IDL98 Season 2: First 100 Recap: Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess with Dr. Caroline Leaf

Do you want to learn the real power and importance behind your thoughts? Why should you follow the invitation to go inward when you feel strong emotions? What is the difference between your mind and your brain?

In this re-released podcast episode, we’re looking back at one of the IDL’s most downloaded episodes, where I speak with the author of Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, Dr. Caroline Leaf. In this episode, Dr. Leaf and I discuss why the brain works as it does, and how we can start to to diagnose our thoughts, and move forward from our bad habits and unhealthy habits.

Meet Dr. Caroline Leaf

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a communication pathologist and cognitive neuroscientist with a Masters and PhD in Communication Pathology and a BSc Logopaedics, specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology.

Since the early 1980s she has researched the mind-brain connection, the nature of mental health, and the formation of memory. She was one of the first in her field to study how the brain can change (neuroplasticity) with directed mind input. 

During her years in clinical practice and her work with thousands of underprivileged teachers and students in her home country of South Africa and in the USA, she developed her theory (called the Geodesic Information Processing theory) of how we think, build memory, and learn, into tools and processes that have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), learning disabilities (ADD, ADHD), autism, dementias and mental ill-health issues like anxiety and depression.

She has helped hundreds of thousands of students and adults learn how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain to succeed in every area of their lives, including school, university, and the workplace.

Visit Dr. Leaf’s website, listen to her podcast, Cleaning Up the Mental Mess, and connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• The difference between your brain and your mind 07:58

• Grow good thoughts 12:50

• Follow the invitation to go inward 28:01

• Dr. Leaf’s advice for the parents 44:40

The difference between your brain and your mind

Your brain and your mind are not interchangeable entities, and this confusion has made it difficult for many people to understand what it means to “clear your mind” because that is not the same as clearing your brain.

The brain, and by extension the body, are responders to what the mind experiences. The mind is the thinking, perceiving, and choosing entity around the brain and the brain enacts our physical response to what the mind experiences and dictates.

Grow good thoughts

Your brain has neuroplasticity. You can, by guiding your mind and clearing up the mental mess, rein your mind in to have good thoughts which in turn build thought good structures in your brain.

You rely on these thought structures for your everyday thinking, you can change and edit them, based on what you think, and depending on what you think you can either reinforce good thoughts or bad thoughts. 

If your mind is a mess, you build on to the mess. If you clear your mind and create good thoughts, you build on good thoughts.

Our mind is not designed for toxic thoughts and therefore when we have toxic thoughts, our mind has an almost ‘immune response’ to them, similar to how your body has an immune response to a virus.

When you think bad thoughts constantly, your brain will have an ‘immune response’ to them and send you the emotions which you feel such as anxiety, depression, and frustration, as a way to communicate with you that the thought patterns you have built up are wrong, or dangerous, and toxic.

Follow the invitation to go inward

In your helicopter over your subconscious forest, you are both the pilot and the copilot. The pilot is your conscious mind, the messy, first-hand experience mind and your copilot is the regulator, the observer. The pilot speaks in “I” and the copilot speaks in “you”.

Through self-observation with the neurocycle, the pilot will listen more to the copilot, who is wired for calm, love, and self-reflection. This cooperative relationship will manifest a space for teamwork as the two pilots fly over the subconscious world, looking to repair any damage.

Dr. Leaf’s advice for the parents

Your kids will do what you do, not what you say. The best way for parents to teach their children effective and helpful techniques for clearing and keeping their minds healthy and flourishing is to practice them yourself.

You do your children no favors by pretending that you are perfect, that life is easy, and that all they need to do is to try hard.

Life is tough and even parents suffer, so the best thing you can teach your children is that even when life is tough and you suffer, you can still grow, learn and come back stronger and wiser from your experiences.

Resources, books, and links mentioned in this episode:

BOOK | Dr. Caroline Leaf – Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: 5 Simple, Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking

BOOK | James Clear – Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones

Visit Dr. Leaf’s website, listen to her podcast, Cleaning Up the Mental Mess, and connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Check out the Neurocycle App!

Email Tyler: tyler@tylerdickerhoof.com

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About the Impact Driven Leader Podcast

The Impact Driven Leader Podcast, hosted by Tyler Dickerhoof, is for Xillennial leaders who have felt alone and ill-equipped to lead in today's world. Through inspiring interviews with authors from around the world, Tyler uncovers how unique leadership strengths can empower others to achieve so much more, with real impact.

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we can learn to manage our mind and manage this think-feel-choose thing so that we can influence the types of thoughts that we build because these inform our next decisions.

Dr. Caroline Leaf

Podcast Transcription

[TYLER DICKERHOOF] Welcome back to the Impact Driven Leader Podcast. This is your host, Tyler Dickerhoof. Glad to see you as you're listening in. Excited to be capping the second year of the Impact Driven Leader podcast and winding out into our 100th episode with a few, I would say, bringing back some of the greatest tips. Why not bring back some of the greatest episodes that maybe you missed, maybe you hadn't seen in the archives? The first one we're going to lead off with is the interview with Dr. Caroline Leaf. Dr. Caroline Leaf, a real brain specialist, she wrote the book, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. If you're watching on video, you see the picture of it right there. Phenomenal book, a book that I so thoroughly enjoyed, but I enjoyed her interview with another one of my mentors and spurred me to book her as a guest and in 24 hours was doing so. My brain was not prepared for that at that moment but man, I am so grateful, so grateful for the opportunity to interview Dr. Caroline Leaf, but also that it was the most downloaded episode on YouTube of the entire Impact Driven Leader podcast so far. I know you're going to get tremendous value out of this episode. I know she's going to share so many great tips and really explaining why the brain works like it does. I believe this, once we understand why the brain works the way it does, then we can really start dissecting the pieces and parts that we want, that we don't want, that we're trying to figure out. This is what I know, is that our brain is a living organism in and of itself and if we can think internally from an external point of view, that may be confusing, but stay with me here, if externally, we can look internally and understand why our brain does what it does, we can start to move forward and really separate ourselves from maybe some of our bad habits or maybe some of the patterns that cause disruptions in our life. As a leader, I believe this, the more that we're growing, that we're improving, that we're managing our mindset, the better that we're going to show up in the world. We're going to have less stress and anxiety and just appreciate who we are. I hope you enjoy this episode, Dr. Caroline Leaf. I'll come back at the end and share a little bit and invite you into some exciting pieces and parts of the Impact Driven Leader community in 2023. [TYLER] Yes, so I'm so excited. Dr. Leaf, thank you for being a guest. Thank you for taking this opportunity. And I'm excited for your book. [DR. CAROLINE LEAF] Thank you. [TYLER] I was actually able to pick up your book yesterday, here's the I'll just let our audience know. So I reached out to you guys yesterday, here we are this morning going through this. I listened to about half the book I got through the other half of it. I have pages and pages of questions. I'm excited to sit at your feet, but I would love just for you to unpack it at the start cleaning up your mental mess. What do you hope is the audience, the reader is going to gain from reading this book, but just starting that process? [DR. LEAF] Okay, that's a great question. Thank you so much for having me on your show. And I'm so glad that we've got a mutual friend, John Maxwell, and just how we kind of connected, which is so wonderful. And thank you as well. I'm excited. This book is really a combination of 38 years of research. I've been in the field for nearly four decades, which is a long time and studying the mind brain connection and initially started off clinically and then solving like serious cases like traumatic brain injury and people with autism and dementias and learning disabilities and severe traumas and from there, it basically just, my research just branched out into all different areas, because people in corporate education, whatever, because humans have a mind and I was researching mind. So my objective and which has really culminated in this book, which by the way, is my 19th book, this is number 19, so I'm very excited, it's really to help people understand that it's okay to be amiss. If you're human, making a mess is a normal part of existence and the more we try and deny that the worst it'll actually become. So if we recognize that, then we can manage it. And as soon as we manage our mess, we can then get into these incredibly high intellectual states and cognitive flexibility and creativity and that kind of thing. So it's a normal human response to feel anxious, depressed, frustrated, irritated, exasperated, concerned, worried. These are all responses that, they are actually warning signals and a warning signal to us that something's going on in our life. They're not that you have now got in your psychiatric brain disease or something. It's actually that there's something going on in your life that you need to pay attention to. So cleaning up your mental mess is really to put into the hands of everyone, no matter what age and what you believe, no matter who you are, you have a mind, your mind is always with you and you come, you go, you wake up with your mind. You go to bed with your mind, you eat with your mind, you're talking and listening now with your mind. It never stops. So what is mind? How do we manage it? Do we have agency over our mind? In other words, do we have agency over the toxic thoughts that our minds produce? And what our thoughts, all of that information I've put together in this book and then I've created a system that I've developed over 38 years ago and I have developed the initial science and the initial theory, and then continued the research because the scientists should keep researching what they do. And I put together a concept called the neuro cycle, which is in the book, in the second half of the book, which is the practical, how do we clean up our mental mess? So the first half is what is the mental mess and the second half is how do we clean up our mental mess? Everything science based in my most recent clinical trials are summarized in the book in a super simple way and I give you the hands on 38 years expertise in a system that's been developed over 38 years ago, but refined over these 38 years. And it's how you use your mind to drive your mind, to change the neuroplasticity of your brain and your body. And the consequence is that you're actually managing your mental mess and functioning and enabling you to do what only you can do. Does that give you a summary? [TYLER] I think that's great. I mean, that's a great start. Absolutely. And as I got through the book and as we mentioned, I really crammed to get through it. I paused myself a little [crosstalk] Yes. Well, I won't lie to you last night as I'm going through this and just taking it all in, and I'm so excited to be able to chat with you and just to review your work and this idea of mindset and my brain started to frazzle a little bit. I was a little bit kind of, I had too much coming in and I even had to lay down. Anyways, this is where I think there's a couple things that really, really stuck out to me. And one of the things I want to first start as you're a parent, you have four kids and so excited that your three daughters are working with you. That's fun. I have three kids and there's so many parents, and especially when you take parenting as leadership, which I believe there when you approach parenting as leadership, where just this cascade of the mind brain work, where is the brain malleable to the point to where it's like, "Oh, we can make a big difference there?" And I'm going to follow that up. Is the generation that we have now, the gen Z going to be better off because we understand this than maybe older generations. So those are, and they are two questions at once, but I'd love to hear you break that apart. [DR. LEAF] Brilliant questions, very insightful, very, very important questions. So the best way to answer this is to explain what the mind is and what the brain is. And once we understand that, then we can apply to the younger generation, to the millennials down gen Z and so on. Is that okay? Does that sound like --- [TYLER] Yes, yes. [DR. LEAF] Okay, so I've got some models to help. So have you got the viewers and listeners? Do you have --- [TYLER] Yes. [DR. LEAF] Okay, so --- [TYLER] I love this. [DR. LEAF] So, if some people are just listening, I'll just describe it. So I'm holding a brain in the skull, but it's not a real brain. Don't worry. Okay. I'm using this because we are in an era where we are told that we are our brain. Mind and brain have been used interchangeably. So when you talk about my people think, "Oh, that's brain," but it's not. Mind and brain are separate. And that's one of the key issues in getting autonomy over your mind, or cleaning up the mental mess. You have to recognize that you can't do it. And if you think you are your brain, that hope of being able to manage your mind or clean up your mental mess, so, just manage what life throws at you, feels kind of one of those things that's impossible, it's sort of a difficult thing to process. So it's important we understand mind versus brain. So mind is not the brain, and I'll use another model now, which even makes it easier to understand. So this is a little model of the body, as you can see, and this the brain. Half the brain disappeared when one of my [inaudible 00:09:15] fell out. So I don't know where is one half of the brain. So this is your physical part of you. And our physical is one to 10% of who we are. So this is super interesting. So if you look at yourself, this is, I mean, one to 10% of who you are and 10% pushing it. The other 90 to 99% is your mind. So the difference between a dead person with the body's just disintegrated and an alive person as having this conversation, the viewers and listeners is your mind. Your mind is that difference between being alive and being dead. So mind is you're aliveness and aliveness is your ability to do what we're doing right now, which is communicate. But it's also to communicate, we have to process what we're each saying to each other and the listeners and viewers are processing what they are hearing. So they're having an experience. We have an experience of a discussion around mind brain and the viewers and listeners are listening to our discussion about the mind brain and mental health. So we're all having an experience and that experience is processed through the mind, into the brain and the brain responds. So the brain and the body are responders, and the mind uses the brain and the body to basically build the experience into the brain and into the body and rebuild it into the mind, but I'll explain it in a moment. And so therefore the brain is the respondent. So the mind is actually the thinking, feeding, choosing a liveness that surrounds the body. So to make us even easier that we're not flirting with the mind, we all agree. We understand what's gravity and gravitational fields. We may not understand what they are, but we know that that's keeping us grounded in our chair. So what the scientists have also discovered and doesn't start this week, started around 150 years ago is that not only do we have gravitational fields and electromagnetic fields that we live in in the universe, but the human body has its own unique gravitational field as well. So surrounding every brain and body, every one of us, you and I, we each have our own unique gravitational field that moves around it through us. It's an electromagnetic field as well. And so that's what's our liveness. Someone who's dead doesn't have that. So that's your mind. Your mind is this powerful force that enables you to receive the experiences that you're going through, which starts at the moment you open your eyes and continue till you go to bed at night. And each of those experiences process through your mind, which is this gravitational field, but on a psychological level, it's, your thinking, feeling and choosing. So mind in action is thinking, feeling and choosing. So we have experiences through listening, thinking, feeling, and choosing all these electromagnetic lightweights and fancy for the stuff and that thing gets converted into these in your brain, little thought trees inside of your brain. So we're growing trees inside of our brain. The light's now 400 billion actions per second. You and your listeners and viewers are converting my words and all these visuals, which are electric magnetic and sound waves, and electromagnetic waves, all this fancy stuff into little protein tree-like structures in your brain, inside, the sort of trees inside your brain, in your body. My words are actually going into every DNA, into the DNA of every cell of your body. So we have a shift the brain [inaudible 00:12:30] in the brain influences immediately every cell in the body and in the gravitational fields of your mind, you're going to have a new little wave. That's this information. Now that's a lot of information that I'm giving you, but I'm saying that to tell you how powerful you are, that means that when you open your eyes between now, and when you go to sleep tonight, you will do this 8,000 to 10,000 times. You will convert every experience into physical structures in your brain. Why is it so important? Well, that is what you operate from. So everything you say and do in the next moment is influenced by what you've just built into your brain. So each experience becomes a thought and that thought then produces your words and actions. So it's okay if it's green, like we see this one as a healthy food and as every, and this is a thought. So you think, I don't know if you caught that, you think feel and choose in your thoughts. So thoughts are real things that are in your brain and you actually control this process if you want to, or it can just happen. It's going to happen anyway, or it can be just randomly happening and then there's a chance you'll make a mess of that. And we will do that, last kind of experimental because we don't quite know from the time you're up till the time you go to bed, that exactly how are we going to respond and what's coming up. We can't control the events and circumstances, but we can get online in such a self regulated state. We can learn to manage our mind. We can manage this thing, feel, choose thing that we can influence the types of thoughts that we build, because these inform our next decisions. And the more we think about them, the more established they become. And what's interesting about this thought, which is what we grow into our brain and this change that we make in our brain, we call neuroplasticity. What's interesting about this neuroplastic change in the brain, in the form of a thought is it's got different parts, like a tree's got roots and a trunk and little branches. What I am saying are the roots memories. So every experience has an origin, a source. So that's the bullying, it's the toxic media, it's the hurt email, it's the comment from someone, it's the financial worry. So that's the origin of the event. Then this part, the tree trunk is your perspective of that, your kind of overall perspective, and then that branches out into these branches, which is your interpretation in terms of your life experience of what you've just experienced. So we get it, we get an overarching view and then go on all our other main reasons are relevant to all these. And in that whole thing then influences what you're saying and what you do. Now I'll go into this deep explanation to show you that if we [inaudible 00:15:03]. We don't build this. So this process I've just described is happening 24/7. During the day, you are feeding and choosing to build. It's that time you sort out the thoughts that you've been building. So you wake up with your mind, you go to bed with your mind. Your mind's always operating. Not even three seconds does your mind stop. So if you don't manage it, you create this, and this --- [TYLER] Which is, for the listeners, it's a, describe that tree. [DR. LEAF] So this is a why I'm holding the one tree that's healthy, beautiful green tree, the beautiful green plant that they are, the ones that are not holding up is a toxic, wiry looking tree. So it looks like it's dead to you, but it's very much alive in your brain. But I use this because the thoughts look like trees in the brain. We talk about thoughts having an Arbor like structure, which is a tree-like structure. And we see that when people have a toxic response, go through a toxic experience that then they're thinking and feeling and choosing in a toxic way, in response to whatever they build this, you can't not build because as soon as you, whatever your experience is goes to your brain and the building happens, regardless of whether it's healthy, toxic, happy, sad. It goes in your brain and you change your brain. The toxic one means that it's still built, but it's built differently. So these trees are built as proteins in the brain. Just, I'm going to give you the most simple structure. The green trees, the proteins are folded correctly. They do what they should. And the toxic trees, the proteins are folded incorrectly. So they're not doing what they should. And that will fix everything. Now this then disrupts the entire environment of the brain and body, because this is seen in the same, recognized in the same way as if you had a virus in your brain or your body. So you all know about corona virus. You all know that COVID virus produces a response in our immune system. What you may not have known, and this is why this is so significant is that thoughts are as real as a virus. And this toxic thought will stimulate the same response in the brain as if you had a virus in the body [inaudible 00:17:04] or whatever. Because this traits in survival. Our brain and body are not designed for toxic issues or unmanaged, two things. It's not designed for toxicity of any sort. So whether it's a bacteria or a virus or toxic thoughts or toxic effects from a toxic experience or toxic habit or toxic reaction. As soon as these happen, the immune system responds and sends that inflammatory factors and that's why we get inflammation in our brain and our body. Our cortisol levels will increase, our homocysteine levels and all kinds of biomarkers in our body will increase. If we don't get rid of the virus, if you don't get rid of the toxic thoughts, those continue to get worse. And when you do that, they mean the environment of our body shifts into a very vulnerable state. When your body is in a vulnerable state, you are now increasingly vulnerable to disease and all kinds of stuff that are [inaudible 00:17:51]. So suppressed toxic thoughts over a long period of time can increase your vulnerability to disease from 35 to 70 to 98%. That's a huge factor. So changes with mind management, you completely control that. So that's a long first part of the question, but the next foundation, I don't know if you want to ask some questions to --- [TYLER] I mean, I could go long ways then we won't get back. So I want to get back and then we'll go into that because, the idea that toxic thoughts are viewed as a virus by the brain, do you just, just put that everywhere. Okay? [DR. LEAF] I will. Well, it's one of those micromoments. It's one of those, "Hey," now, because people to see, you can't see your thoughts. You can see your hands, you can see a virus, we can see under a microscope but we don't really look at thoughts, but thoughts are great images. And in my book, I've actually, I'm sure you've see, I've got some colored images in the book and they're pretty cool. And that's what thoughts look like in your brain. I mean, hear we go. There is a picture. For those that are not seeing this, you can get the book. Go get it on Amazon or whatever, but you'll see little tree-like structures. And that's what thoughts look like in your brain and that is toxic. Your brain's immune system says, "Hey, alert, warning. This is triggering things." It doesn't go with that [inaudible 00:19:06] and it's going to affect us. It's creates, it's putting you into vulnerability. So then these warning signals and those warning signals will be in the form of emotions that you feel. That's what's an emotion, because you're always, mind is think, feel, choose. So to build these, you've been thinking, feeling, choosing. So to win your battle, toxic thinking, feeling, and choosing your body shoots out the toxic feelings. So that's why we may feel depression or anxiety or frustration or irritation, that's this thing saying, "Hey, this is the wrong signal." And that's your body saying, "Hey, pay attention." So it's not an illness. This is not a neuro psychiatric brain disease. Sure it changes the brain. It's increases the vulnerability of the brain, but that's the response of the brain. It's not the cause. And we're in an era and I have a whole chapter in the book, as you would have seen at the beginning of the book, we've been in an era for about 40 years now, where we've been saying that every experience you have is a function of the brain because mind is brain. That's what they been saying, which is wrong. So therefore if you feel sad, the brain's damaged. If you feel depressed, your brain is damaged. If you feel anxious, you've got some kind of brain disease and that's not the truth. It's not great. Yes, you got to look at your brain as a responder, but you can't leave that. That's not your driver. Obviously people have a traumatic brain injury that's external to the brain. And that definitely does affect mind and affect brain, but even so I've shown, I've done the research. My first research was done with people with traumatic brain injury, with severe cognitive damage and emotional damage. And not only did they restore damage, I mean restore healing, but they function as host and mind management at a higher level than pre accident. So that will be after the accident with mind management, than pre accident with no brain damage. I mean, how insane is that? So if you manage your mind, you can turn anything around. And I'm not saying that this is not toxic positivity. This is not saying you're not thinking happy thoughts. I'm going to be fine. Absolutely not. [TYLER] Well, you actually, I know we're, well I'm going to ask you a question here because you actually break this apart. The fact of we'll get back to the age question. I'll remember, I'll get back to the age question. We'll get back to it. But one of the things, yes, one of the things that you break apart in your book, which I think is so relevant and I'm actually, I have the page noted. You probably know it, but I think it's so important here. Let me find my notes because I want to read it because it's so much more imperative. It is on page 107 for those in the book. And you say using techniques or positive affirmations as a band-aid rather than sinking a long-term solution will create incoherence in the brain, which over time can lead to a variety of mental and physical issues. So you're saying in that, this idea of positive affirmations, "I'll just dump band-aids on top of it. That'll fix the injury. You know, I got a broken bone, I have this big, major injury, I'll just put band-aids on it.'' That's what our society does with positive affirmations, as opposed to, "Hey, why do we have these feelings? "As you said, understanding these emotional responses or depression or anxiety, it's like, "Oh, okay. I feel this." And as one of the things that you say later in the book is emotional warning signals are invitations to look inward. [DR. LEAF] Exactly. That's a great statement. [TYLER] I love it. [DR. LEAF] I mean, it's the most, that is literally what it is. It's an invitation to look inside and look at these and you know, the beautiful thing Tyler that happens the minute you take up the invitation. So instead of saying, "Depression's bad. Go to doctor, get drugs," some is band-aid, whatever [inaudible 00:22:33] say my ten positive affirmations. This is still the way. It's the thing that's disrupting the environment of the body. And it's feeding back into the mind. And then, of course it's from the mind to the brain and then to the body and now we've got this whole feedback loop going. And then we're wondering why our life is kind of, and why we call creativity is going and why relationships are suffering, why businesses are not doing well. And then you're getting all this great advice from people like you, but you're still stuck in this mode. So people then they don't apply it. So it becomes data as opposed to hardcore transformational knowledge. So until you manage your mind, people are not going to listen properly to the good advice of people like yourself. [TYLER] So, I'm got to use this imagination of your, if your mind is a garden. Is it the fertile soil to where that seed can fall on an actually bloom and grow or is it that Rocky soil that it's like again, that if I look at those two plants, you have the one that's the wire structure. If you're trying to build within that soil, which that one's growing in, which I'm learning from you is creating that toxic nature where your brain is looking at, "Hey, this is a virus." And even if there's a healthy seed falling underneath there in this root, is there without going in and tilling the soil, I'm using a lot of imagery here, that's coming to me. But it's like, if we think of our brain as that garden, it is our opportunity to say, "Hey, how do we weed it? How do we fertilize it? How do we do with what?" And that's what I'm totally understanding now even more how the neural cycle fits in because you're getting to the roots. And we'll go through that have you explain the five elements of the neural cycle and how it, how does the, perfect segue, how does the neural cycle take and deal with that wire based plant, as opposed to nurturing the healthy green plant. [DR. LEAF] Okay, so what we need to do is, as you said, invitation to go in. So we have to look at, so you all understand, now that mind is this, how are we processing? So we are, so just to lay the foundation. Open your eyes. You go through the day. In this particular day, you're going to build on any of, you guys got this 8,000 to 10,000 of these, hopefully more than these. And like you read that toxic comment on Instagram and you get a reaction or something happens, or you've got patterns in your life that you're not paying attention to and it's coming up in a way. And that's some kind of root cause there. So the first thing is that there's a lot of stuff going on in your mind in order to build a thought, I just want to also add this in order to build these thoughts, you also have other thoughts coming up. So as I'm speaking, now, the reason that you're able to ask questions is because your thoughts are coming up of what I'm stimulating. And that's normal. That's a normal thing. As you are having an experience, existing thoughts. So where did it come from? And to pick up on your, using energy of gardens and all that I use forest. So because these trees form a forest. So you have your conscious mind and your non-conscious mind. And I have to explain this because otherwise it's not going to make sense. To pick up, you've started giving the introduction of the analogy of the garden, which is what I use, but I use it first. So I want you to imagine that you are in a helicopter and you are the pilot and you're the co-pilot. And I'll explain why in a moment. And you're flying over this huge forest. At first it's full, mainly with green trees. If we thought tree, and as you see a tree is made of roots and branches, so the thought is made of the roots like I've explained, which is the origin and the branches, which is your interpretation. So you've got thousands, millions, trillions, gazillions. As far as the eye can see, you have these trees. Some are little recent experiences. Some are medium-sized. Some are huge from stuff from years ago. You've been doing this sense that certain point in the womb. You've been responding to life and building these thoughts. Everything your nurturing, your everything, you've ever been exposed to is in these trees in your brain and in the way the trees in the non-conscious mind surrounding your brain. I mean, the conscious mind, the mind, the mind stuff, the gravitational field, and in your DNA of every cell and you have 37 to a hundred trillion cells. That's a lot. Every experience falls in three places. So that's why when you experience something, you feel it in your body. It's this incredibly huge experience. When someone who's working through the neurocycle and they experience flashbacks, it's very traumatic. It can bring a panic attack on because your whole body responds. Your whole mind responds. Your whole brain, it's a whole experience. And if you're not prepared for that, you think there's something wrong with you. And if the doctors don't understand this, say, "Oh, it's your disease." They suppress it. That's the worst thing you can do because now you damage your brain and you push this back down. And when it's suppressed, it's going to get worse. So this forest you're flying over is your non-conscious mind. An unconscious mind is active, it's active 24/7. It's the biggest part of your 99%. It's huge, infinite. It's time travel, it's present past and future happening kind of all at the same time, on time, time, time travels all the time. Right at the moment you're hearing me in the present but in order to process what I'm saying, you're time traveling to process what I'm saying. It's just how we work. So you're just having to process this whole thing all the time that your non-conscious mind. Your conscious mind is awake when you're awake. So now we're awake. So our conscious mind is working with the non-conscious because, when you go to sleep tonight, only the non-conscious is working. The subconscious is between the two. So when we talk about taking the invitation, listening to the invitation, to look inward, the invitation's coming through the subconscious, from the non-conscious and then unconscious is massive. It channels a thought through a Genesis through the subconscious. It's like a little bridge. And he has the conscious, he has this infinite non-conscious and he has the bridge of the subconscious. When we use our conscious mind in a deliberate and intentional way, in other words, when we self-regulate ourselves to bring all thoughts into captivity. When we catch those thoughts and we suppress, and we can, neuroscience shows us that we can consciously and deliberately, when we are conscious, we can use our veto power. We can consciously and deliberately look at our thoughts, every ten seconds, which means that the whole time that I'm awake today, I can consciously and deliberately monitor my thinking, feeling and choosing. The thoughts I'm building, my responses, the reactions, I can do all of that. So can you. But that skill develops. Initially, it's not so good in it, but as you use the neurocycle, so you become a master self-regulator. To be a master leader, to be a master at anything, you have to be a master mind manager. And that mind manager is basically, so goes hand in hand with self-regulation. You can't manage, my management is self-regulating. So we need to talk about all this whole thing. Then neurocycle is how you train yourself to be a self-regulated mind manager. You're managing your mind in a very sophisticated way all the time. And then your neurocycle trains you to do that. So you learn to do it in the moment with the little things that happen, like the arguments, the politics, the comments, that imposter syndrome, whatever. And in the big step, which are the established, toxic traumas and patterns, et cetera, et cetera. And you use the neuro cycle to build new habits in your brain, and you can use it for that next leadership goal that you have. So if you're trying to change something in your business or creativity and so on. So that's just an example of all the multiple things you can use it for. So here you are, in your little helicopter and it's this hovering time machine helicopter, you know, back to the future starts, like real cool. So you are the pilot and you're the pilot, and you're going through the messiness of life. And as I explained this analogy, stop thinking if you're a parent if you're leader of whatever it is that you do in your life and start seeing how you as a person, a parent, a leader person, as what it is that you do. Start with your most you as a person and then your relationships, and then what you do. Kind of go in three circles like that. And just start listening to what I'm saying about those and keep that in mind. "Okay., now that I've seen it, I'll put you into self-regulation." As soon as I say that you've started observing yourself. Can I teach exactly how to do this in the book? So now you're thinking about that you're in the helicopter, the pilot is you, the mess is you. Life is one big experiment and that's okay. You can be messy, you can be anxious, you can be worried. Those are all just you trying to understand and it's you inviting yourself to look at the signals of how well are you doing this thing called life? How well are you responding in this moment? If you don't self-regulate, it just becomes one big kind of jumbled, chaotic mess. And we put our body into those states and we create a lot of these. And we will create these as well but we will create a lot more these. If we manage that process to train ourselves within your cycle, then that messy pilot listens more to the co-pilot. The co-pilot is also you, but the you in the co-pilot mode is the wise, calm, wild, full of love. And we see that our brain and body from neuroscience, our brain and body are wired for love. We do not have any structures or even down to the subatomic level, full toxicity. What we have in our brain and our body is a whole design in our mind, brain and body for this, for the healthy trees and for number two, managing these. So even if I am attempting to manage them, I have shifted my body out of the toxic state. But if I ignore these shoving back in my unconscious, don't listen to the invitation coming from the, through the subconscious, then I'm going to increase toxicity, my body and the whole immune responsive brain going crazy. And you can see in the first part of the book, actually exactly how that happens. But if I listened to the invitation, I change things. So the listening to the invitation now we are going to get into the neuro cycle? The co-pilot speaks in you instead of I. So the pilot speaks in I. "I don't know what I'm doing. I'm feeling anxious." And the you says, "That's okay. How are you feeling?" "I'm feeling anxious. I'm feeling worried. I'm feeling really weak to complete this narrative in my head that this and this and this, it's making me feel physically awful. I can see my behaviors or just like, I'm not functioning well at work. It's affecting hard, whatever, whatever, and my perspective." And so you start answering the co-pilot. The two of you are doing this kind of exercise together. So I've done it quickly. So let's slow down. So you now are flying over this forest and there's this invitation to pay attention to go inward. The invitation is in the form of that clump of trees that you see over there. It's really dark. If they're really big and they're blocking the middle part of the forest, the middle part of the forest is this beautiful green structure of these healthy trees that are exquisite, that's too wide for love mode. That's your survival mode. We're design for love, which is pure survival. We're designed to operate in that mode. In science we also talk about the optimism bias. You may have heard a lot in the media we have a negativity bias in coexistence. We are not drawn to the negative because we are negatively wired. We are drawn to the negative because we are wired for positivity, not with positivity, we're wired for love, we're wired for survival. And so therefore, anything toxic creates means of survival. So paying attention to the negativity in politics, the news in our life it's not because we are drawn to it because we're drawn to negative. We do it because you're trying to fix it and balance. It's created a threat to our survival. Yes, if we don't manage that, we will get absorbed and embraced. We'll get stuck in it and then we become more toxic. That's why you have to manage everything. You have to manage this desire for survival. Otherwise, it can turn on you and you can become toxic. So that's, so you've landed your helicopter, with your pilot and your co-pilot and you, you're the pilot for the co-pilot and your co-pilot has direct access to the middle of the forest, which is this wide full of survival mode. And as you now look at this toxic issue, which you've received the invitation, the smoke signal, the long wind off, you're not paying attention. So you've landed the helicopter and you get out, you're safe, you're with your co-pilot. You approach this with acceptance. You approach with, "It's okay. Every human on the planet, since the beginning of time has battled with the mind. They say that one in four people are depressed. One in five people have anxiety. Depression and anxiety are increasing. Mental health is a pandemic. Suicides are increasing. Rates of despair, I talk about it in my book. All of that is wrong. Okay, what am I saying? And you want me to say, "Hey, but you're feeling..." Of course, you're feeling a mental mess, but it's not what's wrong is not the mental mess. Not the anxiety. What's wrong is that it's increasing. What's wrong is that it is a new thing. What's wrong is it that it's an illness? What's right is that since the beginning of time, mankind is battled with the mind and battled with mental health and battled with a mental mess. It's not increasing. It's just changed. Every generation faces something else. We had people in World War I going through extreme trauma, World War II, the Spanish Flu. I mean, we can go --- [TYLER] I mean, I'll go back as far as Solomon when he wrote Ecclesiastes, that was him struggling in his mind. [DR. LEAF] Exactly. It's not something new, but we've mismanaged it. We've tried to take human suffering and radicalized it and to make it part of a biomedical model. And tell you that if you feel sad, you have a chemical imbalance you need a drug. That's not the truth. That's not science. It's not accurate. Neuroscientists worth their grain of salt will even say those kinds of things. But that's the message that is marketed to the average population. I'm saying to you, give yourself permission to feel the depression, the anxiety. Look at them and celebrate them, not for the depression, but for what they're telling you, what they're giving you. They are helpful messengers and they are telling you that there's something going on. And if you work through and find the cause, you will get control. The minute you land the helicopter, you've already shifted control. The minute you fly over, you've lost control. [TYLER] Sure. [DR. LEAF] It controls you. And in neuroscience, we see that as soon as you face something, this thing changes structure and becomes weaker. So as soon as it is weaker, what can you do? You can change it. So I'm giving you the steps of how to catch and renew your mind. I'm actually giving you the signs of that process. So all of that said, now we can go fast. We've landed the plane, now we start getting awareness. This is a big Apple tree and it's got tons and tons of apples. And some of this is called rotten apples and if you go to the tree, it's going to fall on your head and knock you out. So you don't do that. That's what we so often do. We dive in and then we get knocked down and overwhelmed. You stand back and you take this thing slowly. You do 15 to 45 minutes a day. You go through the five steps systematically. You work through this for 21 days. You do all five steps for 15 to 45 minutes for four 21 days. After that, you haven't finished. You then take step five and you do it for another 42 days. That well give you a 63-day cycle, which is the scientific time that we need to identify and rewire this, so to embrace, process and re-conceptualize this to the point that you can change your behavior. To be a great leader of whatever you are in, you have to be managing this all the time. Only 3% of leaders are talking about mental health. So that's 97% of leaders are not, which means that 97% of leaders are leading people to not talk about the mental health. And when we don't talk about mental health, rebelling, we are creating a sick population. In this book. I'll give you the statistics between 96 and 2014, because of as bearing everything, the church will be, only 4% of the church are talking about mental health. So we've got 3% of leaders, 4% of the church and that means the majority of people are not talking about it when they do. It's a big, scary illness that no one can control. [TYLER] When we're talking about it, it's this massive, ugly problem, as opposed to, "Oh, it's something we can manage through it." [DR. LEAF] It's lying. It's not a big problem. They've made it one. When you make it a problem and you ignore the mind, because you've done for 40 years, you'll end up with the statistics. We have been advancing medically and technologically. We all understand that. We all agree. We also know that people have been living longer. We all agree with that. So those three statements, however, that's changed. Between 96, 2014, that trend reversed. Now in this 2021 pre even pandemic started from 96, showed up in 2014 strongly and it's got even worse back to 21. And that is that people are not dying younger by eight to 25 years than they were for decades. We've been increasing the trend not the reverse. So what I'm saying in a nutshell is that in this advanced technological medical age, because we do not manage our mind and we suppress that, and that then impacts all our decisions; what we eat or exercise, how we manage technology, everything boomerangs from your mind, because your mind is the first step. Your mind and, everything else is amazing. So for 40 years we've had this really weird philosophy of this weird kind of management. And now we sit here with people dying eight to 25 years younger, but that doesn't have to be you. You can not be. Land your helicopter and live a life of neuroscience thing. Every day, you clean your teeth, you bathe, your clean your house, you have to neurocycle. Neurocycling is quite simply how you manage your mind. And then when you're managing your mind, then they listen to leadership advice, food advice, et cetera. So here with the first thing that you do with your co-pilot is you stand back and you gather the apples. You gather awareness. Gather is a beautiful word. It means you're controlling it. It's not hitting you. You choosing what you can manage in that moment. Today, I can only manage three apples. Fine. I've got a [inaudible 00:39:58] for an Apple. Fine. No problem. You get that awareness where you act. And that's why there's the process over the 63 days. So that's really important. So what kind of apples do you pick and what does it mean gather? You're gathering awareness of those signals, the invitation to land. Now you're looking at the signals. What are the emotional things like depression, anxiety. Depression and anxiety, frustration. I have a whole list in the book of different emotional warning signals and an emotional warning signal card. So you get in with your co-pilot and everything's okay. Everything's a mess. I keep saying that, but that's so important. You get your physical, what are you feeling in your body? Maybe you've got GI symptoms, maybe your heart's flattering. You get awareness of your behaviors. What are you doing? How are you functioning, relationships, work? Just in the moment. How are you functioning with yourself when you're sitting in bed at night when you're alone? First thing is your perspective. How you're looking at life? How is this affecting your perspective? How often? Is it all the time? Is it just nonlinear? If it's not being, why? What are the triggers? So once you've gathered, you move to why, which is the second step, which is reflect. And you start asking, answering, and discussing. You then move to the third step. And this every step, by the way, this is not a quick fix. Every step has had 38 years of meticulous mind, brain research. So when you do gather awareness in the way that I've described super simply in the book with lots of charts and examples and images, you are making the brain work like it should. You're getting the two sides of the brain to be coherent and all these amazing brain things that will increase your intelligence, your cognitive flexibility, your coherence, et cetera, your introspection. You then write. When you write, you act in the form of a meta cog. A meta cog is a patent form where we actually can allow the two sides of the brain work together more effectively. And you'll get to the core of the problem quicker. The most phenomenal tool in therapy that I use is part three of this process. And I teach you how to do it. Here --- [TYLER] And it's in the book. [DR. LEAF] Yes, there's also these images. I also talk about it in my app. I have a neurosurgical app, which you can get Google and iTunes. So you get all this in that audio version. So, I mean, there's an audio book too, which I narrated, but the app is therapy. It's literally me giving you therapy. And there's all kinds of guides, tremendous content. And the new version is being released I think in the next 24 hours. It should be. So when you, let's say that gets in the moment, I want to talk about the right. So let's say that you're just about to do this podcast. It's just creating a scenario, just before we started. At least let's say that you felt that you haven't prepared because you've tried to it [crosstalk]. [TYLER] Yes. [DR. LEAF] You kind of hinted that. So you maybe felt a little bit of anxiety. So you could do a five step very quickly and you may have done it. So we can really do this automatically. I'm just making what humans have been doing on an unconscious level. I've just done the science to bring it into our conscious awareness and show and prove it. So you would have gathered your thoughts because you got to get your head back on to do the interview, or you've got to get your head back on to get into the meeting, whatever it may be. So you quickly get away into some feeling a little anxious. Why? Because there's a lot of content. Am I going to ask the right questions? Which you are doing beautifully, by the way, and then you, maybe you didn't write. You didn't have time, but maybe you just visualize the scenario. So in the moment, so all you do is you watch yourself, "Okay, I'm getting ready for this. I'm a little anxious. It's okay. I've got the book. And I just read from the book." Whatever, and you force it. So the third step in this quick case is you've visualized. When you're doing the sitting down over the 21 days, you write? You're physically writing when you're [inaudible 00:39:58]. When it's in the moment, you can just visualize it as though you're watching yourself through a movie camera, watch yourself gathering and reflecting, watch the scenario, recreate the scenario, that experience that stimulated this. And then the fourth step is to then re-check it. So then you would kind of give yourself a little, it's defined a pattern, the antidote. It's a mental autopsy. "What are the packages yet? Why am I doing this? What's all my activators, my triggers? What could I do instead?? And in the first step is a little action and it closes off the cycle of my action is what I'm just going to go in with my book and read from the book if necessary. I mean, that's a simple example, but it could be like the big stuff. On the first day you may not even get very far. You may only find one article and say, "Well, I'm feeling depressed because of something." That's progress. Tomorrow, you pick it up, you don't push through the whole day. The act of reach is maybe let's say you simply say I'm making progress and you every time you feel anxious you don't go back and think of this. You'll do that tomorrow. You just remind yourself, "I'm making progress," or whatever it is. So that's basically the concept of the neurocycle. It's very systematized and it's putting your mind and brain and body in a certain direction, changing the energy patterns, the waves, the blood flow, the chemistry. It's doing amazing things. And it's giving you control. And I know that we need [crosstalk] the kids, the children's --- [TYLER] Yes. So it wrap up with that one. We'll put a bow on this and I have so many more questions that maybe we'll have to chat again. [DR. LEAF] Sounds wonderful. Okay, so as a leader, you're also a parent leaders too. The best way for you to help your kids, first of all, this generation is growing up as the most drugged generation. So actually, if you look at the statistics, it's very negative. I'm older than you, my kids are big now, but I've got millennials and you've got gen Z. From millennials down are growing up as the most drugged generation. I'm not seeing your kids personally, mark it. [TYLER] I get it. [DR. LEAF] But in general, across the population, they are the most at-risk generation in history. Isn't that scary? With the advances and the technology, we have the most at-risk young generation because they've grown up drugged, they've grown up not being allowed to express their emotions, not being, and that's why millennials fight against it so much because the younger generations don't even know what to do. They just get sucked into. If I feel sad or depressed, there's something wrong with me, I need medication. We have removed hope from this generation. And we're seeing why we've be seeing the cities so badly in the pandemic because they got a lot of young people or with their friends, they can rebuild the hope a lot. But when they aren't with the friends, that hope that we're really going from the kind of messages of this generation is removed. So what do we have to do as parents is recognize that our children are actually to live much shorter lifespans than what we are. In fact, the big age group most effected currently now is 25 to 64, but it's getting younger. We're seeing that people are dying young and younger and younger ages, which is very scary, but that doesn't have to be off the norm. We can change this and reverse this with mind management. Why I say mind management is the key is because if I, as a parent model how I am managing my emotions, if I use in neurocycle, I say to my kids, "Sorry, I got mad at you. I got upset or I was feeling sad today because," and I show them how I'm managing it, I am modeling them that it's okay to be messy. I have a way to manage my mess, which means I can repeat and I can grow. The best way your kids will do what you do not what you say. You've got to give yourself the space to learn how to manage your daily moment, use the neurocycle modeling for them, and then teach them. My youngest patient was at the age of three. If you teach them to mind manage and my kids have learnt from when they were babies, and they've learned the advanced version as I've developed it, when you teach your kids, so you're model it, number one. You learn this, you model it and you use it in the big and the small stuff and be very, very open about it. It's okay to be messy. Parents have this thing that I can't be messy. You can. If you don't show your kids a messy lesson, you show them that you've got to be perfect. You've created such a false, toxic positivity. They go out in the world and they collapse because they have no model for the life stuff. But my parents made an act in this bubble. That doesn't help your kids. You need to show them why you're venting. "This is why I'm battling. This is what I'm doing about the battle. I made a mess with my parenting in this aspect, sorry guys, this is why I did it. This is what I'm doing to repair it." That's how you teach your kids to cope in life. That's how you teach them to respond to the signals. And the other thing is that that gets them off that thing of saying, "Oh, something's wrong with my brain." It gives them hope back to say, "Okay, well if my mom or dad are battling, and this is what they do, there's hope for me. I can battle it." You're saying, "Hey, I see you're sad. Do you want to talk about it? Can I show you this neuro cycle to help you?" Then you change that. Then you have a mindset that convince a kid it's a freestyle. It's just exercise. It's addresses data management, AKA too much technology or mismanaged technology and so on and so on. But honestly, I do give you so much in the book --- [DR. LEAF] Yes, very much. And in the end, in your cycle app, which is also released, which honestly would recommend you get with it has got a whole guide for neurocycling for kids. And I've got a book coming out for this. [TYLER] Oh, awesome. [DR. LEAF] This is out now and I'm doing this now on Teachables. And it's available wherever books are sold, Amazon --- [TYLER] Well, I got mine yesterday at Target. And it was the last one. I had to go to two different Targets because they were sold out. So that tells me it's really popular here in this book camp, which I'm excited about. [DR. LEAF] Oh, wow. I'm actually going to go and do a Target drive today and go and sign books at Target and Barnes and Noble and that kind of thing. So, well, if they don't get there, they can get an Amazon. My Instagram handle is Dr. Caroline Leaf. So if they go to my Instagram, follow me there, they can get to everything. And I have a podcast coming up for me, which also helps with all this stuff. I spoke so much. [TYLER] No. Hey, I am, my brain is full, which is good. So many more questions, which you know, can lead into so many things that, and again, I would love to chat with you again, but I know you've got to go. Thank you so much for your time sharing with me. I know I learned a ton. I know the audience will as well. The book, great, great tools. Dr. Caroline Leaf, thank you so much. I appreciate getting to spend time with you and thank you so much for what you're contributing to leaders and to parents. [DR. LEAF] No, thank you so much. As you said, parents are leaders too. And honestly, this has really shifted, I'm so excited about this because I've seen over the years, over these 40, nearly 40 years, just the impact on hundreds of millions of people. That's why I'm so passionate to get this into people's hands, because then when their mind is right, as I keep saying, they will then apply the knowledge that people like yourself in the wellness industry can deliver. So there we go. There's so much. So thanks for your time [crosstalk] to you. [TYLER] Thanks you. [DR. LEAF] Thanks so much. [TYLER] I hope you enjoyed going back, listening to that episode. Maybe you caught it when it first came out. Maybe it was good to go back and listen to it again. Like I said, I hope you got value. This is what I want to do. I want to invite you personally, yes, you listening right there where you're working out or you're driving or maybe you're taking your kids to school. You just dropped them off at school. Whatever you're doing, I want to invite you to join the Impact Driven Leader Awaken the Leader Within Workshop January 9th and 10th. You can go register, show notes, links there, or theimpactdrivenleader.com. Would love to see there. Appreciate you being here as well. Always supporting, sharing, subscribing, and leaving a comment. Thank you. Until next time, have a good one.