How Dopamine Drives Love, Creativity & Addiction w/Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD EP 1255

Today's guest is Dr. Daniel Z. Lieberman, a professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Dr. Lieberman received his medical degree and completed his psychiatric training at New York University. He is an award-winning educator and researcher and has provided insights on mental health topics for the US Department of Health and Human Services, the US Department of Commerce, and the Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy. Dr. Lieberman shares his expertise on the neurobiological basis of human behavior as a frequent guest on radio, television, and podcasts. He is the co-author of the international bestseller The Molecule of More, which has been translated into 16 languages. In this episode, you will learnHow to use dopamine in a healthy, productive way. A common mistake people make about love. About the root causes of depression. How not to focus too much on the future. For more, go to lewishowes.com/1255Dr. Joe Dispenza on Healing the Body and Transforming the Mind: https://link.chtbl.com/826-podMaster Your Mind and Defy the Odds with David Goggins: https://link.chtbl.com/715-podMel Robbins: The “Secret” Mindset Habit to Building Confidence and Overcoming Scarcity: https://link.chtbl.com/970-pod Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It's one thing to choose dopamine instead of here and now because it gives you pleasure, but it can very easily get to the point where you're no longer in control. Dopamine is controlling you, and a good example of that is doom scrolling.

• 0:14Lewis Howes?

  So how do we use dopamine for focus, motivation, creativity, and avoiding unhealthy addictions?

• 0:22Speaker 00

  I think that we will get the most out of dopamine by

• 0:27Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. We got Daniel Z. Lieberman in the house. You've got an amazing book called The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity and Will Terminate the Fate of the Human Race. You're a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at George Washington University,

• 1:10Lewis Howes?

  and you've done a lot of work in this space of psychiatry and also with the US Department of Commerce, the Office of Drug and Alcohol Policy, and you work with your expertise on the neurobiological basis of human behavior. And you're a researcher, you're a practitioner, you're a teacher, and you're an author. And so I'm excited to dive into this. Andrew Huberman recommended your work, so I'm glad you're here. And the whole thing is about dopamine, what I'm hearing you say, and the unconscious mind and dopamine. Is that a lot of the work that you're dealing with?

• 1:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, the unconscious mind is what I'm working on for my next book. Dopamine is about the molecule of more. I'm fascinated in both of them.

• 1:52Lewis Howes?

  So what do we need to know about dopamine? How does it help us? How does it hurt us?

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Most people, when they think about dopamine, they think about pleasure. But that's just a small piece of what dopamine does. The bigger picture is, is that it's used to maximize future resources. That's why we called the book The Molecule of More. Dopamine is all about making the future better than the present. And so it can do wonderful things. It can give us energy, motivation, desire, excitement, confidence. But it can also do terrible things. It can make us dissatisfied, unhappy, miserable, constantly chasing something we can never capture. It's a powerful tool. We gotta learn how to use it properly.

• 2:37Lewis Howes?

  What are the most powerful examples of dopamine in a healthy way? And then powerful in an unhealthy way that you see in the world happening?

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Right. So, you know, I tend to think of entrepreneurs in terms of healthy dopamine. They wanna build something that never existed before. And you know what it's like to be an entrepreneur? I tried once and I couldn't do it.

• 3:00Lewis Howes?

  It's hard, man. It's very hard.

• 3:01Speaker 00

  It's hard. Yeah, you've gotta, you've gotta go, go, go, go, go. You gotta be driven by passion. You have to work 10 times as much as if you're working a regular job. But dopamine makes it fun.

• 3:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 3:13Speaker 00

  And that's one of the beautiful things about dopamine is it can make, it can just make us feel so alive as we work to make the future better than the present.

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  So dopamine is about, is about seeing something and having an idea in your mind that's not here in the real world. I think in your TED Talk, you talk about, uh, there's two different spaces in the world. The space that we're looking down, that we can touch and grab, and then an external, a space out there. What are those two spaces called? Like a...

• 3:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, so when we think about how dopamine evolved, we've got the peripersonal space. And that's basically the space in arm's reach.

• 3:47Lewis Howes?

  So anything within my reach, um, my energetic field of where my arms go to is called the periwat?

• 3:55Speaker 00

  Peripersonal.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  Peripersonal.

• 3:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, peri means around.

• 3:58Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Right, so it's around you.

• 4:00Lewis Howes?

  And what does that space, what does that mean for us?

• 4:03Speaker 00

  That's, um, anything in the peripersonal space is stuff that you own.

• 4:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  You've got control over. And you interact with it in the present.

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  So this pen, this notebook, your book, this coffee cup, this iPad, this table, this chair, these clothes that I'm wearing, that's in my personal space.

• 4:21Speaker 00

  Yep, exactly. And the way you interact with it is consumatory. That means consume, you know, I can take a drink from this glass of water, but it also refers to consummation. What happens at the end, when the thing that you've worked for, you now have? That's the consummation.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  And that's also related to the peripersonal space, stuff you have now.

• 4:44Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so that's, how does dopamine play into the peripersonal space?

• 4:49Speaker 00

  When you are interacting with things in the peripersonal space, dopamine shuts off.

• 4:54Lewis Howes?

  Really? Even your phone?

• 4:57Speaker 00

  The atoms and molecules may be in the peripersonal space, but your head is far away when you're interacting with your phone.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  Because it's in a different, it's not actually in front of you, it's in a different space.

• 5:08Speaker 00

  It's in a different space.

• 5:09Lewis Howes?

  The content you're consuming, it might be on the phone,

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:13Lewis Howes?

  but it's somewhere else.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  It's somewhere else. You're usually focused on possibilities when you're in your phone. You're reading social media, you're reading the news, you're thinking about, how is this going to affect me? We're thinking about the future.

• 5:26Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Okay, and so what's the other space?

• 5:29Speaker 00

  The other space is the extrapersonal space, outside the personal space.

• 5:33Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  That's stuff that's not within arm's reach. And it could be an apple across the room on a table, or it could be the moon. Whatever it is, you don't have it. And if you want it, you're gonna have to work for it, and your interaction with it is going to take place in the future.

• 5:53Lewis Howes?

  Right, so if there's an apple, you know, across the room, it's an easier effort to stand up, go grab the apple and eat it, than it is if it was right in front of you. But it's much harder to get to the moon.

• 6:04Speaker 00

  Right. But even that apple is gonna require some effort, maybe even some planning, and it's happening in the future. It's not happening right now.

• 6:13Lewis Howes?

  It's not in this moment, I can't just grab it and chew it.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:15Lewis Howes?

  I have to get up. And there's some times where I'm on the, you know, couch watching sports and I see something in the kitchen, I'm like, At that, but it's really comfortable right now and I don't want to get up. And so you have to have some effort sometimes to go across the room.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  You do, you do. But you know, it's funny, sometimes things that we don't have, but we want, give us more joy than the things we have.

• 6:37Lewis Howes?

  Why is that? The things we desire.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's a great quotation from the book, The House at Pooh Corner. Did you read that?

• 6:44Lewis Howes?

  Winnie the Pooh?

• 6:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, Winnie the Pooh. I love children's literature.

• 6:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's so good.

• 6:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, so anyways, Christopher Robin asked Pooh, what is it that you like the best in all the world? And of course, first thing Winnie the Pooh thinks about is honey. And he's about to say eating honey. But then he thinks, this is an amazingly sophisticated thing for a children's book. Then he thinks, there's a moment before you start to eat honey, that's even better, but he didn't know what it was called. It's called dopamine.

• 7:10Lewis Howes?

  That's dopamine.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  That's dopamine. It's the anticipation of about to get a reward. And somehow, right? You go into a great restaurant for dinner and you're excited about it. You're thinking about it all day long. You're there, you're chewing the food and your brain's somewhere else.

• 7:27Lewis Howes?

  Really? Or maybe there's a few moments of like, oh, this is amazing. But then after the first few bites, you're on to the next.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Right.

• 7:34Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, so is that a healthy thing for us to do? To think about the future consistently, but then not appreciate the moment of what we're enjoying? That we've been desiring all day or years of a dream that we've been trying to create?

• 7:49Speaker 00

  Right, no, it's unhealthy at all. It's unhealthy at all. And you know, one of the things we say is that the guy who is most able to afford the beach house is the least able to enjoy it.

• 7:59Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, why is that?

• 8:00Speaker 00

  He goes out to his beautiful beach house, he pulls out his laptop and he's working. Right, he can't just sit there and smell the breeze and, right?

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 8:10Speaker 00

  It's because the guy who can afford to the beach house was born with a pretty powerful dopamine system. And he, it's hard for him to turn it off.

• 8:19Lewis Howes?

  Because he was driven and driven and driven. And that's what allowed him to get the resources that he'd never had in order to buy the beach house.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  Right, yeah. And then now he's got the beach house, he can't turn it off and enjoy the beach house. He's thinking about what's next, the next deal he's gonna do, the trip to Europe, who knows what?

• 8:36Lewis Howes?

  How can someone be so hungry to reach a vision and create more in a healthy place, but also be satisfied with where they're at?

• 8:48Speaker 00

  It's hard, it's hard, you know, the first question is, do they want to, right?

• 8:53Lewis Howes?

  Do they want to be satisfied or be happy?

• 8:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you've heard the saying, um, to travel hopefully is better than to arrive. Have you heard that?

• 9:01Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, uh, that's a dopamine saying, of course.

• 9:03Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 9:04Speaker 00

  Right, it's better to anticipate than to have. And some people don't wanna make that shift, you know? To them, the peripersonal, the here and now, it feels all touchy feely. And it makes them uncomfortable and they don't like it. They wanna spend their life in the future. I don't think that's healthy, but I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna judge them, I'm not gonna choose for them.

• 9:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  So the first thing is they have to decide whether that's something that they want.

• 9:30Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, but where does, uh, dopamine, how, how does dopamine really get you addicted to things like drugs, social media, alcohol, or just bad habits?

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's one thing to choose dopamine instead of here and now because it gives you pleasure. That's a choice, but it can very easily get to the point where you're no longer in control. You're no longer making choices, dopamine is controlling you. And, and a good example of that is doom scrolling, right? You're going through your social media, you're bored, you, you're maybe even unhappy, but you can't stop scrolling. Because what dopamine is saying is one more scroll and there might be something that will change your future and you can't miss that. And, and, and so that's an example, another example is, is compulsive eating, for example, right?

• 10:24Speaker 00

  We're no longer enjoying that third donut, but something is making us eat it.

• 10:30Lewis Howes?

  Right, it's like, ah, there's one more, more, more.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  I feel sick, every bite makes me feel worse, why do I keep biting this?

• 10:37Lewis Howes?

  Is that dopamine?

• 10:38Speaker 00

  It's dopamine, yeah.

• 10:39Lewis Howes?

  So the dopamine is, is telling us what? That... We're not happy with what we have, we still need more of that thing.

• 10:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:46Lewis Howes?

  Whether it be social media, I'm not happy with 10 minutes of scrolling, I need 30 minutes, I need 50 minutes. I need, because something is gonna, I'm gonna feel something that I don't have in this moment. Is that what it's saying?

• 10:56Speaker 00

  You know, I like to think of it evolutionarily. Uh, human beings evolved on the brink of starvation, right? We were always in a situation where we did not have enough resources and we could be dead tomorrow. Um, a- and that's where dopamine evolved. And so dopamine is basically, keep your eye on the ball. Look, that third donor is making you sick. You might not have calories for the next three days. Get it inside you and you'll be alive.

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so is this genetics then?

• 11:24Speaker 00

  It's genetics, yeah.

• 11:25Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 11:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:26Lewis Howes?

  So how do we turn the gene off in our favor to not suffer?

• 11:31Speaker 00

  That's what we get into i- i- in the later parts. And, you know, we, western civilization is very much of a dopamine civilization of more, more, more. And, uh, I think in order to achieve balance in one's life, you, you've gotta make an effort not to do that. Um, i- in the past, we did more of that. One, one of the ways you get in the here and now is by working with your hands. Um, I don't know if you have any hobbies, like working on cars, or woodworking, or drawing, or painting?

• 12:02Lewis Howes?

  I wish I had a talent in any of those, but I don't. I appreciate it, but I, I play guitar, a little bit. I'm not, I'm not that good, but I play guitar and I'm, I love, um, I love sports though, I like.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:13Lewis Howes?

  Anything, you know, um, with a ball, you know, playing basketball, soccer, football, ping pong, pickleball now I'm loving. So anything where I get to hold something and hit a racket, catch a ball, where it makes me have to focus in that moment if I want to succeed at that thing. Um, I also love salsa dancing, so it's like something interactive where it's listening to music and experiencing it.

• 12:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think the height of human experience is when these two things are working at the same time. The dopamine circuits in the brain and the here and now circuits. And that happens in sports.

• 12:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Right? The here and now circuits are focused on your body and the ball, what's happening right now. Dopamine circuits are thinking, strategy. What's my opponent gonna do? What should I do next?

• 12:57Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  And I think that's, that's some of the intense pleasure of a nice competitive sport.

• 13:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's fun.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:03Lewis Howes?

  That's awesome.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:04Lewis Howes?

  So, how do we? Learn to master dopamine then, so that it can help us succeed in everything we want.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  I think it's very much about being aware of what's going on.

• 13:16Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  And so, um, when I was writing this book, I got in the habit of asking myself, is this a dopamine moment, or is this a here and now moment?

• 13:24Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Um, and if it was a dopamine moment, good, think about the future, work hard, make something new, create, think about possibilities, think about potentialities, things that don't exist. If it's a here and now moment, though, spending time with my family, um...

• 13:43Lewis Howes?

  Don't be thinking about the future.

• 13:44Speaker 00

  Don't be thinking about the future.

• 13:45Lewis Howes?

  When you're with your kids, or when you're with your partner, or your friends, right?

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  So turn it off.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  Turn it off. Be in the present moment.

• 13:51Lewis Howes?

  What's the best strategy you've learned to turn it off to be present? You know, because I hear a lot of stories about how parents are on... I don't have kids, but I've heard this from parents that their... Their kids want their attention, but they're saying, you know, they're just looking at their phones still, or they're distracted because of the addiction, I guess. Or that dopamine wanting more of the thing that they don't have right now. So how can people turn it off when they're in those scenarios with friends, family, and activities?

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I think the first thing is to be deliberate, um, to say, okay, I'm going to spend the next hour with my kids, and that's not a time where I'm going to be on my phone. I'm going to leave my phone in the bedroom.

• 14:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Um, and so then you don't have that temptation. And then I think listening is the best way to bring yourself into the present moment.

• 14:37Lewis Howes?

  Listening.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Listening.

• 14:39Lewis Howes?

  How do people learn to listen better?

• 14:41Speaker 00

  It's not easy. I, I think the first thing is to recognize that how hard it is.

• 14:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 14:47Speaker 00

  And that a lot of times we're not good at listening. You're having a conversation with someone, a lot of times you're thinking about what you're going to say next.

• 14:53Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  Rather than what the other person... And people who are very charismatic know how rare this is. And oftentimes charismatic people will be described as making you feel like you're the only person in the room.

• 15:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:07Speaker 00

  Because they're in the present moment.

• 15:09Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 15:09Speaker 00

  They're present with you.

• 15:10Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting, I, I grew up feeling very uneducated, not smart, um, you know, just from school. I, I performed poorly in school.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 15:21Lewis Howes?

  And I told myself a story that, you know, I'm never going to be smart enough. No one's ever going to be interested in me because I'm not a smart person. That's what I told myself growing up.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 15:31Lewis Howes?

  And then I heard a quote, um... I believe it's by Roosevelt that says, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." And I said, "Well, maybe I have a chance if I just show that I care about people and put energy and effort into listening and caring about their lives and their stories. Maybe they'll want to hang out with me." So it was kind of like, uh, I don't know, just a strategy to find friends in high school. It was like, "Let me just pay attention to people and just focus and ask questions that I'm curious about and listen."

• 16:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:02Lewis Howes?

  And I started doing that in business early on when I had no skills on making money or starting a business. I had no idea what I was gonna do. But in the business world, I would go to networking events and I would just ask people questions about themselves and I would never talk about myself ever. And at the end of these events, people were like, "You're the most interesting person in the room." And I never said anything. I just asked questions and paid attention while everyone was being distracted and looking around the room. I just focused. And it served me well, you know, and it's probably one of the reasons why I wanted to do an interview show, just to be able to sit down and ask questions.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:36Lewis Howes?

  So you don't have to be the smartest person in the room, but if you can pay attention, then that can help you in a lot of ways.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  And how old were you when you came to that realization?

• 16:45Lewis Howes?

  It's like 16 probably, yeah. But then it was like one of my early twenties when I really started to practice it.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. It can take people a lifetime to have that insight, though. It's amazing to have that at such an early age.

• 16:58Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I was like, "I'll never be as smart as someone like you." You know, "I'll never be able to do this research and dive in and be this like scientist of the brain or neuroscience or things like that." But if I can just put my effort and energy towards paying attention and listening to people and asking questions that open people's hearts and minds, that will get them, you know, grateful in that moment. And gratitude goes a long way for people.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, it sure does.

• 17:27Lewis Howes?

  That was my strategy. I'm not gonna be the smartest, I'm gonna be the most caring. That was the goal.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  That's great. That's great. And what's interesting to me about that is that it arose out of hardship. It arose because you suffered, feeling that you weren't smart enough.

• 17:41Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  And we worked so hard in life to avoid hardship.

• 17:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 00

  And yet, that's often the most valuable thing we experience in life.

• 17:49Lewis Howes?

  Why is it so valuable to experience hardship?

• 17:52Speaker 00

  I think it's because that when things are going smoothly, we don't have to change.

• 18:02Speaker 00

  And standing still in life is not good for us. We need to grow. You've seen, you've seen middle aged people who still behave like they're in college. They're desperately hanging on to a point in their life that they felt was the best point for them.

• 18:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:20Speaker 00

  And it's sad, it's very, very sad to see. We've got to keep growing, but we don't want to, right? I, I'm, you know, it's, it's much easier to stay still and change.

• 18:29Lewis Howes?

  Be comfortable, yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's very comfortable. So we need hardship to push us out of that comfort zone and make us grow.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  When I think back on the last, I guess my entire life, and I think about the most hard, the most difficult experiences that I've faced, and the lessons I learned from that, I, I go back and think, man, I, you know, I wish I would have experienced them in the moment, but I want to take it back based on the lessons I've learned and how much I've grown from them.

• 18:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:55Lewis Howes?

  I think we need to decide, are we going to learn and develop and grow in these hardships? Because some of us don't, you know, we, something hard happens and we just stay stuck as opposed to break through.

• 19:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, Nietzsche said, what doesn't kill me makes me stronger. It's not true for everybody. You've got to embrace that, and, and you can't let yourself feel crushed by adversity. You've got to overcome it, and then you'll be stronger.

• 19:20Lewis Howes?

  How do you overcome it, though?

• 19:22Speaker 00

  You know, I think you prepare yourself. I, I think you've got to prepare yourself. By getting good at, you can't just say, when the big thing happens, I'm going to rise to the occasion. You've got to focus on the little things, right?

• 19:36Lewis Howes?

  Like what?

• 19:38Speaker 00

  Like, like, you know, you don't say, well, when I'm talking to this very important person who could change my life, I'm going to listen to what they're saying. No, listen to what everybody is saying. Listen to what the bus driver is saying, right? And then you get in the habit. Aristotle said that virtue is a habit, that you can't expect to do the right thing when the big thing happens unless you... You're in the habit of doing the right thing when the little things happen.

• 20:05Lewis Howes?

  So it's really about just being in integrity with yourself every single day and doing the best you can in every moment, not just when the big moments happen.

• 20:12Speaker 00

  It really is. I say to my students, if you want to do the right thing when the chips are down as a doctor, write good notes. You focus on the little things and the big things will take care of themselves.

• 20:25Lewis Howes?

  That's interesting. So how do we use dopamine for focus, motivation, creativity, and avoiding unhealthy addictions?

• 20:37Speaker 00

  I think that we will get the most out of dopamine by keeping it in balance with the here and now. Dopamine becomes our enemy when it becomes the end all and be all. Right? I've got to get a new wardrobe. I've got to get a new cellphone. I've got to get a new car. But if we balance it, if we keep it in perspective, if we don't take it that seriously, if we learn how to laugh at ourselves for constantly wanting more, more, more, while at the same time accepting it, you know, not trying to be saintly, that's, I think, keeping a perspective is what's going to be the best.

• 21:14Lewis Howes?

  And do you think people need to go through a dopamine detox?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Dopamine detox is very controversial. A lot of people say that that's just a fairy tale.

• 21:25Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 21:26Speaker 00

  Right? Because when you get hungry and you eat, you get a big, big release of dopamine. When you work hard and you accomplish something, you get a big release of dopamine. So what are you going to do during the detox? You're going to not eat, you're going to not work, you're going to not make plans to make yourself happy. You're just going to be miserable, bored, and stupid.

• 21:48Lewis Howes?

  Right, right. So you can't really do that.

• 21:51Speaker 00

  You can't really do that.

• 21:51Lewis Howes?

  Maybe there are certain things you could say, what are the things that I've been doing too much of? I'm on social media too much. I'm watching too much trash TV. I'm doing certain activities maybe that bring this constant feeling of dopamine, right? That aren't healthy.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  Right. We can pay attention to things that we're squeezing too hard.

• 22:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Like if you're the kind of person who can enjoy a nice piece of fruit and move on, okay, you don't need to eliminate that. But if you're the kind of person who eats a candy bar and then eats two, three, four, five, You should eliminate that at least for a while.

• 22:24Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  You know, so maybe we'll say an unhealthy dopamine detox.

• 22:27Lewis Howes?

  Yes, unhealthy dopamine detox.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:30Lewis Howes?

  Where does dopamine and addiction come into play? And what would you say is kind of the root of all addictions?

• 22:38Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, yeah. Let's talk about chemical addictions, because those are the, those are the most straightforward. So there, there are dopamine circuits in your brain, and there's different ones. And, and I'd love it if we had a chance to talk about the different ones.

• 22:51Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  But, um, uh, the one we think about with addictions is technically called the mesolimbic circuit. We call it the desire circuit, which is a bit more descriptive.

• 23:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  Uh, the desire circuit gives you reward.

• 23:03Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 23:04Speaker 00

  So the desire circuit goes off.

• 23:05Lewis Howes?

  Is this in the limbic part of the brain?

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:07Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, the, the reptilian part of the brain.

• 23:11Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. So it's kind of in the center, in the middle mass, right?

• 23:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  Not on the top, on the mushroom top, it's more in the middle.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  It's deep, yeah.

• 23:19Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so this is the desire circuit of the brain?

• 23:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. We also call it the reward circuit, right? Eat when you're hungry, you get a pat on the back when you do a good job, you get an award. All of these things promote your evolutionary success.

• 23:33Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So we, we work to stimulate our dopamine reward center. Now, chemicals like cocaine and alcohol and nicotine, they artificially stimulate this, this center. And, and some of them can, can hit it like a nuclear weapon and give it a stronger blast than any natural behavior can do. Now, a lot of times we make decisions in life based on what's going to give us more dopamine. So for example, um, should I go to work today or should I go see a movie? Well, I'm gonna go to work, because if I see a movie, that's gonna have a really negative effect on my future.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  Right? And, and that feels rational. Now, when drugs start giving these chemical blasts of dopamine to the limbic system, it starts to feel rational to do drugs instead of other things. And so when you see some poor guy out on the street and he's lost his job, his house, his family, his health, for his drug, you say, my God, what on earth is making him do that? That's crazy. But from the inside, it appears perfectly rational. He's choosing the thing that gives him the biggest dopamine. And in the absence of drugs, that's a strategy that usually works.

• 24:52Lewis Howes?

  So, what I'm hearing you say, correct me if I'm wrong, people that are addicted to some type of drug.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:58Lewis Howes?

  They make it logical in their mind. That this is a logical thing to do because it's making me feel a certain thing. Is that right?

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Right. It's making me feel successful.

• 25:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 25:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:10Lewis Howes?

  By like alcoholism, smoking cigarettes, weed, cocaine, like?

• 25:16Speaker 00

  When they're high, when they're high.

• 25:18Lewis Howes?

  Afterwards.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  At the top of the world.

• 25:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Right? You know, nothing can touch me.

• 25:22Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  I'm Superman, I'm so great. You see people on cocaine and everyone hates them because they're so arrogant and obnoxious and horrible.

• 25:30Lewis Howes?

  But in the moment, they feel like invincible.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  Yep, that's right.

• 25:33Lewis Howes?

  What happens after the moment? After the, the high?

• 25:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:37Lewis Howes?

  Is there a shame, a guilt, a?

• 25:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:40Lewis Howes?

  Not enough revenge?

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Really? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, you've, you've, you've not been stimulating dopamine naturally. You've been, you've been basically taking a whip to the brain and forcing it to deliver that dopamine. And you exhaust its stores.

• 25:56Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 25:57Speaker 00

  And so when you come down, you're dopamine deprived, and that's a horrible feeling.

• 26:01Lewis Howes?

  What happens when you're dopamine deprived?

• 26:03Speaker 00

  Let me give you a sense of how it feels, and this is just a little tiny trivial example. Every morning, you go to the bakery and you get a cup of coffee and a croissant, okay? And that's your habit. In the beginning, it gave you dopamine, right? Because it was new, but only novelty can give you dopamine. After a while, it becomes the same old, same old. All right, so you're standing in line for your croissant and your coffee. Suddenly, your phone rings and someone's like, drop whatever you're doing and get over here right now. And you get no croissant and coffee that day.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  In the brain, dopamine is shutting down and it's making you feel resentful and deprived.

• 26:43Lewis Howes?

  But you didn't get what you wanted.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Yep, what you expected, what you expected.

• 26:47Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, so that's how it feels to have a dopamine deficiency. You feel resentful and deprived.

• 26:53Lewis Howes?

  How can you, I guess, navigate it then? So you do something, maybe you have a routine, but then you mix it up every now and then so you're not expecting something all the time. And the novelty, guys, brings you dopamine of something new or something different.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:10Lewis Howes?

  Or mixing it up.

• 27:11Speaker 00

  So you may say, "I'm not gonna have that croissant and coffee for a month." And then when I go back to it, oh my god.

• 27:17Lewis Howes?

  It'll feel amazing, right?

• 27:18Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 27:19Lewis Howes?

  Delayed gratification. How does that play in the dopamine? Delaying.

• 27:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:24Lewis Howes?

  Like the marshmallow test.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it stimulates it because you're keeping the thing you want in the future. It's like the advice that mothers used to give their daughters in the past. "Don't have sex until after marriage because the guy's gonna lose interest."

• 27:42Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Right? Where if you say, "Hey, you gotta wait," that's delayed gratification. That's gonna keep dopamine expecting, anticipating, exciting. So yeah, delayed gratification's a good way to boost up dopamine.

• 27:55Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  So is it better to, let's say I want a cookie, right? And I say, "You know what? I'm gonna wait a month until I have a cookie." Or a candy bar, a cake, or whatever.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:08Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna wait a month and I'm gonna think about it, I'm gonna imagine it, I'm gonna, you know, think of the taste of this cookie. But the only way for me to get this cookie is if I work out five days a week for a month. Let's say I make this game up.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  What is I gonna do for myself as opposed to, "I'm gonna have a cookie every day."

• 28:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:25Lewis Howes?

  Whether I work out every day or don't work out every day. Versus if I do this thing five days a week for a month, then I get a cookie. Am I gonna be happier during that entire month? Or less happy with the, "Go for the month, then you get the cookie," versus, "I get a cookie every day."

• 28:41Speaker 00

  Right, right. Happy is a, happy can mean different things, right? Uh, so for example, if I say, um, I'm happy, um, I'm happy that I'm going to get a new iPhone. It's a different feeling than saying, I'm happy because I just got this new iPhone. Those are two very, very different things.

• 29:03Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between the levels of happiness of I'm going to get something versus I just got it?

• 29:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, so when you are happy about something that's going to happen, it makes you feel excited, energized. Maybe it makes you feel strong and powerful and confident.

• 29:19Lewis Howes?

  Like you know it's coming.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:21Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 29:21Speaker 00

  When you're happy because you have something, it makes you feel satisfied and fulfilled. Um, and it's like, ah.

• 29:31Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 29:31Speaker 00

  And those are very different feelings.

• 29:33Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 29:34Speaker 00

  Some people like one more than the other, you know, others like the other.

• 29:37Lewis Howes?

  Where, how much dopamine comes in either form?

• 29:41Speaker 00

  With the second, there is zero dopamine. It turns off.

• 29:43Lewis Howes?

  Once you get something, once you get an award, once you get the cookie, once you buy something, within minutes, it, dopamine turns off.

• 29:51Speaker 00

  Turns off.

• 29:52Lewis Howes?

  Cause you already have it now.

• 29:53Speaker 00

  Cause now you, cause now it's in your, very personal. And dopamine doesn't function in very personal.

• 29:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 29:59Speaker 00

  And so for some people, that's a moment of disappointment.

• 30:02Lewis Howes?

  It's so interesting you say this because most of my young adult life, let's say, for years, I would spend 10 or 15 years with a goal. In sports, I was like, I'm gonna be an all-American athlete. I said this when I was five years old. And I remember, and I was a two-sport all-American. I said I was gonna be a professional athlete, all these different things. And I remember when I, the first time I became an all-American athlete, there was so much joy, like, and anticipation, getting, like, before it actually happened, right? And the buildup and the training and the, and the hard work and the failures and all these different things. And then my name got called for being in the top eight in the country in the decathlon.

• 30:45Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 30:46Lewis Howes?

  And I remember feeling like so like excited and happy for a moment. And then maybe 10, 20 minutes later, I was really sad, depressed, angry, kind of moody. I was kind of moody and my family was there. It was supposed to be the celebration. We're having dinner and I was kind of like moody. I didn't want to be around anyone.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Almost as if you were coming off cocaine.

• 31:07Lewis Howes?

  Maybe I've never been on cocaine, but yeah, maybe that's how it felt.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  That's what, that's what, yeah.

• 31:10Lewis Howes?

  It was weird and I was like, kind of like, didn't want to be around anyone.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  I don't know, you know, so.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Dopamine crash.

• 31:18Lewis Howes?

  Is that what it is?

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're having a dopamine crash.

• 31:20Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 31:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:21Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. But I wonder if it's because I wasn't really celebrating the moments in between like enough. It was more like, okay, I keep pushing until I hit this goal. And when I have it, then I'll be satisfied, but I wasn't satisfied. Now I have a more of approach of like, I'm going to enjoy and celebrate every day the best way I can.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:42Lewis Howes?

  And appreciate every day, all the ups and downs and everything that comes in between and find appreciation for my health and my relationships and the work that I'm doing. Even if it's not the biggest successful day. And I feel much more balanced in that approach. I'm not sure if that's something you talk about, but.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  Well, I, I think it's another example of you, you pay attention to the little things and the big things take care of themselves.

• 32:06Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  You know, just related to your decathlon story, um, I was once giving a talk and there was an artist in the audience. And he told me the most miserable times of his life are when he finishes a piece of artwork.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness, really?

• 32:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  When he finishes it, he's like, now he's miserable.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  Now he's miserable because, um, and, and when, you know, I, I had so much fun writing this book. And when I finished the book, it was a real sense of loss.

• 32:29Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 32:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, because that part of my life was over.

• 32:32Lewis Howes?

  Cause I was done.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:33Lewis Howes?

  So what do we do when we accomplish something, when we achieve, when we create, when we ship, when we launch, when we build, when we post, you know, how do we not have this dopamine, uh, depression, you know?

• 32:48Speaker 00

  That's such a dopamine urgent question.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  The correct answer is you just experience whatever happens in the present moment. So if you finish a work of art and you're miserable, be miserable. Because that's what life is about. Life is not about always being on the top of the world. In order to enjoy the good moments, you have to suffer through the bad moments.

• 33:10Lewis Howes?

  Man.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  And live those, live those suffering bad moments. That's part of life.

• 33:14Lewis Howes?

  I think it's also, what's worked for me is to have, and maybe there's some psychological term behind this, but it's having a meaningful mission for my life. Where it doesn't matter if I'm accomplishing something, my mission is to be of service. And whether that's just saying hi to someone and being of service in the moment, or doing it in a grander way of reaching millions of people in a day with a piece of content. My mission is to be of service and to be as joyful as possible.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:43Lewis Howes?

  And, and I can do that at all stages. You know, it's like, I don't have to be accomplishing the biggest things in order to be living that mission. And that helps me kind of manage those emotional ups and downs, I think.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  I think that's so insightful. We talk about what can we do to be happy, right? But we forget that pursuing happiness is really not the best way to get happiness.

• 34:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 34:09Speaker 00

  Pursuing meaning, you pursue meaning and happiness will just come.

• 34:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What's the meaning for you? What's your mission? Or meaningful mission?

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it changes a lot, you know? And we were talking about the unconscious mind earlier. And I think that that's where your mission comes from. A lot of people say, well, I want to be this kind of person. I want to be the kind of person who cares about the environment, or cares about poverty, or that. And so they go, and they're like, gosh, I don't really care about it.

• 34:43Lewis Howes?

  That's right.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  You gotta find out what you really care for and then pursue that.

• 34:47Lewis Howes?

  How do you know what you really care for?

• 34:48Speaker 00

  It has to do with paying attention.

• 34:52Speaker 00

  You know, you gotta stop thinking about, what do I wish I were like? And start paying attention to what am I really like? Okay, I'm miserable. You can ask yourself, what can I do not be miserable? Or you can say, let me see what this misery feels like. Let me get to know this misery better, because then I'll get to know myself better.

• 35:12Lewis Howes?

  When was the most miserable time in your life?

• 35:15Speaker 00

  I had, I know about your childhood. I had a tough childhood too.

• 35:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Uh, my parents divorced when I was eight years old and they hated each other.

• 35:25Lewis Howes?

  It's not fun growing up in a household with people that are arguing and screaming and not expressing love with one another.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:32Lewis Howes?

  It's really challenging.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  And their hatred for one another was so intense, they had no bandwidth left over to care for their kids.

• 35:37Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  And so we were just kinda out there fending for ourselves, trying to figure things out.

• 35:43Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:45Lewis Howes?

  How long did it take you to heal those memories and wounds?

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Any day now, it's gonna happen.

• 35:52Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 35:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:53Lewis Howes?

  Wow, okay.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  But that's part of who I am.

• 35:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course. That's probably what drives you to be of service and help people find healing and relief.

• 36:01Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 36:02Lewis Howes?

  And it's what you care about because of the pain.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. And also, you know, I often think that I don't have a lot of self-confidence. It's hard for me to see myself as a good and worthy person.

• 36:15Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And so it drives me to do things like write books and, you know, study hard.

• 36:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:23Speaker 00

  So I try to, I try to say, look, this is what my life is. And I'm gonna be, I'm gonna have gratitude for the good parts of it. I'm not gonna say, oh, I wish it were something else.

• 36:32Lewis Howes?

  Are a lot of people making decisions based on survival strategy, like creating survival strategies? It sounds like you went into this, you're like, I'm gonna work really hard, I'm gonna study extra hard, I'm gonna become on the board of this and the board of this and teach here and write these books and learn more and more to try to serve, to find that worthiness and I guess self-confidence? And same thing for me in a different approach. I was like, I'm gonna care about everyone in the world, you know? Cause no one, I felt like no one cared about me. So it's like,

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:59Lewis Howes?

  I gotta find a strategy.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:01Lewis Howes?

  And I feel like I've gone beyond that now where I've really loved myself and cared for myself and healed the inner child and I'm on that journey of healing, but it's, it's a journey, man.

• 37:13Speaker 00

  Yes, it is.

• 37:13Lewis Howes?

  It's a journey.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  It sure is, yeah.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I think it's important to recognize that, that we're not where we need to be, that we still have a lot of growing to do.

• 37:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  Um, and we've got to enjoy the ride. We can't always be focused on what's next.

• 37:32Lewis Howes?

  So how much, I mean, this is something you study. This is something you teach, this is something you are a practitioner in, you have clients and patients in this. On a scale of one to 10, 10 being the most, one being the least, how much self-love and worthiness do you have for yourself?

• 37:54Speaker 00

  Those who can't do, teach. So, I work on it.

• 38:00Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  When I started writing this book, I started meditating. As I was writing this book, I started meditating. Because I began to realize how dopaminergic I was.

• 38:08Lewis Howes?

  Dopamine what?

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Dopaminergic.

• 38:11Lewis Howes?

  Dopaminergic.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 38:13Speaker 00

  It's just an adjective.

• 38:15Lewis Howes?

  Allergic to dopamine?

• 38:15Speaker 00

  No, no, no. It means very focused on dopamine.

• 38:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  That...

• 38:21Lewis Howes?

  The future, the future, the future, the future. Not the now.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  So meditation, breathing strategies, bring you back into now.

• 38:28Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 38:31Lewis Howes?

  And what happens to people that are only focused on the future?

• 38:35Speaker 00

  I think that they're very unhappy. Because you can't be satisfied. Because if you're satisfied, it comes to a screeching halt. So you, right? And your mind is always somewhere else. And so, you know, sometimes I'm walking down the street to work. And I just notice what a beautiful world it is. You know, the birds are singing.

• 38:58Lewis Howes?

  Love that.

• 38:59Speaker 00

  I'm smelling flowers in the air.

• 39:01Lewis Howes?

  Good for you, it's good practice.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. If you're always focused on the future, you never get that.

• 39:08Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  And I think that one of the things I realized is that reality, and reality only exists in the present, right? The future is always unreal. Reality is a million times richer than anything that we can imagine.

• 39:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 39:24Speaker 00

  And so if you're always thinking about what might be in the future, you're living in this poor, thin, pale world. Whereas if you're in the richness of reality, it's a much nicer place to live.

• 39:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so reality is a beautiful place. The future, the imagination, can seem like a beautiful place in our mind.

• 39:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:47Lewis Howes?

  Imagining something, a world...

• 39:50Lewis Howes?

  An experience, an environment that we don't have yet that might improve the quality of our current reality. Is that right though? So there's a beauty of thinking creativity. I think Einstein talked about like imagination is one of the most powerful things. Human can do or whatever.

• 40:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:06Lewis Howes?

  So imagining something greater than where you're suffering or where maybe you're not as fulfilled or happy.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:12Lewis Howes?

  So it's it's a kind of sounds like a dance.

• 40:14Speaker 00

  It is.

• 40:15Lewis Howes?

  Cause if you were unworthy and didn't love yourself and were growing up scared in this environment. You don't want to be in that environment anymore.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:25Lewis Howes?

  There's a reality that's not helpful.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  And that that taught me to be somewhere else.

• 40:29Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 40:30Speaker 00

  Not a healthy habit to acquire.

• 40:32Lewis Howes?

  But it helps you get out of that current state of pain.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:35Lewis Howes?

  And suffering. So there's a it sounds like a dance, right?

• 40:38Speaker 00

  It's a dance. You gotta go back and forth.

• 40:40Lewis Howes?

  You can't just say, I'm gonna enjoy like my parents like screaming at each other and being like feeling worthless.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  Right.

• 40:46Lewis Howes?

  You don't want to just enjoy that, do you?

• 40:48Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. It's a dance. It's a balance. Now, some people choose. Uh, for example, like a Tibetan monk, right? They're gonna say no dopamine. They're gonna choose to live their entire life being having gratitude for the present moment.

• 41:03Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  Um, and there there are ways of putting people in a brain scanner and telling how happy they are.

• 41:10Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 41:10Speaker 00

  And Tibetan monks score highest on that score than anybody else.

• 41:14Lewis Howes?

  On happiness.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  On happiness.

• 41:15Lewis Howes?

  Cause they're just grateful in the moment for everything, right?

• 41:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, they are. Um, tough, tough path for Westerners to follow. We we have a different destiny.

• 41:24Lewis Howes?

  We want more.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  We want more and we want to be like Einstein. We want to create things that never existed before. And there's a real nobility in that. The Tibetan monks have their own nobility, but there's also a nobility in creation.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:37Speaker 00

  Which they don't engage in.

• 41:38Lewis Howes?

  And in evolution and building and evolving, yes.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  So scale of one to 10, where are you?

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. So i- i- if one is the Tibetan monk and 10 is the wor-

• 41:51Lewis Howes?

  Well, if 10 is like the happiest.

• 41:53Speaker 00

  Oh, the happiest.

• 41:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. And one is the the most.

• 41:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'd say I'm about a six, seven maybe on a good day. Yeah.

• 42:00Lewis Howes?

  That's good.

• 42:00Speaker 00

  How about you?

• 42:02Lewis Howes?

  I feel like I'm a eight, nine. Oh, nice. But I really practice, especially with my girlfriend, like waking up and literally just be like, "I'm so grateful for you." "I'm grateful for this moment. I'm grateful for waking up. I'm grateful for my body." And then I do things that bring me more gratitude for the actions I'm taking. So this morning, I woke up early. I did a workout. And I'm like, "Man, I'm so grateful for like taking this action." Because I know it's gonna help my future self. So it's kind of like being, being present, but also I'll do something weird with my mind, where I imagine myself years in the future, next to me, it's kind of weird, and saying like, "Thank you for taking care of my future."

• 42:46Lewis Howes?

  "Thank you for, now we're gonna have a better, healthier existence because of this hour exercise." It's a form of love. It's like loving myself from the future to now. Yes. It kind of sounds weird. I don't know what psychologically what that's called or anything, but it's, it's future casting. It's like appreciating myself in the future for what I'm doing now. So interesting. It's melding the future and the present. Yeah. But it's, so it's thinking about the future, but just saying, "Oh, I'm so grateful for what I'm doing in this moment" and appreciating the moment. So, I think my girlfriend does a great job of it, of, of bringing presence also. I can be thinking about what I want to create for my business non-stop, all day. If I wanted to. I can go home at night and I can just keep working.

• 43:29Lewis Howes?

  But with her, it's like, she, you know, I want to say demands it, but she is a force of presence that requires me to be present with her. She'll just come sit right in front of me and put her face in front of me, you know? It's like, you know, okay, let me just, let's talk. Excuse me, I exist. Yeah, well, it's not that I'm not, I'm avoiding her or something, but she just comes in and she'll sit next to me, or she'll just come and hug me, and it's just like, "Okay, I'm gonna be present with her for how long? We're gonna be present for?" And I think that's a helpful thing for people to be in relationships with other human beings, where they see people, where they are required to be present. Yeah. And so, it's, it's, it's a beautiful gift.

• 44:14Lewis Howes?

  And by taking that time away from your work...

• 44:18Speaker 00

  It probably actually makes you get more work done.

• 44:20Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  That's the thing I struggle with my patients. A lot of my patients are constantly working, working, working. And they're terrified that if they take the slightest breath, the house of cards will come tumbling down. But I say to them, if you take time off, you're actually going to get more work done.

• 44:38Lewis Howes?

  I believe it. I was interviewing this pastor, Pastor Michael Todd. He runs a Christian church in the Midwest. And he said, one of the best pieces of advice he got from one of his mentor pastors, who was kind of mentoring him as he was growing up in the world of the church, said, every year, take one month off where you don't do any work. There's no laptop, there's no emails, there's no, nothing. It's all play, fun, family, you know, vacation, whatever it is. And he was like, a month? That's so much time.

• 45:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:15Lewis Howes?

  And he says, it's non-negotiable. Every year he's been doing this. And he says, I come back, I come up with the greatest ideas. And he's like, that's where I came up with the idea for my next book that was a New York Times bestseller, from that space.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 45:30Lewis Howes?

  In between the work.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 45:32Lewis Howes?

  And he's like, there's an urge to want to start working, but I just have to pause. And when I came back, then I had all this energy and creativity and focus to get it done faster.

• 45:43Speaker 00

  One of the things that requires is trust. You know, we spoke a lot about how we want to be in control of things. How do you make yourself enthusiastic? How do you make yourself interested? No, you have to trust. You take the month off, and maybe it will be a complete waste of time.

• 46:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:01Speaker 00

  Or maybe you'll come up with a New York Times bestselling book.

• 46:03Lewis Howes?

  Ooh.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  Right?

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  How much time have you ever taken off since you started your practice? Have you taken a half day off yet?

• 46:11Speaker 00

  I take long weekends. I like long weekends. But I can't take off, it's hard for me to take off a full week.

• 46:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 46:17Speaker 00

  I just don't know what to do with myself.

• 46:19Lewis Howes?

  You have kids?

• 46:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:20Lewis Howes?

  How many kids do you have?

• 46:21Speaker 00

  I got two boys.

• 46:22Lewis Howes?

  Two boys, how old?

• 46:23Speaker 00

  Uh, they are now, um, twenty-five and twenty.

• 46:30Lewis Howes?

  Wow, okay, cool. Um, one of the best things I did for myself, this was probably four or five years ago. I, I came to a realization where I said, wow, for fifteen years, every day I've had my phone, I've touched my phone.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 46:46Lewis Howes?

  Maybe not all day, but I've touched my phone for fifteen years. This was probably four years ago or something, or five years ago.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 46:53Lewis Howes?

  Cause I got my first cellphone in, in two thousand, right? So it was like, maybe it was six years ago, whatever, seven years ago. But I was like, fifteen years, I've touched my phone every day since two thousand. This must have been twenty fifteen. And I said, what's a challenge for me? What's something that seems like I could never do?

• 47:11Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 47:12Lewis Howes?

  And I said, going away for a week and not having my phone with me. And so I made a commitment, I said, I'm gonna go to, I went to Hawaii and, um, by myself. Left my phone and laptop at home. No electronics on me. I mean, it felt so uncomfortable the first, like, day and a half because, first off, I forgot where my, my rental car was. So I went to every rental car place and said, did I get this here? I didn't even have all the information. I didn't have a GPS in my phone.

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:43Lewis Howes?

  So I stopped at gas stations, asking for directions to hotels. It felt like back in nineteen ninety-five, right?

• 47:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  And, um, after the second day, it felt like the most incredible surrender and peace. I was like laying in the ocean, not thinking about, oh, my phone is on the beach, or I need to like check something. And I almost didn't want to go back to having a phone.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  I want to do that.

• 48:06Lewis Howes?

  It was the greatest gift I gave myself. And so my challenge to you would be to find at least a week to do that for yourself.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  I think Hawaii would be a good place to do it.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, leave your electronics at home.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  Yes, that would be very hard, but I could imagine a realization coming at some point during that week saying, I've been enslaved by this and I'm finally free.

• 48:29Lewis Howes?

  That's how I felt.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:30Lewis Howes?

  Freedom.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:31Lewis Howes?

  It was incredible. Okay, so you started at a six or a seven. What would it take for you, do you think, to get to an eight, nine, or 10? What is the thing, the unresolved stuff that you haven't faced that you feel like would support you in improving the quality of that inner peace or joy? Because the reason I ask and the reason I challenge you, Daniel, is because I believe your work and your message and your mission is extremely valuable for humanity. And so I want you to be at an eight, nine, or 10 to be able to give more from that space of self-love and worthiness. Because I feel like you'll be able to serve at a higher level at that space.

• 49:13Lewis Howes?

  So that's why I'm challenging you and asking you this.

• 49:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, so um, one of the things I've been, I've been doing more is learning to say no.

• 49:28Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's good. So creating a boundary.

• 49:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. When I first started my career as a psychiatrist, I decided that I was going to say yes to everything.

• 49:37Lewis Howes?

  You have to when you're starting.

• 49:38Speaker 00

  You have to.

• 49:39Lewis Howes?

  You've got to build something.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  You got to build. You've got to be the guy that people will go to and they know the job will get done.

• 49:45Lewis Howes?

  I'll show up here, I'll take on this project, I'll do whatever you need.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and, and that worked out really, really well, but then that became my habit. And I started finding myself getting resentful. I felt like I was giving, giving, giving, and I wasn't getting what I expected in return. And so then I just started saying, no, I won't do that. And my happiness went up.

• 50:08Lewis Howes?

  Went up a lot. That's one of the most powerful things. I think it took me the longest to learn that in intimate relationships. Where I would um, Choose, I don't blame anyone that I ever dated, but I would choose certain relationships. And then I felt like I needed to say yes to make them happy or to do what they wanted for whatever it was. And I realized the things that I didn't want to say yes to. So it was never them, it was about me abandoning myself.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 50:36Lewis Howes?

  And being a constant abandonment of my, my own self-love or what I really wanted. And so I think when I learned that lesson, it's been such a beautiful, peaceful environment inside in that. And when I, I started doing that in business years ago as well. And I found like, wow, I have so much more freedom and peace from that. So I think that's a beautiful thing that you're doing.

• 50:58Speaker 00

  One of the things my wife said to me is that when you open your hand to let go of something, your hand is now able to get the next thing.

• 51:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  You know, and you can't, you can't receive the next gift unless you're able to give up the last one.

• 51:12Lewis Howes?

  That's so true. I was asking you before about this, you see patients almost every day or a few days a week?

• 51:19Speaker 00

  Every day, yeah.

• 51:21Lewis Howes?

  And what type of practice is it that people come to you for? What is the main thing that people come to you for?

• 51:31Speaker 00

  My expertise is psychopharmacology. That is using medications to treat psychiatric illnesses.

• 51:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  And my specialty is bipolar disorder.

• 51:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 51:41Speaker 00

  Depression and depression as well.

• 51:45Lewis Howes?

  Where does depression and bipolar disorder stem from? What is the root cause?

• 51:49Speaker 00

  It's really biological.

• 51:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 51:51Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, in the old days, we would look at a person's past and that has an effect. How healthy the environment they grew up in is going to determine their, their strength to recover. But really it's about a genetic vulnerability.

• 52:08Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 52:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:09Lewis Howes?

  But don't, don't some people get in more depressed states, seasons of life? Or if something traumatic happens, they might be in a depressed state, but other times they can be in a less depressed state?

• 52:23Speaker 00

  Well, one of the challenges that we face is separating normal emotional experiences in life from medical illnesses.

• 52:31Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 52:32Speaker 00

  You know, one of the challenges that psychiatry faces is that it's often not viewed as a medical specialty in the same way that cardiology or pulmonology is, right?

• 52:42Lewis Howes?

  Because it can't be seen, really, I guess, right? It's more in your mind.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  That's right. And also because the brain is so hideously complex. You know, the heart's a pump. I don't want to dish my cardiology colleagues, but the heart's a pump.

• 52:56Lewis Howes?

  The brain is like a hundred trillion frickin' cells and, yeah. We just had a brain surgeon on recently who's a neuroscientist as well.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 53:05Lewis Howes?

  Who's done over a thousand brain surgeries.

• 53:06Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 53:07Lewis Howes?

  He was like, this, he's like, you could cut out a piece of the brain where they think is, you know, I can't remember exactly what he said, but it's called the analytical side of the brain. You could cut out a piece of it and the person can still be analytical because the brain can readjust.

• 53:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:22Lewis Howes?

  And rework itself. It's like this, yeah, incredible.

• 53:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's, it's complexity makes psychiatry a younger science.

• 53:31Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  Because we don't understand as much about our organ as our cardiologist colleagues do.

• 53:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 53:38Speaker 00

  And so I, I think that in some ways we get less respect because we're kind of, we're, we're at a much more primitive level.

• 53:43Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 53:44Speaker 00

  Um, but it's still medicine. It's still medicine and we still approach it scientifically. And, and when the brain is broken, that's different than when people are going through difficult experiences in their life.

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 53:56Speaker 00

  And their brain is responding the way you would expect it to, to hard things.

• 53:59Lewis Howes?

  I asked you before, I said, what's been the biggest, um, I guess, challenge over the last year? What type of people have come to you in the last year? And you said, um, what did you say specifically? People who might have an extreme mental illness versus people who are going through extreme adverse challenges?

• 54:16Speaker 00

  Yes. So, you know, all of my patients are being treated for a mental illness. And, um, you know, usually once they get better, it holds and they stay better, but not always. So they're coming in and they're saying, gosh, I'm feeling like I did before I saw you. Did the treatment you gave me stop working? Or is it because I'm stressed out and upset, just like all my friends who don't have mental illnesses?

• 54:40Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 54:41Speaker 00

  We have to figure that one out.

• 54:42Lewis Howes?

  So how do you determine if someone is, needs an actual medication or if they need a? You know, heal a wound that they haven't healed, or they need to heal a trauma, or they need to get out of a toxic relationship, or they need to stop watching the news, or they need eight hours of sleep, or, you know, eating healthier foods, or all the things lifestyle-wise that support a better feeling, a better mood.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Yes. I just ask them, how are the people at work doing? About the same as you? And if they say, yeah, everyone's the same as me, I'm like, healthy lifestyle. But if they say, no, you know, everyone's pretty much okay, and I can't drive myself out of bed in the morning because of this feeling of dread, I say, let's take a look at your medications.

• 55:22Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Is there a way to heal depression without medication?

• 55:28Speaker 00

  There is. Mild to moderate depression can be healed without medication. Severe depression, though, is gonna need medication.

• 55:36Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 55:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:37Lewis Howes?

  There's no way to get out of severe depression from extreme lifestyle shifts, or, again, psychologically going back into childhood wounds and starting the healing journey and creating self-love inside and finding meaning and all these different things?

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Doctors never say never.

• 55:54Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 55:55Speaker 00

  Right, because the human-

• 55:56Lewis Howes?

  I like that. I'm glad you said that.

• 55:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, the human body is, we play the odds. Medicine is about statistics. It's about rolling the dice for the best outcome. But if you've got severe depression and you're gonna try and do it without medication, the odds are way against you.

• 56:09Lewis Howes?

  So you're saying it's much harder with severe depression, where you're like, I can't get out of bed, I can't think, I can't move. It's hard to-

• 56:16Speaker 00

  I'm suffering from a psychosis. I'm hearing voices telling me I'm a horrible person. Severe depression's no joke. It's a real broken brain. People can have delusions, their body is riddled with disease. They can have the delusion, I'm responsible for all the evil in the world.

• 56:33Lewis Howes?

  It's not true, but they have this truth that's not a reality.

• 56:36Speaker 00

  Depression can be a fatal illness. Yeah, it leads to suicide. So it's an illness to be taken very, very seriously.

• 56:45Lewis Howes?

  Right, so if it's extreme, then medication, you're saying, is the way to get out of the extreme, to start saying, okay, now you have some more balance, let's start changing lifestyle stuff. To see if that'll help you, right, and increase the mood or?

• 56:58Speaker 00

  You know, if somebody has that extreme a depression, it's generally a chronic illness.

• 57:02Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha.

• 57:02Speaker 00

  And that's not to say that lifestyle and other changes isn't going to be incredibly helpful. But, you know, let's, let's, let's think about diabetes. Sometimes people can overcome diabetes with lifestyle changes. Sometimes they can't.

• 57:17Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  If they need medication, lifestyle changes will still be enormously helpful.

• 57:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  But we don't want to fall into the stigma of saying, well, mental illnesses don't count. Yeah, we're going to give the diabetic patient medication, but the guy with depression, he's going to have to tough it out.

• 57:33Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 57:34Speaker 00

  Right?

• 57:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's a lot of cases now where Dr. Jason Fung is talking about, you know, reversing pre-diabetes or early-stage type 2 diabetes are able to reverse it.

• 57:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:45Lewis Howes?

  Through fasting, through eliminating certain foods and lifestyle changes. But the farther along it is, it's obviously much harder to reverse without having medication or something like that, so.

• 57:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 57:58Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting. Now, I'm curious about this. I'm forgetting the doctor I had on, the name of him, I'll have to come back and think about it.

• 58:07Lewis Howes?

  But I'd asked him about different stages of his life. He's probably in his 70s now. I'm forgetting his name. And he, there were different stages in his life where he said he was at lower points, more depressed-type states, right? Maybe not full depression, but depressed states. And lower points of enthusiasm, lower points of creativity and wanting to, you know, show up and work every day, right? And things like that.

• 58:39Lewis Howes?

  Gaining weight, all these different things. And I said, what changed? And he said, love. He said, meeting someone.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:47Lewis Howes?

  And feeling powerful love changed the way I thought, changed the way I felt, changed the way I saw the world. How powerful is love when it comes to mental illness, depression?

• 59:03Lewis Howes?

  Overwhelmed, stressed, how powerful is the feeling of love, feeling loved by another human being, or fully loving yourself, reparenting yourself psychologically?

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:16Lewis Howes?

  And giving yourself a love that you'd never had as a child, or bonding with someone chemically through that feeling of love, how can that shift your depression, your states, and your desire to want to give and create more in the world?

• 59:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. I think that love involving another person is probably the single most powerful thing there is.

• 59:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 59:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. Personally, you know, when I met my wife, that was more healing than anything I'd ever experienced before.

• 59:49Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 59:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. That completely changed me, completely changed me as a person.

• 59:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:56Lewis Howes?

  So do you think people that are depressed have love?

• 59:58Speaker 00

  Um.

• 59:59Lewis Howes?

  Or are able to feel love? Maybe there's someone's loving them, but they're not able to receive it?

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  You know, again, I think we need to be very careful about distinguishing depression as a medical illness.

• 1:00:12Lewis Howes?

  Versus?

• 1:00:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it's so easy to fall into the habit of blaming people for their mental illness. Say, "Oh, if only you loved yourself more, you wouldn't be depressed."

• 1:00:20Lewis Howes?

  Of course, yeah, of course.

• 1:00:21Speaker 00

  We don't say somebody with cancer, "Oh, you know, if only you..."

• 1:00:24Lewis Howes?

  Right. I'm just curious how powerful, if we learn to receive and give and feel love?

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  Let me give you the most powerful example I've come across.

• 1:00:35Lewis Howes?

  Share it with me.

• 1:00:36Speaker 00

  And it's one of the most terrible mental illnesses there is, narcissistic personality disorder.

• 1:00:42Lewis Howes?

  This has been a massive topic that people are covering.

• 1:00:46Speaker 00

  Is that right?

• 1:00:47Lewis Howes?

  And we had a narcissistic expert therapist come on and talk about it. And, I mean, it's got over a million views on our channel already from that alone. And I think so many people have... Been in narcissistic relationships where they face this like sucking of their soul out of someone else. I know I've experienced that.

• 1:01:09Speaker 00

  You have? Wow.

• 1:01:10Lewis Howes?

  But I was not aware of it until after the fact, right? Until it's like you learn to heal your, your own self and it's just like.

• 1:01:17Speaker 00

  You're like, oh, I deserved that.

• 1:01:19Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy. It's crazy. And so, um, so tell me more about narcissism and love and where you're going with this.

• 1:01:25Speaker 00

  So, um, for a psychiatrist, narcissism is just brutal.

• 1:01:30Lewis Howes?

  How many narcissists come into your practice?

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Um, when I was a resident, um, I was assigned a patient who had narcissism and I worked with him for two years and, um, I did nothing for him. Uh, and I remember a dream I had once, I was trying to climb a wall of glass and there was nowhere for me to get a hold. And that's what it was like working with this, with this poor man.

• 1:01:55Lewis Howes?

  Oh, you're gonna bring me back to my past now? Yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  There was, there was not enough. I couldn't get it. I couldn't get a hold and there was nothing I could do to help him change because everything was always other people's fault.

• 1:02:07Lewis Howes?

  There's never responsibility, right?

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  No. This was not a bad man. I, I, I liked him. I felt sorry for him. He was miserable, but I couldn't, he, nothing was ever his fault.

• 1:02:18Lewis Howes?

  That is like the, the sign of a narcissist, right? One of the many signs.

• 1:02:23Speaker 00

  One of the many, many signs.

• 1:02:24Lewis Howes?

  Blame everyone and never take responsibility. I faced that in, in a couple of relationships.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  And so after two years of that, when a narcissist would come consult me, I would say, look, I can't take your money.

• 1:02:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. It's so funny, this therapist that we had on who teaches about this and educates people on what to look for with narcissism, does a YouTube channel. She was like, it's rare that I'll even treat a narcissist because they'll never want to go to therapy.

• 1:02:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Lewis Howes?

  They'll never, they'll only go because they're forced to go from their partner or something, or they're gonna, they're threatening a divorce and so they have to go. But it's like, they need to go almost every day for years in order for them to say, you know what? I'm gonna see it differently. I'm gonna take responsibility. And then they need to stay in it in order to get out of that. What, how do people manage that if they're in a relationship with a narcissist?

• 1:03:19Speaker 00

  I don't know. I think they gotta get out.

• 1:03:21Lewis Howes?

  That's the only solution, huh?

• 1:03:22Speaker 00

  That I can think of. I mean, I'm not an expert in narcissism.

• 1:03:25Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  Um, I've never had any success. But I tell you something. So, so there's not very many, there's not very many therapists who can successfully treat narcissism. It takes a very special person to be able to do that. Ninety-nine percent of therapists will get nothing done. But there is something that does reliably help narcissists.

• 1:03:44Lewis Howes?

  What's that?

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  Being in a genuine love relationship. That actually diminishes narcissism.

• 1:03:51Lewis Howes?

  So tell me, what do you mean by that? Not being in a relationship with them, but in being in a relationship with someone else?

• 1:03:56Speaker 00

  Uh, i- i- if they, if they are in a relationship where they truly love the other person. I- i- it's not that they just see the other person as a source of narcissistic gratification. The other person is not just someone to be drained. That they truly love that person.

• 1:04:12Lewis Howes?

  But a narcissist would never do that, right?

• 1:04:14Speaker 00

  It, it, it happens. It happens.

• 1:04:16Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Psychiatry has been more pessimistic about personality disorders than we should be. And, and borderline personality disorder is another example. In the past, we've been very pessimistic. Now we're extremely optimistic. And we think, oh, borderline personality disorder, there's an enormous potential for improvement. I hope someday we'll get there with narcissism. But it, it's, it's more malleable than we thought.

• 1:04:42Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:04:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, but not through treatment. It's through life. See, what's at the heart of narcissism is radical insecurity.

• 1:04:51Lewis Howes?

  Massive insecurity.

• 1:04:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Lewis Howes?

  Huge insecurities.

• 1:04:54Speaker 00

  Right.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Massive wounds.

• 1:04:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:04:56Lewis Howes?

  And they don't feel like, what, they, they don't love themselves?

• 1:04:59Speaker 00

  No, they don't. They feel that they are utterly unworthy. They might not be aware of it. It might be unconscious, but that's what it is, that they're utterly unworthy. And so there's this, there's this hole inside of them. They're constantly trying to fill. And, and they fill it, you know, with other people. And, and that's why it's so horrible being with them, because they're just sucking out of you, trying to fill this hole. The thing is, though, that if something real actually happens, like they do have a real relationship, or even graduating from college, or getting a good job diminishes their narcissism, because suddenly, they're not desperately empty.

• 1:05:37Lewis Howes?

  Interesting, but wouldn't it never feel enough, like, well, I don't deserve this. I've got this great person in front of me, but I'm not worthy enough of deserving this, so I'm gonna sabotage it, I'm gonna suck, I'm gonna blame them for everything still, but how I feel, that's what I went through, it's not fun.

• 1:05:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm not an expert in this, and as I said, what I'm talking about are studies that look at statistics. I would agree with you, though, I think there's some narcissists, it's not gonna work.

• 1:06:00Lewis Howes?

  What's the difference between a narcissist who is, feels like they don't deserve, they have a massive wound, versus someone who just feels unworthy, who's not a narcissist?

• 1:06:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Lewis Howes?

  So, like, me and you growing up.

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  I know, I know, yeah.

• 1:06:16Lewis Howes?

  Who wants to suck the life out of people and blame everyone, versus someone saying, "I know I feel unworthy, I take responsible for these, I'm responsible for these things."

• 1:06:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a question of where the pain goes. The narcissist puts the pain outward on others, right, the person, because I think they're unconscious of their unworthiness. Person who is aware of their unworthiness, pain goes in.

• 1:06:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:06:43Speaker 00

  And people tend to like them, because, you know, they're always trying to please others.

• 1:06:47Lewis Howes?

  They are, yeah, that was me.

• 1:06:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:06:49Lewis Howes?

  That was me. Saying yes to everything, and then resenting it later.

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:53Lewis Howes?

  It's like, yeah. That's fascinating.

• 1:06:56Speaker 00

  But, but those people tend to be more successful in life, right? The narcissists end up alone and miserable, because nobody wants to be with them, right? The guys who are always trying to please people, well, they do get good things.

• 1:07:07Lewis Howes?

  They get taken care, they get taken advantage of, yes. So, what do you see for the future of the brain, dopamine, and...

• 1:07:22Lewis Howes?

  Creating happier, more fulfilling lives for ourselves. When it seems like, and the statistics are showing that life expectancy is actually dropping, at least in the USA over the last, I think, five to 10 years. It's actually dropping now. Where access to

• 1:07:41Lewis Howes?

  foods and things that are unhealthy for the body are making us needing these addictions more and more. Cigarettes, whatever, alcohol, plant medicine, all these things that people are doing to feel something.

• 1:07:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Lewis Howes?

  Social media, the phone, the addictions, all these sort of things. What do you see as the future of where we're going? And if someone truly wants to live a happier, more fulfilled life, what can they do in the face of the next decade of just distractions?

• 1:08:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:08:14Lewis Howes?

  I don't think it's going to get easier for anyone with the accessibility to addictions, things, access. The now gratification.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, think back to

• 1:08:27Speaker 00

  to our prehistoric ancestors. Can you imagine going out on a hunt for a woolly mammoth? How much fun that must have been.

• 1:08:35Lewis Howes?

  It'd be scary, fun, exciting.

• 1:08:36Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, like you're with your buddies, like the tribe. You all depend upon one another. You all got a role. It's life or death. You could come home dead. You know, you're going to bring home meat. I bet that we don't experience anything like that our whole life that was as much fun as that.

• 1:08:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  Related to that.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  You know, like everyone, I started out life poor, you know, as a poor medical student. And now, you know, I'm financially more comfortable. And there are things I miss about being poor.

• 1:09:10Lewis Howes?

  Isn't that interesting?

• 1:09:11Speaker 00

  Did you have, you noticed that?

• 1:09:12Lewis Howes?

  I was sleeping on my scissors couch for a year and a half.

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:09:15Lewis Howes?

  No money, broke, eating mac and cheese and leftovers from her.

• 1:09:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:20Lewis Howes?

  I didn't have a car, so I'm walking everywhere and just like living by, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks a month.

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Lewis Howes?

  And there's something about that time that I'm like, God, it was so exciting to see like, what could I create from this space of nothing?

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're strategizing. Little wins are huge.

• 1:09:37Lewis Howes?

  Oh, someone said yes to meet with me. Here's like all these things.

• 1:09:41Speaker 00

  So as our, as our society progresses farther and farther away from scarcity. We lose those opportunities to have these incredibly big wins that are gonna change our life. And so we overeat on junk food. We spend time with these trivial nonsense pleasures on our cellphones because the big things are no longer in our life. It's no longer about finding sources of food to survive. It's now about, you know, how many views am I gonna get with my latest post? It's not the same thing.

• 1:10:17Lewis Howes?

  So what can we do over the next five, 10 years as these distractions are gonna become more prevalent?

• 1:10:23Speaker 00

  We've gotta think about meaning. We've gotta think about what is meaningful. So for me, you know, writing books has become so meaningful and it's nice and hard and sometimes it makes me miserable, which is good. You've gotta find something that's hard, that will involve failure because that's how hard it is. You can't, you can't choose an easy life.

• 1:10:49Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:10:51Lewis Howes?

  What happens if we choose an easy life?

• 1:10:52Speaker 00

  We become miserable. We become miserable, bored, fat, sick, diabetic, all of those terrible things.

• 1:10:58Lewis Howes?

  Do you have a chapter or a place in here that talks about meaning and finding meaning?

• 1:11:02Speaker 00

  It's my next book.

• 1:11:03Lewis Howes?

  That's the next book?

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  That's the next book, yeah.

• 1:11:05Lewis Howes?

  What is that? What about the unconscious mind?

• 1:11:07Speaker 00

  It's about the unconscious mind, yeah. And...

• 1:11:10Lewis Howes?

  What is the unconscious mind versus the conscious mind?

• 1:11:13Speaker 00

  A lot of people have seen these pictures of the mind as an iceberg, right? Where there's this little teeny part above the surface and a huge mass is below the surface. That's the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is responsible for everything that goes on inside our heads that we don't have control over. Emotions, excitement, enthusiasm, interest. Most people don't think about this. You don't control what you're interested in, you know?

• 1:11:39Lewis Howes?

  How do you, I mean...

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  Really? Do you, so I like football? Okay. I personally don't like football. There's nothing I can, well, I kinda do, but not that much. But there's nothing I can do to make myself passionate about football.

• 1:11:51Lewis Howes?

  Here's the thing, I'm gonna challenge you on this and tell me if I'm wrong. I never liked soccer. I played it growing up and then I stopped playing it when I was a sophomore in high school and I started playing football.

• 1:12:04Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, I never want to watch soccer. The only time I was interested in soccer was during the World Cup, when I was like, okay, I can get behind everyone going out and like watching game and supporting the USA, right? But I never wanted to watch until a few years ago. I was just telling one of our producers here, Mike, that I went to a couple LAFC games, their LA Football Club soccer team, right?

• 1:12:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:23Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, this is incredible, the energy, the experience. I got to know the players and I was like, became interested in the sport of soccer. And I was like, I want to go to more games.

• 1:12:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Lewis Howes?

  So how does that like, what does that mean then? If I'm not interested, but then I become interested in something?

• 1:12:38Speaker 00

  Right. So we talked about, um, we talked about this pastor who took a month off.

• 1:12:44Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:12:44Speaker 00

  And boom, the idea hit him.

• 1:12:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:12:46Speaker 00

  That came from his unconscious mind. He didn't dig it up, right?

• 1:12:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:12:51Speaker 00

  It came to him. You went to the soccer game and you were given a gift.

• 1:12:55Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:12:56Speaker 00

  You were given the gift of excitement.

• 1:12:58Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:12:58Speaker 00

  Uh, you didn't work for that.

• 1:12:59Lewis Howes?

  It was fun and exciting, yeah.

• 1:13:00Speaker 00

  Right. That, that was a gift for your unconscious mind. And, and that's why trust is so important, that we have to trust that these gifts will come. We try to squeeze our unconscious mind and force it to give us things. It's going to rebel. Uh, we, we've got to kind of go through saying, look, I'm not, I've got a co-pilot, or maybe I'm the pilot, maybe the other guys, maybe I'm the co-pilot, maybe the other guy's the pilot and in charge.

• 1:13:26Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 1:13:27Speaker 00

  But it, it, it's, it's a realization that you cannot control everything, that you have to be open to gifts that come from the unconscious mind.

• 1:13:35Lewis Howes?

  So it's kind of like being curious about life. I'm going to try this thing. I'm going to check this out and see how it makes me feel.

• 1:13:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah. Can I tell the story I wanted to tell?

• 1:13:44Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:44Speaker 00

  So, um, so I did this TEDx talk, right?

• 1:13:47Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  And it's a big deal.

• 1:13:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  And I practiced that.

• 1:13:49Lewis Howes?

  Four years ago, wasn't it? Yeah.

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Yeah. I practiced that every day for a month.

• 1:13:52Lewis Howes?

  That's great. Great speech.

• 1:13:54Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:13:55Lewis Howes?

  Every day for a month?

• 1:13:55Speaker 00

  Every single day, well, five days a week. Uh, when I went to work, uh, first thing I did, first thing in the morning is I ran through that speech.

• 1:14:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:14:03Speaker 00

  All right. So I get there, we do a dress rehearsal, get up there and I'm giving my speech. I draw a blank halfway through. Nothing. I'm sweating.

• 1:14:14Lewis Howes?

  Dress rehearsal.

• 1:14:15Speaker 00

  Dress rehearsal. I got nothing. And I'm terrified and there's a dinner that evening and I skip the dinner. I go back to my hotel room and I'm memorizing, memorizing. So now it's the day of the thing and I'm about to go out. And I realize, I say, "Look, I didn't shirk. I wasn't lazy. I did everything I could and it wasn't enough."

• 1:14:39Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:14:40Speaker 00

  And so I said to my unconscious mind, "We're all in this together. Be a pal and help me out." You know, I acknowledged that I didn't have control. And I was happy with that when my unconscious mind came through for me.

• 1:14:55Lewis Howes?

  That was great.

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  But it came through for me as a friend, not as a servant. I didn't order it, I asked it.

• 1:15:03Lewis Howes?

  So what happens to people who are extremely controlling in their life? Versus people that are more in surrender?

• 1:15:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, those controlling people don't do well.

• 1:15:11Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:15:11Speaker 00

  And a lot of times, you know, the unconscious mind has a sense of humor. You know about the Freudian slip, right? A lot of times the Freudian slip will reveal a truth that you were trying to hide. But the unconscious mind says, "Tough luck."

• 1:15:24Lewis Howes?

  You said this, yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, so people are always trying to be controlled. Their unconscious mind is constantly sabotaging them.

• 1:15:30Lewis Howes?

  So the unconscious mind is in control?

• 1:15:33Speaker 00

  We share control. We share control. And we need to work as a partnership. Yeah, it's a partnership. And if you try to be the tyrant, like the people who are very much in control, the unconscious mind is gonna mess with you.

• 1:15:48Lewis Howes?

  So what is the conscious mind versus the unconscious mind? The conscious mind is what? Every thought I'm thinking or saying in this moment? Or what does it mean, really?

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  Yes, the conscious mind tends to think rationally. You know, it thinks logically. It figures things out. The unconscious mind, the conscious mind is very much about words. And it's funny, you know, the Greek word for words is logos. That's where we get logic from. So words and logic are very much connected. The unconscious mind doesn't use words, it uses feelings. It's about emotions, it's about a gut feeling. And people who have a good relationship with their unconscious mind, they rely a lot on their gut feeling. So they'll see someone and they'll just have this gut feeling and they'll trust it. And that's their unconscious mind delivering them information.

• 1:16:41Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:16:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:16:42Lewis Howes?

  Because what does the conscious mind try to do in every situation?

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  Well, let me give you an example. Think about the last time you said, "Let me sleep on that." Right? When you say, "Let me sleep on that," that's an acknowledgement that your conscious mind can't work its way through the problem.

• 1:16:57Lewis Howes?

  Or might react, or the unconscious mind might react if I-

• 1:17:01Speaker 00

  You need your unconscious mind.

• 1:17:03Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  You know? So for example, think about making the decision about where to go to college. There are too many variables for the conscious, right? So you visit all the different places and at some point you go, "This is the right place for me."

• 1:17:18Lewis Howes?

  And you don't know why. There's something within your unconscious mind that just has a feeling.

• 1:17:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:23Lewis Howes?

  So where is the conscious and the unconscious mind?

• 1:17:28Speaker 00

  Like physically?

• 1:17:29Lewis Howes?

  Where is it?

• 1:17:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. It's embedded in the brain circuits of the brain.

• 1:17:34Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:17:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:34Lewis Howes?

  But the mind is not in the brain. Is that right? Where is the mind? It's like, is it in the body? Is it around the body? Is it inside the- Where in the brain is the mind?

• 1:17:44Speaker 00

  Right, right. So, um, right. So as a scientist, I'm gonna say that the mind is simply the activity of atoms and molecules in the brain.

• 1:18:00Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:18:00Speaker 00

  Because that's all a scientist can say, right? As a human being, I don't believe that.

• 1:18:06Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure, sure, sure.

• 1:18:07Speaker 00

  Right? But that's metaphysics.

• 1:18:09Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  That's beyond what we can measure and touch and bang on and experiment on. That's metaphysics and scientists shouldn't talk about metaphysics.

• 1:18:20Lewis Howes?

  So there's physics within the body, right? There's metaphysics which is beyond. What's quantum physics?

• 1:18:25Speaker 00

  Physics.

• 1:18:26Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:18:27Speaker 00

  Physics. It's straight up physics. So, so, so the, everything in the universe is made up of two things. Bosons and fermions.

• 1:18:37Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  Okay?

• 1:18:38Lewis Howes?

  What are these things called? Quarks?

• 1:18:40Speaker 00

  Quarks? Those are fermions.

• 1:18:41Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:18:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Fermions are what make up matter. So quarks are fermions.

• 1:18:45Lewis Howes?

  Quarks.

• 1:18:46Speaker 00

  Electrons are fermions. Atoms are fermions? Yeah, yeah, protons, well, they're, yeah. Bosons are energy, so photons, which carry light and radio waves, those are bosons. Okay? So, so we got bosons and fermions. Anything that's not bosons and fermions, like souls and mind and divinities, that's metaphysical. Consciousness, right? I don't know. That's not part of photons and these other things? I don't know. Right, so it's something else that's not seen. Maybe. That's not measurable. I mean, materialists, um, um, Crick, I can't remember his first name, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, Francis Crick. Okay.

• 1:19:30Speaker 00

  Watson and Crick discovered the big thing. Anyways, he's a strict materialist. He does not believe anything beyond bosons and fermions. And he wrote this book called The Astonishing Hypothesis. And he said, "The astonishing hypothesis is that you, your memories, your feelings, your hopes and your dreams are nothing more than a vast assembly of neurons made up of molecules and atoms." Really? As Lewis Carrus's Alice might say, "You're nothing but a pack of neurons." So where does the soul, the mind? A, a, a, a fair number of scientists, especially neuroscientists, are strict materialists. Interesting. And they will not admit the existence of anything beyond atoms and molecules.

• 1:20:15Speaker 00

  It's a no soul, no mind. No soul, no mind. No soul, no mind. What's your belief? I believe in souls and minds. And where do you, I guess, if you're going away from the scientist's point of view, where would you say the mind is?

• 1:20:29Speaker 00

  Well, I, I, I think that once, once we move away from that, we don't, we don't need to talk about space anymore. Gotcha. I don't think the mind would be localized. It could be everywhere. It could be. It could be anywhere, is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Interesting. Yeah, it, it may not make so much sense to talk about it as being in, in a particular location. Right. You know, like, like, it, it meant, in the old days, I don't know if this was like the 19th century, they did this crazy experiment in which they weighed someone right before they died and right after they died to find out how much the soul weighed. Right, because the soul would leave their body, two ounces, the soul weighs two ounces. And, and you know, nowadays, we say, "Well, that's silly." So I, I, I think that when we move away from science to faith, we're working in a completely different paradigm.

• 1:21:14Speaker 00

  That's crazy.

• 1:21:16Lewis Howes?

  Because there's so many times where people's, you know, I'll call someone and they're saying, "I was just thinking about you."

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:22Lewis Howes?

  And why does that happen? You know, it's like, why are these connections beyond just the brain, you know, from the mind or the...

• 1:21:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:29Lewis Howes?

  Now, we're going beyond this book here, but...

• 1:21:31Speaker 00

  It's interesting stuff.

• 1:21:32Lewis Howes?

  It's fascinating. Is this anything that you tap into, you work on, or research, or is it more...

• 1:21:37Speaker 00

  You know, it's pointless to research it. People have tried, and they've tried many times because it is so fascinating. But it can't be captured. It cannot be captured. And people who have faith would say, "Yeah, yeah." You know, you're not going to put God in a box, right? He's not gonna...

• 1:21:56Lewis Howes?

  Can't explain it.

• 1:21:57Speaker 00

  Yeah. And plus, if there were a proof of God, there'd be no longer any faith, right? Because you would be forced to believe in God. Like, you have no choice but to believe two plus two equals four, right? In some ways, you're a slave. You can't choose. If we could prove the existence of God, we'd be religious slaves because proof would eliminate choice. And so what religious people say is that assuming God exists, he would not create a universe in which you could prove him because he wants freedom for his creations.

• 1:22:34Lewis Howes?

  Do you prescribe faith to your patients? Do you say, do you see people with some faith or more faith as healthier, happier, you know, brains?

• 1:22:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:22:51Lewis Howes?

  And mental, I don't know, capacities?

• 1:22:55Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, you know, asking about spiritual beliefs is part of every standard psychiatric evaluation. Just like asking about diet and exercise, we ask about their spiritual beliefs.

• 1:23:05Lewis Howes?

  And what are the ones who are more depressed or seem to have more extreme mental illnesses? On the spectrum of spiritual faith.

• 1:23:13Speaker 00

  Doesn't seem to be a connection between the two.

• 1:23:15Lewis Howes?

  Some of them might be strong faith, some might have no faith.

• 1:23:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. In general, extreme hardship does drive us to a more spiritual orientation. Because it just forces us to look beyond the physical reality.

• 1:23:30Lewis Howes?

  Because you may not find a meaning or reason in the logical world, so you have to see beyond.

• 1:23:35Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, to me, it makes sense that people with strong spiritual beliefs should be mentally healthier. But that has not been proven.

• 1:23:43Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  What has been proven is that people who attend regular religious services are happier and mentally stronger than those who don't.

• 1:23:53Lewis Howes?

  So it's the attending of a ritual, a community?

• 1:23:57Speaker 00

  It's the community, it's the people.

• 1:23:59Lewis Howes?

  It's everything, it's feeling a sense of peace for an hour, you know, it's...

• 1:24:02Speaker 00

  It's the people, because people who are spiritual all by themselves, which is a very important part of spirituality, they don't get the boost. The boost comes from the community.

• 1:24:13Lewis Howes?

  Really? Based on all the different patients you've had and the...

• 1:24:16Speaker 00

  I didn't do these studies, I didn't do these studies, but smarter people than me did the studies. Yeah.

• 1:24:21Lewis Howes?

  So showing up to a place for an hour a week with a community in a spiritual practice, a religious practice, tends to make people happier.

• 1:24:29Speaker 00

  Yep, so you would probably get the same benefit from the pickleball league.

• 1:24:33Lewis Howes?

  Right. Showing up once a week to like a community activity.

• 1:24:36Speaker 00

  Yep, that's it.

• 1:24:37Lewis Howes?

  That or...

• 1:24:38Speaker 00

  So it's disappointing, we haven't been able to prove that spirituality leads to better mental health. I think it does, it ought to, but we can't prove it. And I think that that's just the way it is with metaphysical stuff. It doesn't lend itself to the scientific method.

• 1:24:54Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, what else do we need to know? Is there anything else you think we need to be sharing or talking about that would be valuable for people today?

• 1:25:01Speaker 00

  Um, there's so much...

• 1:25:03Lewis Howes?

  On the molecule of more?

• 1:25:04Speaker 00

  You know, the one thing I was hoping we would get to...

• 1:25:06Lewis Howes?

  Let's do it.

• 1:25:06Speaker 00

  Was the question of love.

• 1:25:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes, oh yeah, because we were... I talked about it, then I think I distracted you. So you were saying narcissism, it's love?

• 1:25:13Speaker 00

  Well, I talked about falling in love can reduce narcissism.

• 1:25:15Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so tell me about love.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  You know, I want to talk about a mistake people make with love.

• 1:25:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:25:21Speaker 00

  Okay? Um, because there are two kinds of love. There's dopaminergic love...

• 1:25:29Speaker 00

  And there's here and now love. And they're very, very different things. And people get the two confused and it can cause serious problems. So I wanted to make a distinction between the two. Perfect. Dopaminergic love is the kind of love we experience when we talk about falling in love. It's a sort of insanity. It's a rush. It's a rush, yeah. Some people, and I agree with them, call it the most intense, most pleasurable experience we can have in life. But then there's a crash. Yeah. Usually there's a decline at some point. There's a decline. It doesn't have to be a crash. Okay. But there's always a decline. And with a decline, does it become an expectation hangover or like?

• 1:26:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. So dopaminergic love, we might call it passionate love. It only lasts for about a year or two, all right? And then it goes away and you're no longer, when you're in love, all you want is to be with the other person. Is that, yes. You know, they're a god or a goddess and they make your life perfect and you feel like you've never, all you want is that. When that comes to an end, they lose their divinity and they revert back to normal human status. Wow. And what a lot of people do is say, ah, I thought this was the one, they're not. I need to go find someone else because I'm no longer in love with that person. Right. And that's a mistake. Because what happens is that passionate love never, ever lasts.

• 1:26:56Speaker 00

  But it can evolve into something called companionate love. And that's the here and now love. We talked about how dopaminergic happiness is about excitement, enthusiasm. And that's what it feels like to be in love. Here and now happiness is about fulfillment, contentment, satisfaction, serenity. And that's here and now love. That's what passionate love can evolve into. And in some ways, it's better. And so I think that, you know, our society, we romanticize passionate love, right? Movies are all about falling in love. You don't see couples who've been together 20 years and have this enormous level of comfort

• 1:27:41Speaker 00

  with one another, right? When you're in a companionate love relationship, you have this sense of trust. There's someone that you know will always have your back, no matter what. Your life is deeply entwined with theirs. And that is a wonderful, beautiful thing that I think our society doesn't appreciate enough.

• 1:28:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they want more the rush. They want the feeling of falling in love and it always goes away.

• 1:28:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:28:10Lewis Howes?

  And so then they leave the relationship on the next one to feel the next dopamine hit, I guess, right?

• 1:28:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's right. I had a patient who is a salesperson, top salesman in the country in his company, very dopaminergic, and he would just jump from one relationship to another. And he must have gone through hundreds of relationships.

• 1:28:30Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:28:31Speaker 00

  And one day he came to me with a big smile on his face and he says, "Oh, I'm all better. I overcame my problem. I'm married." I'm like, "What?" And there was this girl he had been dating for a couple of months and he persuaded her to fly to Las Vegas and get married.

• 1:28:45Lewis Howes?

  And then it probably ended in the next year.

• 1:28:47Speaker 00

  Oh, it lasted another month and then it was over.

• 1:28:49Lewis Howes?

  No way.

• 1:28:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it was, it was just...

• 1:28:51Lewis Howes?

  There was no foundation.

• 1:28:52Speaker 00

  No foundation. He was solving in a dopaminergic way. He wasn't really growing his here and now circuits.

• 1:28:59Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man. So we got divorced.

• 1:29:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:01Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man. Yeah, it's all about creating that foundation.

• 1:29:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:04Lewis Howes?

  That's huge.

• 1:29:05Speaker 00

  And it's all about understanding that being in love is a temporary phenomenon and that it needs to evolve into something stronger and more long-lasting.

• 1:29:15Lewis Howes?

  Beautiful stuff. I'm loving this, Daniel. Anything else we need to share, you think?

• 1:29:19Speaker 00

  There's a lot more. There's a lot. Can I give you one more thing?

• 1:29:22Lewis Howes?

  Give me one more.

• 1:29:23Speaker 00

  All right. So we talked about the dopamine desire circuit. That's what makes you want stuff. That's what gives you pleasure. That's what drugs hit, sex, food, all that stuff. There's another circuit that involves the frontal lobes.

• 1:29:37Lewis Howes?

  What is that?

• 1:29:38Speaker 00

  The most recently evolved part of the brain, the dopamine control circuit. The dopamine desire circuit says, "I want it now." The control circuit is also about the future, because all dopamine is about the future, but it's about the longer-term future. It's about planning. It's about working with abstract knowledge. So the desire circuit says, "I want that donut." The control circuit says, "You know what? We might be happier right now if we eat the donut, but 10 years from now, we'll be happier if we don't eat the donut."

• 1:30:10Lewis Howes?

  And what's that called again on the front?

• 1:30:12Speaker 00

  We call it the dopamine control circuit. Technical name is the mesofrontal circuit, or the mesocortical circuit.

• 1:30:20Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:30:21Speaker 00

  But that's not very... We call it the dopamine control circuit.

• 1:30:23Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:30:24Speaker 00

  So, you know, when you talk about people who are very strongly dopamine, they can look very different. So someone who has a strong desire circuit can be hedonistic. They're going out to clubs, picking up girls, and drinking a lot of alcohol. The person with the strong control circuit is the workaholic, who's spending all day and all night in the office, making long-term plans for the future.

• 1:30:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:46Speaker 00

  So, you know, most people thinking about dopamine, they think about the desire circuit, but dopamine is all... and that's the hot circuit. But there's a cold dopamine circuit that is passionless and looks to the future, and is merciless.

• 1:31:00Lewis Howes?

  Right. Just works non-stop all day.

• 1:31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:31:04Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:31:05Speaker 00

  So that's the other thing I wanted to throw in.

• 1:31:06Lewis Howes?

  So where should we be in there?

• 1:31:07Speaker 00

  We need that. It's very, very powerful.

• 1:31:09Lewis Howes?

  We need both of them.

• 1:31:10Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, we need the control circuit to moderate the desire circuit.

• 1:31:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:31:15Speaker 00

  Right? We need... so it's a dance, and there's many, many partners.

• 1:31:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:31:21Speaker 00

  And we need to be aware of all the different partners.

• 1:31:23Lewis Howes?

  Man, so much to understand and dive into. But the book shares a lot of this and more, "The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race." Powerful book. Make sure you guys get a copy if you want to understand this chemical in your brain more. Where can people follow you, Daniel? How can they connect with you and support you? You've got this book. Are you on social media as well?

• 1:31:50Speaker 00

  You know, I'm working on starting a YouTube channel, Ask the Psychiatrist, in which I'm going to answer just questions.

• 1:31:57Lewis Howes?

  That's great.

• 1:31:58Speaker 00

  About psychiatry. Not up yet, but soon. DanielZLieberman.com if they want to be aware when it goes live.

• 1:32:05Lewis Howes?

  Perfect. DanielZLieberman.com for the book, and also for the next book on the unconscious and conscious mind. Um...

• 1:32:15Lewis Howes?

  Couple of final questions for you. This is a hypothetical question. Imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away from now. You get to live as long as you want to live. And you create everything you want to create in your life. Right? You share with the world, you make books, you do everything you want to do. But for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. All of your written work, your audio, video, the content you've created. It's got to go somewhere else when you die. It's got to go with you or somewhere else. But we don't have access to it in this world. But you get to leave behind three things that you know to be true from your life experience, three lessons that you would share with the world. What would you say are those three truths for you?

• 1:32:55Speaker 00

  I would say that the key to happiness is living in the present moment. That you are not alone inside your head. And you better get to know your unconscious partner if you want to have a fulfilling life. And that life should not be about you. It should be about what you can do for other people.

• 1:33:25Lewis Howes?

  I love that. Service is a big one for me. That's on my list as well. Living a life of service. I want to acknowledge you, Daniel, for your drive, for having the molecule of more inside of you to want to research, want to obsess, want to serve your patients to help people heal and improve and understand their conscious and unconscious mind, the dopamine circuit that's driving them, and for educating us on this information. It's really powerful. And I think a lot of people are suffering because they don't understand how their mind and how their brain works for them specifically. So I really acknowledge you for being on this journey of service and creating in a powerful way. It's beautiful.

• 1:34:06Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:34:06Lewis Howes?

  Of course. And I hope this, next time I see you, hopefully you're up to a seven or eight on the worthiness and self-love journey.

• 1:34:13Speaker 00

  I'm going to work on it.

• 1:34:14Lewis Howes?

  Yes, exactly. My final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:34:21Speaker 00

  I think it is how much happiness you create in other people. Oh, that's a good one. Daniel Lieberman, thank you, man. Thank you.

• 1:34:29Lewis Howes?

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