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I'm so grateful that you come back every single week to listen, learn, and grow.
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And you know that the podcast for me is just an opportunity to reach out to people that I'm inspired by, people that I feel are changing the world, people that I feel have amazing insights that I can learn from and want to share with you.
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And today's guest is someone that I've been connected with for a while, but I'm so excited to finally have him in the studio because not only is his insights having a huge impact on how we live, how we think, uh just the energy that I felt from him in the first couple of moments that I've met him, I can already tell that it's all in his heart, too.
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And so, to meet someone who's super strategic, super scientific, has an incredible mind, but has a beautiful heart in person, that's my kind of person.
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And today's guest is none other than Andrew Huberman.
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He's a neuroscientist and tenured professor in the Department of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
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He has made numerous significant contributions to the fields of brain development, brain function, and neuroplasticity, which is the ability of our nervous system to rewire and learn new behaviors, skills, and cognitive functioning.
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He also is a McKnight Foundation and Pew Foundation fellow, and was awarded the Cogan Award in 2017.
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Work from the Huberman Laboratory at Stanford School of Medicine has been published in top journals, including Nature, Science, and Cell, and has been featured in Time, BBC, Scientific American, Discover, and other top media outlets. In 2021, Dr.
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Huberman launched the Huberman Lab Podcast, which I'm a huge fan of, and I know you are, too.
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The podcast is frequently ranked in the top 25 of all podcasts globally, and is often ranked as the number one in the categories of science, education, health, and fitness.
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Please welcome my new friend and someone that I'm a huge fan of and admire, Andrew Huberman.
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Andrew, thank you for doing this.
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Thank you for being here.
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And honestly, thank you for what you do in the world.
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I think it's been brilliant to see someone bring so much heart into science and science into heart.
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And I know that people who listen to you and hear from you and communicate with you and even I really meant the few moments we just spent right now, I I love that combination.
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And I wonder how you whether you even see it that way, whether you don't, but I'm fascinated by is that how you've always lived?
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Have you been fascinated by the heart and science for a while?
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First of all, I just want to say thank you for having me here.
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We've known each other through some mutual contacts for a while and it it's a delight to be here.
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I'm an admirer and a fan of all you do and the way you approach it.
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So, heartfelt thanks for for having me here.
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Um in terms of you know, how things have evolved to to where they are now, you know, I don't have much of a mission statement, but I suppose if I had to pick one, it's to share the the beauty and the utility of biology.
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Since I was very young, I've been obsessed with learning and I've also had a compulsion to share what I've learned, especially when I think that the information can be of use to people.
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So, the little 6- and 8-year-old and 10-year-old version of me wouldn't shut up.
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I was just constantly talking about all the stuff I'd been reading about on the weekends.
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And over time, it just made sense to become an academic for that reason.
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And then nowadays with the advent of podcasting, I have this wonderful opportunity to share things that I think are useful.
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In terms of the heart and the mind, you know, I I can only frame it by saying that, you know, our nervous system is our brain, our spinal cord, but of course all their connections with the organs of the body and back again.
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And so, we really can't divorce any of the organs of the body from our thinking and feeling and action and vice versa, as you very well know.
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And then from a more personal standpoint, you know, I had the great benefit of training with mentors in science who really lived and breathed their science, but also had a deep sense of humanity.
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Each one of them had it had an eye or an ear toward um things that were relevant to them.
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In one case, uh one with a particular interest in mental health and the struggles around mental health and mental illness.
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Um the other uh just a person who just loved animals and the natural kingdom.
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And and then my other advisor was a very strong advocate for scientists of all kinds and backgrounds.
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And so, I was so blessed to be weaned by people who really instilled in me a love and a desire for learning and sharing and doing research, but also understood that how one shows up to the conversation means everything.
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And so, you know, I just feel very blessed to have had that and I'm just trying to do right by by them. I love hearing that.
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Like, I had no idea that that was a part of how you were mentored and and guided and I mean, I'm sure they feel very uh proud in seeing that you continue on and pass that legacy on and so beautifully, but I think what I find even more intriguing about that is so many of our early learning experiences are not necessarily that way.
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And you said that you loved learning and you love sharing.
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I think [snorts] most people that I know or at least that I talk to or I hear from in comments or podcasts would say school was not an exciting place for them.
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Maybe they went to college or didn't go to college, but they necessarily didn't have a positive experience.
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Maybe it was filled with fear or doubt or judgment or criticism or maybe there was a lack of confidence.
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That could have been not only from teachers and the school system, it could have been from friends or bullies or or people in that environment.
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So, what I'm fascinated by is our relationship with learning.
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Because when I look at my relationship with learning, too, I remember starting off having that buzz and spark.
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Then almost feeling like I was forced to believe there are only certain ways you could learn.
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I grew up believing I didn't like reading because we were only encouraged to read fiction books.
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And even till this day, I don't like reading fiction books.
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I have no interest in reading fiction books.
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I love reading nonfiction.
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And today I can read nonfiction books every day, every week, every month, every year, and I'm fully engrossed and immersed.
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That's why I'm excited for your book one day.
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Uh and I think that is something that I learned that I do love reading.
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I do love learning, but I was never introduced to that form until my father gave me a biography when I was 14 years old.
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And so, how do you think our relationship with learning has been formed over time, hearing from your own as well?
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I think it was the great physicist Max Delbruck who said that, you know, when teaching, assume zero knowledge and infinite intelligence.
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I try and keep that in mind.
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I think that we are all innate learners by virtue of the fact that this thing, this nervous system as it's called, is really a map of our experience.
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And it's there to form itself.
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It's unusual among the organs in that it shapes itself, right?
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Unlike the kidney or the liver, this doesn't constantly update its own form and function the same way.
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The nervous system is there essentially to educate itself so that it can operate better in a given environment.
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And once one understands that, you start to realize that the forms of learning are many.
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So, for instance, you know, math, or I suppose in in the UK it's maths. [laughter] Well. Um Wow, well remembered. Yeah, yeah.
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But maths, you know, could be learned by way of of of different using different types of examples, right?
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Movement of trains or bartering systems or on paper, just simple long division and multiplication.
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But in the end, what you're really trying to find, anytime you're teaching or learning, is you're trying to find um a universal algorithm of how the brain works.
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And what I mean by that is that, you know, all these nerve cells, they only can communicate through chemicals and electricity.
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You know, it's really just meat in there, uh believe it or not.
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Um but, there are algorithms that are universal.
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So, whether or not one learns better verbally or visually, or whether one has a propensity for math or for verbal subjects, what is true for all of us is that the brain is there always asking questions and trying to make predictions about its environment.
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And I think what happens is when we're children, we are learning passively all the time.
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As we get older, and especially as we get to our mid and late 20s, it takes an immense amount of focus and energy in order to learn.
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But, of course, the nervous system can still shape itself well into adulthood, almost certainly for the entire lifespan.
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But, that focus and energy feels almost like an agitation.
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And I think that as children, we don't necessarily experience that agitation because we can for better or for worse, we can experience and change passively.
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Neuroplasticity just happens by way of pure experience.
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As we get older, mid-20s, early 30s, and so on, that that threshold of agitation for people feels um like it's something to back away from.
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But, if we can learn to approach that and understand that that agitation is actually the circulation of chemicals, which is the the brain and nervous system telling itself, "Aha, now I need to pay attention and change," we can start to actually modify the way that system works.
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So, that's a bit of a convoluted answer to your question, but I think that at the heart of our nervous system is this ability, these algorithms by which it can change its themselves.
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And it's on all of us to understand that that bit of agitation and discomfort need not be interpreted as discomfort.
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That's the edge where learning is beginning.
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So, confusion, being perplexed, um feeling somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of information.
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That's actually the stir of chemicals that are queuing the nervous system to change because if it can do something easily, there's no reason for the nervous system to change.
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Now, in terms of different styles of teaching and learning, I think that many of us experience that agitation early on and we, for reasons that are understandable, we backed away from learning anymore.
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So, for instance, I'm musically I can't I'm musically deficient.
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I love music, but I can't play music to save my life.
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And I think that's entirely because, as as a kid, every time I would try and play music, it just sounded terrible.
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Everyone cringed, the dogs dogs literally howled. So, I stopped, right?
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But knowing what I know now, that would be the cue to that the agitation, the stress, the embarrassment is actually the cue to the nervous system that it's about to rewire itself.
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So, I think if people just understood that, um, children and adults would, uh, lean into learning, um, more regularly and hopefully with more ease overall. Yeah, definitely.
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I mean, even now when what sparks from that answer, which I actually really appreciated, is the idea that as we get older, as you said, it has to become more conscious. It It has that tension.
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It's almost like you have to start figuring out how you learn base best and how you process ideas.
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So, for me, I know that I love to first dive deep and immerse myself in something.
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And then I like to create a structured approach to get there if I enjoy it.
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So, if I want to learn a new skill, I'll get obsessed with it for a weekend.
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I'll go on the course, I'll read the book, I'll watch every video.
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I I just want to dive in to really see if I genuinely care or whether it's me thinking I care and to try and separate that ego and that true desire, for me at least.
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And if I do a weekend of something and I realize, "Oh, my ego liked that, but I didn't really like that. I'm going to step away.
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Or actually, wow, this is fascinating.
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Then I'll go and build a step-by-step plan with small steps and incremental steps.
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That I've learned over a long time of learning different things.
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How can people think about the best way they can learn?
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What are different styles?
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What are different methods that you think people can think if someone's listening right now and they're like, "Andrew, well, I want to learn a new instrument.
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Or I want to learn a new language.
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Or maybe it's I want to learn how to start a podcast.
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Or I want to learn how to play a sport. Or whatever it may be."
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How can someone start thinking about how they should approach learning? Terrific question.
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And fortunately, nowadays, we can look to studies done in humans that define some very key principles.
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The first principle is that the whole process of neuroplasticity and learning is really a two-stage process.
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First, there must be focus and alertness.
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That focus and alertness is associated with the release of neurochemicals, so-called neuromodulators, things like acetylcholine in particular, uh which sort of acts as a highlighter pen, if you will, for certain connections in the brain to later be reinforced.
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And the neurochemical adrenaline, which is also called epinephrine, also depending on if you're in the UK or elsewhere.
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[laughter] A long interesting story, not for this time, about why it has multiple names.
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Epinephrine, also called adrenaline, is associated with an increase in kind of agitation and alertness.
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Acetylcholine, think of it as kind of a spotlighter or a highlighter pen for certain connections in the brain.
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So, you need alertness and focus.
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And then the second stage is that it is only during periods of deep rest, in particular sleep and something that I call non-sleep deep rest, which I've given an acronym, cuz scientists like acronyms, NSDR, non-sleep deep rest.
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Things like yoga nidra, things like shallow naps, things like forms of meditation that don't involve a lot of focused concentration.
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You're a far more the experienced meditator than I, so I'm outside my wheelhouse when talking about meditation.
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But, it is only periods of intense focus and alertness followed by periods of deep rest that allow the nervous system to change.
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And there is an abundance of evidence for that.
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So, that's the first thing to understand.
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The brain actually re-wires during deep sleep and rest because during deep sleep and rest, naps, yoga nidra, deep sleep, there's a replay of the very same cells in the brain that were active during learning, often times in reverse for reasons that are still not understood, but at a much higher repetition rate.
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So, you're actually getting repetitions while you sleep.
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This is why one will strain to learn a language or a motor skill or maths or something like that over and over and over, it doesn't happen, you take a couple of nights sleep, take a break from it, and all of a sudden it's there.
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It's because it happens in rest.
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Now, there's some other things that one can do to enhance this process further that are arrived to us from good data.
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First of all, there's a so-called ultradian rhythm, which is the 90-minute cycles during which we can focus pretty well for a a duration of about 90 minutes, of course flickering in and out of focus.
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Nobody really focuses for 90 minutes straight unless they've built up that capacity or they are very interested in what they're learning, right?
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They're just wrapped with attention.
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Usually people flicker in and out.
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And of course nowadays there's a lot of literature and ideas about ways to maintain focus.
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Put the phone away, limit noise, some people like background noise, some people like music, some don't.
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It's very contextual, highly individualized.
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But 90 minutes is sort of the the the batch of time that the brain can focus really hard on one thing before it needs a true rest of of an hour or two before you can go back to learning or working very hard.
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The other thing is that um there's some very interesting data showing that shallow naps or NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, done within 4 hours of one of these 90-minute learning bouts can be very beneficial for accelerating learning.
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And then there are these incredible data on so-called gap effects.
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So, there've have been studies now of skills that are physical skills, mental skills where people will for instance try to learn scales on the piano or a math problem or a spatial problem or a physical skill and then at random every so often a buzzer will go off and the person will just be told to do nothing.
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Sit there eyes closed or eyes open and do nothing.
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Just stop the learning process for about 10 seconds and then return to doing what they're doing.
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These are these little micro rests.
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Turns out that during those micro rests the hippocampus of brain areas you know that's associated with learning and memory and the neocortex also associated with learning and memory undergoes replay of the thing that the individual is trying to learn at 20 times the speed also in reverse just as in sleep and that has can lead and has been shown to lead to accelerations in learning.
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So there are these ways I wouldn't even think of them as hacks because the word hack is a little tricky because when I think of the word hack it seems like doing something with an object or a tool that wasn't designed for that purpose, right?
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Um the nervous system already harbors these mechanisms and one can access them through these little micro rests.
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So whether or not you're a child or an adult every so often when trying to learn something just pause for 10 seconds or so.
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Do your best to just clear your mind.
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Of course it's very hard to clear the mind but um do your best to clear your mind and then go back to the learning task as as it were and that has been shown to very much to significantly accelerate the learning process and the retention of newly learned information.
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And then the last thing you touched on earlier which is this notion of incremental learning.
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You said you like to throw yourself into something as kind of a litmus test of whether or not you enjoy it or not.
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Turns out that uh from beautiful work done by my colleague at Stanford School of Medicine Eric Knudsen has shown that yes it's true that early in development in humans this would be up until the mid 20s we can learn things in larger batches and much more easily than we can later in life.
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However, if one batches that work into smaller increments and for so for instance deciding maybe set a timer turning the phone off otherwise and saying I'm going to spend 3 minutes just 3 minutes in trying to intensely learn this thing even if I feel like I'm failing.
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If one does that repeatedly those little increments of learning can lead to an outsized amount of learning overall.
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And so the nervous system loves incremental learning.
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It loves to batch things into focused little bouts.
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And you know if that's already the the tools that you've built up which it sounds like you have wonderful but if somebody is out there trying you know struggling to learn really trying to break things down into very brief periods of intense focus.
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That is the cue by which during sleep the nervous system will change itself.
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And this has been shown over and over and over again even in very late life uh individuals and people in their you know we like to think life could go on further than this but people in their 80s and 90s still have neural plasticity.
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There's even evidence that new neurons can be produced in the hippocampus of people in their late 80s and 90s.
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So the capacity is there.
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This is why I love what you do because you would never consider that the answer to learning is deep rest or sleep.
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Provided the focus comes first.
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yeah of course the focus and the attention as you But of course sleep deprivation makes it very hard to learn.
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And there's also something else that important that happens in sleep.
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Nowadays we I think most people thanks to the beautiful work of Matthew Walker at Berkeley and others really understand the value of sleep for health immune system function etc.
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There is a stage of sleep rapid eye movement sleep that we're all familiar with of course and where literally the eyes are moving um that tends to come later in the night during the second half of sleep where there's a there's a tendency to have very emotional dreams or at least dreams that are laden with a lot of emotional content of some kind.
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During rapid eye movement sleep there's an inability to move the body. We call this atonia.
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It's a literally a a sleep induced paralysis that's healthy.
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And a complete failure of the nervous system to release adrenaline, epinephrine.
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This is sort of like a trauma therapy in some sense.
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If you think about it, it's a replay of an emotional event minus the neurochemical that makes us feel tense and agitated.
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So, in our mind those dreams can often feel very distressing.
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It's been shown that if you deprive people of of rapid eye movement sleep, they fail to to dump the negative emotions of things that happened the day before and the day before.
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And I think all of us have experienced the shift in emotionality that happens when we are sleep deprived.
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What ends up happening is that the little things seem like big things.
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But after a few nights sleep, we're okay.
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And there's no mystery to why that is anymore.
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I think almost every sleep scientist believes it has something to do with this built-in kind of trauma release therapy where you get to experience the thing in your sleep minus the neurochemicals that make your body feel terrible.
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And somehow that dissociation allows people to then step back into life with a with a clean slate. Wow, yeah.
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No, I've I've heard those ideas before, but the way you just wove it all together is is really special.
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What I'm intrigued by then is what's the latest science on dreams?
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Uh because there are so many spiritual wisdom-based approaches to dreams.
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I've never really dived deep enough, I think from a scientific perspective into dreams apart from uh some particular aspects.
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But let's let's go there.
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Let Yeah, where is So, I love the idea that sleep of course is acting as somewhat of a dishwasher, cleansing, healing agent.
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So, that while we're sleeping, um we're actually being able to release these ideas.
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Hence, we have Where do dreams fit into that picture? Yeah.
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Well, um glad you said dishwasher cuz from a pure physiological standpoint, this is separate from dreams, but from a pure physiological standpoint, it's now well appreciated that during sleep there's a rinsing out of the debris that accumulate in the the brain.
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The brain is the most metabolically demanding organ that we have.
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It consumes tons of energy.
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Most of the energy that we burn in terms of calories is from our brain, not our muscles, even if people aren't don't feel like they're thinking very hard.
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[laughter] Um and thinking very hard, as we know, can feel very taxing.
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We can feel exhausted after a hard conversation, right?
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The this washout, as it's called, is a so-called glymphatic rinse out.
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The brain wasn't thought to have a lymphatic system, but it does.
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Cerebrospinal fluid starts to reverse basically its pattern of flow during sleep.
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All these incredible ways of washing out the brain during sleep.
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Now, during the first half of one's night, the 90-minute cycles still persist that we're talking about earlier, these ultradian cycles.
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And those 90-minute cycles are mostly made up of so-called slow-wave sleep.
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So, we see big amplitude brain waves, this kind of thing.
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Dreams tend to be pretty boring early in the night.
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Uh they tend to be more associated with motor function and movement.
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And it's actually the case that growth hormone is released in the early part of the night, and that most of the repair of the body and tissues is occurring during that first half of sleep.
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As the night goes on, dreams become more intense and more emotionally laden, regardless of what's been going on in someone's waking life.
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And in fact, toward morning, almost all of those 90-minute cycles that occur back to back is going to be comprised of of this rapid eye movement sleep.
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So, the sleep toward morning is going to be a much more emotional.
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Now, the interesting thing is that if you look at the data on dreaming in humans, and you look at it purely through the lens of neuroscience, you get a bunch of language back about, okay, not much epinephrine happening, so you're dissociating the emotion from the neurochemical state.
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If you look to the psychology literature, which I do, you or you read a book like Memories, Dreams, and Reflections by Jung, or you start to look at some of the the kind of hybrid work, which is psychiatry, which of course are MDs that are grounded in physiology but also think psychoanalytically.
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They I think they're really onto something with this idea that dreams are basically a time in which the ordinary sequence of life events is converted into heuristic shorthand symbols.
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And the brain loves symbols in the daytime, too. Right?
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We don't walk around parsing every angle of every um object.
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The way the visual system works is that the recognition of your face, for instance, there's a brain area that rec I've seen you many, many millions of time millions of times, probably.
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And I recognize you immediately as Jay Shetty because there literally is a neuron in my brain that's a Jay Shetty neuron. We know this, right?
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From recording from brains of people that recognize people, right?
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If I I met some of your staff today, lovely people, for the first time, now those neurons exist for them.
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But the that representation of you was built up through basic representation of just the orientations of lines. All right?
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Just like a a one would sketch your face and then a build in more elaborate representation.
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The brain represents things in symbols in a very abstract way.
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So, without going to down too far of a rabbit hole, if I were to, for instance, say, "You know what, Jay, I'm going to play artist today, um of which I'm not, and I'm going to draw your face."
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And I did my best to draw your face and showed it to you, you'd probably say, "Oh, that's not great, but but you'd probably recognize some of the features." Yeah.
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But, for instance, if I decided that I was going to put your eyes in a different location, eliminate your teeth, put a bunch of tattoos on your face, uh for fun, and and show you this, and I'd say, you'd say, "That doesn't look anything like me."
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And I say, "Ah, but that's my abstract representation of you."
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It turns out that the brain represents everything in the external world as a shorthand abstract representation.
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And in dreams, the reason that the that we tend to, for instance, replace people with animals or objects with um with different objects, is because the brain is thinking more in terms of the relationships between objects than it is the objects themselves.
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And so, this is where dream analysis gets a little bit tricky.
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So, the analyst would say uh you know, the For instance, I had a dream not that long ago where I was being chased by two animals.
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It was a bear and a wolf.
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A very salient dream for me.
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And turns out that that bear and that wolf, I realized only later that day I was walking around.
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I'd gone for a swim in the ocean, got out of the ocean, and I turned to someone and I said, "Oh my goodness, I know what that was about."
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That was about these two children that are now in my life that and I thought, "They're chasing me like they need something from me."
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And it opened up an entire conscious discussion about that.
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So, in my mind, these children were represented as animals, not because children are always represented as animals, but probably because it was the the feeling that they were impinging on me.
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[laughter] And they're one And they're lovely children, but nonetheless that they're impinging on me.
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So, the point is not my dream.
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The point is that dream analysis always has to take into account that the brain operates in symbols, where objects are replaceable. Mhm.
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And there is there are only relationships between objects.
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And so, if one has a very scary dream about a person or sees a monster, it's really in the early waking state of the day that we are in a position to best understand those relationships.
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So, here's a a tool I recommend that's actually supported by sleep science, Please.
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which is when waking and in the first 30 minutes or so around waking, you're in this liminal state, even if you're somebody who wakes up and feels very alert, you're in this liminal state where that symbolism is still quite fluid.
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I highly recommend that people try and not bring in too much new sensory experience if they want to understand their dream.
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Stay lying down with your eyes closed.
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Maybe tell your partner or someone else you live with, if you live with somebody that you just need a few moments, and just try and move about your day in a way where you're not trying to solve the dream, but you're also not bringing in a lot of new sensory experience, because in that moment you actually stand a chance of parsing what that relationship is.
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And this is something that psychoanalysts understand.
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This is something that, believe it or not, clinical hypnotists understand.
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Bring people into a state of deep relaxation and be able to capture that transition between the sleep and waking state.
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Forgive me for the, you know, excessively long answer, but No, not excessively long at all. It's fascinating.
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Honestly, like not not excessively long. Please carry on. Yeah.
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Well, there So, there's physiology that we know, and then there's the psychology of this.
27:17
And and just to make it very clear, the brain thinks in symbols in the daytime and in dreams, in waking states and in dreams. It's all symbols.
27:24
Everything this is symbolic representation because we can't parse all the information coming in our nervous system.
27:29
But because the nervous system's main job is to make really good predictions, to basically do statistics.
27:35
Like when for instance, as a child, one of the first things you learn is that objects fall down, not up.
27:40
So, the first time they see a helium balloon, it's like awe and excitement.
27:43
That awe and excitement is the release of neurochemicals that teach the brain sometimes objects fall up, so to speak. Yeah.
27:51
So, once one starts to recognize that the brain is always trying to make these predictions, you can start to look at your dreams as symbolic representations and how those relate to one another.
28:02
The action functions are far more interesting and important than uh it was a vase, and you know, when I was a kid, there was a vase in my grandmother's home, and that vase represented something.
28:12
Maybe, but more likely, you would want to think about the shape of it or what it what where that vase was in relationship to other things. Mhm.
28:21
Because that's how the brain works.
28:21
It makes predictions based on context. Yeah.
28:26
I hope that's helpful to people.
28:26
Um if there's if there are other theories of dreams, and I'm certain that there are that that extend past this, I apologize for not addressing them, but I think for most people, just thinking about the relationship between objects in their dreams is going to be more useful than thinking about what exactly that the dream was about, quote unquote. Yes.
28:45
And and I want to just say, please do not apologize.
28:46
That was a brilliant answer and and it was so useful even for me because I I think you're so right that so often even people will ask me, they'll be like, "Hey, I had this dream. What does it mean?"
28:56
One thing we have not solved as a neuroscientist is two things.
28:57
One, why it is that people need to tell other people their dreams because other people, unless it's a trained therapist, Totally.
29:05
are useless for helping unless they have an intense knowledge of the symbolic representations in your life.
29:10
We should all be doing this ourselves.
29:12
And the other one is a kind of peculiar one which is there seems to be a need among many people that if they wake up in the middle of the night and they can't sleep to wake up other people who are sleeping.
29:20
[laughter] But I haven't solved that one.
29:22
No, I love that and I completely agree with you.
29:24
I think when I think about that though, what really struck me was this idea of the brain loving symbols.
29:31
And I think of what are healthy symbols throughout the day because I think we forget, I mean, you came into this room earlier.
29:38
We came into the studio and you were looking around at all my symbols that I surround myself with.
29:41
Do they count as symbols?
29:44
Do they not count as symbols? Absolutely.
29:47
One thing I noticed immediately on walking in here is these many of things are beautiful and they have a lot of depth to them and I have this obsession with anytime I'm in a new environment, provided that it's appropriate, I just have to sniff around and look at everything.
30:00
I have to kind of know where I am in relationship to things.
30:04
Absolutely and and I saw you do that and I didn't want to bore you with the history of everything.
30:07
I I can send it to you, but the idea that I find as well, this environment has been sculpted with symbols that allow me to be present with someone and what I hope will help others be present as well or at least spark their curiosity and intrigue so that we can have that in our conversation.
30:27
I wonder what are healthy symbols?
30:27
Are there certain healthy symbols for the brain to connect with on a daily basis, before sleep, after sleep, that allow us to program ourselves more effectively because I feel like most of the symbols that we're seeing are unconscious or unintentional or mainly marketing or advertising or propaganda, but we're not really selective around our symbols.
30:53
Now, I love that you asked this question because for years, you know, we hear these things like you know, you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, but nowadays we spend more time with symbols and people on social media than we do often times with other individuals or at least equal amounts of time in the room, right?
31:08
Rarely is it just the physical bodies in the room.
31:11
It's all the the people in our phone, which I don't see as a bad thing.
31:15
Actually, for years when I was working more or less in isolation in my lab, um I had this little list.
31:22
I don't think I've ever shared this before.
31:23
I had this little list of people who I love and admire, many of whom I've never met.
31:27
And I just would read that list over and over again.
31:31
I didn't realize at the time, but I was developing what I believe the analyst call this a an interject or an introject perhaps.
31:41
Someone should look that up.
31:41
I forget which one it is.
31:44
Which is actually a subconscious representation of somebody else's ideas and approach to things.
31:48
That if we for instance listen to you over and over again, the nervous system starts to ask questions like what would Jay do in this circumstance?
31:58
That's a very real thing and we're not always consciously aware of it.
32:02
Now, physical symbols are also very important because the brain likes to make predictions.
32:09
It loves symbols because symbols are a shorthand way of of eliminating a lot of useless information, but much of the way that we operate and feel really does impact us at a subconscious level.
32:21
And this has been shown over and over again.
32:22
I mean, it's and it's always cast in the context of subconscious bias, which has kind of a negative slant anytime we hear bias of course, but there are positive biases as well.
32:29
So, I think that for some people having order among symbols is very important, equal spacing, everything very aligned.
32:36
I'm sort of one of those, but you know, I'm kind of in the middle.
32:40
Um other people um they aren't so consumed with the with the relationships between how they arrange things physically, but they enjoy great depth and emotional relationship to things. It could be a pendant.
32:52
It could be nowadays, you know, people like tattoos are kind of interesting, right?
32:55
They're much more prominent than when I was growing up.
32:58
They are an externalization of how people feel on the inside. Yes. Right?
33:02
So, those are very powerful symbols.
33:04
And there's something about the process of stamping it into one's skin, etc.
33:07
Um the slider intense pain involved, depending on where and who does it and who and the person's pain threshold.
33:13
So, symbols are a way in which we create an external reflection of who we are to ourselves, but also they are operating in a subconscious level to keep us for instance in a place of order.
33:25
Like to be able to organize one's thoughts in a world filled with statistical information.
33:30
Every ray of sunshine is statistical information.
33:32
We can't pay attention to all of it.
33:33
So, I think that um to directly answer your question, there are a couple of things that I think from morning till night make it outsized positive effect on our nervous system both in terms of its ability to feel, think, and act, and its ability to learn.
33:50
The first one isn't so much a symbol unless you adopt it as one, and I certainly have, which is there are now thousands of quality studies showing that we should all try and get some bright light, ideally sunlight, in our eyes with within the early hours of waking.
34:05
This doesn't necessarily meaning waking with the sunrise, although if you can do that, that's great.
34:07
Some people wake up before the sun comes out.
34:09
Getting a lot of bright sunlight in one's eyes early in the day puts a number of neurochemicals and hormones into a state of let's just call it what it is, positivity.
34:18
Mood is enhanced, immune system function is enhanced, sleep is enhanced 16 to, you know, 20 hours later, and so on. Also in the evening.
34:26
So, the sun as a symbol is is important, but it's also anchoring our subconscious physiology, because every cell in our body has a 24-hour clock.
34:34
We need to time it to the rise and fall of the sun each day.
34:38
When human beings become misaligned with that rising and falling of the sun, bad things happens to the nervous system.
34:44
Now, fortunately, it's very easy to fix.
34:46
There's a study done at University of Colorado taking college students camping.
34:49
I wish I'd been a subject in this experiment.
34:50
[laughter] What they found is that melatonin rhythms, cortisol rhythms, which can be a healthy thing, we all have cortisol, protects us, energizes us, dopamine, epinephrine, all these rhythms of the body could be reinstated to their proper timing by waking up and seeing the sun and going to sleep not too long after sunset, depending on time of year, for two nights and two mornings.
35:12
And and this lasted at least 2 weeks, even though people were getting artificial light.
35:18
So, I would say the symbol of the sun is not just um uh you know, it's not a trivial thing at all.
35:24
It's the anchor by which our our biology is designed and our psychology follows, of course.
35:29
That was brilliant, by the way. Thank you.
35:31
you know, many people who have trouble sleeping, many people who have mood issues, this enhances metabolism.
35:34
I mean, I could list it on and on and on.
35:38
People will ask, so I'll just put it out there.
35:39
Um try and do this without sunglasses, if you safely can.
35:43
You don't stare directly at the sun.
35:45
Never look at any light so bright that it's painful to look at.
35:46
You can, of course, blink.
35:48
Only takes a few minutes on a cloudless day.
35:50
If you're in the UK in the depths of winter, you're still going to get more light coming through cloud cover by going outside than you would indoors with bright lights on.
35:59
And it can take anywhere from 2 minutes to 30 minutes, depending on how dark or or bright it is outside.
36:06
Sunglasses and uh excuse me, eyeglasses and contacts perfectly fine.
36:08
If you think about it, if anything, that just focuses light onto the retina.
36:10
Don't try and do this through a window or or a windshield, because it filters out a lot of the light that you want.
36:16
So, the sun is a key symbol.
36:18
Uh I think if people could adopt that, there I'm certain their physiology and psychology will benefit.
36:23
Then, And terms of physical symbols, I find it very useful and there are good data.
36:29
If a, you know, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a movie is worth a bazillion pictures.
36:34
So, having an image of something that makes you feel good and seeing that early in the day, tremendously powerful.
36:41
Having a mental image of something in your mind is equally powerful because you also carry that with you.
36:48
And then if you do have a meditative practice, or even if you don't, being able to try and bring the mind and the body into that experience.
36:56
So, taking a moment to look at a photo of someone that you love or appreciate, and or the actual person, right?
37:00
And being able to actually sense that and feel it at a complete nervous system level.
37:06
It might sound like kind of woo science, but it's not.
37:08
The nervous system extends through the whole body. Yeah.
37:12
So, the extent that you can make that a truly whole body somatic experience, Yeah.
37:17
that it leads to an outsized effect on the just the ability of the nervous system to function.
37:22
And then of course, we're we are bombarded all day with negative symbols.
37:25
There's just no way around that.
37:27
But we can buffer ourselves against those negative symbols by very strongly associating with certain things.
37:33
And here I'll just defer that great neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks had this obsession with minerals and stones.
37:40
He felt they had personalities.
37:41
And he used to say that he had developed such a strong relationship to them, their touch, um especially as he started to lose his vision later in life, that the the way they felt and they made him feel safe. They made him feel good.
37:53
So, these could be inanimate objects.
37:54
So, find things that you love and associate the with with them on a regular basis, and you are literally shifting your nervous system towards this place of buffering yourself against negativity, and you are reinforcing the very circuits that trigger the release of neurochemicals that make you feel better.
38:13
And some people might say, "Well, then you're just kind of doping yourself up with your own chemicals."
38:17
But as a last point here, the neurochemical dopamine is a very important and very misunderstood molecule.
38:26
First of all, it is the substrate by which epinephrine neural energy is created, and people think of it as dopamine is just feeling good, but dopamine is not about feeling good.
38:35
Dopamine is the molecule of motivation and the desire to pursue additional things in a particular line of life.
38:40
So, when we positively associate with a song, a person, a face, an object, the sunrise, we don't just benefit from those activities based on the effects of those activities.
38:53
It's also what we believe about those activities combine, and the release of dopamine makes you more capable of then leaning into life and going and doing other things.
39:01
And so, it And these are not small effects, right?
39:05
The The effect of a small, even, you know, half a percent increase in dopamine transmission in the brain is the difference between feeling like your life is bleak and you can completely attack the day in the positive sense.
39:18
So, fill your life with symbols.
39:18
You get What's wonderful is that you get to curate what those are.
39:24
If you don't have access to them in your physical environment, they can be entirely internal. Yeah.
39:28
And when I think about the great stories of the Victor Frankls and the Yeah.
39:33
You know, uh and and people who have just overcome tremendous challenge, they've internalized symbols such that the tiniest of things can actually evoke this this dopamine release system.
39:42
And dopamine is just a generic neuromodulator.
39:46
It doesn't know anything about your experience.
39:48
It only knows what you believe about your experience, and it's deployed according to what you believe about your experience.
39:54
So, in theory, I I could train my dopamine system to release dopamine every time I raised my right hand if I genuinely thought that that had if that has meaning for me.
40:05
And this is the art also of superstitions, right?
40:07
This is why, uh you know, people will engage in superstitions because they've built positive associations with outcomes a according to a certain behavior.
40:16
So, what you start to realize is that the brain is making predictions about the external world. Who's Jay? When's he coming back?
40:23
Um, you know, what objects are going to be in the room this time versus next time.
40:26
If I suddenly walk out and that painting over there, which I happen to love, is now on a different wall, my nervous system would notice that because it's but it's also making predictions about internal state.
40:35
And a lot of depression and anxiety is about people feeling like, oh, when they feel lousy that that lousy feeling is going to go on forever. Yes.
40:46
The way to rewire this is to understand that making and controlling predictions about how you feel internally gives you a sense of agency.
40:52
And that sense of agency at the end of the day is just purely neurochemical.
40:56
So, these are pretty straightforward things to master.
41:00
I mean, that's mind-blowing to me because I've never heard dopamine be explained that way.
41:04
Well, dopamine everything about dopamine release is learned. Yeah.
41:07
There are a few things like, um, all the adapt all the ones that evolved uh for us to be here. Uh, okay?
41:12
So, so say with reproduction, food, sugar.
41:17
There's a very powerful dopamine pathway in the brain and in the gut to because sugar has a nutritive value, right?
41:21
We should all probably be ingesting less of it, but, you know, you get it is a hardwired system.
41:26
Um, food when we're hungry, warmth when we're cold.
41:29
Those are hardwired, but the dopamine system is designed to be trained up to associate with anything. Yeah.
41:38
And this is how a a guy like uh you can meditate for long periods of time and feel it I'm guessing there were times in which it felt brutal and there were times in which it felt incredible.
41:46
Um, this is how a a guy like David Goggins can, um, you know, punish himself with running it you know, over and over and over and yet somehow he's inverted that dopamine circuit so that it feels like something he either wants to do or that by overcoming the the resistance to doing it, he he gets a a dopamine Yeah. release.
42:07
So, dopamine is entirely a learned release system.
42:13
There are a few things that trigger its release no matter what, but and it I should highlight drugs of abuse.
42:19
I was just about to say which is why anything can become an addiction.
42:22
Cocaine, amphetamine, excess, you know, pornography, excessive dopamine release and that the diabolical thing about dopamine under those conditions is that the higher the dopamine release, the big amplitude dopamine, the bigger the crash, always.
42:35
It's the way the circuits are designed.
42:37
Now here we're talking about self-training in healthy amounts of dopamine release, non-addictive amounts of dopamine release.
42:42
Or you could say mildly addictive patterns of behavior that serve us and the people around us well.
42:48
And in that case I think of that as kind of an adaptive addiction [snorts] compulsion. Yeah.
42:53
Um and not one that we should necessarily avoid. Absolutely.
42:56
I think that for me, the way I differentiate that and I think that's such a good distinction that you're raising there because what you're basically saying is we could convince ourselves through the release of dopamine that anything is good for us and hence it can lead to addiction or it can be these aspirational positive habits for us.
43:13
And I think the way I've been able to at least differentiate is that which is good for me after that which makes me feel good after I do it because that's that release of dopamine that I'm experiencing after I do it is more important than that which makes me feel good before I do it. that.
43:33
So I don't feel good before I go to the gym or maybe before I meditate or before I eat a healthy bowl of protein and food that's good for me, but I always feel good after it. that.
43:45
And when I I feel good before I stay up late at night and hope that we're going to have a great time.
43:50
I feel good before I eat a pizza or I feel good before I have loads of sugar because I have a massive sweet tooth, but then afterwards I feel the pangs of it.
43:59
I love that and it proves that in your heart you're a neuroscientist because there's something called dopamine reward prediction error.
44:04
This was defined by a in Wolfram Schultz and others, and it's an incredible thing, and it can be made very simple, which is when we positively anticipate something, there is dopamine release.
44:15
I mean, just tell kids that you're going for ice cream, and you're seeing what is all now explained as reward prediction error.
44:22
Now you get to the ice cream shop, and it's closed.
44:24
What happens is their dopamine drops below baseline before they were told they were going for ice cream.
44:29
If they're going to the ice cream shop and they have ice cream, you might think then they get even more dopamine, but guess what?
44:34
If the ice cream isn't as good, or if one kid that the ice cream cone falls, and they don't get another one, what ends up happening is that dopamine is relative to where they were just feeling.
44:46
It doesn't feel that great.
44:46
And so this is the the the diabolical nature of addictive drugs.
44:51
People get a dopamine surge in anticipation of using, and over time they get less and less of a dopamine surge, but the punishment signal, as we say, that comes afterwards, the trough afterwards, goes lower and lower and lower.
45:02
So it's like a asymmetric seesaw.
45:04
It's not just back and forth.
45:06
It goes dopamine, but then it goes punishment signal.
45:08
Now you figured it out, because dopamine reward prediction error says that if you have less dopamine heading into something than you do afterward, that tells the synapses, the brain connections, that were involved to reinforce themselves and to engage in that behavior again.
45:26
And this is also what happens with surprise.
45:27
If you go someplace you're not expecting, you know what?
45:29
Like let's let's go to this place for dinner.
45:31
I don't know, looks good, and it's amazing, you create a much bigger dopamine signal than if I tell you, Jay, I got to take you to this place.
45:37
This is the best sushi in Los Angeles. It's incredible.
45:40
That actually sets you up to not enjoy the meal as much.
45:42
So we all should learn to kind of control this dopamine knob.
45:47
You've done it beautifully by simplifying it into making sure that you get enough happiness, thrill, excitement in retrospect.
45:55
That's the way to wire in healthy behaviors.
45:57
And I'm I I've never actually heard it put as succinctly as you, because academics are not trained to be succinct as [laughter] you can tell.
46:03
But I think if everyone kept that in mind, they would do themselves a great service, which is try and ask whether or not the ple- you had as much or more pleasure in the aftermath of something as you did during, and you will you get two benefits.
46:18
One is you can avoid addictive type behaviors.
46:22
And the other, because you avoid that crash, if there's a dopamine release after there's no crash.
46:26
And the other is that you'll have a tendency to return to that behavior over and over again.
46:30
This is also why I think a lot of people enter new relationships.
46:33
And there is a well-established dopamine surge with the early phase.
46:38
Everything feels possible.
46:40
People feel like people would go out and make purchases.
46:41
They're kind of manic, right?
46:44
And it's a very exciting kind of mental illness that we all enjoy from time to time.
46:48
But then people start to enter the phase of real challenge or often times real challenge.
46:55
And if they can't make that transition seamlessly and they constantly focus back on how great things were, and they look at the differential, it can be a kind of a dark picture.
47:02
And then people have to start working on trying to reignite, so to speak.
47:06
But the bigger the dopamine surge at the beginning, the the bigger the crash.
47:10
So I think that a wonderful model for relationship is also to temper that dopamine release. Spread it out over time.
47:18
Try and spread it out over 50 years and you're and you're home free.
47:21
Now, I'm not an expert in relationship, but it is absolutely clear that dopamine is the hallmark of human bonding.
47:28
Then, you know, early on anyway.
47:30
Then come the oxytocin and all that the the feel-good warmth molecules because dopamine fundamentally is about accessing things that are outside your immediate experience.
47:39
It's reaching for things beyond the confines of your skin.
47:43
A degree, money, a relationship that you're work- that's developing and that you're working on.
47:48
Whereas the serotonin and oxytocin system, which I think most people have heard of, are feel-good molecules.
47:53
They're associated with things we already have.
47:55
Knowledge of how wonderful our partner is.
47:57
Knowledge of how much we love something or or how much we appreciate the meal that we had.
48:04
So, neither it's not that dopamine is bad and and and serotonin is good.
48:06
These are molecules that have been built up in our system over time to allow us to establish new relationships of all kinds to things and people and to ourselves and then to sustain them.
48:17
But that those big dopamine peaks early on are very very dangerous.
48:23
And you we need to learn to temper them and just spread that out over time.
48:27
It's a resource and we need to learn to calibrate that resource.
48:31
Andrew, you honestly you just blowing my mind again and again and again because there are so many long-held beliefs that I have or techniques or tools that I've built or mindsets that I've created and that I share and and and coach and and pass on from the studies that I've done, but I get so much joy out of seeing deep study support those ideas.
48:53
I think I want to unpack a a lot of the things you said.
48:59
The first thing I want to say is my new claim to fame is that you said I'm an honorary neuroscientist now.
49:01
So So I'm going to You [laughter] you think like a neuroscientist because to be able to batch things in time that way is a unique skill.
49:09
I'm not saying this for flattery, but if it makes you feel good even better.
49:12
Like but the fact of the matter is that being funny, but I'm grateful.
49:16
But most people think about experiences as one thing.
49:18
We you know, we went to Costa Rica. It was amazing.
49:21
Ah, but and I'm sure it was.
49:24
And when dopamine's flooding through your system, there's also something really cool is it distorts your perception of time.
49:28
It feels like time goes by very very fast, but in looking back it seems like a lot happened.
49:34
Think about when you're bored in the doctor's office waiting room.
49:38
Feels like it goes on forever and you look back, guess what happened? Nothing. It's low dopamine state.
49:42
So dopamine actually acts as a it's like shooting a film at high frame rate. Yeah. Okay.
49:48
So feels like a lot's happening, you look back and and it it goes by very fast, but you look back a lot happened.
49:54
So, you batch things in time, and this is fundamentally important to how we we work.
50:01
If we look at experiences only in terms of how we experience them and not the aftermath, we miss a a huge portion of life.
50:11
And more importantly, we miss the opportunity to access the right behaviors and thoughts. Yeah.
50:18
We can be very misled by things like dopamine.
50:20
It's it's a uh it's really a a tricky molecule to work with, and we're all working with it.
50:26
No one is immune from this, right?
50:27
So, but yes, you are absolutely a neuroscientist.
50:32
[laughter] That's my new That's my new tagline wherever I go.
50:33
No, I I I have such a fascination with neuroscience, and I hope that at one point in my life, I create the time and space to deeply study and and study alongside you. it.
50:43
We should do an experiment.
50:44
It's genuinely a desire in my life, so I'm not just Eberhardt has a mind-body lab, Ali Crum's lab, which is all about beliefs and how beliefs shape our physiology.
50:50
My colleague David Spiegel in psychiatry studies hypnosis and brain states and beliefs in mind-body.
50:57
So, Stanford, of course, does all the, you know, hardcore rigorous stuff around molecular biology, genetics, etc.
51:02
, deep sequencing, but we also have a collection of people there that are very interested in mind-body, so we should design an experiment. Yeah, definitely.
51:09
I I'd love to That would be That's music to my ears.
51:13
Uh I'm backing more of what you said.
51:16
What I find so interesting is that you said obviously this this painting that you like behind me, and then you said if it was in another place, then, you know, it takes a bit of time to reconfigure and recalibrate, you know, what's going on here.
51:29
And when you look at our lives today, so much of the anxiety that we experience is based on change or the lack of being able to predict, as we talked about, or unpredictability.
51:40
And we've long known, kind of like what you were saying before, we've long known that, you know, things will not always stay the same.
51:48
We realize that change is the only constant, that uncertainty is the only certainty.
51:51
Like, we know these truths, yet we love holding on to predict even for me.
51:58
Like, when I walk into this room, I do predict that these things will remain on the wall and the mics will be here and Homer will have set up the lights and and there's some predictability there, which creates security.
52:08
But, as we all know, shifting and being good with change is so integral. What do we do with that?
52:16
Like, how do we start opening up and being more comfortable in the discomfort of change, not just growth, but just change and shifts that we don't expect and predict? Yeah, I think two ways.
52:29
Um, one, I'll just go back to this fundamental feature of the nervous system, which is it's trying to make predictions.
52:35
So, the reason why change is stressful, even positive change, believe it or not, is {quote} and {quote} stressful, uh, is because of this, then the release of adrenaline and and associated molecules with anytime things change.
52:46
I mean, if you look the psychologists have worked this out, there's a hierarchy of stressors.
52:52
Um, and of course, at the at the top of that hierarchy are awful things that we don't, you know, I think at the top, to be honest, I think death of a child is is perhaps the the greatest stressor.
53:02
Divorce, death of a loved one, um, these kinds of horrible things that we wouldn't wish on anyone.
53:07
Then, as one goes down, not too far below, you see things like moving to a new home or apartment.
53:16
You think, well, that could be a great event, right? Birth of a new child.
53:19
And you think, wait a second, I thought that's supposed to be one of the greatest joys in life, and indeed it is.
53:24
But, it's stressful to the nervous system because so many things have to be reconfigured, to sit not to say anything about the lack of sleep with a newborn and this kind of thing.
53:32
So, change is always going to force our brain to make more assessments of our environment.
53:39
One of the things that we can say about the brain for sure is that once it learns something, it likes to not have to think about it.
53:45
When you walk, because you already know how to walk, you don't think right, left, right, left, right, left.
53:49
But when you learn how to dance a new step or something of that sort or a new skill uh sports skill, you have to think about it and it's work.
53:57
And anytime we have to think about behaviors and they aren't simply reflexive, that work as we call it isn't it's a combination of the release of things like adrenaline, epinephrine in the brain and body.
54:07
I should say from the adrenals in the body, but also in the brain from a little brain area called locus coeruleus that is acts as kind of a sprinkler system for the brain to kind of wake up all brain areas saying, "Okay, let's pay attention to a lot of stuff here."
54:19
Very basic system um but but very fundamental system.
54:25
It's literally a wake-up system for the brain.
54:26
Works in parallel with the release of of adrenaline into our body.
54:31
[snorts] Now, one way to deal with change is to simply know this, right?
54:35
To understand that if one feels stressed or agitated or on a new move or you have a partner who's really stressed about a new move even though it's exciting, it should be exciting, that that's perfectly normal because what they're experiencing is this increase in agitation and alertness and it also makes it harder to enter deeply relaxed states because the brain is in a mode of predictions, making predictions. What's happening next?
54:58
Thinking, thinking, thinking.
54:58
And one of the things that's key to falling asleep each night and replenishing our ability to think and make predictions is the ability to turn off thinking.
55:06
This is why I'm such a fan of what traditionally was called yoga nidra, which literally means yoga sleep, lying down.
55:11
It's a form of meditation, as you know, and with breathing etc.
55:15
Um I certainly I I want to point out that I have no desire to rename any of these ancient practices.
55:21
These are beautiful practices that have been built up over thousands of years.
55:25
The reason I call uh sometimes batch yoga nidra with so-called NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, is that unfortunately both in science and in traditional cultures around some of these behaviors, the language has become a barrier for people to try them.
55:41
I'm not trying to to wash away any of the the wonderful culture and tradition around these.
55:46
I want to be very clear about that.
55:47
But ultimately, it it's about accessing a state of mind as for anyone that's listened to a Yoga Nidra script, and I should say I do Nidra every day.
55:54
I have for almost a decade now.
55:56
It's without question along with viewing morning light, sunlight, the most powerful practice I think I can recommend anyone.
56:02
Um it is about, as you always hear in a classic Nidra script, you move away from thinking and doing to being and feeling. Now, what is that?
56:13
If we take a neuroscience lens, what is this thinking and doing, being and feeling?
56:16
It's about shutting down of the prefrontal cortex, which is making predictions.
56:19
What's happening next, right?
56:21
As you move into sleep, you enter that kind of liminal state where things become disjointed, right?
56:28
A cat flies through the room, and then you might jerk yourself awake, and it's kind of odd.
56:31
But that's the state of not thinking and doing and just being and feeling, being in one's pure somatic experience.
56:37
So, I would say in order to move through change, designate 20 to 30 minutes each day to put the brain into a state of non-thinking, non-doing, and into a state of {quote} and {quote} being and feeling.
56:53
So, not making predictions.
56:54
Now, the tricky thing is when one is stressed, that's especially hard to do.
56:59
And this is why I think what is it Thich Nhat Hanh said, you know, what is it who said, you know, um when stressed, you know, meditate every day, but when stressed, meditate twice as long or something like that, right?
57:10
when when I don't think I have time, like that is almost when I need to make the time, yeah. It's a skill.
57:14
And so, this ability to turn off thinking enhances one's ability to enter sleep, which is vital for mental and physical health, obviously, learning, et cetera, for reasons we discussed.
57:24
So, develop the ability to deliberately disengage from thinking and doing, and do that during periods of low stress. Mhm. Right?
57:33
20 to 30 minutes a day, even 10 minutes a day of just learning to teaching oneself and practicing the art of turning off prediction is an incredibly valuable skill. Wow.
57:45
And then the other one is to just understand that we're being bombarded with contextual change all the time.
57:47
You know, I love Instagram.
57:49
I teach science on Instagram. I see you there daily.
57:51
Um and so scrolling on Instagram is an interesting experience because in 5 minutes you can look at a thousand different contexts.
58:01
The human brain has never dealt with that kind of change before.
58:02
Even when television, when I was growing up there were three or four good channels, then it went to cable, and then now you get onto an airplane or something you got 240 channels. Yeah.
58:12
That's That's a drop in the bucket compared to what we can get in in a social media feed.
58:15
So I think we just need to be aware that the brain can work with that, but then what you're turning on is an ability to walk into a new context and and figure it out the statistics.
58:27
Imagine if if in an Instagram feed, and I'm not demonizing Instagram.
58:31
I think they're wonderful.
58:31
I think they provide a wonderful resource, truly.
58:34
But imagine if we walked out of this room and it was a completely different landscape. It was a jungle.
58:39
Then we turn the corner and go into what I would think was the kitchen, and it was the kitchen of the some, you know, of what some Thomas Keller restaurant in New York.
58:47
Turn the corner, and all of a sudden we're underwater. That's social media. Yeah.
58:52
And we can cope with that. So verse.
58:55
So if I think about it that way, then I think if we can cope with that, then we can cope with transitions in so-called real life with with ease.
59:00
Now, some people have more situational awareness than others.
59:05
They walk into an environment and they're sensing all the things.
59:09
Other people walk into an environment and they're very good at narrowing their attentional spotlight.
59:14
The latter group actually has a bit of an advantage.
59:16
They probably wouldn't be so good as a special operator in the military.
59:19
They have to develop situational advantage, or a police officer, or a teacher, but they're They're to be immensely good at one-on-one interactions because they can make the room disappear.
59:30
And so [snorts] both we need both kinds of people and we all need to learn how to sort of brighten and broaden these attentional spotlights and narrow them as well.
59:39
And I'll just briefly say we are old world primates as it turns out and we have the capacity to do what's called covert attention. Yeah.
59:47
I can pay attention to you but I can also notice that in my periphery there's something else going on.
59:50
So I've got two spotlights now but I am dividing my attention.
59:54
We can't do three simultaneously.
59:55
But what I can also do is decide to merge those two spotlights and intensify them and narrow the aperture of my visual window and my auditory window.
1:00:03
So we should always think of our our attention is two spotlights that can be very broad or it can be very narrowly focused and that we can overlap them. Yeah.
1:00:14
And I think That's fantastic.
1:00:16
we should all know how to do both. Yes.
1:00:18
We should learn how to narrow the aperture of our focus, deeply engage, but also deliberately disengage. Yeah.
1:00:24
And the process of falling asleep that we're talking about before is the practice of learning how to take that attentional spotlight, move those two apart, and then not dim them but extend that same luminosity out more broadly, more broadly, and then we're off to sleep. Yes.
1:00:40
So so it's about deliberate control of the nervous system.
1:00:42
And unfortunately, we all know how to focus on something if we're very stressed or excited by it.
1:00:50
Most people don't learn how to turn off this focus and learn how to deliberately disengage.
1:00:55
And one of my great hopes for humanity is that children and adults will learn how to deliberately disengage. Yeah.
1:01:01
Because it benefits sleep which benefits mental and physical health.
1:01:03
And also, if you think about it, most of the bad things that we do to ourselves and others and that people do to one another, most, not all, but most are from a heightened state of reactivity where we're just not conscious.
1:01:16
And that's because our aperture, our window of attention, is too narrow.
1:01:20
We're not taking into account the full space and time of what we're thinking about. Yeah.
1:01:27
And as a last point, space and time are linked in the brain.
1:01:29
Uh if you have a narrow visual focus, you tend to have a narrow time slicing, right?
1:01:33
Which makes sense if you think about like a little kid watching ants on the ground and then gets called into dinner and all of a sudden the way you batch time is different.
1:01:42
When you're sleepy, you tend to batch things in big blocks. Okay?
1:01:44
Or when you're bored, big blocks of time.
1:01:49
When you're very excited, stressed, or happily excited, you're in that fast frame rate.
1:01:53
You've gone from 60 frames per second, which I think is a a typical smartphone, to a thousand frames per second. Wow.
1:02:01
So, you're catching all the micro nuances, but you're missing everything else. Mhm.
1:02:05
And And what I what I find most interesting about that though is And And I read a study a few years ago and I I don't know if it I don't know.
1:02:11
I can't remember where it's from, but it it said something along the lines of that today in 24 hours we're exposed to more tragedy through the news or pain or stress, whatever word we want to label that as, than we were in our entire lifetime 25 years ago.
1:02:32
I believe that sadly I I think I have to agree. [clears throat] Yeah.
1:02:35
And And what I found also was that what you're saying, and I love this idea of we have these two points of focus and putting it together or bringing out, which I think is fantastic as as a visual, too.
1:02:46
There's an element though that really draws us in of judgment and criticism.
1:02:51
Like I find judgment, I'm using judgment as the overall word, criticism is a very specific word, but what really makes something harder, like when we're processing thousand posts on Instagram, the most difficult part is when judgment comes in, whether it's positive or negative, because that's what draws you in, and I find that we have more things to judge.
1:03:09
And to make that many judgments in a day is quite exhausting, and then to be exhausted by the number of tragic or stressful moments that we experience.
1:03:21
And like you said that, you know, it's okay if we're on Instagram and we're seeing multiple things or we're seeing this kitchen into this animation into this world, but when a lot of it is painful, to deliberately disengage but remain connected to reality, I feel like that's somewhere where people feel like they're in no-man's land.
1:03:41
Yeah, and you know, it it's a particular challenge now with the number of images and movies that can come out of us and and you know, I think that uh here I I I'm not one to to usually talk like this, but I think much of a building a good life is about both honoring and challenging the asymmetries of our nervous system.
1:04:02
What I mean by that is, you know, everything we've talked about up until now are wired into us from birth.
1:04:07
We have dopamine, epinephrine, these circuitries that give an attentional spotlight.
1:04:11
That all we show up in the world with that and we and we do them.
1:04:14
We also need to acknowledge that there is an asymmetry to learning.
1:04:19
You know, before we talked about the gap effects and the two-stage process of neuroplasticity, there are exceptions.
1:04:24
The exception is learning of negative things.
1:04:27
You only have to touch the hot stove once or the meta metaphorically speaking the hot stove only has to touch you once before it changes you.
1:04:34
So, there's one-trial learning of negative experiences.
1:04:36
learning of negative experiences. Now, once we understand that asymmetry and once we understand that negativity actually has a bit of a stronghold on our nervous system, then we accept I would hope we would accept the idea that then we have to work a little harder to
1:04:52
counter that or maybe a lot harder in the same way that so-called highly palatable foods, which is now because kind of science geek speak for unhealthy highly processed foods cuz there's some you know, I do love fruits and vegetables and all that and there's some wonderful baked goods. Let's face it. I Let's face it.
1:05:06
I mean, I I love croissants.
1:05:08
So, I I to demonize highly palatable Yeah, highly palatable [clears throat] foods, but but I think we could all do well to eat healthier foods and they are not as rewarding in the short term as some of these highly palatable foods, right?
1:05:19
And especially to the young nervous system, you know, there's you know, a a milkshake or or a candy just tastes better to these kids than vegetables for reasons that are hardwired into the nervous system.
1:05:32
But we know that kids need their fruits and vegetables probably more than they need candy. Okay.
1:05:36
So we have to all learn to counter these built-in asymmetries in our nervous system.
1:05:43
And as adults, we probably thought we had it made, but then now we're bombarded with all this negative imagery.
1:05:49
And so the key is really symbols that we were talking about earlier to really build in positive symbols and internal symbolic representations.
1:05:57
What I mean by that, not just physical things in our environment and people, but also how we hold those things inside is so important.
1:06:04
I think this is what comes to this notion of intentions. It's work, right?
1:06:09
Right life and right action and all these things that we hear about. It's work.
1:06:12
It's it's working against the tide that is pulling us toward negativity.
1:06:17
That's Um in fact, there's a study that was done in the '60s that was published in the journal Science.
1:06:21
It's an excellent journal, one of the apex journals.
1:06:25
They had people with stimulating electrodes in their brain for reasons related to neurosurgery.
1:06:30
These people could stimulate multiple areas of their brain one at a time.
1:06:32
And then they reported how they felt.
1:06:35
So that the the human would stimulate and they'd feel drunk or they'd stimulate another area and they'd feel happy.
1:06:42
They'd stimulate another area they'd feel sad.
1:06:43
The fascinating we learned a lot about the human brain from these studies.
1:06:47
The brain area that people preferred to stimulate the most, this is really going to upset a few people, was the one that led to anger and frustration. Wow.
1:06:57
And you think yourself, well, that's just terrible.
1:06:59
Are we just doomed, right? No.
1:07:01
What turns out that anger and frustration is a signal to the brain and body that you need to do something in response to that.
1:07:08
Usually move away or move forward and and sort of enter an aggressive state.
1:07:14
Knowing that trained, right? That's like habit.
1:07:18
And that probably comes through in habit.
1:07:19
I think this is why people I spend more time on Instagram than I do on other social media platforms, but listen, I'm not embarrassed to say you go on Twitter and it's a more combative zone.
1:07:28
It's just the nature of the beast there.
1:07:30
It's a more combative zone.
1:07:32
In part cuz there are a lot of academics on It's more combative.
1:07:36
So, I notice if I log on to Twitter, I already get a little bit of an adrenaline surge.
1:07:40
It's like, all right, you're ready to fight.
1:07:43
And just knowing that we have this innate bias towards frustration and anger and that kind of friction, hopefully, my wish is that it will allow people to relax around that and to realize, ah, this is sort of like the food that I immediately want to reach for, that's the kind of dopamine signal that you were talking about early on, but how am I going to feel afterwards? Yes.
1:08:05
How am I going to feel afterwards?
1:08:05
And I would say that 99% of online interactions where people end up in these ridiculous battles, later both parties probably think, well, how did I get wrapped up in that? That's absolutely crazy.
1:08:15
You know, you think you're scoring slam dunks on each other at the time, but it's ridiculous.
1:08:19
So, I think the thing to understand is that we have these asymmetries, but that we can learn to work with them.
1:08:26
The way that a a really I think a really incredible psychiatrist who's done a lot of work on trauma, Paul Conti, describes it in a different context is that um and he's like to my mind the expert on trauma and just has done beautiful work is that it's like those little kids toys where there's a little ball bearing moving around in a maze. He described this to me.
1:08:46
So, this is all Paul Conti.
1:08:47
He's an MD and this is his work, not mine. His words.
1:08:51
You know, there are times in which we are like that game where just a slight shift and all of a sudden the ball bearing goes down the shoot.
1:08:56
And what we should all be striving for is for, you know, slightly concave and for it to kind of maybe move around a bit with the with the with the events of life and what we hear and see.
1:09:05
That's what we should be striving toward and that takes work.
1:09:08
Some people are naturally there but very few people are naturally there.
1:09:10
But this is the power of meditation.
1:09:12
This is the power of non-sleep deep rest.
1:09:14
This is the power of good sleep or most nights.
1:09:19
This is the power of excellent social relationships.
1:09:21
This is the power of mindsets and intentions.
1:09:22
That stuff, gratitude practices.
1:09:26
None of that stuff is weak.
1:09:26
All of that stuff acts as a kind of a a foundation from which we can approach things and go "Yeah, the impulse is to get pretty upset about that but I'm going to lean away from that."
1:09:38
Very hard to do when we're not tending to that those foundational elements.
1:09:42
Actually quite easy to do over time because it gives us the perspective.
1:09:47
And um I think that if we understand that we're being bombarded with this, it's like being at a buffet of junk food. Yeah.
1:09:56
But understanding that somewhere in that buffet is really nutritious food and that's what we should be aiming for and learning to kind of override the the natural signals of "Ooh, I really want that and I really want that" by thinking about exactly what you said earlier, which is how am I going to feel afterwards?
1:10:11
Being And what what's that?
1:10:13
That's dilating our perception of time.
1:10:16
We're getting out of that slave to dopamine mode and we're starting to think about "No, I'm not going to let dopamine control me.
1:10:21
I'm going to control dopamine." And that's powerful.
1:10:26
Yeah, I I I Well, that spoke to me is also this idea that I've been in love with for a while is fragility and strength and how not being exposed to something doesn't protect you but it makes you weaker.
1:10:43
It absolutely does and you know, nowadays there's a big interest in so-called dopamine fasts.
1:10:45
I I think they have their place.
1:10:48
You know, if people been have been engaging in things that are high dopamine evoking behaviors, there is a place for this.
1:10:54
This is one of the routes to sobriety.
1:10:55
Beautiful work by my colleague at Stanford, uh Dr. Anna Lembke.
1:10:59
She wrote Dopamine Nation, incredible book about dopamine in the context of addiction, but all kinds of addiction. Uh she talks about this.
1:11:07
There is a role for dopamine fast.
1:11:09
Really moving away from intensely pleasurable activities for about 30 days is necessary for some people to reset. Yeah.
1:11:16
But it's naive for any of us to think that then you go back into the world and you're not being bombarded with temptation of different kinds.
1:11:21
I mean, the whole idea is to bring the system back into balance so that you can notice the subtle inflections, right?
1:11:27
I guess the the the meditators and yogis I always love the language they use would be like the kind of subtle After meditation, you can notice the kind of subtle ripples in life, right?
1:11:36
Whereas if you're just hard charging all the time, you miss so much. Yes.
1:11:42
Again, I'm using the wrong language here. Yeah, beautiful.
1:11:44
But I think that um so dopamine fast have their place, but better to have your hands on the steering wheel, accelerator, and brake of all these mechanisms.
1:11:52
And to go through It's only when, you know, the car has been wrecked that it needs to go into the repair shop.
1:11:57
Most of us don't need a dopamine fast.
1:11:59
We need to understand how dopamine works.
1:12:01
We need to do exactly what you described earlier, which is to extend the time domain so that we think about, am I getting dopamine later also, or is this just a quick up and down kind of event?
1:12:11
Then I think we can move through life in a much more adaptive way.
1:12:15
And then you mentioned, obviously when we talk about relationships, you know, we talked about how dopamine is there at the beginning, but then we talk about serotonin and oxytocin, these inner feelings, which I love that description also of like how dopamine is this pursuit of external things, and oxytocin and serotonin are more about how we feel what we have.
1:12:32
I think that was a another great visual, and I love how you speak in symbols more than you know, like that You know, it's I really Everything you've been sharing today, I can visualize it, and I really enjoy visual learning.
1:12:45
And so when you were speaking earlier about how you can visualize a symbol even if you don't have it physically.
1:12:51
And even when you said that to me, I'm like, "Oh, that's really fascinating that dopamine is that, oxytocin and serotonin is this."
1:12:58
With oxytocin and serotonin, we know that a lot of the habits you just mentioned, they are what create this balance, right?
1:13:05
So, the reason why people are talking about decreasing dopamine, I guess, is because we've noticed that dopamine is shooting through the roof.
1:13:11
And often, what we do for oxytocin and oxytocin and serotonin are not really that balanced across the board.
1:13:19
Uh what are Let's look at relationships and go, "Is there a need to have dopamine in long-term relationships?
1:13:23
Or are serotonin and oxytocin enough?"
1:13:27
And not just relationships, that applies to career, it applies applies to everything, I feel. Yeah, absolutely.
1:13:33
Um there's a wonderful book about this, written by a psychoanalyst in a slightly different context.
1:13:39
The book um the title of the book is Can Love Last?
1:13:41
And And it's an interesting book.
1:13:43
The It's operates on the premise that when we first meet somebody and we want this in the context of a romantic relationship, and we desire a romantic relationship with them, it's very much about objectification of the other person.
1:13:54
And I don't mean objectification in the traditional sense, but we don't rely on them yet, right?
1:13:59
We only rely on the ability to pursue and get them, right?
1:14:04
Or for them to for us to pursue them, however Or the exactly.
1:14:07
But we don't rely on them for safety at all.
1:14:09
If that evolves to become a romantic relationship, right?
1:14:13
With trust, then what happens is there's a true dependency there.
1:14:17
If one person were to leave for any reason, die or leave or cheat or break up, it is truly devastating to the safety mechanisms of the brain and body, right?
1:14:26
It's a reactivation, actually, of a lot of the machinery that was designed for attachment between infant and parent, right?
1:14:33
As it just as an important aside, the all the work on attachment that was done by Bowlby and Main and others in psychology of taking deliberately taking babies away from their mothers and then reuniting them and evaluating the responses, batching them into different all that circuitry isn't lost as we grow up.
1:14:50
It's repurposed for romantic attachment.
1:14:51
There's no question about that. No question about that.
1:14:53
We just operate in the different domains of anxiety becomes about waiting for a text message as opposed to, you know, mother to come back in the room or or nursing, etc.
1:15:04
So, same circuitry reapplied.
1:15:07
As we advance into relationships, we become more dependent on people, but the idea and that it's touched on quite a lot in this book, Can Love Last, is that there is a need from time to time in some relationships to bring the dopamine element back in.
1:15:21
Now, certain cultures have actually built this in in a very strategic way of actually having men and women not physically contact one another for several weeks out of each month in order to maintain the kind of quote unquote excitement of a relationship. Wow.
1:15:36
Nowadays, we tend to have this model of lover and best friend and sometimes even business partner, right? Literally.
1:15:43
Which for some people can work and for other people can quash all the excitement, right? It really depends.
1:15:49
And especially nowadays where people are working a lot more from home, there isn't a tendency for people to spend much time apart and to miss one another.
1:15:55
Missing one another, the yearning for the other person, is a beautiful thing.
1:15:59
It's a painful but beautiful thing. What is that yearning?
1:16:01
That yearning is the pain of the lack of dopamine and serotonin.
1:16:05
I actually just came back from a a trip and we were visiting a couple, friends of ours, and they said, it was really beautiful.
1:16:10
They said, they'd been together a long time.
1:16:11
They said, they've had three nights apart in their entire relationship. Wow. during that time apart.
1:16:18
And I thought, that's beautiful.
1:16:20
Now, for some people, that's a beautiful model.
1:16:22
For other people, that would be excessive and it actually could eliminate a a number of the positive neurochemical features of the relationship. Yeah.
1:16:31
And there's a lot of variation around this.
1:16:32
So, dopamine is required to quote unquote re-up the excitement in a relationship. How is that achieved?
1:16:39
Well, dopamine is the molecule, as you recall, of reward prediction or of novelty.
1:16:43
So, doing things that are not expected is great.
1:16:45
Routine is great for serotonin and oxytocin, predictability.
1:16:51
Routine, predictability, same thing.
1:16:53
Safety, routine, predictability.
1:16:55
Serotonin, oxytocin system, no question about it.
1:16:59
Dopamine is the neurochemical of novelty and pursuing new things.
1:17:01
So, for couples that are very set in their ways and feel very safe and homey together, wonderful, but creating ways in which they miss one another or creating new experiences for them to kind of re-up the dopamine in the relationship can have a a tremendously positive effect.
1:17:17
And I look forward to a day where neuroscience is actually incorporated into relationship design in an intelligent and and respectful way that they're respectful, meaning that there are differences. Yes.
1:17:29
But we see a lot that people will just go out and get a new relationship, right?
1:17:33
I'm of the mind that, unless, you know, it's it's dangerous situation, better to probably avoid divorce, right?
1:17:40
Um certainly for the sake of children.
1:17:42
Some I've heard, of course, that divorces can rescue relationships, too.
1:17:44
I understand there's a lot of nuance.
1:17:46
But I think everyone would prefer, emotionally, financially, etc.
1:17:49
, to be able to be in a great relationship for a long period of time. Yeah.
1:17:54
And so, I think that understanding that the the push-pull between dopamine and serotonin is key.
1:18:00
And just to remember that missing someone, yearning for someone, is the anticipation of how great it's going to feel when together. Absolutely.
1:18:07
I think that that could that could go a long way.
1:18:09
And also, for people that get very, very, very excited about the new person, the new thing, just be wary that not everyone's dopamine system works the same way. Yeah.
1:18:21
And with dopamine, it's great to have increases in dopamine, but where it passes a threshold and it's very big peaks, where there's a peak, there's a crash, and the crash is always asymmetrically deeper than the peak.
1:18:33
There is no way around this.
1:18:33
And so, learn to temper the excitement if you're an excitable person.
1:18:37
And and I would say learn to ramp up the excitement a little bit if you're somebody who's not so easily overwhelmed. Yeah, definitely.
1:18:46
I mean, me and my wife we've been married for 6 years and nearly together for 10, which You seem to have an amazing from the ex- from the outside, you know.
1:18:54
I I would say I always like to clarify that I don't think you know, I grew up wanting a Hollywood romance and I my views of love were defined by movies and music and I realized that is not what love looks like at all.
1:19:06
And my wife has been a great teacher to me in that space of showing me what a beautiful relationship can look like, but it doesn't look like how we think it is.
1:19:14
And I think often when people see me and my wife, they may think we have that what version too.
1:19:19
And I would just I'm very careful about the idea that we have a fantastic relationship, but it isn't fantastic for the reasons that TV or movies has convinced us that relationships are good.
1:19:29
But we spend around 3 months apart every single year, not by design or choice, just by work and life.
1:19:36
And I haven't seen my wife for the last 3 months.
1:19:39
It will be one more month before I see her. yearning is real.
1:19:42
I cannot wait to see her, but at the same time I get to focus on myself.
1:19:44
I get to have alone time.
1:19:46
I get to refill and refuel myself.
1:19:49
I get to discover new parts of my identity.
1:19:51
I get to learn a new skill.
1:19:53
Like so many healthy And of course, we don't have children yet, so we don't have that responsibility.
1:19:56
Um but but going to what you said, I I see so much value in in how we can be open to these ideas.
1:20:04
I think that's the point, that it's not about there's one size fits all or one right way.
1:20:08
But I want to shift Andrew with our conversation to something you brought up earlier because and and if you don't feel comfortable talking about it, we don't, but I I heard and I I've I've become aware that you are you have tattoos.
1:20:21
You have you have symbols.
1:20:24
Tim Ferriss outed me on his podcast. Thanks, Tim. Uh yeah, I do.
1:20:26
I am you know, I grew up a child of an academic and but then when I was a teenager I got involved in skateboarding punk rock music.
1:20:37
I still have a lot of friends in that world.
1:20:39
So the photographer for our podcast is from DC and Nike skateboarding Mike Blayback.
1:20:42
I have good friends in that world become friendly with guys like Danny Way and you know, it's amazing one of the greatest skateboarders of all time by the way.
1:20:51
I mean he and I aren't close friends but we become friendly and for me that's an you know, I grew up in that and yeah, those were cultures that made a lot of sense to me given where I was at the time and they have always felt to me like my first non-biological family.
1:21:03
So I started getting tattooed pretty young too young and I will say to all of those out there that are thinking about it think carefully.
1:21:13
It is they are permanent.
1:21:16
Things have changed around this.
1:21:16
I always cover up my tattoos for the following reason when when doing public facing work which is that um generally when I'm trying to teach neuroscience, I'm trying to download ideas and transmit them.
1:21:28
So I just want to avoid any distractions about the symbols that are meaningful to me because they just aren't relevant in that context.
1:21:38
I have a good friend who explained it this way.
1:21:39
He said well, you know, maybe tattoos should be an important part of the hiring process because rather than covering them up if you have a a lot of tattoos, it is evidence that you can sit still for a long period of [laughter] time while in intense pain. So that's true.
1:21:50
I'll also say this I was fortunate to know good tattooers.
1:21:54
So a good tattoo there are there's a range out there. are. Yes.
1:21:57
And and along the lines of them being permanent, I will also say that black and gray last longer doesn't fade than color. So I'll say all that.
1:22:05
what's your most uh What's the symbol on your body and I'm sure you have many but if you were to pick one not your favorite but one that feels really meaningful right now in your life? Yeah.
1:22:16
Well, first of all, it's funny cuz people often will say what are you going to do when you're like 60 or 65 you got all these tattoos and I just think okay, well, first of all, now I have an incentive to stay in shape and second of all, um, you know, I actually worry about them disappearing cuz then I'd have to have them all redone and they were pretty painful. It took a long time. I got a lot of them.
1:22:32
So, uh, took a long time.
1:22:35
It's been 25 years or more of getting tattooed.
1:22:39
So, um, I can't pick just one, but I do have a picture of my, uh, bulldog mastiff Costello and a paw print of his life-size or actual size. And I loved that dog.
1:22:50
I had to put him down, um, the while Yeah, and it was just, you know, the last line in the contract of good dog ownership is that you're going to put him down before they're suffering and it was a It actually turned out to be a beautiful transition.
1:23:02
I I did it, you know, in a beautiful location.
1:23:04
He went easy and I don't want to talk about too long cuz I'll cry out of love.
1:23:08
I know it's I I still cry when I think about him, but it's not sadness.
1:23:12
It took me like 3 months to realize.
1:23:14
I was like, I always cry when I talk about Costello or I want to cry and I realize it's cuz I love him.
1:23:19
The feeling isn't sadness.
1:23:19
He just he had such an incredible dog. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
1:23:24
I feel it in my heart right now.
1:23:26
And anyone that knows me, I I I loved that dog like crazy.
1:23:27
So, there's that one and then, um, and I don't want to focus on negative things, but again, it's a feeling of love.
1:23:35
I talked about these three advisors that I had earlier.
1:23:39
I was blessed with amazing advisors and sadly, uh, first one died of suicide, second one cancer who I was very close to my third one cancer.
1:23:46
So, the the the morbid joke among people that know me is you don't want me to work for you.
1:23:50
Now, I can make that joke because all three of them had an incredible spirit about life.
1:23:56
So, I actually have all of their initials or symbols of them tattooed on my body and I miss them every day, but I also, you know, I think there is something powerful to embedding something in your body.
1:24:05
Some people wear pendants.
1:24:07
Um, obviously, some people would decide to get tattoos.
1:24:09
Um, and you know, I've been encouraged at times people are like, you know, just show your tattoos, be out there with them. I want to be very clear.
1:24:17
I'm not ashamed of them at all. I'm proud of them.
1:24:21
But, yeah, but for me if I'm teaching or I'm trying to be an educator, I really want to emphasize the information.
1:24:26
I also think, listen, the world's a complicated place and we can't always control people's interpretations of why we do things.
1:24:32
So for the young people out there thinking about getting tattoos, um just understand that's the world we live in.
1:24:39
Although I think nowadays people are are more accepting.
1:24:41
So Yeah, thank you for sharing both of those. Thank you. I I wanted that more.
1:24:44
I I just appreciate hearing about because we spoke about symbols and Yeah.
1:24:50
and and that for that reason I really wanted to understand the symbols that you know.
1:24:54
Yeah, for me something about having, you know, um having experiences that I've externalized to the surface of my body feels right.
1:25:01
It's weird, they feel like my skin now.
1:25:02
They feel like birthmarks.
1:25:04
I never look at in I never would get up in the morning look in the mirror and go like there's a tattoo and there's a tattoo.
1:25:09
Normally I just think like, oh yeah, like it's just it just kind of becomes part of you.
1:25:13
As as you know, because obviously you I only have three.
1:25:17
I had a plan to the number, it's the it's the important to have my whole upper body tattooed when I was younger and then I became a monk.
1:25:25
So I haven't had any since.
1:25:27
But up until I got my first one I was 16, second one I was 18 and then the last one when I was like 21.
1:25:31
And I did them all and then I became a monk and then I haven't had any since. Yeah.
1:25:36
And my wife's been the other way around like since we've been married she's had like she had one before we married and actually had like seven more so she's Well, it's like I don't wear any jewelry except a watch but yeah, tattoos for me have been um it's been a fun journey and I I'm 46 years old now.
1:25:48
So uh I plan to keep going, you I love that.
1:25:52
Yeah, uh there's there's at this point it's um it's I suppose it's neuroplasticity. It's built into me.
1:25:58
Andrew, you've been so kind, gracious with your time.
1:26:01
Uh I am you know, I I've always known how phenomenally intelligent and and smart and sharp and deeply studied you are but I'm really grateful I got to experience your heart today in so many ways and uh to me that that beautiful synergy you have is is is really uh meaningful to me to experience.
1:26:21
I'm I'm so grateful to you for being here, for taking the time, for for being We've been in touch for a couple of years maybe even it's been or you know, through messaging, but to really experience you in full today has been been a treat for me.
1:26:34
Uh we end every On Purpose episode with a final five.
1:26:38
These have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.
1:26:43
Uh which which for this academic might be a little bit It might be hard, but we will try.
1:26:45
So, Andrew Huberman, these are your final five.
1:26:49
Uh the first question is what is the best advice you've ever received in any area of life? Know thyself. Right.
1:26:57
The oracle said that and it's absolutely true.
1:26:59
We have to be good scientists of ourselves and understand where we have talents, competency, and or challenges, and then work with those. Beautiful.
1:27:10
All right, second question.
1:27:12
What is the worst advice you've ever received or heard?
1:27:16
That everything is just experience.
1:27:16
You know, the idea that all experiences are equivalent.
1:27:21
Um I would love to think that um all our steps lead us to enlightenment kind of thing, but we have I do believe that we or at least I need to be far more intentional than that and that we can be. Beautiful.
1:27:35
Uh question number three.
1:27:37
What is something that you didn't value before, but you've learned to value now?
1:27:42
Almost embarrassed to say it, but um family.
1:27:44
You know, I've relied very heavily on friendship as a deep source of of uh reinforcement in my life.
1:27:49
I've leaned hard into that for many many decades.
1:27:56
Um I think in recently I've become quite moved by the the supports within my family that I did hadn't realized that uh really set me up so well to um to do what I want to do in life. Beautiful. Love hearing that. Uh question number four.
1:28:10
What's the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night?
1:28:15
First thing I do in the morning is get outside and get sunlight.
1:28:17
And if the sun isn't up, I flip on all the lights and then I go get sunlight.
1:28:20
I also drink a glass of water.
1:28:22
Before I go to sleep at night, Yoga Nidra?
1:28:26
You're not doing that at night.
1:28:27
You do that during the No, I actually I think about those three people I was talking about before. I do, every night. I just think about them. I don't know.
1:28:35
It's been a long time now that accumulated over several decades and um, yeah, I think about them every night.
1:28:40
I I don't even think to do it. It I just do it.
1:28:44
I'm just trying to Yeah, I've I've uh, I had lost one of mine mentors.
1:28:48
The others are still alive right now.
1:28:49
One of them had stage four brain cancer and just couple of years ago.
1:28:53
And I I when you said that I was like, yeah, I I know yeah, know that feels like so, yeah.
1:28:58
All right, uh, fifth and final question.
1:29:00
If you could create one law or set one habit that everyone had to do every day for the rest of their life, what would it be?
1:29:06
I think I know what's going to be, but I I have to ask you.
1:29:11
Well, since most people assume it's sunlight viewing, I'll just I'll just assume they're doing that anyway.
1:29:17
I would die a happy person if people would adopt a practice of learning to deliberately calm down.
1:29:29
Whether or not through non-sleep depressed or a couple deep breaths, um, find a tool because I really believe that much of the misfortune and pain of life could be avoided if people learn to calm down.
1:29:43
I also know that there's a lot more joy to access when we do.
1:29:47
Andrew, you're phenomenal.
1:29:47
You blew my mind multiple times today.
1:29:50
I hope this is not going to be the only time uh, that we hang out.
1:29:54
We agreed the first time we spoke that the podcast was an excuse to build our friendship. That's right.
1:29:59
Uh, I feel like there is I this is a podcast episode that I would highly recommend that everyone listens to again, takes notes.
1:30:09
Uh when when you make those notes, try and find those elements that you want to put into practice.
1:30:15
Uh I would highly recommend that everyone who's listening to this episode go and subscribe to and listen to Andrew's podcast, which is a wealth of wisdom in everything we've discussed today.
1:30:24
Today we've tipped the tip of the iceberg.
1:30:26
We've dived into so many different areas.
1:30:28
You'll find episodes on every single aspect of what we've discussed on his podcast.
1:30:31
Highly recommend that you go and check it out for the episodes that really connect.
1:30:35
We didn't even dive into your incredible work deeply on vision or on sugar and diet and you know, we haven't even We didn't even get to go then.
1:30:43
We'll do that hopefully another time.
1:30:44
Uh but please make sure that you tag Andrew and I on Twitter, maybe uh on Instagram to let us know what connected with you, what resonated with you, what is something that you're going to try this week because of this episode, how those habits are going.
1:30:58
I love seeing you put these ideas and insights into practice.
1:31:05
That is the whole goal of living a life that's on purpose.
1:31:07
Uh Andrew, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
1:31:09
Uh express my deepest gratitude for for doing this.
1:31:13
And yeah, any final words, anything you want to share that's on your mind or heart that you want to put out there in the world? Over to you. Thank you.
1:31:20
I I want to genuinely say thank you.
1:31:22
Again, we've known each other somewhat at distance for a long time now.
1:31:26
It's been a tremendous pleasure.
1:31:29
You know, I I look to social media and a lot in science and a lot of different landscapes for inspiration.
1:31:34
It's been a remarkable thing to see what you've done.
1:31:38
And and it's so great to meet in person because I knew you were the real deal.
1:31:43
But there but you know, I'll I'll just say this.
1:31:46
I I know many people already feel this, but I just want to say that to meet you in person is is a real honor for me.
1:31:53
And I just so admire what you're doing.
1:31:56
And I know the intent behind it is real.
1:31:58
And the way you show up to it is incredible.
1:32:00
And so I'm just uh I'm floating on the on the gratitude of of being able to be here today face-to-face. Thank you so much.
1:32:08
Andrew, thank you so much.
1:32:08
Everyone, make sure you share this episode, pass it along to a friend who needs to hear it.
1:32:14
As I said, you can obviously go and subscribe and listen to Andrew's podcast, which is called Huberman Lab, uh which you will find on all podcast platforms.
1:32:21
So, make sure you do that.
1:32:22
And, of course, follow him on Instagram, as you can tell he loves to be there, too.
1:32:25
Highly active, very present.
1:32:25
Make sure you follow him for more insights and more intelligence.
1:32:30
Thank you so much for watching this episode.
1:32:33
Please do share it, and I'll see you next time.
1:32:36
If you want even more videos just like this one, make sure you subscribe and click on the boxes over here.
1:32:42
[music] I'm also excited to let you know that you can now get my book Think Like a Monk from thinklikeamonkbook. com.
1:32:50
Check below in the description [music] to make sure you order today.