The Science Of Manifestation: Can This Stanford Neuroscientist Convince A Skeptical Dan To Give It A Shot? | Dr. James R. Doty

27:58Typically those individuals either abuse alcohol or drugs or have mental health issues. I was fortunate in that what would happen when the chaos would build up at my home, I would get on my bicycle and ride as far and as fast away as I could. And in this particular instance, I ended up at a strip mall where there was a magic shop and I'd had an interest in magic. And I walked into this store and I have to tell you, I was 12. And at that age, I already had a sense of hopelessness and despair because I was reasonably intelligent, but I had no way to get out. I had no mentors. I had no financial resources.

28:41I didn't know anyone. And frankly, I didn't believe it was possible to change my situation. So I walked into this magic shop and there was a woman at the counter and it turned out she knew nothing about magic. She was the owner's mother who just happened to be there because her son was running an errand. But long story short, and I'm sure you've met people like this, she had this radiant presence about her, this smile that just made you feel comfortable. and she created for me what I would call a sense of psychological safety, which is critically important. And I felt I could trust her. I didn't feel she was judging me.

29:28And she looked me in the eye and acted as if she wanted to hear what I had to say. And we had a conversation that lasted 20 or 30 minutes. And at the end of it, she said to me, I'm here for another six weeks. If you come every day, I think I can teach you something that could really help you. Now, you have to remember this was before mindfulness or meditation was in the lexicon, and the same with this concept of neuroplasticity. But what she did teach me, and I did show up every day, and it wasn't because I had self-awareness, it was because, frankly, I had absolutely nothing else to do, and she was giving me chocolate chip cookies.

30:05So I did show up, and she taught me a traditional mindfulness practice on some level, which was an understanding that all of my muscles were tense and I could not focus because I never knew what was going to happen to me. So I had to always be on alert, meaning that my sympathetic nervous system was chronically engaged. And as a result, all the associated negative consequences, release of epinephrine, norepinephrine, release of cortisol, increased heart rate, etc. And it's very hard in that situation to attend and focus. So the first thing she taught me was an exercise to relax the body. Then she taught me the ability to attend or focus, which are two critically important things.

30:54But just as importantly, she made me understand that I had a negative dialogue going on in my head, which told me it's not possible. I can't do it. I'm not worthy. I don't deserve love. In traditional practice, as you know, you just let those things float by and you don't turn to them, if you will, or hang on to them or respond to them. In this instance, though, she actually taught me to explicitly replace those comments with self-affirmations and made me understand that I was so critical of myself. But the secondary effect was that she also made me understand that everyone is suffering. And that training she taught me really changed everything.

31:39It made me look at the world through a different lens because my initial narrative beforehand was everyone has judged me, I'm not worthy, and I deserve what I get. And also that I was the only one who was suffering. And when I changed how I looked at the world, it changed everything. As an example, even in the interaction with my parents, I used to have a lot of anger towards them because it wasn't that they didn't love me. They had no time for me. They didn't care for me. They didn't make those special efforts. But it wasn't because they didn't love me. It was because they did not have the tools to deal with their own issues.

32:18And so I forgave them. And what's interesting is when I changed how I looked at the world, if you will, the world changed how it looked at me. And people would reach out when I looked at them not with suspicion or anger, but when I simply sat there and looked through the lens of compassion and the realization of my own suffering. And that really changed everything. But more importantly, and related to the manifestation discussion, is she taught me visualization exercise and some of the classic techniques, we mentioned the woo-woo and the pseudoscience side of it. There are several components that actually work.

32:59And one of these was making a list of your intention, writing the list down, reading the list silently, reading the list aloud, closing your eyes and visualizing what you want to manifest. Problem was, again, as I mentioned earlier, what I wanted to manifest was what I thought society defined as success, and that's what I put on my list. And every one of those things I got, but it led to ultimate unhappiness. Thanks for telling that story. It brings us nicely to your six steps for manifestation, many of which you've covered. So I just want to list some of the ones you've covered and then get us to the place in the list where I think you've brought us already organically.

33:43The first step is to reclaim your power to focus your mind. I think you've talked about meditation and other contemplative technologies as being a way to do that. The second is to clarify what we truly want. And so I think you've said a little bit about this, but it might be worth saying a little bit more about how we can do that. How can we not have our priorities set by the larger culture or whoever we're following on Instagram or whatever messed up ideas our parents might have? How can we get clear on this? Well, as I said, one of the first things is to examine what you've been manifesting, and I think we've actually discussed that a bit.

34:23And then the other thing is what I was saying is how do you clarify what you want? And I think what we've just been discussing helps one do that. As you know, and you mentioned influencers, you look at what they have done surveys on kids in high school, right? What do they want, sadly, is they want to be influencers. They want to be wealthy. They want to be celebrities. Or they want to be athletes, right? I mean, that's literally the majority of kids out there, which is horrible on some level because, again, they have been fed a narrative, unfortunately, by the nature of our consumerist society or conspicuous consumption society, that if you get that, you're going to be happy.

35:07And I think that there is an irrefutable amount of science that contradicts that narrative. And you simply also have to look at what happens in society. If you look at influencers, many of them pretend either through filters, makeup, or artificial creation of backgrounds that make them look as though they're in exotic places or doing exotic things or are very wealthy, carrying different labels, purses, or clothes. And yet we know that a large percentage of those people, unfortunately, are very unhappy, and a number of them go into depression or commit suicide. And what's worse, of course, is that there's a subset of their followers who believe the narrative and recognize that they can never be like that and go into depression, and a number of those have committed suicide.

36:05And it's clearly evident that path, like it was for me, was a dead end path. And as we were talking about, what we do know, and in some ways, this is how we evolved as a species. Unlike other species, which often are able to run off into the jungle or forest and function independently, our offspring require us to care for them for well over a decade. and we have a genetic imperative to do so. And what I mean by that is when we care and respond to our offspring, either if they're hungry, if they're in pain, or if they're suffering in some way, what happens to us? It engages our parasympathetic nervous system and we are rewarded.

36:55And one of the neurotransmitters is oxytocin, which I think probably all your listeners are aware of, oxytocin is released. It stimulates your reward and pleasure centers, and it further strengthens engagement of your parasympathetic nervous system. When your parasympathetic nervous system is engaged, you're open, you're generous, you're thoughtful, and your physiology works its best. Your heart rate variability, which is a measure of health in some ways, is increased. And while that may seem paradoxical, that's good for you. Your heart rate is often lowered. Your blood pressure is lowered. The expression of inflammatory proteins is diminished.

37:38The expression of stress hormones like cortisol is decreased. And also your immune system is boosted. And these are very much aligned with what happens when you meditate as well. And in some ways, we have learned that you can create that for yourself through different types of practices. And this is why this is so important to be able to shift to that mode because that is the mode that we were meant to live in. The stress mode was only supposed to be engaged transiently. As an example, if you were on the savanna in Africa and you saw the grass move and you knew from experience that probably represented a predator, then that system would engage, you would respond, and if you survived, you would go right back to engagement of your parasympathetic nervous system.

38:25All of that whole argument makes complete sense. I cosign unreservedly. And when it comes to clarifying what we truly want, I guess you could hear somebody like me or you say all of these things and you could take it in. But you and I are like, we have our fingers in the dike. It's just, you know, the overwhelming message from the larger culture is achieve, achieve in individual achievement and success and conspicuous consumption. That is what is going to give you happiness. Happiness is not, in fact, a team sport. But actually what we know is that the team sport part of that is irrefutably true in the evidence.

39:06And so I guess what I'm getting at is like, is making the case enough when it comes to helping people clarify what they want? Well, I think you can answer that probably just as well as I. I've had people say to me, well, Jim, I appreciate what you're saying, but I just want to be in the big house and drive the Porsche for a while. And then I'll decide if I'm unhappy or not. And I can understand that, especially among young people, you want to figure out things for yourself. But no, you're absolutely right. I would suggest though, and it's interesting how there's much more attention on social media.

39:44Because as you know, social media, what they do is they actually hire psychologists and neuroscientists to create addictive patterns of behavior to sell. And this is what advertising does. It's to imply to you that you have a scarcity of something and that scarcity, or if you want to put it in the context of a hole, that hole needs to be filled. And the implication is that if you fill it with junk, that you're going to be happy. And I think what we're pushing or the narrative we're pushing and the narrative that is supported irrefutably by science is that only leads the hole to get bigger or certainly not filled at all.

40:28And the only thing that fills that is connection with others and being of service. As an example, if you look at what we see with the blue zones. And of course, as you know, these are the places in the world where people routinely live to be 100. What we know from that is now there, of course, is the narrative of a plant-based diet, moderate exercise, not smoking, et cetera. By far and away is the reality that human connection, caring for others, that is more important than any of these other things. And this is also supported by the 85-year-old Harvard study on adult development, which is often referred to as the longevity or the happiness study.

41:17It's the exact same thing. What causes us to be healthy or supports our health, What supports longevity is fundamentally deep relationships with others. All the other stuff, the things, contribute zero, if not more, to having a shorter life and a less fulfilled life. Okay, just to reset, we're talking about your six steps to manifest. The first is to reclaim your power to focus your mind. The second is to clarify what you truly want, which we've just been talking about. The third is to remove the obstacles in your mind. What are you referring to there? Does that take us back to your repeated references to the inner critic?

42:03Yeah, absolutely. As you know, I mean, if you tell yourself, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, it's not possible, that becomes reality for you. And what people forget is so often they give their own agency away by believing in this external thing that's going to make them whole or make them feel better about themselves. And the reality is, first, you are the only one who can give that to yourself. There is no external thing that's going to make that happen for you. And this is, of course, the falsehood of the secret and the law of attraction. And the second is that you have immense power within yourself.

42:45And until you believe that and accept that, then you cannot change. So this relates to this concept of limiting your beliefs. And what I did as a child is I would use these negative comments to build a prison for myself that limited what I could do. And each time I laid a brick down, it made the walls higher and made the cell darker. And once you reach a threshold where you're completely enclosed and surrounded and you feel you have no place to go, of course, that's where severe depression and hopelessness kick in. So you have to truly believe. And we have seen the power of belief. Now, this is not to say, I'm not gonna take chemotherapy for my cancer because I just believe.

43:33That's ridiculous. What it does do is it sets the stage for your own metabolic systems to work at their best. So I would say in the context of, let's say, the cancer example, you can maximize your body's ability, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have a cure. You can simply maximize it. And it's just like an athlete. How do you achieve? And we'll get back to achievement in a sec. You achieve by showing up every day, by believing in yourself. As an example, there's a study that shows if you believe that you can increase your muscles, let's say through visualization and some of the techniques I talk about in the book, it has been demonstrated that your muscle mass will increase.

44:21Now, is that going to make you an Arnold Schwarzenegger? No. But the point is though, that simply believing actually has a huge, huge impact. And we look at individuals like Wim Hof, as an example, or Tibetan monks. They can control their body temperature. They can control their heart rate. We look at individuals like David Goggins, as an example, or Charlie Engel, who were runners. You can do these things if you have control of your mind. Now, I'm not suggesting everyone become a Wim Hof or David Goggins. What I am saying is, though, these individuals have mastered certain techniques to change their physiology or their mindset.

45:03Each of us has that capability. It doesn't mean we're going to become a Wim Hof. What it does mean is that we have the ability to change our circumstances. How do we generate that belief? What are the techniques that you would recommend to help us get over the deeply entrenched view we may have that we're worthless? One is to understand that none of us are worthless, that every one of us deserves respect, dignity, and by utilizing some of the practices, which are based on different types of meditation practices, that you can gain access to your mind and you can change your belief system. and it's just doing that.

45:49Now, of course, many people have tried different types of meditation practices and they'll say, well, I can't do it. And of course, the problem for many people is they're competitive and they're trying to achieve something. It's not a race here and it's not that if you fail, you're worthless. It's you just have to keep trying. The other aspect is you don't run a marathon in a day. One of the problems I used to have is I'd say, I'm going to get into shape. And then I'd immediately go out and try to run two or three miles and be highly disappointed and then say, well, forget it. I can't do it. One of the key things I think is looking at through the lens of starting small, demonstrating yourself that it is possible.

46:32And whether that's waking up at six in the morning and going for a walk around the block, which is fairly simple for most people, and then increasing that over time. And then you can see that you can create habits. And once you see it is possible, it starts changing your belief system about what is possible for you. Because if you go out and try to run two miles or whatever it is, you sit there and go, God, I can't do that. I can't do it. And then you go back and say, I'm a loser. Versus if you say, I'm going to get up. That's the first thing. Early, you've done something which you normally don't do.

47:06Two, I'm going to go out and I'm going to walk around the block. Fairly simple. Hey, I did it. Do it another day until you're up to three blocks. Then you're up to two miles. then you start running. This is a process, but the key things are you have to show up, you have to do it, and you have to be consistent. Those are the fundamental aspects of starting to change how you look at the world, what is possible, and if you want to say removing the obstacles that you had placed there or have been placed there unconsciously through your upbringing. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Many experts on the show have talked about one of the keys to behavior change being starting small and generating confidence based on your ability to actually meet those modest goals.

47:53You mentioned earlier visualization techniques. Are those what might also help us remove the obstacles in our mind or are those exercises related to further steps on the six-part manifestation plan? Well, I think they're all closely related. But yeah, as an example, when I was younger and wanted to be a doctor, I could not visualize that happening initially, where I would close my eyes and I could see myself in that position. And what I say is, if you want to say the window was foggy and I couldn't see outside of it what was possible, as I did these visualizations and exercises and made the list and read them aloud, then that window started getting clearer and clearer until I could absolutely see myself in that position.

48:42And as that clarity increases, which again comes along with that power of habit, if you will, then that strengthens that intention until the point where you cannot imagine anything different than that becoming reality. And that's when you're really maximizing that intention. Now, one of the things I just want to get back to quickly is you talked about achievement. And it's interesting because sometimes people get so focused on a goal that actually it becomes a negative for them. And what I mean by that is if you're so focused on the goal that you don't look at anything else, you ignore every distraction, which is of course oftentimes how you achieve the goal, and you get the goal, the question is, what did you really achieve?

49:37If you've lost your family, if your kids hate you, if your wife's divorced you, and you are standing at the top of the mountain and you've gotten the reward, what was the purpose of that at the end of the day? And this is the problem for people. Many people will sacrifice everything to achieve the goal and then have left a lot of lives destroyed, ruined, and unhappiness in their wake. And again, one of the most important things I think is one, and this gets actually a little bit later to one of the other lessons, is there's nothing wrong with the goal, but the reality is the most important aspect is the journey to that goal.

50:18And this relates, again, back to relationships, human connection, and you have to temper the two. How much is that goal worth if you're standing there alone and you destroyed all these lives along the way versus, yes, you achieved it, but also you focused on maintaining relationships and connecting with others. In fact, interestingly, I was just away for the weekend with four college roommates who I've known for 50 plus years. And we get together every couple years and hang out. And the strength of those relationships, even though none of us are perfect and we may have disparate careers, is this connection we've had for so long.

51:03And that's very, very powerful in terms of making us feel good about our lives. Coming up, Jim talks about more of his steps toward manifestation. And finally, how to alert the bloodhound to harness the full power of your mind. I really like this idea. I want to tell you about a product that my family uses. And now that they've become a sponsor of the show, they're also used by many, many of my employees, including my CEO and my head of operations, Taylor. It's Monarch. Monarch helps you manage your money in one simple, seamless, easy place. My wife, who manages the finances in our household, I heard her talking about Monarch the other day to somebody.

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52:43Jim, you've brought us to number four on your list of the six steps to manifest. Again, number one is to reclaim your power to focus. Second is to clarify what you truly want. The third is to remove the obstacles in your mind. And the fourth, which you just talked about a little bit, but I'd love to get you to say a little bit more, is embedding the intention into our subconscious. And so in your view, there are a series of exercises that we can do in order to kind of get this into what my Jewish grandmother might call our kishkes, your guts, your bones. Can you say a little bit more about what we can do in order to make this happen?

53:18Sure. And this will probably be a good time to actually mention these cognitive brain networks and how they work. First, of course, you have to, to make them work their best, be engaged in your parasympathetic nervous system, which is relaxed, open, and present. What many people don't realize is that we are indated with sensory information, about 10 million bits of information a second from our sensory organs that mostly maintain homeostasis of our bodily functions, leaving only about 50 to 100 bits of information every second that we actually have conscious thoughts about or control of, if you will.

53:57So one of the things is to recognize this and then on a conscious level, embed this into your subconscious. So that's the first part, and that's something called value tagging, where you make your intention, if you will, salient, one that grabs your attention, thereby you are tagging it. And once that happens, then other things kick in. So let's go through that. We have one part of our cognitive brain networks, and these are areas of our brain that are not discrete, but areas of different parts, but are connected during a particular activity. One of those is our default mode network. And this typically is engaged when we're daydreaming or mind-wandering or related to self-referential thought or related to memory or planning actions.

54:56Once that is engaged or that, if you will, intention is embedded there as something that has been thought of or laid out, then we engage two other parts, which are our salience network and our attention network. And the salience network is important from switching between the default mode network and what we call the task positive network. And the task positive network contains the salience network, the attention network, and the executive control network. And so the salience network is really important in detecting and filtering salient stimuli from the environment to allow us to allocate attentional resources.

55:46While the attention network is required to sustain attention or redirect attention to those things that are important to us. And ultimately, and I use as an example, the executive control network, which is part of the task positive network, as the part that actually is associated with, if you will, making things happen on a conscious level. And it is the interaction between all of those. In terms of the salience network, I use the analogy of a bloodhound trying to seek out what it is looking for. And the example, and I'll give two, one is as a neurosurgeon, I see patients oftentimes with what would many people say, well, these are unusual conditions.

56:36And obviously for me, they're not because I see them all the time. But my point being that I'll have a patient who I'll say, you have, let's say, hydrocephalus. And they'll say, I've never heard of that doctor. And then two months later, they come back and they, the most amazing thing. I've met five people who have the same thing. And the reason is because you have embedded that. And now on an unconscious level, you're listening to possibilities. And it's like saying, I was thinking about getting a red Mustang, and then you see five in the next couple of days, because you are attuned to that. And that is how you embed things in your unconscious or subconscious.

57:18The other aspect is that once you are able to do that, then of course, you focus on that. And I'll give another example. I am working on a particular project right now that's fairly unusual. And I was in a coffee shop, very noisy coffee shop. And I was sitting there drinking my coffee, thinking about this. And then literally I heard people talking about the exact same thing about three tables over. Well, normally I would never have listened to that at all. Yet that struck me. It led me to walk over and introduce myself. And now we're working on this project together. And that's how it works. And I'm sure you've been in a situation where you're at a noisy party, and you'll hear your name, even among the din of all the sounds, because your identity is deeply embedded with you.

58:09And it shows you how on an unconscious level, you're always turned on, you just don't know it. So you have to define the things that are important to you, and your unconscious or subconscious will seek that out. Yeah, I also think about how when you hear a new word for the first time, you then hear it a bunch afterwards. Exactly, exactly. So this is where people suddenly, when you make these analogies, they go, oh, I get it now, I understand. And just say a little bit more about what we can do to get important ideas and goals and intentions into our subconscious. Well, and this is, again, value tagging.

58:50You have to make it important to you. How do you make it important to you? You use your sensory organs. And I'll tell you, when I was a kid, what I did was I made a list of the things I wanted to have happen to me or manifest. I would read the list silently. I would read it aloud. I would visualize it, and I would do it about 50 times a day. And this is similar to what's described in the typical manifestation practices. And the reality is that it's even like religion. We know experientially that, as an example, this type of a practice or actually religion associated with compassion, these have been learned over millennia that they work.

59:39And then we typically wrap a dogma around it. And this would explain the innumerable religious practices which are associated with different cultures around the world. And in many ways, this explains the same with the woo-woo and the pseudoscience that is wrapped around manifestation. There is validity to some of these practices. The key is how do you maximize the ability for them to have an effect? And I think that's really what we're talking about here. I don't know if you say this explicitly, but there has to be a plausibility, reasonability quotient to this. I could do all of these exercises you're describing, and I am not going to make it into the NBA.

1:00:21What? I know. Dan, I had great confidence. I know. Jokic wants me, but he can't have me. A very bright young man could use these practices to get himself into medical school, right? I could imagine that this would, I don't know if it would do the whole trick, but it would help propel the narrative. And so a young person or any person could start visualizing things that fall within the realm of the physically possible, physically, psychologically, emotionally possible, as opposed to dreaming up like I am going to I don't know. Although having said that, as I'm rambling here, I'm thinking a little bit about the bodhisattva vow, which I know you're familiar with, which comes out of Mahayana Buddhism, which is the idea that, you know, beings are limitless.

1:01:07I vow to save them all. So just setting an over-the-top compassionate goal actually can have some salutary impacts. Yes. If you look through that lens, every action you take is to improve the life of others. And that's ultimately what a bodhisattva's goal is. They live a life by example who they are and do those actions so that hopefully every interaction they have that is contained with it. But getting back to your earlier statement, yes, I am not going to be the first person to work on Mars. And it's not that I have a limited belief system, but these things have to be in the context of plausibility.

1:01:55But that being said, we never know what is limiting. And I'll give you a quick example for myself. And while my statement may be a one in a million likelihood, the reality is sometimes they do occur. But when I applied to medical school, because of the situation with my family, I missed a lot of classes. I had a grade point average of 2.53. And at the time, the average grade point average to get into medical school was 3.79. And I was talking about how you share your aspirations with people. Of course, I would tell friends and classmates that I was going to be a doctor. And they laughed at me and they said, what a joke.

1:02:43You have a 2.53 or you failed that class. And in fact, when I went and we used to have a pre-med committee interview to even get a letter so we could apply to medical school. When I went to the secretary who made those appointments, can you imagine? She said to me, she said, I'm not giving you an appointment. I said, why? And she said, because it's a waste of everyone's time. and I looked at her and I said to her I said well I appreciate what you're saying but I am not leaving here to give me that appointment and she ultimately did and again another aspect of this which is very demeaning was then I walk into a room and this professor is at the end of a long table sort of like what Putin does right and he's sitting with two of his colleagues he has my file he takes it he stands up he throws it on the desk and he says say what you have to say, let's get this over with.

1:03:39And again, how horrible to do that to somebody. But anyway, fortunately through my own whatever, I looked at this guy and I said, you know nothing about me. I am not going to allow you to objectify me into a grade point average. And then I proceeded to lecture them for 20 minutes. At the end of it, they were all crying because they had to look at me as a human being. And then they can't look away. Long story short, when that meeting ended, the secretary gave me a brochure for a program for socioeconomically disadvantaged students and minority students at Tulane University in New Orleans. And she said to me, she said, the deadline has passed, but I don't think that's going to affect you.

1:04:23Long story short, I called the people. They let me into the program. Irvine gave me the highest letter of recommendation they could. I got into that program, was accepted to medical school only when I applied to. And now, ultimately, during Hurricane Katrina, the university closed down. They lost their dean. I endowed the dean's chair. So the dean today is the Doty professor. I rebuilt the library. And I gave the white coat ceremony speech, which is for incoming medical students. And my point is, nobody can predict what anyone is capable of doing. But as you said earlier, and we agreed, yes, it has to be in the context of realistic, but many people would have said it was completely unrealistic and impossible for me to have gotten into medical school.

1:05:15So we have to temper that somewhat, but we do have that power to manifest and change our lives. But we have to have an absolute belief, an absolute commitment, and be willing to do the work and whatever is necessary to make that happen. It's an incredible story. And it does bring us to the fifth of your six steps in manifesting, which is to pursue your goal passionately, which that story amply demonstrates. One of the things you talk about within this, and I think your story touches on this as well is, and this is your phrase, to be someone that you would like to help. Can you say more about that?

1:05:57Yeah. I mean, I think that when I was talking about how I changed how I saw the world and you want to be the person who people can see that there is something about you and they do want to help you. And this is what people forget sometimes is it always amuses me and disappoints me sometimes. You'll see people who end up having achieved certain things and they'll sit there and say, I did it all on my own. Nobody helped me. Well, it's just not true. Everyone every day needs people to support them and help them reach their goals. And anyone who says they did it by themselves is lying or delusional.

1:06:37I could not possibly have achieved what I have achieved without a ton of people reaching out and being supportive of my narrative, my dream, my aspirations. And it is those people that make it a reality. But you have to create the environment where they want to help you. And that's by being the person that you want to be and that exemplifies the goodness, the caring, the love, the compassion for other people. Under this fifth step of pursuing your goal passionately, I believe one of the ideas you discuss is diversifying your opportunities. What do you mean by that? The reality is that it doesn't always work out exactly as you plan.

1:07:20It may approximate it, and that's not to say that should be a disappointment. Again, there are oftentimes external circumstances that have an impact on what your goal is or what you're trying to manifest. And in fact, there are sometimes reasons that you do not understand, you do not see that result in you not being able to manifest something. Or the other side is that it's not as if you control the timeline. There are some things that I am still very passionate about that I would like to see manifest, but they've been taking years and years and they still haven't manifested. It has not changed my belief, my passion, my goal.

1:08:02It's just an acceptance that things don't always work out in the timeline or the way we imagine. Like as an example, if you said, I want this job because it's where I want to live. It's the type of company I want to work for. I want to be in that position in six months. Well, it may turn out that you get the job, but it's in a different city and it's not exactly the title you wanted. Well, is that a failure your manifestation? No, it may be that actually. There are other reasons why you need to move to that city, or there are other reasons why it didn't happen exactly the way. And you have to accept that and not translate it into, I failed.

1:08:46Manifestation is not a perfect science by any stretch of the imagination. The whole point of the book, though, is to have you understand it, how to maximize it, but that is in no way a guarantee that it will happen. People should not somehow think that this is a magic fix for everything. All we're saying is, in some ways, this is like an exercise book. Here are the practices. Here's what you have to do. If you follow these, there's a greater likelihood of this happening than not, but it is not a guarantee that this will happen. That sounds linked to your step number six, which is letting go of attachment to any particular outcome, or in Buddhist speak, we often call it non-attachment to results, that you can work hard, you can set your intentions, remove your obstacles, pursue your goal passionately, but we live in an entropic universe where everything's changing all the time, and it's not necessarily the case that everything's going to go the way you plan.

1:09:45Right. And as you know, I mean, what is the greatest cause of suffering? Attachment and craving. And if you're able to have the goal and pursue it passionately, but if you don't achieve it, that's okay too. It happens sometimes and that's just the way it is, but it should not in any way be a reason for you to get discouraged or have some belief that it's not possible. You just have to realize that again, it doesn't always work on our timeline and sometimes it doesn't work at all, but that's okay. And this is one of the challenges, and this actually hits on something called equanimity, this evenness of temperament.

1:10:25Having chased a goal or having wanted to achieve something and not achieving it causes some people a lot of despair and unhappiness. But the problem is when you achieve it for a subset of people, they always want to live with that high all the time, which is not possible. Conversely, there are people who have bad things happen to them, and they also translate into, this is horrible, this is going to last forever, and it doesn't. All of these things are transitory. And having an understanding that with the highs, you may feel good, but oftentimes you don't learn very much. And understanding sometimes with the down times, those are the places where you learn resilience, where you learn about yourself, where you learn about strengths.

1:11:11And for many people, those are gifts. And if you ask anybody who's lived in these experiences, but the key is, regardless whichever direction things are going, to understand the transient and impermanent nature of these things and accept it and have an evenness of temperament. And that will prevent a lot of the negative aspects of, frankly, living in this world. I totally agree. You know, the book is called Mind Magic. And I'm just wondering, like, as I listen to everything you're saying, it sounds like it's absolutely not magical thinking. And I say, I mean, this is a compliment. It's like advanced common sense.

1:11:47Set a goal, follow these exercises to get your goal into your subconscious, harness the full power of the mind that often we're unaware is even there. Work your ass off. Be nice to people. Be flexible and non-attached to specific results. None of that scans to me as magic. And again, I mean that as a compliment, not a critique, because I'm comparing it in my mind to the magical thinking, and I mean this in the pejorative, of The Secret. No, you're absolutely right. And I did that sort of intentionally, but also the other book is called Into the Magic Shop, right? So that makes the connection between the two.

1:12:25Now I'm thinking of my next book, I'm going to intertwine magic in that, and I haven't got a clue yet, but we'll see how it all goes. One question I should have asked you earlier, because to me, what stands out as the most interesting part of all of this is the idea of embedding intentions into our subconscious. And you made a reference to this, but I don't think I let you really expand on it. You talked about the bloodhound, the internal bloodhound, and there's an analogy you use in the book, the filing clerk and the bloodhound. Can you say more about these? Right. Right. Embedding your intention is in some ways putting a file in the cabinet, but the bloodhound's responsibility is to actually find that intention or anything associated with it.

1:13:07And this gets back to the example I gave of your name being said at a loud party or the example of being in the coffee shop and the bloodhound was always listening and allowed me to hear those people and relate it to what I had embedded in that file cabinet. And then I acted, which was the executive control network guiding me. And I think I use the analogy of the CEO. That's it. And again, all of these tools. And while you did say, there is no magic there and there isn't. And in some ways, what I'm trying to do is to indicate to people that actually the power we have within ourselves, that is the magic and i use the analogy and i think you avoided saying the first sentence in the book no no no you can say it the first sentence in the book is the universe doesn't give a fuck about you but the point is one it has no fucks to give but at the end of the book what i say is what people don't appreciate fundamentally they are the universe and that's really the key here you have the power and all of us are ultimately connected and when you look through that lens.

1:14:18And in some ways, we're talking about bodhisattvas. If you look at the world through that lens and understand that the other is you, you always make the right decision about how to function in this world. If we want to start small and try some of this to try to get a big intention into our subconscious, what's a beginner exercise we can do? A lot of what you recommend involves writing stuff down. But what's a beginner exercise that we could do that wouldn't take a bunch of time that would help us toy with this idea of training our bloodhound to look for something that we really care about? Well, I think one is simply sitting in a quiet room and you don't have to cross your legs or you could lay down, but one is taking the time in a quiet place to think about something you want to happen to you in the sense that it doesn't hurt other people.

1:15:14It's not just about what you want, but it's about doing something that has a larger purpose than yourself, but gives you what you want. And simply thinking about that, and that could be for as little as three to five minutes, thinking about that in a calm space, seeing that, and then just sitting up and writing down why you want it, how it will be of service, how it will benefit you, and just write that down three or four times until you start getting more and more clarity. And just doing that will have a significant effect on you. So I was doing something like that today where it was not preceded by meditation or anything of the sort, but I was just kind of, I have a huge whiteboard in my office.

1:16:01I like whiteboards. And I was just kind of mapping out what a successful version of the future of my business would be. Here are the seven or eight component parts. Here's what I think an awesome financial return on each of these might look like in a future state of two to five years. And so I think what I'm hearing you say is like, just get in the habit of maybe meditate for a little bit on specifically visualizing what this would look like, and then get up and write it down on your whiteboard or somewhere else. And just get in the habit of doing this semi-regularly that can alert the bloodhound so that you're, again, it's not necessarily magical, although on some levels it It is kind of magical, but you're just harnessing the full power of your mind.

1:16:44Most of us are just aware of what we're aware of, but there's so much beneath the surface and this exercise would help you harness all of it. Yeah. And in some ways, it's like the tiny habits. If you start doing that for simple things at first, you'll be amazed at what will happen. It's not as if I just made these up out of the blue. I have been teaching this to people, and they're in some ways shocked about what suddenly can happen to them. It changes the entire way they look at the world. And in fact, it more aligns them with what is possible. And also, it changes their lives in a positive way because it changes their own internal narrative to switch from I to others or from the me to the we.

1:17:33And that is a very powerful effect, not only on your physiology, but on your mental state. So I'm going to update my little practice based on what you just said, which is it's not enough just to think of here the seven or eight parts of my business that I hope will be thriving and what the numbers might look like in three or five years. It's also to imagine what's the impact on other people and on my team and on my family from doing all of this work. And that, if I'm hearing you correctly, supercharges the whole thing. That's absolutely the key. And that's absolutely correct because it's not about you anymore.

1:18:13It's about the impact you're having on other people's lives to improve them. I mean, look at how powerful the message you were sending out through this podcast. it has a huge positive effect on people's lives. And sometimes you don't even realize it. And if you constantly remind yourself that is what this is all about, yes, the money is all fine, the financial goals are all fine. But at the end of the day, that's irrelevant. Your goal is to have a huge impact on other people's lives. And that is the supercharger of all of this. and it will get you all the other things, but that has to be front and center of every action you take.

1:18:56Duly noted and well said. In our remaining moments here, let me just ask you the two questions I traditionally ask people. Is there something you were hoping to cover that we didn't get to? I just wanted to mention a couple other activities that I'm involved with that some people might have an interest in. Great. One is the center at Stanford that I run, which is called the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. ccare.stanford.edu. And that outlines a lot of the programs we have. The second thing is my website, jamesrdotiemd.com, which includes some of the work that I do as well as actually the podcast that I have.

1:19:36And the third is something that I have been working on, which may be of interest to your viewers, not necessarily directly connected to manifestation, but an app that I've created for people, which is a mental health coach, because in some ways we indirectly touched on this. A lot of the angst that many of us have are reactions fundamentally to the way our society works, and it creates stress, anxiety, and distraction. And this app that I created, and it can be found at happy, H-A-P-P-I dot AI, actually combines an emotion assessment tool with a conversational AI knowledge base of compassion-focused therapy and psychology, which is actually, believe it or not, connected to a human avatar, which talks to you.

1:20:27And the great thing about that is for many of us, especially men and adolescents, we would rather talk to an avatar because it's nonjudgmental and it's compassionate and empathic, and it's also available 24 hours a day. So those are the things that I'm working on that I'm proud of. And for any of your listeners, I hope they check those out. And also, I'd just like to leave you also with the reality that some of us forget that every day we have the ability to improve the lives of another person. And a lot of people say, well, I don't have time, I don't have money, I don't have resources. Sometimes just saying hi to another person changes their lives.

1:21:10Absolutely. Cozine on that. And you kind of already answered the second question I was going to ask, which is just to get you to remind everybody of all of the things you're putting out into the world. You just referenced some of them. Your first book is called Into the Magic Shop. The new book is called Mind Magic, the Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. I've certainly heard of your work for many years, so it's great to finally meet you directly. Thank you for your time. Well, listen, I appreciate it. And thank you for the work that you're doing in this world. And I hope our paths cross so we meet in person.

1:21:39at some point. Likewise.

1:21:44Thanks again to Dr. Doty. Quick reminder, if you want to get a guided meditation tailored to this episode, go on over to danharris.com. We're doing tailored guided meditations for every Monday, Wednesday episode this month from the great Don Mauricio, a meditation teacher we all love. Also, don't forget to go over to shop.danharris.com to take advantage of our merch sale while supplies last. That sale ends on July 14th. Before I let you go, I just want to thank everybody who worked so hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great people over at Pod People.

1:22:20Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.

1:22:36Thank you.