930 3 Ways to Keep Anxiety from Going Viral with Dr. Jud Brewer

“It is our duty to spread calm and mental connection rather than infection.”QUESTIONSWhat is more contagious: a physical virus or an anxiety virus? (5:43)How can we keep good mental hygiene right now? (7:40)What has been your honest reaction to the coronavirus escalating so fast? (18:39)YOU WILL LEARNHow our minds actually work with anxiety and fear (2:21)How to build mental resilience in a time of scarcity and anxiety (21:20)Ways to cleanse your mind from the anxiety of coronavirus (30:07)SOCIAL LINKSWebsiteInstagramTwitterFacebookYouTubeLINKS MENTIONEDUnwinding Anxiety appIf you enjoyed this episode, show notes and more at http://www.lewishowes.com/930 and follow at instagram.com/lewishowes Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 930 on three ways to keep anxiety from going viral with Dr. Judd Brewer. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. We're bringing on an extended five-minute Friday, and the reason is because there's a lot of social anxiety happening in the world, a lot of overwhelm, a lot of stress,

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  a lot of worry. And I wanted to bring on Dr. Judd Brewer, who is the Director of Research and Innovation at the Mindfulness Center, and Associate Professor in Psychiatry at the School of Medicine at Brown University, as well as a research affiliate at MIT. Before that, he held research and teaching positions at Yale University and University of Massachusetts Center for Mindfulness. And he is really bridging modern science and ancient wisdom together to helping people understanding their minds, upperstanding how it all works. And in this episode, we talk about the three different ways to keep anxiety from going viral.

• 1:26Lewis Howes?

  How do we not spread the contagiousness of the negativity of the mind to the people around us? I believe it's actually, you know, more dangerous to spread the negativity of the mind to other people, because you could actually be posting online and spread negativity and be isolated at home and not spread a physical virus. We talk about how your mind works. We talk about the worry habit, the worried grave. We talk about building your mental immune system, figuring out how to create new habits, new triggers, new behaviors, new rewards. We talk about social contagion and building mental resilience. I'm very excited about this one. Make sure to share this with your friends, especially during this time of uncertainty

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  and lack of clarity for the future. LewisHowes.com/930. And without further ado, let's bring on Dr. Judd Brewer.

• 2:24Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness. We've got a special episode with Dr. Judd Brewer, who is back on the podcast. You were on here a couple of months ago. People loved it. It's been one of the most downloaded episodes of the year so far. And for those that don't know who you are, you've really been helping people over the last 20 years at Yale and MIT and Brown University doing research on how our brains form negative behavior patterns, bad habits and addictions, and the specific techniques needed to create lasting change. And there's been a lot of chaos and anxiety and what you mentioned before we jumped on called social contagion that has been spreading all over the world

• 3:08Lewis Howes?

  and consuming our minds. You had an article in the New York Times called "A Brain Hack To Break The Coronavirus Anxiety Cycle," and that's gone viral. And there's just a lot of, people are, like, when a time like this happens, we did an episode last week about this, but when a time like this happens, which you were saying beforehand, you've never seen anything in your life in a world like this before happen. But when a time like this happens, I instantly see people going into a place of stress and anxiety and spreading a virus of anxiety, more than spreading something that's physically happening to them.

• 3:45Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yes.

• 3:46Lewis Howes?

  And, and what I started to do right away, not because I'm special or anything, but because I've had specific trainings over years from sports, understanding how to manage pressure and high-pressure situations, and also, the last seven years of doing the School of Greatness podcast, interviewing experts like yourself, who teach us how to calm and relax the mind when there is chaos around you. And I've always been told that you cannot control any exterior event. You can only control how you respond to that event. And you can choose to respond with social anxieties, or you can choose to respond with love and peace and wisdom to the best of your ability. So, tell me what you've been experiencing

• 4:27Lewis Howes?

  over the last few days since this article came out. And also, it just seems like more and more social anxiety every moment with the news.

• 4:37Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, I think that's true. I think that it's really helpful to start by really just kind of understanding how our minds work. So, you know, fear is actually a survival mechanism, right? Fear helps us not get killed, right? If you're, you know, and we actually learned this from our ancestors, right? They're out in the savanna hunting and then the saber tooth tiger comes running at them. If they outrun the tiger, they actually learn, okay, that's a dangerous place. Don't go hang out on that part of the savanna. So fear is helpful. Yet, there's, you know, over the last, I don't know, million, whatever, years, we've actually evolved this new layer of our brain. It's literally called the neocortex, right? The new cortex. And there's a part of that called the prefrontal cortex, which is involved

• 5:20Dr. Jud Brewer?

  in thinking and planning. Now, planning is really, really helpful, right? Thinking is really, really helpful. Yet, to plan, we need one really key ingredient, which is accurate information. Enter coronavirus, where we, we don't know jack, right? This is the, I've never seen a virus emerging like this where people can't figure out yet, you know, what's going on. They're working their hardest. They're gonna figure it out, but we don't know yet, right? We don't know how contagious it is. We don't know how deadly it is. We don't know how much it's actually taken hold, you know, across the world. There are lots

• 6:00Dr. Jud Brewer?

  of unknowns. So fear, healthy, fear plus uncertainty equals anxiety, right? Because those what ifs start coming up. Oh, what if this happens? What if, what if, what if? And so there's that fear of the future that starts to come in.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  So if we knew the actual results of the future, like if we knew like, okay, if you get this, then this will happen to you, would there be less social anxiety or more social anxiety if we knew the result?

• 6:28Dr. Jud Brewer?

  There would be a lot-

• 6:28Lewis Howes?

  If it was a bad, horrible result?

• 6:30Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, there would be a lot less. And there's good research on this showing that people, even if it's gonna be a bad outcome, people would much rather just know, because certainty makes us feel better, right? Uncertainty, it puts ants in our pants, right? We, it makes us itchy because that uncertainty says, do something, figure it out, figure it out. That's a survival mechanism. But if that uncertainty doesn't get resolved, it just spins out on itself.

• 6:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. I mean, I saw- What's his name? The guy, something, uh, Mitchell from the, uh, Utah Jazz, one of the players who has the virus right now. He did an episode this week on, uh, Good Morning America saying like, "I feel fine. I have the virus. I have zero symptoms of fever, of coughing, of soreness, of achiness. I feel like I could play a basketball game right now and I feel fine." That's the scary thing. It's like, some people it's affecting them, other people it's not. You hear stories, "Well, there's all these deaths. It's all over the world." And you just don't know. There's not a clear path for every person of what's gonna happen. And you're saying that the anxiety of not knowing the end result is greater than knowing we're all gonna die if we got it, or something like that.

• 7:39Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, well, we are all going to die. It's just a matter of when.

• 7:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 7:43Dr. Jud Brewer?

  And so, when that, that fear of death comes hitting us right in the face, when it's like, "Oh, maybe I'm what, you know, even if I'm young and healthy, maybe I could be one of those people." Because we just don't know. We just don't know enough about it. So that uncertainty is really, you know, that's, that's tough for folks and it leads to a lot of anxiety.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  What is more contagious? A physical virus or a anxiety virus?

• 8:10Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So this is where we get into social contagion.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Dr. Jud Brewer?

  With a physical virus, you have to actually be near somebody, right? Within six feet, at these, I don't wanna spread rumors, but that's the special number I've been hearing is six feet, you know, somebody sneezes. So you actually have to be physically near somebody to spread a physical virus. Well, guess what? If you go and start scrolling on social media, it's like walking through a line of, of, of brain sneezes. Like people are sneezing on your brain.

• 8:37Lewis Howes?

  Every moment and you're flipping through it.

• 8:39Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, and you're like, "Oh, oh, oh, it's like another sneeze, another sneeze, another sneeze." Well, guess what? You're, you're gonna catch it if you, if you don't have that resilience. So you tell me which one, which one's more.

• 8:52Lewis Howes?

  I think, yeah, I think the, uh, social anxiety is more contagious. And I think- Uh, you know, I mean, we talked about this on School of Greatness a lot. It's like belief is contagious and so is a lack of belief. And the more you believe in yourself through daily habits and routines and actions like you talk about based on science and research that form this sense of, okay, I did the hard work. I followed my word. I did what I said I was gonna do every day. You you build a sense of belief based on the results you create, even if they're micro results, even if it's just like, I did it today. Um, whereas you'll you'll you'll lose a sense of belief through people telling you like you're not good enough, or that you could never go after that dream, or

• 9:35Lewis Howes?

  like either way, you can either build a belief or lose a belief quickly based on the thoughts that we have in our mind and what other people are bringing us every day. Now, what are some things that you're seeing that we can do to cleanse our mind to to, uh, you know, replenish our brain with more positive mental hygiene as opposed to this virus of the mind that seems to be consuming so many people around the world?

• 10:04Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, I'm glad you bring that up because we're so focused on physical hygiene, which is really important. But like we were just talking about that mental hygiene can go, you know, can really spread really, really, really quickly.

• 10:14Lewis Howes?

  It can take, it can consume your mind so much that it takes over your whole life, your whole health, your your relationship with your loved ones, your friends, your family, the relationship to your dreams, to your goals. And it can control you more than an actual physical virus potentially could. Because if you got it, at least you know, like, okay, well, I know it's gonna pass in two weeks, most likely, and I know it's gonna be better eventually based on, you know, the data. And then I can get back to like my my my life, my routine.

• 10:43Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah.

• 10:44Lewis Howes?

  It's like the anxiety of maybe I'll catch this thing. Is almost more painful than the some of the people that are saying, well, okay, I've got it. And they're telling me it's going to pass in a couple of weeks.

• 10:54Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah. So it's a good point that you bring up because we can think of anxiety and these worry habit loops, right? And so we might have this fear and it leads to worry because we, you know, worry feels like we're at least doing something.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 11:07Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Even though that doing something is making our brain not be able to think. But we get into these worry habit loops. And then even when the danger passes, we get stuck in that loop. Like, oh, well, what if it happened again? Or what if it happens to this? Or what if the next one happens? Or what if, what if, what if? So we can actually develop these lifelong habits of worry. It that we don't, if we don't develop a good mental resilience. So you can think of even, you know, this worry coupled with social contagion. That's where we actually start to panic, right? And that panic can lead to panic disorder. You know, it's interesting, panic attacks are not actually a psychiatric diagnosis.

• 11:49Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Like lots of people have panic attacks and then they don't go on to develop panic disorder.

• 11:54Lewis Howes?

  What is a panic attack?

• 11:55Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So a panic attack is where, you know, the sudden onset where people, you know, they get tunnel vision, their heart races, they feel short of breath, and they feel like they're going to die. I actually had a number of them during psychiatry residency, you know? And it was funny, funny now, but I would wake up from sleep and I'd be like, oh, you know, tunnel vision, my heart was racing. I couldn't breathe. All this stuff was actually happening. And then I would go through this DSM checklist. I'd be like, yep, yep, yep. Oh, I just had a panic attack. But, but I actually was studying, you know, and fortunately I was doing some mindfulness training too. So it was helping me not get caught in that. So the, the important piece there with a panic attack versus panic disorder

• 12:36Dr. Jud Brewer?

  is when we have a panic attack and we start to worry about having more panic attacks.

• 12:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 12:42Dr. Jud Brewer?

  And so we have one on the highway, you know, out of patients who, you know, he, the way he described it is he was driving down the highway and he said, I feel like I'm in a speeding bullet going 60 miles an hour. And he'd have these thoughts and he'd have to pull over. And eventually he got so afraid of even driving that he might have a panic attack that he would stop driving on the highway.

• 13:03Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 13:04Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So that's where panic disorder comes in is when we start worrying about.

• 13:08Lewis Howes?

  Worrying about having a panic attack and then we create a panic attack just in the worry.

• 13:13Dr. Jud Brewer?

  We can't. Yeah. And just that worry itself is so, so we can see how that starts to spiral out of control. We don't develop immunity sometimes, you know, unless we actually have the mental immune system to deal with this. And that's where, you know, my, a lot of my research in my lab has been really focused, even specifically around anxiety. So the first thing I would say for anybody is you gotta know how your mind works, right? This, I'm sure you, I'm sure you talk about this all the time, right? Because this is where athletes, this is where, you know, executives, I think of the mental athletes of the world, you know, they gotta know how their mind works. Because if they don't know how their mind works, there's no way they're going to be able to work with it. Right. How do we know how our mind works?

• 13:57Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Well, you know, some of the very simple ways that they work are through reward based learning, right? We just talked about this earlier, like the survival mechanisms. So, you know, the, actually, you only need three, three elements to have a reward based learning, like you need to trigger a behavior and a reward, right? So if we, if we're, if the trigger is that we see the cyber tooth tiger, the behavior is that we run away, the reward is that we live. And so that's actually how we learn. That's called negative reinforcement. Anxiety is learned the same way. You know, there's fear, that's the trigger. The behavior is a worry thought. And then the quote unquote reward is we feel like we're doing something. Yet we don't realize that what we're doing is we're just digging ourselves into it, into

• 14:40Dr. Jud Brewer?

  a worry grave, where we're just inoculating ourselves over and over and over with worry to the point where we get worry is a chronic, you know, anxiety is a chronic disease. So we've, we've done a bunch of research on this. We actually developed an app called unwinding anxiety that we've been studying over the last couple of years. And the first step in that app, you know, you don't need the app to do this, is to just map out these habit loops around worry. Anybody can do this. What's the trigger? What's the mental behavior? Hint, it's usually related to something about the future that you're worried about. And then, and then actually checking in, what do I get from this? And we've actually done a couple of clinical studies. Now, we did a study with anxious physicians, which is, man, I can't imagine the primary care providers on the first lines these days.

• 15:24Dr. Jud Brewer?

  They are just, you know, I feel for them. So much anxiety, right? Yes. So we need to get them this app because this study showed we got a 57% reduction in clinically validated anxiety scores in three months. How? What are they replacing in their mental immune system? Yeah. So I think of it as a three-step immune-building system. So the first step is mapping out these habit loops, right? Anybody can do this. Map out the worry habit, map out the anything fear of the future habit loop. Step two is actually a real brain hack, and I talk a little bit about this in the New York Times article. But basically, what it's about is asking ourselves, what am I getting from this, right?

• 16:09Dr. Jud Brewer?

  If I plan to go to the, you know, I can't plan to go to the airport now because all my travel's been canceled, but we plan for something, right? But, you know, let's say it's airport travel and we're like, okay, I have to get this and then I have to go to the airport and all this. We can plan it a couple of times and make sure we haven't missed anything, but by that 17th time, we're just in a worry spin out. So the next step there is to really ask ourselves, okay, am I overplanning? Am I falling into worry? Am I freaking out about the future? What do I get from this? It doesn't actually help me and it makes me feel bad. So that helps our brain start to see how unrewarding this old worry habit is. And that's really critical because our brains learn through word-based learning. They see, oh, this is not

• 16:52Dr. Jud Brewer?

  rewarding, so I'm not that excited to do it anymore. Yeah. What that does is opens it up for the third step. Okay, step one, map it out. Step two, see how unrewarding worry is. When you mean map it out, what do you mean by that? Map out the exact things that happen, like? Yeah, or just the loop itself. The details aren't that important, but, and even the The worry loop, the worry loop. Yeah, exactly. And the triggers aren't even that important because a lot of times with anxiety, people can't recognize what the, what it was. Why they're anxious. Yeah, yeah. Don't worry about why, you know?

• 17:25Lewis Howes?

  So I, so the map it out would be like, I get anxious every time I go to the airport.

• 17:29Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:30Lewis Howes?

  And then not why, not why am I getting anxious, just I get anxious when I go, when this happens.

• 17:36Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, why doesn't matter. That's not how our brains.

• 17:38Lewis Howes?

  I get anxious when my dad comes home from work. I get anxious and I go to school. I get anxious when I, whatever.

• 17:45Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Right, right. So the what is important because that can help you map out what, you know, when we get caught in these habit loops. But the why, probably not that important as much as I'm sure therapists would love to say, oh, the why is.

• 17:57Lewis Howes?

  Why? Yeah, yeah. Well, let's dive in deeper to your childhood. Yeah, okay.

• 18:00Dr. Jud Brewer?

  I am a psychiatrist and I'm not saying, I'm saying that why is probably not that important.

• 18:04Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so map out what, and then, then the second one is, what am I getting from this anxiety? What is it? What's the reward? What's the price of the reward?

• 18:13Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 18:14Lewis Howes?

  The payoff for having anxiety is that, I don't even know, what is the payoff? Maybe, maybe someone worries about you and shows you attention. Maybe someone helps you to do it for you. Maybe there's a sense of connection somewhere. Maybe there's, I don't know, people.

• 18:30Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, maybe there are a couple of things, but what you're pointing out is there aren't actually that many rewards. This was actually generally set up as a habit loop. And when people start paying attention to step two, they're like, dude, I don't get anything from this.

• 18:42Lewis Howes?

  No good positive things.

• 18:44Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, but it's really important to actually point that out. It's like, you know, training a puppy, you know, uh, you know, if you rub, rub the puppy's nose in the, in the shit, you know, it's like.

• 18:55Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So, so that, yeah, there's no reward. So that's the second step. As we become disenchanted through that second step, that opens the door for step three, which I think of as the BBO, the bigger, better offer.

• 19:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:07Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Where we can actually bring in something that is more rewarding.

• 19:12Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So with anxiety, it's pretty straightforward to see that anxiety doesn't feel good. But in the moment that we're anxious, we can actually bring in two things. One is curiosity. Oh, what does this anxiety actually feel like in my body? Curiosity itself feels better than anxiety. So we can actually bring in that bigger, better offer and help our brains see, oh, this, I'd rather be curious. About anxiety than get stuck in this anxiety loop. And I've had people write out full blown panic attacks when their new habit becomes just being curious. They're like, oh, oh, instead of, you know, getting caught up in panic, they're like, oh, here's this and this and this and this. They don't get caught up in it. So curiosity is key. I think of it as a superpower. And the second piece that we can bring in is kindness, right?

• 19:58Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So instead of beating ourselves up like, oh, why am I getting anxious again? We can step back and say, oh, there's this anxiety habit loop. And maybe on top of it, there's this self judgment habit loop that's making things worse. And we can step back and say, hey, can I just, you know, remind myself I'm human? It's okay. This is just my brain, you know, getting caught up in a habit loop. And that in itself feels better, which helps us step out of the habit loop. So that's step three is finding that bigger, better offer.

• 20:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes. Now, when you first heard about, like, really it was like four days ago when all this stuff went down with coronavirus. Since the time of us doing this interview. When you started to feel the anxiety bubbling in the people around you or just in social media or media in general, and people reaching out to you and all these things, what was your initial thought? Did you lean into a little bit of anxiety yourself? Or did you step into just like, I'm this zen, you know, doctor, I've got my habits and rituals down. I know the science of what's happening here. What was your honest reaction in the last, I guess, week to all this?

• 21:03Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, there's certainly been some times, and it's, you know, my wife and I are both college professors. And, you know, we're now teaching classes online and trying to figure that out. So the biggest, the biggest anxiety pieces that have

• 21:15Lewis Howes?

  Logistics.

• 21:16Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, I've been like, okay, you know, who gets the office to do online teaching, you know, at this time or this time? Um, I have to say, in the piece around getting worried about what might happen, my brain's relatively disenchanted with that. And I have to say, I've been pretty inspired. You know, I think we all, when there's a natural disaster, there's this natural movement to help when we're not worried about ourselves so much. And so I've actually been so inspired to, to help. You know, it's like, there aren't that many psychiatrists, there aren't that many folks that really specialize in anxiety. What can I do? And so I've been, you know, waking up early, just, just trying to, you know, pitch in wherever I can.

• 22:01Dr. Jud Brewer?

  And so It's been and seeing other people do, you know, do great things and help other people has also been inspiring as well. There's so many beautiful acts of generosity and kindness that that, you know, and it feels so much better to be part of that than they cut up with caught up in the anxiety. My brain is not that excited to be anxious about the anxiety.

• 22:24Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think there's, there's real people who are struggling and victims that maybe don't have certain necessities that other people do have.

• 22:33Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah.

• 22:33Lewis Howes?

  That need to be taken care of and they need to look out for themselves first. But I think if we have some, a sense of abundance or feeling or seeming abundant in our lives, like we've got food for a few weeks or a month and we've got whatever the necessities, then hopefully we can shift our minds from a place of anxiety and fear and shift it right into service as quickly as possible. And I think when we can come from service, it makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes us feel more relaxed, more calm. It creates connection, which I'm assuming there's some science behind that, which eases our stress levels when we have more human connection and coming together. So I think that's the key. What you said is like finding ways to serve. And the more we can find ways to serve,

• 23:16Lewis Howes?

  obviously take care of yourself first, but then serve your friends, your family, your communities, your online community, whatever it may be. That's going to help you continue to elevate and lead throughout these uncertain times. And I'm curious, and it sounds like you're seeing a lot of people do that at the school and everything, which is really great. You mentioned mental resilience. How does someone build mental resilience in a time of scarcity or anxiety when they can't even think clearly because they're so anxious?

• 23:44Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, I have to say the first step there is you, you pointed right at it, which is we got to ground ourselves. So if we can't.

• 23:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're in fight or flight mode. You can't think clearly.

• 23:54Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, you can't think. So simple steps to ground ourselves. So even taking a couple of deep conscious breaths, it literally calms our nervous system.

• 24:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 24:02Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Right? Some people find it difficult to pay attention to their breath because they feel anxiety in their chest. So there I say, you know, simply ground yourself in feeling your feet. Get curious. Oh, what am I? My feet feel like right now. You can, you can even play games like, okay, is my right foot or my left foot more warm, more tingly, more whatever? Doesn't matter what the answer is, but it's a great way to literally ground in our direct experience. That helps us take a moment, helps our prefrontal cortex come back online. And then we can start practicing what I think of as like short moments, many times of mindfulness, right? You know this, any habit takes repetition. And we can, we can over and over, start to just bring, you know, short moments of mindfulness into our daily lives.

• 24:47Dr. Jud Brewer?

  You know, I have to say, we, yeah, so we've even done studies, we did a study of our Unwinding Anxiety app with people with generalized anxiety disorder. So these are people who are just anxious all the time. You ready for this? In, in, in two months, we got a reduction of, of anxiety by 63%, right? So these short moments, many times as people are practicing this stuff is really, really powerful.

• 25:15Lewis Howes?

  Why are people worried all the time in life when they're not under attack like the coronavirus or something like this?

• 25:21Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, I think there's a lot of research showing that people actually develop the habit of worry. And it becomes so ingrained that they feel out of place when they're not worried. So

• 25:32Lewis Howes?

  When they're relaxed, they get worried, more worried because it's not, it's not familiar experience.

• 25:37Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah. So that patient that I mentioned who is having panic attacks on the highway, I remember at one visit, he, so he was using our Unwinding Anxiety app and doing really well. And he said, you know what? It's really strange that there are all these times now where I'm not anxious and it feels so strange.

• 25:55Lewis Howes?

  It's scary. It's like, what's going on? Yeah.

• 25:57Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So the uncertainty of, wait, this is different can actually be anxiety provoking.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  Well, I think that's why a lot of people follow the pattern. I know I'm guilty of this. We follow the pattern of Uh, we get out of a toxic relationship or relationship that causes a lot of stress. And then six months later, we get back into a relationship that within a few months, falls back into the similar pattern with a

• 26:19Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Cause it's familiar.

• 26:21Lewis Howes?

  Cause it's familiar with a new, you know, meat suit. Uh, per se, I guess. And it's just like, you get back into the same pattern until you break the cycle and you become conscious and aware of it. And you start ma- a- and you might ask yourself like, why am I doing it? What's the payoff for this?

• 26:35Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah. What do I get from this?

• 26:37Lewis Howes?

  What do I get from, what's the payoff? What's the payoff? And the payoff, I guess, is usually unconscious. Maybe you're just like, well, the, the sex is great or they're a good person or this, but they're just stressed out and I'm just taking this be whatever it might be. But it's like, how do you figure out the bigger, better offer? And until you become conscious and consciously choose something different for your life and consciously say no, or consciously get out of the relationship quicker, or whatever it might be. I think it's creating a vision for what you want. You know, creating a clear vision and writing it down. This is the type of relationship. This is how I want to feel throughout a, an uncertain time right now, the next few weeks. I want to feel calm. I want to feel peaceful. I want to feel loved and connected.

• 27:18Lewis Howes?

  Even if I can't go outside, I'm going to choose to feel his way by doing certain actions. What are the steps I'm going to take? I'm going to meditate. I'm going to use your app a few times a day. I'm going to call loved ones and acknowledge them for how they're stepping up as leaders in the world right now. Whatever it might be, I think you gotta create that game plan as well and not just be a reactive human being in the world.

• 27:40Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah. And, and with regard to the connection, here's one of the silver lining hopes that I have. So maybe you can spread this to your peeps.

• 27:47Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 27:47Dr. Jud Brewer?

  You know, there are so many animals out there who, uh, need adoption. And animals, as far as I know, you don't really spread coronavirus. So I would love to see people go to animal shelters. And, you know, when they've been thinking about getting a cat or a dog or whatever, find a furry friend and take it home with you. You're doing two things. You're helping an animal out. And boy, they are so starved for affection themselves. It's a win-win situation.

• 28:17Lewis Howes?

  I just had my, my birthday today and I'll show you a photo of my, uh, My furry, my furry dog. I don't know if you can see it that well, but

• 28:23Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Oh, yeah. That is awesome.

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  This morning. So this dog, I, I have not had an animal for, I haven't had a dog for 12 years. And my girlfriend got this dog about six months ago and I was resisting. I was like, no, I don't want a dog. Because I know how much I fall in love with pets. And I said, if we have a dog, I'm not going to do anything in my life. I'm never going to go out. I'm just going to be at home. I want to be with this, this dog all day long. And the dog brings so much joy. Yes, there's responsibility and yes, it takes time. But man, it's like, couldn't see myself without the dog now. So shout out to Mama, my little Pomeranian.

• 29:00Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Well, you ready for this? So joining us live in studio.

• 29:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh, the cat. Oh, man.

• 29:07Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So that is Julian of Norwich.

• 29:11Lewis Howes?

  How, how old is Julian?

• 29:13Dr. Jud Brewer?

  She's about five years.

• 29:14Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man. My girlfriend has been wanting us to get a cat for the last two months. And I had a cat that was like a dog. Seven years ago, it was the most amazing cat. And it died a few years back and I'm like, part of me wants a cat, but part of me is like, two animals in my place. I don't know. It might be too much right now. So.

• 29:35Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Well, your dog is pretty cute.

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  So what can, what else can we be doing besides using your app? How, and how can people get your app?

• 29:45Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Oh, yeah, they can, uh, they can get, and we got a bunch of free resources as well on my website. It's just drj, D R J U D dot com. And the app, they can go to the website unwindinganxiety.com to get the app directly.

• 29:59Lewis Howes?

  Awesome. And what else can we be doing, um, moving forward? What are some of the practical things we can do to cleanse the brain to? Again, it's, I feel like I want to emphasize this.

• 30:14Lewis Howes?

  Most of people listening, I'm assuming unless something crazy happens over the next week, most people who are listening probably don't have coronavirus. I'm assuming right now, my listeners. Maybe it's a small percentage. And I'm assuming, I might be completely wrong, that most people are not going to get it if they practice, you know, safe habits, if there's social distancing, if they stay at home a lot, all these different things. You're not going to catch it unless you're out around people for the next few weeks, unless something crazy happens that I'm unaware of. But what you will catch is social anxiety by watching and consuming so much negative information. Whether it's true or not, you're just consuming it and allowing it to create anxiety in your

• 30:58Lewis Howes?

  heart and your brain is going to cause more stress. And I don't want you to be a virus to the people in the world by what you're spreading with your words or your posts or your text messages or your phone calls. And I told my girlfriend, because she got, she essentially got, created a stomach ache in herself on Friday night last week. Because of all the news that just built up, she started consuming it. And she got sick for, for four hours. She couldn't eat. She was like in cramps. And I told her hours before that, I go, you're going to make yourself sick by talking about this, consuming this. And she did. And then it was fine and the stomach cramps went away a four hours later when she finally relaxed her mind. But I said, it's the mind is causing you to like tense up and weaken your immune system

• 31:43Lewis Howes?

  with this anxiety. And I, I feel like even if you don't have it physically, you can spread the virus of negativity so easily. And we need to guard our minds. We need to stand porter at the door of thought and really not allow our minds to consume it. I'm not saying you shouldn't be aware, you shouldn't be educated, you know, if you want to check in on a news site once a day to be updated on stuff, but just. I told her, the only thing I want for my birthday is for you to not say the word coronavirus in a negative way. And we're talking about it now, but I'm like, it's fine.

• 32:17Dr. Jud Brewer?

  But I don't want you to- We're saying it in a positive way.

• 32:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, positively. I don't want you to tell me all the bad things that are happening. I go, this is the only thing I want for my birthday is don't talk about it in a negative way.

• 32:27Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, so-

• 32:28Lewis Howes?

  You know, we need to cleanse our minds of it.

• 32:30Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So, think, there are great parallels to the physical piece here, right? So if we want to prevent the physical spread, we wash our hands, we have social distancing, things like that. So think about this, if we really understand how social contagion is spread, we cannot go and walk out there and catch it ourselves. So if we're anxious and we want some news, it's really important to ask ourselves, what do I need? Do I need information? If I need information, go to the WHO website. Don't go on social media, because if you go on social media, it's like walking into a virus fest. Where everybody's sneezing on your brain.

• 33:08Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So that's the first step, is like, ask yourself, what do I need? Do I need a hug? Go find a furry-

• 33:14Lewis Howes?

  Furry friend, yeah, exactly.

• 33:15Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Go find a boyfriend, right?

• 33:18Dr. Jud Brewer?

  So get, get that, get that affection and have that need met without going into these habitual modes of going on social media, not only catching the viruses, but then spreading the social contagion as well by freaking out on top of it and then adding fuel to the fire.

• 33:34Lewis Howes?

  That's it. I love it. This is powerful, man. Anything else we should be practicing, anything else? You know, you've shared a lot here. There's a whole another episode we did, I'll link for people, on a lot of practices for building positive habits, for grounding yourself, for overcoming stress and anxiety. But is there anything else we should be thinking about in terms of mental cleansing? And I think, again, the more you can stay productive during this time, like what I did yesterday is I cleaned out my whole closet and my whole place. And I was just like, I want to organize my life. I want to organize my physical space, my emotional and mental space. I want to organize my finances. I'm just organizing everything to cleanse and purge things that don't need, you know, trimming the fat of my life.

• 34:19Lewis Howes?

  So that I can continue to have a healthy emotional immune system, mental immune system, physical immune system, financial immune system, strong, under any type of attack or uncertainty in the future, right?

• 34:31Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, yeah, I think that's really, really good. You know, it's like this helps us create this baseline so we can be not only physically healthy, but mentally as well. So I would say the only other thing I would suggest is I think we're going to see a lot of things emerge. And so I'm actually going to be putting out short, like five-minute videos on my YouTube site, just to help people learn about, you know, okay, what's the mental contagion of the day? How do we work with it? And so people can just go to my YouTube site and subscribe so that they get those updates. And I'll be putting those out every day. I'm also going to do a weekly office hours because a lot of folks can't get answers from, you know, from experts or whatnot. So, you know, do that on YouTube Live, anybody can join, ask questions.

• 35:15Lewis Howes?

  Is that just YouTube slash Dr. Judd or what is that?

• 35:17Dr. Jud Brewer?

  I think it's YouTube slash Dr. Judd.

• 35:19Lewis Howes?

  We'll link it up on here too, yeah.

• 35:21Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:22Lewis Howes?

  So those office hours, what will you be doing? You'll be just answering live questions, you'll be coaching people, you'll be?

• 35:27Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Yeah, I'll start with like a five-minute discussion of one of the topics from the previous week. And so if people have a question or a topic that they want me to explore, they can hit me up on Twitter at Judd Brewer and, you know, say, hey, I want you to discuss this. But with that, so we'll take one topic and then take questions around that. And then we'll open the rest of the hour just to any questions that people have, you know?

• 35:48Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 35:49Dr. Jud Brewer?

  I'm not going to do couples counseling, but anything related to the coronavirus anxiety is fair game.

• 35:55Lewis Howes?

  Amazing. Dr. Judd, you're incredible. Thank you for coming on and sharing this. Make sure you guys follow Dr. Judd everywhere, drjudd.com for all the resources, get the app, amazing book. I'll link up your YouTube and the past interview we just did a couple of months ago that was amazing because I think it's going to really help people.

• 36:16Lewis Howes?

  Any final thoughts on whether this gets calmer or crazier for people over the next few weeks or months?

• 36:23Dr. Jud Brewer?

  That is up, yeah. That is up to all of us. And so it is our duty, all of us, to spread calm and mental connection rather than infection. Sounds goofy, but you know, really spreading that common connection rather than germs. And so we can do that by calming ourselves, building that mental resilience in ourself, and then that is going to be infectious for others and help everyone. So that's all I would say is, is let's all, we're all in this together and all we can do is move onward together.

• 37:00Lewis Howes?

  Dr. Judd, you're the man. Thank you so much for coming on. Appreciate you. This is amazing.

• 37:05Dr. Jud Brewer?

  Thanks for having me. This is awesome.

• 37:07Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed this episode. Dr. Judd Brewer, again, powerful information. Make sure to share this with a friend. People are stressing out, people are overwhelmed, and we want to be a source of peace, a source of resourcefulness and information to help people, to guide people to finding inner peace. There may be chaos in the outer world, but you have the power to really control your mind and start to practice controlling your mind and finding more peace at least, and not just being reactive to the world around you. You have the ability to really change people's lives and, and impact people in a powerful way. Send them this link, lewishouse.com/930.

• 37:50Lewis Howes?

  You can truly make a big difference on someone's life. And Dr. Judd Brewer has done some incredible work. Go check out his website, his research, his tools. He's going to be giving away a lot of stuff over on his platform as well. So check out his information. And please continue to cleanse your mind of negativity. Continue to be a leader for good, for love in the world. You have the power. There are tools that we're providing you for free every single week. And I'm going to keep bringing out great tools, keep bringing on incredible people each week and as long as this goes on to help. Calm our mind and bring clarity to our lives. I love you, I'm so grateful for you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.