You're going to teach us the five resets and how to manage stress and how to make it our friend. Let's talk about the first reset. What is it?

The first reset is get clear on what matters most. When you are living in a chronic state of stress, you are being led and driven by the amygdala. It is fight or flight mode, self-preservation, and it is all about survival. When you are living in that immediate sense of stress, it is hard to get out of your own way and think about the future. Which is why when you are feeling stressed, don't berate yourself when someone says, How come you don't have a plan? Because often, when you're thinking about what is a plan, a plan is forward thinking, motion. It is strategic thinking. It is being organized. It is having some structure. All of these qualities and all of these roles are your prefrontal cortex.

And because you're stressed, the amygdala and the fight, flight, or freeze is what is running the show. That's right. It makes so much sense because you're right. When you are in a state of stress, you spin in circles, you feel totally overwhelmed, you completely overthink everything. For me, I get very scatterbrained. I literally feel hopeless, too, when I'm stressed out, the sense that there's nothing I can do about this but try to get through this thing. When you You said earlier that the tendency when you're chronically stressed or burnt out is to keep working. That's right. And so that makes a lot of sense to me. And so why, though, do you need to figure out what actually matters to you when you're running around in circles, when you feel like you can't escape the problems that you have? Why does this important as the first reset?

The reason it's important is because it helps create a roadmap for the future. When you are in that present moment of stress and burnout and overwhelm. You are at a point where you cannot even see the next step, let alone the destination. The distance between where you are and where you'd like to be seems so vast, like a chasm So you don't even take that first step. Why bother? It's not going to help. Correct. I'm not going to feel better. Forget it. It's the all or nothing fallacy. And this first reset, get clear on what matters most, helps you create that destination, a roadmap A North Star. Call it what you want.

Could you do me a favor and talk to the person listening to you and walk them through how you find a reason for why you want to get less stressed? How do you do this? Can you just walk us through it as if we're sitting there in front of you?

When you're feeling a sense of stress, you may say to yourself, because your inner critic has a megaphone, you may say to yourself, What is the matter with me? Instead, ask yourself, What means most to me? This is not a big, existential ask about what is the meaning of life and where do I belong? This is very practical. When you're thinking about your destination, why are you doing this work for less stress and less burnout? It's because you want to create a goal that means most to you, and most stands for something. So M is motivating, O is objective, S is small, and T is timely. It takes eight weeks to build a habit. Understand that part of that eight weeks is falling off the wagon and getting back on the wagon to continue. So give yourself a solid three months to reach your most goal, understanding that you're going to fall off and get back on and fall off and get back on, it's all part of the process and trust the process. Then once you have your most goal of why do you want to do this work for less stress and burnout, it's not that much work, by the way.

I'm thinking about a moment recently where I absolutely hit a medical state of burnout. It was several months ago. My why, if I were thinking about why I finally hit the wall, were things like, I want to sleep through the night. I don't want to dread the work that I have coming up this week. I don't want to feel I am constantly behind the ball. I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and be thinking about work. I need a freaking break. It was all so much in the negative. So when you're doing this first reset, is it important that when you think about that small, timely little goal of yours, that it be framed as something positive?

Not necessarily. It doesn't It can be something external. It can be something internal. But I would say that framing it as a positive and say to yourself, I want my future self to be X, Y, and Z, fill in the blank. I want my future self to have better sleep. Or you can be fed up and say, I'm sick of not being able to sleep through the night. I want to sleep through the night. Motivation comes in many different forms. It can be positive and energetic, but it can also be that you're just fed up of your own shit.

What's reset number two? Once you have this why I in mind, I am thinking about why it matters to me to turn off the amygdala, hit the reset, get control of it. You say it's find quiet in a noisy world. What does that mean?

This is perhaps one of the most important resets. You may think that when you have stress and burnout, you need to check out and spend six months in Bali. At least for me, anytime I feel overwhelmed to stress, you say that you have that sense of overwhelm When I have a lot of stress in my life, I am irritable, I am so short, and I am just constantly frowning or quick to anger. Yes. And even knowing all of the science, it takes me a little bit. I cannot tell you how much over the past six months, I've had my husband say to me, I think you need to start the resets again. And then I'll say, Oh, yeah. Oh, my. Because I have doubled down on every single reset during this whole... I walked the talk, but Particularly over the past few months.

Well, just to put it in context, doing a book tour for a book this important is probably like being a resident in medical school.

Absolutely.

What is Popcorn Brain?

Popcorn Brain is a biological phenomenon coined by a man named Adam Levy. And it is when any time that you're waiting, you're in a grocery store in line waiting to buy food, you're on your phone. You are at the bank waiting to see the teller, you're on your phone. There have been more near miss pedestrian accidents because of popcorn brain. You are just always on your screen, always engaging all day, every day, during all waking hours. And it creates a sense of hyper stimulation in your brain, which makes it difficult to live offline because offline, life moves at a decidedly slow pace. The pace of life is very different offline. Think about when you've said, Hey, you know what? I'm not going to check my phone for a few hours and you're just hanging out. It's very eerie. It's slow. You can see if you have popcorn brain by doing a quick test. Keep your phone in another room, and if you can for a couple of hours, even dry for 30 minutes, sit down with a piece of paper and a pen. And every time you feel that compulsion to check your phone, Just put a little mark, and you will be shocked and appalled.

Even me, knowing all of the science, I had to keep my phone far away so I could write the five resets because it has such a pull. Popcorn brain also is It's triggered by the amygdala because you are having that sense of hypervigilance. Like, Oh, let me check my phone. Let me check my phone. That sense of wanting to check. There's another phenomenon that's very tied to popcorn brain, which is even more concerning, which is called brain drain. So it's not just when you use your phone, which is what popcorn brain is. But scientists have found that brain drain occurs, meaning your phone, like this phone, it's right next to me during this whole conversation. And so your brain, there's a phenomenon where just that sheer potential for distraction, having a phone close by, can be incredibly distracting for your brain and increase your sense of stress and burnout. So the antidote to popcorn brain or brain drain is to create digital boundaries. We have in every relationship in our life with our partners, our colleagues, our friends, we have boundaries, but we have porous boundaries or often no boundaries when it comes to your relationship with your digital devices.

This is not about becoming a digital monk and abstinence. We need to engage in news. It's important to be an informed citizen.

What are your favorite boundaries?

One of the most important things is to keep your phone off your night stand and invest in a low cost alarm clock instead. What I love is your five second rule. When you get up out of bed, over 50% of people check the news or check their phones and check their emails. Think about what that's doing to your brain, what If that's doing to your amygdala. If you are stressed and burned out, chances are you didn't sleep very well that night, or if you had a good night's sleep, great. But then immediately it's triggering all of these chemicals and the cascade in your brain. Instead, keep your phone away from your night stand. When you open your eyes, take in the morning light, and then do the five-second rule and get up out of bed. Then maybe go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, do some stretches, and then check your phone.

Okay.

So that is a key geographical boundary. What's another boundary? During the day at work, keep your phone out of sight so you decrease that primal urge to scroll, keep it in a cubicle drawer, keep it out of arms reach, 10 feet away from you in a cubicle drawer, just so it is not in your reach. The reason is because when you have that primal urge to scroll, what you want to do is you want to override it, and you want to create more intentionality around your media consumption.

I'll share personally that our executive producer, Tracy, will not allow me to have my phone when we are in a meeting, she will reach over if I grab it and literally, like a mom, guide it out of my hand, put it away. And I'll tell you, she's right. You're just distracted. So even if it's near me and I have made it a habit, there's a task table here at work where I set up when I'm in Boston, and my phone is always right over there. I don't have it on my person. I try not to carry it around. I try to put it back over there because I know how I just grab it and just grab it. Dr. Adidi, what's one hack you can do for better focus?

One thing you can do, Mel, is to put your phone in grayscale. When I really felt like my phone, who's in control me or my phone, and there were many moments in my life where I would say, It was my phone. Now it's very much me. But I would switch my phone to grayscale, and just doing that with my screen made all the difference because all of the colors and the brightness and everything is just very enticing. So when it's grayscale, it makes it less enticing. It actively changes your brain. How does it change your brain? Well, because big tech, they know exactly what they're doing. So when you have colors and patterns and beautiful images and this user interface, it makes it more enticing to continue using. Think about when something is black and white. If you switched your phone to grayscale today, try it today. Switch your phone to grayscale, and it just becomes less enticing because the chemicals aren't going off in your brain, the neurotransmitters, because it's just boring.

Well, what I love about the way you're teaching this is that I've certainly heard a ton of people talk about the connection between stress and social media and stress and your phone and the need to get off your phone and these topics. But when you explain it in terms of your amygdala turning on and that your amygdala putting you in fight, flight, or freeze, somehow knowing that makes this way more tangible. It also makes it way more important to me that I follow this advice and I pay attention to when the amygdala is running the show versus when I'm running the show. And these boundaries and this second reset is a way for you to run your life rather than letting the amygdala just kick into high gear and keep you hostage to all of this stuff.

That's right. And I think my approach comes from decades of being a medical doctor and seeing patients. So every single thing that I offer to my patients during my talks in this book, The Five Resets, every single thing is free. That was really important to me because I have had patients from all walks of life with different resources, and that was critical to me. The second thing that I really aim to do with every single strategy I offer, of course, it's science-based, but that it is time-efficient. If we all could spend an hour getting a massage and then getting an acupuncture treatment and then going for a walk and all of the wonderful things that are available to anyone who has the means to do the time as well, then great. But for most people in everyday life, you have in over-scheduled life a million competing priorities Often, you put yourself last on that list. Stress and burnout, your own stress and burnout and your own mental health is like, Oh, I'll get to it when. But if not now, then when. Really making sure that these strategies are easy and practical and can be something that you do today.

Many of these things you can start today. And it is all when it comes to your brain and rewiring your brain and body for less stress and more resilience or less stress and less burnout, these incremental changes a little A little bit every day can actually rewire your brain. It is not some big grand gesture that does it, like a massage once a month. Great. A nice bandaid. It'll help you. When you get a massage or when I get a massage, it feels great for a day. And then the next morning, I wake up and it's the same old stuff.

Now I know why. Because the amygdala is the issue. That is a thousand % what you're teaching us.

It's always the amygdala.

It's literally the amygdala. So what would If the person listening wants to get a better night's sleep, as a Harvard-educated medical doctor and professor, what would you tell the person listening to do tonight in order to get a better night's sleep?

I always lead with self-compassion. So first is, if you are not sleeping well, you are not alone. It is not your fault. When you have better days, you will have better nights. Take sleep and your difficulty with sleep as a simple, a sign or a symptom of something that you want to work on. You can target it head on with a lot of these strategies. Keep your phone off your night stand, invest in a low-cost alarm clock. First thing when you wake up, don't scroll. Try to do something else. And the other thing that I would say is two hours before bedtime, limit your screens. Again, nothing is overnight. It doesn't work like magic. But if you start these today, give yourself eight weeks, but you will see a difference within a week. By the weekend, you should start feeling better. These things take shape quickly because your brain and your body are rewiring all the time. Your brain is a muscle. Neuroplasticity, a very fancy science word, but it means your brain is a muscle. It's not a grab bag. What you got for birth is what you got for life. It's not what it is.

Your brain is like a muscle, just like a bicep. So in exercise, the thing with sleep that's fascinating is that with exercise, if you did two pound dumbbells, like 100 rolls with your biceps, You'd know that it's doing something. I mean, it's not going to do as much as a 10 pound, but you try it anyway. You're like, You know what? I'm going to try it. So think of your brain as a muscle. Try things out. Experiment. Understand that doing a little bit, a simple change, like keeping your phone off your night stand, could make all the difference and could be a game changer. It doesn't have to be this big, giant lifestyle overhaul. Also, your brain cannot handle big lifestyle overhauls when you are feeling a sense of stress, because even positive change, like all of these things that we're talking about, change is considered a stressor to your brain.

Well, that's why you always recommend in your book, too, that rule of two. The rule of two. What is the rule of two?

The rule of two is how our brain responds to change. When we are feeling a sense of stress, so think about in 2020, you may have had big lofty goals. Mine was to build a farmhouse table from scratch, to learn Italian, and to learn to play the guitar. And now it's a wonder if you wear clean clothes and eat a few vegetables at 2024, right? We're here now. It's because you cannot sustain huge lifestyle overhauls during periods of stress because even positive changes are considered a stressor to your brain. And this is a landmark study done in the 1960s by two doctors, two psychiatrists, Dr. Holmes and Rahi. They studied 5,000 people and 43 of the most common life conditions. Positive, happy things like we were talking about, right? Like getting a new job, falling in love, having a child, getting married, buying a new car. And the sad things in life: death, unemployment, divorce, There's lots of these horrible things. And what they found in this research was that at the end, when they added up, they tallied up every single person, all of these life events and found that the more life events that you have accrued, your greater chance of having stress and burnout and greater illness down the road, which showed it's the basis of the rule of two to focus on two things at a time.

Even positive change can be a stressor for your brain because your brain needs time to adapt and recover from this positive change. Again, the word stress, healthy stress being adaptive. It's your brain adapting to these changes. So just aim to do two things at a time. You might read the five resets and say, or you might listen to our conversation, and we're offering so many strategies in this conversation. You You might say, I'm going to do everything all at once, everything with the kitchen sing approach. You'll do it for four weeks, and then you'll say, There's no way I'm doing this.

So pick the most important thing to improve, and then just-For your sleep? If you were to literally just stop the dooms scrolling, and put your phone somewhere other than your bedroom at seven o'clock at night, and you create that boundary, and then you don't sleep next to it, and you don't look at it first thing in the morning. If you were to simply do that, your sleep would improve almost immediately.

Your sleep would improve immediately. The entire tenor of your day would change, and you would feel so much more grounded. You would feel whatever symptom that you're having of stress, there are many, it would have an immediate impact on your stress and your burnout. And over time, if you continue to do that day after day after day, you will be a changed person.

I'm so excited for the third reset because we're talking about the brain-body connection and how when this little amygdala starts going bananas, what is number three?

The third reset is sink your brain to your body. It is all about the mind-body connection.

What does that mean, sink your brain to your body?

When you hear the term mind-body connection, you may think that's total woo- woo. But in fact, there is a lot of robust scientific literature to support the mind-body connection. Which is a fancy term for simply saying that your brain and your body are in constant communication and inextricably linked. What's good for your brain is good for your body and vice versa. When you do better, you feel better, and it's all in the doing. You may be hearing about the mind-body connection for the first time today, but you have been experiencing the mind-body connection forever. Butterflies at falling in love, your face flushing at an embarrassing moment, you're about to give a presentation for work, and your heart starts racing. This is the mind-body connection. It's like gravity. It's happening in the background all the time. The beauty of the mind-body connection is that while it is happening around us, in you at all times, You can learn to tap into the mind-body connection, understand it, and most importantly, influence it to better serve you with your stress and your burnout. The quickest way to tap into your mind-body connection is with your breath. Your breath is the only physiological mechanism that is under voluntary control and involuntary control.

So you and I could do a breathing exercise today, right now, and you would feel a sense of calm. And then we're just talking and your breath is going. Let's do Your brain can't do that. Your brain waves, your digestion can't do that. Nothing else in your body has that same under voluntary control and involuntary control. So that is the first way that you can tap into it. So there are very quick. The other thing to mention is that when you are in amygdala mode or fight or flight mode, your sympathetic nervous system, again, a fancy scientific word, we have two nervous systems in the body. One is the sympathetic nervous system that governs fight or flight. The other one governs something called rest and digest. It's the parasympathetic nervous system. The two can't be on at the same time. They're mutually exclusive. And your breath can help modulate be the light switch between the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system. So when you are in You're in a sympathetic mode driven by your amygdala, your heart is beating, you have quick, shallow breathing. Think about when you're anxious, you're breathing... You're anxious. You're breathing quickly, very shallow and rapid.

That is because it's a physiological mechanism. You're trying to get to get the oxygen in to go to your muscles so you can fight or you can flee. Parasympathetic mode, you are breathing deeply and slowly. It is rest and digest. Sympathetic mode, it's that quick, shallow breathing. It's thoracic breathing. It's chest breathing. Parasympathetic mode, rest and digest, it's belly breathing. And knowing this very scientific explanation, it's simply to say that when you modulate your breathing and influence your breathing, you You can switch one system on and off, and you can tap into your mind-body connection because of what you know now about the breath. Got you. As you're thinking about managing your stress and burnout, it's also important to think about your gut-brain connection.

Can you explain to the person listening how physically the gut and the brain are connected, and how they speak to each other, and how I found it fascinating when I first learned that they were part of the same tissue when you are being formed as an embryo and that during your development that they literally are one clump that then separates. I always imagine that there's this gooey, ooey, sticky stuff between your brain and your gut. But could you explain it as a medical doctor, what the brain-gut connection is?

The brain-gut connection is that your brain and your gut are literally speaking to each other, and there is cross-talk at all times. It happens through an ecosystem of trillions of bacteria, healthy bacteria in your gut, called the microbiome. I want to say that the gut is considered the second brain because there are three to five times more serotonin receptors in your gut than your brain. When you hear the word serotonin, you know the popular class of drugs, SSRIs. These are medications that we use for depression and anxiety and a a whole host of other things. And these are brain chemicals. Serotonin, when you hear the word, you think, Oh, brain, brain chemical. But in fact, there are three to five times more serotonin receptors in your gut than your brain. One of my mentors used to say, my early mentor, he would say, I wonder why people are walking around with hearts around their neck. They should be using their brain as a little pendant. And then another mentor said, Forget the brain. We should be having our guts around our necks because that is truly the second brain. It's like that's how much the science supports this idea of the gut being the second brain.

And Every week, Mel, there is new, compelling, fascinating research about the gut-brain connection. And so this microbiome, this ecosystem of trillions and trillions of healthy bacteria in your gut, govern so many things besides digestion. It is a bi-directional highway of information. Your brain is sending signals to your gut, and your gut is sending signals right back to your brain.

As a doctor at Harvard, what do you do for exercise? And movement.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a stressed patient looking for answers. That's my villain origin story of how I became a doctor with an expertise in stress is because I was a stressed patient looking for answers. I found my way out of the stress struggle, put on my scientist hat. I had gone to see a doctor, and my doctor had said, Go get a massage and just relax. Just try to relax more. I was like, Okay, I'll get a massage. I'll have dinner with friends. I'll go retail therapy, all the things that didn't work. And so when I put on my scientist hat and I started looking and doing the research is when I really found out, Okay, this is how stress impacts the brain and the body, and this is how I'm going to find my way out of stress. Movement was one. And then when I came out of that, I said I wanted to be the doctor that I needed during that difficult time. So that's my origin story. I mentioned that because movement was not something I did every single day. I was working 80 hours a week, and I don't know, I was running from one patient room to the other.

I thought that was movement enough. And so what I did during that time, I was acutely stressed I was so depleted and running on fume smell. I was erratic in my food intake, my sleep, seeing death and dying on a daily basis. Self care and burnout or even stress was not in my lexicon. It was not in my vocabulary. When I was training in my medical training, my motto, how I was trained, was pressure makes diamonds. Someone sat a whole group of medical students down in our first year or second year of medical training and said, I just want you guys to know what you're about to go through. Pressure makes diamond. So I was like, Hey, diamond in the making, bring it on. And then my diamond cracked. So when I discovered all of the science around why movement is important, and exercise is like E, the dreaded E word, no one likes to talk about it. So we can talk about movement We can talk about exercise. To answer your question, it has changed. When I was a stressed patient or a medical resident working 80 hours a week, and I was running on fumes and so depleted, I focused on gentle therapeutic movement.

So I I went to yoga class several times a week. That was my gateway. Just to say that doctors are socialized to play small. We don't share our own personal stories because we focus on the patient. So writing the five resets and sharing my personal story, I have to tell you, Mel, I might start crying. But you were an inspiration for sharing that story because you share so much of your own personal stuff to help people. And I knew that the only way that people would relate to me is if I told them the truth and not, I'm just doing this for my patients. It's because, no, I I was a patient. I struggled with my stress and burnout, and that's when I became the doctor I needed during that difficult time. And so your story and your example was like a leading, like a light, really a lighthouse that guided me.

Well, I'm thrilled that you shared I'm glad you shared your story because you clearly are the doctor we all need.

Thank you. And so during that really difficult time, I focused on a couple of days a week of yoga, gentle, stretching, nothing much, and a few walks. So I used to walk every single day, which is why in the five resets, when I talk about movement, walking, even if it's five or 10 minutes, again, you might say, what's a walk going to do? It's going to do nothing. Because it's not about the promise of physical fitness, this is the promise of mental fitness. And so a little bit of a daily walk. And the reason I walked every single day when I was a stressed patient, and why I suggest when people are feeling that acute sense of stress to walk every single day, is because it avoids decision fatigue. If you say to yourself when you're deeply stressed, I'm going to go to the gym three times a week for an hour long class. Then Monday rolls around, a deadline comes up at work, you don't go. Tuesday, there's a family obligation or a conflict, you don't go. Wednesday, same thing. And by Friday, you might have gone zero or one time. Your sense of self-efficacy goes down.

You're like, I can't get anything right. Why bother at all? And then your amygdala starts firing because the forward future planning prefrontal cortex isn't working as great. Instead, aim to do something a little bit every day to avoid decision fatigue. Now, to answer your question, it's changed. So initially, I started my... I was a sedentary person. I didn't really exercise much. I was into dancing as a child, but not sports. Now I understand the value of sports for so many reasons. Gentle yoga and walks every day. Ten minute walk, that was like, yes, I walk, check. This is not about walking five miles a day.

I love that because the person listening is like, okay, how long? What do I do? It's just 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes?

Five minutes is fine, too. If you can do 20 minutes of a walk Every single day, great. It's the equivalent of a Facebook scroll. Seriously, we all scroll.

That's true.

Or Instagram, or choose your poison. It's the equivalent of a scroll. Opt out of a scroll and go for a walk instead. Do it in between your meetings if you can. Five, 10 minutes every single day. It's that inertia that you're... Sometimes it feels like you're waiting through molasses when you're feeling stressed of lacing up your sneakers and going outside. And if you say, Oh, I'm going to do this for 45 minutes, forget it, you're never doing it. But if you say, Oh, five minutes, I can do that. It's about closing that gap between where you are and where you'd like to be. And so five minutes. So then now what I do, because I am of a certain age, I focus on resistance training. I aim to exercise 30 minutes every single day. Does that happen every single day? No. But I probably get in 4-5 days of exercise. And that includes walking, or if I do a 40-minute walk one day, I won't do resistance training, but I do some form of movement every day. It It is about making things small and tangible and decreasing the barriers to taking that step. So fine, you don't want to put on your sneakers.

Take a walk up and down your hallway in your house. Walk up and down a set of stairs. Research has shown That in fact, to decrease, there was a study that was done, that ultra short bursts of activity, one to two minutes. So walking up a set of stairs or going to... Parking far away when you're going to the grocery store. We all look for parking really close to the entrance, park far away. Take a walk up to the grocery store, run for the bus, or walk quickly to go get the bus or the subway. These short, they're called ultra short bursts of activity, can decrease your risk of dying from cancer by 40%.

Wow. You heard the doctor, get your walk on every day. Ten minutes, that's all she's saying, and it's going to lower your stress. How does sitting all day impact your stress?

As you may have heard in pop culture, sitting is the new smoking.

I hadn't heard that.

The science It shows that sitting, it's not just that exercise is good for you and moving is good for you for your stress, anxiety, burnout. It's that sitting is actually bad for you, and it can increase your sense of anxiety, stress, and burnout.

Wow. Maybe we should have ordered standing desks around here.

And of course, you want to sit. For me, when I can never use a standing desk, I can't think right. I need to sit down and do my work and have my deep thinking. I wanted to share a couple of pretty alarming statistics about sitting. There was a study of 800 people, and the ones who sat the most, this is like knock your socks off data, The people who sat the most had a 112% higher risk of diabetes, 147% higher risk of heart disease, a 90% higher risk of death from heart disease, and a 50% higher risk from death overall. All to say that sitting is actually bad for our health, our well-being, and as it turns out, your stress and burnout.

How does sitting trigger stress?

The Mechanisms of action aren't entirely clear. But the data suggests that when you are sitting for prolonged length of time, you're stewing in your own emotions, so to speak. It's that getting up and moving creates a whole cascade of positive biological changes to your brain and your body. When you're sitting for long periods of time, that doesn't happen. It also has a cardiovascular benefit or rather, it's detrimental to your cardiovascular health to just sit because a body is meant to move. Your body is the greatest machine. We say that this little guy, this smartphone, is the greatest machine that man has invented. I would argue that your brain and your body is truly the greatest machine. And so use that machine to do what it's meant to do. You don't have to become an Olympian, but certainly getting up and moving a little bit every day, even if it means five minutes between your Zoom meeting, get up, take a walk, stretch, sitting for prolonged periods of time. Because think about it, we sit all day at work, you sit all day at work, and then you sit in a car going back home, and then you sit on your sofa all day.

So the human body hasn't been designed to just sit all day. We are meant to move and move our bodies.

As a doctor, what do you recommend? My watch has that stand-up thing. I love it. And I don't realize how much time will go by, and it's like, Oh, I haven't stood in two hours? Holy cow.

I love that. I would say there isn't necessarily a prescription, like a dose relationship for sitting and when to stand up. And what's the dose of standing and sitting? Just do it when you can. You have a two-hour meeting, can't stand up right after that two-hour meeting instead sitting on your Slack channel and responding to emails or doing all those things, get up and walk around. There is something to be said, right? Like Plato, Aristotle, all of these greats talked about the benefit of a walk, that mental health benefit of taking a walk. And so it doesn't have to be this long, profound walk. Just get up and stretch your body. Do some gentle stretching, some exercising, connect your breath to your movement, to your posture. This is really important because that's a way to tap into your mind-body connection as well.

So your next reset addresses one of the biggest lies around productivity. Let's talk about it.

So reset number four is come up for air. One of the biggest myths is that you are meant to be functioning at a high capacity without any need for rest or recovery. That productivity is linear. The more you do, the more you can accomplish, and then the more you do, the more you can accomplish, it's just supposed to be this thing, this feedback loop that's supposed to continue on and on and on. That's a myth. A break is It's not just a nice to have luxury. Your brain and your body need a break. It is a biological necessity for your brain and body to rest and recover. Human productivity is not linear. It functions on a curve. Think of a bell-shaped curve. The left of the curve, when you don't have a lot of stress, you're not very motivated, you're not very productive. Think about the right side of the curve. So much stress. You are keyed up. Many of us are living on this right side the curve, right? There is a sweet spot of human productivity right in the middle. It's just right stress. I call it the Goldilocks principle. And it's this idea of we all are to that right of that bell-shaped curve.

We are anxious. We have so much stress. We're not productive. We can't focus. It's hard to get things done. So the science suggests that moving back, how do you get to that center spot, the sweet spot of human productivity, is to scale back. But you can't scale back. That's not realistic because we have real constraints. We have constraints on our time. We have obligations with work and parenting. Instead, you have to honor your breaks. How do you scale back? How do you apply this science to your everyday life? You honor your breaks. How do you do that? When you are taking a break during the day, what do most of us do? We mindlessly scroll. We've already talked about what happens with scrolling. This isn't a benign thing that you are doing. You are actively influencing your brain and your body for more stress, More stress, more burnout, all of the things that we talked about.

Let me just highlight that because you're right. When I step out of a meeting, the first thing I do is check my phone. And so I'm not actually taking a break. I'm re-engaging my mind and activating the amygdala and juicing up my stress. Never even thought about it. I always viewed like, Oh, okay. I've got a couple of minutes before my next thing. I'll just look at my phone. And instead, if I were to leave my phone where it is and walk into the kitchen here at work or at home, make myself a cup of coffee or step outside for a minute, I'd feel different.

Try some heart-centered breathing. Take a little walk outside, do some stretches, touch your toes, stand up, twist. Do something where you're connecting your breath to your movement. Tap into your mind-body connection. Practice Stop, breathe, B. It's a three-second exercise, and it can help- What is that? The Stop, breathe, B method, the instructions are in the name. It's a three-second exercise. So you stop, you breathe, and you be. So you ground your feet on the floor. I learned the Stop, breathe, be method. It was the first technique I learned to reset my mind-body connection when I was in the throes of stress as a stressed medical resident. I was working 80 hours a week. I was seeing 30 to 40 patients a day. And I brought the Stop, breathe, be method into my life when I would knock on the door of the patient room before I would enter. It was my door knob moment. So as I turned the door knob, I would say to myself, often under my breath, in a crowded place, Stop, breathe, be. And then I would enter. And I would do that incrementally over and over and over again, 30, 40 times a day.

Over time, I could just do it anywhere. In fact, before we started speaking, I was so excited because I was having a total fan girl moment. Still am. It's been a long time of my amygdala going off. But no, just kidding. I was having a fan girl moment. I'm I'm not kidding about that. And I did Stop, Breathe, B. In fact, the entire time that we've been speaking, I've been very aware of my feet on the floor, my posture in the chair, and how I am breathing, because that is important to manage and modulate your stress response. You can practice Stop Breathe B during mundane everyday moments of your life. So I did it with the door knob. You can do it between Zoom meetings. Stop, breathe, be.

It's a little mini reset.

Small micro reset, three seconds. You can practice it when you're brushing your teeth. I have practiced it in the morning when you're getting lunches ready for school, getting everything ready. I do it always at the door knob before I'm about to go into the garage to do school bus stop, drop off, stop, breathe, be. And I think, Oh my God, we forgot the project. Did you bring your hat? Oh, we need to get this. We need to get that. It's just the reset that you need. And the reason the Stop, breathe, be method works so well is because anxiety and anxious thoughts are a future-focused emotion. It is about what if? What if this happens? What if that happens? What if I fail? What if I can't do well? What if, what if, what if? And Stop, breathe, be gets you out of what if thinking and gets you back into what is in the here and now.

Dr. Addi, what is the fifth reset?

The fifth reset is to bring your best self forward. And this is all about the inner critic. We talked about it a little bit at the start of our conversation. That inner critic is that voice in your head that berates you. You may not even know that it is there. You might think, Hey, that's my natural voice. That's who I am. In fact, I would argue that that is not who you are, capital Y-O-U, it is your amygdala speaking. The reason is when you are feeling a sense of stress, that inner critic, that voice, gets a megaphone because your amygdala is doing the driving of your brain. And your amygdala wants to keep you safe and small. That is why getting out of your comfort zone when you're feeling a sense of stress doesn't feel good. You have that what-if thinking, all of these sorts of things. It's It's a self-sabotage situation. And so you stay small, you stay in your comfort zone, you don't try new things, you don't try to get out of your stress because that inner voice. So how do you silence the inner voice? How do you take that megaphone out of your inner voice's hand and say, No, you're not going to be speaking.

I'm the one who's going to be speaking. There's a couple of ways to do that. The first is gratitude. Now, you may hear the word gratitude and roll your eyes like, Oh, my God, gratitude. I'm not going to do this teenage journal bullshit, right? In fact, there There is a lot of science for gratitude. A written gratitude practice is vital to help silence your inner critic and to reset your stress and burnout. Because, again, very simple practice. Keep a piece of paper and a pen next to your bedside. You know how you got rid of your phone on your night stand? Keep a little gratitude journal there instead now. Every night or in the morning, whenever you want, doesn't matter. Five things you're grateful for and why. Put the date, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Write down five things you're grateful for and why. Some days you'll have like, 15 things that you want to write down. You can only write down five. Other days you'll say, I have nothing that I'm grateful for. You have two arms and two legs. You can breathe the air. You have a roof over your head. You have food in your pantry.

These are all wins because many people, particularly now, cannot say that. So write those down. The reason gratitude is so important from a scientific perspective is because when you are doing a gratitude, daily gratitude practice, it takes 60 seconds. You are rewiring your brain because Because what you are doing, it's a fancy scientific name called cognitive reframing, what you focus on gross. Rick Hansen talks about this idea of when you're going through stress, he's a psychologist in California, and it's like moving gratitude Gratitude helps you move away from Velcro to Teflon. When, because you're amygdala is driving that train, negative experiences become sticky in the brain, like Velcro. You hold on to them because it's a feeling of survival and self-preservation. And so when you start practicing gratitude on an everyday basis, it's cognitive reframing. What you focus on grows, so you shift your perspective. So even if negative and positive are happening at the same rate, good and bad things are happening in your life at the same rate, when you are feeling a sense of stress, you are focused primarily on the negative because you are thinking, Danger, danger, danger, red alert. How do you decrease that stickiness of negative experiences in your brain when you're feeling a sense of stress?

By practicing gratitude. It shifts away from Velcro, your The brain circuitry shifts away from Velcro to Teflon. So the negative experiences may happen, but it slides off. How does it happen? Through gratitude. So you write down those things every single day. And studies have demonstrated that 30, 60, and 90 days, there's improved mood, decreased stress and burnout, better sleep. There are so many benefits to an everyday gratitude practice. It also silences your inner critic because it dials down the volume of the amygdala in the background.

Look, I want to also say one thing to you. This stuff is heady. So I'm doing my best to keep this fun and visual because when you get lost in thought, it's going to be hard to apply this. First of all, I want to commend you for sticking with this because now we're going to dig into the exercise. I wanted you to have the understanding, because oftentimes I personally find that if somebody just throws a science-back tip or exercise or tool or tactic or strategy at me, it sounds so dumb on the surface that without the underlying research and mechanics and science that explains why this simple thing works, you will literally roll your eyes and not do it. So now that you have that background, I'm going to reward you with the exercise that I want you to practice. And this one is simple. So if you're cynical, if you're really smart, if you're analytical, it will sound stupid. But I want you to hang in there because there is a really powerful thing going on in your NeuroPathways when you try this. And it's also an incredibly cool and thing to do with your family, with your friends.

In fact, I get texts from people all over the world who are doing it, and my kids who do not live with us, our two adult daughters, they constantly text me pictures of what I'm about to ask you to do. I I promise you, it's worth trying. This is an exercise called Looking for Hearts. And this is how you play it. Every single day when you wake up, you are going to go on a scavenger hunt, and in your day-to-day life, and you are going to try to find a naturally occurring heart shape somewhere in the world. It could be a cloud that's shaped like a heart. You could look at your coffee and see that the foam on top has made the shape of a heart. You might get out of your car and you'll see a stain on the floor or a leaf that's the shape of a heart. I constantly, constantly see rocks. I see heart shapes in the top of mountain ranges. I see the shape of hearts in brick buildings all the time in terms of the different colors of bricks. Here's what's interesting about this. What you'll realize is that there are probably 10,000 heart shapes that are around you in your day-to-day life.

The stain on the carpet, the spot on your dog's back, the tear in a pair of pants, the shape of a leaf. They're everywhere. They're absolutely everywhere. Right now, you walk right by them. Why? Well, because they're not important to you. You have not told the bouncer of your brain to let the hearts in to the nightclub. So you are walking right past all these things, and they are actively being blocked out. It is not in your conscious mind. The second you start playing this game, Find a Heart, you will experience something amazing. You will experience your brain going to work for you. And so here's how I want you to play this, because I do want you to play this every single day. This is truly not a game about finding hearts. This is about training your mind. This is a game where you are telling your mind, I am the freaking boss, bouncer of the mind. I pay your salary. You are going to do what I tell you to do. You are going to find me a heart. If you want to get paid, you are going to find me a heart.

That is your job today. Find me a heart. So get intentional about that. Then I want you to go through your life and just let a heart shape in. When you see it, here's what I want you to do. If you're really analytical, you're going to think this is the cheesiest damn thing you've ever heard, but I want you to do this because there's neuroscience involved. When you see that heart, I want you to pause, and I want you to really stare at it for a minute. You can take a photo of it. If it's a rock, you can pick it up or a leaf and take it with you. Because I want you to reward your brain for being flexible and for trying to help you. I want you to take that moment for real, as cheesy as this sounds, the foam on the top of your coffee, the shadow on the floor. I want you to take a minute and really savor it and literally just go, holy shit, there it is. That's pretty cool. Yesterday, I walked I passed this and I didn't even see it. Thank you, mind. Wow. You just changed in real-time.

You just let something in that I asked you to let that in. If you really want to supersize this, if you're somebody that's really struggling with a sense of self-worth or hope or really believing that you can turn things around, I want you to look at that and tell yourself that that was placed there for you to find, that this was placed there because you needed to see evidence that it is in fact possible to change the way you think. It is in fact possible to tell your mind what you want to see more evidence of and for your mind to work for you. And once you see one heart, you will start seeing hearts everywhere. The more hearts that you see, the more that you are connecting into magic, the more that you realize that your brain is trying very hard to help you, it is going to point out hearts in the moss. It's going to point out hearts on the sidewalk. You're going to see hearts on people's clothing. You're going to see them in paintings. It's weird. They're everywhere. It's as if there is this entire world that you and I live in, and we walk by it every single day.

I think that's true about everything that you want, that there There is evidence all around you that things are working out, that people are trying to help you if you're willing to see it. At the end of the day, finding hearts is not about finding hearts. It is about something so much bigger because it's proof that you can change the wiring in your mind. You can manipulate and program this filter, the RAS, to make it work for you. And every time you see a heart, it is evidence that it is true. And so it's important because this is the first step of a mindset reset. Because if you didn't think, my mind can change. It can allow me to see the world differently. If I can't get you to see and experience that you will never even bother trying thought substitution. And I will say there is something that some of you may experience. So this comes from Nadie in Germany. And she wrote, Mel, I loved what you said about looking for hearts, and I've been trying it. I even saw two hearts within an hour. But then I got nervous and was almost afraid to find them.

How do you overcome the fear of making things better? I relate to this because we're used to the way that things are. We're used to the default programming in our minds, even if it makes us miserable. When you start to catch a glimpse of how things could be different, I think sometimes if you've experienced a tremendous amount of heartache Or you've tried so many times to put yourself out there, the idea of believing again, that it's worth trying again, that that is what's scary. Here's what I have to say to you, this is not about hope. This is hard science. Because you're living with programming right now. I am here to tell you, it's outdated. In fact, when you start to really play around with this next piece of how you change the way that you think, you're going to realize that you're not even listening to your voice. You're listening to someone else's voice. It's probably your mom's or your dad's or in other caregivers. Because that negativity that's in your mind that chips away at you, that default programming that you don't even really hear. For me, I call it my campaign of misery.

I did not create this when I was six or seven or eight. I was taught this. And And so you're going to start to realize that not only do you have the power to change the filter, yes, you can see reasons to be happy. Yes, you can spot wins instead of reasons why you're a loser. Yeah, you can pay more attention to the people in your life that make you feel great instead of chasing the ones that make you feel like crap. You can change all of this. You can make your mind work for you. But what you're going to realize very quickly is, holy cow, there's this default thing in my mind that's like fighting my desire to be happy. It's fighting my desire to win. And so that's where we're going to go next. Because there is an entirely different reality. One of the reasons why I always say to you is, I love you. I believe in you. I believe in your ability to create a better life. The reason why I say that to you all the freaking time, and I mean it, is because I know you don't say that to yourself.

And I didn't say that to myself for a long time either. And I don't need to meet you to say, I love you. Because love is a verb. Love is how you show up in the world. This podcast is an act of love for me. It is a way to connect with you. It's a way for me to support you and empower you. I show up here because I do believe in you. I don't care what's happened to you. You cannot convince me that you cannot change. I have way too much evidence on my side. You only have your experience. I've got an army of a million people that I've seen change. And so I know you can change because I know you can take the actions to make your mind a better place. You can take the actions to make your life feel better. You can take the actions to improve your relationship with yourself. And this is the most exciting part. This is the thing I am working on myself day in and day out. You can take the actions that reclaim your brain, that reprogram your mind, and that make your mindset and your thoughts work for you.

I mean, all this shit is made up that we're saying anyway. So if you can think bad thoughts, why not think good ones? Does it actually make you happy to tell yourself that you suck and that there's something wrong with you? And is it even true? So if you can make that crap up, if you can adopt what somebody else says about it, can't you make up your own? Of course you can. And so let's get to that substitution diet. This is the Mel Robin's way to describe what researchers call cognitive bias modification. It's literally catching default thoughts and substituting something better. And one of the best example of this is the next time that you start obsessing, obsessing over what could go wrong. What if I don't like it? What if it doesn't work? What if I get rejected? What if it does it? What if I look stupid? What if they judge me? What if this? With. Say this, What if it works out? What if it works out? The more you say out loud, what if it works out? You substitute the negative bullshit with something positive. What if it works out?

I mean, can you argue with me on that one? What if it works out? I didn't say it will work out. I said, What if it does? Because you don't know whether it's going to work out or not, do you? And when you allow your default wiring to filter the world with the belief and the thought that, What if it doesn't work out? What if I fail? What if this? What if that? Those thoughts filter the world a certain way. The thought, what if it doesn't work out? Makes you not apply. It makes you not write that book. It makes you not go to the gym. It makes you sit home alone. Those thoughts are filtering your experience of life a particular way. And because the filter in your brain is paying attention to what you care about, it believes that's what you want. So as you scan When you're in the world around you, you see reasons why it's not going to work out. Didn't happen last time. It's a weird world after the pandemic. I don't want to embarrass myself. I feel uncomfortable. When you start to engage in thought substitution, what if it all works out?

What if leaving my house is the best decision I've made in a decade? What if I meet the person that I was destined to meet? What if going to 90 meetings in 90 days at AA changes my life? What if it all works out? See how that mindset switch, cognitive bias modification, See how that leads you to feeling more encouraged? What if I make these 10 cold calls and nobody takes the call, but I'm okay? What if I walk up to this house that I think is going to go on the market and I knock on the door. And it turns out I buy it before it comes on the market? What if I get into my dream school? You're more to apply if you're like, Well, what if it does work out? And this is why this is so important, because your brain is paying attention to what's important to you. And I don't think any of us have a clue How much air time we give to negative thinking, to beating ourselves down, to assuming that life is going against you, to thinking something's wrong, to beating yourself up, to comparing yourself to other people.

And when you start to pay attention to two facts: number one, your mind is trying to help you, and number two, when you figure out what's important to you and you make it a priority, your mind will adjust in real-time and help you see an entirely new world. And when you see that it's possible that you could get into your dream school, that's a whole new world. When you see that it's possible that you'll make the best friends of your life in the next year of your life, a whole new world is possible. When you see that you can not only get your dream job, but you can land your dream job, and it has a bonus A whole new world is possible. It begins with two simple things I want you to do. Look for hearts so you experience that a whole new world is possible, that there's a world that you're walking by every day. This is critical. I do this every single day. It sounds like such a dumb thing. I often think about this moment where a reporter is like, So what's your secret to success? I'm like, Look, I look for a heart every day.

I mean, it sounds so stupid, doesn't it? But what I'm actually saying is I am actively engaged in the process of training my brain. Just like you would lift weights or resist weights or whatever it is that you do if you want biceps, you are training your body to be strong. I'm training my mind every single day to work for me. And every time I see a heart, it's a reminder. Oh, yeah. My brain will tell me what I want it to tell me. And so I can either let the campaign a misery take control of my RAS, or I can tell my brain, no, it is important to be happy. It is important to feel like I'm winning. It's important to put myself out there in light. I need some help with this brain. And so the heart Thoughts, for me, is a simple way to explain this profound amount of research out there and put it into practical use. And this idea of a substitution diet for the shit you've been thinking forever that no longer serves you. That's a simple way for me to explain to you. You're not stuck with the thoughts that you think.

That idea right there That's the whole thing. That's everything. You are not stuck with the thoughts that you think. You can let them rise up, but you don't have to grab them and grip onto them and wrestle them to the ground. You'll be like, Oh, there's that stupid thought that my dad taught me to think. Bye, dad. I choose to think something else because I know what cognitive bias modification is. And that horse shit that you said that I was a failure or didn't mount up to something or wasn't wanted, I don't believe that shit anymore. Because it's important to me to not only see hearts, but it's important to me to encourage myself, to believe in myself, to believe in my life and my effort and my ability. Because that's what I believe. That's why I'm here. If I can do this shit, you can do this stuff. You have no idea how screwed up I was. If you wanted to go toe to toe with somebody that had the darkest thoughts in the world, Mel Robbins will go toe to toe with you any day. And you cannot get rid of it entirely.

But thought by thought, you can learn how to not get hooked by it, and you can learn how to start to reprogram your mind. And I'm I'm also going to tell you something. I said at the very beginning, it's not one and done. This is not toxic positivity. I'm not here to sell you a pill to make your problems go away. I'm here to tell you that there will be times in your life where the negativity comes back and the default comes back and things get overwhelming. That happened to me just six months ago. When big things happen in your life, it can take you down for a little bit. But coming back to this stuff, over and looking for hearts, there's the confirmation. I still even though life sucks, My brain is still trying to help me. And really, I'm telling you, I call it hand-to-hand combat with your mind because that's what you're engaged in. Those negative thoughts either hook you and take you down or you're like, that's interesting. My grandmother's still bitching at me and she's dead. I don't really need this in my default program anymore. That's what's available to you.

So I mentioned earlier that this cognitive bias modification tools that we're talking about today work because not only have I used them in my own life, but also because we've had 250,000 students that I've taught a course about reframing your mindset, resetting your mindset, too. We do these extensive surveys afterwards. One of the things that I know from our data is that the number one negative thought that people struggle with I'm not good enough. I believe that everybody struggles with this. There are two reasons why. Number one, many of you grew up in a household where your lived experience was that you were told you weren't good enough or you felt like you weren't good enough. Even if you grew up in a household where you didn't feel that way, you felt safe, you felt secure, you went to an elementary school or a middle school and you went through the period of human development called adolescence and teenage years, where you separate from your family and your number one objective, developmentally, is to bond with friends. It's during that horrendous period of time that we call middle school, that most of us start to size ourselves up in relation to other groups of people.

Oh, there are the theater All the kids, I'm not good enough for them. Oh, the sports kids. I'm not good enough for them. Oh, the rich kids. I'm not good enough for them. It's a protection mechanism because you don't want to get hurt by approaching a group that you think is going to reject you. This is totally normal. We all have it. Ironically, what we do is we tell ourselves we're not good enough for certain groups or certain people. But our brains pay attention. Our brains at that little age and the filter in our brain starts to change and starts to scan the world for all the places you don't belong. That's my opinion about where it begins. It is part of everybody's development to go through this period where life is a sorting hat and you're trying to figure out where you fit in. I wish that our brains did the opposite and basically scanned the world and were like, Oh, let's just scan and see all the opportunities to fit in so that you amplify your strengths. But instead, we focus on our lack, and we do it as little kids. Because we've been doing it for so long, whether it began inside your home because of how you were treated or in your community because of how you were treated, It definitely was an experience that you had when you were younger of trying to fit in.

It happens to all of us. The opportunity of your adult life and the rest of the time that you have is to reclaim your experience of life, to see all the places, not where you don't fit in, but all the places where you can go, all the places where you could be, all the wins that you have, all the strengths that you have, all the magic you have to give. That's the opportunity when it comes to changing your mindset and changing your brain. And when you take that on, because I believe that's true, I believe you fit I believe you belong. I believe you have incredible gifts to share with the world. I believe that you deserve happiness. I believe that you have huge wins every single day. And that I want you to give yourself credit for them. I believe that you've survived a ton of crap, and you don't even give yourself credit for that. I believe that you're pretty awesome. And I want you to start to have a brain that filters the world in that direction. And so that's why I am telling you this. We all struggle with it to some extent, and in moments of weakness, it's going to be there again.

But that's okay because you can search for hearts and you can tell yourself, what if it all works out? You can remind yourself that we're all a work in progress. You can look for wins every day instead of the things that went wrong. You can spend more time with people that make you feel good instead of chasing places you really don't like. All this is possible. And I want this for you, which is why I hope you'll try this. And simple reframes, if you don't feel good enough, is you can be like, I'm a work in progress. I can figure it out. The people who love me are the people who I need in my life. This is important. I really hope you take this on. And this is the work that you'll do for the rest of your life. And it's worth it because the happiest days of our lives are the road ahead of us. Truly. I want that for both of us. I've spent far too much time beating myself up and looking for what's wrong and searching for reasons to feel tortured or lonely and to stop myself. It's just horseshit.

I'm so sick of it, and I'm sure you're sick of it, too. I'm sharing all this because even though I teach this stuff, it's easy stuff to listen to or talk about. You got to put it into practice, and so do I. You got to catch yourself when the negativity starts. You got to cut off the voice in your head that is not your own. You got to knock this middle school shit off and start claiming your adult life because you do deserve to be happy. Even if you don't love yourself, I'll tell you what, I love you. Even if you don't believe in yourself, that's okay. I believe in you. I'm going to keep on saying it until you catch up with me. Because I do believe that you can take the steps to reprogram your mind. You can take the steps to shut up that negativity in your head. You can take the steps to filter the world in an entirely new way and see how it's working to help you. And it doesn't take a whole lot of time to create a better life. Now go find a heart. I love you.

So let me tell you what the brain hack is. We're going to read from Chapter 7 today. For those of you that like to read along, we're on page 87 of the High Five Habit. I'm going to read this chapter to you, and I'm going to teach it to you. Today, I'm going to teach you how to create with a really simple hack, a more positive mind. It has to do with this. What is this? Anybody know what this is? Anybody know what this is? This is a heart-shaped rock. You want to see another one? Here's another one. A heart-shaped rock. Every single day, I have a simple hack. Every single day, when I wake up, I play this It's now a habit where I look for a heart shape somewhere in nature. It could be a heart-shaped rock, it could be a cloud, it could be a crystal, it could be a shape on a It could be hot on a dog. It could be an oil stain on the floor of a garage. It could be anything. But I look for a heart shape as a way to train my mind. I do it because I want to prove to you.

By the time we're We're going to get on with today's teaching, Chapter 7 is what I'm going to read to you today. I want you to promise me that you are going to look for a heart shape somewhere in nature today, wherever you are in the world. A puddle, perfect. Anything that you see out there. Right now, I can look out at the tree. The mountain looks like a heart, I notice right there. That's pretty cool. I want you to look around today and I want you to see I want you to look for one. Here's why. There's a filter in your brain called the reticular activity system. I write about it extensively in the high five habit. Your whole life has programmed the filter in your brain. All of the negative experiences in your life has taught your brain to filter the world in a particular way. What I'm here to tell you, and what I'm going to teach you today, is that once you understand your reticular activity system, it's like a filter on your brain that is alive. It's a network of neurons that's constantly shifting and changing and responding based on the information that you tell your brain is important to you.

If you don't believe me, how many of you have ever wanted a new car? For me right now, I'm obsessed with the new Bronco. I want one of those four-door, color-green Broncos. I know there's a year-long waitlist. I I need to get on it. I love the new Ford Bronco. Once I decided, I love that new Ford Bronco, what do you guys think I saw everywhere? All the time, all over the road. I see Broncos everywhere. The reason why is because your reticular activity system, which is a live filter on your brain, it responds in real time to whatever you say is important to it. Just like me saying, Oh, my God, I love that new Bronco. I want a new I got to buy a new Bronco. I got to get on the list for a new Bronco. I see broncos freaking everywhere. Now, I'm not sure I want one because it seems like everybody has one. You know what I'm saying? I want you to play this game with me where every day when you wake up and you can start doing it today, I want you to look for a naturally occurring heart shape.

The second you see one, I want you to go, Oh, my God, there's a heart-shaped rock just like Mell is taught. There's a heart-shaped leaf. There's a heart-shaped something. Holy shit. There it is. And the reason why I want you to do this is because when you notice it, when you, holy cow, when you take a photo of it, your brain starts to go, whoa, you're really into hearts. And the filter in your brain changes in real-time and it allows in more heart shapes. The reason why I'm explaining this to you, and I want you to use this little hack, is because if I can prove to you that by simply telling your brain that you want to see more heart shapes in the world, if you experience your own brain changing the way it filters the world in real-time, then you will believe what I'm going to say next, which is, if you want to change how you feel, if you want to change what you believe is possible, you must change how you talk to yourself because your brain is filtering the world based on how you talk yourself. And Chapter 7 of the High Five Habit proves to you that this little hack of looking for hearts, everybody, every single day, naturally occurring hearts, and realizing that your own mind will change and is flexible in real time to change how it filters the world.

When you realize the power of your mind, you will make it a priority to speak to yourself differently, to talk differently about what you want in life and how you think about yourself because what you say matters, because your brain is paying attention. So Chapter 7 is entitled Why Am I Suddenly Seeing Hearts Everywhere? And so I'm going to skip around a little bit because I haven't read from this in a while. And basically, you jump into Chapter 7, and it's a scene where I'm talking to our daughters at dinner, and our daughters are basically explaining that they hate their mindset. One of our daughters is like, Why do I always beat myself up and think I'm a bad person? Our other daughter is like, Why do I always think I'm the ugliest one in the bar? And so I'm explaining to them, If you want to change this opinion that you have, that I'm a bad person or I'm the ugliest one of all my friends. I explained to them the Bronco example that I just gave you. And then I said to them that your brain can change the way see the world in real-time.

This is so exciting, you guys. If you say, I'm a bad person, how many of you say that to yourself? I'm such a bad person. I always screw up. Nothing works out for me. If you say, I'm a bad person, Isn't it true that you see things every single day that make you think it's true? And then our daughter said, Yeah, actually, yesterday, I missed my dentist appointment. I just completely forgot about it. And as soon as I realized I I blew off the dentist appointment, totally forgot. The first thing I said to myself was, There I go again, screwing everything up. And I said, Look, that's an excellent example. Imagine If instead of missing the dentist appointment, imagine if when you miss the dentist appointment, how many of you have missed the dentist appointment? I know I have. How amazing would it be if you miss the dentist appointment appointment and you could just shrug your shoulders and go, Oops, forgot the dentist appointment, without going, See, I screw everything up, and pounding yourself into the ground and beating yourself up. Imagine if you could teach your own mind, everybody, to not see all the stuff that's happening in life as evidence that you're a bad person.

Because you can forget a dentist appointment and just let it pass through your mind without attaching, I'm a bad person to what happened. You have to be deliberate. You have to tell your mind exactly what you want to think about yourself when things mess up. My daughter looks at me, this is a true story, and is like, Really? How the hell do I do that, mom? I've been telling myself, I'm I'm a bad person and I screw everything up for as long as I can remember. How the hell am I going to get my mind to think something else? This is when I hit her with the heart rock game that I'm telling you, you've got to steal this hat from me. I said, Well, let's train your mind by playing a simple game that's It's going to change the way that your mind works in real-time. I said, Every single day, I want you to look for a naturally occurring heart shape in the world, whether it's a heart-shaped rock, a heart-shaped leaf, a heart-shaped oil stain on the floor of your garage, a heart-shaped swirl of milk on the top of your latte.

Anything counts. Then my daughter said, You mean the way you're always looking for heart-shaped rocks when we walk on the beach, mom? I said, Yep. You know what she said to me? She said, Mom, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I said, My other daughter then said, I agree. How the hell does looking for hearts stop me from feeling like the ugliest one of all my friends? I want you to teach me how to be happy and how to be successful and how to make a lot of money in my new career, mom. I mean, you're a self-help person. How the hell do rocks on the ground help me change my opinion of myself? Fair question, right? Don't worry, I had a great answer. I said, Look, the point of the exercise Of every day, I want you to look for a heart shape, like a heart shape rock in the world. The point of this, everybody, is to train your mind to spot the things that you're blocking out so you can prove to yourself that you can make your brain work for you by simply telling you what's important to you.

And if you want to make a lot of money, you better train your brain to see opportunities and deals that other people walk right by, just like you walk by that stupid rock on the ground that's laying there right now. And you miss it because you're not looking for it. And if you want to stop thinking you're bad or hating the way you look, you better train your mind to stop attaching that thought to everything you see. Pretty smart, right? If you'd like to make more money, you got to spot opportunities to make more money. If you want to feel better about yourself, everybody, you got to stop pounding yourself into the ground with negative thoughts any time life doesn't go 100% your way or you screw up, which is totally normal. I could tell they were considering my argument, so I went even further. Besides, oh, there goes the clock. Hold Give me a second. And feel free to ask questions in the comments. This is a short, short, short chapter, okay? Besides, if I told you, everybody, to just repeat a positive mantra, I'm beautiful, I'm a good person, you're thinking, you think this is stupid because you don't believe that.

So first, I got to show you the power that you have to change what your mind sees. Then you're going to trust what I'm saying. You see, good people mess up all the time. It doesn't make you a bad person. And even if you are a bad person at times, why does that make you unlovable? See, it's all about the way you flip the things you look at so that you can see a world that makes you feel empowered and supported. Imagine how much easier and fulfilling it would be if you could stop the beat down and just love yourself while you work on your health goals. Now, let me tell you how to do the heart-shaped exercise. You guys ready? Okay, good. Starting tomorrow. Super easy. Or today. Starting today. I want you to find one naturally occurring heart shape in the world around you. Then stop and take a look at it. Here's mine. Every day when I go for a walk, if you follow me on my stories, you will see that I take photos all day long of heart shapes. This is the thing that trains your mind. I'm getting asked for a meditation on manifesting.

Yeah, looking for a heart shape every single day in the world around you is a way to manifest because you are practicing a skill. You're practicing a skill of waking up and intentionally saying, I am going to find a heart shape today. You are putting that intention into your mind. And by putting it into your mind, you are training your mind to work for you. Now we're going to take it a level up. You ready? When you find something, I want you to stop. I want you to take a moment. I want you to take a photo of it. Oops, my phone, my computer just died, so we're going to stay on Instagram. I want you to take a photo of it. And I want you to really feel that that was placed there for you. I want you to close your eyes, and I want you to have an experience whereby you feel that literally the universe had put something there for you, and your mind helped you find it. And if you take that moment and you feel a moment of gratitude, what's going to happen is that that energetic, positive experience of acknowledging that you told yourself you were going to find a heart shape.

And then your mind scanned and you found it, and now you're taking a moment to feel grateful that this happened, to be present to the larger forces that are out there. And then take a photo, put it on your story. Tag me, Mel Robbins, tag high five habit. And you will be shocked because what will happen is because you took a moment to positively encode it in your brain, your brain will start showing you hearts all over the place. You're not I'm not going to believe the amount of hearts that you walk past. I'm dead serious about this. These are just a few examples on page 91. I repost these all day long from you guys. There's a heart in a coffee cup. There's a heart right here that's a leaf. We've got a heart. One of my favorite ones was inside of an onion. We see rocks all the time. I'm looking for this stuff. That's on page 91. I just realized that we lost our friends on Facebook because your imperfect friend Mel Robbins forgot to plug her computer in. We lost power. Oh, well. Done is better than perfect. And simply showing up here today and making a little bit of progress instead of waiting for it to get perfect is better than not doing it at all.

Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.