Manage Your Mental Mess w/ Dr. Caroline Leaf

Manage your mind… Control your mess! We all have a mess in our brains. How we are able to manage that mess is the difference between a healthy mind and body and a mind and body riddled with anxiety and depression. And there is no one better on the planet to explain brain science than Dr. Caroline Leaf. Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and Ph. D. in Communication Pathology, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. She’s a bestselling author, international speaker, and worldwide educator. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change with directed mind input and has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementia and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression. In this interview, Dr. Leaf is breaking down the inner-workings of your mind in a way you’ve NEVER heard before. She is revealing the science behind how to recognize negative patterns and turn destructive thoughts into healthy thoughts that SERVE YOU! Whether you are a person of science, a person of faith, or somewhere in between, this interview will open your eyes to the TRUE POWER you have inside to control your mental AND give you practical steps on how to do it. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈 → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ▶︎ INSTAGRAM ▶︎ FACEBOOK ▶︎ LINKEDIN ▶︎ TWITTER ▶︎ WEBSITE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

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• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:01Speaker 01

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

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  On October 2nd.

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  This is The Ed Mylett Show.

• 1:48Ed Mylett?

  All right, welcome back to Max Out, everybody. I'm so excited to have this guest here today. By the way, she's made a huge sacrifice. She's, at the time of recording this, there's a storm where she lives in Texas. Snow's rolled in, there's no power. She went and got a hotel room so that we could do this today. So if you see the background, that's where she is. And you wouldn't know it from the background, but this is one of the most remarkable people I've ever talked to in my life. I had the great honor of being on her show. She's a cognitive neuroscientist, which just even saying those things is a miracle that I can get that out of my mouth, never mind understand what it is. She's one of the most brilliant people you're ever gonna meet in your life. She's a bestselling author. She's got a PhD in communication pathology. She's brilliant. And you're gonna write a bunch of notes today. I mean, like, a bunch of notes. So Dr. Caroline Leaf,

• 2:32Ed Mylett?

  thank you for being here and making the sacrifice to be here today.

• 2:36Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Oh, Ed, I wouldn't have missed this. Thank you so much for that lovely introduction. And I just absolutely love talking to you. We had the most amazing talk on when I interviewed you, and I think you're incredible as well. So, thank you.

• 2:47Ed Mylett?

  Thank you. I don't hold a candle to you, what we're gonna talk about today, that's for sure. And we're gonna talk a lot about your brain today. She's an expert on memory. She's an expert on thinking. She's also a woman of faith. She's a very complex, interesting person, and a pleasure to listen to, as you can already hear with that South African accent. So, let's start out a little bit, because we're gonna talk about thinking. So, I was thinking about thinking when I was preparing to talk with you. And I think it'd be a good place to start, because I don't think most people understand it. What is a thought? How does a thought work?

• 3:23Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That is such a great question. And I'm really glad that you asked that, because it's a good place to start. Okay, a thought is something that you actually build. So, it's the consequence of three actions. And those actions are thinking. And when you think, you always you feel. And when you think and feel, you choose. Those three, like, my fingers are, like, stuck together. Those three always go together. You're always thinking. When you're thinking, you're always feeling. When you're thinking and feeling, you're always choosing. And that is mind. And when mind happens, which always happens, you never, your mind is never not with you. You wake up with your mind, you go to bed with your mind, you get dressed with your mind, you eat with your mind, you have discussions with your mind, they're using your mind now. Your mind never stops. So, you're always thinking, feeling, and choosing. And thinking and feeling and choosing has a consequence,

• 4:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  and the consequence is a thought. So, the thought is the result of thinking, feeling, and choosing. So, during the course of the day, you think, feel, and choose in response to the experiences of life. It begins as you open your eyes in the morning. And at night time, when you close your eyes and go to sleep. Then the the thing, the building part of thinking, feeling and choosing, building. You think you'll choose and build thoughts all day long. And then at night time, your mind is still going, but now you're sorting out the thoughts that you've built. Kind of a housekeeping regenerative function, while we dream, get prepared for the next day and all that kind of stuff. So thought is a real thing that is holding the data of the experience. And it holds the data in terms of information and emotions, because you think and feel and choose.

• 4:52Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So it's data and emotions. So a simple way to understand this is, all the listeners and viewers now, as you introduced me, you would have like literally sown a seed in the ground, to use that analogy, of this is some kind of thing about thinking and mind and brain and whatever. And then as we're speaking, we're growing little roots. So as, as, as I'm speaking, they're growing roots. Those roots are protein structures and they are holding my words as vibrations. And as I'm giving more information, so you are growing more of these little protein branches in your brain. And it's all connected and coordinated and you're doing it in your own unique way. So every listener would be building their own roots. And it's, it's filled with data and emotions, because you're thinking and feeling and choosing as you're listening to me.

• 5:36Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And then you go like a little tree trunk, which is your angle, how you view this information. And then that produces little branches with leaves. I've got some analogies here, here's, here's a thought, that's what a thought looks like. The roots you can't see, but there's the little tree trunk and there's the branches with the leaves. And the branches with the leaves are the memories of how you are seeing this information. So it's the behaviours and emotions of how you see this information. So my words are down here in the roots and your interpretation are in the branches and the leaves. And so that whole thing is a thought. And like a tree is made of branches and roots. So a thought is made of root memories and branch memories. And collectively, this then produces what you say and what you do, produces your actions.

• 6:20Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So everything that you do, all your communication, your writing, speaking, talking, running, dancing, jumping, relationship work, all of that stuff is coming from thoughts that we've built. And we're doing this all day long, we're building thoughts. And then at night, we sort the thoughts out. And that's a healthy thought. For the viewers and those that can't see, if there's some just on audio, this is a toxic tree, a toxic thought. So I'm using a wiry thought, also a tree, but you can see it's very much the living dead game of throwing stuff. So it's very much alive, but there's the roots, the trunk and the, and the trees. In your brain, your thoughts look like trees. That's why we say that thoughts have an arbor-like structure, tree-like structure.

• 7:01Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And in, and this is healthy, our brain is wired for, for this. It's not wired for this. This is a good, a nice folded protein, nice balanced chemicals, all the right stuff. And this is incorrectly folded proteins and chemicals and creates a massive response in our immune system in the brain, which thinks that this is something like COVID. It doesn't like this at all. So the immune system will send out the same kind of immune army, the B, B, B and T lymphocytes and macrophages and all that kind of thing to fight this toxic thought in the same way people fight COVID or any virus in your body. So that's how real they are.

• 7:39Ed Mylett?

  Wow. Okay. So let's unpack that a little bit. So first, think, feel, choose is something everybody can take from this right now and understand that you're processing information that way. This idea of the root with the tree is brilliant. I even, I understand that. So I'm still with you.

• 7:52Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You got it.

• 7:54Ed Mylett?

  But you know, when you and I have talked in the past, I want to ask you about this. So it sounds to me as if past experience, past thought informs future thought.

• 8:02Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Absolutely.

• 8:03Ed Mylett?

  If we're not conscious of it. So let's assume I have a pattern of responding to stimulus in a particular way because of this roots gotten bigger and bigger and the trees gotten bigger and bigger. And so these past experiences, these past thoughts are informing how I think, feel and choose currently. How does one overcome the negative implications potentially if they're toxic thoughts of not doing detrimental damage to us now?

• 8:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Excellent question as well. So they, you're totally correct. Every experience we have is basically built into our brain and into our mind. So already the implication of what I'm saying is that mind and brain are not the same thing. So we can go there in a moment, but to, to, to answer your question, we have to be, we, we, and when I say we, we with our thinking, feeling, choosing. So we, you, me, that's mind. So we've got this part of our mind, that's what I like to call the wise mind. It's this instinct that we just know. It's, for example, it's like when you, someone comes to you for advice and you just give them this great advice. And there's just this, wow, I didn't even know I knew that. Or you have a great conversation or something like that. There's this, this instinct inside of us of what's right, okay?

• 9:14Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And that's what I call the wise mind. And that's thinking, feeling, choosing. So we've got this at our core. And so we're drawing on that, that, that, that wise mind psychologically, it's a gravitational field scientifically. And that we use to then self-regulate the stuff that's driving us crazy or the bad habits we've got or the whatever. So we have to get into a system of mind management. We need to manage our minds through self-regulation. And we see from neuroscience and from mind-brain integration research, which has been my field for nearly forty years now, that we can do that every ten seconds. I'm not asking you to check on your watch, like on your Apple watch for every ten seconds or your timer. I'm just saying basically we be supposed to be, when you're conscious, you should always be self-regulating.

• 9:59Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  To the extent where, like for example now, we're talking. So whoever's listening, whoever's watching, just look at your hands, look at your facial expression. Be aware of your body movements, be aware of the impact of what you're saying and how you're saying it or how you're listening. I'm looking, I'm watching all of that at the moment when I'm speaking. I'm extremely aware of it because I'm saying it, I'm looking at your face, I'm seeing your responses. So that self-regulation is what we should be doing all the time. When you self-regulate yourself like that, you'll self-regulate how you're thinking, feeling, and choosing in response to every experience, the conversation, the things that irritate you, the things that frustrate you, the patterns in your life. You'll start seeing, oh, I always respond in this way when this kind of thing happens, or my husband or wife, or business

• 10:42Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  partner, or child, or whatever. We always seem to have the same kind of argument. There's a pattern. So you can start identifying the toxic patterns when you self-regulate. So then you can start identifying the repetition, and then you can start thinking, observing, for example, that maybe you're highly anxious five times a day, or almost every day, or so you start seeing these patterns in your life, and all those patterns, that's self-regulation.

• 11:07Ed Mylett?

  Caroline's so brilliant that I want to unpack, she can say incredibly powerful things, and I don't want to, I don't want to go over all of them and go to the next thing, because I want to go deeper on them. So you talk about the difference between the mind and the brain. I'd like to just have you just mention that. And then you teach, like, I think you call it like, five steps to mind management.

• 11:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, the neuro cycle.

• 11:30Ed Mylett?

  So, give us a quick, what's the difference between brain and mind, and what are these five steps to managing our mind? Maybe you just listed a few of them there, but I like lists, so I'm just wondering what those are.

• 11:40Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Absolutely. Well, first of all, the five steps, we call the neuro, what I call it the neuro cycle. So with your mind, you're cycling through your brain, you're directing the neuroplasticity, which is really nice to know. You can actually direct changes in your brain. So my whole premise is that if you are always, your mind is always working, and it's always changing the brain, and it's always happening, can we direct that process? So for three, three, almost four decades now, I've been researching that. And the answer is yes, and that's what's in the book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. So if you add the neuro cycle to your lifestyle, and it's a lifestyle, you actually will literally improve your ability to manage your mind by eighty-one percent and more, which is phenomenal, because it means that you influence cellular health through the telemeters, which we can

• 12:25Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  unpack as well. You can reduce inflammation, you can improve your immune function, your cardiovascular function, neurological, kidney, like, everything about your body will respond to mind management. Because your mind basically is driving all those functions anyway. Your gut health, your gut-brain interaction, all of it isn't hap, if you're dead, your brain and body are dead. So what's keeping, what's the difference between a dead person and an alive person? Mind. So if mind is messy, brain and body are messy. If mind is cleaned up, And it's a process because we're all going to be messy because we have free will and part of getting a mind sorted out, part of my management is dealing with the mental mess. It's accepting I'm going to be make bad decisions, I'm going to get into arguments, I am going to make,

• 13:09Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  you know, misunderstand people, I am going to have acute traumas and toxic traumas and imposter syndrome and people pleasing and all this stuff all of us go through in different ways. So I'm going to have that and it's okay, but how am I going to manage it?

• 13:23Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So for me personally, what's happened over the years is that I still go through these things, but the difference is I'm eighty one percent more efficient in identifying and managing. So instead of something that could throw me years ago for days and affect my work and everything, I can deal with it within seconds and minutes and get back on track. So that's one part of the answer. So before I go to mind brain, do you want to ask anything or unpack anything with what I said?

• 13:50Ed Mylett?

  No, are there specifically five things like it are going to sequence?

• 13:54Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, it's a sequence. So before I tell the sequence, let me tell you mind brain because it'll make so much more sense.

• 13:59Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 14:00Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Because I've alluded to it a lot. So your mind is separate from your brain but inseparable. So what is the brain? The brain and mind are not the same thing.

• 14:08Ed Mylett?

  Got it.

• 14:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And the brain and body collectively are made of thirty seven to a hundred trillion cells. And your mind is, and then those thirty seven to a hundred trillion cells arrange themselves into this incredible, the brain and the heart and the lungs, et cetera. And your mind is what actually is the external force that keeps them going, the blood flowing, the chemicals, electricity, electromagnetics, all of that, which is phenomenal. So that's why if our mind's not managed, the body and the brain will be a mess. And so, and that goes down to even like if you are eating, if you're eating, maybe eating a farm to table wonderful diet, et cetera, but you're not dealing with your anxiety or you're not, you're just trying to stuff it down or you're not dealing with that bad habit or that toxic trauma. You will lose up to eighty percent of the nutrition.

• 14:53Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Because your mind has affected the ability of the digestive system to actually digest and get the assimilate the nutrients. And sometimes it's kind of messy and sometimes it's great and we all, if we're human, we are going to experience messes and there's no shame in that. The sooner we get rid of the shame and guilt and condemnation around being messy. And the sooner we as leaders talk about the mind more authentically, the more, the more we give people that follow us. A permission to talk about mind. Only three percent of leaders are talking about mind, which is terrible. So that doesn't, that's creating the stigma that they're pretending they'd be perfect. And that's why we see people that seem to be perfect in their lives and they're committing suicide. Meanwhile, it's because we've got this philosophy in this day and age of not being open and seeing.

• 15:36Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Um. Issues of the mind as helpful messengers of an underlying issue. The neurocycle then is these five steps. It is how you manage your mind moment by moment. So it's a lifestyle. So the neurocycle is what you do when you're awake. And and conscious and it then automatically prepares you for sleep because sleep is fixing up your brain. So your mind is always with you. So your mind always needs to be managed. And so an analogy, and then I'll dive into the five steps. You can go three weeks without food. You can go three days without water. You can go three minutes without oxygen, but you don't even go three seconds without using your mind. So you're always thinking, feeling and choosing. Yeah. So it's gather awareness. Second step is to reflect. Third step is to write.

• 16:21Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Fourth step is to recheck and the first step is an act of reach. So each of those, they're so profound, they do the most phenomenal stuff in your brain. And the first half of the book. Where I talk about the mental health system and I talk about my clinical trials, I do explain what each of those steps are doing. So the first thing is to gather awareness. Gather awareness and I've chosen words very carefully. If you think of a big fat apple tree and you're apple picking. And this apple tree is so full that you actually can't, like you just go up and you just nudge it and this apple is just falling on your head. That's how we often feel when our minds are messy. Just everything's just falling on our head and it's just too much. So what you can do with a neurocycle is when you feel that situation coming on. Remove yourself from the tree and stand back and watch the tree.

• 17:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And gather awareness of all of that. Don't be scared of it. Don't run away from the apple tree. Just stand back and observe the apple tree. Observe what's going on there.

• 17:15Ed Mylett?

  Let me jump in about that. This is brilliant. One of the things I've taught for a long time, I didn't understand the neuroscience behind it was that for me, and there's four other steps, this is why everybody needs to get the book, but awareness of your thoughts. I've always said, when I'm aware of these patterns, when I'm aware of my thoughts, they begin to lose their power over me. Their influence over me. And one of the reasons that that you're you're explaining it scientifically, which I've always wanted to understand better because I do become separate from the thought when I observe it, almost like I'm above it and distant from it, like you said, and I realize I'm not just that thought and that is a pattern that I'm running. And so I just want to acknowledge what Caroline's saying, because from a practical standpoint, when I coach people, this is something that I, the first thing I teach is just becoming aware. Now to know that there's four other steps

• 17:59Ed Mylett?

  is obviously very empowering as well, but and I want to just unpack this a little bit into another area. So I want to use your brilliance towards something else. One thing I want to acknowledge is that what Caroline is saying is that neuroplasticity is real, that mind can change matter, that literally that these thoughts, if you change them, change the protein structures in your brain, change the matter of your brain. So this is powerful to know that we can physically change our brain by using our mind. And this distinction between the mind and the brain is also a breakthrough way of listening to it or seeing it. For me, as I'm sure it is for everybody else, just those things alone, just those two things alone have made our time already incredibly invaluable for me and anybody listening to it.

• 18:43Ed Mylett?

  But as terms of patterns and awareness and the power that these patterns can have over us. I'm a big believer that identity drives so much of our lives and you being, I'm just, I've heard you talk about this briefly, but you know, I think we all are trying to become consistent with whatever this identity is that we think we hold for ourselves. And sometimes the lack of an identity is unbelievably detrimental to someone's life. And I've heard you talk about this, being from South Africa and watching what they tried to do with Mandela. And and so could you speak for a minute about the power that identity has over us? And a little bit of how we can at least be more aware of the identity we hold and how we can change it to serve us if we need to.

• 19:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Love your question. It's brilliant and it's so important. Um. Yes, I grew up, I was born in Zimbabwe and that had enough, that country alone had enough problems and still has. And then grew up in South Africa and all my kids were born there. I've been in the States now for thirteen years. So I was in South Africa in the apartheid era and the transition and the post. And so by the time I was, had my first child, my second child, that Mandela came into power, we actually, I was carrying my ba- newborn baby and in the, to go vote for Mandela, literally, and with our, with our housekeeper and, you know, that's how significant that is in my, in my lifetime. But I was working in the pre-apartheid, if the pre-transition, in the, I mean, the apartheid era.

• 20:12Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And it was horrific. I, I chose to, I worked across all socioeconomic strata and different political areas. So from the riches of the rich to the poorest of the poor, education, corporate. And I spent three days a week working in the, what they called the townships, which were areas that they had to apartheid separated out, absolutely evil. And the reason I chose to, to work in all the different environments was to understand mind and humanity. So wherever you are, whatever you in, how does this work and how can we, how can we use our mind to help us cope with all these different circumstances? So in terms of identity, absolutely, what you experience um in your nurturing and in your, and in the environment that you grew up in, is definitely going to affect how you see yourself.

• 20:54Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Because every experience is, is converted through think, feel, choose into brain. So you can imagine a massive forest, which is your non-conscious mind, inner end. And that massive forest is filled with all different shapes and sizes of trees. And in between the green trees, you've got these little black trees and maybe there's a big clump and maybe there's a little one and some trees are little and some green, little black trees from a recent experience and some very big ones from a long-established experience. So something like racism would be a very, very dominant cluster of dark black trees oozing the warning signal of. All the anxiety and the stress and the terrible things that come from something

• 21:34Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  as evil as racism, which is pervasive and affecting ability to actually how you see yourself. And so every bit of nurturing is built into your brain, every experience is built into your brain. So this forest is influencing, in the middle of the forest, just to give a visual, we have this wide full of optimism bias. So always expanded like a strip of trees that are perfect. In the middle of the forest, there's this untouched area that's just perfect. And that's we want, we want to really access that. So if you're flying your helicopter, which is you in life, you're flying your helicopter and you kind of, if you, as you develop self-regulation, you don't just fly your helicopter and bash into a tree and crash, which is what you, we do a lot of, that's messy. We, we want to, we want to know how to not do that. So self-regulation teaches us how to fly with the pilots and co-pilots.

• 22:18Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So we're flying over this forest and we're looking at where, whatever, whatever smoke signals are coming up, where, where the signals, and if you see there, that there's so much of that particular type of black cluster of trees, dark, and that's influencing how you see yourself, your identity's been affected. But if you look at all, if you really dig deep and usually you'll see the middle part of the forest, which is you, it's Ed, who can do something else that no one else can do. But there's these traumatic experiences that are affecting our identity. So they can block and they can become so big that they can actually build a, like a black wall against the green forest. So it's almost hard to see who you really are because you're so busy and being involved in that, that you're stuck in that cluster.

• 23:00Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So that's why I say you've got a, self-regulation is not sitting and walking amongst those trees and getting lost, which is what we do, but it is actually getting in the helicopter and flying above and saying, okay, self-regulate, what am I doing? What, what's, what, why? And, and you, and the only way you can get to the trees and the forest and all that stuff is by looking at the warning signals. So these we track. And then, so then you pay attention, gather awareness of four basic signals. The first is the emotional. So let's say that you're feeling a high state of anxiety that could be all depression. Now, depression and anxiety are not it's, they're not illnesses. To say you have clinical depression or clinical anxiety is one of the most unscientific statements of our age and has created a huge problem where people are now way, betting way more with mental health,

• 23:44Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  not because mental health is on the rise, but because the mismanagement of mental health is on the rise. We're not allowing people to talk about the story in the forest. We're just saying, oh, signal of depression. Five symptoms, you can't sleep, you can't get out of bed, you're feeling um whatever suicidal. All of that, okay. Diagnosis, label, treatment is mainly medication at the current stage is the gold standard. Some therapy if you're lucky, okay? And that very often the therapy is putting a Band-Aid on the wound because they don't deal with the whole origin story. That's terrible. What we have to do is we have to say, okay, so there is this signal. There is this emotion of depression, it's consistent in your life or anxiety or both. Very often it's comorbid together and terror and despair and anger and a whole bunch of others.

• 24:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's never just one. So all of this is giving you power and giving you control, shifting the power balance. When you do this gather in this way, and I'll finish the other three in a moment. You are making fourteen hundred neurophysiological responses work for you and not against you. Your blood vessels around your heart are dilating, which is sending blood flow and oxygen to your brain. That's increasing your ability to think more creatively. It's decreasing impulsivity, I can go on and on and on. And now my body is in a state of healing. But when I suppress it, if I don't gather awareness, if I just suppress it, my fourteen hundred neurophysiological responses will work against me. So now my blood vessels around my heart, for example, one of the fourteen hundred will constrict.

• 25:11Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That means less blood flow, less oxygen to the brain, increased impulsivity, decreased cognitive flexibility. That's just a few. There's a a lot more, but I'm just giving a few not to overwhelm. So I I I stay in a state of increased vulnerability to disease by seventy five to ninety eight percent if I don't gather awareness. But if I gather awareness, I shift that the moment I gather awareness in milliseconds, I've gone from brain damage to brain healing in seconds. Wow. In milliseconds, that's phenomenal. This is how important mind management is. So then I gather, and this is not hard, it is hard, but it's not hard. It's hard because we we have got very, we just wanted, we want quick fixes. There's no quick fix when it comes to mind, this is a lifestyle.

• 25:52Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So you gather awareness of your emotional stuff, the depression, anxiety, label it be specific. And then you're going to gather awareness of your physical state, heart fluddering, G I symptoms, tension in your shoulders. What is physically going on alongside this emotional stuff? Could be a series of things, there's no. There's no cookie cutter, anything. You unique, you you have a unique signal guide. Then you're going to look at your behavioural signals. In other words, what are you doing? How are you speaking? How are you, how are you connecting with others? How are you doing your work? How you just with yourself, all the behaviours? How you speaking? How you whatever? What's your creativity like? So what are your behaviours when you're in this state? And then you're going to go to your perspective. As I start getting specific about looking at these emotional, physical

• 26:36Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  and behavioural warning signals, I'm actually looking at the branches. I'm looking at this, these, because they're memories. The thought tree is made of memories. So I'm, the signals have drawn me in and those have been these, what I've just described. But now as I land my tree, I'm starting to look a little closer at these signals. And so now I also want to look at what my perspective is. What is the tree trunk? What's the perspective of, what's this giving me? Life sucks, or I hate life, or it's not worth living, or there's just no purpose, or what's the? Then you start that. So by the time you've done that, you've objectively gathered all these apples in your basket. You control them. Now you go to looking at the detail. What is, does this mean? What's the data? That's when you reflect. So reflect is ask, answer, discuss. Ask, answer, discuss. Put the thoughts on trial.

• 27:21Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Do that autopsy, that mental brain surgery without the blood. Why? And then you answer, why? And you discuss, why? And you dig, dig, dig. Anyway, so when you write, you can write in lines, but I would recommend you learn how to make a medical. It is unbelievable. In therapy, when I used to still practise, we would have people battling with schizophrenia, which is not a disease. It is a broken mind. It is someone who's gone through so much trauma that they're disassociating, their minds disassociated. It's a symptom of an underlying trauma. And very often they can get multiple personalities because it's coping, it's pure survival. So the system, the neurocycle, in the extreme form, we would use that. And by the time we got to writing, I could show, I could have a subject who had split their personality, their minds because of trauma.

• 28:05Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  As they're writing onto the medic, in the medical, which is a pattern in the mid, middle on branches, like a tree, like a branch grows, each branch grows out the previous branch and leaves are growing on the branches. That's what you do. You grow branches and you put your words on the branches. And you, you just like literally pour your brain on paper. As we did this, we would, the, the sub patients would actually see, oh, same con, they're talking about the same thing, but suddenly there's three different perspectives. The fourth step is then to recheck. It's to look at what you've written. The third step's messy. It's like words all over the place. The fourth step is where you start connecting. What are the patterns? What is the antidote? What is the, what do I need to reconceptualize? See it differently. It's, if we use an algebraic example, we all probably remember X plus Y

• 28:47Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  equals Z, even if we didn't understand it. I'm sure all of us can recall X plus Y equals Z. And the concept there is that X plus Y creates something kind of new that's over, it's like sort of replaces. I'm not saying that. I'm saying X plus Y equals X Y. Reconceptualization is X Y. Because it's your story that you don't want to just, is it, I'm putting a Band-Aid on. I'm not fixing the issue. And that's what, if you just, if you just do like ten CBT, you know, cognitive behavior therapy, not that I'm saying it's bad. You can use CBT, but CBT fits in step five, if you want it to work for you. You've got to first find out what's going on and then you, but if you just, or positive affirmations, people use, uh, they're feeling terrible or they want to achieve a goal. Ten of those

• 29:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  in the morning, ten at night, they, it's a Band-Aid. It's not going to be sustainable because you have to find out what you, what are you trying to drown with the affirmation? So you want the affirmation to work, you have to go through the neuro cycle, then the affirmation will work as a first step. You know, that's how you've got to change perspective.

• 29:46Ed Mylett?

  There's so much in there to unpack that I don't, I want everybody to do is go back and replay that because there's so much in there. And also you have to have the book too, so that some of these things that, you know, that are on the surface while we're doing this now, go much when you're in the book. But I want to ask you, we're getting so deep into the science of it. One of the things that, I'm going to go a completely different direction with you.

• 30:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Oh, Fred.

• 30:08Ed Mylett?

  So one of the things that fascinates about you is that as I've learned more of this, you're also a person of faith, not religion, so to speak, I don't think, but faith. And frankly, most of my.

• 30:22Ed Mylett?

  Uh, scientist friends, even my science friends, not all of them. This isn't a fair statement, but I think you would agree with me that by and large, there's usually two camps of people in life. There's sort of faith-based and science-based. And that's not, that's, that's too big of a general statement.

• 30:37Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  But it's true.

• 30:37Ed Mylett?

  I have, it's by and large, I have all kinds of friends who are very scientifically based, including myself, who have incredibly faith. But you are a little bit, you understand so much about the brain. And I'm wondering for you, uh, I've always felt like my thoughts are prayers. I've felt that way.

• 30:56Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Love that. It's beautiful.

• 30:57Ed Mylett?

  Thoughts are prayers. Is there any validity to that being true? Because prayer is such a deep state of consciousness. And then is there anything particularly about maybe organized religion in general, you think maybe gets it wrong? So it's kind of two questions in one. And I'm just curious of your thoughts about both of them. Because I just personally, I'm fascinated by that. Both, you live in both worlds, as do I. So I'm just curious.

• 31:22Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I love it. I love how you, I love that you asked that question. And for me, it's the most obvious answer, because spirituality and science are one and the same thing. So if you think of like all the beautiful, all the, they're just two sides of the same coin. If you think of it like the spirituality is like a story, the philosophy, and you look at all like the Bible and the Torah and the Quran, you, all the holy books of all the different religions, whichever religion, and then just the diversity of all the religions is an indication of how magnificently huge humanity is, and that there's something that's beyond. That's how I see it. So the diversities is so beautiful. And how all across the whole world, every culture has some belief system that goes beyond just me here. And that's,

• 32:06Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  that for me is spirituality. And I don't, and that's where it goes to even the second answer first, is that I think organized religion is just man trying to get control. But when, and if they want to do it, and it keeps them being a loving person, great. And if they are an accepting person of other religions, fantastic. The problem of organized religion comes in when they say this is the only way. Because there's no ways that there is only one way, because there's so many different people. There's something you can do that no one else on this planet can do. So if it doesn't do it, we all suffer. So there's a viewpoint, and every, the beauty of the diversity is different ways of seeing the different facets of what I would call godness. So I talk about godness.

• 32:46Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  As opposed to God and limiting God, how so many religions will say he, I never understand. He even in the Bible, it says male God, made in God's image, male and female. So obviously God's not male or female, God's a combination of what we don't understand. So the beauty of spirituality is we just don't understand it. And to try and understand it is to lose, to miss it. And to see that it's this incredibly beautiful beyond the sunset, the falling in love, the having a child, the the the rising from the ashes, the, you know, the the agreeing to disagree, seeing different ways of doing different things, seeing that that is not just one type of, that is spirituality and that's the story. It's the beautiful story of humanity. Science is how it all works.

• 33:31Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  How does the world work? How does the brain work? How does the mind work? How do we as humans work? And how does the world work? So you can't separate them because you are a human. And if you believe in in in whatever you believe in, you you still are a human with a brain. So science still applies to you because you're a human. You use your cellphone, you're using science, you eat food, you you that's science. You are parenting a child or you are running a business, that's science. Science comes from the word sclera, which means knowledge. So everything that we gain, everything, you're a scientist, I'm a scientist. We just science and we just both have knowledge of different fields. You know, so if you look at it like that, it's about knowledge, the how to, and then the story of. And you put the two together, you have a beautiful, complex humanity.

• 34:16Ed Mylett?

  The reason I wanted to ask Caroline this, guys, is to jump in is because she said this on stage with one of the most powerful and well-known pastors in the world in a conversation that I watched. And I know you know the conversation I'm talking about Caroline. And and he responded like I did because I'm a Christian and that's an organized religion. When I say organized religion, I don't mean it in the way that most people do. I mean more like the doctrine particular church as opposed to an organized doctrine of a religion. I I believe in Jesus Christ, people know that, that follow me. But I'm open and love people of all faiths. But I believe in an organized religion. But oftentimes, you know, certain specific churches will, you know, certain scriptures to an extreme. One of the things that she was talking about with one of the with this particular pastor was,

• 34:59Ed Mylett?

  and he even said that sometimes, you know, the bad things that happen in our life, it's very easy if you just blame it on the devil or blame it on this. But what if it wasn't just the devil? It happened to be that you're thinking in a toxic way. And so there is this. And I want to bridge that gap between people that are strong believers and

• 35:16Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah.

• 35:17Ed Mylett?

  And science, like I believe there's a quantum field. I just happen to believe the creator of the universe created this larger field that we can plug into that has vibrational frequency.

• 35:25Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 35:26Ed Mylett?

  Things. And, and so I'm, I want to make sure my audience knows I'm a strong believer in my faith at the same time, and I'm a strong believer in the organized structure of Christianity for me. But what I, what I think sometimes, I think you do too. Sometimes though, particular churches, every church anybody's ever gone to, no matter what their faith is, there's a slant. There's a reliance on maybe one version of scripture or a belief than other. And I make sure that sometimes that doesn't blunt people understanding that they have thoughts. They still control it specifically. They can still gain, to your point, science, more knowledge. I do the program. For me, the more I learn about the nuances

• 36:06Ed Mylett?

  and the sophistication, the intricacies of the brain and neuroscience, makes me more reliant that there must be a creator of this magnificent structure.

• 36:15Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly.

• 36:16Ed Mylett?

  We, we have a very, very basic understanding of. And so when you're hearing scientific things like this, for me, it strengthens my faith. What an amazing God I must have to create these amazing beings that we all are, that function the way we are. And I, that wants us to function at a higher level for his good, for the service of humanity. And the more we understand ourselves, the more we understand our mind and the difference in our mind, our thought, the trees and the, all of the stuff that we're talking about here, field, the more you become great at these things, you can serve your God better, your version of God. So I just want to make sure I've said that today, because it's, she's so fascinating to me in this regard. Okay, a couple more things, because we're going to run out of time and like, I love this stuff. Is there one or two?

• 36:58Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Can I, can I interrupt you for one second? Sorry, I wanted to just try and to add to that there. If you think of the, I mean, I was just teaching in a church this last Sunday. I teach all over the place, neuroscience conferences, churches, medical communities. I teach humanity. I teach humanity. And one of the things, what do we think we're doing here? We're capturing, we're bringing all thoughts into captivity. We're renewing the mind. So that if you want to know the science of how to do that, you know, that's, that's, that's the statement that people will make, oh, bring all thoughts, but they're not doing it. So here I'm telling you how to do it. So that's where the Bible tells the story. Science is how to do it. And then you and we don't, when we talk about wild for love and survival and that forest through the middle, that's our made in love image, which is perfection. But we have a

• 37:42Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  labor for your life and death, blessing and cursing, choose life. So we can choose. So that's why we make a mess in the outer forest. And that's why we have to go into our wisdom forest to go fix up the outer forest. So there's kind of a, if you want a more spiritual angle to what I teach.

• 37:55Ed Mylett?

  No, I love that. And I want people to know that you do as well. And this really strong belief, I don't like this battle between the two, which to me is just ridiculous. Like this little brain that Caroline has tapped into that is her to serve us, to serve one another, so that we can live longer and so that we can live more productively and we can be kinder to one another and we can understand ourselves. And the more and more I've understood how my mind works and I've changed myself through lots of techniques like she teaches, I frankly feel like I've been, you know, I sin all the time still, but I but I feel like I'm a better man of God. I understand human beings better. I have more empathy, have more faith because I understand these things. And so they're not one or the other. They're both, as you've said.

• 38:40Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Two sides of a sand coin.

• 38:42Ed Mylett?

  Can you give us one or two brain rituals for brain health? Just rituals for brain health? One or two things to do on a regular basis?

• 38:49Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Okay. Well, the neuro cycle goes without saying. That's your number one. We need to, we need to get into, that's the main, that is the main thing that you want to be doing all the time, because that's constantly driving your mind and driving neuroplasticity. So you're linking into the spiritual, you're driving that healthy spiritual through the brain to get the brain healing like it should. So that brings brain healing. And so that in addition to that, you can do your brain preparation. And brain preparation would include things like deep breathing and there's different types of breathing. So one of the techniques that that I've kind of combined in research, which is so powerful, is is this combination where you would breathe in for three counts. But then you breathe out for seven. So it's a ten second, I call it the ten second pause.

• 39:31Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So you're breathing in for three, a deep inhalation, but you're exhaling for seven. And the reason you exhale for longer and you really whoosh it out, you really push it out, like that yogi breath. You really push it out, that ocean breath at the back of your throat, is that that pushes oxygen to the front of your brain. And the minute you upload oxygen to the front of your brain, you almost like have to shake your head because you feel lightheaded. You have increased your, you've dropped impulsiveness and you've increased your introspective ability. So you're wiser. You've increased your wisdom and you've also calmed down your chemicals that will then calm down your entire brain and body, which then makes you much more able to think clearly. So if you do that at least six to nine times, so for sixty to ninety seconds,

• 40:14Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  you are going to put your brain health in a very ideal state to do the neuro cycle. But at any stage, if you need to calm down in the moment, that's a great sixty to ninety second thing. So in for three, out for seven. And then you can add to make it even more powerful. You can add a cognitive component. You can take the words of the mind. Remember, mind is how you think, how you feel and how you choose. The three work together. So you can add, you can, when you breathe in, when you inhale for three, you say think feel. And then as you exhale, you say choose. So it's think, feel, choose. And as you do that, you can do it quietly in your mind or out loud. You are bringing in a cognitive component factor. So you're forcing mind brain integration.

• 40:55Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You're forcing into interhemispheric coherence, which means left, right will work together. You are balancing all the waves of your brain, which is alpha, delta, beta, gamma. You're increasing theta as well, which is a healing wave. You're increasing gamma, which increases creativity. So the, does that, does that answer your question? Or do you want more?

• 41:15Ed Mylett?

  Thank you. No, thank you. I mean, you're just such a treasure. Like, I don't like, I don't want to end the interview because I want to just keep asking you things because there's, there's, there's. Maybe the only person on the spitting earth who can answer these things the way that you do. But I want to finish with something that I find when I coach people holds them. And and I think that maybe you can help me help other people and just help anybody listening to it. And this is this idea of cognitive dissonance. And I think would hold people back and you can explain it differently than I can. But it's holding you. You talk about coherence a minute ago, getting both side brain working together. It's another type of coherence, though, or incoherence or incongruency. Where we hold two conflicting thoughts for everybody.

• 41:58Ed Mylett?

  I want to be a multimillionaire, but there's this other part of you that thinks rich people get there by doing bad things. And so these are two thoughts in conflict. And so it's great to have a a a positive thought. This cognitive dissonance issue, which she's holding up both trees. If you're listening to the audio, the healthy one and the toxic one. Is there a she's doing this, this is the root of the basically we go to the the the root of your work, so to speak, root, pun intended, right? Because of the trees. Is there people the way be holding these two conflicting thoughts, not just a positive and negative, but they are in conflict with one another, which is different. You have a positive and a negative thought.

• 42:40Ed Mylett?

  But when two thoughts contradict one another, I think you're wired for pain potentially. And you're wired to sort of chase your tails, so to speak. So if someone's sitting here going, well, heck, that's me like no question at all. Like, I want to be in a loving relationship, but I don't think I deserve to be loved. Those are two thoughts in conflict with one another. What would you say lastly to somebody who not and even as I've said it or starting to become aware of other conflicting thoughts they have? What would you say to somebody like that?

• 43:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  First of all, that it's very normal. We all have it because we're all dealing with so much stuff. So it's very much because we can make choices and because there's so many options and there's that that's why. So it's very normal. So just to it's so important that we don't get frightened and and um get into guilt, shame and condemnation. Because we do every time we do something wrong because of unfortunately, because of our. Neuro reductionistic world that we live in and quick fix world and like, you know, what's wrong with you if you haven't said enough gratitude statements if you haven't in the religious world, you know, where's your faith? And so there's a lot of toxic positivity in both the religious world and the psychological and the scientific world where you're supposed to be in this day and age. So that leads to a lot of cognitive dissonance. So first of all, I want to normalize it, which immediately people should be going,

• 43:51Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  phew, I'm not the only one. As soon as you do that, you've already started shifting brain processes and brain health. The other thing is that this is what we're wired for. So if I'm in cognitive dissonance and the one is saying you, this is this and the, and then the other one is saying the opposite, then you have to use this to fix this. You have to go through the neuro cycle. You can, it's going to take you sixty three days, but you don't ignore this. You land your helicopter, you start doing the work and you start working out why is there this dissonance? Why is there this, this cognitive dissonance where I'm thinking one thing, but I'm doing another? Well, I know I should be doing that, but I can't do that. Or I believe whatever, anything that's in opposition. Um, that because this is the wise mind. Your cognitive dissonance is the wise mind and some kind

• 44:32Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  of experience that has led to the growth of this thought that is impacting your behavior. So what we're going to do is find out what, where did this come from? And how can I reconceptualize it so that I can operate in this accurate truth? So when you, yeah, so that's it. So you just, you've got to do the work of the, it's not going to go away in five minutes. I would recommend landing the helicopter, do the neuro cycle over the sixty three days.

• 44:54Ed Mylett?

  I have to tell you the two things that I took from today because I have read the book and so I'm aware of the five steps. And there's two things I took from today. I just want to share with everybody, well, three. One is that you're even more brilliant than I knew. It's more incredible than I knew. But two things, one, I'm driving the helicopter. So, and so are you all. You're driving that helicopter. So you can get above these things and look down at them and you can park the helicopter and do the work. And that's important to know because I think sometimes we think the helicopter drives us.

• 45:20Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes.

• 45:21Ed Mylett?

  And that's not the case. And I, and then, and then I think probably. You know, there's a lot of different things you shared today, but I think the second one for me is that I can get above these thoughts and that they can lose their power over me. I've always sort of known that to some extent, but I don't think I understand the extent that you've said this today. And I just really want to thank you. I think today was one of the most remarkable conversations. I know it's one of those we're going to have to go back and listen to again because of the depth of it. But I just think you're unbelievable. I want people following you. Should just start at Instagram. I mean, they should get your books, but should they go to Instagram to follow you there? Is that the best place?

• 46:02Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah, go to Instagram Dr. Caroline Leaf because from there you can get you everything. And the book is a doctor, cleaning up, name of the book, cleaning up your mental mess.com. I've got a podcast, as you know, you've been on it, cleaning up your mental mess. But that's a great place. Instagram, the book, book cleaning up your mental mess.com.

• 46:17Ed Mylett?

  Guys, she's unbelievable. She's one of a kind. I'm just telling you, which is why I'm so grateful to have had a chance to share this experience with all of you guys here today. So, thank you, Caroline. And I can't wait to have you back again because this is, this is easily one part of like a 10 part conversation, for sure.

• 46:34Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Thank you so much, Ed. Thank you. I love your questions. You always answer such insightful questions and we do, we have a great conversation. We could just keep going and going. So I'd love to come back. Thank you so much.

• 46:43Ed Mylett?

  We're gonna have dinner. It's gonna be like a five hour dinner.

• 46:45Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I think so, yeah. Maybe we should just like make it an all day thing that starts in the morning and we just like end at night, you know?

• 46:50Ed Mylett?

  I would love that. If they record it, we can put it out and it'll get help a lot of people. But even if they don't, it would serve me. So thank you so much. Everybody, everybody, please share the show with anybody you care about that you think this would benefit. And if you're listening to the audio version, go over to YouTube and subscribe. If you're watching this on YouTube, click on an audio platform and listen to the audio versions of this so you can get it as you travel as well. God bless you all and max out.