Dr. Daniel Amen ON: How to Change Your Life By Changing Your Brain & the Lies About Happiness That Are Increasing Depression

You can order my new book 8 RULES OF LOVE at 8rulesoflove.com or at a retail store near you. You can also get the chance to see me live on my first ever world tour. This is a 90 minute interactive show where I will take you on a journey of finding, keeping and even letting go of love. Head to jayshettytour.com and find out if I'll be in a city near you. Thank you so much for all your support - I hope to see you soon. Today, I sit down with our third time guest, the one and only Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Amen is a physician, double board-certified psychiatrist, twelve-time NY Times bestselling author, and founder and CEO of Amen Clinics, with 10 US locations. Dr. Amen is the author of many books including the mega-bestseller Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, as well as The End of Mental Illness, Memory Rescue, Healing ADD and Your Brain Is Always Listening. In March 2022, Tyndale will publish his new book, You, Happier: The 7 Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type. Dr. Amen emphasizes the importance of our brain health. He explains how taking care of our brain and mental health is a constant daily practice, comparing the things we do to boost our brain health to eating foods that will love our body back, foods that we love to eat and are beneficial to our health. We share our thoughts on why our generation is the unhappiest and uncontented, what we can do to boost our happiness hormones, and how happiness is always tied to our health. Get more science-based tips from Dr. Amen to achieve a healthier, happier, and more fulfilling life despite the challenges and difficulties we may be going through today. What We Discuss: 00:00:00 Intro 00:04:53 A healthy mind starts with a healthy brain 00:08:12 Activities that damage our brains 00:11:55 Brain and mental health is a daily practice 00:17:31 Accurate thinking versus positive thinking 00:24:02 Love food that loves you back 00:28:20 Focus on the micro moments of happiness 00:32:04 Why are we the unhappiest generation? 00:34:42 Did you experience childhood trauma? 00:45:45 Targeted nutrients to boost happiness 00:49:50 What’s your brain type? 00:54:19 Seek happiness in the context of health 00:56:10 Dr. Amen on Final Five Episode Resources Dr. Daniel Amen | TikTok Dr. Daniel Amen | Instagram Dr. Daniel Amen | Twitter Dr. Daniel Amen | LinkedIn Dr. Daniel Amen | Facebook Dr. Daniel Amen | Books Dr. Daniel Amen | Website Amen University Take The ACE Quiz Do you want to meditate daily with me? Go to go.calm.com/onpurpose to get 40% off a Calm Premium Membership. Experience the Daily Jay. Only on Calm Want to be a Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach? Get the Digital Guide and Workbook from Jay Shetty https://jayshettypurpose.com/fb-getting-started-as-a-life-coach-podcast/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 0:44Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and is clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. This episode is brought to you by Mazda. Confidence isn't something Mazda finds, it's something they practice. That's the thinking behind every Mazda. With proactive safety features designed to help keep you more aware, more connected, and more engaged with the road ahead. It's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand

• 1:27Jay Shetty?

  and has won more 2026 IIHS Top Safety Pick+ Awards than any other car brand as of July 2026. Visit www.iihs.org to learn more. A lot can happen when an accident doesn't. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. This episode is brought to you by Orange Theory Fitness. One of the best investments you can make is in your own strength. The choices you make today can help shape how you feel for years to come. Orange Theory Fitness provides a one-hour workout to build strength, burn fat, and build muscle with an expert coach guiding you every step of the way. Head to orangetheory.com/onpurpose to learn more and get your first class free.

• 2:12Jay Shetty?

  Orange Theory Fitness: helping people live longer, more vibrant lives. Terms and conditions apply. See webpage in studio for details.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  You want to drip dopamine, don't dump it. Because when you dump it with the fries and the alcohol, the porn, you don't have much left. And so then you have to go back and do it again. And all of a sudden.

• 2:40Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you that come back every week to listen, learn and grow. And I am so excited to be talking to you today. I can't believe it. My new book, Eight Rules of Love, is out and I cannot wait to share it with you. I am so, so excited for you to read this book, for you to listen to this book. I read the audiobook. If you haven't got it already, make sure you go to eight rules of love.com. It's dedicated to anyone who's trying to find, keep or let go of love. So if you've got friends that are dating, broken up or struggling with love, make sure you grab this book.

• 3:22Jay Shetty?

  And I'd love to invite you to come and see me for my global tour, Love Rules. Go to jayshettytour.com to learn more information about tickets, VIP experiences and more. I can't wait to see you this year. Now you know that I'm fascinated and committed to introducing you to people who can expand your mind, your brain, that can help you heal internally and externally, that can help you 360 degrees take care of your life. And today's guest is someone who is the first guest who ever has been on the podcast twice. And now the first guest who's ever been on the podcast three times, which shows us how much you all love him and how much I really appreciate

• 4:06Jay Shetty?

  all his insights and guidance as well. He's my go to person. Whenever I hear about a new treatment or a new therapy or a new, whatever it may be, I'm texting this person saying, hey, what do you think about this? Like, what do you think about this? And I really appreciate how he lives an extremely holistic life from a, from a spiritual point of view, from a scientific point of view. And having someone that I can ask these questions to openly helps me. So I hope today helps. I'm speaking about the one and only Dr. Daniel Amen. Dr. Amen's 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 the Amen Clinics with 10 locations across

• 4:46Jay Shetty?

  the US. Amen Clinics has the world's largest database of brain scans for psychiatry totaling more than 200,000 spec scans on patients from 155 countries. He's also the founder of BrainMD, a fast-growing, science-based company, and Amen University, which has trained thousands of medical and mental health professionals on the methods he has developed. Dr. Amen is not new to books or TV. He's produced over 16 national public television shows about the brain, and his online videos on brain and mental health have been viewed over 300 million times. And Dr. Amen is a 12-time New York Times bestselling author. I've got a long way to catch

• 5:31Jay Shetty?

  up. And today, we're talking about his latest book. It's called You Happier: The Seven Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good Based on Your Brain Type. This is the book I want you to go and get. The link is in the caption right now. Dr. Daniel Amen, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for allowing me to have you in my pocket at all times, to be able to text you and ask you weird and wonderful questions. And most of all, thank you for being just, you know, such a such a kind, warm-hearted person who who always brings their best energy to serve others. So thank you for being here.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Well, it makes me happy to be with you. You know, I think of happiness as a daily practice, and appreciating the people you love is just critical to it.

• 6:15Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah. And I really appreciate you. You said you were happy to be here when we were just filming a couple of seconds ago, and then you were telling me that I looked good. And I was saying to you, it's because I've been doing all the right things and following your advice. And I remember, I think it was our second interview, not our first one, our second interview, I was saying to you, like, I have only one cheat day a week now. And you just looked at me and you were like, well, you know why they call it a cheat day, right? And I didn't. I was like, what do you mean? And you were like, yeah, because you're cheating your brain. Like, you know, and you gave this beautiful explanation. And I was thinking, you always have these things that you say that stick with me. And if anyone doesn't follow Dr. Daniel Lehman on Instagram,

• 6:56Jay Shetty?

  make sure you go and follow him because I love how you post the brain scans of befores and afters of on a certain drug and without a certain drug, on weed, without weed. Like, I just think that the way you communicate brain health is fantastic and so great for, you know, my generation, the generation after me. I think we have so much to learn from you. So, thank you for what you're doing and how you're doing it too. And always makes me happy to see you and your wife as well. And this has probably been the longest I haven't seen you since you scanned my brain.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Which was so much fun.

• 7:26Jay Shetty?

  That was so much fun. I was very relieved to know that my brain was doing alright, so.

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Well, and when you see it, you develop a relationship with it and you want it to be better. And it's hard to hurt it once you see it.

• 7:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's so true. And it's crazy to me that we don't get exposed to our brains. Like, you don't ever see your brain, which we use every day, that works for us every day. And you have no access to it apart from see your body, you see, you know, different organs maybe sometimes, but the brain's not talked about a lot. What is our brain? What does it do? And how do we develop a relationship with it? Because I feel that people are very confused with what is the brain? What is the mind? You know, what does it do? What does it not do? I think there's a lot of stuff out there. How would you describe it?

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Well, it's very clear to me, after all the scans I've done, that your brain, the physical functioning of your brain, the moment by moment, physical functioning of your brain creates your mind. And if your brain's not right, your mind's not right. And there are a lot of spiritual teachers that'll separate the mind from the brain, but you can't. Because just think of Alzheimer's disease, you know, very damaged brains. And they're very damaged minds that go, I mean, people that act in ways they'd never act if their

• 8:58Speaker 01

  brain was healthy, that they don't remember people that they're deeply in love with. And so if we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with a healthy brain. And, you know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged. So if your behavior is so bad, you end up in a cage. And they're not thinking, oh, I have to understand, evaluate, rehabilitate that person's brain, and then that better. And that helps all of us.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Dostoevsky once said, "You can tell about the soul of a society, not by how it treats its outstanding citizens, but by how it treats its criminals." And it's, you know, when I first started scanning people, I didn't really have an opinion on the death penalty. I just really hadn't thought about it. I thought of free will as black or white, you have it or you don't. And then, as my work became known, defense attorneys would send me people who did really bad things. And their brains were so damaged. And when I would go to court, and a lot of people hated me for that, you know, if you have a bad brain and you did something terrible, you don't get to go home. But should you kill them?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a really important question. And I'm like, no, you know, it's not the sign of an involved society to kill sick people. I mean, you have to protect society from them. But what I've seen is if we rehabilitate their brain, they can have a meaningful life. And people just aren't connecting. It's your brain. It's easy to call people bad. It's harder to go, why? And oh, can I fix it?

• 11:01Jay Shetty?

  What are the things that damage our brains? Because I think what we find is, we often think like, oh, that person was totally normal, and then one day, they just changed. Or we say things like, oh yeah, if you just met them, like, they were just quiet and calm, like, you would never have noticed anything, and then they did this horrific thing. Like, what are those habits? What are those patterns that start damaging our brain? Because I don't think we're aware, as you said, we never see our brain, we don't really talk about it, we don't really know much about it. What are the things we do since birth that damage our brains? That could lead to something as extreme as that?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  Well, even before birth.

• 11:41Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  So since marijuana's been legalized in many states, babies born with marijuana in their bodies has gone up seventeen hundred percent. I mean, it's a ridiculous amount. So even before you're born, what happens in utero can damage the trajectory of your life. They have more behavior problems, they have more attention problems, they have less empathy for other people. And then, you know, as you go through life, the standard American diet is damaging brains. You know, you talked about how healthy your diet has been. I follow this guy on TikTok.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  For some reason, my TikToks has gone crazy. And he, he looked at his blood sugar before and after Pop-Tarts. And Pop-Tarts was like the worst thing he looked at, almost worse than Coca-Cola. And, but what are we feeding children? I mean, in public school, free lunches, Pop-Tarts. Which means we're damaging their blood sugar levels, we're damaging their weight, and we're damaging their brain. And I have a mnemonic called Bright Minds, which helps me remember, you know, like, B is for blood flow, low blood flow, number one brain imaging predictor of Alzheimer's disease. So.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Netflix, right? Not in front of the TV too often, not exercising, that damages your brain. Probably the number one thing that causes brain trouble. Your brain is soft about the consistency of soft butter. Your skull is really hard and has sharp bony ridges. Mild traumatic brain injuries ruin people's lives. If you said, hey, Daniel, single most important thing from 210,000 scans, mild traumatic brain injuries. Don't let your kids. Physical, right? From snowboarding, falling off a horse, football, soccer, hockey.

• 13:48Jay Shetty?

  Physical abuse too, I guess.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, physical abuse will do it, falls, car accidents. Um, you know, and people are texting and driving and texting and walking. And there's three million new concussions every year in the United States, which means over the last 30 years, there've been 90 million people that have had concussions. It's very common and a common cause of depression, homelessness, addiction, suicide, panic attacks, ADHD.

• 14:27Jay Shetty?

  Wow. Yeah. I mean, when, when you spell it out that clearly, I think what I love about you is I think the two times I have done an interview with you and then when I was with you, I just go away going, oh, I need to sort, I need to do something for my brain. I need to figure it out, right? And it's, it's a good thing. Like I enjoyed that healthy sense of an awakening and a healthy sense of fear, because I think we are so scared of being scared in society today. Like, we don't want to listen to the truth because it's scary. It's inconvenient. It forces us to change something. If someone could do something, starting tomorrow, what is the thing that someone could do, waking up tomorrow, that could be better for their brain? What would you say that is?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Well, you know, and you happier, I talk a lot about. The tiny habits, the smallest things that'll make the biggest difference. And brain and mental health, it's a daily practice, just like physical health, right? As I said, you look really great. That's a daily practice, right? You just don't do that one day a week. You do it every day. If you want a really great brain and a really great mind, they're habits every day. And some of my favorite, every day is this good for my brain or bad for it? I just like when my daughter, she turned 19 yesterday. Oh, happy birthday to her. And when she was little, we played Chloe's game.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  And Chloe's game was, is this good for your brain or bad for it? Frozen blueberries, oh, two thumbs up. God's candy. Or avocados, oh, two thumbs up. God's butter. Hitting your head with a soccer ball, no, very stupid. Thumbs down, right? And so just playing with her with that question that takes three seconds, right? I mean, it doesn't take long. And people go, what's good and what's bad? Second graders know it. I went into her second grade class, put 20 things on the board and I went, separate them for me. And they got 19 out of 20 right. So I got a 95%.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  And the only thing they got wrong was orange juice, which they put in the good category, which is like way too much, sure. And so whenever you unwrap sugar from its fiber source, right? Turn fruit into juice, it turns toxic in your body. So you have to be really careful with that. So that's one. Two, whenever you wake up in the morning, today is going to be a great day. You have to nudge your brain, right? We have a conscious mind, we have an unconscious mind, we have a self-image. And your subconscious is paying attention to the words that the conscious mind is saying. And so if you're like, oh, I don't want to get out of bed. Today's going to be a bad day.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  You're gonna have a bad day because you just programmed your subconscious mind to do that. Every day when my feet hit the floor, today is going to be a great day. And then my favorite of all of them is.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  When you go to bed at night, and bed is so important because if you want to have a good day, it starts the night before, is what went well today. So when I go to bed, I say a prayer, and then I go, what went well? And I go on a treasure hunt because I'm purposefully looking for what are the right things that happened. And I look for the micro moments, you know, like what's the smallest thing? And for me, where I live, I see a lot of hummingbirds and butterflies, and I just, I just focus on them. And I've been doing this for years, and it's so helpful. And about two and a half years ago, my dad

• 18:20Speaker 01

  died. And it was an awful, awful day. And when I went to bed that night, I said a prayer, and then went, what went well today? And then the voice in my head, you know, started criticizing me like you're a bad kid, and you don't love your dad, and whatever. But because it's my habit, I went, what went well today? And I saw this interaction between my mother and the police officer. And it was so funny, and so beautiful, that it just made me smile. And then I thought of all the texts I got from my friends who found out about my dad, and that was peaceful. And then I just thought about holding his hand before they took him

• 19:01Speaker 01

  away. And I went to sleep, because I'm mastering my mind, and not being a victim of the situation. It didn't mean I didn't grieve. I still grieve. I still miss him. But it's these habits, like every day, to direct my mind to help me while taking care of my brain.

• 19:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love those practical tools, because in effect, what we're trying to do is change our thought pattern, right? We have a pattern, as you said, to wake up and say, I'm tired. And we put it on snooze and then we get up and then we're having breakfast and we're like, I'm still tired. And then we get to lunchtime and we're like, looking at the clock and we're like, I'm still tired. And then by the end of the night, I'm still tired, but then we're up at midnight watching Netflix or whatever it may be, saying, I'm still tired. And then that becomes our reality that we just continue to feed that fatigue and we're just more and more and more tired. Whereas when you nudge your brain in a different direction, as you said, and you said, today's gonna be a great day, you now start making great choices because you want it to be a great day.

• 20:08Jay Shetty?

  But what I love about what you've defined, and this is different and I appreciate it, is that you don't talk about positive thinking, you talk about accurate thinking as being a healthier way to live. And I really like that clarification because I think the positive thinking approach can also be quite toxic. Like you just said about your father, it's not that you didn't feel grief, it's not that you don't miss him, like of course, those are very real human emotions, but you know how to direct them. Can you clarify for our audience today, what is the difference between accurate thinking and positive thinking?

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Well, positive thinking is I can have this third beer and it won't negatively impact me. Or I can drive at 125 miles down the freeway in the rain and it won't hurt me. Positive thinking is I can stay up and be on my phone until 2:00 in the morning and it won't have a negative impact. They did this great study out of Stanford, Lewis Terman, 1921, evaluated 1,453 10-year-old children, and then they followed them for 90 years, looking at what goes with success, health and longevity. And the don't worry, be happy people,

• 21:26Speaker 01

  actually, in the beginning of the book, I talk about the lies of happiness. And this is one of the lies, don't worry, be happy. They died the earliest from accidents and preventable illnesses. I have an older brother and I adore him, but he's like 150 pounds overweight. I always sort of wanted to be like him because I'm intense and I work hard and I've always got projects. And he's like off at 3 o'clock playing golf and, you know, he just seemed to not have a care in the world, but...

• 22:02Speaker 01

  My health is so much better than his because I worry about it. And so you want to have the right dose of anxiety. People with low levels of anxiety go to jail because they don't like think, oh, if I do this, this bad thing could happen. But obviously, too much makes you suffer. And I love the verse in the New Testament, John 8:32, "Know the truth, and the truth will set you free." And I want to live my life in truth. So I want to tell myself always, so what's the truth? So if I think Tana never listens to me, I'm like, well, is that true? Right?

• 22:46Speaker 01

  It's another little habit, right? To always carry around those three words. I don't have any tattoos, but if I did, is it true? Would be one of the tattoos because I don't want to believe everything I think. And that's very important. Your mind creates trouble.

• 23:06Jay Shetty?

  With MasterClass, you can learn from the world's best minds anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. You can learn how to act from Samuel L. Jackson, improve your singing skills from Christina Aguilera, or learn disruptive entrepreneurship from Richard Branson. With over 150 classes from a range of world-class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do is closer than you think. Each class is broken out into individual video lessons, usually around 10 minutes long. You can explore at your own pace, and each class is supported by downloadable materials, class guides, recipes, or more.

• 23:47Jay Shetty?

  MasterClass is available on iOS, Android, Desktop, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, and Roku. Lessons range from specifically showing you how to execute a technique to an instructor's insights about their craft that can be translated across many fields and disciplines. I've been really enjoying Esther Perel's class on relational intelligence with lessons on the power and art of connecting to others. Esther was a past guest on the podcast and her class has been a great way to learn specific techniques to deepening relationships. And I love that all of the lessons are around 15 minutes long and how their audio listening feature lets me listen on the go like a podcast. I highly recommend you check it out. Get

• 24:31Jay Shetty?

  unlimited access to every class and as an on purpose with J. Sherry listener, you get 15% off an annual membership. Go to masterclass.com/ onpurposenow. That's masterclass.com/ onpurpose for 15% off MasterClass.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  You know, thoughts, they come from all sorts of places. They come from your ancestors. They're actually written into your genetic code. I don't know if you ever read the book, It Didn't Start With You.

• 25:02Jay Shetty?

  Yes, of course.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Amazing. I love that book. And trauma and successes actually get written in our genetic code. And our thoughts come from the voices of our moms, our dads, our siblings, our friends, foes, the news you listen to, which by the way is no longer the news anymore. Let's just be really clear, they bastardize that industry and it's about tribalism and money. And it's not about news. I start every day with the Good News Network. It's just a cool app. I have no financial interest in it. I just love it. I'm always smiling, you know, sending

• 25:47Speaker 01

  articles to my kids. And the music you listen to. I actually did a study on rap, country, rock, and classical music and heavy metal. We did a memory task with high school students and heavy metal was the worst. Classical was the best. The second best was country, which shocked us.

• 26:11Jay Shetty?

  Where did rap fall in the?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Right behind heavy metal.

• 26:17Jay Shetty?

  Oh, wow. Wow. Because that's like one of the biggest forms of music today is rap and hip hop.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  And music so influences how we feel. And so you want to be careful with the inputs because you might not think they matter, but your subconscious mind's listening.

• 26:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's why I want to ask you, this is really interesting to me because, so I've been listening to jazz in the car now. Jazz is my new, jazz is my new, I usually don't listen to anything. I usually just talk to myself when I drive. That's been like my habit for years is I see driving as a moment of spending more time with myself. So I generally drive to nothing, but when me and my wife are in the car together, we both like music and recently we've been listening to jazz music together. But what I find really interesting about what you just said is that there's a difference between what feels good and what is good for you. So someone may say, I feel good when I eat junk food,

• 27:21Jay Shetty?

  when I listen to music that isn't good for my brain and when I drink. But when I miss out on that meal, I don't feel good. When I choose classical music, I don't feel good. And when I choose to eat healthy and maybe don't drink as much, I don't feel good. And so what I'm fascinated by is our relationship with feeling a certain way versus being a certain way. So when I started to have to remove refined sugar from my diet, which my wife encouraged me to do, I didn't feel good about that. Like that was painful. I didn't enjoy that feeling in my mind, right? Or when I started to go to the gym every day or hike, where I hike outside here every day now.

• 28:06Jay Shetty?

  And when I'm working out, I don't feel good about it, but it's good for me. So I started to discover that the things that are actually good for me don't always feel good. So how do you approach the idea of feeling a certain way? Because I feel like everything that I do that's good for me, I didn't feel good about when I started doing it. Now I choose it because now there's.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Because you're getting the benefit.

• 28:29Jay Shetty?

  Correct, the benefits. I'm also feeling the pattern shift. Now if I, so I still get a craving for junk food. I still have that craving sometimes. And maybe once a month now, I'll be like, all right, I'm gonna have a burger. Like, I'm gonna eat, you know, like a burger and fries and whatever. And now I don't like the taste of it. Like, after, I feel really regretful. And I'm like, I didn't even like that. I need to remember that, that now I've changed my tastes. So now it's changed. So tell, talk to me a bit about that. Like, why do we always wanna feel happy and feel good? But we don't often make the right decisions.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Secret number four is love food that loves you back. And you're in a relationship. I want you to love what you eat. But I also want it to love you. And so if you're in love with alcohol, and alcohol is clearly toxic to your brain for so many reasons, brain and your body, then it's sort of like you're in an abusive relationship. And, you know, I just want people to think about, what do you really want? Do you want that mountain of fries? Or that swimming pool of alcohol?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Or do you want energy? Do you want clarity? Do you want memory? Do you want vitality? Do you want creativity? And ultimately, what, what I want is I wanna feel good. And I wanna be good. And I wanna do good. And that comes from a brain and body that work right. So I don't wanna feel good now, but not later. Right? That's a four-year-old's mindset. I wanna feel good now and later. So the things I do, day in and day out, I love. Now, it just, it takes a while sometimes to change your habits.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  The brain is lazy. It just wants to do what you've allowed it to do. So what you said is just so beautiful. It's like, well, I still get the cravings and I'll give in. And then I'll go, why did I do that?

• 30:45Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's how I genuinely feel right now.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Cause then I just don't, I just don't feel awesome. So for that momentary pleasure, it's like, well, is it worth it?

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Does it fit? So another tattoo I'm going to get someday. Does it fit? So I recommend, and this is actually part of secret seven, live each day based on clearly defined values, purpose and goals. And quite frankly, hedonism, it's not on my goal list. It's, it's not in my value list and hedonism. So giving in to every craving I have is the enemy of happiness. Because it ends up wearing out your dopamine or pleasure centers in your brain. And I always talk about you want to drip dopamine.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Don't dump it because when you dump it with the fries and the alcohol, the porn, you don't have much left. And so then you have to go back and do it again. And all of a sudden chemicals are controlling you rather than you are controlling you.

• 32:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast.

• 32:43Jay Shetty?

  That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Amtrak. You know that feeling when you're already tired and you haven't even gotten there yet? That's where Amtrak comes in. Leave the driving behind and settle into a comfortable seat with plenty of room to stretch out. Catch up on work with wifi, grab a snack at the cafe car, or just sit back and enjoy your favorite podcast. Choose a seller or Northeast Regional and get there without the stress of getting there. Visit amtrak.com to plan your next trip.

• 33:22Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe. Listing items is a quick and simple process and once something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And the best part, there are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn. It's a simple way to clear out your closet, be less wasteful, and maybe make some extra money along the way. Give your clothes a second life with Vinted.

• 34:02Jay Shetty?

  Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. The dopamine gets so addictive. And as you said, with the pleasure centers, now we're having to, the same amount of what we had doesn't even fulfill the amount of pleasure. So we have to have more to hit the same amount of pleasure, as far as I understand. Is that correct?

• 34:24Speaker 01

  It's absolutely true. And fame wears out the pleasure centers in your brain. And I've been blessed. I mean, I'm friends with you, with Justin and Miley. And, you know, we talk about this over and over again, how fame is just such a trap. Because, you know, once, you know, like I had a video go viral and it was like 40 million views. And I'm like, oh, it's so exciting. And so when the next one gets eight million views, you're like, well, that sucked. And you realize just, you know, how stupid that is.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  You have to be very careful and you want to drip dopamine.

• 35:10Jay Shetty?

  How do you drip dopamine? How does someone do that? Let's say someone who's not getting 40 million views or eight million views, but they're posting on social media, they're eating a burger, they're having that glass of, you know, alcohol every night, whatever it may be like. How does someone learn to, I love that idea. I'm thinking, how does someone practically drip dopamine? Cause that's really-

• 35:29Speaker 01

  It's the micro moments of happiness. So for me, I mean, it's like holding Hannah's hand and then, but noticing-

• 35:38Speaker 01

  And feeling her skin and feeling the warmth, the softness. It's, it's like being present, being connected or seeing the hummingbird. Watching the sunrise or the sunset, depending on where you live. It's being present, noticing what you like way more than what you don't like. Plus sunlight drips dopamine, pumpkin seeds drip dopamine. Omega three fatty acids, I just gave you a present of our vegan omega three. Cause I know you're vegan and people have been wanting it for so long. But all the vegan omega threes, they don't have EPA in them.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  So omega threes, there's EPA and DHA, they're almost all DHA. But EPA is critical for mood, for focus, for circulation. And it's the first product on the market that I know of. That is just loaded with the right balance of omega threes.

• 36:43Jay Shetty?

  And what is the difference between EPA and DHA?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Um, they work on different systems in the body. Both of them are absolutely essential and they're essential, which means you've got to get them from an outside source. Your body doesn't make them. And people who are vegan, it's really hard to get healthy EPA and DHA levels from flax seeds and avocados, for example.

• 37:12Jay Shetty?

  No, I can't wait to start taking them. I'm really excited. What, what am I gonna notice? What's gonna be like?

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Well, your skin's already good, but your skin, your hair, your nails, that's the things people notice. But their mood is better. Brand new study out just today. Omega three fatty acids help decrease the incidence of depression. Also helps with focus and helps with memory. It's just critical because they make up the fats in 25% of nerve cell membranes in your brain. I mean, that's hugely important.

• 37:44Jay Shetty?

  The reason why I find this so fascinating is I think so many of us are trying to solve a mental challenge when actually it's a physical brain tangible challenge. Right? Like I, I'll meet a lot of people who are saying, I don't feel focused. I feel cloudy. I feel no energy. I feel lethargic. What do I do to get motivated? And it's like, well, no, no, no, the motivation's not the issue. It's like you're dealing with a lot of other stuff physically, tangibly, that could be solved. And then with good values, good purpose, good goals, you can actually go in the right direction. But just having a good set of goals and targets and values is not going to solve the fact that your body is crying out for attention.

• 38:28Jay Shetty?

  And I think I was definitely in that space for a long time in my life where I like had such a strong mind that I didn't realize how much I was weakening my brain. And actually, if I strengthened my brain, my mind was even stronger, my body was even better. And, you know, it was all interconnected. And so for anyone who's who's listening to this, I want you to remember that if you've got an energy issue, a fatigue issue, a focus issue, like this is the podcast for you. Like this is what I want you to listen to because chances are it's because you're missing out on some of this stuff, like there's there's a part of your diet or something that's not going into your body.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Well, and if you think of it like hardware and software.

• 39:09Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  That setting goals, which is so important and not believing every stupid thing you think, which we'll talk about is so important, but those are software programs and you got to have the hardware that will run it. Plus, I hate the term mental illness and you and I've talked about that before. It's it's not mental, it's brain. And when you call someone mental, you shame them. When you call them a brain, you elevate them. So we need to change the discussion. And mental illness is in, right? Everybody's talking about their mental illness and but it's the wrong discussion. The discussion is about brain health.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  And yes, you have to program it. But what's happening in our society now, it's one of the reasons I wrote the book. We're the unhappiest we've been since the Great Depression. That depression tripled from February of 2020 to August of 2020. Unbelievable, never seen anything like that. And children, suicide skyrocketed, depression, anxiety, drug abuse skyrocketed in children. And it's like. The pharmaceutical industry is winning? That the incidence of antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications like Xanax went up 20% in teenagers?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  That is a nightmare because it's the wrong solution. And I'm not opposed to medicines. It's never the first thing I think about. It's like, let's get your brain and your habits right. And then we'll see what you need. And more than half the people taking medicine really don't need it. Last year, 337 million prescriptions for antidepressants in the United States. That's insane.

• 41:07Jay Shetty?

  I mean, yeah, it's alarming. I think we've all experienced it in little micro doses of our family, our friends, the news. But then when you hear it as a collective, it's super painful. I mean, how does a society that's going through so much pain? How do we collectively heal? Because that's like, we're all, we're further behind because of the pandemic. It's like, it was already tough. Now we're really dealing with it. If someone's dealing with a friend or family member or someone in their life who's going through that, it can feel overwhelming for anyone. Like, not everyone's a trained psychiatrist, not everyone's trained as a therapist to be able to support that kind of individual. Where would you suggest someone starts if someone in their life is really spiraling or struggling?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Well, I would start by following me on TikTok or Instagram or YouHappier or The End of Mental Illness. There is, this is a completely new way to think. And I dedicated my book, The End of Mental Illness, to my nieces. And right at the beginning of the pandemic, we adopted them because their mom and dad couldn't stop using drugs. And I am so proud of them because of how well they're doing by just getting the right supervision, the right love, the right food.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  And the right habits. Now, they grew up in trauma. Do you know that ACE test, adverse childhood experiences? No, I don't. Oh, we should talk about it. Yeah, please. It's a test, and originally done by the CDC and Kaiser. And it's 10 questions on did you experience early childhood trauma? So, things like physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, parents who divorced, parents who were addicted, incarcerated. You watched one of your parents being beaten in domestic violence. Okay, so 10 of these questions. So, how do you score? Do you score zero, like you had no trauma? I score one. My wife is an eight.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Because she grew up in trauma. And she wrote about it in her book, The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child. The nieces we adopted, it's a nine. If you score four or more, you have an increased risk of seven of the top 10 leading causes of death. If you score six or more, you have a 1,200% increased risk of killing yourself. You have a higher risk of depression, addiction, virtually every bad health thing. And our daughter is a one. So, eight to one. That's the goal, right? How do you take your trauma, heal it,

• 43:57Speaker 01

  and not give it to the next generation? And when I met Tana, I dearly loved her. I mean, she's beautiful, she's smart, she's awesome. But when I learned about the trauma, I gave her 10 sessions of EMDR. It's a specific psychological treatment for trauma. It stands for eye movement, desensitization, and reprocessing. She ended up going for a year, because there are a lot of stuff to work out. But changed the trajectory of her life. She's like my best friend. We like never fight, we get along, we have the same goals. We don't live out of the past. We live out of the present and what we want for the future.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And so many people live...

• 44:46Speaker 01

  With trauma and they're living being controlled by the traumatized eight year old in their lives when they don't have to be. And so part of being happy is dissipating the traumas from the past.

• 45:04Jay Shetty?

  Where can people do that test? That sounds fascinating.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  So they can go online and just search for adverse childhood experiences. NPR has a free version of it online and you pretty much know, once you take it.

• 45:20Jay Shetty?

  How long does it take to do just?

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Like three minutes.

• 45:23Jay Shetty?

  Oh, wow. It's very short.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  It's just 10 questions.

• 45:26Jay Shetty?

  Oh, wow.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  And it's basically yes or no.

• 45:28Jay Shetty?

  Got it, got it.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  But you know, if you're for more getting help and EMDR is so cool.

• 45:38Jay Shetty?

  I want to hear more about it from your perspective. I'm so glad you raised it because I was like, I've, I've had a few clients I'm coaching right now and they've been working with someone else in the EMDR space. Obviously that's not my expertise, but I, yeah, I wanted to get your thoughts on it. Like, explain for anyone who doesn't know, what is EMDR? Not the name, but like, what is it as a practice?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  So what you do, it's, it's actually an eight step practice is you take a good history and you're looking for like, what are the top 10 traumas you've had in your life?

• 46:09Jay Shetty?

  And you do this with a?

• 46:10Speaker 01

  You do it with a therapist, with somebody who's trained and certified in it. Then you begin to target, so what's the worst one? And what's the negative belief with that? And what's the positive belief that you would rather believe? And where do you feel it in your body? And so you hold that image and then imagine just being on a train.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  And we get your eyes to go back and forth. Or sometimes they'll do alternate tapping on your knees. Or there's a thing called the butterfly hug to do alternately. While you bring that up and while you're on the train, you just sort of see where it goes. And it'll often go to the early traumas, heighten them. But then with the eye movements, it helps the brain integrate it from an adult perspective rather than living as a four-year-old's perspective. And it takes the distress from like an eight or nine out of 10 to zero. And it's so cool.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  And it's one of the fastest therapies. Because a lot of times people go to a therapist and they'll talk about the trauma and they just feel worse.

• 47:30Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Because what they've done is they've brought it up. They've like, say subconscious, let's pay attention to these awful things you've been trying to forget. But it's the integration. And I did a study that we published in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, a great journal, on eight police officers who were involved in shootings. And they couldn't go back to work because they were traumatized. Because, you know, whatever you think about the police, I work with a lot of police officers. Most of them are just kind, caring, service-oriented people. And they don't want to hurt anybody. And so they were devastated, couldn't go back to work. I scanned them and in their brain,

• 48:15Speaker 01

  there's a pattern for trauma, where their emotional brain was working too hard. And after an average of eight sessions, their brain had calmed down and they all went back to work.

• 48:28Jay Shetty?

  With EMDR?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  With EMDR.

• 48:30Jay Shetty?

  Wow. And so, and with EMDR, there's, you're not under anything, there's no substance, it's just?

• 48:37Speaker 01

  No, in fact, just sitting down, talking to you, I began, I made this connection. Because what psychedelics do, and people asking me about that all the time now, and I'm not a fan of it.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Because I think it's risky, and I get to see the fallout of people doing it that have bad trips. What psychedelics do is they begin to fill in some of the holes in the ruts in your brain. Like, you know, if you've been traumatized, and I'm bad, I'm bad, I'm bad, or it's my fault, it's my fault, my fault. It can help dissipate that for some people. But there are side effects with EMDR, there's no side effects. And you come out of it freer. So my first experience with EMDR, so what I do in my profession is, you know, I've often said I've been bleeding on the cutting edge. Because psychiatrists don't look at the brain, which is completely insane.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  But when I started doing that 30 years ago, my colleagues like hated me. It's like, no, you shouldn't do that, that's not what we do. We make diagnoses based on symptom clusters. We don't need to know about the brain, which I'm like, you people are insane. But I got investigated by the medical board in California for like a year. It was the worst year of my life, and I had an EMDR therapist working for me in my office. And one day I went into Dr. Lendell, and I'm like, I am not okay. Do this thing on me. And after an hour, I left her office and I didn't care. I'm like, it'll, whatever will happen, will happen.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  You know, I love to say, my friend Byron Katie says, argue with reality, welcome to hell. And my anxiety just went away. And ultimately, they dismissed any complaint against me. And I've obviously been doing this a long time. But I just saw how powerful it was. I didn't have to stay attached to the pain.

• 50:38Jay Shetty?

  Hmm. I, I mean, I'm fascinated to try it myself now and, and like, I think that's the only way to know. And I, but it's great to hear that. Again, I, I, just to clarify, I think what you're saying is that this is a great practice. It helps you move along and then all the habits still have to be in place because do you feel like people doing it? Yeah, right. It's like others, you can just go back and like.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Well, like dancing is a great brain exercise, but if you drink while you dance, you're completely messing up the benefit.

• 51:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, that's great.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Or ping table tennis, brand new study out today. I was so excited that racket sports, people who play racket sports live longer than everybody else, 16% longer, longer than runners, longer than anybody else.

• 51:24Jay Shetty?

  I love that because I play ping pong, tennis and pickleball. So I'm like.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Beer pong is not going to help.

• 51:30Jay Shetty?

  You know, I don't drink, so yeah. But no, I literally play, I play all three of those. I'm getting a ping pong table. I play tennis and I start playing pickleball. And it's like, it's so much fun. It's easy. You only need one other person, easy to do.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  And it's good for you.

• 51:43Jay Shetty?

  And it's fun and you don't have to be that good at it.

• 51:45Speaker 01

  Love it. And it loves you back.

• 51:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  So you just have to find what are those habits? What are those activities I love that love me?

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most accurate heart rate sensing in wearable. So your vitals app now with heart rate variability can tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. The features described are for wellness purposes only and not for medical use. iPhone 11 or later required. Based on Apple conducted study of heart rate accuracy, August 2026. Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12.

• 52:25Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. One of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves is the chance to step outside of our routine. Travel is a way of slowing us down and shifting our perspective. And with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, every journey becomes even more rewarding. Earn four times the points on flights and hotels booked direct. Enjoy access to award-winning airport lounges, three times the points on dining and reserve-exclusive tables. Learn more at chase.com/sapphirereserve. Cards issued by JP Morgan Chase Bank, N A Member FDIC. Subject to credit approval, terms apply. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair.

• 53:09Jay Shetty?

  Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are. But it can be challenging to balance style, budget and endless options. I was looking to create a dedicated calm space for my morning meditation and reading, but I was struggling to find pieces that felt grounding but could also stand up to daily use. I went on Wayfair and found a beautiful, solid wood accent chair and a bookshelf. Now that corner is my favorite place to anchor my day. The quality is incredible, it's built to last, and it completely shifted the energy of the room. Plus, you can shop with Wayfair Verified, where product specialists carefully vet items for quality and functionality, so you can shop with more confidence.

• 53:49Jay Shetty?

  And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Yeah, that's fantastic. I want to let everyone know, if you don't have You Happier already, which is the book that we're talking from, make sure you grab a copy because we're, you know, literally touching the surface, but the lies of happiness are fantastic. There are 11 lies in here that we're told. We've talked about a lot of them today, having more and having more of something like love, sex, fame, drugs.

• 54:35Jay Shetty?

  Be happy. We talked about that positivity mindset. We talked about advertisers and fast food. We talked about needing, you know, technology. We talked about, and we'll talk a bit more about that, too. We talked about constantly being in the news, constantly being aware of the news. We talked about alcohol, marijuana. We've touched on a lot of those lies, but I really want you to dive into it because I think those lies are what's governing our pursuits. But focusing on the seven secrets of happiness to talk about that no one else is talking about. You said the brain needs targeted nutrients every day to boost happiness. What are some of those targeted nutrients? Because you also gave me, along with the vegan omegas, you also gave me theanine.

• 55:17Jay Shetty?

  Could you tell us a bit about why that's so awesome for calm, clarity and focus?

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Well, especially if you tend to be anxious.

• 55:24Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Theanine from green tea helps you focus and calm you at the same time. And yes, green tea does have a little bit of caffeine. But why green tea is better than coffee is the theanine helps calm down the effects of the caffeine. And but theanine by itself is just magical for so many of my patients. And those gummies, they taste great and they have no sugar, right? Because sugar for me would be a brand violation and we don't do brand violations.

• 56:00Jay Shetty?

  Where does theanine come from? What is it?

• 56:02Speaker 01

  From green tea.

• 56:03Jay Shetty?

  Okay, it comes, oh, that's where it comes from, right?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's one of the active ingredients in green tea. Green tea catechins are another great substance for your brain. My favorite of all of them, we talked about omega threes, but my favorite is saffron. And I've been following the science of saffron for over 20 years. Because over 20 years ago, a study came out showing it was equally effective to Prozac. And I'm like, whoa. Um, and there's folklore in India. India, yeah. My mom is gonna love this moment of this podcast. She tells me saffron all the time.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  That if you're too happy, you must have had saffron. So now there are 24 randomized controlled trials, head to head against antidepressants, showing that it's equally effective to boost your mood. But as opposed to antidepressants, which can decrease sexual function, saffron increases sexual function, increases pleasure, increases responsiveness, even in some studies, um, sperm motility. Saffron has been shown to enhance memory. And I'm like, memory, mood, and sex. And at the beginning of the pandemic, right when my dad was sick, I'm like, I make

• 57:30Speaker 01

  something called Happy Saffron with saffron zinc and curcumin. I've taken it every day since. And I just think it's just a nice thing to help keep people balanced. But then the supplements in large part depend on your brain types. That's secret number two, is what makes some people happy, makes other people miserable. And a one size fits all with happiness is just not reality. Some people need novelty and they love surprises, where it's type two, there's five primary types, that's our spontaneous type. But type

• 58:11Speaker 01

  three, the persistent type, they hate surprises and love routine. And so know your type and the type of your spouse and children. And then ask yourself every day, am I doing something that makes me? Uniquely happy.

• 58:30Jay Shetty?

  And this book's gonna help people figure out their type. You have the types in the book. So we have the balanced brain type, the spontaneous brain type, the persistent brain type, sensitive brain type, and the cautious brain type. And the book helps you diagnose and figure out which brain type you have. So you can do this with your friends, your family, your partner, your kids. And that's gonna help you understand what they need more of or what they're missing.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  In fact, my nieces, they had friends over and they were in the spa at home. And they were taking the ACE quizzes with their friends and knowing each other's brain type. It was such a great discussion.

• 59:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I love that. How do you people, as in, walk us through some of the process you created to help people figure out their brain type?

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Well, you know, based on my imaging work, I'm like, I was looking initially for the one type of, you know, where's depression in the brain? And then I realized, oh, there's not one type of depression. There's seven. Where's ADD in the brain? There's not one type of ADD. There's seven. That's why Ritalin's controversial. For some people, it's a miracle. For other people, it's a nightmare. And it depends on how your brain works. And then I realized I was seeing patterns of personality. Like if your frontal lobes work too hard, you tend to be worried and rigid. And if things don't go your way, you're upset.

• 59:53Speaker 01

  And I have, of my five girls, two of them have this pattern. And I know, no matter what I say to them, they're gonna dismiss it. It's gonna bounce off. It's like they wear Teflon. And so if I were like shopping, I love shopping with my girls, and I go, oh, do you like this? The answer will be immediately no. So for them, I know their type, and I wait for them to show me stuff. And if I want them to do something, I'll actually ask them the opposite of what I want them to do. Because they're just, you know, these people. They're just sort of naturally oppositional. And if I want them to go to the store with me, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to the store.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  You probably don't wanna go with me. It's like, what do you mean I don't wanna go with you? We don't spend any time together.

• 1:00:45Jay Shetty?

  That approach of personalization and individualization is just so needed, especially in healthcare. Because like you're saying, you can, and that's what me and my wife see that in us. Like, our diets are completely different for us to be at optimal level. And our workouts are completely different. Like, my wife is a high-intensity workout person. I'm a low-intensity workout person. I just don't enjoy high intensity. It doesn't work for me. I feel more inflamed. I feel, you know, more heated in my body. I don't need that. I'm pretty, you know, active heat as it is. And then my wife really enjoys it. It's really great for her body. She feels great from it. And so I just think it's so fascinating that we keep trying to take like, whatever works for everyone must work for me. And we get this trend or this fad.

• 1:01:28Jay Shetty?

  And I think this diagnosis of your brain type, though, I think this is the best thing that you possibly could have done for us.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  The persistent people, they need carbs. If you put them on a ketogenic diet, they get depressed and they get angry. I was on Rachael Ray's show and she was the persistent brain type. And on national TV, we're talking about this. And she said, I went on a low-carb diet and I was so mean. I wondered why my husband didn't lead me. Because the persistent brain type needs serotonin. And if you think about a higher protein, lower simple carbohydrate diet, it's a dopamine diet. It helps you focus. But if you give it to the persistent type, they focus more on the things that make them unhappy

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  and make other people unhappy. So the wrong diet can cause divorce. And so you have to like target it to the person. But it's also why people get addicted to sugar. Because sugar is a simple carbohydrate and sugar raises serotonin and it makes you happy. Have you ever wondered when you go to a restaurant, why they immediately give you bread and alcohol? Because both of them drop your frontal lobe. So the bread, simple carbohydrate. Raises your blood sugar and your pancreas sees it and produces insulin. Insulin drives tryptophan into your brain.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  Tryptophan makes serotonin and you feel pretty happy, which is why people get addicted to pastries and bread and pizza and donuts. And then they give you alcohol because it drops your frontal lobes. So if they give you free bread and offer you alcohol, they're going to make more money because you're going to order things you said before you walked into the restaurant you weren't going to order, including dessert.

• 1:03:22Jay Shetty?

  That is so true, and I love it when they give me bread. It's like my favorite, but it's not anymore. But that's like my favorite thing that I love it when I walk into a restaurant, I'm like, do you have a bread basket? Like, you know, it's such a, it's such a habit, right? It's all habits. What, I find that happiness is such an interesting goal. That's what I meant by like, we want to feel happy, but the things that you have to do to feel happy are not necessarily the things you want to do.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Initially.

• 1:03:51Jay Shetty?

  Initially, that's what I'm saying. Initially, until it switches.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  Until it switches. And oh, by the way, and I start the book with this, happiness is a moral obligation. Because, you know, people are like, oh, you're writing a book on happiness. That's fluff. Can't you do something more serious? And I'm like, but it's a moral obligation. Why? Because of how you affect other people. I guarantee you, if you ask someone who was raised by an unhappy parent or married to an unhappy spouse or raising an unhappy child, whether or not happiness is an ethical issue. So this is important for us to seek happiness in the context of health.

• 1:04:35Jay Shetty?

  Unbelievable. Everyone, that is Dr. Daniel Amen, speaking about you happier. This is the book. I genuinely, genuinely recommend this book. I think, you know, there's certain books that will just transform how you think about your brain. I know that working with Dr. Daniel Amen has been really powerful for my brain. So many of the habits that have developed consciously or subconsciously have happened through our conversations. I mean, when you told me about. Racket sports, that's what led me to start playing tennis. And then I started playing pickleball and then I picked, I'm getting a ping pong table. And it was just, there were these really tiny things that we've exchanged in our conversations that have made huge differences in my life. And so today, when you told me I look great, I was like, yeah, thanks to you, Dr. Daniel Lehman. This is because of you.

• 1:05:18Jay Shetty?

  But I want you to go and grab this book, The Seven Neuroscience Secrets of Feeling Good, based on your brain type. The book's called You Happier. Dr. Daniel Lehman, you're no, this will be no surprise to you. We end every interview with a fast five, which is our final five every time that we do this. So you have to figure out new answers every time you come on. But these are your fast five. So the first question is, what is the best brain advice you've ever heard, received or given?

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Every day, ask yourself this question. Is this good for my brain or bad for it? It's so simple. It's the mother tiny habit to have a great brain for the rest of your life.

• 1:06:00Jay Shetty?

  Okay. Second question, what is the worst brain habit advice you've ever received? So what is the worst brain advice or you've ever received?

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Everything in moderation, which is the gateway thought to hell. It's the gateway thought to cheating. As soon as you hear someone say, everything in moderation, they're going to do something bad for their brain.

• 1:06:22Jay Shetty?

  Wow, explain, let's, let's dive into that a little bit because I feel like that's such a common misconception that people have, oh, I need to have a balanced life and a balanced diet, right?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but balance for them, when they're saying moderation means sugar, or it means alcohol, or it means marijuana, or it means fast food. It, it means comfort. It's their excuse. It's, it's one of the little lies people tell themselves that keep them fat, depressed and feeble minded.

• 1:06:53Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, let's, let's do, I actually want to take a little segue. Let's talk a bit about marijuana because I think that that's become so popular. I did it a bit as a kid. I messed around with it in my teens. I never really got into it. You did my brain scan, there's no, there's no signs of it because I was never too deep into it. And obviously, since I lived as a monk, I don't, I don't mess around with anything. So I haven't, you know, I haven't drank alcohol for. Sixteen years or something like that and like no marijuana for sixteen years. Um, but what is marijuana doing? Cause I feel like so many people do feel like they need it or like it's benefiting their life or it's become so normal now. Like what are the, what are the issues?

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Well, they need it because it changes their brain to need it in order to feel normal.

• 1:07:40Jay Shetty?

  What is it doing in a way to make people feel like it's helpful?

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  It's calming things down.

• 1:07:45Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  In the brain. So I published a study on a thousand marijuana users. Every area of their brain is lower in activity. And then I published the world's largest imaging study on sixty-two thousand four hundred and fifty-four scans, looking at how the brain ages. And I looked at, well, what accelerated aging and marijuana was the second worst thing to accelerate aging. The worst thing was having schizophrenia. But the second worst thing, it surprised me, quite frankly. It was worse than alcohol, worse than marijuana. It dulls, slows down nerve cell firing. So if you have a busy brain and you're anxious, you feel like it's helpful.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  But it's also been shown to damage some of the structure of neurons. And kids who smoke or use have an increased incidence of anxiety, depression, and suicide in their twenties. Kids who use have a four hundred and fifty percent increased risk of developing psychosis. And people have been, I've been a psychiatrist forty years. We've all seen cases like that. There are cases now because marijuana is so much more potent than it was when I was growing up that there's a word called squamitting, which is screaming and vomiting at the same time.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  That if you're in an emergency room, people like go, oh, this person's poisoned with marijuana. Not to mention the seventeen hundred percent increase in babies being born with marijuana and the trouble that that causes. It's like people go to that before they learn diaphragmatic breathing, before they learn meditation, before they learn self-hypnosis, before they go for EMDR to deal with their traumas. And that's just not right. Like, let's do the non-toxic things first, rather than, you know, and that's my problem with psychedelics.

• 1:09:54Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, maybe at some point, if you have severe PTSD that's not responding to anything, that could be helpful, but have you done the basics first?

• 1:10:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, and the challenge I find that most people say is that non-toxic things are slow. You have to learn something, right? It's not immediate, like meditation, for example, or actually not meditation. Let's take, uh, what was the first thing you said? You said, um?

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Diaphragmatic breathing.

• 1:10:19Jay Shetty?

  Diaphragmatic breathing, yeah.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  So I can get you to break a panic attack in two minutes.

• 1:10:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  If I just get you to breathe.

• 1:10:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Four seconds in, hold it for a second, eight seconds out, hold it for a second. Do that for three minutes. You're gonna feel so much better, so much calmer. This isn't hard.

• 1:10:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:40Speaker 01

  But it's not taught, and so people don't know.

• 1:10:44Jay Shetty?

  No, yeah.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  And then they're like, so where's my dealer?

• 1:10:47Jay Shetty?

  That's the hard part. That's the hard part. We're not taught, and then we go for the quick fix. And then we get addicted to the quick fix, because it's a quick fix, and then that becomes our reality, and that's...

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Right, but there are other quick fixes that are quick.

• 1:10:59Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  If we just are taught.

• 1:11:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Um, like, you know, one of my favorite things is killing the ants, the automatic negative thoughts. Whenever you feel sad, mad, nervous, or out of, write down what you're thinking. Just write it down and then go, is it true? And then write the opposite. Tana never listens to me. Tana does listen to me. And then go, is that true? And you'll often find the opposite of the thought that's torturing you is true.

• 1:11:30Jay Shetty?

  Is also true.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  That just like blows your mind when, when you...

• 1:11:33Jay Shetty?

  I do that all the time with my wife. I feel the same way. Doing it with your spouse is very helpful. When I'm like, oh, Radhi doesn't care about me. And then, yeah, I ask myself, Radhi does care about me. Oh, I can find lots of reasons. Yeah, it's, it's beautiful.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  And then you don't have to believe.

• 1:11:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  The negativity, because where you look determines how you feel. If you find the negative, you're gonna feel negative, and if you find the beautiful, you're gonna feel beautiful.

• 1:12:00Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. All right. Question number three. This was, that was a great tangent. I'm glad we did that. Uh, question number three, uh, what is your current purpose? How do you define it?

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  My current purpose is to change how psychiatric medicine is practiced, to take it out of the dark ages, to end the whole concept of mental illness and create a revolution in brain health.

• 1:12:26Jay Shetty?

  I love that. What a great purpose. We're here to support.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  We have a big gala. I'm so excited.

• 1:12:32Jay Shetty?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  December 7th at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the end of mental illness. We're gonna be.

• 1:12:40Jay Shetty?

  What's the goal of that? What's the, what's the purpose you did in that event?

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  So the purpose of the event is to really raise money for the foundation, for research, to end the whole concept of mental illness, for education. We actually have a new preschool course to teach kids to love their brain called Brain Thrive by Five, and service to raise money, especially for first responders, because, you know, they got hurt really bad in the pandemic, so that they can get this new brain health way. We're so excited. Carrie Anna Naba is gonna be the emcee of the event.

• 1:13:17Jay Shetty?

  Amazing.

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  Miley Cyrus says she's gonna come, so we're excited.

• 1:13:20Jay Shetty?

  Awesome. Congrats. Very excited for that. I've got two more questions for you, then I'll let you, there you go. All right. Question number four is, and is that something everyone can come to, by the way?

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:30Jay Shetty?

  It's a public event.

• 1:13:31Speaker 01

  We're gonna start advertising it soon.

• 1:13:34Jay Shetty?

  Perfect. December 7th.

• 1:13:36Speaker 01

  December 7th.

• 1:13:36Jay Shetty?

  This year, 2022, Beverly Hilton Hotel. It's a public event that people can buy tickets to come to, to support the cause that you just mentioned.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:13:44Jay Shetty?

  Amazing. Love that. We'll put the details in the notes as well, so everyone has them. Question number four, what's something you wish you knew about the brain earlier in your own life?

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  So 1991, I'm 37, and I'm a double board certified psychiatrist. I was the top neuroscience student in medical school. And I don't care about my brain at all. And I was overweight and I was only sleeping four hours a night. I was chronically stressed and I scanned my brain because I just started scanning. So I scanned everybody I knew. I scanned my 60 year old mother. She had a gorgeous brain and when I scanned myself, it wasn't healthy and I was horrified. And I come from a very competitive family and I just really unhappy that my 60 year old

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  mother had a better looking brain than I did. So I developed a concept called brain envy. I always say Freud was wrong. Penis envy is not the cause of anybody's problem. I wanted a better brain and I think I've spent the last 31 years just trying to get a better brain.

• 1:14:58Jay Shetty?

  Wow. So you just wish you knew about that earlier?

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  I wish I knew about that earlier. I wouldn't have played football.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't have drank diet soda like it was my best friend.

• 1:15:12Jay Shetty?

  Do you want to tell us a bit about that? Because I feel like soda, people have agreed it's bad, but now diet soda has become...

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  I used to think diet soda was free, right? I mean, it's like no calories, but the aspartame and what we know now with sucralose is really bad. So there's a brand new study out looking at sugar, sucralose or Splenda and stevia. And they did brain scans and cognitive testing and stevia, nothing happened before or after. It seemed actually pretty safe.

• 1:15:48Jay Shetty?

  That's amazing.

• 1:15:49Speaker 01

  Sugar, new learning dropped. Splenda was the worst. New learning dropped, long-term memory dropped, and you got a surge of slow frontal lobe activity, which means it deactivated your frontal lobes. And I'm like, and you know, the yellow packets are everywhere.

• 1:16:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's so scary. It's like, I don't know how they haven't figured out a way to just improve the food market as a whole through all these standards. Like with all these studies coming out, how have most of these foods has not been bad?

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Because of the agricultural lobby.

• 1:16:25Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  That, you know, I mean, just we talked about Pop-Tarts and how bad they are, but they're, you know, we're spending government money to give them to poor children.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Which will keep them poor.

• 1:16:38Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's so sad. I find that's the hardest part for me where I'm like.

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  But we can change it.

• 1:16:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  I know we can. That's smart people can figure out solutions to dramatically shift the population. I don't know if we ever talked about the Daniel Plan, the big project I did at Saddleback Church.

• 1:16:56Jay Shetty?

  We did, yeah.

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Where, you know, thousands of churches have done the health program that I created with Pastor Rick Warren. So you just have to have intention.

• 1:17:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, absolutely. There's lots of good.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Purpose. That's part of the revolution in brain health.

• 1:17:10Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Fifth and final question. What makes you happier?

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Being here makes me happier. Seeing you, being with people I love makes me happier.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  I was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel today getting ready for our event and they cooked a lot of Tana's recipes from her cookbook, The Brain Warrior's Way, and they did such an amazing job that made me happy. And I'm walking out to the parking lot. Someone recognized me. I said, "Love your TikTok of all things." So making a difference makes me happy. I'm one of seven children and I'm in the middle, so I was completely irrelevant. And so not being irrelevant sort of helps make me happy.

• 1:17:57Jay Shetty?

  I love that. Dr. Daniel Amen, it's always such a joy to spend time with you, honestly, it really is. And thank you so much for all the work you're doing. I know I lean on it constantly and I deeply appreciate it. And I hope that everyone's going to go out and read the book, make a change in their life and start changing their brain. But thank you so much for joining us. Make sure that you follow Dr. Amen on TikTok, on Instagram, on all social media platforms, and make sure that you tag us with anything you learned, anything that stood out, any element of this podcast. Feel free to share it with someone else who needs it. Feel free to cut it up and put it on TikTok. Like, there's so many amazing insights here in the book, but also in this show. And I love to see what resonates with you and I love to see what you're applying in your life. So make sure you share that.

• 1:18:40Jay Shetty?

  Thank you so much for listening and watching. And Dr. Daniel Amen, thank you for doing this so much.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:18:45Jay Shetty?

  Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 1:18:56Speaker 03

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, theHouseMajorityPac.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

• 1:19:25Speaker 04

  Mr. President, my company informed me of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:19:29Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 1:19:30Speaker 04

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:19:34Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is.

• 1:19:36Speaker 05

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:19:42Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:19:46Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:19:49Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:19:55Speaker 06

  Espolon Tequila. It arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead. Espolon Tequila. Balanced, delicious. Perfect for nights out, nights in, and people who like to drink tequila. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth. Then hold on tight. 100% agave, 0% eagle. Espolon Tequila. For a real margarita, ride the rooster.

• 1:20:19Speaker 05

  Espolon Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Compaia America, New York. Drink responsibly.