#903 - Rick Hanson - The Science Of Rewiring Your Brain To Be Less Miserable

30:08What's meaningful about it. Bingo. You are increasing the trace. You're heightening the trace in physical structures and functions that's left behind by the experience. How does that process or where does this map on to heal your acronym for a framework? Thanks for being a really good student in my stuff. I've only had six years to prepare. That's right. Super briefly, the heel acronym. So I did not invent any of these methods. Now really good teachers and people often on the run who have a fairly steep learning curve. I would imagine that you yourself have been just doing this naturally along the way.

30:53Do these processes of internalization. What I have done is to pull them together in a comprehensive framework and embed it in evolution and then apply it, which we'll get to in a second about the second big thing that people can do with this, which is to identify particular strengths they want to grow inside. Not just kind of move through life, harvesting, you know, here and there, useful experiences, which is great in its own right, but going after things in particular. So I'll get to that. So, he'll stand for have. That's the have the beneficial experience in the first place. Either you notice it's happening or you create it.

31:30And then the second necessary step, right? The one that I and others routinely forget of installation. I call it activation installation, because I read too much science fiction installation and still do probably. The East stands for Enriching. You're helping the experience be big, powerful, lasting in your brain, and A, for absorbing your sensitizing, the neurobiological machinery of memory. So the enriched experience is landing on a more sensitive system that can really internalize it. That's the basic process. Then the fourth step is optional, but very powerful, is to link in the moment A beneficial experience with some negative material you're trying to soothe and ease and eventually even replace.

32:22That's the overall structure. I think if it is like the brain and mind are like a garden, you can be with it, which is fundamental, but you can also work with it. And working with it means pulling weeds and planting flowers. And my focus a lot is how do you plant the flowers, but you can use in the linking step. You can use flowers not just to gradually crowd out the weeds over time, but to actually uproot the weeds. Is there anything else to say on here before we get to all?

33:00Yeah, let's get to the end of the cool, but the second way people, you said, okay, Greg, great. Thanks. How does this translate into daily life? I think of this as like the five minute challenge. Right. Three parts. The first part I've said already is you go through the flow of your life, look for a handful of useful experiences, beneficial good moments, and slow down and let them sink in. Most of them are not million dollar moments. They're bread and butter a daily life. But if you start looking for them and taking them in, that will change your day alone. And you've only spent a minute doing that.

33:34Spread distributed over the course of your day. Second, what do you want to grow more inside? What would make a big difference if it were more present in your mind? You know, there are these four questions. Chris said routinely clinicians should think about and people can think about in daily life. What's your challenge? What's a challenge? especially what's the experience of it inside you. All right, then second, the money question, what would help if a warmer present in your mind? So now you know, like for example, my story, feeling respected for not being a total loser athlete. I'm not great, but I'm kinda good.

34:14All right, I wanna feel that, I wanna look for that or I wanna feel more included, more comfortable. I'm very, very very, very comfortable. Fairly, manly, men like you were scary to me when I was like a skinny, dorky guy in school to feel fine and comfortable. That's something I want to grow inside, let's say, whatever it might be, and there are many other things. I'm working on patients and being less exasperated by some people. Whatever you're working on, know what that is. I think of it as like I call it the vitamin C. You know, if you have scurvy, iron -moan -help, you need vitamin C. What are the specific inner resources, inner strengths that are matched to the challenges you have?

34:55And as you know from hardmiring happiness, I think of challenges in a certain framework related to the evolution of the brain or three basic needs for safety, satisfaction, and connection, and what are the strengths that are specifically matched to those particular challenges? If you, a lot of it is just what is your heart long for? Where when you were growing up, what would have made all the difference in the world? That identifies, okay, now that you know what you're trying to grow, one or two key things, look for ways to step one, experience it, or factors of it, and second, slow down and really take it in.

35:31That might take another minute a day. That's the second aspect of my five -minute challenge. And then last, if people are real about it, at some point in your day, maybe part of your wake up or go to sleep, marinate in what I call deep green. The natural setting of our species and mammals in general is why zebras don't get ulcers, you know, Sapulski's wonderful book on stress. The natural setting, when we feel that needs are met enough in the moment, is the body settles down to in its equilibrium state, in which it's undisturbed, and the mind is saturated in terms of our three needs with a broad sense of peacefulness, containment, and love related to safety, satisfaction, connection.

36:23Whatever for you feels like a kind of homecoming to your natural state of sense of your own inner goodness, deliberately take one to three minutes to just marinate it every day. Just help yourself come home to it, help it land, sink in, stabilize and establish itself in you and give it a minute to three every day. That will gradually build up a resilient core of well -being inside you that you can return to increasingly and that core will gradually build out even with stresses and frazzled and irritation and worry and so forth around the edges. Okay, right there, that five minutes, most people, you know, will easily spend five minutes a day on their workout or, you know, doom scrolling on Twitter, spend five minutes a day influencing who you are becoming.

37:26Right, so that's a quick summary. And just the first three steps have enriched and absorbed here. I like that. Relate to what I've said so far. And if you want, then you can move into linking to clear out the negative cred. Yeah, I suppose, you know, in the word heal, maybe most people would think about there being an issue which is being made better. And so far, three quarters of it, we've been engendering more of what we want to see in our lives. We have been finding the particular areas that we may feel deficient in or that we would just like to to bring more of into our experience I'm moving toward that but everything kind of changes oh We move more into the remediation Part when we look at the linking so talk to me about the neurobiology of that.

38:17Oh, definitely Kind of inevitably talking about it can sound kind of like professorial or didactic, because I'm like a coach or I'm saying, well, you want a ski, these are the things to do. You know, lean into it rather than back, you know, things like that, be aware of your edges. And when you're doing this, it feels really quite intimate with yourself. And kind, you're, I mean, we're hungry. We're big scared monkeys. Life is hard. We're rattled, shit happens. Most of us have been treated unfairly in different ways, less so if you're more privileged and so forth, but still, shit happens. So, you're really standing up for yourself.

39:04You're helping yourself. You're being good to yourself. You're treating yourself like other people should have treated you. That's right. It's real. We want to take in. Okay. And in the process of that, nobody, there's been very little research on the deliberate internalization of beneficial experiences. There's been a lot of research on the impact of sustained experiences that are beneficial and how they change the brains of humans and especially non -human animals. There's a lot of evidence for this. And one of the things I'm really interested in is retuning the amygdala and the parts of the brain that are biased negatively and then get very sensitized negatively.

39:50How can we retrain them over time so that they become, you know, reactive to red lights and assholes, but they are on the other hand much more opportunity focused and have more of what's called an approach orientation, which you know is more associated with mental health and well -being. Okay. Linking.

40:14Two ways to do it. One is, in the moment, you know that there's a place inside you that has either a wound or a lack. And the lack part is really important because people are aware of how they were mistreated. Like the woman and at 80 who was well -eater, harassed as a kid, that creates wounds. Alongside those wounds, it could well have been, there could also well have been a lack of inclusion and groups, or if she was with the kids she liked, she may not have had a good friend, maybe her parents were busy and old school and decent and not very touchy -feely. So there may have been a lack of positive social supplies.

41:02We can be just as affected by the lack of the good as the presence of the bad. That's really important when people kind of reflect on themselves. What are they working with? Either way, there's a quote unquote negative material inside. All right? So if you know about your own negative material, I really enjoyed listening to use the metaphor in going through therapy of learning about all kinds of new rooms in the mansion of your being. When you start to know what's in those rooms, then you can start to identify what are the resources inside, the strengths inside that would be a good match for that wound or that lack.

41:45That would help to fill that lack inside, that hole in your heart, maybe, or would soothe an ease and gradually mend that wound inside. So you identify a particular strength. So I'll give an example. Let's suppose that someone Either based on their history or just their temperament is anxious about stuff Let's say anxious in work environments about sticking their neck out speaking up and even making presentations very common, okay? Or or being let's say vulnerable speaking from the heart With someone they care about letting someone know hey, you know, it's really scary You're a kid to go to the some house knock on the door.

42:28Well Johnny come play or Susie play, you know Do you like me? It's really scary. Okay, so let's say there's an anxiety there. What's the psychological resource that would be matched to it? Well one is Being able to calm yourself especially calm your body when you're nervous about something That's good Another is a sense that you're strong that yeah you're anxious about something or it's threatening or challenging, but you're strong. You're determined, you're capable, you've got moxie, you're going to get through it. You can deal with it, you know. Either one of those so far, right? So, it might extend an example, sorry about those.

43:08Let's say you're going through life and you know that you have anxiety and you know that you value you a sense of calming in your body or a sense end or a sense of personal strength. So then when you have that positive matched resource like calming or sense of strength and you're feeling it in the present, you could deliberately bring it into contact with that anxiety. Maybe anxiety going back to your childhood, maybe more like your temperament and be You wear both of them at the same time. Neurons sit fire together, wire together. So if you keep the positive experience bigger in your mind while you're aware of that negative off to the side and a sense of the positive connecting with the negative going into it.

44:05Both of them are present in your awareness at the same time where you're toggling back and forth pretty quickly. Linking is central to therapy, trauma work, as of healing in general. I'm talking about how to do it on your own very specifically. If the negative material is so powerful, I can trauma that it's going to hijack you, you're not ready to do linking with it. But if you can do it on your own and regulate yourself while you're doing it, this is top Top five, top three mental health method I know, in terms of its far reaching impact. So that's one in which you start with the matched strength and you deliberately connect it with the negative material.

44:50Or a few breaths, maybe longer. You can explore it. You can do longer versions of this if you want to. And it's done in longer ways, in structured therapies. But you can do it on your own. And it's incredibly powerful. The other way is if you're sucked into the negative after you be with it for a while, the three main ways to work with your mind are to let B let go and let down. So you let B, you be with it, you feel it mindfully, then you move into some kind of release, then what do you want to replace it with? You've released, let's say the anxiety, but you want to replace it with, for example, calm or sensibly strong or other matched resources.

45:30So then what you would do in linking is you would deliberately bring up some resource that's matched to the naked material and being aware of both of them at the same time, keeping the positive bigger. This episode is brought to you by Nomatic. Traveling should be about the journey, not the chaos of packing, which is why I've partnered with Nomatic. Their backpack and carry on pro have genuinely made the travel process almost enjoyable. They've got compartments for everything, your laptop, your shoes, your sunglasses, so well organized that even your toothbrush will feel important. It's like the Marie Kondo of luggage, everything has its place.

46:08And if you're still on the fence, their products will last you literally a lifetime with a lifetime guarantee. And you can return or exchange anything within 30 days for any reason. So you can buy your new bag, try it for a month, and if you don't like it, I'll just give you your money back. And get a 20 % discount and see everything that I use and recommend by going to the link in the description below are heading to nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. That's nomatic .com slash modern wisdom. It's interesting to think about that cognitive superposition of holding both the positive and then to sort of add this in without collapsing it down into one but allowing them both to sort they've sit together and then that's very good.

46:53You got it. Yeah, it's really, it's cool. And you got to keep, you got to be on, you got to be on your own side to do this. You got to want the positive to win. You start to discover sometimes that there's an inner trader inside you that is allied with the negative and wants to keep it around maybe because it serves some function for you. So a lot of stuff gets stirred up when you try to do this. It's really useful to be aware of in yourself. But if you stay with it, you know, you want the strong to prevail, not because you're trying to bypass the negative or suppress it. No, you're being kind to yourself.

47:29You're easing it. You're soothing it. You're helping yourself not feel unnecessarily anxious. It's useful to be anxious in proportion to threats. And then it's useful to move past anxiety and deal with the threat without feeling nervous. I've done a ton of hardcore rock climbing in very dangerous situations. And most of the time I'm really happy because I feel resourced. I have a robe, I know what I'm doing, I have my body, I'm scruffy and determined and I'm going to get up to the top of the darn thing. So just because there's a threat, we don't have to feel anxious as we cope with it. That's a detail for an important one.

48:11It seems like one of the most, no matter what your outcome goal is here, being able to slow down around experiences seems central. So quickly moving beyond experiences to the litany of new novel things, or the next achievement that you're trying to do is fundamentally like amputating occupacity for embedding happiness in this way. Chris, I appreciate you immensely. You know, I'm just because I knew I was doing this. I was sort of watching you and you're so clear. And the clarity comes from the inside out. It's just a really a pleasure. Thank you. You're exactly right. And I reflect on that a little bit as, you know, like a kid.

49:07You're not the boss of me. You know, who and what do we let bosses around, including our own habit tendencies, to chase the next thing? And as you know, my own background is increasingly kind of Buddhist in which there's a real respect for the intelligence and the Buddha's original drive theory of suffering. We let craving chasing the next shiny object, you know, drag us away from the present. and getting control of that, in part by repeatedly internalizing the felt sense of needs met enough in the present to undo the biological machinery of craving, which is based on deficit, and needs met enough.

49:51Right? That there's a lot in that. But to me, it becomes very profound to to do exactly what you're saying, to be able to marinate in the bounty of the present, right? With a sense even of contentment, in the present, even as we pursue worthy goals. Yeah, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about conspicuous productivity recently, being obviously busy and the social rewards that you get for that, whether it's internally within a company, whether it's externally with the people around you, look at how much I'm doing, see how frenetic and how quickly I move. But if you look at what happens in systems that are very, very tuned up, you remember they're ever given that big tanker that got stuck in the Suez Canal a couple of years ago, they're still paying off the supply chain issues that cause tens of billions of dollars.

50:55I think it was maybe stuck sideways in the Suez Canal for four days, five days, something like that. But the system is tuned up so tight that there is no tolerance left. And the smallest error causes massive, massive repercussions and everything falls apart. And I think Think about the way that a lot of people, myself, to over tune our lives. We try to overclock our speed run through how many thoughts can I think at once? How much work can I do at once? I'm going to watch the dishes whilst listening to a podcast at two -time speed. Now, I'll have my emails open over the fan side. So while the world is getting hot, I'll quickly go and do this thing.

51:33And in some ways, it's exhilarating to do that. You know, it's exciting, it's rushy, it's very obvious, the ways in which you are moving towards something. But when you actually ask yourself, okay, what did I get done today? When you look back, the dishes weren't washing dishes, maybe a bad example because it's pretty difficult to do it badly. But maybe the dishes weren't washed thoroughly. You don't remember anything from the podcast and you didn't send any emails but you kind of looked at them a little bit. So my point being that we can prioritize, we can optimize for trying to do very obvious things that in no way meaningfully move us toward the goals that we have in life, the actual outcome that we're trying to achieve.

52:21And much of the time, the thing that we're looking for is right under our nose. But why is it that you're trying to do the very next thing? Why is it that you're rushing toward this next set of novelty or this next task that you can tick off or to achieve the next whatever target it is that you've set yourself. Well, presumably it's because you want to try and achieve an enjoyable emotional state. Like, that's really all there is, just enjoyable emotional states. Yeah, I just want to be in the present moment and feel good about it. Okay. What if by chasing the next shiny new thing, you are denying yourself the very thing that you're trying to achieve by doing that thing?

53:00So you're sacrificing the thing that you want for the thing which is supposed to get the thing that you say that you want And uh every time I put out a fire with gasoline or Satisfied your thirst with saltwater. Right exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like um I can't stop to look at the sunset whilst I'm driving in the car. I must drive quickly toward the sunset so I can see it Like I must have my eyes down at the steering wheel so I can get toward the sunset It's like, dude, it's right fucking that. And, you know, the more that I hear about, the importance of slowing down, the fact that you do need to, something good has happened.

53:36Allow it to notice it. Allow it to sink into you, build it up, build it up. Allow it to be felt in your body. Okay, you cannot do that. If your next thought is the next thought, if you're moving toward the next action, the next thing that's going to go on. That's correct. And, yeah, I think I'm at the stage and a lot of my friends are now, where just I, I'm kind of sick of myself. I'm kind of sick of my patterns. I'm like really kind of bored of this, of using that chasing of the dragon, the dopamine thing, because tried it, become very successful at it, but source code, fundamentally, it doesn't change that much.

54:18It is an aura borrower, sorry, it's like one of those ancient gods that had an unlimited size stomach. It's like it can just continue to eat and continue to eat and continue to eat. There'll never be an amount of stimulation that's enough. So I think that getting in and actually tinkering with the knobs and the dials at the very bottom seems like a much better strategy.

54:43I dropped a mic. Yeah. I can't touch it. Yeah. I mean, it really is so true. It is funny for myself, I thought I would have issues with in terms of the three main needs, safety, satisfaction, connection. I thought I would have issues with safety, like I'm kind of anxious by temperament, or as a lonely kind of introverted person, I thought I'd have issues with connection. And by issues, I mean, having stable experiences of feeling safe enough, or connected enough in the present. But no, my issues really have been around contentment, have been around feeling satisfied enough in the present because I'm very goal directed, I want to accomplish things and I'm hedonistic, you know, on the anyogram I'm a seven if that's relevant to you in terms of that system of modeling.

55:36So that's been, it's been really startling to appreciate a much automaticity there is and my fairly well -trained brain at this point to look for the next thing to want. It's like endlessly foraging even though my belly is already full, looking for the next new thing to want. And it's really quite profound for people to explore, can you actually feel like there's enough right now even as you pursue wholesome goals to feel already content even as you pursue important ambitions. It's pretty challenging and probably because it's challenging it's been really interesting I really wanted to do that and to me that's the that's the name of the game to feel content already, enoughness already.

56:31You know, I have a meditation thing online and I did a talk just on the word already, like the profound wisdom in the word already. You're already safe. You're already enough. You are already enough. And on the basis of that, yeah, accumulate where knowledge becomes more skillful, become more able to help more people, good stuff, But to feel already enough is just hard for people and yet it's really important You're good enough already Whoa Let that sink in in other news Creatine is one of the most researched and effective supplements for improving strength muscle recovery and it even improves cognitive performance and mood But not all creatines are created equal purity consistency and the absence of impurities like heavy metal can make or break its effectiveness.

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58:00A checkout that's L -I -V -E -M -O -M -E -N -T -L -U -S .com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. I had this idea a long time ago. I was interested in why personal development seemed to assuage my feelings of insufficiency. even though the insufficiency was still there and the fear of not being enough. And I think that it is the denial of something like the word already or enough, which is if I know that I'm on a trajectory where every day I'm getting a little bit better, and today I might not be good enough, but because tomorrow I know I'm going to be a little bit better, maybe tomorrow will be the day when I feel enough, and you continually push off the promise of when you will be happy or satisfied with yourself or with the place that you've got to, you continually push that off until the next day.

58:52Well, it might not be now, but it'll be tomorrow. And I imagine that maybe people with eating disorders, maybe girls suffering from anorexia, maybe my body's not right now, but if I don't eat today, maybe tomorrow will be the day that I do this. This sort of anticipatory prediction that we have, there's something that's going to come up, will be the moment at which I'm at peace. That was when it was enough. It's not right now, but the trajectory is moving me in the right direction, even if it's the wrong direction.

59:26So what's the difference? What's it feel like to be motivated by a sense of something missing? Or on the other hand, to be motivated toward something good with already a sense of fullness. It would be a difference. I mean, it's the difference between running away from something that you fear and running towards something that you want. And even the thing you're running toward that you want is done in the knowledge that you can have it and it will be great if you get it, but you don't need it and you're enough without it. I think, you know, that whatever cognitive superposition thing, these are two very difficult ideas to hold in our mind at the same time because so much of what we do is driven by fear of insufficiency and uncertainty and wishing that we were it's a really powerful fuel in the beginning but it's toxic when you use it for too long.

1:00:28That's right. In long term pay a big price. I mean, Maslow got to that with this as you know, hierarchy and so forth. And so if actually the lower needs are called D needs, deficiency needs, something's missing. There's a lack, but self -actualizations of B need, B need, you know, there's a fullness already. And I think a lot of people in the culture, dare I say as a generalization maybe a lot of men have a fear that they'll lose their edge. You know, the great ads, I don't know if you saw the beer ads for Tossakis, this like really manly man, state thirsty, my friends. You know, if we don't state thirsty, if we don't stay hungry, then we're going to lose our edge in not pursuing.

1:01:12It's interesting that in early Buddhism, the root of the word for craving is thirst in the language of early Buddhism. Thirst, something's missing. It's a drive state, biologically, hypothalamus based. It's quite something for people to realize that they can shift out of a flawed vehicle that they're familiar with, you know, deficit -based motivation into a fullness, a different vehicle that you can still be motivated. You can still be a top performer. You can still have a work ethic, you can still have standards, you can still achieve based on a sense of fullness already. good enough already, accomplished enough already, content already.

1:01:55And it helps people to realize I can step out of this robot. It's working for me, but it's costly. It's toxic over time. It's got a whole lot of money. Yeah, and then some of the vehicles that I can increasingly trust over time, you know, as the basis for my motivations going forward. Looking back at the heel framework, I know the most recent paper that you put out was only 2023 or something. So this thing's like hot off the press in academia terms. How much evidence is there of the impact of these strategies on things like personality, neuroticism or extraversion, well -being, health outcomes?

1:02:34What happened in the evidence -based literature for this? Yeah, there's tremendous evidence for the ways in which beneficial experiences can gradually shift people over time. And there's tremendous evidence for that. There's a large evidence for the underlying neurological implementation of that process, increasingly. What's happening in the hardware? That's really great. There's been almost no study at all about internal factors in individuals, whether in formal clinical settings or in formal life in general. What are the internal factors that lead to greater response to treatment or greater rate of change?

1:03:24It's kind of crazy. In schools, there's what's called, there's the learning to learn movement that got interested in classroom settings for fifth graders, how do we teach kids to be self -directed learners from the inside out? So there's a growing sense of that in educational settings, but it's crazy that we've had a hundred years of people in the growth business formally, you know, their psychotherapy and counseling and now coaching, who are interested in producing change that have generally operated growth 1 .0 model in which the person is regarded as a passive recipient of experiences and information and the hopes that something will stick.

1:04:11And for some it does, but we have ignored in any systematic way the agency of the individual and how they are engaging their experiences at the time.

1:04:30I've in ways that promote positive neuroplastic change. What do we do on the inside out with the experience we're already having? Because we have tremendous influence at the front end of the learning process, the formation of memory in the broadest sense, emotional, somatic memory included. The most important factors in terms of what actually lands is what we do at the front end of the experience we're having at the time. When you say front end, what do you mean? Oh, I mean, while you're experiencing something beneficial, while you're experiencing it, whatever you do in your mind or whatever is being made to happen in your mind by a skillful teacher or therapist or coach, that's going to most affect the impact of that experience, whether it sinks in or not.

1:05:19The dirty secret is that the delta, the rate of change from session to session and therapy peer counseling or other or rate of change, listen to a podcast. I do a podcast too. It's really humbling. You know, I read books, I did some meditation. What change is actually happening? It's humbling to stare hard at that and point being the most powerful factors in change are what people are doing inside their minds at the time with how the engaged experiences are having. And yet my whole profession, clinical psychology, broadened out to counseling and coaching has basically ignored the agency of the person and not systematically certainly taught people how to steep in their own growth curve based on how they're engaging the experiences they're having at the time.

1:06:10That to me is the growth 2 .0 model and to, as you can tell, I'm kind of revved up about it. I feel about it, but here's a weird fact. 40 years ago, really good research on psychotherapy for say anxiety and depression showed that on average, there was a moderate effect size on average. Some people got more, some people got less, but the average in numerical terms the way this is done about 0 .6. That's moderate. That's legitimate, It's credible. It's not, it doesn't work for everybody. Average benefit. Pretty good. 40 years later. New theories, new understanding, new personalities, new charisma.

1:06:56What's the average response to psychotherapy for anxiety or depression? It's the same. There's no trend whatsoever of average improvement. So we've gotten a lot better at helping people have various experiences. we've gotten no better at helping them learn from them. And so to me, there's a call for action here. So when I tell you candidly, yeah, there's been very little research on one paper and a couple other related papers so far that have to do with teaching people how to deliberately internalize useful experiences to grow the good that lasts inside and there's been no research on the underlying neurobiology of that.

1:07:37So to me, it's not a critique of what I'm trying to say. It's a plea, you know, for more investigation of this really important area. Yeah, not exactly a glowing review for the field of psychotherapy that you haven't really been able to make any progress. You know, it would be like finding some sort of a drug and never developing a better one. It's like a kind of a right -ish, but some survival rates for breast cancer. They're all a bit better today than they were 40 years ago. There's their improvements. We want to see improvements in certain areas.

1:08:17And I'm...

1:08:22It's really strange, if you think about it, that... And you see this in the spiritual traditions as well. certainly the ones I'm familiar with, mindfulness training, Buddhist kinds of situations, very sincere teachers, very good at helping people have experiences. And sometimes, in a growth 1 .1 model,

1:08:48those different settings are different kinds of trainings, engender certain experiences and people that tend to have more impact, like being in groups of others or having intense experiences like Tony Robbins is a master at himself in gendering states and factors that promote emotional learning in people. Phenomenal. And still, and this is no critique of him. I did the fire walk with him like 30 years ago. I've made it through it. It was cool stuff. But he's not teaching people on the inside out now to deliberately internalize the experiences they're having at the time so that they really land and so that would be if Tony was doing the E and the A you might see even greater Responses even bigger reactions and that of course would be how to do more research on that where you take two you standard interventions and you add, you know, these approaches of deliberate internalization to one and hopefully you see greater impact and so on.

1:09:53But the broad point I would make about the fields is that I don't think there's much more upside to be had in getting better at fostering shiny experiences for people where the real upside is investigating how does learning actually happen in the broadest sense. and how can we help it happen well? Just getting back into the one negative side of experiences, what is happening in the brain when we can't stop ruminating about some upsetting scenario or memory or fear that we have?

1:10:32There's tremendous activation in the default mode network, so briefly in your familiar with this, there are different networks in the brain. They're probably three major networks that are relevant, kind of sort of right here. One is when we're, the salient network is tracking what matters, very amygdala -based. And then when we identify what matters, like in survival situations back in the jungle, we see the snake, we've detected the snake, then the second network, task network, gets engaged, better do something about the snake, like jump back or prevent snakes or in the future go different trail.

1:11:14Fine. And then when things settle down, the brain defaults to a third network, which is where we go when we're kind of just spacing out or daydreaming or ruminating. And that network is kind of in the midline toward the rear. So when people are ruminating, there's activity there. I think of it as the simulator, the ruminator. You know, very involved with what's called mental time travel, imagining the future, reflecting on the past. So when people are stuck, there's a lot of activity there. And a lot of that activity we haven't talked about this yet, super cool, is self -referential. It's very me, myself, and I.

1:11:55And since neurons that fire together, wire together, when people are in the default network and the reminader, they're reinforcing what they're reminiding about. and sensitizing your brain to what's negative along the way. So one of that for me, take away someone I've really learned over the last 30 years about the brain is to get out of the ruminator as fast as I can. Feel the feelings. It is not about avoiding feelings, but feel them mindfully in a framework of spacious awareness. So you're not so glued to that angry case about other people, or that resentment, take poison and wait for others to die as they say.

1:12:38All right, resentment. When you do that, you're reinforcing it. But if you're witnessing it more and naming it to yourself, mindfully, you actually reduce reinforcement. What are some of the ways to break that circuit? Sometimes people get stuck in a vicious cycle. people now they don't even have the culpable deniability. They don't know it's further increasing their sensitization to negative experiences in future, which may actually make them more fearful of the experience. They're free to ask, sorry. Yeah. Well, look, you've given the poison now. It's time to give the tonics. That's right. That's right.

1:13:16I can tell you there's some of those things. They were really cool. Cool. Let's get aggressive with the intervention. Someone's been and ruminating for a long time, there's something I've worried about. What are some of the ways they can break that circuit? Yeah, okay, so one is to take action. Take action, and very often people ruminate to avoid certain experiences, particularly experiences related to taking action. So if you're ruminating about a meeting with your boss or you're ruminating about a workplace presentation or you're ruminating about a mistake you made, whatever, what's appropriate action related to what you're emanating about?

1:13:55Now that's kind of tough -minded. Beneath therapists to million years, I think more compassionate than I'm kind of tougher. There's no replacement for action, action binds anxiety, and action breaks people out of the remination cycle. And it satisfies you, hey, you took the action you could. I mean, right there, know that you did what you could, and then you have to work on becoming at peace with what you can't control. But you did where you could control. That's really important. One, two, there are a couple of fantastic hacks. One is to do what's called interoception. Tune into the internal sensations of your body, like the sensation of the air coming in as you inhale and flowing out as you exhale, chest rising and falling.

1:14:44That engages a part of the brain called the insula and it acts like a circuit breaker. When people are tuning into inter -oception, they're in the present, and that reduces activity in the default mode network, which tends to be very often, like I said, focused on the future of the past. That's really a very, very powerful hack right there. Third thing people can do is tilt towards some kind of intensely positive experience. You know, whatever it is that's energizing for you. Jump up and down, eat something good, look out the window, watch a CAD video on YouTube. You know, there is a place for literally snapping out of it.

1:15:26You want to reduce the reinforcement of the remination cycle. And then I'll say one more, one more practice really great is on my favorites. It's so cool. Get a sense of anything as a whole. You can get a sense of the sensations of breathing in your chest as all, rather than in one little park or your body as a whole. Or get a sense of the volume of your room as a whole. Or raise your gaze to the horizon visually. And or kind of deliver, yeah, I would just say that. When you do that, when you get a sense of things as a whole, two good things happen. One is that you start to engage with most people, the right hemisphere of the brain, which does holistic, assault, processing.

1:16:21That's why it does a lot of visual, spatial reasoning, distinct from the sequential step -by -step specialization of the left hemisphere, which is why I specialize for language, because language is sequential. Much remination is saturated with inner speech, inner language, talking to yourself or ideating, but when you get a sense of things as a whole, you're immediately drawing on that right hemisphere of your brain, which reduces rumination activity. The other thing that happens, including when you, especially, lift your visual gaze to the horizon or above, you shift out of what is called an egocentric frame of perceptual processing into an allocentric frame.

1:17:12There's a lot of science about this. And a large fraction of the brain is dedicated to visual processing, not just the occipital cortex but other areas as well. So when you fiddle with visual processing, you're affecting your brain. A lot of real estate is getting affected. So you can just notice it in evolution and make sense when things are close to you, when your gaze looks down to what's within a meter or two. That's where friend and foe live, typically. You're going to eat me or can I eat it? Self -referential processing increases. with saturates remination is self, me, right? The me that it's happening to or could happen to or did happen to or it should have done a better job.

1:18:04Me, me, me, me. Okay. On the other hand, and you can just observe this, when you start getting a sense of things as a whole, And especially when you lift your gaze out to the bigger picture, you shift into a more impersonal frame of reference. You're not privileging your perspective. You're taking a sense of things as a whole in which you're certainly a part of that whole, but there's a lot more going on in that whole. The sense of self immediately starts reducing. And as the sense of self starts reducing, just like as the sense of inner language is reduced, rumination starts to reduce as well.

1:18:47So good. So let's say that someone's acquired negative learning across life. They've just found this insight now, fantastic, but they think that's quite if you decades of accumulating thought patterns in this way of sensitizing myself, how possible is it to get rid of those negative learnings? Is it possible that once those pathways are laid down, that we can actually prune them, or is it simply a case of us having to create other patterns? Are these, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, don't know, give me, give me the, give me the truth. Oh, that's really great. Never bet against the human heart.

1:19:30That's kind of my bottom line. And, you know, there's a lot to this. So, um, first off, in terms of remination, I want to say one more thing. One of the reasons people reminate is a defense against feelings certain things. And the feelings keep coming up because they're incompletely experienced. So one thing a person could do to help themselves, if they keep ruminating around, let's say, a loss or a regret or there's something to have remorse about, it's to really open up to that feeling. And to resource themselves so they can tolerate it and are not overwhelmed to buy it, but once you're able to feel it, if only for a few minutes in a row, really let yourself feel it.

1:20:26And as you feel it, help it to flow, blow it in effect. That's really a crucial thing. The hacks I've mentioned are more situational. Taking action on the things that you've ruminate about, including reaching out to someone you've harmed and really apologized to them or write a letter that they'll never read because they're dead or they'll never open your mail but you at least wrote the letter and shared it with people. Take the actions that you can as well as feel the feelings fully and help them out the door. In the last few years I've been just stunned by the amount of mistakes that I've made in my life that have resurfaced for me to consider.

1:21:12It's not like people brought them to me. It's just my mind has gotten quiet enough that that stuff and some of those rooms, you know, in the mansion of the mine, has started to open their doors on their own and push their way into the living room. Hello, Rick. You really fucked up there. How do you feel about it now? And I've had to really come to terms with it, but in the key to that is to let it to flow. So that's that's a deep aspect to it. And then your other question, there's tremendous evidence that people can really change over time. They really can, as you talk about, go into those different rooms and gradually clear them out.

1:21:52They really can. And so what are the factors that help people do that? One is to, just like anything, is to bring effort to it. How much time are you spending? really, productively, on releasing old pain and replacing it with something beneficial, including things like kindness toward yourself and compassion for yourself and respect that I've been with people in a lot of home or men in business settings and also in wilderness settings who are really fierce, really tough, really prepared to deal with a lot of challenge. Who are completely undone at the prospect of being at all emotionally vulnerable with another person?

1:22:43Like that is staggeringly hard for them. You know, they're, I think of interpersonal cowardice as a certain particular kind of cowardice. I'm not trying to shame it. I'm just sort of naming it. We're scared. Right? Right? Admire yourself, respect yourself for doing that kind of noble work. So that's one factor. How much effort do you bring to it? Second house, Gilflore, are you listening to your podcast, which is an incredibly dense repository of wisdom about how to change for the better over time? Being skillful, and do you reach out to experts about it? It's so interesting. People understand they have to fix their faucet.

1:23:26You need an expert. Let's say someone who knows how to do it. Maybe you already know how to do it. But if you don't know how to do it, you want to get someone who knows how to do it. Well, if you want to fix a leaking faucet, you know, and they're spewing, they're dripping, cried in your mind, walk to an expert, especially you can. Given the expenses involved, do the best you can there. I think that's, that's also important. And then there's another thing which is, in wisdom traditions, it's considered that they're the path and the cart of healing growing and awakening. I think of those three.

1:24:05Healing growing and awakening is like a cart with two wheels. There are two tracks. And one is the track that we've been entirely focused on, which is developmental change over time, which means you've got to be changing your brain over time. But the second track is true nature already. What's always already, and we're again already true underneath it all, of who you really are. Can you get in touch with that? Can you believe in it? Can you use it as a refuge that you can return to so that the two tracks support each other? You know, phrase gradual cultivation, sudden awakening, gradual cultivation.

1:24:50You know, it's a progressive process. And so for people to really, really change over time, I think what's really helpful is like I said, effort as in any domain and skillfulness as in any domain and along the way as that change is happening. So if you're getting increasingly in touch with your own fundamental good -heartedness, you know, your own innate goodness, the innate wakefulness, biologically, even without getting new age -year transcendental about it. Just for some reason, biologically, we evolve a level of being inside us underneath personality and gender socialization and history and that is un -stainable, unbreakable.

1:25:39We didn't make it, we can't break it. It's there. And we can gradually get in touch with it, especially as your mind gets quieter, you can recognize it increasingly in yourself and get in rest in it. You know, have one of your wheels in your wagon of healing, growing and awakening. you know, stay in touch with that track along while doing the work developmentally. Rick, you're so great. I can't believe I had to wait six years to speak to you again. You're really kind. Thank you. Did I adore this intersection, the way that you're able to weave between the hard neuroscience, neurobiology stuff, the sort of peaceful, dynamic side, it's so great.

1:26:25I let's we need to run this back. Let's do another episode at some point this summer. I've got so much more to talk to you about. I'd love to. Why should people go? Do they want to keep up to date with all of the things that you do and put out and have created? Why do you want to send them? Oh, very briefly. Just Google my name or go to rickhansonsoand .net. And most of what I do is really offered. We have stuff for sale for people who can afford it is reasonably priceful. Blah, blah. But it's kind of the Robinhood principle, frankly, where a lot of our aim is to make things available for free, you know, for people around the world.

1:26:59So I would say that. Also, I got a shout out. You asked about our son, Forest, who's a superstar and the podcast being well. He's really driven that and more and more. He's creating his own content. So people could check out that podcast too. Yeah. Shout out Forest. Rick, I really do appreciate you. I think you're great. And I can't wait to run this back again. I promise it won't be six years. Maybe it won't even be six months. Oh, anytime, really. Well, you take good care of yourself, Chris, and I hope my wish for you in part is you too can be in touch with really what a good guy you are. Thank you.

1:27:34I appreciate that. Until next time.