DO THIS First Thing In The Morning To COMPLETELY HEAL Your Body & Mind w/Dr. Daniel Amen EP 1243

Today’s guest is Dr. Daniel Amen. His mission is to end mental illness by creating a revolution in brain health. Dr. Amen is a physician, adult and child psychiatrist, and founder of Amen Clinics with 10 locations across the U. S. Amen Clinics has the world’s largest database of brain scans for psychiatry totaling more than 200,000 SPECT scans on patients from 155 countries. He is the founder of BrainMD, a fast growing, science-based nutraceutical company, and Amen University, which has trained thousands of medical and mental health professionals on the methods he has developed. In addition, he has produced 16 national public television shows about the brain and his online videos on brain and mental health have been viewed over 300 million times. Make sure to check out his new book, ‘You, Happier’ - The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type In this episode we discuss:The main causes of dementia and how to prevent it. The five different brain types. The lies around happiness.5 questions to ask yourself when you have a negative thought. And so much more! For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1243Get Dr. Amen's new book: ‘You, Happier’ - The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain TypeMel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-podDr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-pod 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.

• 0:00Daniel Amen?

  Every day you're making your brain a bit better or a bit worse. You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better.

• 0:12Lewis Howes?

  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.

• 0:35Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to this special episode and thank you so much for being here today. And if this is your first time listening, I hope today's episode inspires you and helps you on your path to greatness. And I'd love to hear from you and know what your key takeaways are over on social media. Just message me at Lewis Howes over there. And if you're a regular listener of the show, then welcome back. I'm so grateful and inspired by your commitment to live greater, love deeper, and leave a legacy. Make sure to reference our show notes in the description for today's guest information and any mentioned links. And if you enjoy the show, make sure to tell a friend and leave a review over on Apple Podcast. This really helps the show reach more people and impact more lives as a result together. Okay, now it's time to dive into today's episode.

• 1:23Lewis Howes?

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• 2:06Lewis Howes?

  So for simple, smart savings on your prescriptions, check GoodRx. Go to GoodRx.com/greatness. That's GoodRx.com/greatness. GoodRx is not insurance, but can be used instead of insurance. In 2021, GoodRx users saved an average of 79% on retail prescription prices.

• 2:29Lewis Howes?

  What are some of the other techniques or nutritional things that we should be thinking about to optimizing the brain and body beyond ping pong?

• 2:38Daniel Amen?

  Well, the first thing, and I did it this morning, is you go, "Today's going to be a great day." And that way, you get your brain looking for what's right, rather than what's wrong. And I get to be with you today, and that makes me happy. I end every day, and I recommend everybody do this, what went well today? So whenever I put myself to sleep, I say a prayer, and then I go, "What went well today?" And I start at the beginning of the day, and I purposefully look for the smallest things that went well, that I like, that make me happy. Now, along that, you'll find the big things, but you know, we're both busy, and great

• 3:21Daniel Amen?

  things happen, but you often don't stop and reflect on those great things that happened. And if you make it a habit, like the day my dad died, my dad died almost two years ago, and that day, when I went to bed, I went, "What went well today?" The voice, the critic in my head was so upset, it's like, "You're a bad human being." But it's my habit, and then I thought about all the things that went right that day. And even though I was sad and aggrieved, I went to sleep. Because I have my brain trained, we live in a society of undisciplined minds, and there's a science to disciplining it.

• 4:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So what would you call that? Is it a, at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, what is that strategy called? Is it just mental focus? Is it gratitude?

• 4:15Daniel Amen?

  Well, when people come to my clinic, we often do some neuropsych testing, and one of the tasks is negativity bias versus positivity bias.

• 4:24Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between those two?

• 4:26Daniel Amen?

  Well, negativity bias is you're focused on what's wrong. Your brain quickly, almost immediately, goes to what you're afraid of, what's negative. And the news will tell you all sorts of things to be afraid of. Positivity bias is you go to what's right. And so, those two techniques are part of what I talk about in the new book, positivity bias training. How do you train your brain? To look for what's right, not for just what's wrong. Now, it's not over the top because I've been thinking about this Bible verse a lot lately. The beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord. And it used to always sort of bother me.

• 5:10Daniel Amen?

  I'm like, why do I have to be afraid? And then I realized people who have low levels of anxiety die early from accidents or preventable illnesses.

• 5:22Lewis Howes?

  They're not worried about anything. They die earlier is what you're saying.

• 5:25Daniel Amen?

  Right. And often the people that go to jail, they have low levels of anxiety. They actually have slower heart rates. They have lower sweat gland activity.

• 5:36Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 5:36Daniel Amen?

  Right? Like if I think I'm gonna go rob a store, well, I don't because I don't wanna be caught.

• 5:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 5:43Daniel Amen?

  And I don't like institutional food. And I don't really look good in an orange jumpsuit. Right? And so I'm always thinking ahead. And one of the lies of happiness. So I open you happier with the lies of happiness is don't worry, be happy. So Bobby McFerrin's Grammy Award winning song, Don't Worry, Be Happy, is a lie. Because you need some anxiety so you do the right things. And doing the right things consistently help you be happy.

• 6:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. So you have a moral code. You're doing the right habits for yourself. You're not just like, I'm not gonna care. I'm gonna drink all day. I'm gonna eat whatever I want. Everything's gonna be fine. You wanna have some, well, if I do this action, there might be a negative reaction later as well.

• 6:33Daniel Amen?

  Right. Fifty percent of people 85 and older will be diagnosed with dementia. I'm not okay with that. Those are bad odds, right? Because we're living longer and I don't want a 50% chance of having lost my mind. Now, but I can't start thinking about that when I'm 83. I need to be thinking about that when I'm 43 or 33, right? I mean, the earlier you can, the more you can push off those negative effects. So not too much anxiety because the cortisol damages your brain, but enough. It's like a dose response. What's the right dose of anxiety?

• 7:16Daniel Amen?

  And as a psychiatrist, I used to think my job was to lower the anxiety in my patients. And then, and that's true for some patients. It's not true for other patients. I need to raise their anxiety.

• 7:29Lewis Howes?

  So what would you say are the three main causes of someone more likely to reach a dementia state over eighty-five or before then even? What would those things be? The three bad habits or the thing, you know, the causes of dementia? Would you say?

• 7:45Daniel Amen?

  So.

• 7:46Lewis Howes?

  That increase those.

• 7:47Daniel Amen?

  In the book, I actually talk about our bright minds approach to preventing dementia. So there's eleven, but if I had to pick a couple, it would be being overweight. Because if you're overweight or have high blood sugar, there's something I call diabetes. It's a combination. You actually have seven of the eleven risk factors. Because I published three studies. The last one on thirty-three thousand people that said as your weight goes up, the actual size and function of your brain goes down, virtually in a linear pattern. So.

• 8:24Lewis Howes?

  Does it happen if you're thirty years old and you're younger? Or is it like only when you reach?

• 8:28Daniel Amen?

  Happens in children.

• 8:29Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:30Daniel Amen?

  Yeah. So we had two data sets, one in children, one in adults. Drops.

• 8:36Lewis Howes?

  The function and the size of the brain.

• 8:38Daniel Amen?

  Function and size. Because it lowers blood flow to the brain. Obesity lowers blood flow to the brain. It ages the brain. It increases inflammation. Fat cells store toxins. It changes your hormones, takes healthy testosterone and turns it into unhealthy, cancer-promoting forms of estrogen. This is not a good thing. And so if I had to go, don't be overweight. Now, don't be underweight. Underweight's not good for you, right? Have a reasonable.

• 9:15Lewis Howes?

  A healthy weight.

• 9:16Daniel Amen?

  Be a healthy weight. And you don't want anything to damage your blood vessels. Because.

• 9:25Daniel Amen?

  They've found neurons, brain cells, actually don't age. It's your blood vessels that age. And if your blood vessels aren't feeding your brain cells, they begin to die. And so with all of these risk factors, how do I know if I have it? So SPAC, this imaging study I do looks at blood flow. If you're drinking caffeine, if you're using nicotine, if you're sedentary, if you have any form of heart disease, if you have high blood pressure, all of those decrease blood flow

• 10:00Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 10:00Daniel Amen?

  to your brain. So you always want to increase blood flow. And I love this part because when I get someone brain healthy, their sex lives get better. Because if you have blood flow problems anywhere, like you have erectile dysfunction, you have brain dysfunction. And if you have brain dysfunction, odds are you also have sex dysfunction because they're connected. It's about blood flow, right? The healthier your blood flow. And so, you know, I see a lot of 50, 60-year-old guys and they're worried about their mom had Alzheimer's disease. They don't want to get it. But when they get on the program, their sex lives are better. And that makes me so happy for them.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  Now, there's something you touched on a little bit ago about the negativity bias and the positivity bias. I like to believe that I think in a positive way. I see the perspective of a situation. I try to look at the good perspective of the situation. I try to appreciate the things that I have as opposed to things that I lack. I try to see, have compassion and empathy for certain situations and say, that's really unfortunate. So I should be extremely grateful for where I'm at. You know, in all areas of my life, I try to have that perspective. I feel like it's a positive bias, right? Because it makes me feel better. There's been a lot of talk lately with different researchers and professors talking about the negative effects of

• 11:24Lewis Howes?

  Call it toxic positivity or too much positivity, I guess. Is there, you know, is there really a negative effect to the brain if you're thinking positively all the time? And so can you be toxic in the way you think in a positive way?

• 11:43Daniel Amen?

  So I'm actually not a fan of positive thinking. I'm a fan of accurate thinking with a positive bias. Because positive thinking is I can have this third brownie and it won't hurt me. I can drive at 125 miles an hour down the freeway in the rain and it's not dangerous. I can give my phone number to a woman I met in a bar and not be thinking about the potential downsides of that. Especially if I'm married and I want to stay.

• 12:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly, yeah.

• 12:21Daniel Amen?

  Right, I have this one friend. He came in and he told me about this woman he'd met at a medical conference. And they were on a plane together and she'd been to his office. And I looked at him and I'm like, do you like attorneys? And he's like, what do you mean? I said, you're married, you have ADD, you're not going to cover up this affair. Your wife's going to find out, you're going to lose half your net worth. And you're going to be visiting your children on the weekends. And he's like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. Which is means his frontal lobes weren't working because the front part of your brain not only thinks of the moment, it thinks of all of the moments, right? If I do this, what happens?

• 13:04Daniel Amen?

  And too often, people that have the most sadness, it's because they made bad decisions. And that can be toxic positivity. Like, oh, I'm in the moment, where I want people to be in all of the moments. Not just now.

• 13:23Lewis Howes?

  The future moments.

• 13:24Daniel Amen?

  Now and later, right? I want people to feel better. Quickly.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 13:30Daniel Amen?

  With things that help them feel good now and tomorrow.

• 13:34Lewis Howes?

  Right. Okay, so I like that. Accurate thinking with a positive bias. Yeah, accurate thinking, okay. Is there such a thing as toxic positivity in your mind?

• 13:42Daniel Amen?

  Well, it could be. It's like, don't worry, be happy. It's like, no matter what I do today, it's not gonna impact me tomorrow. I can spend, I can max my credit cards, I can flirt with a girl even though I'm in a committed relationship.

• 13:59Lewis Howes?

  I can drink all I want, I can eat all I want, yeah.

• 14:02Daniel Amen?

  Yeah, that's toxic positivity.

• 14:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:05Daniel Amen?

  It's like, no, you need to be afraid, right? I mean, you came to my clinic and we looked at your brain. And it's like, no, I wanna love my brain. So if I love my brain, I avoid these things and I do those things. And then you have a better life, right? The school of greatness starts with a healthy brain.

• 14:26Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 14:28Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. And so how do we figure out what our brain type is then? There's different brain types. How do we know what ours is?

• 14:34Daniel Amen?

  Most books on happiness, and there have been a lot of books on happiness, is they go, okay, here are the things that make you happy. From gratitude and purpose and novelty.

• 14:46Lewis Howes?

  Working out and this and that.

• 14:47Daniel Amen?

  And I'm like, well, it depends on what your brain type is. Because for some people, helicopter skiing makes them happy. Or jumping out of an airplane makes them happy. And for other people, that makes them flat out miserable. It's like, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'll be anxious, I'll be afraid. No. And what I learned, so I have ten clinics around the country, we do brain imaging. So if you have anxiety, depression, temper problems, relationship problems, memory problems, head trauma, whatever, we'll talk to you and then we'll scan you. And it's been my big love affair in life, is looking at people's brains.

• 15:32Daniel Amen?

  And early on, I realized, because I was looking at like, what does ADD look like in the brain? Or what does depression look like? Or bipolar disorder, or autism? And early on, quickly, I learned they're not one thing. That each of those things have subtypes. And I've written...

• 15:50Daniel Amen?

  Bucks, like healing ADD, the seven types of ADD. And then, when I was thinking about happiness, I'm like, it's clearly not one thing. And I've identified five primary types. Brain types. Brain types. Okay. Based on imaging. So there's the balanced brain type. Where, quite frankly, most anything will make you happy. You're focused, you're flexible, you're positive and relaxed. Okay. And type two is the spontaneous type. Type one, you have a generally healthy brain. Two, you have sleepy frontal lobes, the front part of your brain. Low, lower in activity.

• 16:32Daniel Amen?

  And you're very creative, often, often. A lot of the young superstars I see are the spontaneous type. They need novelty. They love surprises. They hate routine. Yeah. They want their life to be a bit unpredictable. They also like scary movies. They need a dopamine fix.

• 17:00Daniel Amen?

  Now, the persistent type, type three. Their frontal lobes actually work a bit harder than everybody else. And they hate surprises and love routine.

• 17:15Daniel Amen?

  They're accomplishment oriented. They finish things on time. They show up on time. And unfortunately, they tend to marry the spontaneous type. Or at least, those are the people that come to my office. They attract them, yeah. To my office.

• 17:35Daniel Amen?

  The fourth type is the sensitive type. And this was the type that was damaged the most in the pandemic. Because they crave connection, crave relationships. They're deeply.

• 17:47Daniel Amen?

  Empathic. And when their relationships are good, they're really happy. And when they're stressed, they're very unhappy. And then type five is the cautious type. These are people that are early to appointments. They will never jump out of an airplane unless the airplane's on fire. And to make them happy, they need peace. They need relaxation. They need a massage. And so, understanding my type, and there are combinations.

• 18:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you might have two or three.

• 18:23Daniel Amen?

  Right.

• 18:23Lewis Howes?

  And so. Like, I like three or four of these things at times. You know, it's like, I like my routine, but I also like to get out once in a while and do something spontaneous, you know?

• 18:32Daniel Amen?

  So there are 16 types when you look at the combinations. And in the book, there's a link on how to get to your free brain type. It's just so helpful.

• 18:44Lewis Howes?

  What can we do once we know which type we're at? What do we do then with that information?

• 18:49Daniel Amen?

  Well, for the balanced people, just keep it that way. For the spontaneous people, here are some supplements that might help your type. Here's the right diet for your type. Here are the right exercises for your type. So for the spontaneous person, it is critical for them to know their goals in great detail. And they love the exercise. And then every day, they ask themselves the question, does it fit? Does my behavior fit? Because the break in their brain is vulnerable. It's a little weak. And so often, they'll go off here, they'll go off there. And a lot of CEOs are the spontaneous types, especially entrepreneurs.

• 19:30Daniel Amen?

  Not maybe CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, but for their own companies, which can be wildly successful. But they need a persistent person to organize them.

• 19:42Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:43Daniel Amen?

  Because they're really good at growing, at starting businesses. They're not good at growing businesses. So just know, oh, is that me? Then make sure you don't hire someone like you with your type to grow your business, because they won't.

• 19:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:59Daniel Amen?

  They'll get you in trouble with the IRS.

• 20:01Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 20:03Lewis Howes?

  So once we know the, and what's your brain type?

• 20:05Daniel Amen?

  So I'm balanced.

• 20:06Lewis Howes?

  Balanced, yes.

• 20:07Daniel Amen?

  But I have features of cautious and sensitive. Because I crave relationships. So when Tan and I get along, and thank goodness, we get along almost all the time, I'm so happy. My first marriage, didn't get along at all, and I was miserable for two decades.

• 20:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 20:27Daniel Amen?

  And I'm, I guess maybe I'm the persistent type too.

• 20:31Lewis Howes?

  If you want to try to make it work, you can try to do everything you can.

• 20:34Daniel Amen?

  Oh, I'm feeling guilty when it doesn't.

• 20:35Lewis Howes?

  I know that feeling. What do you, what do you say is the biggest lesson you've learned about your own personal life? Of assessing, I think it's 200,000 brain scans now? Over 30 years, how long, how long is it? 30 years of work of just assessing the world's brains and these different types. What's the biggest lesson you've learned about yourself? In personal life, relationships, you know, all these things?

• 21:02Daniel Amen?

  So I started imaging in 1991, and I'm 37. I'd been a psychiatrist nearly a decade. I was the top neuroscience student in medical school. And I didn't care about my own brain.

• 21:19Lewis Howes?

  So what did that mean? You were eating whenever, you were sleeping whenever?

• 21:22Daniel Amen?

  I only slept four hours. And I, and I thought I was special because I could do that. Then I realized I wasn't special.

• 21:28Lewis Howes?

  You're bragging, "Oh, I only need four hours of night sleep and I can function."

• 21:32Daniel Amen?

  Yeah, I was eating fast food, I was overweight.

• 21:37Daniel Amen?

  Chronically stressed. And when I, the week before I scanned myself, I scanned my mother. And she was 60. And at 60, she had a stunningly beautiful brain. She's 90 now, and she still has a stunningly beautiful brain. It's a little irritating. And then the next week, I scanned myself, and it wasn't good. My brain looked older than her 60-year brain. But it reflected her life, her brain. She's, could manage my difficult dad. She has seven children. She now has 54 grandchildren, great-grandchildren. She's the most consistently loving person. She knows everybody's birthday. She knows what's going on in everybody's life. She's, she's just always interested. My brain wasn't healthy.

• 22:21Daniel Amen?

  I played football in high school. I had meningitis twice when I was a young soldier and that's a bad thing for your brain. And I didn't care, right? I never drank or smoked. I just didn't want to do that. I fell in love with my brain. And every day I'm like, is this good for my brain or bad for it? You know, I don't take red eyes because I know that's bad for my brain. I mean, I'd rather give up a half a day to travel than take a red eye.

• 22:56Lewis Howes?

  Tell me why. Why is that a bad thing for your brain?

• 22:58Daniel Amen?

  You're not gonna sleep right. When you're sleeping, you're changing time zones. And now, sometimes if you go to Dubai or something like that, you don't have a choice.

• 23:08Lewis Howes?

  But on a frequent basis.

• 23:09Daniel Amen?

  East coast to west coast. It's like, no, I have a choice. I'm gonna take a 10 o'clock flight and, you know, I'll just get other work done that day. And that way I'm not gonna lose a day of sleep because it's bad. And I look at what I eat. I look at how I think. I mean, everything in my life. Like if you date my daughter, I'm scanning your brain, right? I mean, it's really at the core, at the center of my life. When I met Tana 16 years ago, I liked her a lot. And like three weeks.

• 23:48Lewis Howes?

  Please, I hope her brain looks good.

• 23:50Daniel Amen?

  I'm like, you know, she could be the one. And so I said, you haven't seen the clinic. I said, don't you want to come see the clinic? Oh, by the way, could we look at your brain? And she's a neurosurgical ICU nurse, so she loves the brain. And I scanned her and it was good enough.

• 24:11Lewis Howes?

  You're like, it could be better now. I'm gonna get my girlfriend in there now too. We just moved in. I'm like, the next test is the brain scan to see if you're really healthy.

• 24:21Daniel Amen?

  Well, because ultimately. Brain functions are empathy. Being able to see things from the other person's point of view. It's cooperation.

• 24:32Lewis Howes?

  That's so true.

• 24:33Daniel Amen?

  It's excitement, it's fun, it's listening. It's those things that make a relationship work, right? Once you get beyond the cocaine phase of a relationship. Like when I scanned Tana, I was totally in this cocaine phase.

• 24:48Lewis Howes?

  The adrenaline phase.

• 24:49Daniel Amen?

  I wanted to activate my frontal lobes and go, okay, how's her brain? And one of my kids was dating this very cute girl. And I scanned her and I'm like, please don't marry her. Please, don't marry her.

• 25:07Lewis Howes?

  Based on the brain?

• 25:08Daniel Amen?

  Yeah. Cause I'm like, she's doing things that you don't know that she's doing. Cause I can tell if your substance abuse it.

• 25:15Lewis Howes?

  Now, you can tell if someone's smoking, drinking marijuana, vaping? You can see this in the brain?

• 25:21Daniel Amen?

  Yeah, I mean, it doesn't label it, this is vaping. But it's like, this is toxic.

• 25:26Lewis Howes?

  There's a toxic thing happening to the brain?

• 25:29Daniel Amen?

  Right.

• 25:29Lewis Howes?

  And could that be through thoughts alone? Or is it, you can see the difference between a toxic thinking versus toxic substance taking?

• 25:40Daniel Amen?

  It's different.

• 25:41Lewis Howes?

  Is it?

• 25:42Daniel Amen?

  So toxic thinking will often activate your emotional brain. So your limbic brain will be more active. Mold exposure or marijuana or alcohol, your brain starts to shrivel.

• 25:57Lewis Howes?

  Really? So you can tell? So if say someone eats perfectly, you know, has all the right things to eat, they sleep well. Well, they may not be able to do this if they're thinking negatively all the time. But let's just hypothetically say they try to work out consistently their healthy weight. They're not taking any harmful substances. But they have extremely low self-esteem. They're constantly saying to themselves internally, I'm an idiot, I'm stupid, why did I do that? You know, doubting themselves. What does that look like to a brain? But they're doing all the other things. Semi correctly.

• 26:34Daniel Amen?

  Well, one, we would have to look, because I always say, how do you know unless you watch? Because they may have been kicked in the head by a horse when they were 10 and it damaged their frontal lobes. And nobody knows about it because they were unconscious and had amnesia for the event. But say they're doing everything physically right, but mentally their mind is undisciplined and it's negative. They're gonna have a relatively healthy brain, but their emotional structures are gonna be really busy. And so it's like the chatter in their head, the internal dialogue is just too active.

• 27:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 27:14Daniel Amen?

  And one of the fun techniques in the book, I love this technique, is give your mind a name. And so you can gain psychological distance from it. It's sort of like the man in your head or the woman in your head that's always running a dialogue on you. Name him or her and separate from it. Like when I learned this technique, like, what would I name my mind? I named it after my pet raccoon when I was 16. So I literally have pet raccoon, Hermy was her name. I thought she was a boy, but she wasn't. Anyways, Hermy, because I loved her, but she was a troublemaker. She like TP'd my mother's bathroom.

• 28:00Daniel Amen?

  And she went to my dad, my mom went to my dad that night, and she said, Louis, it's my dad. It's either me or the raccoon. Now, my dad loved my mom, but he has the persistent brain type. And if you have the persistent brain type, nobody can tell you what to do. As soon as they tell you what to do, you're going to do the opposite. And when I heard him say, don't let the door hit you in the rear, I'm like, this is gonna be a bad night.

• 28:30Daniel Amen?

  And then a couple of days later, Hermy ate all the fish out of my sister's aquarium. It just like holds up signs, like you're a fool, or you're a failure, or you're an idiot, or whatever it is. And on most days, those things aren't true. And if I could watch my thoughts, rather than attach, it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer.

• 28:52Daniel Amen?

  We all have crazy thoughts. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer.

• 28:57Lewis Howes?

  So it's not having the crazy thoughts is one thing. Attaching, I guess, your identity to the thought.

• 29:04Daniel Amen?

  Or believing.

• 29:05Lewis Howes?

  Or believing it's a real thought.

• 29:07Daniel Amen?

  Right.

• 29:08Lewis Howes?

  Will make you suffer.

• 29:09Daniel Amen?

  Right, like Jerry Seinfeld said, "The brain is a sneaky organ." We all have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts. That nobody should ever hear. Like if you see someone with a big load of boxes in his arms, you're like, "Oh, I should trip him." Now, you don't.

• 29:27Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right.

• 29:27Daniel Amen?

  You don't because you're a kind, caring person and you know that would just cause all sorts of trouble.

• 29:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:35Daniel Amen?

  Right? So just having the thought. And I've had guys, they come into my office and they go, "I'm a pedophile." And I'm like, "Tell me about that."

• 29:45Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 29:46Daniel Amen?

  And they're like, "Well, my teenage daughter brought some friends over and I had sexual thoughts about them." I'm like, "Did you get their phone number? Did you climb in bed with them?" Did, I say, having a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true. But when you attach to, "I'm a pedophile," oh my God. And, and they feel like sometimes they have to share that. And I'm like, "Please don't share that."

• 30:13Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 30:14Daniel Amen?

  Share it with me. You know, let's work through it because if you really are a pedophile, we have to work on that. We have to protect.

• 30:22Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 30:22Daniel Amen?

  You and other people, you and the children, we have to protect you. And often, I've actually scanned a number of pedophiles.

• 30:30Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 30:31Daniel Amen?

  They, they have an impulsive, compulsive brain where they can't stop thinking about something and then they can't control it.

• 30:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 30:39Daniel Amen?

  But just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true.

• 30:47Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 30:48Daniel Amen?

  I mean, a lot of people have had, you know, "I should kill myself," but it doesn't mean you're going to. But it's why you shouldn't be drinking. If you have suicidal thoughts, you need to stop drinking because people have suicidal thoughts. Who drink have a higher risk of killing.

• 31:02Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm. So what should we be aware of about thoughts? Are we the creator of thoughts? Do thoughts randomly come to us? Can we shift the thoughts? Should we believe every thought we have? Or realize, okay, that's just a thought. That doesn't mean it's who I am and it doesn't define me. What's your overall principle around thoughts?

• 31:23Daniel Amen?

  They come from all over the place. They come from your genes. They're actually written in your genetic code. So, trauma from a past generation can actually show up in future generations. It's really interesting. Last time I was here, we talked about your brain is always listening. And I talk about the ancestral drag. Where the issues you have may not be your issues. They may be from your mom or from your dad. So knowing your family history is really important. Thoughts come from the voices of your mom and dad. I have six siblings. Your siblings' voices come from your friends, from your enemies, from the news, from the music you listen to.

• 32:07Daniel Amen?

  And they lie a lot.

• 32:10Lewis Howes?

  Your thoughts lie a lot.

• 32:11Daniel Amen?

  Your thoughts lie a lot. Now, every time you have a thought, your brain releases chemicals. Every time you have a good thought, positive thought, happy thought, hopeful thought, your brain releases chemicals that make you feel good. Immediately, your hands get warmer.

• 32:27Lewis Howes?

  When you think a positive thought.

• 32:28Daniel Amen?

  When you think a positive thought. Your hands get drier. Your muscles become more relaxed. Your breathing becomes slower and deeper. And your heart rate variability goes up. And it happens immediately. When you have a sad thought, a hopeless thought, a helpless thought, a stressful thought, your body immediately produces chemicals that make your hands colder and wetter, muscles more tense, breathing shallower and more erratic. Heart rate variability goes down. It's a sign of heart health. And it happens immediately.

• 33:06Lewis Howes?

  So how connected are our thoughts to our nervous system and our body?

• 33:10Daniel Amen?

  They're completely connected. Every thought you have impacts every cell in your body.

• 33:17Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 33:18Daniel Amen?

  And thoughts lie.

• 33:22Daniel Amen?

  And it's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to. So whenever you feel sad, or mad, or nervous, or out of control, write down what you're thinking. And then just ask yourself if it's true.

• 33:36Lewis Howes?

  What if you think it's true? How do you switch that?

• 33:38Daniel Amen?

  Well, so I love Byron Katie's technique.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  She's great.

• 33:41Daniel Amen?

  And I talk about it. It's like these five questions. And she calls it four questions. And I turn around, and I'm like, okay, five questions.

• 33:48Lewis Howes?

  Is it true? Is it really true?

• 33:49Daniel Amen?

  So if we took a thought. I don't know if you had a negative thought recently that you want to share.

• 33:54Lewis Howes?

  Negative thought. I've been in a pretty good place, to be honest. I mean, I was just telling you, you know, I'm pretty consistent with my emotional accountability with therapy. I feel like my relationship's in a great place. What's a negative thought? Maybe a negative thought is I've been traveling a lot in the last month, and I haven't been as good with my nutrition, my sleep patterns, and my working out. So I kind of felt like, man, I just feel like a little sloppy, a little off, like, you know, I'm behind. You know, that's not like a negative thought.

• 34:25Daniel Amen?

  So let's go with "I'm behind."

• 34:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Daniel Amen?

  Is that true? And remember, we're not interested in positive thinking.

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:33Daniel Amen?

  We're interested in accurate thinking with us, positive thinking.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  Am I behind? I'm behind necessarily on like my view of what I want to create for myself. So on that viewpoint, I guess I'm a little behind, but it's, I'm not like beating myself up. It's more.

• 34:49Daniel Amen?

  Okay, so that's question one. Is it true? Question two is, is it absolutely true? A hundred percent certainty, you're behind.

• 34:58Lewis Howes?

  Right. Is it a hundred percent true? It's not a hundred percent true. It's just the story I'm telling myself, yeah.

• 35:05Daniel Amen?

  Question three is, how do you feel when you believe the thought?

• 35:08Lewis Howes?

  I don't feel as good. Yeah, I don't feel as good when I'm ruminating or thinking about that thought. You know, I feel like, you know, a little frustrated.

• 35:18Daniel Amen?

  Question four is, how would you feel without this thought?

• 35:22Lewis Howes?

  I'd feel a lot better. Yeah.

• 35:25Daniel Amen?

  Right, and you're not the person. So many people worry, if I didn't feel bad, I wouldn't be motivated. But that's not you.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  No. Not on this point, I'm motivated.

• 35:34Daniel Amen?

  Yeah, yeah. And question five is my favorite of all of them. Let's take the original thought.

• 35:41Daniel Amen?

  And turn it to the opposite, I'm not behind. And then we ask ourselves, is that true? Do I have any evidence that I'm not behind? So I love that because if I get a thought, Tana never listens to me. I've had that thought, right? She may be at that time in her cycle, or she may be distracted. And she's not listening to me. But if I go, Tana never listens. Is that true? No. No. And who would I be without the thought? I'd be a good husband. I'd understand, maybe she's having a harder time. And then the turnaround can go three ways. It can go to the opposite. Tana does listen to me. Well, I've written and produced 16 national public television shows.

• 36:24Daniel Amen?

  She's listened to the script on all of them. Yes. So she does listen to me. But you can also take it to, I don't listen to her. I'm like, I'm busy. Or I don't listen to myself. So the turnaround can be opposite self and other, which is a sophisticated concept. But when you get it, you don't have to believe your thoughts. They're productions of genetics and environment and chemistry.

• 37:00Daniel Amen?

  You then go, does this help me? Does it get me what I want? Is it accurate? And we haven't talked yet about this. I love this idea that happiness is a moral obligation. Because when I grew up in Catholic school, I went to Our Lady of Grace Elementary School in Encino, and then Crespe High School. The idea that happiness is a moral obligation, that was nowhere to be found. In Catholic school growing up? Yeah, or in most religious schools growing up. Or in most families. Why is that not something that people think about it? Because they think of it as fluff. It's like, oh, so you're happy.

• 37:44Daniel Amen?

  But when you ask someone who was raised by an unhappy parent.

• 37:50Daniel Amen?

  Or married to an unhappy spouse. Whether or not happiness is an ethical issue. And I guarantee you the answer will be yes. You're not happy, it's sort of like having bad breath that impacts everybody else. So it's not selfish to seek happiness. Now, in the same breath, I want to say hedonism is the enemy of happiness.

• 38:14Lewis Howes?

  What's hedonism?

• 38:15Daniel Amen?

  Where you just seek pleasure for pleasure's sake. And so.

• 38:21Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna have sugar all day, I'm gonna have sex all day, I'm gonna watch movies all day, I'm gonna whatever it is your pleasure trap is.

• 38:28Daniel Amen?

  Right, because it wears out your pleasure centers. Before we were on, we started talking about fame and how fame can wear out the pleasure centers in your brain. You want to be very careful with the happiness you seek.

• 38:44Lewis Howes?

  What is the fame trap? Like, how does it, how does fame bring happiness or bring sadness to people? Because I feel like a lot of people want money, they want power, they want fame. Is what they think they want, growing up. But what have you seen from the brains that have a lot of fame, money, power, followers? If they don't have the right habits to help cultivate a healthy brain, what happens?

• 39:12Daniel Amen?

  So there's these two areas in your brain. They're called the nucleus accumbens. And it responds to dopamine. And dopamine is often thought of the molecule of more. And pleasure and focus and being high or happy. When you hit it hard, so think fame or think cocaine, you feel great.

• 39:43Daniel Amen?

  But the more you hit it, you begin to wear it out. And then it takes more and more. To feel. To feel anything at all. Interesting. And then it sets up a cycle of depression. And so, and I just listened to Will Smith's autobiography, which I thought was great. And he talks about it. Really? That, you know, another number one movie release or a number one bestselling hit, it's like, it's not nearly as cool as the one before. It's not enough anymore. And, and I had, and I experienced this. And it was disorienting. My book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life,

• 40:25Daniel Amen?

  spent a year at number two or number three on the New York Times Bestseller list. It was a historic bestseller. But my next book wasn't as good. I mean, I thought it was better. Right. But it didn't sell as much. And so. So how does it? It's dis- it's disorienting. And then, and then my book after that did great, Healing ADD. But then the one after that, not so much. And you just, as an author, if you're really successful, you begin to feel off. And then, you know, I had to like come to grips with it. I've had 12 New York Times Bestsellers. But, you know, I've written 40 books, so that means a bunch of them worked. Right.

• 41:09Daniel Amen?

  And do I, do I write to feed the nucleus succumbens?

• 41:16Daniel Amen?

  Or is it really a different chemical that I'm after? I'm after serotonin, which is respect, and oxytocin, which is connection. And so, it's interesting to think about what you do based on the chemistry of happiness. And so, yes, there's dopamine, but unfortunately, dopamine's a trap. It's the molecule of more. I need more sex, more money, more praise, more followers. And I'm not gonna lie, when we went over a million fans on TikTok, that was cool. That was cool. But it's not the point, right? The point is connection, purpose, respect. Yes.

• 42:00Lewis Howes?

  And what happens to the brain, we were talking about this before, of a brain that is in service to something greater than themselves, whether it's locally, whether it's with a friend or family member, they're being in service to someone, or they're making it their mission of a cause greater than them or their own accomplishments. What happens to a brain that's on-service mentality, more focused towards that versus a brain that's focused on self, success, acknowledgement? Can you just compare those?

• 42:33Daniel Amen?

  So, part of it depends on your brain type. Because, and I want people to know, so what makes you uniquely happy? But there's this great study from Baltimore. It's part of the Baltimore Longevity Study, where they did MRI scans on two groups. And one group volunteered at least once a week for a year, and the other group just did their regular.

• 43:01Lewis Howes?

  Live life.

• 43:02Daniel Amen?

  Yeah. So that was the intervention. Volunteering was the intervention. At the end of the year, they did MRI scans on them again, and the volunteer group had grown their hippocampus. Now, why is that important? The hippocampus, one of my favorite structures in the brain.

• 43:20Lewis Howes?

  Where is that in the brain?

• 43:21Daniel Amen?

  So, it's on the inside of your temporal lobe. So, behind your eyes.

• 43:26Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 43:29Daniel Amen?

  Back, maybe an inch and a half. And hippocampus is Greek for seahorse, because it's shaped like a seahorse. They're about the size of your thumbs, so they're big in your brain. And they're very special. Their hippocampus is involved in memory, so it gets memory into long-term storage. Did you ever see the movie 51st States?

• 43:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:56Daniel Amen?

  With Drew Barrymore and Adam Sandler. It's a great movie. I love that movie. Well, she had damage both of her hippocampi. So, she couldn't, something happened today. She didn't remember tomorrow. So, it's heavily involved in memory, but also in mood and spatial orientation. And it's very special because the hippocampus produces stem cells. Every day, about 700. And when you...

• 44:28Daniel Amen?

  Put the hippo, the baby seahorses, called baby seahorses, in a healing environment, you grow them and they become part of your brain. And volunteering was good for the baby seahorses.

• 44:41Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 44:42Daniel Amen?

  And I wanted to teach people skills, not just give them pills.

• 44:46Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 44:47Daniel Amen?

  Whether it's antidepressants, or anti-anxiety medications, or marijuana, or whatever. It's like, that's not the first thing to go to. The first thing is to learn diaphragmatic breathing. The first thing is to learn not to believe every stupid thing you think. The first thing is like, let's get your diet right, because that'll fix thirty percent of mental health problems. You just, you have, when you're working with people, you have to find what works for them.

• 45:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:15Daniel Amen?

  Because, you know, what works for their type and what works for them. You have to find what they love, because the whole goal is to love your brain.

• 45:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:25Daniel Amen?

  Because then you love your life.

• 45:27Lewis Howes?

  Here's the thing, addiction is hard for a lot of people to overcome. It's an addiction for a reason, and people stay addicted for a long time, because they probably try multiple times on whatever it is, marijuana, cigarettes, or alcohol, or porn, or sex, whatever it is people are addicted to, or just negative thinking. So how does someone who feels like, I've been trapped, I've been addicted for years, or a long time on something, how do they really get to the root of healing that addiction, or stopping it, without taking on a different negative addiction?

• 46:01Daniel Amen?

  In my last book, Your Brain Is Always Listening, I actually wrote a new 12-step program. Because the original AA program was written in the 30s. And I'm like, there's no neuroscience. It's basically a psychological, social, spiritual program. And step number one is know your life is out of control. That's actually step number two. Step number one is what do you want? What do you want in your relationships?

• 46:29Lewis Howes?

  Get clear on what you want.

• 46:30Daniel Amen?

  What do you want in your work? What do you want in your money? What do you want in your physical, emotional, spiritual health? You gotta get really clear, what do you want? And then you ask yourself, is my behavior getting me what I want? And if it's not, that's step two. My life's out of control. It's being controlled by something I don't want. But so often, people don't go to step number one. What do you want? And you know, people go more money. It's like, that's probably not what you want. Because money doesn't make people happy. I mean, up to about seventy-five thousand dollars. Right, if you're poor, you're not happy. So, there's a baseline of happiness.

• 47:13Daniel Amen?

  But above that, there is no connection to money and happiness. And so, when you really get to what most people want, and I'm quite shocked by this. I've been a psychiatrist forty years, and I ask people what they want, and they don't know. Or they'll say things like a promotion, or a girl, or money. But, no, no. What do you want? And let's balance it, because when you're not balanced, I mean, you and I work very hard, but when you're not balanced, you get burned out. Yes. And so, what do you want in your relationships? I start there. What do you want for work? And money, because that's important, right?

• 47:58Daniel Amen?

  And if you know what you want for your money, you don't spend in a dumb way. What do you want for your physical health? So, obesity runs in my family, and I don't want to be obese. So, when I think of the brownie, or rocky road ice cream, or my mother's baklava, I'm like, no. Because it doesn't fit, right? I mean, I care if I don't have tattoos, but if I had a tattoo, does it fit would be the first tattoo. And maybe over here, be, is it true? Is it true? Does it fit? And in the new book, there's these seven secrets, like, what's your brain type?

• 48:41Daniel Amen?

  And are you doing things that make you happy? Optimize your brain. But with each secret comes a question. Like, am I doing something that makes me uniquely happy today? And this makes me happy, right? To me, this isn't work, it's fun. It's connection and education. So is that one of the things, to ask yourself? What makes me uniquely happy based on my brain type every day?

• 49:08Daniel Amen?

  And then I want you to look for the micro moments of happiness. What's the smallest thing? And am I doing those things on a daily basis? Am I doing those things? Like hummingbirds, they're my micro moments of happiness. And I have hummingbirds in my yard, so I put plants there that they're going to be interesting. And it makes them happy, so everybody's winning. Everyone's happy, yeah. Everybody's happy. What's another neuroscience secret? Optimize the physical function of your brain. So I did a study for this book. We looked at 500 consecutive new patients staying in clinics. And I gave them the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire. So how happy are you on a scale of one to six?

• 49:51Daniel Amen?

  We compared the high happiness group with the low happiness group. The low happiness group had lower function in their frontal lobes. And so how do you increase the function in your frontal lobe? So hyperbaric oxygen, certain supplements, not hitting soccer balls with your head. If you're boxing, don't let people hit you in the head. I mean, you protect them. And I have thousands of before and after scans. If you do the right thing. So we just, you're on our series Scan My Brain. We just did Troy Gloss. So Troy was the third baseman for the Anaheim Angels. He was the 2002 World Series MVP. Hit 320 home runs. He's a very successful baseball player.

• 50:34Daniel Amen?

  And, but he was drinking too much. And had four concussions when he played, had no purpose. And he came to see me and his brain looked terrible, especially his frontal lobes. And he was really sad. And which meant his family was really sad. People don't get it. It's right, it's not all about you, it's about everybody. That's why you say moral obligation. Moral obligation. And I loved Troy because he just did what I asked him to do. He stopped drinking and... It was an athlete mindset. He's like, coach me up, I'll do what you tell me to do, yeah. Yeah, no, that's why I love treating athletes. So he stopped drinking? He stopped drinking. He took the supplements I gave him. He ate better, he lost 15 pounds and...

• 51:19Daniel Amen?

  Increased his exercise, because a lot of athletes, they got so burned out from working out. They stop, and you can't stop. I mean, you can shift, but you can't stop. And two months later, I scanned him again. His brain was so much healthier. Two months, and he was happier.

• 51:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:38Daniel Amen?

  Now, he has appropriate anxiety. He's like, no, I don't want that bad brain. I don't want that bad brain. And I don't want to go back to feeling bad.

• 51:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Daniel Amen?

  And so, there's enough anxiety, but now he asks himself, at least I hope, does it fit? Does this behavior fit the goals I have? Three is supplement. Your brain, am I taking my supplements every day? And the supplement for happiness, there's a number of them, but safran. I'm like a huge fan of safran. I make something called Happy Saffron with a safran extract called afron, zinc, and curcumin. Because in independent randomized controlled trials, they've been found to boost your mood.

• 52:28Daniel Amen?

  In fact, safran has 24 randomized controlled trials comparing it to Prozac, Paxil, Lexapro, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, showing it to be equally effective.

• 52:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 52:41Daniel Amen?

  But most antidepressants decrease sexual function, where safran increases sexual function. And I think that's so interesting.

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Is this a natural supplement?

• 52:54Daniel Amen?

  It's just a natural supplement.

• 52:55Lewis Howes?

  Not a drug, yeah.

• 52:57Daniel Amen?

  It's not a drug. And I'm not opposed to medication. It's just never the first thing I think about.

• 53:02Lewis Howes?

  Don't just say, my brain's messed up, I have ADD, here's a drug.

• 53:06Daniel Amen?

  Right.

• 53:06Lewis Howes?

  You say, here are all these other things you couldn't try to get you a little closer to where you want to be first.

• 53:12Daniel Amen?

  Well, and we want to look at your brain first, because how do I know what's going on with your brain based on just what you tell me?

• 53:18Lewis Howes?

  Right? No other doctor acts like that.

• 53:21Daniel Amen?

  Four, love food that loves you back. And when you travel, it's harder.

• 53:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:27Daniel Amen?

  But you still have choices. And so, we always go compared to what, right? So, I could have the deep dish pizza, or I could find a salad.

• 53:37Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 53:38Daniel Amen?

  Right? I mean, it's like, oh, but I love pizza.

• 53:43Daniel Amen?

  But it doesn't love you. You're in an abusive relationship with pizza.

• 53:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:48Daniel Amen?

  Because, and I just think both you and I, at least me for sure, have been in bad relationships in the past. I'm married to my best friend, I'm not doing that anymore. Just not. And so many people come, but I love sugar.

• 54:04Lewis Howes?

  It doesn't love you.

• 54:05Daniel Amen?

  But it makes you stupid. And it makes you stressed. And, oh, but I love cake or cookies or whatever. You know? It's love food that loves you back. You're in a relationship.

• 54:21Lewis Howes?

  And your brain is in a relationship with food as well. That's a good one. What's number five?

• 54:27Daniel Amen?

  Master your mind and gain psychological distance from the noise in your head. So that's where we put, is it true? And I love just sort of watching my mind. Because it doesn't torture me anymore. It used to torture me. And I was 28 before I learned I did not have to believe every stupid thing I thought. I was 28 years old, I was a psychiatric resident. And I'm in class, and when the professor said that, I'm like, really? It is a game changer for me. Just to like not-

• 55:05Lewis Howes?

  Believe every thought.

• 55:07Daniel Amen?

  But to sort of just watch the storms that come in my head. And when you do what I've done. So I have been a troublemaker in my profession. I have, we've had 10,000 physicians and mental health professionals refer people to us. I get a lot of love. But I've also gotten a lot of hate. Washington Post did an article on me. And they called me the most popular psychiatrist in America. And to most psychiatrists, that's a really bad thing. So. So but learning how to manage my mind because you know, sometimes the thought will come up, nobody likes you. And then I'm like, 10,000 people have referred patients to

• 55:51Daniel Amen?

  Amen clinics. So maybe not. But if if you don't know how to manage that, and I'm not unique, right? I mean, I have five sisters. I'm used to criticism.

• 56:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, sure.

• 56:02Daniel Amen?

  But if you don't know how to manage it, you get resentful, reactive.

• 56:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 56:09Daniel Amen?

  All of those things.

• 56:10Lewis Howes?

  How do you how do you how do you manage it when you get, whether it's media or other, I don't know if there's other scientists or researchers who might be questioning you or your methods, how do you handle that and address it, both personally and professionally?

• 56:22Daniel Amen?

  It used to be really hard for me. It used to be really hard. And then I realized none of them will help 1% of the people we've helped at Amen clinics.

• 56:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 56:41Daniel Amen?

  I know we change lives. I have stories over and over and over. The lever patient that helped me with this, because I lived initially, because I was called all sorts of bad names, a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, and I was just anxious and upset. Because I became a doctor in part because I like when people respect me.

• 57:05Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 57:06Daniel Amen?

  And now I'm being disrespected. And hell is separation from God, or it's separation from your community. And now, and I loved being part of the psychiatric community, won a research award from the American Psychiatric Association as distinguished fellow. And now I'm getting all this grief and...

• 57:31Lewis Howes?

  Why is this happening?

• 57:32Daniel Amen?

  Well, I know why it's happening. And it's just normal that when you try to change a paradigm, people don't say thank you, especially for the people that are making money on the current paradigm.

• 57:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:44Daniel Amen?

  They demonize you. There's a great book called The Structure of Scientific Revolution. And initially, somebody sees there as a problem, the powers that be try to fix it.

• 57:58Daniel Amen?

  That person comes up with a new paradigm, like what I do. We came up with a completely new paradigm. You should scan your brain and then you should do skills and natural things, not just pills. So you can see the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry are like, oh, no, can't do that. Step four is the rejection. It's the most predictable phase in scientific revolution.

• 58:21Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 58:22Daniel Amen?

  And then five, progress in science happens through funerals. The old guard dies and a new guard comes up that embraces the new paradigm.

• 58:33Lewis Howes?

  But it might take years or decades to embrace the new paradigm and then that becomes the new norm.

• 58:39Daniel Amen?

  And then that becomes the new norm.

• 58:41Lewis Howes?

  Until that's broken in 50 years or 100 years or when there's something new or whatever it might be.

• 58:46Daniel Amen?

  Well, last year, so one of the exercises in New Happier is write down the 20 happiest moments of your life. Because when you get sad, you can anchor them. Like I have them anchored in my house, like at my front door. It's anchored in my memory of me holding Tana, taking her across the threshold. And almost dropping her because I almost dropped her when we practiced our dance the night before. And it was funny. It was fun.

• 59:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:17Daniel Amen?

  It was a good memory. And when I go in the kitchen, my grandfather's there at the stove making fudge. Although I'm teaching him how to make a healthy fudge.

• 59:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 59:26Daniel Amen?

  Right? Well, last May, I got another one of my 20 happiest memories. The Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine, which is a prestigious scientific body that regulates spect in Canada, wrote new procedure guidelines as if I wrote them.

• 59:43Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So they used some of your procedures or they?

• 59:46Daniel Amen?

  They, they wrote it as if I had written it. And 10 of the authors, five of them were my students.

• 59:53Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 59:53Daniel Amen?

  Basically saying, you should look. What's the matter with you if you don't look? And it's, it's a radical shift in the paradigm.

• 1:00:03Lewis Howes?

  What specs stand for again?

• 1:00:04Daniel Amen?

  Single photon emission computed tomography.

• 1:00:09Lewis Howes?

  This is how you scan the brain?

• 1:00:10Daniel Amen?

  It's a nuclear medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity, but single photon. Photon's a little piece of light. So when I scanned you, we injected the medicine. It goes and locks to your brain and then sends out signals that we could scan. And your image was made up of about 10 million photons or times the pieces of light hit the crystals in the camera. So it's really cool. But if you wanna be happy, don't be a pioneer.

• 1:00:43Lewis Howes?

  Because you're gonna be criticized, taken down, tried to be taken down, told all these nasty things about you.

• 1:00:50Daniel Amen?

  And I just, I wish I'd known when I started that the sequence to how this is gonna go.

• 1:00:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:56Daniel Amen?

  Right, I wasn't. I wasn't looking for the hatred.

• 1:01:03Lewis Howes?

  What was the sequence for you? Was it like, oh, I'm gonna try some, this paradigm isn't working the way I want it to work. It's old paradigm, so let me find something new. This is exciting, I'm seeing some results.

• 1:01:14Daniel Amen?

  So for me, I, when 1972, I turned 18 and Vietnam was still going on. And I became an infantry medic where my love of medicine was born. Anyways, about a year into that, I realized I didn't like being shot at. It's not for me. So I got retrained as an X-ray technician and developed a passion for imaging. As our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look? So I loved taking pictures of people's bodies. I just thought that was so cool. And when I went to medical school, someone I loved tried to kill herself. And I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist and I fell in love with him. Because I knew if he helped her, it would help generations of her.

• 1:01:57Daniel Amen?

  So I fell in love with psychiatry, the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And because of my imaging background, I knew it was wrong.

• 1:02:07Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:08Daniel Amen?

  And I knew it would change, I just had no idea I'd be part of it.

• 1:02:11Lewis Howes?

  Because psychiatry focuses on thoughts in the brain, but it doesn't take an image or scan it necessarily.

• 1:02:19Daniel Amen?

  So if you went and saw a psychiatrist today, he would make a diagnosis exactly like they did in 1840.

• 1:02:27Lewis Howes?

  Based on?

• 1:02:28Daniel Amen?

  When Lincoln was depressed.

• 1:02:29Lewis Howes?

  Based on what you're telling them.

• 1:02:31Daniel Amen?

  By what you tell them, how you look.

• 1:02:34Lewis Howes?

  Your habits.

• 1:02:35Daniel Amen?

  And they're looking at symptom clusters.

• 1:02:37Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:02:38Daniel Amen?

  Oh, you're a bipolar disorder. Oh, you have borderline personality disorder. Oh, you have ADHD. And. Early on, I'm like, that's complete crap. Because how do you know what's going on in their brain? The assumption is depression's one thing. It's a serotonin deficiency and so everybody should take an SSRA. But they work no better than placebo in large groups of patients. I mean, 60 Minutes did a whole study, a whole show on that.

• 1:03:10Daniel Amen?

  Interesting. And then when I started looking, because I like looking, I got so excited. And I'm also a writer and a communicator. Like, I like to write what I'm doing for the general population to benefit from my work. Because I feel good when someone else benefits from my work, right? That gives me serotonin and oxytocin and the chemicals of happiness. We should talk about oxytocin before we finish, for sure.

• 1:03:41Daniel Amen?

  But what I didn't know, because I started looking, and I didn't make this stuff up. I mean, I had a teacher and other people were doing it at the time. Because I have a big mouth, I would attract a lot of patients. And that would cause jealousy. And then the haters would come out. And then it didn't fit the current paradigm. Diagnosis based on symptom clusters, no biological data. And then, when I did it, the first 10 cases.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  When did you first do, how long were you a psychiatrist for until you did the first scans?

• 1:04:18Daniel Amen?

  Nine years.

• 1:04:19Lewis Howes?

  Nine years. And so you were doing this and you were trying to diagnose patients?

• 1:04:23Daniel Amen?

  And I would be horrified, because like, they're depressed. Let me give you Prozac. Because I was, I'd just gotten out of my residency when Prozac came on the market. Some people got better, like dramatically better.

• 1:04:36Lewis Howes?

  By giving them the medicine?

• 1:04:37Daniel Amen?

  By giving them Prozac. And some people got worse and wanted to kill people. And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm not okay with this. Or, I'm also a child psychiatrist. They had ADHD and I'd give them Ritalin. And some kids got dramatically better, like from Ds and Fs to As and Bs. And so much better. And other kids would become suicidal. And I'm like... No, we're missing something.

• 1:05:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:05:02Daniel Amen?

  And then when I started looking, I'm like, okay, what's the one pattern? Like, oh, there's not one pattern. There's like seven or eight different patterns for all these things. So let's stop making diagnoses based on symptom clusters with no biological data. And then the other thing I learned, which is why I do the athlete work I do, is mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives. And nobody knows about it.

• 1:05:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:05:28Daniel Amen?

  Because they see psychiatrists, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, and nobody's looking at their brain.

• 1:05:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Daniel Amen?

  And so my NFL work, they have four times the level of depression as the general population because of the chronic traumatic brain injuries.

• 1:05:43Lewis Howes?

  And what's the movie Concussion?

• 1:05:45Daniel Amen?

  Concussion.

• 1:05:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's kind of bringing that more to light.

• 1:05:47Daniel Amen?

  I was a consultant.

• 1:05:49Lewis Howes?

  You are?

• 1:05:49Daniel Amen?

  On concussion. And I was actually written into the script. So I know what it's like to be written into a movie.

• 1:05:55Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:05:56Daniel Amen?

  And I know what it's like to be written out of a movie.

• 1:05:58Lewis Howes?

  Taken out of it, yeah. So it's, you know, it's interesting that now it's becoming more. And now there, the NFL is changing the way that the rules of the game, where you can't hit head to head. And so I think there's some progress.

• 1:06:08Daniel Amen?

  And isn't it every bit as exciting?

• 1:06:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Daniel Amen?

  I mean, the idea that we need the violent hits to feed our animalistic nature. Stop that.

• 1:06:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:18Daniel Amen?

  I mean, I grew up a Ram fan and the Super Bowl was fun. But I still saw concussions. And that's still...

• 1:06:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, little micro concussions.

• 1:06:29Daniel Amen?

  Horrifies me. Right. I mean, the thousands of subconcussive blows.

• 1:06:34Lewis Howes?

  Every day in practice. I mean, you played football for how many years? A couple of years?

• 1:06:38Daniel Amen?

  Three.

• 1:06:38Lewis Howes?

  Three years?

• 1:06:39Daniel Amen?

  And I loved it.

• 1:06:40Lewis Howes?

  And you probably hit head to head. This is probably before they had sophisticated helmets.

• 1:06:44Daniel Amen?

  Oh, we had plastic helmets.

• 1:06:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and so you probably had...

• 1:06:47Daniel Amen?

  And we did drills in practice.

• 1:06:48Lewis Howes?

  That's all you did, head to head, yeah.

• 1:06:50Daniel Amen?

  And I'm thinking, that's insane.

• 1:06:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Daniel Amen?

  When you just think the brain is soft and the skull is hard and the skull has sharp bony ridges and your brain controls everything. You do, how you think, how you feel, how you act. Why would you ever let a child do that? I spoke at the Future of Medicine conference. And a friend of mine, who's actually a billionaire, stands up and he goes, because he heard me talk about football. And he goes, but my son really wants to play. And I hired him like a former NFL player coach. I'm like, what if he said, I really want to do cocaine? Because the level of damage is the same. Would you find him the most talented drug dealer?

• 1:07:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I hear you.

• 1:07:42Lewis Howes?

  It's funny, I think about this now, I'm like, one of my buddies who was, I played arena football for a season and he was the MVP of like the arena championship game. And he goes, there's no way I'd let my son play football, you know, knowing what I know from back then. He's like, just the traumas over and over again. It's like maybe baseball or some other sport, but basketball, but not in a sport where there's just constant hitting, you know? And I think it's, I asked myself that, my girlfriend's like, would you let your kid do this? I'm like, I don't know. I don't know, I mean, it's a long way away.

• 1:08:16Daniel Amen?

  So when you have LeBron James and Barack Obama saying they wouldn't let their kids play football. Then I knew.

• 1:08:22Lewis Howes?

  LeBron played football, so.

• 1:08:24Daniel Amen?

  Well, then I knew that it's starting to seep into consciousness. Cause when I started my NFL work, my brother laughed at me, he does that. And he's like, you just want everybody to play ping pong. Cause table tennis is the world's best.

• 1:08:40Lewis Howes?

  You know, sport, you know, sport that I've just started playing over Thanksgiving, last Thanksgiving is pickleball. Have you played this?

• 1:08:47Daniel Amen?

  I have not, people love it.

• 1:08:49Lewis Howes?

  They love it and I know why now, it's incredible. It's big table tennis, but little tennis. It's incredible and it's a better workout, but it's just as much, you know, hand eye coordination. So you don't have to be really technically good at swinging a racket. So it's like, anyone can play, it's really fun.

• 1:09:08Daniel Amen?

  Oh, I have to do that.

• 1:09:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

• 1:09:11Daniel Amen?

  People who play racket sports live longer than everybody else. Everybody else, studied from England. The second was swimmers. The worst were football players and soccer players. But now you're playing pickleball.

• 1:09:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly. So, but for someone like you who, you know, had a lot of head trauma for three years essentially, and then I guess psychological trauma from, from the war, you know, for a year or two of just being in that environment. How do you heal your brain or can your brain?

• 1:09:42Daniel Amen?

  You didn't bring up my five sisters.

• 1:09:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, the emotional trauma.

• 1:09:47Daniel Amen?

  And being third in a Lebanese family.

• 1:09:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, the emotional, psychological trauma, all that stuff. You're still able to heal your brain, though. Even if you did a lot of these, you know, physical damages to your brain, right?

• 1:09:58Daniel Amen?

  I love that you can change it.

• 1:10:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:01Daniel Amen?

  Every day.

• 1:10:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:02Daniel Amen?

  Right? I mean, you know, if you go on a bender tonight, your brain is going to be worse tomorrow.

• 1:10:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:08Daniel Amen?

  But if you sleep well tonight, your brain's gonna be a bit better tomorrow. Every day, you're making your brain a bit better or a bit worse. And I have scans, like Anthony Davis, the Hall of Fame running back from USC. I love him. He's the reason we did our big NFL study. Uh, he came to see me in 2007 and his brain was terrible. And he was terrible, temperamental, the memory problems. Uh, but he just did everything I asked him to do. He's so much better. I have his brain 10 years apart.

• 1:10:45Daniel Amen?

  I mean, how cool is that? I just scanned someone recently where I have her brain 24 years apart.

• 1:10:50Lewis Howes?

  How is it?

• 1:10:51Daniel Amen?

  She's now 81 and her brain is dramatically better than when she was 50.

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  Come on.

• 1:10:56Daniel Amen?

  Oh, no. It's amazing. It's so cool.

• 1:11:00Lewis Howes?

  Huh.

• 1:11:00Daniel Amen?

  Makes me so happy for her, but also makes me happy for me. Cause this is the idea.

• 1:11:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:11:07Daniel Amen?

  You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better.

• 1:11:12Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:13Daniel Amen?

  But you gotta have the right mindset.

• 1:11:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:11:16Daniel Amen?

  Not of, oh, I can't do this, so I'm deprived.

• 1:11:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Daniel Amen?

  It's, oh, I did the right thing. Good for me.

• 1:11:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Daniel Amen?

  Good job.

• 1:11:25Lewis Howes?

  And that's.

• 1:11:26Daniel Amen?

  It's shifting your mindset.

• 1:11:28Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:29Daniel Amen?

  Um, did you ever see City Slickers with Billy Crystal?

• 1:11:33Lewis Howes?

  I think I did, yeah.

• 1:11:34Daniel Amen?

  So he's this New York guy going through a midlife crisis and goes to a dude ranch and trying to find his mojo. And he's with an old cowboy Curly and Curly goes, you just have to know the one thing. And Curly's played by Jack Palance. Just have to know the one thing. And Mitch, played by Billy Crystal, goes, "What's the one thing?" And the next scene, Curly dies. And so he doesn't know the one thing. But I know the one thing.

• 1:12:03Lewis Howes?

  What is it?

• 1:12:03Daniel Amen?

  When you do the right thing, feel good about yourself.

• 1:12:06Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so master your mind and also gain psychological, psychological distance from it. So you're not wrapped up in it all day. What were the next two then, the final two?

• 1:12:16Daniel Amen?

  So six is notice what you like about other people more than what you don't. This is giving.

• 1:12:22Lewis Howes?

  Don't judging people, you mean?

• 1:12:23Daniel Amen?

  Giving happiness away. No, it's shaping people. It's, um, my wife hates when I say this, but I totally believe it. Everybody's out for themselves. It's just the more sophisticated you are, the harder it is to tell. And I do this because I feel good doing this.

• 1:12:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:12:44Daniel Amen?

  And, you know, altruism is the best medicine for your stress hormones. That when you give and other people benefit, you matter.

• 1:13:00Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:01Daniel Amen?

  As opposed to I need to take advantage of this person.

• 1:13:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:13:04Daniel Amen?

  Because that made me feel awful about doing that. But I shape you by what I notice about you. And I clearly do it with my children. And I clearly do it with my wife. I, my wife has red hair. I can get her to yell at me. Or I can notice what I like and make her smile.

• 1:13:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Daniel Amen?

  And is that manipulative? Sort of. But it's in a good way.

• 1:13:27Lewis Howes?

  Right. It's better than saying something nasty about them or saying the worst of them.

• 1:13:32Daniel Amen?

  It's like activate your frontal lobes. Does this get me what I want?

• 1:13:36Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:37Daniel Amen?

  But notice what you like about other people more than what you don't. So there are really four animals in this book. I collect things. So I guess maybe I'm more of the persistent type than I think. But like I collect sea horses because of the hippocampus. And I collect anteaters because you have to be able to kill the ants.

• 1:13:57Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:59Daniel Amen?

  And I collect, um, penguins.

• 1:14:02Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 1:14:04Daniel Amen?

  Ever tell you my penguin story? No. So, I'm a child psychiatrist. I'm in training to be a child psychiatrist, 1986. My son is seven. He's hard for me. He's oppositional. I adopted him when he was two and a half. And it's like, no matter. He's the persistent type. No matter what I say, he'd argue with me. And I'm like... And I didn't feel close to him. And I was feeling bad. And I'm talking to my supervisor. And she's like, "You have to spend more time with him." And so I took him to a place. I was doing my training in Hawaii. And took him to Sea Life Park, which is where they have sea animal shows. Sort of like SeaWorld. Went to the dolphin show, and that was great.

• 1:14:49Daniel Amen?

  And the killer whale show, and that was fun. And the sea lion show, and that was fun. And at the end of the day, he grabs my shirt and he goes, "I want to see the penguin show. I want to see Fat Freddy." I'm like, "Who's Fat Freddy?" It's a penguin. And so at the end of the day, Fat Freddy is this chubby, but very cute penguin, who comes out onto the stage, climbs the ladder to a high dive, goes to the end, bounces. That's cool. And then jumps in the water. That's cool. And then he gets out. He bowls with his nose. He counts with his flipper. He jumps through a hoop of fire. And I'm like, "This is so interesting." And then at the end of the show, the trainer asked Freddy to go get something.

• 1:15:33Daniel Amen?

  And Freddy went and got it. And he brought it right back. And then time stood still for me. Because I asked this kid to get something for me. And he wants to have a discussion. Yeah. For like 20 minutes, and then he doesn't want to do it. And I knew my son was smarter than the penguin. So I go up to the trainer afterwards. "How did you get this penguin and get you what you want?" "How did you do all of this with this penguin?" And she looked at my son, and then she looked at me, and she said, "Unlike parents, whenever Freddy does anything like what I want him to do, I notice him. I give him a hug, and I give him a fish." Wow. And the light went on in my head that even though my son didn't like raw fish, my daughter actually does.

• 1:16:17Daniel Amen?

  I wasn't paying any attention to him. Because I'm like my dad. I'm busy. I'm driven. I'm working. And...

• 1:16:29Daniel Amen?

  So I collect penguins as a way to notice what I like about other people.

• 1:16:35Lewis Howes?

  That's cool.

• 1:16:35Daniel Amen?

  More than what I don't like. And literally, I have thousands of them. I actually wrote a book about this. And you are shaping the people in your environment.

• 1:16:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:16:49Daniel Amen?

  So you could notice the house isn't clean, or you could notice when the house is clean. And maybe you could be helpful.

• 1:16:57Lewis Howes?

  And focus on that.

• 1:16:58Daniel Amen?

  And you can focus, like, my wife and I, we were in Florida and we were looking for property. And in my head, I'm like, she's gonna make a bonehead decision. And if I would have said that, it would just start her to fight. I'm like, you are one of the smartest people I know with real estate. I said, what do you think? And then she just stopped. Not because I criticized her, because when you criticize someone, you bring them more toward their position.

• 1:17:25Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:27Daniel Amen?

  But when you notice what you like and then back up, especially with persistent people, I often call it a little hit and run. It's like, say it kindly, softly, and then don't talk about it. Because if you keep talking about it, you solidify them in their position.

• 1:17:45Lewis Howes?

  Notice what you like about people. I think that's something I've tried to live by for a long time is... That's a great way to build connection too, and intimacy is to notice those things, so...

• 1:17:55Daniel Amen?

  Which is happiness. Because relationships, more than almost anything, is happiness.

• 1:18:02Lewis Howes?

  And what's the seventh?

• 1:18:04Daniel Amen?

  Live each day, based on clearly defined values, purpose, and goals.

• 1:18:12Lewis Howes?

  What happens if we don't have clear values, purpose, or goals?

• 1:18:15Daniel Amen?

  You're thrown around by the news cycle, by the weather, by... What other people's values, purpose and goals are.

• 1:18:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. And I'm a big believer that when you have this and you're seeing progress towards these things, it makes you happier as opposed to not seeing progress on anything.

• 1:18:34Daniel Amen?

  And so Tony Robbins says happiness is progress.

• 1:18:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned one-

• 1:18:38Daniel Amen?

  So doing this exercise, one page miracle is so important. It's called the one page miracle because on one piece of paper, if you can put down what you want and then just ask yourself every day, am I getting it? You become so much more successful.

• 1:18:56Lewis Howes?

  It's huge.

• 1:18:57Daniel Amen?

  And I think it's one of the foundational reasons for my success. Besides building a team, getting people, getting the right people on the bus.

• 1:19:08Lewis Howes?

  This is a very powerful and inspiring book with just so much tools, so many strategies, tools, research, images showing before and after, and lessons and nutritional facts and studies, all these different things that people can dive into. I want to make sure people get the book. Powerful, You Happier, The Seven Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type. And it's important for us to be aware of what our type is first so we can make actions that'll improve that type. Over 200,000 brain scans for people all over the world, 155 countries, backing kind of this research and information. So I want people to get a few copies of this, give it to their friends.

• 1:19:51Lewis Howes?

  You have a 30 day game plan on how to improve, all these different things. And the least you can do is try some of this. And if it doesn't work, then you can try something different. But this is an amazing solution to start working towards.

• 1:20:02Daniel Amen?

  So based on the book, I did a 30 day happiness channel.

• 1:20:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:20:07Daniel Amen?

  We actually have it at Amen University. People can sign up for it.

• 1:20:12Daniel Amen?

  People who finished it were thirty-two percent happier after thirty days.

• 1:20:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, that's what I saw.

• 1:20:17Daniel Amen?

  That's what I.

• 1:20:18Lewis Howes?

  That's pretty cool.

• 1:20:19Daniel Amen?

  Their energy was better, their memory was better. You know, with all of my books, I sort of tend to wrap everything I know into, okay, what's this issue? If people preorder the book or order the book in the first week, I'll give them a bottle of Happy Saffron and the Thirty Day Happiness Challenge and a workbook and a new cookbook.

• 1:20:42Lewis Howes?

  Where do they go for that?

• 1:20:43Daniel Amen?

  Go to youhappier.com.

• 1:20:46Lewis Howes?

  And they can get all the information there. Okay, cool. Youhappier.com. I want to ask you one final question or two about how death and grief affects the brain. You lost your father a year ago, is that right?

• 1:21:01Daniel Amen?

  Almost two years.

• 1:21:02Lewis Howes?

  Two years ago?

• 1:21:02Daniel Amen?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Lewis Howes?

  I lost my dad a month ago, just passed away. And I remember the last time you talked about how you missed him every day. You mentioned this the last time we spoke. I'm curious about death and grief. How does it affect the brain of someone that you care about and love deeply when they pass away? And how does the feeling of grief affect the brain? And is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Is it, you know, reflecting and processing in a healthy way, does that heal the brain? Does it affect it in certain ways? I'm just curious. This is something new for me.

• 1:21:37Daniel Amen?

  Well, it's a normal thing, right? We all lose people we care about. And I want people to do the right things for their brain rather than the wrong things for their brain. So, one, know it, feel it. The week after my dad died, I mean, every day, I was in my office thinking about him. I have voicemails from him, listening to the voicemails, going through pictures. I wrote his eulogy and it was so healing for me. And I was in my office crying after we.

• 1:22:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:22:19Daniel Amen?

  Because I was sad.

• 1:22:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:20Daniel Amen?

  And it was, I mean, I was ninety, but it was a surprise because

• 1:22:27Daniel Amen?

  he had worked so hard in his last five years to be healthy. But it was a combination of COVID and heart stuff. Anyways.

• 1:22:35Daniel Amen?

  Feel it, like spend time grieving and feeling. And make sure you have balanced memories. Like, you know, I had a hard relationship with my dad. Yes, don't focus on all that stuff. But I also had a great relationship with him. And so keeping it balanced, and I got criticized by some of my nieces and nephews because I didn't talk about him as if he was God or if he was perfect. But, you know, grieving is being honest and then not letting the ants come in and then doing the brain healthy habits. I have this great story of a woman, you know, like you, when I lecture,

• 1:23:18Daniel Amen?

  people come up to me and they say they appreciate your work. Well, for me, people come up and cry. And when she stopped crying, she said, "I lost my daughter two years ago to bone cancer." She was 12, heartbreaking. And I didn't know how bad it would hit me. I went to bed, I drank too much, ate all the wrong foods. She ballooned up to over 200 pounds. And she said, "On the two-year anniversary of her death, I was gonna kill myself." "And then I saw one of your shows on public television. I decided I'd get your book. And if it was a bad book, I'd kill myself tomorrow." Oh my gosh. I'm like, "No pressure."

• 1:24:03Daniel Amen?

  Oh, dad. Um, she said, "But it was so simple." When I try to do it and you're happier, "This is so simple." "See, seven secrets and seven questions you ask yourself every day." She said, "I'm down 24 pounds." She said, "You gave me my life back." And she said, "But I want you to tell people who are grieving, is never let grief be your excuse to hurt yourself."

• 1:24:31Lewis Howes?

  To create bad habits and bad actions to hurt yourself. Yeah.

• 1:24:35Daniel Amen?

  Right. And the people who have prolonged grief often have habits that are not helping them.

• 1:24:41Lewis Howes?

  Meaning they haven't processed it?

• 1:24:42Daniel Amen?

  Distorted thinking or...

• 1:24:44Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean prolonged grief? Like they haven't processed it in a healthy way?

• 1:24:47Daniel Amen?

  Right. So I mean, sometimes you can get grief that goes for years.

• 1:24:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Daniel Amen?

  And it's because they don't process it.

• 1:24:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow. So process all the emotions. This is beautiful. Daniel, I appreciate you. You Happier, The Seven Neurosigns Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Time. Make sure you guys get a few copies. You can go to youhappier.com to get all the bonuses as well. I really acknowledge you, Daniel, for constantly showing up and being of service. It's a beautiful gift. From all the years, the experience, the lessons, the scans, the people you've helped, the case studies. There's just more work to be done. So I acknowledge you for constantly showing up and being of service to so many people. Thanks again for being here and all your help. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

• 1:25:34Lewis Howes?

  Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple Podcasts as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.