How to Rewire Your Mind in 63 Days | Dr. Caroline Leaf

23:54And that's pretty unusual because most of the work on telomeres has been done around diet and exercise. Right, right. It's all about like, you know, leafy greens and plant-based. Exactly, which is significant. And also there's been some work on meditation, but there's been no, I think this is the first study that's been done on actually doing deliberate intentional mind work to change. And then we saw significant drops as well in inflammation markers and blood markers. But the biggest thing was the narrative, the person's story. So if we go away from the biology for a minute and we listen to the person's story, that person was offline, they were online, and they were living again.

24:29And they had also had this acceptance, and this is what I wanted to kind of circle back to when we started, was life and managing your mind doesn't mean that it's going to be one big rosy, you know, put on rose-tinted glasses. That's crazy. It is actually the ability to be okay and at peace with having moments of depression and actually looking for the message and seeing them as helpful. We have this really weird philosophy, which has been about 40 years in the West now, where we look at depression and anxiety and those kind of things as illnesses and neuropsychiatric brain diseases and as bad symptoms that we must suppress, like cancer symptoms you must suppress.

25:06So it's been lumped on misery of life has been medicalized, to quote a brilliant psychiatrist and Joanna Moncrief. So we've got to really watch out for that. But actually, the real truth is that those depression and anxiety are not illnesses. They are just survival instincts. It's telling you, hey, pay attention. There's something going on. You need to go and unpack. Something's not working. Something's not working. Something's not working. And it's manifesting as a pattern that needs to be addressed. And that'll block the greatness. So are you saying, am I hearing, did I hear you say that there isn't a mental health disease?

25:40It's more of just a pattern or something that we should be mindful of, but it's not an actual disease? No, it's not a disease. And I know this counters the current philosophy, but if you look at the science. There's a large body of science. In fact, if you interpret all the science around this field and you really look at what's being tested, you actually will see it's not a, they've been looking for the neurobiological correlates. They've been looking for where in the brain is depression. And for years, we've been told about the serotonin imbalance causing depression. I mean, that's not even, it was a theory never proven, great for marketing, for telling drugs.

26:15And also the simplistic way of telling someone, hey, you're depressed, don't worry, it's chemical imbalance, let me give you a drug to fix it. You know, we want this quick fix mentality. So as medicine has advanced and technology has advanced, so we've become very caught up in the quick fix. But life's not like that. Mind is not like that. Mind is separate from brain and body. You can apply that kind of thinking, not quick fix, but you can apply a symptomatic diagnosis treatment approach to body, to physical brain and body. But when it comes to mind, there's this gravitational field, this force, this think, feel, choose, think.

26:48It's not going to go, a medication is not going to change how you're thinking, feeling, and choosing. It's not going to get rid of this. It's just going to numb your brain. So maybe you don't feel this while it's working. Wow. But at the same time as then when that drug wears off, this is still there. This is still being recognized by the immune system of your brain as a problem. So this is increasing your, the longer it's there, the more you increase your vulnerability to disease. Oh, my gosh. And this is what gets you stuck. And these are the patterns. So, no, it's not an illness. It is a normal human response.

27:18Mental health has always been an issue. Notice from the beginning of time, mankind has battled with life, with issues, with death, with fighting, with war, with whatever. So mental health is not on the rise. But the mismanagement of mental health, making it a disease, has created a whole new problem. Wow. So here we sit with before the pandemic. They started doing a population study in the mid-90s. And this is when I was still practicing, early days of my practicing, sort of 10 years into my work. and I started seeing this trend of, and I was watching the study, where people were, where the decades-long trend of people living longer.

27:54So we know, we all hear this message. This is what we've heard. People are living longer because of the advances in medicine and technology. None of us question that. But something happened in 96 that did start questioning that. By the mid-2000s, it was an established, researched fact that we don't live longer anymore, that the trend of people living longer has actually reversed and that we have a pandemic of deaths of despair where people are dying from preventable lifestyle diseases and the age group most being affected are between 24 and 65. So people at the beginning of their career and the prime of their career and through that age group are dropping down dead like flies and it's considered deaths of despair by preventable lifestyle diseases.

28:38So we have to look at the bone. lifestyle disease means that there's something in our body that's weaker. Why? Lifestyle, which is mind-driven, how am I eating, drinking, sleeping? But more than that is what's my mind behind all of that? How am I actually managing the day-to-day moments? How am I managing the patterns, the traumas, the established toxic habits? What am I doing about that stuff? And when we ignore all of that, because this current trend of science is saying, oh, those don't matter. What matters is the symptoms. Let's just look for the symptoms, So checklist, diagnose, label. When you label someone, you chop up to 10 years more of their life.

29:16You know, it's like it's adding on. They've shown studies of people with a mental health diagnosis have chopped up to 20 years of their lifespan. People on psychotropic drugs, because of all the complications and the changes in the brain and the body, chopping up to 25 years of their life. There's such a contradiction because they're saying, hey, there's this adverse circumstance, grief of loss of people, uncertainty, medical and not knowing if you're going to live or die and how long is isolation going to go on and economic impact and whatever, the whole lot. That's trauma. And they say that when they say, but this is the way to treat it.

29:50Let's label it. Let's diagnose this. Let's medicate it. So we've got to shift our narrative completely. And we've got to stop saying that mental illness is on the rise and that there's one in four people on antidepressants who are depressed. 100 % of people are depressed and anxious. 100 % of people in the world at some point in their life have and will be anxious and depressed and in grief and sadness and terror and despair and one of the others. A large percentage of the population, and I'm not sure the exact percentage because no one's really done this kind of research, but estimates, it's probably 30, 40 % of people will have extreme trauma from abuse, war trauma, that kind of stuff where they'll go down the continuum to sort of the minus 9, 10, 8, 9, 10, if you look at a continuum of 0 to 10, 0 to minus 10, and have things like psychotic breaks and hearing voices and extreme states of distress, mental distress, which are still not diseases.

30:44They are simply in that traumatic situation, you're having a traumatic response. Think of someone who's a war vet. I just interviewed a Navy SEAL the other day who was trained snipers. And I mean, the things that he had to do and that his teams had to do, they come back and try and we all know the problem of trying to reconcile back into civilian life after you've gone through. I mean, this is what they'd be experiencing all day long, stuff that's completely against survival, completely against our human nature. And now instead of them being allowed to process this trauma, they're coming back and being told that they're diseased.

31:17And he would tell me that what they do with a lot of, we don't hear this sort of thing, but he told me this, they will inject things like risperidol, which is an antipsychotic into the spines of war vets because they're a bit psychotic and they're psychotic for a reason. It's their coping. How do you deal with this? Of course, you're going to be angry. You're going to be frustrated. You're not going to be able to love like you did. You have to be able to embrace process and be conceptualized. Giving them a drug is not going to help it. In fact, it constrains the brain. It restricts the brain. There's no chemical cure for that.

31:49That's just going to add fuel to the fire because your mind's got to work through the brain. So now you put chemicals in and now that's not going to facilitate change. We have to do something. So it's like a narrative. Do you feel like there, I mean, is there such a thing as a chemical imbalance in some people? You know, when they say, oh, I have a depression, it's a disease or bipolar, or I have this mental health disease, or I have a chemical imbalance, I was treated with this, don't try to say I don't because this is who I am. Is that, do some people have that or is Is that based on – Go ahead.

32:24The narrative of I have a chemical imbalance and my depression is from chemical imbalance is a narrative that is the only explanation that people are being given. They're not given an alternative reaction. I mean an alternative narrative. So the most important thing is that anyone listening to this podcast, I want to validate your depression, your anxiety, your grief, your despair, your PTSD, whatever label you've been given. I want to validate that that doesn't need to be validated with a disease label. You're not diseased. You're not a broken brain. Your brain isn't defective. You are going through something.

33:00So you aren't something. You aren't that. You are going through something. You're experiencing something. You're experiencing something. And you're experiencing and you've coped in the only way that you could cope in that moment. So it created this adverse response because it was an adverse situation and you were just trying to cope. So what we have to do is go through a process of embracing and processing and reconceptualizing. So the important thing here is to recognize that chemical imbalance isn't the cause of your despair. The cause of your despair is what you've gone through and what you're going through.

33:30And learning how to, and not knowing how to manage it and how to deal with those thoughts that are driving you crazy and those flashbacks and the trauma of the flashbacks and going back into those situations of the rape or the abuse or the war trauma or the, that. It can drive a person crazy. And that's not crazy in the sense of illness. It's crazy in the sense of your mind is like this erratic tidal wave around you. And it's going through your brain. And you've got these and your immune system and everything screaming out to you and saying, hey, let's fix this. So a disease label invalidates it.

34:03And for a moment, it might be nice to know, okay, well, there's a label to how I feel because it kind of feels like we've got a bit of control. So initially, that gives you comfort. But don't see yourself as that. It's better to say, I'm experiencing post-traumatic stress issues because of what I've been through versus I am PTSD or I have the sickness of PTSD. It's better to say, I'm experiencing symptoms of bipolar, these intense swings because of my whole story, than saying I have bipolar, I have a chemical imbalance. I mean, just researchers coming out the other day show that we've got to stop saying this.

34:39The top psychiatrists that lead this field will tell you, we've got to stop saying this, that there's no ways that serotonin imbalance, you can't even measure that. There's no genes or serotonin imbalance causing it. It's what you've experienced that's the cause. And then that moves through your brain and your body. So obviously, your brain and your body respond. So we will see changes in the brain and the body. We will see neurochemical chaos, not necessarily serotonin imbalance. That's just one. Sometimes it's dopamine. And if dopamine's down, serotonin's off and then anandamide's off. And then, I mean, I can give you a list of big chemical terms, and that's going to change every function in the structure of your brain and your DNA and your telomeres.

35:18And 1 ,400 neurophysiological responses are off. So, you know, that's the response, though. And that doesn't mean that you have this thing hidden inside of you, this scary thing that's controlling you. And that invalidates. If someone comes back from war or someone's had a sexual trauma, to tell them that the depression or anxiety they're feeling is an illness is an insult to what they've gone through. But if I say to you, gosh, that's terrible. Tell me about it. I want to hear your story. I want to support you. Your depression and anxiety that you're feeling is a signal that there's stuff going on.

35:57There's an origin story. There's a source. So can I listen? Can I help? can I support you in trying to recognize the signals and go through the process to find the origin story and then to reconceptualize it. And that takes time. It's not a 15-minute appointment where I can give you a label. That takes time. It's also not the conditioning kind of treatments that are in place that some of them work if they're used in the right place. But to try and put a veteran who's gone through something back into the situation to try and condition them. You can't condition. You have to reconstruct. So it's kind of like an algebraic equation.

36:34X is the situation. Y is how you want to function for mental peace. So you've got X plus Y. And so here we are in our X situation where we are the sort of human experiencing life. We're supposed to be at Y. And you put the two together. And what the current treatment says is that, okay, now we're going to create Z. We're just going to ignore X and Y. We're going to create a new thing. And that new thing is you diseased. But that doesn't work. It's actually X plus Y equals XY. X is what you're going through. Y is where you want to find mental peace. And you want to put the two together to live together so that you can change how the past plays out into your future.

37:13Oh, man. This is powerful. Gosh. I want to go back to what you said when you were experiencing this traumatic event in the family you had recently where you were wearing a glucose monitor. And you mentioned that there was a process. You realized, like, the monitor went through the roof. heart palpitations, stress, you could feel your physical, your body changing into this stress response, this protection, tightness, whatever it was. Fear, anxiety, all these things you were experiencing in the moment. What was the process that you broke down to bring it back to more normal levels for yourself of feeling more peace, groundedness, calm?

37:51Okay. So it's the process of the neurocycle. Excellent question. It's the process of the the neurocycle, which is in the second half of the book. So the neurocycle is five – This is the five steps, right? Yeah, this is the five steps. This is what I initially developed for people with traumatic brain injury. It was my first time that I developed it and developed my theory, and then from there I refined it to all the different types of situations I worked with, and then it's been refined over the years. This is the most updated research. So a good scientist should keep learning and changing and improving, which is what I've tried to do.

38:23So in this book is the updated version of the neurocycle. The neurocycle is how you get your mind, which is always working, under control. If in a state of acute trauma, like I was in in that moment, acute trauma creates a red brain. I showed you that picture of a red brain. That red brain means that I have a tidal wave in my brain going on or that the left and the right brain will be out of harmony. I'll have a drop of blood and oxygen to the front of my brain. I'm going to have things like the delta. We've heard of things like delta, theta, alpha, beta, gamma. All those waves are supposed to flow like waves in the sea.

38:55And if you think of the C, you've got the big swells, which is delta, slightly smaller swells, which is theta, the build, which is beta, the crest, which is high beta, and the gamma, which is the ripple on the beach. And so we want that through the brain in this nice kind of even way. That's kind of the Y state, X plus Y. X is what happens to us. Y is that state. So X happens, and then that Y state gets thrown off. So in that moment, that's what happened to me. So what we want to do is, because mind works through brain and body, and mind is experiencing this trauma, which is a mess, our brain and body just do what the mind's doing.

39:29So then there's a mess in our brain and our body. But if I have that kind of chaos, I can't think straight. I'm not going to have any wisdom. I'm going to fall apart. And in this situation, I would have. And I have in the past, but now I've learned how to deal with this. And I talk about that this neurocycle can improve how you manage anxiety and depression by 81%. That's a massive claim. And I've shown it scientifically. Okay, so what I did was to try and get myself back under control. Now, in that state, you don't know what to do in a tremendously acute traumatic state. But I knew from my science and from my knowledge, so I'm proactive.

40:04So I could go into two zones. So I went into two modes. The one mode was the mental mess that I was in, which is the pilot because I'm driving. I'm in this time. Imagine yourself being in a helicopter that's like a time capsule. And you're flying over this forest. And the forest is your mind with all these trees. and this acute trauma has just grown because it's instant. So here's this terrible, and your helicopter is drawn to this because you are in shock and terror and fear and deep panic and anxiety. That is all the smoke signals. So my pilot's going like this. The co-pilot is also me, but it's my wisdom because inside of each of us is our survival.

40:42And that's our instinct. You know when you give someone great advice and you just think, oh, wow, where did that come from? You get that. It's like we know what we know. We know how much we can handle. We will say, I know this, that kind of thing. That's the co-pilot, this wisdom. So what we want to do in those states is to get ourselves into the co-pilot. Remember the co-pilot and the pilot, and you use the you language. So here you're flying this plane all over, and the co-pilot's saying, okay, let's calm down. Let's land it at that tree. So you land the plane. You land this time capsule, whatever.

41:12And you get out, but you're with the co-pilot, so you're safe. So you've created a distance. and this is, I'm explaining in detail and obviously you train and it's all in the book and it's all, I've got an app that explains it too. But this is the mindset that I have trained myself to come into so I can go into an acute trauma in that mind. I'm still crying, I'm still freaking out. But I'm freaking out in this zone where I now know, because I know that I need wisdom. I need to be able to tap into that and I cannot get through this chaos if this chaotic brain and body and mind unless I've calmed it down.

41:43So I have to get through this because I'm stuck in that black tree and I'm stuck in this chaotic brain. So that'd be considered like fight or flight, whether it's someone cutting you off in front of you on the street in the car or someone yelling at you or someone, whatever, an event happening which is causing you to react and fight or flight, whether it's a massive T trauma or little T trauma, right? Exactly, exactly. Or an acute trauma, which is the blindsiding stuff, the stuff we don't expect that just hits us out the blue. Yes, absolutely. So you're going into a level of fight or flight. So everything physiologically, 1 ,400 neurophysiological responses are activated to help you focus.

42:19But they can't work for you unless you do what I'm telling you to do, which is to shift your perception. So this is the how-to. Because as soon as you shift your perception in an instant, because I told you within seconds I brought the glucose monitor down. And I mean, I didn't even expect it to work that fast. I was amazed. And as it cycled through the 12 hours of the trauma, I was able to manage it more and more. So, I mean, really, and this is not the first time I've done this my whole life, but it was just so interesting seeing it in real time. Sure. And seeing the reaction. Okay, so. So, step one is to get the co-pilot state of mind to land the plane.

42:53That's the preparation. You haven't even got to step one. Okay. So, land the plane first. Yeah. So, that's it. So, recognize that you remember there's a co-pilot, which is your wise mind. You, the crazy pilot going all over the place, land the plane. Let the co-pilot tell you, okay, land the plane. And you land the plane where you need to, which is at the issue. And what drew you into land the plane to find the issue was your emotional. So this is step one. You're going to gather awareness. And gather means you're controlling it. You're not sitting under the apple tree and all the apples are hitting you on the head.

43:23You are standing back and you're picking the apple. So there's control. There's a sense of autonomy, a sense of agency. So in the midst of chaos, you can create agency mentally because your mind's driving it. So you stand back and you say, OK, I picked that apple. So that's my emotional warning signals, terror, despair, utterly traumatized, like whatever they are. You pick those apples, you put them in your baskets, you're gathering. Then you gather awareness. So this is gathering kind of your – Awareness. This is how I'm feeling. This is what's happened. This is the event. Yes, this is gathering.

43:56It's almost – yes, it is. But you're gathering in very four little distinct packages because the more organized you are, the less chaos. We're being very systematic. So what are those four things? So you gather awareness of your emotional warning signals, so the despair, anxiety, whatever, panic attack. Then you gather awareness of your physical bodily response. So here's your copilot saying, okay, how are you feeling? Gather that apple, gather that apple. What is your physical? Fluttering in the heart, panic attack, tension, gut-drenching, adrenaline, whatever flight and fright freeze mode you're in.

44:29Then your behaviors. What are you saying? What are you doing? How are you responding? How are you responding? Yeah, action. Yeah, what are you saying? What are you doing? What is actually happening? And I'm grabbing this, I'm grabbing that. Get this, get that. So what is that? And is it working? I mean, just doing this changes how you do things. It's amazing. You immediately go into this different mode. Fourth one is perspective. What's your perspective? This is doomed. This is terrible. This sucks. This is end. Or, okay, this is bad, but. So gather, you gather. Then as soon as you've got those, you then go into reflect.

45:02So it's very systematic. And then as you've gathered and done all this preparation thing, you've got the two sides of the brain. We've got coherence again. You've got blood flow back to the brain. You've got oxygen back to the front of the brain. When you've got low oxygen and low blood flow at the front of the brain, which happens in a trauma, in an acute situation, in those sudden things, it drops. Then you are impulsive. You're going to make bad decisions. You're going to react incorrectly. You're going to create incoherence. Your alpha wave in the brain drops and becomes more active on the right side.

45:33And that's on the right side, which is not great because that means that we now are not going to have insight. So by doing what I've just said, you change all of that. You bring back coherence. You increase alpha. And it may not be excellent yet, but you've started the process. Then as you move forward through the five steps, and I put all this brain stuff in the book and what happens. So I'm just giving you the overview. So then you start now reflecting. Okay, what have I got in my basket? So number two, reflect. Reflect is an incredibly beautiful word as is gather awareness. Gathering awareness, I just want to point out, in the earlier on I said that we mustn't be frightened of despair and anxiety and trauma and anxiety, depression.

46:13Don't be scared of them because they are messengers. They're helpful messengers that are telling you something. And if you respond to them in that way, you then control them. But if you respond to them in fear, they control you. Yeah. And then you're not going to move forward. You're going to get very stuck and then stuck in rumination and the patterns will just get worse. So get the control. Even though you can be crying, screaming, swearing, I don't care what you're doing, but just get the control. You're at the tree, you're doing the stuff. So gather. Reflect is, when you think of light going through a prism, it reflects all the colors of the rainbow.

46:44So there's depth. That one thing means a lot. And so reflect is this process of being a detective. Okay, well, why am I having that reaction? Now, when it's something in the moment, we pretty much know why. I mean, I knew why I was. So I didn't have to do too much reflection, But I had to, the reflection in terms of why, because I knew the cause. But the difference was I needed to reflect to say, okay, if I react like this, this is going to happen. So it was questioning, what are you doing with that emotion? What are you doing with that behavior? Is that behavior helping? So the reflect in that situation would be different to a reflect for someone who is having a complete and utter imposter syndrome attack.

47:25And it's a pattern and they keep doing it. So they're now working sequentially through the process. So they're going to have to start finding why, what does it track back to, what level, what sort of self-esteem issues are, what is the origin story of it. So the reflect in that case would be ask, answer, discuss, why do I feel this? Why, why, why? And so it's a different, so the reflect is to just get meaning, but in a very comprehensive way, because there's all these patterns of meaning. In that acute trauma, it's quick. I'm doing the five steps quick. If I'm working on a pattern over time, I'm going to spend longer.

47:57Third step is you write. And the writing step is obviously I was in the midst of a trauma. I couldn't write, so I visualized. So the quick stuff you can just visualize, or if you can write, write. Writing, I recommend if you write, write, write in the form of a metacog. I teach you how in the book, and I have a video of a neurocycle app that goes with this. What's a metacog? A metacog is a pattern form of writing that stimulates, it looks like a tree. You start in the middle and you work on branches and you put words and you don't write whole sentences. You basically just pour information and you literally let it just come out in this pattern format.

48:29But one of the key things is to group. As a thought, as something comes up, you put it on one area. And as something else comes up, you put it wherever. So you have these clusters of information. And every word's on a line. And every line goes out of the previous line. And that format is unbelievable. It just drags the two sides of the brain together, digs deep, and you start getting insight into what you didn't even know was there. And then the fourth step is to then go and sort out that chaos that you've just written down. So the fourth step is to, okay, I've gathered awareness, I've reflected, I'm writing, what does this mean?

49:00What's the mental autopsy? What's the pattern, the activators, the antidotes? How can I reconceptualize this beautiful word, reconceptualize? And then you end off the cycle with a little action. And that action, if it's in the moment, like in that five seconds or whatever, it's okay, I'm going to actually take a deep breath and I'm going to act like this, or I'm going to say that, or I'm going to do this. So it's a little action that anchors you back in a state where you can function in the next moment, in that acute trauma or in that imposter moment and imposter syndrome moment. And you've now got to go and into a business meeting, you're feeling like you can't because you're in the imposter syndrome fraud sort of setup.

49:37So in doing it in the quick moment by moment, you're going to have a simple quick action. In the big stuff where you're working out the pattern, each day you do your work for a limited amount of time. And I say do the work because it's not a quick fix. If you're looking for a quick fix, nothing related to greatness is a quick fix or mind. It's time. And you know that you experienced that with your whole story. And so essentially, you would do it for around 15 to 45 minutes a day when you're fixing up the big stuff. And you would do it, Lewis, the big stuff you would do for 63 days. So that's key.

50:09Why 63? Glad you asked that. So we've all been told 21 days to build a habit. Well, that's a complete myth. I wrote about it in the book too. A neurosurgeon, It's not a neurosurgeon. A surgeon many years ago was talking about the physical cycles of healing that our body goes through. Like if you get a blister, it takes about three weeks for the stem cells and everything to form and the immune system to do its job to get rid of the blister. That's assuming that your mind's not a mess. If your mind's a mess, you can chop off 60 % of that healing time. It'll take 60 % longer. Wow. 60 % longer. If your mind's a mess, you increase healing.

50:41If your mind is right, does it decrease the time? It does it on time. It does it on time. On time. And sooner. It depends. It depends on the level of damage. And sometimes you'll need one cycle of three. Sometimes you'll need multiple. That's for physical healing. Mind healing, however, needs a minimum of three cycles for behavior change. Really? Is this scientifically proven? Yes. So there's very little research in the 21-day myth. So I decided to research it. And there's a few studies. There's one from University College London. I put them in my book. There's my one that I've just done recently in 2019, over 2020, where I tracked.

51:15And we tracked in the brain what happened. So 21 days, you get what we call gamma peaks, which means that you've taken this, you've deconstructed it, and you've reconstructed it into something healthy. So you've changed this thought, but it's X, Y. So that's in there, but it's in a different, it looks different. It's like if you take an ugly old house that you're going to renovate, you take lots of photos of all the mold and all the ugly carpets, and you bash it down, you build a beautiful new house, you still remember how it was, but you've reconceptualized it. You're living in that new space.

51:43You remember the old. Okay, so that's what I'm talking about. That takes 21 days. So you create to break down and build a thought with memories because a thought is a tree made of memories. Memories are what, like a tree is made of branches, thoughts are made of memories. So to make something that's got a level of sustainability takes about 21 days. And in that 21 days after that, if you stop there, it's a tiny little plant in your forest. It doesn't have enough energy to move from the non-conscious mind, N-O-N. The non-conscious mind operates 24-7. It's where all your experiences are stored in thoughts, all your belief systems, your nurturing, everything about you.

52:17And that is influencing your conscious mind. Conscious mind's only awake when you're awake. So right now as I'm talking, everything that I'm saying is stimulating thoughts from your non-conscious mind to move into your conscious mind to make sense of what I'm saying and to build all this new stuff into thoughts in your trees. So a non-conscious mind, for a thought to move from the non-conscious to the conscious, through the subconscious. So non-conscious, subconscious is the bridge, conscious is when you're awake, non-conscious, 24-7, infinite, huge, massive, and where our wisdom is as well. So the wisdom is through the middle.

52:48If you want to imagine a forest, you've got the beautiful dark green strip, which is all your instinctive wisdom, survival stuff, wide for love stuff, optimism, bias, and then everything we experience in life is around the edge. Little trees, big trees, dark trees, green trees. The smaller the tree, the newer the experience or the newer the memory, the weaker the memory. The big established trees are the ones that influence. So those things are powerful. So if it's a big dark tree and it's influencing, it's going to jump into your conscious mind and influence your view. So backtracking, to get something that's good that you've rebuilt, to actually influence how you view something, it has to have more energy put into it.

53:25Energy's never lost. Energy's transferred. Quantum physics talks about energy. These things are proteins with energy vibrating in the little protein structures. So you want that they're weak. So you've got to strengthen. You've got to water it. You've got to feed it It's a fertilizer. Totally. And all you do is it's so easy. Oh, my gosh. It's so easy. From day 22 to 63, you simply do step number five for about a minute a day. That's how simple it is. It's 42 minutes over 42 days. In my NeuroCycle app, I've actually got an active reminder function that you can type it into. It pops up on your phone, and you can remind yourself to do this.

54:01And you literally just read it. And it keeps just reading it, reminds you to do it. and then you're building your strength and you're turning it into behavior change. So to go around the theme of your podcast, you get to greatness, requires behavior change. So real behavior change, if you really want to build a good habit into your life, you're going to have to spend the 63 days doing it. So not only is that 63 days, I mean, I've shown it scientifically and so on, not only is it for detoxing the patterns, the traumas, the toxic habits, the small tea, big tea, as you mentioned, the acute stuff, the bad habits, we've developed, but it's also to build new habits.

54:38So if you identify this is an area that I want to grow in my life to go to the next level of greatness, whatever that is, you need 63 days at least, and sometimes more. Sometimes the trauma is so embedded and it's blocking your greatness that you might need multiple cycles of 63. There's no cookie cutter design, but the more you do that and the more you practice it in the moment by moment, the more self-regulated you become, which brings us right back to the beginning of the conversation, which was that mind is always in action. So you may as well control it. So here I've just told you how to do it.

55:09It's pretty much the nuts and bolts. What does the neuroscience say behind positive thinking versus negative or toxic thinking? And I think, I don't know what the stat is, it's 60 ,000 thoughts a day or something like that we have, and 80 or 90 % of them are the same recurring thoughts. I'm probably off there, but something like that. No, no, there's a lot of stuff like that out there, and you're not far off in terms of what the media is saying. In terms of the people, I follow people that are heavy into understanding the numbers from a very neuroscientific perspective, and I've done my own calculations.

55:48We build around about 8 ,000 to 10 ,000 thoughts a day. So we're building. So that's sort of how many events we experience. It could be more. These are very, very, very, very, very average numbers. It really is. So it's somewhere between 8 ,000 and 18 ,000 that we build. So we build in response to what we experience. So whatever's new is built. But then to build, you also have the thoughts popping up. So at any one moment, so we can work in 10-second blocks. That's what neuroscience shows us, just to give you some kind of tangible thing to hang on to. In any one 10-second moment, you can literally have anything from one to 13 thoughts that will move from the non-conscious and maybe more, and also build a couple of thoughts in that, a thought with one thought, but with multiple, maybe 100 memories in that.

56:39So that's 120-odd things happening in any 10-second block. Wow. And multiply that by 60 seconds, you know, times six, so in one minute. So you can really see the numbers as they multiply. So that's where we get anywhere between 8 ,000 we build and then probably about another 10 ,000 are coming up. So 18 ,000 seems to be a more. But whatever the number is, it doesn't really matter. It's a lot. We have a lot of thoughts. We have a lot of. And a lot of them are more negative, it seems like, right? Not necessarily. If you look over, the only reason it feels like that is because the negative get more attention, not because you're wired that way, but because they have created complete disruption in your brain.

57:24It's a stronger physical reaction, right? And you've got to get rid of it. It's against your survival. So you're going to pay attention to whatever's threatening your survival. Think of it. If someone's at your front door and they're trying to bash your front door down and you've got your family to protect, you're going to pay attention. You're not going to sit and watch TV. You're going to pay attention to what's a threat to your survival. That's why we – so it's not that we have more negative thoughts. When we're relaxed and calm, we're not thinking, ah, I need to fix this. We're just relaxing and hanging out.

57:51But it's when there's a thought that's negative, we put a lot of attention on it. Exactly. It's the big tree in the forest. It's where – whatever you think about the most will grow. So you may have – if this huge infinite forest of green, the strip through the middle is the wise mind that can't ever change. The majority is green. small trees, big trees, and you're going to have clusters of the black in between. Some people will have more because they've had more abuse, as I said, 30%, 40%, 20%, 30 % of the population, depending on where you are in which country, would have more experience, more trauma, socioeconomic abuse, war, et cetera.

58:23So war-torn countries will find more PTSD, a higher percentage than in somewhere like a less war-torn country and that kind of thing. But on average, the forest is mainly green, but whatever's getting the most attention in your life, if you're living in war torn something, or if you're living in an abusive situation, or you're living with a bullying boss, or you're living under the threat of someone in your family who's really ill, that's what's going to dominate. So it's not that we have more negative thoughts. It's because that is survival, it's threatening our survival, it's creating brain damage, we've got to get rid of it, we've got to manage it.

58:55It's a call to management. Paying attention to the toxic is a call to management. It's created disruptions in the gravitational field. Think of those. I need to get an image. There's a movie, and I don't know which one it is, but it's those, you know, you get that ripple effect. It's moving through like a field or something, and you can almost, you know, they create with the movies, they create that ripple effect. Can you visualize something like that? Okay, that's what's happening with the mind. So we've got these ripples. It's not just trees that are standing still. There's these ripples, but every now and then, that ripple is toxic.

59:27So it's like it's going to be very disruptive. And that sends out this, it upsets the balance in the non-conscious mind. And it's linked to a physical. So this gravitational field wave disruption storm is linked to one of these in the physical brain. So it's in the storms there, somewhere there. So maybe it's there. And then it's also there, this thing in there. So those are linked and those are threatening your survival. So they will get your attention and your attention is to go fix so if we suppress so if we suppress in terms of what not pay attention not be aware yeah medicate take drugs uh drink whatever the addiction is exactly as opposed to address it what happens well so essentially i'm glad you brought that up so addiction is not a disease we're not caught by the chemical and the chemicals do change your brain i've just explained that but your mind can override any biological change because your mind's more powerful than your brain.

1:00:23And that's how we, you know, you can always draw on that internal survival instinct, which is that internal strip of green trees, just for the analogy's sake. So addiction isn't a disease. Addiction is a response, like depression. It's a warning signal. It's trying to take something that's painful and taking something to numb the pain. So as you said, the sex, the pornography, the alcohol, the drugs, the smoking. So you often find, exactly. So if you find someone who was talking to someone yesterday who had a tremendous battle with cocaine and alcohol, but it wasn't those that grabbed them, we get the impression that, oh, your brain's diseased, therefore you're vulnerable to those and you can't control it.

1:01:04Nonsense. That's taken all the hope. People are dying from lack of hope, Lewis. That's what that statistic I spoke about earlier, the reversal of trends. People are dying from lack of hope, death of despair. when you take away people's sense of agency you're taking away the most core dynamic of who you are as a human your mind is all about agency think feel choose you control that and you remove that agency from someone by saying hey you can't control the fact that you're addicted to alcohol or that you're addicted to that's terrible but if you say okay i see that that is where you're finding your coping strategy at the moment that having the alcohol is numbing the pain having the pornography the repeated whatever the abuse of whatever abuse of anything to hide it the opioid addiction it's just to numb the pain so once a person is in a loving supportive environment where they can start seeing that change then they can start seeing why then you can take them through the process of okay well let's see maybe that signal has got a cause and let's start finding and when you start working through the neuropsycho I can tell you now most of the time they're still addicted to something because the pain is so bad and they're denying this is a disease because it's easier to accept that initially but they deny no I don't I'm not addicted to alcohol I know I'm not addicted to to whatever the cocaine I'm not addicted but once you start lovingly showing them okay well let's talk about forget about the the what's the substance let's talk about you what's going on what's happened and when you start doing that then I'm depressed and this and this and then the things start coming up.

1:02:36And as soon as you start getting that cycle happening, then the person is more able to say, oh, I see, I've been trying to numb my pain. And then you can start getting the release. 86 to 93 % of people that are addicted get out of addiction through choice. And that choice is stimulated by a super supportive, loving environment that helps people to see what's going on because it's very hard to face that stuff. So we can live in a state of denial. And so that's what takes a lot of good supportive and good therapy and good environments, supportive environments. But to tell someone, I'm always an addict, is one of the worst things you can say.

1:03:13You're saying, okay, you have no power. Right, right. I'm a victim to this chemical imbalance or whatever it might be. Yeah. But that's not the case. And it may take you years. I mean, I was speaking to someone the other day who was, as I said, a cocaine battling with all kinds of stuff. And now is one of the most amazing people helping other people doing the most incredible work. That person had been raped multiple times as a child. He came from a very wealthy family. And a babysitter who looked after him when his parents were so busy working was repeatedly raping this child through his childhood.

1:03:44And then got, I mean, it happened again at university and this and this and different work environments and in different parts of the world when he traveled to different parts of the world. And that's where, so he had to get to the point where he realized he was numbing the pain. You know, so that's, can you see we have to shift the narrative? Absolutely. You know, that this is, and these are extreme cases, but there's also the day-to-day. I mean, we've got to live with ourselves. Someone the other day said to me, well, that's all and well relationship, big extreme. What about just sitting here with myself?

1:04:12And I can't sleep at night and I'm worrying about like, you know, the things that aren't, I can still get through life, but I'm ruminating and I'm overthinking and I'm stuck in anger. And, you know, that too, we've got to manage all of that. And that was my, that was 25 years of my life. because I talk about being sexually abused when I was five and having anger and resentment and frustration and rage for 25 years until I was, until I actually started opening up and talking about it, until I did therapy, until I did, you know, yeah, I mean, I did every type of therapeutic experience I could do.

1:04:47And it, it really, truly gave me the, the environment of love, support, and peace to begin the path of setting me free, setting the pain and the trauma-free by giving it a voice, by expressing it, by doing the work. And it didn't happen overnight. Eight years later, it's still an ongoing thing of healing. It will be. Yeah. It's much easier. And I can have a conversation about it with ease where eight years ago, I would be crying talking about it. That's X, Y. That's the X plus Y equals X, Y. You've reconceptualized. You're able to talk. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but that's what you've done.

1:05:23You've been neurocycling without knowing it. Now, Now, if you formally start neurocycling, if you start a daily program, you're going to start unwiring it even more. You're going to get even more control over the accumulation of all the things that happened. I mean, that's just what I would recommend that you try it out. For sure, for sure. So what should we be thinking when toxic thoughts about ourselves? I'm not good enough. I'll never amount to anything. I shouldn't try this. This person doesn't like me. drama, stress, anxiety, whatever it is, when we have a toxic thought that doesn't support our dreams, that doesn't support the betterment of our future and our vision, what should we be thinking in terms of replacing that, in terms of the process?

1:06:08Or is that something we shouldn't be rejecting negative thoughts? We should be analyzing and being aware, but how do we do it without consuming our life? Okay. So you kind of answered the question, the second part, that's what you do. The only way to get control is to embrace and to process and reconceptualize. And you do it in a very accepting manner. So it's like getting to the helicopter and be the messy pilot and be the co-pilot. And get into that state of mind because then it's very nonjudgmental. You start by telling yourself like the very first thing as you're getting in the helicopter, whichever point when you're in, is to say, it's okay.

1:06:44It's okay. There's been a million, billion people who have been in the same position as you that are battling. In fact, most people battle with self-esteem. It's very few people that don't, for some reason, battle with self-esteem. For example, just take that example, thinking I can't do this or I am ashamed. Because every toxic experience we have completely rips at the core of who we are. And the core of who we are is I'm needed, I'm valuable, and I have something to contribute to the world that no one else can contribute. So when someone tries to take that away from you through an abuse or that has attacked the core of you.

1:07:19So you kind of hide amongst shame. And self-esteem comes out of this, I shouldn't be feeling this. But especially a young child, like five, to be abused, you don't know how to process that. So the most immediate thing is because it's so against survival, because the adult in your life who's supposed to be the protector, everything's distorted. You don't have the language. You don't have the brain power yet, the mind power yet to process. So your coping strategy will be, well, this made me feel bad, so I am bad. So you tend to have this pervasiveness. Sexual trauma tends to create a pervasiveness of shame, and that comes out in all kinds of behavioral manifestations, whether it's withdrawal, whether it's being difficult, aggressive.

1:07:57And it's pervasive, and that attacks self-esteem because something at the core of who you are has been attacked. And that's why it takes time, as you spoke about, to go back and find that. So in terms of what you say to someone, the first thing is to get to the point where we have to change our narrative. We have to forget what the world said about all these scary words and see those as very helpful. It's a complete 90 degree or 360 degree change. Despair, anxiety, shame, thinking I am shame, thinking I have no self-esteem, thinking I can't do this. That's okay. Because as soon as you say that's okay, as soon as you can admit you're feeling that, you've controlled it.

1:08:36You've now promised neuroscience. You've got power back. You've got the power back. You've shifted the power balance. So instead of, this is now in the non-conscious, it's this former, it's the five-year-old, it's gone through the years, whatever. And there's been this, and I'm not saying you did this, but there may have been a period that you suppressed because you didn't know how to process until maybe 15, 16, 17, when you were getting more metacognitively able and started seeing things. Maybe it was older. Very often it hits around between 18, 22, early childhood trauma, where we start seeing those patterns manifesting and a bit of awareness coming.

1:09:08So now that when this comes into consciousness, in the brain, this thing is now weakened. So these protein branches, which are the memories and the emotions, the data of the event, which was that, is now weakened. So the minute I, through my tears, say, okay, I feel shame. I feel like I've got no self-esteem. I feel like I'm useless and I'm ugly and I'm this and I'm that and I can't ever achieve anything. The minute I can accept that, I can look at that objectively, pilot, co-pilot, and the co-pilot can say, what do you feel? I feel, okay, let's now see if that's real. And that whole calm, just the way I'm speaking, calm, it's okay, oh, nuts, it's fine, it's okay.

1:09:51Now we can fix it. That's weakened these chemical bonds, protein bonds. I've started changing the structure in my brain. I've now shifted 1 ,400 neurophysiological responses to work for me instead of against me. I've now started recreating balance in the brain. I've increased blood flow. So I'm setting myself up to be more resilient to do the very hard work of unpacking. And it gets worse before it gets better. And one of the really good things that I have presented in my work and in this book is to know that scientifically I've shown that even if you feel worse, which you will when you unpack this and you start seeing stuff that you've suppressed, it's terrible.

1:10:27It's heartbreaking. It can make you feel like you just want to die. That's how I felt. When I started talking about it, I was like, this is the scariest, hardest thing that I've ever done. I'd almost rather die. Like, it's the feeling that you have. You're like, if anyone ever knew these things about me, if I had to truly face these things, it's the most scary, challenging thing I've ever emotionally had to deal with. And it feels like you're dying. I don't know. I mean, maybe that's too extreme. Maybe that's too extreme. But I think you're thinking or feeling like I'm going to die. because if I process this and if people knew this about me, how could they ever accept me?

1:11:06How could they ever love me? I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life. Like your mind, my mind went through these thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. And there's like no meaning and there's no purpose and what can you do and it's a waste of time and I can't live with myself like this and it's so terrible and I just can't do this and then you start rejecting people around you or you make wrong decisions. It's totally normal. That is normal. You need to accept that about the process. It will get worse before it gets better and that's okay. And it's totally what you've gone through is normal. And we can't go and label that and medicate that.

1:11:35Then I invalidate your experience. By you being able to talk about your experience, this format of having a podcast around the world now where people are being much more vulnerable and opening, it's bringing this into the open. And it's enabling us to then be able to weaken that. You've shifted the power balance. And it does get worse. As you said, you want to die. It's so bad. But then the shift starts happening. Because look where you are today. A shift happens. At some point when it really gets double, you may even have tried to commit suicide or you may even have got to the point where this is it, I'm out of here, or something traumatic, really traumatic, and then suddenly there's that shift, there's that awareness, and then you can start rebuilding.

1:12:13And that is a time process, and that shift is real. You asked me about what would you say to someone who's in that state, where do you start? You start by giving yourself permission. You start by getting into the co-pilot policy, by letting that pilot fly like a maniac and crash the plane. It's a time capsule. You can get that plane going again. But helping, leaning on the power and the comfort of the co-pilot to say, I'm really scared of that. I don't want to land my plane. You land, but I will, and you land your plane. And then you take out your spades and you start the process of getting to eventually digging this whole thing up and slowly as you're ready.

1:12:50That's why I say 15 to 45 minutes a day, you don't do longer. You do a little bit at a time. and you do as many cycles as you need and eventually it gets to the point where you have reconceptualized. How do we truly heal the trauma of the past that causes a lot of our thoughts? Because I'm hearing you say that I'm feeling the traumas, the memories of the past that we had from the event and we're holding onto the memory, the idea, the thought of the event. And a lot of the times I would go to say, I'll speak for myself and I'm thinking most of us probably. An event happens and our memories after decades and years build it up into something bigger and more extreme potentially than the event actually was.

1:13:34And we're holding on to, now our mind is coming up with memories that weren't even real that caused this reaction in us. So how do we really, is it healing the trauma of the past? Is it healing the memory of the past? Is it healing all of it? What is the process? What should we do? Is it only through therapy? Can we do it alone through just journaling? You can do it alone. You can do it with therapy. You can do it. I would never do anything completely alone. I would make sure you have some sort of support system. If you can get your therapy, it will definitely help. But therapy is a catalyst. It's not actually, and it's your place where you can unpack the pain and get the guidance for how to manage the next step.

1:14:11But you're still living with yourself 24-7. You've got to do the work. You've got to do the work. And this is where having a system of mind management is so vital. So what you've described is the whole thought tree. And that thought tree, let's take the incident of what you went through as a child. And that would have been, you know, what the actual incident would have been is the roots. The event. The event. And the details and the timing and everything. And that then builds your perspective of how you viewed yourself and how you viewed this whole, which this is your emotions and the data. and that manifested in how you actually lived your life.

1:14:46So that's a trauma from the past. There's no guilt in this, even though it's toxic, because that's all you could do to survive. It's a coping mechanism. So this toxic tree is a coping mechanism. So we've got this inbuilt thing in our mind and our brain or system that enables us, because this should wipe you out. You shouldn't even be alive kind of thing, if you look at the natural biology. But there's this protective system in place it kind of cocoons it for a season until you're ready to deal with it. So that's, you know, and then something will come, an event will come in your life where now you have to deal with it.

1:15:22And sometimes we ignore that. We ignore it a few times before we do, and then eventually. So there's kind of a cocoon, so it's protective, so it is damaging. But because you're not ready to deal with it, it's not wiping you out. It's still causing problems. It's still creating a few shockwaves there in the ground and that kind of thing. But when you're ready to, you know, then suddenly something will happen in your life And it's slowly infiltrating. It's a slow infiltration. So it's sending out little tendrils. It's growing, that you're still surviving, but things are getting worse and worse. And eventually, this cocoon starts breaking down, and it explodes mentally, physically, in something, in a relationship, in a work environment.

1:15:58It builds. It cascades. And little things happen, and then eventually, there's a big explosion. That's this thing, the cocoon starting to come off as you are maturing and getting older and doing more with your life and experiencing more, this has to then get sorted out. So your body gets to a point where it has to reject it. The past has to go, for want of an awful analogy, but it's a good example. At some point, it can't stay there anymore. And that's when it explodes. And when it explodes, these are all the memories. As you recall it, this is the concept of the abuse as a child. That's the thought.

1:16:30This is the detail of the story. And that's how you experienced it. and so you've got to go from your the warning signals back to the data here how you experience it back to the actual moment yeah and then you reconceptualize so how do you make it play out in your future that's always part of your story but you change how like you've already done it you said it earlier you can talk about it now without falling apart but at some point you could not talk about it at all and so you rewrite the script and that takes time that takes these cycles of 63 days you literally reconceptualization is rewriting the script.

1:17:03So eventually, this goes, you then have this, and that now, instead of being toxic, is can you see some of these leaves are shining a little brighter than the others? Okay, so there is that in that. It's reconceptualized. I can now talk about it. That'll make you cry, but you've now turned it into a part of your, you've redesigned it. It's the beautiful new space. That's how it was, but now you've made it work for you instead of against you. So that is then the trauma of the past, which is there's no excuse in that. There's no forgiveness even in that, but you need to be released. Because if you're still connected to that trauma, it keeps you connected in the quantum world literally to the abuser.

1:17:47So until we release, so there's a connection. So you literally, here's your brain, here's that person maybe 10 ,000 miles away. But because of entanglement in quantum physics, there's no space-time dimension. And because of that, it's a toxic entanglement. But when particles are entangled, and you may have heard of this somewhere or someone saying this, but when two particles are put in a relationship in quantum physics experiments, no matter how far apart they are shot, they still are in relationship. So this one turns this way, this one will turn this way. So until you release, until you reconceptualize, you're still connected.

1:18:18So that will always be controlling you. So when we talk about, people say forgiveness, I think release is a better word because how do you forgive? going through this process over time. As you reconceptualize, you're slowly cutting the ties. So by the time it's in this format, no longer is that invisible tie there. You know that you've cut the tie when you can actually talk about it and you're not excusing that person's behavior. That can never actually, what they've done can never be forgiven. If you think of it, but you can release it. So we talk about forgiveness as being part of a healing, but we've got to, I had this discussion with someone the other day, we've got to be very careful of using the term forgiveness loosely because when someone's done something wrong, that wrongness, even whatever you've done wrong to someone, that wrongness is always there.

1:19:03What is forgiven is what should be done is we should release. We should realize that that was a moment in time it was wrong. The person needs to own it, but it's not your responsibility to make that person own it. They have to unpack that wrongness and kind of work through that. What you have to do is be released from it and to put that into your past. And that's kind of the easiest thing to do because a lot of people keep getting stuck because they think, I can't forgive, I can't forgive. How can I forgive someone who's, how do you forgive someone who's raped you? How does your parents forgive someone who's hurt their child?

1:19:33You know, how do you, how does, how, how does when someone's murdered, you know, that, I'm not saying that you have to keep that and not, you know, you have to get, you have to release yourself from that. And you have to accept that that event, maybe that person was operating out of trauma. So the reason for them doing that was trauma driven. And it doesn't make it right. But we can't ignore it. And what I think we've also tried to do with a lot of psychological approaches is, oh, forgive, especially in the religious community. Forgiveness, it's all gone. It's all gone away. It hasn't. It's still there.

1:20:06It's part of a story. I think the Kintsugi principle explains it the best. Do you know the Kintsugi principle? The Japanese art. When a vase shatters to the ground and it's in a thousand pieces, they don't sweep the pieces away. When you were raped as a child, your life was shattered. But you didn't sweep the pieces away. What they did was they collect every piece and they meticulously rebuilt the vase with gold, lacquer, and platinum. So now you have this beautiful new vase with all the gold and platinum represents what you've gone through. It's enriched you who you are as a person. Now you are helping others through your story.

1:20:41You are teaching others. You as a leader are one of the 3 % only that are enabling others to talk about their trauma. Only 3 % of leaders are talking about mental health. Really? 3 % globally. That's terrible. Wow. So if we as leaders don't talk about it, how do we give permission to those that are following to talk about it? So as a leader, as you talk, you've now taken the Kintsugi principle. You are showing us your gold cracks, the shining light in the leaves. And the trauma is shocking. We never forgive that is wrong. We can never say that's right. It's never right. But what you've done with it is right.

1:21:17and now you can turn it into helping others go into greatness. Yeah, absolutely. That's kind of the transformation. Wow. I'm curious, how do we, what's the process of protecting our mental health on a daily basis? Whether we've, it sounds like first we need to be aware of and do the process of healing the past or the traumatic memories of the past, however you want to call it. But what's the process of protecting the present and the future so that we don't fall back into a dark space that kind of keeps us there for so long? Absolutely. Is there a process you recommend? There is, and it's self-regulation.

1:21:53It's being very, very self-regulated. We see from neuroscience, and I actually have a little quote in the book where I think I actually had it open because I actually did a little live on it today. But you can every, I can tell you what it is. Every 10 seconds, here it is. I don't know what it is. I thought I had the page open. every 10 seconds you can be consciously aware of what you're thinking feeling and choosing mental peace and keeping yourself in a state of mental peace comes from being aware every 10 seconds now i'm not asking you to set your watch and your time on your phone i'm just saying that translate that out it means all the time that as when you're awake you need to be standing back and observing your own thinking you need to be thinking okay what am i thinking in this moment how am i reacting this moment i wake up i feel great and then i read an email i feel lousy or I wake up feeling on edge.

1:22:44Why? I'm talking to this person. How am I reacting? How am I responding? I'm doing this email. I'm doing this work. It's constantly monitoring. And that may sound exhausting, but it's not. It's the most natural thing in the world. It's one of the most brain healthy things you can do. So that's the one key is self-regulation. As you neurocycle, as you get into the habit of neurocycling, your self-regulation skills are trained to a level where it changes your life. Honestly, if I had to say what protects my mental health, it's my increased self-regulation from constantly living a life of neurocycling.

1:23:17Then the other thing in the neurocycling that is phenomenal for protecting mental health, which no one speaks about. I don't happen to anyone except me speak about this, and it's called brain building. And there's a whole section in the book on brain building. And that's taking the five steps of the neurocycle to learn new information. As humans - What does that mean? A new skill or a new - Every day, new data. So for me, I will take my scientific research. Every day, I spend at least an hour looking at neuroscientific or scientific studies related to my field of work, studying new information, the latest.

1:23:51So I study it to the point where I could actually give a lecture on it or I could write an exam on it. So I take the five steps and I study information. Every day when you wake up, you have millions of new baby nerve cells. And nerve cells look like trees and they are waiting for you to be like lattices to strengthen the new cells, the new thoughts that you build into the neurons of your brain, these little branches, these thoughts. And if you don't use them, they become toxic waste. So that affects your sleep at the end of the day and affects your dreams. And cumulatively over time, they affect your health of your brain.

1:24:24So when you brain build, it's like cleaning your teeth. If you don't clean your teeth every day, eventually you're going to have a real problem with your teeth and your brain because it's going to cause all kinds of issues in your body and so on. Same thing with brain building. Brain building builds mental and physical resilience. So by learning something, we actually think deeply. When you neurocycle to brain build, what I'm doing is getting you to think super deeply. And when you think deeply, you make all these great things happen in the brain, the left, right side, oxygen and all that stuff.

1:24:53And that's the only way you can actually grab those new baby dendrites. They respond to deep thinking. They don't respond to shallow thinking. They don't respond to scanning through headlines and hurry sickness and rush, rush, rush and data capturing and never doing anything. They respond to, oh, I scan the headlines, that interests me, let me read that article and study it. And so I'm going to write an exam or I'm reading this great book or take my book and study it. Study that every day for an hour. You'll not only get the tools, but you'll be building your brain, whatever. Take anything you're interested in.

1:25:23If you love cooking, if you love whatever you are interested in, self-help books, anything, Don't just read, study them. Use the five steps, take an hour a day. If you can do more, do more, and you will transform your mental health. All my patients, when they came into my practice, I would obviously evaluate and do all that kind of thing. We'd work out sort of where the issues were, but we would always do brain building first. Sometimes for a few sessions, I would only do brain building and get them to a state where I could recognize they're starting to get more resilient and self-regulated. Then we would start doing the trauma work and the learning disability work and the work with Puma, working with traumatic brain injury.

1:25:58And in fact, all the traumatic brain injury and stroke work that I would do with my patients, like if I was working with someone like what your dad went through, I would teach the patient and the family brain building. We would take, what are you interested in? And if your dad was interested, let's say in whatever, let's say he was interested in, I don't know, what was your dad interested in? He was into playing piano, singing, sports, running. Okay, so you could take maybe sports and you could then use the brain building. You can do this with him now. You can take the brain building and take sports.

1:26:26You don't just read it, but you actually study it. You do the five steps and you study it as though you are now going to give a lecture, Dad. You're going to now teach this. That's what I would do with my patients. And then we would slowly restore function because that changes the – it orders the gravitational fields, orders the brain, changes and directs the neuroplasticity, and healing comes. And you start transforming. I mean, I had CEOs of top companies in South Africa have terrible car accidents and completely lose their functionality, not be able to function. Do this brain building in the whole, over a period of time and go back and become something else.

1:27:06So like the one guy was an engineer, but went into management and became the CEO of a huge corporation, had this terrible car accident, ended up going back and becoming a top engineer with brain damage. So, I mean, I've had pilots at 82 that couldn't fly anymore that have become accountants. I mean, I can tell you story after story. When I'm in the most distressed state, like that night of acute trauma that I told you about, besides the glucose monitoring, besides doing the neurocycling, what did I do? I did brain building. I sat there, brain building, to calm myself down in that state. So, I would shift between the management neurocycle to the brain building neurocycle.

1:27:41To try to learn and understand something, yeah. But that built resilience. it calm me down. If I'm worked up, I'll go do brain building. If I'm really out of it and I'm not managing and I'm feeling like I'm getting super anxious or depressed or something, I will even go and do 10 minutes of brain building. I'll grab a study, study it, do the brain building, and I'll immediately increase my resilience. Does brain building only happen when you're studying and learning something or is it more of like, okay, I'm going to play ping pong or play a sport or do an activity to help hand-eye coordination?

1:28:11Yes. No, definitely. You can do that too. So ping pong is fantastic for the brain. You know, anything that really challenges the brain to coordinate is definitely going to be a brain building exercise. So, you know, racquetball, tennis, ping pong, you know, things that are challenging. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah. You can do those too. So do those. Those are more physical related. So I would balance the physical with the mental so that you do the cognitive as well. I mean, both are mental. I shouldn't say that. So sort of text and physical. Make sure that you're brainwilled with a combination. You know, I feel like a lot of parents in general don't have the tools to have conversations with their kids around mental health.

1:28:54You know, I don't remember much of my parents, although they're amazing. I don't remember us talking about mental health and these challenges that might arise, these emotions and these feelings that might arise for us at different times in the ways of how to manage it properly as like the tools that are now being discovered and researched like you have today. What conversations should parents be having with their kids around mental health in order to make them feel safe, seen, and loved with the confusion that they have maybe as teenagers or young adults in today's world? I love your question, and it's so important.

1:29:31We should be doing this from babies. So when a child comes home from school and they're maybe three or four years old and they're sad, they don't have the language. but to be able to actually notice and validate. I see you feeling sad. Why are you sad? And what, you know, to be able to act out the older they get. Never overlook a child's emotion. Always validate. I see you sad. Do you want to talk about it? I see you. So it's, I see you. Do you notice I'm saying, I see you? And you can find your own wording of that, but it's to acknowledge, which validates and never to judge or say, oh, you don't need to feel like that.

1:30:04What parents do a lot unintentionally, I'm a parent of four. I did it even with all my knowledge. So we make mental messes. I say we make mental messes all the time. But it's very important not, your child comes to you and says, I'm really worried. And then you say, what are you worried about? I'm worried about this one doing something that you think is totally irrelevant. Oh, that's not so bad. You don't have to worry about that. That is the worst thing you can do to a child. Because what you've done is invalidate something that for them is now they feel shame. So now they've got this confusion of worry.

1:30:37They don't know how to process it. And you know what parents do that? And you haven't accepted their feelings or their thoughts. Yeah, that's it. So it's very important. Even if you don't think that it's valid, you're not helping them saying, and I know it's done often with the intention of, oh, it's not so bad. It'll be okay. Calm down. Don't do that. It's rather sit down and embrace it. Say, okay, let's talk about how you're feeling. Why do you think you've got to go through the five steps? I've actually got in my NeuroCycle app, I've got a whole thing on how to use NeuroCycling for children.

1:31:05And I'm writing, I've written books in the past, but now we're doing the updated versions of neurocycling for the rainy tots, neurocycling for young kids, teenagers, whatever. So exactly how to have the conversations. But it's openness. One of the things that I have as a parent, and I mean, I used to do a lot of family therapy when I practiced, and the advice I always gave parents and that I've tried to apply as much as possible is keep your environment open. Keep it no matter what your kids, if your kids want to talk to you about sex and things that you don't want to talk about, if you don't want to talk about them, they're going to talk about them somewhere else.

1:31:38And that goes for emotions too. We've got to allow our kids to say, I am feeling depressed. The other day someone said, how do I help my child not be a professor of depression? And it was quite an interesting way of phrasing it. And my response to that was, well, help them process it. If they're a professor of depression, what can you learn from them? If you feel that they are so good at depression, that's a symptom or a signal of something going on. You need to acknowledge that and say, I see you're feeling depressed. Can you explain more? And then work through the whole, get those five steps, work through it systematically.

1:32:10You can use a lot of visuals with kids. I mean, I'm doing this with kids when I was practicing and training in schools and things as young as three. And I would take the brain. Listen, three-year-olds respond to this. They will. And I'll say, this is in your brain. And I'll take a tree. Okay, so now this is this happy tree, the sad tree. And you work through. Okay, what are you feeling? What's the sad? And you give them the words. And then let's see, what are you doing? and you work through systematically through the process. And you say, okay, so this is where it's coming. And it might take a few days.

1:32:37So it's the same process, but you're orientating them to their level. And then what you're doing is you're modeling what to do. At the same time, don't hide your feelings as a parent. You know, there's so much. Don't act perfect. No, because it's in the mess that they see Europeans grow. Mess is how they learn. So you make a mess, you get mad at your child for no reason, and then you feel guilt and condemnation. Don't do that. If you get mad, explain why you're mad. Say, I'm really mad. I'm sorry. I said the wrong thing. I didn't mean to do that. This is why I did it. But the thing that we mustn't let a child grow up, oh, you're the mother.

1:33:11You chose to have me. Therefore, you've got to be perfect. And if you fail, you've messed up my life forever. That's not healthy for a child. And that's what happens. And it's bad for the parent and the child. And with the parents pretending, oh, no, everything's fine. And meanwhile, behind closed doors, you and your husband are having a huge fight. Or you and your wife are having. That's so confusing. When my husband and I have an argument, the kids grew up knowing why. We explained, okay, we were wrong. We shouldn't have said this. This is why we argued, and this is our solution. And so it's that authenticity and that honesty.

1:33:40And you know what? They may not like it always because it can be quite scary, but life is scary. And you've got to give people, your kids, the tools to know that, hey, this is how I'm managing it, and I'm an adult, and I still battle. So when they're an adult and they're battling, they don't think, oh, gosh, I'm an adult. I'm supposed to be like my mother who was perfect. No. My mother still cries. My dad still gets upset. But they've got a management plan. So it's that authenticity and honesty. Does that answer the question? Absolutely. I've got a couple of final questions for you. This has been fascinating.

1:34:12Really inspired by all this. And I can't wait to dive in more on the book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, Five Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking. So make sure you guys get the book if you haven't got it yet. This is going to be really powerful and helpful for you. for a family member, for a friend. So make sure to check this out. Really inspired by this. Thank you. You've been doing this work for what, three decades now? Nearly four. It's 38 years now. So almost four decades you've been doing this work and research and as a practitioner as well, applying this in the real world.

1:34:47What is the biggest challenge you still face today, even knowing all of these practices and awareness around the brain, the mind, thoughts, thinking, memory, all this stuff? What's the challenge you still face as a human being with four decades of experience? The challenge that personally, it's I wish I could manage it 24-7. And that's my goal because I know it works. And I get totally frustrated when I think, why didn't I just use the neurocycle? It's got to the point in our family where if I would like, I actually went to my husband yesterday. I was really like worked up about something. He said, well, why aren't you neurocycling?

1:35:26I want to, like, don't say that to me. I don't feel like neurocycling. I want to, I just want to have a moan, you know, that kind of thing. But essentially it's true because I had to. I actually got myself back under control. So my greatest, the greatest, probably the hardest thing to do is to watch people in pain when I know that they can, that there's a way out. And I wish I could fix things. And that's probably what you can't do. I mean, not probably, you can't do that. It's made me, my weakness is I now want to fix everything and everyone. and if I can't, I think, what have I done wrong? So I have to keep reminding myself all the time that I can't, I can only, you cannot fix anyone else, but you can only support them.

1:36:04So that's a very big challenge for me because I can see, hey, just do this. Even to myself, do that. You'll be fine afterwards. You'll get through this, you know, as that saying goes. This too shall pass when you know how to manage it. So that's, yeah, that's for me a big challenge. And in terms of globally, the narrative of mental health, We just have to stop telling people that they are brain damaged when they are just being normal humans. That's a huge challenge. This is awesome. I'm really glad we had this conversation. Thank you. So am I. This question I ask everyone towards the end is called the three truths question.

1:36:35So I'd like you to imagine it's your last day on earth many years away from now and you get to accomplish all your goals and dreams. They all come true. But eventually, you got to go to the next place. You got to leave this earth. and you've got to take all of your work with you, all of your research, all of your books, this interview, it's got to go with you to the next place. This interview especially. Yeah, exactly. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you would share with the world. This is all we would have to remember you by are these three lessons or what I like to call three truths.

1:37:08What would you say you would share? That the mind is something you can control. The mind is real. The mind is the source of everything. and that it's something that you can learn and develop and that I would leave the system behind. I'd say, listen, learn to manage your mind, use the neurocycle, develop it further, whatever. But that's what I would, and the fact that your mind is real, that your mind is always real. If you don't get your mind under control, everything else is just window dressing. Yeah. We have to, that would really, so that would be sort of the main thing. And then the how to, I would definitely leave behind, do this and develop it, grow it further, make it even better than what I've done.

1:37:45but this is what I can offer humanity is this has hard managed mind. And then the philosophy, the third thing I'd leave behind is three words, three lessons that psychologist William James has quoted often as saying, and that's three things in life that are so important. Be kind, be kind, be kind to yourself, to others. And those three things I think we'd be pretty well equipped to have a decent, peaceful, realistic existence. Absolutely. Those are beautiful truths, Caroline. I appreciate that. I want to acknowledge you, Caroline, for a moment because this has been very awe-inspiring and eye-opening.

1:38:24And I acknowledge you for nearly four decades of constant curiosity, constant research and dedication to understanding the mind. and the complicated nuances of the mind, of the mind-body connection, of the mind-brain connection, of quantum physics and all the things surrounding the energetic field of the mind. It's something I've been fascinated with my entire life as a young child growing up learning about it, but it's something that I've been more curious about. But for you to make this your life's mission and study it and then make it simple, try to simplify the complex in a way so human beings can understand their minds.

1:39:07I really acknowledge you for doing the work, showing up consistently and providing and having the passion you have to share this information. I think it's really inspiring. So I acknowledge you for all of it. Thank you. That's so kind of you. Appreciate it. Of course. I want to remind everyone again, get the book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. Make sure you check it out right now. you are on social media you do a lot on Instagram I see Twitter, Instagram Facebook, Dr. Caroline Leaf on pretty much everywhere and also your website is just drcarolineleaf.com or just drleaf.com drleaf.com, it's got all your information, your books, all the different stuff over there so make sure people check out drleaf.com it's a final question, yeah go ahead I have a podcast as well called Cleaning Up Your Mental mess.

1:39:53So that's another place. Check out the podcast. And then, and you, I want to interview you as soon as possible on there as well. I'd love to have your story. It'd be fantastic. For sure. I would love to. Yeah. I'm always down to do the work. If anyone wants to analyze me and do sessions with me, I'm in. So you have such a wonderful story. I appreciate it. Thank you. My final question is what's your definition of greatness? I think you know my answer to that. My definition of greatness is when you start getting to grips with understanding how you think, feel, and choose, then you start seeing greatness because there's something you can do that no one else can do.

1:40:30And when you recognize that there's something that you can do that no one else can do, which is your mind, it's what you're doing, it's your perception, then there's no envy or jealousy. There's no desire to be like someone else. Competition goes because you can't be competed with because no one can do what you can do. So everyone is in that same boat. So suddenly now if you move from competition to enhancement, and that is key. So when we enhance each other, that's when we really grow as humanity. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links.

1:41:07And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

1:41:49you