Dr. Caroline Leaf: The Fastest Way to Banish Stress and Unleash Mental Wellness | Mental Health | E362

23:13I'm obsessed with this model. So if you guys want to take the Working Genius assessment and get 20 % off, you can use code profiting. Go to workinggenius.com. Again, that's workinggenius.com. Stop guessing. Start working in your genius.

23:28Hey, young and profiterers. As an entrepreneur, I know firsthand that getting a huge expense off your books is the best possible feeling. It gives you peace of mind and it lets you focus on the big picture and invest in other things that move your business forward. Now imagine if you got free business internet for life. You never had to pay for business internet again. How good would that feel? Well, now you don't even have to imagine because Spectrum Business is doing exactly that. They get it that if you aren't connected, you can't make transactions, you can't move your business forward. They support all types of businesses from restaurants to dry cleaners to content creators like me and everybody in between.

24:02They offer things like internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, and mobile services. Now, for my business-owning friends out there, I want you to listen up. If you want reliable internet connection with no contracts and no added fees, Spectrum is now offering free business internet advantage forever when you simply add four or more mobile lines. This isn't just a deal. It's a smart way to cut your monthly overhead and stay connected. Yeah, Bim, you should definitely take advantage of this offer. It's free business internet forever. Visit spectrum.com slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever.

24:36Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. Do you believe all sickness then is rooted from having a mental mess? You've got to be careful how we see that because you can have a vulnerable immune system because of what you've been exposed to, because of diet, because of socioeconomic environment. So the environment plays a massive role. And if you're living in an unnurturing environment, if you're growing up in an abusive relationship, if you're in whatever, all of those weaken, that's all coming in and it's hitting your body and your body's vulnerability increases. So that's not your fault.

25:11We unfortunately live in a world that creates vulnerability in our brain and our body. I mean, just by putting junk food in our body, we do. It's the same principle. You put junk food in your body, your body will not work so well. You don't do exercise, your body won't work so well. You don't have an environment that's very conducive to healthy thinking, your body won't work so well. So there's stuff that happens to us that creates this vulnerability and then there is stuff that we do. So we choose because choice is predominant. So how we choose to respond to that angry moment, which is what we started this conversation, how I choose to respond to the traumas in my life.

25:45You're not going to excuse the trauma. You're not going to ghost the trauma. You're not going to ignore the clinical impact of that trauma on your brain and body and your life and the feedback loop that's created. But you also have the power to change. you can't change it, but you can't change what happened, but you can change what it looks like inside of that network and therefore how it plays out into your future. That's the power we have. So what research shows in terms of the link between mind and illness in our body is that there is somewhere between 75 and 95 percent. The research varies, but it's in that range of diseases are coming from how we are managing our mind in response to life.

26:24And that makes sense. If 99 % of my mind is the thing that's fundamental, the work that's been done in my mind is going to impact the brain and the body because the brain and the body don't think. They simply do what the mind tells it to do. So we're putting the bad food, don't do the exercise, don't manage our thought life. So there is that link. There are studies showing that 95 % of current illnesses, lifestyle illnesses, come from our thought life. So when we talk about lifestyle, that's a big word that we hear a lot of. and lifestyle are the choices we make about how we live our life, how we manage our stress, how we exercise, et cetera, et cetera.

26:58We're very good in this day and age at looking at the physical. Do the exercise, eat healthy. That's very strong, very established message and it's well done. People are very aware of that. But when it comes to mind, there's very little on mind management. Very, very little. So we pay a lot of attention to the 1 % but very little to the 99%. So my work is to try and make people more aware of the 99%. Okay, really quick. What does 63 represent? 60 to 63. I'm playing on the number 63. So around about 60 seconds, we see that from the translation of the different levels of mind, the non-conscious mind is the fastest part.

27:33Operates at about 400 billion actions per second and faster. The conscious mind is operating at about 2 ,000. What does that mean? It means that the conscious mind can only handle about two to three words or one conversation at a time. You and I are talking. If someone talked to you and someone talked to me, no one would know what was going on. So the conscious mind is quite slow. There's a reason. It's not bad. It's just that that's what the conscious mind does. It focuses on one conversation at a time. The non-conscious, an infinite number of conversations, never stops its present, past, future.

28:03So now you've got this massive power and it's got to fit into the slow conscious mind. That's why we have the subconscious. It filters through, slows it down and filters little bits of information at a time into the conscious mind. And this comes through from the 400 billion to the different levels of speed and then eventually gets into the subconscious mind at sort of four to seven things per every 10 seconds. And eventually that comes through into the conscious mind as these little bursts, 40 bursts per second. But we consciously perceive that as a stream of consciousness every 60 seconds. So all those numbers that I've said very quickly, all those levels, we perceive kind of like a comic book.

28:43Think of when you watch a cartoon, an animation. It looks like it's one flowing thing, but we all know if I think it's 40 images per every frame that create that frame. That's kind of what's happening. So what we know is that the stream of consciousness can be interrupted every 60 seconds. That's what it basically means. And it's very, very influential. That is a very important timeframe because it's that timeframe that then determines the mindset. Instead of putting a stormy rain cloud into my brain, I can actually calm down and it's just a gentle storm. So you're still mad, but the madness has changed to a level where it's not controlling you.

29:21You're not absorbing that person's energy. You're kind of protecting yourself. And it's less damaging for your brain, right? Because every single memory is something that can be damaging for your brain from what I remember. Exactly. Yes. So I have to ask you this question. I wasn't planning on asking you this question, but now that we're talking, AI is highly prevalent. It's all the talk right now. And I've talked to like every single AI expert. Everybody has a different opinion. But you know so much about brain and consciousness. So are you worried about AI taking over? And do you think that it could ever reach human level consciousness?

29:56Or because you know so much about the brain, maybe you're not so worried about it. So I'm so glad you asked me that question. And how many hours do we have? I know it's a lot. So I'm going to give you a simple answer. and then I'll just refer people to go to my podcast because I actually recently did a podcast on AI and on all of this. So they go to the Dr. Lee show, they can just put in AI and they'll find the podcast and we have a blog and everything on it. Okay, so to try and give you the simple thing, I'm not worried about AI at all because I know as a neuroscientist and as a psychoneurobiologist, I know the power of the mind.

30:28I know the mind is fundamental. I know that the brain is a biological organ that works on computation. Now, computation is algorithmic. It's a pattern prediction. And it's the complete opposite of what mind does. Mind is abstract reasoning, intuition. When you do abstract reasoning, like now we're having an abstract conversation, there's no place in your brain that's for abstract reasoning because your brain, it computes, it's algorithmic. So what we'll see is your brain lighting up as the details stimulate the brain. But the abstract reasoning of me answering your question and you understanding my answer is happening in the mind and then the energy is put in the brain.

31:08So having said that, AI could never get to that level because AI is developed by abstract reasoning. So therefore, AI is incredibly useful in the fact that it can speed up those things that take us a long time where you can do things much quicker, where you can, if you're battling with how to express yourself, you've got to fight through to work out how to express yourself and then maybe say, okay, let me see if there's a better way. of saying this. And then you can use AI to refine it in maybe three different ways. That's a good way of using AI. But to just hand off completely, and Apple released a study just recently, which I'm sure you're aware of, where they showed that it's actually affecting the way that the brain functions.

31:49The brain's not exercised. The brain requires building. It requires stimulation to keep it going. It needs to be constantly built, neurogenesis, neuroplasticity. When you use AI, where you take away the friction and the challenge that thinking deeply and intuitively and struggling, when you remove that aspect and you think AI is doing it, but you hand it off to AI and it seems like they're doing it because AI has got so much data that it can mimic back and seem like it's generating something very creative, but it's not. It's mimicry. Clever, very smart, very useful. But when you do too much of that, your brain will literally shrink.

32:26The evidence is there. It's not getting the exercise it needs. It's not being built in a way that's healthy. So the way to use AI in a healthy way is to use it, to be aware of it, to get as much knowledge as you can, but to recognize that you need to still manage it. It still needs mind management. I don't believe AI will ever, like general intelligence, will ever reach the levels of human intelligence because mind is the opposite. It doesn't compute as the actual antithesis. It's the opposite of that. The other thing is just if you look at the neurology of a brain, forget mind for a moment, just look at the brain.

32:58AI is based on the algorithm of how one electron fires, the principles, which is a hugely complex process. We've got 100 billion. We don't even understand with our current neuroscience how two neurons interact, let alone 100 billion. We don't even understand that conversation yet. So we don't have the tools yet. Now, one day I think we'll get there and that will make AI even more efficient. And that's when we're going to have to use quantum computers and that sort of thing. And then there's another aspect and that is quantum energy, which is energy. And that's inside the neuron. We haven't even tapped into that yet.

33:28So besides the biology hasn't even been tapped fully. So there's a lot of development down that side. The other side is that there's been research done for nearly 30 years called the Blue Brain Project, changed names a couple of times. Actually, a South African professor, Henry Markham, who actually started the project 30 odd years ago. When he started the project, he said, in 12 years, we're going to build a computer that will reflect what the human brain can do. 20 years into that, billions of dollars later, he turned around and he basically, I'm summarizing the whole thing, but basically said that this is an impossible task.

34:00Every single thought is its own universe. All we've done in 20 years is map one pathway in a mouse brain as they look at cheese in a maze. And that's an infinite pathway. What could human thought be? So based on those, plus research by Hammerhoff and Penrose, many different theories, when you look at it from that aspect, you won't be frightened by AI. You will embrace AI for the usefulness when you recognize that mind needs to manage it. What we have to be concerned about is our next generation coming up, where we want to make sure that as parents, as leaders, teachers, adults, whatever, that we make sure that they don't substitute AI for humanity.

34:39And because of the smartness of humans and our abstract thinking, we can create things that look so and seem so human. And that can cause a problem. So we've got to be careful of that. We've got to work very hard at keeping our humanity, the distinction. We need to train that distinction right from the word go. Oh my gosh, I'm so happy I asked you that question. I feel like that's going to be so useful for people to hear because people are just really scared about AI. But I want to get back to help in a hurry. So you've written more than a dozen books. I think it's like 19 or 20 books or something like that.

35:13This is number 19. Yeah. So incredible amount of work. Why did you feel like this book needed to be put out in the world? What I found when I was practicing clinically, which I did for 25 years, I've been in the field 40 years. And the reason I stopped practicing was because I can reach more people with these principles. So alongside my practice, I've also been doing research for 40 years. We have a research team. We still do clinical trials and different research projects and we publish. So everything that we bring to the table has got a scientific basis. One of the key things, and I say that to say this, everything I do is grounded in science.

35:45And one of the things that I found when I was practicing and I found in the people that we reach millions on our platform, they would say, but how do I handle this moment right now? I'm in the middle of life. I don't have time to take 63 days to go resolve things. I've actually got to get through this next hour, this next meeting, look after my kids, keep myself together for a podcast or whatever it may be. Life, how do I manage the moment? So I see it as a missing link. How do I create the balls? How do I learn to stop reacting, to start responding? Because reactions will drain our wise mind, our non-conscious mind, which is that wise mind where reasoning, logic, and intuition reside.

36:26The conscious mind is thinking, feeling, and choosing, but it needs wisdom to make it think, feel, and choose well. And when we get caught up in reactivity, we get stuck in a conscious mind-brain loop, and the conscious mind working without the non-conscious becomes very much a mechanical loop where it doesn't think things through. It's going to just react from generally bad habits, basically. It's going to be driven by whatever bad habit had the most attention. So if I've been constantly allowing myself to get irritable and never ever get it under control, that's a very established pattern. And if I'm not listening to my intuition in my wise mind, then the conscious mind will draw on that pattern and the slightest thing will make me irritable and I just set off that irritability loop and I just make it even stronger.

37:10So I want to stop that loop. Help in a hurry is for us to recognize those patterns and to recognize where they come from and to deconstruct and reconstruct them, to rewire them using neuroplasticity. So what we did was look at myself and my team, the top areas that people speak about. And it's easy to find those. Just what do people say? I'm so pressurized. I'm so stressed. I wish I didn't do that. They made me so angry. Everything's not so black and white. I always do this. I never do that. So there's 18 basically areas that we found that seem to be top areas. There were actually 23, but we took the top 18 areas.

37:47And that's what these 18 chapters that cover these basic areas of what people would ask me about the most at a conference, questions, DMs, all that stuff. And then from surveys and then looking at the general research out there. And so I've compiled those into simple chapters so that if people feel I'm under so much pressure or what do I do about my child who's diagnosing themselves from TikTok or I'm stuck in a regret cycle. I keep people pleasing. Top sort of those. And you find the chapter that's relevant pretty much. I mean, I do all of these things. All of us pretty much do all of them, but there'll be some that will be more than others.

38:21And you find the one that's most relevant in your life at this moment. And then basically I explain what that means, simplistically a bit of the science and then techniques that you can use within that 63 second, 10 minute framework, seven window framework. And that's why I wanted to give them, I call it the missing link. Where do I start? Because I know when I was in therapy and my patients would come to me and they'd come with big stuff. And I work with neurological issues as well as trauma. I would work with people with stroke or heart attack issues from, not being able to speak from heart attacks, from learning disabilities, autism, plus the traumas from sexual abuse.

38:54And then just the day-to-day stuff, just living. When you're in a state, the last thing you want is for someone to say, calm down. And the other last thing you want is for someone to give you a whole science lecture when you so worked up. So what I wanted to do was to give simple things. Okay, let's do these four things and choose our technique and let's practice that in the good time so that when you see this as a pattern in your life, you get really irritated really quickly about this sort of thing. We recognize that. Let's understand it. Let's create your little network. Let's practice it. So let's wire it in to the mind-brewing body network so when you're in that state, you can draw on that.

39:28That then helps shift your perspective, keep you in wisdom, keep your conscious mind connected to the non-conscious. When our conscious mind disconnects from the non-conscious, we get into addictive patterns. We say the word addiction, people think alcohol, drugs. Addiction is also those loops. What we keep doing that same thing over and over because even if it's not good satisfaction, it satisfies something but it's not healthy. It's a craving that's going in the wrong direction. But it satisfies the basic need to have order and control. but it's distorted. So we always want to try and keep connected.

40:01So what I found from my research and clinical work was that, wow, this is such an amazing first thing that worked with my patients. And that's why I decided it's a hard time after 40 years to put this in a book. Yeah, I feel like a lot of this stuff is really useful. So I want to talk about the need to not label ourselves. There was a couple instances where I was reading that you were saying, You don't want to label things like stress as an illness. You want to think of it as a signal. And then you also were talking about how you're worried about people self-diagnosing and labeling themselves with ADHD and that it can actually make things worse.

40:38So talk to us about when we should be trying to label things, whether it's our emotions or illness or whatever it is, and when we shouldn't. So the word label isn't a bad word in itself, except when you use it to tie something to your identity. Mine are so powerful, as I've been saying. So when you label something and you immerse yourself in that label, it shifts your identity and that isn't necessarily the truth. So you can get locked in. And because we have such a dominant messaging of neurocentricity, which means brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain, brain. So once it's in your brain, well, pretty much that's it.

41:17That's been the messaging, which is a very hopeless message. And it's not accurate science and it keeps people stuck. So what I've tried to show people is we're not decrying, I'm not, I don't want to say it's sidebar here, depression, anxiety, these things, when they become extreme, they become a problem. You don't need a label to justify if you are broken from a situation and you're in a state of depression where you need help. That's not a brain disease. That's not a genetic disorder. And you don't need one of those scary labels to validate. You are valid in what you are going through. That's very important that when we talk about not labeling, we're not invalidating.

41:54You actually invalidate with a label. Because if you think about it, if there's 10 people sitting in front of me right now, and all of them are what we would call clinically depressed, is it fair for me to just say, oh, you have clinical depression, you have clinical depression, you have clinical depression, and stick them under a label without any real hope and then say, okay, you need this medication or do a bit of this therapy? That's changed their identity. They are now, I am depression or I am anxiety or I am bipolar or I am totally toxically stressed and it's in my genes or something like that.

42:24What we've done is just limited that person and we've given them a gift, but it's an empty gift. So initially they might feel such a sense of relief. Now I know why I'm doing what I'm doing. It makes sense. I've got all those symptoms and things like that. But then what? Then you open that box and there's nothing there. And all 10 of those people, these people in front of me right now, these imaginary people have all got 10 different stories. They don't just have one story, they have a thousand stories. And that whole thing has contributed to the epigenetic story, the environment, all of that has fed in.

42:54They have a network of stuff in the mind brain body connection that has led to the point that they're at today. How do we minimize that to a label? So it's doing people an injustice, a disservice to say, whew, all of this you is now one thing. And by the way, it's genetic, it's in your brain. If that was true, this is the idea that was sort of being researched about 20, 30, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. I think it was about five years ago that Tom Insel said that 20 billion has been spent in the United States alone on researching the genetic and neurobiological foundations of mental illness. And he said that all we've done is publish some fancy papers, but we haven't proved anything.

43:35I keep up with the top scientists in this field, and I can say to you as a scientist, There is no research confirming that any kind of mental illness has a neurobiological cause. Effect, yes, because whatever I put in my brain, as I've been saying, is going to change brain function, but it's not the brain function that caused the problem. Now, another sidebar. Let's say that you're in a car accident and you damage your brain, or let's say someone hits you over the head, or you get shot in the head, or you have a reaction to a very strong medication or something like that. Yes, that changes your biology for sure.

44:07And that can definitely have an effect back the other way into your mind. Your mind is always powerful, but your mind works through biology. So if the biology is damaged, like the computer is damaged, it can't do what it used to do before. So that then impacts the efficiency that the mind can move through. One of my specialities was traumatic brain injury. So we see a damaged brain, but the mind is behind it. So if we can try and pull the mind through, we can start changing things, which is what I showed with my research. Okay, so having said all of that, if I then take a label and say that this is it, with all the sounds I've just given you, I'm keeping myself stuck.

44:45It would be way better to say, yes, there is depression, but instead of a label, let's look at a description. Let's expand the definition of what depression is. So now I can say, okay, I'm showing up with depression. What are the emotions? So that's an emotional warning signal. It's data. What are the emotions? Well, it makes me feel totally flat, makes me feel like I just want to give up. It makes me feel anxious, whatever. So I'm now describing the emotional signals. Where do you feel that in your body? Every emotion doesn't work alone. It has a sensory input because that emotion is in the mind-brain-body network.

45:21It's planted deep inside the brain and the body and also in the mind. So it's going to have a bodily sensation. So where am I feeling that depression? total lethargy in my body, maybe gut ache, etc., whatever. Then I can say, okay, how is this affecting my behaviors? What I say, what I do, how I say and how I do it. And that's where we can start looking at, okay, I'm withdrawing. I don't want to do anything. I'm not getting out of bed, whatever. Then you're going to look at how is this affecting my perspective? Well, my life sucks. So now what I've done is I've described. So I'm not depression.

45:58I am depressed because of. I am showing up with depression and these bodily sensations and these behaviors and these perspectives for signals, categories of signals. So those aren't it. Those aren't symptoms. They're signals of what? They're coming from something. A signal is coming from something. It's coming from a thought. What is a thought? A thought is a collection of memories that form an experience. That could be the abuse that you suffered for years. That could be the financial strain. That could be the socioeconomic environment that you're living in. That could be the political whatever.

46:34That could be the problem with your child that's stressing you out as a mom that you just don't know how to help your child. It's the million stories that we have. And those over time play out. So there's a thought attached to it. And that thought's got memories. And every thought's made up of anything from 50 to 5 million memories, depending on how long, how big, et cetera. So if I can go from my signals to my thought, then I can say, okay, so if I'm feeling depressed, I've got all these other categories that depression is linked to, all these other signals, it's data, that data leads me to the thought that's also data.

47:05That's a story, it's a narrative, it's an experience. And I can't change that it's happened, but I can see, oh, that's why, that's the because. So I can go down to the root cause and I can do the work to deconstruct down to the root. And then I can say, okay, how do I want this? Now I've got it. I can't find out why that person abused X or why that person chose to behave like a narcissist and wreck my life or whatever, why that situation happened or whatever. But at least I know that I am not depression. I'm depressed because of, and there's a source. Now I've got power. The minute I go through this process, this is mind management.

47:41This is the conscious what's doing this, all this stuff I've just said. Your conscious mind working with your non-conscious. The two together, you're using think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose of the data and you're using reasoning, logic, intuition and intelligence and intellect and all the good stuff that's in our wise and unconscious, you're putting it together and you're doing this analysis. And you're doing it in an organized flow and then you reconstruct, how do I want this to play out in my future? Now, as you can imagine, that's not going to happen in one day or 63 seconds. 63 seconds just arrests the process, gets you into a state to find the pattern.

48:13That sort of thing happens over 63 days. So labeling takes you completely away from that process. Labeling is a finite, you are this because of this. What do I do now? Lacking in hope. You see, it takes hope away from people. And that is not good. And also your identity changes. So we've done research where we've shown in people's brains where you do use QEG, which is a great way of looking at the energy flow in the brain. You don't read the brain, but you see the response in the brain. and we've had people that have been abused as children for years and they've sat in situations where they have, in the clinical trial, for example, saying that I am depression and they didn't know why they'd suppressed it.

48:52Anyway, long story short, we see in the brain waves that their identity has been fused with depression or fused with I'm only as good as the amount of stuff I do for other people. People pleasing, there's a fusion, so there's a distortion. You can't see that in the brain, But what you can see is a drop of energy in the front part of the brain. And we know when people's identity is compromised, that's an abstract concept. But that abstract concept of me not having an identity shrinking is going to affect the energy in the brain. And we see that as a drop. So I'm just giving an example. We'll also see the change in hormones.

49:25We'll see changes in things like prolaxin, which is a hormone that picks up on these things. So we'll see DNA. We'll right down to the level. We've looked right down to the level of telomeres, which are the ends of chromosomes. So labeling affects you all the way through, right down to that level. So I always tell people, take the label, turn it around and say, okay, don't say I am. Say, I'm showing up as this because of, and then complete the cycle. Get all the other descriptions added. Find the thought, do that process. And that, by the way, is called the neuro cycle. And we cover that actually in our first episode.

49:58So I am going to make sure that I play that episode so you guys can figure out how to undo your trauma and things like that. And what I hear you really saying in like the simplest terms, because obviously I'm not a doctor or a scientist, is instead of labeling yourself, what is the story that you're telling yourself about you? What are the details of that story? And then how do you want to retell that story? You summarize that beautifully. And the brain-mind-body connection, psychoneurobiology works on exactly that, telling the story and in an organized way. So that's why I said literally find those four signals.

50:30That's the neurocycle. It's a formula for how you actually get the rewiring, how you direct the neuroplasticity, how you change those faulty networks. So all that stuff is happening in the back, but you are, you are acknowledging, why am I like this? How do I want to be? Where's it from? You're changing your narrative. You have the right to write your story. No one else. And you can rewrite your story.

50:56Hello, young and profiters. Running my own business has been one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. But I won't lie to you, in those early days of setting it up, I feel like I was jumping on a cliff with no parachute. I'm not really good at that kind of stuff. I'm really good at marketing, sales, growing a business, offers, but I had so many questions and zero idea where to find the answers when it came to starting an official business. I wish I had known about Northwest Registered Agent back when I was starting Yap Media. And if you're an entrepreneur, you need to know what Northwest Registered Agent is.

51:26They've been helping small business owners launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They literally make life easy for entrepreneurs. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And guys, it can get really complicated, but Northwest Registered Agent just makes it all easy and breaks it down for you. So when you want more for your business, more privacy, more guidance, more free resources, Northwest Registered Agent is where you should go.

51:59Don't wait and protect your privacy. Build your brand and get your complete business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com slash yapfree and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at northwestregisteredagent.com slash yapfree.

52:20Hello, Yap gang. I know my young and profiting listeners want bigger businesses and a better life. and the new year is the perfect moment to reset and commit to your growth. But let's be real, you can't build an empire if your finances are all over the place. That's why getting into it QuickBooks is one of the best first moves you can make this year. They've got powerful money management tools built right into their platform and they have them for every stage of your business, whether you're a solopreneur or a small business. And I love that QuickBooks helps you get paid faster, pay bills smarter, and even gives you access to funding when opportunity pops up.

52:55So QuickBooks can help you with bookkeeping, can help you with getting paid, can even help you with projections and understanding where your business is at financially. Plus, QuickBooks Money Solutions reduces manual work by half and keeps your money and your books perfectly synced. That means less time staring at spreadsheets and more time actually building the vision that you started with. That's the upgrade that every profiting entrepreneur needs. Start the new year strong, take control of your cash flow with QuickBooks Money Tools. Learn more at quickbooks.com slash money. Again, that's quickbooks.com slash money.

53:26Terms apply. Money movement services are provided by Intuit Payments Incorporated, licensed as a money transmitter by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

53:37What's up, Yap Gang? If you're a serious entrepreneur like me, you know your website is one of the first touch points every single cold customer has with your brand. Think about that for a second. When people are searching on Google, everybody who interacts with your brand first is seeing your dot com initially. But here's the problem. Too many companies treat their website like a formality instead of the gross tool that it should be. At Yap Media, we are guilty of this. I am really due for an upgrade for my website and I'm planning on doing that with Framer this year because small changes can take days with my other platform and simple updates require tickets.

54:11And suddenly we're just leaving so much opportunity on the table. And that's why so many teams, including mine, are turning to Framer. It's built for teams who refuse to let their website slow them down. Your designers and marketers get full ownership with real-time collaboration, everything you need for SEO and analytics with integrated A-B testing. I love that. I love testing and making sure that we've got the best performing assets on the page. You make a change, hit publish, and it's live in seconds. Whether you're launching a new site, testing landing pages, or migrating your full.com, Framer makes going from idea to live site fast and simple.

54:46Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com slash profiting for 30 % off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's 30 % off in 2026. Again, that's framer.com slash profiting for 30 % off framer.com slash profiting. Rules and restrictions apply. So what is the difference between overthinking and deep thinking? And how can we pivot between the two? Overthinking goes nowhere, except in this loop that creates a lot of toxic stress inside of you. It makes you feel worse and worse and worse. You don't move anywhere versus deep thinking finds solutions.

55:24It's a struggle. It creates friction, but it's growth and it's movement and it gets to a point where you are getting some level of solution. So overthinking is very often triggered. We can imagine overthinking doesn't tap into the non-conscious, the wise non-conscious. It's one of those loops that we get stuck. And it's like this. Someone says something to you at work or a family member says a statement, something like, geez, you always do that. Now it seems so innocent. Maybe they didn't even mean to say it, but there's something that you maybe just, just a response that you had to something in the conversation and they turn around and they say that to you and it activates.

56:00And then in your mind, you're thinking, what do I always do? What do I always do? Am I bad? Do they not like me? What have I done? And there's this loop and there's no logic. It's just going nowhere. It's like hamster wheel. And that's the addiction you were talking about before. It's addiction. Exactly. It creates an addictive pattern because it releases all this dopamine, serotonin, and endomite, but all of these great chemicals, but in the wrong way. Not in an organized, satisfying, healthy growth way, but in a destructive. It creates what we call, it reduces the entropy of a system. And what that fancy word means is it creates disorder.

56:32And wherever there's disorder, there's going to be chaos. And there's going to be a price we pay physically and mentally for that. So overthinking, you want to recognize it. And very often it will take a good seven days to recognize the pattern. And the patterns are the who, the what, the when, the where, the why, the how. So when I talk about finding a pattern to overthinking or any of these things, you are asking yourself, who do I do it with? When do I do it? Why do I do it? How do I do it? So the who, what, when, where, why, what have I left out? Who, what, when, where, why, how? You ask those questions.

57:01And I've got little tables in the book that you can actually fill in. And that's really important because then you can actually, you're honing down to what this thing is. You're getting control over it. and that way it's easier for you to reconstruct how you want to change that. And then to recognize, because once you've had some practice with overthinking, you may have heard me say this earlier on, whatever you've done, whatever story, whatever pattern, you'll always have them there, but they change. Instead of them being powerful, dominating forces, you turn them into teeny little shrunken little things.

57:30But at any point, if I don't control it, I could go back to overthinking. So one of my big things was regrets, regret cycles. And I know what it is. I've shrunk the tree. I've done the work. But if something big happens, I can easily find myself saying, if only I said that, then this and all the scenario that would never ever happen. And it makes me overthink. It throws me into a cycle of overthinking. But I know how to catch it. I know how to stop it and not let it regrow, et cetera, et cetera. Let's talk about black and white thinking. How can people catch when they're doing this and what are the signs of it?

58:01So black and white thinking, there's a lot of use it or lose it. There's a lot of these kinds of phrases or it's like an and or game. But life is not like that. Life's a gray scale. It's not either, or, or, and. Okay, so it's not just one thing. So instead of saying words like always, never, those words rather shift to sometimes. And I may do that. Those very strong adjectives are very good key signals that you're stuck in black and white thinking. We're very harsh on ourselves with black and white thinking. We get very judgmental of others. People that are very judgmental on themselves and others have a tendency to black and white thinking.

58:35If you don't think like me, then you're wrong. That's not correct. If you don't follow this religion, you're wrong. If you don't follow this way of thinking, you're wrong. That's very black and white thinking. And it's definitely not what life's about. So it limits connection, communication, et cetera. And so the way to break that, and I'm giving this quickly because I know we're running out of time, is, you know, there's charts in the book, but go and have a look. And I've put down the general words like always, never, et cetera. And you can then track the pattern and then I've given you words that you can train yourself to say.

59:03So if you catch yourself saying never, which is a word I used to use a lot, if I say it Now, the minute I say, because I've trained myself, I'll immediately, it goes off in my head and I'll shift it over to, oh, sometimes. You know, that's what you can do. The deep thinking, overthinking, one of the quickest ways to break that. Quickest technique, read fiction, read stories, find a book you love. And as you read it, think about the character, close your eyes and just think about it. In other words, to recreate deep thinking and find your identity again. Characters in stories, we love stories. Humans love stories, as we know.

59:34So it's a quick way. There's a lot of other ways, but that's a very fast way of helping to get you into deep thinking versus overthinking. Okay. So the next is a game segment, and I'm going to list some emotions. And I want you to just quickly tell us what are some things that we can do to snap out of that emotion. You might tell me it's all the same for all of these, so we'll see. So it's a help in a hurry, quick fire segment. You brought up regret, right? So let's talk about regret. What are some of the things that we need to know about regret? and how can we make sure that we stop feeling so regretful in the moment?

1:00:07Everyone regrets. Everyone suffers battles with regrets, some more than others. But according to research, literally 99 % of the world's population battle with regret. I don't know what the 1 % does, but they're the ones that have started managing it. So it's normal. But regret, you have what we call upward and downward counterfactuals. And what that means is there's a fact that's happened. Something happened. Something was said. Something was done. You did something, whatever. Wrote an email, had a conversation, whatever. And then that's happened. Those are the facts. Now we counter the facts with a regret.

1:00:36We say, ah, if only I had said that, then this would have happened. And then we visualize this wonderful ending of all these great things and you feel absolutely terrible. Or you might say it could have got worse. That's called a downward counterfactual. So the thing to break it is never ghost yourself. This is really key. Never ghost yourself. If you have a regret, honor that regret. That's how you break the cycle. Interrupt the cycle with honoring the regret. What do I mean by that? I'm not making it better. I am validating. I'm not ghosting it. I'm going to say, okay, I recognize I'm in a regret.

1:01:08I'm saying, and I'll actually say that. I am saying, and as you say it out loud to yourself, you'll think, gosh, Caroline, you can't do that. It puts you in a state where you can almost give yourself therapy, literally. So it's very much one of acknowledge, say it out loud, preferably if you're in a crowd or in company, just say, okay, I'm in a regret cycle. I validate what you're saying in your head, but you can't go any further and let's move on. Enter back in the conversation or do something different, like a minor distraction. Then you can come back and you can see, is this a pattern? And then you can do a 63 day.

1:01:41It's not to ghost yourself, but it's immediately to stop it. So this is it. Okay. I acknowledge it, but now let's move on. Let's close that curtain and let's move on. I'll deal with it later. I'll find the pattern. So is shame or embarrassment something similar that you would do? Shame is a heavier one than embarrassment. So I would almost separate those two. Embarrassment, it can lead to, obviously, these things, there's a lot of crossover. So when we embarrass, we often think, I wish I had done this. So you can go into a regret cycle, but you can use that as data. So if you're embarrassed, it's okay to be embarrassed.

1:02:13It's okay to not be okay. That's a big, strong message throughout my book. It's okay to not be okay. So when we're embarrassed, we need to be able to tell ourselves that it's okay to not be okay. This is what I'm embarrassed about. It's valid to be embarrassed. I'm embarrassed for you being embarrassed, whatever. Don't ghost yourself. That's what you can hear me saying. And then mind shift. Say, okay, well, it's happened. And I can tell you those people are, if they laugh at you for a few moments, listen, there's another thing coming along that will be more embarrassing, that will entertain them even more.

1:02:38It's happened. It's done. How can you grow through it? You know, it's that kind of mind shift that will catch it and stop it. But it's not to allow ourselves to keep going down the rabbit hole. Catch the regret. Catch the embarrassment. Shame is very deep. Shame tends to be linked to identity. Shame tends to need a lot more work than embarrassment. Very often we'll need a 63-second catch and then a 63-day, if not more. I found a lot of my patients that were abused had a lot of shame because it was spoken over to them and those patterns were established. So they battled to receive compliments and they always will see the worst in themselves and a lot of self-talk, that kind of thing.

1:03:13Okay, the last one here. What if you're feeling lonely? So this is AI question. They're worried about, are we going to turn to AI bots to solve our loneliness? Okay, that's just a sidebar there as well. is that it can never satisfy our, and a bot could never satisfy that human connection. Okay, so loneliness is we've got to separate being alone and loneliness. And there's so much in the media, and rightfully so about the epidemic of loneliness. And I even interviewed a previous surgeon general about this and he had a whole, and I'm totally all behind it. Loneliness has become a problem. We do live in a country that is very much individualized as opposed to community focused.

1:03:51So what we do about loneliness is we all pretty much understand that there is a problem and that it goes against our human nature. We need connection. We all get that. So then the thing is just to think, not, oh, this is so terrible, it's going to kill me and whatever, because it does affect your heart and all that. It's just think, what can I do? What is the smallest thing that I can actually do? I can reconnect with an old family member and I can set up a text thing once a week where we can talk. Or I can go and invite my neighbors over for coffee and do it on a regular basis. Or I can make it, it's getting yourself out of your comfort zone because we've also from COVID and individualized society and working so hard and pressure.

1:04:27We're just too tired to do anything. So if you don't feel like physically going and having coffee, text each other, get on the phone, set a date to have a chat and then try and get to the physical. So it's action because we all know the reasons. There's enough literature out there. So I want to talk about your career because we've got a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs out there and you have a unique career where you started as a doctor and a researcher and then you decided to start a personal brand and post online and start a podcast and write books. So first of all, talk to us about why did you decide to actually step out as a public figure?

1:05:03What was that decision making like? And then what were some of the early things that you did break out there? I didn't know about branding and social media and all that kind of thing. It was not a thing 25 years ago as much as it is now. But what had happened was that in my career of, I worked in private practice. I had a clinical practice and quite a big one. And then I used to do a lot of training and lecturing. So I lectured students and I trained physicians. And so I was already in a public speaking environment and I got invited more and more public speaking. It was people telling me, hey, you need to share this with more than I got offered a publishing deal.

1:05:36This was 30 odd years ago and I wrote my first book. And so it was a natural progression to recognize that, hey, this is something that I can help X amount of people individually. We have restarted our individual coaching again, but it's very limited. Obviously, we have limited numbers that I work with, but I can reach millions and we do. We literally reach millions. My goal is to empower people to empower themselves. As I said earlier on, 1 % is brain and body, 99 % is mind. So I wanted to teach people about mind because if you can tap into intuition, you can find your identity. I know you know my book, The Perfect You.

1:06:13That is very key because in this world of influences, social media, branding, there's a lot of competition and there's a lot of, I've got to be like that person and a lot of loss of authenticity and a lot of, oh, geez, I need to be like that person. They're in my arena and look what they're doing and I've got to emulate what they're doing. My advice, I've fallen in that trap. And as soon as you do that, you lose your authenticity. The thing is to try and not look at the numbers and try and not look at, even though now and then, have a stat you don't have to look at numbers, but be more balanced.

1:06:44First, find you. There's something you can do that no one else can do. Maintain that authenticity. This was so key for me. I've had one message for all these years and I have stuck to that message. Come hello, high water. I have been told by many people, change this, change that, change this. Careful of that wording there. And I respect and honor any advice, but I will keep to the truth of the science and the message. And I've kept to that and I've tried to keep as authentic as I can. And then around that, I've let teachers come in. People come into my lives to say, hey, maybe you could say this differently or maybe you could do a little bit of this for personal branding or whatever.

1:07:16People that know more than me about areas that I know absolutely nothing about, I will learn from them, open to learn. So authenticity is number one. Retain your identity. Don't allow yourself to get into competition. The minute you start competing, you will lose your authenticity. You may have numbers and whatever, but the sustainability will go. Don't compete, rather enhance. We are actually designed as humans for enhancement, which means lifting others up. If I celebrate you, I'm not taking anything from me. I'm actually increasing my own empowerment and my own authenticity. I'm growing. But we don't live in a culture like that.

1:07:51We live in a culture that, oh, I've got to do better than this one. I've got to do better than that one. And it's very, very hard. It's so easy. And I fall in that trap, but I catch it quickly. I use help and hurry. I get out of it as quickly as I possibly can. So that's really what I would say. And learn. Get the best teachers. I have some of the best teachers around me. I have people in my team that I know nothing about that have taught me so much. Be open to learning and get the experts around. I can't do everything. I know what I can do. I stick to what I can do. And then I get the experts around me to do the other stuff.

1:08:22Well, your brand has blown up so much that it's become sort of a family business, right? So your husband is the CEO. I believe your kids work for you. So talk to us about mixing family and business. What are the pros? What are the cons? Why do you do it? And it's always a funny story because I never actually asked any of them to come in. They all chose to. And my son-in-law was also involved, which is really great. So we've got the whole team involved. Our core team is basically family. And then everyone else are contractors. So how it happened was that I had my private practice, my husband had his own business, and he always did all the sort of accounting side of the business, sort of business management side.

1:08:57And then it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. So he then basically sold his business and came in and took over as CEO. By that stage, my eldest daughter had finished her degrees. And so she had been helping out while she was at university and she got involved. And then the second one went out to do degrees, went to work, and then she decided this is interesting. And then that's what happened right down to the youngest. And so, yeah, it's just, it happened naturally. And I think that's really important. I didn't ask them to get involved. I'm thrilled they're involved because they're immersed.

1:09:25They've grown up with this, but it was something that came naturally from them. I think the key is they like what I do. This is important. It's important content that we deliver and they sold on the content and they determined to try and get this out. And I think that's what's drawn them in. Yeah, sure. We have our issues. You have to be very careful that you don't work 24-7. We have to have, okay, it's now weekend. We're on a walk. We don't talk business. We're at dinner. We don't talk. It's hard. I mean, it's so easy to slip into, oh, you know what, and to bring up work over dinner. So it's very important.

1:09:58And the other thing is you've got to lay ground rules in meetings. and that's been very hard because it's, oh mom, you know, or it's so much easier to snap at your husband or your child or get irritated or say something you would never say to a colleague. So there's rules. You have to put rules in place and you have to keep putting those rules in place and we fall all the time but we keep picking ourselves up. Don't take offense. Keep moving on. None of us take offense. We say sorry fast. Very key. You're irritated with someone, you snap at them, say sorry. Fix it. Take ownership. Take responsibility.

1:10:29No one forces you to get angry. No one forces you to get irritated. You choose. Take responsibility. You choose. You can choose to change. This has been such an awesome conversation and I want to make sure I'm respecting your time. So I end my show with two questions. You can answer them really fast. What is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? Manage your mind. Get to know your mind. Understand the importance of mind. Don't think you're ruled by your brain and your body. Your mind is fundamental. Your biology is driven by your mind. And then the other thing I'd say as well is that you can't control events and circumstances, but you can control your reactions.

1:11:06You can turn reactions into responses. You have so much work out there. Where is the first place that people should go find your stuff to get started? Probably social media, Dr. Caroline Leaf. I'm on every platform. My webpage is drleaf.com and my books are available wherever books are sold. And then I've got the podcast, Dr. Leaf Show. We're going to stick all those links in the show notes. Dr. Caroline, you are always welcome to come back on the show. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much. Great questions. I really enjoyed it.

1:11:37Well, Yap Fam, what an insightful conversation with Dr. Caroline Leaf, back on the show for a second time and as eye-opening as ever. If you take away one thing from this episode, let it be this. You don't have to wait to heal. Dr. Leaf's new book, Help in a Hurry, is all about giving you fast, science-backed tools that you can use in the heat of the moment. You can reset your mind in just 63 seconds. That way you stop reacting and start moving toward a more intentional response. I love the concept of mind-brain-body connection, a reminder that what we think about will grow. If we stay stuck in negativity, we're not just spiraling emotionally.

1:12:13We're literally wiring toxicity into our brain structure. But the good news is that we can choose to think differently. With awareness, you can create new neural pathways that lead to peace, clarity, and better business outcomes. Entrepreneurs, this is your competitive edge. Dr. Leaf also dropped a massive truth bomb. Not every emotional struggle is a disorder. We live in a culture that loves to label depression, ADHD, but those labels can quickly become boxes that we live in. Caroline challenges us to stop identifying with the problem and instead get curious about the root. What is triggering all of it?

1:12:48What is the pattern? What are the stories you're telling about yourself? She encourages us to stop identifying with our struggles and start organizing our thoughts into meaningful narratives and take back our control. And lastly, my favorite part of the conversation was when we talked about AI because her take was refreshing, it was unique, and it was also relieving because she knows so much about the brain and consciousness and she says that AI may replicate human output, but it's never gonna replace humans. It's never gonna replace human consciousness. The ability to think deeply, feel meaningfully, and manage our minds, that's what makes us truly human.

1:13:23As entrepreneurs in the age of automation, our ability to regulate our thoughts and emotions will be our ultimate differentiator. So yeah, fam, if you're feeling stressed, anxious, or mentally cluttered, don't rush to label it. Pause, reflect, reframe, and remember, your mind is literally a magical tool that is near impossible to replicate, not even by AI. So manage it well, and there's no limit to what you can build. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast. If you listened, learned, and profited from this amazing conversation with Dr. Caroline Leaf, then send it to somebody who you know is ready to transform their mental well-being.

1:14:00And if this episode helped you shift your mindset, do us a solid and leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to the show. It's one of the best ways to support us. If you guys wanna watch all of your videos on YouTube, it's uploaded on there. We're also now on Spotify Video if you guys wanna check that out. You can follow me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn, just search for my name. It's Hala Taha. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.