ADDICTION: How Dopamine Can DESTROY Your Life & How To Master It For HEALTH | Daniel Z. Lieberman

it's one thing to choose dopamine instead of here and now because it gives you pleasure but it can very easily get to the point where you're no longer in control dopamine is controlling you so how do we use dopamine for focus motivation creativity and avoiding unhealthy addictions i think that we will get the most out of dopamine like i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness the whole thing is about dopamine what i'm hearing you say in the unconscious mind and dopamine is that a lot of the work that you you're dealing with yeah you know the unconscious mind is what i'm working on for my next book uh dopamine is about the molecule of more i'm fascinated in both of them so what do we need to know about dopamine how does it help us how does it hurt us most people when they think about dopamine they think about pleasure but that's just a small piece of what dopamine does the bigger picture is is that it's used to maximize future resources that's why we call the book the molecule of more dopamine is all about making the future better than the present and so it can do wonderful things it can give us energy motivation desire excitement confidence but it can also do terrible things it can make us dissatisfied unhappy miserable constantly chasing something we can never capture it's a powerful tool we got to learn how to use it properly what are the most powerful examples of dopamine in a healthy way and then powerful in an unhealthy way that you see in the world happening right so you know i i tend to think of entrepreneurs in terms of healthy dopamine they want to build something that never existed before and you know what it's like to be an entrepreneur really i tried once and i couldn't do it it's hard man it's very hard it's hard yeah you've gotta um you've gotta go go go go go you gotta be driven by passion you have to work ten times as much as if you're working a regular job but dopamine makes it fun yes and that's one of the beautiful things about dopamine is it can make um it can just make us feel so alive as we work to make the future better than the present so dopamine is about it's about seeing something and having an idea in your mind that's not here in the real world i think in your ted talk you talk about uh there's two different spaces in the world the space that we're looking down that we can touch and grab and then an external a space out there what are those two spaces called like uh yes when we think about how uh dopamine evolved we've got the parry personal space and that's basically the space in arm's reach so anything within my reach um my energetic field of where my arms go to is called the parawhat parry personal parry personal yeah parry means around okay cool right so it's around you and what is that space what does that mean for us that's um anything in the parry personal space is stuff that you own yes you've got control over and you interact with it in the present um so this pen this notebook your book this coffee cup this ipad this table this chair these clothes that i'm wearing that's in my personal space yup exactly and the way you interact with it is consumatory that means consume you know i can take a drink from this glass of water but it also refers to consummation uh what happens at the end when the thing that you've worked for you now have that's the consummation okay and that's also related to the parry personal space stuff you have now okay so that's how does dopamine play into the peri personal space when you are interacting with things in the perry personal space dopamine shuts off really even your phone the the atoms and molecules may be in the very personal space but your head is far away when you're interacting with your phone because it's in a different it's not actually in front of you it's in a different space in a different space the content you're consuming it might be on the phone yes but it's somewhere else it's somewhere else you're usually focused on possibilities when you're in your phone you're reading social media you're reading the news you're thinking about how is this going to affect me we're thinking about the future interesting okay and so what's the other space the other space is the extra personal space outside the personal space okay that's stuff that's not within arm's reach and it could be um an apple across the room on a table or it could be the moon uh whatever it is you don't have it and if you want it you're gonna have to work for it and your interaction with it is going to take place in the future right so if there's an apple you know across the room it's an easier effort to stand up go grab the apple and eat it than it is if it was right in front of you but it's much harder to get to the moon right but even that apple is going to require some effort maybe even some planning and uh it's happening in the future it's not happening right it's not in this moment i can't just grab it and chew it yeah i have to get up and there's sometimes where i'm on the you know couch watching sports and i see something in the kitchen i'm like i really want that but it's really comfortable right now and i don't want to get up and so you have to have some effort sometimes to go across the room you do you do but you know it's funny sometimes things that we don't have but we want give us more joy than the things we have why is that the things we desire yeah there's a great quotation um from the book the house at pooh corner did you read that winnie the pooh yeah i love children's literature so good yeah so anyways christopher robin asked what what is it that you like the best in all the world and of course first thing when the pooh thinks about is honey and he's about to say eating honey but then he this is an amazingly sophisticated thing for a children's book then he thinks there's a moment before you start to eat honey that's even better but he didn't know what it was called it's called dopamine that's dopamine that's dopamine it's the anticipation of about to get a reward and somehow right you're going to a great restaurant for dinner and you're excited about it you're thinking about it all day long you're there you're chewing the food and your brain's somewhere else really or maybe there's a few moments of like oh this is amazing and but then after those first few bites here on to the next right gosh so is is that a healthy thing for us to do to think about the future consistently but then not appreciate the moment of what we're enjoying that we've been desiring all day or years of a dream that we've been trying to create right no it's not healthy at all so we're healthy at all and you know one of the things we say is that the guy who is most able to afford the beach house is the least able to enjoy it gosh why is that he goes out to his beautiful beach house he pulls out his laptop and he's working right he can't just sit there and smell the breeze and and right why is that uh it's because the guy who can afford to the beach house was born with a pretty powerful dopamine system and he um it's hard for him to turn it off because he was driven and driven and driven and that's what allowed him to get the resources that he never had in order to buy the beach house right yeah and then now he's got the beach house he can't turn it off and enjoy the beach house he's thinking about what's next the next deal he's going to do the trip to europe who knows what how can someone be so hungry to reach a vision and create more in a healthy place but also be satisfied with where they're at it's hard it's hard you know the first question is do they want to right do they want to be satisfied or be happy yeah i mean you've heard the saying um to travel hopefully is better than to arrive oh have you heard that sure yeah that's a dopamine saying of course okay right it's better to anticipate than to have and some people don't want to make that shift you know to them the parry personal the here and now it feels all touchy-feely and it makes them uncomfortable and they don't like it they want to spend their life in the future i don't think that's healthy but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna judge them i'm not gonna choose for them sure so the first thing is they have to decide whether that's something that they want um but where does uh dopamine how does dopamine really get you addicted to things like drugs social media alcohol or just bad habits yeah so it's one thing to choose dopamine instead of here and now because it gives you pleasure that's a choice but it can very easily get to the point where you're no longer in control you're no longer making choices dopamine is controlling you and a good example of that is doom scrolling right you're going through your social media you're bored you're maybe even unhappy but you can't stop scrolling because what dopamine is saying is one more scroll and there might be something that will change your future and you can't miss that and and so that's an example another example is is compulsive eating for example right we're no longer enjoying that third donut but something is making us eat it all right we're just like i just want more and more more i feel sick every bite makes me feel worse why do i keep biting this is that dopamine dopamine yeah so the dopamine is telling us what that we're not happy with what we have we still need more of that thing yeah whether it be social media i'm not happy with 10 minutes of scrolling i need 30 minutes i need 50 minutes i need because something is gonna i'm gonna feel something that i don't have in this moment is that what it's saying you know i like to think of it evolutionarily uh human beings evolved on the brink of starvation right we were always in a situation where we did not have enough resources and we could be dead tomorrow um and that's where dopamine evolved and so dopamine is basically keep your eye on the ball look that third donut is making you sick you might not have calories for the next three days get it inside you and you'll be alive wow so is this genetics then it's genetics yeah really yeah so how do we turn the gene off in our favor to not suffer that's what we get into in in the later parts and you know we western civilization is very much of a dopamine civilization of more more and more and uh i think in order to choose balance in one's life you've got to make an effort not to do that um in the past we did more of that one of the ways you get in the here and now is by working with your hands um i don't know if you have any hobbies like working on cars or woodworking or drawing or painting i wish i had a talent in any of those but i don't i appreciate it but i play guitar a little bit i'm not that good but i play guitar and i'm i love i love sports though i like yeah anything you know um with a ball you know playing basketball soccer football ping pong pickleball now i'm loving so anything where i get to hold something and hit a racket catch a ball or makes me have to focus in that moment if i want to succeed at that thing i also love salsa dancing so it's like something interactive where it's listening to music and experiencing it yeah i think the height of human experience is when these two things are working at the same time the dopamine circuits in the brain and the here and now circuits and that happens in sports yeah right the here and now circuits are focused on your body and the ball what's happening right now don't mean circuits are thinking strategy what's my opponent going to do what should i do next interesting and i think that's that's from the intense pleasure of a nice competitive sport yeah it's fun yeah that's awesome yeah so how do we learn to master dopamine then so that can help us succeed in everything we want i think it's very much about being aware of what's going on okay and so um when i was writing this book i got in the habit of asking myself is this a dopamine moment or is this a hearing now moment and if it was a dopamine moment good think about the future work hard make something new create think about possibilities think about potentialities things that don't exist if it's a here and now moment though spending time with my family don't be thinking about the future about the future when you're with your kids or when you're with your partner or your friends right right so turn it off turn it off what's in the present what's the best strategy you've learned to turn it off to be present you know because i hear a lot of stories about how parents are on i don't have kids but i've heard this from parents that their their kids want their attention but they're saying you know they're just looking at their phone still or they're distracted because of the addiction i guess or that dopamine wanting more of the thing that they don't have right now so how can people turn it off when they're in those scenarios with friends family and activities yeah so i think the first thing is to be uh deliberate um to say okay i'm going to spend the next hour with my kids and that's not a time where i'm gonna be on my phone i'm gonna leave my phone in the bedroom yeah um and so so then you don't have that temptation and then i think listening is the best way to bring yourself into the present moment listening listening how do people learn to listen better it's not easy i i think the first thing is to recognize that how hard it is yeah and that a lot of times we're not good at listening you're having a conversation with someone a lot of times you're thinking about what you're going to say next exactly rather than what the other person and people who are very charismatic know how rare this is and oftentimes charismatic people will be described as making you feel like you're the only person in the room right because they're in the present moment yes they're present with you it's interesting i i grew up feeling very uneducated not smart um you know just from school i performed poorly in school uh-huh and i told myself a story that you know i'm never going to be smart enough no one's ever going to be interested in me because i'm not a smart person that's what i told myself growing up and then i heard a quote i believe it's by roosevelt that says people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care and i said home maybe i have a chance if i just show that i care about people and put energy and effort into listening and caring about their lives and their stories maybe they want to hang out with me so it was kind of like a i don't know just a strategy to find friends in high school it's like let me just pay attention to people and just focus and ask questions that i'm curious about and listen yeah and i started doing that in business early on when i i had no skills on making money or starting a business i had no idea what i was going to do but in the business world i would go to networking events and i would just ask people questions about themselves and i would never talk about myself ever and at the end of these events people were like you're the most interesting person in the room and i never said anything i just asked questions and paid attention while everyone was being distracted and looking around the room i just focused and it served me well you know it's probably one of the reasons why i wanted to do an interview show just to be able to sit down and ask questions yeah so you don't have to be the smartest person in the room but if you can pay attention then that can help you in a lot of ways and how old were you when you came to that realization probably yeah but but then it was like one of my early 20s when i really started to practice it yeah it can take people a lifetime to have that insight though right it's amazing to have that at such an early age yeah i was like i'll never be as smart as someone like you you know i'll never be able to do this research to dive in and be this like scientist of the brain or neuroscience or things like that but if i can just put my effort and energy towards paying attention and listening to people and asking questions that open people's hearts and minds that will get them you know grateful in that moment and gratitude goes a long way for people yeah so it sure does that's that was my strategy i'm not going to be the smartest i'm going to be the most caring that was the goal that's great that's great and what's what what's interesting to me about that is that it it rose out of hardship uh-huh it grows because you suffered a feeling that you weren't smart enough absolutely and we worked so hard in life to avoid hardship yeah and yet that's often the most valuable thing we experience in life why is it so valuable to experience hardship i think it's because that um when things are going smoothly we don't have to change um and um standing still in life is not good for us we need to grow you've seen p you've seen middle-aged people who still behave like they're in college they're they're desperately hanging on to a point in their life that they felt was the best point for them right and it's sad it's very very sad to see we've got to keep growing but we don't want to right you know it's it's much easier to stay still and be comfortable yeah it's very comfortable so um we need hardship to push us out of that comfort zone and make us grow when i think back on the last i guess my entire life when i think about the most hard and most difficult experiences that i've faced and the lessons i learned from that i i go back and think man i you know i wish i wouldn't have experienced them in the moment but i want to take it back based on the lessons i've learned and how much i've grown from them yeah i think we need to decide are we going to learn and develop and grow in these hardships because some of us don't you know we something hard happens and we just stay stuck as opposed to breakthrough yeah nietzsche said uh what doesn't kill me makes me stronger it's not true for everybody you've got to embrace that and you can't let yourself feel feel crushed by adversity you've got to overcome it and then you'll be stronger how do you overcome it though you know i think you prepare yourself i i think you've got to prepare yourself um by getting good at you can't just say when the big thing happens i'm going to rise to the occasion you've got to focus on the little things right like what um like like um you know you don't say well when i'm talking to this very important person who could change my life i'm gonna listen to what they're saying now listen to what everybody is saying listen to what the bus driver is saying right uh and then you get in the habit aristotle said um that virtue is a habit that you can't expect to do the right thing when the big thing happens unless you're in the habit of doing the right thing when the little things happen so it's really about just being in integrity with yourself every single day and doing the best you can in every moment not just when the big moments happen it really is i i say to my students if you want to do the right thing when the chips are down as a doctor write good notes uh you focus on the little things and the big things will take care of themselves that's interesting so how do we use dopamine for focus motivation creativity and avoiding unhealthy addictions i think that we will get the most out of dopamine by keeping it in balance with the here and now dopamine becomes our enemy when it becomes the end-all and be-all right i've got to get a new wardrobe i've got to get a new cell phone i've got to get a new car but if we balance it if we keep it in perspective if we don't take it that seriously if we learn how to laugh at ourselves for constantly wanting more more and more while at the same time accepting it you know not trying to be saintly that's i think keeping a perspective is what's going to be the best and do you think people need to go through a dopamine detox don't mean detox is very controversial um a lot of people say that that's just a fairy tale okay um right because um when you get hungry and you eat you get a big big release of dopamine uh when you work hard and you accomplish something you get a big release of dopamine so what are you gonna do during the detox you're going to not eat you're going to not work you're going to not plant make plans to make yourself happy you're just going to be miserable bored and stupid so you can't really do that you can't really do that there are certain things you could say what are the things that i've been doing too much of i'm on social media too much i'm watching too much trash tv i'm doing certain activities maybe that bring this constant feeling of dopamine right they aren't healthy right we can we can pay attention to things that we're squeezing too hard right right like if you're the kind of person who can enjoy a nice piece of fruit and move on okay you don't need to eliminate that but if you're the kind of person who eats a candy bar and then it's two three four five you should eliminate that at least for a while yeah and that you know something like saying an unhealthy dopamine yes unhealthy dopamine detox yeah where does dopamine and addiction come into play and what would you say is kind of the root of all addictions yeah let's talk about chemical addictions uh because those are the those are most straightforward um so there are dopamine circuits in your brain uh and there's different ones and and i'd love it if we had a chance to talk about the difference but um uh the one we think about with addictions um is technically called the mesolimbic circuit we call it the desire circuit which is a little bit more descriptive yeah uh the desired circuit gives you reward okay so the desired circuit goes off is this in the limbic part of the brain mm-hmm okay yeah yeah the the reptilian okay cool so it's kind of in the center and the middle mass right yeah that's right not on the top on the mushroom top it's more in the middle it's deep yeah okay yeah so this is the desired circuit of the brain yeah we also call it the reward circuit right you eat when you're hungry you get a pat on the back when you do a good job you get an award all of these things uh promote your evolutionary success really yeah so we we work to um stimulate our dopamine reward center now chemicals like cocaine and alcohol and nicotine they artificially stimulate this this center and some of them can can hit it like a nuclear weapon and give it a stronger blast than any natural behavior can do now a lot of times we make decisions in life based on what's going to give us more dopamine so for example um should i go to work today or should i go see a movie well i'm going to go to work because if i see a movie that's going to have a really negative effect on my future sure right and and that feels rational now when drugs start giving these chemical blasts of dopamine to the limbic system it starts to feel rational to do drugs instead of other things and so when you see some poor guy out on the street and he's lost his job his house his family his health for his drug you say my god what on earth is making him do that that's crazy but from the inside it appears perfectly rational he's choosing the thing that gives him the biggest dopamine and in the absence of drugs that's a strategy that usually works so what i'm hearing you say correct me if i'm wrong people that are addicted to some type of drug um they make it logical in their mind that this is a logical thing to do because it's making me feel a certain thing is that right right it's making me feel successful really yeah yeah but like alcoholism smoking cigarettes weed cocaine like when they're high when they're high afterwards for the world right right you know nothing can touch me gotcha i'm superman i'm so great you see people on cocaine and everyone hates them because they're so arrogant and obnoxious and horrible but in the moment they feel like they feel likable yup that's right what happens after the moment after the the high yeah is there a shame a guilt a yeah yeah that takes revenge really oh yeah oh yeah you know um you've you've you've not been stimulating dopamine naturally you've been you've been um basically taking a whip to the brain and forcing it to deliver that dopamine and you exhaust its stores really and so when you come down you're dopamine deprived and that's a horrible feeling what happens when you're dopamine deprived let me give you a sense of how it feels and this is just a little tiny trivial example um every morning you go to the bakery and you get a cup of coffee and a croissant okay and that's your habit in the beginning it gave you dopamine uh right because it was new but only novelty can give you dopamine after a while it becomes the same old same old all right so you're standing in line for your croissant your coffee suddenly your phone rings and someone's like drop whatever you're doing and get over here right now and you get no croissant and coffee that day uh in the brain dopamine is shutting down and it's making you feel resentful and deprived but you didn't get what you wanted yeah what you expected what you expected interesting yeah so that's how it feels to have a dopamine deficiency you feel resentful and deprived how can you i guess navigate it then so you do something maybe you have a routine but then you mix it up every now and then so you're not expecting something all the time and the novelty guys brings you dopamine of something new or something different right or mixing it up so you may say i'm not going to have that croissant and coffee for a month and then when i go back to it oh my god i feel amazing right yeah that's right delayed gratification is that how does that play in the dopamine delaying yeah like the marshmallow test yeah yeah well um it it it stimulates it because you're keeping the thing you want in the future it's like the advice that mothers used to give their daughters in the past don't have sex until after marriage because uh the guy's gonna lose interest right right where if you say hey you got to wait that's going to that's delayed gratification that's going to keep dopamine expecting anticipating exciting um so yeah delayed gratification is a good way to boost up dopamine really yeah so is it better to let's say i want a cookie right and i say you know what i'm gonna wait a month until i have a cookie or a candy bar a cake or whatever yeah i'm gonna wait a month and i'm gonna think about it and imagine i'm gonna you know think of the taste of this cookie but the only way for me to get this cookie is if i work out five days a week for a month let's say i make this game up yeah what is that gonna do for myself as opposed to i'm gonna have a cookie every day yeah whether i work out every day or don't work out every day versus if i do this thing five days a week for a month then i get a cookie am i gonna be happier during the entire month or less happy with the go for the month then you get the cookie versus i get a cookie every day right right happy is it happy can mean different things right uh so for example if i say um i'm happy um i'm happy that i'm going to get a new iphone it's a different feeling than saying i'm happy because i just got this new iphone those are two very very different things what's the difference between the levels of happiness of i'm going to get something first i just got it yeah so when you are happy about something that's going to happen it makes you feel excited energized maybe it makes you feel strong and powerful and confident like you know it's coming yeah okay when you're happy because you have something it makes you feel satisfied and fulfilled um and it's like you and those are very different feelings sure some people like one more than the other you know others like the other where how much dopamine comes in either form with a second there is zero dopamine it turns off once you get something once you get an award once you get the cookie once you buy something within minutes it dopamine terms off turns off because you already have it now because now you because now it's something you're interested in and dopamine doesn't function very personal really and so for some people that's a moment of disappointment it's so interesting to say this because most of my young adult life let's say for years i would spend 10 or 15 years with a goal in sports i was like i'm going to be an all-american athlete i said this when i was five years old and i remember and i was a two-sport all-american i said i was gonna be a professional athlete all these different things and i remember when i the first time i became an all-american athlete there was so much joy like and anticipation getting like before it actually happened right and the build up and the training and the hard work and the failures and all these different things and then my name got called for being the top 8 in the country in the decathlon wow and i remember feeling like so like excited and happy for a moment and then maybe 10 20 minutes later i was really sad depressed angry kind of moody i was kind of moody and my family was there was supposed to be the celebration we were having dinner and i was kind of like moody i didn't want to be around anyone almost as if you were coming off cocaine maybe i've never been on a cocaine but yeah maybe that's how that's what that's what yeah people it was weird and i was like kind of like didn't want to be around anyone wow i don't know you know so don't mean crash is that what it is yeah you're having a dopamine crash wow yeah that's crazy yeah but i wonder if it's because i wasn't really celebrating the moments in between like enough it was more like okay i'd keep pushing until i hit this goal and when i have it then i'll be satisfied but i wasn't satisfied now i have a more of approach where of like i'm going to enjoy and celebrate every day the best way i can yeah and appreciate every day all the ups and downs and everything that comes in between and find appreciation for my health and my relationships and the work that i'm doing even if it's not the biggest successful day and i feel much more balanced in that approach i'm not sure if that's something you talk about but well i think it's another example of you you pay attention to the little things and the big things take care of themselves absolutely you know just related to your decathlon story um i was once giving a talk and there was an artist in the audience and he told me the most miserable times of his life are when he finishes a piece of oh my goodness really yeah when he finishes it he's like now he's miserable now he's miserable because um and and when you know i i had so much fun writing this book and when i finished the book it was a real sense of loss yeah because that part of my life was over i was done yeah so what do we do when we accomplish something when we achieve when we create when we ship when we launch when we build when we post you know how do we not have this dopamine uh depression you know that's such a dopamine urgent question the correct answer is you just experience whatever happens in the present moment so if you finish a work of art you're miserable be miserable because that's what life is about life is not about always being on the top of the world in order to enjoy the good moments you have to suffer through the bad moments man and live those live those suffering bad moments that's part of life i think it's also what's worked for me is to have and maybe there's some psychological term behind this but it's having a meaningful mission for my life where it doesn't matter if i'm accomplishing something my mission is to be of service and whether that's just saying hi to someone and being of service in the moment or doing it in a grander way of reaching millions of people in a day with a piece of content my mission is to be of service and to be as joyful as possible yeah and and i can do that at all stages you know it's like i don't have to be accomplishing the biggest things in order to be living that mission that helps me kind of manage those emotional ups and downs i think i think that's so insightful we talk about what can we do to be happy right but we forget that pursuing happiness is really not the best way to get happiness really pursuing meaning you pursue meaning and happiness will just come yeah what's the meaning for you what's your mission or meaningful mission yeah so it changes a lot you know um and we were talking about the unconscious mind earlier um and i think that that's where your mission comes from a lot of people say well i want to be this kind of person i want to be the kind of person who um cares about the environment or cares about poverty or that and so they go and they're like gosh i don't really care about it that's right you got to find out what you really care for and then pursue that how do you know what you really care for it has to do with paying attention um you know you got to stop thinking about what do i wish i were like and start paying attention to what am i really like okay i'm miserable you can ask yourself what can i do not to be miserable or you can say let me see what this misery feels like let me get to know this misery better because then i'll get to know myself better when was the most miserable time in your life i had i i know about your childhood i had a tough childhood too yeah uh my parents divorced when i was eight years old and they hated each other uh it's not fun growing up in a household with people that are arguing and screaming and not expressing love with one another yes it's really challenging and their hatred for one another was so intense they had no bandwidth left over to care for their kids oh man and so we were just kind of out there fending for ourselves trying to figure things out oh my gosh yeah how long did it take you to to heal those memories and wounds any day now it's gonna happen really yeah wow okay but um that's part of who i am yeah of course that's probably what drives you to be of service and help people find healing and relief that's right and what you care about because of the pain yeah and also um you know i often think that um i don't have a lot of self-confidence it's hard for me to see myself as a good and worthy person really yeah yeah and so it drives me to do things like write books and um you know study hard yeah so i try to um i try to look this is what my life is and i'm gonna be i'm gonna have gratitude for the good parts of it i'm not gonna say oh i wish it were something else are a lot of people making decisions based on survival strategy like creating survival strategies it sounds like you went into this when you're like i'm going to work really hard i'm going to study extra hard i'm going to become on the board of this and the board of this and teach here and write these books and learn more and more to try to serve to find that worthiness and i guess self-confidence and same thing for me in a different approach i was like i'm gonna care about everyone in the world you know because no one i felt like no one cared about me so it's like yeah i gotta find a strategy yeah and i feel like i've gone beyond that now where i've really loved myself and care for myself and healed the inner child and i'm on that journey of healing but it's it's a journey man yes it is it's a journey it sure is yeah um yeah and i think it's important to recognize that that we're not where we need to be that we still have a lot of growing to do yeah um and um we've got to enjoy the ride we can't always be focused on what's next so how much um i mean this is something you study this is something you teach this is something you are practitioner in you have clients and patients in this on a scale of one to ten ten being the most one being the least how much self-love and worthiness do you have for yourself those who can't do teach so i worked on it when i started writing this book i started meditating as i was writing this book i started meditating because i began to realize how dopaminergic i was and that dopamine what uh dopaminergic dopamine meaning so meditation breathing strategies bring you back into now right right um and what happens to people that are only focused on the future i i think that they're very unhappy because you can't be satisfied because if you're satisfied it comes to a screeching halt so you right and your mind is always somewhere else and so um you know sometimes i'm walking down the street to work and i just noticed what a beautiful world it is you know the birds are singing i love that i'm smelling flowers in the air good for you it's a good practice yeah yeah if you're always focused on the future you never get that yes and and i think that one of the things i realized is that reality and reality only exists in the present right the future is always unreal reality is a million times richer than anything that we can imagine wow and so if you're always thinking about what might be in the future you're living in this poor thin pale world whereas if you're in the richness of reality it's a much nicer place to live wow so reality is a beautiful place the future the imagination can seem like a beautiful place in our mind yeah imagining something a world an experience an environment that we don't have yet that might improve the quality of our current reality yeah right though so there's a beauty of thinking creativity i think einstein talked about like imagination is one of the most powerful things human can do or whatever yeah so imagining something greater than where you're suffering or where maybe you're not as fulfilled or happy yeah so it's a kind of sounds like a dance it is because if you were unworthy and didn't love yourself and we're growing up scared in this environment you don't want to be in that environment anymore right there's a reality that's not helpful and that that taught me to be somewhere else exactly not a healthy habit to acquire but it helps you get out of that current state of pain yeah and you're suffering so there's a it sounds like a dance right it's a dance you got to go back you can't just say i'm going to enjoy like my parents like screaming at each other and being like feeling worthless right you don't want to just enjoy that deal right right right it's a dance it's a balance now some people choose uh for example like a tibetan monk right they're gonna say no dopamine they're gonna choose to live their entire life being having gratitude for the present moment absolutely um and there are ways of putting people in a brain scanner and telling how happy they are and tibetan monks score highest on that score than anybody else unhappiness unhappiness because they're just grateful in the moment for everything yeah yeah they are um tough tough path for westerners to follow we we have a different destiny we want more we want more and we want to be like einstein we want to create things that never existed before and there's a real nobility in that the tibetan monks have their own nobility but there's also nobility in creation yes which they don't engage in and in evolution and building and evolving yes yeah so scale one and ten where are you yeah yeah so if if one is the tibetan monk and and ten is the world well if ten is like the happiest oh they're happy yeah yeah one is the the most yeah i'd say i'm about a six seven maybe on a good day yeah that's good how about you i feel like i'm a eight nine oh nice but i i really practice especially with my girlfriend like waking up and literally just being like i'm so grateful for you i'm grateful for this moment i'm grateful for waking up i'm grateful for my body and then i do things that bring me more gratitude for the actions i'm taking so this morning i woke up early i did a workout and i'm like man i'm so grateful for like taking this action because i know it's going to help my future self so it's kind of like being being present but also i'll do something weird with my mind where i imagine myself years in the future next to me it's kind of weird and saying like thank you for taking care of my future thank you for now we're going to have a better healthier existence because of this our exercise form of love it's like loving myself from the future to now yes which kind of sounds weird i don't know what psychologically what that's called anything but it's it's future casting it's like appreciating myself in the future for what i'm doing now so interesting it's melding the future in the present yes yeah but it's so it's thinking about the future but just saying i'm so grateful for what i'm doing in this moment and appreciating the moment so i think my girlfriend does a great job of it of bringing presents also i can be thinking about what i want to create for my business non-stop all day if i wanted to i can go home at night and i can just keep working but with her it's like she you know i want to say demands it but she is a force of presence that requires me to be present with her she'll just come sit right in front of me and put her face in front of me you know it's like you know okay let me just let's talk excuse me i exist yeah well it's not that i'm not uh i'm avoiding her or something but she just comes in and she'll sit next to me or she'll just come and hug me and it's just like okay i'm gonna be present with her for however long we're gonna be present for and i think that's a helpful thing for people to be in relationships with other human beings where they see people or they are required to be present yeah and so it's it's a beautiful gift and by taking that time away from your work it probably actually makes you get more work done absolutely that's the thing i struggle with my patients a lot of my patients are are constantly working working working and they're terrified that if they take the slightest breath the house of cards will come tumbling down but i say to them if you take time off you're actually going to get more work done i believe it i was interviewing um this uh pastor pastor michael todd he runs a christian church in the midwest and he said one of the best pieces of advice he got from one of his mentor pastors who was kind of mentoring him as he was growing up in the in the world of the church said every year take one month off where you don't do any work there's no laptop there's no emails there's no nothing it's all play fun family you know vacation whatever it is it was like a month that's so much time yeah and he says it's non-negotiable every year he's been doing this and he says i come back i come up with the greatest ideas and he's like that's where i i came up with the idea for my next book that was a new york time bestseller from that space wow in between the work yes and he's like there's an urge to want to start working but i just have to pause and when i came back then i had all this energy and creativity and and focus to get it done faster one of the things that requires is trust you know we spoke a lot about how we want to be in control of things how do you make yourself enthusiastic how do you make yourself interested no you have to trust you take the month off and maybe it will be a complete waste of time right or maybe you'll come up with a new york times best-selling book ooh right how much time have you ever taken off since you started your practice uh have you taken a half day off yeah i take long weekends i like long weekends that's like i can't take off it's hard for me to take off a full week really i just don't know what to do with myself you have kids yeah how many kids do you have i got two boys two boys how old uh they are now um [Music] 25 and 20. wow okay cool um one of the best things i did for myself this was probably four or five years ago i came to a realization where i said wow for 15 years every day i've had my phone i've touched my phone uh-huh maybe not all day but i've touched my phone for 15 years this is probably four years ago or something or five years ago because i got my first cell phone in in 2000 right so it was like maybe six years ago whatever seven years ago but i was like 15 years i've touched my phone every day since 2000 this must have been 2015. and i said what's a challenge for me what's something that seems like i could never do and i said going away for a week and not having my phone with me and so i made a commitment i said i'm gonna go to i went to hawaii and um by myself left my phone and laptop at home no electronics on me i mean it felt so uncomfortable the first like day and a half because first off i forgot where my my rental car was so i went to every rental car place and said did i get this here i didn't even have all the information i didn't have a gps in my phone yeah so i stopped at gas stations asking for directions to hotels it felt like back in nigeria right yeah yeah and um after the second day it felt like the most incredible surrender and peace i was like laying in the ocean not thinking about oh my phone is on the beach or i need to like check something and i almost didn't want to go back to having a phone i want to do that it was the greatest gift i gave myself and so my challenge to you would be to find at least a week to do that for yourself hawaii would be a good place exactly yeah leave your electronics at home yes that would be very hard but i could imagine a realization coming at some point during that week saying i've been enslaved by this and i'm finally free that's how i felt yeah freedom yeah it was incredible okay so you say you're at a six or a seven what would it take for you do you think to get to an eight nine or ten what is the the thing the unresolved stuff that you haven't faced that you feel like would support you in improving the quality of that inner peace or joy because the reason i ask and the reason i challenge you daniel is because i believe your work and your message and your mission is extremely valuable for humanity and so i want you to be at an eight nine or ten to be able to give more from that space of self-love and worthiness because i feel like you'll be able to serve at a higher level at that space so that's why i'm challenging you and asking you this yeah so um i one of the things i've been i've been doing more is um learning to say no oh that's good so creating a boundary yeah yeah when i first started my career as a psychiatrist um i decided that i was going to say yes to everything you have to when you're starting you have to you've got to build something you got to build you've got to be the guy that people will go to and they know the job will get done i'll show up here i'll take on this project i'll do whatever you need yes um and and and that worked out really really well but then that became my habit and i started finding myself getting resentful i felt like i was giving giving giving and i wasn't getting what i expected in return and so then i just started saying no i won't do that beautiful happiness way i went up a lot that's one of the most powerful thing i think it took me the longest to learn that in intimate relationships where i would choose i don't blame anyone that i ever dated but i would choose certain relationships and then i felt like i needed to say yes to make them happy or to do what they wanted for whatever it was and i realized the things that i didn't want to say yes to so it's never them it was about me abandoning myself and being in constant abandonment of my my own self-love or what i really wanted and so i think when i learned that lesson it's been such a beautiful peaceful environment inside in that and when i i started doing that in business years ago as well and i found like wow i have so much more freedom and peace from that so i think it's a beautiful thing that you're doing one of the things my wife said to me is that when you open your hand to let go of something your hand is now able to get the next thing right you know and you can't you can't receive the next gift unless you're able to give up the last one that's so true yeah i was asking you before about this you see uh patients almost every day or family every day yeah and what type of practice is it that people come to you for what is the main thing that people come to you for my expertise is psychopharmacology that is using medications to treat psychiatric illnesses okay uh and my specialty is uh bipolar disorder really uh depression uh and depression as well where does depression and bipolar disorder stem from what is the root cause it's really biological really yeah you know in the old days we would look at a person's past and that has an effect how healthy uh the environment they grew up in is going to determine their uh their strength to recover um but really it's about a genetic vulnerability really yeah but don't don't some people get in more depressed states seasons of life or if something traumatic happens there might be a depressed state but other times they can be in a less depressed state well one of the challenges that we face is separating normal emotional experiences in life from medical illnesses gotcha you know one of the one of the challenges that psychiatry faces is that it's often not viewed as a medical specialty in the same way that cardiology or pulmonology is right because it can't be seen really i guess right it's more in the mind that's right and also because the brain is so hideously complex you know the heart's a pump i don't want to diss my cardiology uh colleagues but the heart's a pump the brain is like a hundred trillion freaking cells and yeah we just had a brain surgeon on recently who's a neuroscientist as well uh-huh he's done over a thousand brain surgeries wow he was like this he's like you could cut out a piece of the brain where they think is you know i can't remember exactly what he said but it's called the analytical side of the brain you could cut out a piece of it and the person can still be analytical because the brain can readjust yeah and rework itself it's like this yeah incredible yeah and it's it's complexity makes psychiatry a younger science yes because we don't understand as much about our organ as our cardiologist colleagues do and so i i think that in some ways we get less respect because we're kind of we're at a much more primitive level yes um but it's still medicine it's still medicine and we still approach it scientifically and and when the brain is broken that's different than when people are going through difficult experiences in their life gotcha and their brain is responding the way you would expect it to to hard things i asked you before i said what's been the biggest um i guess challenge over the last year what type of people have come to you in the last year and you said what do you say specifically people who might have an extreme mental illness versus people who are going through extreme adverse challenges yes so you know all of my patients are being treated for a mental illness and um you know usually once they get better it holds and they stay better but not always so they're coming in and they're saying gosh i'm feeling like i did before i saw you did the treatment you gave me stop working or is it because i'm stressed out and upset just like all my friends who don't have mental illnesses gotcha we have to figure that out how do you determine if someone is needs an actual medication or if they need to you know heal a wound that they haven't healed or they need to heal a trauma or they need to get out of a toxic relationship or they need to stop watching the news or they need eight hours of sleep or you know eating healthier foods are all the things lifestyle wise that support uh a better feeling a better mood yes i just asked him uh how are the people at work doing about the same as you yeah and if they say yeah everyone's the same as me i'm like healthy lifestyle but if they say no you know everyone's pretty much okay and i can't drag myself out of bed in the morning because this feeling of dread i say let's take a look at your medications interesting is there a way to heal depression without medication there is mild to moderate depression can be healed without medication severe depression though is gonna need medications really yeah there's no way to get out of severe depression from extreme lifestyle shifts or again psychologically going back into childhood wounds and starting the healing journey and creating self-love inside and finding meaning and all these different things doctors never say never okay right because i like that i'm glad you said that yeah the human body is we play the odds medicine is about statistics it's about rolling the dice for the best outcome but if you've got severe depression and you're going to try and do without medication the odds are way against you so you're saying it's much harder with severe depression where you're like i can't get out of bed i can't think i can't move or it's hard to i'm suffering from a psychosis i'm hearing voices telling me i'm a horrible person depress severe depression is no joke it's a real broken brain people can have delusions their body is riddled with disease they can have the delusion i'm responsible for all the evil in the world it's not true but they have this truth that's not a reality depression can be a fatal illness um yeah it leads to suicide so it's an illness to be taken very very seriously right so if it's extreme then medication you're saying is the way to get out of the extreme to start saying okay now you have some more balance to start changing lifestyle stuff to see if that'll help you right and increase the mood or you know if somebody has that extreme of depression it's generally a chronic illness gotcha and that's not to say that lifestyle and other changes isn't going to be incredibly helpful but um you know let's let's let's think about diabetes um sometimes people can overcome diabetes with lifestyle changes sometimes they can't right if they need medication lifestyle changes will still be enormously helpful for sure but we don't want to fall into the stigma of saying well mental illnesses don't count yeah we're going to give the diabetic patient medication but the guy with depression he's going to have to tough it out sure sure right well yeah there's a lot of cases now where dr jason fung is talking about you know reversing pre-diabetes or early stage type 2 diabetes or able to reverse it yeah through fasting through eliminating certain foods and lifestyle changes um but the farther along it is it's obviously much harder to reverse without medic having medication or something like that so right that's interesting now i'm curious about this i'm forgetting that the doctor i had on the name him off to come back and think about it but i'd asked him about different stages of his life he's probably in his 70s now i'm forgetting his name and he there were different stages in his life where he said he was at lower points more depressed type states right maybe not full depression but depressed states and lower points of enthusiasm lower points of creativity and wanting to you know show up and work every day right and things like that gaining weight all these different things and i said what changed and he said love he said meeting someone yeah and feeling powerful love changed the way i thought changed the way i felt changed the way i saw the world how powerful is love when it comes to mental illness depression overwhelm stress how powerful is the feeling of love feeling loved by another human being or fully loving yourself re-parenting yourself psychologically yeah and giving yourself a love that you never had as a child or or bonding with someone chemically through that feeling of love how can that shift your depression your states and your desire to want to give and create more in the world yeah i think that uh love involving another person is probably the single most powerful thing there really yeah absolutely uh personally you know when i met my wife that that was more healing than anything i'd ever experienced really for yeah that completely changed me completely changed me as a person yeah wow yeah so do you think people that are depressed have love um or are able to feel loved maybe there's someone's loving them but not able to receive it you know again i think we need to be very careful about um distinguishing depression is a medical illness versus yeah because it's so easy to fall into the um into the habit of blaming people for their mental illness oh if only you loved yourself more you wouldn't be depressed of course yeah of course we don't say somebody with cancer oh you know if only right i'm just curious how powerful if we learn to receive and give and feel loved let me give you the most powerful example i've come across share it with me um and it's one of the most terrible mental illnesses there is narcissistic personality decisions this has been a massive topic that people are covering is that right and uh we had a a narcissistic uh expert therapist come on and talk about it and um i mean it's got over a million views on our channel already from that alone and i think so many people have been in narcissistic relationships where they face this like sucking of their soul out of someone else i know i've experienced that you have wow but i wasn't aware of it until after the fact right until it's like you learned to heal your your own self and it was just like you're like oh i deserved that it's crazy yeah it's crazy so um so tell me more about narcissism and love and yeah where you're going with this so um for a psychiatrist narcissism is just brutal how many narcissists come into your practice um when i was a resident um i was assigned a patient who had narcissism and i worked with him for two years and um i did nothing for him and i remember a dream i had once i was trying to climb a wall of glass and there was nowhere for me to get a hold and that's what it was like working with this with this poor man oh you're gonna bring me back to my past now yeah it was there was not enough i couldn't get it i couldn't get a hold and there was nothing i could do to help him change because everything was always other people's fault and there's never responsibility right no this was not a bad man i i i liked him i felt sorry for him he was miserable but i couldn't he nothing was ever his fault that is like this the sign of a narcissist right one of the many signs one of the many people want to never take responsibility i faced that in a couple of relationships and so after two years of that when a narcissist would come consult me i would say look i can't take your money yeah so funny this therapist that we had on who teaches about this and educates people on what to look for with narcissism does a youtube channel she was like it's rare that i'll even treat a narcissist because they'll never want to go to therapy yeah they'll never they only go because they're forced to go from their partner or something or they're good they're threatening a divorce so they have to go but it's like they need to go almost every day for years in order for them to say you know what i'm going to see it differently i'm going to take responsibility yeah and then they need to stay in it in order to get out of that how do people manage that if they're in a relationship with a narcissist i don't know i think they got to get out that's the only solution that i can think of i mean i'm not an expert in narcissism yes um i've never had any success but i tell you something so so there's not very many there's not very many therapists who can successfully treat narcissism it takes a very special person to be able to do that 99 of therapists will get nothing done but there is something that does reliably help narcissists what's that being in a genuine love relationship that so that finishes narcissism so tell me what do you mean by that not being in a relationship with them but in being in a relationship with someone else uh if they if they are in a relationship where they truly love the other person it's not that they just see the other person as a source of narcissistic gratification the other person is not just someone to be drained that they truly love that person but a narcissist would never do that right it happens it happens really yeah psychiatry has been more pessimistic about personality disorders than we should be and and borderline personality disorder is another example in the past we've been very pessimistic now we're extremely optimistic and we think oh borderline personality disorder there's an enormous potential for improvement i hope someday we'll get there with narcissism but it it's it's more malleable than we thought really yeah but but not through treatment it's through life see what's at the heart of narcissism is radical insecurity massive insecurity yeah huge insecurities right massive wounds yeah and they don't feel like what they they don't love themselves no they don't they feel that they are utterly unworthy they might not be aware of it it might be unconscious but that's what it is that they're utterly unworthy and so there's this there's this hall inside of them they're constantly trying to fill and they fill it you know with other people and that's why it's so horrible being with them because they're just sucking out of you trying to fill this hole the thing is though that if something real actually happens like they do have a real relationship or uh even graduating from college or getting a good job diminishes their narcissism because suddenly they're not desperately empty interesting but it wouldn't never feel enough like well i don't deserve this i've got this great person in front of me but i i'm not worthy enough of deserving this so i'm going to sabotage it i'm going to suck i'm going to blame them for everything still about how i feel that's what i went through that's not funny yeah i'm not an expert in this and as i said what i'm talking about are studies that look at statistics i would agree with you though i think there's some narcissist it's not gonna work what's the difference between a narcissist who is uh feels like they don't deserve they have a massive wound versus someone who's just feels unworthy who's not an artist narcissist yeah so like me and you growing up i know i know yeah who wants to suck the life out of people and blame everyone versus someone saying i i'm i know i feel unworthy i take responsible for these i'm responsible for these things yeah it's a question of where the pain goes the narcissist puts the pain outward on others right the person because i think they're unconscious of their unworthiness the person who is aware of their unworthiness pain goes in wow and people tend to like them because you know they're always trying to please others they are yeah that was me yeah that was me saying yes to everything and then resenting it later yeah that's fascinating but but those people tend to be more successful in life right the narcissists are kind of alone and miserable because nobody wants to be with them right the guys who was trying to please people well they they think that's a good thing they get taken care of they get taken advantage of yes so what do you see for the future of the brain dopamine and creating happier more fulfilling lives for ourselves when it seems like and the statistics are showing that life expensivity is actually dropping at least in the usa over the last i think five to ten years it's actually dropping now where access to foods and things that are unhealthy for the body are making us needing these addictions more more cigarettes whatever me alcohol plant medicine all these things that people are doing to feel something yeah uh social media the phone the addictions all these different things what do you see is the future of where we're going and if someone truly wants to live a happier more fulfilled life what can they do in the face of the next decade of just distractions yeah i don't think it's going to be easier for anyone with the accessibility to addictions things access the now gratification yeah you know think back to um to our prehistoric ancestors can you imagine going out on a hunt for a woolly mammoth how much fun that must have been it'd be scary fun exciting yeah like you're with your buddies like the tribe you all depend upon one another you all got a role it's life or death you could come home dead you know you're gonna bring home meat i bet that we don't experience anything like that our whole life that was as much fun as that wow related to that um you know like like everyone i started out life um poor uh you know as a poor medical student um and now i i you know i i'm financially more comfortable and there are things i miss about being poor isn't that interesting do you have you noticed i was sleeping on my sister's couch for a year and a half uh-huh no money broke eating uh mac and cheese and leftovers from her yeah i didn't have a car from walking everywhere and just like living by i don't know a couple hundred bucks a month yeah and there's something about that time that i'm like god it was so exciting to see like what could i create from this space of nothing yeah you're strategizing yes little winds are huge huge someone said yes to me with me here's like all these things so as our as our society progresses farther and farther away from scarcity we lose those opportunities to have these incredibly big wins that are going to change our life um and so we we overeat on junk food we spend time with these trivial nonsense pleasures on our cell phones because the big things are no longer in our life it's no longer about finding sources of food to survive it's now about you know how many views am i going to get with my latest post it's not the same thing so what can we do over the next five ten years as these distractions are going to become more prevalent we've got to think about meaning we we've got to think about what is meaningful um so for me you know writing books has become so meaningful and it's nice and hard uh and sometimes it makes me miserable which is good um you've got to find something that's hard that will involve failure because that's how hard it is um you can't you can't choose an easy life really yeah what happens if we choose an easy life we become miserable we become miserable bored fat sick diabetic um all of those terrible things do you have a chapter or a place in here that talks about meaning and finding meaning it's my next book that's the next book the next one yeah what is that one about the unconscious mind it's about the unconscious mind yeah and um what is the unconscious mind versus the conscious mind a lot of people have seen these these pictures of the mind as an iceberg right where there's this little teeny part above the surface and the huge mass is below the surface that's the unconscious mind the unconscious mind is responsible for everything that goes on inside our heads that we don't have control over emotions excitement enthusiasm interest most people don't think about this you don't control what you're interested in you know i mean really do somebody like football okay i personally don't like football there's nothing i can well i kind of do but not that much but there's nothing i can do to make myself passionate about here's here's the thing i want to challenge you on this and tell me if i'm wrong i never liked soccer i played growing up and then i stopped playing it when i was a sophomore in high school and i started playing football um and i was like i never want to watch soccer the only time i was interested in soccer was during the world cup when i was like okay i can get behind everyone going out and like watching game and supporting the usa right but i never wanted to watch until a few years ago i was just telling one of our producers here mike that i i went to a couple of lafc games their la football club soccer team right yeah and i was like this is incredible the energy the experience i got to know the players and i was like became interested in the sport of soccer and i was like i want to go to more games yeah so how does that like what does that mean then if i'm not interested but then i become interested in something right so we talked about um we talked about this pastor who took the month off and boom the idea hit him yes that came from his unconscious mind he didn't dig it up right right it came to him you went to the soccer game and you were given a gift you were given the gift of excitement yes uh you didn't work for the exciting yeah right that that was a gift from your unconscious mind and that's why trust is so important that we have to trust that these gifts will come we try to squeeze our unconscious mind and force it to give us things it's going to rebel we've got to kind of go through saying look i'm not i've got a co-pilot or maybe i'm the pilot maybe the other guy's maybe i'm the co-pilot maybe the other guy's the pilot and in charge but it it it's it's a realization that you cannot control everything that you have to be open to gifts that come from the unconscious mind so it's kind of like being curious about life yeah i'm gonna try this thing i'm gonna check this out and see how it makes me feel yeah yeah can i tell the story i wanted to say yes so um so i did this tedx talk right yes and it's a big deal yeah and i practiced four years ago wasn't it yeah yeah i practiced that every day for a month that's great great thank you thank you every day for a month every single day well five days a week uh when i went to work uh first thing i did first thing in the morning is i ran through that speech all right so i get there we do a dress rehearsal get up there and i'm giving my speech i draw a blank halfway through nothing i'm sweating stress rehearsal stress rehearsal i got nothing and i'm i'm terrified and and and there's a dinner that evening and i skip the dinner i go back to my hotel room and i'm memorizing memorize so now it's the day of the thing and um i'm about to go out and i realized i said look i didn't shirk i wasn't lazy i did everything i could and it wasn't enough wow and so i said to my unconscious mind we're all in this together be a pal and help me out you know i acknowledged that i didn't have control and i i was happy without when my unconscious mind came through faith that was great but it came through for me as a friend not as a servant i didn't order it i asked it so what happens to people who are extremely controlling in their life versus people that are more in surrender yeah those controlling people don't do well really and a lot of times you know the unconscious mind has a sense of humor um you know you know about the freudian slip right yes a lot of times the freudian slip will reveal a truth that you were trying to hide but the unconscious mind is tough you said this yeah yeah yeah so um people are always trying to control their unconscious mind is constantly sabotaging them so the unconscious mind is in control we share control we share control and we need we we need to work as a partnership yeah it's a partnership and if you try if you try to be the um the tyrant um like the people are very much in control the unconscious mind is going to mess with you so what is the conscious mind versus the unconscious mind the conscious mind is what every thought i'm thinking or saying in this moment or what does it mean really yes the conscious mind tends to think rationally you know it it thinks logically it figures things out the unconscious mind the conscious mind is very much about words and it's funny you know uh the greek word for words is logos that's where we get logic from so words and logic are very much connected the unconscious mind doesn't use words it uses feelings it's about emotions it's about a gut feeling and people who have a good relationship with their unconscious mind they rely a lot on their gut feeling so they'll see someone and they'll just have this gut feeling and they'll trust it uh and that's their unconscious mind delivering them information really yeah because what does the conscious mind try to do in every situation well let me give you an example think about the last time you said let me sleep on that right uh when you say let me sleep on that that's an acknowledgement that your conscious mind can't work its way through the problem or might react or or the unconscious mind might react if i you need your own conscious mind okay you know um so for example think about making the decision about where to go to college there are too many variables for the conscious right so you visit all the different places and at some point you go this is the right place for me and and you don't know why there's something within your unconscious mind that just has a feeling yeah so where is the conscious and the unconscious mind like physically where is it yeah it's it's embedded in the brain circuits of the brain yeah but the mind is not in the brain is that right where is the mind it's like is it in the body is it around the body is it inside where in the brain is the mind right right so um right so as a scientist uh i'm going to say that the mind is simply the activity of atoms and molecules in the brain interesting because that's all a scientist can say right as a human being i don't believe that yeah right but but that's metaphysics that's beyond what we can measure and touch and bang on and experiment on that's metaphysics and scientists shouldn't talk about metaphysics so there's physics within the body right there's metaphysics which is beyond what's quantum physics physics okay physics it's it's straight-up physics so so so the the everything in the universe is made up of two things bosons and fermions okay okay one of these things called quarks those are fermions okay yeah fermions what make up matter so quarkxpermia quarks electrons are fermions uh both of them's are fermions yeah yeah protons well yeah uh bosons are energy so uh photons which carry light and radio waves those are bosons okay so so we got bosons and fermions anything that's not bosons and fermions like souls and mind and divinities uh that's meditation consciousness right i don't know that's not part of photons and these other things i don't know right so something else that's not seen maybe that's not measurement i mean materialists um um crick i can't remember his first name co-discoverer of the uh structure of dna francis crick watson and crick discovered the big thing anyways he's a strict materialist he does not believe anything beyond bosons and fermions and he wrote this book called the astonishing hypothesis and he said the astonishing hypothesis is that you your memories your feelings your hopes and your dreams are nothing more than a vast assembly of neurons made up of molecules and atoms really as uh lewis carrack says alice might say you're nothing but a pack of neurons so where does the soul the minds a a fair number of scientists especially neuroscientists are strict materialists interesting and they will not admit the existence of anything uh beyond atoms and molecules they say no soul no mind no soul no mind no soul no mind what's your belief i believe in souls and minds and where do you i guess if you're going away from the scientists point of view where would you say the mind is well i i think that once once we move away from there we don't we don't need to talk about space anymore gotcha i don't think the mind would be localized it could be everywhere it could be anywhere is there anything yeah yeah that's right interesting yeah it may not make so much sense to talk about it as being in at a particular location right you know like like it meant in the old days i don't know if this was like the 19th century they did this crazy experiment in which they weighed someone right before they died and right after they died to find out how much the soul weighed right because the salt would leave their body two ounces the soul weighs two ounces and you know nowadays we say well that's silly so i i think that when we move away from science to faith we're working in a completely different paradigm crazy because there's so many times where people's uh you know i'll call someone they're saying i was just thinking about you yeah and why does that happen you know it's like why are these connections beyond just the brain you know from the mind or the yeah now we're going beyond this book here but it's interesting stuff it's fascinating is this anything that you tap into you work on your research or is it more um you know um it's pointless to research it um people have tried and they've tried many times because it is so fascinating but it can't be captured it cannot be captured um and people who have faith would say yeah yeah you know you're not going to put god in a box right right he's not going to can't explain it yeah and plus if there were a proof of god there'd be no longer any faith right because uh you would be forced to believe in god like you have no choice but to believe two plus two equals four right in some ways you're a slave you can't choose if we could prove the existence of god we'd be religious slaves because proof would eliminate choice and so what religious people say is that assuming god exists he would not create a universe in which you could prove him because he wants freedom for his creations do you prescribe faith to your patience do you say do you see people with some faith or more faith as healthier happier you know brains yeah and and mental um i don't know capacities yeah well you know asking about spiritual beliefs is part of every standard psychiatric evaluation um just like asking about dying and exercise we ask about their spiritual beliefs and what are the ones who are more depressed or seem to have more extreme mental illnesses on the spectrum of spiritual faith doesn't seem to be a connection between the two some of them might be strong faith some might have no faith yeah in general extreme hardship does drive us to a more spiritual uh orientation um because it just forces us to look beyond the physical reality because you may not find a meaning or reason in the logical world so you have to see beyond yeah now to me it makes sense that people with strong spiritual beliefs should be mentally healthier but that has not been proven really what what has been proven is that people who attend regular religious services are happier and mentally stronger than those who don't so it's the attending of a ritual a that's what it's the people because people who are spiritual all by themselves which is a very important part of spirituality they don't get the boost the boost comes from the community really based on all the different patients you've had and the studies i didn't do these studies but smarter people than me did the studies yeah so showing up to a place for an hour a week with a community in a spiritual practice so religious practice tends to make people happier yep so you would probably get the same uh benefit from the pickleball league right yeah showing up once a week to like a community activity yeah that's that's it that or so it's disappointing we haven't been able to prove that spirituality leads to better mental health i think it does it ought to but we can't prove it and i think that that's just the way it is with metaphysical stuff uh it doesn't lend itself to the scientific method what else do we need to know is there anything else you think we need to be sharing or talking about that would be valuable for people today um there's so much molecule of more you know the one thing i was hoping we would get to let's do it with the question of love yes oh yeah because we were i talked about it then i think i distracted you so you're saying narcissism it's love well i talked about falling in love can reduce narcissism okay so talking about love you know i want to talk about a mistake people make with love okay okay because there are two kinds of love there's dopaminergic love and there's here and now love and they're very very different things and people get the two confused and it can cause serious problems so i wanted to make a distinction perfect too all right dopaminergic love is the kind of love we experience when we talk about falling in love it's a sort of insanity it's a rush it's a rush yeah uh some people and i agree with them call it uh the most intense most pleasurable experience we can we can have in life but then there's a crash yeah it comes usually there's some there's a decline at some point there's a decline i it doesn't have to be a crash okay but there's always a decline and there's a decline does it become a expectation hangover or like uh yeah so dopaminergic love we might call it passionate love it only lasts for about a year or two all right and then it goes away and you're no longer when you're in love all you want is to be with the other exactly right um you know they're a god or a goddess and they make your life perfect and you feel like you've never all you want is them when that comes to an end they lose their divinity and they revert back to normal human status wow and what a lot of people do is say ah i thought this was the one they're not i need to go find someone else because i'm no longer in love with that person right and that's a mistake because what happens is that passionate love never ever lasts but it can evolve into something called companionate love and that's the here and now love we talked about how dopaminergic happiness is about excitement enthusiasm and that's what it feels like to be in love here and now happiness is about fulfillment contentment satisfaction serenity and that's here and now love that's what passionate love can evolve into and in some ways it's better right and so i think that you know our society we uh romanticize uh passionate love right movies are all about falling in love you don't see couples who've been together 20 years and have this enormous level of comfort with one another right when you're in a companionate love relationship you have this sense of trust there's someone that you know will always have your back no matter what your life is deeply entwined with theirs and that is a wonderful beautiful thing that i think our society doesn't appreciate enough yeah they want more the rush they want the feeling of falling in love yeah and it always goes away yes and so then they leave the relationship next on the next one to feel the next dopamine hit i guess right yeah that's right i had a patient who um it's a sales person top salesman in the country in his uh company wow very dopaminergic and um he would just jump from one relationship to another uh and he must have gone through hundreds of relationships no way and one day he came to me with a big smile on his face and he says oh i'm all better i overcame my problem i'm married i'm like what and there was this girl he was been dating for a couple of months and he persuaded her to fly to las vegas and get married and that probably ended in the next oh it lasted another month and then it was over no way yeah because it was it was just there's no foundation no foundation he was solving in a dopaminergic way he wasn't really growing his hearing now circumstances man so he got divorced yeah oh man yeah it's all about creating that foundation yeah it's huge and and it's all about understanding that being in love is a temporary phenomenon and that it needs to evolve into something stronger and more long-lasting beautiful stuff i'm loving this daniel uh anything else we need to share you think um there's a lot more there's a lot can i give you one more thing give me one more all right so we talked about the dopamine desire circuit that's what makes you want stuff that's what gives you pleasure that's what drugs hit sex food all that stuff there's another circuit that involves the frontal lobes what is that the most recently evolved part of the brain the dopamine control circuit the dopamine desire circuit says i want it now the control circuit is also about the future because all dopamine is about the future but it's about the longer term future it's about planning it's about working with abstract knowledge so the desire circuit says i want that donut the control circuit says you know what we might be happier right now if you eat the doughnut but 10 years from now we'll be happier if we don't eat the donuts and what's that call again on the front uh we call it the dopamine uh control circuit the technical name is the um uh is the uh mesofrontal circuit or the mesocortical circuit okay but that's not very we call it the dopamine control circuit okay cool so you know when you talk about people who are very strongly dopamine they can look very different so someone who has a strong desire circuit can be hedonistic they're going out to clubs picking up girls and drinking a lot of alcohol the person with the strong control circuit is the workaholic who's spending uh all day all night in the office making long-term plans for the future yeah so you know most people think about dopamine they think about the desire circuit but don't mean this all and that's the hot circuit but there's a cold dopamine circuit that is passionless and and looks to the future it is merciless right yeah just works non-stop all day yeah wow so that's the other thing i wanted to do so where should we be in there we need that very very powerful we need both of them yeah i mean we need the control circuit to to moderate the desired circuit yes right um we need so so it's a dance and there's many many partners and we need we need to be aware of all the different partners man so much to understand and dive into but the book shares a lot of this and more the molecule more how a single chemical in your brain drives love sex and creativity and will determine the fate of the human race powerful book uh make sure you guys get a copy if you want to understand uh this chemical in your brain more where can people follow you daniel how can they connect with you and support you you've got this book are you on social media as well you know i'm working on starting a youtube channel ask the psychiatrist in which i'm going to answer just questions that's correct about psychiatry um not up yet but um daniel z lieberman.com if they want to be aware when it perfect daniel z lieberman dot com for the book um and also for the next book on the unconscious and conscious mind um a couple final questions for you this is a hypothetical question imagine it's your last day on earth many years away from now you get to live as long as you want to live and you create everything you want to create in your life right you share with the world you make books you do everything you want to do but for whatever reason you've got to take all of your work with you all of your written work your audio video the content you've created it's got to go somewhere else when you die it's got to go with you or somewhere else but we don't have access to it in this world but you get to leave behind three things that you know to be true from your life experience three lessons that you would share with the world what would you say are those three truths for you i would say that uh the key to happiness is living in the present moment that you are not alone inside your head and you better get to know your unconscious partner if you want to have a fulfilling life and that life should not be about you it should be about what you can do for other people um i love that service is a big one for me that's on my list as well living a life of service um i want to acknowledge you daniel for your drive for having the molecule of more inside of you to want to research want to obsess want to serve your your patients to help people heal and improve and understand their conscious and unconscious mind the dopamine circuit that's driving them and for educating us on this information it's really powerful and i think a lot of people are suffering because they don't understand how their mind and how their brain works for them specifically so i really acknowledge you for being on this journey of service and creating in a powerful way it's beautiful thank you of course um and i hope this next time i see you hopefully you're up to a seven or eight on the worthiness and love journey yes exactly um my final question for you is what's your definition of greatness i think it is how much happiness you create in other people oh that's a good one daniel lieberman thank you man appreciate you there are really nice studies done by my colleagues in stanford psychiatry and biology department showing that if that cortisol peak starts to drift too late in the day you start seeing signs of depression it's actually a well-known marker of depression so you want that cortisol almost stressed out kind of the day's beginning i have a lot to do feeling that's a healthy thing you want that happening early in the day

Channel: Lewis Howes

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Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: tCms70V6zu8

Length: 93min 43sec (5623 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022