Revolutionizing Brain Health Despite Critics & Finding Inner Peace | Dr. Daniel Amen EP 877

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12I love just sort of watching my mind because it doesn't torture me anymore. It used to torture me. And I was 28 before I learned I did not have to believe every stupid thing I thought. I was 28 years old. I was a psychiatric resident and I'm in class. And when the professor said that, I'm like, really? It was a game changer for me. Just to like not believe every thought. But to sort of just watch the storms that come in my head. And when you do what I've done, so I have been a troublemaker in my profession. We've had 10 ,000 physicians and mental health professionals refer people to us. I get a lot of love.

1:03But I've also gotten a lot of hate. Washington Post did an article on me, and they called me the most popular psychiatrist in America. And to most psychiatrists, that's a really bad thing. But learning how to manage my mind, because sometimes the thought will come up, nobody likes you. And then I'm like, 10 ,000 people have referred patients to me. Sure, sure. So maybe not. But if you don't know how to manage that, and I'm not unique, right? I mean, I have five sisters. I'm used to criticism. Yeah, sure. But if you don't know how to manage it, you get resentful, reactive, all of those things. How do you manage it when you get, whether it's media or other, I don't know if there's other scientists or researchers who might be questioning you or your methods.

1:53How do you handle that and address it, both personally and professionally? It used to be really hard for me. It used to be really hard. And then I realized none of them will help 1 % of the people we've helped at Amen Clinics. Yeah. I know we change lives. I have stories over and over and over. the lever patient that helped me with this because I lived initially because I was called all sorts of bad names a charlatan, a snake oil salesman and I was just anxious and upset because I became a doctor in part because I like when people respect me and now I'm being disrespected and hell is separation from God or its separation from your community.

2:54And now, and I loved being part of the psychiatric community. I won a research award from the American Psychiatric Association as a distinguished fellow, and now I'm getting all this grief. Why is this happening? Well, I know why it's happening, and it's just normal that when you try to change a paradigm, people don't say thank you, especially for the people that are making money on the current paradigm. Right. They demonize you. There's a great book called The Structure of Scientific Revolution. And initially somebody sees there's a problem. The powers that be try to fix it. That person comes up with a new paradigm like what I do.

3:36We came up with a completely new paradigm. You should scan your brain and then you should use skills and natural things, not just pills. So you can see the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry are like, oh, no, can't do that. Step four is the rejection. It's the most predictable phase in scientific revolution. And then five, progress in science happens through funerals. The old guard dies and a new guard comes up that embraces the new paradigm. But it might take years or decades to embrace the new paradigm. And then that becomes the new norm. And then that becomes the new norm. until that's broken in 50 years or 100 years or when there's something new or whatever it might be.

4:21Well, last year, so one of the exercises in you happier is write down the 20 happiest moments of your life. Because when you get sad, you can anchor them. Like I have them anchored in my house. Like at my front door, it's anchored in my memory of me holding Tana, taking her across the threshold. and almost dropping her because I almost dropped her when we practiced our dance the night before. And it was funny. It was fun. It was a good memory. And when I go in the kitchen, my grandfather was there at the stove making fudge, although I'm teaching him how to make a healthy fudge. Well, last May, I got another one of my 20 happiest memories, the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine.

5:09She's a prestigious scientific body that regulates SPECT in Canada. wrote new procedure guidelines as if I wrote them. Wow. So they used some of your procedures? They wrote it as if I had written it. And 10 of the authors, five of them were my students. Interesting. Basically saying, you should look. What's the matter with you if you don't look? And it's a radical shift in the paradigm. What's that stand for you? Single photon emission computed tomography. This is how you scan the brain. It's a nuclear medicine study that looks at blood flow and activity, but single photon. Photon's a little piece of light.

5:52So when I scanned you, we injected the medicine. It goes and locks to your brain and then sends out signals that we could scan. And your image was made up of about 10 million photons, or times the pieces of light hit the crystals in the camera. So it's really cool. but if you want to be happy, don't be a pioneer. Because you're going to criticize, be taken down, try to be taken down, told all these nasty things about you. And I just, I wish I'd known when I started that the sequence to how this is going to go. Yes. Right? I wasn't looking for the hatred.

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7:35Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.