How to give up control - advice from neuroscientist Heather Berlin

0:02This is how to be a better human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy, and I'm not going to lie. The thing that I like most about hosting a podcast is how it gets edited. There is so much control that we have because it's not live. If I say something off-putting or a strange noise gets made like or.

0:23Yeah, yeah.

0:28That can get edited out. The producers and I have a lot of control over the audio that you end up hearing and the video that you end up seeing. But, but, but I have no control at all about what you think about each episode. What do you do with that information? How you respond? Do you love it and recommend it to a friend? Do you hate it? and leave a furious review? Do you send me an email telling me that I need to invest in high quality lozenges to make my voice sound smoother? That is up to you. If you are like me, and I guess most people, you probably think that it's better when you have more control over your life and what happens.

1:04But today's guest, the neuroscientist Heather Berlin, believes that that is actually not the case, that what we should be aiming for is a balance between control and letting go. She wrote a whole book about it that is called The Fine Art of Losing Control. And here's a clip from her TED Talk where she's talking all about it. For over two decades, my research has explored how the prefrontal cortex, the brain's brake pedal, interacts with deeper emotional and reward circuits of the limbic system, the accelerator. We use impulse control tasks together with brain scans and physiological measures to see in real time how well people can hit the brakes and how strongly they're pulled to hit the gas and what happens when these two systems are out of sync.

1:48And what I've learned from my research, clinical work, and life is that thriving depends on how well we balance those extremes between holding back and letting go. To truly gain control, you have to learn the fine art of losing it on purpose, in the right moments. Now, sometimes you need the break, pause, walk away, choose the long game. But sometimes you need release. Stop perfecting, rehearsing, trying to control everything. Let uncertainty and connection in and the messy version of you to show up. We're going to be right back with more from Heather after this quick ad break.

2:40Hey, Yetis. This is Nick and Jack from the Best One Yet podcast. Now, the last company we worked at, they used Paylocity and everything just worked. It wasn't until launching our own media business, this show, that we realized how rare that is. Because Paylocity is one delicious burrito of operational needs. They roll up HR, finance, and IT seamlessly into one delicious bite. And everything wraps together like that all at once. Your workforce, your tech stack, your business. You don't need more tools. You don't even need cilantro. You need one solution. And that is why Paylocity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI-driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next.

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4:10So if you're looking to sustainably spruce up your spring wardrobe this season, take a look at Rothy's Cruiser Collection and take your pick from their wide variety of spiffy styles and vibrant colors. Discover the world of Rothy's at rothys.com. That's R-O-T-H-Y-S dot com. And we are back. Today on the show, we're talking about how to let go of control with Heather Berlin. Hi, I'm Heather Berlin. I am a neuroscientist and clinical psychologist and professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. And my new book's coming out next year in 2027.

4:49It's called The Fine Art of Losing Control. One of the things you said in your TED Talk that I thought was surprising is that thriving, in your opinion, as a neuroscientist, is about finding the right balance between control and loss of control. Yes. Yes. And I think that's not a way that many of us think about thriving in our lives is having the right balance of loss of control. You know, I think it's pounded into us, you know, from an early age, especially with children who, you know, their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed yet. And so parents are constantly trying to sort of get them under control, right, to control their impulses.

5:29And from an early age, you know, we were kind of taught that the pinnacle is, you know, for thriving is to gain ultimate control over our instincts, you know, over our animalistic behaviors, right? you know, you want one marshmallow now, or you can wait for two marshmallows later, right? And the people who can wait, like have some sort of advantage. And while yes, control is very important in certain contexts, and we do need it to thrive, like say, you know, to achieve great things at work, or, you know, you need to sacrifice the immediate reward to get the long term gain. And so that really works well for certain contexts.

6:09But I think what people tend to miss is that it's just as important to find time to purposely and in a healthy way let go. And that is just as important for other things, for play, for connection, for creativity. And the real control comes in learning how to tune the dial, how to turn up the control at will and then turn it down on purpose. And that's where real thriving comes in. I used to think like scientists and artists have really different ways of approaching the world, have really different mindsets. And yet, when talking to you, when we first met several years ago, you challenged that idea for me in the sense that you are a scientist, you're a really accomplished scientist, and yet you are asking these same questions that artists are asking.

6:59What is my unique contribution? What am I passionate about? How do I say something in a new way? How do I find something that is new and powerful and meaningful? So I wonder if you can talk about that, the creativity part of the research and how that ties into this idea of loss of control sometimes. I am fascinated by, you know, what it is to be human. My real reason I became a scientist was it was like this fear of death. And I want to understand where does my consciousness come from? Where do my thoughts come from? Oh, they come from the brain. How does the brain work? But really, it's like, you know, whatever you want to call it, a soul or being human.

7:34Like, what is it that makes us human and feel alive? life. And, you know, I think that comes from this idea of, you know, we can create things, we create meaning. We have this, you know, we find ourselves here on this earth and there's all this ambiguous stimuli around and we find meaning in it and we find structure and we build relationships. And so I've always been a scientist and an artist. Like I needed both. And I was a fine arts minor and I did theater and painting and I needed that outlet to be able to do the more concrete, you know, convergent thinking that was needed for science, I needed the outlet.

8:11It was like a yin and yang. And that being said, science itself is a creative endeavor. I mean, the most brilliant scientists are the ones who took all the data points and came up with something new and thought of a new idea, right? Like the double helix or, you know, Darwin comes up with this theory of evolution. Everyone else had access to the same data, but he looked at it in a new and unique way. So I think art and science are not separate. They're integrated and they need one another, right? Because all unstructure isn't good, right? Like improvisation, you know, you're not just playing random notes.

8:43You're playing around within a particular structure, right? Or like, you know, freestyle rap, you know, it's not just random words. It's rhyming. And so anyway, I got fascinated with the how in terms of like treating patients and looking at different psychiatric and neurological illnesses, how do we access the unconscious? And I started looking at the neural basis of creativity because it was a state in which you decrease activation in the sort of control center of your brain, the prefrontal cortex. And it allows for this information to sort of bubble up that's normally being suppressed from the unconscious.

9:18And you can access it. And that's where creativity comes because you get these divergent connections between ideas, whereas normally things are suppressed and concrete. And you want that most of the time, but sometimes you need to take the lid off to allow for a generative phase, you know, and then you execute, right? Then you need the prefrontal cortex to execute. So how does the academic and scientific knowledge you have about creativity and about control and about presence, how does that affect your day-to-day life or these moments that are, you know, these high stakes moments, like giving a TED Talk on a big stage in front of 2000 people?

9:53Yeah, it's so funny because it's like, there are two parts of your mind, There's one, there's like the scientists and I know the facts, right? But as much as you know the facts about things, you're still an experiencing human who's like, you're basically, you can understand sort of how the matrix works, but you're still living inside the matrix, right? So like, there's only so much like meta awareness I can have. And, you know, the point with the being self-aware is that, you know, once you've practiced something, you know, whether it's a musician, a surgeon, or someone giving a lecture, an artist, But once you've trained your muscles in a way, to perform your best, you have to actually stop trying so hard to perform.

10:29You have to let go. The moment you become too self-aware, you're actually inserting too much consciousness into it, this sort of top-down processing, and you lose the flow state of what you've trained to do. So the best, the most professional athletes in a way, when they're finally in this peak performance, they have to let go. And if you become self-aware, you lose the flow. And so I try to practice that. Is that because it's going through an entirely different pathway in our brains? Or is it because a pathway that is not helpful in that moment is not being activated? It's a bit of both. If you think about this, you know, I talk about top down or conscious control.

11:03Consciousness is really good when you're having novel situations and you need to be very specific about, okay, like, I'm just going to give a minor example. But like, if you told me you need to pick only the red M &Ms from this jar of M &Ms, like it's very specific. You want to be consciously aware of color and things to get that specific thing. And that's a sort of different brain network. And we need that for novel things. But when the brain is interacting with the world, there's so much stimulation out there. If we had to be consciously aware of every decision in every single situation, it would be overwhelming.

11:33It would be maladaptive. So we have these heuristics. We have these shortcuts that we sort of perform in an unconscious way, like walking. We're not thinking about each step we're taking. Or if you're a professional tennis player, you're not thinking, okay, what exactly angle should I hit this ball? Because then you start activating another part of the brain, which is important for some circumstances, but not in a highly trained circumstance. Then it actually gets in the way of this automatic sort of, let's call it network that's doing its thing. It knows what to do. It just runs on autopilot.

12:01And when you start starting consciousness, it can mess it up. Now, if something novel happens, like let's say you're driving, you're not consciously thinking about all the movements you're doing when you're driving. But if suddenly a car comes out of nowhere, suddenly you're going to attend to it and start to make these different decisions and use consciousness. But let's say everything's going smoothly. Inserting consciousness can actually mess up that automated network that you've trained to sort of run on its own. The idea of training is a big piece of this, but also this idea of play, right?

12:29That like when you play, you aren't as focused on the outcome. Instead, you're focused on the process and being in the moment and enjoying it, right? Like it's a very different feeling to like play tennis with a friend versus to compete in tennis in a tournament, right? I would freeze up and be terrible. Whereas if I'm just hitting the ball around, I probably am much less focused on the outcome and I'm probably having more of a fun time as a result. When you're in the moment, when you're in that, when you're sort of in that unconstrained state, you stop thinking and start being, you know, so you're fully present in the moment.

13:04The moment you start, and again, it's not that thinking is bad. It's good for certain situations. But when you're playing, you're almost like, we can see parts of the brain, the prefrontal cortex are less active. When it's overactive and you're overthinking, you can become anxious or ruminate or too self-aware and start questioning everything you're doing. And that's not fun, right? But when you can release that and not be self-aware and not be overthinking things, you are fully present in the moment. And when people are in that state, it's a very enjoyable state. It's associated with positive emotions and people really thrive to get there.

13:38And that's also happens to be where creativity can emerge as well. But you don't need to have creativity in these kinds of flow states. It could just be a matter of just being and being fully present and not overthinking or ruminating. So you're turning down activation of that prefrontal cortex, the kind of self-awareness center of your brain. Maybe you can give me a little bit of some like technical terminology or understanding of a thing that I think we've all had. The one that for me is the most intuitive and common, which is that I do not think about breathing for 90 % of my day, probably even more than that.

14:12But if I think about breathing, now I'm actively controlling whether I'm inhaling or exhaling. And it's actually kind of weird because now I'm thinking about it and I'm not inhaling when I should be inhaling. And so I have to go. Well, first thing I want to say is just like, in terms of technical, like, you know, nuance, it's not just the prefrontal cortex as one entity. And a lot of the work I did for my PhD was like trying to dissect the different parts of the prefrontal cortex. You have the orbital prefrontal cortex and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex.

14:43So there are different aspects of the prefrontal cortex that do slightly different things. And I'm just throwing that out there as like a little caveat. It's not one thing. But a lot of the sort of suppression that happens like in the self-awareness, that's to do with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as opposed to the orbital prefrontal cortex. So that's to be a little bit technical. But now the question you asked, I mean, that's a great, great question because a lot of times, I have patients, for example, who have OCD, obsessive-pompulsive disorder. And when we do neuroimaging studies, we see it's actually over-activation of parts of their prefrontal cortex.

15:18And some of them have what's called like this sort of body-focused OCD where they're very focused on something like they're hyper aware of their breathing and or of like something like their mouth being dry and they can't and normally these are things we're not really consciously thinking about the second you focus on it as soon as you said them i became really aware of both of those right didn't you and now imagine you can't take your attention on focus off of that how distracting that would be how frustrating that would be and so you know you do get into these disorders where they're paying too much conscious attention to these things that is distracting, that is maladaptive.

15:55So it's very adaptive to not pay attention to it. If there's a problem, like suddenly your breathing is becoming labored, you're going to focus your attention on that. But the bigger question that you're asking is, where's the switch, right? Where's the switch in the brain between conscious and unconscious? There's a lot of debate within the field about what is the difference between sort of the neural circuitry involved in unconscious processes and what changes when it becomes conscious. And we can build experiments that we look at. For example, I show you an image with like a subliminal message in it.

16:25And you're looking at it, you don't see the message. You're like, I don't see it, whatever. Suddenly I'm like, look, there it is. There's the hidden message. Now once you see it, you can't unsee it, right? All you see is that message. And then we try to track what changed in your brain, in your mind's eye. Because the physical stimulus was the same, but your conscious perception switched, something switched. And we start to try to track that. Now there's different theories about what the neural basis of consciousness is some people say you need feedback loops you need activation in the prefrontal cortex to feed back to sort of like let's say it's a visual stimuli to visual parts of the brain and in within these feedback loops you get this emergence of consciousness some think you just need the back of the brain there's integrated information theory which says it's a certain um amount of like differentiated integrated information that you need.

17:13So it gets very complex. The real answer is we don't fully know. We do not have a consensus on the neural basis of consciousness. We have some ideas. We have some understanding of what like very important parts of the brain are for something to be conscious, but we don't know the exact mechanism. I find it very easy to switch into control, to be like, I'm controlling my breath. I'm aware of the saliva in my mouth. I am aware of my body's walking, I find it much more difficult to switch off from control, to lose the control. It's easy to switch into, I am actively controlling my body, and it's harder to switch out of.

17:51Now it becomes automatic again. And it seems like there's quite a lot of benefits to losing that conscious control. So one, is that just me? Is that some weird thing that I have, or is that more common? And then two, how do we do that? How do we consciously lose some control of the conscious control? So what I would say first is that there's variation amongst people, right? Now, some people are, think of it like a spectrum, a control spectrum. Some people are chronically, like on the one end of the spectrum, they're sort of have too little control, right? Let's say somebody who's prone to like addiction and impulsive behavior, whatever.

18:26And their goal is to kind of, it's harder for them actually to gain control. And we work with them to try to gain more of it, right? They have, let's say, compulsive gambling or those kinds of behavioral addictions. Then you have people on the other end of the spectrum that have too much control, right? They're over-controlled, OCD, and then you need to try to help them get less. And then there's just people everywhere amongst that, you know, within that spectrum. So everybody's slightly different in terms of what's harder or, you know, for them to do. But I would say in general, if you take a person who's a kind of, let's say a type A person, you know, they're CEO of a company or whatever.

19:00They're very successful in their career. So they're very good at control, but they have difficulty letting go. and you kind of have to train your brain and practice like you do any skill set. And, you know, I talk about in the TED Talk, these four different ways of practicing. One is to practice micro letting go, like doing it in little ways, you know, like take a different route home or, you know, let someone else choose a restaurant and try to practice tiny little letting go, you know, out your day, taking these micro risks, and then also sitting with the discomfort. So it might feel uncomfortable at first, like people don't like uncertainty, right?

19:40As people who tend to be on the more control side, right? So you're letting go of the reins a little bit and you're sitting with the discomfort until it passes. And, you know, learning that discomfort isn't danger, you know, it's okay. Like your brain needs to actually learn because it's again, one thing to be cognitive of something like, oh, yes, I know it's good. Or let's say, you know, somebody's afraid to take the elevator, right? Okay, I know there's nothing really bad, but yet you still feel that something bad could happen. So you actually have to just take the elevator and sit with the discomfort and then your brain learns, oh, look, nothing bad happened.

20:13And then it becomes easier to do it again next time. So you kind of have to train yourself. And then I talk about, you know, doing one thing where you lose track of time. And as my test is like your tea, I have always my tea with me, a cold tea test, Something where you get so absorbed in something where you forget your tea until it turns cold. This cold tea test. And, you know, for me, it's like it could be when I get super absorbed in like reading or writing. But for someone else, it could be, you know, rock climbing or it could be whatever your activity is where you lose track of time and try to gardening, right?

20:47Try to do that more and incorporate that more in your life. Another tip is to let yourself be bored. Because I think boredom, we're always busying ourselves. You go for a walk, but yet you're listening to a podcast and you're always occupying what we call the executive control network of the brain. And I want you to get into this sort of default mode network. And in order to get there, you have to go through sort of the portal of boredom. And so let yourself be bored and eventually your mind will start to wander. And that's a good thing. And you need to build that into your day. So you can do it a little ways, like you're waiting in line for your coffee.

21:22or something. And instead of checking your phone, your emails, just stand there and look around and be bored. Like we used to do in the, you know, 80s and 90s, if you're that old, you know, look out the car window. I used to watch the little drips of the rain, like when they would go on the window and then they would like join up with each other and they would be like racing each other. Like that's how I occupied myself. But it's that very beautiful scene in an indie movie right there. Oh, right there. I mean, come on. Yeah. So, you know, these are some ways to practice letting go so that you can get more comfortable doing it.

21:52Now, some artists, like it's so easy for them to get into these states that they actually have trouble getting out of them. Right. And but depending on where you're on the spectrum, you're going to need different, you know, other people are going to need tricks of the trade to get more control. But these are the ones to kind of let go. So it's it's practicing finding both ends of the spectrum and then finding yourself where you sit in the middle of it on on all of these forms of of boredom and control. I think, you know, you got to find where's your pain point and then like lean into that. And that's sort of usually where that's where the work needs to be done for you.

22:26And like I said, there's no one prescription. Everybody, everybody is a bit different. And it depends on where, you know, where you want to grow. But, but I do think like with letting go, you can do it in healthy ways. Like you don't need drugs or alcohol. Do you like some people just like go straight to that? I'm like, yeah, like look, psychedelics, they, they're an immediate, like shut your brain, the control part off and you get, we can see with neuroimaging, you get this, these unconstrained sort of communication between networks in the brain that are normally constrained. But if you would like that all the time, it'd be like schizophrenia, like you need some constraint, right?

23:00So it's okay to occasionally take, like I said, take the lid off, let there be this sort of chaos in the brain, but then put the lid back on. But you can do it in healthy ways. The brain is sort of equipped to do it on its own without drugs. You don't need drugs. You can, you know, deep meditative states and it's harder to get there through the natural means, but you also don't get, you know, the hangover or addiction. So there's some plus sides too. There's a plus side too. Not that I'm for or anti-drug, you know, whatever, do what you want. But I'm just saying, you know, the brain is a very powerful mechanism to get you there.

23:36We're going to be right back with more from Heather after this quick break.

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26:34Taste the Omaha Steaks difference and never settle for grocery proteins again. Get flavorful, high-quality proteins delivered by visiting OmahaSteaks.com, plus$35 off when you use promo code HUMAN at checkout. That's OmahaSteaks.com, code HUMAN. Terms apply. See site for details. And we're back. Heather, it feels like the perfect scenario to talk about the relationship between control and letting go is giving a TED Talk. So can you talk about how you came to the TED stage and how you balanced those two impulses? You know, as someone who's a science communicator, and I've done a lot of like stage presentations and things like I'm not a I'm not afraid of public speaking.

27:17Right. But this was very nerve wracking for me because of what the amount of what was like a sort of perceived control with it. And but but for me, it started, you know, it started with a conversation with one of the head curators and, you know, it was very much curated in the sense like, yes, you create a script and it's, you have a very small period of time. So you really want to get in a lot of information at times. So that necessitates a script. You don't want to just start rambling. And then, you know, before you know it, whatever, 10, 15 minutes is gone. So the thing that really tripped me up was this idea of having to memorize a script.

27:52Now everyone's like, you don't have to memorize it, whatever. However, I, my advice, I mean, for someone like me, it's almost like you, you have to memorize it so well. I practiced it three times. First, I color-coded it and did all this stuff because that's my learning style. I had to see it visually or whatever. But then I practiced it three times a day, every day, for about two and a half weeks leading up to that. It was just part of my daily routine. It was like ritual. It almost was so much ingrained that I used to do it on my walks. I'd go on daily walks. But what was so interesting is that what I found on stage when I finally went up there, and I was very nervous because just the format and the people in the audience, like, you know, it's not just any audience, right?

28:31And it's just you standing alone on this, you know, big red circle. And it's just, it's not the most natural of situations, let's say. And it feels very high stakes. It feels like this could be the moment that turns my book into a bestseller that changes my life. This is all the opportunities that could happen right here. Look, if I bombed it, like nothing bad would happen. But I felt like if I did really well, it could lead to opportunities. And so it was a chance to do something. But I knew from neuroscience that the only way it was going to go well is I had to let go when I'm on stage. And I'm like, if I become too self-aware right now, I'm going to mess up.

29:08And almost in saying that allowed me to let go even more. But I also found myself because once I turned the filter down a bit, like I threw in some ad libs at my talk, even though I had practiced this talk so much and whatever, and I wasn't going to get every word right. There were just moments that it just, once I turned the filter down, like I just let go and I threw in some ad libs, which I'm sure you'll be able to notice. Yeah. And they're very fun. They connect you to the audience, but then there's also this moment at the very end of your talk that I was curious to ask you about, because it felt like you got genuinely very emotional.

29:42Like maybe there was a moment where you're like almost about to cry and it clearly wasn't like a practiced moment, but it also wasn't necessarily like the words were so, it wasn't like you were telling a story about like a pet that had died or something like that. It wasn't some tragic moment. It was just like you were really present in the moment, even though you had rehearsed this so much that you got to a place where you were almost crying. I knew I had rehearsed it enough. I wasn't that worried that I was going to forget my lines, but I wanted to be fully present and to let go. And so when you let go, you're not controlling your emotions.

30:14You're not controlling like what you might blurt out or whatever, but that's part of that's necessary as part of the process. Almost like why, you know, comedians who were doing improv on stage, like things start to just come out right from their unconscious. You don't know what's going to come. And that's part of it. That's sort of the risk that you take. Listen, beginning of the talk, I was like, I want to get out of here. Like part of my brain was like, I want to run off this stage right now. I don't want to be here. Like I was because you just, it's all the adrenaline and you're kind of terrified.

30:38And as I was nearing the end, I was like, oh my God, like, you know, almost like a relief. Like I did it. But also I was talking about, you know, my fear of death. And, you know, what I've learned is that in order to sort of truly live and be present, it's this acceptance. You have to accept, like, I can't control how long I live. I can't, you know, you have to fully let go and be present. And that's when you start to actually savor every moment of life. And I think that's like, you know, was the lesson that I had learned. And it was so powerful because it was like, this was a moment for me. Here I was on the stage in that moment.

31:19I just felt it all at once of like, this is a moment in my life, like in real time. And it just kind of all came together for me of like, yeah, I don't want to die and all of that and this fear. But like, here I am in this moment doing this thing, which is pretty cool. And I'm almost done. And I did it. And it was just, it was pretty overwhelming for me. I love that. And giving this talk, I think, is a very practical example in your life of a way that you both had control and had to give up control. The other thing that I'm thinking about for myself is when I think about the idea of losing control and my desire for control, a lot of what comes up for me personally has to do with other people.

32:03So relationships, being a parent, being in a romantic relationship, working with people. So often my desire for control is that I wish I could make other people do things in exactly the way that I want them to do things that would be easiest for me. And having to get comfortable with the idea that that's not what any relationship will ever look like. It's just a perfect frictionless smoothness. And actually that is the beauty of them is that I get challenged in ways that make me grow and make me see the world differently and that are beautiful. Like so much of what I value about my relationships is exactly that inability to control another person.

32:44So how do we accept some of the lack of control in our relationships with other people? In my book, I have a whole section on love and, you know, what's happening in the brain and how that relates to our relationships. But to truly love, you have to let go and you have to take a risk. First of all, you have to be vulnerable. You have to allow yourself to be fully in love. You have to have the risk of being really badly hurt. But if you don't open yourself up fully to that vulnerability, you won't actually ever fully feel that connection and that love. So it's a very scary thing. And I see this a lot of patients too.

33:25A lot of people come to therapy. It's like a lot of relationship issues. It's like, look, the person is who they are. You're not going to change them. People can change within certain boundaries, right? But if you're a highly anxious person, I can maybe get you to be slightly less anxious, but you're never going to be the most relaxed person in the room. It's just not in your nature, right? So like, yes, people can change within limits, but don't expect your like very messy, messy partner to suddenly become a neat freak. Like you can get them to maybe clean up a bit, but expect that they're still going to like leave their clothes on the ground.

33:58And there's an acceptance and also an appreciation of you. Each individual is unique. Each person sees the world through their own perception box. This podcast I do is called the Science of Perception Box, but it's how we all see the world through our own lens. And when you accept that somebody else, they just don't see the world the way you do. And your whole job is to try to figure out ways to connect and interact and be together as a couple, given that you are so different. and instead of trying to make that person more like you or behave in more in ways that you would like, say, that's who they are.

34:33How am I gonna figure out how to interact with them given who they are and given who I am? And then it's like liberating because you're not trying to control anyone. You're just trying to find what can I do to make this work versus what can I make them do to make this work? It also feels like when a relationship of any kind isn't working, having less of this idea that it's all in your control is a way to not feel guilty or ashamed of not being able to make every single relationship work in exactly the way that you think it maybe should work. So like, maybe you're not going to be friends forever.

35:08Maybe this isn't the romantic relationship for you. It's not actually in your control. You know, when people, I do couples therapy too, which is just always interesting. They often come and they want me to be the sort of referee and determine like who's right and who's wrong. And it's like, nobody's right and nobody's wrong. It's are you too compatible or not, given who you are? It's not like that person needs to change, this person did something wrong. It's just there's so much incompatibility that it's just there's so much friction. You just think, you know what, it's not going to work. There's the good, you know, the bad outweighs the good.

35:39Then it's okay to step walk away and move on. You don't have to force every relationship into working. And it's okay to let things go if they're not servicing you in a way that's like, you know, helping fulfill your life. And that's to say that every relationship has to be about, you know, serving you. But but it is to say that, like, if it's becoming more arguing, then you actually are having good times together, then maybe it's OK to let it go. We've talked about your kind of four tips of ways to practice letting go. So I wonder if there are some kind of smaller interventions that we might have if we feel ourselves really not wanting to lose control, if we're really in that, like, I'm gripping so tightly and I shouldn't be gripping.

36:24What can you do in that moment to kind of let go? You have to find like a little opening in the door, right? Just something, like whatever you can tolerate. So, you know, let's say you have a child who's struggling with perfectionism. I'll say like, like purposely just, just, you know, spell a word wrong and sit with it or, you know, color outside the line. Like it can be the simplest thing as much as you can tolerate. I often say to people, like you have a scale of one to 10 in terms of like uncomfortableness or feeling anxious about something. Okay. 10 is like the absolute worst thing, right?

36:58One is like no anxiety. I'll say, do something where you can, it's like, like a four for you, a four or five for you on the sort of, you know, discomfort scale and sit with it and do it over and over again until eventually your brain habituates and it goes down to a two or a three and then do the next thing on the scale. So whatever it is for you, maybe it's like, you know, symmetry. And I'm like, okay, you just tie the one shoe with one tie and the other shoe, you do it with a double knot. And then you sit with that for the day or something, whatever you can tolerate where it's not overwhelming for you, but it's like a four or five on a discomfort scale.

37:33So that that's, you know, can vary between people. This episode is sponsored by Kohler Smart Toilets. The objects we interact with most are often the ones we notice least. Kohler's smart toilet challenges that assumption. What if the most overlooked space in your home could become the most considered? Their veil smart toilet is a sculptural silhouette that isn't just intentional. It's a philosophy that design changes everything. The Kohler Veil Smart Toilet is sleek, with a rounded shape that's more like architecture than just plumbing. And it goes beyond looks. The touchscreen controls and customizable cleansing features offer a level of comfort and cleanliness that exceed expectations.

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40:21something that's fun about those examples to me too is i think if we have the frame of how we're seeing those as like this is how it's supposed to be and this is the right way in the wrong way and i'm doing it the wrong way it feels scary or uncomfortable for a lot of people um but if you switch the way you're viewing it and you view it as fun or play or a game right like what's the wildest difference I can create between how my left shoe and my right shoe are tied. If it's not just like a little bit different, but if it's as truly as far as you can go, all of a sudden that heightened version feels playful and funny and often provokes laughter, which I think is a state that when you're laughing and playing like that, you don't feel that fear or that judgment of yourself or judgment from others.

41:05And it's a different way of viewing it. Yeah. And I think, you know, humor is one of the, we call it the more sophisticated defense mechanisms in a way of like dealing with uncomfortable feelings. Humor is a good way to deal with it and to lighten it a bit. I also do it as for certain people, especially perfectionists, as a challenge. I'm like, your assignment is to color outside the lines. And if you don't, like you get, you fail. Like you get an F, right? So you got to kind of like flip the narrative. and like, I'm like, I'm the teacher. This is your assignment. You need to like do well this week in messing up, right?

41:42And so you can kind of like flip the narrative and they almost like are excited about it. It's like a challenge, right? They're like, oh my God, I did it. Like I didn't, you know, I handed in the paper and I let the grammar mistake sit there. And the other thing is that once you train yourself with these little things, when the bigger things happen in life that are out of your control truly, you're better equipped to deal with it. It's like you're inoculating yourself, you're preparing your brain. And then ultimately, like for a lot of people, sometimes like the worst case scenario for them is like, oh my God, what if I lose my job?

42:14Or what if I, you know, like, and that's like where the fear is stemming from. And then sometimes when the worst thing actually happens and it's not so bad, they're like, wow, now I feel like I can deal with a lot of other things. And a lot of that fear and anxiety subsides. So, you know, you have to think about micro letting go is kind of like preparing yourself or the bigger things that you can't control or the death of a loved one or whatever, you know, things that are gonna inevitably happen because that's part of life. So the more you practice the letting go, the more able you're equipped to handle things when they happen and you truly don't have control.

42:44I feel like that's directly relevant to why you're so in favor of people practicing boredom too is because we get so many messages, especially, you know, living in like a hyperproductive capitalist society that like every time should be, every instant should be used for something. It should be productive. You should be working towards something. And just using your time to do nothing, to truly be bored, to allow yourself comfort with not having a productive goal or a productive output, that builds that same muscle in the way where then, when we are not having things go our way, we can have a little bit more comfort with that.

43:24Is that why you want people to practice boredom? you know, again, it's to tolerate also, you know, your own thoughts. Like a lot of time when something bad happens, whatever, you get these negative thoughts and then people distract themselves. And then maybe they turn to, you know, drugs and alcohol or, you know, shoplifting or whatever, you know, negative behavior, things to quiet the thoughts. But if you can practice, because being bored really means don't start filling your brain with other things to distract yourself. Let your thoughts flow freely and accept whatever comes through it. It's a meditative kind of practice in a way of like whatever thoughts come up, let them come up, let them pass.

44:03You don't have to kind of attach to them. But when you're constantly distracting yourself, you're not training your brain how to do that. And I even say it with my kids, like, you know, they're like, but you know, long car, but I'm bored. Like, can I have something? Like, so be bored. Good. I'm like, I want you to be bored. And, you know, practice that at an early age so that you can tolerate the sort of quote unquote, you know, distress of that. Because ultimately what happens is your brain passes through the uncomfortableness and then it gets to this, it starts self-generating stuff. It starts to get creative.

44:34You know, so the kid's complaining for a little bit and then after a while they're like, all right, let's, they come up with some creative game to play, like a talking game, right? And so you got to get through a little of the difficult patch to get to the good stuff. But it's also training to how to tolerate when negative thoughts come up and not turn to distractions. And I do that, again, with patients. I'll assign them, like, I want you to go for a walk today, like a nature walk, or notice the trees, and don't have your headphones in. Don't even be listening to music. Just be with whatever's around you and notice the things around you.

45:09Here's a question that comes from one of the producers on our show, Noor. And I feel like fewer people experience boredom now than maybe they used to. They're on their phones, they're listening to podcasts or music or et cetera. Do you think that that has larger impacts on our mental state as a society? Or is that kind of thinking overblown? Basically, are we all more mentally ill now? Look, I think it is certainly having societal impacts. Our attention spans are shortening, right? And we're having like people reading books, like that's going down, right? Long form formats, like people's attention is really shrinking.

45:47I think that has all sorts of knock-on effects. But really, ultimately, the larger picture is that our brains were like these caveman brains in a modern world. And our brains evolved to be social and to have real face-to-face human interactions. And the research shows that it's not just about being on screens or whatever, listening, you know, it's a podcast, whatever. It's about that you're doing that instead of the social interaction, looking at people face-to-face, learning how to, you know, social cues and emotional regulation and all of that. And so it's what we're missing. And researchers that when you give people like technology breaks, they actually, their social skills increase because they're now getting the exposure for that.

46:32So it's recoverable to an extent. and I think we really need to be cognizant, especially of younger kids or developing brains of building in time for just pure, like for play, you know, go out and play, interact with each other in real time, no screens, no audio, whatever, because that's what it is to be human and that's what our brains and bodies were built to do. So I do think that, you know, whether mental health issues are going up because of, you know, modern technology, you know, it's a larger question, But I do think the way to counteract that is to build in time for just play and, you know, being off screens and being off technology and being human.

47:13Well, Heather, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. I'm always really struck by the fact that you are such an impressive and serious scientist and clinician, but also so open and creative and vulnerable and very human in your work, too. You have these two sides that are very well and uniquely married in you. So it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much. It's great to talk to you too. And I really enjoyed this. Thank you.

47:44That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to our guest, Heather Berlin. You can pre-order her new book, The Fine Art of Losing Control, right now. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can also buy my new book, Humor Me. How Laughing More can make you present, creative, connected, and happy. You can find out more about my live show dates and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to be a better human is tightly controlled by a group of type A overachievers. On the TED side, we've got Daniela Balorezzo, Ban Ban Chang, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Lainey Lott, Tansika Sungmanivong, Antonia Leigh, and Joseph Debrine.

48:18Ryan Lash edited every single frame of this video, and Mateus Salas made sure all factual assertions held up to scrutiny. On the PRX side, though, we got some chill, laid back, free spirits of audio. I'm talking about Morgan Flannery, Nora Gill, Patrick Grant and Jocelyn Gonzalez, the Joss. Thanks to you for listening. You are the ones who are really in control. Please send this episode to someone who you think would enjoy it. We'll be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care. Thanks for listening and have a great week.

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