Andrew Huberman: The Simple Habits That Will Transform Your Health

Jay welcomes neuroscientist Andrew Huberman back for his third appearance to dive into his new book, Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. Andrew breaks down what’s really happening in your body from the moment you wake up, from morning cortisol and better sleep to the science behind that afternoon energy crash. Then the conversation goes beyond physical health, exploring prayer, surrender, and how to better manage your energy. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Mazda crafts cars for people who do more than simply move. Visit Mazdausa.com to learn more. Consumer reports does not endorse products or services. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with the Personal Price Plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. JAY’S DAILY WISDOM DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX Join 900,000+ readers discovering how small daily shifts create big life change with my free newsletter. Subscribe here: https://news.jayshetty.me/subscribe Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast What We Discuss: 00:00 Introduction 01:07 The Core Philosophy: Finding Ease, Peace, and Alignment 05:21 Optimal Morning Habits: The First Hour Of The Day 08:13 The Biology Of The Cortisol Awakening Response 13:31 Restoring Circadian Balance 15:19 Navigating The “Afternoon Crash” 21:15 Simplifying Fitness: Accessible Movement 24:13 The Science of Sleep and the Power of Prayer 26:35 Leaning Into Faith: Turning Willpower Over To God 28:30 The Scientific Mystery Of Surrender 32:54 Moving Beyond Binaries: Science And Faith 40:11 Jay’s Reflections On Grace And Compassion 44:46 James Hollis’s Four Rules For A Good Life 50:28 The Science Behind Recurring Thought Patterns 55:05 The Eastern Metaphor Of The Chariot 01:01:00 Breaking Out of Your Default Morning Mindset 01:03:30 The Pillars of Wellness And Impulse Control 01:06:00 The Ethical Burden of Animal Research 01:09:37 Prefrontal Strategy: Humans vs. Dogs and Cats 01:10:47 Brain-Machine Interfaces for Paralyzed Patients 01:11:54 The Future of Non-Invasive Brain Stimulation 01:15:00 Willpower, Stress, And Directing Energy 01:16:37 The 27 Club Vs. Blue Zone Longevity 01:17:25 The Drive to Stand Out and Succeed 01:19:18 Nolan Williams And High-Output Healers 01:20:44 Rick Rubin’s Riddles On Balancing Energy 01:24:34 The Flow Of Energy Exchange 01:27:24 Hard-Earned Positivity 01:29:27 The Injured Bird 01:31:38 Achieving Scientific Consensus Over Time 01:34:09 Andrew Huberman On Final Five Episode Resources: Pre-order Andrew's new book Protocols: https://www.hubermanlab.com/protocols-book Website | https://www.hubermanlab.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/hubermanlab/ YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@hubermanlab TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@hubermanlab Threads | https://www.threads.com/@hubermanlab Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/hubermanlab LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-huberman X | https://x.com/hubermanlab Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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

• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:30Jay Shetty?

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• 2:16Jay Shetty?

  And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro

• 3:00Jay Shetty?

  at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 3:10Jay Shetty?

  Hey, it's Jay. I don't know what your day's been like, but I was just thinking about you for a minute. And I hope you're being a little patient with yourself because you deserve it. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon.

• 3:33Jay Shetty?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose. Today's guest is one of your favorites. This isn't his first time, not his second time, but his third time on the show, Dr. Andrew Huberman, neuroscientist, professor at Stanford School of Medicine, and creator of the Huberman Lab podcast. Andrew's new book, Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body, is a practical guide to improving your health, energy, focus, and performance using science-backed tools for everyday life. Andrew Huberman, welcome to On Purpose.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me back, Jay. Great to see you.

• 4:06Jay Shetty?

  I know we want to spend more time together than we get to, but I have to be honest and say that whenever we do get together, I feel like we have the best conversations. So.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  It's rich.

• 4:13Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I'm very grateful, very, very grateful. I want to dive straight in and ask you, seeing as Protocols is all about a manual for the human body. If the human body came with an instruction manual, what's the first page everyone should read?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Get sunlight first thing in the morning. You know, the title in the book, Protocols, is both accurate and a little bit misleading. Accurate because indeed, the book has lots of protocols for sleep, for navigating stress, neuroplasticity and learning, and on and on. But the goal of the book is that these protocols, of which there are many, but there will be more in the future, can be organized into simple frameworks that allow people to be healthier mentally and physically, but also live their life with more ease and peace. And I think right now, thanks to podcasts like yours, podcasts like mine, and others, in the last five years, we've arrived at a place

• 5:12Speaker 01

  where it's very clear what the core elements of health and wellness are. But one of them, which is social connection and ease and peace, internal and hopefully external as well, is a little bit incompatible with the rest. If the rest is all about doing lots of protocols and optimization. So the fundamental theme of the book, despite the title, is to look at your day, check with yourself, and figure out what you can do that's in alignment with who you are,

• 5:43Speaker 01

  that allows you more peace and ease, and that also allows you to be healthier and quote unquote optimize. Although I'm a bit anti-optimization in the classic sense. It's really about getting your morning sunlight. Why? Because there's a larger principle there. To wake up your body so that you have more alertness, better mood, and so that it sets you up for better sleep at night. So it's not about ticking off a thousand different things, or even just that one or two things are the things. Although some move the lever more than others in terms of health and wellness. It's about understanding some of your biology so that on any given day, you can do the things that are most accessible to you and that you enjoy the most. Maybe a few things that you have to push yourself to do here and there. But the book Protocols is really to tell people what to do that we know works

• 6:28Speaker 01

  to improve mental health and physical health, to make those very clear as to why you're doing them. That's an important factor for reasons we could discuss. And then also, you know, because in my heart's heart, I'm a scientist, to give people access to this beautiful thing that's biology, to really understand their bodies and minds at the level of physiology a bit, so that they can really come to appreciate what we've been given and make the best of it. So it's not about becoming a robot. It's not about biohacking. It's not about optimization in the classic sense of any of those words. It's really about taking the best science, understanding why certain things work, and then applying those in a way that's really compatible with one's life and indeed gives you more peace and ease.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  So it's not intended to raise pressure. It's intended to reduce the amount of pressure in one's life.

• 7:18Jay Shetty?

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• 8:03Jay Shetty?

  Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. I think we oscillate as humans between doing nothing and doing everything. And it's like, we want to optimize every moment or just lie on the beach or lie in bed all day. And the answer is somewhere in the middle. And I think the protocols that you're suggesting, and even the spirit in which you're suggesting them are like, do what you can, start the alignment, build those habits. If someone wants to start their day off in the best way possible, what should they be doing in the first hour of the day to ensure that they have a great day?

• 8:37Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what I do. Because I don't think it's that far out of reach for most people. Probably all be completed in 30 minutes or less and it's compatible with having other people around and having others to take care of and so on. First thing I do when I wake up is I get up and use the restroom. Then I get back in bed and I do a 10 breath to five minute meditation. I have this idea that I think is well-supported by the literature that if I can't get my mind into a state of focused awareness, if that's what we want to call the sort of meditation that I do, focused awareness for 10 breaths, I'm going to have a hard time navigating the day with the most intention and peace, right? And making the best decisions.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  So I do a 10 breath meditation. And I ask myself, was I able to focus on all 10 breaths? If so, I get out of bed. If not, I do five minutes. It's so brief. And my lab, some years ago, published a randomized control trial with another lab at Stanford, a David Spiegel's lab, where we actually saw benefits of a five minute per day meditation. It was in comparison to some breath work and things like of that sort that were also beneficial. But just a five minutes per day meditation has an outsized positive effect on reducing heart rate, increasing heart rate variability, improving mood, improving sleep, and all these things. But very few people, as you know, stick to a meditation practice. So I force that 10 breath meditation as a requirement to get into the day. If I complete the 10 breaths, occasionally I'll do the five minutes anyway. But if I don't, I hold myself to the five minutes.

• 10:07Speaker 01

  Okay, so we're about five minutes into the day, including the walk to the bathroom and back. I get up, I drink water.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  The reason I drink water, of course, is to quote unquote hydrate. But what I'm going to describe in the next minute or so are three things that are all designed to, believe it or not, spike my morning cortisol. Most people say, why would you want to spike cortisol to stress hormone? I'll explain in a few minutes why I do these things. But the principle here, if people take away nothing else from today's discussion, it's do things in the first hour of your day to deliberately elevate your cortisol. It will give you elevated mood focus and alertness all day, improved cognition, and it sets you up for low cortisol and great sleep at night. This is perhaps the most important thing in all of health and wellness, I believe. So I get bright light in my eyes. If the sun is out, I go outside. If it's a cloudy day, I do it anyway.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Still lots of bright light on a cloudy day. I don't wear sunglasses or a brimmed hat for this. I look in the direction of the sun. I might bring my dog with me. I might bring my partner with me, depending on who's around. And I just look in the direction of the sun. I don't force myself to stare at it. I just get some sunlight in my eyes, which spikes morning cortisol by up to 50% above its baseline levels. Keep in mind, you wake up every morning, in part, in large part, because of a rise in cortisol. It's called the cortisol awakening response. So I'm spiking my morning cortisol with bright light and the hydration, the water, actually further elevates cortisol. So now I've done two things to spike my cortisol. It's taken, what, five, seven minutes total? So I'm about 10 minutes into the day, if I'm tracking correctly.

• 11:41Jay Shetty?

  Why are we trying to spike our cortisol?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  You want to spike morning cortisol because morning cortisol, if it's elevated, is what is going to give you energy to get through your day. And most importantly, cortisol is on what's called a negative feedback loop. So, once your cortisol hits a certain level, it now starts to shut itself down. And that's going to be a slow shutdown into the early afternoon and evening. There are lots of markers of health and of illness, but one of the primary markers of health is a high cortisol level in the first hour to three hours of the day. I mean, really high. Now, people with Cushing's disease, this is, you know, pathologically elevated, but that's not the situation we're talking about. Most people are not getting enough bright light in their eyes in the early part of the day.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Not enough movement, not enough hydration. And so they get a spike in cortisol. That's indeed why they woke up. Even with an alarm clock, your cortisol spikes. We can talk about this a bit more later. But if your cortisol doesn't go high enough, it's very susceptible to inflections in the afternoon and evening. So the fundamental principle here is you want your morning cortisol high because it gives you lots of energy and ability to move through the day. It's actually positive for your immune system function. And were you to, and let's just face it, you're likely to face some bouts of stress, work stress, relational stress, et cetera, during the day. You will get little blips in cortisol, maybe even big spikes in cortisol is the consequence of that stress. But how quickly those spikes return to baseline is critically dependent on having high morning cortisol.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  The higher your morning cortisol, the briefer those spikes in cortisol will be to stress. You recover from stress better if your morning cortisol was high.

• 13:20Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Okay. Conversely, if your cortisol peak in the morning isn't high enough, you get what's called a flattening of the cortisol curve. This is bad for mental health. This is bad for blood sugar regulation. By the way, the pattern I describe of wanting high morning cortisol and low nighttime cortisol is not a male-specific thing. This is true for women, pregnant women, kids, everybody. Cancer treatment does better when people have high morning cortisol, low afternoon cortisol. That was shown by my colleague David Spiegel, Stanford School of Medicine. If you deliberately spike your morning cortisol, you will find that, no, you're not anxious. You recover from stress more quickly. You have more energy through your day. And towards the afternoon, you'll feel that natural kind of subsiding of your energy levels.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  This is because cortisol's main role is not to stress you out, right? Nature didn't design us with these hormones to stress us out. It's gotten this unfair reputation as a stress hormone. Cortisol's job is to mobilize energy, in particular glucose, blood sugar, from your liver and elsewhere in your body so that you have energy. It's also responsible for causing its own shutdown. So if you get a lot of cortisol, it'll shut itself down. Unless you're going through the day, like kind of moving into the morning slowly, it's fine to wake up and be peaceful. I'm not saying you have to be stressed. I'm not looking at the sun, you kind of stress myself out. But the next thing I do is I get some physical exercise. If I don't have time for a full workout, I'll do some sort of exercise. Maybe 25 jumping jacks, maybe a walk. These days, I have a new puppy.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  I walk the dog every morning and that's what I'll do for the rest of his life. Just a walk. If you can get a full-blown workout in, great, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, that can be a very intense workout. Most people will find that if they work out early in the morning, early for their morning, notice I'm not giving specific times, but within the first three hours of their day, they have more energy all day long. It's because it makes that morning cortisol spike higher. Intense exercise late in the day spikes one's cortisol very, very high. Now, better to exercise than not exercise late in the day. But if you do exercise late in the day, you'll want to do things to lower that cortisol as you head into your nighttime, your sleep. We'll get to that. So when cortisol is high in the morning, melatonin levels go up at night. They're on a seesaw. High cortisol means low melatonin.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  High melatonin means low cortisol. High cortisol means lots of glucose mobilization and body temperature goes up. One of the conditions for getting melatonin, the hormone that most people now realize makes us sleepy, comes from the pineal, is a dropping body temperature. So a lot of people, especially a few years ago, but certainly still now are waking up, they're on their phone in bed, independent of what they're seeing there. The light coming from it seems bright, but in the morning, it's not nearly bright enough to spike your cortisol. And they're getting up, they're moving slowly into the day. Then they might look at some things that stress them out. Okay, that's stress-induced cortisol. Cortisol levels are still far too low. As the day goes on, they've got this flattening of the cortisol curve. Now they're really set up to have the classic falling asleep fairly easily

• 16:20Speaker 01

  and waking up at two or three in the morning. Why is that happening? Well, as you get into the evening, your cortisol should be low, low, low, low, low. I don't want to use precise times because people go to bed at different times, but let's assume about four hours into your sleep or five hours, it should be at its all-time low for the 24-hour cycle. Then it slowly just naturally starts climbing on its own. Now, if you didn't spike your morning cortisol, what happens is you might fall asleep just fine, but somewhere around two or three in the morning, people wake up. It's that cortisol awakening response happening too early.

• 16:49Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  So, again, if nothing else, spike your morning cortisol and get into the day. So it's bright light. If you don't have access to sunlight for some reason, one could purchase one of these 10,000 lux artificial lights. This is what's used for seasonal effective depression in Scandinavian countries. They're about $100. I don't have any relationship to a company that sells them. They're all more or less equivalent. Getting that bright light in your eyes will also spike your cortisol. Sunlight would be better. And then hydration, some form of movement. People who do this immediately notice they have more energy during the day. And your resilience to stress is really the best feature. Something happens in the afternoon and things happen. Someone cuts you off in traffic, et cetera. You'll notice something just sort of calmer. I fall asleep more easily. My sleep is deeper.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  It's because that morning cortisol spike sets you up for all the right hormonal, neurotransmitter-based features throughout the morning and the rest of the day and at night that you're seeking. So for a long time, I was, like most people, thinking protocols, you know, cold plunges and, you know, and what should I eat in the morning? Low carb or high carb? Should I fast, et cetera? And many of those have value. I talk about some or all of those in my book. But if you think, what can I do today to elevate my cortisol, in healthy ways, of course, in the morning? And what can I do in the evening to keep my cortisol low? Many of the things that people struggle with, low energy, mood issues, issues with stress, challenges, falling and staying asleep, those resolve on their own.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  And, you know, any doctor with some background in endocrinology will tell you, yeah, indeed, high morning cortisol and low nighttime cortisol are important, but that low nighttime cortisol is tethered to the high morning cortisol.

• 18:28Jay Shetty?

  But why do so many of us crash around 2, 3 PM? And what can we do to find energy without turning to caffeine or other sources?

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'm raising my hand because I'm one such person that crashes in the afternoon. The crash in the afternoon, provided it's not really traumatic, is not always such a bad thing. Your rates of energy have to do with a lot of things, blood sugar regulation and so on. But one of the primary determinants is whether your body is heating up or cooling down quickly. Now, the cortisol curve, as we call it, that I just described, more or less mirrors your body temperature curve. Your body temperature is increasing in the final hours of sleep. This is a good thing. Once it reaches a certain threshold and your cortisol reaches a certain threshold, you wake up. Okay, so this is good. Your body temperature will continue to rise, but then somewhere in the early afternoon, your body temperature starts to drop. When the rate of temperature drop is high, when your temperature is dropping fast, that is, you're going to feel sleepy.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  So this is also why you get sleepy at night. When your body temperature is falling fastest, that's what allows you to get into sleep. For most people, this happens around between 2 and 3 PM. You can adjust the size of your lunch. People will talk about that. You can eat a few fewer starchy carbohydrates at lunch. That can help. You can wait a few, maybe an hour or so in the morning before ingesting caffeine. I've talked about this for a number of years. A lot of people don't like this, but that will eliminate the afternoon crash for a lot of people for reasons related to cortisol and a molecule called adenosine that we could get into. My personal favorite way of dealing with this is simply to embrace it and to do 10 minutes of yoga nidra in the afternoon or five minutes of meditation or even just lying down, feet elevated for five minutes with one's eyes closed

• 20:04Speaker 01

  and not doing anything at all except not tapping away on one's phone, has been shown to restore mental and physical vigor in the hours that follow. Because it's kind of remarkable, right? You have energy in the morning, most of the time. You get to the afternoon and you're dragging. And then a few hours later, you're alert again. So it can't simply be this adenosine thing where, oh, you know, the longer you're awake, adenosine accumulates, that makes you sleepy. That's basically the way it works. Caffeine blocks adenosine receptors. That's how caffeine works. It blocks the function of the sleepy molecule. Caffeine wears off and people tend to crash a bit. This is why delaying your caffeine a little bit in the morning can be a good thing. You can clear out more adenosine before you have your caffeine. So there isn't a whole lot waiting around because normally, let's say I wake up, slam back some caffeine right away.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Great, you're into the day. It even spikes your cortisol a little bit. So you'd say, well, that's good. Well, you probably had some residual adenosine from your previous night's sleep. It built up the previous day and sleep clears it out, but you probably still have some there. Maybe even some residual melatonin. If you immediately drink caffeine, you plug the receptors for adenosine, but the adenosine didn't go away. Now you're into your day. You're doing all your activities. And then somewhere around 2 PM, That caffeine wears off, the adenosine is still there. It's compounded with the adenosine you generate throughout the day. And boom, you get a crash. So just delaying your caffeine by 60 to 90 minutes. I know some people are probably going into shock hearing about that. 60 to 90 minutes can offset the crash for a lot of people. But I've tried a number of different things and frankly, if I can grab that 10 minutes

• 21:33Speaker 01

  or some days 20, but usually it's just 10 to do 10 minutes of quiet breathing or yoga nidra, non-sleep deep rest, which I know you and I are both huge fans of. Your restoration in mental and physical vigor is really striking. And the best part about meditation or yoga nidra or non-sleep deep rest, which is sort of an analog to that, is that you don't get sleep inertia. A lot of people, if they nap in the afternoon, it disrupts their nighttime sleep or they feel groggy after the nap, then they're drinking more caffeine and now they're disrupting their sleep at night. So a short break in the afternoon where you're, I guess you could be on your phone, but ideally you just let your mind wander and you move out of the planning state of mind and you get just into sensation in some way.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Some long exhales, because as we've talked about before, to put it very simply, if you want to breath work in one sentence, if you emphasize your inhales in any kind of breath work, it speeds your heart rate up. You become more alert. If you emphasize your exhales, make them longer or more, just even focusing on them mentally. Cause normally we passively exhale slows your heart rate down through something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia. It involves the vagus nerve, but you don't need to know any of that. All you need to know is if you emphasize your inhales, make them deliberately more vigorous or longer, your heart rate speeds up, you'll become more alert. If you emphasize your exhales, focus on them, make them longer, your heart rate will slow down. So five minutes of just sitting there and checking in, you know, and just trying to

• 23:02Speaker 01

  deliberately exhale, your heart rate will just slow right down. This is physiology. There's nothing mystical about that, but in a beautiful way, you know, the yogis and have to be cautious not to credit any one group. For thousands of years, people have understood this aspect of their physiology. So those short breaks of 10 minutes in the afternoon, not only embrace the quote unquote crash, but they, they allow you to move around it. I think a lot of people just try and power through. Now, keep in mind, as I list off these things, you might say, well, who has time for this? But the morning thing only takes about 30 minutes total. And I've got a bright light in my kitchen, one of these 10,000 lux lamps. So I'm doing that while I'm making my morning coffee or I drink mate these days. Or, you know, I go outside to get sunlight.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  I'm also walking my dog, get some socialization with my partner, like the, you know, get some social. It sounds like an experiment. We socialize, we talk. I have to be careful because the nerd speaks sometimes and people go, oh my God, he's a robot.

• 23:55Jay Shetty?

  I hope she likes to socialize with you.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  I hope she does too. The whole idea here is that none of this takes much time. I've learned over the last five years or six years of doing public health discourses that it can feel like a lot, like, oh my God, this is a lot, a lot. So one of the goals in the book was to let people understand their biology and just to remind them, yeah, you're trying to elevate your morning cortisol. There are a bunch of paths to that. In the afternoon, you're trying to bring it down. You'll still have energy at night, you're really trying to bring it down. So this notion that you have to do all the things is not true. I think that a good analog would be exercise where, you know, we know that people should resistance train and they should do cardiovascular exercise. They should probably do some mobility and flexibility work too. It sounds like a lot, but then you break it down and resistance training is really about,

• 24:42Speaker 01

  you know, doing some warm up and doing some compound movement. So multiple joint movements, you know, hip hinge, press, pull, this kind of thing. And if you do that, and then you have to leave, you're still pretty good.

• 24:51Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Right? Mobility, you know, get your knee behind your glutes a few times a day because we don't do that enough, not when we walk, not when we sit, et cetera. So get your knee behind your glute. There are a number of ways to do that. You can do camel pose in yoga, you put your foot up on a couch. Like there are a number of ways to stretch out the hip flexors, right? And you think the cardiovascular thing is, does it have to be 180 minutes of zone two? Okay, fine. That's one way to phrase it. The other way to phrase it is walk as much as possible every day. Walk less one day because you're on a plane, walk more the next. Take the stairs, not the escalator in the airport, if you can, this kind of thing. And try and get your heart rate really high once per week, at least. Get on a treadmill, warm up and then, you know, go at 80 or 90% of whatever maximum you can. Get your heart rate really high and then stop. If you do those things, you're kind of checking off the major boxes.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  And people start thinking, well, there's another list. Ah, but if you just understand what you're trying to do in each one of those circumstances, then it doesn't matter if you're in a hotel room or you're in airport even, or you have access to the best gyms in the world, you can do these things with body weight, with weights. I'm arriving at this place where I both have the catalog of information in my mind from having thought about this stuff so much and read about it so much. But I'm also arriving at this clarity based on the feedback I've heard from people, kind of taking like a pulse check, not just of my audience, but that what feels like the larger landscape out there, that people want more peace and ease. And yet only they can take responsibility for their health. So how do we put people into a place where they really feel like they can accomplish things without spending a ton of money and spending a ton of time?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  That's really what I'm trying to do.

• 26:24Jay Shetty?

  What I'm learning or gaining from you is that there's a lot of science to back up very simple things that we can do at opportune moments in the day.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:34Jay Shetty?

  And it's almost like if you could map out your day and know when you're feeling certain ways. And I think all of us know that, like all of us know, God, when it hits 3pm, that's when I feel my worst. Okay. Well, let me have a little reminder on my phone that gets me to take 10 breaths. I know that when I wake up in the morning, I need a bit of sunlight or whatever it may be, and I'm not doing enough of that. Or maybe let me keep a bottle of water next to me. So when I wake up in the morning, I can spike my cortisol. So I feel like we've got to get intentional about mapping our days according to the patterned experiences and the conditioned experiences that we're having.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 27:08Jay Shetty?

  So that we can lock into this new framework that you're offering us. Because otherwise you get to that same place every day and you reach for the candy bar or you reach for the sugary drink or reach for the caffeine, because that's what you've conditioned yourself to do.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  One thing we are all, I don't want to say enslaved, because it's actually a gift, is the circadian rhythm. I mean, I cannot emphasize this enough. Yes, there are night owls and bless them. Yes, there are morning people who want to wake up at four or five AM. Most people are somewhere in between, just statistically. But no one escapes the demands of circadian rhythm. Your cognition is going to be better at certain points in the 24 hour cycle. Your ability to sleep is better. Your ability to be calm and to listen, to be kind to yourself, to filter the world's events in ways that are peaceful and kind to yourself, but also aware of what's going on in the world. All of that is different at 8 AM versus 8 PM versus 3 AM for everybody.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  So the most important things, I believe, are the things that take our natural rhythm. There's going to be an elevation in cortisol. Make it in the early part of your day. Ideally tether it to light, ideally sunlight, tether it to movement. I'm a big believer in morning meditation. I'm a big believer in nighttime prayer or meditation or long exhale breathing. You know, it depends on one's orientation towards those things, but I pray every night before I go to sleep. Why? Well, that's something that I really believe in and has become a core practice for me.

• 28:37Jay Shetty?

  What do you pray for, Andrew?

• 28:38Speaker 01

  For me is a reality, which is that we're an amazing species. Humans are amazing. Dogs are amazing, all these amazing species, but humans are an amazing species. We can develop all these technologies, we could develop sophisticated language. But I came to this clarity at 50, which is kind of amazing. It took me this long, but you know, I'm like, you know, I suffer from this like thick skull sometimes. That a lot of the problems we see in the world, a lot of the things that have been challenging for me, they're central to being human. I'm not giving up on the possibility of world peace. I'm not giving up on the possibility of people really, humans evolving to a place where we truly can be better to ourselves and others. But if we look at history and we look at where we are now, in many ways, we could say,

• 29:20Speaker 01

  well, this is just a different version of the same thing over and over. And I had to just accept that we're not going to turn into a different species. And I started really pondering the question of whether the answers to all the things that I wish for the world and for myself would come from non-human sources. And I believe in God, I've always believed in God, and I decided to really lean into a prayer practice. So I started praying every night, every night. I have not missed a night. If I fall asleep some, you know, downstairs on the couch or something, I get out of bed and I, or off the couch and I pray before I get into bed. And I pray for others. I pray for the people in my life. I pray for the world.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  I, I do the, what admittedly can be hard work of praying for people that I've had challenges with. I pray for my relationship to them. In that prayer, I really try and give over my will to make things right internally and externally to God, to the, to the forces in the universe that, that are outside my control and that I don't think any, any humans can really solve. And I prayed before I came in here, prayed before every podcast. I'm a man of science. I believe in science. I believe in the scientific method. I believe, you know, in evolutionary biology, I do.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  But I also believe that there is a God and that there is an aspect of the energy of humans that if we open up to that, can allow us to be the best version of our species. Now I realize religion is a complicated one because it has been and it continues to be ways that humans divide and harm one another as well as embrace and help one another. But I think that I'm in this body to try and learn and spread knowledge for health and for wellbeing. But I don't think that I can do the best job at that unless I turn some of it over to God.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  And, and I'll tell you what brought me to this realization, which was I understand the biology of cognition, volition, addiction, sleep, autonomic nervous system. I mean, I teach and learn this stuff. I ran a lab for many years.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  And there's this bizarre thing that happens when people are struggling to change their thoughts or behavior in some way. And despite all the knowledge in the world, all the support in the world, they can't do it. And then you observe. That if they give that process over to, sometimes they call it higher power, like in 12 step, or sometimes they'll just give it over to God, or they'll, they'll take their hands off the throttle and the steering wheel. They are somehow able to accomplish that thing. Now, it makes no sense. It actually goes completely counter current with everything we understand about the prefrontal cortex and control of impulsive behavior. And I've never seen it fail in myself or in others.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  And recently I was up at Stanford because I split my time between Southern and Northern California and the Veritas group, which is an on campus, they happen to be a Christian group, asked me to come talk about satisfaction and what leads to real life satisfaction. I mean, it's, it's not denominational, but that's where Veritas got started. And it was so interesting because here I am on my, still a tenured professor at Stanford, I'm on my home court, I'm there talking about God, I have, I'm not educated in this realm. And I'm talking to, you know, I said, I started off by saying, I'm certain this room is filled with people that are far more knowledgeable about the Bible and God than I am. But all I can tell you is that a prayer practice has fundamentally changed my ability to think, to feel peaceful, to make better decisions, to see aspects of the world that are beautiful,

• 33:08Speaker 01

  that clearly were there before that I was missing, to look at fellow humans with more appreciation, and I like to think kindness and forgiveness. And most of the ways in which we think that works run it directly against neuroscience and psychology and their formal academic, you know, literatures. And yet I still believe in all of that as well. I mean, in two words, it works. How it works is still mysterious. And I think, nonetheless, I think it's an extremely powerful thing to live in the question of faith, or maybe even in faith. And two years ago, I couldn't say this, even though I was doing it, I was too scared. I thought, oh, no one will take me seriously as a scientist anymore.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Listen, if, if someone wants to sit down and we have a four hour conversation about everything from, you know, molecular level up to circuit level and psycho, like we, I can do that. I'm by no means an expert in all those areas, but I've been surrounded by them. My friends who are neurosurgeons, especially the physicians that I know who are exceptional, who work on the brain, they'll tell you, there's got to be something else beyond just the textbook understanding of the brain. There has to be. So how do you know? And they say, well, because they've got their hands in people's brains, seeing and working with the, the chemicals and the meat of it. But they've just seen some astonishing things. They've seen certainly tragedy in some cases, but what they describe as miracles.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  So as a curious person who loves knowledge, I just kept hearing the whisper and then it was a tap and then it was a little bit of a shove, like, like, let's do this, let's explore it. But when I say let's do this, I mean, I'm, I'm exploring, I'm like anyone else. There are nights and days where I go, God, maybe this is all in my head, maybe I'm, and I, and I said, okay, well, I'm just going to keep doing it. The same way one would continue with an academic program that was difficult to get to the end, the same way that one would continue with a fitness program, except on, on days when it's difficult. Yeah. So forgive me for taking that tangent. No, no, no, no. But that marks the end of my day. I mean, yes, and I dim the lights in the evening and I try not to, you know, hydrate too much, trying to drink caffeine too late in the day, even though I love an afternoon

• 35:18Speaker 01

  coffee, I'm half Argentine, we love our afternoon coffee. I try and not get aggravated by things I see in the world late in the day. I, I really try and bring the low cortisol themes to my home. My partner and I, she, you know, she's really good about like, like, like bringing the tone down and, and, and all of that. And I try, I follow suit. This prayer practice before sleep has, my, my dreams, my life is so much more peaceful. It just feels remiss if I didn't talk about it. There's still, as people can probably detect, a little awkwardness because I'm not, you know, I'm not running around quoting Bible passages. I'm not certain about anything, except that there's something there. And the fact that prayer has.

• 36:03Jay Shetty?

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

• 36:48Jay Shetty?

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

• 37:33Jay Shetty?

  for quality and functionality, so you can shop with more confidence. And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation, and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles.

• 38:18Jay Shetty?

  It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in store or online. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by

• 39:00Jay Shetty?

  the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state.

• 39:06Speaker 01

  Fundamentally transformed my life for the better.

• 39:09Jay Shetty?

  To me, listening to you say that highlights the challenge that we all have as humans again, which is that battle of the binary and that either or. So it's like, it's either God, or it's science, or it's spirituality, or it's science. And I almost feel like that's where all of our problems come from. All of our human problems, almost the origin is because we believe there can only be one or the other.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  I completely agree. I'm chuckling because there's this really wonderful paper that was published in Neuron, which is a self press journal, it's a really fine journal that basically shows that there's a really strong dopamine release and reinforcement, a reward for validating one's own beliefs. Explains a lot about the world. And it's very easy to get cynical when one sees that sort of result. In fact, I think a lot of the world can be explained, especially online, by people believing things in order to feel some way that's satisfying to them. And oddly, to not feel good, you know, I don't think most people are going online, I want to feel good, and so I'm going to go online. I think people were compelled to go there and wonderful things happen online, including podcasts and news, and sometimes the news is wonderful and we need to stay informed.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  But there seems to be this aspect to the human brain that actually science backs up. In the 1960s and 70s, a guy named Robert Heath, a controversial scientist for unrelated reasons to his expertise, but he did these experiments as a neurosurgeon that were very informative and important nonetheless, which was he allowed people to press buttons which would stimulate different areas of their brain. Some areas made them feel giddy, other areas drunk, other areas they would feel aroused, other areas they feel hungry, other areas they'd feel sated. The number one area that people preferred to lever press for, warning, this is going to discourage some people, was the central median nucleus of the thalamus, midline thalamus, that made them feel mild frustration and anger.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  People feel reinforcement from that arousal, which is not the same thing as liking it. I don't think anyone likes to feel frustrated or likes to feel angry. But one of the most important things about neuroscience that people should know about their brains is that reinforcement is a more useful term than reward. Everything about dopamine rewards, no, no, no, no. The dopamine system and related systems.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Are there to reinforce, to strengthen the likelihood that certain behaviors occur. And it's not always about pleasure. This is a tough thing to accept about our species. It's a really tough one because if you give any other sort of animal, a mouse or a dog, the opportunity to stimulate their brain, this is not what they do. They go for pleasure. Humans, for whatever reason, and perhaps it's the fact that we've need to lean up against the edges of nature and feel the pain of cold, feel the pain of famine. And our species is uniquely gifted to develop technologies to overcome those. Maybe we need to feel this frustration. It's reinforced and then we go build tools to overcome cold, to overcome hunger and so on.

• 42:15Speaker 01

  People like to feel activated, even if the activation feels lousy.

• 42:19Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  We have to understand this. We have to acknowledge this because once you do, you realize, let's take it back to the morning routine. I can wake up some days and to borrow a phrase from Andy Stumpf, who is a remarkable person in his own right, a former tier one operator, is a very impressive person. He says, you know, sometimes you wake up and there's a revolution in your mind. You don't want to do this, you don't want to do that. It all seems overwhelming, you're tired and what do you do with that? It's so easy to slide down the, into the trench of frustration and anger and like, I don't want to do this or lazy. And some days we need to do that, but most days we need to get up, get our sunlight, do our meditation, we have to fight this midline thalamic nucleus is like trying to,

• 43:04Speaker 01

  and how do we fight it without negative arousal? Most people know how to fight back. They know how to fight for their kids. They know how to fight for their political party. But how do you advocate for yourself? How do you generate positive arousal? The word arousal is a little tricky too, because people immediately default to romantic sexual arousal, but arousal is just our tendency to feel up.

• 43:23Jay Shetty?

  Alive, yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Alive and up. How do we access that? Knowing that there's this strong bias towards going into kind of darker places. I think the key, I mean, you know, far more about this than I do, Jay. I think the key lies in that early meditation, in gratitude, in realizing that as beautiful as our brains and our species are, we're all a little crazy, right? We all have this strong bias toward feeling frustration and wanting this reinforced arousal that isn't good for us or for the world. And if we just can acknowledge that, and the fact that dogs and cats, and these days I've accepted cats into my life too. You know, like, I don't know what they experience, but something tells me because they lack

• 44:08Speaker 01

  the sophistication to develop tools and think about the future and organize around it in ways similar to us. I think they just default to less, they want less friction. I think the friction was an important lever in our evolutionary trajectory. If there's going to be a big inflection in quote unquote collective consciousness, it's going to come from acknowledging we're an amazing species. We are also a flawed species. Let's even forget the notions of flawed in the, in the religious context, although it might have relevance here. We're flawed, our brain wiring ain't great for us and others sometimes. But if we know it, we're above it. If we're above it, we can make better decisions. If we can make better decisions, then I do think our species can get to a place where

• 44:53Speaker 01

  we just kind of laugh about how insane our mental workings are so that we can lean into their positive aspects. I really think this is possible, but it requires that stillness that only comes through self-awareness, which only comes through the breath from being still. I mean, you've, you have been doing that for a long time. You've talked about it. I think for the longest time I thought, great, meditation is a way to lower cortisol, sleep better at night, increase one's heart rate variability and, and not be as reactive. Cool, cool, cool. Maybe even access like new realms of consciousness if I do it long enough and I do it like in big sir or something. But I think the deeper piece here is the acknowledgement that comes from, I need this.

• 45:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  This should be a requirement for our species, but another feature of our species, we don't like to be told what to do. The best way to get somebody to never do a health practice is tell them they have to do it. One of the beautiful aspects of humans is like, we, we, we like to fight for our, for our independence over our mind. Nobody wants to be controlled.

• 45:54Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  And that's a great thing. So I don't know, I, I think about this stuff a lot, but I don't let myself go into a revolution in my mind in, in the morning. Because as at 50, I can tell you, I've spent too many mornings there, too many nights there. And I think it's important to grieve when one needs to grieve. I think it's important to be angry when one needs to feel angry. But I put all that on top of a really deep acceptance that our, our brain has this feature. Feels like a flaw, but I think it's just a feature.

• 46:24Jay Shetty?

  Few reflections on what you're saying. Fascinating discussion and, you know, so gripping to even get to talk about this with you, but first thing on the meditation piece, I was thinking, we think we meditate so that we can be peaceful, but actually we need to meditate so that we don't disturb anyone else. And when you realize that, that meditation was there to access more grace, more compassion, it was tuning into the reservoir of that so that we could be streams and rivers and tributaries of that compassion. And all of a sudden you realize it's not all on you.

• 47:06Jay Shetty?

  I think that's partly why prayer is so powerful is because it's an acceptance that I'm fallible and I can't hold this all myself, couldn't possibly. And that there's something greater than me that's holding me and holding everything else. And actually that vastness may have the capacity to understand everyone and to hear everyone and to make people feel seen and understood because if it's left to me and my five senses, I'll probably fail. And so I think that piece is really beautiful and I couldn't agree with you more that it is simply having access to a well or a reservoir in the moment that you need it, right? You can have a glass of water in front of you, but if you don't know where it's going

• 47:48Jay Shetty?

  to be filled from tomorrow, then the anxiety comes in, the stress comes in, the pain comes in because you think I only have one glass of water, which is, I think, our human experience on so many levels. It's the scarcity, it's the lack of access to enough understanding, how much more compassion do I need to have? How much more can I try and not be anxious? You know, how much more do I have? And we don't, we don't have. And therefore I think prayer is a beautiful access to that. But I guess what you're saying is, a lot of what you're talking about, even though it does give us protocols for health and wellbeing, it's actually giving us stability for interacting and exchanging and connecting with people better as well.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  That's right. I mean, the pursuit of mental and physical health through quote unquote protocols is not a closed loop. It's so that you can be more present for your, your family members, for the world. It's so that you can be more present to nature so that you can see new possibilities and new ideas. Look, I feel over the moon honored and delighted that the last five, six years has been this conversation about health and wellness in a way that even though I've been interested in it for a long time, I've never observed in the world before. I've been fortunate to play some small part in that and

• 49:00Jay Shetty?

  Huge part.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Thank you. I mean, the ability to take what I learn and share it is just, seems to be hardwired into me. I think that's why I'm here. I enjoy it so much and, and I feel very gratified that people benefit and it's, it's an honor and a privilege. I think that the field of health and wellness, for lack of a better term, is in a bit of a self-reflection mode right now. Like how much optimization do we need? Do we all need to be doing red light therapy, taking a million supplements? And no, no, no, no, no, no. You can, you don't have to. The things that really move the needle are going to be the things we talked about, you know? Meditations, brief or long, long exhale breathing when you're stressed, hydration and, and exercise.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  And, you know, in the book, I, I have an entire chapter, it's basically seven books in one. It's a very large book. I was joking.

• 49:50Jay Shetty?

  That sounds like you.

• 49:51Speaker 01

  If nothing else, it'll cure insomnia or it could serve as a doorstop. It could be read linearly front to back, or you could just focus on individual chapters or jump around. It's designed for that. It's meant to be a resource and a look up guide. It has a little bit of a textbookish feel, but their story, I like to think it's very readable. I do give my backstory and what the motivation for going into all of this was and is in the introduction. But each chapter, you know, sleep, exercise, stress management, nutrition, light, not just sunlight, but things like red light, et cetera, light, it's an impact on the body. I mean, incredible literature that is the beautiful work of others, not mine. You know, neuroplasticity and personal development.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  Each one is, is designed to say, okay, here are the protocols that I'm, that I am certain are most power, powerful, starting with the most powerful as the first protocol in each chapter, as well as the science that, that supports them. Each one of those is meant to give people tools. But the final chapter on personal development for me was the most important in terms of framing the human brain and mind and all the stuff. Because you alluded to this at the beginning of our discussion today, but I had a conversation with James Hollis. He's a psychologist, he's probably about 86 years old now. He wrote some incredible books that I was aware of years ago. One is called Under Saturn Shadow on Healing and Trauma. It's very early in that discussion. He's, I mean, he's been around working hard and, and there for a while.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  He wrote the Eden Project, which is the psychology of relationships. Brilliant, brilliant man. Years ago, I saw a video of him on YouTube called Creating a Life. And the audio was terrible and I was like, I gotta get this guy on the podcast. And so I said, like, what's the key to a really good life? And he said, four things. I talk about this in the book, but it's all Hollis. He says, first, he's very, he's very compassionate. He says, shut up, kind of like this, suit up and show up. It's like, whoa, I didn't expect that from Hollis. He's not really like the

• 51:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, motivation is legal.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  And then the fourth one is to, once a day, get out of stimulus and response, drop into a different mode and really stay in touch with what's true for you, what's closest to your heart, which sounded more like the Hollis I was expecting. The shut up piece is actually about gratitude. He talks about this every day. He literally has his clients write this down, shut up, suit up, show up.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  There's always somebody suffering more than you. That's his, his belief and I totally agree. So we have to work to be grateful. It's not a reflex for most people. Do a gratitude practice. Do it. Then it's suit up, prepare. The prepare piece is really about making sure that when you show up for the roles in your, in your life, relational, vocational, et cetera, that you're positioning yourself to win as best you can. And there's a process I talk about that's neuroscience related in the book of how to do that. And then the last one is show up. You know, here's this guy who's all about the mind and the heart and all this stuff. And he's telling me, he said, you know, one of the most fundamental things to having a good life is to fulfill outward roles.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  And it's naive to think that we just need to be in touch with our heart's desires. We have to fulfill outward roles, especially if we don't like those roles and we want to leave them because that positions us to leave them if we need to. So the first three were kind of like very, you know, steal a term from the kids like boomer, boomer advice, you know, like, you know, shut up, suit up, show up. But the way he couches in what the real meaning behind it is just beautiful. And then the getting out of stimulus and response is something that we've heard about for years. Viktor Frankl, people, meditators for thousands of years, you know, getting out of this planning and doing thing. And I said, but that's a tough one, right? Cause how do I touch into my deepest heart's desires? Or just sit there and go like, okay, what's my heart really want? Maybe.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  But what he said is the most important thing is that you have to get out of role fulfillment. You have to get out of the mode of trying to please notions of yourself, to please other people for a short while, could be five minutes, and let your mind idle, because that's where your unconscious will spontaneously just toss things up to your conscious mind to receive. Some people get them in dreams. Some people will sit there and realize, gosh, I was just frustrated today. I actually don't want to leave my job. I actually don't want to leave my spouse. I'm just exhausted. The truth comes out. Sometimes it will be, oh my gosh, I'm in the wrong life. This is not my life. Okay, I'll check in tomorrow to make sure that's still true before I do anything about it. That seesaw of checking in on all these things is so critical.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  And frankly, the book was also written to myself. It was the book I wish I had in my twenties. I hopped on the science track because I, out of desperation, we've talked about this on previous podcasts, my life was not going well as I exited high school. My life was looking really bad. And I had a lot of reasons to be angry. I had frustration and I, but I was like, no one's coming to save me. Role fulfillment. Do the thing, at least for me, that I knew if I just kept doing it, at some point I'd get something. And in that case, it was a degree. I would just build knowledge on knowledge. I eventually fell in love with that learning, but even if I hadn't, I would have kept going.

• 55:05Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision-making and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  What's so awesome about James Hollis's stance is that it acknowledges both. We hear we need to be in touch with ourselves, what we really want. We also need to fulfill roles in society and our families, to ourselves and to others. But the fulfilling roles for others piece has never failed across societies, across cultures, across thousands of years. This is the thing that gives us confidence that if we need to pivot work or whatever, that we can be successful in the next thing. Our ability to control our own mind, to work against the revolution that is our brain and get things done is critical to this thing that we call confidence.

• 56:18Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  The rudder should be within us. I'm steering in a direction that I want to go on average, because some days we don't want to do it. But that for me was, it was like, I had to wait until I was almost 50 years old and sit down with Hollis to really see that. But the other thing that I just think is sort of central to everything we're talking about today, and we were talking about before we came in here, is that that chapter on personal development also gets into the neuroscience of thoughts. You know, there is no textbook in neuroscience that covers this. There are textbooks in neuroscience, wonderful ones, in fact, that cover everything from brain development to plasticity, to diseases of the brain. I teach from these books, right? And you won't find a section or a chapter on thoughts.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  You find them on memories, on consciousness, but like, what's a thought? And I had a conversation on my podcast with a neuroscientist from Duke. Her name is Jenny Groh, and she studies how the brain represents visual space. But she also explained to me for the first time how thoughts actually work. And I'm a neuroscientist and I couldn't figure it out. And she said, well, basically we, our species was gifted many, many more brain areas to represent the different senses, but not just one area for touch, but many, many, many more than any of the other old world primates out there. And when we have a thought, so like, let's say we see something online or this table, for instance.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  So if we look at this table, the moment we look at something and concentrate on it, or we hear something and concentrate on it, it's almost like the magic library in the Harry Potter play, where the books around it start to change. You take out a book on one thing and all the books around it start to become tangentially related to that thing. So if we look at this table, it's glass. So my, the area of my brain that represents glass also is thinking smooth. Then it's thinking elegant, then it's thinking round. And so the brain starts moving into what we call a dynamic attractor state. It's like there was a ball bearing, which is our thoughts on a flat surface. And the moment we seed that thought, or it seeded for us, like, oh, politics, war,

• 58:28Speaker 01

  dog, child, smile, whatever it is, it has the potential to seed those thoughts. These brain areas, everything that represents smell, touch, hearing, they all start offering up related themes. And so what Jenny explained was we are the species that can create all these tangential and very elaborate representations of, neuroscientists call them a seed stimuli, but something. Now I could have picked painting. I could have picked the fact that you always are immaculately dressed, which always makes me wonder if I've got lint on myself.

• 58:59Jay Shetty?

  You too.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  I don't know, man. Somehow I seem to accumulate lint, but you always seem, I don't know, maybe you have some magic thing that protects you from lint. But I could pick anything and the brain will start to layer in sensory representations. What do I mean by that? I said, smooth. Now other smooth things come to mind. This is the way that the brain works when it comes to thinking. And we need to be very, very careful what sorts of thoughts we always say like that we feed, but let's think about it in a positive stance. I can take something I love, focus on it, and other things I love will start to enter the picture. Now, some people say, oh, this is kind of veering towards law of attraction, whatever. People can call it whatever they want at this point.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  It's human brain starts to layer in sensory representations of things around that, from my past, from the present, what could be in the future. And as she explained this, I thought, my goodness, the real work of life is to stay present, but to also be a selective filter about which thoughts we, I don't want to say feed, but seed. This is so important. And how do we do this again? By getting to the recognition that our brain can be pulled in different directions. We're not always in control. Then if we go far enough down a particular thought route or emotional state, that ball bearing starts to drop into a trench and it's very hard to get out. So the revolution of the mind that sometimes starts first thing in the morning for me

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  or late at night, or after bouts of stress, or when it's just been so much, the revolution of the mind can only be overcome by acknowledging, ah, like the library I'm in right now is filled with this stuff. I need to go to another room in the library. There's no way out of here by just continuing to think about these problems. How do you turn off thinking? So this is the super skill, I think, of humans that we need to develop. I do not have a protocol in my book for how to turn off thoughts because it doesn't work. What we can do is get back into sensation, back to breath. All the stuff that used to sound kind of loose in the neuroscience world, there are tons of randomized controlled trials and, you know, Library of Congress PubMed IDs for this stuff now.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  This stuff is no longer wishy washy. It's really about the lability of our brain, but also our ability to steer it in the right direction.

• 1:01:16Jay Shetty?

  The words you use there feel very analogous to the eastern perspective of how the mind and the consciousness work. So you gave the example of you saying the mind feeling pulled, or like the brain feeling pulled. And so the metaphor that's created in the eastern landscape is that the mind is on a chariot and there are five horses and the five horses are the five senses.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Beautiful.

• 1:01:40Jay Shetty?

  And so the sense, you hear something, you smell something, whatever it may be, and it captivates you. And now the horses start running in all these different directions, which is how we feel when we're like, oh God, I need to do that thing, but I kind of want to spend time with this person, but oh my God, I just heard about what happened in the news. And it's like, all the horses are chasing that direction. And the mind is like trying to hold on to the reins, but doesn't have a clue what's going on. And then what's happened is that as the horses are trying to run, the only thing that can help the mind is the guard. There's a guard, which is the intelligence. And the intelligence is the discernment between what the horses want to do and what the conditioned consciousness experiences.

• 1:02:22Jay Shetty?

  So for example, if a horse is running toward alcohol, because it's always had access to alcohol, the conditioned consciousness goes, oh yeah, we like alcohol. We had a great time last time. And the guard totally moved out of the way and then we go and follow that. The eastern perspective is the senses are going to do what they're going to do unless they're controlled and unless they're trained. If a horse is trained, it follows suit. If it isn't trained, it's going to go wild and go crazy. So is your mind a wild horse or is it a trained horse? The second is, is your intelligence trained? So that if your sense gets out of control, does the mind have the ability to check with the guard and the intelligence? And the intelligence can go, no, we know that when we go out late at night, we get a bit too drunk and it's not too great tomorrow.

• 1:03:05Jay Shetty?

  We know that when we kind of push it at work too much, we burn ourselves out and we get exhausted, but that intelligence need to be strengthened. And again, that's through the thoughts that you allow in. What are the thoughts that you're filling your intelligence up with? So you've got these two checking points. This is from the eastern perspective of understanding the mind and the consciousness. But the hard part for us is we're exhausted. So the intelligence is weakened. And then we're stressed out. So the mind doesn't really have the the ability to rein in any of these horses. So our thoughts go wild and crazy. And I think that's at the crux of it, that I think we're just so tired today.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Look, I have great reverence for the field of neuroscience. It's amazing what neuroscientists have figured out, even in the last 25 years. I've been so blessed to be a part of neuroscience at a time where all these tools just arrived and we so much still to figure out, but just incredible understanding that we didn't have 10, 20 years ago, certainly 40 years ago. But thematically, many of the things that one can conclude from the best neuroscience has been demonstrated and was documented in the East a long time ago, just different language, more time perhaps spent observing and putting into practices. And the two have really started to merge.

• 1:04:23Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I feel that way.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  They really have. And, and really, this is a moment to put in a real strong plug for federally funded research. It is hard to explain to people just how much incredible science and gifts of medicine have been discovered because of that support that doesn't happen elsewhere in the world. Yes, in the UK, yes, in other places in Europe, but like my father came from South America to the United States to become a scientist because there's no funding for research there. But the point being that about 25 years ago, someone, I don't know who, at the National Institutes of Health, made the very, very good decision to start funding grants on meditation, which, let's face it, for scientists who want to understand, curious to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and stuff, there's a finite amount of money. So it sounded a bit squishy, like, are we really going to fund this stuff? But at the

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  time, meditation was really considered counterculture and woo and all of that. And what we know for certain is that these practices of exhale, emphasize breathing, closing one's eyes, getting out of stimulus and response, it fundamentally helps people at the level of sleep, reduce stress, helps kids with ADHD, helps people who are dealing with traumas. I mean, and on and on. I'm telling you what you already know. And now, most people say, yeah, okay, we, we know, we should meditate. Okay. But there was no quote unquote, Western science substantiation for that until mainly NIH came in and did the, what I believe was really good work of putting federal tax dollars to that. And now we're there. And, and I

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  think there's more to discover, but it's just a reminder that Western science and Eastern practices are not always in conflict. In fact, they're often in collaboration before they even realize it.

• 1:06:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  And now they've really merged. So there's a really, there's, that's a success story. If I want to take a moment to tip my hat to Richie Davidson and colleagues at University of Wisconsin, who wrote Altered Traits, which was one of the first books based on, mostly on the work in his laboratory about mindfulness and the putting people into FMRI's and really understanding that studying well-trained yogis was important, but also college students meditating for the first time and really important work that broke through. There needed to be a scientist like him to kind of break through.

• 1:06:30Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  And now it's common knowledge, but

• 1:06:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:34Speaker 01

  they had it right, based on everything you're telling me. And maybe that's the first thing to acknowledge each day. Wake up, thank God for being alive another day. That's Hollis's shut up. He's not saying shut up. He's saying be grateful. You know, you're breathing, you're awake. Some people will say, and I've certainly said, like, yeah, okay, but I've got, but okay, you're there. And then I think it's, at least for me, it's to acknowledge that we've got this feature. Let's not call it a flaw. Let's call it a feature, which is we can easily slide down the trench of negativity and obsession over things that don't serve us, but we can also climb up the staircase faster, first thing in the morning. This is something that's really true. You know, the circadian rhythm, we're much better at advocating

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  for ourself in the morning. Some people need coffee first. Gotcha. Need some sunlight first, et cetera. But, you know, two, three in the morning is a hard time to fight one's own mind. But first thing in the morning, you stand a fighting chance.

• 1:07:30Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  You can sleep quite as much, do yoga nidra, you'll recover some of that sleep, that vigor. And maybe the first fight is with ourselves, right? And maybe, if I may, and now definitely editorializing, but maybe that's what God wants. And maybe that's our first test. Like, hey, like, can you just acknowledge that, like, you're, you're not on the best footing just by being human? Climb up the ladder, get a foothold on yourself, and then you stand a fighting chance. And even my language now is like fighting and foothold. I mean, there's got to be a more peaceful, easeful way into this. But at least for me, at least where I stand now, the peace and ease doesn't come till the end of the day.

• 1:08:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  But I work on it. When I, when I feel like, ugh, I'm getting pulled, I sometimes will just pray.

• 1:08:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  I would say, God, I, I, this feels too hard. I know I can do it, but can you help me out here? And there's something about those little prayers that sound perhaps silly to some, but for those that do them, you go like, and somehow, all of a sudden it gets a little easier. Again, runs totally counter current to everything we understand about top-down inhibition and all this stuff that is definitely true for other circumstances, but we let go a little bit and somehow, the path kind of opens to us.

• 1:08:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  We don't really have science to understand this. It's gonna be very hard to study in a laboratory, but someday people will figure it out.

• 1:08:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  And you just start moving in that direction. And I think, then, you know, you've got your horses, they're fed. Now it's time to exercise them and water them and get them sunlight. And animals do a lot of things intuitively. People always say, does the morning sunlight thing, is it also true for animals? Every species has these cortisol mechanisms, these melatonin mechanisms, every mammalian species, and needs to supply the same things. Sunlight, hydration, movement in the morning, dim, dim light, long exhales. Watch a dog before it goes down to sleep. It'll do.

• 1:09:21Speaker 01

  It does the physiological side because it's a hardwired circuit. There's a brain center specifically for that. We do that, too. Our heart rate slows down. We have more, more ease getting into sleep. So I think acknowledging our instinctual side is critical and acknowledging that that instinctual side is like, not always best for us and best for the world.

• 1:09:42Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  And when we say that, like, acknowledge our instinctual side, people will say, oh, so you're really saying like, we should acknowledge that we have rage in us, that we have envy in us, that we have jealousy in us. Yes, yes, and yes.

• 1:09:52Jay Shetty?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  Not trying to sound biblical here, but yes, yes, and yes. Anyone that doesn't have those aspects to their psyche, doesn't have a hypothalamus. That's all rooted in these deep brain structures, that because we have this other thing called a cortex, it can exert top-down inhibition. You know, the two marshmallow test that everyone, you know, loves to discuss, and then it was sort of quote unquote debunked.

• 1:10:14Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  But then I just had someone on my podcast recently, which showed me that the debunked got debunked. So it turns out this is like, eventually, all the kids took the marshmallow. The question was, who waited the longest?

• 1:10:24Jay Shetty?

  Got it.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  It's very interesting, but there's a lot more plasticity to it than, than we were told. It's not like kids, you're fated to be the impulsive one or the non, but you can learn to set up new incentives. I'm going to wait because, gosh, it would be nice to have the two. Or I'm going to wait because someone else is going to benefit from it. I mean, that's the beauty of being human. We can place new rules and strategies and meaning on those same basic instincts that are, that are in all of us. And so I'm both in deep acceptance of our instinctual side, but as a way to try and get past it.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  This theme has been missing from the health and wellness and neuroscience and psychology conversations, because the way we're trained as scientists, and even in the health sphere, it's like, you're not like this, and I'm like, not like this. But in general, people have to kind of pick a theme.

• 1:11:17Jay Shetty?

  Totally, yeah.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  I'm the red light guy, or I'm the morning sunlight guy. I've been accused of that, and I'll take that. Or the meditation lab. You know, when you're a scientist running a laboratory, you can't afford to work on a bunch of things. So people, typically, if we hear from them, they're talking about one area. But really, the themes are circadian rhythms, alertness and sleep. That's frankly, half of wellness.

• 1:11:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, right now.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Stress management, nutrition and exercise, learning. These are the fundamentals, right? I mean, if we say, oh, yeah, we all do want the chocolate cake. Cool. That's just a hardwired thing. When should we give into the impulse? When shouldn't we? Now, that's the tricky part. The rulebook comes from other humans, and we don't like other humans telling us what to do. We like other humans telling us things that we like to do. And so I think a big issue that everyone should ask themselves is, you know, how much do I want to fight my instinctual nature? How much am I willing to?

• 1:12:16Jay Shetty?

  Should we be?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Well, when it comes to being kind to oneself, yeah. And to others, yeah. I think most of the suffering in the world is our desire to control our mind, to control the mind and behavior of other people. It's a feature slash flaw of our species. Comes with being a primate. Like, have you watched Chimp Empire? I don't know if you've watched that series on Netflix. It's incredible. But it will make you pause and go, wow, these, these old world primates, these large primates, they lie, they cheat, they steal. They also love and care and protect.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  But they lie, they cheat, they steal and love and protect and bond. It does seem to be a feature of primates with large brains, that they have the opportunity to do harm and good. Which is not to say that all wolf packs are just benevolent.

• 1:13:08Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  But I've looked at the brains of a lot of different species, something I'm bittersweet about, but comparative neurology is something I spent a lot of time doing. I've worked, I don't like to say on, with a number of different species. Turns out humans is the place I'm comfortable working because they can consent. I'm not against animal research, but I've, I've come to the place where it was gnawing at my soul for a long time, which is why I decided to get into public education.

• 1:13:31Jay Shetty?

  What did you learn?

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Till recently, I taught neuroanatomy. I mean, much of what we know about neuroanatomy comes from human brains, but also other animals' brains. I mean, it's hard to not be somewhat of a speciest. Like if you're trying to discover a cure for Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, probably gonna have to work on mouse brains, which means you're gonna have to kill mice. And you try and do it as pain-free and humanely as you can. Non-human primate work is something that is very, very hard on the soul. I can tell you that, having done it and decided this is not for me. This is the one fortunate consequence of less funding for research is that what I believe to be non-essential, non-human primate work is no longer being funded. There's still some primate work that's being funded and I'm not in a position to say whether or not it's worthwhile or not, because I'd have to look application by application. But they're on this planet with us.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  We owe them respect, they're sentient. You know, dogs, cats, fortunately, very, very little research, certainly in the US. I don't think you're gonna find that much anymore. It probably still exists, but that was a very difficult part of becoming a neuroscientist. I really grappled with that one and was happy to stop.

• 1:14:37Jay Shetty?

  Because it really affected you.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  It did. And I have to be careful because, you know, you've got people who will harm other people who work on animals. And I've known some of those folks and that's bad too, right? You know, it can get extreme and sometimes animal models are the only way to go. But yeah, that one was rough. It's not something I've talked about before because in a way I'd be a hypocrite. Because if anyone looks up my papers, many of them were on ferrets, which are a carnivore. People say, oh, ferrets sting, you know, ferrets are smart animals. They have probably largest brain volume to body size, which is a simple way of saying they're very smart. They have, you know, bumpy brains, they got a lot of brain in there. I think they have a sense of humor. They certainly feel pain.

• 1:15:22Speaker 01

  Mice have a smooth brain, but they feel pain. They form social bonds. People study social bonds in these animals. So I'm not saying all that work should be stopped. I'm saying that for me personally, I got to the point where I was like, enough, I just can't do this. And I knew something was happening for me. I was pursuing meaningful questions that relate to human health. But at some point I had to have a really honest conversation with myself, which was, is this eroding my soul? And I just couldn't, you know, having a dog, I talk a lot about dogs, as people can probably tell. And I think their lack of a prefrontal cortex is what makes them so awesome. Sorry, they have, they have a prefrontal cortex, but it's small, believe me. I've seen them, small in volume.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  The prefrontal cortex is an area of brain just beyond your forehead, which allows you to set context and strategy settings, suppress impulses.

• 1:16:13Jay Shetty?

  You're saying your dogs don't really love you, they just don't know.

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  No, they, I think they only love you. I think they only love you. This is the part of the brain that's strategic, that can lead to deception. And some people say, well, my dog lies. Okay, they, they have a little bit of prefrontal cortex. But the human and other old world primates, were the ones with a really built out prefrontal cortex that can imagine technologies and then implement them. Good and bad. I think dogs are amazing because they have just enough prefrontal cortex to allow them to think and plan and recognize. And they have, to my understanding and experience, zero diabolical nature to them. They're a you win, I win, I want everyone to win species.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  And I'm not trying to condemn any of my colleagues that do this kind of work. Although I will say my greatest reverence for neuroscientists right now are people like my childhood friend. I've known him since we were seven, Eddie Chang. He's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. You know, he's taking people who are in lock, who are locked in in paralysis. And he's gotten them to speak for the first time in 10 years by understanding neural mechanisms in the brain, translating it through. I mean, he's also a bioengineer and he's using AI. He has this patient, it's been documented, it was discussed in the, in the Times and elsewhere, who said hello for the first time through a computer in 10 years and now speaks with his family members. And there is other patients that are doing the same, like he's a healer. Right? So the, the work in animals informs stuff in, in humans.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  But I feel like there's a lot that needs to be implemented in humans. And I don't think AI is gonna solve all of it, but AI is going to be a magnificent, it is already a magnificent tool for better understanding brains and biology. But I know there's a lot of AI fear right now and I understand why people feel that way. But the ability to really understand what brains are doing in humans. Everything Eddie did in those experiments is through machine learning plus neurosurgery. I mean, he's, he's like an astronaut of the brain, he does all those things. But in the next three or four years, we're gonna see people, okay, there's gonna be low-level technologies that are gonna be very useful. Recently, and I don't have any relationship to them, I tried an eye mask that causes eye movements that put you to sleep. I want an eye mask that helps me fall asleep and that measures my rapid eye movements

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  and can increase my rapid eye movement sleep. It improves learning, emotional, unloading, you know, heaviness of emotional experience. All that's gonna happen through AI, understanding your eye movements and then subtly controlling them, non-invasively, a little electrical stimulus behind the ear while you sleep, improving your sleep. Likewise for focus and cognition, for vagal nerve stimulation, non-invasively. This is all gonna happen and AI is gonna be a critical piece of this. But also for deciphering your health data, telling you what you actually should eat, which supplements you actually need, and then watching your blood work move in the right directions. And you know, we think about this in the context of just general health. But you know, I have a friend with MS, he's especially interested in that. Right? Because you're not gonna find any literature about what to take if you're taking MS. It's all through these patient groups and they're talking to one another.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  AI can really assist taking those, all that information and for free, basically giving back the best practices. And then at the level of, of neurosurgery, but also brain machine interface. I do think that Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, severe ADHD, OCD, eating disorders like anorexia, the most deadly psychiatric illness. People don't realize this, but many, many people with real anorexia die. And they know that they should eat and is their brain has a wiring issue. And I do think that brain machine interface and, and AI is going to cure all of the things I mentioned. I think that is going to happen.

• 1:19:47Jay Shetty?

  Really?

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  I do, I absolutely do. I mean, the, the challenge is how to stimulate or suppress certain areas of the brain, non-invasively or with a minimum of invasion. But that can be done through ultrasound through the skull. There may soon come a time where you could get enough precision with, you know, a device that you would wear, maybe just a hat. Eventually, it's coming, like ways where you don't have to breach the skull and drop wires into the skull. But the real challenge for so many years has been what areas to stimulate. Now that's where the animal research was very critical. Which areas to suppress the activity of? You can't just like shut down your prefrontal cortex because then we know what that looks like from people with prefrontal damage. It's not good.

• 1:20:25Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  They don't have impulse control and cognition suffers. And so we've got a lot of information based on the many years of truly important, uh, non-human work.

• 1:20:36Jay Shetty?

  It's interesting what you said earlier about, you were saying that I wanted to be more easeful and not the fight. What I always valued about the eastern texts is that they talk about relishing the battle. So it's not that it's gonna be easy or that it's just all hard. It's that you find the way to relish the battle in the morning. And the best way I can think about it is like when you're playing sport competitively, you wanna win and you're fighting, but it's so much fun.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  That element of play is so critical. I had a discussion recently with Ido Portal. He's a movement guy, he started, you know, he's like, he had a background in martial arts and dance and all these things. And we were talking about will and discipline and he said, you know, it's so important to use willpower, but just enough to allow you to move into whatever it is you're trying to do. And then really trying to bring elements of ease and play into it. You know, because I worked on stress for a long time in my lab and stress control is a big thing. And, you know, but we have neural energy, right? Our neurons, our nervous system, which controls our muscles and everything else, our movements, our thoughts, it is electrochemical, right? Neurons release chemicals, which was electrical firing in other neurons and on and on. That's the nervous system.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  I'm fascinated by this idea that we're born with, obviously a finite number of days. We don't generally know how long we're gonna be around. And we have an energy in us and that energy, as we've been talking about, can be directed in certain actions, certain thought patterns, and it takes energy to direct our energy. That's the thing, don't tell us, right? This is like the, the Jay Shetty mastery that like I'm seeking is like, is there a way to require less energy to direct my energy? I think this is like, I hadn't realized till I said it now, but I think.

• 1:22:22Jay Shetty?

  That's a great question.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Like people are drawn to you, you know, and, and I'm drawn to not only being your friend, but it being in these conversations with you. Because it seems like you've figured out something about how to not over-invest energy into directing one's energy. You know, I'm fascinated by certain aspects of popular culture, certain, don't intrigue me at all. But what I'm interested in are the, the themes that seem to show up again and again, again, across generations. And you know, they're like the 27 club, all these people who die in, at 27 or around 27, who seem to have this immense creative energy. It's almost like they were fated to take, let's put in units, like a million units of energy

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  and just pack it into this early life and they're able to channel it. And they do these incredible things and then they die. Then there are these people that we, you know, we think about the blue zones and the people that live, live a long time where they're like, what are they doing? And they seem like they're, they're not chilling, but their, their energy is, seems to be on a, on a pretty nice cycle through the days, through the weeks, through the seasons. And everyone's like, oh, it's social connection or oh, it's a cup, glasses of wine or whatever it is. But whatever, their energetic regulation seems very, it's clearly sustainable because by definition it's happened a long time, but it's like got a good push and pull to it. And then there's the rest of us, right? And I often think like, what is this energy thing?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  And if we feel a lot of it in us, I think that we should be wise about learning to direct it. Maybe if we don't have enough, we should think about how we can generate more of it. I mean, so much of the, the, the fighting in the world is people trying to steal each other's energy. They're going to insult somebody, so then they get in their heads, so then that person can't do the work, then they're going to outcompete them. This is the stuff of primates with large prefrontal cortices, sadly. Now, of course, also, humans, we can do amazing things and build societies and benevolence and podcasts and hospitals and art and music. But if you look at the people with accomplished incredible feats, like really spectacular feats, usually doesn't end well.

• 1:24:28Jay Shetty?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  I saw this documentary recently, The Dark Wizard, about a guy clearly with a bipolar issue, some trauma, I don't want to give it away. He was a free solo climber, Dean Potter, this was before Alex Honnold, and then he got into base jumping and there, it's amazing four-part series. Because it was very clear that when he was in his manic episodes, he could channel his energy into doing things that were truly dangerous, but he had abilities that other people didn't have. Now, Alex is a really special one, because he maintains that calm that allows him to channel all his energy into, you know, free soloing, LCAP, which is like, without the manic energy. But he's really unique in that way.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  In fact, he, when he climbed the tower recently, I was like, oh, man, like, I kind of want him to stop climbing, because I just, like, I don't want anything to happen to him.

• 1:25:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  But he's a grown man, he's responsible for himself, and what do I know? What we're dealt in this life is this energy thing, and it's our work to try and figure out how to build it when we need to build it, steer it when we need to steer it, not how it turn on ourselves. I had a close colleague this last year, take his own life, and this was a guy who studied suicidality, triple board certified neurologist psychiatrist. He had all the information, brutal. And, but he was running multiple companies and labs, and it was almost like he was just this fireball of energy. And then, now, looking back, you could almost predict it. I mean, none of us knew that was coming, clearly, and we're still all shaken by it. But when people like him, his name was Nolan Williams, and he is a remarkable human, and

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  he has changed for the better the face of psychiatry for many, many years to come. Took a long protocol for depression and learned to compress it into a one-week thing for people. He was an incredible person serving the world. But when you see that, and you look back, it was like, it almost had to, hate the language around, but it's like, of course it was headed that direction. I feel like this is something that I don't have science to put to. But it's almost always the case that when someone's real, like, on a hockey stick growth of their art or their whatever, like, sure, there's going to be some attacks, because they're always trying to like, you know, the tall poppy syndrome, and then there's that media-related component, but there's something else there. We don't want people to have too much energy. They're not allowed to go up, up, up, indefinitely.

• 1:26:47Speaker 01

  There's something about our primate species, like, come down, and sometimes it's unkind, or even abusive. Other times, it's, it probably saves people. In ancient practices, what is known about energy? Like, if you just stop when you're feeling anxious, or you alert, you wake up in the morning and you meditate, there's this impulse to get up. You know, my friend Rick Rubin tells me, there's a way you can start to circulate that energy, you can start to feel it kind of even out in you. This isn't his direct language, but it's kind of what I think he's trying to tell me. You know, Rick is a dear friend, and I adore him, and I, you guys had an amazing conversation.

• 1:27:23Jay Shetty?

  I'm so grateful.

• 1:27:23Speaker 01

  Everyone should listen to that conversation. But he also speaks in riddles sometimes, right? You know, to be fair. And, and we're very close, but sometimes I'll be like, can you, like, explain exactly what you mean? But to be able to, to have that calm but alert, well-directed energy state is harder for many people, including me, to achieve. What is this energy thing through the lens of what you know? And there, and I ask with sincerity, because I, neuroscience, or I could make up a story about autonomic nervous system and this and that, but like, I'd be just throwing out a bunch of words. I don't think we have anything solid to hang our hat on there from neuroscience yet. But I think it's a critical aspect of being human, and I think it's a critical aspect of being a creator.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  It's also a critical aspect of dynamically spending and resetting one's energy to manage a family, a business, a, a mind. What do you know about this?

• 1:28:18Jay Shetty?

  It's such a beautiful question, and I'm, you know, in no way the foremost authority either, but I'm happy to offer what I've learned from amazing teachers and guides.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  I value you, I really value your thoughts on this. And I'm asking, anyone and everyone that I think has deep understanding of this, which means so far I've asked Rick and I'm asking you. And there are others, but I'm on, I'm on.

• 1:28:38Jay Shetty?

  No, and, and I'll share what I've learned from, from my teachers and my guides, who I believe are, are well-versed in this. So much of it is what you've been saying as well in, in different ways, but I think, when I think of energy, the language that I think we can make sense of it through is fuel. So what are we fueled by? What is it that fuels us? And I think we know fuel, because we think of food for the body, et cetera. So we know what fuel looks like, we know what gas is like for a car. A car without gas is not going anywhere. It doesn't matter how beautiful the car is, how new the tires are, it's not moving. And so I think humans are like that, too. You could have someone that looks amazing, that is in great shape, that is stunning,

• 1:29:20Jay Shetty?

  and their parent can be telling them all these things, and the kid feels stuck. Right? What is that? Why is it that this talented, beautiful being, that is being reminded by the people around them and reassured that they're beautiful and talented and gifted, everything but can't see it within herself? What is that? It's that the energy is stuck. It's that the energy is not flowing, it's that the energy is not moving in and out. And so I think what happens to humans a lot is that we think we have a finite amount of energy, and we think everyone has finite amounts of energy. And then we believe that the only way to get more energy is to take some more of someone else's finite energy.

• 1:30:03Jay Shetty?

  Because we've all been raised to believe that there are a limited number of seats in a theater. So that means if someone else bought the tickets, I can't have any. And so if someone else has energy, then I need to know what they have, and I want what they have, and if I can understand what they did or get it from them, then maybe I can take some of their energy. So we live in a finite world, and I think the finite mindset is why we are so constrained in our energy, because we think, well, I can only ever be this confident, or I can only ever be this bold, I can only ever be this interesting, because it's all finite. And I think it's only in union with the infinite, and only in connection with the infinite, that you start to realize that energy moves through you, and you don't have to hold on

• 1:30:48Jay Shetty?

  to it. I think as humans, we're good at hoarding. When you think about animals, you're saying, animals are good at hoarding, like, we're good at, like, keeping stuff and burying it and holding it for a rainy day, and it's like, energy doesn't work that way. It works opposite. It's like, the more I give to you, if I'm giving out of genuine compassion, the more I receive from above. It's not mathematically finite. And I think that's the problem, is the math that we've studied is, well, if I have two apples and I give you two apples, then I have zero. And that's what we believe. So if I give you two hours of my time, and I feel drained, then I feel like only feel drained, not realizing that there's so much more to access and coming because I'm offering to give.

• 1:31:30Jay Shetty?

  Which is why you see the people who changed the world were completely in service. You know, when you think about the people that really impacted society, they were completely in service. Where did they get all of that energy from? Where did they get that fuel from? It's because they were going to a source far bigger and greater than we were. And so, to me, that's a big part of it, and that fuel is a fuel of gratitude and responsibility. It's gratitude that fuels me. You're in the same boat. Like, I think we both could stop doing what we're currently doing and just live comfortably and not care anymore. And it's like, but that's not the point. Like, I didn't do all of this so that I could stop and leave everything behind and be comfortable. That wasn't the goal. The goal was always service. The benefits that came with them have been amazing, but the goal was service, and so

• 1:32:15Jay Shetty?

  I want to keep serving. Because service to me was the most beautiful part of all of this, and service is the part that receives more fuel. So I think it's almost like energy gets stuck when someone's not learning from a higher source, and when they're not giving to someone newer. And so if you think about the perfect mentor-mentee relationship, say, everyone should have a mentor and a mentee. But if you don't have a mentor, then you're stuck, because then you're only giving and not getting anything. If you only have a mentor and you don't have a mentee, that means you're only getting and not giving anything. And I think that's as humans, where I think we get stuck, our energy gets stuck, because we're either over-giving or over-getting. And I think most of us find ourselves in one of those two spaces, rather than this

• 1:32:55Jay Shetty?

  full flow of receiving, being, and giving, that just seems to work of its own self.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  I'm positively struck by a lot of it. In particular, this notion that we fundamentally misunderstand the

• 1:33:11Speaker 01

  Potential for energetic synergy or that builds in good relating.

• 1:33:16Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, it's compounding. It's not, it's not like I've got a finite number of apples. I'm going to give them to you and then I have nothing left.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:33:22Jay Shetty?

  And I think that's the challenge. It's like, we don't realize the energy doesn't work that way.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  There's something so fundamentally important in what you just said about revising our notions of, of, of spending and receiving and thinking more about exchange. Eddie, the neuroscientist I mentioned earlier, you know, I enjoy amazing conversations with them about neuroscience, but I get frustrated because he studies the neuroscience of speech and language. And I just like, I sometimes I say, you know, like language is maybe not sufficient to really carry out the kind of communication that we want, you know? There's the positivity, energy exchange framework, and then there's the cynic, right? And I have them both in me. I mean, my Argentine relatives will say, yeah, well, it's, they're the one side of my East Coast relatives. I won't say which one, which, but you know,

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  I have that in me, that kind of like, and some people will think like, oh, yeah, like all this positivity stuff, right? I look, I've tried it both ways. I've tried being angry. I've tried being in the fight. I tried being, building off of the things from my childhood where I felt I was wronged. And I got a lot done, frankly, but when I say I got way more done accessing places of love and gratitude and appreciation, it's an order of magnitude.

• 1:34:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's not positivity either. I feel like, that's hard work.

• 1:34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the, I think the energy management part that also builds energy comes through that positivity. But then people hear positivity and then they go, oh, that's not discerning. I mean, my father's from Argentina and went to British boarding school. So he'll tell you, you know, like being, when he was growing up, he was taught that being happy and go lucky meant you were dumb. That's what he was told. You know, he'll tell you a very different story now.

• 1:35:07Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 1:35:07Speaker 01

  He's in his early eighties, still very healthy and vibrant and we enjoy a great relationship now. And, and, and he'll tell you like that, that is the absolute wrong mindset. And he's eighty something years old and he's kicking butt out there. So I feel like, you know, something. It's not just he's my dad. I've met other, but James Hollis will tell you the same thing.

• 1:35:24Jay Shetty?

  But he's changed his mind on that.

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  Totally. And I think, you know, in the United States, but everywhere, you know, like this notion, like we can get that arousal through fight.

• 1:35:33Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:33Speaker 01

  But it is a resource depleting in us. We also can't just feel like naive, like, oh, everything's fine when things, when things aren't fine. So it's this like kind of narrow bridge.

• 1:35:43Jay Shetty?

  Have you ever heard of the story of the, the injured bird at the monastery? A monk finds this injured bird at a monastery and wants to help the bird. So the monk is having compassionate feelings. The monk's about to pick up the bird and the Buddha says, don't hold it too tightly. That's our fight. I want to do something good, but I'm going to hold it so tightly. But I'm, I'm going to squish it. I'm going to kill it. And then as he picks it up softly, the Buddha says, no, no, no, not too light, not too soft either. Because if you hold it too softly, it will fly away. It won't even know what to do. It might start flapping and it might hurt itself. And so it's too tight, too loose. That is the fight. The fight is not holding it, gripping it and trying to save it and trying to think,

• 1:36:25Jay Shetty?

  how do I hold this bird not too tight and not too loose so that I can actually take it to safety?

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  Oh man, I love that.

• 1:36:31Jay Shetty?

  And that's our own heart. That's our own body and mind. It's, it's what you're saying about protocols, not, not too tight, not too loose.

• 1:36:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:39Jay Shetty?

  If I never look at the sunlight in the morning, that's not good for me. But if I, if I like, make sure that I have to do the sunlight and the water and the this and the this, I'm going to kill myself.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  You're unhealthy in that case.

• 1:36:47Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  The book is really trying to give people the big levers that will position them best to have the things they want. But the really hard work I'm realizing to not work too hard, but not too light. That's the hard work of being human. And some people probably be like, all right, you know, Huberman's fifty, he's getting soft, talking about animals. Yeah. But I actually think for me, just internally, that's the stronger stance because it's the honest stance. I never felt good about it. I'm actually probably coming through today. I'm, I'm working on self forgiveness for that because I carry a lot of pain around that. Finding the, the peace and ease in the day and in one's life is so critical.

• 1:37:30Speaker 01

  It's part of the reset, but it's also just great. Like not everything, and this is coming from the guy who teaches about health and health, quote unquote, optimization, a term I don't really like all that much. But part of the great thing about being human is also just like kicking back, putting your feet up, feeling the breeze and then going back into the, the internal battle of this being human, you know?

• 1:37:51Jay Shetty?

  Too tight, too loose.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Too, too tight, too loose. And I think that in fields of science, there's something I've observed over and over again over three decades, which is, it takes about five years of intense interest in, in a topic from a variety of labs to get someplace. Don't necessarily solve the disease, but to really get someplace where everyone agrees on certain things. Like, okay, this, this is something we can really move forward on. We could write a textbook chapter on this or a portion of one. I feel like in this place of health and wellness that includes psychology and the, the sorts of things that you work on and talk about, your expertise, it's been about, well, you started your podcast in twenty nineteen.

• 1:38:27Jay Shetty?

  Seven years ago.

• 1:38:28Speaker 01

  Okay. And, and me in twenty twenty one, and, and there've been others. So I feel like we're about five plus or minus three years into this, this form of discourse. And it's been going on a long time, to be fair. But we're sort of at the place now where we know certain things. And most people agree on those things and they disagree on the details. And then there's this whole new landscape of like peptides and psychedelics and hormone therapies. I'm happy to talk about those because those are the things that I've been exploring in recent years that I'll probably talk about in a future book. But protocols is really about, there are neuroscience textbooks called principles of neuroscience. So it would be like principles of health and wellness that you can really hang your hat on. And the principles piece is key. It's not one practice where that practice are better or worse.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  It's like, these are the principles of high cortisol, melatonin, these are principles of stress regulation and exhales and inhales. These are principles of short wavelength light and long wavelength and so on and so on. And so we're there now. And then the question becomes, what higher level questions are we not thinking about? And I realize like, I must've been thinking about that coming in here today about like energy. Like I believe that every human is born with at least enough energy to take that first breath.

• 1:39:34Jay Shetty?

  I love that this is what we do together. Cause whenever I'm with you, everyone loves you. Everyone loves your advice. The people that I know look at you to help solve their biggest problems. I do that and you do.

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  I'm humble.

• 1:39:46Jay Shetty?

  And you do. I love your work and I'm grateful that I've learned so much from you. I'm grateful that I get to see the science that supports beliefs I've had. There's so much. But whenever you come on the show, my goal is for us to have a conversation that only me and you would have.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Today, definitely.

• 1:40:02Jay Shetty?

  Yeah. So I'm always grateful.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  And I should say that I promise that I don't wax poetic or philosophical in, in my book. It's meant to be a reference guide. If somebody's having challenges in a certain area or wants to level up in a certain area, they can go to the book. You don't even have to read it linearly. You just go and look up the thing and you can do the thing or you can learn the science. I think the science is beautiful. I hope people learn some science. So in any case.

• 1:40:24Jay Shetty?

  We end every episode of On Purpose with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence. So question number one, what's one protocol that's actually worth the hype?

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  I already mentioned the morning sunlight viewing. So I'll build off that as do that. But everyone should resistance train. It's critical for women, for men. You need to learn to do it properly, but it's key to understand that that lever of health will keep you uninjured and very likely around longer.

• 1:40:59Jay Shetty?

  Second question, what is one of the most overrated health habits?

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Well, there are supplements that can really help and I've long been a fan of them since I was a teenager and I take plenty of them. They are not necessary to be extremely healthy. They can help, but they're not necessary.

• 1:41:17Jay Shetty?

  Question number three, what's the fastest way to make a new habit actually stick?

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Despite books and claims that it takes twenty one days to form a new habit, if you're super present for the behavior when you engage in it, or the suppression of behavior, if it's a don't type thing, if you bring your attention to what you're doing, I believe, and I've observed in their data to support the fact that three to six days of doing something or avoiding something and you're locked in, it's in you. But the more attention you can bring to it, the faster you're going to embed that thing.

• 1:41:50Jay Shetty?

  Question number four, what's the most effective way to improve your focus?

• 1:41:55Speaker 01

  There really is something special to the data, say thirteen minute, but maybe even as short as five minute meditation. Richie Davidson, the expert on this pointed out that most people in the first week of embracing a meditation practice, experience a significant increase in anxiety. It's important to know you're learning stress tolerance. You're anxious, you're stressed and you're going to sit still. The energy is all over. That's a super valuable skill. But Wendy Suzuki's lab at NYU has shown those short meditation practices carried out, if not every day, then just repeatedly, maybe even just three days a week, significantly improve attention and focus. Meditation holds a lot more than just focus, but it is in many ways a focusing exercise.

• 1:42:41Speaker 01

  You're trying to focus on your breath, focus on everything but where your mind and your impulses want to take you. It's a focusing practice. It's a mental gym and you get better at it. And the circuits for focus are amenable to plasticity too, which is just nerd speak for focusing during meditation gets you better at focusing and everything.

• 1:43:00Jay Shetty?

  And fifth and final question, what's helping you find peace right now within yourself?

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Prayer. Acknowledging that humans as beautiful as we are, as complicated as we are, not in charge of everything and creating space for that in prayer, praying for others and just listening and asking God to use me for, for good, to teach and to be the best version of myself. But prayer's the, that's the big one for me.

• 1:43:29Jay Shetty?

  Andrew Huberman, thank you so much. The book's called Protocols. I hope you come back again and again. This is your third time on the show. I welcome you back as many more times as you want. And looking forward to more offline conversations like this as well. And so grateful for you showing up so truly openly, genuinely as always. And glad we got to learn a lot about your heart today and a lot about the journey that you're on internally as well as the mission you're on externally. So thank you so much.

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jay. It's always great to come here and I'm going to just take a moment to express my gratitude for you. You know, being in this whole podcast, public education space and health and wellness and all the rest is, is a magnificent gift, but it's made so much better by having colleagues. And I do consider you a colleague and friends.

• 1:44:11Jay Shetty?

  Thank you.

• 1:44:12Speaker 01

  You, as they say, hold the space extremely well and your heart and your love for what you do and for people is undeniable. So I've certainly benefited and so many people benefit. You're a special person and you're channeling it for good. So thank you.

• 1:44:28Speaker 02

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• 1:45:14Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You start, you freeze in there. That's what?

• 1:45:18Speaker 03

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• 1:45:22Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

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• 1:45:43Jay Shetty?

  Thank you, man. That's very kind. And yeah, long may it continue together. So thank you. Thank you so much.