Andrew Huberman: The Simple Habits That Will Transform Your Health

21:27Andrew Huberman:If you emphasize your exhales, make them longer or more, just even focusing on them mentally, because normally we passively exhale, slows your heart rate down through something called respiratory sinus arrhythmia, involves the vagus nerve, but you don't need to know any of that all you need to know is if you emphasize your inhales make them deliberately more vigorous or longer your heart rate speeds up you'll become more alert if you emphasize your exhales focus on them make them longer your heart rate will slow down so five minutes of just sitting there and checking in you know and just trying to deliberately exhale your heart rate will just slow right down this is physiology there's nothing mystical about that but in a beautiful way you know that the yogis and uh and have to be cautious not to credit any one group for thousands of years people have understood this aspect of their physiology so those short breaks of 10 minutes in the afternoon not only embrace the quote-unquote crash but they they allow you to move around it i think a lot of people just try and power through now keep in mind as i list off these things you might say well who has time for this but the morning thing only takes about 30 minutes total and i've got a bright light in my kitchen one of these 10 ,000 lux lamps.

22:36Andrew Huberman:So I'm doing that while I'm making my morning coffee or I drink mate these days, or, you know, I go outside to get sunlight. I'm also walking my dog, get some socialization with my partner, like the, you know, get some socialization. It sounds like an experiment. We socialize, we talk. I have to be careful because the nerds speak sometimes. People go, oh my God, he's a robot.

22:53Jay Shetty:I hope she likes to socialize with you. I hope she does too.

22:56Andrew Huberman:The whole idea here is that none of this takes much time. I've learned over the last five years or six years of doing public health discourse is that it can feel like a lot. Like, oh my God, this is a lot, a lot. So one of the goals in the book was to let people understand their biology and just to remind them, yeah, you're trying to elevate your morning cortisol. There are a bunch of paths to that. In the afternoon, you're trying to bring it down. You'll still have energy. At night, you're really trying to bring it down. So this notion that you have to do all the things is not true. I think that a good analog would be exercise where, you know, we know that people should resistance train and they should do cardiovascular vascular exercise.

23:32Andrew Huberman:They should probably do some mobility and flexibility work too. Sounds like a lot. Then you break it down and resistance training is really about, you know, doing some warmup and doing some compound movement. So multiple joint movements, you know, hip hinge, press pull, this kind of thing. And if you do that and then you have to leave, you're still pretty good. Yeah. Right. Mobility, you know, get your knee behind your glutes a few times a day because we don't do that enough. Not when we walk, not when we sit, et cetera. So get your knee behind your glute. There are a number of ways to do that.

23:58Andrew Huberman:You do camel pose in yoga. You put your foot up on a couch. There are a number of ways to stretch out the hip flexors, right? And you think the cardiovascular thing is, does it have to be 180 minutes of zone two? Okay, fine. That's one way to phrase it. The other way to phrase it is walk as much as possible every day. Walk less one day because you're on a plane. Walk more the next. Take the stairs, not the escalator in the airport if you can, this kind of thing. And try and get your heart rate really high once per week, at least. Get on a treadmill, know, warm up and then, you know, go at 80 or 90 % of whatever maximum you can get your heart rate really high and then stop.

24:32Andrew Huberman:If you do those things, you're kind of checking off the major boxes and people start thinking, well, there's another list. Ah, but if you just understand what you're trying to do in each one of those circumstances, well, it doesn't matter if you're in a hotel room or you're an airport, even, or you have access to the best gyms in the world, you can do these things with body weight, with weights. I'm arriving at this place where I both have the catalog of information in my mind from having thought about this stuff so much and read about it so much. But I'm also arriving at this clarity based on the feedback I've heard from people, kind of taking like a pulse check, not just of my audience, but what feels like the larger landscape out there, that people want more peace and ease.

25:11Andrew Huberman:And yet only they can take responsibility for their health. So how do we put people into a place where they really feel like they can accomplish things without spending a ton of money and spending a ton of time? That's really what I'm trying to do.

25:22Jay Shetty:What I'm learning or gaining from you is that there's a lot of science to back up very simple things that we can do at opportune moments in the day. And it's almost like if you could map out your day and know when you're feeling certain ways. And I think all of us know that. Like all of us know, God, when it hits 3 p.m., that's when I feel my worst. Okay, well, let me have a little reminder on my phone that gets me to take 10 breaths. I know that when I wake up in the morning, I need a bit of sunlight or whatever it may be, and I'm not doing enough of that. Or maybe let me keep a bottle of water next to me.

25:54Jay Shetty:So when I wake up in the morning, I can spike my cortisol. So I feel like we've got to get intentional about mapping our days according to the patterned experiences and the conditioned experiences that we're having.

26:06Andrew Huberman:That's right.

26:06Jay Shetty:So that we can lock into this new framework that you're offering us. Because otherwise, you get to that same place every day and you reach for the candy bar or you reach for the sugary drink or reach for the caffeine because that's what you've conditioned yourself to do.

26:20Andrew Huberman:One thing we are all, I don't want to say enslaved, because it's actually a gift, is the circadian rhythm. I mean, I cannot emphasize this enough. Yes, there are night owls, and bless them. Yes, there are morning people who want to wake up at 4 or 5 a.m. Most people are somewhere in between, just statistically. But no one escapes the demands of circadian rhythm. Your cognition is going to be better at certain points in the 24-hour cycle. Your ability to sleep is better. Your ability to be calm and to listen, to be kind to yourself, to filter the world's events in ways that are peaceful and kind to yourself, but also aware of what's going on in the world.

26:59Andrew Huberman:All of that is different at 8 a.m. versus 8 p.m. versus 3 a.m. for everybody. So the most important things, I believe, are the things that take our natural rhythm. There's going to be an elevation in cortisol. Make it in the early part of your day. Ideally, tether it to light, ideally sunlight. Tether it to movement. I'm a big believer in morning meditation. I'm a big believer in nighttime prayer or meditation or long exhale breathing. You know, it depends on one's orientation towards those things, but I pray every night before I go to sleep. Why? Well, that's something that I really believe in and has become a core practice for me.

27:35Jay Shetty:What do you pray for, Andrew?

27:36Andrew Huberman:for me is a reality, which is that we're an amazing species. Humans are amazing. Dogs are amazing. All these amazing species. Humans are an amazing species. We can develop all these technologies. We can develop sophisticated language. But I came to this clarity at 50, which is kind of amazing. It took me this long, but I suffer from this thick skull sometimes, that a lot of the problems we see in the world, a lot of the things that have been challenging for me, they're central to being human. I'm not giving up on the possibility of world peace. I'm not giving up on the possibility of people really, humans evolving to a place where we truly can be better to ourselves and others.

28:14Andrew Huberman:But if we look at history and we look at where we are now, in many ways we could say, well, this is just a different version of the same thing over and over. And I had to just accept that we're not going to turn into a different species. And I started really pondering the question of whether the answers to all the things that I wish for the world and for myself would come from non-human sources. And I believe in God. I've always believed in God. And I decided to really lean into a prayer practice. so I started praying every night every night I have not missed a night if I fall asleep some you know downstairs on the couch or I get out of bed and I or off the couch and I pray before I get into bed and I pray for others I pray for the people in my life I pray for the world I I do the what admittedly can be hard work of praying for people that I've had challenges with I pray for my relationship to them.

29:11In that prayer, I really try and give over my will to make things

29:19Andrew Huberman:right internally and externally to God, to the forces in the universe that are outside my control and that I don't think any humans can really solve. And I prayed before I came in here. I prayed before every podcast. I'm a man of science. I believe in science. I believe in the scientific method. I believe, you know, in evolutionary biology, I do, but I also believe that there is a God and that there is an aspect of the energy of humans that if we open up to that, can allow us to be the best version of our species. Now I realize religion is a complicated one because it has been and continues to be ways that humans divide and harm one another, as well as embrace and help one another.

30:06Andrew Huberman:But I think that I'm in this body to try and learn and spread knowledge for health and for wellbeing. But I don't think that I can do the best job at that unless I turn some of it over to God. And I'll tell you what brought me to this realization, which was, I understand the biology of cognition, volition, addiction, sleep, autonomic nervous system. I mean, I teach and learn this stuff. I ran a lab for many years. And there's this bizarre thing that happens when people are struggling to change their thoughts or behavior in some way. And despite all the knowledge in the world, all the support in the world, they can't do it.

30:52Andrew Huberman:And then you observe that if they give that process over to, sometimes they call it higher power, like in 12 step, or sometimes they'll just give it over to God, or they'll take their hands off the throttle and the steering wheel, they are somehow able to accomplish that thing. Now, it makes no sense. It actually goes completely counter current with everything we understand about the prefrontal cortex and control of impulsive behavior. And I've never seen it fail in myself or in others. And recently I was up at Stanford because I split my time between Southern and Northern California and the Veritas group, which is an on-campus, They happen to be a Christian group asked me to come talk about satisfaction and what leads to real life satisfaction.

31:34Andrew Huberman:I mean, it's not denominational, but that's sort of where Veritas got started. And it was so interesting because here I am on my still a tenure professor at Stanford. I'm on my home court. I'm there talking about God. I'm not educated in this realm. And I'm talking to, you know, I said, I started off by saying I'm certain this room is filled with people that are far more knowledgeable about the Bible and God than I am. But all I can tell you is that a prayer practice has fundamentally changed my ability to think, to feel peaceful, to make better decisions, to see aspects of the world that are beautiful, that clearly were there before that I was missing, to look at fellow humans with more appreciation.

32:12Andrew Huberman:And I like to think kindness and forgiveness. And most of the ways in which we think that works run it directly against neuroscience and psychology and their formal academic, you know, literatures. And yet I still believe in all of that as well. I mean, in two words, it works. How it works is still mysterious. And I think nonetheless, I think it's an extremely powerful thing to live in the question of faith or maybe even in faith. And two years ago, I couldn't say this, even though I was doing it, I was too scared. I thought, oh, no, no, take me seriously as a scientist anymore. Listen, if someone wants to sit down and we have a four-hour conversation about everything from molecular level up to circuit level and psychological, I can do that.

32:59Andrew Huberman:I'm by no means an expert in all those areas, but I've been surrounded by them. My friends who are neurosurgeons, especially the physicians that I know who are exceptional, who work on the brain, they'll tell you there's got to be something else beyond just the textbook understanding of the brain. There has to be. So how do you know? And they say, well, because they've got their hands in people's brains seeing and working with the chemicals and the meat of it. But they've just seen some astonishing things. They've seen certainly tragedy in some cases, but what they describe as miracles. So as a curious person who loves knowledge, I just kept hearing the whisper and then it was a tap and then it was a little bit of a shove, like, like let's do this let's explore it but when i say let's do this i mean i'm i'm exploring i'm like anyone else there are nights and days where i go okay maybe this is all in my head maybe i'm and i and i say okay well i'm just going to keep doing it the same way one would continue with an academic program that was difficult to get to the end the same way that one would um continue with a fitness program except on on days uh when it's difficult yeah so forgive me for taking that tangent, but that marks the end of my day.

34:09Andrew Huberman:I mean, yes. And I dim the lights in the evening and I try not to, you know, hydrate too much, uh, trying to drink caffeine too late in the day, even though I love an afternoon coffee, I'm half Argentine. We love our afternoon coffee. I try and not get aggravated by things I see in the world late in the day. I, um, I really try and bring the low cortisol themes to my home. Um, uh, my partner and I, she, uh, you know, she's really good about like bringing the tone down and all of that. And I try, I follow suit. This prayer practice before sleep has my dreams, my life is so much more peaceful. It just feels remiss if I didn't talk about it.

34:46Andrew Huberman:There's still, as people can probably detect a little awkwardness because I'm not, you know, I'm not running around quoting Bible passages. I'm not certain about anything except that there's something there. And the fact that prayer has.

34:59Jay Shetty:This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making and that extends to the practical stuff too like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

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37:16Andrew Huberman:Fundamentally transformed my life for the better.

37:18Jay Shetty:To me, listening to you say that highlights the challenge that we all have as humans again, which is that battle of the binary and that either or. So it's like, it's either God or it's science or it's spirituality or it's science. And I almost feel like that's where all of our problems come from. All of our human problems, almost the origin is because we believe

37:45Andrew Huberman:there can only be one or the other. I completely agree. I'm chuckling because there's this really wonderful paper that was published in Neuron, which is a cell press journal. It's a really fine journal that basically shows that there's a really strong dopamine release and reinforcement, a reward for validating one's own beliefs. Explains a lot about the world. And it's very easy to get cynical when one sees that sort of result. In fact, I think a lot of the world can to be explained, especially online by people believing things in order to feel some way that's satisfying to them. And oddly to not feel good.

38:18Andrew Huberman:You know, I don't think most people are going online. I want to feel good. And so I'm going to go online. I think people were compelled to go there and wonderful things happen online, including podcasts and new, and sometimes the news is wonderful and we need to stay informed, but there seems to be this aspect to the human brain that actually science backs up in the 1960s and seventies, a guy named Robert Heath, the controversial scientists for unrelated reasons to his expertise, but he did these experiments as a neurosurgeon that were very informative and important nonetheless, which was he allowed people to press buttons, which would stimulate different areas of their brain.

38:51Andrew Huberman:Some areas made them feel giddy, other areas drunk, other areas they would feel aroused, other areas they feel hungry, other areas they'd feel sated. The number one area that people preferred to lever press for, warning, this is going to discourage some people, was the centromedian nucleus of the thalamus, midline thalamus, that made them feel mild frustration and anger. People feel reinforcement from that arousal, which is not the same thing as liking it. I don't think anyone likes to feel frustrated or likes to feel angry. But one of the most important things about neuroscience that people should know about their brains is that reinforcement is a more useful term than reward.

39:34Andrew Huberman:We think about dopamine rewards. No, no, no, no. The dopamine system and related systems are there to reinforce, to strengthen the likelihood that certain behaviors occur. And it's not always about pleasure. This is a tough thing to accept about our species. It's a really tough one because if you give any other sort of animal, a mouse or a dog, the opportunity to stimulate their brain, this is not what they do. They go for pleasure. humans for whatever reason and perhaps it's the fact that we've needed to lean up against the edges of nature and feel the pain of cold feel the pain of famine and our species is uniquely gifted to develop technologies to overcome those maybe we need to feel this frustration it's reinforced and then we go build tools to overcome cold to overcome hunger and so on people like to feel activated, even if the activation feels lousy.

40:29Andrew Huberman:Yes. We have to understand this. We have to acknowledge this because once you do, you realize, let's take it back to the morning routine. I can wake up some days and to borrow a phrase from Andy Stumpf, who's a remarkable person in his own right, a former tier one operator, is a very impressive person. He says, you know, sometimes you wake up and there's a revolution in your mind. You don't want to do this. You don't want to do that. It all seems overwhelming. You're tired. And what do you do with that? It's so easy to slide down the, into the trench of frustration and anger and like, oh, I don't want to do this or lazy.

41:03Andrew Huberman:And some days we need to do that, but most days we need to get up, get our sunlight, do our meditation, drink water. We have to fight this midline thalamic nucleus is like trying to, and how do we fight it without negative arousal? Most people know how to fight back. They know how to fight for their kids. They know how to fight for their political party. But how do you advocate for yourself? How do you generate positive arousal? The word arousal is a little tricky too, because people immediately default to romantic sexual arousal. But arousal is just our tendency to feel up. Alive, yeah. Alive and up.

41:35Andrew Huberman:How do we access that, knowing that there's this strong bias towards going into kind of darker places? I think the key, I mean, you know far more about this than I do, Jay. I think the key lies in that early meditation, in gratitude, in realizing that as beautiful as our brains and our species are, we're all a little crazy, right? We all have this strong bias toward feeling frustration and wanting this reinforced arousal that isn't good for us or for the world. And if we just can acknowledge that and the fact that dogs and cats, at least days I've accepted cats into my life too, you know like I don't know what they experience but something tells me because they lack the sophistication to develop tools and think about the future and organize around it in ways similar to us I think they just default to less they want less friction I think the friction was an important lever in our evolutionary trajectory if there's going to be a big inflection in quote-unquote collective consciousness it's going to come from acknowledging we're an amazing species We are also a flawed species.

42:42Andrew Huberman:Let's even forget the notions of flawed in the religious context, although that might have relevance here. We're flawed. Our brain wiring ain't great for us and others sometimes. But if we know it, we're above it. If we're above it, we can make better decisions. If we can make better decisions, then I do think our species can get to a place where we just kind of laugh about how insane our mental workings are so that we can lean into their positive aspects. I really think this is possible, but it requires that stillness that only comes through self-awareness, which only comes through the breath from being still.

43:17Andrew Huberman:I mean, you've, you have been doing that for a long time. You've talked about it. I think for the longest time, I thought, great meditation is a way to lower cortisol, sleep better at night, increase one's heart rate variability and, and not be as reactive. Cool. Cool. Cool. Maybe even access like new realms of consciousness. If I do it long enough

43:37Jay Shetty:and I do it like in Big Sur or something.

43:40Andrew Huberman:But I think the deeper piece here is the acknowledgement that comes from, I need this. This should be a requirement for our species. But another feature of our species, we don't like to be told what to do. The best way to get somebody to never do a health practice is tell them they have to do it. One of the beautiful aspects of humans is like we like to fight for our independence over our mind. Nobody wants to be controlled. That's a great thing. so I don't know I think about this stuff a lot but I don't let myself go into a revolution in my mind in the morning because as at 50 I can tell you I've spent too many mornings there too many nights there and I think it's important to grieve when one needs to grieve I think it's important to be angry when one needs to feel angry but I put all that on top of a really deep acceptance that our brain has this feature feels like a flaw but I think it's just a feature a few

44:34Jay Shetty:reflections on what you're saying, fascinating discussion and so gripping to even get to talk about this with you. But first thing on the meditation piece, I was thinking, we think we meditate so that we can be peaceful, but actually we need to meditate so that we don't disturb anyone else. And when you realize that meditation was there to access more grace, more compassion, it was tuning into the reservoir of that so that we could be streams and rivers and tributaries of that compassion and all of a sudden you realize it's not all on you i think that's partly why prayer is so powerful is because it's an acceptance that i'm fallible and i can't hold this all myself i couldn't possibly and that there's something greater than me that's holding me and holding everything else.

45:31Jay Shetty:And actually that vastness may have the capacity to understand everyone and to hear everyone and to make people feel seen and understood because if it's left to me and my five senses, I'll probably fail. And so I think that piece is really beautiful. And I couldn't agree with you more that it is simply having access to a well or a reservoir in the moment that you need it, right? You can have a glass of water in front of you, but if you don't know where it's going to be filled from tomorrow, then the anxiety comes in, the stress comes in, the pain comes in because you think I only have one glass of water, which is, I think, our human experience on so many levels.

46:09Jay Shetty:It's the scarcity. It's the lack of access to enough understanding. How much more compassion do I need to have? How much more can I try and not be anxious? How much more do I have? And we don't. We don't have. And therefore, I think prayer is a beautiful access to that. But I guess what you're saying is a lot of what you're talking about, even though it does give protocols for health and wellbeing, it's actually giving us stability for interacting and exchanging

46:36Andrew Huberman:and connecting with people better as well. That's right. I mean, the pursuit of mental and physical health through quote unquote protocols is not a closed loop. It's so that you can be more present for your family members, for the world. It's so that you can be more present to nature, so that you can see new possibilities and new ideas. Look, I feel over the moon, honored, and delighted that the last five, six years has been this conversation about health and wellness in a way that even though I've been interested in it for a long time, I've never observed in the world before. I've been fortunate to play some small part in that.

47:10Andrew Huberman:And huge part. Well, thank you. I mean, the ability to take what I learn and share it is just, I mean, it seems to be hardwired into me. I think that's why I'm here. I enjoy it so much and I feel very gratified that people benefit. And it's an honor and a privilege. I think that the field of health and wellness, for lack of a better term, is in a bit of a self-reflection mode right now. Like how much optimization do we need? Do we all need to be doing red light therapy, taking a million supplements? And no, no, no, no, no, no. You can, you don't have to. The things that really move the needle are going to be the things we talked about.

47:47Andrew Huberman:Meditations, brief or long, long exhale breathing when you're stressed, hydration and exercise. And, you know, in the book, I have an entire chapter. It's basically seven books in one. It's a very large book. I was joking. That sounds like you. If nothing else, it'll cure insomnia or it could serve as a doorstop. It could be read linearly front to back, or you could just focus on individual chapters or jump around. It's designed for that. It's meant to be a resource and a lookup guide. It has a little bit of a textbook-ish feel, but their story, I like to think it's very readable. I do give my backstory and what the motivation for going into all this was and isn't in the introduction.

48:23But each chapter, you know, sleep, exercise, stress management, nutrition, light, not just

48:31Andrew Huberman:sunlight, but things like red light, et cetera, light, it's an impact on the body. I mean, incredible literature that is the beautiful work of others, not mine, you know, neuroplasticity and personal development. Each one is designed to say, okay, here are the protocols that I'm, that I am certain are most powerful, starting with the most powerful as the first protocol in each chapter, as well as the science that supports them. Each one of those is meant to give people tools. But the final chapter on personal development for me was the most important in terms of framing the human brain and mind and all the stuff, because you alluded to this at the beginning of our discussion today, but I had a conversation with James Hollis.

49:12Andrew Huberman:He's a psychologist. He's probably about 86 years old now. He wrote some incredible books that I was aware of years ago. One is called Under Saturn's Shadow on healing and trauma. I was very early in that discussion. He's been around working hard in there for a while. He wrote The Eden Project, which is the psychology of relationships. Brilliant, brilliant man. Years ago, I saw a video of him on YouTube called Creating a Life. And the audio is terrible. And I was like, I got to get this guy on the podcast. So I said, like, what's the key to a really good life? And he said four things. I talk about this in the book, but it's all Hollis.

49:46He says, first, he's very compassionate.

49:51Andrew Huberman:He says, shut up, kind of like this, suit up and show up. It's like, whoa, I didn't expect that from Hollis. He's not really like the - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Motivational is legal. And then the fourth one is to, once a day, get out of stimulus and response, drop into a different mode and really stay in touch with what's true for you, what's closest to your heart, which sounded more like the Hollis I was expecting. The shut up piece is actually about gratitude. He talks about this every day. He literally has his clients write this down, shut up, suit up, show up. There's always somebody suffering more than you.

50:30Andrew Huberman:That's his belief and I totally agree. So we have to work to be grateful. It's not a reflex for most people. Do a gratitude practice. Do it. Then it's suit up, prepare. The prepare piece is really about making sure that when you show up for the roles in your life, relational, vocational, et cetera, that you're positioning yourself to win as best you can. And there's a process I talk about that's neuroscience related in the book of how to do that. And then the last one is show up. You know, here's this guy who's all about the mind and the heart and all this stuff. And he's telling me, he said, you know, one of the most fundamental things to having a good life is to fulfill outward roles.

51:14Andrew Huberman:And it's naive to think that we just need to be in touch with our heart's desires. We have to fulfill outward roles, especially if we don't like those roles and we want to leave them because that positions us to leave them if we need to. So the first three were kind of like very, you know, steal a term from the kids, like boomer, boomer advice, you know, like, you know, shut up, suit up, show up. But the way he couches and what the real meaning behind it is just beautiful. And then the getting out of stimulus and response is something that we've heard about for years. Viktor Frankl, people, meditators for thousands of years, you know, getting out of this planning and doing thing.

51:47Andrew Huberman:And I said, but that's a tough one, right? Because how do I touch into my deepest heart's desires? Or just sit there and go like, okay, what's my heart really want? Maybe. But what he said is the most important thing is that you have to get out of role fulfillment. You have to get out of the mode of trying to please notions of yourself, to please other people for a short while. It could be five minutes. And let your mind idle because that's where your unconscious will spontaneously just toss things up to your conscious mind to receive. Some people get them in dreams. Some people will sit there and realize, gosh, I was just frustrated today.

52:20Andrew Huberman:I actually don't want to leave my job. I actually don't want to leave my spouse. I'm just exhausted. The truth comes out. sometimes it will be oh my gosh i'm in the wrong life this is not my life okay i'll check in tomorrow to make sure that's still true before i do anything about that seesaw of checking in on all these things is so critical and frankly the book was also written to myself it was the book i wish i had in my 20s i hopped on the science track because i out of desperation we've talked about this on previous podcasts my life was not going well as i exited high school my life was looking really bad.

52:54Andrew Huberman:And I had a lot of reasons to be angry. I had frustration. But I was like, no one's coming to save me. Role fulfillment. Do the thing, at least for me, that I knew if I just kept doing it, at some point I'd get something. And in that case, it was a degree. I would just build knowledge on knowledge. I eventually fell in love with that learning. But even if I hadn't, I would have kept going.

53:15Jay Shetty:This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making. And that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

53:49Andrew Huberman:What's so awesome about James Hollis's stance is that it acknowledges both. We hear we need to be in touch with ourselves, what we really want. We also need to fulfill roles in society, in our families, to ourselves and to others. But the fulfilling roles for others piece has never failed across societies, across cultures, across thousands of years. This is the thing that gives us confidence that if we need to pivot, work or whatever, that we can be successful in the next thing. Our ability to control our own mind, to work against the revolution that is our brain and get things done is critical to this thing that we call confidence.

54:28The rudder should be within us.

54:31Andrew Huberman:I'm steering in a direction that I want to go on average because some days we don't want to do it. But that for me was, it was like, I had to wait until I was almost 50 years old and sit down with Hollis to really see that. But the other thing that I just think is sort of central to everything we're talking about today, and we were talking about before we came in here, is that that chapter on personal development also gets into the neuroscience of thoughts. You know, there is no textbook in neuroscience that covers this. There are textbooks in neuroscience, wonderful ones, in fact, that cover everything from brain development to plasticity to diseases of the brain.

55:06Andrew Huberman:I teach from these books, right? and you won't find a section or a chapter on thoughts. You find them on memories, on consciousness, but like, what's a thought? And I had a conversation on my podcast with a neuroscientist from Duke. Her name is Jenny Groh and she studies how the brain represents visual space. But she also explained to me for the first time how thoughts actually work. And I'm a neuroscientist and I couldn't figure it out. And she said, well, basically our species was gifted many, many more brain areas. And to represent the different senses, but not just one area for touch, but many, many, many more than any of the other old world primates out there.

55:49Andrew Huberman:And when we have a thought, so like, let's say we see something online or this table, for instance. So if we look at this table, the moment we look at something and concentrate on it, or we hear something and concentrate on it, it's almost like the magic library in the Harry Potter play. where the books around it start to change. You take out a book on one thing and all the books around it start to become tangentially related to that thing. So if we look at this table, it's glass. So the area of my brain that represents glass also is thinking smooth. Then it's thinking elegant. Then it's thinking round.

56:24Andrew Huberman:And so the brain starts moving into what we call a dynamic attractor state. It's like there was a ball bearing, which is our thoughts on a flat surface. And the moment we seed that thought or it seeded for us like politics, war, dog child smile whatever it is it has the potential to seed those thoughts these brain areas everything that represents smell touch hearing they all start offering up related themes and so what jenny explained was we are the species that can create all these tangential and very elaborate representations of neuroscientists call them a seed stimuli but something now i could have picked painting, I could have picked the fact that you always are immaculately dressed, which always makes me wonder if I've got lint on myself.

57:10Andrew Huberman:I don't know, man. Somehow I seem to accumulate lint, but you always seem, I don't know, maybe you have some magic thing that protects you from lint, but I could pick anything and the brain will start to layer in sensory representations. What do I mean by that? I said smooth. Now other smooth things come to mind. This is the way that the brain works when it comes to thinking. And we need to be very, very careful what sorts of thoughts we always say that we feed. But let's think about it in a positive stance. I can take something I love, focus on it, and other things I love will start to enter the picture.

57:46Andrew Huberman:Now, some people say, oh, this is kind of veering towards law of attraction. Whatever. People can call it whatever they want at this point. It's human brain starts to layer in sensory representations of things around that from my past, from the present, what could be in the future. and as she explained this i thought my goodness the real work of life is to stay present but to also be a selective filter about which thoughts we i don't want to say feed but seed this is so important and how do we do this again by getting to the recognition that our brain can be pulled in different directions we're not always in control then if we go far enough down a particular thought route or emotional state, that ball bearing starts to drop into a trench and it's very hard to get out.

58:30Andrew Huberman:So the revolution of the mind that sometimes starts first thing in the morning for me or late at night or after bouts of stress or when it's just been so much, the revolution of the mind can only be overcome by acknowledging, ah, like the library I'm in right now is filled with this stuff. I need to go to another room in the library. There's no way out of here by just continuing to think about these problems? How do you turn off thinking? So this is the super skill I think of humans that we need to develop. I do not have a protocol in my book for how to turn off thoughts because it doesn't work.

59:04Andrew Huberman:What we can do is get back into sensation, back to breath. All the stuff that used to sound kind of loose in the neuroscience world, there are tons of randomized controlled trials and, you know, Library of Congress, PubMed IDs for this stuff now. This stuff is no longer wishy-washy. It's really about the lability of our brain, but also our ability to steer it in the right direction.

59:26Jay Shetty:The words you use there feel very analogous to the Eastern perspective of how the mind and the consciousness work. So you gave the example of you saying the mind feeling pulled, or like the brain feeling pulled. And so the metaphor that's created in the Eastern landscape is that the mind is on a chariot, and there are five horses and the five horses are the five senses.

59:50Andrew Huberman:Beautiful.

59:50Jay Shetty:And so the sense, you hear something, you smell something, whatever it may be, and it captivates you. And now the horses start running in all these different directions, which is how we feel when we're like, oh God, I need to do that thing, but I kind of want to spend time with this person. But oh my God, I just heard about what happened in the news. And it's like, all the horses are chasing that direction. And the mind is like trying to hold onto the reins, but doesn't have a clue what's going on. And then what's happened is that as the horses are trying to run, the only thing that can help the mind is the God.

1:00:21Jay Shetty:There's a God, which is the intelligence. And the intelligence is the discernment between what the horses want to do and what the conditioned consciousness experiences. So for example, if a horse is running toward alcohol, because it's always had access to alcohol, the conditioned consciousness goes, oh yeah, we like alcohol. We had a great time last time. And the guard totally moved out of the way and then we go and follow that. The Eastern perspective is, the senses are going to do what they're going to do unless they're controlled and unless they're trained. If a horse is trained, it follows suit.

1:00:55Jay Shetty:If it isn't trained, it's going to go wild and go crazy. So is your mind a wild horse or is it a trained horse? The second is, is your intelligence trained? So that if your sense gets out of control, does the mind have the ability to check with the God and the intelligence and the intelligence can go, no, we know that when we go out late at night, we get a bit too drunk and it's not too great tomorrow. We know that when we kind of push it at work too much, we burn ourselves out and we get exhausted. But that intelligence needs to be strengthened. And again, that's through the thoughts that you allow in.

1:01:26Jay Shetty:What are the thoughts that you're filling your intelligence up with? So you've got these two checking points. This is from the Eastern perspective of understanding the mind and the consciousness. But the hard part for us is we're exhausted. So the intelligence is weakened. And then we're stressed out. So the mind doesn't really have the ability to rein in any of these horses. So our thoughts go wild and crazy. And I think that's at the crux of it, that I think we're just so tired today.

1:01:54Andrew Huberman:Look, I have great reverence for the field of neuroscience. It's amazing what neuroscientists have figured out. Even in the last 25 years, I've been so blessed to be a part of neuroscience at a time where all these tools just arrived and we so much still to figure out, but just incredible understanding that we didn't have 10, 20 years ago, certainly 40 years ago, but thematically many of the things that one can conclude from the best neuroscience has been demonstrated and was documented in the East a long time ago, just different language, more time perhaps spent observing and putting into practices.

1:02:30Andrew Huberman:And the two have really started to merge.

1:02:33Jay Shetty:Yeah, I feel that way.

1:02:35Andrew Huberman:They really have. And really, this is a moment to put in a real strong plug for federally funded research. It is hard to explain to people just how much incredible science and gifts of medicine have been discovered because of that support that doesn't happen elsewhere in the world. Yes, in the UK, yes, in other places in Europe. But like my father came from South America to the United States to become a scientist because there's no funding for research there. But the point being that about 25 years ago, someone, I don't know who at the National Institutes of Health made the very, very good decision to start funding grants on meditation, which let's face it for scientists who want to understand cures to Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and stuff, there's a finite amount of money.

1:03:16Andrew Huberman:So it sounded a bit squishy. Like, are we really going to fund this stuff? But at the time meditation was really considered counterculture and woo and all of that. And what we know for certain is that these practices of exhale, emphasize breathing, closing one's eyes, getting out of stimulus and response, it fundamentally helps people at the level of sleep, reduce stress, helps kids with ADHD, helps people who are dealing with traumas. I mean, and on and on, I'm telling you what you already know. And now most people say, yeah, okay, we know we should meditate. Okay. But there was no quote unquote Western science substantiation for that until mainly NIH came in and did the, what I believe was really good work of putting federal tax dollars to that.

1:04:00Andrew Huberman:And now we're there. And I think there's more to discover, but it's just a reminder that Western science and Eastern practices are not always in conflict. In fact, they're often in collaboration before they even realize it. And now they've really merged. So there's a really, that's a success story. If I want to take a moment to tip my hat to Richie Davidson and colleagues at University of Wisconsin who wrote Altered Traits, which was one of the first books based on mostly on the work in his laboratory about mindfulness and putting people into fMRIs and really understanding that studying well-trained yogis was important, but also college students meditating for the first time and really important work that broke through.

1:04:38Andrew Huberman:There needed to be a scientist like him to kind of break through. And now it's common knowledge, but they had it right based on everything you're telling me. And maybe that's the first thing to acknowledge each day. Wake up. Thank God for being alive another day. That's Hollis's shut up. He's not saying shut up. He's saying be grateful. You know, you're breathing. You're awake. Some people will say, and I've certainly said like, yeah, okay, but I've got da-da-da-da-da. But okay, you're there. and then I think it's at least for me it's to acknowledge that we've got this feature let's not call it a flaw let's call it a feature which is we can easily slide down the trench of negativity and obsession over things that don't serve us but we can also climb up the staircase faster first thing in the morning this is something that's really true you know the circadian rhythm we're much better at advocating for ourself in the morning some people need coffee first.

1:05:31Andrew Huberman:Gotcha. Need some sunlight first, et cetera. But you know, two, three in the morning is a hard time to fight one's own mind. But first thing in the morning, you stand a fighting chance. You can sleep quite as much, do yoga nidra. You'll recover some of that sleep, that vigor. And maybe the first fight is with ourselves, right? And maybe if I may, and now definitely editorializing, but maybe that's what God wants. Maybe that's our first test. Like, hey, like, can you just acknowledge that like you're, you're not on the best footing just by being human, climb up the ladder, get a foothold on yourself.

1:06:04Andrew Huberman:And then you stand a fighting chance. And even my language now is like fighting and foothold. I mean, there's gotta be a more peaceful, easeful way into this, but at least for me, at least where I stand now, the peace and ease doesn't come till the end of the day, but I work on it. When I, when I feel like, Oh, I'm getting pulled. I sometimes will just pray. I'll say, God, I, I, this feels too hard. I know I can do it, but can you help me out here? And there's something about those little prayers that sound perhaps silly to some, but for those that do them, they would go like, and somehow all of a sudden it gets a little easier.

1:06:40Andrew Huberman:Again, runs totally counter current to everything we understand about top-down inhibition and all this stuff that is definitely true for other circumstances, but we let go a little bit and somehow the path kind of opens to us. We don't really have science to understand this. It's going to be very hard to study in a laboratory, but someday people will figure it out. And you just start moving in that direction. And I think then, you know, you've got your horses, they're fed. Now it's time to exercise them and water them and get them sunlight. And animals do a lot of things intuitively. People always say, does the morning sunlight thing, is it also true for animals?

1:07:12Andrew Huberman:Every species has these cortisol mechanisms, these melatonin mechanisms, every mammalian species, and needs to supply the same things. Sunlight, hydration, movement in the morning, dim light, long exhales, watch a dog before it goes down to sleep. It'll do, it does the physiological side because it's a hardwired circuit. There's a brain center specifically for that. We do that too. Our heart rate slows down. We have more, uh, more ease getting into sleep. So I think acknowledging our instinctual side is critical and acknowledging that that instinctual side is like not always best for us and best for the world.

1:07:52Jay Shetty:Yeah.

1:07:52Andrew Huberman:And when we say that, like acknowledge our instinctual side, people will say, oh, oh, so you're really saying like we should acknowledge that we have rage in us, that we have envy in us, that we have jealousy in us. Yes, yes, and yes. Yes, of course. Not trying to sound biblical here, but yes, yes, and yes. Anyone that doesn't have those aspects to their psyche doesn't have a hypothalamus. That's all rooted in these deep brain structures that because we have this other thing called a cortex, it can exert top-down inhibition. You know, the two marshmallow tests that everyone, you know, loves to discuss, and then it was sort of quote-unquote debunked.

1:08:24Andrew Huberman:Yeah. But then I just had someone on my podcast recently, which told me that the debunk got debunked. So it turns out this is like eventually all the kids took the marshmallow. The question was who waited the longest. Got it. It's going to be interesting, but there's a lot more plasticity to it than we were told. It's not like you're fated to be the impulsive one or the non-in, but you can learn to set up new incentives. I'm going to wait because, gosh, it would be nice to have the two or I'm going to wait because someone else is going to benefit from it. I mean, that's the beauty of being human.

1:08:53Andrew Huberman:We can place new rules and strategies and meaning on those same basic instincts that are there in all of us. And so I'm both in deep acceptance of our instinctual side, but as a way to try and get past it. this theme has been missing from the health and wellness and neuroscience and psychology conversations because the way we're trained as scientists and even in the health sphere, it's like, you're not like this and I'm like, not like this, but in general, people have to kind of pick a theme. I'm the red light guy or I'm the morning sunlight guy. I've been accused of that and I'll take that. Or the meditation lab.

1:09:35Andrew Huberman:You know, when you're a scientist running a laboratory, you can't afford to work on a bunch of things. So people typically, if we hear from them, they're talking about one area. But really the themes are circadian rhythms, alertness and sleep. That's frankly half of wellness.

1:09:51Jay Shetty:Yeah. Right now.

1:09:52Andrew Huberman:Stress management, nutrition and exercise, learning. These are the fundamentals, right? I mean, if we say, oh yeah, we all do want the chocolate cake. Cool. That's just a hardwired thing. When should we give into the impulse? when shouldn't we? Now that's the tricky part. The rule book comes from other humans and we don't like other humans telling us what to do. We like other humans telling us things that we like to do. And so I think a big issue that everyone should ask themselves is, you know, how much do I want to fight my instinctual nature? How much am I willing to fight? Should we be? Well, when it comes to being kind to oneself, yeah.

1:10:30Andrew Huberman:And to others, yeah. I think most of the suffering in the world is um our desire to control our mind to control the mind and behavior of other people it's a feature slash flaw of our species comes with being a primate like if you watch chimp empire i don't know if you watch that series on netflix it's incredible but it will make you pause and wow these these old world primates these large primates they lie they cheat they steal they also love and care and protect, but they lie, they cheat, they steal and love and protect and bond. It does seem to be a feature of primates with large brains that they have the opportunity to do harm and good.

1:11:15Andrew Huberman:Um, which is not to say that all wolf packs are just benevolent, but I've looked at the brains of a lot of different species, something I'm bittersweet about, but comparative neurology is something I spent a lot of time doing. I've worked, I don't like to say on, with a number of different species. Turns out humans is the place I'm comfortable working because they can consent. I'm not against animal research, but I've come to the place where it was gnawing at my soul for a long time, which is why I decided to get into public education. What did you learn? Till recently, I taught neuroanatomy. I mean, much of what we know about neuroanatomy comes from human brains, but also other animals' brains.

1:11:48Andrew Huberman:I mean, it's hard to not be somewhat of a speciest. Like if you're trying to discover a cure for Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, probably gonna have to work on mouse brains, which means you're going to have to kill mice. And you try and do it as pain-free and humanely as you can. Non-human primate work is something that is very, very hard on the soul. I can tell you that having done it and decided this is not for me. This is the one fortunate consequence of less funding for research is that what I believe to be non-essential non-human primate work is no longer being funded. There's still some primate work that's being funded and I'm not in a position to say whether or not it's worthwhile or not because I'd have to look application by application, but they're on this planet with us we owe them respect they're sentient you know uh dogs cats fortunately very very little research certainly in the u.s i don't think you're going to find that much anymore it probably still exists but that was a very difficult part of becoming a neuroscientist i really grappled with that one and uh was happy to stop because it really affected you it did and i have to be careful because you know you've got people who will harm other people who work on animals and I've known some of those folks and that's bad too, right?

1:12:58Andrew Huberman:You know, it can get extreme and sometimes animal models are the only way to go. But yeah, that one was rough. It's not something I've talked about before because in a way I'd be a hypocrite because if anyone looks up my papers, many of them were on ferrets, which are carnivore. People say, oh, ferrets stink. You know, ferrets are smart animals. They have probably largest brain volume to body size, which is a simple way of saying they're very smart. They have, you know, bumpy brains. They got a lot of brain in there. I think they have a sense of humor. They certainly feel pain. Mice have a smooth brain, but they feel pain.

1:13:35Andrew Huberman:They form social bonds. People study social bonds in these animals. So I'm not saying all that work should be stopped. I'm saying that for me, personally, I got to the point where I was like, enough, I just can't do this. And I knew something was happening for me. I was pursuing meaningful questions that relate to human health. But at some point I had to have a really honest conversation with myself, which was, is this eroding my soul? And I just couldn't, you know, having a dog, I talk a lot about dogs as people can probably tell. And, um, I think their lack of a prefrontal cortex is what makes them so awesome.

1:14:09Andrew Huberman:Sorry. They have, they have a prefrontal cortex, but it's small. Believe me, I've seen them, um, small in volume. The prefrontal cortex is an area of brain just beyond your forehead, which allows you to set context and strategy settings, suppress impulses.

1:14:23Jay Shetty:You're saying your dogs don't really love you. They just don't know.

1:14:25Andrew Huberman:No, I think they only love you. I think they only love you. This is the part of the brain that's strategic, that can lead to deception. And some people say, well, my dog lies. Okay. They have a little bit of prefrontal cortex, but the human and other old world primates We're the ones with a really built out prefrontal cortex that can imagine technologies and then implement them, good and bad. I think dogs are amazing because they have just enough prefrontal cortex to allow them to think and plan and recognize. And they have, to my understanding and experience, zero diabolical nature to them. They're a you win, I win, I want everyone to win species.

1:15:07Andrew Huberman:And I'm not trying to condemn any of my colleagues that do this kind of work. Although I will say my greatest reverence for neuroscientists right now are people like my childhood friend. I've known him since we were seven, Eddie Chang. He's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. You know, he's taken people who are locked in in paralysis and he's gotten them to speak for the first time in 10 years by understanding neural mechanisms in the brain, translating it through. I mean, he's also a bioengineer and he's using AI and he has this patient, it's been documented, it was discussed in the Times and elsewhere, who said hello for the first time through a computer in 10 years and now speaks with his family members and his other patients that are doing the same.

1:15:44Like he's a healer, right?

1:15:47Andrew Huberman:So the work in animals informs stuff in humans, but I feel like there's a lot that needs to be implemented in humans. And I don't think AI is going to solve all of it, but AI is going to be a magnificent, it is already a magnificent tool for better understanding brains and biology. I know there's a lot of AI fear right now, and I understand why people feel that way, but the ability to really understand what brains are doing in humans, everything Eddie did in those experiments is through machine learning plus neurosurgery. I mean, he's like an astronaut of the brain. He does all those things. But in the next three or four years, we're gonna see people, okay, there's gonna be low-level technologies that are gonna be very useful.

1:16:24Andrew Huberman:Recently, and I don't have any relationship to them, I tried an eye mask that causes eye movements that put you to sleep. I want an eye mask that helps me fall asleep. And that measures my rapid eye movements and can increase my rapid eye movement sleep. It improves learning, emotional, unloading, you know, heaviness of emotional experience. All that's going to happen through AI understanding your eye movements and then, you know, subtly controlling them non-invasively, a little electrical stimulus behind the ear while you sleep, improving your sleep. Likewise for focus and cognition, for vagal nerve stimulation, non-invasively.

1:16:54Andrew Huberman:This is all going to happen and AI is going to be a critical piece of this. But also for deciphering your health data, telling you what you actually should eat, which supplements you actually need, and then watching your blood work move in the right directions. And, you know, we think about this in the context of just general health, but, you know, I have a friend with MS, he's especially interested in that, right? Because you're not going to find any literature about what to take. If you take MS, it's all through these patient groups and they're talking to one another. AI can really assist taking those, all that information and for free, basically giving back the best practices.

1:17:24Andrew Huberman:And then at the level of neurosurgery, but also brain machine interface. I do think that Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, severe ADHD, OCD, eating disorders like anorexia, the most deadly psychiatric illness is people don't realize this, but many, many people with real anorexia die and they know that they should eat and is their brain has a wiring issue. And I do think that brain machine interface and, and AI is going to cure all of the things I mentioned. I think that is going to happen. I do. I absolutely do. I mean, the challenge is how to stimulate or suppress certain areas of the brain non-invasively or with a minimum of invasion, but that can be done through ultrasound through the skull.

1:18:09Andrew Huberman:There may soon come a time where you could get enough precision with a device that you would wear maybe just a hat. Eventually, it's coming like ways so you don't have to breach the skull and drop wires into the skull. But the real challenge for so many years has been what areas to stimulate. Now that's where the animal research was very critical. Which areas to suppress the activity of? You can't just like shut down your prefrontal cortex because then we know what that looks like from people with prefrontal damage. It's not good. They don't have impulse control and cognition suffers. And so we've got a lot of information based on the many years of truly important non-human work.

1:18:45Andrew Huberman:It's interesting what you said earlier about

1:18:47Jay Shetty:you were saying that I wanted to be more easeful and not the fight. What I always valued about the Eastern texts is that they talk about relishing the battle. So it's not that it's going to be easy or that it's just all hard. It's that you find the way to relish the battle in the morning. And the best way I can think about it is that when you're playing sport competitively, you want to win and you're fighting, but it's so much fun.

1:19:14Andrew Huberman:That element of play is so critical. I had a discussion recently with Ido Portal. He's a movement guy. He started, you know, he's like, he had a background in martial arts and dance and all these things. And we were talking about will and discipline. And he said, you know, it's so important to use willpower, but just enough to allow you to move into whatever it is you're trying to do. And then really trying to bring elements of ease and play into it, you know, because I worked on stress for a long time in my lab and stress control is a big thing. And, you know, but we have neural energy, right?

1:19:44Andrew Huberman:Our neurons, our nervous system, which controls our muscles and everything else, our movements, our thoughts is electrochemical, right? Neurons release chemicals, which was electrical firing and other neurons and on and on. That's the nervous system. I'm fascinated by this idea that we're born with obviously a finite number of days. We don't generally know how long we're going to be around and we have an energy in us. And that energy, as we've been talking about, can be directed in certain actions, certain thought patterns, and it takes energy to direct our energy. That's the thing that don't tell us, right this is like the the jay shetty uh mastery that like i'm seeking is like is there a way to require less energy to direct my energy i think this is like i didn't realize till i said now but i think that's a great question people are drawn to you you know and and i'm drawn to not only being your friend but being in these conversations with you and because it seems like you've figured out something about how to not over-invest energy into directing one's energy.

1:20:49Andrew Huberman:You know, I'm fascinated by certain aspects of popular culture. Don't intrigue me at all, but what I'm interested in are the themes that seem to show up again and again and again across generations. And, you know, they're like the 27 Club, all these people who die at 27 or around 27 who seemed to have this immense creative energy it's almost like they were fated to take let's put in units like a million units of energy and just pack it into this early life and they're able to channel it and they do these incredible things and then they die then there are these people that we you know we think about the blue zones and the people that live live a long time where they're like what are they doing and they seem like they're they're not chilling but their their energy is seems to be on a on a pretty nice cycle through the days through the weeks through the seasons and everyone's like, oh, it's social connection or, oh, it's a couple glasses of wine or whatever it is.

1:21:38Andrew Huberman:But whatever their energetic regulation seems very, it's clearly sustainable because by definition it's happened a long time, but it's like got a good push and pull to it. And then there's the rest of us.

1:21:50Jay Shetty:Right. And I often think like, what is this energy thing?

1:21:55Andrew Huberman:And if we feel a lot of it in us, I think that we should be wise about learning to direct it. maybe if we don't have enough we should think about how we can generate more of it i mean so much of the the fighting in the world is people trying to steal each other's energy they're going to insult somebody so then they get in their heads so then that person can't do the work then they're going to out compete them this is the stuff of primates with large prefrontal cortisans sadly now of course also humans we can do amazing things and build societies and benevolence and podcasts and hospitals and art and music but if you look at the people with who accomplished incredible feats, like really spectacular feats, usually doesn't end well.

1:22:38Andrew Huberman:I saw this documentary recently, The Dark Wizard, about a guy clearly with a bipolar issue, some trauma, I don't want to give it away. He was a free solo climber, Dean Potter, this was before Alex Honnold, and then he got into base jumping, and it's an amazing four-part series, because it was very clear that when he was in his manic episodes, he could channel his energy into doing things that were truly dangerous but he had abilities that other people didn't have now alex is a really special one because he maintains that calm that allows him to channel all his energy into you know free soloing lcap which is like without the manic energy but he's really unique in that way in fact he when he climbed the tower recently yeah i was like oh man like i kind of want him to stop climbing because i just like i don't want anything to happen to him yeah he's a grown man he's responsible for himself and what do I know what we're dealt in this life is this energy thing and it's our work to try and figure out how to build it when we need to build it steer it when we need to steer it not how it turn on ourselves I had a close colleague this last year take his own life and this was a guy who studied suicidality triple board certified neurologist psychiatrist he had all the information brutal and but he was running multiple companies and labs it was almost like he was just this fireball of energy.

1:23:59Andrew Huberman:And then now looking back, you could almost predict it. I mean, none of us knew that was coming clearly and we're still all shaken by it. But when people like him, his name was Nolan Williams and he was a remarkable human and he has changed for the better, the face of psychiatry for many, many years to come, took a long protocol for depression and learned to compress it into a one week thing for people. He's too incredible person serving the world. But when you see that and you look back, it was like, it almost had to hate the language around, but it was like, of course it was headed that direction.

1:24:33Andrew Huberman:I feel like this is something that I don't have science to put to, but it's almost always the case that when someone's real, like on a hockey stick growth of their art or their whatever, like, sure, there's going to be some attacks because it's always trying to like, you know, the tall poppy syndrome. And then there's that media related component, but there's something else there. We don't want people to have too much energy they're not allowed to go up indefinitely there's something about our primate species they don't come down and sometimes it's unkind or even abusive other times it's um it probably saves people in ancient practices what is known about energy like if you just stop when you're feeling anxious or you alert you wake up in the morning you meditate there's this impulse to get up you know my friend rick rubin tells me there's a way you can start to circulate that energy can start to feel it kind of even out in you this isn't his direct language but it's kind of what i think he's trying to tell me you know rick is a dear friend and i adore him and i you guys had an amazing conversation everyone should listen to that conversation but he also speaks in riddles sometimes you know to be fair and uh and we're very close but sometimes i'll be like can you like explain exactly what you mean but to be able to to have that calm but alert well-directed energy state is harder for many people, including me to achieve.

1:25:54Andrew Huberman:What is this energy thing through the lens of what you know? And I ask with sincerity because I, neuroscience, I can make up a story about autonomic nervous system and this and that, but like, I'd be just throwing out a bunch of words. I don't think we have anything solid to hang our hat on there from neuroscience yet. But I think it's a critical aspect of being human. And I think it's a

1:26:20Andrew Huberman:of dynamically spending and resetting one's energy to manage a family, a business, a mind. What do you know about this?

1:26:28Jay Shetty:It's such a beautiful question. And I'm, you know, in no way the foremost authority either, but I'm happy to offer what I've learned from amazing teachers and guides. I really value your thoughts.

1:26:39Andrew Huberman:And I'm asking anyone and everyone that I think has deep understanding of this, which means so far I've asked Rick and I'm asking you and there are

1:26:49Jay Shetty:share what I've learned from my teachers and my guides who I believe are well-versed in this. So much of it is what you've been saying as well in different ways. But I think when I think of energy, the language that I think we can make sense of it through is fuel. So what are we fueled by? What is it that fuels us? And I think we know fuel because we think of food for the body, et cetera. So we know what fuel looks like. We know what gas is like for a car. A car without gas is not going anywhere. It doesn't matter how beautiful the car is, how new the tires are, it's not moving. And so I think humans are like that too.

1:27:24Jay Shetty:You could have someone that looks amazing, that is in great shape, that is stunning, and their parent can be telling them all these things and the kid feels stuck. What is that? Why is it that this talented, beautiful being that is being reminded by the people around them and reassured that they're beautiful and talented and gifted everything but can't see it within herself. What is that? It's that the energy is stuck. It's that the energy is not flowing. It's that the energy is not moving in and out. And so I think what happens to humans a lot is that we think we have a finite amount of energy and we think everyone has finite amounts of energy.

1:28:06Jay Shetty:And then we believe that the only way to get more energy is to take some more of someone else's finite energy. Because we've all been raised to believe that there are a limited number of seats in a theater. So that means if someone else bought the tickets, I can't have any. And so if someone else has energy, then I need to know what they have and I want what they have. And if I can understand what they did or get it from them, then maybe I can take some of the energy. So we live in a finite world. And I think the finite mindset is why we are so constrained in our energy because we think, well, I can only ever be this confident.

1:28:40Jay Shetty:I can only ever be this bold. I can only ever be this interesting because it's all finite. And I think it's only in union with the infinite and only in connection with the infinite that you start to realize that energy moves through you and you don't have to hold onto it. I think as humans, we're good at hoarding. When you think about animals, you're saying animals are good at hoarding. We're good at keeping stuff and burying it and holding it for a rainy day. And it's like energy doesn't work that way. It works opposite. It's like the more I give to you, if I'm giving out of genuine compassion, the more I receive from above.

1:29:19Jay Shetty:It's not mathematically finite. And I think that's the problem is the math that we've studied is, well, if I have two apples and I give you two apples, then I have zero. And that's what we believe. So if I give you two hours of my time and I feel drained, then I feel I only feel drained not realizing that there's so much more to access and coming because I'm offering to give, which is why you see the people who changed the world were completely in service. You know, when you think about the people that really impacted society, they were completely in service. where did they get all of that energy from?

1:29:53Jay Shetty:Where did they get that fuel from? It's because they were going to a source far bigger and greater than we were. And so to me, that's a big part of it. And that fuel is a fuel of gratitude and responsibility. It's gratitude that fuels me. You're in the same boat. I think we both could stop doing what we're currently doing and just live comfortably and not care anymore. And it's like, but that's not the point. I didn't do all of this so that I could stop and leave everything behind and be comfortable. That wasn't the goal. the goal was always service. The benefits that came of them have been amazing, but the goal was service.

1:30:25Jay Shetty:And so I want to keep serving because service to me was the most beautiful part of all of this. And service is the part that receives more fuel. So I think it's almost like energy gets stuck when someone's not learning from a higher source and when they're not giving to someone newer. And so if you think about the perfect mentor-mentee relationship, say everyone should have a mentor and a mentee. But if you don't have a mentor, then you're stuck because then you're only giving and not getting anything. If you only have a mentor and you don't have a mentee, that means you're only getting and not giving anything.

1:30:54Jay Shetty:And I think that's as humans where I think we get stuck, our energy gets stuck because we're either over giving or over getting. And I think most of us find ourselves in one of those two spaces rather than this full flow of receiving, being, and giving that just seems to work off its own self.

1:31:12Andrew Huberman:I'm positively struck by a lot of it. In particular, this notion that we fundamentally misunderstand the potential for energetic synergy or that builds in good relating.

1:31:26Jay Shetty:Yeah. It's compounding. It's not, it's not like I've got a finite number of apples, I'm going to give them to you and then I have nothing left. And I think that's the challenge. It's like, we don't realize the energy doesn't work that way.

1:31:36Andrew Huberman:There's something so fundamentally important in what you just said about revising our notions of, of spending and receiving and thinking more about exchange. Eddie, the neuroscientist I mentioned earlier, you know, I enjoy amazing conversations with him about neuroscience, but I get frustrated because he studies the neuroscience of speech and language. And I just like, I, sometimes I say, you know, like language is maybe not sufficient to really carry out the kind of communication that we want. You know, there's the positivity energy exchange framework, and then there's the cynic, right. And I have them both in me.

1:32:12Andrew Huberman:I mean, my Argentine relatives will say. They're the one side of my East Coast relatives. I won't say which one to which, but you know, I have that in me that kind of like, and some people think like, oh, I got like all this positivity stuff. Right. I look, I've tried it both ways. I've tried being angry. I've tried being in the fight. I tried being building off of the things from my childhood where I felt I was wronged and I got a lot done, frankly. But when I say I got way more done, accessing places of love and gratitude and appreciation it's an order of magnitude yeah

1:32:47Jay Shetty:that's not positivity either i feel like i mean that's hard work yeah that's the i think the

1:32:51Andrew Huberman:energy management part that also builds energy comes through that positivity but then people

1:32:57Jay Shetty:hear positivity and then they go oh that's not discerning i mean my father's from argentina and

1:33:03Andrew Huberman:went to british boarding school so he'll tell you you know like being when he was growing up he was taught that being happy and go lucky meant you were dumb.

1:33:14Jay Shetty:That's what he was told.

1:33:15Andrew Huberman:You know, he'll tell you a very different story now. He's in his early eighties, still very healthy and vibrant. And we enjoy a great relationship now. And, and, and he'll tell you like that, that is the absolute wrong mindset. And he's 80 something years old and he's kicking butt out there. So I feel like, you know, something, it's not just he's my dad. I've met other, but James Hollis will tell you the same thing.

1:33:34Jay Shetty:But he's changed his mind on that. Totally.

1:33:36Andrew Huberman:And I think, you know, in the United States, but everywhere, you know, like this notion, like we can get that arousal through fight.

1:33:42Jay Shetty:Yeah.

1:33:43Andrew Huberman:But it is a resource depleting in us. We also can't just be like naive, like, oh, everything's fine when things aren't fine. So it's this like kind of narrow bridge.

1:33:53Jay Shetty:Have you ever heard of the story of the injured bird at the monastery? A monk finds this injured bird at a monastery and wants to help the bird. So the monk is having compassionate feelings. The monk's about to pick up the bird and the Buddha says, don't hold it too tightly. That's our fight. I want to do something good, but I'm going to hold it so tightly, but I'm going to squish it. I'm going to kill it. And then as he picks it up softly, the Buddha says, no, no, no, not too light, not too soft either. because if you hold it too softly, it will fly away. It won't even know what to do. It might start flapping and it might hurt itself.

1:34:27Jay Shetty:And so it's too tight, too loose. That is the fight. The fight is not holding it, gripping it and trying to save it and trying to fix it. How do I hold this bird, not too tight and not too loose so that I can actually take it to safety? I mean, I love that. And that's our own heart. That's our own body and mind. It's what you're saying about protocols, not too tight, not too loose.

1:34:48Andrew Huberman:Yeah.

1:34:49Jay Shetty:If I never look at the sunlight in the morning, that's not good for me. But if I, if I like make sure that I have to do the sunlight and the water and the this and the this, I'm going to kill myself. You're unhealthy in that case. Yeah.

1:34:58Andrew Huberman:The book is really trying to give people the big levers that will position them best to have the things they want. But the really hard work I'm realizing to not work too hard, but not too light. That's the hard work of being human. And some people probably be like, all right, you know, Huberman's 50. He's getting soft. It's talking about animals. Yeah. But I actually think for me, just internally, that's the stronger stance because it's the honest stance. I never felt good about it. I'm actually probably coming through today. I'm working on self-forgiveness for that because I carry a lot of pain around that.

1:35:35Andrew Huberman:Finding the peace and ease in the day and in one's life is so critical. It's part of the reset, but it's also just great. like not everything and this is coming from the guy who teaches about health and health quote-unquote optimization a term i don't really like all that much but part of the great thing about being human is also just like kicking back putting your feet up and feeling the breeze and then going back into the the internal battle that's being human you know too tight too loose too tight too loose and i think that in fields of science there's something i've observed over and over again over three decades, which is it takes about five years of intense interest in a topic from a variety of labs to get someplace, don't necessarily solve the disease, but to really get someplace where everyone agrees on certain things like, okay, this is something we can really move forward on.

1:36:23Andrew Huberman:We could write a textbook chapter on this or a portion of one. I feel like in this place of health and wellness that includes psychology and the sorts of things that you work on and talk about your expertise, it's been about, well, you started your podcast in 2019. seven years ago. Okay. And me in 2021 and there've been others. So I feel like we're about five plus or minus three years into this, this form of discourse. And it's been going on a long time to be fair, but we're sort of at the place now where we know certain things and most people agree on those things and they disagree on the details.

1:36:57Andrew Huberman:And then there's this whole new landscape of like peptides and psychedelics and hormone therapies. I'm happy to talk about those because those are the things that I've been exploring in recent years that I'll probably talk about in future book, but protocols is really about, there are neuroscience textbooks called principles of neuroscience. So it would be like principles of health and wellness that you can really hang your hat on. And the principles piece is key. It's not one practice or that practice or better or worse. It's like, these are the principles of high cortisol, melatonin. These are principles of stress regulation and exhales and inhales.

1:37:26These are principles of short wavelength light and long

1:37:28Andrew Huberman:wavelength and so on and so on. And so we're there now. And then the question becomes what higher level questions are we not thinking about? And I realized I must have been thinking about that coming in here today about energy. I believe that every human is born with at least enough energy to take that first breath.

1:37:44Jay Shetty:I love that this is what we do together. Because whenever I'm with you, everyone loves you. Everyone loves your advice. The people that I know look at you to help solve their biggest problems. I do that. And you do.

1:37:56Andrew Huberman:I'm humble.

1:37:56Jay Shetty:And you do. I love your work. And I'm grateful that I've learned so much from you. I'm grateful that I get to see the science that supports beliefs I've had. There's so much, but whenever you come on the show, my goal is for us to have a conversation that only me and you would have. I'm always grateful. So I'm always grateful.

1:38:14Andrew Huberman:And I should say that I promise that I don't wax poetic or philosophical in my book. It's meant to be a reference guide. If somebody is having challenges in a certain area or wants to level up in a certain area, they can go to the book. You don't even have to read it linearly. Just go and look up the thing and you can do the thing or you can learn the science. I think the science is beautiful. I hope people learn some science. So in any case.

1:38:34Jay Shetty:We end every episode of On Purpose with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence. So question number one, what's one protocol that's actually worth the hype?

1:38:44Andrew Huberman:I already mentioned the morning sunlight viewing. So I'll build off that as do that. But everyone should resistance train. It's critical for women, for men. You need to learn to do it properly, but it's key to understand that that lever of health will keep you uninjured and very likely around longer.

1:39:08Jay Shetty:Second question, what is one of the most overrated health habits?

1:39:13Andrew Huberman:While there are supplements that can really help and I've long been a fan of them since I was a teenager and I take plenty of them, they are not necessary to be extremely healthy. They can help, but they're not necessary.

1:39:26Jay Shetty:Question number three, what's the fastest way to make a new habit actually stick?

1:39:57Andrew Huberman:the faster you're going to embed that thing.

1:40:00Jay Shetty:Question number four, what's the most effective way to improve your focus?

1:40:04Andrew Huberman:There really is something special to the data, say 13 minute, but maybe even as short as five minute meditation. Richie Davidson, the expert on this pointed out that most people in the first week of embracing a meditation practice experience a significant increase in anxiety. It's important to know you're learning stress tolerance. It's you're anxious, you're stressed, and you're going to sit still. The energy is all over. That's a super valuable skill. But Wendy Suzuki's lab at NYU has shown those short meditation practices carried out, if not every day, then just repeatedly, maybe even just three days a week, significantly improve attention and focus.

1:40:44Andrew Huberman:Meditation holds a lot more than just focus, but it is in many ways a focusing exercise. eyes. You're trying to focus on your breath, focus on everything, but where your mind and your impulses want to take you. It's a focusing practice. It's a mental gym and you get better at it. And the circuits for focus are amenable to plasticity too, which is just nerd speak for focusing during meditation gets you better at focusing and everything.

1:41:10Jay Shetty:And fifth and final question, what's helping you find a peace right now within yourself? Prayer, acknowledging that

1:41:19Andrew Huberman:humans as beautiful as we are, as complicated as we are, not in charge of everything and creating space for that in prayer, praying for others and just listening and asking God to use me for good, to teach and to be the best version of myself. But prayer is the, that's the big one for me.

1:41:39Jay Shetty:Andrew Uberman, thank you so much. The book's called Protocols. I hope you come back again and again. This is your third time on the show. I welcome you back as many more times as you want And then looking forward to more offline conversations like this as well. And so grateful for you showing up so truly, openly, genuinely as always. And glad we got to learn a lot about your heart today and a lot about the journey that you're on internally as well as the mission you're on externally. So thank you so much.

1:42:04Andrew Huberman:Thank you, Jay. It's always great to come here. And I'm going to just take a moment to express my gratitude for you. You know, being in this whole podcast public education space and health and wellness and all the rest is a magnificent gift, but it's made so much better by having colleagues. And I do consider you a colleague and friends.

1:42:21Jay Shetty:Thank you.

1:42:22Andrew Huberman:You, as they say, hold the space extremely well and your heart and your love for what you do and for people is undeniable. So I've certainly benefited and so many people benefit. You're a special person and you're channeling it for good. So thank you. Dave Portnoy here. The wait is over. Football is here and so is DraftKings. DraftKings is now live in all 50 states. One app, every sport, nationwide. New DraftKings customers. Sign up with code SPOTIFY. Spend$5 to get$200 in rewards within 21 days. Includes all markets. That's code SPOTIFY in partnership with DraftKings. The crown is yours. Gambling problem?

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1:43:37Andrew Huberman:Varies by state.

1:43:38Jay Shetty:Thank you, man. That's very kind. And yeah, long may it continue together. So thank you. Thank you so much.