1016 The Science of a Success Mindset with Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman

“I think gratitude is wonderful, it resets the system so that you can be in pursuit.”In part two of Lewis' interview with neuroscientist and Stanford professor, Andrew Huberman, Ph. D., they discuss neuroplasticity and why it’s the key to learning new things, why you should always have a sense of play in your life, techniques for deep relaxation, the science of gratitude, and so much more! For more info on Andrew's research, check out Huberman Lab. For more: https://lewishowes.com/1016For Part 1: https://lewishowes.com/1015 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 1,016 with Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:31Lewis Howes?

  Priest and academic Richard Lindgerd wrote, "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." And actor Sean Mullehill said, "Understand this and be free. We are not in our bodies. Our bodies are inside us." My guest today is neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, who is a professor at Stanford University and head of the Huberman Lab. This is part two of my interview with Andrew. Part one has been blowing people away. So if you haven't listened to it yet, make sure to go to lewishouse.com/1015 to check it out. And in the first episode, we talk about how much control your brain has over your emotions and experiences,

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  the positive effects stress can have on the body, the science of hope, how we can rewrite our subjective experience to increase happiness and more. So make sure you check that out after this one, if you haven't checked it out yet. And in this episode, we discuss what neuroplasticity is and why it's the key to learning new things. The importance of keeping a sense of play in your life. This is huge for so many people right now. Where go-getters get it wrong. The techniques for deep relaxation and why you need to make it a priority. The science of gratitude and how it rewires your brain for success and so much more. Again, this episode is going to be a game changer for so many people, and so is the last one.

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  So make sure to re-listen to these over and over again. Share them with a friend who you think will be inspired by it, who this will help. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts right now on the School of Greatness, as well as give us a rating and review. Okay, after this quick message, the one and only Andrew Huberman.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  The mental strain you feel when you're learning something is the trigger for neuroplasticity, for your brain to change.

• 2:25Lewis Howes?

  Say that again, the mental strain you feel while doing something is the what?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Is the trigger for neuroplasticity.

• 2:32Lewis Howes?

  Which neuroplasticity allows you to expand your mind to do more things?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  That's right. So neuroplasticity is a process of taking something where there's duration, path and outcome, where I'm working hard, I'm thinking hard, maybe it's a hard conversation, maybe it's a business plan, maybe it's a scientific career. And the goal of neuroplasticity is to make things reflexive so you don't have to think about them. Right?

• 2:53Lewis Howes?

  For instance, I just started taking Spanish class one-on-one and it's extremely hard. It makes me want to say, why am I doing this? This is going to take me years until I'm conversational, who knows how long until I'm fluent. You know, if it's this hard at like this stage, man, is it ever going to get easier? I have those moments every time I'm doing class, I'm like, this sucks.

• 3:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:16Lewis Howes?

  Because I'm like, I'm 37, can I learn this language at this point?

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 3:20Lewis Howes?

  It's so much easier when you're five.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:22Lewis Howes?

  Now it's almost impossible. I watched your video on this a couple of days ago on social media. And, and the video you talked about this is, yes, it's harder when you're older to expand your neuroplasticity, but it's going, it's almost the, what I'm hearing you say is like, it's the only way to live, is the older you get, you need to constantly be expanding it, otherwise you'll be going backwards.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  That's right. So, you know, when you want to learn something new like Spanish or a new physical skill, your mind shifts over, the forebrain comes on and says, okay, we're going to pay attention to things. And now what am I doing?

• 3:54Lewis Howes?

  I get so tired, I'm like...

• 3:56Speaker 01

  And we get, and we start doing evaluative stuff to other people, to ourself, and you can start using all sorts of examples like, wait, you know, I was a professional athlete in your case, or, I want to be clear, I was never a professional athlete, but you were a professional athlete, you've been successful in other regimes of life, but it still feels like effort, right?

• 4:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And so, but that effort is because two things are happening. One is adrenaline, epinephrine is being released, so it doesn't feel great.

• 4:21Lewis Howes?

  It's not fun.

• 4:22Speaker 01

  It's like, uh, and then... And in addition to that, by bringing focus to something, you're recruiting a neuromodulator called acetylcholine, which is the molecule of focus. Now, it's important-

• 4:34Lewis Howes?

  Which takes energy and effort.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  It takes energy and effort. You feel it in your body and in your brain. And it tends to highlight, acetylcholine will highlight the areas of your brain that are active during that learning phase, when the teacher's talking, or you're talking and making that effort, it's paying attention to how you're moving your mouth, what it sounds like to you, feedback cues. And it's marking those brain areas for change. And then later, when you sleep, or when you work out, or when you're having a conversation with somebody, that's actually when the brain changes occur.

• 5:03Lewis Howes?

  Not during the actual activity.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 5:07Lewis Howes?

  It's when you're not doing the activity, resting or recovering, when it starts to expand, or it starts to grow.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  That's right. So neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to change in response to experience, and is the main way in which we go from deliberate action, duration path, outcome stuff, to reflexive action and thought. That process has two parts. One is the trigger, which is, in adults, is triggered by focus and attention, and even a heightened state of agitation. The more frustrated you feel, the more you're actually triggering learning, it's saying, this is important, this is important. Because the brain just wants to do whatever it wants to do. It needs to cue itself to, oh, this must need to change. And then the second part is deep relaxation, meditation, in particular, a form of meditation called yoga nidra, which we could talk about, but forms of deep relaxation, deep sleep, like slow wave sleep.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  That's when the connections between neurons, called synapses, actually get stronger. That's when the connections that you don't want get removed. And that's also in certain cases, where you get new neurons actually born in your brain to help these circuits speak Spanish.

• 6:10Lewis Howes?

  This is why in sports, growing up, I remember I would go to like basketball camps in the summer, and I'd always learn new footwork. And I always just wanted to be like the fancy guy doing like whatever, finger roll layups or something as a kid. But then, we would go to these basketball camps, and we'd just work on the fundamentals and the footwork, and like, all this different stuff. And I remember being in the moment, it being very frustrating and challenging. I was like, I don't get this. And I would suck at it. But then, the next day I'd come back, and I would all of a sudden like have it, after a few times of doing it. But I never learned how to do it in the moment. It was always like, okay, I may have got it once, but then I fumbled on it. It was the next day or the next few days where it's like, oh, I can do this.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  It just shows up.

• 6:51Lewis Howes?

  It shows up.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  It just shows up.

• 6:52Lewis Howes?

  And that's because when the mind is able to relax, it's then making the connections on how to do that thing.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in deep, deep sleep and rest is when the connections actually get built up. It's sort of like in with resistance training, right? The gym is a little misleading, resistance training, because people get the, you know, the famous pump. And so they get, they get a visual glimpse into what they might look like later. But then, of course, it goes back down, right? But so, but actual hypertrophy, the enlargement of the muscle fibers and the strengthening of the neural connections.

• 7:22Lewis Howes?

  When you sleep.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Fibers is later, when you sleep. So it's the same thing with neuroplasticity.

• 7:26Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. How important is it for us to constantly be learning and challenging our mind the older we get?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Well, I believe it's very important for living a full life. And, you know, my hero in this, two heroes actually is, I would say, Richard Feynman, the great physicist, who had a very playful attitude about learning. That's one thing that I really should illustrate if you are in frustration and strain.

• 7:51Lewis Howes?

  Have fun.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  A sense of play is great because in play you have focus. You have intention and alertness. And it keeps you light enough that there's that dopamine release. Is it dopamine is released in play for a reason because kids and animals, young animals and young children, learn social interactions through play.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  A puppy bites another puppy and it, the puppy barks out loud. That's why they have those sharp puppy teeth. To say that's too much of a bite, then they play a little bit more. It's they're found, they're finding the boundaries. They're finding the, the limits to which they can use physical force for hurting another or just for playing. They learn soft bite. Play in animals is an ancient form of sampling these neural pathways. And as adults, we tend to be more demanding of ourselves. We don't tend to embrace as much play. Richard Feynman is somebody who really incorporated a lot of play into his adult life. He learned how to, in addition to being a Nobel Prize winning physicist, he also, you know, played bongo drums. He would be, learned how to sketch and paint late in his life. He did float tanks, he was kind of a wild man, but he had a lot of fun and he was a lifetime learner.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  So I think it's important because it's a great way to learn dopamine release.

• 9:01Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  And it's a great way to. Expand one's experience of life.

• 9:06Lewis Howes?

  This is when we were, when I was in Poland with Wim Hof earlier this year, I took a group of like thirteen guys. And we were all nervous to get into this ice club together for ten minutes, like up to here. And for the first two minutes, it was not fun. We were just like, this sucks, this is cold, but then all of a sudden, we were like, let's have fun. We're gonna be in here for eight more minutes. We might as well try to enjoy it. So we started chanting, we started singing, we started like, just like in a rhythm together, like smiling, and it was like, it's more enjoyable. It's still gonna be challenging, but you might as well try to have the most fun in the challenge than just suffer, right?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, team and community, not by coincidence, is a powerful tool for buffering stress. Again, you know, look at high performing teams like SEAL teams or other special operations units, they, team is a big part of it for being functional in the actual job.

• 9:55Lewis Howes?

  It must be impossible to do it alone if you're now Navy SEAL.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are other divisions of special operations where actually it's more focused on solo missions. Yeah, where, and so there are people that are very good at that, but teamwork is a great way to buffer the stress response.

• 10:09Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  And so earlier you asked, is there any way to make it not cold? Uh, I guess the answer is no, but there is a way to make the cold not painful.

• 10:18Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  And so that's where dopamine intervenes. The other thing that's important, because we talked about neuroplasticity, you trigger it with focus and energy, you know, and effort and strain is, you know, children can learn very easily, um, their brain is hyperplastic and very quickly is, the whole job of the young brain is to take things that it's taught and very quickly pass it over to reflex. Including morals and beliefs.

• 10:43Lewis Howes?

  Automatic.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is what's scary is also, you know, the things that kids hear and they believe, and they're exposed to, those beliefs become reflexive. Now around age twenty-five or so, the brain is still plastic and forever for the entire life, but then you need more focus and you need what's called self-directed plasticity, neuroplasticity, self-directed, meaning the only person that can change their brain for the better after about age twenty-five is the actual person.

• 11:08Lewis Howes?

  You.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  You can't force neuroplasticity on somebody, positive neuroplasticity. So.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  The other element that's really important to plasticity is this deep rest phase. And it's associated with the release of the molecule neuromodular serotonin. Serotonin is a reward molecule, just like dopamine, except that it's released in the brain in response to the subjective experience that we have enough resources. So when we eat a big meal, or we enjoy, even better, when we enjoy a meal with friends or family, and it just feels like one of those incredible evenings, you know, you're reset. It's that feeling of being reset. It has an antidepressive effect. When we are, when you hold, you know, if you hold your child, or a partner that you

• 11:56Speaker 01

  love, or your dog, if you love your dog, there's this feeling of having enough. And so whereas dopamine is really the molecule that makes us look at things outside the boundaries of our skin, like to be in pursuit of things, it really is the pursuit motivation molecule. Serotonin is really about feeling like we have enough in our immediate environment. And it's so powerful, because unless that dopamine, that, excuse me, that serotonin box is checked off periodically, we cannot lean back into the dopamine outward pursuit process for very long.

• 12:27Lewis Howes?

  So we need serotonin.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 12:28Lewis Howes?

  To feel more, what, complete, whole?

• 12:32Speaker 01

  Safe.

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  Safe.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Once you feel, this is where people, you know, I think that the go-getters get it wrong, no pun intended, where getting after it and being hard-driving is really important. But, you know, we've all seen examples of this. I've seen a number of these in Silicon Valley friends that did very well in tech, get to the point where they reach that finish line, and then they don't have a whole lot, or a whole lot of people to share that with, and they end up very isolated and depressed. And then they go through this whole cycle of trying to find themselves. And you need to balance serotonin and dopamine, maybe across the day, maybe across the week. You know, I think in religious practices, all religions really, there's a kind of Sabbath, there's a rest period, you know, for many,

• 13:14Speaker 01

  I think all of them. That makes sense, because there needs to be a renewal, whether or not people have a religious practice or not, there needs to be a renewal.

• 13:22Lewis Howes?

  A recovery.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  A recovery, to recover the immune system. You can't drive the immune system all week, all week, all week. You need to recover it.

• 13:27Lewis Howes?

  This is why I love sports analogies, because there's a preseason, there's a season, there's a postseason where you're really in high stress and emotion, and then there's a postseason. There's an off-season.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:39Lewis Howes?

  For a reason. You can't be in-season. Ten years.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:43Lewis Howes?

  You know, in a row, you've got to find time to relax and have a bye week. It's like, if you don't have a bye week, you're probably going to get injured eventually. So it's just like trying to create that in your own life. Do you do that for yourself as well? Do you have?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Definitely. I've got things I do each day and I've got things I do on a weekly basis. I'm less good about the annual vacation. I've never done it.

• 14:01Lewis Howes?

  It's so hard.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  I've been doing science 25 years. I, you know, there's a, I, I'm sure some of my former relationships will be like, that's right. We never actually took a proper vacation. Yeah. My former girlfriend and I, it was like, we'd go to like Paris, England, Germany. And I was giving talks and talks and talks. And then, and then I'd get sick. And then one day, she was so understanding. It's like, I, I still feel some guilt about that. But we, we would take an afternoon and go to a gallery. But then I was like, right back at it, you know?

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  That's been my life too.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  It's, it's hard. I mean, you have to find that balance, you know? Luckily, I was in my 30s then. And when you're in your twenties and 30s, you can get away with less serotonin in your system. But on a day.

• 14:39Lewis Howes?

  Now you need more serotonin.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 14:41Lewis Howes?

  So what do you do every day to get more serotonin or weekly?

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Sleeping an adequate amount is key. The, the practice that served me the best has not been a meditative practice. There are two practices. One is called yoga nidra, which is, doesn't involve any movement. You just, it literally means yoga sleep. This was introduced to me about five years ago.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  Just laying on your back?

• 15:01Speaker 01

  You listen to a script. There are a lot of scripts on YouTube and it teaches you to, there's some breathing involved, but it's really a body scan. You learn to go into deep relaxation. I do this once or twice a day. If I wake up and I haven't had enough sleep, I do it first thing.

• 15:14Lewis Howes?

  Five, 10 minutes?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a 20 minute script I like. There is a 10 minute script that's out there too. I can give you the links to these if people are interested in them. I have no affiliation with any yoga nidra businesses, but I love what the, the practice, because I feel like I recover the sleep I didn't get. I then feel really alert. In the afternoon, if I'm feeling tired, I'll do yoga nidra. It also involves some intentions, which has a kind of pseudo self-hypnosis component. And I have a colleague, David Spiegel, in the Department of Psychiatry, who does clinical hypnosis. And these intentions that we do in states of deep relaxation are known to have positive effects on thinking and action. They are, and pain mitigating. And even breast cancer outcomes, David's work has shown that. So we're not saying it's stage hypnosis with like a pendant, we're talking.

• 15:57Lewis Howes?

  Self hypnosis.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  Self hypnosis or medical hypnosis.

• 16:00Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's like you said, deliberate thought as opposed to reactive thought.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Right. And you're in going, you're teaching your body and brain to go into deep relaxation deliberately. You're doing it. And that's, I think, a power.

• 16:12Lewis Howes?

  You're saying, okay, relax, lay down, relax your body, relax your face. Call, you know, breathe slower. You're, you're telling yourself to do it.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  You're using the body to control the mind. That's again, and you're deliberately turning your thoughts off. Most people can't do that. And so for me, yoga nidra has been a absolute amplifier, accelerator, whatever you want to call it, on my career and life and wellbeing. It also gets you better at falling asleep. Because one of the reasons why people have trouble falling asleep is they can't turn their thoughts off. So you're training your nervous system how to do this. I should say, because it sounds a little bit out there in the kind of new agey space, there are several studies, imaging studies, positron emission tomography studies and others, looking at yoga nidra specifically. This wasn't worked on by my lab, although we are exploring it in my lab as a tool for stress mitigation, anxiety mitigation.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  But the studies show that 30 minutes, I believe it was of yoga nidra resets the levels of dopamine in an area of the brain called the basal ganglia, which prepares the brain and body for action. So these deep relaxation states, even if we're wide awake still, allow the nervous system to reset so that it can get back into action. So for the go-getters, if you're really, if you want to have a long career, you want to high perform your whole career. You want to have tools that allow you to reset that dopamine level. Because that is accomplished, that has a huge effect, excuse me, on buffering adrenaline, as we said earlier. But in addition to that, serotonin is what resets the dopamine pathway.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  So now there's sort of what we're seeing is kind of a logic to it. You need to all, you need to alternate rest and effort. You need to reward effort. You need to understand.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  With rest.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  With rest. So there's yoga nidra. And I would say the best time to do it is first thing in the morning, before you go to sleep at night or any time of day. In other words, I believe everyone should have some deep relaxation process that's deliberate, that doesn't involve ingesting anything.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  You know.

• 18:10Lewis Howes?

  Not food or wine or.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  For some people, you know, a drink is fine. I'm focused on behavioral tools. You know, supplements and drugs have their place and, you know, there are clinically depressed people that need a boost in dopamine or need a boost in serotonin. And I'm, I think, even though drugs like Prozac get a bad rap, those drugs have also saved millions of lives. There's just an appropriate dose and context and some people shouldn't take them.

• 18:32Lewis Howes?

  Well, people also, what I'm hearing you say is you can, you take them when you need them, when you're unable to physically create those habits for yourself and routines for yourself. But then, once you take it, you're always gonna need it until you can learn how to behaviorally change your actions.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 18:47Lewis Howes?

  Right?

• 18:47Speaker 01

  It's like the obese person that finally, you know, if they really can't move, right? You know, maybe they do need to do some sort of surgical procedure or they need to, or they do something that, but then, once they start exercising, you, you, I believe you always wanna go behaviors, focus on behaviors first. Get the behaviors dialed in. Everything we've talked about today is free. Everything we've talked about is, is self-directed. So it's behaviors. Then, I think it, I think diet is very important or nutrition. I think supplementation definitely has its place. I think we are past the, the ridiculous idea of the eighties and nineties, like, oh, can't you get everything from what you eat? No one can even agree on what we're supposed to eat.

• 19:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  Every scientist I know who's serious about their mind and body takes supplements.

• 19:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  I don't have a supplement company. I'm gonna be very clear about this, but they all have their regime for them. And I think we're seeing a tide change now where supplements are no longer being thought of as this like niche thing that only bodybuilders and like people who are selling snake oil are about. There is a lot of snake oil out there, but there are also some supplements that are powerful for the sorts of things that we're talking about, for sleep and all the others. We could talk about them if you like. But I think it's behaviors, nutrition, supplements. And then, there is a place for prescription drugs. There are people that are clinically depressed and suicidal and need help. And they need to talk to a board-certified M.D. and get ahold of. In some cases, the opinion of whether or not they should take these drugs. Doesn't mean they should take them forever, but you know, we tend to jump to drugs.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  And that's why I think a lot of those drugs, they won't change your behaviors. You still need to change your behaviors.

• 20:25Lewis Howes?

  That's the easy way out to start is taking the drugs. But what you should be doing is the behavioral nutrition supplements. If you do those three things first, you should start to feel better.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Sunlight in the morning, the things we've talked about.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Breathing, relax, yeah, all these things.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  I have a friend, he's an M D and he says, says it beautifully. He says, you know, better living through chemistry still requires better living. Right. There is no pill or substance or psychedelic that's going to completely rewire you. It's not even clear what that would look like. And then there's a fifth category that's starting to emerge now, which is brain machine interface. Things like devices that people put on and to adjust their brainwaves, enhance plasticity. There are great devices out there for what I would say, reading and measuring from the nervous system. Monitoring sleep, for instance, monitoring brainwaves. We're still in the infancy of good commercially available brain machine interface. But I think that will eventually show up. The, the other thing, cause you asked about tools each day.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  I have a daily practice of doing yoga nidra. For me, that's my form of meditation and sort of serotonin reset. The other one is gratitude. I know gratitude gets a lot of discussion nowadays, but I always want to point out that gratitude is, it's not complacency. People think it's navel gazing and it's, but it, it has been shown to increase levels of serotonin in the brain.

• 21:45Lewis Howes?

  It's a science, now it's, I did an interview with Dr. Laurie Santos. She's the Yale professor, science of happiness at Yale. I had her on and I was like, okay, what are the top scientific reasons for happiness right now? That are proven? And she was like gratitude is like one of the top three or four. It's like, okay, so this is not woo woo anymore. She's like, no, this is scientifically proven that gratitude makes you happier.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  I think gratitude is wonderful. It resets the system so that you can be in pursuit. I think gratitude sounds like complacency and people like, oh, I don't want to be a navel gazer. I'm just, then I'm not going to be content, then I'm, excuse me. Then people fear that they're not going to be in pursuit.

• 22:26Lewis Howes?

  They're like, I'm just happy with where I'm at.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  But serotonin resets dopamine, which puts you back in the fight. And allows you to fight longer and further. And I guess I'm doing this a lot today, but I've had the great, you know, privilege of doing some work with these communities. If you look at high performers in these very high risk, high consequence special operations communities, they have gratitude practices.

• 22:48Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 22:49Speaker 01

  They do, and they incorporate them. And so, you know, people think there's like some secret sauce or there's something, you know, and they are very unique individuals and very special individuals. But they, but they have those practices.

• 23:01Lewis Howes?

  They have the same tools that anyone can use.

• 23:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 23:04Lewis Howes?

  We all have these tools. You do yoga, nidra, you do gratitude practice throughout the day. What else do you do?

• 23:08Speaker 01

  So the first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I actually is a gratitude. No matter what pops in my head, I reorient to being grateful that I'm waking up. I mean, you know, it's, you know, I've had a number of close calls in life. I've lost people like everybody. I'm 45, so you know, seen a lot of babies born, seen a lot of people die. That's just the way it goes. But just I express some gratitude for just waking up.

• 23:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  And that puts me in forward motion. And then I can do things like make my bed, reward that, that I'm not doing something else that, you know, and start getting into things. And I tend to reward relationships in a big way. My dog's 10 years old. I raised him since he was a puppy. He's getting, he's a bulldog. He's probably getting to the end. I try and really just focus on the sheer pleasure of having a bulldog. They're such characters and him in particular, relationships of all kinds. Like if I spend time with people or just, I just try and think about mentors, people that got me where I, where I am. I do that all the time.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  And I'm pretty, as you probably imagine, I talk fast, I work a lot, I'm pretty intense, but I finish my days now not feeling ground out and depleted. Doesn't mean I'm grateful for every opportunity or everything that comes my way. I have to be conscious of it, but I think a deliberate practice that of relishing or enjoying what we have is so powerful. And not just going through the motions.

• 24:34Lewis Howes?

  If we're not enjoying it and we're just waiting for the end result, we're going to be unhappy.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Well, absolutely. And there's something called dopamine reward prediction error where people work, work, work, work, work, or they expect something to be great. And as you do that, you actually raise the level of dopamine that's required to make it feel good when you get there. This is why people. You know, achieve great things and kill themselves.

• 24:57Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy, right?

• 24:58Speaker 01

  You know, the failure to respect these neurochemical pathways and these neural pathways is actually, I mean, it's basically throwing away everything that we were given, in my opinion. And I don't want to give the impression that people have to follow these protocols because I'm talking about them. We were all given these. You know, people will sometimes ask me, they'll say, you know, is there an app or a product around this? I just say, look, Mother Nature has the patent for this, you know? Whatever people's beliefs, you know, this stuff was built into us for whatever reason. And we can use these different neurochemical pathways to organize our life in a way that really serves us and the people around us best. And the gratitude practice can be one second long. It can be 10 minutes if you

• 25:41Speaker 01

  want. People do love and kindness meditation. I've never done that. I've always had a hard time being in meditation for a long period of time. I'm not good at mental visualization.

• 25:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  So I tend to gear more towards behaviors.

• 25:54Lewis Howes?

  Well, you're a neuroscientist. You're not good at mental visualization.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I try, but I think we all differ in our ability to hold on to a mental imagery. And mine's kind of fleeting. So I tend to write things out. But yeah, gratitude practice, I get, try and get sun in my eyes. I mean, exercise, I love. I'm fortunate that I love exercise and training. I think that got into me young. For people that that's harder to do than, you know, you just build these things up through subjective reward.

• 26:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah. I want to go back to neuroplasticity at a later age in life. How much, like, let's say I want to, every year, I want to challenge myself to learn something that's harder, or maybe not, E comes easy to me, maybe it's Spanish this next couple of years, and then something else 10 years. The older I get, say eighty, ninety, a hundred, hopefully I get there. If I keep pushing my mind to be challenged in that way, that's uncomfortable. Will that actually help me to live longer or will it hurt me to living a shorter life?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  That's a great question.

• 27:04Lewis Howes?

  I hear people like who live in the blue zones around the world, right? Who they kind of have their normal routine, they have their family, they walk up a hill every day. They eat a certain way and they have good community relationships. But they're, I don't know if I've heard them say like they're constantly challenging their mind to expand.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I'm pretty confident saying that it's not going to shorten your life. Remember that the dopamine system, so dopamine and acetylcholine are the primary triggers for adult neuroplasticity. We know this because if you, there are experiments done by a guy named Mike Merzinek at UCSF. If you stimulate the areas of the brain that release dopamine and acetylcholine, you can rapidly induce plasticity like one trial learning, like Spanish today.

• 27:48Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Like fluent in Spanish today, which is kind of scary. This is actually the basis of companies that are thinking about inserting wires into the brain and stimulating.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  I could be fluent in Spanish today?

• 27:57Speaker 01

  In theory, if you stimulate enough acetylcholine and dopamine release while experiencing enough Spanish, you probably have to speak that Spanish, you probably have to read it.

• 28:07Lewis Howes?

  Wow, you could remember it and connect it.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's possible.

• 28:11Lewis Howes?

  It's like Matrix.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  It's possible.

• 28:13Lewis Howes?

  Like I know Kung Fu.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're not quite there yet, but it's possible. It's been done in, in other forms of learning and other studies.

• 28:19Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Lewis Howes?

  What's it called?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Well, if you release that, well, you'd have to actually have an electrode down in your head. I don't know that you want to drill a hole in your skull.

• 28:26Lewis Howes?

  You'd have to drill through a skull. Enough dopamine in your.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  He would, remember the dopamine comes from the neurons that are in there. So you'd be stimulating the dopamine neurons, the acetylcholine neurons. You'd be probably reading a Spanish script. There are, I will say there are.

• 28:38Lewis Howes?

  Shut up.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there are programs happening right now to accelerate language learning through implantable electrodes.

• 28:44Lewis Howes?

  No way, it's already happening?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  It's happening.

• 28:46Lewis Howes?

  Someone's done it before?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  It's happening now.

• 28:49Lewis Howes?

  They're testing it now?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  I don't think they're at one day for an entire perfluency, but they are definitely at massively accelerated language learning.

• 28:57Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have close friends that do this sort of thing for a living.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  You know someone who's done this?

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Who run the laboratories who do this kind of thing, absolutely.

• 29:05Lewis Howes?

  So what do they do? They put something in your head?

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Well, the goal, so we, we know that dopamine and acetylcholine. From experimental, already published results. If those are released, then in massive amounts, whatever you pair that release with, whatever sensory experience, massively rewires the brain according to that experience. So Merzinek has these beautiful studies where he showed that if you play a certain auditory tones and you stimulate these brain areas, the auditory cortex, the area of the brain that listens and hears and understands sounds, massively rewires according to what was played in that moment. But because these neurochemicals are like gates, they open the gate to plasticity. You normally engage them by focus, agitation, stress and strain, self-reward, et cetera.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Or going to, you know, and having a conversation in Spanish where you're like, wow, I'm doing it. I'm fluent. I'm doing it. That's gonna keep you. I get it. I get it, right. But you can imagine there are groups on this planet that are very interested in rapidly accelerated language learning that would be willing to put many millions or billions of dollars, probably not billions, toward programs to get massively accelerated language learning. By putting either implantable chips in the brain that will stimulate these brain areas, including memory areas, or stimulating acetylcholine or dopamine release. So people have already done this where they put a, they cut open their head and put a chip in their brain. These are neurosurgery patients who are already undergoing surgery for other reasons and have agreed to be part of the study. Really? Yeah, and there are animal studies doing this all the time. Shut up. Absolutely.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And are there any results of this? Well, they're not, the groups that are doing these sorts of things are not going to reveal the results just yet. So you can imagine that these are related to, you know, these are government military type contracts. It makes sense, right? You'd want to do this. Yeah, absolutely. And it's definitely happening overseas, too. I mean, massively accelerated learning is kind of the holy grail of neuroscience, right? Right. How can we learn anything faster? Right. Because time is the thing that we're all trying to maximize. Right. And, you know, and you could imagine that because the human brain can, in development, can be biased toward becoming exceptional at math or exceptional at athletics. I mean, you could build brains that are, you could bias brains to be very, very good,

• 31:20Speaker 01

  even exceptional at the level of surpassing all previous behavior. By triggering these sorts of plasticity events. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't run out and put the chip in your head immediately. I mean, this stuff has to be worked out. But there certainly there's a whole community that's spinning up right now around nootropics, smart drugs. Right. It's not a it's not a word or an area that I'm really a big fan of because like, what are you talking about creativity, task implementation? Focus. Focus like the word smart drugs is terrible and nootropics is even worse because it's not pointed enough. It's not it doesn't it doesn't illustrate exactly what the end goal is. It's sort of a throwaway catch all kind of like smart drug. Like, what is smart? Right. So, but there are, you know, for instance, I know a Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist

• 32:04Speaker 01

  who chews immense amounts of Nicorette each day. He's in his 70s because it increases his focus. He quit smoking, which stimulates nicotine and those stimulate acetylcholine. So Nicorette is a nicotinic stimulant and nicotine is a citocholine receptor. So his goal is to continue to learn in his old age by stimulating the nicotine pathway. Really? So, yeah, he chews the nonstop nicotine. Now, I'm not recommending people chew Nicorette. I want to be clear, I'm not a doctor. I don't prescribe anything. I'm professors, I'm professing things. But the the there are things like choline, alpha GPC, that will stimulate a citocholine release and will allow you, in theory, to learn quicker and better in a bout of learning. To give you to give you more focus. Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Under adversity. They'll so they will trigger the plasticity event to be, you know, it's like driving, like carving that knife in deeper. But then you need a corresponding increase in the amount of rest in order to make sure that those pathways get better. Think about it like going to the gym. I actually have seen these guys in the gym in LA where they've got electrodes on the muscles. Yeah. So they're maximally recruiting motor units. But then you need that much more recovery because it's unusual to get those high threshold motor units. So you need to rest for two days, you can't go back to the gym tomorrow. Right. And a lot of these guys are also drug assisted to the point where you can almost smell it from across the room. Right. But that's another story. Yeah. But but that whole area is geared around maximum stimulus, maximum recovery, maximum

• 33:34Speaker 01

  stimulus, maximum recovery. So. Drugs, supplements can accelerate these processes. A fun one from sports, because it should have been the Olympics this year. But, you know, the sprinters have their own drug community. It's not just the anabolic. They, those sprints are won by who gets out the blocks fastest. That's reaction time. And there's a, there's lore, I'm not involved in this, but there's lore of sprinters taking drugs to accelerate nerve transmission by focusing on the

• 34:01Lewis Howes?

  The gun.

• 34:01Speaker 01

  On the gun. It's all about hearing the gun and getting out the blocks. So they take drugs to stimulate dopamine and acetylcholine. Because that puts you into faster reaction, more focused, faster reaction.

• 34:11Lewis Howes?

  So is that activating the adrenaline receptor, adrenal receptors? So you react quicker?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  It's actually happening at the neural level. And it's, it's allowing them to hear the gun as it's going off.

• 34:21Lewis Howes?

  And not hear it after the fact and react.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Because you can lose by being the last person out the blocks. Most of those drugs are illegal, but there's a whole, there's a whole world of drugs in sports that are geared around the mental side and focus and the ability to get into sleep. I mean, you can bet, given now the, the understanding that sleep is so fundamentally important for performance, people are hacking sleep like crazy. Chili blankets, magnesium, you know, theanine, certain things that I think do work. You know, people are wearing whoops and aura rings. And it's all about sleep now, right? It's all about sleep because it's so powerful. And there are

• 34:56Lewis Howes?

  Sleep is the ultimate drug.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  And people are now developing drugs that will allow people to fall asleep and sleep better, function better on less sleep, optimize the amount of slow wave sleep time. Anyway, it's a whole, whole world. I'm fascinated by it because it's the extreme of the things that we're talking about. But for the typical person, behaviors are the way to go.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  Behaviors.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  And nutrition is not an area of my expertise, but incidentally,

• 35:18Lewis Howes?

  The body is connected to the mind.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  The body is connected to the mind.

• 35:21Lewis Howes?

  And if the body doesn't have good gut health and good nutrients, then it's going to be affecting the way you think and the way you feel and the way you act.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 35:29Lewis Howes?

  It's going to be harder and harder if you don't have energy.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:31Lewis Howes?

  And food and nutrition gives you proper energy.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:34Lewis Howes?

  Or it takes the energy away from you.

• 35:36Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:36Lewis Howes?

  It depletes you from energy. So, so the older we get, it's harder to expand our neuroplasticity. But that's why we should be learning new, challenging things every year is what I'm hearing you say, to help us.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And whether or not it extends the lifespan, I don't know. But I do know this. So the dopamine pathway is intimately tied to the reproductive hormone pathway. So testosterone and dopamine have a very close relationship.

• 36:03Speaker 01

  So much so that they're released and they're triggering or their releases from very neighboring areas in the brain. Because if you think about it, it's the pursuit molecule, right? Like testosterone's main effect is to make stress and effort feel good. That's what it does. It suppresses that kind of grinding response like it's painful and increases recovery. In women, which are more estrogen dominant than testosterone dominant, and both men and women both have testosterone and estrogen, of course, estrogen is sort of similar to testosterone in that it's coupled to dopamine. A lot of people think the opposite of testosterone is estrogen. It's not. It's a molecule called prolactin. Prolactin is what's secreted after orgasm.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  It's what's secreted after a big win and there's that crash. It's designed to keep organisms in the place they are so that there's pair bonding, there's recovery and shift them into that serotonin regime. So the reason I mention this is that being in pursuit of goals and trying to trigger neuroplasticity isn't just about changing your brain. It's closely linked to the reproductive hormones, testosterone in men and estrogen in women, meaning it's linked to the will to live. The will to pursue, and it's not just about sex. I know as soon as we talk about testosterone and estrogen, people start, people think about mating behavior. It's that, but there's a lot more. It's the will to live.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  So when dopamine is reduced, the will to live is reduced. When serotonin is too high and dopamine is too low, people feel like they have everything they need. Think chronic pot smokers, no beef against the pot smokers, but they don't tend to be the most ambitious people. Sometimes they are, but they tend to make people pretty placid. Think, you know, any high levels of antidepressants that make you feel like you have enough of everything you need, they make people kind of, there's a passivity there. So that's why it's important to keep these things in the right range. So the will to live is tied to the dopamine system and to the reproductive system. So what are we doing, what are we doing when we don't have a goal in our life? What happens to us? We are essentially on idle. It doesn't mean that we don't have the will to live.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  It means that we are idling and the brain and body, because they are so intimately related with one another and affect one another, they see when we're in pursuit of a goal. And That sends every organ in the body the message to keep going. That, you know, the will to live is a kind of a deeper abstract concept, but it's a real thing. And so people that are low in estrogen and typically in women or in men, people that are low in testosterone or people are or low in dopamine. So it's ultimately dopamine, which is motivation and drive and pursuit. You don't want too high, but you definitely don't want it too low.

• 38:49Lewis Howes?

  And we need, in order to increase our dopamine, we do some of these tools.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  Right. You want to be in pursuit of something. You want friction, but you also want to be able to reward the effort process, reward that friction process. Now, keep in mind, children which have the ultimate will to live, you know, in positive environments, children are wonderful because they're all about the will to explore and live and learn. That it's just their, their default is to explore, live and learn.

• 39:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  And children are flooded with dopamine. You show them a baby something new and it's like, because it's the mother nature has wired them to use that process to incorporate new ideas and new learnings.

• 39:27Lewis Howes?

  That's how they can learn.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  That's how they learn.

• 39:28Lewis Howes?

  The more dopamine they have, they can learn, they connect ideas and they can grow.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  They, and they play. I mean, you tell kids a story, a ridiculous story, and they'll go with you on that. As we become set in our ways, it's kind of interesting, the brain over time, the space between the neurons tends to fill in with this stuff called extracellular matrix. It's like pouring concrete between the neurons. It makes it much harder for them to rearrange and move around. But a lot of beautiful studies, experimental studies have shown that that extracellular matrix, if it can be reduced, the neurons can move around and form new connections. And the way to do that is by triggering some strong pursuit goal. The more important the goal is, the more, the faster the plasticity is going to happen.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  How does someone like you, I don't want to stereotype a scientist and a professor, but how does someone like you have fun? When most scientists are more like lab rats that are just like focused on the research and the work and getting it done, how do you incorporate play and fun in your life?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Well, I love doing science because to me being a brain explorer is like the coolest thing. I mean, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be an astronaut and then I didn't pursue that path. And but for me, the next best thing is to be a brain explorer and you know, dig around in the brain and try and understand the brain and um but I enjoy, let's see, I I mean, I'm a little bit of a sicko in the sense that I love music, I love food, I love to eat, I love to train, I love friendship.

• 40:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  I I'm at this point now, and I wasn't always like this. I've definitely experienced depression. I've been there. I I'm at the point now where maybe it's the gratitude practice. Maybe it's the fact that I've been trying to get enough sleep and I sometimes do. But I'm I just feel so happy to be in relation to all these opportunities. And the fact that people care about neuroscience and they want to learn and that there's a place for me in this world to teach it, you know, it's just kind of like an endless source of joy. I love movies, music, friendship, training, food.

• 41:20Lewis Howes?

  Your dog.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  My dog.

• 41:21Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Goodness, art, I you know, I I think I've found enough things in the world that I love that um you know, I feel like I have like five time, five lifetimes worth of things to to pursue.

• 41:36Lewis Howes?

  What about fears? Do you have a lot of fears? And how much does fear play into um the body and mind connection?

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Well, the fear is huge in the body mind connection because it can shut us down. I mean, fear can really take us to the point of, you know, from a place of feeling really great to just they can like crump us all at once. And I mean, the things that um well, I have several fears. One is, you know, I had this weird um history in science where my undergraduate advisor, my graduate advisor, my postdoc advisor are all dead. They all died young. So it was like it was suicide, cancer, cancer. It was really rough because I was close with all of them. And so I have one major fear, which is dying without getting the information that I believe should be out in the world, out into the world. Because I'm struck by this all the time, you know, when people die, there's no download from their brain.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  There's no fossil record of their thoughts unless they write, they speak, they put things out into the world. For some people, it's art. For other people, it's their family, whatever it is. But. One fear is that, you know, I'll get hit by a bus or something, or have a heart attack before I'm able to express, you know, sort of put out my expression. That's one. And then the other is, you know, these days I have a lot of irons in the fire doing public education, running my lab. My lab's actually two labs. I guess a big fear of mine is that, you know, in trying to take on so many things that the quality will drop. And so as a consequence, I've had to really put boxes around my life so that I can really dig in. And I'm blessed to have amazing people in my lab.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I've just, my lab operations manager, I would die without him. My, you know, my graduate students and post-docs, you know, they're phenomenal. And so I'm blessed to have great people around me. But yeah, I would say that's one of the big fears is that, you know, that I can't do it all. And of course I can't. But, but I have not tried to learn Spanish fluently.

• 43:32Lewis Howes?

  Do you want to, or no?

• 43:33Speaker 01

  I do. Actually, a few years ago, I promised on social media I was gonna learn Spanish as proof of principle for neuroplasticity. And then I would deliver some of the tutorials in Spanish, because there's huge parts of the world that I think are curious about neuroscience, they don't have access to them. And I abandoned mission temporarily.

• 43:51Lewis Howes?

  I'll tell you what, man, I've been saying this for 20 years, I want to learn Spanish. And for whatever reason, I have a Spanish girlfriend now from Mexico, which gives me more of a motivation, which I know you talked about needing some greater motivation.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  It'll accelerate the process.

• 44:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, if you have like a reason why, as opposed to just, I want to do this because you're gonna quit probably, unless there's a bigger reason, a bigger reward at the end. And I've been saying this since, you know, high school. I took Spanish in high school, college. I've traveled all over Latin America, Spain, everything. I'm a passionate salsa dancer. For 15 years, been dancing extreme amounts of salsa.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Awesome. Guys like you have bumped me out a number of times. Because when salsa picks up, there's salsa dancing, I'm like, I'm like, I'm over the door, like periphery the room.

• 44:38Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And I, that was another thing that I was committed to learning, because it was so challenging to learn, that I was like, I need to go all in. I need to create like reward loops for myself, all this stuff, because it was so embarrassing and humiliating to get started in something. In a completely uncomfortable setting.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  But now you're very skilled at it.

• 44:57Lewis Howes?

  Now I can go anywhere in the world, any salsa club and find the best dancer and dance with them in a moment without speaking to them. And feel a hundred percent.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  That's admirable.

• 45:05Lewis Howes?

  It's the greatest feeling and I want that in every other area of my life. I want it in Spanish. Because I want this message to reach a hundred million people a week and I know the Latin community could use this.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so your incentive was the same, like information transfer.

• 45:18Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. And I'm also like, okay, you can translate things. You could have a translator with you. You could have subtitles.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  But they, but my dad's from a Latin country. He's from Argentina and, and um, when people make the effort.

• 45:30Lewis Howes?

  They respect it.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's such a deep sign of respect to really go over to somebody else's side. And deliver it in a form that's really designed for them.

• 45:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, and it's almost like you have empathy for someone else when you try to learn something that they know. And that's hard for you to learn. So I said to myself, okay, I've tried to do this many times the last 20 years and I've always failed. And I was like, I need to pay for it. I need to do it every week. I need to have a one-on-one teacher because I've tried apps. I've tried this stuff. All these things didn't work. And I need to stop thinking about becoming fluent.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:05Lewis Howes?

  I need to start appreciating the process of every day doing it. And after six months, I'll be able to see and look back like, okay, I actually know some stuff. And then after a year or two, I'll know a little more and then hopefully one day I'm just fluent.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  And attach reward to the intention and the effort process.

• 46:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:23Speaker 01

  I mean, what I heard you say was that it, at a very core level, you really want to meet people where they're at so that they can derive more from the message.

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 46:31Speaker 01

  And so if you can build, so as an example of the, the subjective reward process, the more that you can tap into that intention, this is why I think intentions and being able to be pulled by some bigger, greater, greater mission is, is the ultimate thing because then. The discomfort we feel is offset by this reward that you can always look to.

• 46:51Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  It's like it's always there. It's like having that magic drug on the shelf that you can just take.

• 46:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Because it's internal, it's always with you, which is far more powerful than needing it from some external source.

• 47:02Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, exactly. So I'm excited.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  I'm excited for the Spanish speaking people out there. They're gonna hear it from you. So not to hold your feet to the fire.

• 47:10Lewis Howes?

  No, but I feel like it's just, I gotta enjoy the process and I gotta enjoy like the challenges of day to day. And I'm starting to make it fun now. I'm starting to, when I'm like really stressed, because I'll get tired, but I'm just like, I have no clue what this means. And all I want to do is like go watch sports or go work out.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  But the confusion is the trigger.

• 47:27Lewis Howes?

  That's what I'm learning from you.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  It's saying, it's like raising a flag and it's saying, there's something special about this mental track that we need to return to later and it's flagging it.

• 47:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  And so when you sleep or you're doing something else.

• 47:40Lewis Howes?

  You'll reconnect the dots, right?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's.

• 47:42Lewis Howes?

  So that's what I'm doing. When I'm getting frustrated and challenged, now I'm just like, I just start having fun. I'm just like, okay, let's, I'm just like being playful in the moment and it brings me with more energy as opposed to like this lazy tired feeling. I'm like excited. I'm like, okay, I don't know this, but I'm gonna figure it out one day.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  So good.

• 47:58Lewis Howes?

  And, and so it's just like I'm committing to the process and making the process the prize, not the end result the prize.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Right. And also maybe someday you'll run for office and then you can, you know, you can reach more people with a specific message.

• 48:11Lewis Howes?

  It's like, what, 60 million Spanish speaking people in America, 40 million or something like that. There's a lot of people. So who knows? Anyways, my team's telling me I need to wrap this up because I want to go into talking a lot about fear and how to overcome fear and eliminating stress and all these different things. But I'll have to get you back on and talk about these things. So hopefully you'll come back on.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  I'd be, I'd be happy to come back anytime you guys invite me.

• 48:34Lewis Howes?

  We'll do more and talk about fear and how to overcome fear and all these different things. But this has been fascinating and I want to ask you a couple of final questions, Andrew. One is, Called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth and you've you've actually accomplished all of your you've gotten all your work out there in the world that you wanted to create.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:54Lewis Howes?

  Your books, your lab results, all the research you got to do 99% of it, right?

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:59Lewis Howes?

  You're always gonna wanna do more, but you got to do as much as you could.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 49:02Lewis Howes?

  You have books out there, lectures, everything is out in the world that you wanted to do. But it's your last day and you've got a for whatever reason, you've got to take all of your work with you. So this podcast is gone, your books, your results, everything. So it's all gone with you to the next place, wherever you go. But you got a pen and a piece of paper and you get to write down three things you know to be true about your entire life and the lessons you've learned that you would share with the world. This is all we have to remember you by or your lessons. I call it the three truths.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 49:30Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are your three truths?

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Okay, well, the first one I'm gonna poach from the oracle, which is know thyself. I do believe that through whatever exploration, whether or not it's therapy, meditation, religious, exercise, all of the above, I think people should explore what they're, you know, sort of how they're showing up in the world.

• 49:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  And then, obviously, based on today's discussion, I believe that we can make changes around that. But know thyself. Wish I had said it, but someone beat me to the punch. The second one is, it's rather Freudian, but I do think there's a core set of operations about the way we work that are important. You can imagine three boxes, it's like a three box diagram. And in the first one, it would say wish, and there's an arrow next to it, it would say anxiety, and then there'd be an arrow, and then the last one would say defense. Typically, we have a wish, it creates some anxiety in us, and then we get into some reflexive defensive behavior. For some people, that's addiction, for some people, that's, you know, rabid ambition

• 50:41Speaker 01

  to the point of neglecting things, whatever the defense is. And I think our job is to intervene between anxiety and defense, or at least come up with defenses that serve humanity, so that we're giving as opposed to destroying.

• 50:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  But I do think that wish, anxiety, defense is a big one. And then goodness, and then for the last one, a couple of days ago, I might not have said this, but I had an experience that leads me to say, I think, you know, have fun.

• 51:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Because it's the ultimate reset. It's not the only thing you want to do, but it's really tragic when people are so hard driving that they can't derive pleasure. And as we talked about today, the pleasure process is part of the renewal process, is part of the the ability to be in greater pursuit.

• 51:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  You know, and I think that when we're having fun, you know, provided it's not at somebody else's expense, I think that it has a regenerative quality to it and that we can, um, I think that's the best experience of life.

• 51:43Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to learn and grow without having fun is what I've heard, hearing you say.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually stole this. I feel bad because I stole it. I had the great pleasure of knowing, you know, Laird Hamilton, the great Laird Hamilton, and we'd done some training and we were talking about it and I was, we were leaving their house and he said, um, what Laird said, he said, you know, remember, I'm going to get this wrong, Laird, so sorry, but he said something like, remember in fear of death, have fun.

• 52:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  And he was not saying go and do stupid things that put you in risk. What he was saying was, you know, this fear of death is something we all live with and we all struggle with. So we have to remember to have fun.

• 52:21Lewis Howes?

  That's it, man.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  It was something like that. I think I botched it, but I was saying, you know, you know, Laird's done some incredible things in his life. He's an incredible human being and family man and husband and father, all this stuff and friend. And so I was like, you know, I could afford to have more fun. So that's what I'm telling myself these days.

• 52:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, trying. Trying. The scientist's got to have fun too, you know?

• 52:39Speaker 01

  I'm trying.

• 52:40Lewis Howes?

  Where can we follow you on, on social media and how can we support you in this moment? You got a book coming out in the future.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  The future. I know I haven't gotten around to actually writing the whole thing. I teach neuroscience and do regular neuroscience posts on Instagram.

• 52:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, they're fascinating, by the way. What's your, what's your handle there?

• 52:56Speaker 01

  It's Huberman Lab. So H U B E R M A N L A B.

• 52:59Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  And right now I'm doing a hundred days of neuroscience in the 15 second reels format.

• 53:05Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, great.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Which is a real challenge to me. But I do some longer posts. We talk about everything from stress, fear, dopamine, learning. We touch on some stuff related to like autism, Alzheimer's, things like that. It's not medical advice, but I talk about the research. I invite researchers on to talk about their work. And it's a lot of fun and I love the questions there so people can send me questions.

• 53:24Lewis Howes?

  Very cool. So follow you on Instagram, Twitter as well, Huberman Lab and you reply to people there.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  I do, yeah, mainly Instagram. I do have a Twitter account, but mainly Instagram.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool. Awesome. This is fascinating, man. I can't wait to have you back on in the future and I want to acknowledge you, Andrew, for the incredible gift that you have to educate us about understanding thoughts, feelings, emotions, all this stuff. I think it's so confusing, especially in 2020, on how to improve our lives when there's so much destruction and distraction and noise and stress and anxiety like we talked about. So for you to come and bring a scientific, practical, and then make it practical as well, how we can apply this in our life, it's really empowering to so many people. So I acknowledge you for the gift you are, man, for constantly showing up. This is really beautiful.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for having me on. It's been a real pleasure. I was a fan long before you invited me on, so for me, it's especially gratifying.

• 54:18Lewis Howes?

  We'll have you back on a bunch, man. I'm excited. And my final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 54:24Speaker 01

  The human species was given this tremendous gift of neuroplasticity, the ability to change ourselves and be better in deliberate ways. And my definition of greatness is anyone that's making that effort, even in a tiny way, just to take this incredible machinery that we were given, this nervous system, and to leverage it toward being better, feeling better and showing up better for other people. That's, I really believe that's why we're here.

• 54:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Thank you very much, brother. Appreciate it, man. Thank you so, so much for listening to this episode. Hopefully you listened to both parts of this interview with Andrew Huberman. If you enjoyed this, please share this with a friend. Your ability to share this message can impact and have a ripple effect on someone's life that you care about. So text it to a friend you love, text it to your intimate partner, text it to a family member, text it to a work colleague, or share it to your entire social network on all the social media platforms, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, et cetera. And please click that subscribe button right now over on School of Greatness on Apple Podcast.

• 55:31Lewis Howes?

  And make sure to leave us a rating and review if you enjoyed this episode. And if you want to be inspired every single week, then make sure to text me right now the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960. And I want to leave you with this quote from the great Brian Tracy, who said, "Set peace of mind as your highest goal and organize your life around it." I hope this was powerful, great reminders, and you've got some great tools for your life to continue to organize it for peace for yourself. If no one's told you lately, you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.