in the healthcare, diet,
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wellness industry, personalized medicine industry, all of that, being able
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to decipher that today. So it's a bit of an
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ambitious goal, but I'm going to take you on a
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journey because all of us come from this very Western
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medicine world, which is, I would say, defined by a
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couple of things. One is that there's this fantasy that
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we know what to do and we'll just do it perfectly.
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But there is a gentleman named Richard Thaler, Dr. Thaler,
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who won the Nobel Prize a couple of years ago
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for behavioral economics. And in his way of describing us.
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I think it's a perfect metaphor. He says there is
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a planner, the one who plans and a doer, the
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one who does the plan. And so the whole game,
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the whole ball game is to get those two to
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get along and to be really effective and empathetic as
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a planner for your doer so that you're not abusing yourself.
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And then more importantly, after you give it your best
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after you maybe didn't work, that you are kind to yourself,
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that there is a self-compassion that kicks in, that replaces
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what our society teaches us to do, which is to
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beat up on ourselves and to blame ourselves and to
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be ashamed of ourselves. Yeah. So I'm taking on a
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almost trillion dollar industry, as I'm saying these things. This
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is a huge, huge industry, the healthcare industry plus the
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wellness industry. And you have to pay attention, speaking of
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behavioral economics, to the most important thing, which is where
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are the incentives? Who gets paid to do what, depending
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on what I do or don't do or what happens
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to me, right? And the current systems, unfortunately, whether you
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look at diet programs, for example, the more we fail,
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the more money we are making for somebody else, either
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because we have to keep paying those dues, those subscriptions,
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those prescriptions costs, whatever the case may be, to somebody
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else to outsource our health, our wellness, or we get
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better let's say, and then somebody is not interested in
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us or they don't make money on us. And it's
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unfortunate that the whole industry has kind of turned in
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this way. See, I'm old enough where when I started
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out in healthcare as a doctor, there was this kind
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of air of virtue. We are here to do no harm.
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We are here to just absolutely help the patient. Now
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there was a shadow side to that, which is we
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had arrogance and we had a big fat ego because
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we were gods and goddesses, you know, over the patient.
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And that has since fortunately become more equal as a relationship,
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as a collaboration. But coming from that world of, you know,
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we're not here to exploit, we're not here to do
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unnecessary things that was looked down upon. And now it's
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just a Tuesday. Now it's just what hospital systems have
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to do to survive. And before we go into any
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judgments of anybody, I want to say that myself, you,
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all of us are flawed. We have things where we
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kind of sell ourselves out. Carolyn Mace, who I love
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as an author, used to say that there's four main
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archetypes that everybody has, right? One of those being the prostitute,
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meaning that when it comes to our paid work, sometimes
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we make decisions because of the incentives to do things
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that we don't all the way believe in or want
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to do. I am fortunate in my current situation that
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I no longer have those things, but I know in
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earlier jobs, whether it was a retail job or a
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waitressing job, which I sucked at. I sucked at. I
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could not remember somebody's request for ketchup like three or
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four times. And it wasn't, obviously it wasn't because I
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wasn't intelligent. I just didn't have that kind of intelligence
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to be able to do that job well. But anyway,
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you know, we all kind of sacrifice on our way
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to ourselves we try on different things. We try on
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different hats and we try on different roles and we
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put ourselves out there in ways that, you know, are
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kind of awkward. And it's almost like the world is
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a casting agent. You know, a casting agent is somebody
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who looks at that, you know, person auditioning and says,
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can I believe them as the, you know, the lead
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role for this movie? Or do I think that they
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are more of a character actor, that kind of thing.
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So we are iterating our way through our health and
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these industries that are locked in to, you know, putting
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us in win or lose states. What do I mean
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by that? I mean, when you set a goal that
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I'm going to do this by this, and it's going
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to look like this, and I'm going to look fabulous,
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or I'm going to be super healthy. And then we
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fall short, which is 99% of the time, we fall
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short of that exact perfect vision. And we go about
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it that way, which is super rigid, super fragile, then
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what happens is that we trip over our own brains.
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And so this being the Unstoppable Brain Podcast, we want
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to talk about what is it that's getting in our
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own way? What's it, what is it that's getting in
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your way? And I'm willing to bet that you've had
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an experience where you set a goal of a smart goal,
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for example, or a goal that you were tracking against.
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And that By setting that goal, your planner told your doer,
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you better do this or you're going to fail. And
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the doer did its best. Or maybe forgot because it's
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not used to doing or it's not used to this
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particular thing. Or maybe it didn't like how the vegetables
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tasted or didn't like how it felt to sprint and run.
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Maybe it wanted to walk instead. But your planner was
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quite a tyrant. and forced the doer to do things
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that it wasn't ready to do, didn't like doing, or
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in some way wasn't sustainable. I give the example in
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a lot of my keynote speeches of, let's imagine a
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mother who wants to get in shape after she has
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a baby. And, you know, it's been a couple years,
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so she's got a toddler and she decides to join
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a gym. And in going to the gym, she finds
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dance class or a yoga class. And she's like, this
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is it. I've been waiting for this, this exercise type
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my whole life. I, I'm enjoying it so, so much. Right.
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But then every time she goes, especially, you know, now
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that we're getting into the time of the year when
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the sun is, sunlight is shorter, um, let's say that
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she gets off work at five, then she goes and
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picks up her kid from daycare. And then she takes
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the kid to the gym daycare. And then she goes
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to her exercise class and then she's feeling good, but
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then she comes back to the daycare center at the
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gym and her child is crying or her child
feels
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bad and she feels guilty. Mom guilt is real. It
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is real. I haven't heard of men talk about this
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too much. I'm sure they have their own version of this,
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but mom guilt is very strong. And so what's going
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to happen? That experience of I'm failing my kid. Maybe
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you don't feel like you're failing yourself as the mother
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going to the fun dance class or the yoga class.
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But over time, this area of the brain called the
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implicit memory system tracks kind of the win-loss scoreboard of
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how something is going for us. And then guess who
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is sitting in the background taking score judging and saying,
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this isn't working out for us. The Habanula, my favorite friend. Now,
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I also have been listening to some podcasts lately of
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some doctors and scientists who were trying to explain the
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world of, you know, this planner doer or the no
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do gap. Like I know what to do. I just
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don't do it. Um, and trying to give us audience
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some insights into why that was. And there was a
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couple of flaws. If I could be a little bit, um,
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critical of this because it's important to get this detail right.
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Because if you don't understand your brain right, then you're
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going to be all kinds of confused and all kinds
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of self-blaming and ashamed of yourself and feel like you
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failed when in fact, it's just, you didn't have all
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of the pictures. So I'm unpacking, I'm giving you the
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picture as I know it, because I think it's a
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more complete picture of how you go about these things
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instead of going down the road where I've seen so
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many people, so many patients go, where it's just disappointment alley,
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it's just disappointment and failure and frustration and blame and
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judgment and shame and the whole negative experience. So I'm
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trying to protect you in this moment from having to
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do that anymore. I want to show you the way
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that is going to feel safer for your little timid,
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ego yourself that is brave enough to even try something new,
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that is brave enough and courageous enough to believe in yourself,
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to have hope even, to heal, to find healing, whether
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it is physical health or mental health, does not matter.
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It is an act of courage to say, I don't
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like where I'm at right now, and I'm going to
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put out effort and risk looking like a fool, risk
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risk looking like I wasted my time, risk facing my
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own inner judge to try something new. And so as
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long as you're going to put out that effort, you
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want to do it in a way that is safe,
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that is going to be not making things worse. And unfortunately,
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in our current understanding of behavior change, which is this
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goals and tracking world, we are unintentionally Can I emphasize that?
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Unintentionally hurting our patients, our clients, our friends, ourselves by
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using these methods that we think of as, well, it's
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either right or wrong, black or white. I won or
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I lost. I did it or I didn't do it.
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If you find yourself with any of those evaluations on
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your effort, meaning your effort is no longer a process,
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your effort no longer has any grace to it, your
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effort no longer has any self-compassion, and you're just running
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right into the worst possible version of your own self-judgment,
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then I invite you to really understand me. Listen to
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me now. That is not your fault. You are just
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in a society that is offering you the wrong medicine
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for what you need. So what's the right medicine? Okay,
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this is the exciting part. I found this out because
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I was one of these people who would spin and
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fail and set smart goals and wonder, is it just
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me or is everybody having this? But fortunately, I had
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the very privileged position to be able to do large
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scale research with a lot of people. And I saw
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the same thing in them. I saw that most of
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the time people would do well for the first couple
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of weeks, maybe the first month. Like think about the
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beginning of the year where everybody sets their New Year's
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resolutions or otherwise wants to change their lives, right? They
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say about mid-February, it's all over. You know, the party's over.
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The gym equipment is now available again. The classes are
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not overcrowded, right? So that's six weeks of effort that
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people can kind of like grind and grit and, you know,
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just force their way into a new life, which is
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so admirable. It's so tragic to me that what they
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are trying is going to trip up their brain's habenula
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because they're choosing all that they have access to, which
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is a performative world, right? Whether that is, you know,
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do this for 21 days. Here's a 21 day challenge. Well,
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what if I don't make 21 days? Failure, habenula trigger,
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motivation is killed. I quit. I then blame myself. I
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then feel so bad inside for that, that I reach
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for something addictive. This is hibiscus tea, but you know,
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I reach for something because the habanula puts the hurt
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on me, is the source of my negative self-talk, of
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me beating up myself. And so you can obviously recognize
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some of these things because you have been there. You
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would not be listening to me right now You would
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not be encountering this new information had you not pay
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your dues and over and over again being churned in
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the failure industry. I call it the failure industry. It's
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like the diet industry, the healthcare industry in many ways,
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the wellness industry, anything that would really set you up
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to be dependent on them in order for you to
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be well, in order for you to be healthy. And
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I guess one of the good things that's happening right
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now is that in our healthcare system, the sad part,
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the tragic part is that there's so much cost jumping up.
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At the same time, there is clinician shortages. When was
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the last time you could just pick up the phone
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or go online and book a doctor's appointment, not an
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emergency one, but like a regular doctor's appointment in the
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next couple of weeks, right? I literally, my horses, I
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have horses and they have a dentist. And even in
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that world, they're booking out three, four months and same
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with the vet. And so there's just this kind of,
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there's a book called In Shitification, which I have not read,
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but I love the title of this because I want
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to call it out. Like we are in this world
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where it almost seems like there's a bunch of people full-time,
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low-key trying to make everything more difficult and everything more complicated.
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And so we are in this kind of failure field,
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if you will, that's so easy to fail. It's so
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default to fail instead of succeed. And success in performative
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methods is just, this is the literature talking, not me,
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but there's so many studies that show that performance-based goals,
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performance-based goal orientation is really great if you have something
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short-lived that you're trying to do. Let's say I'm trying
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to graduate high school or college. Once I do that,
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you know, it's just this grind. It's just this push.
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And once I get myself to do that, then nobody
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can take that degree away from me, right? And so
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for things that are irreversible, things that are short-term, short-lived,
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and that are kind of like a push, a sprint,
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performance-based goals are great. It's like a sprinting kind of energy.
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But for most things that we try to change, We
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are in a marathon. If you're talking about weight loss
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or weight regulation, weight maintenance, that is a lifelong thing.
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I'm in a lifelong journey around that. And so is
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everybody else. If we're talking about our own mental health,
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life happens to us. We get hit down. We get
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leveled by life oftentimes. And so that mental health journey,
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if you will, goes like this. It's just up and down,
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even if you don't have genetic risk or propensity to
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be more sensitive to mental illness, if you will, and
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negative self-talks. So let's talk about habanula real quick. There's
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a paper that I wanted to center on today because
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there's some new stuff coming out about the habanula. This
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is a paper in Nature Neuroscience in October of 2026.
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And the title of it is called Spatial Temporal Remodeling
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in Habenula, marks the onset of depression-related phenotypes. Lots of words, words, words,
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but let me break that down for you. Basically what
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they're looking at is that there is this buildup in animals,
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the test of the sun mice, animals where they stress
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the mouse by putting corticosteroid, right? So that's cortisol in
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their drinking water. So it's like they're not stressing them out,
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like poking them or torturing them or anything. They're just
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giving them this steroids. Like if you have ever had inflammation,
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I had poison oak one time and I had to
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take steroids because it got so bad it was laughable.
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And they put this in the drinking water. So that
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makes them all super jacked and super stressed out, right?
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And then they look at their brains at various points,
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one in seven in 21 days, I think in this
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And eventually this type of thing leads to depression. Just
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like in our lives, in our bodies, what happens to
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all mammals is that if you are stressed chronically long
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enough without any breaks, what it eventually leads to that
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we notice clinically is depression or even anxiety, something kind
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of chronic on the mood disorder kind of side of things, right?
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And of course, this then leads to sometimes addictive behaviors,
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whether it's the phone use, whether it is something more toxic, drugs, alcohol, nicotine,
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you know, things that are really going to kind of
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mess up your body, cancer risk, or mess up your relationships, whatever.
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So in this study, basically, they stress out these mice,
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and then they look at these different time points, and
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they found that the big change that led from just,
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you know, I'm stressed out, I'm super stressed out, I've
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been stressed out for a while, that chronic stress flipping
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and over into depression, clinical depression. Okay. So clinical depression
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doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes out of like
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a buildup of stress is what this paper is saying.
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And what's most important is that once the habenula goes off,
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that is the hallmark. That is the sign of correlating
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from the neural activity going from stress state, chronic stress rate,
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stress state to a Like I'm failing to just succeed
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here and depression comes in. What is depression? Depression is
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I'm failing at being me. I'm failing at whatever I'm
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trying or I failed in the past, right? So it
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takes a little while of this feeling of stress in
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order for the brain to kind of generate that conclusion.
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But once it does, the habenula is involved is what
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they're saying. And then the most interesting thing, for those
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of you who have followed my work or in the book,
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Unstoppable Brain, we talked about the ketamine treatment was showing
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early promises. And since the book came out, that's just
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gotten stronger, that evidence. So then what they did is
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they gave ketamine when those changes started, when the chronic
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stress started to tip over into depression, and they were
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able to get rid of the depression. they were able
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to reverse the depressive behaviors. But if they waited too long,
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let's say that the depression was too hard-coded after a while,
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kind of like that, and then they gave the ketamine,
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it really didn't help to reverse. And this is something
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that we know in patients who have psychosis, patients who
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have bipolar, patients who have major depressive disorder, even anxiety disorder.
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The problem with
letting that go untreated is that it
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gets worse and it starts to kind of hard bake
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into the neurocircuitry of that brain. And it becomes more
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and more difficult to undo because the nature of the
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brain is neurons that fire together, wire together. And so
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they're forming all these relationships and these connections, these neural networks,
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and they're getting fatter and fatter and thicker and thicker.
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and more fast, more paved. I like to call those
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highways in the brain versus these little foot trails that
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are more temporary behaviors. And it starts to create a
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sense of, oh, this is who I am. If you've
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ever seen somebody who has been many years struggling with
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an addictive substance, they will even call themselves an addict.
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Or people do this also who might have diabetes for
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a long time they might convert over to an identity
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and they might call themselves a diabetic. It's not something
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that we as clinicians or people trying to help people
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to be free of these limitations want them to believe
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about themselves. It's just that if you leave that chronic
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stress burning for that long, for that on continuous without
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treating it, without doing anything about it except overeating or
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trying to trying to numb out with phone use or whatever,
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then you literally wire the brain into that. Our brains
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are designed to rewire throughout our lives. Our choice is
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where we want that to go. What we want to do,
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we want to be a passenger in that process and
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just let it rip and just be almost like an
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animal trying to scratch an itch and just become So
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numbed out that we're not even here anymore. We're kind of,
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you know, not thinking our way through. We're not mindful
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about our lives. We're not enjoying our lives. We're just
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going from one thing to the other, trying to survive
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the next day. I once heard this really tragic thing
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from a cashier at a store one time where she
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was talking to her coworker and she said, well, just
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trying to, just trying to get through the day. Just,
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it's just another day. Just kind of like, I'm trying
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to waste this day. I'm just trying to get through
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it because I'm bored, because my life doesn't mean anything.
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And you don't have to have that. You don't have
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to have that mindset. No matter what you do, there's
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an importance to it. No matter what role you're playing
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in this life, there's a dignity to that, whether that
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is a caregiving role, whether that is a parenting role,
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whether that is a teaching role or a student role.
384
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or a cleanup role or a service role or a
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healer role, whatever your station in life, the most important
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thing is that you are, you know, appreciating yourself for
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the effort that you're putting out. And heck, if it
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doesn't make you feel good to do it, then that
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might be a really screaming alert that your brain is
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telling you, like, this isn't for me. This isn't me.
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This isn't making me happy. And in fact, it's, playing
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to my worst impulses to be in this kind of job.
393
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And one of the things that just shocks me is
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that each of us are different in our brains and
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what gives us joy and what gives us clarity and
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00:26:01.130 --> 00:26:05.779
what gives us meaning that my sort of things that
397
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I like to do might be just unpleasant for somebody
398
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else and vice versa. I don't really love detail stuff.
399
00:26:15.519 --> 00:26:20.349
I don't love super detailed work, unless I'm like alone
400
00:26:20.369 --> 00:26:24.410
and I've got no time pressure. But other people, they
401
00:26:24.450 --> 00:26:26.349
love that and they hate what I do, which is
402
00:26:26.390 --> 00:26:29.619
like visioning and big picture and all that kind of stuff.
403
00:26:29.680 --> 00:26:32.339
So we're all different and we have to really play
404
00:26:32.359 --> 00:26:36.380
to our strengths. So going back to this chronic stress thing,
405
00:26:37.000 --> 00:26:42.990
what's happening is that the brain is telling itself in
406
00:26:43.049 --> 00:26:46.579
order to have stress that This is not working out
407
00:26:47.539 --> 00:26:53.309
for me. This is something's
wrong here. So there's a
408
00:26:53.349 --> 00:26:57.309
gap between my expectation of my experience and what I'm
409
00:26:57.410 --> 00:27:01.329
actually experiencing. And the brain is freaking out and releasing
410
00:27:01.829 --> 00:27:05.890
stress hormones, cortisol, into my bloodstream and making me feel
411
00:27:06.039 --> 00:27:09.500
really super amped and stressed because it's a flight or
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00:27:09.539 --> 00:27:15.740
fight response, really. Freeze, fawn. And then if I do
413
00:27:15.759 --> 00:27:18.720
that enough and I'm jacking my blood system, my bloodstream
414
00:27:18.759 --> 00:27:21.220
with this cortisol enough, and my adrenals are just getting
415
00:27:21.240 --> 00:27:25.259
like so pooped out, it's called adrenal fatigue. And, you know,
416
00:27:25.279 --> 00:27:27.819
I don't have any parasympathetics going on, which is the
417
00:27:27.859 --> 00:27:30.779
kind of, you know, rest and digest message carried by
418
00:27:30.819 --> 00:27:34.539
the vagus nerve, the parasympathetics. And I've got, I'm just
419
00:27:34.599 --> 00:27:37.980
like fried. I'm frying my, I'm fragging my, my, my
420
00:27:38.019 --> 00:27:42.759
motherboard of my brain up here. And so in this,
421
00:27:43.099 --> 00:27:47.240
in this study, it really cautions us to think about
422
00:27:48.200 --> 00:27:53.289
trying to calm down our habenula. Why is this important?
423
00:27:54.150 --> 00:27:56.250
So in these lectures that I was talking about before
424
00:27:56.430 --> 00:28:02.269
around different doctors and scientists talking about explanations for stress,
425
00:28:02.329 --> 00:28:04.529
you know, the kind of, you know, HLA access of
426
00:28:04.569 --> 00:28:10.910
stress hormones, that model, that's the pituitary and the thyroid
427
00:28:11.170 --> 00:28:14.460
and the adrenals kind of all regulating our sense of stress,
428
00:28:14.500 --> 00:28:18.599
which is true. It's true. It's incomplete because the habenula
429
00:28:18.619 --> 00:28:21.660
is in there kind of behind the scenes pulling all
430
00:28:21.680 --> 00:28:26.130
the strings on that whole system. And there's another paper
431
00:28:26.170 --> 00:28:29.630
that I'll get into later on, which has to do
432
00:28:29.849 --> 00:28:36.769
with the habenula is controlling serotonin and dopamine in the
433
00:28:36.829 --> 00:28:40.640
human brain. So what is the implication of that? So
434
00:28:41.099 --> 00:28:46.569
that means that We, our reward system, how much pleasure
435
00:28:46.730 --> 00:28:49.369
or pain we are having that we are in, how
436
00:28:49.410 --> 00:28:53.049
much motivation we have, how good or bad we feel
437
00:28:53.170 --> 00:28:59.309
is all being machinated by the habenula. And so that's
438
00:28:59.349 --> 00:29:02.049
a game changer. None of this talk that I heard
439
00:29:02.089 --> 00:29:05.569
about in these other podcasts about the amygdala, which you
440
00:29:05.609 --> 00:29:09.930
might've heard of, which is a wonderful alarm system. Think
441
00:29:09.970 --> 00:29:14.950
of the amygdala's line as that's scary. Okay. Whereas the
442
00:29:14.990 --> 00:29:18.079
habenula's line, if they were characters in a movie or
443
00:29:18.119 --> 00:29:22.099
play is more like, that's not working out for me,
444
00:29:22.200 --> 00:29:24.259
or that won't work out for me, or that's never
445
00:29:24.319 --> 00:29:28.140
worked out for me. And therefore abort, abort, abort, get
446
00:29:28.200 --> 00:29:33.029
out of here. You know, like reverse, stop trying, avoid
447
00:29:33.049 --> 00:29:36.309
that at all costs, nothing but pain there. Right. So
448
00:29:36.349 --> 00:29:38.890
that's the, that's the habenula. Oh, and by the way,
449
00:29:38.950 --> 00:29:41.680
you're the worst person in the world and all the
450
00:29:41.720 --> 00:29:43.660
negative self-talk. And what about that thing you did when
451
00:29:43.680 --> 00:29:45.680
you were in second grade? I mean, all of these
452
00:29:45.759 --> 00:29:48.480
things that beats up on us is coming from the habenula.
453
00:29:48.900 --> 00:29:51.680
Why is it important to know that the habenula is
454
00:29:51.720 --> 00:29:55.960
behind that versus the amygdala? This is a little bit
455
00:29:56.009 --> 00:29:58.750
of a nerdy question, but the reason why that's important
456
00:29:58.789 --> 00:30:01.930
is the habenula is is we know what turns it
457
00:30:02.029 --> 00:30:09.769
on and off. Negative emotions, negative beliefs, failure, I'm failing,
458
00:30:09.890 --> 00:30:13.769
I'm going to fail, right? I'm disappointed, I'm frustrated, I'm
459
00:30:13.859 --> 00:30:17.079
helpless here, I'm powerless to do anything. All of those
460
00:30:17.180 --> 00:30:22.079
things are what's called negative cognitions. Fancy word to say,
461
00:30:22.799 --> 00:30:28.000
bad feelings, bad thoughts that flip this thing on. That's
462
00:30:28.079 --> 00:30:34.190
different as a metaphor. than the amygdala. The amygdala, it
463
00:30:34.210 --> 00:30:37.450
just seems like once it gets turned on, it's just
464
00:30:37.470 --> 00:30:41.369
going to freak out. And Alex Honnold, the guy who
465
00:30:41.390 --> 00:30:46.779
climbs the free climbs, the skyscrapers and doesn't somehow die yet,
466
00:30:46.819 --> 00:30:49.960
they've scanned his brain and his amygdala does not really work.
467
00:30:50.019 --> 00:30:56.279
It's very low reactive. Whereas somebody who's super anxious, super uppity,
468
00:30:56.579 --> 00:31:00.539
like my dog, my girl dog, is going to have
469
00:31:00.599 --> 00:31:04.480
a pretty active amygdala. It's like, that's scary. That's scary.
470
00:31:04.500 --> 00:31:07.319
You know, like little kids bump in the night, monsters
471
00:31:07.359 --> 00:31:11.259
under the bed, that kind of scary. And the promise
472
00:31:11.500 --> 00:31:15.609
of knowing what turns on and off the habenula gives
473
00:31:15.710 --> 00:31:18.890
us hope. It gives us a way out. It gives
474
00:31:18.950 --> 00:31:26.049
us freedom to free ourselves from the tyranny of failure, shame,
475
00:31:26.630 --> 00:31:32.029
and guilt. That's my hypothesis here. If you put together
476
00:31:32.230 --> 00:31:36.039
all these scientific studies and you put together exactly this
477
00:31:36.130 --> 00:31:39.900
moment of everything that we have right now, all of
478
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:43.980
it points to don't set yourself up to hit your habenula.
479
00:31:44.339 --> 00:31:48.619
Avoid that at all costs. Our habenula has a good
480
00:31:48.660 --> 00:31:50.839
role in our lives. It's to keep us alive, you know,
481
00:31:50.920 --> 00:31:53.720
from touching the hot stove more than once or, you know,
482
00:31:53.759 --> 00:31:56.680
driving too fast and possibly losing our life, you know,
483
00:31:56.720 --> 00:32:02.609
like It's keeping us alive, literally. But when we aspire
484
00:32:02.630 --> 00:32:05.450
to be something more than we are, when we want
485
00:32:05.569 --> 00:32:08.410
a way out of our childhood pain, when we want
486
00:32:08.450 --> 00:32:11.829
to heal things, when we want to release things, when
487
00:32:11.849 --> 00:32:14.279
we want to forgive things, when we want to get
488
00:32:14.440 --> 00:32:18.460
out of addiction cycles or things that are really self-sabotage, right?
489
00:32:18.839 --> 00:32:22.519
The habenula is the most important thing that we have
490
00:32:22.539 --> 00:32:26.130
to think about, not the amygdala. The amygdala doesn't give
491
00:32:26.170 --> 00:32:29.410
us any information. It's just kind of like a very
492
00:32:29.490 --> 00:32:34.079
scared little friend over here that's saying, watch out, watch out. Habanula,
493
00:32:34.660 --> 00:32:37.660
we can do something about. We can turn it off.
494
00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:40.980
We can say, oh, is that really true that I'm
495
00:32:41.000 --> 00:32:43.019
failing or that I'm going to fail or that I
496
00:32:43.059 --> 00:32:49.109
have failed, right? We can cognitively quell it down. And
497
00:32:49.190 --> 00:32:51.109
there's even like, you know, a case to be made
498
00:32:51.150 --> 00:32:56.509
for ketamine and some of these electromagnetic therapies, psychotherapeutic therapies.
499
00:32:57.369 --> 00:33:01.650
whatever it is that's going to help chill out our
500
00:33:01.670 --> 00:33:06.529
habenula from being too hyper firing, hyperactive, it's called rapid
501
00:33:06.569 --> 00:33:11.069
firing or lightning firing in the literature, that should be
502
00:33:11.130 --> 00:33:15.230
our target. And so all these performative methods, if you're
503
00:33:15.250 --> 00:33:17.059
going to use them, because that's all there is out there,
504
00:33:17.099 --> 00:33:20.519
except for our software, which is designed around the habenula,
505
00:33:21.039 --> 00:33:23.670
that's not a promotion thing, but it is free. It
506
00:33:23.730 --> 00:33:25.450
is a resource out there for you if you'd like
507
00:33:25.490 -->
00:33:27.890
to try it. But we have to do it ourselves
508
00:33:27.990 --> 00:33:31.769
is protect ourselves from our habenula. And the way you
509
00:33:31.809 --> 00:33:36.630
do that is you argue with yourself or you release
510
00:33:37.269 --> 00:33:40.150
thoughts and stories that your brain is telling you, your
511
00:33:40.170 --> 00:33:45.450
habenula is telling you that you are not going to succeed.
512
00:33:46.500 --> 00:33:49.740
And you question it and you give hope to it.
513
00:33:50.809 --> 00:33:53.130
And you find a way around it and you iterate
514
00:33:53.170 --> 00:33:55.589
your way through it so that your benula stays nice
515
00:33:55.650 --> 00:33:59.769
and quiet and sleepy like a little bear hibernating in
516
00:33:59.789 --> 00:34:05.450
the winter. And you have your clinical target there. I
517
00:34:05.490 --> 00:34:08.449
will talk some other time about iterative mindset because that
518
00:34:08.510 --> 00:34:12.590
is a really powerful medicine that I have found to
519
00:34:12.650 --> 00:34:18.030
be more powerful than other protective factors like self-efficacy, confidence, optimism.
520
00:34:20.349 --> 00:34:24.789
you know, learning-based goal, performance-based goals, all those kinds of
521
00:34:25.329 --> 00:34:28.730
things that we thought were kind of the grit, resilience,
522
00:34:29.170 --> 00:34:31.550
all those kinds of measures that we thought were the
523
00:34:31.590 --> 00:34:37.769
protective factors. This one is more strong and more reliable
524
00:34:38.489 --> 00:34:42.949
because it targets the habanula more directly than like a
525
00:34:43.070 --> 00:34:45.659
growth mindset or something like that. Those are all helpful
526
00:34:45.699 --> 00:34:49.059
because in every case, anything that works is working for
527
00:34:49.079 --> 00:34:52.659
your habenula. If you think about it, anything that works
528
00:34:52.699 --> 00:34:55.260
for you to get you to do the thing where
529
00:34:55.300 --> 00:34:57.809
your planner is able to be effective at getting your
530
00:34:57.869 --> 00:35:01.949
doer to, you know, take a chance and do something
531
00:35:02.010 --> 00:35:05.010
and not be judged, you know, is because you are
532
00:35:05.050 --> 00:35:08.590
protecting yourself from the habenula. You're either saying to yourself, well,
533
00:35:09.070 --> 00:35:11.280
tomorrow's a new day, or I'm going to give myself
534
00:35:11.340 --> 00:35:14.739
grace just now, or, It doesn't matter if it's not perfect.
535
00:35:14.860 --> 00:35:17.510
All that matters is that I tried. Whatever those are,
536
00:35:17.570 --> 00:35:23.369
those are protective beliefs and expectations that protect you from
537
00:35:23.409 --> 00:35:25.769
your habenula. And every clinician that I talked to, I
538
00:35:25.809 --> 00:35:29.369
talked to 200 clinicians a couple weeks ago, and I said,
539
00:35:29.510 --> 00:35:33.389
anything that you do good for your patient, you didn't
540
00:35:33.429 --> 00:35:35.860
know it until now, but you are doing that to
541
00:35:35.900 --> 00:35:38.900
protect them from their habenula. So that's the whole ballgame.
542
00:35:39.519 --> 00:35:41.960
That is the whole ballgame. And by the way, when
543
00:35:42.000 --> 00:35:46.179
I say Habanula, I mean Habanula Complex, aka Anti-Reward Pathway.
544
00:35:46.619 --> 00:35:48.699
For those of you who are really up on the
545
00:35:48.739 --> 00:35:51.260
literature and are super nerdy like me, I just want
546
00:35:51.300 --> 00:35:52.719
you to know that I know that you know that
547
00:35:53.139 --> 00:35:56.000
that's really the language that's used, but I'm using Habanula
548
00:35:56.159 --> 00:35:58.949
as a cheat code, as a short code to be
549
00:35:58.969 --> 00:36:01.630
able to talk about this more fluently. So I hope
550
00:36:01.670 --> 00:36:05.289
I've convinced you. I've convinced you of two things. One
551
00:36:05.449 --> 00:36:08.869
is that you didn't do anything wrong this whole time.
552
00:36:09.900 --> 00:36:13.550
There is a whole big culture out there or an
553
00:36:13.769 --> 00:36:17.130
industry out there, put it that way, an economy out
554
00:36:17.150 --> 00:36:23.969
there that is unfortunately set up to benefit from your failure,
555
00:36:24.949 --> 00:36:28.780
from you becoming weaker. And I don't want that for you.
556
00:36:29.059 --> 00:36:31.119
And I know you don't want that for you. And
557
00:36:31.139 --> 00:36:34.139
so I'm showing you the doorway out of that world
558
00:36:34.739 --> 00:36:38.409
and into the world of your own empowerment and your
559
00:36:38.650 --> 00:36:45.929
own Unstoppability. Because I see you as whole, as able,
560
00:36:46.389 --> 00:36:50.909
as powerful. And I've known so many people who came
561
00:36:50.969 --> 00:36:55.630
back from hell, including my own family, who have come
562
00:36:55.650 --> 00:36:58.989
back from hell. And so I know it can be done.
563
00:36:59.809 --> 00:37:01.909
I myself have come back from different hells and I
564
00:37:01.969 --> 00:37:06.130
know it can be done. So believe in yourself. I
565
00:37:06.210 --> 00:37:09.760
hope I've convinced you, number two, of you are not
566
00:37:09.800 --> 00:37:14.400
a failure. You have no, there's no shame in what
567
00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:17.559
you've done. Everything you've done has been get to where,
568
00:37:17.579 --> 00:37:22.199
to where you are now. Right? So no regrets. And
569
00:37:22.219 --> 00:37:26.570
there's no guilt because again, you didn't know if you
570
00:37:26.610 --> 00:37:29.769
hurt somebody else or you hurt yourself, you just didn't know.
571
00:37:30.170 --> 00:37:33.130
So you need to let that shit go as they say.
572
00:37:35.050 --> 00:37:39.630
So yeah, I hope I've convinced you. And, um, I'll
573
00:37:39.650 --> 00:37:41.449
see you on the next pod. We have a lot
574
00:37:41.469 --> 00:37:45.659
of awesome neuroscientists coming into the pod and really incredible
575
00:37:45.679 --> 00:37:49.380
doctors this season. And I'm really looking forward to sharing
576
00:37:49.400 --> 00:37:53.099
all that with you. And yeah, thanks for joining me.
577
00:37:53.300 --> 00:37:56.119
And let me know in the comments or however you
578
00:37:56.139 --> 00:37:59.489
can to let me know if this made any difference
579
00:37:59.530 --> 00:38:01.849
for you, because I really want to know. And tell
580
00:38:01.869 --> 00:38:04.250
me your story. All right. Thank you. Till next time.