Wendy Suzuki: 2 Powerful Tools To Use When You Feel Stressed Out (This Will Lower Your Anxiety in 1 Minute)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everyone, it's Jay Sheddy and I'm thrilled to announce
my podcast tour. For the first time ever, you can
experience on purpose in person. Join me in a city
near you for meaningful, insightful conversations with surprise guests. It
could be a celebrity, top wellness expert, or a CEO
or business leader. We'll dive into experiences designed to experience growth,

(00:25):
spark learning, and build real connections. I can't wait to
meet you. There are a limited number of VIP experiences
for a private Q and a intimate meditation and a
meet and greet with photos. Tickets are on sale now.
Head to Jysheddy, dop me Forward Slash Tour and get
yours today. How much do we actually know about the

(00:47):
brain and its potential?

Speaker 2 (00:51):
We have years of knowledge, but there is an enormous
amount that we still don't know. There are brain areas
we have no idea what they do. Every ping of
the phone is anxiety producing, which then launches her stress response,
and that keeps us stressful for way too much of

(01:12):
the day. So many people are appreciating at a higher
level stress and anxiety and depression. A little bit of
that is actually good for the brain. You want to
live a long, healthy, energized life, start paying attention to
all the things you need to do to make your

(01:32):
brain work beautifully. It defines everything that we do and
everything that we are. The number one Health and well
Iness Podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Jay set Jay Sheddy, Wendy, thank you so much for
being him so grateful to have you on on purpose.
I was really looking forward to this and even just
the few words we've exchanged now I'm like, all right,
click record asam. We need to capture all of it.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Well, let's dive right in. Yeah, the first thing I
wanted to ask you was how much do we actually
know about the brain and its potential?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
That is such a great question. We have hours and
semesters and years of knowledge that we have gained about
the brain since we've seriously been studying it, but there
is an enormous amount that we still don't know. There
are brain areas we have no idea what they do.

(02:35):
My favorite is called the claustrum. Somebody asked me, what's
the most mysterious brain area that you know? Wendy, this
is a brain area that connects to everything cortically subcortically,
it should be integrating something critical. We have no idea
what it does. We have little idea of how consciousness works.

(02:57):
We know a lot about vision. So it is a
beautiful bag of information and mystery that our brain represents.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
There's something about that, right that There's so much we've learned,
but there's so much yet to uncover. Yes, but I
feel when we talk about the brain and what's relevant
to us, I think about what does a healthy and
unhealthy brain feel like? Yes, and how do we know
whether we have a healthy or unhealthy brain?

Speaker 2 (03:23):
I think that the answer to that is, so many
people are appreciating at a higher level their stress and
anxiety and depression. A little bit of that is actually
good for the brain. Chronic all the time can't get

(03:44):
out from under the cloud or the big rock around
your neck, that anxiety can feel like. That is not
good for your brain. High levels of stress overall will
start to first damage and then kill some neurons in
your brain. That is not good. So if you are
at that level, that is not good for your brain.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
What about someone who says, and I'm sure you hear
this all the time, Wendy, Oh, you know, stress doesn't
really affect me. You know, I can just keep going.
I don't really notice it. What would you say to
someone who says.

Speaker 2 (04:14):
That, I would say I said that a lot to myself.
And when I sat down to write my second book,
Good Anxiety, I realized how much stress and anxiety that
I was dealing with in my life. And also, I
think the key was there were simple tools that one

(04:37):
could use to address not all forms of your stress
and anxiety, but a lot of those forms of stress
and anxiety. And so the first step is awareness.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, so becoming aware. Why are we in denial about
our stress?

Speaker 2 (04:53):
I think, well, I live in New York City. People
like to wear a badge of stress. Oh you know
you every time you answer how are you? Oh so
stressed out? So much to do? It's like a badge
of a badge of honor. So I think that that
becomes has become part of our individualistic society, and that's
not good. I mean, what you should be able to say,

(05:16):
at least a good chunk of the time is actually,
I'm doing well. I feel good, I feel energized. And
you don't hear that response all too often. And that's
not just in New York, but I think all over
the country and all over the world.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yeah, for sure. No, I think you're so right. I
think people are used to saying surviving, Yes, just surviving,
just getting through this day. Yeah, I'm just moving forward.
And I think that's why we're doing this episode, because
we want people to be able to turn around and say, oh, no,
I'm doing well, imnergizing. But it's almost like we carry
this guilt if we are about to say that, right,
there's a feeling of like, oh, there's a feeling of

(05:52):
shame that I'm not working hard enough. Yes, right, So
going back the other way with the badge of honor,
there's a feeling of if I said, oh, no, I'm
actually doing okay, Yeah, that's me saying I'm not working
hard in it.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Right. I've noticed that as well. I've noticed that in
myself and my colleagues. And it's about stepping back and realizing.
You know, I think one of the most profound pieces
of advice that somebody gave me early on is making
me realize how important and how complex my brain was.

(06:26):
It defines everything that we do and everything that we are,
and making that work well should be high on our list.
Chronic stress and buying into that I'm busy all the
time culture is not conducive to brain health. So you

(06:47):
want to live a long, healthy, energized life, start paying
attention to all the things you need to do to
make your brain work beautifully.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah, no matter how much you think you've got away
with it up until now, Yes, it's not good to
keep pushing that and testing, yes, how far the brain
can go exactly. Walk me through the difference between anxiety
and stress and why is it important to know the difference.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
They are intertwined in a really complex way. So physiologically,
the stress response is enacted by the sympathetic nervous system,
and it's all those feelings that we are very familiar with.
Increase heart rate, increased respiration rate, our eyes dilate, there's
a upset stomach because actually blood is rushing away from

(07:37):
our digestion and reproductive systems towards our muscles, because the
response is to get us ready to run away, to
physically flee. Now, anxiety is the emotion of fearing something
that is coming up in the future, that could that
we don't like, that that could harm us. In his essence,
it is protective. So you know, a woman three point

(08:00):
five million years ago, trying to protect your baby wanted
to use those feelings of anxiety to keep that baby
safe from those physical dangers that were there. The problem
is that in today's world, every ping of the phone
is anxiety producing, which then launches your stress response, and
that keeps us stressful for way too much of the day.

(08:24):
So the key, I think is learning how to turn
the volume down on those anxiety cues that then launch
stress and learning what they are for yourself, but also
using the tools of science to turn that volume down.
It's a simple first step that everybody can take.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
How do we do that?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
So the first thing that you can do is first realize,
you said, you know, how do we know we're stressed?
Self reflect for a moment. Am I am? I telling
everybody I'm stressed all the time? Do I not sleep
well because of stress? When you do that, there are
my number one and number two tools that I immediately go to,

(09:05):
And I know you've talked about this so many times
on your show. Number one, because it is immediate, is
deep breathing breath work. Why because breath work activates the
equal and opposite part of that sympathetic fight or flight system,
the parasympathetic system. I told you all the things that
stress activates, heart rate rays, respiration rays. You know you're

(09:29):
blood rushing. I can't control where my blood rushes, and
I can't really control my heart rate, but I can
control exactly how deep and profound and frequent my breathing is.
So that's why just deep breathing just two or three times,
can you know, tried out, It can really calm you down,
and if you practice it, it gets even more powerful.

(09:52):
That's my tool. Go to number one, and it's number
one because if I'm getting anxious about this interview, could
actually do this in the background you don't even know,
And I can calm myself down even in the heat
of a This is not a stressful conversation at all,
but I'm pretending that you know it could be. Number

(10:14):
two is moving your body, and so ten minutes of
walking outside or anywhere up and down the stairs, down
the hallway has been shown to decrease your anxiety and
stress levels. It's one of the fastest way that you
can use physical activity to address your stress and anxiety levels.
Those are my number one and number two go tos.

(10:36):
Anybody can use. You don't even have to change.

Speaker 1 (10:38):
Your clothes that first Roe. I'm so glad you brought
that up. And it's a practice I do still till
this day if I'm going on stage or if I'm
doing something that's anxiety and using And I think people
are always like, Jay, wait a minute, you experienced anxiety.
I'm like, of course I do it. Yeah, It's a
part of everyday life. And if I'm about to do
something that feels that way, I can not. It's the
same thing. But now that I've noticed that queue, which is,

(11:00):
like you said, it's easy for me to think, Okay, well,
I know I need to breathe in for a four
and breathe out for more than four, which is a pattern.
I like, Are there any patterns that you suggest or
is it just deep breathing?

Speaker 2 (11:11):
You know, the easiest is just deep you for three
or four counts in three, four counts out. But I
like box breathing, which I know you know about. Deep
breath in for four counts, hold at the top for
four counts, deep breath out for four counts, hold it
at the bottom for four counts. It's funny every time
I even say that, and I often say that in

(11:32):
these kinds of interviews, I feel myself destressing as I
do that, because the muscle memory of when I do
do that comes in. But yes, it is such a
powerful technique that everybody can use.

Speaker 1 (11:47):
And how do we spot our cues more closely? Because
so for a long time I used to say I
don't get stressed, And then I started to realize when
I was actually still, that all my stress was stored
in my body. So I wouldn't get stressed mentally, I
wouldn't ex experience it in my mind, and I wouldn't
experience it in my chest or my heart. But then
I started to notice that my upper shoulders or my
neck is always tight. Yeah, And it took me a

(12:09):
while before I started to recognize that stress existed in
different ways as opposed to this idea of oh, well
it's not up here, so it doesn't exist. How do
we get closer to those cues? Because I think there's
two questions. One is how do we get closer to
our cues? And the second is when you feel that
cue or trigger, how do you remind yourself to breathe?

Speaker 2 (12:28):
I think to get closer to your cues. The easiest
answer is to spend time in open awareness of your
own cues. And just as you said, and it's the
same for me, they don't suddenly appear on a list
in front of you. You have to go and seek
them out because for you, it wasn't in your head,
it was in your body. I'll never forget. Multiple times

(12:51):
I've had the experience of deep tissue massage in certain
places that triggered just crying in me and I'm I'm
so sorry, what's happening? They said, No, I've just touched
a point in your body that you store a lot
of stress. You mean, like actually cry, actual physical crime.

(13:12):
And it wasn't like I couldn't help it. And it's happened.
It's happened just twice. But that was my very clear
cue that I also store a lot of stress and
anxiety in my own body. You have to go and
look for that, and you have to notice it, and
you have to remind yourself when you've been covering up

(13:34):
your own stress and anxiety, which I am also a
master of. It takes a little exploration, and I think
that listening to others and and and actually asking a friend,
do you notice times when when you think I'm more
stress than others, and sometimes you might be surprised. That
might be a really good, you know, moment of realization.

(13:56):
And so then your second question was, once you realize
in this moment, how do you remind yourself to breathe?
And that's a hard one and I think the best
way is don't wait until say, oh I'm anxious, I
need to breathe. But never having any practice with this breathing,

(14:18):
it is wonderful to take To take a class time
and go to a breath meditation class. You learn so
much because there is literally thousands of years of breath
work technique to learn. And I've been exploring that as well.
But you don't have to get super fancy. Sometimes it's
just about you said you like the inhale and exhale

(14:41):
for a longer time. That is a very basic but
powerful one. Explore that on YouTube. There are thousands of
free meditations you can do that. I always send people
there practice it, see which ones you like. Sometimes it's
too long of a hold for people, and you have
to find the one that you like, practice, get it
comfortable with yourself, and then it'll be easier to call

(15:04):
it up when you do notice that moment coming up.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Yeah, I agree, I think I think that's great. At
what advice it's you can't have something help you. It's
almost like I remember being at school and they'd always
train you with what happens if there was a fire,
So you're training when there isn't a fire, yes, and
so it's like, hey, when there's a fire, you're going
to walk through this door, you're going to line up outside,

(15:27):
you're going to do this. And it's almost like we
need that yes for when the fires appear in our
mind exactly, and you've got to do the routine before
it happens in reality.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Right, And if you do, do it, really think about
how that made you feel. Do you feel that difference?
And it's important to keep exploring how different things make
you feel. Because maybe you chose just a bum breath technique.
It doesn't work for you, and there are those that

(15:57):
you know just won't hack it for you, So try
other things, but stay aware. And that practice of self
awareness I think is so important for the rest of
our lives.

Speaker 1 (16:07):
I think what's actually happening to the brain when we
ignore anxiety and stress for a long periods of time.

Speaker 2 (16:14):
Stress very physiologically releases stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol goes through
the blood brain barrier, goes into the brain. And the
danger is that there are key brain areas that you
want to keep healthy and thriving and growing throughout your
life that high levels of consistent cortisol will damage and

(16:37):
then eventually kill cells. And the first brain area I'll
focus on is called the hippocampus, critical for memory function,
and here we know that long term stress. For example,
people with PTSD monkeys that have low rank in the
pecking order male monkeys have tiny little hippocampi because those

(16:58):
cells have gotten damage and then died, and that is
not good. We need what I like to call a big, fat,
fluffy hippa campus for the rest of our lives. This
is the area that first gets attacked in Alzheimer's disease,
and you want to keep that beautiful and healthy. The
other brain area that is attacked in stress is your

(17:20):
prefrontal cortex, critical for decision making, being able to shift
and focus your attention. And so you are starting to
damage two key areas you know. I lead nine thousand
students The two brain areas I want to work best
in these students are the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
And it kills me that during finals, all that stress

(17:42):
that comes off is damaging their ability to show us
all the beautiful knowledge that they learn. Of course, not
just my students, but all students around the world. How
how can we destress that process and thereby help learning,
help help re call, help their professors know what they

(18:03):
do understand about the topic.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yeah, what what are our daily activities that are damaging
the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Yeah, I mean it is that every day stress. It's
the anxiety provoked by scary news that we read every
single day, by social media. And here I'm thinking about younger,
younger people well known how much it damages self esteem
to spend too much time on social media, all these things.

(18:33):
We all know these stressors in our lives. But it's
actually hard to put the newspaper down. It's hard, it's
really hard to put the phone down. But that could
be such a game changer for both adults and children.
And you just ask, well, what am I going to
do have a conversation with the real person, which is

(18:55):
what I always try and push people to do. That
is such a joy and a privilege in our lives
to be able to do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
I've really found also that if we can just find
a gap between when you wake up and when you
pick up your phone, it just rewires the brain. And
I think we have to think about it, yeah, physically
where it goes. Okay, Well, if I don't put my
brain in this noise in the morning, just as I

(19:26):
would never wake up to like volume one hundred on
any song or whatever it may be, if I just
allow my brain some time to like speed up naturally
and catch up with the pace of the day, then
actually I'll be better at doing everything else rather than
when I rush my brain from zero to one hundred
miles per hour with fifty emails and thirty notifications, I'm

(19:48):
expecting so much of my brain, and no wonder I'm
stressed out immediately because my brain's trying to compute and formulate.
It's like, it's like if your partner turned to you
in the morning and said I want to have a
really deep discussion about life. Yeah first in the morning,
It's like you'd be like, well, I don't think I
can handle that right now. Yeah, and it's shocking to
me how many of us are putting ourselves in stress
by looking at our phones first thing in the morning.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yeah. I have a morning routine that I've come to love,
which is about a forty five minute meditation when I
first wake up. So that's the first thing that I do.
And I do a tea meditation, which is meditation over
the brewing and drinking of tea, because not tea bag tea,
but you know, loose leaf tea where you have to

(20:30):
seep it for a certain amount of time or else
it doesn't taste its best, and then you pour it
and then you drink it and then you re seep it.
So for me, that ritual really keeps me in meditation.
And what do I mean by meditation Just I do
body scans. I have prayers that I go through every morning,

(20:53):
which is I think, the antithesis of looking at your email.
And then I do a thirty minute workout, which is
I do it online, So I do open my computer,
but I'm not, you know, looking at the newspaper at
the same time I'm doing my workout. I'm focused on
that workout, and that really prepares me for the day,
and if I miss either one of those, I feel
it the rest of the day.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Yeah, definitely, I love hearing that. How long have you
done that for?

Speaker 2 (21:17):
I've done the meditation for nine years straight and I've
missed only a few days when I have those four
am you have to get on the cab at four
am to get to the airport and exercise I've been
doing for even longer. I've gone through lots of habits
with my exercise, but having the morning habit and really

(21:39):
forcing myself, not forcing, it's a habit, having the habit
of even when I only have five minutes I'll do
some sort of you know, stretch or something for that
five minutes every single day and feel good about that
in addition to my good thirty minute cardio strength workout
where I really sweat. So, I mean, I think we're

(21:59):
both talking about the habits that we choose for ourselves
that improve our mental health, strengthen our brain. This is
so important to choose for us.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yeah, absolutely, And I think the point is you'll get
so much more out of your day and your brain. Yes,
I think often we think, well if I skip that,
I used to be like this with my wife. She
was the one who kept drilling into me how important
physical activity was. Yeah, And I was just like, no,
I'm fine, and she was like, imagine how alert you'll be,
Imagine how focused you will be. And I didn't believe her.

(22:31):
And then when I started to do it, I was like, oh,
she's right, and it's such an interesting thing. It's so
easy to think I'll accomplish more if I don't make
time for meditation, breath work and working out, But you won't.
You'll actually accomplish less.

Speaker 2 (22:45):
You'll accomplished.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
Is that what you found is that does a science
show that too?

Speaker 2 (22:49):
You know, the science shows that exercise improves your mood,
it improves your ability to shift and focus your attention.
Long term, it will improve your memory. And so compared
to subjects or you know, animal subjects that don't do exercise,
there is better brain function in those people that are exercising. So, yes,

(23:12):
the science is behind it. And there's beautiful science in
meditation showing that there are brain areas that are enhanced
with in months. For example, that's going way. I'm never
going to be a monk. But the active meditation is
a act of learning how to focus better, so that

(23:33):
I could focus on your questions and not be distracted
by whatever is going on on the outside. I mean,
we have a nice quiet room, but sometimes, you know,
I live in New York, We're on the subway and
there's so much noise, and when you practice the meditation,
you realize how powerful that is for your life, that
I could choose to focus on you. That's all I'm

(23:55):
focused on. I'm listening to you deeply, I'm thinking about
it deeply, And that is an experience that not enough
of us are having on a very regular basis.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, why does it feel like when we're trying to
do that? It almost feels like it hut right, Like
when someone's really trying to focus, it's like you're trying
to pull the energy. And people can feel like, oh god,
it's so tiring, where it's exhausting to be present and
it almost feels like you're having to pull yourself in
a certain direction, but there's some tension and resistance back.
What are we experiencing? What's going on? You know?

Speaker 2 (24:30):
I think part of that is our lives have been
focused on getting pulled in ten different directions at the
same time. We get used to that, and so no,
I can't focus on you for a whole hour because
I have thirty other things that I usually get pulled into.
And that becomes your habit. If that is your habit,

(24:51):
I think you need to rethink that. And it's a
muscle that you build. I remember my undergraduate IT advisor,
the woman who made me want to become a neuroscientist.
She used to say that new learning, this is a
new habit that you're learning, will hurt. It'll make your
brain hurt because it's those dendrites that are growing and

(25:14):
stretching out and making new connections. It's not an easy thing.
It's a metabolic load. It is an effort to build
new pathways. But that's what we're doing when we're trying
to focus and connect for longer periods of time than
we were used to.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Okay, so it's okay if it hurts.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Oh yeah, absolutely, it's supposed to hurt.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Right. It's almost like you're walking through a path that
doesn't exist yet, yes, and so you're having to pave
that way exactly. You're the first person walking in. Yeah,
there's nothing ahead of you. You're chopping down the trees
and leaves in front of you. You're building the bridge
the pathway. Yes, and that's why it hurts. And it's
so interesting when you think about it that way. Yeah,
you go, oh, okay, So every time I walk over

(25:55):
that bridge, it will become stronger, yes, And every time
I step on that step path becomes clearer, and now
it's going to be easier for me every time. Yeah. Yeah,
it's it's fascinating to me just how everything that's good
for you seems hard and everything that's bad for you
seems easy.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Well, yes, I think at the certain at a certain
point of the journey, that is absolutely the case. But
at a different point of the journey, when you've when
you've you know, cut down those trees with your machete,
it feels glorious to be able to have these deep
conversations with your friends and build that habit with your

(26:40):
friends and your loved ones, and build that habit of
first thing in the morning, no no phone, and meditation,
and you know how much better you're going to feel.
And that that is the part of the gratitude. Yes,
I have a gratitude practice. It is that it is
like being grateful for all those good habits that I

(27:01):
have been forming and throwing those away that I don't
and being grateful that I threw that away.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah. I talked a lot about going back to your
point around Monk's Brains. I talked a lot about the
science be Monk's Brains in my first book, Think Like
a Monk. And I remember a simple practice that we
used to do when I lived as a month that
was really helpful to me. So we would often meditate
on beads, and we were always told because we'd be
meditating on those beads sometimes for two hours at a time,

(27:28):
four hours at a time, even more. And so we
were always told, when you hear the word two hours,
you're just like, God, how am I going to get
through two hours? And we're always told, just focus on
one bead at a time, one mantra at a time,
just one at a time, And all of a sudden,
it became so much easier where it was just like,
it's just about this bead, it's just about this mantra,
it's just about this step, it's not about two hours.

(27:51):
And I think sometimes when we're thinking, oh gosh, I've
got to build this new habit, I've got to work
out five days a week, and I've got to it's
like that just feels so insurmountable. Why does the brain
work better with small steps and habits and changes.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
That's such a great question. I think that it is
part of the effort that goes into something new, the
novelty of praying on a single bead and kind of
fighting away that instacts like, oh I didn't get through
one hundred beads, I'm a failure. That's a lot of

(28:28):
cognitive noise. And I always say for exercise and meditation,
those those two things that could immediately decrease your stress
and anxiety levels. It's great. In fact, I tell you,
I tell everybody to start small. Ten minutes of walking.
Don't even have to change your clothes or your shoes,
just a minute of deep breathing, just put your phone on,

(28:51):
you know, just the clock and just so you know
how much that minute is. And just doing that is
is good enough. And the effort comes in batting away
all those feelings of failure and the difference between your
one minute and ten hours that you really wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Definitely, what's the difference between everyday anxiety and then having
an anxiety disorder?

Speaker 2 (29:15):
Yeah, so Anxiety is a normal human emotion. Everybody has anxiety.
I think it's been kind of clinicalized. Oh I have anxiety. Yeah,
everybody has anxiety. But anxiety exists on a very very
large spectrum. So we all have anxiety, and yes, the
highest levels of anxiety that prevent you from doing the

(29:39):
everyday things that you need to do in your life
and having a job and having relationships and going out
and doing things. That's clinical and it is just kind
of going down that rabbit hole of anxiety and needing
more help, clinical help to get you out with cognitive
behavioral therapy, so many different techniques that you could use.

(30:00):
So it's all part of a spectrum, which you know,
I hope that makes people feel better because you can
come back. Everybody has it. Let's just pull you back
from that highest level and let you take advantage of
I think one of the things I love the most
from my book Good Anxiety is that it's not about

(30:23):
anxiety so bad. Let me just tell you the tools
to get rid of it in your life. It is
the acknowledgment that anxiety is a protective mechanism. My invitation is,
can I invite you to try and use your anxiety
to help protect you, to actually give you some gifts

(30:44):
or superpowers, because there's a lot that we can learn
from our anxiety and all our uncomfortable emotions.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
I think when people hear that, they may think, oh,
that's cool, but I don't believe it, Like, how could
I believe that anxiety can be my superpower?

Speaker 2 (30:58):
How do I do that?

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Make that switch from going I'm scared, yeah too, actually unprepared?

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Yeah yeah. So I start with I think the easiest
to implement. So this one is the superpower of productivity
that comes from a very common form of anxiety that
everybody has, which is the to do list that comes
up at opportune times like oh you get overwhelmed. For me,
it comes up right before I'm going to go to sleep,

(31:24):
and so it prevents me from going to sleep, so annoying.
And so the flip for that is to take the
to do list, and first I want you to notice
that all of these things are things that you care
about doing well. They're usually about your job, or your
relationship or money, money, things, all good to be concerned

(31:48):
about them. The trick is to take that what if
list and turn it into a to do list and
so for me, I don't do it in the middle
of the night. I wait till the next morning. But
I've trained myself that I'm going to take care of
each one of those worries and do something active. If
there is an issue at work, I'm going to talk

(32:09):
to three people about it and try and get input
for that. There's something active that you can do for
every single one of your worries, and the more people
you talk to about it, you realize that very productive
people are already doing this, so take advantage of that
of that trick.

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(33:52):
really like that. And one thing that's really helped me
is I always look at my anxiety as revealing to
me a skill I haven't yet developed. Yes, and I
really believe that it's like it's a muscle that you
need to develop. So I go, Okay, if I'm anxious
about going to this event and having to do small talk,
it's because I haven't built the skill to be able
to do small talk. So maybe if I read a book,

(34:13):
or I spoke to someone, or I sat down with
an expert, or I listened to a podcast with an
expert on how to have good conversations, all of a sudden,
now I know what questions to ask, and at least
it makes me feel comfortable. Or if a I'm nervous
about the fact that I've been asked to do something
at work and I know nothing about it, Hey, let
me go and take a course on it or a
class on it. And I feel I always look at

(34:34):
anxiety as just a sign of what's a skill I
don't have, quality, I haven't developed, an ability, or a
priority I haven't made, and now let me do that.
It could be the skill of having tough conversations, the
skill of learning to say no, the skill of setting boundaries,
whatever it may be. It's just this one skill away,
not that I won't feel that anxiety ever again, but

(34:55):
that I can actually better manage that anxiety when it arrives.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Right. I love that because you've just created a new
superpower of anxiety, which is the love of learning. So
can you turn your anxieties into the next learning project
that you have and then get better at small talk
or whatever you're anxious about. I love that.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Yeah. No, it's the only thing that's ever helped me
for so many years subconsciously. I just I've always experienced anxiety,
but I've found that it just got less and less
and less as my skills developed. Yeah yeah, And developing
those skills was hard, and that took time and effort
and it wasn't easy. But as those skills grew, now
it was just like, oh, I can manage this. I

(35:38):
know I can deal with this. And of course there
are always going to be things that surprise you and
then you go, oh god, I have no skills for
this one. And that's okay too. But even if the
skill is resilient, or even if the skill is learning
to develop how to deal with grief, I feel these
are all skills and muscles and if they looked to
that way, we can deal with them better.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Absolutely. I mean, those anxieties are really telling you what
you hold dear in your life. I think, wow, that
sounds good. I want to know what I hold dear
in my life because the flip side of your anxiety,
and the flip side of grief is deep love. And
so I think that all of these more difficult emotions,

(36:20):
when seen in that light, can be embraced in a
new way instead of trying to kick them out the
door and never experience them again. That that is not
a full life if you don't have grief, because it
suggests you didn't have that deep love that turns into
grief when something goes away. Not that I'm wishing people grief,

(36:43):
but that helped me so much in my periods of
grief to realize that that grief would never be so
deep that I could never even imagine it before it happened,
unless unless the love for those people were were so
deep in the first place. And it's like, Wow, I

(37:03):
loved them more than I even realized, which was a
gift to realize that and pulled me out of my grief.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
Wow, that's so beautiful. Could you share more on that
from real perspective, how you actually got to that realization,
How was it before you felt that way?

Speaker 2 (37:20):
So that realization really really defined the way I wrote
this book Good Anxiety, because I started the book before
these events, and it was going to be a neuroscience
based book on anxiety, and I was going to explain
the science of it so everybody could understand. And it
was going forward in an exciting way. And then my

(37:41):
father passed away, and he was eighty five, and he
had dementia and he had a sudden heart attack, and
it was just so so sad, and I remember being
so grateful that my brother did the eulogy, because that
has been my biggest fear in life, to have to

(38:03):
do eulogy and have to stand up and talk about
somebody who's just passed without your crying uncontrollably. He did
such a beautiful job. But the next traggy tragedy was
that three months later, my brother, who's two years younger,
also passed away of a heart attack. Suddenly. He was
the most fit person and that you would ever know.

(38:27):
And that was devastating to lose both of them of
the same thing within three months. And I was trying
to go through it, and I stopped writing the book
because I couldn't because I was grieving. Then I realized
I had to. I had to do his eulogy because
there was nobody else left. It was it was only me. Uh,

(38:52):
and so a lot of soul searching what am I
going to say? How am I going to get through this?
And it was in that search that I realized that
that grief was coming from a good place, and it
actually was inspired by a workout that it was doing,
where the instructor said and trying to get us to

(39:14):
work out harder. She said, with great pain comes great wisdom.
And I was like, oh, my god, that's what I
need to know right at this moment. What is the
wisdom that's coming from this huge pain that I've never
felt before? And I realized that the wisdom was that
the deep grief was showing me how much I love them.

(39:38):
And so it was still hardest thing I've ever done
to write this eulogy and stand up, but I basically
invited everybody to cry along with me at the one
point that was hardest to get through, and I got

(39:59):
through with that way. But it allowed me to approach
grief in a very different way, and I want to
say I'm almost thankful for that experience because it made
me search for the beauty that comes from the pain
in our lives in a brand new way.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Thank you so much for sharing that, And I'm so
sorry for that period in your life. I can't imagine
how Yeah, how challenging and stressful that is talking about
stress and anxiety. Yeah, and I really appreciate how you
connect to the dots for us, because it's one thing.
You know, you're this incredible researcher, professor, you have so

(40:44):
much amazing insight, but then to apply it in real
life in extreme cases, it is so hard. What did
you learn about the brain when going through that that
you didn't know already?

Speaker 2 (40:58):
I learned that my brain was more resilient, to more
resilient than I thought it was. I expanded the range
of my emotions that I had experienced in my life,
which is a good thing. I think that relativism is beautiful.
That dark feeling of deep grief helps me appreciate the

(41:23):
joyous moments better. And I think about that a lot
after this has happened. It really that was part of
the gift that I got. And yes, and it changed
the way I looked at because then I did the eulogy.

(41:44):
I came out of it. I was feeling better. Okay.
I to go back to this book on anxiety, but
I couldn't write it in the same way anymore. I
had to find the gifts or the superpowers that came
from anxiety, which I've already shared that with you, But
that's the reason why I never would have I don't
know what the gifts are. Well, I did learn not trick.

(42:06):
I learned that lesson through through that experience, and I
applied it to the emotion of anxiety, and I think
it changed the book. Well I know it changed the book.
I wrote it in a completely different way and I've
used those lessons in a different way in my life
since that experience.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Wonderful And what did you know about the brain already
at the time that helped you get through it?

Speaker 2 (42:26):
Yeah, as a nerdy neuroscience and neuroscientists, I know all
about the mechanisms and the receptors involved in stress. And
not that I studied grief per se, but grief is
one you know, it gives you a lot of stress
when you have grief. I think my whole life has

(42:47):
helped me bring my more academic study of neuroscience to life.
There is the lessons that I could teach and that
I do teach to students about what we know about
the stress system, the memory system, your prefrontal cortex, decision making,
all these fascinating topics. But then there is life that

(43:08):
comes in, and I think that what I've been doing
more recently in my career. I did a very traditional
academic career up to a certain point, and then I
started to try and apply kind of life's lessons to neuroscience.
And so what does that mean? That means going off

(43:30):
book and thinking about, you know, other ways to convey anxiety,
not just the clinical part, but the useful part for
your life. So that's how I wud describe it absolutely.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
How do traumatic events like that what you went through
over a period of three months? And I know so
many friends have been through similar things and different things
that man maybe are not to do with grief in
that way, but even grief of a life you could
have had if you've had breakups. How does emotional trauma
actually affect the brain? What's going on?

Speaker 2 (44:05):
Yeah, so you know emotional trauma. Also there's a relatively
simple formula with what happens, which is going back to
the stress hormone cortisol. Depending on the actual stressor and
the duration of that, it is going to first kind
of alert your brains. Like I don't want to listen

(44:26):
to happen again. It's like, this will not happen again.
And that's what it was supposed to do. It's supposed
to heighten your senses so you can escape from the
burning building. However, in these other life circumstances a breakup
or death that you know, the emotional effects linger for
a long time. They might actually cause what's called fear

(44:50):
memories to develop. These are memories dependent on a structure
called the amygdala that again are trying to protect you, like,
don't have this happen again, and steer you away from events.
So I might have been steered away from eulogies or
speaking in front of crowds, which I do all the time,

(45:12):
but yeah, I would have been steered away from eulogies.
When you have these broader realizations about what's going on,
you could actually learn in a deeper way from them,
and instead of being steered away, instead of developing a
fear memory that is very strong and hard to get

(45:32):
rid of, you can have a deeper learning that sharing
those very personal, very deep, very difficult emotions to feel.
Talk about new synapses forming is a deeply cathartic process

(45:53):
that brought me closer to my family and to everybody
that was there footing, all my brother's friends, many of
whom I didn't know.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
So yeah, yeah, Is it possible to prepare for future
trauma or is the only way to be prepared for
it to go through it. Can we build resilience before
a traumatic event?

Speaker 2 (46:18):
Yeah? I think I wouldn't recommend that everybody goes out
to try and prepare for trauma. But but you know,
everybody has some form of trauma. And I think going
back to your superpower of anxiety and learning learning from
that and also realizing this was another big realization for me.

(46:42):
You're not going to get rid of that deep negative emotion.
It's there for a reason to warn you against this
is a bad time. If you didn't have this warning,
you would be walking in the middle of the freeway
with no care in the world. So you're not going
to get rid of that. But to focus yourself on

(47:02):
the learning that comes out of it and that yes,
it might take some time, and to give yourself that time.
Maybe what I'm trying to get at is a self
compassion that can come from any trauma that you have,
and learning to apply that to yourself I think is

(47:23):
a really good thing that you can prepare. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
I think when you lose someone you love, that painful
feeling inside is a reminder that life is sacred. Yes,
that you should tell the people that are close to
you that you love them, that you should really value
and prioritize time together and moments together. It's a reminder
that pains just pushing you in the right direction, nudging

(47:49):
in the right direction to say, don't make the wrong priorities,
don't set the wrong focuses in your life.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Right.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
And if it went away, as it does, we also
forget that as the distance grows from when you've lost
someone and the distance from that pain, it's not that
pain goes away, but it gets less and less and less,
we also forget that. Yeah, and then all of a
sudden something else happens again, and we've read prioritized, right,
does it? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Absolutely?

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Why do we forget lessons that we learn?

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Well, if I could answer that, that would be that
would be the sixty four million dollar question. And actually
part of the answer is the brain evolved to help
us remember those lessons around dangerous situations that we have,
so we don't go in that direction anymore. Yes, we

(48:43):
might forget, but actually our brain is has evolved to
make those kinds of fear memories or difficulty memories the
hardest to get rid of. That is why PTSD is
so hard to get rid of, and those you don't
want to be carrying around. So I would ask a

(49:03):
flip question, which is how come we don't relive our
most glorious memories more often than our lives. And in fact,
I think of that because that is my favorite brain
hack from good anxiety, which are tools that you can
use to decrease your anxiety. And this tool is called

(49:26):
joy conditioning, and it is designed to specifically to counter
fear conditioning dependent on the amigla. Joy conditioning is dependent
on another structure called the hippocampus, which allows us to
form and routaine our everyday memories for events. And so
joy conditioning is simply using all the tools that we
know about neuroscience that make those kinds of memories stick,

(49:48):
which is reliving them. I just went on a beautiful
week long yoga breath work it was actually not yoga
breath work retreat, and I completely unplug rugged and so
what I'm practicing my joy conditioning on is what it
felt to be in that circle every day, every morning,

(50:09):
every afternoon. I remember that the ocean was so loud.
We're right by the sea. The heat was so hot.
The food or the fruits were so amazing, just the
flavor of the fruits. And those are the things that
that that rea vivification of the what where, why? When

(50:30):
the taste, the smells, the sounds, that's what strengthens the memory.
I am strengthening this joyous memory and I do that consciously,
and I invite everybody to do this to kind of
counteract all those negative memories that are hard to get
rid of. Let's let's fill our brains with all the

(50:52):
most joyous, funny, fun memories of our lives.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Yeah, I love that joy conditioning hock and Habit was
when I went on tour last year. We went to
nearly forty cities across the world, and at the end
of them, I'd lead in meditation. And I didn't have
a name for it, but that's exactly the meditation I do.
I ask everyone to go back to a moment where
they experienced the most love and joy in their life

(51:18):
and to relive it in the feelings. And I was
thinking about earlier this year, you reminded me as you
were talking about your breathwork retreat. Earlier this year, I
visited Bhutan and I'd never been before. And for anyone
who doesn't know, Bhutan is this tiny, beautiful country landlocked
between India and China, right in between, and it's got

(51:39):
a beautiful culture. They're famously known for measuring GNH not
GDP and gnh's gross National Happiness, and so it's the
culture of Bhutan is very very much mindful and being present.
And I was asked the leader session there and I
remember we'd gone inside one of these old Bhutanese buildings.
It was We're in this beautiful courtyards surrounded by candles.

(52:02):
It got really really dark, where even though I was
giving a presentation, no one could see me. They could
only hear me. And before it got dark, when it
was just the sun was about to set, I asked
everyone to take a mental picture. And I always love
that technique, the five four three two one technique. Yeah,
And so I asked everyone to look at five things
they could see, four things they could touch, three things

(52:24):
they could hear, two things they could smell, and one
thing they could taste. And I was like this is
how we take a mental picture. And now literally, if
I close my eyes, I can go back there, right now,
to that moment, because I took in the colors like
you were just saying, took in the shade of the sky,
took in the shapes of the Bhutanese architecture like all

(52:45):
of these, and as you were describing the fruits and
the colors, and I just feel like, if we all
I love what you're saying, because I do think we
have so much joy in our lives. Yes, but we
relived the negativity more. If you had a tough journey
coming here, or I did, we would talk about how
tough it was the whole day, yes, But if we

(53:07):
had the most beautiful journey coming here, we wouldn't talk
about it once exactly, and we just ignore it and
feel like, well, that's normal. But what's become normal is
us repeating our challenges. When does talking about our problems
and our anxiety actually help our brain versus our brain?

Speaker 2 (53:26):
I think it depends on how you talk about your anxiety.
And I think, again, going back to this learning process,
can you talk about your anxiety as what it brings you,
what you learned from either the fantastic way you handed
your anxiety or the non optimal way, and then think about, well,

(53:49):
how will I do that differently the next time. That
is the classic growth mindset. And if we can learn
how to talk about our fear or anxiety that way,
that is beautiful. In my meditation this morning, actually it
was an auditory, you know, I was listening to a

(54:11):
guided meditation. They asked me to think about four things
and I just loved it. I didn't know this was
coming up. It was what do you fear? What scares you?
What brings you joy, and what brings you hope? I thought, Wow,
what great things to ponder, and it really kind of

(54:33):
brought things into focus for me when I the first
thing that came to mind what do I fear? Who
do I fear? Losing more people? What am I scared of?
And there it was, you know, I get scared of
people's opinions about myself. What brings me joy, all the

(54:53):
friends that bring me joy? And what do I hope
for when don't want to build in this world? So
it's about approaching and there's anxiety in that list that
everybody will do when they if they choose to do
those four things. But again, anxiety is pointing you towards
what you hold dear, and all of those questions point

(55:16):
out what you hold dear and what your aspirations are.
So so to summarize mindset is so critical as we
are living, even as we're talking about our bad day,
you know, our bad parking experience or driving experience, is
it to learn or is it to commiserate or just

(55:39):
to you know? Or or you're not realizing you are
focusing too much on a negative thing. Mindset and awareness.

Speaker 1 (55:47):
Yeah, And also what you're saying, is this over amplification
as well of something that actually was quite insignificant, Yeah,
or if it was significant. You're talking about looking at
our challenges or talking about them in a way that
takes accountability and future accountability. And that's what I love
this idea of, well, let me talk about what went

(56:07):
wrong today, and maybe I shouldn't take that route to
work anymore, or you know, maybe let me talk about
what went wrong in this conversation with someone I love,
and maybe I've got to set better boundaries. It's always
about a solution oriented growth focus, as you said, but
so many of our conversations today, especially about anxiety and
stress are victim based and how do we make that switch?

(56:28):
Because when you feel like the victim, it feels so
real to you. It does, yeah, and you do feel
so hurt that if someone said, well, what could you
do differently, You'd be like nothing, I did everything the
best I could. So how do we open up that
switch from anxiety to growth?

Speaker 2 (56:43):
Yeah? So I think that something that has really helped
me is to pay attention to who you are talking to,
who is feeding you information in your life, and if
it's too negative and it if it you know, you
know this person is the best complainer in the world,

(57:04):
and and you you join in because it feels good
to complain, you know, with a with a friend about something.
Step back and instead choose somebody who has that growth
mindset that can open up other possible ways to think
about that. Do it yourself. Think, okay, you know you

(57:25):
can do an exercise, do the complainer mindset for you
on yourself, by yourself, and then do the growth mindset
and ask yourself, how does that feel? What does it
feel if I just go down the road of the
complainer versus what I like? Oh? I actually like that idea?
What if I do that next time? Can you inspire yourself?

(57:45):
So many different routes and coaches, therapists can they're experts
at doing this as well. So that's another route to go.
But podcasts or another, this is a common topic in
in podcast these days.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Definitely, what does healing actually look like in the brain
from trauma, like from a chemical perspective, like, what's actually
happening when we're healing?

Speaker 2 (58:09):
I must say I'm more of an expert not on
healing from trauma, but on growth in the positive direction.
And so here's what growth can look like based on
of the things that we've already talked about. So we
talked about the effects that the fact that moving your
body can have an immediate positive effect on your anxiety,

(58:32):
also on your depression, decrease your stress response. What's happening there?
Every single time you move your body, you're releasing a
whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain. I like to
call it a neurochemical bubble bath for your brain.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
And so you're giving yourself this bubble bath. What's in
that bubble bath? Well, you've heard some of these neurochemicals
before dopamine. I know you love talking about dopamine. You
and so many other people talk about dopamine in such
interesting ways. Gitonin nor adrenaline endorphins. That's what's being released
in this bubble bath, and so not surprisingly, you feel
better after you walk. That is why you're feeling better.

(59:10):
But the other thing that gets released is growth factors.
Growth factors get released and they go to the hippocampus
and they actually build new brain cells in the hippo camps.
They help new brain cells grow in the hippocampus. Now,
you want as many shiny new hippampal brain cells as
you can get, which means that and they don't pop

(59:31):
up like mushrooms. It takes a while. You need to
keep up that physical activity and for that, the best
way to get high levels of growth factors in your
bubble bath is to do an aerobic workout, any workout
that increases your heart rate. Now, this gives you lots
of options. You like to dance, go dance, You like
to take your dog for a walk, Go take for

(59:51):
a dog for a power walk, like to walk, go
for a walk. Anything that gets your heart rate up.
I don't care what it is will help with this.
But keep it up, and it's like I picture a
watering can with growth factors going on your left and
your right hippocampus, making it big and fat and fluffy.
And that is one of the harbingers two great brain growth.

(01:00:18):
The other brain area, which I'm sure is huge in you,
is your prefrontal cortex. Living a life of a monk
and doing that deep practice of focusing your attention keeping
it there makes your area ten, which is right behind
your forehead, enhanced, enriched, not because of new neurons, but
likely because of new synapses. And so basically, what a

(01:00:42):
healed brain looks like is a bigger, fatter, fluffier brain
that is kind of flush with good neurochemicals and is
building new synaptic connections. That is kind of the beautiful
picture of what I call positive brain plasticity.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
You make it sound so simple in terms of what
we need to do. We need to want breathing and moving. Yes,
like it's as simple as that. What if we're doing
breathing and moving and we're still not feeling positive benefits,
what could be a play there?

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Well, you know, I think that sometimes it's hard to
appreciate what's going on. It could be that you're not
moving quite in the same way. I think it's easy
to get in a habit of moving, and so sometimes
you need to push yourself a little bit more. If
you're doing ten minutes of walking, maybe try fifteen minutes
and it's it's you know, there are some pillars that

(01:01:36):
not just me, but so many neuroscientists have shown are
so important for brain plasticity, which is actually what my
undergraduate advisor discovered as she was a young neuroscientist in
the nineteen sixties at U SEE Berkeley, Marion Diamond, and
so exercise was one of the pillars stress reduction that

(01:01:58):
comes from meditation. Social interaction. We are social beings. I'm
sorry social media does not count person to person interaction.
That is what humans were evolved to do. Sleep, which
we haven't talked about but is so critically important. And
the fifth pillar is good nutrition. Social interaction. Sorry, I

(01:02:23):
need to add that social interaction doesn't mean just conversations.
I include love. There. Having love in your life is
something that neuroscientists don't often talk about, but it is
absolutely critical for the health of your brain.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
And how do you define love from a neuroscience perspective?

Speaker 2 (01:02:43):
Well, so you can study the neurobiology of love and
compare the brain areas that get active when you look
at the picture of an acquaintance versus the picture of
somebody that you might have.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
Well, you see, you would see you would see.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Ward areas lighting up, but other areas social interaction areas
as well. And one of the most interesting findings that
I love from that neurobiology of love fMRI study of
love literature is that they've also started to look at
how does the brain response to your loved one change
from the first throws of romantic love when you can't

(01:03:23):
get enough of each other to a relationship that has
evolved to something stable but very very loving. And what
happens is it goes from just lots of lots of
dopamine and lots of reward areas and kind of a
suppression of the amigla and and kind of the fear.

(01:03:44):
You're fearless when you are first in love. And I know,
you know I felt fearless. I don't know if in
a good way, but we feel fearless. And it starts
to evolve into a pattern that looks like the maternal
or paternal pattern, that is that protective element and we
can't see everything from fMRI, but I thought, I thought,

(01:04:07):
that's such a beautiful pattern to think about that that, yes,
I can't sustain that first you know, flush of love
for the rest of my life. But that deep love
that you do feel for a child, that is what
comes with long term.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
I'd never heard about that from when your That's so interesting. Yeah,
that's so interesting, that romantic love. But the way it
looks afterwards is more paternal and protective.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Yes, yes, not in every single you know, Marcel, but
when you look at the relationships that you admire, you know,
those long term relationship, there is the devotion that is
there that of course you see for you know, protection
for your young child. It's not identical, but that devotion
is beautiful. That's what's moving about those kinds of relationships.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
And I feel like today it's become harder and harder
and harder even just in how people gather. Like I
feel like I was just watching what I just see,
Gladiated too, And I remember watching Gladiator one and I
was just while I was watching it, I was just
thinking about the fact that the Roman Colisseum was so
big and that people would gather every week. I mean,
they'd gather for the worst reason. But the idea that

(01:05:25):
so many people would gather every week, or I think
at one point it was every day, And I'm like,
first of all, what is everyone doing in their spare time?
But so many people would gather, so many people would
be together. Of course, if we look at whether it's
community census, churches, temples, the places of gathering today we
have less and less places of gathering. Even though there's

(01:05:46):
millions of people going to listen to this episode, they're
not in the same place listening to it. And I
know that if we did have a million people here
right now, even if we had a portion of the
people that listen to the episode here, they could then
talk about it yeah, and discuss it and exchange it,
and they could look at each other's eyes and be like, oh,
you feel that too, Oh my gosh, I went through

(01:06:06):
that grief, and how amazing would that be? And we're
losing that, And so the ability to create love and
connection is becoming harder and harder and harder because our
places of similar value are now digital. Right If this
is a place, I know everyone who listens to us
has similar values, cares about similar things, but they're not
meeting each other. And you know, we're trying to do

(01:06:28):
that by when I go on tour. That's really one
of my biggest goals because I'm hoping when everyone walks out,
they're all going to just talk to each other and
ask each other questions. Should we be forcing ourselves to
have places to gather of similar value? Like should we
make that a priority?

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Absolutely? And I immediately think of the university, And that
is a natural place of gathering in person. Universities, you're
gathering every single day, multiple times a day. But sometimes
I see the stress and the worry of do I
you know, am I smart enough? You know in this

(01:07:07):
room pushes people apart and then they go and they
go on their phone and it's more comfortable to do that.
That is what I'm trying to shift, so that we
take full advantage of this person to person place of
gathering at our university, that they feel connected to each other,

(01:07:27):
they feel like they belong there for whatever thing that
you want to promote, I, as dean, want to promote
the joy of learning. That is what I want to
teach them. That is what I want them to feel like.
And so yes, all of you university professors out there.
You have this power to make your place of gathering

(01:07:50):
one of these places where people are talking and interacting.
And of course we all try that. It's harder because
because of the pandemic and we're not used to being
together as much in society or you know, in our
growing up. So the answer to your question is, yes,
it's our responsibility to do that. How can we do

(01:08:10):
that more? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:08:11):
I love that example. I saw I read a study
that said eighty percent of us pull out our phone
in a crowd just to avoid conversation and contact. And
so I love what you're saying about building it on
a college campus. And I think the same applies inside
a corporation if people are coming to work, even if
they're coming to work three days a week. As a
dean yourself, how do you do that when you've got targets.

(01:08:34):
I'm sure there's results you have to get to. You've
got things, deadlines you have to meet, You've got a
ton of stuff on your play, as does a CEO
of a major corporation or an organization. How do you
prioritize a love for learning and belonging and connection. Yeah,
not just as nice things that you say, but actually
do How do you do that? Because I see it

(01:08:55):
as very genuine from you.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
Yeah, real, absolutely, And so how do I prioritize I
just make it a priority, and I decide the actions
that I'm going to do to get to that goal. So,
for example, I am literally strategizing about how I could
get in front of as many of those nine thousand

(01:09:17):
students that I have multiple times during their four years
with us. I see them all, every single first year student,
I see every single one graduating. I see there's a
lot of time between that. What can I do to
have a meaningful How should I go on tour just
like you do, but talk to the first year is,
the second year is the third years. I loved my

(01:09:39):
college experience because I was imbued with the love of learning,
and so I do that through the coursework that I
provide for my students. That is actually I'm trying to
develop it right now. It is an online class, but
with an in person component so that I could kind
of gut up to sk the first time I did it.

(01:10:01):
It's called it's called the Fluffy Brain Course. So I
want to give all the students in this course a
fluffy brain teaching them a lot about what we've just
spent the last hour talking about. But there's always going
to be an in person component and the goal of
this class is to inspire them to do person, not
inspire them. It's part of the class. That's a great
thing about a class. I could assign things to you.

(01:10:23):
So your assignment is to do a personal experiment about exercise.
How are you going to up your exercise for the
next week, But first you're going to just notice your
mood or your regular mood states, so that self awareness,
and the next week you are going to propose something,
do it, increase your exercise, and then self reflect about

(01:10:44):
that and we will we will explore that and talk
about it together.

Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
I love that. And they have to do it, they
have to really do it. Yeah, I'm really happy that
you're saying this, because I do think as leaders in
different institutions and organizations, there's such a there's a responsibility.
There's also just a vision for what an amazingly happy,
fluffy brain community looks like. Yes, And when I think

(01:11:09):
about it, coming from college, it's hard because people are
coming from so many different motivations. Yes, right, someone's coming
there for the best job in the world. Someone's coming
there for an amazing social experience. Someone's coming there to
compete with everyone else. Right, You've got all these drivers,
and to kind of take everyone's drivers and point it

(01:11:31):
in one direction is one of the hardest things to
do in the world because everyone's got their background and
their walk of life. And I remember in the monastery,
it's similar to what you said, our senior most monk
would always talk about three qualities above all qualities, and
it was humility, tolerance, and compassion that was it. And
so if you went to one of his lectures, that's

(01:11:52):
all he was going to talk about. And what you
realized slowly was that, at least for me, I found
that those became qualities that inspired for because I recognized
they were most valued in this place, even though I
may have come from a different set of values before.
I would have come from like ambition, drive, whatever it was,
And all of a sudden, it's humility and tolerance, compassion.

(01:12:14):
And then you saw those who accepted and those who
rejected it as well. There were some people who just
went ye oh, yeah, whatever, who cares, and then there
was some that went, no, that seems to be the
truth and so what do you find is the healthiest
way to encourage people in the right direction. Is people
don't want to be told and people don't want to
be preached to. So how do you do it in
a way that actually the brain digests.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
So I start with the official greeting of the College
of Arts and Science, which is Jay, you have a
beautiful brain. And so I invite all the students when
they see me on the street to come up and say,
you have a beautiful brain. And of course I will
say it back to them. And I love starting from
there because that is the truth, the neurobiological truth, that

(01:13:02):
every single one of the brains of my students is beautiful.
Your brain is beautiful, My brain is beautiful. And no
matter what your motivation for being in this space with me,
it has a beautiful brain. And from there we go,
from which hopefully provides a sense of belonging, we go

(01:13:23):
to let's share. Let's share what you have to give
from your beautiful brain, because your brain has something to
give that is different than what my brain. And let's
just provide a situation and an environment that's open to
all of that sharing and talk about the fact that
no it's not about competition, it's not about getting the

(01:13:46):
highest mark. It's learning the deepest for whatever class you are.
And I know these are hard priorities, but I'm building
them over the last two and a half years and
it's really a joy to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:02):
They're so lucky to have you there, really are. That's
such a you know, to leave college with that mindset,
with a love for deep learning, I think we'll set
people up for so much more success, yes than just
a great job that eventually may end up being the
job that they don't want to be in and a
career that they don't enjoy. And then when you realize

(01:14:22):
that and you don't have a deep love for learning, yes,
that becomes really really hard. And that's kind of what
I see. I feel like I speak to a lot
of people who are kind of got the job that
they thought they want out of college, and then five
years in, maybe even quicker to like, it's actually not
what I wanted yea, And now I'm trying to find
meaning in life. For the problem is I didn't have
that deep love for learning, and so now I have

(01:14:44):
to build it later on. So it's so lucky to
have you. Oh, thank you, it's really amazing. I want
to ask you when you say that after meation, I
love that you have a beautiful brain. Does positive thinking
and positive affirmations do they actually work?

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Absolutely? I mean there are studies showing that if you
take a group of people and have them do positive affirmations,
not just just saying them a certain number of time
every day, versus people that don't do those positive affirmations,
their affect is better. It's higher, you know, less uh,
less negative affect and more positive affect. Yes, it does

(01:15:17):
have an effect, which makes sense. Our brain takes in
everything that's happening to us. So you know, this is
why we talked about looking at the people that you are,
that you're that's feeding you information. Are they cynical? Are
they negative? Or are they giving you a growth mindset?
Are they are they giving you interesting new possibilities to

(01:15:38):
go to? Very important to ask yourself that I wanted to.

Speaker 1 (01:15:41):
Ask you, BENDIVI, it's okay. A couple of questions from
your first book about memory. Yeah, sure, because I just
think it's such a fascinating subject. And when we think
about the brain and memory, I think there's there's just
there's so much connection that I think would fascinate people.
I wanted to ask you, why is it that we
can remember different things about the same event and when
you're there with the same people.

Speaker 2 (01:16:02):
Yeah, so sorry to say, but our memory does not
work very well. Generally we think, oh, you know, I'm young,
I have a great memory. No, our memory is not great.
And so the reason why two people at the same
event remember different things is that we are focused on
these different things. And let me just go over the

(01:16:23):
four things that makes memory stick. This works at all
ages based on the neurophysiology and biology of this hippy
campus that we talked about critical for forming and retaining new,
new long term memories. So what makes memory stick? Repetition.
So you and I might be at the same event

(01:16:44):
and you're focused on one thing and it's the same event,
but event is big. I'm focused on something else, so
you're repeating something that I that I never saw, and
I'm seeing something that you never saw. Repetition association. We
remember things better when they're associated with other things that
are in our long term memory. So we might be
easier to remember a friend of a friend that we

(01:17:07):
know really really well and they introduced us versus somebody
that you don't know at all, and you try to
remember them from anybody association. Novelty, if it's really novel,
you've never experienced this in your life, it tends to
be more memorable because our brains are focused on novelty.
It's a danger kind of you know, we have to

(01:17:27):
pay attention to novelty, and maybe there are things at
the event that were really novel to you that, like
I've seen a million times in my brain just completely
ignores them. And the fourth thing that makes memory stick
is emotional resonance. So we remember the happiest and the
saddest points in our life. That's what this structure, the
amygdala helps with. It kind of helps those really emotional

(01:17:50):
memories stick better. And again, at this same event, you
might be moved by something that either I didn't see
or just I wasn't moved by because that wasn't in
my in my life experience. So there's lots of different
reasons why two different people will have sometimes very different
memories of the same event.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Yeah, and I have a friend who is very present,
like you know, in the moment. But if I was
to say to them to remember something from one two
years back, even from like fifteen years back, they cannot
recall it at all. Well, yeah, is that an issue?

Speaker 2 (01:18:25):
You know, memory is also there's a lot of variability.
And I remember at I met somebody with something called
highly superior autobiographical memory. I don't know if you've heard
of this. They did this great show on sixteen minutes
about people. It was actually discovered by colleagues of mine,

(01:18:46):
neuroscientists at UC Irvine. And these are people that have
extraordinary memory for details, so they could remember when they
were eight years old what was on TV at seven pm,
seven thirty eight pm, and this this uh uh, this
incredible memory. It gets in the way. But but uh
there's on one end that form of memory, and then

(01:19:09):
all the way too. There's actually particularly poor memory in
that same vein. I'm not sure if two years ago
memories don't stick as long as the person can you know,
live their lives and they have you know, regular memory
for the things they need to live their lives for.
But there Yeah, there's a there's a wide variety of

(01:19:32):
memory levels that that can exist.

Speaker 1 (01:19:33):
In the world. So that's not a sign for dementia Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
Know how old are they?

Speaker 1 (01:19:39):
No, they're young, They're young.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
Yeah. So so so many people have this fear of demand.
I have dimension in my family. It's uh our memories. Also,
here's a tip for everybody. They get worse as a
as we age because we know and we've experienced more
in our life. It's called interference. So I didn't know

(01:20:01):
anything when I was in high school. My memory was
better because I had nothing to interfere. Now I have
so much to keep track of. I don't I give
myself some slack when I don't remember certain things. That's
why I have an assistant to tell me what I
really need to remember. But I'm not worried because there
is a lot of interference in my life, and I
take that into account.

Speaker 1 (01:20:23):
Yeah, and if we want to strengthen our memory, what
would you suggest?

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
Yeah, So, strengthening your memory is all about being present
to what you really want to remember using those four techniques. Now,
you can't make something emotional emotionally resonant unless you try
and make it funny. So that's actually one technique that
I've used. If I really want to try and remember
somebody's name or something, I try and create a funny

(01:20:47):
image about it, but sorry. Repetition repetition. Repetition will help
your memory, no problem. Association can help. So if you
can associate this person or this name, or this concept
with something that it reminds you of to help those
kind of recall lines that you can have to this memory,

(01:21:08):
that can help as well. You can't make something novel
if it's not completely novel. But it's not unfortunately a
magic bullet.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
Wendy, You've been so kind and gracious with your time today.
I feel like I've learned so much. We've talked about
absolutely everything. I really hope that everyone goes and grabs
a copy of your book Good Anxiety. It's brilliant. I
think there's a need for us to use anxiety in
the way you're saying, rather than this desire to avoid it.
We end every episode with a final five, so these

(01:21:38):
questions have to be answered in one word to one
sentence for maximum Okay, So, Wendy, these are your final five.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
The first question is what is the best advice you've
ever heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
Your brain defines who you are. Take care of it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever
heard or received?

Speaker 2 (01:21:58):
Put your head down and work as hard as you
can until you reach your goal. I'm the one that
told me that that bad advice.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
So I love that question Number three, what's something you
can't wait to discover about the brain?

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
I would love to discover how to enhance joyous memories
more easily.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
I love that question. Number fore, what's something that you
used to think was true about the brain but now isn't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Oh well, we used to think back in the early
nineteen sixties that the adult brain had no capacity to
change or grow. And my whole neuroscience career has been
showing how that could happen. How do you make it
happen more? And what are those activities that you can
bring into your life to do that beautifully?

Speaker 1 (01:22:51):
Why did we believe that? Where did that come from?

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
It came from the point in time we were in neuroscience.
There was just no evidence that there were over changes.
We didn't have deep enough microscopes to see the molecular changes,
even the structural changes that we can now see very
easily with our more powerful tools. And so understandably they said, oh,

(01:23:17):
I see no evidence for change once you reach adulthood,
I see no change. And so of course that was
the dogma until somebody said, hey, I think let's look
at this in a different way. And of course that
wasn't believed at first, but then with effort, that was
the concept of brain plasticity. And now we know that
so much can change in the brain.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
Is there an age at which certain things can't change?

Speaker 2 (01:23:42):
You know? Yes, for certain things. Language, there's a language change. Yeah,
I think it is. Don't quote me on this, around
ten years old. It's good to learn the languages before that.
That could be a little bit on the low side. Also,
it's really important to get bilateral good vision, and so

(01:24:05):
if you have amblyoplia, it changes your vision. So those
are things that change with me.

Speaker 1 (01:24:14):
All right. Fifth and final question. Okay, we asked this
to everyone who's ever been on the show. If you
could create one law that everyone in the world had
to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
You must make at least five deep friendships in your life.

Speaker 1 (01:24:27):
It's beautiful. Thank you so much, doctor Wendy Siziki. You
are incredible. That was so much fun. I had a
great time with you. Thank you for being so personal
as well and open about your own journey with grief,
and I hope you'll come back onto the show.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
I would love to thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
Thank you. If you love this episode, you'll enjoy my
interview with doctor Daniel Ahman on how to change your
life by changing your brain.

Speaker 2 (01:24:52):
If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with
a healthy brain. You know, I've had the blessing or
the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and
over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged.

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