Neuroscientist Reveals How Your Mind Blocks Love w/ Caroline Leaf EP 1481

The Summit of Greatness is back! Buy your tickets today – summitofgreatness.com – Born in South Africa, Dr. Caroline Leaf is the bestselling author of such books as Switch on Your Brain, Think Learn Succeed, and Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. Since the 1980s, she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input. During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in South Africa and the USA, she developed her theory Geodesic Information Processing theory of how we think, build memory, and learn into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression. In this episode you will learn,How our brains are wired for love and its impact on attracting a healthy romantic partner. The influence of childhood trauma versus a solid foundation in shaping our ability to find love. Gender differences in how the male and female brains are wired for love. Exploring whether our current wiring for love is different from our innate nature. Strategies for healing ourselves before entering a relationship. For more information go to www.lewishowes.com/1481For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More relationship building advice from some of our favorite relationship experts:Esther Perel: https://link.chtbl.com/1291-podFaith Jenkins: https://link.chtbl.com/1221-podMatthew Hussey: lewishowes.com/944 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.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection. I've got an invitation for you. Join me at this year's Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness. This is the one time a year that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend. People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Josprey Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Sanchero, and many more. You'll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.

• 0:44Lewis Howes?

  So if you're ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com/summit2023. Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I'll see you there.

• 1:01Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Everything that we do that is impacting us negatively is coming from something we've experienced, everything. So it's essential that we live lifestyles of mind management so that we can observe ourselves. So if I, for example, have trained myself to do this, if I start noticing a certain pattern in my behaviors and I notice that there's maybe some jealousy emerging or some envy, I'm very quick to observe it now and I'm not saying I'm a saint at all. But from it, I'm just saying I've trained myself and I'm proud that I've trained myself and I'm saying it because you can do this.

• 1:36Lewis Howes?

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

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

  I'm excited about having you here because I feel like people are struggling in relationships right now. There's a lot of confusion and I feel like a lot of it has to do with the way we think and how our minds and our brains are wired around love. So I'm curious, can you start us off by talking about why and how we are wired for love as human beings? And why it is so challenging for so many people to find and attract healthy love?

• 2:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, it's such an excellent question and such an important question and one that I've actually written about quite often. And there's actually a Nobel winning scientist who talks about the fact that we're wired for love. And so it's a good term, it's a really great way of explaining things. So in a nutshell, I'm a psycho neurobiologist, as you know, so look at mind, brain, body connection. So what we, what myself and other scientists have found is that your brain and body are basically wired for love and your mind. So because they're three separate things. So that means that every single cell, every single organ, every single system is wired for life, which means survival, which means that we are geared towards be loving each other, connecting with each other, supporting each other, helping each

• 3:12Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  other. You know, we are really made to make love and not war. You know, and that's really what to how we function. But we, free will and choices in life happens and that can mess with that. And an interesting kind of way of understanding this also is if something bad happens, like politics or whatever, we're drawn to that, not because we have bad wiring in us or that we have a natural sort of evil wiring, which is what often people talk about, that we have this sort of dark side. It's we are daunted because of being wired for love. So if something is toxic in whatever form, we're drawn to that to fix it.

• 3:51Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 3:51Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It fascinates us because and it grabs us because it's throwing love off balance.

• 3:56Lewis Howes?

  So if, okay, so let me break this down. So if we see someone that maybe has toxic tendencies or behaviors or thoughts or energy, maybe not all the time, but we see like something a part of them is broken, right?

• 4:10Lewis Howes?

  Does that mean we're broken also and we're trying to fix them? And us, or we are not broken, but we're trying to fix someone else?

• 4:18Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  We're drawn, not so much trying to fix each other, we're drawn to try and support return to balance. And so it could be that we are very drawn because it reflects our own brokenness and we can recognize the similarities. It could be for a multitude of reasons. There's going to be so many reasons why someone's broken. It could just be that you just love that person so much and you see them broken and it just touches you, so many reasons.

• 4:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 4:43Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  But we're drawn to try and restore the balance.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 4:46Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And you know, what's interesting is like if you take a political kind of situation where people are drawn or conspiracy theories, or the things that are happening in our country at the moment, where there's so much divide and so much hate as opposed to love. And while people are so fascinated with that negative news and that kind of thing, very often it's pitched as because you've got this dark side, as I mentioned, but we're not, people are caught up in that because it's so, and it's sort of like this is so not normal. Now, they don't know that sort of consciously people are talking about it like that, but that is part of our wiring. So essentially when people get sucked in and then they get down the rabbit hole of the negative toxicity and really get caught up. What happens is that your brain will merge with your environment. So, but your brain is driven by your mind. So where your mind drives your brain,

• 5:30Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  your brain and you, where you keep the focus, that's what your brain will merge with. So where people stay in and become more and more and more toxic is because their mind, they haven't managed their mind. So the mind is now kind of just messy minds, just kind of got into this pathway. And then they've wired that functioning, that way of thinking into the brain and it's counter to our natural functioning. So Lewis, literally that wires in a toxic sort into the brain. And I know your audience have seen these trees when I did spoke at your conference or whatever. So that is in your brain and that toxic event or whatever that you're getting sucked into.

• 6:04Lewis Howes?

  Can you explain it? What's in the brain?

• 6:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Absolutely. So. This does whatever we tell it to do. The brain can't do anything on its own. When you're dead, your brain just disintegrates. So the thing that's making the brain work is your mind. So your mind is your sentience, your aliveness, your ability to have this conversation, to appreciate a rainbow, to love Martha, to do all the different things that we do as a human. That's what our mind is. And it's actually a biofield that's in and around us. It makes us work, it makes your heart pump, it makes you see the meaning of a sunset, the meaning behind a painting. It's all of those things. So to the basic biology of making your brain work, the energy waves and the chemicals and your heart pump, to us experiencing our humanity.

• 6:48Lewis Howes?

  To experiencing, feeling.

• 6:50Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And love and relation.

• 6:51Lewis Howes?

  These things, the mind allows us to perceive our environment.

• 6:55Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly, and experience it. The experience of a conversation and enjoying each other, the conversation, all of that. No mind, you and I couldn't do this, we'd be dead and we'd have a disintegrating brain. So the brain's not doing any of that. So all of, because the nature of the brain, every, every part of the brain, right, and the body, right down to the level of, if you go with the structures, down to the cells, down to inside the cells, everything's geared for survival. Everything's geared for, wired for love. So survival and wired for love are basically in the same pathway. So if you hate each other, it doesn't lead to survival. Hated leads to death. And dissension leads to death in, in stages and breakdown and disease and all that kind of stuff.

• 7:35Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So if, and in terms of ourselves, if people are get caught up in hate, hating each other, envy, jealousy, dissension, that each of those experiences is becoming a physical thing in the brain. So let's say that you are watching something on TV that's working you up and it's very negative. And you get into conversations, you start fighting with family members and, you know, like the vaccine of the COVID, for example, broke up family members. That experience is, your mind is listening to all this stuff, processing you with your mind, and it lands up becoming a physical structural change in your brain.

• 8:07Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 8:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So that energy goes into your brain, your brain responds electromagnetically, electrochemically and genetically. And it's happening very fast. It's like waves of energy that you're putting in your brain and they, like a wave, build, collapse, build, collapse. Every time it collapses, you make proteins and those proteins hold that information as a vibration. And those proteins build together to grow these things.

• 8:29Lewis Howes?

  And what are these things?

• 8:30Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Thoughts.

• 8:31Lewis Howes?

  So if we- This is the mind, this is thought?

• 8:33Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  This is, this is what the mind looks like in the brain.

• 8:36Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh, gotcha.

• 8:37Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Does that make sense? So this is, so every experience that we have with our mind, which is life, is built into these thought trees into the brain.

• 8:44Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 8:45Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And they are, they have this, the structure where there's a source, a root system, and then there's a processing, how we uniquely process that experience, and then there's our interpretation of that experience as a unique human being.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  How we create meaning around it, our interpretation of meaning, yes.

• 8:59Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That's what this is, exactly. So those are in the brain, good and the bad, hopefully more of these. Now we're wired for these, this brings health to the brain.

• 9:07Lewis Howes?

  This is the bad thoughts?

• 9:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That's the toxic thought. And they're very much alive, and that's the healthy thought.

• 9:10Lewis Howes?

  And this thought, okay.

• 9:11Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And that's very much what they look like. They look like these branch things and the roots, the source. And so essentially, we, this is what we're wired for. This is wired for love and applies into our relationships and-

• 9:21Lewis Howes?

  Garden, that's what we want. We want a forest, garden.

• 9:25Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes.

• 9:26Lewis Howes?

  Rainforest, all those things.

• 9:27Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly. And at the core of who we are, this wired for love nature that we see as these healthy trees in the brain, healthy functioning of all the cells and the organs and so on of the body, and also in the actual cells of the body, right down into the depths of the cells, health and love and survival kind of all go together.

• 9:45Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 9:45Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So as soon as something happens, like a toxic relationship or a toxic focus of whatever, whatever it may be, is we build these instead of these.

• 9:54Lewis Howes?

  We build negative thoughts, toxic thoughts, over healthy thoughts.

• 9:57Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly. And the thought, you can see, there's lots of branches and roots. So that thought is made of a lot of memories, memories of the data. So this is the whole conversation or the, the, you know, the details is the data. So that's, and so, and the similar data clusters together to form thoughts. So if you think of it, the data are the memories. So memories are the details of the thoughts. So thoughts are made of root memories and interpretation memories. Does that make sense? Okay, so these then, this is what the brain's designed for. So if these go into the brain, the immune system of the brain says, hey, that's pathogen. That's like a pathogen, that's like the COVID virus.

• 10:33Lewis Howes?

  That's toxic, yeah.

• 10:34Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's toxic. So it sends out immune factors in exactly the same ways if it was a COVID virus in your body or whatever, in any kind of virus or bacteria or something that's threatening your survival. Your immune system kicks in, we all understand that, and sends out immune factors. It creates inflammation around that area.

• 10:52Lewis Howes?

  In the brain.

• 10:52Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  In the brain and the body, depending on where it's. So if first, if it's toxic thought, first in the brain. So let me, good question. Let's reverse this. Here's the toxic experience lands up in the brain as this. In the mind, it's a field, but it's not a nice sign wave. It's a crazy, chaotic energy wave. And in the body, it's a change inside the actual structure of the cell in an area called a microtubule. And the microtubules inside the cell, and those microtubules are made of proteins, and those proteins hold the vibrations of information.

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  They hold the memory.

• 11:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  They hold the memory.

• 11:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So you build the main memory in your brain, and that works very closely with your mind. And then as it builds in your brain, your brain sends instruction and it builds in all other thirty seven, two hundred trillion cells or have them in we have in your body. So it's a slightly different type of memory, but it builds into, um, the data is built into every cell of our body. That's why we have body memory. Okay, that's why we can, you know, we can feel the pain and not in just in our mind, but in our body. We, and when we say I feel the pain in my mind, you are. Those waves will give you a headache. Those, the actual physical damage in your brain that this is causing, you, you feel it.

• 12:03Lewis Howes?

  So what I'm hearing you say is the mind is an energy field.

• 12:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, we call it a biofield.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  A biofield. And it's, how far does it expand from the body?

• 12:13Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Not sure, but.

• 12:15Lewis Howes?

  Like an arm's length, maybe, or a few feet?

• 12:17Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I think in, at this stage in science, we're not sure, but it's probably kind of our arms' length.

• 12:22Lewis Howes?

  Yes. And so it's a bio, a biofield, an energy field. The mind is there.

• 12:27Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, and it's embodied. It goes around and through.

• 12:30Lewis Howes?

  Around and through you.

• 12:31Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes.

• 12:32Lewis Howes?

  And when you, when we experience something, we see an event. Someone says something to us, we interpret it. It could be a bad thing, but we can interpret it good and it could have a positive effect. Or it could be a bad thing and we really hold on to this negative thought, right?

• 12:48Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  We're gonna be one of the two.

• 12:48Lewis Howes?

  We build one of these kind of negative thought trees. When that happens. Then it's not going to have a frequency in this biofield that is calm and peaceful. This harmonious frequency, it's going to be a chaotic frequency.

• 13:01Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's going to be chaotic.

• 13:02Lewis Howes?

  And when we have a chaotic frequency in the mind or biofield, it will also penetrate the physical field.

• 13:09Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly.

• 13:10Lewis Howes?

  And it'll cause stress, it'll cause overwhelm, it'll cause fear, scarcity.

• 13:15Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly.

• 13:15Lewis Howes?

  Lack, uh, defensiveness, all these different things.

• 13:18Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  All these different things.

• 13:19Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 13:20Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That's brilliant. You, you did that brilliantly. And you can, no, that was brilliant. Thank you. You made it simpler than what I did. It was really good. So that also, um, what we, what this research, I mean, there's mind blowing research out there, but there's research, uh, that, that's been done that shows that, um, these, these thought trees, in, if you go inside, these are the dendrites, this is a neuron, if you go inside, that's where you find these, what we call these microtubules that are made of these proteins that actually store the, the little memories, the vibration, the data. So it's basically inside, not the outside of the neuron, you go inside, you find these special proteins that roll up, they're like beads and they roll up into these like sheets. And the, inside there, you've got this vibration, which is like an aromatic ring. And that's what is, what's the memory?

• 14:04Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And this can constantly change. They build and rebuild, uh, they do this building and rebuilding in the brain. In the body, they're more like a railway track. So they're kind of fixed and then they go through a different process of change. I know I'm going into detail, but they found resonance that is similar to music. That these vibrations in the microtubules produce resonance like a harmonious resonance or non-harmonious resonance. So this would be a harmonious resonance, unique to the individual, and this would be a non-harmonious resonance. And what they've even found, and this is research that's like still pretty new, is that it kind of lines up with the universe in terms of planetary movement of stars. And I mean, they are drawing lines through.

• 14:43Lewis Howes?

  The frequencies, yeah.

• 14:44Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  There's, Sir Roger Penrose, for example, is a mathematician who's won the Nobel Prizes. And I mean, he's a phenomenal, he's actually been doing, showing how this kind of works.

• 14:53Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 14:54Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And so whatever. So that's another whole.

• 14:55Lewis Howes?

  So if we are, if we have a lot of the toxic thoughts stored in our, our minds, our memories and our selves.

• 15:03Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes.

• 15:04Lewis Howes?

  From experiences, events, childhood, previous relationships that maybe didn't end well. And we have these memories that are these toxic thoughts.

• 15:12Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Lewis Howes?

  How can we heal those thoughts to attract healthy love moving forward?

• 15:19Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly, perfect. So, great question. So essentially, what will happen is if these are unresolved issues from a toxic relationship, so let's say that you had a really bad marriage, or you'd had a really bad whatever, and there's all the experience is stored in this, so that's the source as it's happening in natural interpretation. And there's a great, strong chance that your interpretation of things like, I don't deserve love, or I'll never have love, or I can't trust that person, or, you know, there's always the

• 15:43Lewis Howes?

  Is it too good to be true, or is it, yeah?

• 15:45Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Looking for the shoe to drop, you know, and it's sort of, and then holding back and hesitating to commit, and, you know, all those kinds of things. So that's, that's what's in here. Because of that, and there's this distorted processing. This, not only is it affecting your actual relationship, but you are actually increasing the vulnerability of your brain and body to disease by thirty-five to ninety-eight percent.

• 16:06Lewis Howes?

  Wow, really?

• 16:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Over time, yeah. It's cumulative over time. And I know you've interviewed Lisa Epple, so I, and her and I are communicating and going to be doing some work together hopefully in the future. And I've done work on telomeres as well, based on her research, and I've shown that in, in, with mind management, you can actually grow telomeres and make them healthy

• 16:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 16:26Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  within nine-week cycles. And an unhealthy telomere is what you're going to see in this kind of tree. A healthy telomere is what you can see in here. So if you've got a toxic issue you haven't dealt with, not only is it affecting the relationship, but it's shortening your telomeres. It's changing your inflammation, it's affecting your hypothalamic pituitary axis, it's affecting everything. So that, over time, the weakened telomeres make weakened cells, which make weakened systems, which make weakened bodies, vulnerability. So it's not something that, what I'm, the point I'm making, Lewis, is that we can't actually sit with those issues. We've got to deal with them because we are shortening our telomeres. We are increasing our vulnerability to disease and illness over time.

• 17:04Lewis Howes?

  So, wow. You know, how can we, I mean, if we don't, if we don't manage these toxic thoughts? And memories from previous relationships that have hurt us or caused us harm or frustration. And and sometimes when we end a relationship, it can be devastating. It can take years to recover sometimes. If we don't learn to heal these toxic thoughts.

• 17:27Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You carry that into the relationship.

• 17:28Lewis Howes?

  Is it possible to create a healthy relationship in the next one?

• 17:31Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, it is. So the thing.

• 17:32Lewis Howes?

  If we don't heal these thoughts.

• 17:33Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  No, no, not if we don't heal them. It's that always going to stick. Sorry, I didn't listen for.

• 17:37Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so is it, if we don't heal these toxic thoughts from previous relationship, is it possible to have a healthy relationship in the future? If we don't heal them?

• 17:46Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  No, that's a straight.

• 17:48Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 17:48Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's going to affect us.

• 17:49Lewis Howes?

  So the person isn't going to change in front of us, the next person and be better than the previous?

• 17:53Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  We've got to change ourselves. We've got to change ourselves because what will happen is if we don't heal that, we're going to always look for that. We're going to look, we're going to externalize this. And we're going to be looking for the lack that this has created in that person. And because it's not their issue, it's yours, they're never going to satisfy that. So you're going to go from relationship to relationship, looking for something that's missing in you.

• 18:12Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 18:13Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So you have to change your relationship with yourself before you can change your relationship with someone else. So you're not going to fix everything before a relationship because there's certain triggers in a relationship.

• 18:22Lewis Howes?

  But you have to process and go through it.

• 18:24Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  They'll be triggered. Matt and I have been married thirty five years. And we still work in through things. And then we still realize, hey, that's actually coming from, just the other day, we talked, you know, that issue has actually come from like way back when. That's something that, you know, in in his childhood, that that kind of clash with, what you know what I'm saying?

• 18:39Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 18:39Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  But we, so we didn't feel everything before we got married, but we healed a lot before we got married. And and that, you know, so you, you, the biggest issues that we will, obviously, the most obvious ones you'll work on first. But a lot of people don't even want to work on those. And a lot of people's coping mechanism is one of, you know what, it's not me, that's the problem.

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  Right, it's the other person.

• 19:03Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Or they say, I need that from that person and I'm looking for that from that person. So that's why I say that if you go into a relationship like that, it's not going to work. It's going to be a very challenging, it may last, but it's never going to, you may even get married, you may even find that you stay married for, but at some point, things crash.

• 19:20Lewis Howes?

  But it may not be healthy.

• 19:21Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That's the thing.

• 19:22Lewis Howes?

  It may be toxic.

• 19:22Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly. And then if you have kids along the way, you know, they get infected.

• 19:26Lewis Howes?

  More stressful.

• 19:26Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Stressful and.

• 19:27Lewis Howes?

  So why, you mentioned this in the beginning, that why do we, why do we attract certain people? You were saying like we tracked, what were you saying? Like we tracked someone that might have something broken inside of them. So we can bring harmony or balance, what were you saying?

• 19:41Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So basically, it's humans, humanity, or the way we are because of a wired feel of nature in the mind, brain and body. When something is off, we're drawn to that to restore balance. So that's why very often you will see, you may recognize your brokenness, which is one of the comments you made in someone else and that could do it to them. Or it could be that you just see something that's, that you didn't really experience, but it could have triggered something or didn't trigger something. But just the mere fact that you're human, there's a desire to help. That's what people go in. That's what people, look at what you've done with your life. You help people. Your whole biggest, one of your biggest features about you as a person is you have a desire to constantly help others. You know, and that's very authentic and very real. People see that very clearly in you.

• 20:24Lewis Howes?

  But when it happens, here's the interesting thing. You hear this in, uh, sometimes you hear women who will try to find a guy who maybe has a deficiency or is broken or something's off, right? And they see the potential and they're like, okay, I want to go help this person overcome this challenge or this pain or this struggle and fix them. Um, and they struggle for them, that guy to change or transform or heal or grow. Or when they do transform, then there's nothing else to fix. Or they try to reinvent new problems to fix in them. So what happens when a woman who is not healed finds a healthy man?

• 21:06Lewis Howes?

  A man who's working on himself, who wants to grow, is doing it independently, but doesn't need like all this fixing. Why is she unable to be okay and happy in a healthy relationship?

• 21:20Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Cause there's brokenness in her and what she's trying to fix is herself, externalizing it. And you'll see that male to female, you'll see it in male to male relationship, female to female relationship, whatever.

• 21:30Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 21:31Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  In any kind of relationship, it's not just a male to female thing, female to male thing. It's also in any kind of gender relationship. So it's, it's, it's, it's the unique person. So first we must look at the person, see ourselves as a unique human being, and then we look at what our gender is. And what, and, and that's really important because otherwise we're going to have this, um, and consequently have this sort of sexist thing that, you know, that is done in one side or another kind of thing. And it's very, I mean, it's, I'm not contradicting what you're saying. It's totally, I totally agree, it could be a female, whatever.

• 22:01Lewis Howes?

  Both at all, yeah.

• 22:04Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So essentially, this brokenness is, um, is, is the first comment that you, question that you made. We can be attracted to, and it's not the law of attraction, we are not talking about that, absolutely not. Okay, that's not what I'm talking about, but that's a whole different story and a whole different, very unscientific story too. But there's, um, there's elements of truth in everything. What we're getting, what we're talking about here is the essence of what I have missing in my relationship. I need to either, I see in someone else and wanna fix, or I want to, because I'm trying to fix my own thing.

• 22:36Lewis Howes?

  What I have missing in my relationship to myself?

• 22:38Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Self, yes.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  I need to find in someone else that I can fix.

• 22:41Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, and there's two key things over there is instead of me fixing myself,

• 22:47Lewis Howes?

  I'm gonna fix someone else.

• 22:48Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And you can't fix anyone else. The only thing, person you can fix is yourself. All we can do is support other people.

• 22:54Lewis Howes?

  That's when it gets even more challenging in relationships, when you're constantly trying to change someone. You're constantly trying to fix them or change them. I just feel like that's where a lot of stress and chaos happens, is conflict. Because you're not accepting them.

• 23:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly.

• 23:08Lewis Howes?

  You're not choosing them based on acceptance.

• 23:09Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly, I can give you an example.

• 23:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 23:11Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I can give you an example of, of, of a relationship of people that have been married for quite a few years. And the, the male, I'm not obviously mentioning names, I'm gonna protect people's identity. But, um, the, the male, the, the husband in the relationship was incredible, used to get incredibly, um, irritated with his wife and switch off and found her just demanding and always like nagging and, and this, they had just kind of got into this pattern of, you know, very unhealthy. And it got to the point where kids are out of home and all that kind of thing. And this person is basically at a point where, you know, this is like, you know, do I carry on with this? Which is very often what happens once.

• 23:47Lewis Howes?

  After the kids are gone.

• 23:48Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yep, then you realize it. And this person started. Doing the neurocycle. I mean, they were sort of working through this process and started initially very skeptical because and basically the neurocycle is just mind management. It's it's the scientific way that you get your mind, messy mind to listen to your wise mind to change your neuroplasticity. So it's mind driven neuroplasticity. So it's a science of how do I find how I'm showing up? And how can I change that? Which is your question you asked right in the beginning. Can we change this? Or do we have to live with all of this? Yes, we can change it. So that person, that husband lived with that relationship for years, but you don't have to live for whatever, however, forty, fifty years of marriage.

• 24:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It was long that they were in. You don't have to live with it. You can train your kids to start looking at these things in yourself so that you can become healthy and pick up things quickly and change them. Long story short, after a period of like initially being very skeptical, suddenly a connection was made around about three weeks into the process of, oh, I'm actually blocking off to my wife. And she is just trying to get me to connect with her. That's what sounds like the nagging. And missing her is just wanting everything to be perfect all the time and finding that really irritating is actually triggering my poor relationship with my dad.

• 25:08Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 25:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And my dad was one who required complete and utter perfectionism.

• 25:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 25:13Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And used to constantly go. So as soon as it would sound.

• 25:16Lewis Howes?

  If someone's nagging me or criticizing me.

• 25:18Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's I shut off, I protect coping mechanism. And the realization has transformed and saved a marriage. I mean, I've left a lot of bitter life, but that's the essence of the story.

• 25:27Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 25:27Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So there's an incident of years of this growing. This this there's the initial incident as a child growing up, but the parent that loved this, the child, but had a way of dealing that made that child feel not good enough.

• 25:41Lewis Howes?

  How much has, how much does our love as adults in relationships?

• 25:47Lewis Howes?

  Reflect based on what we witnessed, our parents' love like as kids.

• 25:52Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Huge, hugeness.

• 25:53Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 25:54Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's, it's really huge. Having said that, if you didn't witness a good relationship, it doesn't mean you can't have one. But it does mean you're going to have to overcome a lot of obstacles and that is definitely.

• 26:04Lewis Howes?

  It's harder.

• 26:05Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's harder. It's definitely harder because it generally leads to a lot of mistrust. And.

• 26:09Lewis Howes?

  As an adult in relationships.

• 26:11Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And what very often happens is that when you've seen that you haven't had a good model. And you don't get into deep enough relationships and then you can get hurt very easily. Or you kind of end up maybe sort of almost using people without even consciously using people. And you meet people that are also broken, so they use, so you use each other. So they, it creates a lot of distrust. And sort of the fear and lack of commitment and you, you know, you look for. Any, your things will trigger you much more quickly and that kind of thing. So it's really important to. You know, you know what I always say when it comes to parenting, because I'm a parent of four kids, as you know. And awful work with us, which is quite a miracle too, which is amazing if you think of it. Um, but I can't, I always tell my kids this. I was someone's daughter.

• 26:55Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And someone's, and I have a mom and a dad, and they were someone's daughter and son. And so, and each person had baggage. So you cannot go into a marriage, a relationship and parenting without baggage. We know that, it's logical. So you've got all this come down, it's in these networks and it plays out and it's triggered. And whatever isn't resolved will be triggered badly. And whatever is resolved, well, you'll handle it. You'll see, oh, I could be like that, but I'm like this, or my mom did that, but I'm not going to do that. And so in other words, that's where you've worked through something. So what we need to do as, as daughters and sons going into relationships is to say, okay. I honor what my parents went through. They maybe didn't have a great relationship. I don't know the ins and outs. It's not really.

• 27:36Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  A child's responsibility to know all the intimate details of why a marriage broke down. To certain, you know, there's a certain amount that they should know and a certain amount that they shouldn't know. And recognize that, you know, sometimes things don't work out and to honor these stories, but at the same time. You have the right to honor the impact it had on your life.

• 27:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 27:55Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So it's to kind of, so it's not.

• 27:56Lewis Howes?

  There could be good impact and bad impact at the same time. Yeah.

• 28:00Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That's.

• 28:00Lewis Howes?

  You can hold both in your hands.

• 28:02Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You can hold both in your hands at the same time. But very often what will either happen is you'll swing to suppressing the negative because you feel you've been disloyal to a parent or to the parents.

• 28:10Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 28:10Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So, yeah, and very often happens. So you'll almost suppress it for years.

• 28:14Lewis Howes?

  And act like what it didn't happen or wasn't that bad or?

• 28:17Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, that it wasn't, you're denied, you diminish, you suppress and you don't deal. And then you suddenly something will trigger you one day. And this happened with the conversation that I had with someone in, working in clinical practice. Where very successful person, um, parents went through a very traumatic marriage. And um, the parent, the one parent said way too much to the children.

• 28:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah. And it was, there was, there's, there's got to be boundaries. There's got to be a amount that you do say, otherwise the child will think it's their fault. That's another thing we need to realize. Children will immediately, if there's a broken marriage, a child will think it's their fault, that they're the cause. So it is important to say, hey, listen, this is not you, this is between us.

• 28:54Lewis Howes?

  If someone watching or listening has parents who have been divorced, whether it was traumatic or not traumatic as a child with their relationship, watching the relationship, but they went through divorce. What? How, you know, what are the percentages or how does that indicate how successful you will be in a marriage or in a relationship? If you don't learn to create new healthy meaning around their, their model of love and relationship and, and they're divorced. And if you don't heal and process that, like, what are we setting ourselves up for if we don't, if we're not aware of it? And make sure we really work on these things if our parents have been divorced.

• 29:34Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You, you set yourself up for failure. And the, the, the reason I say that, and it sounds really harsh, but the other flip side of the coin is that once you do deal with it, you send yourself up for success. And that power is in your hands. You know, and that's really why it's so important that we don't suppress stuff. Because suppressing stuff, not only is it keeping the toxicity, increasing your vulnerability to disease, so physically you're suffering. And you will suffer more and more over time because it's counter, it's your, your natural, our full of nature is being challenged. Your survival's being challenged. So your body's trying to fight this thing. Um, at the same time, you are going to kind of boomerang from one bad relationship into the next because you haven't dealt with the core issue. But once you start dealing with it, the beauty of, you can have, look at this example, the first

• 30:19Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  example I gave, you can have a fifty year marriage and fifty years of a toxic pattern that really was problematic and you can heal that and have the last however many years you've got left in a very healthy relationship. So you, the, the, the, the hope, Lewis, is in the fact that we can change, but there is work involved. There is no pool that's gonna fix it. There is the work involved.

• 30:40Lewis Howes?

  What happens to the brain then, when we see our parents that have harmony at home, they, they hold hands, they kiss, they dance, they love each other, they show affection versus what happens in the brain when we see distance, passive aggressive energy between our parents, yelling, screaming, slamming of doors, no affection between each other as a model? What happens to the brain with those two essences?

• 31:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Such a good question. So basically observing your parents as a child, that's your, you know, you're modeling that relationship, so your relationships are, that's your model. So you're wiring that in, so you're wiring in the fights, the slammed doors, the silent treatment, the, the moaning, the upset, the crying, the tears, the confusion, the closed doors and all the noises and sounds and the, and maybe it even gets to the point where there's abuse. So that becomes your, you build it in, into your brain and your whole thing is, I can't trust people, there's, I can't trust someone else, I can't, I can't build a relationship, this is not safe.

• 31:39Lewis Howes?

  Is that, is that I can't trust people in intimacy and in romantic relationships? Or I can't trust friends, colleagues?

• 31:46Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It could bleed over into, depending on how bad, depending on how you see it, depending on your perception, depending on the age, depending on the context, depending on how you're involved, all those factors will influence how you, it's gonna play out into your future. And that's, yeah, so it could, I mean, it took some people, it will just mean that they, that they're everything, they just live a life of completely this, and that, sorry, do it quickly, just, I know you've got a question. A lot of narcissistic type behavior. If you track back, it's complete distrust of all people.

• 32:17Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 32:17Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And I'm not condoning it because it's very destructive behavior patterns that people really suffer from. But it's it's trying to control the uncontrollable that they have. So very often, if you track back, you'll see that there's been a model that has been very bad at some point. And they may, on the outside, their upbringing may have looked perfect, like they may have had money and good schools.

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  Put together and dressed well and yeah.

• 32:40Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  But their inside wasn't, their inner person wasn't validated. Their ability to, hey, I came home, I was bullied, I was bullied today, I'm sad. They weren't allowed to process emotions. So their coping mechanism was one of unbound control people. I don't trust anyone, so I am going to drive around the shots here, run the show. And that can be technosisistic type behavior. So that's just a side note.

• 33:02Lewis Howes?

  And is there, is there a certain attachment styles that we will have in relationships based on the model we witness from our parents?

• 33:11Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  For sure, for sure. So attachment styles research has been done in a very limited, with a limited group of people, but its applicability is pretty good. And so what we, if you look in different cultures, it's quite interesting to see that most cultures where you've got sort of more solid relationships, it's not the child brought up by the community. So it's not just the mom and dad, it's the whole community. So in the United States and westernized countries, it's very much.

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  Isolated between parents.

• 33:42Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah, not enough of the supportive grand. And sometimes it's just a way that we've gone in this country and in a lot of ways, which is unfortunate because you do get a healthier model and you've got more balance. So if parents need alone time, they can get it more because you've got the granny and the family and you've got the community. So a lot of pressure on parents that leads to arguments that could have been probably resolved if they had a bit more time alone. Could, you know, and that child maybe wouldn't have missed as much. So we have got an invol- we have got society now that has needs. If you look at our societal structures, our work structures and that kind of thing, they've put that kind of pressure on families. It's definitely putting pressure that are in a pressure cooker, that people are living in a little bit of a pressure cooker,

• 34:24Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  which I think is leading to, you know, problems in relationships that probably wouldn't have been there if they had more of a community.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:30Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So in terms of how, okay, there's so many questions going through my head now. So to bring us back to your question.

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  The attachment styles was the, was current one.

• 34:40Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So in the community, we're going to have a slightly more balanced attachment style versus ever to just.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  If we're, if we're raised by a community or aunts and uncles and friends, yeah.

• 34:51Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's more realistic. It's more like, okay, they're arguing, give them some time, then he goes with granny.

• 34:55Lewis Howes?

  Cause we're not needing the love and affection from one person. Is that right or is?

• 35:00Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  We get, we get it from a community, but if you're in this very isolated, insular type environment, where does the parent explode safely?

• 35:08Lewis Howes?

  There's no, there's no safe environment for a child.

• 35:10Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly. There's no safe environment. There's no safe environment for the parents. So, and you are going to explode. It's very normal to have those arguments. So that's the ideal. It's not what's happening. So what do we do now? How do we deal with that? You have to be honest with your kids. You have to, and what Mac and I tried this and we got it right and we got it wrong, but we got it right. I think a lot of the time was we do have very different opinions about a lot of things. And both of us are Italian and background and explosive. So we did have arguments. I mean, much of it, you know, it's, it's easy. When kids are around and the pressures of raising kids and working.

• 35:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, four kids, that's a lot.

• 35:43Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's a lot. And both of us working and whatever, it's, it's a lot. I mean, with countries, with young kids and. So, but what we did from what we did right, we did wrong, but what we did right was we, if we had an argument, we would never just leave it. We would go to the kids, we would apologize. We would tell that we gave them permission to tell us when we were getting upsetting them. So they would say, hey, listen, can you just stop? You know you're gonna make up. Can you just resolve this? Or one reading this or dad that we gave them permission to actually, you know, like from an outside point of you saying, hey, you are impacting us. This is really upsetting us. And this is, you know, and reminding us that, hey, you do that. Okay, so let me go back a step. If you have an argument, you need to tell your kids, okay, we had an argument about X, obviously language, age appropriate,

• 36:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  and also within boundaries. They don't need all the details. We had an argument, we disagreed on this. I didn't like dad's reaction. Dad didn't like my reaction. I did this, it bugged him. He did this, it bugged me. And this is how we resolved it, and this is what we're gonna do. That's a neurocycle. We went through all five steps of the neurocycle. Once we cooled down and calmed down and we use the neurocycle individually on ourselves and then on each other, then we would. And I didn't call it the neurocycle then, because that's a new name, but that process we applied. And it was a god saving thing. It was a life saving thing in our marriage because it helped us to stand back, calm down, evaluate, what am I really fighting about? What is, you know, take momentum or a concept? What happens if both of us are dead tomorrow? Or one of us is dead? What could we do right now?

• 37:12Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And so we would resolve it. And, you know, we would let our kids know. We're still trying to resolve it, so there may still be a bit of argument or whatever, but this is where we're going. This is our resolution. We still love each other. Kids need that. Even an adult child needs that. If there's an argument, if Matt and I have an argument now, we still do it. We'll still say, hey, you know, we love each other. Dad, you're irritating me about this. Sorry about that. Sorry. We tell them. We, so that's what we can do in our internal environments that we live in in this day and age. We can go through that process of showing, modeling to a child, listen, it's normal to have arguments. We have bad days. We are a mess. No one's perfect. We're not perfect. We do not expect you to be perfect. But let's talk about, hey, it's a horrible argument. I'm so sorry. We should not have yelled.

• 37:54Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It was scary for you. Tell us how you feel. You know, get it out. Don't, and go through the sequence. Don't just blur it all out. Be ordered. The big thing, nurse, about healing in a relationship to have healthy future relationships is not just get the kids to talk about emotions or one makes it all up. Very organized. Let's talk about, this is how I felt. This is one of my emotions was. This is what I said. This is what I did. Four categories of signals, very organized. I'm gonna talk about how, how we felt our emotions, our behaviors, our bodily sensations and our perspectives. So. We were both mad and irritated. We yelled and spoke too loudly and used ugly body language, leaning in or whatever. Our perspective was that we were very irritated with each other and our bodies were very tense.

• 38:39Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Our shoulders were raised. We spoke with loud voices. That's how analytical you get. And then you say, why was we disagreed about this concept? That said something that I didn't like. He didn't listen to my answer. Whatever, whatever it was. So we then, you know, put the why down. Then what you should do is the third step is to then get that out on paper and write that out or visualize it or something. So it's a state where you, so once you've gathered awareness and reflected, gather awareness of all those signals, reflect on them, which is the why of those signals. Very audit your brain. Your psychoneurobiology responds to order, sequence. You throw it all at once, it's chaos. And that's what a lot of people do. And that's what a lot of us do in our relationships and arguments. But if you break things down and get in a very, you can get calm.

• 39:24Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You can get your neurophysiology physiology under wraps and you can work through. Third thing is what Mac and I will do is if we have an argument is we'll, we'll write it down. We'll text each other. We'll get in, we'll get all those thoughts out. We'll do it on a piece of paper, depending on what we're solving, how big, how small, whatever. But there's a writing phase where we're pouring our things out. Then there's a recheck phase. Okay, you said that, I said that, that was the trigger. This is what we did. How can we, this is the problem. How can we solve it in the future? What's our action? Okay, this is what we're going to practice. And then we tell that to the kids and then we do it. So look, we're trying this. Okay, guys, this is what we need to do. If you see us not doing it, just remind us. So you give them empowerment to, okay, they'll, they'll resolve it. They'll, they'll get through this one.

• 40:06Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's horrible. We don't like it, but we can end it quicker if we remind them of their active reach.

• 40:10Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 40:10Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Which is step five.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 40:12Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And that sounds like a very idealized thing and it's a skill that you're going to learn. Like you, you're an athlete.

• 40:16Lewis Howes?

  You have to practice it. You have to try it. Yeah.

• 40:18Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And it'll take you 63 days to set it up in your, in your home system because it takes that long to, to form a habit, not doing one, not four days, not one neuro cycle. You're going to have to consistently practice for at least 63 to 66 days. And I've done a lot of research and doing another big study at the moment, looking at the time and the pattern of habit, complex habit formation, not just the little things. Drink your green juice or wash your hands or make sure you get to the gym. But the complex love relationships, how long does it take to rewire a pattern? So that you can have a change, how it impacts your relationship?

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  If someone's in a broken relationship right now, maybe they've been arguing for years or fighting. They don't, you know, maybe they have good weeks and then there's a bad week. And it's the cycle of good and bad, up and down. And it just feels like it's draining or exhausting. What can they do to start healing the relationship, to start healing individually? And the relationship to create harmony in the future? What are those steps?

• 41:16Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Okay, so first thing is if it's an abusive relationship, then obviously just get safe. That's priority, as we all know. But let's say that it's not an abusive, you're just getting some bad habits.

• 41:27Lewis Howes?

  Both of you are doing bad habits, both of you are trying to fix the other person, both of you are.

• 41:31Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  But you're still together because there's love and there's a desire to be together. So that's the scenario, okay? So the first thing to do is to get into some good practices that will help calm your neurophysiology down. So I call that brain preparation.

• 41:45Lewis Howes?

  You're calming your nervous system or?

• 41:46Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Calming the entire neurophysiology. So that when your mind, you've got a calm, wise mind that's always active and always on your side. Then we have our messy mind that's in the relationship, it's in the moment, it's the in the moment messy mind.

• 41:59Lewis Howes?

  It's reactive.

• 42:00Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Reactive, learning, it's very normal, it's that experimental. And it sometimes goes really messy and other times it kind of gets it right and whatever. So it needs a lot of guidance. And that's our wide flow of nature is our wise mind. So the first thing is that when we're in that messy mind state, it's sending all this messy energy through the brain and it's triggering all kinds of, I mean.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  Talk to your thoughts.

• 42:23Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Just think of an argument, when you start some stupid thing gets you going and then you end up arguing, what am I even talking about?

• 42:29Lewis Howes?

  What's the point in the first place?

• 42:30Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly, well, why did I even bring that stupid thing up? We resolved that years ago, you know, why am I bringing that up now? You know, that's what will happen if you don't calm down on neurophysiology. So it's get your neurophysiology calm first. And you can do that with meditation, breathing, with exercise, gym workout with it. Creating space that, okay, we're both too hot now, let's just like.

• 42:49Lewis Howes?

  Some fresh air, yeah.

• 42:50Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Get some fresh air, let's resolve this at a later, let's create mental, physical space. I mean, just, there's so many ways of doing that, there's so many great sort of meditative breathing.

• 42:59Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 43:00Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Find something that works for you, it may not be the same thing. Um, Mac and I like to just create space and I like to do um a seven, a three, ten breathe, a three, seven breathing thing that gets my neurophysiology under control. So you breathe in for three and out for seven.

• 43:16Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And if you do that seven times, you'll feel high, but it's great because you push so much oxygen to the front of your brain. And it's a very good way of calming down your neurophysiology. You can do that in, you know, in ten sec, I call it a ten second pause. You can do it for sixty to ninety seconds. So it's ten seconds that you do six to nine times.

• 43:33Lewis Howes?

  Mmm.

• 43:34Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Great little formula for calming down neurophysiology.

• 43:36Lewis Howes?

  Wow, that's great.

• 43:37Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That's, that's a fail safe we always use. Really good fail safe. Like, we are a family run business, all of us are involved. It's very easy to argue with family. So when we all get hit up, which we do, because we're all very Italian, we do a ten second pause and we will go out the room, grab a cup of coffee and then come back and reconvene. Those are simple things that I know we know, but are we doing them?

• 43:58Lewis Howes?

  Mmm.

• 43:58Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Or are you trying to push through? I've got to solve this now. I used to be like that at the beginning. We've got to fix this now. And so I had to learn to, hey, no, you don't have to fix it now.

• 44:08Lewis Howes?

  Take a pause and yeah.

• 44:10Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Okay, so that's both in brain.

• 44:11Lewis Howes?

  You can't, is it possible to fix something when you're in chaotic thoughts?

• 44:16Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You can, but it's more difficult and you, you have to, you know, it's just going to be confusing and, you know, messy and harder and not very sustainable. And it's just, it's not a very peaceful way of doing it.

• 44:26Lewis Howes?

  It's exhausting, yeah.

• 44:27Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I wouldn't do it that way. Then the next thing that's very practical is you can focus on good stuff. So it may just be good stuff about yourself. So you can, part of what I did work, part of me for health is not just detoxing stuff. It's also building healthy stuff. So I love talking to you. We have great conversations. Every time I talk to you, I have, and I think about, we have great memories of our conversations. So if I want to get myself into a good state, I can think of, I can recall a good moment, like maybe a conversation with you. I love my research. We just published a paper and I mean, I look at those results and I get, I get like high, literally. So get yourself, so this is two silly examples, but they're very powerful. So if you've now calmed down in neurophysiology and you now go and focus on something that you know makes you feel great,

• 45:11Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  that means you're pulling this up. When you pull this up, amazing things happen in your brain. You change all the delta theta, alpha, beta, gamma frequencies, you calm down. Think of the waves of the sea. You want, you know, they're built, they're deep and big, and then they build on the beach, crash, make little waves, go back. We want that kind of energy going through our brain, which activates good neurochemical flow, the endocrine, all that stuff, immune system. So by the brain prep that I explained, the breathing, whatever, and then these, you have put yourself into a really good brain state. Mind, brain, body state, not just brain state, but you've got a very good flow happening. Now, you're still as irritated as, still would like to go and do something physical, like, you know, whatever, I'm just joking.

• 45:53Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  But I mean, you might be frontropated the wall, or you're still, oh, I'm so mad about what, it's okay. It's okay to be messy. So third thing, tell yourself it's okay to be a mess. It's okay, I can be a mess. It's okay for us to, it's normal, but how am I going to manage the mess? So give yourself permission to be the mess, feel the mess, analyze the mess. I'm frustrated, what's my emotion? And what's my body feeling? What's my perspective in this moment? What am I doing? So you go through, it's okay to be a mess and do a little mini neurocycle, go through five, why am I feeling like this? Write a few things down, do a recheck. Okay, this has happened, what can I do? Action. Okay, I'm ready to talk. See what I've just done?

• 46:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 46:33Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So step one is brain prep. Step two is think of something good. This has activated our natural resilience. We have, we are not fragile, we are resilient. We are much more resilient than we realize, but if we take on the current zeitgeist that we break in the thormus rectus for life. We're going to become fragile, which we're not. We're going to mask our natural resilience. We are pretty amazing as humans. Look at the stories of people surviving and getting through stuff. You know, and then we need to draw on that. We need to unmask our resilience. So these steps, the brain prep, focusing on something about yourself. And then you could also add up to this, not just focusing on your own good stuff. You could think of something great about your partner. You could think, you know, whatever, think of a great memory, which is a really good addition. And that people hear before, but you know, I'm sure you've heard that before. But it's doing this great step in your brain.

• 47:18Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Then do a neurocycle in yourself. You can do this in three minutes, in 10 minutes, in an hour, whatever. Then reconvene and say, okay, now we're going to do this as a neurocycle. I have a whole relationship podcast where I went into in detail of how to actually, what to say, the guidelines of what to say at each step. And I mean, we can talk about some of those.

• 47:38Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious, I love all this. And the thing that came up for me is what happens if we want love? We want to be in a relationship, we want connection, we want intimacy, but we don't believe we're deserving of love. What will happen then?

• 47:53Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Such a great, great question. And it just reminds me, as you're talking, you're just prompting all these clinical experiences I've had. I'm a very successful, incredible person and just could, one of those people that could get anything in their life, okay? And just wonderful in every single way. Thank you. And just could not keep a relationship going. We start off well and everything. And at the end of the day, the core issue, once this person had worked through, was that they didn't deserve love. And it came, unfortunately, a lot of it comes from childhood.

• 48:27Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 48:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And it's not everything, because you can have a great childhood and really trust in love. And then go into a really bad first marriage or first relationship.

• 48:38Lewis Howes?

  How does that?

• 48:38Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And a person can break you. And I can, I can give you an example of it.

• 48:41Lewis Howes?

  So it could be, you could have a great, great childhood, great parents, great model of love.

• 48:45Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Total.

• 48:46Lewis Howes?

  But you get into a relationship, you fully trust and accept and love someone.

• 48:49Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Because that's what you've seen. You throw everything.

• 48:51Lewis Howes?

  And so you expect they're going to do the same for you. And then it doesn't go your way.

• 48:55Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly.

• 48:56Lewis Howes?

  And then you don't, and then that could potentially set you up to think, I'm not deserving of love.

• 49:01Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, especially if it happens in your adolescent years. Twelve to eighteen is the most difficult part of the entire human life cycle. So, and that's where we are interested in forming our relationships. That's where romantic relationships are what we desire. Up until then, it's more friendship based. Yeah, it could be early ten, eleven, you can have little boyfriend, girlfriend things, but it's more just community, connection, deep friendship. Something starting. But those years are, and, and you, you, at that age, your relationship with your friends and, um, potential partners are more, are a lot more important, but are more important than your parenting.

• 49:37Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 49:37Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  They, they supersede.

• 49:39Lewis Howes?

  In terms of relationship, yeah.

• 49:40Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  The formation of who I am.

• 49:42Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 49:42Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So at that stage, that's, you know, so you can have this great foundation. And then you.

• 49:47Lewis Howes?

  Amazing parents, no trauma.

• 49:49Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  Fun all the time, peace, harmony and home.

• 49:51Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Sorted it out, did the real thing, just great parents. They had their own messed up lives, but took responsibility, said sorry, did all that stuff.

• 49:58Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:59Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And then you get into a relationship where someone who's broken is attracted to you. And you're attracted to them and you swept off your feet either way. And their brokenness is put onto you in your informative years and you get told you're not good enough.

• 50:12Lewis Howes?

  Oh, what happens when we believe that?

• 50:15Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  What's wrong with you and, yeah, and, and at that stage where you are so like, you, you're forming yourself, you're, you're forming your choice, your identity in terms of others' relationships, me and the world, you know, in, in terms of, um, that, that drive for love. So if you're told you're not, you're never gonna get a relationship.

• 50:32Lewis Howes?

  Or you get rejected, or you get dumped, or you get cheated on as a teen. How does that, how does, how does someone overcome that feeling of, I'm not deserving of love?

• 50:42Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So that is, is a, is a hard one. So they, to start all of it's hard.

• 50:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:46Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  But it's to find, um, the source. So what you, what you very often is as an adult, and it's very often in the twenties and thirties where you start doing this work and it can happen, I'm not saying always, I'm not generalizing, but very often because that's when you kind of get through school and whatever you do and you get into the workspace and you start actually really forming deeper relationships and then you start getting to the point where you're thinking, okay, well. Why, my friends are getting married. You know, everyone around me is in relationships and I'm the only one who's not in a relationship. I can't seem to keep a relationship. What's wrong with me? That's when you start seeing those signals, patterns. That's when you need to sit down and do the work over sixty three days and multiple cycles of sixty three days. And then you could, you'll get to the point where you'll see, okay, what is the root?

• 51:30Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  The root was either a childhood issue or an adolescent issue. Maybe it was you were the new kid in town and everyone laughed at you because you wore glasses. And they just, you know, said you never, you know, you were mocked. So you were too scared to actually show that guy that, or that girl that you liked them. And you were too scared because you were so quiet, whatever. And that was the source of the, there's many reasons, you know. There was, I can tell the story of, of someone else who was one of four kids. And it was the only girl, three boys, ki- kind of almost like seemingly perfect. I mean, there's never any perfect, whatever.

• 52:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 52:05Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Kind of got it more or less, okay. There's a religious stuff going on there, but still. But the boys were very sporty and very, you know, and the father just, you know, like always, like was totally sporty. It was like a big deal, but this was not a sporty little girl. But to get the father's recognition, this little girl had to be like one of the boys also, she thought.

• 52:29Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 52:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And so purposefully, like almost made herself a mirror, the hat on backwards and baggy clothes.

• 52:35Lewis Howes?

  Tomboy, yeah, yeah.

• 52:37Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah, tomboy, didn't want to feminize and that kind of stuff and didn't want to, not that there's anything wrong with that. But her objective was not a healthy one. It was trying to fit in to be accepted. And her perception, once we got to the root was, well, I was never accepted, but never accepted by my, I thought that I had to be like a boy for my father to love me. And that was a huge thing. But it was so interesting, what really triggered that, this kid was about five or six, already doing this, already reading the, the room and thinking this was the answer. And they were sitting and some stranger came up, they were sitting at some restaurant and this kid was dressed up like one of the boys. And someone said, oh, what a cute little boy. And that broke her. Because it was confirmation that that was, that she's not good enough as a female,

• 53:21Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  that even outside people are saying, oh, I accept you because you're a cute little boy.

• 53:25Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 53:26Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So that led to years of self abuse, self hurt, sexual promiscuity,

• 53:32Lewis Howes?

  Isn't it crazy that one

• 53:33Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Broken marriages.

• 53:34Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. Isn't it crazy that one thing we hear from a friend, a sibling, a parent, an outsider, a schoolmate, a teacher, it could stick with us for decades, forever.

• 53:46Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Forever. Now imagine, Lu, if that person could have, and this is what triggered me to write the current book that I have on children with all these stories that I can tell, that person, I remember saying to me, if only I had known how to say to my parents, am I only loved if I'm a boy? I feel sad because you don't seem to love me unless I'm like a boy. Or that that man made me sad because that man made me say, I've got to be a boy. Or daddy, do you love me even though I'm a girl? That child didn't know how to say that, didn't have the language, didn't have the tools. So what, what I'm trying to create, and we know that the mental health situation is, is, is for a multitude of reasons. We're not individuals, society, social media, AI. I mean,

• 54:30Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  there's our generations facing our problems. Every generation faces their issues. Every generation thinks what we were saying the previous, well, no we're not. We're just facing our unique problems. What we need in this generation with our kids, so that they have decent relationships, is, and it starts with having a decent relationship with themselves, is we have to have a way of them being able to process and express their feelings. So that five year old needs to be able to say, hey, I feel sad, or have a point of context, something. So you can teach a child as young as two how to do this first. My youngest patients in my practice were two and three years of age, and you can teach them how to Identify these signals.

• 55:09Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 55:10Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Detox and and to make it really easy, that's what I've done in in the latest book, this one, How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess. Um, but we created this character, I actually created this character twenty five years ago, I had a Disney artist create this character and we had it all updated. So the book, if you flip through, you'll see there's multiple images of Brainy. This is a character we've created called Brainy.

• 55:28Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 55:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  When Brainy goes through all these different scenarios and it's how you understand how you can teach a child as young as two that these trees in the brain and how you could change your brain and how to expression, identify your signals, all these hard things that we battle with as adults, you can teach children very basically as a child. So we created a toy. So for example, let's say you have a two year old who is sitting at, um, let's say, let's take a five or six year old and they're at school daycare or whatever, I mean, at Kindergarten and someone constantly comes up and knocks their toy tower over that their building and then next day pull the heel in the playground. And there's a series of teasing going on.

• 56:07Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:07Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Um, and that child most likely has, and I'm talking of another clinical case, has been abused at home by a terribly, terrible physical abuse, but it's taking it out on the most vulnerable person in the playground. Then that child comes home and takes it out on the most vulnerable person in the family, which is the younger brother, who's maybe two or three years of age. And so now we see a perfect home environment with all the love and dealing with all the issues and stuff, but this child's now starting to bully the younger child and quite badly so that there's this terrible sibling rivalry.

• 56:36Lewis Howes?

  Where does bullying come from? Like, why do most people start to bully other kids?

• 56:41Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  It's, um, it's, um, it's a, it's a coping mechanism from abuse.

• 56:45Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 56:45Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So it's one of the.

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  Could be verbal or emotional or sexual or physical abuse?

• 56:48Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes. So it's coming from any level of, of eight, nine, ten, Thomas. If you think of a scale of one to ten, eight, nine, ten would be your extreme Thomas. And persistent bullying that's breaking a person down would fall under that category along, you know, any kind of abuse will fall under that sort of category. So when bullying is one behavior in amongst those four signals I keep talking about, that is an energy that's built up, that's self hatred. And self hatred therefore is now blasting out and they're repeating a pattern. So bully has been bullied. And so it's a persistent pattern that goes through generations.

• 57:21Lewis Howes?

  They don't know how to process their emotions in a healthy way. So this is how they get it out.

• 57:25Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly. That's how they're getting it out.

• 57:27Lewis Howes?

  So bully has been abused in some way.

• 57:29Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yes, and they've been bullied or have been bullied or are being bullied. And so they're just taking it out. So you can't treat the bully by punishing the bully. You've got to actually help resolve why the bully's doing the bullying in the first place. And so you'd start with a child in your home that's bullying the little brother and find out, okay, well, let's now, you know, and this is key. You need to make a person feel validated because you need to say to that child, whether or an adult, this is not who you are. These behaviors that I'm seeing that are impacting us, the rest of the family, yourself, your friends, whatever, this is not who you are. I can, I know that, but I know you are. I know who you are. I love you. So in other words, you divorce the behavior from the person.

• 58:11Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And that's really critical to create that safe space. So I'm going to help you work through this. This is no judgment, but let's talk about this. Let's talk about how, let's, you can't hurt your brother or sister, whatever, that's, but at the same time, I recognize that this is not who you are. So you're doing this for a reason. So you've got to stop hurting. And we've got to put boundaries in place for that, but I'm also going to help you understand what's going on. And you're going to help me understand. And then you take them through a process of a neurocycle. You have a contact point. So I've created things like toys, coloring books, that character. That if a child is not able to verbalize, which they're not until they're old enough to have the language, and even then they don't have the words often. But if you have a key point, contact point or a point in your house,

• 58:53Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  where, you know, like you have a sitting room and you watch TV and that's your place of relaxation. You need a mind management place in your home. You've got a gym, you've got a whatever. You need a mind management center in your home, which could be a beautiful little couch that you, or a little beanbag and makes a pretty plant, something that you as a family. Create and choose and anyone adults say that this. Whenever you go there, there's no judgment, there's only safety. And if someone's sitting there, that's they need, they're needing support to creating that environment and then having, you know, like a toy like this, a young child, it's often easier to say, oh, Shane Branny was bullied today and he's so sad. And, you know, so they, I see that Branny is angry. And so you, you transfer that over, transfer that over to the toy, then the child can then act and carry it out and show you what's happening.

• 59:38Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And then it divorces it from them directly and it enables them to try and, and, and act it without feeling threatened or scared or externalizing. And you can also model for yourself, oh, mommy feels sad today and, this happened. And so you model and you actually walk through the five steps without saying them, but you do that and you model. So that allows them to have the space. Oh, mommy also sometimes gets mad or dad also sometimes gets mad or uncle also. But you, in that space, now that idea of creating a mind management space, um, or a neurocycle space, whatever you want, or a brainy space, whatever you want to call it. And I've got these examples in the book. Came from a study done in Zimbabwe years ago, where I was actually born. Called Bench Therapy. And it was a granny on a bench,

• 1:00:19Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  in a tribe, in a country that has no money for current modern mental health and actually has better mental health than any, westernized country, because our current model doesn't make things better. It actually makes things worse. And the science is there to prove that. And all that this granny did, Lewis, was sit on a bench, create a safe space for people to listen. It was so successful that King, King's University in Harvard did a study on it. And I heard about this years ago when I was in early, early in my research and I started adapting and, applying it in my practice and working with families and sort of setting this up and whatever. And so now you don't have to have a bench, you can have anything. It could be a bench and flowers, it could, whatever, create that space as a family, find it. When you've got very young kids, you can get little boxes,

• 1:01:00Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  fill them up with pictures that you cut out of all of emotions, behaviors, perspectives, bodily sensations. So when a child comes from school and they can't verbalize or they're just so overwhelmed, they go to that corner, they pick up Branny or other toys. And they can act it out. It's safe. Doesn't matter what they do there, no judgment, that's a cry for help. Pull out the picture, they can use pictures to show. So you create a sense of communication. So that little girl, whose dad, whose friend said, oh, what a cute little boy, could have gone to the, that neurocycle corner, whatever you want to call it, mind management, mental health, whatever you want to call it, picked up a toy and maybe demonstrated and. Made Brandy cry and then mommy says, well, why is Brandy cry? You see what I'm saying?

• 1:01:42Lewis Howes?

  Sure, yeah.

• 1:01:43Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And you start that at two and three. By the time you've got a ten year old, they're going to adolescence, prepared for the terrors of adolescence.

• 1:01:51Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:01:52Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And the, the challenges.

• 1:01:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I just think learning to process emotions at an early age can help you immensely as an adult. I never learned how to process emotions until I was thirty. Yeah, I, the emotions I processed was anger, right? And that came out in sports or physical contact or reactions.

• 1:02:12Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Yeah, all your energy transferred, it never lost the transfer.

• 1:02:15Lewis Howes?

  And once you, once I lost the safe environment, sports to do that, then it was just like, oh, what do I do with this? You know, and so I had to learn over the last decade how to process and, and really create a safe space for me to process with me and then with others.

• 1:02:30Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Or a relationship with herself.

• 1:02:31Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. If someone feels broken in an intimate relationship,

• 1:02:38Lewis Howes?

  are they usually more reactive to the partner if they're not feeling like the partner is helping fix them?

• 1:02:44Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Definitely could be. They can either be more reactive in that they are verbally more reactive and, you know, maybe make demands like that are seem crazy. They seem possessive or whatever, um, or they could withdraw. You know, they could go silent and give you the silent treatment and withhold sort of sexual intimacy and, you know, all kinds of things for kind of, to get some level of control.

• 1:03:07Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:03:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You know, there's those aspects. So, yes, so it's, and as a partner, do you feel your partner is, has some kind of weird behaviors towards you? Well, that's time to talk and it's time to say, hey, listen, let's go to that safe space. And I noticed this, I know this is not you. Is there something I'm doing or saying? Is there something that you have triggered or is there something in your life? Maybe it's not me, maybe something's happening at work or with your mom or your dad or your best friend. And you just don't feel that I'm here enough to listen to you. Yeah, we are not talking in space or safe space or, or mind management corner, on your cycle corner, whatever you want to call it. Let's, you know, let's talk and I see you doing this. Have I understood you correctly?

• 1:03:49Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And, you know, so it's, it's show, tell a person what you see lovingly, kindly in the safe space. And say, am I correct? Have I read the situation correctly? Am I, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. And I, I see you doing this and I know it's not you. So you always validate, always acknowledge, always listen, always compassion, kindness, and love. You talk about wild for love. We have got to immerse in love.

• 1:04:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes. And what about, where do you believe that the root of insecurity or jealousy comes from in relationships? Is that a, is that a wound from the past that makes us insecure or jealous in our current relationship? Or where does that come from?

• 1:04:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Everything that we do that is impacting us negatively is coming from something we've experienced. Everything. And so we need to live lifestyles of managing our reactions. So we are very capable of standing back and observing ourselves 24/7. Well, you're sleeping when you sleep at night, but then if you do this during the day or nighttime, when you sleep, our mind and brain are doing housekeeping. And so when we manage our mind well during the day, we get really good advice. When we sleep, we get really good cleaning, a good cleaner. So it's essential that we live lifestyles of mind management so that we can observe ourselves.

• 1:05:08Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So if, if I, for example, I've trained myself to do this, if I start noticing a certain pattern in my behaviors and I notice that there's maybe some jealousy emerging or some envy, I'm very quick to observe it now. And I'm not saying I'm a saint at all, far from it. I'm just saying I've trained myself and I'm proud that I've trained myself and I'm saying it because you can do this.

• 1:05:28Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And it's not just me. There's millions of people now that we reach and I hear this all the time and I saw this in my practice. So I'll observe myself. I'll watch, maybe I snap at Matt because he does something that irritates me and I've got so used to being around him because we're together 24/7 that I may just, and I'll, you know, find myself getting irritated or being sarcastic. And I'll catch myself and say, I'm sorry, I was sarcastic there. You said something in a way, I didn't really listen to you, you didn't, you know. So you can train yourself to live lifestyle. In other words, if I did have felt that urge of jealousy, I will let that thought and interaction with someone else, let's say maybe it's social media and I see something going on, or someone a friend has, whatever, jealousy comes wanting what someone else has got.

• 1:06:10Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  We as humans, and I've got to get this right, we as humans, when I support you and I love you and I lift you up and I am building you and I'm excited, stentily and genuinely excited for every element of your success, without one moment of wishing I had that, I am going to function at my highest intellectual level, I am going to be the healthiest I am. So loving and supporting and lifting you is actually increasing my own intelligence and mind and brain health. However, we are in a zeitgeist of if, what can I get out of you? And if you've got more than me, how did you get, I need that. They may not be saying that to you, but that's what's going on in their head. That is slowly creating toxic thoughts that are slowly creating a disruption of those microtubal things I spoke about and setting you up for disease and dementias.

• 1:06:55Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:06:56Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Big link between, and a sense of loneliness, which is pretty much a guarantee for leading towards dementias and things. So envy, jealousy, bitterness, anger, those things eat you from the inside out. So lifting someone up makes you healthier, being jealous of someone else. If you are have a twinge of jealousy, which is first thing, it's okay to be a mess. It's okay. Okay. I feel jealousy. So what? Okay. I feel it. Now what? Why? And then go through the neurocycle, find the source and fix it.

• 1:07:23Lewis Howes?

  I love this. Um, I feel like we can go on for a long time about this stuff. Is there anything else that you think people should know about how to end toxic thoughts to get into healthy relationships or relationships in general? Any other?

• 1:07:39Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I think what's so important is that we try and reconnect as communities again and create, you know, there's a big move, and there has been for about forty years, saying that, yeah, it's great. We're talking about mental health. We're lifting the stigma. But if you look at how we've done it, we've, the research shows we've created a more worse stigma.

• 1:07:58Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:07:58Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  And we've actually created environments where people are talking about mental health in a certain way that leads towards seeing it as an illness. In other words, seeing you as a broken person. Now, if I go to a dinner party and I walk in and say, oh, I've just had this another label, I'm now bipolar and this and schizophrenia and blah, blah, blah. Everyone at the dinner table is gonna kind of be wary and you're not gonna, you're going to a job interview and say that, whatever. But if you go to that dinner and you say, you know, I've just had like such a rough few weeks and I've just seen these patterns in my life. And I, you know, went through this whole sort of exploration and I found that, hey, these patterns are coming from something. And whatever, how much of you wanna share, but in order to, and you tell your story, everyone will lean in and everyone will say, hey, wow.

• 1:08:41Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  You know, they have, this happened to, and you, and everyone will start sharing stories in this community and support and advice and interaction. That's healthy mental health talk, whether it's among an adult, a child, a baby, an adolescent, two year olds, whatever. We need, that for me is huge, that we need to create genuine safe spaces. Yeah. Not this, oh, I haven't met, it's okay to say it's an illness like diabetes and that makes the stigma go away. And if we can talk about diabetes, no one criticizes you if you've got diabetes. Why do they criticize you if you've got bipolar? Bipolar doesn't even exist. And now, please, I'm not dishonoring the fact that people have mood swings. But if I just say you have bipolar, all I've done is, is reduce something massive in your life.

• 1:09:24Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  That's absolutely huge, bigger than this room, into just, I think, a little, they, I totally invalidated you. But if I say, oh, okay, tell me about this bipolar that you say you've got a diagnosis. What, what do you mean? And then you describe a set of behaviors, then I would say, okay, so what you're describing is that you have certain behaviors going on in your life. With these emotions, stuff feels in your body. So if that's the case, what's going on? Let's find out why, what's your story? What is hap, you know, why, where did? Then I've actually tuned in and I've listened to you. That's what I'm talking about. Right, right. That's validating a person, that's recognizing that person who can't get out of bed for three weeks or four weeks or two years or. Listening to them, what I spoke about earlier on, that's the validation we need.

• 1:10:09Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So I'm in a nutshell saying that all these mental health labels reduce something that's massive into something that's not massive and put it into a disease label. That's not good. We've got to come back to our humanity. We've got to see it's huge. If someone's in a panic attack, or someone's depressed, or someone's got these mood swings, or someone's battling to focus, or battling to function in, we need to listen to these stories. We need to sit down and connect and communicate and create safe spaces for extreme trauma, which has created extreme behavior changes that they can't really split back in society very well. And they need a couple of weeks or months or whatever to just talk safely in a safe space.

• 1:10:47Lewis Howes?

  Talk it out, process it, yeah.

• 1:10:49Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Exactly. That for me would be critical. That will lead to very healthy partnerships between people.

• 1:10:55Lewis Howes?

  Caroline, I love, I love you. I love your message. I love everything you're doing to help people. If you've enjoyed this, make sure to leave a comment of the biggest moment takeaway on YouTube or over on audio as well. Leave us a comment there. If you want more about how to master your mind in relationships and intimacy, then leave a comment on YouTube that you want another part two of this episode. If you've got kids or you're about to have kids, make sure you get this book, How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, A Guide to Building Resilience and Managing Mental Health. This will be a game changer for the future of our humanity. And if you just feel like you want to overcome stress, anxiety, or toxic thinking, then make sure to get this book as well. Cleaning Up Your

• 1:11:40Lewis Howes?

  Mental Mess, Five Simple Scientifically Proven Steps to Do Those Things. So make sure you get a copy of both of these. We'll have it linked up. Follow Caroline everywhere on social media. Your podcast is amazing, your YouTube, all these different places that you have. Where can we best support and serve you? Is it DrLeaf.com? Or where should we all connect with you?

• 1:12:02Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  My social media platform is DrCarolineLeaf and my podcast, as you mentioned, is the same name as the book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. So thank you.

• 1:12:08Lewis Howes?

  I love you. I love your content. You're amazing. You spoke at our Summit of Greatness last year and it was incredible. And you're just doing so much good for the world. So we're so grateful for you, your research, science you do, everything that you're finding online, and really just giving it in practical terms that we can understand. So I always love the analogies. I love the props. I love everything that just shows us how to simplify the challenges, the stresses, the overwhelm that we feel, whether it be in life, or money, or relationships. But again, if you guys enjoy this, make sure to comment below if you want a part two on mastering your mind in relationships. I've asked you this question before, but I'm gonna ask it again. It's a three truths question. See if it's got a different answer for you this time.

• 1:12:52Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Okay.

• 1:12:53Lewis Howes?

  Imagine it's your last day on earth, many years away, and for whatever reason, you can't take, you can't leave behind any content, or this book, or any message you've ever put out there. It's gotta go with you to the next place. And you only get to share three pieces of advice, three lessons that you would leave with the world. But none of this interview is gone, this book is gone, but you get to share three final things with the world. After all the success you have, what would you share those three truths?

• 1:13:21Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I would share the same thing that I said a moment ago is work. Start maybe with the first one, accept that you can be a mess. And it's okay to work on your relationship with yourself, be the kindest compassion to yourself. Then give the same to others, listen to others. It works through that process of really listening and supporting. And that's kind of those two kind of winding to each other into, I think, those two kind of encapsulate kind of everything.

• 1:13:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:49Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  So that would then be two loves. So it's work on yourself and work on others, and that leads to love.

• 1:13:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. I want to acknowledge you, Caroline. I always do. You're, you're so committed to service, and I'm so grateful for you for how you show up. You know, you have

• 1:14:07Lewis Howes?

  It's rare to find someone who has had a healthy long-term relationship, who's got four kids that are also working with them and have a healthy relationship with them and have a career in service to humanity the way you do. So I'm just grateful for you and I know it's not, you're messy in all the areas, but the way you show up consistently is beautiful and I'm really grateful for you.

• 1:14:31Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Thank you. Thank you. This is beautiful. Look back at you too. You're amazing. And really, I have so much higher regard for you.

• 1:14:37Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it.

• 1:14:38Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  Love everything you do and you touch all our lives.

• 1:14:41Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Again, final question, what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:14:48Dr. Caroline Leaf?

  I love this question you always ask me. Someone who actually has a good relationship with themselves.

• 1:14:53Lewis Howes?

  I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels, at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox

• 1:15:38Lewis Howes?

  over at greatness.com/newsletter. And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.