Most Replayed Moment: The 4 Personalities Living In Your Brain! How To Switch Between Them

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0:39So you said there's four personalities in everybody's brain. What are those four personalities? As we're looking at the brain, just from an anatomical perspective, the way evolution happens for the mammalian brain is that there are creatures who have a spinal cord and they have and then and there are creatures like that like worms and then a little brain a little medulla will form at the top of that tissue and then now that brain controls and streamlines information processing to the rest of the system and then we add a pons what's that It's just a structure of cells. So this is the medulla. We would have spinal cord there.

1:20And this is the pons. We call that the pons. It's a group of cells. It's a small brain. Yeah, it's a smaller brain. And in relationship to that pons is this cerebellum. And the cerebellum has this gorgeous cell in it called the Purkinje cell. And they're like a hand. They're like, you know, two-dimensional. And they all line up like this. and then fibers run through those. And it's part of the mechanism of timing so that you have fluidity of movement because of the way those cells are aligned. So not all cells are created equal and not all cells look alike. Cells have the right shape for the right job.

1:56So as then we grow and now we have the mammalian brain, we're going to have the hippocampus, you've heard of that, for learning and memory, The amygdala, you've heard that for am I safe? Am I safe? Are you safe? The amygdala, yeah, there's a group of cells right there that is scanning constantly. Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe? And you're fine until you're not safe. Okay, so like threat detection. Yes, that's exactly what it is. You have two emotional systems. One in your left hemisphere and one in your right hemisphere. And the right hemisphere is going to be right here, right now. Am I safe in the right here, right now?

2:34So let's say all of a sudden a snake went by and we would jump. We would startle because it's your right amygdala saying, oh, my gosh, am I safe? And then the left hemisphere is going, oh, my gosh, it's a snake. No, I'm not safe. Push it away. And when we're calm, that's when the hippocampi, because we have two amygdala, one in each hemisphere, two hippocampi, one in each hemisphere. And when the amygdala are calm and you feel safe, now you can learn and focus, focus with the anterior, with the cingulate gyrus and learn new things. So, so, you know, these groups of cells. Now, if you wipe out an amygdala, you're not going to feel any fear.

3:13You wipe out a language center, you're not going to have any language. You wipe out motor skills to your index finger and you can't, you're paralyzed. So every ability you have is because we have these brain cells that perform that function. so for the four parts of us so we have an emotional system in each hemisphere the emotional system of the right hemisphere this is a right here right now machine right here right now that's all it has doesn't have the past doesn't have the future doesn't know who you are doesn't have anxiety depression well it has anxiety but most of that is going to be based in the left hemisphere because this machine, the left hemisphere, has linearity across time.

3:54So this emotional system is remembering every traumatic event that ever happened to you that you don't want to have happen again. Is that where trauma lives in the brain? Trauma is living in there, as is addiction. Addiction, there's a group of cells in here called the insular cortex, and that's where craving is, and that's part of the limbic system of the left hemisphere. And if you wipe out craving, do you still have an addiction? so this is so so it let me just keep going so we have these two emotional systems and then we have these two thinking systems and the thinking system is what distinguish us as humans from all of their mammals okay so our mammals our dogs love us they're in any question about that our dogs can punish us when we're not very you know we don't show up and we've sent them to doggy care if they're not happy about that.

4:43So mammals have other forms, but we have this higher executive functioning. And in the right hemisphere, it's right here right now. And in the left hemisphere, it's all about me. Because in there, in that thinking, is my ego center in that prefrontal region. I, me, I exist. Back here, orientation association area, I begin and I end here. This is the package of me, the individual. I have a language. I can create language. I can understand language. I can read. I can write. I have mathematics in there. And this motor system controls the opposite side of my body. So that's a personality. So what are the, to summarize them, what are the four types?

5:24Okay. So I, when I look at a brain and this is totally randomly named, um, and I did that because I had to communicate about it somewhere. So I call left thinking character one. And I actually give that part of my brain a name. I call her Helen. Hell on wheels, she gets it done. You're talking to Helen right now. She's giving you facts and details. She is all about what is right and wrong and good and bad. How do I fit myself into a society? How do I use my words in order to communicate? So this is the part of us that goes to work. It's our A-type personality. Character one, left, thinking. And that's on this side here.

6:00Yeah, well, it's this outer layer of cells is called the cerebral cortex. And the cerebral cortex is actually in human made up of mostly six layers of cells. It's very complex. In some areas, especially where you have sensory systems, it's just going to be four layers. But this is a complex portion of the organ that separates us from other animals. What about character two? So character two is going to be the lefty motion. Now, the difference between the things you can say predictably about the left hemisphere is it has linearity across time and it has me the individual. And my emotional system then has my past pain and it's kind of always looking for a reason to knee-jerk react and have emotional reactivity.

6:51So, so many people are trying to fix or heal or get rid of their emotional reactivity. when this is a portion of our brain which is running constantly in the background to protect us from in the present moment when new information comes in. So we want to work with that and we want to appreciate it and we want to love on it and we want to be kind to it because it's generally not very happy because it is storing all of our pain from the past. And what do you call that? Character two. I call mine Abby. We could spend a whole semester talking about character two because character two is our pain from the past.

7:27And in our society, everything's about our pain from the past and our professional self. Character three is going to be the emotional content of the right hemisphere. Well, this is right here, right now. What am I experiencing emotionally? Experiential. This is where, what's the temperature of the air? What does it feel like to have clothing on? What does that feel like on your body? When you meditate, they ask you to become aware of your environment, right? And focus on your breath, exactly. because they want you to expand yourself, one, out of the thinking consciousness and right and wrong and good and bad structure, the box that we think in of the left thinking, and they want you to stop, you know, thinking about your girlfriend and, boy, we didn't really end it very well, or, boy, I had a great morning this morning.

8:12Okay, so this is playful. So character three, it's young. We have two little people inside of ourselves and that's the emotional. They're immature. Sure, we are feeling creatures as biological creatures. We are feeling creatures who think. So a lot of character threes, actually we have character three moments that land us in jail because it's not thinking about consequences of behavior. It's just thinking, oh yeah, the neighbor's pool. It's three o 'clock in the morning. They won't notice. Let's go jump in their pool. And then the next thing we know, you know, we've been arrested. So then character four is the thinking portion of our brain.

8:46This is our wisdom. We go and we have experiences. And we learn because neuroplasticity is real. And we have to have neuroplasticity. And this is all about the cells. Neurons in real time reaching out, making new connections constantly, but their cell bodies are in position. But in order for me to make an association between you and something else, then I actually grow to you and I grow to the something else and then I learn about that. So our capacity to learn is the underlying feature is neuroplasticity. I would not be sitting here talking to you today if neuroplasticity didn't turn on fire when I needed it for eight years.

9:31And it took eight years for me to use what I had in this brain to rebuild the skill sets of this brain. But the thinking portion, the character four portion of our brain is the wisdom that we gain from the knowledge that we have had and we have associated it and we can relate to it. And this part, all it cares about is that emotion that I felt that morning, which was all, all that I'm allowed alive at all. And when we can connect to that, people, it's a billion-dollar industry of meditation to quiet what's going on in the left hemisphere so that we can open up the possibility to what's going on in the right hemisphere.

10:14And it's our peace. We are wired at the core of our being, of our right-thinking tissue, to feel peace. And we do not exist in a world that is peaceful. So if we are functioning on an extreme left brain, left thinking, and we are emotionally volatile when people insult us, and we're all about the me, me, me, and we have forgotten about the we, look at the world we currently live in. And right now, we are so skewed to me, the individual, and I want more, and I'm against you because you're not a part of my tribe. and we balance that by knowing that I'm alive. It is this incredibly precious gift.

10:57The odds that I had to beat just to be here. Have you ever stopped to think about the odds you had to beat just to be here? Think about this. Now, first of all, think about this. The little egg cell that would evolve into you eventually, it took form. It's about the size of, you know, it's an egg cell. It's tiny, but it took form during your mother's fifth week of gestation. So your mother, your grandmother's pregnant, right? And that little egg cell that would be your mother has now made it into the womb. And during the fifth week of being there, the little egg cell that would grow into you took form.

11:34It differentiated into the ovum. And so you, the little egg cell, witnessed the next eight months of your mother's gestation, your mother's birth, your mother's screaming, your mother's toddler years, your mother's learning to sing and laugh and play and learn geography and mathematics all the way through her puberty. And then, so she's born with some 400 ,000 egg cells in her two ovaries. And out of those 400 ,000 egg cells, approximately 500 of those egg cells are going to be the next follicular eruption month by month by month with her period. And your little egg cell, imagine you're hanging out in your little ovarian follicle and it's your turn and you're getting all prepped by the hormones of the body and you're going, oh my God, it's my ride, right?

12:27And you're this little egg cell. And then the hormones swoop by your little egg cell and it beams you out and the fembriae of the fallopian tubes gather you up and you begin your promenade, your fallopian promenade on the way road to your mother's sacred womb. And in that moment, your father was there for you. And you were one of the lucky ones. And you beat the odds of all those egg cells. You beat the odds. And how can that not be something that we celebrate the wonder of the odds you had to be just to be here. And then for the next nine months, that little egg cell is going to multiply its DNA, repackage that DNA.

13:10One cell becomes two, becomes four, becomes eight, becomes 16, becomes 50 trillion cells over the course of nine months. And you're multiplying egg cells at a rate of 250 ,000 new cells per second, per second, not per minute, per second. You're this explosion and literally the energy of the universe is what is fueling all of this from happening. You are nothing other than mass and energy working together. And then there's you. And it's like, how on earth can I have mental health problems and not acknowledge and have awe for what we are? Oh my gosh. And that's what, that was the gift that stroke gave to my life.

13:55And you can see, I get a little excited about it. A little, yeah. We are so beautiful. We are so beautiful. We are perfect and whole and beautiful just the way we are. And it's like, if we would become balanced as a society, we would, I truly believe, truly believe with every essence of my being, that our number one job is to love one another. When we love one another and we support one another and we encourage one another, we all grow and we will benefit as humanity. And when that happens, we will really recognize we have fragile resources on this planet and we need to nurture the planet as a part of us because we have a symbiotic relationship with this planet.

14:39Chokes me up. Why? Because it's, you know, lots of conversations about are we going to make it or are we not going to make it? What is the future of humanity? Where do we go? How do we, what happens? We live in a threat every day of our existence being completely blown apart. Okay. What are these? I would like for you to put those on. Okay. Now. Okay. And I just want you to sit in that for like, oh, just 30 seconds, 20 seconds. Actually, it's a pretty good look on you there. It's like men in black. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. Now, I would like for you to pull your right one. Do you see how it's got a little edge?

15:29Yeah. Flip it up. It'll flip up. Yeah. And flip it all the way up. Now, what you're doing right now is you are bringing light in from the lateral portion of your visual field. What does that mean? So close one eye and leave one eye open. Okay. That's a ball. Okay. Down the middle is an artificial line. Yeah. Outside, the outside portion, that is called lateral. And the inside side is called medial. Okay. And so the lateral light is now coming in, and that hits the medial side of your retina. Okay. And the retina is the back of the eyeball. Okay. So the light's coming in from the outside of my eye, and it's hitting the inside of my eye.

16:09It's hitting the – it's coming out from the outside of your visual field. it's hitting the medial internal side of your retina, and then those fibers are, boom, crossing over to the opposite hemisphere. Okay, I'll put a diagram on the screen for anyone. Yeah. Yeah. So right now you are purposely stimulating your left hemisphere. So I just wanted to just, how do you feel inside of your body? Just describe a few things to me. How do you feel? Feeling analytical about anything? Thinking about anything? My back has got a little bit of a pain in it. but otherwise just very focused on doing this job as the host of the diary of a CEO.

16:47Beautiful. Just focus, which is what that left hemisphere should do. So go ahead and flip that down. Okay. Yeah. And then just like stay for like 20 seconds and let everything kind of equilibrate to whatever the darkness is that's in there. Yeah. All right. Okay. Go ahead then and pull up the other side.

17:12it's a good look it's like a little flag right there yeah okay

17:20how do you feel weirdly i felt more relaxed now or before no now i feel more relaxed your whole body just went calm yeah what else tell me something more any aches or pains in your body I just feel way more relaxed. I feel like I'm laying low on a sun lounger. Yeah. That's what the right brain feels like. So you're bringing less information in from that, the light of the lateral side of your visual field. It's hitting the medial portion of your retina and crossing into your right hemisphere. So what you're doing right now is you're sending light energy photons into the right hemisphere, and it is pushing through.

18:07and now this is a an easy easy way for people to control and choose how they want to be between their two hemispheres and really get to know oh how do i know this isn't just a placebo like how do i because i said i do feel way more relaxed i can't be bothered to carry on this but if you look at the anatomy if you look at the anatomy this is where light is coming in on the um you can't really see it on here, but that's going to be information from your eyeballs, which would be sitting right here, right there. This is fibers. You're wired for this. This is how you are wired. That's why everything about you, this isn't about a placebo having a behavioral impact.

18:52This is about the anatomy of the brain. Have they tested this in trials to see? Oh, absolutely. In fact they just did a brand new one at harvard um and and showed it on fmri yeah and have they done like a double blind control trial where they put these glasses on and then ask people how they feel well even more than that they're doing they're manipulating the light source in different kinds of ways i'm not involved with that work but i know that marty teicher at harvard as well as Frederick Schiffer. Now, Frederick Schiffer is a psychiatrist who has been doing psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for his whole career.

19:33And he would use these types of glasses with his psychiatric patients and would show the patient that there is a part of them that is less well and one side that is more ill. And so he would use the relationship between these two different characters, these two different personalities to find more peace and healing. I feel very, it's weird. I felt, I just lifted up the right side again and put the left side down. And I immediately felt, well, not immediately, but it took a little while, 20 seconds. I felt focused again. Is that just placebo? Am I making it? No, that's why you're wired. That's why you can feel focused because of the cells that you are now stimulating.

20:21In the other hemisphere, it's not about focus. It doesn't care about focus. It cares about the big picture and your relationship to the big picture. So it's not like the brain is just this soup of cells. These cells are very specifically organized. Every ability you have is because you have brain cells that perform that function. and all you're doing right now is preferentially stimulating certain cells. It's kind of like, okay, I'm going to open my eyes and I'm going to experience vision. Well, that's not a placebo. If I want to be able to actively switch between these different parts, these four personalities in my brain so I can be most effective in a given situation, is there a practice where I can control my brain in that way?

21:07Absolutely. In your life, this is a practice. You don't just learn it and then go do it. This is a practice. You've got to say to yourself, first step, step number one, recognize in this moment, am I using my left thinking judgment, listening to this conversation? And what is my judgment? Is my judgment, yes, this makes sense. This is interesting. I want more. Or is this, oh, this is just crap. I just can't go there. I got to turn it off. Or, okay, I'll give you an example. Once you know who your four characters are, once you have really thought about them, studied about them, paid attention to when they come out in you, what they feel like inside of your body, I can jump between all four in an instant.

21:52Because I know them so well. But is there a practice? You have to say, hadn't. So this is what I do. So this is what I do. Well, once you know the four of them, and the only way to know them is to practice with them. Get to know them. When do you get really unhappy? Who unhappies you? When do you want to growl at people? I wouldn't name a name. Don't name a name, but you know, see, you went straight into that character two part of you. That's the only part of you that holds grudges. You're right. Thinking doesn't care about that. It doesn't even know about that because that's in the past. So here's the key.

22:28Step number one, observe yourself. When am I being a character one? When am I at work? When am I speaking and organizing and making a to-do list? And when do I like to be the boss? And when do I like to control? People, places, things, and time. And all of that. When am I doing that? Well, you know that part of yourself very well. He's probably called Steven. The part of you that is not very happy. You know, your parents probably know this part of you. Your girlfriend definitely knows this part of you. Right? Yes. Okay. When are you playful? What does it feel like? It feels completely different than when you're at work or when you're not happy.

23:05When are you at play? And if you're not at play much, then you might want to give yourself a little bit more play. So I was working with a group of physicians because physicians are very busy people. And right now, the physician is a very high level of suicide. So I care passionately about this population because they're not finding any peace. Because society expects them to be left thinking all the time. They're supposed to be the authority and they can't have any mental health issues because they're the ones we go to for mental health issues. So all they can do, they don't have time. They are busy, busy, busy, and they're not very happy about it.

23:41And our system is a mess. So they're having to deal with that. So I was working with a group and I said, OK, I want you to take a chalk outside of the ER room and I want you to draw a hopscotch. And what happened was all these doctors in and out and these medical professionals were hopscotching in and hopscotching out. And that just that helped them bring their glee back just for a moment, just for an instant. So this is the glee and it's exciting and it's fun. And it's like, figure out what brings you joy and do that. that and know, and this is why it really helps to know this, because if you're going to say, okay, I'm going to go, I'm going to go play basketball.

24:26I come from Indiana. Everybody plays basketball. I'm going to go play basketball and I'm going to go do it for 20 minutes. And my character one is over here saying, we don't have time for you to go shoot some hoops, girl. We got business to take care of. We're on a deadline. And little character three comes in and says, I will refresh you. I will be your pause. I will refuel your spirit. I take the stress away from that subject. I release, I have all kinds of endorphins and excitement stuff going on. And then I go back and I do such a more creative and open job because I made space instead of just the drive, drive, drive, drive, do, do, do, linear, linear, linear.

25:07The beauty of being a human is you have all four parts of this brain. This is our design, but we are functioning with only one online as conscious. Imagine, imagine if you could say in this instant, I want to, um, I want to, I want to feel as though, just feel as though whatever your spiritual beliefs or your beliefs about a higher power, whatever, just call it the universe. Cause we know there's a bunch of rocks spinning around in space and we're on one of them hanging on for life just being human right so that's all happening so oh my gosh i can say thank you to all those rocks for being in the positions they're in so that we're still here and i can feel this deep sense of gratitude and as soon as i feel that gratitude and that oh oh my god i existed all and it could be over like that and then it's over but right now it's a party life can be play What you just listened to was a most replayed moment from a previous episode.

26:09If you want to listen to that full episode, I've linked it down below. Check the description. Thank you.