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, 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 brain and its potential?
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 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 brain work beautifully. It defines everything that we do and everything that we are. The number one Health and well Iness Podcast.
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.
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
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?
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. 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. We know a lot about vision. So it is a beautiful bag of information and mystery that our brain represents.
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?
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 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.
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.
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 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.
Yeah, so becoming aware. Why are we in denial about our stress?
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, 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.
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
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.
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. 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 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.
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.
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 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 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. 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.
How do we do that?
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, 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 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. 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 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. Anybody can use. You don't even have to change.
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, 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?
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 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.
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 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?
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 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. 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 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.
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, 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 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 it up when you do notice that moment coming up.
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,
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.
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 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.
I think what's actually happening to the brain when we ignore anxiety and stress for a long periods of time.
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 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 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 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 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 do understand about the topic.
Yeah, what what are our daily activities that are damaging the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.
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. 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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, 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.
Yeah, definitely, I love hearing that. How long have you done that for?
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 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 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.
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. 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.
You'll accomplished.
Is that what you found is that does a science show that too?
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, 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 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
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.
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?
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, 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 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.
Okay, so it's okay if it hurts.
Oh yeah, absolutely, it's supposed to hurt.
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 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.
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 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 have been forming and throwing those away that I don't and being grateful that I threw that away.
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,
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.
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.
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 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, 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.
Definitely, what's the difference between everyday anxiety and then having an anxiety disorder?
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 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. 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 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 or superpowers, because there's a lot that we can learn from our anxiety and all our uncomfortable emotions.
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?
How do I do that?
Make that switch from going I'm scared, yeah too, actually unprepared?
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, 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 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 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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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, 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 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 that I can actually better manage that anxiety when it arrives.
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.
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
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.
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, 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, 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 loved them more than I even realized, which was a gift to realize that and pulled me out of my grief.
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?
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 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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
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.
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 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?
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 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.
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. 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.
Wonderful And what did you know about the brain already at the time that helped you get through it?
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 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 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 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.
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?
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 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 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, 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 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 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.
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?
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. 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 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 a really good thing that you can prepare. Yeah.
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 in the right direction to say, don't make the wrong priorities, don't set the wrong focuses in your life.
Right.
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?
Absolutely?
Why do we forget lessons that we learn?
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 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 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 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,
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, 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 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 most joyous, funny, fun memories of our lives.
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 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 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. 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 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 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 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?
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, 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 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 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 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 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 to you know? Or or you're not realizing you are focusing too much on a negative thing. Mindset and awareness.
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 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? 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?
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, 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 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? 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.
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?
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, 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.
I love that.
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. 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 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 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.
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 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.
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?
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 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
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 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.
And how do you define love from a neuroscience perspective?
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.
Well, you see, you would see you would see.
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 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. 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, 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.
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.
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.
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 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 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
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
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?
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 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, 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 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 that more? Yeah?
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.
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 as very genuine from you.
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 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 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.
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. 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 that and we will we will explore that and talk about it together.
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 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 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
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. 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.
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 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 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 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.
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 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 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?
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 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 go to? Very important to ask yourself that I wanted to.
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.
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 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 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 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 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
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.
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?
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,
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 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 memory levels that that can exist.
In the world. So that's not a sign for dementia Alzheimer's.
Know how old are they?
No, they're young, They're young.
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 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.
Yeah, and if we want to strengthen our memory, what would you suggest?
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 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, 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.
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 questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence for maximum Okay, So, Wendy, these are your final five.
Ye.
The first question is what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?
Your brain defines who you are. Take care of it.
Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?
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.
So I love that question Number three, what's something you can't wait to discover about the brain?
I would love to discover how to enhance joyous memories more easily.
I love that question. Number fore, what's something that you used to think was true about the brain but now isn't.
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?
Why did we believe that? Where did that come from?
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, 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.
Is there an age at which certain things can't change?
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 if you have amblyoplia, it changes your vision. So those are things that change with me.
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?
You must make at least five deep friendships in your life.
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.
I would love to thank you very much.
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.
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.