Transform Your Anxiety Into Your Greatest Strength | Dr. Wendy Suzuki

Dr. Wendy Suzuki reveals that 90% of people suffer from anxiety, but most are approaching it completely wrong. Instead of fighting or suppressing anxious feelings, she explains how anxiety is actually a protective mechanism that can be harnessed as fuel for action, courage, and personal transformation. Through her own journey of loss, she discovered that our greatest pain often leads to our deepest wisdom. From the neuroscience of love and social connection to practical tools like joy conditioning and micro flow, this episode offers a roadmap for turning your most uncomfortable emotions into superpowers. You'll learn how anxiety can build empathy, resilience, and flow states when you shift your relationship with it. This isn't about eliminating anxiety but about using its energy to propel you toward the life you want. Dr. Suzuki’s books: Healthy Brain, Happy Life Good Anxiety In this episode you will: Learn the exact breathing technique and morning rituals that rewire your brain for peace and decrease chronic stress Discover how to transform everyday anxiety into actionable energy that drives you forward instead of holding you back Understand why social connection is the number one predictor of longevity and how to build meaningful relationships that heal anxiety Master the concept of joy conditioning to create positive neural pathways that counteract fear and worry Recognize the six superpowers hidden within your anxiety including resilience, empathy, and the ability to access flow states For more information go to https://lewishowes.com/1901 For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960 Follow The Daily Motivation for essential highlights from The School of Greatness More SOG episodes we think you’ll love: Lewis Howes [SOLO] Dr. Caroline Leaf Dr. Daniel Amen Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

• 0:04Wendy Suzuki?

  90% of the population identifies as suffering from anxiety.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so 90% are affected by anxiety.

• 0:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 0:12Lewis Howes?

  Is it possible for us to change the way we think about anxiety? And start to heal our brain, heal our mindset around the topic of anxiety? So that it doesn't affect us or consume us in our life? Is that possible?

• 0:25Wendy Suzuki?

  Absolutely, it is possible. And I think the first step is to realize that anxiety and our stress response, which is causing all those negative feelings. Evolutionarily, that is a protective mechanism. It is necessary for our survival. It was and it is necessary. So it was evolved so that if there is a line coming at us, or a dangerous situation that you're in, that you automatically have that increased heart rate, that increased respiration. All the blood goes to your muscles, so you can run away. Our problem is that in this day and time, there's not a lot of lines coming at us, but there's all the worry that we see every single day

• 1:08Wendy Suzuki?

  when we look in the newspaper and look at our Instagram feeds. And that worry of a possible terrible thing that might happen, that also activates our stress and anxiety systems. So, but it is there for protection. How do we harness that and bring it back into submission? So it can help us in the way that it was developed or evolved to help us? That is, to put us into action. I want to use that energy to go into action, to try and check off all those things. I have this, I don't know when your anxiety hits you, but it always hits me right before I'm gonna go to sleep. It's like, oh, almost there! And then, bing! You know, what if this happens tomorrow? Did I do that? What if that happens?

• 1:53Wendy Suzuki?

  What if that happens? And so that action, the way I use it is, I say, "That's okay. That is going to be my to-do list for tomorrow. I'm gonna take action." And knowing that I can and will take action. Helps me go back to sleep.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 2:10Wendy Suzuki?

  Because it still happens.

• 2:12Lewis Howes?

  I used to, it used to be extremely difficult for me to sleep until I hit about thirty, thirty-one years old.

• 2:17Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  And I would sit in bed for probably an hour to an hour and a half almost every night.

• 2:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Uh huh.

• 2:22Lewis Howes?

  Anxious, worrying, thinking.

• 2:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 2:24Lewis Howes?

  Judging myself, whatever it may be, stressing about something I haven't done yet, or really just kind of beating myself up.

• 2:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Lewis Howes?

  Emotionally. And what I've learned, there's two things that I've learned, well, really three things that I've learned that have helped me go to sleep extremely fast.

• 2:38Wendy Suzuki?

  Oh.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  In the last eight years.

• 2:40Wendy Suzuki?

  Okay.

• 2:40Lewis Howes?

  That has been like an automatic switch for me.

• 2:42Wendy Suzuki?

  Uh huh.

• 2:43Lewis Howes?

  One is going through a transition of fully sharing and starting to heal the process of my shame from the past. So taught, like finding a therapist and talking about what I'm shameful about.

• 2:57Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 2:57Lewis Howes?

  Um, you know, and really revealing the parts of myself that I never wanted anyone to know about me.

• 3:02Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:03Lewis Howes?

  There were so many things that I didn't like about myself that I was ashamed of or felt insecure around.

• 3:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:08Lewis Howes?

  And it made me feel like a prisoner.

• 3:10Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:10Lewis Howes?

  To my own thoughts.

• 3:11Wendy Suzuki?

  Uh huh.

• 3:12Lewis Howes?

  Because I felt like I was, in a sense, hiding myself.

• 3:15Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:15Lewis Howes?

  To the world.

• 3:16Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:16Lewis Howes?

  And to the people closest to me. Like certain people didn't even know who I was.

• 3:20Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:21Lewis Howes?

  So I felt like an imposter at times.

• 3:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:23Lewis Howes?

  I was still a loving, fun, generous human, but I felt like there was a few things that people didn't know about me.

• 3:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  And when I started to open up about those things. I felt inner peace.

• 3:32Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:33Lewis Howes?

  It didn't all go away, but I felt like, you know, a lot more peace. Number two was I started to focus on everything at night, what I was grateful for from the day. I was like, okay, if there was anything good today, what was it? Even if it was all bad, there had to be something. I'm alive.

• 3:47Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:48Lewis Howes?

  You know, I'm healthy or whatever it may be. I have a roof.

• 3:51Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:51Lewis Howes?

  So it's just focusing on anything, and I do that every night where I think, it's about three things to be grateful for. That brings me like another level of peace.

• 3:58Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Lewis Howes?

  And then I think about, what am I gonna do tomorrow to help people?

• 4:01Wendy Suzuki?

  Hmm.

• 4:02Lewis Howes?

  How am I gonna serve?

• 4:03Wendy Suzuki?

  Beautiful, yeah.

• 4:03Lewis Howes?

  So it's like, you know, healing the shame.

• 4:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 4:07Lewis Howes?

  Focusing on gratitude, and then thinking about how am I gonna serve?

• 4:10Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Lewis Howes?

  Not just, what do I need for me, but how can I show up for other people? That kind of three-part combination gives me so much peace before I go to bed.

• 4:19Wendy Suzuki?

  Oh, that's so beautiful.

• 4:20Lewis Howes?

  And it's a practice, you know? It's like a constant practice. It's not always perfect, but it's a practice, yeah.

• 4:25Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. I love the, um, Thinking about something you're gonna do for somebody else tomorrow, coming from this practice of healing your own shame. One of the superpowers in good anxiety that comes from your own anxiety, and this is a beautiful example that you just told me, is the superpower of empathy.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  For yourself or others?

• 4:46Wendy Suzuki?

  First, for yourself, and recognizing it in yourself, and then giving it out to others. Because, just as you described your journey, a lot of our own anxieties have been with us since we were little. Same anxiety.

• 5:01Lewis Howes?

  They stay for decades.

• 5:02Wendy Suzuki?

  For your lifetime, sometimes.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  What was yours?

• 5:05Wendy Suzuki?

  So, I have many, but the one that I talk about here is shyness, and kind of social anxiety. And I've learned, because I'm a teacher and because I want to become an author, I've learned the skills not to have those kinds of anxieties. But I was painfully shy as a young girl. And even into college, I found myself in social situations, and wanting to join and not feeling comfortable, or even in class. And so, I realized that that has become my superpower as a teacher. Because I know when I'm standing at the front of the classroom...

• 5:42Lewis Howes?

  Shyness is a superpower.

• 5:43Wendy Suzuki?

  My shyness.

• 5:44Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 5:44Wendy Suzuki?

  Because, when I'm standing at the front of the classroom, there are always those students that say, "Oh, I know the answer, I know the answer." And I know that there's many more that want to talk to me, that want to show me what they know, want to have that interaction, but can't do that. And so, what do I do? I make sure that I am there 15 minutes before. I stand there, I talk to the students before, I stay after class. Anybody that wants to come up for a casual conversation, where you don't have to be the one raising your hand. And I didn't even realize it, until I wrote this book, that that is a superpower of in-class empathy. And I have that particular form of empathy because of my particular form of anxiety.

• 6:28Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 6:29Wendy Suzuki?

  My social anxiety. And so, imagine the 90% of people that have their particular form of anxiety. They know what it feels like, they know what's going through many others of our minds. And what if you turn that around? And you do what you do, and say, "How can I help somebody else in this way that I know I've struggled, but I also know what can help?"

• 6:50Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. Okay.

• 6:52Wendy Suzuki?

  So that's one of my favorite superpowers.

• 6:54Lewis Howes?

  How do we know how to turn anxiety into something good? Like if ninety percent of the, is this the US or the world feels anxiety?

• 7:01Wendy Suzuki?

  I think the actual study was about the US.

• 7:04Lewis Howes?

  The US, ninety percent of the US claims that they have anxiety on some level, right?

• 7:08Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly.

• 7:09Lewis Howes?

  And what does anxiety do for us when we don't have attacks coming our way? Like if we're constantly in a state of anxiety, what does it do to the brain? And what does it do to our immune system and to our body and our emotions?

• 7:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So that's a great question. The answer is, uh, long-term anxiety will have terrible effects on all of the physiological systems that are being activated. So what's happening when you have a stress response? Your heart rate is going up, your respiration is going up. So long-term effects of anxiety and stress are, um, heart disease.

• 7:44Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 7:44Wendy Suzuki?

  The other thing that's happening when you're in a constant, um, state of stress is that blood is being shunted from your digestive and reproductive systems to your muscles because you're supposed to be running away from the lion and you're sitting there worrying about your taxes instead, or whatever, the Delta variant instead. And so long-term effects, um, ulcers, reproductive problems, long-term reproductive problems with, with, um, long-term anxiety. And that's just the body. So now we get to my favorite body area, the brain.

• 8:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 8:15Wendy Suzuki?

  And so long-term stress will literally start to first kill off the dendrites of your neurons, the, the, the input structures of your brain cells in two key brain areas. The hippocampus, critical for long-term memory, in the temporal lobe, and the prefrontal cortex, critical for decision-making, focus and attention. And so, for example, PTSD, if you have PTSD, classic example of long-term stress, your whole temporal lobe gets smaller. Why? Because you first start to degrade the, the size of your individual brain cells and then you start to kill them off. And so that is not, memory problems ensue. So it is not.

• 9:00Lewis Howes?

  Is long term also the same as chronic?

• 9:03Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 9:04Lewis Howes?

  So long term stress, long term anxiety is chronic anxiety and stress?

• 9:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly.

• 9:08Lewis Howes?

  Which, which, what's the, the definition of chronic? Does that just mean something that's consistent over?

• 9:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Over months, over months and, and years. And, and of course, there's different levels of intensity. Also, I should say that this book, Good Anxiety, is not addressing clinical anxiety. That is a different animal. For clinical anxiety, just as you would do if you had a broken leg, you need medical treatment. This is not a medical treatment for somebody that has chronic anxiety. This is the 90% of people that say, yeah, I have some anxiety every day. I call it everyday anxiety.

• 9:46Lewis Howes?

  Everyday anxiety.

• 9:47Wendy Suzuki?

  So these are some of the approaches and mindsets that you can use to start to shift that negative effect of anxiety and shift it in to the basic brain activation that it is and start to help motivate yourself to address the things that you're afraid of.

• 10:07Lewis Howes?

  What are the, what are the common things that most people have on a daily anxiety basis, I guess? What is it? Fear of what?

• 10:14Wendy Suzuki?

  You know, generally, and this is before the pandemic.

• 10:16Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 10:17Wendy Suzuki?

  Fear of public speaking is one of the most common.

• 10:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Fear of money fears, another big one. I'm just thinking about all the, my own anxieties that I've talked about in the book. Let's see, yeah. Early on, social anxiety is, you know, they mirror the, the clinical levels of anxiety. One is general anxiety disorder is just kind of life and situations and interacting with anything come to my, start to produce anxiety. Social anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorders, one can start to worry obsessively about whatever that thing is that, that worries you.

• 11:01Wendy Suzuki?

  And of course, the thing that is on everybody's mind right now is the uncertainty around the coronavirus and everything that's happened in the future. We can't predict. We don't know what's going to happen in the fall with schools or work for that matter. And that uncertainty is the key.

• 11:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Driver for a lot of anxiety.

• 11:26Lewis Howes?

  So uncertainty in general.

• 11:27Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 11:28Lewis Howes?

  Is is uncertainty about my money, uncertainty if I go to this social event, am I, you know, am I going to fit in? It's just kind of the uncertainty of life.

• 11:35Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 11:36Lewis Howes?

  Around different topics.

• 11:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 11:37Lewis Howes?

  It's uncertainty about my parents, are they going to stay healthy? Yes. Just the uncertainty of life.

• 11:42Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 11:42Lewis Howes?

  So that sounds like it's one of the main causes of daily, everyday anxiety.

• 11:46Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 11:47Lewis Howes?

  How do we get comfortable with uncertainty so it doesn't consume us?

• 11:51Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, that's a great question.

• 11:53Lewis Howes?

  How do we embrace it and enjoy uncertainty?

• 11:56Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm hmm.

• 11:56Lewis Howes?

  And have fun and play and connect with it in a different relationship?

• 12:01Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah. So that is a great question, and the answer that I provide in the book is a multi-spoke kind of strategy. And one strategy that's easy to understand is how do you create more joy in your life to kind of counteract all of these negative things coming coming out? And so one of my favorite, this is in the toolbox part of the book where I go through immediate, medium term and long term tools that you can use to flip your anxiety from bad to good. And my favorite, one of my favorite ones is called joy conditioning.

• 12:41Wendy Suzuki?

  Joy conditioning is mining your own memory banks for those joyous, funny, pick your favorite positive emotion events in your life and consciously bringing them back up and revivifying them and bringing up those emotions. And my little trick for that is try and find a memory that you love that has an olfactory component to it.

• 13:11Lewis Howes?

  A what component?

• 13:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Olfactory, so a particular smell associated with it. Why? Because smells are really evocative of memories. It's very easy to bring up everything associated with that memory if it has a smell. It's okay if it doesn't. But the one that I use is, I love this one because everybody. Might have an example of this. I remember a particular yoga class I went to in New York City. And I was doing so well. I was, you know, up dog, down dog. I flipped my dog. It's like, yeah, I did really well. And then I was doing my, the pose that I do the best, which is shavasana. So I was in shavasana.

• 13:49Lewis Howes?

  Is that the one where you just lay down?

• 13:51Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, I do that really well.

• 13:53Lewis Howes?

  You just lay on your back or your like child's pose?

• 13:55Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly. I do that even better than child's pose. It's like I lay on my back, shavasana. And I was feeling really good about myself, had this great class. And then, on top of all of that, the teacher came around and she put some lavender lotion on her hand and she waved it under my nose. And she gave me the most luscious five-second neck massage that I've ever had in my life. Because, you know, I worked out hard, I was feeling really good about myself. And so I literally, in my purse out there, is a little vial of lavender essence. And when I need a little pick-me-up of, remember the time I just felt so good? It was just this relaxing, feel-good moment.

• 14:38Wendy Suzuki?

  I smell that lavender and that memory, that is my joy conditioning. I'm joy conditioning myself with that memory. But you can do that with whatever memory you want.

• 14:48Lewis Howes?

  Joy conditioning?

• 14:49Wendy Suzuki?

  Joy conditioning.

• 14:50Lewis Howes?

  Is that a scientific term?

• 14:51Wendy Suzuki?

  That is Wendy, Dr., Professor Wendy Suzuki's term. And it's based on my 25 years of studying how memory works.

• 14:59Lewis Howes?

  I love it.

• 15:00Wendy Suzuki?

  And applying all of my knowledge to addressing anxiety. And it's really a direct antidote to fear conditioning, which we all experience automatically. So that's, my example is, my apartment in Washington DC was robbed. And I walked around the corner, my door was the only one around the corner. And I still remember walking around the corner and seeing my door crowbarred open, hanging open when it was supposed to be locked. It's like, what's hap- and I walked in, which was not the smartest thing to do. Nobody was there, but, but every time I walked around that corner for months and months, I felt that. That is fear conditioning.

• 15:43Lewis Howes?

  How do you flip it?

• 15:44Wendy Suzuki?

  So, um, that didn't go away.

• 15:48Lewis Howes?

  You had to move.

• 15:49Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, I did have to move. It went down slowly, but I, you know, um, um, to counteract that with something like joy conditioning is, you know, invite friends over, create wonderful memories, uh, wonderful safe events in that same space. Um, it never went away and I'll tell you why, because that is a safety mechanism. You don't want to, you know, the brain doesn't allow us to, uh, obliterate anything. This isn't like that movie, um, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Yes. So, um, uh, we can't do that, but we can counteract that very protective mechanism.

• 16:31Wendy Suzuki?

  Actually, I don't want to eliminate that. I want to be wary of areas and situations that were really, really bad for me. That is-

• 16:41Lewis Howes?

  You don't eliminate it.

• 16:42Wendy Suzuki?

  I don't want to eliminate it.

• 16:43Lewis Howes?

  What if it's been something traumatic though, where someone breaking in or a sexual assault against you or something traumatic? How do we learn to heal the memory and the emotion of that fear, of that trauma?

• 16:56Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Lewis Howes?

  To live with ourselves or to live in the environment of a home that we can't leave yet? Or how do we?

• 17:01Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 17:02Lewis Howes?

  Is it just more joy conditioning? Are there other things?

• 17:05Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, so this is where we get to that boundary between clinical levels and what this addresses. So I'm really not addressing, you know, I went to Afghanistan. I have, you know, terrible PTSD. This-

• 17:19Lewis Howes?

  That's not that.

• 17:19Wendy Suzuki?

  This can help a little bit, but it does not substitute for, you need to go to a medical professional, yeah, therapist. And, um, so yeah, that is not a substitute. However, you can use these in addition to your, you know, uh, therapy, uh, approaches.

• 17:36Lewis Howes?

  Any tool, I think, is a good tool to try.

• 17:38Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 17:38Lewis Howes?

  Any tool is a good tool to try. What's another tool we can use in order to quiet some of the negative anxiety that keeps us from joy, that keeps us from feeling good about ourselves? What's another tool you like?

• 17:50Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. I mean, we already said this, but I think this is one that so many people can use. And it was really inspired by a really good lawyer that I happened to meet at a party one day. And I told her, I'm writing this book about anxiety. And she said, I am the lawyer that I am today because of my anxiety. And I said, oh, tell me about that. And she said, you know, I use my anxiety for all the different arguments that the other side is going to put up against me, or all the things the judge might say. That becomes my to-do list. Like, what if the judge says that? What if the other side brings this up, that, that up? And I turn that into actionable items.

• 18:32Wendy Suzuki?

  And so, because I do that on a systematic basis, and I've gotten really good at that, I, I plug all the holes in my case. And I think you could apply that to anything, anything in your life. And I love it because it is an act of, of turning the energy of just worrying, oh, what if this, what if this, into an action. That is really at the core of this book. Can you turn that inner turmoil into an action that is positive? And this is one example that's easy to understand how I do that. Even if you get to the top three things on your list and do something about that,

• 19:15Wendy Suzuki?

  there is a satisfaction that comes from that. And it, you can feel that anxiety coming down with every checkmark that you do.

• 19:28Lewis Howes?

  If people don't turn their anxiety into a positive action, what happens? If they stay in it consistently, what happens?

• 19:35Wendy Suzuki?

  Well, then we go back to what are the chronic effects of anxiety.

• 19:39Lewis Howes?

  They get sick, heart disease, long-term stress.

• 19:41Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, right. And they stay in this, in this negative emotional state. They stay in the state of pure worry, no action. And that is, that is difficult to maintain. And, and it starts to interfere.

• 19:58Lewis Howes?

  It's exhausting.

• 19:59Wendy Suzuki?

  It's exhausting.

• 20:00Lewis Howes?

  It's emotionally draining to be in a constant state of stress, anxiety and worry.

• 20:03Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 20:04Lewis Howes?

  Draining, it's got to make you look older.

• 20:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Lewis Howes?

  Feel tired. I mean, I'm assuming, I'm not sure what the research says about longevity. If someone has a lot of stress and worry and anxiety, but I'm assuming you don't live long.

• 20:15Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:16Lewis Howes?

  You probably die younger than you should.

• 20:18Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 20:18Lewis Howes?

  What, have you studied anything about the blue zones? About the people that live in the blue zones?

• 20:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Lewis Howes?

  Who live the longest in the world?

• 20:25Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes, yeah.

• 20:25Lewis Howes?

  About how they manage anxiety or if they have anxiety?

• 20:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 20:29Lewis Howes?

  And is there some benefit to having some anxiety? Or is it better to just have this kind of worry free?

• 20:36Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Lewis Howes?

  Life?

• 20:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Lewis Howes?

  Happy go lucky. I'm not gonna let anything bother me. I forgive everyone, you know, it doesn't matter what you do. I'm just a happy human being. Is there some benefit to that or no?

• 20:46Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, so I think that, I think about anxiety now and all that worry and anger and all these other things that come with anxiety. I really think of it as kind of the wind in my sails. That is the little fire under my backside that gets me to do things, gets me excited, gets, gets me to go towards the fear and get through it. Because I know there's something good on the other side. And without it, I mean, that, that is, I think there's certain perhaps times in your life if you are retired and, and you know, aren't in this situation where you're dealing with the world, that, that could be great.

• 21:29Wendy Suzuki?

  That is the, you know, the happy go lucky, no, no worries. But for most of us, I think it is very beneficial to learn how to take that fear that is depleting us, it is exhausting us, it's making us look older, and turn that into something that makes you feel better about yourself. It decreases the overall stress in your life. And frankly, it is more practical to say, "Look, I'm not gonna be happy-go-lucky all the time." Nobody's happy-go-lucky all the time. But I'm gonna use that bad stuff that is inevitably going to come in. And I am going to learn from it.

• 22:12Wendy Suzuki?

  I'm going to use it to my best advantage. And one thing we haven't talked about yet, I'm gonna learn about myself through thinking about my anxiety, rather than just trying to say, "Oh, I hate it, go away." What does it tell us about ourselves? And like for me, my social anxiety told me how much I love and I appreciate deep friendships, because I didn't have them, because I was too scared to start them.

• 22:44Lewis Howes?

  Really? You're so shy.

• 22:44Wendy Suzuki?

  I was so shy, and it kept me isolated. And there's something wrong about that. I mean, that contributed to the isolation in the first place. And so the realization, and because part of the time it's like, "I'm a lone wolf. I like being alone, you know, it's okay." But actually, the truth was, I love being with people. It motivates me. So I had to get through that shyness to get that joy on the other side. And so that was a learning that I went through.

• 23:17Lewis Howes?

  When someone says they like being a lone wolf, what is that? I mean, no one likes to be alone, really. I mean, we like to be alone in moments, but no one's to be alone and not have close friendships, right?

• 23:27Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Lewis Howes?

  What is that really, what are we really saying when we say, "You know what? I just wanna be alone, or I wanna be a lone wolf." Is that we don't, we've been embarrassed in the past by social settings, where people have made fun of us? Or what does that mean, kind of in general, do you think?

• 23:42Wendy Suzuki?

  You know, I think-

• 23:43Lewis Howes?

  I don't trust people.

• 23:44Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, it's difficult to deal with, you know-

• 23:51Wendy Suzuki?

  Reading the cues and it's just confusing or overwhelming.

• 23:57Wendy Suzuki?

  You know, a criticism of, you know, the monk lifestyle.

• 24:04Wendy Suzuki?

  They're alone all the time. They don't have to deal with, you know, what if I don't like the other monk, you know, I'll just go off to my cave and I'll be all alone and then you don't have to deal with it. The real test comes when you do have to deal with that and disagreements. What if somebody doesn't disagree with, what if somebody disagrees with you? That, that, that brings up all of these things that humans were evolved to do. We are social animals. And I think that, you know, there's, there's, there are social butterflies. I was never a social butterfly. I will never be a social butterfly. But it is not true, what I told myself, that, you know, I just love to be alone and I, you know, I'm better on my own. No, I'm much better with people.

• 24:49Wendy Suzuki?

  So I, I think there's, it is that, that difficulty. Social interactions, we were, we were evolved to be social, but it is scary. And some of us have that, that fear and so.

• 25:03Lewis Howes?

  I think it can be terrifying if you don't know to handle the emotions of it. If you haven't learned the tools.

• 25:08Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 25:08Lewis Howes?

  On how to navigate when someone lets you down or when someone talks behind your back or when someone lies to you or when someone breaks their commitment or whatever it is. It's like, it's hard to learn these things.

• 25:19Wendy Suzuki?

  It is.

• 25:19Lewis Howes?

  And we can wall ourselves up, we can protect ourselves, but I think that creates more stress and anxiety. It's like being, feeling alone and feeling disconnected of people.

• 25:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 25:29Lewis Howes?

  I think is even harder.

• 25:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 25:31Lewis Howes?

  But that's, it seems safer in the moment, so.

• 25:33Wendy Suzuki?

  It does, it does. And I do believe that, you know, you give, you get what you give. And so, you know, put out there, I could tell by your evening ritual that you like to put out there. What can I give to other people? And the more you do that, it's not to say that nobody will ever turn around and try and, you know, go behind your back about something.

• 25:56Lewis Howes?

  They do, yeah.

• 25:57Wendy Suzuki?

  But you, you are. Building so much goodwill in the people that do appreciate it. It is like this like protective cocoon. So the more you do go out there and give to people, the more protected. And that is going back to vulnerability, the more vulnerable you are and say, you know, I want, I like you, I want to help you. Here's what I can do, this would make me feel good. That's a very vulnerable thing to do and to offer. And I think that that, but that pays, even though sometimes it's hard and it's scary to reach out.

• 26:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Adam Grant talks about that in his book, I think, Give and Take, I think it's called. It's like there's givers and takers and you wanna, you wanna learn not to just constantly give to the takers, but make sure there's give and take and relationships and stuff like that. I love you said that the worry you feel should help you move towards your fear. So if you're worried about being in social settings, you should think about it and say, okay, what can I do to help me overcome this?

• 27:02Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 27:03Lewis Howes?

  I really like to create exercises and kind of games when I'm afraid.

• 27:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 27:08Lewis Howes?

  And I say, okay, I used to be when I was a teenager, I was afraid to talk to girls. I think like most teenage boys, I don't know, maybe I was the only one. But I was afraid to talk to girls. And I remember I was, I've told this on my show many times, but I was sick and tired of being, having so much anxiety, getting rejected by just saying hello at 16. And I said, okay, for this summer, I am going to, every time I feel butterflies when I see a girl, I'm gonna go right up to her and have a conversation. And I need to go up to her, I can't, I can't walk away, I have to put myself through this. And the first couple of weeks was horrible, it was terrifying because I got rejected, I was stuttering, I was stumbling over myself, I was like, the girls were running away, like the whole thing. But then eventually you gain more and more confidence.

• 27:53Lewis Howes?

  You you get a little win, okay, she talked to me for ten seconds. So you build your confidence.

• 27:57Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Lewis Howes?

  And I think if you create a game or an experiment for yourself and say, you know, I'm just gonna do a social experiment around this. I did this with public speaking as well. For a year.

• 28:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 28:08Lewis Howes?

  I went every week and it was terrifying.

• 28:10Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 28:10Lewis Howes?

  I went to a public speaking class.

• 28:11Wendy Suzuki?

  Wow, yeah.

• 28:12Lewis Howes?

  And I was like, I'm gonna do this as an experiment and see what I can prove every week.

• 28:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 28:15Lewis Howes?

  I think if you do that, it becomes more, we we go back to joy. How do you create joy around the anxiety?

• 28:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 28:22Lewis Howes?

  How can you make it a fun game?

• 28:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm hmm.

• 28:24Lewis Howes?

  Not something that's like this terrible fearful thing, but how can I make a game out of this?

• 28:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:30Lewis Howes?

  For me, that has worked wonders.

• 28:32Wendy Suzuki?

  Hmm.

• 28:32Lewis Howes?

  By creating experiments, games.

• 28:34Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 28:35Lewis Howes?

  And trying to throw some joy in there, even when it's so stressful.

• 28:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I love that idea. I love that idea. And bringing friends in to help you.

• 28:44Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 28:45Wendy Suzuki?

  Um, because you were saying that you you you shared uh these parts of yourself, presumably with with close friends. And um I had that same thing, you know, I I wanted to project. I was that ten percent that's, I'm not anxious.

• 29:00Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 29:00Wendy Suzuki?

  I am, I am happy all the time, you know.

• 29:03Lewis Howes?

  You got a smile on your face, yeah.

• 29:05Wendy Suzuki?

  And the truth was that I wasn't. And it was fear of, well, if they saw a real me, then they would never want to. And I'd be, you know, with fewer friends than I have right now, and that's terrible. But you have to learn how to share your authentic self, or else you get inauthentic friends.

• 29:21Lewis Howes?

  That's true.

• 29:21Wendy Suzuki?

  I learned.

• 29:22Lewis Howes?

  Gosh, why is it, you said that, um, we both said this, you know, if people actually knew this about me, then then they wouldn't love me. Or they wouldn't like me.

• 29:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 29:31Lewis Howes?

  Or I'd be alone, or they wouldn't wanna spend time with me.

• 29:33Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 29:34Lewis Howes?

  Is that something you think is a fear for a lot of people? If people actually knew this about me.

• 29:39Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 29:39Lewis Howes?

  What I was most afraid of, what I'm most ashamed of.

• 29:42Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 29:42Lewis Howes?

  What I'm most insecure about, if they actually knew this is how I felt.

• 29:46Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  They wouldn't love me. Do you think that's a common theme in the world?

• 29:49Wendy Suzuki?

  I think every single person, I think that same ninety percent that are suffering from anxiety has that about something in in their life, cuz it's hard to share, even the most. I'm sure Oprah even has things that, you know, although she's obviously shared, shared, shared a lot.

• 30:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 30:08Wendy Suzuki?

  Very difficult to do and um, yeah, I, I'm sure everybody has something like that. And I have this vision that people are just searching for the right configuration of friends. Where they feel comfortable or family members, where they do feel comfortable enough

• 30:29Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 30:29Wendy Suzuki?

  to let that guard down and, you know, let it slip out. It's like, you know, what's gonna happen if, if that really comes out? And, and it's, it's a yearning that, that gets suppressed, I think, too much.

• 30:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I, it's funny, when I started to reveal the things I didn't like about myself or wasn't proud about myself about eight years ago and started to really incorporate that on a more consistent basis in my life. And I have this platform where I'm always talking about my insecurities and doubts. So my audience knows all my, my, my darkness. It gives me, it's funny, the more I started, before I did it, I had so much anxiety and worry and stress.

• 31:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 31:12Lewis Howes?

  Thinking about sharing things.

• 31:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:15Lewis Howes?

  Too close friends, family members, and then eventually I started just opening up more on my, my podcast here. But it's since I've done that, it's like the worry and stress goes away.

• 31:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Hmm.

• 31:25Lewis Howes?

  Cause I'm like, oh, I'm still alive.

• 31:27Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 31:27Lewis Howes?

  People like me.

• 31:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:29Lewis Howes?

  I have friendships.

• 31:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Lewis Howes?

  My family didn't abandon me.

• 31:32Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Lewis Howes?

  And in fact, it brought me closer to people.

• 31:35Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 31:36Lewis Howes?

  It strengthened the bonds and connections with my friends, family. It created new relationships that I didn't have because people trusted me more, they could see me better.

• 31:46Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Lewis Howes?

  They could understand and empathize with me, they could, you know, they just felt like I was more real, whatever it might be.

• 31:52Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Lewis Howes?

  And I think that also allows me to sleep better at night. Knowing, okay, I am being a hundred percent authentic to who I am.

• 32:00Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:01Lewis Howes?

  Revealing myself, opening up, being vulnerable in conversations.

• 32:04Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 32:05Lewis Howes?

  It feels great, you know, I feel like, and people still like, I have great friendships.

• 32:09Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:09Lewis Howes?

  So what do I need to worry about?

• 32:11Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Lewis Howes?

  People know all my stuff that I don't like about me.

• 32:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 32:14Lewis Howes?

  And they still like me, you know, it's like, and they're my friend, you know, and the people that don't like me, okay, they weren't meant for me.

• 32:20Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 32:21Lewis Howes?

  It feels more peace.

• 32:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  It's, I don't know, it's.

• 32:25Wendy Suzuki?

  I know exactly what you're feeling, what you're saying. It really opens up this new kind of communication route. When you are vulnerable and honest. And it gives permission to the other person to be vulnerable, honest, or just be there to listen, because that's also very, very powerful. One of the experiments that I did in my lab this last year was trying to find the most, the easiest, shortest intervention that we can do with students that would decrease their very high levels of anxiety.

• 33:07Lewis Howes?

  What was that?

• 33:08Wendy Suzuki?

  And so, we tested many things, just to walk outside, chair yoga, all these things they can do online, this was all virtual. But one of the things that was very effective, that I was so excited about, is a mindful conversation. So what we did is, we didn't go deep. We didn't want to have them reveal some, you know, deep dark secret. But what we did is, my student researchers had a script. They shared a real story about a favorite vacation, why it was favorite. It was real, they were really trying to share this experience with them. And then invited the student, who they didn't know, who was our experimentee, to share the same thing.

• 33:52Wendy Suzuki?

  And in that year, where everything was virtual, and it was, you know, professors just said, "Okay, now learn these five chapters. Go ahead, do it." And to have somebody there, listening to their story, listening deeply, and asking real questions, because they were, it was only 10 minutes, completely decreased their anxiety.

• 34:13Lewis Howes?

  Really? By them sharing and someone listening? Or by them also listening to someone else's story?

• 34:18Wendy Suzuki?

  You know, I think it was really the sharing and have somebody else listening, because the first part, my students always went first. They didn't know what exactly was going to happen. So that was just to lay the groundwork. And I think the the interaction and the good feelings started to develop. When they started to open up, sharing this story and seeing, oh, my God, somebody is really listening to me. They're asking me a question about about this event that meant something to them. And that is just shows how powerful social interactions are. And even this short 10 minute thing between we were we were we thought about, should

• 35:01Wendy Suzuki?

  we get two friends to try and have a conversation? That was too hard to control. But I could control, we could control exactly the protocol of this stranger student and the kind of interaction they have.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Yeah. Do you, is there any research on if men or women are more anxious? Is there any research around this, like?

• 35:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Um.

• 35:24Lewis Howes?

  When, if men have more anxiety or stress, or if women have more anxiety or stress?

• 35:29Wendy Suzuki?

  I think the stat, I should know this.

• 35:32Lewis Howes?

  Are we all, are we just all messed up equally?

• 35:34Wendy Suzuki?

  Well, I think we're all messed up equally. There's more women with depression. Depression and anxiety are are related, but but, you know, have different symptoms. But I think it's pretty equal for anxiety.

• 35:48Lewis Howes?

  The reason I was, I'm curious is because when I was studying about masculinity, years ago, I wrote a book called The Mask of Masculinity, which is kind of the the mask that men wear to project and protect themselves from showing emotion and showing, revealing themselves. And when I was on tour, talking about it, I would always ask in every city, and about 50% men and women would show up, and I would always ask, like, okay, for the for the ladies here, raise your hand if you have a girlfriend or girlfriends that you talk to once a week about your stress, your worry, your challenges in life, your work issues, your. Your body issues, whatever it might be dealing with that you have someone,

• 36:31Lewis Howes?

  one or multiple girlfriends you speak with on a weekly basis.

• 36:35Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  And pretty much the entire room of women raised their hand and said, yes, every week I have at least one person. And I said, keep your hands up if you do this every day. You call a girlfriend on the phone, you have lunch, you're just talking about something for a few minutes.

• 36:47Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Lewis Howes?

  And I go, how does it make you feel to be able to talk about these things? They're like, it feels great.

• 36:51Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  To be able to share.

• 36:52Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 36:53Lewis Howes?

  This.

• 36:53Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 36:54Lewis Howes?

  And say, okay, for the men in the room, raise your hand if, once a month, you get together with a guy friend and you talk about your vulnerabilities, your insecurities, your body issues, your, your challenges at work, and you really open up to this other male friend.

• 37:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Lewis Howes?

  Maybe one or two guys and out of hundreds would raise their hand.

• 37:11Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:11Lewis Howes?

  And, and I was like, and I would say, you guys are part of a church group, right? Where you meet once a month and it's like for an hour and you do these things.

• 37:19Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 37:19Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  And I say, okay, I go back to the ladies in the room. I say, ladies, imagine not being able to do this once a month. Only doing this once a month, how would it make you feel? They're like, I'd feel more anxiety, more stress. And I go, imagine these men who never do this.

• 37:34Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Lewis Howes?

  In the room. They never share these things.

• 37:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Lewis Howes?

  I'm not saying all men, but a lot of men

• 37:39Wendy Suzuki?

  A lot of men.

• 37:39Lewis Howes?

  Don't feel like they have one guy friend they can open up and reveal to.

• 37:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Lewis Howes?

  And I feel like, uh, maybe there's another symptom. Maybe it's just like, they just wall themselves up and don't share emotion and there's other internal factors or physical elements that they're caused from that stress.

• 37:55Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 37:55Lewis Howes?

  But, um, I think it's, yeah, either way, I think it's important for everyone to learn how to share these things. And based on that study you did, I think it's, when we share.

• 38:05Wendy Suzuki?

  Right.

• 38:05Lewis Howes?

  Whatever it is.

• 38:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 38:06Lewis Howes?

  Even if it's five, 10 minutes. It decreases.

• 38:09Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 38:09Lewis Howes?

  The stress and the anxiety, it seems like it goes down.

• 38:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Lewis Howes?

  And I feel like we've, we gotta create better friendships or relationships or therapists or whatever that we can connect to and have that consistent communication stream.

• 38:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 38:24Lewis Howes?

  Because otherwise, when we trap, when we hold on to it, just bad things happen.

• 38:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:29Lewis Howes?

  Bad things happen.

• 38:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Absolutely. So, what, how does that work? What is the, what is the change that we need in raising boys and talking to boys?

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  This is a whole, I mean, this is a dynamic. I mean, I grew up in the eighties and nineties. I was born in eighty-three and it was just not accepted to show emotion in elementary school, middle school, high school. It wasn't acceptable, especially as an athlete. Growing up in Ohio, it just wasn't, maybe in some, you know, part of Beverly Hills in LA, you know, or some like posh school in New York City, I don't know, maybe in pockets, there's some more acceptability of younger boys showing this type of emotion. I don't know what it's like in twenty twenty-one, but I just know that you were laughed at, you were made fun of if you cried, if you showed emotion.

• 39:19Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 39:20Lewis Howes?

  And so you learn, in order to fit in, to wall yourself or to not share

• 39:25Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 39:26Lewis Howes?

  the things that people won't like about you.

• 39:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm-hmm.

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  And I'm not saying that's okay, and we all have our responsibilities.

• 39:33Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Lewis Howes?

  But as young boys growing up, when we're conditioned that way, it was hard to break that for me personally.

• 39:39Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Lewis Howes?

  And it took me a long time until I realized like, wow, this isn't working for me.

• 39:44Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Lewis Howes?

  I have more stress and anxiety. It was really decades of stress and anxiety and not being able to sleep at night. That was the thing, the catalyst that you talked about that was like, enough is enough.

• 39:58Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 39:58Lewis Howes?

  Maybe for you as a social anxiety, but finally as a teacher, like, okay, I've gotta show up differently to not stress all the time.

• 40:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 40:07Lewis Howes?

  And so eight plus years ago, I finally started to reveal myself. I was just like, okay, I can't live like this anymore. So everyone can know everything about all my shame, because I'd rather that happen and be alone, because I feel so much stress all the time.

• 40:22Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Lewis Howes?

  And then it gave me a lot of peace.

• 40:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 40:24Lewis Howes?

  And then I learned the process of healing and therapy work and workshops and all that stuff, but, and just healthier relationships in general.

• 40:31Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Lewis Howes?

  I don't know the solution. I don't know the solution, but I know I'm trying to be a better model for other men to witness.

• 40:38Wendy Suzuki?

  That's beautiful.

• 40:39Lewis Howes?

  I'm trying to bring other men on.

• 40:40Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Lewis Howes?

  Have these types of conversations. So that younger men could see like, okay, here's someone that maybe I like what he does or what he's been, he's an athlete and I can understand and relate to that.

• 40:52Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Lewis Howes?

  Hopefully I can start to do this with my own life or maybe with my girlfriend or my guy friend.

• 40:56Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 40:57Lewis Howes?

  Try to have some of these conversations, but I just think it's challenging in general.

• 41:00Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 41:01Lewis Howes?

  It's challenging when you're younger and you're trying to have a few friends and they don't accept it.

• 41:05Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:07Lewis Howes?

  That's tough.

• 41:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:09Lewis Howes?

  Because no kid wants to be alone.

• 41:10Wendy Suzuki?

  No, no.

• 41:11Lewis Howes?

  They want to just hang out and go on the playground and just be with their buddies.

• 41:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Lewis Howes?

  So it's, it's really challenging.

• 41:17Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 41:20Lewis Howes?

  Do you have kids?

• 41:21Wendy Suzuki?

  No, I don't have kids.

• 41:22Lewis Howes?

  I don't have, I don't have a solution to that, but I think as a, you know, I don't have kids either, but if I was a parent, I would just encourage showing emotion with my, with my sons or daughters. And be the example, be vulnerability with them.

• 41:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 41:38Lewis Howes?

  Allow myself to feel, allow myself to cry if I'm watching a movie or something happens in my life and I'm feeling it.

• 41:44Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 41:44Lewis Howes?

  To not wall up.

• 41:45Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:46Lewis Howes?

  But to allow myself.

• 41:47Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 41:47Lewis Howes?

  This is, I mean, we're going off another topic here. We're going off another topic here for another conversation. But as an academic, as a neuroscientist, and a study of psychology and the brain and all these things, you've come from a very academic approach to your research.

• 42:02Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:03Lewis Howes?

  But a year ago, you unfortunately lost your father and your brother.

• 42:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 42:07Lewis Howes?

  Around the same time.

• 42:08Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 42:09Lewis Howes?

  And while you were writing the book, and so you had to kind of shift some of the stuff writing the book.

• 42:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Lewis Howes?

  Because you were experiencing on an emotional level what you were kind of researching.

• 42:19Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:20Lewis Howes?

  Can you share more the biggest lessons you learned from these types of losses for yourself? And how you emotionally had to navigate it when maybe you didn't have the answers?

• 42:29Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 42:30Lewis Howes?

  And what did you learn from those, that experience?

• 42:33Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So it really was the week that I was about to dive in and start writing the the real chapters of this book, Good Anxiety. And, and that was when my younger brother passed away completely unexpected.

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  Younger brother?

• 42:53Wendy Suzuki?

  My younger brother. Just three months after our father had passed away. So we were just healing, still raw from losing my father, our father. And then he had an unexpected heart attack.

• 43:09Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 43:09Wendy Suzuki?

  And so first, just that pain and grief that I was experiencing is not the same as anxiety. It shares some of those negative emotions. This was just

• 43:21Lewis Howes?

  Lost grief, sadness.

• 43:22Wendy Suzuki?

  Grief, sadness. It was so painful. Like, how could this happen? It feels like a different reality. Everything looked the same, but it just felt so

• 43:36Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 43:36Wendy Suzuki?

  different. And it forced me to explore these feelings that I'd had inklings of in the past, but never to this extent. And kind of in this wave of first my dad and then my brother. And I slowly came back from it. And I used some of the tools that I talk about in the book that were already in place for me. Morning meditation. So I do a morning tea meditation.

• 44:05Lewis Howes?

  Tea meditation.

• 44:06Wendy Suzuki?

  A tea meditation, which I describe in the book, which is a meditation over brewing and drinking tea. For me, that was the magic bullet for meditation because there's a sequence for brewing tea. You boil the water, you put it in the tea leaves, you let it seep, and then you pour it out and then you drink it. And that kind of sequence kept my meditation going. I always had something to do. I was waiting for the tea to brew. I get to drink the tea now. I get to be mindful about how does the tea feel? How hot is it? How does it taste? And I really came to appreciate that there is this moment. And yes, everything on the outside of my meditation

• 44:51Wendy Suzuki?

  feels like it's different. But this moment still feels like every other moment that I enjoyed my tea meditation. So that helped me come back to, I am alive. I'm so lucky to be alive.

• 45:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes, perspective.

• 45:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, so lucky to have the family that's still with me.

• 45:10Lewis Howes?

  Yes, yes.

• 45:11Wendy Suzuki?

  And exercise, my first book, Healthy Brain, Happy Life, was all about the transformative effects of exercise on the brain. So after I meditate, I do my workout in the morning. And it was really one day, I was doing my workout. It's a video workout, and the trainer said, it was a hard workout, and she said, you know, in working out with great pain comes great wisdom.

• 45:36Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I love that.

• 45:38Wendy Suzuki?

  And I was like, oh, my God. That is what I need to hear, not just for working out. I have just gone through the worst pain in my whole life. And I do have more wisdom. That wisdom is based in the love that was left behind.

• 45:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 45:56Wendy Suzuki?

  And not just left behind, that sounds like it's leftovers. The love that is here.

• 46:02Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:04Wendy Suzuki?

  You know, that's still here from my brother and my father. And that's when I started to think about this book, Good Anxiety, in a different way. Because anxiety is an everyday kind of pain and suffering that we all go through. And what if that leads to wisdom? What does that look like? And I needed as much wisdom and power that I needed. And so the book became searching for the power and the wisdom in everyday anxiety. It never would have been that if I hadn't had this event happen. And so that's where the six superpowers

• 46:49Wendy Suzuki?

  or gifts of anxiety came from. I needed them to be superpowers. We ended up calling them gifts.

• 46:56Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 46:57Wendy Suzuki?

  But same thing. And yeah, so that is the real origin story of this book.

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy. I always talk about the importance of experiencing some type of structured pain on a daily basis. And for me, that's just a workout. You know, it's like something that makes you uncomfortable.

• 47:18Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 47:19Lewis Howes?

  That's like, oh, I don't want to do this. And I don't want to push a little harder, but when we do that, I feel like every day, healthy pain is going to help you long term.

• 47:29Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 47:29Lewis Howes?

  Be happier, healthier. What are the positive effects on the brain? When we deal with physical, healthy pain?

• 47:38Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So, physical activity, and we know the most about aerobic activity. Any activity that gets your heart rate up. The best way I know how to convey this is that every single time you move your body, it's like you're giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals.

• 47:56Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 47:56Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes. Those neurochemicals include dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, growth factors. And the dopamine and serotonin, what does that do? It makes you feel good. It makes you feel rewarded. That's why just going out for a walk outside when you're, you know, things are going up to here and you can't handle it anymore. It immediately makes you feel better. The growth factors that that get released in your brain with every workout doesn't necessarily do something immediately. But it leads to one of the biggest wow's that I have to this day about the effects of exercise on the brain. So, growth factors that you are releasing every time you work out,

• 48:38Wendy Suzuki?

  it helps brand new brain cells grow in your hippocampus. Did you know that all of those workouts that I know you've done all your lifetime is actually growing you a big, fat, fluffy hippocampus?

• 48:53Lewis Howes?

  Hypocampus, not a brain, but a hippocampus.

• 48:55Wendy Suzuki?

  Hypocampus. And and there's only two brain areas where new brain cells are born in adulthood. One is the olfactory bulb that helps with smell, and that doesn't grow with more exercise. But the second is the hippocampus, critical for your long-term memory function.

• 49:12Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 49:12Wendy Suzuki?

  That grows, new cells grow with more growth factors that come with exercise. And it's not going to cure aging. It's not going to cure neurodegenerative disease states like Alzheimer's. But it'll give you the biggest, fattest hippocampus that you could have. When you get to that age where the neurodegeneration might start happening if it's in your genes. So it'll take longer for the enough brain cells to.

• 49:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, gotcha. Interesting. Okay, so working out how many times a week?

• 49:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Lewis Howes?

  Helps you with the hippocampus growth. What is there?

• 49:47Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So here's what I've found in my lab. So for low-fit people that haven't started their regular workout, I took low-fit people and I found significant improvements in mood, in their prefrontal function and hippocampal function with just two to three aerobic workouts a week. It's not nothing. It will make you sweat and especially if you're just starting, that is a challenge. But that is the minimum that I've found that will give you the more long-term improvement in your hippocampal function. Let's say you're somebody like you. You work out, I'm sure, very, very regularly. And so what we found is, first thing to know, your regular workouts have improved your brain.

• 50:32Wendy Suzuki?

  You have a bigger prefrontal cortex, you have a bigger hippocampus. The prefrontal cortex is bigger because the synapses, there's more connections, not because there's more cells. And your circulatory system, you're actually stimulating the growth of new blood vessels in your brain with every workout. And that is fantastic because the brain is the number one user of oxygen in the entire body.

• 50:57Lewis Howes?

  The brain is.

• 50:58Wendy Suzuki?

  The brain is.

• 50:59Lewis Howes?

  Overall muscles and the heart and everything, right?

• 51:01Wendy Suzuki?

  Way more.

• 51:02Lewis Howes?

  Blood.

• 51:03Wendy Suzuki?

  The brain is the number one user of oxygen and the blood, you know, brings oxygen.

• 51:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 51:08Wendy Suzuki?

  And so I want my brain to have as much oxygen as possible so it works the best. And so that's what you're doing.

• 51:14Lewis Howes?

  So working out brings more oxygen to the brain?

• 51:18Wendy Suzuki?

  Working out will stimulate new blood vessels that, yes, bring more oxygenated blood to the brain.

• 51:25Lewis Howes?

  And if we don't work out on a consistent basis, what does that do to our brain?

• 51:29Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, so you don't, you don't get any of those benefits. You don't get the burst of good feeling from serotonin and dopamine. You don't get the big hippocampus. You don't get the, the blood vessels. And then the next question that everybody asks me is, how long of vacation can I take, you know, without working out so, so that I don't lose it? And, you know, what comes up goes down. It's true in the brain, true in muscles. You know, how long do I don't lift those weights so that my bicep goes down? There is, there's a timeframe. We don't have the exact amount of time. We know that it takes between three and nine months for these new hippocampal cells to grow with regular workouts.

• 52:13Wendy Suzuki?

  And yeah, if you go on a two-year vacation, it's

• 52:16Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's gonna be hard.

• 52:19Lewis Howes?

  What are some of these? So there's six superpowers, is that right?

• 52:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 52:22Lewis Howes?

  Can you explain these superpowers? We've already talked about a couple of them, but can you explain the rest of them?

• 52:27Wendy Suzuki?

  Sure, sure. The first one is resilience.

• 52:32Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 52:32Wendy Suzuki?

  And that really comes, I started the superpower book with that origin story that we

• 52:38Lewis Howes?

  Being resilient, yes.

• 52:39Wendy Suzuki?

  Being resilient, because that is, that is one of the first things that I realized came from that, that terrible experience.

• 52:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:49Wendy Suzuki?

  That I, I had to, I had to write and give a eulogy for my brother. My brother is the social butterfly of our family. There were 200 people and more that wanted to come. We had to keep down his celebration to just, celebration of life to just 200. Not that, I mean, I speak to large audiences, but it was, it was his eulogy. It made me definitely anxious to, to know that all his friends and our family were there. And

• 53:18Lewis Howes?

  Where do the anxieties stem from? You didn't, you don't want to mess it up? You don't want, you wanted to make sure you did him justice with his life?

• 53:25Wendy Suzuki?

  I wanted to make sure that I did him justice. And there was a lot of guilt there because it's like, I wasn't a good enough sister. How come I didn't, how come I didn't visit him more? How come I didn't?

• 53:38Wendy Suzuki?

  How come I didn't talk to him on a more regular basis? And talking about vulnerable conversations. The vulnerable conversation that I had with my parents being Japanese-American, third-generation immigrants. You know, I call us kind of the Japanese-American version of Downton Abbey. Very proper, you know, not a lot of hugging. We don't do a lot of, you know, exuberant kissing.

• 54:07Lewis Howes?

  Yes, not affectionate.

• 54:09Wendy Suzuki?

  Not affectionate. And the truth is, even though my brother and I knew that my parents loved us, we never said "I love you" to each other as adults.

• 54:16Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. I think a lot of people have experienced that as well, though, right?

• 54:19Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, and I, at some point, my father had developed dementia. And I thought, you know, I feel like I really want to say this. But it was, I got stuck. It's like, I don't know if I could actually just start saying it out of nowhere to my parents.

• 54:34Lewis Howes?

  If you never said it.

• 54:36Wendy Suzuki?

  Never said it as an adult, never.

• 54:38Lewis Howes?

  Wow, so you said it as a child, but not as adult?

• 54:40Wendy Suzuki?

  I think I said it as a child. I mean, we got kissed goodnight and stuff, but I don't exactly remember. You know, it had been so long. It's like, but I had this desire to say this to both of my parents. And so I decided I had to ask them permission to say "I love you." And so I...

• 54:58Lewis Howes?

  How did that work? What did you say?

• 55:00Wendy Suzuki?

  Well, I'll tell you. I was living in New York, they live in California, and I spoke to them every Sunday. And I decided, I built up my courage and I said, "This Sunday is going to be the big day."

• 55:12Lewis Howes?

  You asked them?

• 55:13Wendy Suzuki?

  I asked them whether I can say "I love you"

• 55:16Lewis Howes?

  Oh my goodness.

• 55:17Wendy Suzuki?

  To them. And I know how this happens. My mom always answered the phone, and I'd tell her about my week. And then she passes it to my dad, and I'd tell him about all the same stories. And then that's how the telephone call went every Sunday. And so, you know, I called, my mom answered, I told her about my week. And then somewhere in the middle there, I said, "Hey, Mom, you know how we never say 'I love you' at the end of these telephone calls? What do you say if we start to say that?" Silence. Silence.

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Is this FaceTime?

• 55:50Wendy Suzuki?

  No, no, no, this is just a regular, you know, cell phone call to my, yeah, phone call to my mom.

• 55:54Lewis Howes?

  Silence.

• 55:55Wendy Suzuki?

  Silence for a long, long, long time. I can't tell how long it was because I

• 55:59Lewis Howes?

  Felt like forever probably.

• 56:01Wendy Suzuki?

  It felt like forever. And then she said, I think that's a great idea. And I'm like, phew. I was, I was trying to keep it, you know, keep it light, no big deal. And I said, oh, great.

• 56:13Lewis Howes?

  Well, I've never said I love you before, but yeah, you kept my secret.

• 56:15Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So I thought, great, mom, let's, let's do that. Okay. So we finished off our conversations. But then

• 56:22Lewis Howes?

  The moment comes.

• 56:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, we both are realizing that, oh my God, it's the end of the conversation. We're, we're actually going to have to say it. And, and so, and it was clearly, it was like, I felt like there were two lions circling each other. What's gonna happen? Who, who's gonna go first? And I, well, I asked, so I thought, I, I need to initiate this.

• 56:46Wendy Suzuki?

  And so I still, I get nervous when I tell the story because I remember the, the fear. And I said, because my theme was keep it light, I said, okay, I love you. Like big Disney, I love you. I love you. And my mom said, I love you too. And then she went to go get my dad. Dad, Wendy's on the phone. And so it's over. She, she wanted to get it over. We were both secretly thinking, oh my God, thank God, that's over. That was so hard. And then I talked to my dad and I explained it to him. It was easier. It was harder with my mom for some reason. I knew my dad would say yes. And so he said, yes. We said our awkward, I love you's.

• 57:28Wendy Suzuki?

  And, uh, and then we hung up and I started crying, you know, at the end of that call because

• 57:35Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful, yeah.

• 57:36Wendy Suzuki?

  I had never said

• 57:37Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful.

• 57:37Wendy Suzuki?

  I love you to my parents before. So it felt really good. My father had dementia. The next week I called back and I said, I love you to my mother, slightly less awkwardly. And, you know, at this point, my father, really, he couldn't tell whether it was Thanksgiving or Christmas that I was visiting at. So, so I was prepared to remind him that, that we had made this agreement. But

• 58:02Wendy Suzuki?

  He said, "I love you" first.

• 58:04Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's beautiful. That's beautiful.

• 58:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Lewis Howes?

  He had dementia at the time.

• 58:08Wendy Suzuki?

  He had dementia.

• 58:08Lewis Howes?

  He remembered it.

• 58:09Wendy Suzuki?

  He remembered it.

• 58:10Lewis Howes?

  Oh, man, that's beautiful.

• 58:12Wendy Suzuki?

  You know, emotional resonance, we remember the happiest and the saddest events of our life.

• 58:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 58:20Wendy Suzuki?

  And his daughter had never asked him.

• 58:23Lewis Howes?

  Wow, my goodness.

• 58:25Wendy Suzuki?

  Whether she could say, "I love you." And he remembered, and he remembered every single week through his entire, including the last time I spoke to him.

• 58:33Lewis Howes?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 58:34Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So, that was really...

• 58:36Lewis Howes?

  That's beautiful.

• 58:37Wendy Suzuki?

  But, I never said, "I love you" to my brother, going back to the eulogy. And, you know, that was a big source of grief, of guilt. It's like, "How come I didn't do it? I should have done it, I knew." But it was weird because he was not my parents, he was my brother. And same thing, he's a bro kind of guy, not that, I'm sure he would have said it, but it was really hard to have that conversation with him. So, yeah, lots of, lots of things like that going through my mind.

• 59:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course.

• 59:11Wendy Suzuki?

  When I was preparing and getting ready to give this. But I got, I got through it. And it had funny parts in it, it had parts that I made everybody cry, including myself. And I was very proud that I was able to get through it. And that, I really, really felt for the first time in my life, I could get through that. I could get through anything. So that most horrible thing really gave me the most resilience that I've ever felt personally in my whole life. And again, that's the origin story. And, and every single time we're able to get through that anxiety,

• 59:56Wendy Suzuki?

  even if we get through and we don't feel so good, you've gotten through, you made it to the next time. And that can help you build your resilience.

• 1:00:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:05Wendy Suzuki?

  Little by little. And that was part of the, the gift of, and I know that, that grief wasn't anxiety, but, but going through these hard times, that anxiety kind of gives us a little bit of a gift of, it gives us lots of, you know, challenges to get through. That is what ultimately builds up our resilience.

• 1:00:30Lewis Howes?

  Well, anxiety gives us the ability to experience courage.

• 1:00:33Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:34Lewis Howes?

  If you didn't have that fear and anxiety, you wouldn't have to bring the courage out

• 1:00:38Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:00:39Lewis Howes?

  to prepare, to show up, to know like, "Okay, I'm gonna cry at some point in front of 200 people. And I'm a shy person. I don't like people seeing me this way." It gives you the courage to become something you've never become before.

• 1:00:51Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Lewis Howes?

  And step into a different version of yourself.

• 1:00:55Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:55Lewis Howes?

  Or step into who you truly are, that you've been holding back.

• 1:00:58Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, that's true.

• 1:01:00Lewis Howes?

  So, you know, it's not fun, but it allows us to access certain characteristics and skills that maybe we don't utilize.

• 1:01:09Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, and that courage is a skill that is so beautiful. And, you know, people say, "How do I get more courage? How do I do it?" And it really is going back to that action. That anxiety and that activation was designed and evolved to put us into action, including to act in that courageous way. That phone call to my parents to say, "I love you", was a very courageous act.

• 1:01:36Lewis Howes?

  Huge.

• 1:01:36Wendy Suzuki?

  It was huge.

• 1:01:37Lewis Howes?

  How many years were you thinking about that?

• 1:01:39Wendy Suzuki?

  Many months, because it was during the development of my father's dementia that it's like, it was building up, building up. It's, "Oh, no, I don't want to deal with that. That's too hard." And I can't tell you the number of people that have come up to me that said, "Oh, my God, I don't say, 'I love you' to my parents, and you gave me the courage to do it." And a lot of Asian people, because it comes from our culture.

• 1:02:04Lewis Howes?

  Very cultural.

• 1:02:06Wendy Suzuki?

  But also, lots of other cultures don't have that in their natural way of talking to each other. But it taps our social element and our need to express what we truly feel, which is love.

• 1:02:23Lewis Howes?

  Where does... So that's the first superpower. I want to talk about love, though, for a second. Where does love play into...

• 1:02:32Lewis Howes?

  Overcoming stress, worry, and anxiety. If we have more love in our life.

• 1:02:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Lewis Howes?

  With the people connected to us and love for ourselves, does anxiety, stress, and worry diminish?

• 1:02:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Absolutely. I think that is one of the things that we can help balance. This anxiety that has gone up significantly since the start of the pandemic is, one way is to work on those events that cause you anxiety, which is a great thing to do. And the other thing is to build up the positive emotions to counter anxiety. So we talked about joy conditioning.

• 1:03:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:03:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Bringing more love into your life through social interactions. The number one predictor of a long life is the number of positive social connections that you have.

• 1:03:26Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:03:26Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes. And I thought, it's gonna be exercise. It's gonna be exercise on top because of my first book. But no, exercise is, I don't know, three or four or five. It is social connections. And it doesn't have to be that girlfriend that you've had since third grade. It can be positive interactions that you have with the barista at your coffee shop. Having that positive banter, giving them, you know, giving them a little punch in the arm and they get it and give it back to you. That, that counts, which I love thinking about that. So that, that happiness and joy that you can bring, it costs nothing for you and it is giving you a longer life.

• 1:04:05Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely. Interesting. So, but love in general. Is there research or science behind what love does for?

• 1:04:13Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Lewis Howes?

  Happy, like a happy brain, a happy, a healthy heart, like?

• 1:04:19Wendy Suzuki?

  So, love is a natural counteraction to the stress that you were talking about. And in fact, so the part of the nervous system that is controlling all of those stress responses that we talked about, the blood going to the muscles, the high heart rate, the high respiration is called the sympathetic nervous system. Luckily, we have an equal and opposite. Part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system. Not stimulating love specifically, but it helps calm everything down. It decreases the heart rate, it decreases respiration. It brings blood back into our digestive and reproductive systems. It's called the rest and digest nervous system.

• 1:05:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes, the parasympathetic.

• 1:05:02Wendy Suzuki?

  Parasympathetic.

• 1:05:03Lewis Howes?

  Rest and digest.

• 1:05:04Wendy Suzuki?

  Parasympathetic, rest and digest. Sympathetic, fight or flight.

• 1:05:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:05:09Wendy Suzuki?

  Okay.

• 1:05:10Lewis Howes?

  So we want to be more in the parasympathetic.

• 1:05:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes, yeah. You want to be able to control.

• 1:05:15Lewis Howes?

  Yes, be in that state.

• 1:05:16Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:05:17Lewis Howes?

  So that when we need to stress, when we need to take on something scary.

• 1:05:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Right.

• 1:05:22Lewis Howes?

  We lean into the sympathetic, but we're not staying in the sympathetic all day long.

• 1:05:26Wendy Suzuki?

  Right, right. And the best way to lean into parasympathetic, when you, when you start to feel that really bad anxiety come on, is deep breathing.

• 1:05:36Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:05:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Deep breathing, because that is the only thing in that list that I gave you that we have conscious control over. I can't make my heart rate go down. I can't bring blood into my digestive tract, but I can breathe deep and long. And people would be, if you haven't tried this before, just deep four-part breath where you breathe in for four counts, hold it for four counts, breathe out for four counts, hold it out for four counts. Easiest way to bring some of that calm back in because you are actively stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system.

• 1:06:12Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:06:13Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So, but love can also stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system in, in, in the sense that it decreases your, your heart rate, but mainly, it's kind of a different animal. My, my most popular lecture of all the lectures that I've ever given in my entire 23-year career at NYU is called "The Neurobiology of Love." It's like, "Ooh, I want to know, I want to know about the neurobiology of love."

• 1:06:42Lewis Howes?

  Is this online also?

• 1:06:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Uh, yes, actually it is. If you go to the website, all my lectures for my brain and behavior class were, were videotaped. And so I get to tell the intriguing story in my Neurobiology of Love lecture about...

• 1:07:00Wendy Suzuki?

  The prairie voles. Have you ever heard of-

• 1:07:02Lewis Howes?

  Prairie voles?

• 1:07:03Wendy Suzuki?

  Voles. Prairie voles.

• 1:07:05Lewis Howes?

  I don't know what that is.

• 1:07:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Prairie voles are these little rodent-like animals that live in the Midwest.

• 1:07:10Lewis Howes?

  I'm from Ohio.

• 1:07:11Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:07:12Lewis Howes?

  I've probably seen them.

• 1:07:12Wendy Suzuki?

  You've probably seen them. But they're one of the few-

• 1:07:15Lewis Howes?

  Like a prairie dog or something?

• 1:07:16Wendy Suzuki?

  No, different from prairie dog. These are prairie voles. And prairie voles are one of the few mammals that form lifelong pair bonds.

• 1:07:26Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:07:26Wendy Suzuki?

  And the way they form it is fascinating. So they live in large, multi-generational family units. And so, the, all the prairie voles have a, have a particular area, a territory. And a pair bond forms when an almost mature female prairie vole that isn't pair bonded yet is walking down the trail and she smells the urine of a male prairie vole not in her family unit. Well, that is like love potion number nine to her, that urine. And if that, the positer of the urine is around, they mate for 40 hours straight. It's pretty impressive. Yeah.

• 1:08:08Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot of energy.

• 1:08:09Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, it's a lot of energy. You know, they have that, that small body, high metabolism. They need it. Forty hours is, is amazing. And what happens in that 40 hours? Well, in the female prairie voles, oxytocin, that hormone of love and, and connection, gets released like a tidal wave in their brain. And in the males, it's vasopressin that gets released as a tidal wave in their brain. And you can show in the lab, if you artificially mate them, that if you block oxytocin during this mating period, they will not form the pair bond. In the females, and if you block vasopressin, you won't, you won't form the,

• 1:08:50Wendy Suzuki?

  the pair bond. So is it the case that, you know, what if I mate for 40 hours? Will I form a lifelong pair bond? Doesn't quite work that way. But it identified these key hormones that are those connecting bonds that we know something's happening, right? When we're forming that, that first connection that, that keeps us, that, that, you know, finds us a partner.

• 1:09:12Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:09:13Wendy Suzuki?

  And so, that was the start of the real neurobiological study of-

• 1:09:20Wendy Suzuki?

  Love and connection. Because before that, it's like, oh, that's too mushy. We can't, we can't study that, right? But now, they had a hormone. And they can look at the genes behind that hormone. They can delete the hormone. And they could

• 1:09:32Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:09:33Wendy Suzuki?

  Image people when they were, one of my favorite studies was they imaged a group of people that had just fallen in love. They were in that honeymoon phase of falling in love. And they identified a set, a complex set of structures, of course. It wasn't just one that lit up when they were in love. But reward systems, dopamine systems were very highly activated in love. And interestingly, after, then what happens after you're together for five years? Does that disappear?

• 1:10:06Lewis Howes?

  Then what happens? Yeah, have you seen the research that shows you can sustain that for decades?

• 1:10:11Wendy Suzuki?

  It evolves. It evolves. And what happens is that those people that are still in love, that still have a strong relationship.

• 1:10:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:10:21Wendy Suzuki?

  The pattern of activation is different. It's not the same activation as in that honeymoon phase.

• 1:10:28Lewis Howes?

  Which is more what? The sexual attraction?

• 1:10:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:31Lewis Howes?

  Chemistry?

• 1:10:32Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:10:33Lewis Howes?

  The chemicals of the attraction?

• 1:10:35Wendy Suzuki?

  It's, it's, you know, in, in the modality that was measured, it was brain activation. So we were just looking, they were just looking at the

• 1:10:43Lewis Howes?

  The brain.

• 1:10:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Networks that were, that were activated. But what it comes to evolve into is that kind of activation that you see in parent and child. So that strong family connection. You not only see it in parent and child, but between long-term partners. And it makes sense. Our, our relationships evolve. I think it would be hard to sustain that honeymoon. Feeling for years and years, 20, 30 years down the line, but it evolves into a different kind of social connection that has a different brain signature.

• 1:11:27Wendy Suzuki?

  And they've shown that that brain signature is similar across cultures, which is interesting. Is it only in the United States? Or they've done these studies in China, throughout Europe, and it's the same patterns that are quite unique in the early throes of love, and it evolves into something different later on if you stay together.

• 1:11:50Lewis Howes?

  Have you studied a lot of, I guess, the brain science around relationships and love and intimacy long term?

• 1:11:56Wendy Suzuki?

  You know, that area of research is still pretty new.

• 1:12:01Lewis Howes?

  Okay.

• 1:12:02Wendy Suzuki?

  And so I always keep an eye on it because I know it's my most popular lecture, and I want to update the students.

• 1:12:11Lewis Howes?

  Is there anything you could share around what to look for in a relationship around the neuroscience of a partner? Like, meeting a partner? Is there certain questions you could ask to see if they have the right brain chemistry? I don't know. Is there anything else you think we could look for from research or studies or examples that you've seen around understanding, like, is this a potential good partner?

• 1:12:35Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I have one warning from an experience that I had, which was I did an event with the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, the acting school. And we were talking about the neurobiology of emotion and the neurobiology of love. And we were doing it with the graduate acting class.

• 1:12:59Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:13:00Wendy Suzuki?

  And these are the students that are going to go on to be the Meryl Streep's of our time. And they said, okay, we're going to do an exercise. Everybody come up. And for some reason, I went up on stage to do it with them. So I got partnered up with one of the...

• 1:13:13Lewis Howes?

  An actor.

• 1:13:14Wendy Suzuki?

  One of the actors.

• 1:13:15Lewis Howes?

  Students, yeah.

• 1:13:15Wendy Suzuki?

  One of the student actors. And they basically took us through, you know, those 36 questions that you ask a stranger to get...

• 1:13:22Lewis Howes?

  To see if you're like, fall in love or something? Where you like stare in their eyes and you ask the question?

• 1:13:27Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, but no words. They led us through exercises like that. And they led us through things like, now you have a choice. You can step closer to your partner, or you can step away. I didn't know this guy. He's like, oh my god, it became so critical. What is he gonna do when it was his turn to make these choices? And I kinda fell in love with this person.

• 1:13:52Lewis Howes?

  Wow, what, like 10 minutes or something?

• 1:13:54Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, it was 10 minutes. And it made me realize that kinda the system can be hacked. Was this, you know, random student, the, the love of my life? No, I had enough, you know, prefrontal cortex to know that that wasn't gonna-

• 1:14:10Lewis Howes?

  This 21-year-old is probably not ready.

• 1:14:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly, no. But, but it was such a powerful, powerful experience. And it, and, and, you know, I, I, I had wondered about doing those 31 questions. Like, yeah, you know what? I'm not gonna do that because I need to have those questions come up organically to test out other things because-

• 1:14:35Lewis Howes?

  You can almost trick the brain to feel chemically connected.

• 1:14:38Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly, when, when there's no connection there. So that's my lesson. You can quickly have those, or I quickly developed very powerful feelings.

• 1:14:50Lewis Howes?

  In minutes?

• 1:14:51Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:14:52Lewis Howes?

  With a stranger?

• 1:14:53Wendy Suzuki?

  With a stranger.

• 1:14:54Lewis Howes?

  But it could have, there could have been other red flags or values or something that maybe wasn't aligned to your long-term.

• 1:15:00Wendy Suzuki?

  Right.

• 1:15:01Lewis Howes?

  But our brains can create such-

• 1:15:02Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:15:03Lewis Howes?

  Connection, right? Or our bodies and emotion, like everything combined.

• 1:15:07Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:15:08Lewis Howes?

  What, what happens with, when someone is sexually connected early on?

• 1:15:13Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Lewis Howes?

  Say within the first week, you have sex with someone.

• 1:15:16Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Lewis Howes?

  What does that do to the same type of brain chemistry? Is it more powerful than these kind of 31 questions of intimacy and love?

• 1:15:23Wendy Suzuki?

  That would be an interesting experiment, right? To compare and contrast.

• 1:15:26Lewis Howes?

  But what does that do when you sexually bond with someone?

• 1:15:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:30Lewis Howes?

  Whether you've known them for a day, a week, a month.

• 1:15:33Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:33Lewis Howes?

  How does that accelerate the feeling of love and like we're supposed to be together?

• 1:15:38Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, that's where we can turn back to the studies of the paravolts. We know that while we don't have exactly the same brain chemistry or brain response, there is release of, of those love hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin. And that does give you that feeling of bonding. The more sex you have, the more- A kind of physical connection that you have. So, you know, I, I think our goal is to step back and think, do I need more physical connection? Or do I need to get to know this person a little better? See what their values are?

• 1:16:18Wendy Suzuki?

  Have more verbal conversations before I get myself bonded to this person.

• 1:16:25Lewis Howes?

  Because it's hard to un-bond.

• 1:16:27Wendy Suzuki?

  It's hard to un-bond.

• 1:16:28Lewis Howes?

  You feel more and more connected.

• 1:16:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:30Lewis Howes?

  And you might oversee certain behaviors or actions because you feel the connection.

• 1:16:36Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 1:16:37Lewis Howes?

  I think that's where a lot of problems relate. Not that we're relationship experts here, but.

• 1:16:40Wendy Suzuki?

  No, no, no. Definitely not here.

• 1:16:42Lewis Howes?

  But, but it's just curious to know the, the neuroscience and the psychology behind intimacy. Whether you're having a, a dyad in front of someone talking about vulnerable things or answering vulnerable questions.

• 1:16:55Wendy Suzuki?

  Right.

• 1:16:56Lewis Howes?

  You, you created intimacy and connection.

• 1:16:58Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:16:59Lewis Howes?

  Quickly, and also sexual connection that bonds people.

• 1:17:03Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:03Lewis Howes?

  It's interesting. So, wow, you gotta be, you gotta be careful what type of questions you ask someone.

• 1:17:08Wendy Suzuki?

  You gotta be careful. And it, it really heightens the importance of your prefrontal cortex, which is that decision-making brain area. You don't want it clouded. And two things we've talked about today can cloud the prefrontal cortex. High levels of anxiety literally shut it down. We know the neurochemistry and the molecular biology of that. That absolutely happens. And so when you have too high of levels of anxiety, it depletes your decision-making process and you default to the automatic. Just whatever, whatever's most common I do in my body, that's what I do. Because I've lost my ability to evaluate. And similarly, those, those, you know, that connection that could happen

• 1:17:53Wendy Suzuki?

  through sexual encounters can also block off your.

• 1:17:57Wendy Suzuki?

  Decision-making processes. I think that lots of people have, it's like, yeah, I think, I think I wasn't making the best decisions there.

• 1:18:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:18:04Wendy Suzuki?

  Sometimes, right?

• 1:18:05Lewis Howes?

  We've all done that, yeah.

• 1:18:06Wendy Suzuki?

  So, um, yeah, so preserve your prefrontal cortex. Use that part of your brain, and that is the antidote to my warning there. I think that is, um, that, that is a powerful tool in relationships.

• 1:18:23Lewis Howes?

  And another superpower is about opening the door to flow. What does that mean?

• 1:18:27Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:27Lewis Howes?

  Enhancing your performance and open the door to flow.

• 1:18:29Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, so I wanted to talk about flow because one of the things that anxiety does beautifully well is it shuts flow down. So flow-

• 1:18:39Lewis Howes?

  You can't get into flow when you're stressed.

• 1:18:41Wendy Suzuki?

  No, exactly.

• 1:18:42Lewis Howes?

  You gotta be fully in the moment and-

• 1:18:44Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:18:45Lewis Howes?

  And feel freedom.

• 1:18:46Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:46Lewis Howes?

  Essentially, right? You've gotta feel free.

• 1:18:48Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes, exactly. And so, first of all, I was depressed because I read the definition of flow, and it's, you know, you have to be this world leader, and then you have to be at the height. It's like, I, what? I can never have flow in my life. And then I get stressed about that, and then it goes even further, which is why in the book I coined another term, which is microflow. Look, I may not have the flow that Yo-Yo Ma or Serena Williams gets in that beautiful moment right before they're gonna, you know, win the prize. However, I can tell you that I do enjoy flow in my life. Going back to

• 1:19:31Wendy Suzuki?

  my joy conditioning, I have microflow when I'm in shavasana at the end of a yoga class. I felt really sweaty. All that sweat is drying. I feel so good. That is flow.

• 1:19:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, for one minute.

• 1:19:42Wendy Suzuki?

  For one minute. It is flow. And, um, you know, we were talking about building up those, those positive events in your life. And just the realization that we have many moments of microflow that might flip by. We didn't even recognize them. Recognize them. That is like, oh, I love microflow of having a wonderful cup of tea-

• 1:20:05Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:20:05Wendy Suzuki?

  Right before I needed it, or, or at the end of the day. Um, it, it is that appreciation. It is the savoring. Learning how to savor is a wonderful antidote to anxiety.

• 1:20:20Lewis Howes?

  So many, so many moments in the last three months, I just stop and I say, man, what a beautiful moment.

• 1:20:27Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:28Lewis Howes?

  What a beautiful moment. I look, I'm just being more aware of my surroundings and the people I'm with. And just little moments. I'm just like, what a beautiful moment.

• 1:20:38Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Lewis Howes?

  When I savor these multiple times throughout the day.

• 1:20:41Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:42Lewis Howes?

  I just feel better.

• 1:20:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Lewis Howes?

  And I think that's important, you're saying that, because a lot of times we're just on to the next, on the next, on the next.

• 1:20:49Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly.

• 1:20:49Lewis Howes?

  Thinking about this moment, but literally look in the sky and just be like, ah, do you ever imagine like we are in the middle of a, we're dust of sand.

• 1:20:57Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:58Lewis Howes?

  Floating around in an infinite universe. This is unbelievable.

• 1:21:02Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:03Lewis Howes?

  You know, just the awe of what this is.

• 1:21:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:06Lewis Howes?

  Is amazing.

• 1:21:07Wendy Suzuki?

  It is. Yeah, that's a moment of micro flow.

• 1:21:11Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:21:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Uh, just that appreciation and I, I found myself, I'm not a good picture taker, but I, it messes up my micro flow. If I try and take a picture of it. I just went, I'm staying with friends and we took, um, uh, the little girl to her very first day of kindergarten. No, first grade, sorry, first grade today. And it was so sweet to see her. She found a little friend and so she went skipping down with the, holding the hand of her little friend. And I almost cried and I'm, I was trying, and then I was too late to take a picture, but, but I got that moment of, that is such a beautiful thing to witness. She's excited to go to the first day of first grade. She's never gonna have this day again.

• 1:21:57Wendy Suzuki?

  Never this moment again.

• 1:21:59Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. That's really cool. The micro flow. I love that. Um, the next thing is nurture and activist mindset. What does that mean?

• 1:22:06Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. So this is really about the power of mindset and we've been talking about it all along.

• 1:22:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:22:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Is this, um, an, an experience that's going to batter me down because anxiety is out to get me?

• 1:22:21Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 1:22:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Or is it a challenge that I can do an experiment, as you were talking about, to see whether I can do it? And it really doesn't matter if I fail, I win. You lose, I learn so much from the failure. Okay, I'm not going to do that again. And I do it the next day. And that shift of mindset, I just have to remind myself and there's so many things that can put you into that bad anxiety. If I'm hungry, if I'm hangry, you know, all those things, it's harder to pull myself out. But reminded myself of what a positive mindset can do. It not only shifts your brain networks, it shifts your whole physiology. It decreases cortisol.

• 1:23:04Wendy Suzuki?

  It, the beautiful experiments that the psychologist Aliya Crum at Stanford has done, has shown that all you have to do is tell hotel workers that their level of physical activity and changing the bed sheets, the surgeon general said is actually above average. You are getting a good workout. When they said, no, I don't work out at all. I don't have time. Too busy. I'm too tired. That change, that changed their mindset. It made them lose more weight than the controls that were not told that they were working out. And it increased their job satisfaction. And so that one belief, what if you, what is that belief?

• 1:23:46Wendy Suzuki?

  That, that idea that will change your day. That is a wonderful thing to ask yourself every day that you go in to a difficult situation or just your regular situation.

• 1:23:58Lewis Howes?

  That is beautiful. And what about, we talked about love and helping you, I guess, eliminate some of the stress and anxiety.

• 1:24:05Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Lewis Howes?

  What about purpose and having a meaningful purpose in your life?

• 1:24:10Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:10Lewis Howes?

  How does that, if you know that you're on a mission to, for a purpose, whether it be three months, a year, or you're, you know, decades, you're on the same mission.

• 1:24:20Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:21Lewis Howes?

  How does that help decrease anxiety and stress?

• 1:24:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah. For me, I, I, I feel like when you think about your purpose.

• 1:24:34Wendy Suzuki?

  It's like this tunnel vision. All of these things, all of those obstacles go away. And I feel personally, I was meant to do that. I know I'm going towards that. So, let's just see how I get there. And, you know, you can throw anything at me. I got through my brother's eulogy. So, I got through that, I can get through anything. And, and that is a wonderful reminder. And finding your purpose and, and really sticking to it and, and being playful with your purpose. So, despite the fact that I was always a very shy young girl, I always had this secret desire that I knew would never happen

• 1:25:18Wendy Suzuki?

  of being a Broadway star. So, I wanted to be Julie Andrews. I wanted to be Shirley Jones. I watched all the Hollywood musicals. I dream of myself, you know, onstage doing that big number. And, and it turns out that, that, that feel, that secret feeling that I harbored all through my shyness comes out when I teach in front of the classroom.

• 1:25:44Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:25:45Wendy Suzuki?

  Which, by the way, is on Broadway. So, in fact, I am performing on Broadway.

• 1:25:49Lewis Howes?

  That's great, yeah, it is.

• 1:25:51Wendy Suzuki?

  And, and that, I, I, I am a secret performer. And I've, I've used that. And I feel like that is part of my purpose. Like, I, I ended up doing neuroscience. And I have all that science. And I could explain science to people so that they understand it. But I also have this kind of performer's secret, you know, desire to, to break out into song. And it absolutely comes when I get in front of large audiences. And the bigger the audience, the bigger the secret diva comes out.

• 1:26:28Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:26:29Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:26:29Lewis Howes?

  You're like this ultimate performer.

• 1:26:31Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something weird happens. And it's, it's, I've discovered it since I did the first book and, you know, did more talks and bigger talks. It's like, wow! That, that, that, and that is part of the purpose. It is, it is part of the skill set that I know that I have that is bringing me towards that purpose. It is that ability, my, my way of communicating. And part of it is the science. And part of it is that secret Broadway.

• 1:26:58Lewis Howes?

  The art, the performance.

• 1:27:00Wendy Suzuki?

  The performance. And that love of the... Talent. I always had this huge appreciation of the talent that it takes to act and sing and dance.

• 1:27:11Lewis Howes?

  Such a talent.

• 1:27:12Wendy Suzuki?

  Such a talent.

• 1:27:13Lewis Howes?

  It's so hard.

• 1:27:14Wendy Suzuki?

  Ah, I wish, I wish, if I could only sing, I would have, you know, gone out for the Broadway plays, but sadly, I can't sing.

• 1:27:22Lewis Howes?

  But you had to heal the people's hearts and brains instead.

• 1:27:26Wendy Suzuki?

  Exactly.

• 1:27:27Lewis Howes?

  You had to help people heal.

• 1:27:28Wendy Suzuki?

  So, yeah.

• 1:27:29Lewis Howes?

  What about alter ego?

• 1:27:32Wendy Suzuki?

  Alter ego.

• 1:27:32Lewis Howes?

  Have you studied the alter egos and how they support overcoming anxiety, stress, and worry? Especially being in a performance setting, or speaking at a eulogy, or speaking on stage, or performing at a big event, or performing in athletics, or speaking in front of a class?

• 1:27:48Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:49Lewis Howes?

  Have you done any research on alter ego?

• 1:27:51Wendy Suzuki?

  No.

• 1:27:52Lewis Howes?

  And developing it for the brain?

• 1:27:53Wendy Suzuki?

  No, I haven't, but I think that would be a fascinating study. Somebody asked me once, how do you give, how do you give your talks? You know, what is your process? And for me, it goes back to my science training. Science, it turns out, is all about the story. What is that story that you're gonna tell in this science experiment that you did? And I had a very great speaker and a great scientist that was my early mentor, that encouraged me to think about that story. What is the story you're gonna tell the audience? Because they don't wanna hear all those boring details. They wanna hear what the, what the origin is, how you got through it, what is that hero's journey, and then what is, what is your conclusion?

• 1:28:38Wendy Suzuki?

  And so I got hooked on telling the best science story. And then, and then it takes a while to get the next story, because you have to do all these experiments, and it's really, really hard. But I got really excited about, about building that next, that what is that story gonna be, and how am I gonna tell it? And that, that has informed, it turns out that, that, you know, that's what storytellers do, and that's what actors do to get through their, their, their thing. So I, I came at it in a very different way, but I was always about... Trying to get people that like, I know you may not be interested in this part of science, but let me try and pull you in and tell you why this is so cool. Cause I really have something cool to tell you.

• 1:29:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Um, that's based on science.

• 1:29:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:25Wendy Suzuki?

  So alter egos, is that an alter ego? That is my, my strategy. And, and I guess it's, it's kind of my secret Energizer bunny that, that maybe it comes from my people pleasing, natural disposition.

• 1:29:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:43Wendy Suzuki?

  It's like, I want you, I want you to be as fascinated as I am.

• 1:29:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:48Wendy Suzuki?

  With this, I'm gonna show you how fascinating, cause it is so fascinating. Just give me a second, let me explain it to you. And that's how I always approached my teaching. And that's, that's what evolved into my speaking that I do now.

• 1:30:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I think that's cool. I think there's a, uh, you know, I love studying athletes who have an alter ego. Beyonce has an alter ego. Uh, I think it's Sasha Fierce, when she steps on stage, she becomes this persona.

• 1:30:13Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:13Lewis Howes?

  Which allows her to kind of overcome maybe the, the stress or fear. Uh, maybe she doesn't have that anymore, but when she was kind of rising in fame. Uh, that'd be an interesting study to do, alter egos and see how that supports people in overcoming anxiety. If they, they believed they were another person.

• 1:30:30Wendy Suzuki?

  Right.

• 1:30:30Lewis Howes?

  Or if they believed they stepped into something.

• 1:30:32Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:32Lewis Howes?

  That they had, that helped them overcome that anxiety.

• 1:30:35Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:36Lewis Howes?

  I'm curious.

• 1:30:36Wendy Suzuki?

  And how it evolves over time? Because she does not have the same, um, fear that she had, that I'm sure drove her to create that and to have that energy. She's, she's Beyonce now.

• 1:30:51Lewis Howes?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:30:51Wendy Suzuki?

  So what do you do?

• 1:30:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you just become Beyonce. You're just a Beyonce, yeah. That's interesting. Um, there's so many other questions I want to ask you, but this has been an amazing, uh, couple of hours here. And I want to ask you the final few questions, but before I do, I want to make sure people get the book. You can go pick it up. It's called Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion. Make sure you guys pick up a couple of copies and give them to your friends. I see you've got, uh, my friend, uh, Daniel Amen on here as well, who we've had on here. Lisa Billie was on here as well, so lots of great people have endorsed this book. Make sure you guys pick up a couple of copies. I feel like this is one of the biggest challenges today is anxiety, people dealing with stress, anxiety around many things, uh, the uncertainty of the future.

• 1:31:39Lewis Howes?

  Their own identity in life.

• 1:31:41Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:42Lewis Howes?

  Why we're here, relationships, money, career.

• 1:31:47Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:48Lewis Howes?

  There's so much anxiety that people are consumed by. It's one of the things that I appreciated about how I was raised. My father wouldn't allow me to watch the news or commercials.

• 1:31:58Wendy Suzuki?

  Hmm.

• 1:31:59Lewis Howes?

  Because he didn't want me to be consumed by negative programming of, okay, you're gonna get sick. You're gonna be unwell. So you're gonna need this drug, you're gonna need this thing, you're gonna need this solution. Like always selling something that I don't need.

• 1:32:13Wendy Suzuki?

  So smart.

• 1:32:13Lewis Howes?

  And he would mute the commercials or turn them off. And he wouldn't let us watch the news because it was always based around fear and conditioning.

• 1:32:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:22Lewis Howes?

  That there's more and more and more anxiety and fear in the world that I need to be consuming.

• 1:32:25Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:26Lewis Howes?

  And I am a happier, healthier person.

• 1:32:28Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Lewis Howes?

  When I don't consume storytelling of the worst of moments and that are happening in life.

• 1:32:34Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:35Lewis Howes?

  Like it's happening everywhere.

• 1:32:36Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:32:37Lewis Howes?

  You know, it might be happening somewhere.

• 1:32:39Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:39Lewis Howes?

  But it doesn't mean it's happening next door to me.

• 1:32:42Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:42Lewis Howes?

  Or when I walk across the street. And so, learning to find these moments of joy, learning to find these moments of beauty, like you talked about, and being in the moment. Learning to create the social fabric of great connections with friends.

• 1:32:56Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:56Lewis Howes?

  And staying in a positive environment for me has been really helpful.

• 1:32:59Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:00Lewis Howes?

  And you've got forty other strategies for making anxiety work for you in this book. So make sure you guys pick up a few copies of this, give them to friends. By Dr. Wendy Suzuki. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the three truths question. So hypothetical scenario, imagine it's your very last day on earth, many years away from now.

• 1:33:20Wendy Suzuki?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:21Lewis Howes?

  You get to, you know, live as long as you want, but eventually it's the last day.

• 1:33:25Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:25Lewis Howes?

  You've accomplished all of your dreams. You've done all the research, the science, you've had all the fun, the joy, everything you wanted to do, you've done it.

• 1:33:32Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:33Lewis Howes?

  But for whatever reason, your work that you've created in the world is no longer in the world. It goes with you to the next place or it goes somewhere else. But we don't have access to your information anymore.

• 1:33:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:43Lewis Howes?

  Your speeches, your videos, this content is gone.

• 1:33:45Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:46Lewis Howes?

  But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world. Three things that you know to be true from all of your experiences.

• 1:33:52Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:53Lewis Howes?

  And this is all we would have to remember you by, these three lessons or three truths.

• 1:33:57Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:57Lewis Howes?

  What would you say would be those three truths for you?

• 1:34:01Wendy Suzuki?

  For me, it would be that we were evolved to move our bodies. And so, learn how to bring movement into your life in a regular basis. So that it's not hard, it's automatic, and your life will benefit from that.

• 1:34:18Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:34:19Wendy Suzuki?

  Number two is that your brain is the most complex structure. It is so unique. It is the most amazing thing in the universe. And so, use its powers to make your life better. Use that mindset to make your life and the world a better place.

• 1:34:45Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:34:45Wendy Suzuki?

  And the third is that social interactions and love is the most important thing to make our lives both longer and happier. So use that statistic for yourself.

• 1:35:02Lewis Howes?

  Oh yeah, so true. I mean, I was interviewing a doctor who, he had mentioned that there were a couple of moments in his life where he was going through a depressed state. It was a couple of years of depression or some sickness and some poor health that was happening in his life, different decades apart. And I said, "How'd you get out of that?"

• 1:35:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Lewis Howes?

  And he said, "Love." He said, "I met someone and it created like this journey for me of like feeling better, of love, healing myself."

• 1:35:33Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:33Lewis Howes?

  And love was the anchor, the support of the healing, the growth, the peace of mind.

• 1:35:39Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:40Lewis Howes?

  And he's like, "Both times, it was love that helped him heal." So I think that's fascinating. It's the love we have with our friendships and our family, the intimate love we have. And those connections, I think, are extremely invaluable. I want to acknowledge you, Wendy, for the commitment you've had to this for, what, three decades now? You've been doing this work and putting your life's mission into creating practical, inspiring tools for us to improve the quality of our life. I think it's so valuable that there are people like you in the world who make this your mission, because it can seem daunting to overcome anxiety and stress and worry. It can seem like there's no way out for a lot of people.

• 1:36:21Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:21Lewis Howes?

  The statistics of people going through deep depression and suicides and just hurting themselves, addictions.

• 1:36:30Lewis Howes?

  Are rising and so for you to make this your mission and to be able to teach it in a way that we can understand it is very inspiring. So I really acknowledge you for your work, for your efforts and for the growth that you've had to experience in the last few years to put these things into practice unfortunately, but I think it makes you an even better teacher of these things and more empathetic to the world. So I really acknowledge you for that. And where can we connect with you online? Where do you spend the most time? I guess social media, your website, where can we go?

• 1:37:00Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, my website, www.wendysuzuki.com. You can go there to participate in the great Good Anxiety Social Experiment. So you can go and do, test your own anxiety and test the effects of different tools, including the ones in the toolbox, on your anxiety.

• 1:37:21Lewis Howes?

  So you can take a quiz essentially?

• 1:37:24Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:24Lewis Howes?

  To see how anxious you are?

• 1:37:26Wendy Suzuki?

  A stress and anxiety experiment, survey before and after, different interventions that we're testing and you get back the immediate effects of...

• 1:37:36Lewis Howes?

  The tools on how to implement?

• 1:37:37Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:37:37Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's cool. So you can see kind of where in your life you're the most anxious and then which tool to implement for that right now?

• 1:37:43Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes.

• 1:37:44Lewis Howes?

  I like it. And that's your website, right?

• 1:37:45Wendy Suzuki?

  Yes, exactly.

• 1:37:47Lewis Howes?

  And what social media are you on the most?

• 1:37:48Wendy Suzuki?

  I'm on Facebook and Instagram.

• 1:37:51Lewis Howes?

  Okay, Facebook and Instagram, Wendy.Suzuki on Instagram and then Wendy Suzuki, you'll find yours as well there on Facebook. Anything else we can do to support you besides the book, the quiz, social media, anything else we can go to?

• 1:38:05Wendy Suzuki?

  Gosh, that is...

• 1:38:08Lewis Howes?

  You can see your videos online?

• 1:38:10Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, videos online. I'm so excited because that story that I told you about saying I love you to my parents was a moth talk.

• 1:38:21Lewis Howes?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:38:23Wendy Suzuki?

  Yeah, so that was such a joy to be able to share with people. But I'm doing another one on Good Anxiety and it will be out in December.

• 1:38:34Lewis Howes?

  Okay, cool.

• 1:38:34Wendy Suzuki?

  So that, stay tuned for the origin story of Good Anxiety.

• 1:38:38Lewis Howes?

  Love it. I'm excited. Okay, cool. This is the final question. It's what's your definition of greatness?

• 1:38:47Wendy Suzuki?

  My definition of greatness is using your unique brain to its full potential, whatever that means. That is great. And great is so many different things in so many different people. And everybody has a beautiful and different brain. So that's my definition.

• 1:39:05Lewis Howes?

  Wendy, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

• 1:39:08Wendy Suzuki?

  Thank you so much, Lewis.

• 1:39:09Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And

• 1:39:53Lewis Howes?

  now it's time to go out there and do something great.