Brain Doctor: Why You Can't Stop Worrying Even When Nothing Is Wrong

26:19And rumination is the thought loops, right? It's all the negative cycles that we can tell ourselves and that we can have that like downward spiral of thoughts. So this is sort of the neuroscience of like a thousand things that you've heard, like a thousand different fields talk about this. Yeah. thousands of number I just made up, but like so many, you know, whether it's yoga or meditation or therapy or just like well-being and all sorts of things, you know, so many things say just, you know, focus on being in the present. And, you know, when you put your attention in the present and actually be there, it turns down all the stories, literally turns down the network for all the stories.

26:56So it's a really healthy thing to understand that about the brain. and the two are in a seesaw. And the more you practice noticing which one you're in and shifting, the more dexterity you get with that. And that's essentially what mindfulness practice is. Well, I guess that's more regulation, right? You get with it. But you also, I guess, with that as well, you get kind of more self-awareness. Knowing which state you're in, like direct experience or narrative, knowing which one you're in is a form of self-awareness. You've got to be looking inside yourself. You've got to be paying attention. It's called interoception as opposed to perception, right?

27:33Such a beautiful word, interoception, like looking inside. So when you're looking inside and you're paying attention to which one of these your brain is in, just that in itself starts to calm the nervous system. But when you shift to direct experience by tasting or smelling or something, when you shift to direct experience, it really calms the nervous system, the heart rate, improves the positive emotions, improves the immune system in that moment. it really helps to rebalance you. It's one of the best self-regulation strategies. It'll work at level one threat. It'll work at level two threat. It probably won't work at level three threat because you sort of need to get back to a bit of a baseline to do it.

28:13But I think of it as a mindful moment as you're just like suddenly bringing your attention into the present and it really, really helps with regulating strong emotions. So we'll go right back to where we started. What's the one thing I know about how humans function is that sort of everything is about are we in a toward or away state and everything kind of builds off that and a little bit of the away state or the threat state is fine. But you want to basically all good creative work, all good collaboration, all good kind of work that we do as well as longevity and well-being and even good gut health and digestion is going to come from being primarily in a toward state and now and then in a level one threat and not much more than that very often.

28:54I have one small ask while you're watching this show. If you're enjoying it, please hit subscribe on whichever platform you're listening on. This really, really helps the show more than you can realize. It helps people that have never listened to the show before come across it and see all the incredible episodes that we have with the amazing guests. So if it is one small favor today, if you're not already a subscriber, please do subscribe. Well, you said something interesting at the beginning, which is you had this big insight when you were in a pool. and I always think about people having these sudden insights when they're in a shower and I feel like it just relates to what you said because I guess when you're in a shower you're feeling the water on yourself you're probably like more connected to a sensation that's happening is that why we just get these kind of like epiphanies or these like ideas of creativity when we're in that moment and you had one when I mean it was in water is this anything to do with water or is it giving ourselves space like what is it there's a funny I'm laughing because I'm remembering this funny cartoon I used to show because I've been studying this question for years and I wondered that as well when I first started down this path like 22, 23 years ago, I started kind of asking these questions.

30:01And there's a funny cartoon of someone saying, you know, I seem to have all these great ideas in the shower. So I've put a shower into my office in the, you know, at work. And it turns out not to be the water. So I kind of got obsessed about this question. It's a long story, but one of the first things I did sort of in this phase of my career, so I started doing what I'm doing like 28 years ago, right? And one of the first things that I did was I basically worked out how I wanted to be coached, right? So I was on a long sabbatical and somehow I got the idea of I wanted to know how to be coached better.

30:42And for a year, I sat down with a few people and we sort of deconstructed what happened when someone was actually helpful. And that turned into a coaching program in 1998, literally, I started launching this coaching program based on a year or two as research. And that's like evolved. We've now trained 25 ,000 coaches in like 24 countries. But the basic model was I realized that when you coach people, there was an active ingredient that was very, very necessary in the process. And that was a moment of insight. And usually, unfortunately, the coach was having moments of insight, which didn't help at all, got in the way, because the coach was like asking questions and then having this great answer.

31:27And it was an unhelpful side effect, very unhelpful. You actually need the person being coached to have an insight. And I actually sort of stumbled on by literally observing workshops over and over that when someone has an insight the whole the whole game changes right now you don't have to talk them into an action you don't have to like they're motivated right and I got really really interested in the experience of insight this was like literally 1998 to 2001 something and I um I started studying it and I basically went interviewed all the scientists who were studying this at the time and um spent a lot of time trying to kind of unpack what was really happening.

32:06And it turns out there's a very, very clear mechanism involved. And when you understand it, you reorganize your life around it. It's really helpful. I'm like gripping on the table now. It's incredibly simple. Every book you've read, this is a great book I hear. Congratulations on the Sunday Times yesterday. Thank you. And I remember when I first met you that you told me about this. I was like, hell yes, that's exactly right. We should talk about that sometime. And here we are. We'll get to that. But every single book that you've read, good or bad, stays in your brain, right? But also every single conversation you've had, every problem you've solved, every TV show, every song that you've heard, you know, more than once.

32:46Like you hear a song two or three times, it's really in your brain forever, right? Just two or three times. So everything's stored. But what happens is when you don't use something again, the brain keeps it, but it recycles a lot of the networks. Right. This is why, like, if you played an instrument when you were like seven, but never picked it up again, if you pick it up again 30 years later, you're not at the very beginning. You still have some things. It's just like skiing as a kid. Yeah, exactly. Kids that can ski. I never skied as a child. And I can see friends that haven't skied in 20 years and you put them on skis and I'm like, you are really good.

33:17Same as riding a bicycle. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. People that can ride bicycles when they're children and then you might not ride a bicycle for 10 years, but you can get back on and ride it again. I don't know why they call it muscle memory because it's brain memory. But anyway, it's in the basal ganglia, which is a deep network that stores motor functions and patterns and all this stuff. But all this stuff is in there. Like think about that. Every conversation, every problem you've solved, every TV show, every CSI, like all that stuff is there. But because you don't use a lot of it, the brain recycles the neurons.

33:44So something like, say, a book you read, you know, you read this right now and really, you know, read it, you'll create billions, if not trillions, of networks in your brain for all the ideas in there. But in 20 years, if you don't pick up that book again, that might be sort of turned down to just like 100 neurons from billions or trillions, but it'll still be there. The basic idea will still be there. But anyway, there's a ridiculous amount of intelligence in your brain as an adult. And the insight phenomena is basically pretty much every question that we ever ask ourselves, there is an answer in there, but it's either in a problem we solved once or a TV show or a book we read or a combination of all the books we read or like something we heard, right?

34:31So the answers are almost always in there. But the problem is they're very small numbers of neurons speaking to each other. So the solution might be literally 100 neurons in conversation. But everyday thought is like might be a billion neurons in conversation. Like when you're like, especially when you're busy and you're juggling 25 things, you've got a lot of brain activity going on. So what happens is basically anything that quietens your brain makes it more likely to hear these quiet signals. So these distant memories are like a quiet cell phone at a loud party. So anything that helps you turn down the party brings up the chance of the signals.

35:16And these are electrical signals. They're dopamine spikes as well. They've seen them as dopamine spikes. But they're essentially a memory network that's activated by the search you're doing. And you just don't hear the answer until you quiet things down. Now, it turns out what quiets the things down, we studied this exactly, wrote a whole paper on it. What quiets the things down is basically anything that makes the brain quieter. One of those things is literally not taking in visual data, he says as he closes his eyes. When I close my eyes, there's an amazing amount of information I'm no longer processing.

35:51Like your hair just like fell right there. My brain saw that. And the information in that, if I tried to encode that in a computer, just that little bit of hair moving, it's like a lot of information. So your brain, when your eyes are open, there's a ton of information that means your brain's noisy. All these neurons are firing, like registering all the information visually. Whereas when you're in the shower, or in my case, the bottom of a swimming pool, or exercising somewhere you don't have to pay a lot of attention, you can kind of check out a little bit, you'll see people's eyes go up. They go internal.

36:28And they stop taking in visual information. And often they stop taking in audio information. When you ask someone a hard question, you'll see them not hearing you when you ask something else. You'll ask them a question and they'll be processing. they'll be like oh I'm processing then you say something else they're like what so they stopped hearing and seeing well when I interviewed Brian Johnson for the first time it was the weirdest experience of my life I'll tell you why this was four years three four years ago I asked him a question and honestly like a filing cabinet he looked at me and then he went and I was worried of what was happening but it was like a filing system that he's like going through his brain and then he just like came out with this like flawless answer weird but okay but but it's true I mean what he's doing is looking inside himself which is where you know there's a huge amount of information now I understand yeah yeah no it's all there but so so essentially we we we shut down visually so that we and order you know audio so that we can basically make the brain quieter right so so the second thing is we we don't uh we have to approach the question in a slightly positive way like when we're trying to have an insight we if we say like why is this a problem you won't have many insights because threat activates lots of the brain right whereas reward doesn't activate as much so when we're like why is this a problem all the the limbic system fires up gets really noisy which makes it hard to hear quiet signals so we um uh you have to remind me i have to come back to the two uh reminds me i have to come back to the two types of reappraisal that are really fun, fun, fun things.

38:04But anyway, when you're quiet, when you're not actively thinking and you're internally focused and you're slightly positive and you're not working directly on the problem, but you're kind of playing with it, what happens is you get into a brain state that radically increases insight. And so it's called mind wandering. It's basically doing any repetitive task that doesn't tax you. So you don't need to use working memory. but it kind of takes just enough attention that your brain quiets down. So it could be repetitive, like it could be knitting. It could be, you know, being in the shower is a really, really, really common one.

38:43That's the most common experience where people have insights in the shower. It could just be waking up in the morning. Your brain's not quite there yet. Things just come to you because it's quiet. Biggest tip I can give you, Sarah Ann, is don't look at your phone until after your shower in the morning. Oh, that's so hard. I know this. Why do I find it so difficult? It's really hard. It's really hard because the uncertainty, like uncertainty is a pain response. I sleep with my phone next to me and I know that's the worst thing I can do. We're going to have words about this. I know. And I know all of this.

39:12Just put it across the room. That's the annoying thing though, setting an alarm and it's across the room. It's like, it's called an alarm clock. I know. But anyway, so insights come from a quiet brain because they're basically quiet signals that need to break through. and you know at the bottom of a swimming pool I'd been working on this question I was in the Philippines and I'd been working on this question of like what what is there a pattern in the strongest threats or rewards that we all experience I'd been seeing all these studies come out about you know social pain and all this stuff I mentioned earlier and what happened was I'd got to this hotel in the Philippines this was literally I think 2000 2003 uh anyway I um there's this giant tarpaulin like next to the front door and this is like a five-star hotel I'm there to see a client and uh I asked them at the desk I like what's what happened here are you guys doing some renovations or something they're like oh it's really nothing just their army tank came through a few weeks ago um there was a bit of a thing but it's all gone now it's all fine now I was like are you sure it's all fine now should I be concerned they're like oh no it was fine there was a bit of a coup because they felt really treated unfairly by the government and there was a bit of a rising up and they they did kind of come through the hotel with a tank because there were politicians here but it's all been settled now they're back in the barracks everyone's fine it was just a big big fairness issue anyway I'd heard that that morning and I was in the bottom of a swimming pool like a few hours later and I just like was just enjoying like the water and being quiet.

40:48And my brain was quiet enough that it saw a pattern. And I'd been playing with this model for like three years at this point. Actually, it must have been 2006 when this happened. It was 2006. I'd been playing with this model. It was cars. Certainty was one of the things, right? There was these sort of four domains that I'd been playing with. And it had been sort of really bugging me. I'd like literally been bugging me for three years. and I'd had hundreds of hours of conversations with scientists at this point. And I sort of had C-A-R-S. It was going to be arcs or SCAR or cars or something. And I was at the bottom of the swimming pool and suddenly the F hit me, like just like a ton of bricks.

41:33I had this huge blinding insight that I was missing fairness. And when I added the F, suddenly the whole framework became SCARF, S-C-A-R-F. And I went, wow, that's a really powerful word. I raced back to my computer and sort of looked up if anything was there. It was like a completely, you know, obviously scarves people wear. But scarf became like the five things that the brain actually obsesses about all the time. So what are those five things? Status. So fairness is one, right? Fairness is the F. So each one of these is like there's anywhere from hundreds to thousands of studies on each one of these.

42:10It's not something I made up. It's a summary. I mean, I made up the framework, but it's a summary of existing research that's really, really solid. It's a little bit like a meta-analysis. It is a meta-analysis. Bodying and all this research and kind of seeing like, you know, what's causation, association, you're kind of bringing it together. It's a synthesis. It's a synthesis and meta-analysis into a sticky, memorable framework. And as we'll talk about, all frameworks are wrong, all models are wrong, some are useful. But this just happens to be really useful for a couple of reasons. But the S is for status.

42:37so we could have a two-hour conversation about the brain and status but just let's just say like social status social status but it's socio metric which is you compared to others around you or socio economic but the brain detects it on every axis like it detects status difference in height in dress in attractiveness in humor ability in like anything and low status is a threat response. And basically, I never said this before, threat, like pound for pound or, you know, kilo for kilo, threat is stronger than reward, right? So you see why negative comments are more stronger. It's why negative comment, right?

43:16You get one negative comment, right? On a book review and like it's all you can think about, right? Yeah. 13 positive comments and you hardly, you know, you feel slightly good, but one negative comment, it really, really, really jumps out, right? Yeah. And so basically negative status, like, you know, feeling less intelligent than someone else is quite a strong threat response or even just less important, like meeting with your boss, right, their higher status, your lower status. So just being with a higher status person puts you in a threat state, usually a slight threat state, unless you meet a much higher status person.

43:49Like, you know, the queen's favorite question to people was, you know, have you come far? Because just no one could think at all when they met her. You know, rest in peace. Yeah, people are in such a strong threat response, meeting someone so high status in their mind that they just had no prefrontal resources. Wow. So status is actually really important. It's a real thing. It's how we kind of identify in society. You can't take it out. People have tried, but there's multiple brain regions detect the status differential between you and everyone you speak to and act accordingly. And it's a really, really big part of everything that we do.

44:24And, you know, when you say to someone, can I give you some feedback, they get a huge status threat, like, and they, like, big threat response, right, because it's status. And there's a whole big, big, big body of research. Some of that's in my book, Your Brain at Work, but also my new book. But status is a very, very big part of what drives behavior. The C is for certainty. So a little bit of certainty is a reward, but a little bit of uncertainty is a strong threat, right? And uncertainty is actually stronger than an actual threat in a lot of situations so you know uncertainty like anxiety as well yeah anxiety is linked to that um i'll give you the i'll give you the model sort of briefly because there's a lot to say about each one and then we can dig in where you want but a is for autonomy which is feeling in control feeling like you're making the choices um you're an autonomy and fairness person i spotted it straight away right um you like probably like yeah like they're close together But fairness is sort of a close second for you.

45:22I can spot people's profiles really fast. Oh, wow. So A is for autonomy. R is for relatedness, which is basically about having things in common with someone or even better shared goals with someone. So we have relatedness because we're both trying to do our best to improve the world in similar ways. We're both from the Commonwealth. We've got different ways that we have relatedness. We don't have competing goals. If we discovered we were competing for something, it would be like, okay, maybe I'm not going to tell you as much, right? So relatedness is really anchored on shared goals with someone.

45:55So much interesting and scary research, like when someone is in your out group as opposed to in group. So relatedness is, you know, out group or in group. When someone's in your out group, you're actually motivated when they lose more than when you win. Wow. Yeah, yeah. It's really scary. So people who are different to you, you get really, really motivated by them being unsuccessful. And it's the schadenfreude effect. There's studies directly reading the brain on this in all sorts of different studies. So you like it when someone fails? You like it when someone fails. You won't admit it, but someone who's in your out group, someone with a competing goal to you.

46:32It could be a sports team. It could be a competitor at work. It could be someone you just decided you don't like, but someone you've decided you have competing goals with. So they're in what's called your out group, right? When an in-group member wins, you're motivated, you're excited. When an in-group member loses, you're threatened, right? When an out-group member wins, you're threatened. And when an out-group member loses, you're even more excited than when an in-group member wins. Right. It actually explains a lot, right? I mean, there's a lot to this so much, so I wrote a whole book on it.

47:03So then the F is for fairness. So status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness. So I published this in 2008. It's got a couple of thousand academic citations now, and it's used in organizations. You know, we teach it in organizations as a foundation of basically why people do what they do. It's kind of the primary colors of motivation, but also of psychological safety and belonging and inclusion. And it's the primary colors of many things to do with sort of how we interact. So all of that came to me, or the framework finally came to me the bottom of a swimming pool having what I call a level five insight.

47:39So I created a scale for the strength of insight called the Eureka scale. And this was definitely a level five insight. A level five insight changes your life, like changes how you see the whole world. Wow. I feel like I had that with this when I kind of finally, after eight years, got to the point of exactly what it was for me where I was funneling, funneling, funneling self compassion, which is such a cringe word in the UK was this Eureka moment where I was like, Oh my gosh, that's it. Amazing. Yeah. And when you have that big moment, you can't, like, you have aftershocks. Like, it keeps coming back.

48:10It's like you remember it forever. It's like, yeah, that's a level five. A level five, like, changes how you see the world. And it's just like you can't avoid it. You have to do something about it. You have to do it. Whereas a level four is, like, motivated. You remember it for months or years, but it's not life-changing. But level four, if you're a trainer or author or screenwriter or, you know, poet or artist of any sort, You're trying to give people level four insights that just basically change how they see the world. So how can you, so you were like, you're an R and F. How can you see this in people?

48:42I don't really know. I haven't really unpacked it, but I do it with, I can see it in a whole group sometimes, which is really spooky. So I'll quite often present to like a workshop for an hour or something. And I'll write down on a note what I think the whole group's profile is, like what the highest scarf domain is for people. and I'm most of the time really right. I don't know. It's just a sense. So if you're an F, you're more driven to wanting to be fairness. If you're an S, you're more driven towards status. Yeah. R was what? Relatedness. Relatedness. Okay, yeah, if you relate and have a, okay, interesting.

49:15You can definitely sort of see where people's attention is. Like if you're watching someone, if their attention is on really themselves and trying to look good, that's status. If they're on trying to work out everything, that's certainty. If they're trying to like stay in charge, right? It's autonomy. If they're caring about everyone else, and trying to bring everyone together, that's relatedness. And if they're caring about how everyone's feeling and sort of, you know, fairness, you can sort of see. So you can really hear it in people's language pretty quickly. We created an AI in my day job.

49:43We created an AI that can really, really quickly in a few minutes detect your, what we call scarf profile and also the scarf profile of anyone you're talking to and tell you how to motivate them better and all this kind of stuff. Wow. Which is a whole thing, yeah. I'm just thinking about how good that will be when you're meeting a partner. Very helpful. Think about where you are with someone. Yeah, often partnerships don't work because you've got like scarf conflicts. Like, you know, two status people is not great. No. You can imagine. Two people that are obsessed with status is not great. No, no, no.

50:18I think there's another term for that, but we won't go into that. Okay, so you mentioned to me before I sat down, I said, and we kind of spoke a little bit about it, but, you know, I said, you know, how do you just keep going? And I've always been told that these like 90 minute blocks of work. So Oliver Berkman came on here and he said to me when I was writing my book, only do 90 minute blocks of work because your brain kind of can't concentrate after that. And it's really important that you give yourself space, which is interesting because that, I guess, stuck in my brain as 90 minutes. And so I kind of look at the clock and go, yeah, okay, maybe this isn't going to be the best.

50:56But you've made me rethink about it a little bit differently now sitting here. And you said, actually, it might be 15 minutes or it might be a couple of hours. So how can you focus and sustain your focus when you really need to? So maybe it's those deadlines or you've got a few crazy weeks coming up. How do you sustain good brain energy and focus? Yeah, no, it's a great question. So I wrote four books in 10 years. and gosh it took me eight years to write one it took well it's taken me the last it's taken me the last 10 years or more to write the next one because I was so exhausted but um but almost the entire four books were written on a long flight between Sydney and New York right so I'm Australian originally if you haven't worked that out yet and uh I think I moved to New York 16 years ago but before that for literally seven years I was traveling back and forward and literally four eight times a year between New York and Sydney, trying to get the business going, trying to kind of break out into something.

51:54And most of the books were written on this really super long flight. And what I found is I could focus for like 12 hour blocks if I do it right, even on an airplane. And more, like out of 24 hours, because it was 24 hours door to door, I could do like 15 to 18 really high quality focus hours. And I would just break the back of writing. And I I found if I wasn't flying for a while, I just like was – it's like it's not writer's block. It's airport block. I'm just – I'm not like – I can't focus. I just found you could focus because think about it. People bring you food. Distractions are gone. There's no distraction.

52:31There's no Wi-Fi. Still not great Wi-Fi, so it's okay, right? No distraction. People bring you food. There's a bathroom right there, and if you need to nap, you can. And this was an economy most of the time, but if you need to nap, you can. You just shut your eyes, right? And just no one's going to disturb you. So you can really go deep into your brain. But what I found is, of course, after an hour or two, you get really tired. Now, the 90 minutes is a reasonable thing to say, but for some people, it might be 45 or 50. And for some people, it might be, you know, two or three hours. And it'll also depend, like, if you get up at 5 a.m., have a good cup of coffee, a bit of fruit, you might be able to do two and a half hours of amazing work, and you shouldn't stop, right?

53:09If your brain's quiet, especially if it's like a Monday after a restful weekend, you might be able to do hours of focus it's more about noticing when you need to stop noticing when you're just no longer really able to focus as opposed to like 90 minutes 90 minutes but as a general guide it's okay what's really about and this is in the first part of your brain at work is i unpacked in that book the mechanisms of thinking which is working memory right i remember mentioned working memory before so the mechanisms of working memory there's amazing scientists at Yale in the States, Amy Arnston is her name.

53:47And she basically unpacked how working memory works. And it involves getting just the right amounts of dopamine, we mentioned, and norepinephrine, which is brain adrenaline. So one of those is alertness, dopamine, and one of those is, sorry, alertness is norepinephrine. Right. And the other is interest, which is dopamine. Right. So it's getting quite good amounts of alertness and interest, right, to actually billions of points across the brain just to hold a thought, right? So to hold any sort of thought involves literally, you know, putting the right amount of these chemicals for billions of points right across the brain.

54:24And so you need pretty good amounts of these two things. The problem is when you first wake up, you don't have much of either. You're like groggy. You can't really think straight yet, right? So you don't have much alertness, not much interest yet, right? and then what happens sometimes we have too much of one or the other like you go to the TED conference you've got way too much dopamine from way too many amazing ideas you're like idea overwhelm too much dopamine and then you can go into shutdown I went to shut down a little bit at TED because also I felt like I was missing out if I wasn't going and then I was going and not kind of taking everything I was just sitting there at the end Richard Dawkins was speaking and I was like I don't know what he's saying but it becomes blah blah blah at some point yeah it's dopamine overload So sometimes we have too much dopamine.

55:10But what we mostly have is too much adrenaline, too much norepinephrine, which kicks in with threat response of any kind, and not enough dopamine. So you want to have quite good amounts of both but not too much. But you need quite good amounts. It's a little bit individual, so some people need lots of both to even be out of focus at all. Are we not in dopamine overload right now because of our phones and all of the distractions? We're more in noradrenaline overload. Really? Because everyone talks about dopamine land and dopamine overload and all of that type of stuff with our phones and the constant, instant reward.

55:45But a lot of the stories we're seeing are threat producing. So it's the threat response from the social media that we're seeing as opposed to the social media. But what about the constant scrolling? What if you're scrolling? Both of these things are activating dopamine too much, depending on what you're scrolling, right? Yeah. If you're scrolling actually interesting, amazing things and you scroll, scroll, scroll, you're getting dopamine overload. But a lot of the time you're getting dopamine and norepinephrine overload because these things are making you anxious, right? So you're basically getting too much of both and you're getting to level two threat.

56:19See how there's a whole language starting to form, right? Yeah. So all these pieces, these chunks that I'm telling you, we call neurointelligence, right? So learning about three levels of threat, learning about like working memory, dopamine, all this. This is neurointelligence. And we think this is essential for managing yourself in today's world is neurointelligence, right? So basically, to get back to your question, what I worked out was that when I'm on a long flight, I can work for say an hour, hour and a half. Um, and if I watch something that raises my adrenaline, I'm wrecked for the rest of the flight.

56:53So if I watch a scary movie and all movies are scary, they try to get you because basically when you're in a threat state, you shut out what's on the side and you, you pay attention. Right. So, so all, most movies are drama, action, whatever. They try to like create a threat response in you to keep you focused. Um, and, you know, things that don't do that are kind of boring to, you know, to people, right? So, so what I would find is if I watched a movie, I would have to finish the movie, and I would be exhausted and not be able to write much more, and I realized, oh, there's enough, like, you know, brain adrenaline and just being in an airplane.

57:28I probably need to just keep my dopamine up. I probably need to keep it interesting, and I realized, like, oh, okay, so I've got to do something interesting and novel. And so we would search for standup comedy, right? And I would watch, you know, chunks of standup comedy for like five to 10 minutes as my brain refresh, right? And I would do like an hour, hour and a half, and then do 10 minutes for standup comedy, and then an hour, hour and a half, and another 10 minutes. And now it's time to eat something. And while I'm eating something, I'm doing more standup comedy, right? Because it's resting for my brain it's funny it's not cortisol and then i would get back to it and then i do a few rounds of that then it's time for a nap nap is a fantastic reset is a fantastic reset it resets the dopamine and norepinephrine really nicely back to it so it'll bring you down in a good way um and so i learned to nap as well short naps um i can nap on a floor anywhere what about people can't nap because i meet people where they're like so i'm the person that can get on a plane and go and just pass out very, very quickly.

58:30Yeah, me too, yeah. I don't know how I've managed to train myself to do that, but I have. Survival, you had to. Survival. Probably had to, yeah. Well, I think it was probably from my modeling days before when I was on plane to plane to plane to plane to plane, and I never knew where I was sleeping, where I was going. So I just learned to sleep when I can. Yeah, sleeping when you can is a good thing. So I learned to nap a long time ago, super helpful. So basically that resettles the chemistry, and you can really feel it, even like a five-minute nap, just being checked out for even one minute you come back actually being checked out there's practice just practice just just like try to go internal and practice and I like to um I like to focus on dreams I've had before and the last like that I can remember and I try to like repicture the dream and it sort of pulls me back in oh that's cool um so anyway uh what I'm saying is is the way I would work for hours and hours and hours productively is focus until I could tell my focus was going.

59:27And then something interesting and novel. So stand-up comedy, if I'm on a plane, talking to a fun friend, doing, you know, looking at something online that's actually interesting to me, like something I'm, you know, something I haven't done for a while that'll be interesting to look at. So I'm just, I'm just trying to work with novelty and interest and like, oh, what am I interested in? What would be interesting? And I'll do that for a little while, right? Or something novel, right? And so I'll just do that. And then I can do, you know, I recently was, in sort of a hermit mode finishing this new book.

59:58And I was doing 18 hours a day in one place, not on airplanes, but I was in the woods, my house I've got in the woods, and I was doing literally 18 hours a day for a couple of weeks just focusing this way and got an incredible amount. I was exhausted at the end of it, but I got an incredible amount done that I couldn't have got without understanding my brain. Gosh, it's so interesting because I remember when I interviewed Sam Sinek on here and he said to me the only way he wrote his book, because he has he talks about his adhd quite significantly the only way he could write a book was booking a flight so he basically wrote all of his books on a flight and i was like that's a really expensive way to do it he's like well yeah i just turn up to an airport and just be like get me on a flight i don't know where i'm going but just get me on a flight and he would just end up in all these random places on these flights because he was like there was no other way i could physically write the books my adhd was so extreme and i was like that's such a fantastic story and now literally I'm hearing someone else say not because of ADHD but from a neuroscience perspective I probably have a little ADHD too I've not been I've not been tested but probably but I never got that far but I totally could have if I didn't have long flights I had to do all the time you wouldn't even know he was going you just turn off that's hilarious and get me on a flight that's actually hilarious um and effective and yeah you really do focus on there and and I I don't fly anywhere near as much now I live in the US and now go back to Australia like twice a year maybe three times I'm not doing like four to eight anymore um but I do fly a lot and I still find it super helpful for now now and then I'll like just like watch tv and chill out I feel really guilty I know I mean I relate to that quite I wish I wasn't I I'm very envious of those people that feel that they can switch off quite easily there's a trait that I wish I couldn't have it sometimes quite a lot so I'm a lot of my work is connected to self-worth right how we kind of see ourselves how compassionate we are to ourselves and so the s the status kind of within the your amazing framework scarf i always think like how much of adult behavior is an attempt to feel significant in the world and then when you said the s i was like oh that's quite a good kind of moment for me to intercept on the status question because some people will be like i don't really care um my dad's an amazing example of this you know he came from nothing he's so proud of it and he is just completely unaffected by status maybe actually even more so he goes the other way so if he feels someone is of significant status he actually might like leave the room he's like just not he's not an impressive person by that he likes kind of the realness and you know it's really interesting to watch it whereas with other people feel very drawn towards status or could even change their behavior like a chameleon to feel like they can fit into a room quite well.

1:02:42Like how much of adult behavior is an attempt to actually feel quite significant? I think it just really depends on if they're awake or not. No, for real. If they're awake, it's probably driving the show a lot. Unconsciously, you know, more in some and less in others, but for everyone, it's driving the show all the time. Really? Yeah, all the time. And it won't be like fully driving all human behavior. Like for your dad, it's maybe less, but it's still there. And it'll be there in the sense of, you know, if he's standing next to someone, you know, taller than him, he'll, he'll, without even notice it, be experiencing a bit of a threat response.

1:03:17So it's, it's always driving human behavior, like always, it's deeply, deeply built into our brain, but also to all mammals and many animals have like pecking order, right? Like it's really built into the evolution, you know, and systems are generally healthier, like small, small groups of people are healthier when there's when I say healthier, better functioning, small groups of people trying to do a task are better functioning when there's a clear status order and a clear leader because people just jostle for status otherwise. It's like we sort of calm when status is clear. If you've ever tried cooking with someone and it's not clear who's the chef and who's the sous chef, you start losing fingers.

1:03:57One person needs to be in charge. One person needs to have the plan and the other person can help. But you can't both be cooking dinner. That's interesting. One person has to be in charge. So it's not like status is bad. What about group dynamics? Because sometimes you can get two people who both kind of want to be the one in charge and that can cause a lot of friction. It causes a lot of friction. Yeah, status battles are the stuff, you know, all the friction. You think about some of the biggest unfortunate tragedies in the world are religions where you've got two branches of the same religion vying for conceptual supremacy like Sunni and Muslim or Catholic and Protestant, right?

1:04:33You've got like which one is the dominant one within. it's a status battle and they end up creating huge wars. So status is deeply woven into the conflicts we have and it's a really, really big part. But I wrote a piece once years ago about that status is a more accurate brain-based way of understanding self-esteem. That's why I connected to self-worth. That's kind of where my connection came to with status. Exactly. So basically a lot of self-worth is just people who are feeling low status. and it could be compared to the people around them. It could be compared to the expectations they had of themselves.

1:05:13They're feeling worse than the person they imagined that they would be. But just basically feeling lesser than, whether it's shorter, less funny, less well-dressed, anything lesser than creates a pain response in the brain. Lower status in any domain creates a pain response and advertisers and marketers use that, right, to get us to buy something, to lift our status, the watch, the car, whatever, right? They're all attempts to lift our status. But it is a real pain response. There's a book actually out of the UK. The original book was called The Spirit Level. It's an unfortunate title. It's talking about kind of balance, not spirituality.

1:05:48But he studied status inequities across countries and states. And status and fairness are slightly linked, but it was sort of an inequality. He studied inequality, literally. So what's the status gap? and what he basically found is is countries and states within the u.s countries and states where the status gap was bigger everyone was unhealthier because a whole lot of people are feeling a whole lot of pain and the people who are lower status in any you know country or or state those people were mitigating that pain with unhealthy practices with food with drugs with alcohol and literally at every point in life from birth to death when there was a bigger status gap there was more unhealth.

1:06:31And because people feel their self-esteem is challenged, they feel not as good. And feeling not as good is literally, you know, painful. And this is why, you know, short people become funnier or well-dressed because they're trying to balance out the status threat that they're constantly feeling. So it's a huge driver of all of life. But don't we see that that's going to just expand even more so with where our world's going, you know, with how the wealth is kind of becoming, you know, the first billion dollar company can be built by like one singular person now compared to 50 years ago and you kind of see the inequalities just rise and rise more so than ever before like is that not it's a problem yeah it's a problem yeah the the inequality is tied to status certainly but the and also fairness and and you know people at the low end of that also feel a drop in certainty and a drop in autonomy it's like it's a lot of threat but I feel like businesses are going to be more powerful than countries.

1:07:29Businesses are more powerful than countries right now. That's what I mean. Doesn't that drive a massive threat? It does drive a big threat. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting time. It's definitely an interesting time to be a cognitive scientist and studying the brain and work because, you know, we can go down that rabbit hole if you like, but it's an interesting time. But let's stay on your work for a minute. The self-esteem, you know, when you're having a self-esteem crisis, you don't feel good enough. It's a threat response. And one of the things that you do when you experience a threat response is you try to balance it with a reward.

1:08:00And sometimes the easiest reward at hand is food, right? So you get a lot of obesity in lower socioeconomic communities have higher obesity. And the theory, the hypothesis is they're feeling a lot of pain. They're mitigating that pain with calories and alcohol and drugs to feel less pain. but it's real pain they're feeling. It's not like a metaphor. They're actually experiencing pain. If you feel left out by a group of friends, it feels painful. And if you'd attract your brain, you'd see networks that would light up when you were feeling physical pain. The distressing component of that pain, especially that network lights up with social pain, just like with physical pain.

1:08:46Well, that's like if you go back to evolution being excluded from the group, you could literally die. You wouldn't be here. and so I think that's why that can feel you know I go back to school and you can think about those times when you're like left out or you're excluded you've had like a fight with your friendship group and you're not the same at school next day like it it feels like a real it's really intense it feels really intense and I think especially you know when you've got hormones and you're a teenager and all those things but it's really really hard to kind of understand just how terrifying that can be like I think the social exclusion is a big one but also the food is a big one.

1:09:20How do we get to the point when we don't self-sabotage then at that moment with our brains? How do we get to the point where we can actually not feel like this? It's happening but how do we then reverse that or intercept that? Such an easy question you ask, Sarah. I know. Such an easy question. Look, humans are so, so spectacularly successful self-sabotaging that you'll never get rid of it but you can reduce it and I'm going to circle back to the two most useful and easy and fun reappraisals. Remember I said reappraisal? At the beginning you said these two. Remember I said reappraisal is necessary for like level two threats.

1:10:03Sometimes it'll work with a level three. It'll obviously work with a level one threat being just slightly anxious but reappraisal is a power tool. In fact there's a scientist, a psychologist named James Gross at Stanford who's the founding father of emotional regulation research. Yeah, I love him. He's such an amazing guy, one of my favorite scientists. He explained, you know, he was the first person to really understand emotions and explain it. But he did this one amazing experiment I've written about which divided people into two camps. When strong threats came along, did they try to suppress the emotion or did they reappraise the emotion?

1:10:39And it was a – I don't remember the sample size. It was in the hundreds. It was pretty big. maybe it was 500 maybe it's a thousand but um but anyway what he found is he could pretty easily categorize based on some surveys what people did when like a strong threat came along and there were definitely people who would just grin and bear it right and deal with reality and just try to push it down and you know not always but often there were men and then there were people who would actually alter their interpretation and you know see this as an opportunity in some way or like like reappraise and then he measured them on like a whole raft of different like outcomes you know health depression well-being relationship health work health you know all this kind of stuff and there was a massive difference between the two groups um that basically people who reappraise more are just radically better off in every part of life than people who try to suppress emotions because suppressing emotions actually makes them worse by the way um and that's a whole other story And can that be like disassociation as well, if you're like disassociate from your emotions?

1:11:36You're just trying to distract yourself with TV or alcohol or something. We're just trying to suppress it. Or work. Or work, yeah. That's a big one. Yeah. So you're not reappraising. You're not changing your response. Right. You're trying to suppress the feeling in some way. So basically reappraisal is just such a healthy part of your life. So I'm going to give you the two really, really helpful reappraisals, especially under pressure when you haven't got a lot of cognitive resources. The first one is literally fun. It's humor. right it's so true humor is the best medicine right so sometimes when you are just like really falling apart you just have to find the funny perspective on this right you just have to laugh at it and when you do you just get all these resources back suddenly you can like see straight again and think straight again because you've you've looked at the funny side of this right so humor is really fabulous I made a new friend a couple years ago I've been hosting these salons around when I'm in places and I just like to meet new people and understand people and I met this guy who was a comedian, a stand-up comedian in the US.

1:12:37And we became friends and we hung out quite a bit. And I spent quite a bit of time with him because I really enjoy just like his constant humor. It's not something he just switches on. Like that's just who he is the whole time. And so we spent quite a few weeks hanging out doing different things. We were writing together up at a property I have. And he actually just started a new late night show just when Colbert's just kind of crashed. So he started the world's first YouTube late night show. It's a little bit American focused, but very relevant. His name's Ben Glebe. It's called Good Night with Ben Glebe.

1:13:11And he just launched it literally two weeks ago. But I spent a lot of time with him and it made me, I won't say it made me funnier, but it made me kind of see the value of humor and just how it turns down like really difficult things. And we ended up doing a podcast together about sort of humor in the workplace. And so essentially finding the funny side is fabulously helpful for reappraising. And the second one is a little deep. The second one also sort of in an emergency, it's a good one because it doesn't take all the cognitive steps of reappraisal. So reappraisal can sometimes be a little taxing because you've got to like identify what context you've set and sort of look at options and then choose one.

1:13:56You've got to go, okay, why am I feeling like this? and then, okay, what's a different way to see this? Okay, I'm going to see it that way. So reappraisal sometimes in its entirety can take a bit of resources, which you might not have because the oxygen and glucose goes out of the prefrontal, right, for when you're experiencing a threat. So anyway, what it is is you're looking at a situation and you realize that's just my brain.

1:14:21That's just my brain at a level two threat. That's what it does, right? That's just my brain with too much dopamine. I'm like hyper. I'm just hyper now from too much dopamine. I need a nap. That's just my brain. Oh, that's just my brain having an insight. I should like do that more often, right? But especially when something's threatening, oh, that's just a fairness reaction. That's just my brain. The words they just said are like not really about me. That's them having a fairness reaction. That's just their brain. So the more you understand your brain, the more you can see in real time things that are happening and you can literally say to yourself, oh, that's just my brain or that's just their brain.

1:15:01And it's a really powerful reappraisal in the moment. It's so interesting because actually I think about when I got my dyslexia diagnosis when I was 23. And I think this is why self-compassion is so essential for me anyway and to talk about it. It's because I lived in a state of never feeling good enough because I never understood my brain. Low status. Yeah, well, I just never understood my brain. This was the problem. and so I just lived in this thing of like can't get it can't intake this information my processing they would talk to me about it on a shelf and like you have this amount of shelf and when you have too much information you just kind of dissociate quite quickly and it's like when somebody actually showed me how my brain worked but also how I could use it to a strength I was always trying to cover the weaknesses of my brain and actually when I flipped it and I understood the brain or my brain how it functioned i mean it was like a rocket ship yeah it was just completely different like my whole life changed yeah but it was only because of that incredible professor that sat down with me saw it because i would i didn't even know what dyslexia was when i was 23 i hadn't ever heard of it before right and so it was literally her compassion towards me but then also an explanation of this is your brain this is how it works this is the best resources and then I was off.

1:16:17Amazing. Yeah. You had a level five insight. I had a level five insight, but not kind of, you know, just sporadically. It was because I said I wanted to leave university. I mean, I literally tried to hand in like basically my resonation. I was like, I'm not going to be here anymore. And she questioned me and she questioned me that, you know, I was like, I can't do this. I don't understand what's going on. And she'd seen really, really quickly exactly what it was. But knowing and understanding my brain was a revelation. Yeah, exactly. It's super helpful. People don't have enough neurointelligence.

1:16:51We know more about our cars and dishwashers. We should be understanding our brain. We should be teaching this in schools. Kids should be learning about three levels of threat. They should be learning about scarf. Some do. A bunch of schools use their work. But they should be learning more about their brain so they can actually reappraise more often and alter their whole experience. You altered your whole experience of the world by reappraising something that was a threat and actually turning it into a reward, turning it into a strength through understanding your brain. And kids should be having that experience all the time.

1:17:24And certainly our whole sort of psychological makeup is often made up by the middle school years, the sort of 12 to 15-year-old when they're experiencing really strong emotions often. They often have really tough social experiences at school and it burns their whole kind of character. but often those are unnecessary decisions that they made that have really changed their life in an unhealthy way. And if they could understand that that was just someone else's brain reacting and you didn't need to react that way, you could undo a lot of damage. What do you see? I mean, you've just said how many people.

1:18:01Did you say how many, 20 ,000 people you've helped? So it's a kind of big number. what I said before is that we've trained 25 ,000 coaches since 1998, 25 ,000 coaches. And those people have gone on to coach probably in like hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people because it's over, you know, 28 years, right? But the bigger number is the work we've been doing in organizations, which started to scale about 10 years ago, a bit more than 10 years ago. But we just looked at some numbers recently for my new book that in the last 10 years we've taught 20 million people about scarf and a lot of the stuff that we've been talking today we've taught inside organizations so like microsoft licenses all our work and people learn about their brain when they start work at microsoft they learn about the brain through our work across the business across the world yeah so from all of those people that you've trained what's for you i guess because you're a spectator in this now right you're kind of looking on to seeing people take in this information and change the way they're seeing themselves what's been like the biggest insight that you've seen that people have kind of taken from understanding their brain like what's their guess is it limiting belief or is it lack of worth or is it overwhelm like what is it that you think resonates with most people when they understand their brain and something changes what it what have you seen the thing that i see is most valuable happens to be partially because of the audience that I speak to.

1:19:32And I, I, I, when I published Your Brain at Work, it came out in 2009, like a long time ago. Uh, that's an update. But, um, when I first published it, I was like, oh, this is going to be great for like everyone. And then I realized it was, it was very hard to kind of build a real business around, um, just sort of everyone. And I was, I was like, okay, let's focus on organizations. And then we tried like workshops for organizations and we found it wasn't like hitting. And then we realized the real pain point in organizations was managers. And that A, managers generally are really bad, and B, managers need to be a lot better for people to succeed.

1:20:11And C, companies spend much more on managers than they will on an average employee because there's, you know, 10 to 1 of them. And so we sort of made this strategic decision in my business to focus on managers and focus on the challenges that managers have. And the fundamental, the biggest challenges managers have is understanding people, motivating them, and then developing them, really sort of at a simple level. And what we found is SCARF gives you an incredibly useful framework for understanding people and motivating them and developing them. And the first thing is just like a manager trying to talk to people doesn't understand that they create a status threat just walking in the room, right?

1:20:50And when you kind of explain that to them and say, look, you're putting people on edge just by virtue of who you are, you're wanting them to listen to you and not react. You have to turn down the threat response. Do you think people become more defensive when they see someone's higher status? Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Your boss creates a threat response because they are higher status and other reasons. So managers really struggle with managing performance as a universal challenge, with giving feedback as a universal challenge, with just motivating people. Just Scarf is an incredibly helpful tool day-to-day.

1:21:28When we teach people, they use it most days somewhere. It just kind of explains something, and you become a bit like Neo in the Matrix, where you can actually see the battle that's about to happen. And it's like, oh, if I say, why did you do that? You're going to yell back at me, aren't you? Okay, so I shouldn't do that because of status. I should say, what are your thoughts about doing this better next time? And then it's a status reward. Or giving ownership to them as well in the same context. Give them autonomy as well, right? Instead of reducing their status and telling them what to do, maybe I'll raise their status and raise their autonomy.

1:22:00And suddenly people find instead of arguments and pushback, they get engaged, right? So SCARF ended up being just like the most sticky and helpful kind of framework. And so, you know, from what I'm told, that's the thing people use all the time. And there's other frameworks we built, the five levels of insight that I mentioned, the three levels of threat. There's a whole bunch of kind of frameworks in what we call neurointelligence. But SCARF is a super powerful tool somehow, yeah. so it's interesting there's a couple of questions that I feel like fall off that for me but I think now I've gone into the work brain mode success you've mentioned goal posts a couple of times what happens when we potentially reach where we think we're going to get to and then the goal posts just keep shifting you never end up feeling like fully fulfilled so unfair asking for a friend it's a little energy in that sir and um it's so unfair it's a big strong threat response it's a big big strong threat response yeah and you feel no autonomy you feel no control right you feel no certainty it's a so the interesting thing is the really strong experiences in life are multiple scarf threats right they're like multiple scarf domain threats So like that experience and the goalposts have moved on you and you didn't have a say, you've lost status, you've lost autonomy, you've lost certainty, you've lost fairness.

1:23:29And if you thought the person was on your side, you've lost relatedness. It's like it's the negative jackpot, right? Right now, don't know if we want to go into this, but, you know, for a lot of employees, AI is the negative scarf jackpot. Yeah, well, the risk of jobs is massive. Yeah, it's the risk of jobs, but it's also uncertain. They feel no control. They don't know who to trust. It feels unfair. Like it's a negative jackpot, which is why a lot of people are, you know, really, really pushing back. And companies aren't realizing and respecting just how strong a threat people are having to it, right?

1:23:59So the negative jackpot is a problem. So Scarf explains like a lot of things that just weren't making sense before. That's why it's kind of, you know, why I think it's kind of so useful is that once you know it, you start making more sense of the world. And we'll go right back to the start. you said what's one thing people don't know that helps understand sort of everything and scarf has sort of been the most helpful thing that I've created um that really explains so much uh but it's based on toward and away and it's based on three levels of threat and it's based on some of the ideas that we've shared and scarf is also a kind of reappraisal you're you're noticing and shifting your interpretation in that way as well so is it that we just then interpret okay I've reached this level and now I should feel satisfied the problem is goal focus is a dopamine function right and dopamine is a lovely thing dopamine is the expectation of reward right it's like imagining a delicious meal imagining a holiday right it's like imagining a holiday that's in like a month you're looking forward to it you think about that expression looking forward right it's a towards state forward you're looking forward to it it's it It helps you offset threats.

1:25:12Looking forward to that holiday helps you offset day-to-day threats. But it's the expectation of the reward. And then often we get there and the reality is nothing like our expectation and we're really upset. Some people even get, and sometimes I have got this, where you get more of a lull. Yeah, you do. You kind of come down and you're like, whoa, I should be feeling up here, but I feel down here. Yeah, you do. Yeah, and just a bit of an aside, but if you're trying to manage your, well, your mental health over the year, don't have like a big long holiday once a year. have like six short holidays every two months, like much healthier for you because you've got something to look forward to all the time just around the corner.

1:25:48It's much better for you. But yeah, quite often when you achieve the thing that was drawing you in, once you actually achieve it, you get a little bit of a down, right? And it's like, oh, and even if it was as good as you expected, because unexpected, like, look, when something's not as good as you expect, it's quite a threat response. Unmet expectations are a strong threat. Met expectations are a slight reward. Exceeding expectations is a reasonably good reward. But unmet expectations is a stronger threat than even exceeding expectations is a reward. Right. Which is why they always say like, you know, set low expectations and beat them because you, you know, it's better than missing one.

1:26:30So, so, you know, even if your holiday meets expectations or even exceeds expectations, is you've now got no, now you don't have the dopamine of something to look forward to. Right. You're not on the track of that, you know, so you might need to set a bigger goal, but it's good if you set it and you own it and you're not getting an autonomy threat. Okay, what's the next thing to look forward to is another way to think about it. That's interesting, thinking about booking six short holidays as opposed to one big holiday throughout the year. Much healthier. Do you need like, is there a specific amount of time that's, You know, because sometimes I go away and if you're away for just a weekend, I feel like I've landed and then gone again.

1:27:08And I've never actually got into like the recalibration because sometimes it can take me like a week to just to kind of chill out a bit when you're away. I'm going to say something really inappropriate now. Don't take this as gospel. And I didn't say it as a medical person, but sometimes that's what alcohol is for. You just need a bender on the first night just to calm the heck down. Just to like calm down and be able to sit on the beach the next day. And then you'll settle in. Yeah, but then I feel worse. You do. You will feel worse. I feel like shit. Maybe not a huge bender, but you just need to like, sometimes you just need to like calm down on the first night so you can actually settle in.

1:27:40But no, it's - But you get that with people, right? You feel like you're kind of still on a bit, like you're checking social media a bit more, you're checking your emails, like you're kind of a little bit more on because you've been used to being on. I think people take like four or five days to kind of start adjusting. People have been studying this. I haven't, I don't know the research closely. I remember the optimal is like four or five days. Right. You'd have to look it up, but it's something in that realm. Like two days isn't enough. Three days starts to get there. I think it was like four or five days is like an optimal time.

1:28:09Okay. And I think any more than that is you're sort of getting the law of decreasing return. So you're better to have like four or five days regularly. But you're right, it does take a couple of days usually to settle in. The thing I find is, and it's sort of problematic, is when I really like calm down and like really like do physical activity, like I love to snowboard, I love to climb. Yeah. Like when I'm doing something really physical, I have my best ideas. I'm like, I have so many insights. I've got to rush back to my room and start writing. But I've just learned to live with that and just like, I'm going to go and write.

1:28:43Hey, everyone, I'm going to go and write for a couple of hours. I'll be back soon. But I guess that's you digesting, right? Yeah. In a way, like processing. I mean, when I went to Patagonia, which was one of my favorite trips I've ever done, I'm in the complete wilderness. And I mean, we moved every like three days. We weren't in just one place, but it was just hikes every single day. And I had some of my best ideas. But it's also that really hard thing where you're like, well, this isn't also life. Like, I can't. This isn't everyday life. You know, you kind of go back to work and then you kind of forget that amazing spatialness that you felt and the calmness and the insights.

1:29:20And there's that really hard balance where you're like, well, I know that that's amazing for you, but that's also a trip of a lifetime that I'm not going to do again for a very, very long time. but then you also know there's the grind you also have to do. How do you balance that? How do you support the brain in that moment where sometimes it feels like it's all or nothing? You're like fully in the wilderness or fully in the grind, like hustle culture. That's an eternal question. How do you get that balance right? Is there a balance? Because a lot of people argue there isn't. I think there's not a balance, but I think there's more balance than less.

1:29:55I think you can be more balanced. I don't think you can be balanced. I think you can be more balanced or less balanced. So it's a continuum without an end point, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's already a helpful distinction. But I think about, you know, now compared to like a decade ago when I was really like working, working, working, like, you know, just I still work really hard, but I'm not working like 80-hour weeks anymore. And what I'll do is I'll work really intensely for a few weeks, but then I'll have like four or five days of recovery. So for me, I try to like force in to my calendar time where I'm just really in a different brain space.

1:30:35So I try to go to different festivals or different conferences or different like communities, be part of really different like novel things where I'm just being energized. So I've learned sort of where those great events are. It's taken me a long time. I'm in my late 50s. So it's taken me a while, but I've found where the really great communities are of people and great events and all sorts of things where I can kind of switch my brain off. And it's probably every two or three months, at least I'm doing something. Do you think that's also maybe because, and you can push back on me on this, do you think that's also because you've become more self-assured in what you do and how your company is now running and it's like off the ground and you've now like helped so many people that there's this like validation that you can then actually say, okay, now I can step back for a bit.

1:31:22and let this thing run? Yeah, I mean, I've been running my business for 28 years and I've got some like 15 to 20 year employees and stuff who like know what they're doing. Because I'm just thinking about people listening to this that are like, well, I can't do that. Yeah, no, you might not be able to. I can switch off and like leave my business alone for a week and it'll be fine. Yeah. They'll be fine. Right, they might miss me here and there. They'll be out having a load of fun. It's actually funny when I was just doing Australia and the US, I would like leave Australia and I'd come back a month later and they'd done so much better without me.

1:31:56And then the same would happen in the US. I'm like, hmm, what's going on here? But I think people step up when you're not doing everything. So sometimes we're too attached and we're just not giving people space and we should just give them space. But sometimes you're actually needed to solve problems and they don't know how. So maybe don't take a month off in your first year in the business. But for me, I'm at a point where I can, you know, take four or five days and I'll check in a little bit, but I can be largely offline. Once a year, I go fully offline for eight days, like no text message, no email, no nothing.

1:32:30It's really terrifying every year, even though I've done it for like six or seven years, but it's so good for my brain. Just there's no phone at all. Where'd you go? And I come back, I'm like, what is this device? What is this thing? Why am I looking at it? What's going on? It's so refreshing. So you can go anywhere and go to the wilderness, go camping. But I go somewhere where there's absolutely no signal. And, you know, I won't die if there's an emergency. Things are managed, but I don't have phone signal. And it's just I find it so good, so, so helpful. And I would encourage people to go on total digital detoxes, you know, a couple of times a year, even if it's three days, four days.

1:33:06It's really, really nice. Well, I guess that is where you kind of, I mean, that's your longer shower, right? it's my very long usually I need a very long shower afterwards well that is it's where you're saying like these like smaller neurons can kind of come up to the surface because I think about it when you were explaining it the way I relate to that is food noise right so we talk about GLP ones and you know if people don't know what that is that's a Zempik and like you know all the weight loss drugs about what we're going to learn about that stuff in a few years well I mean it's the biggest exploding area right now in the pharmacological world of, I mean, the thing is, we're going to learn a lot because it's booming.

1:33:49So it's making a lot of money. It's impacting like restaurant habits. Yeah, massive. And I think there's a food noise is how they describe it, right? So you take this drug and your food noise becomes much quieter. You also just feel very nauseous. So it's also the reason why you don't want to eat. That's like a big reason of why people don't eat. But I think about when they've not got that internal chatter they can listen to maybe other signals and it's similar to what I was thinking about you and we're not hearing those like constant thought loops or rumination or the constant noise that's in our brain of the to-do lists or like what we forgotten or like it's my mom's birthday tomorrow and I have her in her a card or like the constant things that pop up in our brain and we can actually let it quiet and when you can go away when you stand in a shower that I guess is some of the most like yeah important moments that But I really take that for granted, I think.

1:34:41Really, really important. Really important for mental health, for career health, for relationship health, for everything, just to have some really solid downtime. And you've got to find it in different ways. I find it on top of the mountains, snowboarding. I've been boarding for 30 years, so I'll just go off on my own in the woods, like the craziest places no one goes. And I just find a lot of peace and quiet there. And I can really, really think. and so you've got to find some way where you can really get some downtime and let the brain quiet down. Physical things are often really, really good, but there's no one-size-fits-all.

1:35:17Maybe going for a run, people that are like, oh, God, I don't have any time, even just like a run or a walk. I mean, runners know this. Runners know that the first 10 minutes are really painful and then by 20 or 30 minutes in, you just can think straight again. But also a power walk will do that, where you're actually working up a sweat. A power walk, if you can't run, just put some good solid walking shoes on, walk for an hour, like solid. A power walk will really get you there. It takes a good 30 minutes to get there, but after about 30 minutes, you'll find your nervous system will have calmed down, your brain will be quiet, and you'll actually be able to have insights again.

1:35:54So an hour power walk is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And if you can't do that, a 30-minute, really strong power walk will also really, it'll calm the nervous system and calm the brain. We're not doing enough physical moving to kind of be able to have our mental, you know, faculties the best they could. So if you were going to leave someone with one main tip that they can take away, now they've like listened to all of this exploding information. Sorry. On this podcast where they're like actively trying to write down all the tips and trick. If you could give somebody a tip to do something genuinely differently for their brain, what would it be?

1:36:30Learn about it. I mean learn about it like go with what's interesting I won't say just like read my book that would be very self-serving like read a book that looks interesting to you like find what would be of interest to you but learn about your brain it's such a useful thing to understand and if you don't want to study learn about your brain just pay attention to your attention that's a good one just watch what your attention does are we in an attention crisis? yeah yeah pretty big one And it's getting worse. It's getting a lot worse because, you know, AI can produce just a ridiculous amount of content.

1:37:11And now we're all getting like barraged by way more pictures and ideas and content and all this stuff. And we're like hitting up against our capacity limits. So, yeah, no, we have a certain amount of capacity and we want to use it for the right things and not be overwhelmed or just, you know, bobbing around in someone else's field. So we are having a bit of an attention crisis. and coming back to your body, coming back to direct experience, right, coming back to, you know, the senses in the moment, that turns the brain down. Getting into physical activity, that'll turn the brain down. And as you turn the noise down in your brain, you have more insights.

1:37:45And as you have more insights, you've got more of a towards state, you've got more things to build. And so I would just say find ways to, you know, quiet the brain, have the insights come through and then, you know, follow through with them. And that's the stuff of life really is having a big idea and going and making it happen. Yeah. Well, I feel like mindfulness there is the thing that kind of sticks for me the most, then quieting the mind. Whenever I hear that, I think of mindfulness. A lot of people are going to be better off taking an hour power walk than trying to practice mindfulness. Yeah, because...

1:38:16But can't you be mindfully walking? Because the thing that I then worry about is then... When I say this, this is a blooming podcast, but I was the type of person that would go for a walk and I'd be like, I'll put a podcast on or I'll listen to music. No podcast, sorry. And so you are, so you're constantly in a mode of distraction. Whereas I've had to learn to say, now I'm going to go for a walk without my AirPods in. And I'm going to like notice what's around me. And weirdly, I now, I don't do the whole time because I would fall over. But I try and look up when I walk. I try to like look at my spatial awareness.

1:38:48And sometimes when I'm running, I'm also like looking up because often we're just looking down. Looking down all the time. Right. And our lens becomes very narrow. And so opening up the spatial awareness and looking up and being like, what can I hear? What can I see? That's really changed the way that I regulate my body because I'm naturally someone that is curious. And I'll be like, I'll call a friend or I'll check this out or I'll learn about this podcast. And I've got to be like, no, you just you need to kind of interact with the present and the world and the senses. It's called the direct experience network.

1:39:20It's called the direct. Now I know. Yeah. Yeah. You're activating your direct experience network and turning down the narrative network as a result. Like as you're taking in data in real time, you're turning down all the story. It's a wonderful thing. Look, podcasts are amazing for driving because driving is really boring and annoying. And like you could be experiencing threat responses driving when you could be learning instead. Yeah. Same with being on, you know, on the subway, transiting. Podcasts are amazing when you're transiting, you're not trying to talk to people. Yeah. There's lots of great times for podcasts, you know, on your vacation.

1:39:48And people watch them at home now. Like people, lots of them watch them on YouTube now, which is great. Amazing. um so so uh but i think i think that you know if you were to say what's the right frequency of that you know probably three or four times a week like an hour solid power walk or run if you can run for now that's amazing or half an hour 20 minutes 15 minutes but a run or a power walk we don't have anything else going on or some other form of cardio that really you know like engrosses you for 30 to 60 minutes um really really good for just all the things we've talked about turning down threat, increasing the towards state, rebalancing the nervous system, rebalancing your digestion and getting your brain healthier.

1:40:26It's, you know, it's really a great thing. And I think that's what we've got to do in this time where we're spending more and more time on screens. We've actually got to build some disciplines to be off those screens and, and in the real world, you know, as much as we can. I think, yeah, being in the real world, being in the present, like actually being in the moment, I think is so important. Not always thinking about the next thing like that is something it's hard for us goal focused people that is but i'm trying i'm building the muscle in my brain um i think many people that listen to this show though are exactly the same you know i think we get so many amazing people write in about the things that like connect to them change them but i think the kind of the goal focus for many people is is a thing i think not also celebrating the wins is also another thing that i've learned is actually when it can even be really small it can even be like somebody said something really nice about something you did today like not celebrating it acknowledging that i think is really important people that are goal or like goal focused because otherwise you're just bypassing any other signal well see the problem is because negative is stronger than positive right and we know ourselves well we see all the little tiny stupid things that we do all the time and we just obsess about those and we don't remember all the good that we're doing and the positive stuff so we just obsess about that one negative thing that we did.

1:41:44And so we're really tough on ourselves. We're all our own worst critics. We don't give ourselves much acknowledgement. It's a good thing to actually give yourself a pat on the back sometimes and not just be focused on all the negatives as you're going for different goals and all that. Absolutely. So, David, thank you for coming and teaching us all about the brain. I'm very excited. Now, it's called The Good Humans, do I want to say? The new book is called Good With Humans. Good with humans. Good with humans. Good with humans. And it's the scarf model. Oh. It's literally the scarf model. The scarf model and we go deep into each domain like early on and you work out which one's you and you really, really understand the science.

1:42:24But it's written as a story because the brain loves stories. We love storytelling. So the first part's about this sort of the model and each one but through stories. And then the second part's about scarf and kind of everyday interactions like giving people things to do and following up and collaborating and, you know, easy sort of just everyday interactions and then harder interactions like giving feedback, trying to motivate someone. There's a whole chapter on trying to motivate a teenager. So there's a harder interactions. And then there's sort of towards the end, there's a big section on like teams and families, organizations, also community, relationships.

1:42:58Scarf and relationships is a really interesting thing. Well, that's what I said. As soon as you said the scarf model, I thought how great would this be for understanding relationships? Because we talk about love languages and relationships a lot, you know. well I'm words of affirmation or I'm more touch or I'm more acts of service but this is also quite an interesting one it's a whole podcast in itself I I there's a closing chapter about relationships okay um that was fun to write and uh yeah and a lot of the arguments that people have in with a partner are scarf threats um it's it's feeling like your autonomy is being taken away it's it's it's a battle for status that's happening it's feeling treated unfairly you know all these things So they're really scarf things and even the slight anxieties you're feeling are often just like these changes in scarf things.

1:43:46So yeah, so the book is called Good With Humans. It is actually available for pre-order already, but it comes out in a couple of months. And the subtitle is The Neuroscience of What Makes Us Tick and What Ticks Us Off. And it was a journey to write. I had to work really hard. I've got to tell you, finding focus, like, in this time, wow. Not on a flight? Well, I wasn't flying enough. I wasn't flying enough. I should have just booked a ticket to anywhere. I'm just like, I needed to do this a year ago. What a great idea. We've got to book a ticket to anywhere next time. But I was not flying enough and the flights I was doing were too short.

1:44:26so um but just finding the focus i find i have to get up really early and just start no no phone just start and i could do it but just the discipline it took to really get into the groove this time was was a lot it took a lot of a lot of discipline to get there so i'm kind of proud of myself give a little pat on the back for getting there but um yeah i know it's a it's it's an idea i've been i it was an itch that started in literally the year 2000 i the itch for like what is this framework there's some kind of framework here and I like was talking about it from 2003 to 2006 it came together in 2006 it was published first in 2008 and I'm finally writing the book almost 20 years later that actually like really walks through everything about it because we've been studying it for the last 20 years or so so it's been helpful to me it's been the most helpful thing around trying to understand people and motivate them even if not at work just with your kids, your partner, yourself.

1:45:23It's just been a really useful framework for kind of understanding why people do what they do. But all these other pieces kind of help with the puzzle as well and sort of form neurointelligence. But SCARF has been sort of the most helpful kind of chunk of neurointelligence that we've developed. Wow, I'm really going to look more into that with myself and other people who I work with too. David, I'm going to pop that in the show notes from going pre-order. We all know how important pre-orders are. When someone writes a book. Thank you. Congrats on your book. Thank you. It's spot on with Healthy Shouldn't Be That Hard.

1:45:55It is so much about how people are approaching it. And the cliff note, the way I understand it, is if you create a threat response around your whole health and well-being and diet, if you're doing all of it from a threat response, it's going to backfire. Exactly. That's basically what we, you know, kind of how I see it. That is literally. And then you kind of turn it from threat using self-compassion. Right. Reappraise. Exactly. and we know that that reduces the threat response we know that is literally i mean i was i felt like i was uncovering a secret that no one had ever heard of but it's interesting you know when we direct it there's so many different ways of approaching all of these conversations and you know or one will be like happiness one will be health you know one will be you know all different areas of like what you're trying to do outcome in life i mean i guess happiness is the big one but health and hours is such a big topic and for me i just felt like every patient and client i was seeing it's like i'm approaching this all wrong like you know how we're conveying health information is not coming from the most helpful and it's not just having the perfect diet that's going to give you the perfect life no no you know that's where the collapse kind of for me came in um and so yeah the threat response exactly i speak about that in the book no i like the book it's um it's based on some solid research i checked out all the references at the back acknowledge you a few your great research and not just make it all up.

1:47:17So well done. Scientist practitioner is a wonderful thing to be. So, yeah, congrats on the book. And, you know, I hear it's doing fantastically. So well done. Yeah, thank you. Well, David, this leads me to my last question, which I ask to every guest. In over 500 conversations from the show, we've only had the same answer twice. Oh, okay. No pressure. So. 42. Incorrect. We've never had the answer. so what does live well be well mean to you live well be well I mean I think I do live well um but live well be well I think it's knowing yourself I think it's knowing like it's like a plant I'm a bit of a gardener right and like a plant is like you can put it just like just over here with a bit more sun and it'll love it and then another plant you'll put a bit more sun it won't love it like it'll dry up and you've got to have just the right amount of water the right nutrients the right size pot the right temperature like there's so many variables that goes into like a plant really thriving and we're exactly the same right but it's very individual you know like the amount of social you need the amount of downtime you need the amount of novelty that you need the amount of certainty that you need like all these things are really really individual and there's no like test for it right so I think live well be well is is you know think of yourself as a plant and what do you need?

1:48:41How much sunlight, how much social, all these things, like working out what you need and experimenting, which is what we're all doing unconsciously. But experiment with what you need. I think understanding the brain gives you a bit of a language for seeing the success of those experiments because you can see things that raise and lower your threat levels and all this, give you more or less insights and all this stuff. But I think we undervalue the importance of social needs. I think we're very social creatures, which is what Scarf's about. But find what you find, you know, your needs as a plan and try and get those for as long as you can.

1:49:15And I don't think it's anywhere near as important that you have the exact vitamins or the exact like, you know, cold plungers. I hate cold plungers. Don't talk about cold plungers. Sorry. It's crossed off on the list. Oh, good. Excellent. Good job. Sorry, cold plunge people. Hyperbarics, on the other hand, are pretty good, but expensive. But I don't think it's about that stuff. I think it's really about finding the things that you need to live well and be well. And there's no such thing as balance, but just to be more balanced and just being thoughtful about that. And I think there's lots of tools, including your book and my work and other people's work, that just gives you more language to be able to think about that.

1:49:52But I think that's the journey we're all on is how much sunlight, how much water, how much of all these things we need and then just trying to structure our lives to get them. I love that. I always talk about language, not the interpretation. I think about the child. It's very frustrated. and it's because they don't have the language to express themselves right think about a baby they're just screaming because you know they can't actually say what it is that they're feeling and you know our emotional granularity which is like you know understanding how we can express ourselves with you know 180 different types of emotions is so fundamental it's so fundamental and so i think you know the language that we have to ourselves you know i i give people when they come and see me the wheel of emotions it's in the book and it's the 180 missions and it's just it's like life-changing for some people because they're like oh my god i had no idea that that was actually how i was feeling i wasn't actually angry you know i had envy or i had jealousy or i had whatever it was and they can explore a different type of language which gives them validation and then that's a massive step and so i think language is so critical it's everything that gives you it's a type of labeling by the way when you have better words what you're actually feeling you're more accurately labeling and when you're accurately labeling you're turning down even mild threats and putting yourself back in that towards state so language is super helpful for labeling and you know reappraisal and all that without language we're definitely lost yeah wow there we go that's the one show that we're going to end on thanks so much for the opportunity what a great chat thank you thank you so much and i can't wait i mean i can't wait to get my hands on your new book i'll get you a galley copy as soon as i can you great i did try and ask one before but it's still It's not really yet.

1:51:29It's too early. David, thank you. Thanks so much.