I now want to prove to you that your mind is super flexible. It is so easily programmed. I can't even work my television remote, and I can teach you how to change the filter in your brain. And your brain right now is trying its best to change in real-time to help you. And I'm going to prove that to you, too. And I'm also going to give you an example of just how flexible your mind is, how quickly you can change it. And when you start to realize, holy cow, Mel's right. My mind is easier to program than a television remote. Holy cow. I never even realized this. Just you buckle up and wait because your mind has been dying for you to learn what you're about to learn. Let's prove to you that your mind is at the ready to change to help you. I'm going to give you an example that I am sure you have experienced in your life before. Here's the example: buying a new car. Have you ever had an experience where you either were looking or shopping for a new car, or you were in your family, somebody was, right?

Or you became interested in a new car? They're releasing this brand new Bronco, okay? And now you're super interested in it. I am personally in this boat right now. I drive a nine-year-old car, a 2014. I love this car, but it's time. It seems like the engine light is on every other week, and every time I take it to get fixed, it's like a $500 bill. And so the thing is paid off. But I'm like, nine years, maybe it's time. It's getting to the point. I love my car, but maybe I should get a new car. And the truth is, I'm not really a car person. I don't really give a shit about cars. I just want the car to be comfortable. I want it to work. I want it to be reliable. I want the seats to have heaters in them and the steering wheel to be a seat heater thingy. I always mix those words up, but that's That's what I care about. So I don't really think about cars. But you want to know what? The second I started truly considering, maybe it's time to get a new car. Do you know what I saw everywhere?

I'm like, Holy cow. There are a lot of cars in this tiny town in Southern Vermont that I live in. Cars are everywhere. And then as I started to hone in on the new Bronco, does everybody and their mother drive the new Bronco? It's like it's the only car on The road, the two-door, the four-door, the soft-top, the hard-top, the gray-one, the red-one, the green-one. They're everywhere. Now, here's the thing. A couple months ago, when I was happily driving my nine-year-old car before the break light has been on consistently for three months, a few months ago, I had never seen a Bronco up here in Southern Vermont. The only Bronco that I had ever seen was the one that my brother bought a year ago, and he lives in Chicago. But now that I'm interested in Broncos, I see them everywhere. And the second that I got excited about that silvery blue one with the soft top, I couldn't believe it. Jessie, who runs video production for us, her husband drives one. I didn't even notice that they had a Bronco. And now everybody has not only a Bronco, but that color. And I want you to think about a time that this has happened to you, where you started to get interested in something, and then it's like, wham-o.

Overnight, you see it everywhere. Maybe it was a handbag that you were really interested in, or a certain style of shoe or sneaker. You know the new Converse ones with the really inch tall sole on them? All of a sudden, those things were everywhere. Or the Birkenstocks. You know the Birkenstocks that have the covered toe? It's like, those were popular 30 years ago, and now every single college student and 20-something is wearing them. Bangs. The second I wanted curtain bangs, it's like, does everybody have curtain bangs suddenly? Everybody that I now see has curtain bangs. Never even noticed them before. Or you hear a song and you tune in, you're like, Oh, I love that song. That song is so cool. And suddenly you hear this song playing in every restaurant. Maybe you haven't shopped for a car, but I bet when you were looking at colleges, it's like, wait a minute. Does everybody have a Michigan sweatshirt? Does everybody's parents go there? Is there You have a sticker that says University of Michigan on every car? Is it just me or is that the only college in town? It's the same thing if you want to have a baby.

As soon as you are trying to get pregnant, you know what happens? You see kids and pregnant women everywhere. It's like there were only adults on the planet and people that weren't pregnant, and then you want a baby, and boom, it's in your face. Or how about this one? You want to fall in love. What do you see? You see couples in love. It's so annoying. It It begins instantaneously. You know what that is? That phenomenon where all of a sudden overnight, you see something everywhere. That is your mind changing in real time. That is a filter in your brain, paying attention to what it thinks you are excited about or interested in. And it's changing what it's showing you in the world around you. And here's the crazy thing about your mind, and this is why this science is so exciting when you understand it. Oh my God! Here's the crazy part. You ready? The Broncos, the Bangs, the Birkenstocks, the babies, they were always there, all around you. You just didn't notice them. You want to know why? Because they were not important to you. The fact that you suddenly see those things everywhere.

That is an example, and it is proof that your brain wiring is changing in real time, and your mind is trying to help you. Your mind is showing you the broncos that have always been there. It's like it's highlighting it with a highlighter. Why? Because it became important to you. Why would your mind let you see things sometimes, but not others? Why are you suddenly seeing the covered toe Birkenstocks now, but you didn't see them for the last five years? That's a great question. And this brings us to the topic of the filter in your mind. Oh, I'm so excited for you to learn this. So there is a filter in your mind. It is called the reticular activating system. The reticular activating system. I'm going to call this the RAS, okay? Here's the visual, because you know your friend Mel loves visuals and metaphors to make this stuff easy. I want you to imagine that there is a hair net over your brain. This hair net is a live network of neurons, and it is constantly changing in real-time. And this RAS, this network of neuron hair net that sits over your brain as a filter, it has one job, a very important job, mind you.

The RAS has determine in real-time, I'm talking nanoseconds, what information it should allow into your conscious mind for you to see and register, and what information it will block out from your conscious mind. Another way that you can think about the RAS is think about it like a bouncer in your brain. The reason why you need a bouncer is because life is like a very popular nightclub. Everybody wants to get in. Because Because there's so much and so many people and so many things showing up at a very popular nightclub trying to jam their way in the door, you need a bouncer who is deciding who gets in and who has to stand in that long line, freezing their ass off in an outfit that is not appropriate for winter, trying to get in. Okay? Let's go back to the example of the car and the purses and the babies and the University Michigan stickers that you suddenly see everywhere. The truth is, all that stuff, all the cars on the road, all the handbags people have, the hairstyles, it was already there. It was already in your subconscious. You, quote, saw it, but the RAS didn't allow you to register it.

It shoved it right in that line. It did not let it into your conscious mind. The RAS is the bouncer. It determines what is it that is important enough to Mel Robbins that we are going to zet, let it right in and have her think about it. Holy shit, there's another Bronco. I'm not getting the blue-gray color now because that's like the third one I've seen today. In fact, I don't even know that if I want a Bronco anymore. I don't think I want Bangs anymore either, because it looks like every single person that I meet has Bangs. This is how the bouncer in your mind works. It literally has a guest list, and you're the one that writes the guest list out. What is on the guest List of your mind? Anything that is important to you. Okay? All the other Yajoo's that are not on the list, all the other colleges that are on stickers on every other card, Dartmouth, Harvard, Brown, University of Wittenberg, Not even noticing those. Why? Because you're thinking about University of Michigan. So all those other college stickers, they're waiting in line, they're not getting in. That bouncer won't let them in.

But boom, there's a University of Michigan, Short skirt. Come on, you're going in. That's how it works. And so this is super, super important, and it's really exciting. It's really exciting because when you understand that there's this electric hair net on your brain called the R-A-N-S that works like a bouncer at a popular REST Club, we can tell that bouncer what you want, who you want to let in. It's that simple. And there's another important reason for the R-E-S and why you need a bouncer. And the reason is information overload. It's just impossible for the human brain to consciously process all the data that is coming in through all five senses. If you just take a second and look around, and if you're driving a car, please do not take your eyes off the road. But look around wherever you are right now. There is so much stuff all around you, whether it's 50 license plates on the road ahead, every single make and model of the car, The road signs as you're passing, the speedometer, the music input coming in, feeling your rear end on the seat, the air blowing out of the vents, all that happening in a car, the perfume somebody's wearing, all that stuff is information coming into your brain.

If you're sitting at a home office or you're sitting at home, think about all the books. I'm looking up at our production calendar. There's all these bazillion Post-it notes, and I've got Jessie standing right there, and I've got six chairs and my purse. There's a kitchen towel that I just noticed on the floor of our office, just laying there. I must have carried it up, just a dish towel, laying there in the office. Now I'm focused on it because I put my attention on it. But your RAS cannot allow you to consciously process absolutely everything you can hear, smell, feel, taste. What's the other one? Smell, taste, touch. Can't do it. Your head would explode. And so your RAS, this bouncer with the list of what's important to you, it has to decide every nanosecond of every day what it's going to let in and what it's going to block out. And so this is important because the way that it programs what comes into your conscious mind is based on what it thinks is important to you. That's it. What it thinks is important to you. And here is where the life-changing opportunity is for you and me and everybody that you know.

When you get intentional about purpose successfully telling this bouncer what you want to see, whether it's Broncos, or it's a certain handbag, or, heck, now it's the University of Colorado, that bouncer will change up The List, the RAS, reprograms itself in real-time. It changes the filter. This is a live network in your brain. It changes in real-time to help you see those things that are important to you. That's what you're experiencing when you suddenly see the car that you're interested in all over the road. And today, you're going to learn how to use that scientific neurological fact to your advantage, because you're going to give yourself a mindset reset. So let me recap what we've learned so far, because it's a lot. Number one, your mindset is like a pair of sunglasses. It filters the way you see yourself, the world, your future, absolutely everything. Your mindset triggers whether or not you take action or you don't take action at all. The second thing that you've learned is that when If you change the lens through which you view the world from something pessimistic and darker to a worldview that is more rosy and action-oriented, it's going to lead to a happier and more action-oriented life, and this is according to both research and common sense.

Third, you've now learned that there is this filter in your brain, this super cool thing called the reticular activating system. It changes in real-time. It is flexible. It It is alive. It is a network of neuron acting like a bouncer, keeping people out of your mind, letting some things in. Right now, it's only acting based on what it thinks is important to you. And fourth, you have learned that when you get serious and intentional about what you want to see, whether it's babies or broncos or it's banks, this filter in your brain will change in real-time to help you achieve it. Period. Full stop. This is science. Now, we're going to take a second and hear a quick word from our sponsors. But when you come back to me, I'm going to explain how your mindset is connected to that filter in your brain. And I have a super simple, really cool little tool that you're going to start using today to put this science around your filter to work. And your brain, it is going to start working for you. We'll be right back. Okay, so let me just set the table again. I like to do that because when I listen to podcasts and I hear all the ads, I completely forget what we've talked about by the time I get back to the show.

So we've been talking about your mindset, and we've also started to scratch a surface at this thing called the reticular activating system. This is that live filter in your brain that is flexible and capable of changing in a nanosecond to help you. So now I want to go a layer deeper, and I want to start to apply this flexibility in your filter to changing your mindset. Let's start with this question from a listener named Peter.

Hey, this is Peter from Washington. I was just wondering, how do I get past my doubts and maintain a positive mindset? Thanks, Mel.

Thanks, Peter. I want to focus on one aspect of your question, and that is where you said getting past your doubts. This is where the science gets really interesting because your belief about yourself is a mindset. I'm going to say that again. Your belief about yourself filters how you see the world. I'm going to give you an example. You use the word, Peter, self-doubt. If you have a lot of self-doubt, you question yourself, you criticize yourself, you hold yourself back, what color do you think the lenses on your sunglasses are? I'm not trying to be silly here. I'm trying to make this intellectual topic very tangible and understandable. If you have a lot of self-doubt, what is the color of the lenses on the sunglasses? Because this is where the filter in your brain starts to become programmed by your mindset. Now, I said earlier that your filter focuses on showing you what it thinks is important to you. How does it know what's important to you? I'll tell you. I said earlier that the RAS, that filter, its sole job is showing you what it thinks is important to you. So it begs a question, right, Peter?

If you haven't been intentional, at least you didn't think you were, about telling the filter what to show you, how the hell does it know what to show you? Well, it shows you whatever you spend your time, energy, thoughts, and attention focused on. So going back to your question about self-doubt. If you doubt yourself, right? You put a lot of energy into doubting yourself. It's not just one thought. You probably do it all day long. Your thoughts are critical, you hesitate, you don't speak up, you hold yourself back. All of that is energy that makes your RAS think that doubting yourself is important. If you doubt yourself and you go into work, you know what happens to you at work? You don't see the 15 things that you do right. You know what you obsess over? The one thing you've done wrong. That one email that you sent that was a screw up, that one customer that you didn't quite do a good job with. The one thing you've done wrong is all that you can focus on. Well, when you start to doubt yourself, this is where the RAS starts to make it worse.

Because your RAS sees you spending so much energy and mental fuel in criticizing, doubting, and hesitating. And so So your RAS thinks, Oh my gosh, ding, ding, ding. Peter thinks it's important for him to see what's wrong. And so your RAS blocks the 15 things that you did right. You know what you did today, Peter? You sent 32 emails. Great job. You didn't see it, though. You did a great job with those five customers. You're not giving yourself credit, though. You were amazing in that meeting earlier. Not getting credit for that either. But the one email, the one email, that bouncer is like, Come to the front of the line. I'll take the email that is negative with the short skirt, and that email is getting in. Just like a dark pair of sunglasses, shades everything. When you doubt yourself, it shades your mindset toward self-doubt, and then your brain gets involved. When the email from your boss comes in, Hey, can you stop by my office before you leave today? How do you think Peter's RAS interprets that email? If he doubts himself, I'll tell you how. When he reads, Can you stop by my office before you leave today?

His RAS goes, Oh, shit. Because you've trained it to look for things that aren't right. By putting so much time and energy into focusing on your self-doubt. You are also training the filter in your brain to filter out everything that's going right and to focus only on the one thing that's going wrong, thereby magnifying the self-doubt. Let's go back to an earlier example. Remember that pessimistic friend sitting on the beach that's bitching that lunch hasn't come? Or that pessimistic relative that is bitching about the family member that's halfway across the tent? It's all they see. They can't even see the beautiful water or the happy couple or anything else good. Why? Because their pessimism is what has programmed their reticular activating system. This is how mindset and the filter in your brain get linked. They become fused together. All you see is the reasons you should doubt yourself. It's how you feel. So first it starts with a mindset. You're thinking negative thoughts, and then your filter gets involved. And next thing you know, you're just seeing more and more and more and more reasons to doubt yourself. And here's something that you may be thinking right now.

Why is my brain doing this to me? Why is my brain working against me? Your brain is not working against you. It's just responding to where your mindset and all your energy is going. That's it. It follows your energy and your focus. And this is the good news, okay? If you get intentional about searching for reasons to feel proud or for the small wins, the 15, 32 emails that you sent, the good things that you did, the places where you're showing up, your mind will spin like a top. All of a sudden, just like you saw broncos and babies and burkentocks, instead of seeing the one thing that you did wrong, you will see the 15 things that you did right. This is not a joke. It's hard science. This also, by the way, ties right back into the endless science about the power of a gratitude practice. A gratitude practice is a way to train your mind. A gratitude practice is teaching the RAS, that being grateful and taking times to savor beautiful moments and focusing on things that you're really proud of and you appreciate, that that's important to you, so you see more of it.

That's how this all works hand and hand. I want to give you one more example, okay? Because I think this is challenging at times to see in ourselves, because we're so used to seeing the world through a certain lens that we don't even realize we're wearing sunglasses. But It is easy to spot in other people. Here's one more example about how your own beliefs and mindset about yourself or a situation that you're in can become paralyzing because the filter in your brain keeps the mindset in place. Okay? So think about somebody that you love who's single, and they are desperate to meet the right person. And the longer they stay single, the more and more insecure they get by the day. And when you see them, you see a person who is smart, who's awesome, who's hilarious, who's loyal, who's sexy, who's amazing, who would be the most incredible person to be in a relationship with. But I want you to just imagine that the color of the lens on your glasses, when you look through your belief about them, it's completely Completely different than the color of the lens on their glasses. When day in and day out, all this person can think is, Why can't I find somebody?

I'll never find somebody. Why does everybody else have somebody? I see all my friends getting approached at the bars. I see my friends getting asked out. Why am I not getting asked out? What you've now learned about the mindset and belief about yourself and the way your filter responds in real-time Is the more energy you put into a negative narrative like this, it's never going to work out for me, nobody's ever going to love me, I am unlovable, everybody else has a date, I'm never going to have a date. The more that mindset and that belief becomes a self-fulfilling situation. Why? Because you're putting so much energy into the negative that the filter in your brain is now going to filter the world in a way to reinforce the negative story. When you walk into a bar, all you're going to see are all the couples. You're not You're not going to focus on all the other people that are single that you should walk up and talk to. That's the bouncer in your brain aligning with where your energy is. This also explains why you, as the friend, see the opposite. You can tell the person over and over and over again.

You need to calm down. You're amazing. You are going to find an amazing person. It's not that you're not going to meet somebody. You just haven't met the right person yet. It's the exact same situation. But because both of you have different mindsets and beliefs about the situation, you see it through a different lens. And you both believe, by the way, that your belief is the truth. And this simple example highlights how your mindset and how you view the world impacts the filter in your brain. Because the more that this carries on for your friend, the less your friend is going to put themselves out there. Because they're slowly convincing themselves that this is never going to happen, so why bother? And the more that you see them pulling back, the more that your belief is going to become, But you need to, but you're the one holding your back. See, the filter in your brain, it's either going to make the situation worse, or, and this is what I want to teach you. It can make it better. But that depends on your ability to get serious about programming it. Because wouldn't you love it if your friend who wanted to meet somebody would still have a positive mindset or a rosy outlook so that they don't just latch on to some loser?

Because you would probably do anything to make sure that this friend of yours, this person that you love, would maintain a positive mindset and a rosy outlook. Why do you want them to maintain that? I'll tell you why. Because your mindset dictates your actions. If you can stay positive, if you can stay optimistic, if you can keep saying to yourself, There is nothing wrong with me. I just haven't met the right person yet. But one of these days, the right person will walk in, and in the meantime, I'm just going to keep being me. If they can get intentional about creating that mindset, a number of things are going to happen. They're not going to become insecure. They're not going to start acting all weird around people. They are not going to latch on to some loser just because they're starting to convince themselves that they're desperate and this is their only option. Because we both know that's not true. There's 8 billion people in the world, and right now, the right one has not walked into your life, but they will, if you can maintain a positive attitude. And the secret is training the RAS and catching your negative mindset and swapping it out for a more positive one.

Because as you're learning, the thoughts that you think dictate the world that you see, the way that you feel, and the actions that you take. Noticing this, that you have a mindset that's holding you back, that's the first step. Second, asking yourself if it's serving you, that's the second step. And the third step, you just got to get serious about making your mind work for you because you can. If you're breathing, you can change this. Even if your default is negative and pessimistic, you can teach yourself to be optimistic. I'm going to give you one more example. If you are somebody that loves social media, if you've ever seen the Instagram Explorer page or the TikTok Discover page, you'll notice that it changes in real-time because those pages are filters, and they respond to what it thinks is important to you. So if you click on a puppy, all All of a sudden, that Discover page, it's going to be all puppy videos. I went through this phase where I was really into long nails, and suddenly that Discover page went from puppies to long nails. And it doesn't matter if you accidentally click on Beyoncé videos or on some other thing, wedding videos.

The algorithm is going to think that that's what you want to see, so suddenly that's all that you see, and it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. Your brain's the same way. Once you focus on something, your Your brain starts showing you more. My daughter had this huge breakthrough about how she felt about herself based on social media and on her brain, because she realized, Oh my God, my Explorer page, it's all fitness models. It's fitness models that are in photos of waist trainers and wearing body makeup and taking these crazy filtered photos in these contorted positions to make themselves look like they have a waist that's 2 inches small. I mean, of course, she felt like shit about her body. Why? Because she was seeing it over and over and over again. And so her brain started thinking, Oh, well, this must matter to you. And then the social media pages start aggregating it and showing you more and more and more. And so as that all starts to happen, you start to believe that everybody on the planet is the size of your pinkie finger, which then, of course, invalidates the fact that you have this big, beautiful, amazing, strong body, and you look fabulous.

But it doesn't matter because it doesn't match all this crap that's being shown in your face. This is how your brain works, too. You got to get on top of this. 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, like the sense that There's nothing I can do about this, but try to get through this thing. When you said earlier that the tendency when you're chronically stressed or burnt out is to keep working. That's right. That makes a lot of sense to me. 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. 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 on the phone, 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. And 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 I was thinking about a moment recently where I absolutely hit a medical state of burnout. And 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 I have coming up this week. I don't want to feel like 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 Is it as something positive?

Not necessarily. It doesn't have to 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 in mind, like 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 fine 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 overwhelmed. 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 I 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. 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 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. 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. 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 is as such a pull. Popcorn brain also is 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 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 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 arm's 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. 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 lights and Sorry. 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. And if you switched Switch 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 And the 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 You have in overscheduled life a million competing priorities, and 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 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. 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 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, aim to not 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. That'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 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. For, right? Like, 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, 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 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 may say, I'm going to do everything all at once, everything with the kitchen sink 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 doomscrolling 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 You feel 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 Our brain-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 it. 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... And 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 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 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 is 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 When you modulate your breathing and influence your breathing, 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 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? Was. And movement.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a stressed patient looking for answers. And that is why... That's my villain origin story of how I became a doctor with an expertise in Stress is because I was a 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. So I was like, Okay, I'll get a massage. I'll 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. 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 diamonds. 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 depleted, I focused on gentle therapeutic movement.

So 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 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 to that, really a lighthouse that guided me.

Well, I'm thrilled that 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 few walks. 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 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, okay? 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 This 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 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, I'm going to 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 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 showed that, in fact, to decrease, there was a study that was done, that ultra short bursts of activity, one to two minutes. Walking up a set of stairs or going to parking Park 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 Sitting is the new smoking.

I hadn't heard that.

The science 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, 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 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. And so it's that getting up and moving creates a whole cascade of positive biological changes to your brain and your body. And 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 A smartphone is the greatest machine that man has invented. I would argue that your brain and your body is truly the greatest machine. 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 meetings, 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 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 of 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 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 of 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 the 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, right? 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 reengaging 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, B method. It was the first technique I turned 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 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. 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 not kidding about that. And I did Stop Breathe Bee. 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 Bee 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 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 am 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 B 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. Adini, 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 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 want You have that what if thinking, all of these sorts of things. 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 I'm not going to do this teenage journal bullshit, right? In fact, 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, it doesn't matter. Five things you're grateful for and why. Put the date, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, write 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 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. It's like moving. Gratitude helps you move away from Velcro to Teflon. When, because your 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. When you start practicing gratitude on an everyday basis, it's cognitive reframing. What you focus on grows. You shift your perspective. 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, right? Red alert. And so how do you decrease that stickiness of negative experiences in your brain when you're feeling a sense of stress?

By practicing gratitude. So it shifts away from Velcro, your 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.

You're a world-renowned brain coach who has worked with athletes, actors, and executives. And in addition to that, you've been running a brain institute for the past 30 years. Do you really believe absolutely anyone can improve their brain? I mean, come on. Nobody's walked through the doors of your institute that you're like, Oh, boy, couldn't help this person.

It's been my experience coaching people every single day for the past 32 years is that regardless of your age, your background, your career, your diet, your education level, your financial situation, your gender, your history, IQ that we all can improve. It's about progressing beyond what you're currently demonstrating or what you believe is possible.

So you're saying it's not about being born smart. You're saying that we all have the ability to be a super learner, no matter what your IQ is?

We know that about one-third of your brain's performance, if you will, like its memory, is predetermined by genetics and biology. But that means two-thirds is in your direct control. The idea What we hear is we have more influence than we think.

Jim, how did you become a brain coach? Do you go to school for something like that?

My inspiration, you could say it was my desperation. One day in kindergarten class, I'm five years old. This would have been in 1978. There was this commotion outside, sirens and honking. And all the kids, obviously, want to see what's going on outside, but we're five years old. We can't see outside window sill. And so we all had this idea to grab our chairs and prop them by the window and stand on them. Anyway, I lost my balance, and I went headfirst into one of the radiators and was rushed to the emergency room. It really affected me in school. I had poor focus, poor memory. I had processing issues where a teacher would repeat themselves three or four or five times, and I still wouldn't understand. I would I stressed my body all the time because I didn't want to be called on because I never knew the answer. And so I would sit behind the tall kid, or I'd make myself so sick before an exam. I remember when I was nine years old... God, this brings back this... It's funny how feelings work, right? I was being teased more than usual because I was slowing down the class.

I wasn't understanding lessons. And a teacher pointed to me to come to my defense. She said, Leave that kid That's the boy with the broken brain. All I took out of it was that I was broken. I guess adults have to be very careful of their external words because they often become a child's internal words. Because every single time I did badly in school, which was weekly, every time I was in a pick for sports, I was always the last one, I would always say to myself, Oh, it's because I have the broken brain. And that became my inner talk. And I think our minds always eavesdrop on that inner talk, right? And it wasn't just something that I dealt with for a year or two. It was elementary school, it was middle school, junior high, and all through high school. Our struggles can become strengths.

I love it. Our struggles can become our strengths. Anyone ever tell you, you talk like a superhero? Our struggles can become our strengths. But did you always have that mindset?

For me, I was really driven because I wanted to make my parents proud. My parents immigrated to the United States. We lived in the back of a laundromat that my mom worked at, and they had a lot of jobs. Through school, it was a challenge. And then I was lucky enough to get into a local state university. And I thought, freshman meant I can make a fresh start. I'm going to show the world, show myself that I could do this. But I took all these classes, and I did worse. I wasn't equipped. And so I was ready to quit school because I'm the oldest of three kids. I want to be a good role model for my younger brother and sister. And yet also, I don't have the money even to be in school, and it's better that they have it. I'm not smart enough. This is my belief system. And a friend said, Hey, I'm going home this weekend. Why don't you come with? I mean, saying you're going to quit school to your family is a big deal. Why don't you get some perspective? And And I noticed, Mel, that when we change place or we change people we're spending time with, it gives us a different point of view.

Yes. So I do agree to go. And the family is pretty well off. Have a beautiful home on the water. And the father walks me around his property before dinner and asks me a very innocent question. He says, Jim, house school, right? And I am introverted, and I'm very shy at the time. And yet I start bawling like crazy, crying like crazy in front of this complete stranger that I just met 30 minutes before.

What did he do?

Yeah. He was freaked out because he didn't know my situation, but I gave him the full download. I told him about my brain injury labeled broken, how I have to quit school. It's just I'm not smart enough. It's just not who I am. I don't know how to tell my parents because they're going to be heartbroken because they work so hard. He asked me a question, and it's interesting, not only does perspective change our point of view, but so do the questions that we ask. He says, Hey, Jim, well, why are you in school? I didn't have an answer other than, This is just what you do. You go to school. That's what my parents expected of me. So he dug deeper and said, Well, why are you in school? He said, What do you want to be? What do you want to do? What do you want to have? What do you want to create or contribute? And Mel Well, I didn't have an answer for any of those things because nobody's ever asked me those questions before. And so you ask a new question, we get new answers. I didn't know what I wanted to be or do or contribute.

He forced me to stay in that space, to not escape it and change the subject. I start to just fantasize. He asked me to just imagine anything. You could do anything or be anything or have anything. And then he takes out a journal or notebook in his back pocket and gives me a couple of sheets, and he asked me to write them down. It's the first step in taking something that's invisible, that's in your mind, and then all of a sudden, it's visible outside of yourself. I fill up two pages, and I start folding up the pages, the paper to put in my pocket, thinking this exercise is done and we could eat.

Let's go.

Yeah. And then as I fold the sheets of paper to put in my pocket, he has the audacity to reach out and grab them out of my hands. Now, He's reading to himself all of my dreams and goals or fantasies. And I don't know how much time goes by because I'm just thinking the whole time. Like a lot of people, I don't want to be judged. When he's done, this is what he does. He takes his fingers, and if people just listen to the audio, I'm spreading my index fingers like a foot apart. And he says, Jim, you are this close to everything on that list. And it's like out of a movie, right? And I'm thinking, this is my honest conversation in my mind. If I'm real and raw, it was like, there's no way. And this is what I'm telling him. I'm like, there's no way. Have you not heard my story? I'm like, fighting for my story, right? I have a broken brain, horrible in school. And give me 10 lifetimes. I'm not going to crack this list. And he takes his fingers that are spread apart, a foot apart, and he puts them this side of my head, meaning what's inside my brain is the key.

And he takes me into home. But before dinner, he walks me into a room that just honestly freaking me out. It was wall to wall, ceiling the floor, covered in books. Now, I've never read a book. It's like being in a room full of snakes. Because I'm very intimidated by books. But what makes it worse, Mel, is he starts going to the shelves and pulling snakes off the shelf and handing them to me. And he says, Jim, you need to read to succeed. Promise me you'll read one of these books a week, and then And you could have them because it'll allow you to achieve what you want on this list. But I can't. And he, very smart man, he reaches into his pocket, Mel, and pulls out my dream list. And he has the audacity to read my goals out loud.

I can't even imagine what you were feeling in that moment. So what did you do next?

It's funny how memories work, right? At a meta level, because it just comes back, even the feelings of how my throat was constricting, and I couldn't breathe, and I was perspiring, my heart's beating. Maybe I thought, this is it. Metaphorically, I'm just throwing away my potential or my dreams, or maybe I could fix my brain. Maybe I could learn how to learn better. And I was like, Okay, how do I do it? And my brain went, School. That's how you learn anything. And I asked the nurse to bring me a course bulletin, a directory just to look at classes for next semester. I'm reading hundreds of classes, and all the classes are on what to learn, but not how to learn. Classes on math and history and science and Spanish, but there are no classes on how to learn them. And I start studying this initial stack of books that my mentor provided me with. And then it started opening new ideas to the power of the mind. I wanted to find find out, how does my brain work so I could work my brain? And I started studying it, and it was very functional because I had a reason.

It wasn't just learning facts to understand facts and vocabulary. I had a real problem I needed to solve that I've been struggling with my whole life. And I started getting answers and seeing a little bit of momentum and a little bit more confidence. And it was like 60 days, two months into it, a light switch just flipped on. And I started to understand things for the very first time I felt. It It gave me a lot of hope. And I was really upset, first of all, that there were simple things that I could have done that would have made my life a whole lot easier. I felt like my whole childhood was just trying to just work really hard without getting the results. And then the other thing was I felt a purpose because I wanted to share this with others, almost as an evangelist, because I was just like, How does everyone not know these things? Learning is our superpower, and it's the superpower we all have. We We just aren't really shown how to unlock it and unleash it. But the other thing I realized was my mission, my purpose, to build better, brighter brains, no brain left behind.

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.