This 1 Thing Can Rewire Your Brain & Unlock the Focus Your Phone Steals From You

Environmental neuroscientist Marc Berman drops a revelation that could transform how you think about your daily struggles with focus, stress, and mental clarity: your brain has two completely different attention systems, and modern life is systematically destroying one of them. While we scroll through endless feeds believing we're taking "mental breaks," we're actually depleting the very cognitive resource we need most to achieve our goals, control our impulses, and become our best selves. Berman's groundbreaking research reveals that something as simple as a 20-minute walk in nature can be as effective as ADHD medication for focus, while looking at curved edges in natural environments literally makes people think more about spirituality. You'll discover why your environment isn't just influencing your mood—it's rewiring your brain, shaping your behavior, and determining whether you become the person you're capable of being. Marc’s book Nature and the Mind: The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-BeingIn this episode you will:Discover the two attention systems in your brain and why one is being hijacked by modern technology, leaving you mentally fatigued and unable to focus on what matters mostTransform your understanding of "rest" by learning why scrolling social media when tired actually drains you further, while nature exposure restores your cognitive batteryBreak through mental fog and decision fatigue using Berman's five daily strategies that environmental neuroscientists use to optimize their brains for peak performanceUncover shocking research showing that 11 trees per city block provides health benefits equivalent to a $20,000 income increase, and why hospital patients with nature views heal a full day fasterHarness the power of "softly fascinating" environments that capture your involuntary attention while allowing your directed attention to recover, making you sharper and more resilientFor more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1824For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Dr. Kevin Tracey – greatness.lnk.to/1812SCDr. Andrew Huberman – greatness.lnk.to/1219SCDr. Caroline Leaf – greatness.lnk.to/1785SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. Very excited about our guest. We have the inspiring Professor Mark Berman in the house. So good to see you. And you are the world's leading environmental neuroscientist and psychologist. And you're professor as well. And you're teaching people about the power of nature and how it truly impacts our brains in an empowering way. And I'm glad you're here. You've got a book called Nature and the Mind, the Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being. And in a world where there's just seems like, at least in the Western culture, there's so much anxiety, depression, stress, overwhelm, disease, uh, mental disorders.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  It seems like we're missing our roots, literally and spiritually. And nature is something you've been studying as a neuroscientist and a psychologist of understanding the power of nature. So like my first question for you is, what kind of effect does nature have on our brains? And if we're not using nature the way it's meant to be used, how will it hurt our brains?

• 1:10Speaker 01

  So I think the thing that we should kind of, that we focus on about why nature is so beneficial to us, actually has to do with attention. And we think that nature has the ability to restore our attention. And we think attention is almost critical to so many different human behaviors. Like if we want to achieve our goals, if we want to have self-control, if we want to be cooperative, if we want to leave life with a lot of meaning, you have to have attention. You have to be able to direct and pay attention. And we do think that in modern times now, there are a lot of things that are robbing our attention.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Social media, streaming services, all the advertising that we see. We're just bombarded with information and it's really taxing us. And you know, I and other people like Jonathan Haidt has his book, The Anxious Generation. That all of this social media that's around us is making kids in particular more anxious. And we think that part of that is because all these different technologies are kind of robbing our attention. Now, this isn't to say that all of these attentions are, all of these technologies are bad. It just means we have to be careful. And so what we think interacting with nature does is it has this ability to restore our ability to direct attention that would become

• 2:34Speaker 01

  refreshed. So if we're mentally fatigued, nature can can restore our attention. So we talk about humans kind of having two kinds of attention. So one kind of attention we call directed attention, and that's the kind of attention where you, as the individual person, are deciding what to pay attention to. So presumably, Lewis, you're deciding to pay attention to me, even though what I'm saying might not be the most interesting thing in the environment. And it's thought that that kind of attention is fatigable or depletable. You can only kind of focus or direct your attention for so long before you become mentally fatigued and you can't focus anymore.

• 3:11Lewis Howes?

  Kind of like schoolwork. If I'm not interested in schoolwork, or being in a classroom, listening to something that I really could care less about, or I'm thinking more about, you know, a girl or whatever from school, or sports, or playing with my friends, or video games, I only have so much attention as a 15-year-old in a classroom to hear something.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 3:32Lewis Howes?

  I have to really like focus my energy and pay attention, I guess, right? But you're saying that can only go so far.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. And we've kind of all had that sensation, like, at the end of a long workday, you might be staring at the computer screen, and you can't really focus anymore. You start daydreaming or thinking about other things. We call that like a directed attention fatigue state. That's the time to take a break. And the kind of break that we think you should take is something involving interacting with nature.

• 3:57Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. It's interesting because maybe like eight years ago, I used to live in an apartment, and I had my studio in the apartment. So I'd work out of there, I'd live there, and I would record interviews out of there from the School of Greatness. And usually halfway through the day, I'd be like, gosh, I just need to get out and like throw a frisbee. And I'd go in the park, and I'd throw a frisbee for like 20 minutes, and it gave me a lot more energy. Just like stepping aside, being in the grass, even though the city was around me, I was still in grass, I could see some trees, and I was playing. That really gave me more attention to go back and do the next thing.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so one of the reasons why we think interacting with nature is so beneficial... Is that we think interactions with nature activate a different kind of attention that we call involuntary attention, or sometimes people call it like bottom up attention. And that's the kind of attention that's automatically captured by bright lights, loud noises, things that automatically capture our attention and we don't really have control over it. And we think that a lot of natural stimulation like trees, forests, rivers, those things automatically capture our attention, which gives our directed attention a chance to kind of take a break or replenish. Another thing that you mentioned, Lewis, which is interesting is that you said when you were

• 5:16Speaker 01

  playing frisbee, you kind of like got out of your studio environment and went somewhere else. And one of my mentors, Steve Kaplan, used to talk about this, that he thought many natural environments give people the sense of being away, like getting away from their regular day to day, which could also kind of activate this involuntary attention and give the directed attention a chance to replenish.

• 5:40Lewis Howes?

  So how many types of attention are there?

• 5:42Speaker 01

  So we think there's kind of two main kinds. So one is this directed attention. That's the one where you are controlling what you're paying attention to, even if it's not the most interesting thing. Unfortunately, you can kind of only do that for a limited amount of time and then you kind of can't focus anymore. That's different from this involuntary attention that we think is automatically captured by interesting stimulation in the environment. And it's thought that that kind of attention is less susceptible to fatigue or depletion. So you don't often hear people say, oh, I can't look at that beautiful waterfall anymore. It's just too interesting. I can't look at it anymore. Oh, I can't watch this movie anymore. It's just too interesting. I have to shut it off. So the idea, this is what's called attention restoration theory.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  It's a theory about why interacting with nature is beneficial. The idea with attention restoration theory is that if you can find environments that don't put a lot of demands on directed attention while simultaneously having interesting stimulation to activate this involuntary attention, you can restore or replenish this precious directed attention resource.

• 6:46Lewis Howes?

  And so directed attention, so I'm getting it right, is you saying, I'm going to focus my attention on a thing.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 6:53Lewis Howes?

  Like a person, a thing, my studies, my work, whatever it might be. I'm going to pay attention and think about this thing. And what I'm hearing you say is that There's only so much willpower where you can hold that focus for a certain amount of time. Maybe that's 30 minutes, maybe that's three hours, but eventually you're going to get fatigued is what I'm hearing you say. Whereas involuntary attention is less susceptible to fatigue where you could pay attention longer. And maybe you just get bored, but it's not like you're not exhausted from paying attention, right?

• 7:27Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:28Lewis Howes?

  That comes from being in nature. Uh, but I'm hearing is it also comes from like bright lights or flashing movies or things like that that are just easier to watch? Is that what you're saying?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Things that are just kind of inherently more interesting.

• 7:41Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And you can kind of think, you know, sometimes too, we can kind of get into these like flow states where a task is really interesting to do and you do want to pay attention to it. That doesn't really require as much directed attention. When we're talking about directed attention, it's like, oh, I've got this really challenging thing. I don't want to do it.

• 7:58Lewis Howes?

  You'll play video games or hang out with friends.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. I don't, it's kind of almost think about the, like you said, willpower. It's like this mental energy. I know there's this hard thing. I need to get it done. It's hard to do. And when you turn your directed attention to try to finish that task, it's just, you don't, you don't have an unlimited amount of that direct attention resource to finish the job.

• 8:20Lewis Howes?

  Are there any other health benefits besides improved focus that being in nature gives the body and the mind?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Yes, it's true. But one thing I want to kind of mention is that we don't want to minimize attention. Because we do think, you know, when, when people think about attention, they think a lot about kids squirming in their seats in school, not being able to pay attention. Or, you know, oh, I just couldn't finish this project, you know, at work. But we think attention, directed attention is fundamental to many, many other behaviors. Like we think if you don't have enough directed attention, you might become really irritable. You might become aggressive. You might be less likely to be able to achieve your goals. You're going to be more impulsive. So I think one of the interesting things that we're

• 9:12Speaker 01

  We're saying here is that attention is not just about focusing in school. It's about almost like being our best selves. That we need to have this mental energy, this directed attention to be able to achieve our goals.

• 9:26Lewis Howes?

  So directed attention is what allows us to set and stay focused on our goals through challenging times.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 9:32Lewis Howes?

  Because when you set a goal, there's going to be obstacles, challenges, you're going to need to have repetition of something. You know, you became a professor, you wrote a book, you're leading a department now. That took decades of research, time, energy and focused attention for you to accomplish skills. Build relationships, develop bodies of work, research that was probably like tedious, long days, long years of not getting a lot of results right away that stack over time. And that takes directed attention, focus in order to do that.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 10:07Lewis Howes?

  And if you're lacking the ability to develop that, then you're probably going to struggle at becoming your best self is what I'm hearing you say. Accomplishing your goals, moving projects forward, getting a pay raise, whatever it is you're looking for.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 10:22Lewis Howes?

  And so the whole goal that we should be having, based on what I'm hearing you say as a neuroscientist and environmental psychologist and all these things. Is that we should be learning how to optimize our brain and our body for attention. Is that what I'm hearing you say?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Yes, and treating it as this precious resource. Because again, there's a lot of things in the environment that are vying for our attention. And one other concept that I think is important too to talk about is the kind of stimulation that activates the involuntary attention.

• 10:52Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  So we think that you want to be, to get this restoration benefit, to restore directed attention. We think that the environment has to have what we call softly fascinating stimulation. So when I say softly fascinating, it means. It captures your involuntary attention, but it doesn't sort of capture all of your attentional resources.

• 11:14Lewis Howes?

  It's not constantly stimulating you like this.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Right. So like when I look at a waterfall, when you look at a waterfall, it's interesting. You look at it, but you can still kind of mind wander and think about other things. If I'm in Times Square, that's also super interesting. But it sort of captures all of our attentional resources and doesn't let go.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  You can't focus on like creating something in that space.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  No, it's too overwhelming.

• 11:36Lewis Howes?

  You're in stimulation mode, you're just like, ah, this is amazing, but you're not able to focus attention on actually creating something.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  That's right. It leaves no room for any kind of reflection.

• 11:45Lewis Howes?

  So as a, as a neuroscientist then studying this, what are five key things that you do or you have in your environment every day to maximize your attention for growth in your personal life and professional life?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  So a few things. So one, I try to be really, really mindful of when I'm getting into a directed attention fatigue state. And I don't usually try to power through.

• 12:12Lewis Howes?

  You don't?

• 12:13Speaker 01

  No. I say, I need to take a break. And the reason why I say that is, you know, powering through, you might be able to get it done, but I don't think you're going to be as efficient.

• 12:23Lewis Howes?

  It's not your best work.

• 12:24Speaker 01

  It's not your best work. So I think I, the first thing I do is when I feel like I'm getting in this direct attention fatigue state, I'm getting irritable, I can't focus, I can't concentrate, I say, you know what? I gotta go take a break. And I gotta go take a break in nature.

• 12:38Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:40Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so first key is take a break and take a break in nature.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:43Lewis Howes?

  When you feel exhausted or tired or.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  Yes, mentally fatigued. It's like I have physical energy. I don't have to go to sleep, but I can't mentally concentrate. Exactly.

• 12:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, no, I'm assuming there's sometimes you might have to, you don't have the luxury of doing that. You're at school and you have long days or you've got your four kids and it's like, we've got to get something done here.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:03Lewis Howes?

  So there's moments where you're pushing through.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 13:05Lewis Howes?

  Exhaustion mentally.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:07Lewis Howes?

  But your goal is to try to do that when you can.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  That's right. Exactly. And we can talk too, you know, a lot of us don't have easy access to nature. And the good news is, is that we, we find that you can get benefits from listening to nature sounds, looking at nature pictures, looking at nature videos. The effects aren't as strong as going into the real thing, as to going in real nature, but you can still get benefits that way from the simulated nature. So that's really, really good.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that's the first thing. Take a break in nature. The second thing that you do or you you focus on?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  So the second thing I focus on is sort of what I don't do. So I don't do social media.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  Stare at your phone? Yeah, would you get tired?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  I don't. I don't stare at my phone when I'm tired. Um, I don't do much social media stuff.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  You know, I try to be, because those activities, even though they feel restful, they actually aren't that restful.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, because sometimes when I'm tired and I want a break, I'll take my phone out and go into, I guess, the involuntary attention, which feels like it's it's less fatigue because I'm being fed a movie or content that is just allowing me to like not think about the task I was just doing.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 14:22Lewis Howes?

  But you're saying that that's not a good thing.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  It may not be because it's not, it may be kind of taking you out of what you're doing before, but it might not actually be a restful behavior. So when you actually try to go back and do the thing, you might actually have less energy, less directed attention.

• 14:38Lewis Howes?

  You're still tired.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Than you had to do it with. Yeah.

• 14:40Lewis Howes?

  So take a break in nature and don't get on social media or your phone if you can, unless you're like.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  For a break. I mean, I'm not, again, I'm not trying to demonize social media. It's just not restful.

• 14:49Lewis Howes?

  It's not restful. Okay. Third thing?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Third thing is, um, so I've got kids and I like them to interact with nature and I like to get them out in nature, but I don't count that as my break.

• 15:02Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 15:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:03Lewis Howes?

  Because that's you having to still wrangle kids and like make sure they're not dying, you know, or falling on something, right?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Right. And they whine. They don't always want to go out there, right? So it takes a lot of mental energy for me to get them out of the house to do it. So.

• 15:17Lewis Howes?

  It's not like you're sitting there sunbathing in the forest or whatever, relaxing when your kids are out there.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 15:23Lewis Howes?

  You have to pay attention.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  To them. I'm using mental energy, direct attention. Get your shoes on. We're going. No, I don't want to go, Dad. No, we're going out there. Right? That takes directed attention. So that doesn't count as a break for me. That's good for my kids, but it's not, it's not my break. The other thing, maybe we'll call this like the fourth element, is that when I go into nature, I don't have my earbuds in, I don't look at my phone. And I go by myself.

• 15:53Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. So you won't listen to music and also kind of?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  No, because I want all of my senses to be captured by the softly fascinating stimulation of nature.

• 16:03Lewis Howes?

  You go alone?

• 16:03Speaker 01

  And I go alone.

• 16:05Lewis Howes?

  You don't want to go with anyone in your family or it's not, that's not, it's a different task.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  It'll be different. Like, for example, I do, you know, sometimes when my wife and I, if there's something we're trying to figure out, or something tricky that we're trying to understand, we will walk in nature together and talk about that issue, which can be good, but it's not, it's almost like the nature like helps us in communicating, but it's not like a break for me or for her. So when I want, because when you're having a conversation with somebody, you're using a lot of directed attention.

• 16:35Lewis Howes?

  You are.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  So this, this, this is kind of a solitary process.

• 16:41Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. And is there anything else that you do? A fifth thing?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  A fifth thing, um.

• 16:47Lewis Howes?

  What about in your personal environment at home to set up to make sure that you have nature involved in some way?

• 16:54Speaker 01

  So we do, and, and my wife, I really thank her for doing this. She, we have this nice bay window in the front of her house and she's got all these plants growing in that bay window. Some of these are really like big plants, like these huge leaves. It's just really gorgeous to look at. My office doesn't have great lighting, but we have artificial plants in my office. I kind of want to do more like even having like a fake green wall and things like that. So we do try to bring nature indoors into the home as well.

• 17:26Lewis Howes?

  Is there benefits to having fake green plants in your home or office? As, instead of having a living green plants?

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Well, I would, I would say living is better, but you can get benefits from the artificial too. And it's interesting, there have been studies in hospitals where a lot of these hospital environments have to be really sterile. And there's maybe not much natural light and they'll put fake plants, fake greenery into these hospitals and people report feeling calmer in the hospital. They're not as agitated, even when they know it's a fake plant. So that's kind of interesting too. So. Sometimes even just being able to mimic some of these patterns in nature

• 18:08Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  can can have some of these benefits.

• 18:10Lewis Howes?

  What are the health benefits besides focused attention that being in nature has for people?

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it's really amazing, actually, and it it has really important consequences. So maybe I'll start with a study that we did in Toronto. So we had health data from about 35,000 people in Toronto. And we had this incredible data set where the University of Toronto Forestry Department catalogued every single tree on public land in the city of Toronto. So we had data from 580,000 trees in the city of Toronto.

• 18:41Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  We knew where each tree was, we knew the species of each tree, and the diameter of each tree at breast height. So like how how big or how old the tree was.

• 18:50Lewis Howes?

  This is like Google Maps for trees.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:52Lewis Howes?

  It's like, you know, every tree, every street, every alley, like.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 18:56Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  And so one of my students, Omid Kardan, what he did is he calculated how much tree canopy each individual tree provided. And we related that to this big health data set that we had. And we found that if you had 11 more trees of average size per city block, that reduced cardiometabolic disorders by about 1%.

• 19:19Lewis Howes?

  Now, that's crazy.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  But that sounds kind of modest, 1% doesn't sound like much. But to get that equivalent 1% benefit economically, you'd have to give every household on that city block $20,000 and have them all move to a neighborhood with the median income that's $20,000 wealthier, or make people about one and a half years younger.

• 19:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  So that's pretty powerful.

• 19:40Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  Now, again, that's.

• 19:41Lewis Howes?

  Now, is that cause of effect or is it core?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  So that's right. So that's the good question. So I can't claim strong causality there because the worst case scenario would be maybe just healthier people choose to live in neighborhoods that have more trees. But they can't be younger, they can't be more educated.

• 19:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  They can't be wealthier because we're controlling for that. Here's another study that's even cooler. So Roger Ulrich, in the 1980s, he looked at a single hospital corridor in a hospital in Philadelphia. And he was looking at patients recovering from gallbladder surgery. And it just so happened that some of these rooms, hospital rooms, on this single hospital corridor in Philadelphia, some of them had views of modest nature, like some trees or some grass. And some had views of like a brick wall, like the hospital like coming back around.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Amazingly, the patients that had the views of nature out of their window recovered from gallbladder surgery a day earlier.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  And they used less pain medication than the people had the views of the brick wall. And what's really cool about this study is that the patients are randomly assigned to the different rooms. So it's not like younger people or healthier people get the nature view. They're just randomly assigned to whatever room is available. So there you can almost claim causality there. The thing that's really interesting about this is why? Why does having the view of nature out of your window?

• 21:04Lewis Howes?

  And they weren't going in nature every day. They were in a sterile hospital.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  They're recovering from gallbladder.

• 21:10Lewis Howes?

  Looking at nature.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Looking at nature.

• 21:12Lewis Howes?

  So why do you think this impacts our health by just looking at nature?

• 21:16Speaker 01

  So this is what's kind of crazy. So if we just, if we go back a second to the study we did in Toronto. Okay, having more trees, maybe the air is better. Maybe having more trees, maybe I'm more willing to go outside and exercise. But that's not the case in the Roger Aller study.

• 21:34Lewis Howes?

  Not getting more oxygen through the, yeah, through the window.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  I don't think so. So what we think might be going on there is that there's something about the aesthetic of nature. Seeing the fractalness of nature, the curved edges. And then maybe our brains like process that more efficiently. And that that could have health benefits. Cause again, mind and body are one. So things that are good for the brain are going to be good for the body. Just like things that are good for the body are going to be good for the brain. So that I think is really interesting and somewhat counterintuitive. That actually processing the, or the sounds and the visuals of nature could have health benefits.

• 22:13Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. So looking at nature. This study proves that there's a health benefit to recovering from sickness or disease or anything you might have in there. Whereas staring at a brick wall takes you longer to heal and recover.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:31Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. When I think about people that live in like New York City or that have no light coming through their window or just looking at a building right next to them when they wake up or something like that. If someone does live in a concrete jungle with no access to parks or nature. What's the next best thing for their brain to heal and feel optimized?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  So I think there's good news. That we find even in our research that.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Looking at. Nature on a computer screen can have benefits.

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Listening to nature sounds can have benefits. And again, in some of these hospital settings. People that are getting some painful procedures in hospitals. Sometimes they bring in like nature posters or use virtual reality where they show people nature stimulation. And that helps with pain management. So it does seem like that artificial nature, like nature pictures, nature videos, nature sounds. They can improve attention, but they can also have some healing benefits. Now, I want to caution that. It's not going to be as good as the real thing. The real thing is the best.

• 23:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  But it's good to know that for a lot of us that don't have easy access to nature. These simulations can be beneficial.

• 23:50Lewis Howes?

  If you had a friend or someone that reached out to you who is trying to recover from some type of sickness. Disease, hospital surgery. And you were able to set up the perfect conditions for them to heal using nature. And they could use any tool in the toolbox. And you said, if you do these things, it will drastically support your body and your brain's ability to heal itself faster. What would you tell them to do?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I would almost tell somebody to kind of try to heal almost in like a greenhouse.

• 24:23Lewis Howes?

  Like live in a greenhouse?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  To be like surrounded by the nature, to get the natural light coming in. Like Andrew Huberman talks about the importance of natural light. Natural light is a big thing, but you want to be seeing. All of these patterns in in nature. So you'd like to be able to see the trees, maybe out of the greenhouse. You'd like to have some plants. Inside that greenhouse, you want to hear the sounds, you want to hear the birds chirping. You want to hear the wind in the in the leaves. Maybe you can have some kind of water feature that's got.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  So you can hear running water. I think all of those things would have would have healing qualities.

• 24:58Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, like healing in a greenhouse.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:01Lewis Howes?

  Like sleep there for the next week in a greenhouse and just be in nature.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Right. Now, I will say this, there have been some other studies where.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  If you make the environment almost too green, like imagine the studio. If we. Increase the green space here by 10 to 20 percent. People really, really like it. But if you start going way, way above that, it starts to feel a little bit busy.

• 25:26Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Almost like a jungle.

• 25:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  So maybe you don't want to go too far.

• 25:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  But some studies are suggesting if you can get the space to have 20, 10 to 20 percent of having green space in the interior would be beneficial.

• 25:40Lewis Howes?

  We just built this out a few months ago. So we're still optimizing this. We've got a couple of, you know, fake plants, you know, a couple of, you know, things. We've got a photo of a sky and some trees. We've got like some things here.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  You got the fire.

• 25:53Lewis Howes?

  Like, you know, it's not real fire, but it's like, we've got wood.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  Accents. How could we increase this? Or what would you suggest as a leading environmental neuroscientist on how we could optimize for peak attention for guests here, but also people viewing where they see it and they just feel, I feel more relaxed.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  So I think we probably want to get more natural patterns like on the walls.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  And even like this fire, maybe you could even have that, you know, this has natural patterns here too. And people talk about like.

• 26:32Lewis Howes?

  The flame, right?

• 26:33Speaker 01

  The flame, right? That, and the crackling even the sound.

• 26:36Lewis Howes?

  I love that sound.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  So again, anything where you're mimicking the patterns of nature, we think it can be, it can be beneficial.

• 26:46Lewis Howes?

  So would you add more plants? Would you do like a few more here and there?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  I would do more plants, but I think even if you could have like a, even if it's fake, like a hanging green wall.

• 26:54Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, like down, down some of the sides.

• 26:58Lewis Howes?

  That could help.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  That could help.

• 27:00Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. What about a water feature? I guess you don't want water because it's too loud in here, but.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Maybe, but if it was soft enough, maybe.

• 27:05Lewis Howes?

  Just like a tranquil, a little like stream of water. Okay?

• 27:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 27:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay. Not too much, but a little bit more. How does being in nature compare with other kind of common focus boosters like caffeine, meditation, exercise? How does it compare if you're just sitting in nature for an hour versus drinking coffee, working out, meditation?

• 27:27Speaker 01

  It's a really, really great question. I don't have an easy answer. In fact, one of my students was asking me about this, that we should do a comparison. We do know a little bit about how it compares to meditation. And the effects are pretty similar to meditation. The good news is that meditation requires training, whereas being in nature doesn't, sit there and later, sit there and look in nature. So it seemed at least like for these are like short-term kind of exposures, like 10 to 20 minutes in nature, 10 to 20 minutes of meditation, similar effects. There was an interesting study that was done with kids with ADHD. And they found that a 20-minute walk in nature for these kids who had ADHD

• 28:11Speaker 01

  was about as good as a dose of Ritalin.

• 28:13Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:15Lewis Howes?

  A dose of Ritalin was the same as just being in nature for 20 minutes?

• 28:18Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 28:19Lewis Howes?

  For kids with ADHD?

• 28:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 28:21Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Charlie, when someone starts putting a child on Ritalin or an attention-style drug to give them more focus, what happens to their brain's ability to just self-regulate when they're not on it? Like versus learning tools and strategies like being in nature or meditation or other things that aren't medication?

• 28:45Speaker 01

  Right. Well, you know, I'm not a pharmacological expert. You know, Ritalin kind of acts like caffeine a little bit. It's kind of counterintuitive. It actually gives them more energy to focus. You know, I don't think we're at a point yet where we could say, oh, you know, kids with ADHD, we can just prescribe them nature interactions and they don't have to go on Ritalin. I don't think we're there yet. But I do think we're at the point where we could say, look, walking in nature, being in nature could be a supplement to Ritalin. And it's not just ADHD. You know, we find that walking in nature is really beneficial for people suffering from depression. In fact, the walk in nature for people suffering from depression that we found was actually

• 29:29Speaker 01

  stronger than our results with people with non-clinical depression.

• 29:35Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  And now you have.

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  So what are you saying, that people with depression had better results being in nature than people without depression going in nature?

• 29:44Speaker 01

  That's right. So people without depression going in nature, we found that when people went for a 50, five zero minute walk in nature, they improved their ability to focus by about 20% versus a walk in an urban environment.

• 29:59Lewis Howes?

  And they felt, they've just felt happier in general, they felt less depressed, or what's the?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Well, here's what I think is interesting. So a lot of people have the intuition that, well, people just like nature more, and so it just feels good. And that's why people are getting these benefits. And it's true. We had people, we did some of these studies in June, when it was like 80 degrees Fahrenheit, these were done in Ann Arbor, your favorite place. It was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. People loved the walk. They showed really healthy attention benefits. We also had people walk in January, when it was 25 degrees Fahrenheit. People did not, participants did not like the walk in nature, but they showed the same attention benefits as the people that walked in June.

• 30:43Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  So you don't have to like the nature to get these cognitive benefits, these attention and memory benefits.

• 30:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, freezing or sweating the whole time.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  So here's, so there's gonna be.

• 30:54Lewis Howes?

  It's not enjoyable.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  So right, it's not enjoyable. So but there has to be some minimum threshold. Like, people sometimes ask me, Mark, well, what if it's a wildfire or you're being chased by a bear? I would say, no, that's not gonna be.

• 31:03Lewis Howes?

  That's not nature.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  That's not be restorative. You're gonna have to use a lot of directed attention. So the kind of nature experience we're talking about is like, you feel safe, you know, your minimum levels of comfort have been met. You don't have to love it. You know, it could be a rainy day, it could be cloudy, it could be snowing. You can still get the attention.

• 31:23Lewis Howes?

  The benefits. Interesting. Okay. And what happens in the brain when we trade an hour in front of our screen for an hour in nature?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Well, I think, you know, we're, you know, so here's the interesting part about the, think about the direct brain implications. Have you ever been in an MRI scanner before?

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  I have. Yeah, yeah, full body. Yeah, yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Was it comfortable?

• 31:46Lewis Howes?

  No. No, I was not comfortable. You're like for an hour in this tube. It's like you can't move. It's not enjoyable.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Right. So do you think I could give you a good nature experience in an MRI machine?

• 31:57Lewis Howes?

  No, that'd be tough.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  So that's, that's part of the problem. So one of the reasons why it's hard to get direct brain evidence now is because I can't give people a good nature experience in the MRI scanner.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  You're not in nature. You're surrounded by electronic, you know, a tube.

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Right, that's right. A superconducting magnet.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:18Speaker 01

  But now what's really interesting is that there's now mobile brain imaging technology, like these caps that you can have people wear and have them go in nature. So that's what we're starting to do now, is actually have people walk in nature while wearing what this is called functional near infrared spectroscopy, or FNIRs. They're wearing this FNIRs cap, walking in nature versus walking in more urban environments to see changes in the brain. And what we think is going to happen is that we think we're going to see the brain exerting less effort in nature versus the urban environment.

• 32:53Lewis Howes?

  That makes sense. We don't have the evidence yet.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  We don't have the evidence yet, but that's what we're doing.

• 32:57Lewis Howes?

  It makes sense. What effect does nature have on our nervous system?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Well, some people have found that it can change heart rate and help people recover from stress. So again, Roger Ulrich has shown that if you kind of stress people out, like show them kind of disgusting pictures of people getting their hands chopped, which really stresses people out. If you then immediately show them pictures of nature, their stress response recovers faster than if you show them pictures of an urban environment.

• 33:29Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Right afterwards. So, so interacting with nature might help people to recover from, from stress.

• 33:36Lewis Howes?

  So an urban environment, like just staring at straight lines all day long and concrete buildings and straight lines that don't, that don't mimic nature lines, I guess.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:49Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't support our health in any way, I'm hearing.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Right, and I don't want to.

• 33:54Lewis Howes?

  Maybe it doesn't hurt us, but it doesn't support our.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Well, I don't wanna, I don't wanna demonize cities because there's other research that we do showing that cities are really great in other aspects. But it does seem like people do not like looking at straight lines and right angles. People really prefer looking at architecture that has more curvature,

• 34:20Speaker 01

  more fractalness. So fractalness is like if you see a snowflake, it's got a shape. If you zoom in, same shape, zoom in, same shape. So it doesn't matter what spatial scale you look at the snowflake. It's got the same shape. Nature is filled with fractals and people like that. And some architects take advantage of that. Like, I don't know, architect Gaudi in Barcelona, he built these buildings.

• 34:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I was just in Spain two weeks ago and I saw a Gaudi building.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Interesting, yeah. And, and people really like that architecture. And it may be that that architecture might give people some psychological benefits.

• 34:54Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  So I think this also has implications for how we design the built environment, too.

• 35:03Lewis Howes?

  I saw a stat that the CDC has reported a 60% increase of depression in US adolescents and adults in the past decade.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  And I know, who is the author you're talking about? The Anxious Generation?

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Jonathan Haidt.

• 35:17Lewis Howes?

  He's got a lot of stats in there as well about, you know, teens and pre-teens and the depression rates and all these things like that. But how can we combat, combat these, you know, rates with nature? And I'm also hearing about this terminology called forest bathing. Like, what is that? And how can we use that?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  To support decreasing these rates?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Right. So I think. You know Jonathan Haidt would say that a lot of the rise in depression anxiety is due to us being addicted to our smartphones and not connecting with each other anymore. We're doing a lot of social comparison. That's not healthy. And what we would say too is that it's also robbing your attention.

• 36:04Lewis Howes?

  It is.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  That it feels easy to just kind of scroll through, but it's actually draining your attention. It's draining your battery. So, I mean, the first thing that I would say is that, you know, we need to get kids and adults interacting with nature more and getting these breaks and, and taking some pauses off of the device and going into, going into nature. You know, going into nature is kind of interesting, too. We did a study where we had people walk in an indoor conservatory versus an indoor mall. And when people were walking in the indoor nature conservatory, it's really beautiful. It's Garfield Conservatory

• 36:45Speaker 01

  in Chicago. They, they thought more about other people and they thought less about themselves. So that's also very interesting that nature maybe has this effect of getting us to be less egocentric.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  And thinking more about others.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  So explain this again. What is this? People went into a conservatory?

• 37:03Speaker 01

  So we had, we had people walk in the conservatory. It's Garfield Conservatory. So it's like an indoor nature conservatory. There's big plants and trees.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Indoors. Or we had them walk in Water Tower Mall in Chicago. A beautiful indoor mall, not very natural.

• 37:18Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And we gave people cell phones that pinged them and asked them questions like, what are you thinking about right now? And it turns out that when people were walking in the nature conservatory, they thought more about other people when they were in nature.

• 37:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  But they thought more about themselves when they were in the mall.

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  Why is that, you think? Why are you thinking about yourself in a mall when there's also people around? I'm assuming, right? There's people walking around and you could see other people walking around.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let's start with nature. I think part of it is that when you're in beautiful nature.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  I think it can sometimes make people feel a little bit small, but small in a good way. That you kind of maybe feel like you're part of something bigger. You're in this awe inspiring nature, you know? Maybe my problems don't seem as as big anymore. And I think it encourages people to feel more connected to the environment. And also to other people, people are part of the environment. And we also think that actually kind of being, you know, less egocentric and thinking more about others probably takes energy. And so if you're if you're boosting your directed attention.

• 38:34Lewis Howes?

  You think about others.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  You think about others.

• 38:36Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  In the mall, I mean, I don't want to.

• 38:39Lewis Howes?

  Thinking about buying for you.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  What can I get for me? I want to look good.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Which is.

• 38:44Lewis Howes?

  You're comparing yourself to other people. What do they have and I want that and.

• 38:48Speaker 01

  And people felt more impulsive in the mall. So again, the environment was designed for that reason. They want people to buy things. So, you know, I think part of our research and what we talked about in the book too, is that, you know, in part, this is more than just nature. This is about the environment in general, the physical environment in general. And the physical environment in general has a significant impact on our behavior. I think sometimes as humans, we forget that because we have so much control over the environment. But it doesn't mean that we're immune to the environment.

• 39:18Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. There's this, what is it called? Let me see, I think I have something here that I want to ask you about. Oh, yeah. Have you seen the Gen Z trend of I need to touch grass?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 39:32Lewis Howes?

  So there's this trend, I guess, on TikTok or social media of Gen Z people saying, I need to go touch grass. And I think it's about where there's just, they're in an addiction loop. They're on their phones nonstop. They've been locked on their screens or they haven't gone outside. And they feel like they need to go and actually feel the grass.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 39:52Lewis Howes?

  And feel connected to something that's not just a digital device. Of just obsession or self indulgence or whatever scarcity mindset of what you're lacking.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:04Lewis Howes?

  What happens when we go and touch the ground and touch the grass, feel the dirt? Is there something that shifts instantly in our bodies when we touch grass?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it kind of goes back to this this connection element that I think you you feel more connected to to the physical world. There's this really interesting book called The Finnish Way. And it's kind of cliche that, you know, the Nordic countries or the Scandinavian countries are just better at everything and they're happier. But one of the main things that the Finns do is they make sure they are out in nature all the time, even swimming in nature in really, really cold temperatures. Yes. And so one thing that we haven't talked about much.

• 40:53Lewis Howes?

  I've been to Poland and I've I've spent a week in Poland with Wim Hof, just being in frozen rivers. I mean, not completely frozen, but like very cold rivers. We climbed a mountain that was snow and ice, like without clothes on essentially, like just shorts and shoes. And it was just like extreme cold. But you felt happier, even though it was uncomfortable.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:18Lewis Howes?

  It was for a purpose. It was controlled. It wasn't like we're gonna sit here for hours, you know, like die. It was extreme heat and extreme cold. We were doing five to 10 minutes on like ice baths and all this stuff. And there was something about feeling the cold air.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:34Lewis Howes?

  Being in cold water.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  Jumping off of a cliff into a frozen river.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 41:39Lewis Howes?

  It was something about being in barefoot and like skin to skin with the elements.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  That was very healing. It was uncomfortable, but it was healing, freeing and vigorously.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:53Lewis Howes?

  Life giving, all these things.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yes. And I think that's one thing we haven't, you know, we've hey, because it's hard, these studies are harder to do. We've mostly focused on the visual of nature, the sounds of nature, but the tactile

• 42:04Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  of nature is also really, really important. And so I think you're touching the grass. There's something about the feel of nature that's important, the bark of nature, you know? There have been these studies done in rodents where they give rodents like plastic toys versus like toys made of like, that are like real wood. Right. And the rodents' brains, like they have more synapses. When they have the real.

• 42:30Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so again, like, we evolved in nature. This environment that we built is very, very artificial, right? We weren't meant to like, sit on a phone and touch this, you know, artificial thing. We're meant to like, touch the real.

• 42:47Lewis Howes?

  Dirt, rocks, grass, bark.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  You know, to do things with our hands. And so, you know, that could be another element to it, too.

• 42:55Lewis Howes?

  You've got, you've got four kids. How do you fight against the temptations of the modern world? And them being stuck in a school building all day and getting 10 minutes of recess or whatever it is, and them being on computers now and how they're learning versus with books? And just how do you deal with all this? Knowing that you're a busy professor with a lot of responsibilities and your kids are in school, I'm assuming? But you know the side effects of all the things that they're experiencing.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  How do you combat against modern society? Peer pressure? School systems that are slow to evolve and change to have more things for kids to feel in nature, like, how do you deal with this?

• 43:42Speaker 01

  It's challenging. But I think, you know, it's moderation. Like, we let our kids watch TV.

• 43:50Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh, yeah, yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  Our oldest daughter, she has a cellphone. We don't let them have any social media. They don't have that.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  And, you know, we chose to live and we were lucky, we were fortunate, we chose to live in a neighborhood that's close to two nature trails. So the kids can go out there. Right now, as we're having this conversation, my kids are at my wife's family's cottage that's like two hours north of Toronto where they're fishing.

• 44:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's cool.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  So we try, you know, when we have the free time, we try to make it nature time.

• 44:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  But it's hard. And I think this is one thing, Lewis, that maybe we can all do together is that let's make it easier. Right? I mean, you know, this is important. And one thing that drives me crazy about schools is that they are kind of cutting recess. And imagine this, so right now, they want to have an eight hour school day. They don't want to give the kids too many breaks because they want to give them as much instruction as possible. But if four hours through the school day, if you're in direct attention fatigue state, you might not be getting anything out of the last four hours.

• 44:59Lewis Howes?

  Nothing.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  So imagine this, imagine it's still the eight hour school day. It's six hours of classroom instruction and two hours of being out in nature.

• 45:10Lewis Howes?

  Play outside, it'd be amazing.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  It's possible, I mean, it's possible that the kids might actually learn more.

• 45:17Lewis Howes?

  Do better.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Do better. So, you know, and I think if I say that to people, they kind of just, you know, laugh at me like, what is this, you know, sounds too hippie or something like that. But it is possible because just powering through doesn't seem like it, it works. Just like, you know, Matt Walker talked about sleep, right? It used to be thought, oh, you'll sleep when you're dead. You don't need sleep. No, it turns out if you don't sleep, you're gonna die.

• 45:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, earlier.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Earlier, right? And, and I think we're kind of saying the same thing about nature that if we're not interacting with nature and doing things in nature, we're just not going to be our best selves.

• 45:54Lewis Howes?

  I've got, I've got twins on the way and it's 2025. And so I'm going to have two kids coming into the world in 2025. If you could say hypothetically, in a perfect world, this is how you should set up your structure for your kids to thrive the best way possible. Whereas now, when I see kids get out of the hospital or they're getting, I don't know, a million injections and they're put in plastic blankets right away, they've got shoes on their feet, they're covered in synthetic clothing right away. They probably don't even touch the ground, nature anymore. And they're put in controlled environments, perfect temperature, and then set in schools and industrial looking buildings for 20 something years of their life.

• 46:37Lewis Howes?

  If you could give a prescription for how parents could raise kids to try to set better conditions, now it may not be, they may not have the luxuries or the ability to move or create the environment. But if you could have the perfect environment as an environmental neuroscientist that could try to optimize the brain and the body connection with kids today, what environment would you create for them? How frequently would they be in nature? What would you eliminate from their lives and what would you add?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I think, again, it's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna have a lot of real nature in their lives all the time. And one thing that we find too in our studies, you know, adults typically like nature.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  But we've also done studies with kids and we say, you know, we show them pictures, like what picture do you like? Do you like this nature picture more, this urban picture more? The kids liked urban better.

• 47:30Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:31Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 47:33Speaker 01

  We don't know exactly.

• 47:34Lewis Howes?

  You show like a photo of like a beautiful lake and mountains and you show a photo of New York City, like buildings.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:42Lewis Howes?

  The kids will gravitate towards the city.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 47:44Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  And it's only when they get older do they start to like nature more. So at four and five, they prefer urban. As they get older, they start to like nature more.

• 47:57Lewis Howes?

  Is it because it's so like foreign to them, your involuntary attention is like, oh, it's this shiny thing, it's different.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  And that could be part of it, you know, maybe the nature is too boring for them to some extent. And even, we have some collaborators in the UK, you know, you can't ask a six month old, what do you like better? But you can see what they look at. And the six month olds look at urban.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  It's got more attention though, grabbing. It's like if you looked at, uh, whatever, Dora the Explorer or something like a cartoon.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna grab your attention.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:29Lewis Howes?

  Versus looking outside, you could be like, what is this shiny bright light?

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:33Lewis Howes?

  You know, it's, it's not gonna be calming.

• 48:35Speaker 01

  Right, right. But so what I think is critical here though is that, and the four and five year olds in our studies, their preferences didn't match their parents either. It's only when they got older did their preferences look like their parents. So in some sense, this love of nature is learned. And so I think it's really, really important that we demonstrate that to our kids. We have to get out in nature, we have to show them that nature is important. We can't just tell them, their inclination actually is to urban.

• 49:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  So we have to, we have to show them that it's nature. And then, you know, there's so many things that we can do again.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Humans have so much control over the physical environment, but we've kind of built the physical environment to move goods efficiently and to house people efficiently.

• 49:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  We didn't build the environment to like, give you the best attention, or to make you more cooperative, or to give you the most contentment. So, I think that's what we want to start to do. We want this like, this nature revolution that's gonna incorporate nature into all these aspects. And you know, unfortunately too, I feel like cities often, especially in North America, are so car-centric. So there's this beautiful park in Chicago, Jackson Park, designed by Frederick La Almsted, same landscape architect that designed Central Park. But it doesn't have the same feel of Central Park. And I remember taking my kids to this park, and we're walking in the park, and this car zoomed by, and literally, a hubcap flew off of the car, right in front of us and started spinning around us.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  And it's like, okay, the nature is here, but, but the, the car traffic is wrecking it. So, again, what I'm suggesting is gonna be very expensive, but it's almost like you have to, to separate the car traffic from these nature spaces, and to keep them more pure, let people walk around in these spaces. It's gonna be expensive, but I really think, I mean, again, we, we can do it. We have the control of the environment.

• 50:30Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. I grew up in Ohio, you grew up in the state of Michigan, unfortunately, but it's okay. And when I'm driving around Ohio, especially northern, northern Ohio, I see a lot of Amish communities up there, right? I don't know if there's a lot of Amish in Michigan as well. Maybe the southern part, maybe northern Ohio, southern Michigan. And for whatever reason, I don't know all the studies, and I don't know like, the actual facts about it, but it seemed like they're out in nature a lot, working. They're working with family, the kids are working with the parents. They're learning, working, they're in outdoors most of the time. The, from the outside observation, it doesn't look like there's a lot of obesity.

• 51:12Lewis Howes?

  Again, they're not using cell phones, or if they are, it's very minimal to just make business calls, I guess, or to deal with logistics. And is there any information around communities like Amish communities that seem to be working in nature more? Or other communities like that? On the the health benefits that they have versus the rest of modern society or anything like that?

• 51:37Speaker 01

  It's a really good question. I don't I know a little bit about like allergens, like for example, I've heard that. Like the kids in those Amish communities don't usually have many allergies.

• 51:46Lewis Howes?

  Really? Why do you think that is?

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Because they're getting exposed.

• 51:50Lewis Howes?

  They're in nature.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  They're in nature and and and there were some studies done in Finland of these forest schools where the kids are out in nature in school. They don't like sit in the classroom. They're like eating dirt, like playing in dirt. And the kids have better immune systems because they're they're ingesting the microbiota of nature, which is beneficial. So.

• 52:11Lewis Howes?

  They're probably not getting a lot of like and shots also as as kids like the Amish or these other.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Maybe not, you know.

• 52:18Lewis Howes?

  Who knows? But they're just more they're more they're more exposing themselves to these things.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  To these things.

• 52:24Lewis Howes?

  Which is allowing their immune system.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  To be stronger.

• 52:26Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, you know, again, those communities are so different in so many ways, but you know. I think that I think one thing that you mentioned too is that the sterile environment that we're in has downsides, right? The natural environment is kind of dirty, but it's good dirt.

• 52:45Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  And and so I think we need to have more more exposure to that.

• 52:51Lewis Howes?

  We don't need to be clean all the time.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  We don't need to be clean.

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Especially as kids, like allow kids feet and hands to be dirty sometimes.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  I don't know if you can see this, but like.

• 52:58Lewis Howes?

  You're dirt in your fingernails.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Well, it's right. It's because my son and I, we were picking black walnuts. And I was opening a black wallet. The black walnut juice is very staining. I cannot get it off.

• 53:09Lewis Howes?

  Get it off.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Um, but there's something about getting our hands a little bit dirty that is important.

• 53:17Lewis Howes?

  Is it better to have plants and a garden in your environment? Or is it better to be actually planting things in your environment? Is there differences of both?

• 53:30Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think you, you know, people have different interests. I think there's, there's definitely benefits to just having the nature around. There was my mentor, Steve Kaplan, with his wife, Rachel Kaplan, did do a study with gardeners. And they did find that a lot of these gardeners did show a lot of benefits to gardening. What was interesting, though, the gardeners that didn't use pesticides showed the most benefit.

• 53:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 53:58Speaker 01

  And they, they thought the reason for that was that if you're so stressed out, that the plant's gonna die or something like that, or I need to protect this plant, that's gonna use a lot of directed attention. And the people that just were more naturalistic with it, I think they were just letting nature take its course. They were just kind of going through the feeling of the gardening without that strong, strong attachment. And that might've been more, more beneficial.

• 54:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  So again, yeah, I think if you can get your hands dirty a little bit, it's gonna be beneficial. Yeah.

• 54:37Lewis Howes?

  What about grounding? Have you heard about grounding? You know, there's this, you know, kind of spiritual movement of people talking about grounding, which is essentially just having your bare feet on the ground. Not like on a synthetic ground, but on the grass, on dirt, on rocks, on sand. And the, the benefits of that. Is there any science that you're aware of around either the, the earth's, you know, energetic forces on how it's connecting to the skin? And how it actually gives you more energy? Have you had any research or study around that?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  I haven't seen anything like that. But again, I think it's kind of back to touching grass that, you know, again, the natural tactile stimulation might be beneficial, getting those, getting those feelings. And again, a lot of people are just so disconnected. They don't do, people don't do anything with their hands anymore. I think actually engaging more with those, with that tactile stimulation, you know, could be beneficial.

• 55:45Lewis Howes?

  Why is it when I'm in the ocean, in a lake, in a pool, or in the shower, I feel more relaxed? And I feel like more ideas come to me when I'm immersed in water? Is there anything around how water impacts our brains and our health?

• 56:01Speaker 01

  I think it's also related to involuntary attention. And people have found that blue spaces can have some of these benefits. So water has this, some of these fractal sounds. It even has some of the, you know, waves kind of crashing has fractal stimulation. So I think it's kind of, again, it's these nature patterns that you're getting in water that might be leading to some of these benefits. Capturing your involuntary attention in a softly fascinating way.

• 56:29Lewis Howes?

  Do you think it has any, besides the attention factor? Do you think it has any health benefits to being in water? Do you know, have you seen those studies?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  I've seen a little bit, even they've been saying about like, open water swimming can have some health benefits.

• 56:43Lewis Howes?

  Swimming in the ocean or like swimming?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Just in large bodies of water, not in like an indoor pool.

• 56:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly what the mechanism is.

• 56:51Lewis Howes?

  Not a man-made water pool.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Pool, but being in open water can be beneficial.

• 56:56Lewis Howes?

  It's just more scary for me if like a shark or like some weird fish is gonna come up. That's the only thing you're like, ah! Maybe you're more focused on your attention, like, what is that feeling? Oh, bad.

• 57:08Lewis Howes?

  I used to go to, the only time I went to Michigan was in the summer. I'd go for weekends to Torch Lake.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:14Lewis Howes?

  Have you ever heard of Torch Lake?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  Yes, I've been there.

• 57:16Lewis Howes?

  This is probably one of the most beautiful places that I've ever been to in terms of a lake. And it's all white sand and like this perfect blue lake.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:25Lewis Howes?

  It's unfortunate it's not in Ohio and it's in Michigan, so I have to cross the border. But it's beautiful.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  It's beautiful.

• 57:31Lewis Howes?

  And it just feels so calming.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  Yes. And it's a very deep lake.

• 57:36Lewis Howes?

  Very deep.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  The only negative thing I find with Torch Lake is that they have so many boats sometimes.

• 57:40Lewis Howes?

  A lot of boats. The summer has passed.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  So that's my only complaint.

• 57:44Lewis Howes?

  That's true. You can't really enjoy it anymore because there's so many people there now.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Right, but otherwise, you're right, it's a fantastic thing. Again, because it's just, it's so softly fascinating.

• 57:55Lewis Howes?

  It is incredible.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:56Lewis Howes?

  What else is there in the research that you've seen recently about spirituality and nature?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  So it's really interesting that you asked that. So there was this private foundation called the TKF Foundation. Now they're called Nature Sacred. And they built like 150 parks in the DC, Baltimore, Annapolis, Maryland area. And this foundation built these characteristic benches in these parks, these wooden benches. And underneath the bench was a journal or diary. And people could write their thoughts in the journal entry. So what this foundation did was they digitized all of these journal entries. So they had like 12,000 journal entries that they had digitized.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  And so we were interested in what are people thinking about or writing about in these parks? So one of my former students, Kate Shirts, she analyzed all these journal entries. And it turns out people were pretty reflective in these parks, you know, writing things about like nature and time and place, but also things related to spirituality. What was interesting too is that we had pictures for a lot of these parks. So we could like quantify how many curved edges there were in these parks. And it turned out that the amount of curved edges in the parks correlated with people writing more about spirituality.

• 59:29Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  So it gets crazier. So why is that? You know, what's going on there?

• 59:34Lewis Howes?

  The more curved edges in the parks. So what does a curved edge mean? So it... Man-made curves or curves of nature?

• 59:40Speaker 01

  It could be both. So like a tree will have a lot of curved edges. Some of these parks also had like a labyrinth, like this kind of like maze that also had curved edges.

• 59:50Lewis Howes?

  Like a walking maze?

• 59:50Speaker 01

  Yes. So don't really know yet. Was it something about man-made about the park or was all the natural things? So what Kate did is, and that's very correlational. We don't know what's going on there. So Kate designed a study where she would show people a picture of nature or a built environment. And we could manipulate how many curved edges there were in the environment by like how many trees there were, or like how intricate was the architecture. And it turns out if the image had more curved edges, people thought more about spirituality.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  It gets even crazier. So, one way that we manipulated curved edges was actually sometimes putting in water. Because flat water doesn't have a lot of curved edges. So, maybe there was just something about seeing water that you don't think about spirituality. I don't really believe that. But to get around that, what Kate did was she scrambled the image. So, she would like take all the curved edges and then scramble it. So, it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. You can't really tell what it is. But it preserved all the curved edges. And it turns out, this image that looks like abstract art, if it had more curved edges, people thought more about spirituality.

• 1:01:07Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  And that's kind of like independent of nature. Right, it's just seeing curved edges.

• 1:01:14Lewis Howes?

  Do you have an example of that in the book, or is that more recent?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  We do have an example picture in the book.

• 1:01:19Lewis Howes?

  Do you know where it is, or skim through?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  It might take me a second here. Yeah, I'm trying to find the one where it shows the image intact. And then where we scrambled it. I've got it on my computer.

• 1:01:33Lewis Howes?

  Is this the page 140?

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Bingo, you got it.

• 1:01:38Lewis Howes?

  I saw this earlier in here, I thought.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:01:40Lewis Howes?

  So, it's like an image of a nature and then an image of just kind of like a a building, I guess, and some benches.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:50Lewis Howes?

  And then you scramble the images.

• 1:01:51Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:01:52Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:01:53Lewis Howes?

  And so, people looking at the nature one with more curved images still, even though it's scrambled, you can't really tell what it is.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:59Lewis Howes?

  It's still more pleasing.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Well, they think more about spirituality.

• 1:02:02Lewis Howes?

  You think more about spirituality. Just looking at a scrambled image of curves rather than straight lines from this other building. Let's try to see that, that's interesting. Yeah, page 140.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:14Lewis Howes?

  Nature and the mind. Yeah. And then you have the two.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like the one on the right here has more curved edges. So, people think more about spirituality, looking at that one versus that one.

• 1:02:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And the page before, 138. You have something that has fewer curved edges. These are all uh fewer curved edges and more curved edges in nature.

• 1:02:39Lewis Howes?

  Versus less natural, fewer curved edges and more curved edges.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  In urban cities.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  So if you're in an urban city, but the architecture is more curved and more flowing.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Lewis Howes?

  It's gonna be more aesthetically pleasing to think spiritually rather than.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  People like it more, but they'll also think more about spirituality. So if you're in this environment.

• 1:03:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  People think more about spirituality than this environment.

• 1:03:03Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  And people think more about spirituality in this environment versus that.

• 1:03:06Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, isn't it?

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:08Lewis Howes?

  With more curved edges.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  More curved edges.

• 1:03:10Lewis Howes?

  And a curved edge doesn't mean you have to have a big circular.

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:13Lewis Howes?

  Thing. It could be tons of leaves that have curved edges. Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right.

• 1:03:17Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. That's really cool. Because in this one example here with fewer curved edges, it's in the ocean. So you see lots of water. There might be benefits to seeing water or hearing the waves.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:31Lewis Howes?

  But you're not thinking as much if it's not as curved.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  You're not, it might not cause you to think as much about spirituality. This is like one thing too where it's sort of like.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  I don't know, Louis, if there's gonna be like

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  one perfect environment. It's like, what do you want people to get out of it? Like, do you want them to think about spirituality? Or do you want to improve their intention more like?

• 1:03:57Lewis Howes?

  Right. Or maybe being in water is more healing for the body.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:04:00Lewis Howes?

  It's like, what are the purposes of it?

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  That's right. And I don't, I mean, not to get you might get more confusing. Did you, do you know what the broken windows theory is?

• 1:04:08Lewis Howes?

  No.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  The broken windows theory is this sociology theory that if you see broken windows or graffiti or litter, it suggests that people aren't paying attention and you can like steal or commit crimes. Okay.

• 1:04:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  So, that's kind of interesting.

• 1:04:28Lewis Howes?

  You can commit crimes in that space?

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  In that space, because nobody's watching.

• 1:04:32Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  It's like a social cue.

• 1:04:33Lewis Howes?

  It's, it's, it's abandoned.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  It's abandoned, right.

• 1:04:37Lewis Howes?

  So if there's something in there going there and no one's gonna catch it?

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  No one's gonna catch it.

• 1:04:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  No one's watching. So, and they've done these studies like in Europe, it's kind of interesting. Like they'll have a mailbox. The mailbox will have a package sticking out with like a $5 euro. And they're looking to see who steals.

• 1:04:55Lewis Howes?

  The interest.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  The bill. And if the mailbox has no graffiti, maybe 10% of people steal the bill. But if the mailbox has graffiti on it, 30% of people.

• 1:05:05Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Steal it.

• 1:05:07Lewis Howes?

  That's so interesting. Because they just psychologically think, no one's gonna catch me.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:05:10Lewis Howes?

  No one's paying attention.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:05:13Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  No one's watching. So, but we wondered like, is it just the graffiti that's doing it? Or is it like, the graffiti is kind of messy? And somehow like processing this messiness might lead to more cheating. So we did a study where we gave people, um, a kind of a stupid math test. They're like shown this matrix of numbers with two decimal points. And they have to find the two that add up to 10. It's annoying. So they have to do this in a short amount of time. They get two minutes. And then, um, we show them their answer. And what the correct answer was, and we tell them beforehand.

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  The more you get correct, we're gonna pay you more. So it gives people the opportunity to cheat.

• 1:06:01Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  But in between, in between taking the math test and grading themselves, we show them images that are more disorderly or less disorderly. And it turns, and it's just like the Jackson Pollock thing, just nonsense. And it turns out if we show them the images that are more disorderly, they're more likely to cheat.

• 1:06:20Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  And to cheat by a bigger amount. So that's kind of weird, like, okay, these curved edges are causing people to think about spirituality, but they might also cause people to cheat more.

• 1:06:30Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. I wonder if it's like. I used to cheat all the time in school, like constantly. One, because I was in the bottom of my, it's not like, it's funny, but it's also like not a good thing, right? It's like, but I used to cheat all the time. It was almost like survival. Cause I was in the bottom of my class. I had, you know, tutors every year, all through high school, college, elementary school, everything. And I just, I wasn't able to pay attention. It was very hard for me to pay a focused attention. After the first hour of class, I didn't understand what the teacher was saying. I couldn't read and write. And so I just felt like exhausted.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:06Lewis Howes?

  And all I'm thinking about is when is school over so I can go play?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:10Lewis Howes?

  And you're stuck in a little desk and you have to sit there like this. And there's so much mental pressure, the least it was for me.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Lewis Howes?

  So it was almost like out of survival. I just found ways to cheat on tests, on homework. And it's not like something I'm proud of, like I want to look back at this, but it's really a survival strategy.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:30Lewis Howes?

  And I wonder if there is a, any research to how much someone cheats or steals. If they're in nature more versus if they're just stuck in a industrial box. At an industrial desk, you know, eight hours a day, being forced to pay attention to something that's really hard you don't understand and have pressure of performing well. Versus just being in nature.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:58Lewis Howes?

  I wonder if I would have cheated less, you know, stole less, all these things. Just being outside doing the work versus being inside doing the work.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's an interesting question. So I don't know exactly for cheating. My hypothesis would be that if you're in more nature, it would lower cheating. That would be my hypothesis.

• 1:08:20Lewis Howes?

  You'd relax more, your call.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I think, you know, in some sense, Lewis, I think cheating was the easy thing to do. And the hard thing to do would have been to not cheat.

• 1:08:31Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  And so again, I think that depends on attention. And if you don't have enough directed attention, I think it's easier to go to your impulse.

• 1:08:39Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  And not to control your impulse. The work that I know about nature and sort of,

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  You know, what do I call like bad behaviors? There have been studies with nature and aggression. And so these are really, really interesting studies in Chicago public housing projects. Like the Robert Taylor homes that aren't around anymore. And these were not nice places to live. No. Some of the apartments had modest views of nature and some of them had like no views of nature. And it turns out the families that had the modest views of nature, the kids had better attention, they had better self-control. In the adults, there was lower aggression, better attention. Less violence. And lower reported crime. And what's interesting too, this is just like the Roger Ulrich study. It's not like the wealthier, more educated families got the views of nature.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  These families are just randomly assigned to these different apartments and it had this significant impact on behavior. So I think that's really, really interesting and we, we kind of followed up on that with a cell phone trace data set. So this is kind of a creepy data set, but interesting as a researcher. We knew where 100,000 people lived in Chicago, where 300,000 people lived in New York, and we knew where they went for an entire month. Wow. And so from those data, we could quantify, how often did you leave your neighborhood and go and visit a park? And we found that if in neighborhoods where people left their neighborhood more and went

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  to visit a park, there was less reported crimes in those neighborhoods, controlling for age, education, income and ethnicity. Crazy. So again, this is kind, I think what's going on there is that when people go out and get a nature break, they're restoring their directed attention and they have more ability to control, to control impulses. Wow. And what's interesting too, we also quantified how often people went to go to visit a museum. That did not relate to crime. So it seemed like it wasn't just going to anywhere that had cultural value or anywhere that was nice. It seemed to be specific to. Nature. To go into nature.

• 1:10:53Lewis Howes?

  Nature and the Mind. I've got a couple of final questions for you here, but I want people to get the book Nature and the Mind, The Science of How Nature Improves Cognitive, Physical, and Social Well-Being. It's probably something we need the most, but we've been lacking a lot in our lives, just in the modern society. There's so many things we can do to improve the quality of our life, but I think nature is definitely, it's free. It's something we can choose to do at any moment. It might just take a little time getting to nature if you're in an urban city. But in most places, you can go somewhere 10 minutes and be in a place where there's some trees, some grass, some water, even if it's a controlled environment where you can just walk around in nature for a little bit. Even if there is cars and everything around you, you can still be in that space.

• 1:11:37Lewis Howes?

  It's a decision to do that. Unless you live, you know, in the middle of America, where there's more open space and you're kind of living in nature already. But a lot of people are stuck in cities to try to earn money.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  I guess one thing I might mention a little bit there is that, you know, not all nature is created equally. And, you know, some parks are nicer, more well-maintained, and others aren't. And like, we did some studies in Chicago where we had students from the south and west side of Chicago, go around and look at the parks in their neighborhood. And they had like data-enabled cell phones. They could take pictures of the parks. And we wanted to ask them, like, do you feel safe in the park? Do you feel like the park is well-maintained? And it turns out, a lot of these kids said, you know, "There's a park there. They didn't feel safe there." And so...

• 1:12:23Lewis Howes?

  So if you don't feel safe, it's not, you're not getting the benefits.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  You're not gonna get the benefits. And so I think this is, you can't, it can't just be, you put the park there. It's gotta be well-maintained and people have to feel safe there, so...

• 1:12:36Lewis Howes?

  There's crime happening there. There's no benefit.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  There's no benefit. So, and that's what I think is really kind of depressing is that in a lot of parts of the US and big cities, there are some nice parks, but people don't feel safe in them. So they're not gonna achieve the benefits.

• 1:12:55Lewis Howes?

  That's so interesting. You know, now you're saying this, like, something just came out to my mind. I got married earlier this year and the morning of my wedding, I remember I just like, I felt like I needed to be in nature. So I went by myself to just go kind of reflect on my life before getting married. It wasn't like I was questioning whether I was getting married. It was more just like, "Oh, this is happening. This is a big moment." "Let me go take some time to like, just reflect on this before the madness of like, you know, people there and all this stuff." And I went for a hike in nature by myself, probably like an hour and a half. You know, over here, near here, there's a beautiful hike that's kind of in the middle of LA, but it feels like you're not in LA.

• 1:13:36Lewis Howes?

  And you're surrounded by trees and you can't hear the cars and you just see the mountains in the horizon. It was such a spiritual reflective moment. Being alone, taking a hike in nature before kind of this big life-changing moment was happening. And it really allowed me to reflect on everything, just kind of relax and calm myself before what was about to happen. And I never regret going for a hike in nature. You know, when you do it, you never regret like, "Ah, I wish I was like on my phone for the last hour." You're like, you always feel better. It's kind of like going to the gym. It's kind of like getting quality sleep. You never regret getting good sleep. You never regret eating a healthy meal. You regret eating like donuts all day, you know?

• 1:14:23Lewis Howes?

  So it's just something that we need to be baking into our daily routine, the best way possible. Even if it's 10 minutes, it sounds like it can have incredible benefits. Huberman talks about waking up and looking at the horizon as the sun's coming up. Obviously not direct sunlight, but as the light is coming up, like gazing your attention towards the horizon to get that natural kind of healing benefits to support your brain health, your body, the circadian rhythm, and it sounds like nature in general. Being in nature where you feel safe adds so much more benefit. Than not doing it.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  Exactly, and kind of what you're saying, Louis, too, is people actually underestimate how good they'll feel after going in nature. So people have done studies where they say, "How much do you think you're gonna like going on this nature walk before they go on the nature walk?" And then they have another group of participants go on a nature walk and ask them afterwards, "How much did you like going on the walk?" And people underestimate how much they're gonna like it.

• 1:15:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  So, and I think that's just about liking, but I think we're also underestimating how good it's gonna be for our brains and for our attention and for our well-being. So I think we really are, as a society, underestimating the benefits of nature.

• 1:15:40Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Mark, is there anything else that you want to add about this that we haven't covered today?

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  I think we hit a lot of the big ones. I think, you know, one thing, too, that it's not all about liking, that you don't have to love the nature walk to get these cognitive benefits. I think that's important. I think that you can get some of these benefits with the artificial, uh, nature, the pictures, the sound. It's not as strong as the real thing, but it can be really beneficial. The physical health benefits of nature.

• 1:16:13Lewis Howes?

  Spiritual health.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  Spiritual, and then also, you know, that people are less aggressive. And, you know, other studies have found that when people interact with nature, they see people as being more human, which I think is also kind of related to, to, to less aggression. So it's really beneficial at all these, these different levels.

• 1:16:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, a lot of benefits. I've got a question that I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the three truths. So imagine hypothetical scenario. You get to live as long as you want to live, and you get to accomplish all of your goals that you have in life. You have unlimited directed attention, which allows you to focus on your goals and create the life you want. But for whatever reason, on the last day of your life, you have to take all of your life's work with you. So this book is gone. Anything else you've created, it's gone hypothetically. But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three truths that you've learned about life that you'd like to leave behind. What would those three truths be for you?

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  Hmm. So it's gotta be different than stuff that I've done?

• 1:17:15Lewis Howes?

  It can be the same stuff. It can be the same stuff. It can be anything at all. It could be professional, personal information, you know, just some, a lesson you learned or what you think the world needs to hear.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  Wow, this is, uh, that's a good, I never thought about that before.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  I guess, you know.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  The first one, I mean. Why I got interested in psychology. Is because my grandparents on my dad's side were Holocaust survivors. And. I just couldn't believe that people could do that to other people. It just boggled my mind. I kind of like obsessed over it. I couldn't. I couldn't. Wrap my head around it. I just kind of thought, well, you know, Germans must just be bad people. And. I remember sitting in. An intro psychology class at Michigan. And the professor showed us this Milgram experiment. I don't know if you're familiar with that experiment. But in the experiment.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  There's two people.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  One person is the teacher and one person is like the student. And the student has to memorize all these words and the teacher kind of tests the student on the words. And if the student gets a word wrong. The teacher has to give the student electric shock. And so. And this is. They didn't really, to the teacher, they thought they were giving real electric shocks, but it was set up that they weren't really giving electric shocks. Although there's still ethical problems with this study. So anyway, so they separate. So the the student goes into some room and the teacher is. Is reading. The words and testing, testing the student. And when he gets them wrong, he has to give an electric shock. Like he just pushed the button. He thinks that.

• 1:19:05Speaker 01

  That he's giving a real electric shock to the student. And he can hear the student go ouch. And and you keep increasing the more he gets. Wrong, the greater the shock. The greater the shock. Okay. And people don't want, after it gets to a certain point where the guy's going, ow, ow, ow, ow, this really hurts. I don't want to do this anymore. You know, people say like, look, I want to stop doing it. But then there's this experiment which says, no, you must continue. You have to continue giving the shocks. And you know, like, two thirds of people deliver the shocks all the way to like, you know, almost like killing the person. And I remember seeing that study and thinking. Oh, my God. Like, that just like rocked my world. It was like.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  I could do bad things. You know, I think I'm a nice person, but maybe in different circumstances, I could do bad things. And so I think that was a really strong lesson to me where it's not. I mean, we're all born with different capabilities, but a lot of our behavior is very much determined by the environment. And so

• 1:20:07Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  I just, so one takeaway I would think is that, you know, the environment really, really impacts our, our behavior. Like it can make somebody good, it can make somebody bad. And I think, you know, now we know so much about what makes it hard for people, like not having enough resources, worrying about food, you know, crime, all these things make it, make it hard. And I guess, you know, what we're trying to impose is like, hey, there's, maybe we can design environments that can like make people good or better. And, and we need to take it seriously that we're not immune to the environment. So that, there's a lot in there, but I think that, that one takeaway that the environment that around us has so much

• 1:20:50Speaker 01

  impact on our behavior, like fundamental things that, you know, you might think, oh, somebody is a bad person or somebody's a good person. Well, it might not be so, that's too simple. You know, you have to think about the person and all the environmental context that they've lived through.

• 1:21:05Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So that's the first one.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  That's the first one.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  So what are, these are pearls?

• 1:21:10Lewis Howes?

  Three truths. Yeah. Three lessons that you would share that you've learned from your life.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Three lessons I've learned from my life experience.

• 1:21:20Speaker 01

  You have to, you have to do what you're passionate about. You cannot,

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  and I feel very fortunate that I'm, I get to do what I love to do, but the people that I see the most unhappy are not really doing things that they're most passionate about.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  And maybe part of that too is feeling like

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  it has purpose. Like I don't feel like I'm doing busy work. I feel like the stuff that I'm doing.

• 1:21:54Lewis Howes?

  It's meaningful.

• 1:21:55Speaker 01

  It's meaningful. It's meaningful.

• 1:22:00Lewis Howes?

  Third thing?

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  Third thing.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Well, you know, this one maybe is kinda controversial, I guess. I guess, I'm not controversial. I don't know. I, uh, um.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  I had a little bit of a complicated, not, not, not in a bad way, but like, I, I grew up, um, as a, as a kid, so my mom, like, she converted to Judaism. So I have, half my family's not Jewish, half my family is Jewish. And like, I remember going to Hebrew school and I'm saying like, you have to marry somebody Jewish, you know, you have to.

• 1:22:40Lewis Howes?

  They said this to you.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, or just in general, that, that like, you know, and, um, and I didn't.

• 1:22:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  Somebody Jewish. But it was very complicated in my head. It's like, well, like, did dad do something wrong? Like, um, you know.

• 1:22:54Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:22:55Speaker 01

  And I think what the truth is, there is, like, I kinda, maybe this is gonna sound too simple. I don't like groups. I never liked groups. I never liked clubs.

• 1:23:07Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, like group thinking?

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Group think are just like identifying in a group. Because I, I worry that when people identify as a group, they say like, I'm.

• 1:23:16Lewis Howes?

  I am this thing.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  I'm this thing.

• 1:23:18Lewis Howes?

  So you don't identify as a Michigan guy then, right?

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  I.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  That's for fun. That's fun stuff.

• 1:23:23Lewis Howes?

  Oh, no.

• 1:23:28Lewis Howes?

  You gotta, you gotta break that identity, you know? You gotta break that.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  I knew when I was saying this, I was like, Louis is gonna get me on this one.

• 1:23:36Lewis Howes?

  The one group you wanna be a part of, you can't be anymore.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  It's gonna get me on this one. Is that like, you know, I just feel like groups invariably, like, when you're in a group, you think you're better than the other group.

• 1:23:49Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:23:50Lewis Howes?

  It's excluding rather than.

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  It's excluding. And, and it always bothered me. And, um.

• 1:23:56Lewis Howes?

  But you're also in group. You're a professor of a, you know, of a university, you're, that's a group of professors. You're a neuroscientist, okay, I'm in a neuroscientist community. It's like, you're in, you're a Michigan guy.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Share that. It's not exclusive. Like, you can, you can bring people in. So I guess I just feel like I, you know, I, I never really liked, uh, exclusive clubs. I guess, I just kinda feel like, you know, we're all humans. We're kind of all in the same boat.

• 1:24:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  And, uh, I just kinda wish.

• 1:24:25Lewis Howes?

  We're all trying to belong.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  We're all trying to belong and, uh, I wish we could kinda. See that more often that we're kind of, you know, we all kind of have the same destiny. And, uh, you know, we, we just gotta work together. We can't be so tribal hanging on to the group.

• 1:24:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay. So when you, when you cut up.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  When it comes to football season.

• 1:24:44Lewis Howes?

  When you cut, yeah, yeah. When you cut up your alumni card, send me a photo when you cut it up and say, I'm no longer a part of this group anymore.

• 1:24:54Lewis Howes?

  Um, I've got one final question for you, Mark, but this has been really inspiring. Nature and the mind, the science of how nature improves cognitive, physical and social well being. Uh, except for when you're part of the alumni group of, uh, Michigan. Um, final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  Boy, that's a, that's a hard question, too.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  I think greatness is when, uh, when you kind of,

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  you know, do you know Abraham Maslow?

• 1:25:37Lewis Howes?

  Maslow's hierarchy of needs, yeah.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  I think the top of the hierarchy was self-actualization. When you like become your best self. And I kind of feel like that's the definition of greatness.

• 1:25:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there you go.

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  Is becoming your best, your best self.

• 1:25:52Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  I know it might be kind of squishy, like, what does that mean? But I guess when you define your own strengths and become the best version of yourself, I think that's, that's greatness.

• 1:26:03Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. Mark, thanks for being here, man.

• 1:26:05Speaker 01

  Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

• 1:26:06Lewis Howes?

  Go Buckeyes. Go Blue.

• 1:26:10Lewis Howes?

  I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy. And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life and you want to, stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier. You want to make it flow. You want to feel abundant. Then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment, moving forward. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links.

• 1:26:52Lewis Howes?

  And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.