Do You Feel Like Your Memory Is Getting Worse? (Do THIS Quick Daily Brain Exercise to Reset Your Focus & Strengthen Your Memory Long-Term)

Today, Jay welcomes back world-renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist Dr. Rahul Jandial for a mind-expanding conversation about memory, attention, and the brain’s incredible potential. Dr. Jandial unpacks the different types of memory and explains why we often forget things like where we left our keys or what we had for dinner. He reassures us that not all memory slips are signs of aging or illness, and shows us how understanding memory can help us feel more in control of our minds. Jay and Dr. Jandial also dive deep into working memory, the kind of memory that helps us juggle tasks, make quick decisions, and stay mentally sharp. They explore how things like stress, distraction, and even poor sleep can weaken our focus, while simple changes like better digital habits, brain-training games, and quality rest can help us stay mentally strong. Using relatable examples, from parenting to surgery to driving, Dr. Jandial shares how we can train our brains the same way we train our bodies: with just the right amount of challenge, practice, and consistency. In this interview, you'll learn: How to Strengthen Your Working Memory How to Train Your Brain Like a Muscle How to Handle Emotional Memories Without Being Overwhelmed How to Protect Your Brain as You Age How to Spot Early Signs of Dementia in Loved Ones How to Create a Brain-Healthy Daily Routine How to Stay Mentally Sharp in a Distracting World If you're looking to improve your memory, support a loved one, or feel more mentally present, this episode offers practical tools and powerful insights to help you live with greater clarity and intention. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Join over 750,000 people to receive my most transformative wisdom directly in your inbox every single week with my free newsletter. Subscribe here. What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 02:54 Is Your Memory Really Getting Worse? 06:28 What’s Distracting Your Working Memory 10:26 How to Manage Distractions and Stay Focused 13:39 Understanding the 3 Main Types of Memory 19:05 What’s Distracting Your Working Memory 22:43 Why the Right Amount of Stress Helps You Grow 25:22 Yes, Older Adults Can Have Strong Working Memory 29:14 How Memory Is Built Inside the Brain’s Ecosystem 33:16 The Critical Gap Between Thoughts and Actions 35:31 Simple Ways to Train and Improve Your Focus 40:28 Why Negative Memories Stick With Us 48:55 Three Daily Habits That Keep Your Brain Sharp 51:02 Why Therapy Isn’t One Size Fits All 55:18 Redirecting Your Focus Away From Painful Thoughts 58:30 Debunking the 20 Percent Brain Power Myth 01:00:34 What’s Behind the Rise in Cancer Rates? 01:05:15 A Smarter Way to Take Care of Your Mind and Body Episode Resources: Dr. Rahul Jandial | Instagram Dr. Rahul Jandial | Facebook This Is Why You Dream: What Your Sleeping Brain Reveals About Your Waking Life 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?

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• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 1:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Mazda. Confidence isn't something Mazda finds, it's something they practise. 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 and has won more 2026 IIHS Top Safety Pick Plus 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.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Whether you end up having Alzheimer's, it begins with like, where did I put my keys? We can't tell you which one's going to go to 10 years later. That adult says, I can't find my way home. Since we don't have that answer, everybody should do things to prevent memory loss.

• 1:55Jay Shetty?

  Neurosurgeon. And a neurobiologist. It's Dr. Raul John Dial. Why is it that we feel we can't remember anything anymore?

• 2:02Speaker 02

  One of the most common questions people ask is when they start forgetting like where the keys are at and they say, is this Alzheimer's? Does this need to be fixed? Is this natural?

• 2:11Jay Shetty?

  What are we doing every day that's distracting and disrupting our working memory?

• 2:17Speaker 02

  Too much juggling, multitasking has its own issues. You want to get away from your thought hijacking your body.

• 2:25Jay Shetty?

  Why do we replay negative memories? Why is it so easy?

• 2:28Speaker 02

  So an emotional imprint on a memory requires no focus and attention. So emotional imprinting of a memory and trauma makes it sometimes too easy to remember. And sometimes it pops up without even wanting to. When you're able to revisit a memory in a controlled environment, you can dampen your emotional stamp onto that memory. You don't forget the memory. You just disassociate the emotional feelings, the trauma, the fear, the physical damage.

• 2:55Jay Shetty?

  For anyone concerned that their family member may have early dementia, Alzheimer's, what should they be looking out for and how can they help that person?

• 3:07Speaker 03

  The number one health and wellness podcast.

• 3:10Speaker 04

  Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty.

• 3:16Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the place you come to listen, learn and grow. Today's guest is someone that we had on last year and you absolutely loved the episode. The response was incredible. We had to have him back on. It is none other than Dr. Raul John Dial, a renowned neurosurgeon, neuroscientist and author. Dr. John Dial is known for his expertise in brain surgery, particularly in areas related to brain tumors, epilepsy and other brain disorders. Dr. John Dial is also a prominent public speaker and educator, frequently sharing insights into the brain's complexity and health. His work combines clinical practice with research, aiming to deepen our understanding

• 3:59Jay Shetty?

  of the brain and improve treatments for neurological diseases. Please welcome back Dr. Raul John Dial. It's great to have you back.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  I'm stoked to be back, my man.

• 4:09Jay Shetty?

  People loved that episode and the response was so great that we were like, we have to get you back on for part two.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  I mean, it was hard to tell for me because, you know, we're here and it's intimate. I'm feeling relaxed and I can communicate. But then it's going out of so many people. Whereas if you do a, you know, live television or you do an audience event, you can feel that energy like a sporting event. But I'm thrilled to be back, man, and I'm, I'm ready to just, just go off the top and just vibe.

• 4:33Jay Shetty?

  I love it, man. I love it. I wanted to dive in because I know you've been talking a lot about memory. And that's been something you've been studying quite deeply recently. Why is it that we feel we can't remember anything anymore?

• 4:46Speaker 02

  So that was the most common question I would get from my patients. So I, I'm a brain surgeon. I've taken care of several thousand patients with surgery and the interaction before and after surgery. And then I've met thousands. I was talking to your team, like, you know, not everybody you see needs surgery or benefits from surgery or chooses surgery. So there's just a lot of human interaction I've had, thousands of patients. I'm 52. I've been doing this since I was 25. And one of the most common questions people ask when they start to think about, maybe my brain isn't going to be perfect forever, is when they start forgetting like where the keys are at or they stop remembering things. And they, they say, is this Alzheimer's? Does this need to be fixed? Is this natural? So that the question about memory is fundamental.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  And I'll, I'll zoom out for a little bit. People who don't have memory of who they are are completely lost. Every day they have to invent themselves new. So it's an essential feature that one type of memory called autobiographical memory, it stitches our memories of our childhood, lifetime experiences, and it gives us a sense of identity, meaning, purpose. Like I have been the one in this vehicle of life and those experiences are connected, right? So memory is essential in that way for identity. On a more practical level, memory is not one word. So like, there's a lot of types of memory. And I think that's where today, I want to just take it one step deeper.

• 6:07Speaker 02

  Like, I don't have all the answers, but when I'm communicating with patients, if I can take it one step deeper in the explanation and they go, aha, I get it, then they're more likely to implement the guidance they choose. There are many types of memory. Memory is not one word. So let's take one that we rarely lose. Procedural memory. Once you learn how to ride a bike, once you learn how to like, you know, tie your shoelaces, patients of mine that have Alzheimer's or even brain injury or just get 80s and 90s, they still remember that. Procedural memory is not the one we need to be thinking about. Then there's another type of memory called semantic memory. That's facts. I don't want to remember my phone number anymore. I got facts on my phone. I want to connect the dots. So those kinds of things aren't as important.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  Then there's the a third type you can call episodic memory. It's a fancy word for episodes. Again, like this happened in my life. This episode. Now that's important. Unfortunately, that type of memory is what's lost with dementia, with aging. And people worry about that. Like, does this mean I'm aging normally? Or is this the onset of Alzheimer's? We don't have that answer. So whether you end up having Alzheimer's or whether you just have age-appropriate subtle loss of memory, it begins with like, where did I put my keys? Like, it all begins that way. We can't tell you which one's going to go to 10 years later. That adult says, I can't find my way home.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  So that concept is so tricky that since we don't have that answer, I believe everybody should do things to prevent memory loss.

• 7:43Jay Shetty?

  Right.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Because you don't, because if you go down the Alzheimer's path or just a normal cognitive decline, the guidance is still the same. A, B, C. Eat a certain way. Think a certain way. Move a certain way. The guidance, A, B, C. Whether you're about to get Alzheimer's, don't know if you have Alzheimer's or normal aging or have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, the guidance is the same. And that speaks to how the brain and mind works.

• 8:08Jay Shetty?

  How bad is it that we can't remember what we had for dinner last night?

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Not a big deal at all.

• 8:13Jay Shetty?

  Not a big deal.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Not a big deal at all. So those glitches are age-appropriate. That happens in our 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. As we get less young, I had a patient a long time ago. She was 90 something. I said, well, you're older. She looked at me with just a scowl. She was like, older? I'm less young. So since that day.

• 8:34Jay Shetty?

  You say it.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Less young. So as we get less young, that's natural.

• 8:38Jay Shetty?

  Why? What's happening?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Well, the answer is is not clear because we don't study that. What we do study is when it starts with age appropriate sort of subtle memory loss. If you zoom out, our whole, our knees age, our hearts age, our minds age. That's not necessarily a disease. But it's age appropriate versus Alzheimer's. Alzheimer's is and dementia and like what Bruce Willis has, frontotemporal dementia. There's a lot of different types of dementia. Maybe we should just call it dementia. Is that it starts with a little bit of memory loss. That's just normal aging. But then it accelerates. And what people think is like, oh, they can't remember things. It's more than that. They can't remember their autobiographical memory.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  They can't remember who they are because they don't remember their stories from their childhood. Then they start forgetting who the loved ones are and why their loved ones. Autobiographical memory. Then the the injury goes even deeper and it affects their emotional regulation. Like, that's a big topic I love. I wrote about a long time ago, like the ability to say, I'm angry. But that's not how I want to feel right now. That's not how I want to act right now. They lose emotional regulation. So for caregivers, it's very challenging. It's like, you don't remember me, I'm your child. And then on top of that, you're angry with me all the time. It's a it's an intense experience, of course, for the patient, for the person. I wouldn't say why do can we can we never age in a way that's super memory all the way?

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Let me jump, I'm gonna get to that. I'm not sure we want perfect memory that's about facts, that's about procedures. The area, the the last type of memory that I didn't mention is called working memory. This is this is the memory I want. Of course, I want autobiographical memory. I'm Rahul, I'm this, I'm that. Facts are on my phone. I think I'll be able to, you know, handle a bike and and laces for a while. So let's get down to if you want to level up. So the training for Alzheimer's and dementia, the training for me, the training for NFL quarterbacks, for moving receivers, analysis, judgment, timing, that's called working memory.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Too much juggling, multitasking has its own issues. But working memory is, it is the skill I want. I want to be able to run six governmental departments. I want to be able to manage a hospital with sixteen patients on ventilators when I was twenty-eight. I want to manage talking to you and having a bunch of ideas popping in the back and which one do I bring, right? That's called working memory. And there is guidance and training for that. There is brain training for that type of memory. So you asked me early, like, what's memory? So now we've broken it out into several types.

• 11:22Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 02

  And the one, the one we want is short-term, juggling a lot of plates, a lot of thoughts in the sky. And that's where creativity comes from. You're looking at things, your working memory is pulling back imagination. Working memory can be trained. Working memory is the digital therapeutic for Alzheimer's. Working memory is like the people I look up to, the ones that do things the best. Because it's not just procedurally, like, I'm looking at six monitors and able to operate. It's the fact that I have a lot of thoughts in my head and my working memory is keeping them all immediately accessible. I don't have to like go, ah, where was that, what was that? No, I've got like eight or nine things I want to talk to you about. My working memory is keeping them afloat, allowing me to extract them for you.

• 12:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. For anyone who's listening right now and they're concerned that their family member may have early dementia, Alzheimer's, that direction, what should they be looking out for and how can they help that person?

• 12:20Speaker 02

  The story is when we, when humans passed away in our thirties and forties, it was sort of like the heart that wore out. And then we lived longer and we addressed heart disease mainly, you know. As, as we live longer and longer, it's the brain that's starting to wear out. And if you suspect that your family member is having memory issues, the greatest challenge will be, and I don't mean this lightly, is that that person doesn't remember what they don't remember. They're not thinking, I forgot that because they don't remember that. It's the loved ones that see it. So if you see that, you have to invite them and say, look, you know, I'm noticing a few different things. In our next general visit to the doctor,

• 13:05Speaker 02

  can we maybe mention it to them? And they'll do a neurocognitive test. It's straightforward. Draw the circle backwards. And they do like those that like a little test. It's casual, but they can track it. Say, hey, can we do this every year? And you track that test every year. And when when you see that you're drawing the clock and you're missing numbers, even the person with dementia will say, yeah, you know, something's changing. But if you try to persuade somebody who can't remember, hey, you're not remembering. You could see how that could just not work, right?

• 13:34Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  So you want to get them to somebody early. And what the physician will do is take a look at that. And then I say, hey, do you have genetic history? And so certain, almost all dementia is not genetic, but there are some genetic issues that you want to know about. And then, this is the best part. Whether it's age-appropriate cognitive decline of certain memory, not working memory, the one we're fighting, I'm fighting for, or it's early onset Alzheimer's that we can identify, the interventions are the same. Keep the brain arteries open. Eat a certain type of food, the mind diet, and continue to challenge the brain. Puzzles, socializing, networking,

• 14:19Speaker 02

  taking a different route home, using your left hand, learning a new language. You don't have to learn the new language. You just have to try. You might only get like three words. You're like, hey, this language thing is not working. But it's the those, those three steps are there is it? That's the established thing. And I think that way, that's empowering to the patient, to the families. And it's not like pill and medicine dependent because frankly, there ain't good medicine for it.

• 14:44Jay Shetty?

  Really?

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is not a, there are not great treatments for Alzheimer's. They're out there. People can look at them. They're for early cognitive decline. But when you, even if you were to take those medicines, you still gotta do the other things. You gotta walk to keep your brain arteries open. You gotta irrigate the flesh. You gotta eat a mind diet, which is fatty fish, or if you're vegan or plant-based, you know, they have that. And then you gotta like, you have to do those brain training and challenge your working memory. The same thing with somebody with Alzheimer's, about to get Alzheimer's, worried about Alzheimer's, and you and me, it's the same recipe.

• 15:19Jay Shetty?

  Let's break down the recipe for people who are listening right now so that we can get into the details of those three steps.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Like, you know, the brain is flesh. I remember the first time I saw it when I was 26, and they opened the skull and I was just like watching the professors. And I was like, what? Is this even possible? And it gets 20% of the blood flow from your heart with these four raging arteries that come up. And it's like three pounds or five kilograms or whatever it is. That three, four pound organ gets 20% of our blood flow. It is an energy hog. And you think it's, and then it's white. Opalescent, it's shimmering under the operating room lights. I mean, it's not gray matter. Gray matter is when the patient's passed away and they've like, no, no, no. And it's heat. With every breath, it heaves a little bit. It's got fluid chambers on it.

• 16:09Speaker 02

  I mean, it's like, it's, the way to imagine it is like 100 billion-ish jellyfish in an aquarium, but there's fluid in there and they're shooting electricity and chemicals at it. You mentioned something about when I said sleep entry and you said, yeah, versus falling asleep, language is important for our concepts. That's what I tried to do before I came on today was like, how do I describe this in a way where it's not like, the brain? I say the same thing. I'm not, I'm not throwing shade on anybody, but take your imagination away that it's 100 billion jellyfish packed together in clusters, floating in an aquarium inside our skull. Our brain doesn't sit on the inside of our skull. It's buoyant. And it's spraying electricity and it's not in left and right directions.

• 16:52Speaker 02

  It's like Aurora Borealis or a school of birds that rolls back onto each other, right? It's a, there's an electrical flow that's shivering through those, through those jellyfish, right? Like, that's how you gotta imagine it. So when you look at it, the first thing you need to know is those four arteries that come and feed this garden, right? And the neurons are like roses, you, you get what you get. You're not really growing neurons, it's a mild exception with stem cells. And then there's all the supporting cells that I call like shrubs, like astrocytes, like you wanna keep that garden irrigated. You sprinkle the lawn, right? You gotta sprinkle blood to that flesh because that activity in those neurons is relying on the glucose coming up. And glucose is the fuel to keep those little molecular jellyfish alive.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  So people say, well, what do, what do I do to keep my brain sharp? Well, keep those arteries open. How do you keep those arteries open? You know that, take the lipitor, walk, exercise. That's not just to look good, it's to keep the main arteries and all those fine branching arteries going into those crevices open, because if you start losing swaths of brain tissue, you're gonna have issues. Not always, but that's the first thing is, heart health is also brain health. That's the easiest thing, okay? Number two is what you eat, not, not today or tomorrow, but over a decade. And this is well established, this isn't like one study.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Globally, the Mediterranean diet, which is mostly plants, fatty fish, beans, nuts, those people, if you just look at like thousands and thousands over a decade or two, they have lower rates of dementia and that's the only difference that they're having. That's the recommendation we give to people. So you say, well, why does that, what kind of, that kind of diet, why does that work? Hey, look, I'm gonna have a burger. I love it. I mean, it's not the indulgences. It's that baseline habit with food.

• 18:45Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's the eighty percent.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Those neurons, the neurons, if you think of it as a jellyfish, with all these tentacles, you know, they're rough numbers, ten thousand, hundred, whatever. But the electrical signals that flow between our neurons, they're wrapped with something, insulation. The insulation lets the electricity fire faster. That insulation is literally made of omega-3 fat. The brain is fatty. The fat that the brain uses to keep insulated comes from fatty fish and those kind of things. So there's a reason to eat that way. And the last thing we've been talking about all, you know, all morning is focusing on tension on your next level up, not somebody else's. Right, because if I told you, hey, you want bigger biceps, we would say we need it. But this is a thinking flesh.

• 19:30Speaker 02

  This is a feeling flesh. This is an interconnected flesh. So vibe, think, read, whatever that is for you. But the combination of those three things is well established, and there is no shortcut.

• 19:42Jay Shetty?

  Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from our sponsors. 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, F D I C.

• 20:25Jay Shetty?

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• 21:09Jay Shetty?

  Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees. So you keep every dollar you earn. 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. Orange Theory Fitness, helping people live longer, more vibrant lives. Terms and conditions apply. See webpage in studio for details. Thanks for taking a moment for that. Now, back to the discussion.

• 21:53Jay Shetty?

  I love the way you've broken down the different memories. I had no idea that there were so many different words for memory. And I love that because it helps us really compartmentalize how we think about this really big topic. But when I'm listening to you, I'm wondering, what are we doing every day that's distracting and disrupting our working memory?

• 22:12Speaker 02

  So what I try to do is I try to take my patient's stories. I try to look at the neurons in a Petri dish. I read a lot. I read a lot of random things. And I try to think about how to answer that. What's the right? How do you thread the needle between juggling enough to where you're holding on to and cultivating your working memory? Or you're just like, just numb by this like blitz of, of things coming at you. I think it's very individual. I would say it's different for children. Because as we discussed last time, we're learning to move and walk and the brain is learning to have a sense of self.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  There's a psychological cultivation that mirrors our physical cultivation. You don't want to flood that mind with too much. I'll let others comment on at which age they should be on social media or not. But the concept I think we can all agree on, based on science, and this conversation is, in the developing mind, it doesn't have the filter and it doesn't have the maturity of that working memory. You don't want a kid. I've raised three sons, they're nineteen, twenty and twenty-three. So I'm talking from the perspective of parent. I always try to see where are they at? And then add one more thing. But sometimes when I see families with their patients in the waiting room.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I mean, the kids just look down at their phones for like a hundred hours. You know, it's like you look at their, you know, their time they've been on there. And you ask them, how long you been on there? Oh, a lot, you know, they just, it's just, it feels excessive for that age. And then it's also the content. At the later age of life, you want certain brain training games for elderly. They have shown like it's FDA approved. That means you brought a lot of evidence in it. It's not just one study. I'm not throwing shade on anybody, but the game is, it's a racer game where like grandma's like racing a car. And there's distractions coming up and she has to avoid them. Same thing for NFL quarterbacks. I think it was Atlanta.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  He's a broadcaster now, he's a quarterback. They had a game where they're looking at something, but different lights are popping up. And they have to identify them in their peripheral vision. That speed of processing, that working memory is an important skill. The question is, when are you stunting its development and when are you cultivating? I think it's age specific. I think it's individual specific. I think when we know when we're just doing something to shut down versus doing it as training. So that portal can be both. It can mess you up, it can hold you back. But if you have the right digital diet, man, it can open up the world for you. So I think that's the way I look at it.

• 24:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I always think about it like an elastic band. And it's this idea that an elastic band is useless if it's not being stretched. But at the same time, there's a point at which it will snap.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:06Jay Shetty?

  And I've seen that with my own memory or my ability, my working memory, as you describe it. Where I used to think. I was doing everything I could and then I stretched. And I was like, oh, wow, I could do more than I believe. And then I stretched. And then I stretched and I started to realize that my capacity and capability was far larger than I ever imagined.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  And you were developing it with each stress.

• 25:29Jay Shetty?

  Exactly. But if I accepted where I was, that, oh, this is the most I can do, actually, I would never have known. And you're saying that in some ways, that's unhealthy.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  Unhealthy that you.

• 25:39Jay Shetty?

  You don't stretch and challenge. Like you were saying with your kids, you're always adding one more.

• 25:43Speaker 02

  Somebody flies to space, they don't have gravitational force, they come back, their bones are brittle. You need certain amount of stress at the bone, at the osteocyte level, like physiologically, we need gravity. So some stress makes us grow. Too much stress fractures that bone. Okay? Take that physiologic concept and apply that same to the mind. Now, what I would say is that elastic band, I love that. And if you leave it idle and that elastic band gets dry, then the stretching is too late. And then the last thing I would add to that is when my sons and others, they play video games, is a very well-studied thing. If you give them multiple levels, they'll compete to level up. But if you just present them the fifth level, they'll just say, no, that's too hard.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  And if you make it too easy, that won't hold their attention. So the nuance is exactly is to find where I'm, where am I at? Not that person's advice, not that person's life, but from everything that I've taken in, where am I at? Where the appropriate next stress challenge, stretch of the rubber band, next level on the video game is there? That's enticing enough, achievable with some effort, and then I get there. And then I get there. And then I get there. And then I get knocked down. Because life is, is gonna knock you down. That's part of its struggle and its beauty. And then you might find yourself not at those same levels, not with those same coping mechanisms,

• 27:06Speaker 02

  but remembering that it's an incremental crawl out of that ditch that your mind can fall into. I've seen it in my cancer patients, they're heroes. And so if the lesson there is that our working memory, our memory, our mind, everything. From bones to biology to trees, we need stress and pressure. It's a thermostat. Stress isn't all bad. Stress isn't all good. And it's individual. Stress for you might be different than stress for me. In the hospital, there are stresses that certain friends of mine can handle. That's a massive stress. You're operating in the middle of the night. You're handling fifteen patients. For them, they're right at that. For other people, that might inundate them, and that's not appropriate.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  So it has to be an individual thing. But biologically, physiologically, psychologically, I think knowing thyself is to know, what's that next challenge for me? That's enticing, that's achievable with effort, that's not too easy, so I don't give a damn.

• 28:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Or just, there's no way I can get there, so I'm not even gonna try.

• 28:09Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, there's a brilliant book called Flow State by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, if I'm saying his surname right, that explains this so brilliantly. He talks about the need for having your skills meet your challenge. And so he talks about this idea that either what most of us experience is our challenge is above our skills. So we get frustrated, right? We get really disappointed. You might even get depressed because your challenge is so high and your skills are so low. Or you have the opposite, where your skills are really high, but your challenge is low. Now you're bored. Now you're disconnected. Now you're disengaged because you can practically do everything with ease. And so he talks about flow state, which is what we see athletes, musicians, singers. These people are in their moments or in the zone

• 28:54Jay Shetty?

  is when their experiences and their skills meet their challenge. And while we're talking about this, the part that I was thinking about is why do we get so stressed when we can't remember something? Right when we're like, oh, man, I wanted to tell you about that movie. And I want to tell you about that. Oh, what was that actor's name? Oh, gosh, I, you know, we get so frustrated when we're, we almost feel that glitch.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  I think that's because we assume that we're slowing down or shutting down. And what I'm trying to tell people is that memory, uh, outsource that to your phone. There are people who forget their keys, forget other people's names. That's appropriate as we get less young. But older people can still have high working memory, fight for working memory and stay with that. Back to the flow state. I love that, man. I mean, I wrote about it a little bit. I'm familiar with the book. And I think the insight that he provided. Is that one, it's individual. You can be in a flow state driving. You could be in a flow state sewing. You can be a flow state holding your kid. It's not only for high level people.

• 30:01Speaker 02

  I think, you know, as described that it's again, individual. It's personal, but it takes knowing not what other people's ambitions and desires are, not what other people's goals are. It takes knowing like this is something I want to get better at. This is something I want to cultivate myself. I think that's what I liked about his book was that it wasn't about the skill. It was at your skill level. Yes. It's not like brain surgeries are in flow state. Athletes are in flow state. He, he studied them to understand that. The second thing that I liked about it, often there's a physical component and a thinking component. And I love that because there have been times where, I don't know. I mean, people think like, people think like brain surgery is like fixing a car. You do these 20 steps.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  It's every tissue, every cancer is reverse sculpting. There's at some point you have to just, you have to let the maneuvers go where like it's, it's a dance. When I've seen it done with finesse at the highest level. And in those occasions where I'm feeling that, I just remember feeling so good about what was happening without every thought being engineered and structured. Like there was a, I felt proud that there was a skill being released. And I think that's a flow state for me during surgery. Sometimes when I drive, I grew up in LA. So when the freeways are open, I took a long, fast drive through all the open roads. I had my white coat. I was, you know, I'm a surgeon, so we're allowed to be on there.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  But for driving, some people, they just describe it as again, it's both paying attention externally and then doing something physically. I think the combination. Yeah. The physical movement, physical activity, I think should not be underestimated. Let me give you a specific example. The overlap of.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  Of wanting and desire those circuits. When you talk about flow state, it's not just a psychological thing. The most times I felt that it's a mind body thing.

• 32:01Jay Shetty?

  What's the connection between you were mentioning their focus and attention? What's their connection with memory? Because I think a lot of us are trying to be more present. We see it as valuable. When we meet someone, you forget their name instantly. You're right, the facts will be there. But there's a part of us that feel like we're almost looking through people. We're not really there. How much does focus and attention actually impact memory? Or are they not connected?

• 32:25Speaker 02

  You know, that's a good question. I don't think I have a specific answer about that. I haven't read about that, but I will tell. I will tell you that memory to retrieve it is a reconstruction. There's no rolodex or a filing cabinet. You pull it out. Memory is built.

• 32:40Jay Shetty?

  What do you mean by that?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Let's think of the brain as an ecosystem. Right? The general electricity that you can record or like an atmosphere. Then we have the flesh, the lobes. We can talk about that. Then we have networks and circuits, like things that work in ensembles. They go up and down together. They they never turn off. It's always like fifty one forty nine. There's no part of the brain that shuts off. And then there's individual neurons. You can think of them as like each tree in a forest. When we talk about memory, it is not a filing cabinet. It's a hub. And so it pulls like I want to remember something. The easiest way for me to remember something and sometimes unavoidable.

• 33:22Speaker 02

  Like you can't even forget it is when the emotional structures and regions of your brain have put a stamp on it. So emotional imprinting of a memory and trauma makes it sometimes too easy to remember. And sometimes it pops up without even wanting to. Right? So that's one type of focus attention. Emotional stamping. I don't amygdala is not positive. It's not negative stamping. It's just emotional stamping, both positive and negative. So an emotional imprint on a memory requires no focus and attention. It's just, it's just churning back there.

• 33:56Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  It's activated. A smell can pop it open. You don't wanna think about it, it's coming up. I think we all know that, right? Like, things we don't wanna think about, feelings we don't have, memories of the past, blended with imagination. So, you don't require attention and focus for some types of memory. Usually the ones with emotional stamps. We can get into trauma and that sort of thing.

• 34:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  For the re- For the rest of it, if we're engaging people, then on the other side is, there's all this like, you don't wanna remember all of this? It's not really relevant, right? It's a habit. You're driving, you make that exit, there's a memory, there's a procedural memory. I don't wanna think about like tying my shoelace. So somewhere in between is the attention to, I should remember this, I want to remember this. So memories emotionally imprinted, memories you don't need, you're just driving on the freeway. And in between, the emotional memory is easy, the attention and focus to memory is hard, because it's a decremental process. Meaning, bandwidth is a casual word, but it takes effort.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  The emotional thing, oh, it just strikes you, the other one you don't want. So attention and focus requires effort. And so when you have people you're talking to, you wanna remember something, or you wanna remember, you know, them or their names, that attention and focus is something you have to dial up.

• 35:20Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  And there's a couple of ways to dial it up. Removing distractions. We talked to LeBron James, it's like, it's about not thinking about it. There's one way is to remove distractions, or increase attention. And that's individual. Focus is, if you haven't slept, your energy towards attention is less, it's decremental. They call it decremental vigilance. Like, if you're on guard in a military situation, like after a certain amount of hours, or a long surgery, or a long shift to the hospital, it fades. If you're in the middle, you're just like, I wanna have more focus and attention to this, the natural answer is lessen the distraction, be rested, and, you know, make it a priority. But that's within each of our minds, based on what we're looking at.

• 36:03Jay Shetty?

  So when you just told me before we started that you're doing- Brain surgery at 3 a.m. today. How do you maintain a level of attention? Obviously, there's no distractions.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Oh, there are kinds of distractions.

• 36:18Jay Shetty?

  Okay, okay.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  People are walking around, things are going wrong, beeps are going off. You gotta tell somebody, hey, no music today.

• 36:23Jay Shetty?

  So walk me through that. How are you that focused with something that sensitive in that moment? How do you prepare for that type of surgery?

• 36:31Speaker 02

  So the skill, the cultivation is to know when this task can be performed casually, going to cafeteria, talking to a patient. Your emotional intensity is there, but you you learn to dial up and dial down as the situation requires us. The fancy word is ecological validity. Like, you got you got a game plan, but it's got to be tested. And so that long training and those long hours was partly because they needed labor, partly because, you know, they justified it like if you go work in a small town and you do an operation, then the patient has to go back because something went wrong. You can't call somebody else. You gotta run it. You gotta handle it. And so what you learn is, so for example, the the operation went late last night.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  That's not a big deal to me because before that, I wasn't trying to wear myself out with drama with somebody, you know, wearing myself out with like looking at things that were distract. I went into a sort of what I call a Zen mode to prevent distractions. You know, I go to Zen mode before and it's not like you can tell. And then I save that tension and focus because I know my vigilance is decremental. It fades. And then we get the patient set up and we do all of that. I'm still just whatever, you know? And until there's like a there's a physical cue for me and then it lifts. There's attention and focus. And then there's the craft and then there's a release. And then after that, there's, you know, there's a crash. And then I make the decision I'm going to Uber home or drive home, you know?

• 38:01Speaker 02

  I know the freeway, so I drove home. But that goes back to your original question is realize attention and focus for memory, for anything is a resource. Some things will grab your attention. Some things don't warrant your attention. It's it's it's that middle zone, right? That's what we're trying to finesse at an individual level, you know, and a collective level.

• 38:19Jay Shetty?

  Well, I I appreciate what you're saying because I remember reading about it in a book by Daniel Levitin called The Organized Mind. And he talked about this idea of how when Warren Buffett Is deciding where to invest. He takes milk and cookies, rents an apartment in New York City and lives in that apartment for five days. So basically, he's doing very little when it comes to his daily requirements of food. He's cleared out his space, so he's in a new environment that's empty. And then he's sitting there making decisions and he talked about how this was his way of removing decision fatigue. This idea that when we're making lots of insignificant decisions in the morning when we wake up, by the time it comes to a big decision at the end of the day, the middle of the day, we have no energy left to make it.

• 39:03Jay Shetty?

  So most of us are stressing out going, what do I eat today? What do I wear today? Which route do I take to work today? Oh, my gosh, what am I going to say to that person today? Now, by the time you get into the office, you've already made so many insignificant decisions that you're exhausted. And now you can't dial it up when you actually need it.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Because it's limited and it's and it's decremental over time. I love that. What I would say is, again, you have to know yourself a little bit like that's coming. And it could be, I'm about to have a hot conversation with my lover and this is not, this is a tense situation. I don't want to walk in that with my mind already in a fuss. I got a big case, it's going late, there was an emergency before, I'm gonna start this at 11 o'clock, it needs to go tonight. That's not when I'm trying to get into a fuss. I don't know what the example will be for your viewers and other people. But if everybody can walk away with like your attention and focus or wherever level and stage you're at is precious, is limited.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  You want to control your environment, you don't want to talk to certain people, maybe you do want to talk to certain people. Maybe you want to listen to certain music, maybe you don't want to listen to. Those examples are all around us. Athletes walking in with their bows, headphones on, they're doing the same thing. But we can explain it with neuroscience that attention is decremental. You cannot maintain

• 40:22Jay Shetty?

  A hundred percent.

• 40:22Speaker 02

  Sustained external focus. So in those 40 hour shifts, I never did a 40 hour operation. And I just learned to work with my intention and focus. That was the real skill that I learned. And then Buffett, you know, he's also changing his physical environment.

• 40:36Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  I do that too. Like I'm going to London next, next week and I'm just, people are like, oh, you like to stay in the same place? I think, no, I'm coming here to like, oh, get lost. Oh, my phone's not working. Look at this. Where's this? Like I, I need to change physical environment to have new thoughts because I'm working on something in my mind. And so I think part, maybe part of what he does is, is not just to get rid of the fuss and to avoid uh, decision fatigue or decremental vigilance because of decremental vigilance, I like prefer that one for is broader. I'm not telling you what to pay attention to. I'm not trying to tell you about, you're about to make a decision. Just realize this focus, this external, they're, they're catchy calling it action network and action brain network.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  These fountains and continents that rev up a little bit on the, inside our brain for outward attention versus dreaming where it's all imaginative. Like you can't rev that up for 16 hours. See, there's a cadence to the day.

• 41:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  You're setting yourself up for success. Individual success. Fighting with somebody, dealing with a kid, driving you crazy, whatever it is, that's, that's yours. I want people to walk away with like, I get it. You know, my, my day is, my, my, my day is a dance, you know?

• 41:46Jay Shetty?

  I really like that, man. I think that's such great advice and it resonates so strongly with me. Even when I look at my day. So for example, I only do two interviews per day. So you're my first one. I have another one in the afternoon. And I can only do two interviews per day because for me, these interviews require a hundred percent focus. And if you ask me to do another one on top of that, I just don't think I could be at a hundred percent. But I know that for you, I can be at a hundred percent. I then have a couple of meetings in between which are requiring a different part of me that don't require this exclusive focus. And you're so right. I think we put so much pressure on ourself that we expect this level of focus in every conversation, every meeting throughout the whole day.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  In every situation.

• 42:29Jay Shetty?

  In every situation.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  You get some bad news, you gotta know, I may not even be able to pull off two. You got a crunch, you might be able, but that's exactly, that's again ecological validity. In your environment, if I get into a car crash, I can't go into my Zen, pre-surgery Zen mode. I call my partner. I gotta know where I'm at. And so there is no final guidance. It's just. That your attention and focus is

• 42:52Jay Shetty?

  That's great advice.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  You know what I mean?

• 42:53Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's great advice.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Because people think like, like, he's a robot. No, man. I've been through a lot. I go through a lot. I feel a lot. But I've just realized that to deliver as a surgeon, here's the dance I do with my own mind to be, to bring it for that patient. Because that patient trusted me on a journey that's sacred. And at that moment, that's all I'm about.

• 43:16Jay Shetty?

  Before we dive into the next moment, let's hear from our sponsors.

• 43:22Jay Shetty?

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• 44:05Jay 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 Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in store or online. This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

• 44:49Jay Shetty?

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• 45:22Jay Shetty?

  And back to our episode. I wanted to ask you about something you've mentioned before. You talked about this idea of this emotional memory that almost comes immediately. This idea that if, and I often lead this meditation. It's one of my favorite ones to lead when I'm sharing it with my audience or community. And technically, it's called a loving kindness meditation. And what it means is I'll often ask people, before we share love with the world, I edited it slightly for people to really experience love within themselves. So I'll ask people to close their eyes and get into that zone, but I'll ask them to go back to a memory where they felt the most joyful, the most happy, and the most loved. Who was there? How did it smell? What could they see?

• 46:07Jay Shetty?

  What could they hear? What could they taste? And immediately, people will have a vision. People think of their wedding day. People have even thought of their dog passing away because it was a really important transition point for them. It could be the first time they celebrated their parent or bought their parent a home or whatever it was, the ability to take care of someone. Yeah, it's really beautiful. It's different. But it's really interesting. What you said is, for most of us, it's actually the opposite that we do more of. So it's more common for us to replay a negative memory again and again and again and again than it is for us to remember what we did last weekend, even if it was positive. Why do we do that?

• 46:51Jay Shetty?

  Why do we replay negative memories? Why is it so easy? And what do we do about it?

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Memory. Is imprinted with emotion for our protection. Right, like you see a snake, you don't want to have to think about it. It's a global thing, but roughly as the brain blossomed, it went from brain stem, which people call reptilian, to limbic structures that people call emotional or primal brain and prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that pushed the brain forward. They have different regions, but they're all interconnected and they're hubs. So it's not a consistent texture throughout the brain. It's not like a liver. It's not like flan where it's like the brain, the brain is not one thing. It's a whole ecosystem, different structures, different connections, different cells.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  And memory and emotion are intertwined as part of the primal limbic structures. That's the way my puppy can sniff and smell out when I'm trying to trick her. Think about it in that way, how ingenious that is like if you're going on a date now, you're like, hey Frankie, Frankie, come, come. She's like looking at you, right? That's instinct. So emotion and memory and thoughts, that is a type of thinking. I don't think of emotions as not thinking, but that if you have a brain injury and you lose those primal centers, you're paralyzed, you can't make a decision. You can actually have an injury to your prefrontal cortex and still do a lot with just your limbic structures. So emotion and memory are important, right? You want that imprint.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  I saw a snake, I jumped before I thought about it. Then what also happens is we have emotional regulation. I saw the snake, I jumped, then I looked down the second time and said, it's a plastic snake. I'm not worried about that. Or I'm afraid of heights and exposure therapy. I can learn to tamp down my emotional responses with my prefrontal cortex, which is the area of the brain that pushed the forehead forward. You can think of it as two fists and there's different regions that do different things that are fascinating. That's an important system, but that system is so hot for your protection that it could go sideways on you too. So what I think is important is That most of us, when we have traumatic experiences, we don't develop PTSD.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  The great majority of people from hurricanes and COVID and other things, they don't develop PTSD. There is a protective mechanism on how to deal with trauma. And that mechanism is learning to uncouple the emotional imprint of the limbic structures in the primal area of the brain, amygdala, just part of it. That I was hurt and the assailant was wearing a flannel jacket. Your immediate response is not to go down that alley. That's protective. When a year later, you're not able to leave your home, I'm not judging you, I'd be the same way. I'm just saying that's something you want to work on, that emotional imprint is too strong.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Then you go to somebody who can take you safely, based on you feeling safe. Not every therapist's office is safe. You feel safe, you bring up that memory. Your body has a response and you realize, you know what, it's okay. You do that 10 times and what happens? You take the traumatic, negative, hurtful, scary emotion to that memory. You don't lose that memory. Those patients will tell you, yeah, now I can think of it, but it doesn't, it doesn't take my breath away like that.

• 50:25Jay Shetty?

  You're extracting the story you have attached to that memory from that memory, right?

• 50:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, the negative imprint part of the story. You're not, you're not trying to forget about it. That's the most, that's the, are you that cool? Like, that's established. I don't know how that works. I'm not a therapist. But that's, that's the point there is the hippocampus, the hub from brain-wide memory and limbic structure, something happens, they're meant to stamp you, don't go down that alley again. Don't get hit with that snake again, right? Like, that's, that's the design. But what happens in our life is we're dealing with a lot of the, the hurt from it, from lovers, from experiences at work. And from assault, that, you know, I work in a hospital, people still get hurt quite a bit. And so when you're able to revisit a memory in a controlled environment.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  And not have that harmful experience, you can dampen your emotional stamp onto that memory. You don't forget the memory. You just uncouple, disassociate the emotional feelings, the trauma, the fear, the physical reaction. And I don't know if that's a negativity bias or not. I don't have an answer for that. You ask like, why do we always remember more painful things? I mean, maybe they're protective. It's more of evolutionary psychology. Maybe that helped us. There's no way to experiment or like, I can't give you that answer. But what I would say to you is, what if we did the flip side? Maybe that's the neurobiology. I'm not talking about neuroscience and the brain, the brain. Just to be specific, what if by remembering a positive memory,

• 51:56Speaker 02

  you are enhancing and accentuating the positive stamp?

• 52:03Jay Shetty?

  That's my belief, yeah.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And because it's interconnected with hubs and continents and lobes, not what if, because it's interconnected, just stay with me. If you have an emotional, negative, negative emotional stamp on a memory and it reverberates through your body, I mean, God, it would just goosebump. I mean, you know, it's, it's like, we can go over the connections, but it's a physiologic response. What if you could have by choice in that part of that prefrontal cortex, that area at the bottom called orbital frontal cortex, without getting into the details of it, but there's an internal referee of where we steer our thoughts and our competition of wants and thoughts. What if we spent time saying, bring up positive old memories,

• 52:47Speaker 02

  stamp them harder, put them in a collective environment that reinforces it, bring out the positive thinking, bring out the positive vibes? It could be physiologically possible to be the opposite of PTSD, emotional stamping of the hippocampus. Now, there's no experiment for that, but I believe in that.

• 53:04Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 02

  There's no reason not to believe in that. And if you do that, just remember, it's not happening in a spot in your brain. It's reverberating through your brain and your body. So then maybe you stop having some of those somatic symptoms. Maybe, right, maybe you feel that flow state where your body is different and your brain is different. So I believe that there, every nerve is two-way.

• 53:29Speaker 02

  I touch, it goes up, I wanna move, it's the same nerve, it's bidirectional. So why can't the relationship between our primal limbic circuits, whatever, amygdala, and our memory zone and all interconnected, why can't that be bidirectional? If we can stamp a negative memory so we don't fall in that trap again, what if we could stamp a positive memory and add momentum in that direction?

• 53:50Jay Shetty?

  This is a huge, huge thing I won't be able to take away because what we've kind of stumbled on here is so profound for people because what we're saying is, don't try to forget the bad memory. If you try to forget the bad memory, it will never go away. That memory is gonna stay there because it's trying to teach you something, it's trying to remind you something, it's trying to make you aware of something. But if you can change the story, if you can give it a different meaning, if you can extract the pain out of it, it just completely transforms. And I'm thinking about so many moments in my life that you're so right, that now you can think of that memory, the memory is not gone.

• 54:34Jay Shetty?

  But the way I think of that moment, I think of it as being a powerful part of my story, I think of it as being a beautiful breakthrough for me.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Put that crisis to use.

• 54:43Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. And all of a sudden, yeah, that's really bad.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Because it's too hard to tell somebody to forget that, they're like, uh, you're telling me to forget that is the only thing I'm thinking about, doc. You know what I mean? It's not fair to them.

• 54:53Jay Shetty?

  I think the problem is not just people telling us, I think we want to forget it.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Well, because of the language and the concepts that are out there. But if we're told, no, you haven't failed because you forgot to have that thought. You haven't failed, you haven't failed in your intentional efforts because that thing continues to grip you. Just say, yeah, that's in your head, that's in your life, that's your experience. Nobody knows what happened last night to me, or you, or that patient, or anybody. So it cannot be the same advice for everyone, but it can be the same concept. We don't have infinitely wild dreams, our dreams follow some patterns. Well, our thoughts and emotions follow some patterns. Negative emotional imprinting, built in.

• 55:37Speaker 02

  Turn that answer ahead and it'll be incremental.

• 55:39Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 55:40Speaker 02

  It's not gonna be, hey, tomorrow, I see, I get it. I can hold on to that memory. I just can't feel bad about it. That's not gonna happen in a second. It's not gonna happen in a moment. There are epiphanies. We can get into some things like that. But that's, that's the direction that you wanna put your attention and focus.

• 55:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, no, and it applies to even what you were saying last time you were here. And for anyone who's listening, we're not gonna dive into this topic today, but you can go back and listen to Dr. Rahul Jandial's first episode on the podcast. You were talking about this powerful state for when we're kind of awake, kind of asleep in the morning. You're talking about the need to journal at that time to I've been practicing it ever since we spoke. It's been one of my favorite things. I've talked about it with people, shared it with people. And it's amazing because I was saying to, I was talking to my personal trainer today when we were working out. And I was explaining to him that if you said in that time, I'm tired, like that's the first thing you think of. Now for the rest of the day, you're just looking for proof and confirmation that you're tired.

• 56:39Jay Shetty?

  So you look in the mirror and you see bags under your eyes and go, yeah, I knew I was tired. Then you get to the day and you're late for your meeting and everything's feeling a bit slow and you're like, I knew I was tired. And now what you're doing is you're just confirming that belief. And it's not setting you up rather than saying, I'm going to look for energy today. I'm going to find rest today. I'm going to create a space for curiosity today, whatever it may be. You're now gonna look for that. And I think that at the very base level is how we wire what we look for and what our repeated thoughts are throughout the day. And so I really love that piece of advice. I'd love to encourage people to go back to it. But going back to the conversation we're having right now. One thing that comes to mind is a lot of people today are scared of going to therapy.

• 57:21Jay Shetty?

  Because they don't feel, even if they don't say this consciously, they don't feel they want to bring something up because it's so painful. I interviewed someone a couple of months ago and

• 57:36Jay Shetty?

  All I could think of the whole time was that they just couldn't go there. And they haven't gone there, not even in their public life on a podcast. They haven't gone there in their private life because they don't want to go there. Is it true that the brain will let you go there when you're ready? Or why is it that they're suppressing this negative experience?

• 57:57Speaker 02

  I don't have an answer for that. And, um, you know, again, the concept of the brain as a, as a single entity, I would say, you know, like, our whole, our brain, mind and behavior.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  So I, I try to think of as the brain creates a mind. It can create many minds, the dreaming mind, the waking mind during the day. We have many minds. Sometimes you're frustrated, sometimes you're tired, and then there's behavior. His mind, that person's mind might be saying, this is something I need to address. It's eaten me up, but the behavior doesn't translate to going to take those steps. And that's the thing I'm working on right now is the difference between mind and behavior, which is, comes down to sort of the, the internal referee again, like the, the brain has created the mind. The mind can actually go back and change the brain. So certain, certain ways of thought can create grooves where electricity is more likely to flow.

• 58:52Speaker 02

  Like it's kind of steering the aurora borealis of neuronal activity in your brain. And then, but there's behavior, behavior is fascinating. You can think, I need to do this and you don't like where's, why is that not happening? Aren't you in charge of yourself? You're not, you have a competition of wants and behavior. You know what the right thing to do is this person might say, I need to tackle this. I would be better by tackling this. So mind and behavior is uncoupled. We don't always act on what we should do or have even decided to do. But then the, the original thing you asked suppression, but one of the coping mechanisms is suppressing, looking at something difficult. And I see that when I was a, I did a lot of pediatric neurosurgery, like you gotta

• 59:36Speaker 02

  give the parents time to deal with the sick child. So yeah, they're gonna hold it at bay. They're gonna suppress it. That doesn't mean that's a, a pathologic or bad therapeutic technique. It's ecological validity, right? Like in that situation, I mean, we ain't judging parents who got sick kids, right? Cause that's a stress we can't imagine. So for this person, I don't know what's going on in the other parts of their life, but suppression of something is a, is a basic, but very effective.

• 1:00:09Jay Shetty?

  And so it shouldn't be forced out of people is what I'm saying.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  Cause I don't know what's going on with him, you know?

• 1:00:13Jay Shetty?

  No, I think that's a really important note because I think a lot of us, especially when you start doing some of this work, a lot of people want their family member to be like, you need to go to therapy. Like you need to go look at your past. And I feel like it's well intentioned.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:27Jay Shetty?

  But you gotta be very careful because that person may actually need to wait a certain amount of time before they feel ready.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  And to fully engage and to delight. I love the attention and focus thing. And cause you're not, you can't just show up. You gotta put attention and focus to that.

• 1:00:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, exactly. So even if you force them to go, but they weren't ready to engage, it's gonna be even worse. And they may walk out thinking that doesn't work for them or it was a useless waste of time.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Right. And I think as a physician, as a surgeon, I see myself as a cancer surgeon. Yes, brain, but cancer surgeon. I never say you need this or you need that. Like you can choose to not have this life-saving measure. You can choose to let this thing, you know, cause you pain. I'm just talking to you about leaving you with an understanding, an informed, so you can make my, my role is to inform you about the things that are out there in this world. This medicine, that medicine, this surgery, that surgery. And then if you choose me to be your surgeon, I will give you everything, right? Then I

• 1:01:33Speaker 02

  feel like that's how it should be for psychological challenges as well. Like, hey, loved one.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  You know, I know you, I could see you're not doing well. These are kind of the things that are out there. You know, there's this, there's that, and there is no one path and depression gives us that answer. For some people, it's the talking cure. For some people, it's a talking cure plus a medicine that interferes with serotonin at the neuronal level. For other people, they're so close to self-harm that it's a ketamine sniff in a hospital that breaks their suicidal ideation within 12 hours. Like, wow, how does that work? I'm fascinated with that. For, for other people, it's, I choose to have stickers placed on my scalp and get shock therapy at elite centers. Like, so if you look at depression, it's just so wide.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  And people say, well, this treatment didn't work, but yeah, because all of those treatments only work in some of those people. But please keep going because there might be something that works for you. That's what I think where, where therapy is just, it's too encapsulated. It may not have, the term is too encapsulated. I love the field. I've been reading about it, like cognitive reappraisal and how to stop bodily urges. Like, I love the field, but the delivery is sometimes not nuanced enough, nurturing enough, inviting enough for the other person. So I would say, think about how, you know, people engage cancer patients. Like, you don't have to do anything, but do you know that these things exist and may benefit you, may harm you? Depression, the wide range.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  I think that is where I would like to see the term therapy go. So it's not a, you ain't doing well. I got it all figured out and I'm judging you with this term. Uh, it's more of an invitation, an exploration that has benefited me. You may want to consider it.

• 1:03:25Jay Shetty?

  I remember growing up, I used to always hear the phrase, we're only using 5% of the brain's potential. How true is that?

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  Well, over here it was 20. Um, that, that's the urban legend. And I think it's exciting because you think like, hey, if I did this, I think there was a movie with Bradley Cooper.

• 1:03:43Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, Limitless, yeah.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, okay, I'm just, I'm just waiting on, I'm just gonna be at the boss of all of this once I get the rest of this 80, this 80% kicking in. It's a, it's a myth and I'll explain to you why, a couple of clear reasons.

• 1:03:55Jay Shetty?

  Oh, you've ruined it.

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I know, but I'll still leave people inspired. The, because it's such an energy hog, I don't want to run all the brain matter to tie my shoelaces. So habits will manage with just. In that ecosystem of jellyfish, just the lightest shiver of electricity will shiver through some neurons to tie my shoelaces. We wanna be efficient, right? That, so, we only use twenty percent of our brain at a time to do most things, but there is no hidden corner, and we know that categorically now with brain scans, the whole region lights up, it just lights up in different ways for different tasks. I think what's inspiring for people is to know that when you try to learn something new, when you try to activate something new, it's gonna feel like work.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Like, let's not, it's not gonna be easy, but once you get over that, it's called activation energy, once you get over that, once you put in the original work, the best way I can describe it, you're going down a mountain, you're falling the same sleep, the slopes, the, the, the ski, the grooves on the mountain that all the skiers run. It's gonna take work to create another groove of thought, of feeling, of emotion. But after a while, it doesn't require the same amount of effort. So that, again, there's decremental vigilance in surgery, but there's also like, hey, this thing you're trying to change, put a couple months into it, lockdown for a couple months, and then the years afterwards, it'll be in your pocket, it'll be easier, it's not gonna be uphill forever.

• 1:05:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. Thanks for busting the myth. The last thing I wanted to talk to you about, Raul, was this, you know, so many young people today are getting cancer. I just had my friend, forty-two, just, you know, had a surgery, thankfully he's gonna be okay, I think. I lost a friend a few years ago to colon cancer. So many younger people are getting cancer. We keep hearing it used to be one in four, then one in three, maybe it's gonna get to one in two people have cancer. What do we do?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  That's a big question.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  So that when you look at last, last thirty, forty years, uh, there have been some positive shifts. Cancer treatments are leading to significantly improved lifespan and quality of life for cancer patients. Lung cancer rates here are going down. They're starting to pop up in other countries where there's pollution. So there, there are shifts in cancer. The concerning shift is, um, certain cancers, breast and colon in particular, are, if on average, they popped up at a certain age, that curve, you know, there's some early outliers and some late outliers, but the bulk of the curve that drives, you know, understanding of how to, how to manage that as at a global and at a national level,

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  that curve for, is shifting earlier and in particular for women. And that's, you know, Chadwick Boseman got, caught people's eyes, you know, with Black Panther. That's somebody that was very young. You're starting to see people with breast cancer at a much younger age. That doesn't mean they're all passing away, but two questions quickly arise. What's going on that's causing it? And then what do we do differently to catch it? Right? While waiting to figure out why it's happening, do we need to change how we live, how we screen and that sort of thing? What's causing it? I, I don't know. I used to get asked this thing like, are there more brain tumors? Because self, everybody's on a cell phone. Well, now it's not on our ear, but the global rates of brain tumors didn't change.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  The earlier cancers, people are saying, well, is it microplastics? Is it something else? Is it that? I don't know. It's a hard thing to design and experiment for. You're not going to give a thousand people microplastics and a thousand people pretend microplastics as a placebo and like that. So you have to look at the data that's available to you, but there is a concern that our food, our air, our, our water,

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  is not good enough for people, should receive more attention. We deserve as a human right, better food, what water. The link to cancer, I, I can't say that that's categorically there. What's very important is for those people that are living with that fear now, like cancer is coming earlier, why not give them something that's good for them? That may also be protective for these cancerous. I think a lot of people on the flip side, like there was this thing like, you don't need an experiment to say the, if you don't open a parachute, you're not going to do well. We don't need tons of proof to say we should improve health at the systemic, right? We just talked about 10 years of a certain diet.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Well, what if 10 years of bad water, bad food and bad process is the culprit? Even though I can't prove it, that's the right thing to do. And I think it gives people a sense of power. Okay, on the flip side, screening needs to move early. If screening for colon cancer in the past is 45, 50, we need to start screening people earlier. There's easy imaging. You don't have to have an invasive procedure. And here we need more reduction of what I call barriers to care. Right, it's in our field. There are medicines and screening and treatment that people don't even know about. People don't even get to. There's a language barrier. Maybe somebody can't afford the bus. So as I work in my laboratory to make new medicine, we got to make sure the medicine and the care we got gets to everybody.

• 1:09:23Speaker 02

  So that's reduction, the barriers to care, education, what we're, you know, what we're doing on television, what we're doing on messaging is to start the screening a little bit earlier. And that's important because both breast and colon, they grow in stages. One, two, three, four. And wherever you're at, if you catch it one stage earlier, that's less medicine, maybe no medicine, less surgery, maybe no surgery. So it doesn't matter where you catch it. You want that feeling of, I'm glad I got screened and I caught it earlier. So those would be my two suggestions.

• 1:09:55Jay Shetty?

  It's such a fascinating time we're living in because I think there's more data available than ever, but a lot of us are scared of seeing that data as well. And there's a fear of not wanting something, but finding out too early as well. It's, you know, it is a lot of scare. And the biggest thing that I think you raised today, which I'm glad that you're focused on figuring it out, is that mind behavior disconnect. Because I think we all know what we have to do. Everyone knows what they need to change, right? We don't, me and you don't have to tell them. We're all aware, but we just can't seem to do it. If you had to give anyone any final words on that, for anyone who's been listening today going, I want to change my diet. If anyone is listening today saying to us, you know, I want to work out more.

• 1:10:37Jay Shetty?

  For anyone listening to us today and saying, I want to challenge myself more, but I feel unmotivated, I feel tired, I'm just exhausted, I'm overworked and overwhelmed. What would you say to them?

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  To give you a big picture, you, you, us as creatures in this world, we have a reciprocal relationship with our environment. The brilliance and beauty is that we have choice. The, like the first cell by the deep water, you know, we used to just drift away from toxins, but then at some point a single cell said, that's nutrition, I want to swing over there. And then a collective of cells and then animals and creatures. And so we have choice. This is like, I love this. And the newest part of that prefrontal cortex I was describing to you, the little, the newest neurons, like sedimentary layers, you know, you can see like where the dinosaurs are, you cut a tree and you can see,

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  you can age it, you figure out, you in the brain, you can figure out which are the newest neurons. Or in this area called the orbitofrontal cortex, which is orbital, it's just, it's just descriptive, it just mean above your eyeballs and at the bottom of your frontal lobes, you know, like right behind your forehead, but at the bottom, you know? And the cells there, if they're injured, people have a hard time changing political beliefs. Like it's different, it's, it's a decision maker.

• 1:11:55Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:56Speaker 02

  And they call it the arbitrator system that it, it decides between things. So again, tying your shoelaces, that's not a big decision. A decision made for you, that's not a big decision. But then there's a competition of wants. I want to do this, but I also want to do this. I want to have this piece of bacon, but I want to, you know, I don't want to eat it. That's where we are at our most vulnerable and best. You know, that's where we're human. And rather than feeling frustrated by those wants that you can't always pursue the way you really choose to inside your mind, like, I want to do this, but I don't get there. My mind is ready to do it, but my behavior doesn't reflect that. That, that's called your internal referee. It's, it's the, it's the decision maker.

• 1:12:40Speaker 02

  And what I would, the specific guidance I would give people is that internal referee is vulnerable. Okay. So you want to work with that internal referee. You want to do a handful of things. One, you want to know attention and focus is limited. Two, you want to know it is susceptible to attentional magnets. You want to stop smoking, be careful looking up at that gas station at those shiny boxes. You want to avoid eating something and you, you know, it's, you know, your struggle to get there. Work with that internal referee. One, break the compulsions, break the attentional magnets and make you look at something and then that decision goes downhill. You're like, ah, now it's at the gate. So the first thing is when it's in your head, think it out. This trips me up. I want to space myself from this.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  I want to physically distance myself from this. I want to only get a little bit of coke and then drive away, right? Whatever you're working on, I'm not judging anybody. But first is to give yourself the physical and psychological distance from attentional magnets that have you shift away from the want that you had decided you wanted. Number two is then if you're, then, then if you're in it and you're like, okay, I didn't want to have this food. I didn't want to have this puff. I didn't want to have this snore, whatever, whatever your thing is. Once you're going down that road, now your internal referee is a different creature. Now what you're trying to do is prevent it from becoming an urge. For smokers, you're looking at the shiny box, you walk outside. You smell, you want to get away from your thought hijacking your body. Cause now you're jonesing, you've got, you're shivering.

• 1:14:10Speaker 02

  Now it becomes a physiologic thing. The game isn't lost, you could still turn it around, but you need to know the steps of desire as they happen, as in your competition of wants and work with yourself. Break the tensional magnets. Don't let it become an urge. If you do decide to, there's a whole thing called wanting and seeking. That's fine. I'm gonna have this smoke. I'm gonna have one puff. I'm gonna throw away the pack. I'm gonna have this bacon, but I'm only gonna, I'm gonna mitigate. I'm only gonna have one piece rather than have the whole thing. There are steps in the way we negotiate our wants. So it's not just, I wanted to do this, but it didn't happen. Develop your arsenal, the arrows in your quiver of this is a competing want. And I've got one, two, three, three things I'm gonna do.

• 1:14:55Jay Shetty?

  I love that. Dr. John Diel is such a joy every time you're here.

• 1:14:59Speaker 02

  My pleasure.

• 1:15:00Jay Shetty?

  And I hope you'll come back when your new book's ready. And everyone who's been listening and watching back at home, when you're traveling, whatever you're up to, make sure you tag me and Dr. John Diel on Instagram, on TikTok, wherever you post your clips, because I want to see what resonated with you. I want to see what connected with you. I always take away so much when I meet you, honestly. It's things that stay with me for a long time and they're good memories and the good lessons. So I'm very grateful for your time and energy.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  I appreciate you.

• 1:15:24Jay Shetty?

  Thanks so much for coming back. If you loved this episode, you will enjoy my interview with Dr. Daniel Amen on how to change your life by changing your brain.

• 1:15:33Speaker 05

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