MBS960-- Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess with Dr. Caroline Leaf (Neuroscientist)

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a neuroscientist 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.

Toxic thoughts, depression, anxiety--our mental mess is frequently aggravated by a chaotic world and sustained by an inability to manage our runaway thoughts. But we shouldn't settle into this mental mess as if it's just our new normal. There's hope and help available to us--and the road to healthier thoughts and peak happiness may actually be shorter than you think.

Backed by clinical research and illustrated with compelling case studies, Dr. Caroline Leaf provides a scientifically proven five-step plan to find and eliminate the root of anxiety, depression, and intrusive thoughts in your life so you can experience dramatically improved mental and physical health. In just 21 days, you can start to clean up your mental mess and be on the road to wholeness, peace, and happiness.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You work with your mind. You go into exercise with your mind. If you go to if you go and exercise, work out, and your mind is your mindset's negative and you're just beginning to work, get it over, or you cross with someone or something, or you're worrying about something, you will lose up to 90% of the benefits that your DNA would get from that exercise because of your mindset.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Hi there, ladies and gentlemen. Today I'm very proud and honored to bring you Dr. Caroline Leaf. She is a South African but a world-renowned expert on cognitive neuroscience. She has a PhD in communication pathology, a BSC in logopedic specializing in cognitive and metacognitive neuropsychology. She's written over 19 books and has been studying something called neurogenesis in the brain since the late 1980s. Her research has been instrumental in establishing true insight in the mind-brain connection, and her initial research dates back all the way some 40 years. She is responsible for developing the original theory of how we think, as well as tools and processes that have transformed the lives of patients with traumatic brain injury, learning disabilities, autism, dementia, emotional mental health issues, and has shown thousands of students all around the world and adults and corporations how to use their mind to detox and grow their brain. This is literally the process of rewiring your brain and even becoming more intelligent. So very privileged to have her on the show today. So in this episode, we explain the science of thoughts and what exactly is the mind-brain connection and how can we direct our mind to rewire our brain. She also shares some very personal stories about Soweto during the apartheid years of South Africa. As a white woman working in Soweto for some 25 years was quite a thing back then. And just pay careful attention to some of the incredible results of one particular school that was written off from an education perspective, but somehow managed to wind up in the top three schools in the country in terms of its students. So this is all a direct product of her work. She unpacks at length her five-step process for rewiring your brain, which is part of her book called Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: Five Simple Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and Toxic Thinking. It's got some crazy five-star reviews. I don't even think there is a four-star review somewhere in there. But Caroline is a world expert, as I said, she has a lot to say. So her answers are quite long, but stick around because I do feel that what she has to say truly is at the cutting edge of neurogenesis. And as entrepreneurs, as ordinary human beings, we all aspire to build more, to reach other levels or new levels of success. And our mind is our greatest weapon and tool that will get us there. And don't forget, guys, if you would like to join the conversation, keep sending those emails to me. It's hello at mattbrown show.com, or you can tweet me at Matt Brown Z A. I respond to all those emails. So thank you so much. But without further ado, enter Dr. Caroline Leaf. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to yet another cracking installment of the Matt Brown show. Today I'm very proud and privileged and uh humbled to bring you the great and powerful Joe Rogan spread expression, but it's probably relevant here today. Uh Dr. Caroline Reef, welcome. Leaf rather, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 3:49

Thank you so much, Matt. It's great to talk to a fellow South African and a fellow fellow Joe Burger, if there's such a thing.

SPEAKER_03 3:56

Is that a thing?

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Is that a thing? Well we used to live in uh Cape Town in Japan in mainly Johannesburg, and we lived in Saddlebrook. So I'm very familiar. And the last time we came there, I couldn't believe how it changed. It's grown and developed so much.

SPEAKER_03 4:10

It has. It has changed a lot. Um but um but uh how are things over there in the States at the moment? Obviously, you're based in Dallas. Um how are things how would you characterize things at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Well, things are kind of getting back to normal now, which is really great. If there is such a I actually hate to say normal, it's the new, you know, these new changes. We people have adjusted incredibly well. And you know, we've humans are very adaptable, but things are opening up much more travel. Texas is a huge state, so they've um they're a little bit lax on the the the mask mandate, which is a bit of a concern. But um things people are back in business, a lot of things are opening, people are starting to travel again. We were obviously like all of you locked down for almost a year, and I I used to travel 70% of the month. So our travels are now starting again, but you know, not not quite as much. Most of it's done via Zoom and you have technology. So yeah, things are people are much more positive now. You're all happy Biden's in.

SPEAKER_03 5:07

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Obviously, Texas being historically a Republican state, if I'm not correct or incorrect.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

It is, but it's become there's quite a good balance, and it's you know, it's growing and it's becoming a place that's very desirable for people to live. So I think it's becoming one of those purple states. So good.

SPEAKER_03 5:23

Well, when I'm over there, I'll look you up for a coffee for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Oh, for sure, for sure.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

So, Caroline, uh, there's a lot to get into today. Obviously, uh you're probably one of the world's leading experts on logopedics, I believe. Is that a thing? Or neuroplasticity or neuropsychology. Um, maybe for our audience and viewers around the world who potentially haven't heard about you and the incredible work that you have done in the space of the mind and the brain connection. Um, give us the elevator pitch.

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Absolutely. Well, as you just said, our mind-brain research I've been doing for that's my field, and it's basically psychoneurobiology, sort of, so it's the whole mind-brain-body connection. And I've been in the field for 38 years, began in South Africa, been here in the States for 13 and a half years. So the bulk of my initial research was done in South Africa. I practiced there for 25 years. I would work through all Johannesburg, Harting, Eastern Cape, all those areas. I spent three days a week, in fact, working in all the sort of township areas and through the apartheid transition and the post-apartheid, um, developed a lot of my theories and initial research in South Africa. And um I developed I worked extensively with people with traumatic brain injuries and learning disabilities, a lot of sexual trauma, war trauma, trauma from different things, the Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, that sort of area. And in that process, um, in the 80s, I actually studied at UCT and at the University of Victoria. So I did my four degrees across those two universities. And back in the 80s, they didn't believe the brain could change. And I remember sitting in one of my neuroscience lectures in the 80s, and neuroscience was like brand new then. And uh, they told us the brain can't change, but they still spoke about the mind. And I remember challenging a professor, and this is this interesting story, at UP University of Pretoria and saying, Hey, you know, um, I mean at UCT, I don't think that's right because our mind's always changing, and our brain is just the substance through which the brain mind works, because there was a very clear distinction between mind and brain backing at that time, and there has been for since ancient times. It's only in modern era that we don't distinguish between the two, which is interesting. And they said to me, No, well, that's a ridiculous question. You can't, your brain can't change. And I said, Well, I've I've really challenged that question. I started doing research in South Africa on traumatic brain injuries, and I did some of the earliest neuroplasticity research in the late 80s, early 90s. Um, there's a TED talk on it as well. Um, and that neuroplasticity is that the mind can change the brain. So I started challenging that paradigm. Then by the mid-90s, it was it's accepted once we had fMRI technology and the technology to look at the brain responding. Um, and we actually already had EEG, but it just wasn't being used in that way. Um, and now then so I showed that the mind can change the brain, and then it just sort of spiraled from there, and I started developing systems and techniques to help people understand hey, we can be very driven by what we feel, we we can feel like we're out of control because we've got these things that we keep doing and keep getting stuck in. But actually, you do have autonomy, you do have agency. It's that we just don't train people in how to develop the mind or what the mind even is. And we throw out words like mind, brain, memories, thoughts, emotions, and it's all this kind of mixed mishmash of words. And we but if you if you don't distinguish between them and understand what each is, you will always feel out of control. You always feel like you've been controlled by what's out there. But meanwhile, inside of you, there's so much ability for us to actually uh learn how to manage our minds. More than to, you know, the word control is scary sometimes, but it's more manage your minds and recognize there is agency over how we respond and what we do with what we've gone through versus just being controlled by the world. So fast forward I still do clinical trials, I don't practice anymore, but I travel around the world teaching and all this mind brain stuff and podcasting and um books and that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 9:10

Yeah, speaking of books, um I'm actually gonna bring it up on screen for everybody. Uh so your book probably is this your how many books have you written?

SPEAKER_01 9:17

This is the 19th book.

unknown 9:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

And number 20 is already in process, so yes, it's like that's what I do. A lot of books and a lot of research, a lot of journal articles, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

Hey there. I know being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely experience. You sometimes get stuck, don't you? Well, if you're like me, being stuck sucks. But what if you could access the minds of over 850 CEOs who have built companies generating billions of dollars in revenue and access all of that knowledge in a fraction of a second? Well, the good news is you can't literally do that today. What my team have built is Matt Brown AI. It is trained on all the interviews, over 850 of them that I've done to date, all my books, all the knowledge capital that has been generated over the last 10 years right here on the Matt Brown show. And you can get access to all of that right now for free. So, how do you get access to this? Well, head on over to mapbrown show.com and at the top you'll see community. Hit that link, sign up, it's absolutely free, and you'll be given instant access to MacBrown AI and a community of over a hundred thousand subscribers. So, this one, Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, five simple scientifically proven steps to reduce anxiety, stress, toxic, and toxic thinking, I suppose is is almost um an extension of what you were describing.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

SPEAKER_03 10:53

Hey there, I know being an entrepreneur can be a very lonely experience. You sometimes get stuck, don't you? Well, if you're like me, being stuck sucks. But what if you could access the minds of over 850 CEOs who have built companies generating billions of dollars in revenue and access all of that knowledge in a fraction of a second? Well, the good news is you can't literally do that today. What my team have built is Matt Brown AI. It is trained on all the interviews, over 850 of them that I've done to date, all my books, all the knowledge capital that has been generated over the last 10 years right here on the Matt Brown Show. And you can get access to all of that right now for free. So, how do you get access to this? Well, head on over to mattbrown show.com and at the top you'll see community. Hit that link, sign up, it's absolutely free, and you'll be given instant access to MacBrown AI and a community of over a hundred thousand subscribers.

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Pretty much, and you know, I've tried to make um there's it's such an interesting era, as we all know. There's so much going on, and there's so much so much, so many good shifts happening and bad shifts. And so I've just tried to make it very accessible for people to understand what mental health is because it's spoken about so much, and people are trying to destigmatized, but it's kind of more stigmatized, and there's just so much confusion. So I want to just bring light to the confusion and and help people to understand the science behind the fact that this is your mind, this is your brain, and this is what you can do. So, yes, it's based, I keep doing research to update because any science changes, science changes all the time. And a good scientist should keep on researching and updating and finding out new stuff, which is what I do. So this book is very much a summary of my most recent research, updated research, making mind management very simple and accessible for everyone and demystifying mental health.

SPEAKER_03 12:45

So, speaking of confusion, you mentioned the mind-brain connection. So it was something that I was wondering, and I'm sure I have listeners, excuse me, out there that are wondering, what does she mean by mind and brain? What are the what is the difference here? Because I think I know where we're going to go, and I think land landing some fundamentals are gonna be important for everyone.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

I like that. I like that, Matt. I think it's so important to land fundamentals, otherwise we get tied up in linguistics and we don't quite know. It just becomes overwhelming. So it's just it's kind of simple to understand, simple but complex. Complex because the current narrative for the last 40 years has been mind and brain are the same thing, but they are so not the same thing. For since ancient times, since the ancient texts and even 150 years of modern science, we have actually distinguished between the two. But the narrative, the way it's explained, people talk about, oh my mind, oh my brain, you know, so it's the same thing. And in the literature and in the media, it's also spoken about in the same way. And that's it's just a misuse of terms and also a misinterpretation of a lot of science. So essentially what it is is that I'm going to use some models for those people that are just listening. I'm holding up a model of a body, but you can look at your own body if you can't see, if you're just listening. And we obviously made up a brain and a body, and our brain and our body are the physical part of us. So it's easy to understand that because we know there's a brain in our skull and we know we have a body. But this physical part of us, our neurobiology, is only around about one to ten percent of who we are as humans. So, what is the other 90 to 99 percent? It's the mind. So, mind is our aliveness, it's our ability to have this conversation, it's our ability to process what we're talking about, what we're hearing, it's our ability to process what's gone through COVID, our relationships. It's everything from the time you wake up to the time you go to sleep, and when you're asleep, your mind's still working. It's just the conscious and unconscious minds, two different parts of your mind. So, mind is our aliveness. The difference between you and me and the and the audience and the viewers is and a dead person is our mind. So, our mind is this aliveness and can be described in two ways, in a very physics-y way and in then in a more psychological way. So, let me start with the psychological. Your mind is what's enabling you to actually understand what I'm saying and process it and experience this. So, your mind is how you think and feel and choose. Now, I notice I'm holding up three fingers, and that's very significant because you think, when you think, you feel, and when you think and feel, you choose. So, mind is doing these three things all the time. You can't think without feeling, and you can't feel without choose, think and feel without choosing. So, we often separate those in our discussions and in our evaluating of ourselves and just in life, but actually they always go together. So, right now, at the moment, for example, your mind and the mind of all the listeners and viewers are processing what I'm saying and the things that I'm showing you at with with think, feel, choose, think, feel, choose cycles, 400 billion cycles per second, literally. So that we're going through to take this information and process it. So that's quite complex. Then if you think of now, if you imagine on a physical level, there imagine there's a sort of cloud around you. And just for visual visualization's sake, okay, imagine a cloud now, also be observant of the fact that you're sitting in a chair, you're not floating, and that's because of gravitational fields. So we all get that gravity, and we all get that these gravitational fields. You may not know much about them, you may or may not, but gravitational fields have a lot of properties to them. And when we talk about gravitational fields, we're talking about things like electromagnetic effects and Einstein's work and complex stuff like that, quantum physics, et cetera. Or what they've discovered is not just that the world is keeping us from floating, the gravitational field is keeping us from floating, and electromagnetics are all these forces, et cetera, between us, but there's also a field around each human and it passes through a human. When you're dead, you don't have this field around you, it's no longer existing. And you can, it's it's not anything weird, it's completely normal science. And there's so many ways to understand and experience this. And the one most basic way is that I use QEEG in my neuroscience research, which is a way of looking at the energy response in the brain. A person's dead and you put a QEEG on someone, or you do a QEEG, I should say, on someone, there won't be any response because there's no mind. And the mind, the mind physics side is measured by this electrical activity. If you put an EKG on the heart, you can then see the response, the electrical response of the heart. But a dead person doesn't have any electrical response. So all this response that our body has when we um when we measure it using instrumentation technology, medical technology, is a way of kind of visualizing mind moving through brain and body. And so the mind is this force on a physics level, and it's a on a psychological level, it's how we are in the front lines of life. So it's imagine you are this cloud around you and you're talking now. I mean, you're listening to me now. It's your mind that's taking my words, processing them through the zinc field tubes and all these electromagnetic fields and all this science-y stuff, and that's being pushed through the brain, and then the brain responds on an electrical, chemical, electromagnetic, and quantum level and genetic level. And then also that then sends instructions to every cell of the rest of the brain of the body. And then the body also responds on it on a DNA level. So every single experience from the time you wake up till the time you go to sleep, and that's about 10, 8,000 to 10,000 experiences that you'll have in a day, is all converted, processed and converted by mind into brain as little protein thought trees and into the DNA as changes in the DNA structure and becomes a field in the mind. So it's kind of complex, but we can control that process. We can actually not, you know, do it's not it's not conscious, but uh you're not you're not seeing all the little fields and everything, but that's the science. But with what you do with your thinking, feeling, and choosing, as you manage your thinking, feeling, and choosing, you're using your thinking, feeling, and choosing mind to manage your thinking, feeling, and choosing, as you do that, you're actually influencing those fields, you're influencing the brain, you're influencing the DNA, you're influencing everything about how you function as a human. And when you understand that, it kind of helps us shift our knowledge and change our skills and our attitudes to um looking at ourselves very, very differently. It gives a whole different perspective of who we are as humans and what it means to be a human.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Yeah, I'd love to um maybe circle back to where your this whole story actually started because um I think uh the journey is obviously quite important. Um you spent, as you said, a lot of time working in during apartheid uh in the late 80s in Soweto, a white woman running around Soweto would be intimidating for for that for that individual. Um and yet there you were, as you said, three days a week working 25 years. 25 years, sorry. All the way through to just really amazing.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

I would all the way through. So all the all that time period, the partake, the transition, and the post.

SPEAKER_03 19:39

Sorry, my mistake. I actually meant to say three days a week.

unknown 19:42

Not really.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

No, no, no, it's three days a week, and it was so it was sometimes four or five days a week, but it was pretty much my whole time in South Africa. I was working in those areas.

SPEAKER_03 19:51

And um you obviously worked with you know underprivileged children, uh, marginalized humans, uh, so to speak, um, and yet that this was really the the genesis of your of your research. Um, and this has now led really to you know you being on a global stage. So I'd love to maybe uh spend a few minutes with you just to paint a picture of that time. Um what what were you curious about and why Soweto? I mean, you had you had choices, obviously, we all have choices, uh, you know, uh, but why did you choose then there at that time and walk us through what you were thinking?

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Well, I and I love your question, Matt. Thank you for asking that. Um the at the it started when I was uh the first area that I worked in was traumatic brain injury. So when I was challenged by that professor, and we were looking for, we were being challenged to do our first research project on an honors level um and mass, so it was actually the it's on honors level then and master's level and PhD. I was doing all that research I did in South Africa. But that um I initially worked with traumatic brain injury, and that um that stimulated the under this this um understanding that if we train our mind, we can change our brain and our body. As soon as I started practicing, I was still doing research, I was still doing honors and masters and PhD and so on. That's when I started working. Um, I just was approached actually by government, by the South African government to start doing projects in schools. And I but I had already started training teachers and training um students, people heard about me, I was lecturing at university, that kind of stuff. It just started growing. And the message I was bringing was hey, listen, we can train on mind, we can learn how to learn, we can manage our emotions. And I started developing the system basically, not a technique, because there's brilliant techniques out there, not a new education system, not new content. I was developing how do you transfer the content to students in in in challenging situations, like in in in the in Soweto. I worked throughout South Africa, not just Swedo, Khao Teng, Eastern Cape, all across the Cause Union. I worked across all of them, all those areas. How do you transfer and help a teacher to transfer knowledge to a student, whether it's in a privileged position, because I had a private Practice too, and I've trained in very wealthy private white schools and as well as government schools and things. And then I was working in the terribly disadvantaged schools. So the two contrasts, it was radical. But the same problems, it's similar problems manifested in that if you don't, as a human, understand how to deliver information and how to receive and process information, you're going to battle to learn. And you're going to battle to process your emotions because think, feel, choose, feelings are involved in the learning process. So it was very interesting looking at it from both perspectives. And I was working in corporates, doing working with corporates, and I was working in government. So I was working in different spheres, all with mind. So it's this the same concept with different, different socioeconomic strata and different areas. And what really um drove me was the what was the curiosity came in what is mind, what is brain, what's the mystery of the integration, and how much control do we have? Because I couldn't go and fix what years of apartheid had done. But all I could do was equip those people to recognize, okay, there's emotional damage from what is from this racism and this terrible um structure, the system system that had been imposed on them for all these years. How do you help a person manage that emotionally? How do you help a person who's getting educated the education? I mean, they'd have one textbook, 100 kids, talk boards, talk that didn't work. It was horrific. When I was working, we were talking 38 years ago, 30 between when I started then those areas. It was horrific. I mean, how anyone can get educated? These kids were sitting and like repeating from one textbook, you can't learn like that. And so going into those environments, it was a massive challenge about how can we equip people to be able to transform and change their learning. So I would like some of the schools, they would go to um, I would teach them the system, and the teachers would take newspaper print and stick it on, go to the local newspapers, and because they didn't have chalkboards, they didn't have whiteboards, didn't have anything, they didn't have textbooks. And they would we would stick wall um wallpaper the wall with this newsprint, and then we would create use them uh this four five-step system I developed to teach them how to learn. And we would transfer all the knowledge that they were teaching the kids into the wallpaper the wall with the knowledge in these in these structures called Metacogs using the system and then teach the kids how to do that. So that's what I would go and do. I would drive now, I've had four kids, I would be nine months pregnant driving through areas where you and I both know why people did not drive at that time. No one would touch me. I could go alone without an escort anywhere, and no one would touch me. Why? Because people knew I was bringing a message of hope. I went in there and helped people to understand how to learn, how to learn. And I saw resilience. I learned so much. It's where I was motivated. I was curious. I went in and shared what I had, and they taught me as much as I taught them. And it was at that process that then showed me that no matter what circumstances are, the only way we're going to change systems is we're going to have to teach people how to manage their response within the system while the system is changing, and then equip people to go to some intellectual heights that they'll challenge, be able to come with constructive um ways of challenging systems to change systems because fighting doesn't change anything. And there still is fighting going on everywhere, as we know. But if you can start developing a person from the inside out and helping them manage their responses, you can then grow a person, you can grow a community. And some of those in those years, and some this is in my in my CV on my website and the work I did for 25 years through through this through South Africa. I had TV shows there, I would love to live on all the education stuff and everything. Um, we had schools that were written off. You uh you probably remember this, but totally written off by the government. The kids were just not, they weren't learning anything, they weren't getting any, they weren't being educated. And those are the schools I worked with, those are the schools that that I chose to actually get in and work with. And those some, when Card Oswald was still the education minister in that particular year and that time frame that he was education minister, schools that were completely not even known to exist became some of the top three schools in the top three. They always have to always recognize the top three schools. We were consistently getting kids that had gone through the system and teachers and stuff that had trained in the system, going into the top three schools and so on. So, I mean, there's just, I mean, I can go on for hours, but that that resilience, what I learned there when I saw what people had, nothing. And how once I showed them, okay, this is how your mind works, this is how your brain works, this is how you learn, this is how you can manage emotions. How can we put this together? And how can we now educate better, manage community better, manage support each other emotionally better? It was a it was a back and forth between the communities that really motivated me to go out and do get to where I am at this stage. There's so much quite passionate about it.

SPEAKER_03 26:35

Yeah, I know that's great. There's so much I want to get into there. Um there's there's something that I believe wholeheartedly, and I'm trying to jump into my my team also. It's um the idea that you never rise to the level of your goals, you always fall to the level of your systems. Um and it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

That's very good. I like that.

SPEAKER_03 26:51

Yeah, it's um it's like you know, you just find truths and it's like, damn, that's true. And then you can't break it because it's true. Um, and uh it's and it's again uh, you know, I suppose found in what you've just described, in the sense of, you know, you developed a four, five-step system, and that you know, got kids that were just I mean, you know, schools and the and the students that that were written off, they were just in a dark hole somewhere, to like the top three, you know. So that obviously indicates that the system does work if you know how to apply that system. So I want to get into that just for a minute or two with you. Um, you mentioned that there's four or five steps. Could you describe what they are?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Well, there's five steps, and it's the neurocycles. The NESHFET was birthed back in the um late 80s when I did my initial research with traumatic brain injury, and I had to, we were told, um, okay, the brain can't change. So here are the techniques to teach your patients how to compensate. So diagnose and teach to compensate. And I thought that's such a low-level goal for any human, just to compensate. Now, compensate's not a bad thing, but rather can we not transform as opposed to compensate, which is a totally different thing. Because compensate means that I just, you know, that's broken and I'm just gonna put a band-aid on the wound. And it's not like a long-term thing, because in how sustainable is compensation? So, in terms of mind work, so I rather didn't want to give therapy like that. I wanted to be able to help people to manage their mind and to be able to go through a transform transformational state. So let's say that you have X situation happening in your life. Well, there's X, that's you. Let's take you as being X, and that's you with your specializations, because every human is born with this phenomenal mind that is then expressed through the brain and the body. And the brain and the body are so specialized, and all of us are specialized. Um, I talk about that a lot in my books, the gifts and all that kind of stuff. I've done a lot of research on that gift in you and how to understand it's it's not the Myers Briggs, it's not the IQ, those that are so outdated. We've got to look at the fact that each of us is so different and that we can't stick anyone in a box and say you're this type of person because no one's anyone else's type. You are your own type. And so, in other words, you specialize to someone, and that specialization is very much for community and system focused. So if each of us is so uniquely specialized in we've got all basic skills, but specialize that you can do what you can do, and I can do what I can do. I'm not any competition for you. So that leads to a system that's not competitive, it leads to a system that's enhanced. So the whole philosophy I have is enhancement versus competition because you specialize. So you're never a threat to me. You're only someone who can enhance me. So if I understand you, I learn from you, I enhance myself, I enhance you versus this. Oh gosh, that person's doing better than me. I must do everything I can to you know be better than them. I'm competing. That drive to compete is actually very destructive. But the drive to enhance is very, very, very pro how the brain and mind and body are driven. So when we help each other, we lift our intelligence, we lift our community, etc. And I saw so much of that enhancement in the communities in South Africa. That's really where I understood competition is not the answer. It is not competition that drives the species, it is enhancement that drives us as humans. And then quantum physics, when I started studying that, talks about it's not about you, it's about you in the world. So it's you in the world. So when you get that kind of capacity, the jealousy, envy, being thrown by others, imposter syndrome, which is we all suffer from, are things that actually are destructive and not and not come not healthy because they're competitive driven. But if we can shift people away from that, we can grow a person to enhancement, which is really you change, it takes things to a whole different level in in a community um and in the in the world. So um, having said that, um what we uh and now I lost my train of thought for a second there.

SPEAKER_03 30:35

Just prompt me back with that question because I was Yeah, uh, I was talking about the five steps. So you're talking about competition.

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Based on that, based on based on enhancement, I wanted to develop not a set of techniques, because there's beautiful techniques out there. I mean, there's so many great techniques that have been developed over the years, and and I I wanted to just get the system going that okay, you're a human, you're alive, this is your mind, this is how you manage it, and this is how you direct the neuroplasticity of your brain and create a healthy environment in your brain and body so that you can resist what's going on and try to make your body as strong as possible for all the stuff that's going on in the world in terms of exposure to chemicals, disease, trauma, stress, etc. Because whatever environment you immerse in, your mind, brain, and body will merge. But if you can know how to control your mind, you can to a certain extent protect yourself from that environment. So, what that basically means is we need a system that enables us to be, which into which you can fit everything else that you choose to do to enhance your specialization and enhance life, etc., and do what it is that you do and stay as healthy as you can. We need a system, we need to understand the system that drives us, and then we need to know how to manage that system. So the mind is what drives us. When you live, there's no mind. So if mind is what drives us, mind is what experiences like. So if you're experiencing constant trauma, like in South Africa, being in the apartheid system, racism, that's an immersion in constant trauma. COVID, um, the way it's managed in this country, uh, 90% of media has been negative. But there's also, and there's yes, it's a negative thing that's happened, but you can balance negative with positive, and we need to always do that. So whatever you immerse, whatever environment you immerse yourself in, your mind is going to be processing that, your mind is is immersed in that. But when whatever you think, feel and choose about the most will grow into your brain and your body, and then it can feel like it's real. So I want people to be able to recognize, okay, what am I paying attention to? Am I able to, in other words, an awareness of where am I focusing my attention? Because wherever my attention goes, I'm growing stuff in my brain and my body, and that's then going to manifest in how I show up. Because how you show up, what you say, what you do, yes, is based on your specialization, but it's strongly influenced by your immersion, so the environment, whatever you're focusing on, etc. So, therefore, if if a child's been traumatized, if a child's gone through a child's gone through this apartheid system, an adult bullied or whatever, whatever age you're at, you're experiencing life. How can I kind of get away, just create distance, look at what's going on, look at how I'm showing up, and transform that. So there's X, that's who I am, that specialization thing. And then here's Y, what's happening in life, and this is happening all day long. And instead of just saying, okay, X, Y, slap a band on and just X, Y it, you know, sort of just push it together, and okay, well, it's just can't really do anything about it, just kind of carry on. You can actually transform, you can create Z. It's like if you have, and then I'll come to the five steps. If you have coffee and and you want to sweeten your coffee with something healthy, like organic honey or something, or honey, here's coffee, here's the honey, two different substances. So there's X and Y. When I put them together, I get Z. I've transformed the coffee. It's now sweetened coffee, I've changed it. As opposed to just keeping them sitting next to each other, I haven't done any transformation. They're just still sitting next to each other. There's no relationship created. So, what I'm trying to help people to do is to get to that reconceptualized transform state and to do that all the time because your mind never stops. You go, you can go three weeks without food, you can go three days without water, you can go three minutes without oxygen, but you can't even go three seconds without thinking, feeling, and choosing. So your mind drives everything. You wake up with your mind, you get dressed with your mind, you eat with your mind, you're in this conversation with your mind, you're in your relationships with your mind, you do work with your mind, you go and do exercise with your mind. If you go to if you go and exercise, work out, and your mind is your mindset's negative, and you're just doing it to work, get it over, or you cross with someone or something, or you're worrying about something, you will lose up to 90% of the benefits that your DNA would get from that exercise because of your mindset. You may be eating a super healthy great meal, but your mind is so worried and toxic you lose 80% of the nutrition. We're not taught this. So I wanted people to go back to basics. Whatever you fit in, whatever system of eating, exercise, techniques, affirmations, do all of those, but do them in the right mind. Get your mind working right. And that's what the neurocycle is. Initially, the neurocycle, which is the five steps, was called the it had different names over the years. I've as I've developed the concept. It's based on a theory that I developed called the geodesic information processing theory, which is a fancy term for mind-brain, mind-brain integrate, mind-brain body integration. I've started off as a very therapeutic technique, then I adapted it and simplified it and grew it. Now it's simplified into the concept of the neurocycle. How to use your mind to cycle, cur cycle your mind correctly so that you drive the neuroplasticity of your brain. So it was intensive labor over of neuroscientific labor over years and years of taking, okay, if I do this, what's happening in the mind of the brain? If I do this, what is the systematic way? What's the best way to get people to do things? So every of every step of the five steps, everyone will know them. And not some new radical thing that I've got from, you know, it's everything that's familiar, but it's how you do them, how you approach them, how you combine them, the system, the systematic nature of it. Because basically, your brain and body do what your mind tells it to do. So, neural, when we keep doing something, if there's a pattern in our life, we physically wire that into our brain over time in a very systematic way, in a very non-conscious, systematic way. And our non-conscious mind is the biggest part of our mind and it drives us. So if we don't recognize um those patterns and don't do something about them, we're gonna feel always feel like we're driven by something else that we can't control, but we can control. So the five steps brings control back, it brings agency back. It's mind management, you managing your mind. Um, so that's the philosophy of it. So I don't know if you want me to dive into the five steps, if you want to ask any questions about what I've just said.

SPEAKER_03 36:40

Yeah, I think a lot. I think you've given us a lot of context there, and I want to double down on some of the stuff you said. Uh, but maybe just yeah, very quickly, like what are the five, like, is it what step? Because I'm like, I want to rewire my brain, you know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

So, in the second part of the book, I do explain the whole first part of that book. I do explain the build-up to you know, what is mind mental health? Because we need to touch on sort of the concept of mental health as well when we talk about this. But the second half, I explained the five steps, and there's a table, and there's tons of examples for how to apply for trauma, the different types of trauma, acute toxic, big T, small T trauma, um, toxic habits, building new good habits, brain building. So all the different ways that you can use it because your mind never stops. So basically, what I'm giving people is a system for my mind never stops. So this is this is how I get my mind working properly, and then into that I can fit in all the other little things that I like to do. So I'm not asking you to throw anything out, and I'm not and definitely not telling people to throw therapy away. Go to therapy, then hard to start, do your coaching, do your counseling, do your affirmations, but just get them in the right place and do them in the right way, otherwise they don't work for you. That's the issue. They don't, they don't, you they you're gonna get minimal benefit from them, and then your body's environment also affected. And the first part of the book, I do put my clinical summary of one of my clinical trials in my most recent, where I show how when you do the five steps, what it can do to shift all the neurophysiology of your brain and your body to decrease your vulnerability to disease, to build your immune system and so on. So your mind does affect your brain and your body because your mind is this cloud, it's driving your brain and body. So if we stay toxic, if we stay, if we try and suppress, if we keep suppressing trauma, if we don't deal with our stuff, if we just keep staying in those patterns, our brain and body's vulnerability to disease increases by 35 to 98%. So I'm trying to tell you, hey guys, you don't have to live like this. I'm not saying if you think positive thoughts, you're not going to get cancer. I that's the last thing I'm saying. This is not the law of attraction. This is not just simply positive thinking. Those are very, very shallow. They're not real. They I can stand in front of the mirror and say 50 positive affirmations, 10 gratitude statements, and still have a lousy life and still die of a heart attack very young. Because it's not that you're putting a band-aid on a bullet wound, as my one friend says. And you, or you're going in that garden of weeds and you're chopping off the head, and you find for a while then the weed grows back. We have to do the hard work of mind, we have to do mind work, and we have to teach our kids this from young, which is what I did in South Africa, teaching this from very young in schools and so on. Okay, so essentially the five steps are um the first step is to is the first thing you've got to do is prepare your brain. Your brain and body need to be prepared. You literally have to tell your brain what to do, and that incorporates things like breathing and meditation. And I've got a whole bunch of different suggestions in the book that you can use that that help to direct the neuroplasticity of the brain. So things like meditation aren't they're not bad, but they're not enough. And there's so much research now coming out because meditation is the thing. You know, everyone, meditation, mindfulness, it's the big thing in corporate. I mean, you're in business, you know that it's like these things, and it's great, but it's it's not safe alone. Because what it does is it brings awareness into your mind, and then people are now, okay, now what do I do with what I'm aware of? And then it can create, have a boomerang effect and make people worse. So it's not sustainable. So meditation and mindfulness are important, but you have to go beyond. And you also mustn't decontextualize anything. So when I say decontextualize, meditation's become very westernized. So they've taken taken an element of a big concept and packaged it in a nice little thing with a little bow on and plopped it into Western culture, and now everyone does little these little exercises. And they honestly, I've interviewed so many people that really understand meditation, and a lot of what's been done out there is not just it's kind of dangerous, it can create a lot of problems in the brain and body. So when you talk about brain preparation, I'm talking about contextualized proper meditation and mindfulness and breathing and that kind of thing. And what I've also brought out now is an app called the Neurocycle app. It used to be called the Switch app. Now we've upgraded it and it works with the book. And in there, I give some examples as well. I walk you through brain preparation. Now, why brain preparation? Well, your brain is just physical, it's structured and its weights, it's driven, it's it's driven by something. So it's like the car, but unless you get in the car, it can't drive. So brain preparation is making sure you've got gas in the car and you know that kind of stuff, it's preparing so that the car is going to run like it should. So your brain wants to you need your brain to be running like it should. You want your chemical chaos controlled. If you are, for example, I did a live this morning and people about Monday morning blues and what they do in your brain. So, in terms of brain preparation, so to give you an example, so if you are waking up and you're negative and you've got those Monday morning blues, if you don't catch that quickly, you can create such neurochemical chaos in your brain that you'll create like literally the two sides of the brain will work out of above your eyebrows called the orbitofrontal cortex, will kind of separate and work out of sync during the day. That'll affect your decision making, your wisdom, it'll make you feel frustrated, on edge, it'll start causing inflammation in your brain and your body, it'll affect your stress system, it'll raise cortisol. I mean, these, and if you do that all the time, cumulatively that increases your vulnerability to disease by 35 to 90%. So that's what I mean. It's cumulative over time if we don't manage our mind. That's just one example. So that's first thing is brain preparation. Second thing is what's your attitude coming into the five steps? If you come in, okay, quick fix, quickly do it, quick fix, techni like being in the technological age. Give me a pill, give me a quick fix. Wellness industry, here's these five steps. This is this diet will solve your life. We have got to stop thinking like that. There is no quick fix, there is no one diet, there is no one technique, there is no one cookie cutter, anything. Each of us is different, each of us is so specialized. So, what we have to do is use whatever works, but we've got to make sure that we are driving the brain in the right direction. That's why this is such an open-ended concept that I've developed, that it's so systematic and you can put anything into it, okay? So the mindset coming in is that I am brilliant and I am can be empowered, I can control my mind, I can change my brain. It's happening right now. You're always changing your brain, it's never not changing. And whatever you do is changing. So whether you're negative or positive, whether you're detoxing or managing your mind or not managing your mind, whether you're cleaning up your mental mess or not, your mind's still changing your brain. So you may as well control it. Otherwise, it's going in the wrong direction. Okay, so the mindset is my brain is always changing anyway. So I may as well direct the change. Third thing is, third part of your mindset, sort of attitude coming into the neuroscycle is be kind to yourself. Everyone, if you're a human, which you are in your life, which you are because you're listening and watching, whatever, you are a mental mess. It's a fact. You're a human. Life is tough. We are facing stuff. Some of us have worse stuff to deal with than others, but there is a mental health affects everyone. It's not one in four have depression, one in five have anxiety, and one in this, have that, and and and that mental health is on a pandemic rise. No, not at all. Mental health has always been an issue since the beginning of time. If you're a human, you cannot control events and circumstances, you cannot control people. Toxic things are going to happen, bad things are going to happen to everyone. So, therefore, every time those things happen, our mental health is challenged. Cumulatively, over time, they'll be suppressed, suffer can get worse. Some some people, there's obviously different degrees of trauma, like someone in the apartheid system and someone not in their apartheid system, someone who's traumatic. abuse someone who's not but people so we all experience degrees of abuse so what we've got to do number three coming in is recognize that it's okay to be depressed and anxious and frustrated and and talk and and have toxicity and guilt and shame those aren't bad in themselves because they're not it's they're not illnesses mental illness does not exist now before everyone thinks ah what she's saying mental illness doesn't exist mental illness isn't an it like cancer or diabetes what does exist is mental ill mental ill health so it's not illness so we can have mental challenges not even ill health is the wrong word it's mental challenges that exists and that's huge so if our bodies one to 10% cancer diabetes all those things affect the physiology of the body directly we can see we can see and measure when it comes to mind that's 90 to 99% mind is how we experience life which then influences body so mind needs to have more literally more attention than brain and then physical brain and body because it's the mind that drives the brain and the body so all of us battle with mind issues. So I'd rather talk about mind issues versus mental illness or mental ill health or neuropsychiatric brain diseases because that is taking a mental concept and subsuming it into a physical thing. So it's actually invalidating and it's also stigmatizing. So if you if I have five people in front of me that have all been diagnosed with clinical depression and I treat them give them all that diagnosis and a label and say okay just take this medication and do a bit of CBT or something like that to a therapy I have now completely invalidated each person. Why? Because each person depression is not an it they're not suffering the same thing. Depression is a signal a clue that there's an underlying issue going on. Each of them has a narrative so there's five people with five narratives and they have and and their narrative needs to be heard they need to be allowed to process their narrative their narrative needs to be honored and each person needs to no one can is an expert on anyone else's feelings or narrative. So each person needs to be supported through their narrative and some people may be more extreme than others but that's okay because that's their right because they've gone through something. So we've got to stop invalidating people's stories which we are by saying oh you have clinical depression take this tablet that's it you've got a neuropsychiatric brain disease you're already feeling terrible because of what you've just gone through maybe it's grief or loss or whatever or abuse or something now you get told you've got a brain disease on top of that and they can't even define it. There's not even signs for that it's just become a really good marketing tool. So what we have to be very careful of is invalidating and we've got to stop invalidating ourselves. We invalidate ourselves so you tell yourself it's okay to feel depression it's not a disease it's a warning signal as is anxiety frustration irritation guilt shame all of these are telling us something about what's going on in our life. So we show up with those emotions as warning signals and we need to become thought detectives. So we've got to have kindness and grace and give ourselves grace because where you are someone else is has been there in that depression or anxiety or frustration with their own specific narrative. So you're not alone all of us out there are needing to do this. 3% of leaders talk about mental health which means that the 97% don't which means that the people that they are leading think oh well that's that's the model I mustn't talk and that includes parents and that includes the churches the government corporate etc we all need to be more open and say hey I feel depressed today because of this and so it's it's owning it and expressing it and laying it out there and normalizing it and being able to support each other that's enhancing versus oh that one's got a neuropsychiatric brain disease. Just think of it like this if you have a dinner party and five and and there's a whole group of your friends and you turn up and you say hey oh I've got this neuropsychiatric brain disease I've got technical this and I've got to have all this medication and everyone at the table will start thinking okay this person is now a little crazy or whatever words are going on in your head but you will look at them differently and you will treat them differently even because of the implicit bias we have in us like we have implicit biases as white people with racism it's there it's because of how we've grown up we've had 40 years of conditioning to see people that say that their depress is crazy and is different and is weird and that's terrible because you and I are just as crazy as each other. We're all battling and we've got to stop thinking someone's different to someone else. But if that same dinner party is running and instead of you saying you've got this neuropsychiatric brain disease you come there and say hey guys I had such a week in therapy this week I discovered this and this had happened and then this happened at work and and it made me feel so and you tell your story. Everyone leans in and says oh my gosh I'm so sorry how can I help you oh wow I had a similar experience I think I can relate I you know that kind of stuff it changes the playing field it it levels the playing field the humans in life doing life together so that's kind of the overarching approach that this neuroscope will help people move into so the basic steps are once you've prepared your brain and got that mindset right you are gathering awareness. So gather is a very powerful word gather means that I control. I'm not going to sit under the apple tree and have the apples of life falling on my head and knocking me out. I'm going to stand back and say okay I'm depressed why I'm frustrated why I'm waking up every Monday or every day with Monday morning blues. So seven days a week Monday morning blues or I'm always getting in the same argument with my spouse or at work the same problem keeps coming up or whatever. I'm going to stand back and gather those apples and start working on them. So the first step is gather awareness. The second step is and it's very systematic this is the brain mind connection is interesting. If you want to change something you've got to be very systematic about it. So your mind is gathering all this data and it's a whole and experiences the whole thing presses it in the brain the brain builds a thought out of protein into these tree like structures and I'm going to hold up a plant which looks like a tree and a tree's got roots obviously in the ground this is what your thoughts look like this is the product of mind. So you experience what what you are listening to now is an experience that your mind is processing with the psychology of think field shoes and the science of gravitational fields, quantum physics blah blah blah it goes in your brain and you get all these responses chemically and electromagnetically and genetically and my words are now growing into trees in your brain. And these trees are made of proteins so this is a thought tree on this conversation and the words I'm saying and the questions and the discussion we have that's going into the roots because that's the source because this discussion is information we're giving and so that's any so any in any source is the initial experience. So this could be the this discussion it could be a lecture you attend a book you read a newspaper article you read a conversation you have a business meeting whatever's the source is there. Your interpretation what you think feel and choose about the content is there. These are little branches are all memories so the thought is made of memories so memories are inside. So one thought can have thousands of memories the root memories which are the source and then the interpretation memories this is how you show up now that's healthy. Here's a toxic one this is from South Africa by the way from the side of the road in Cape Town what is that it's a wiry looking tree and we I have had picked up every I've had two of them that I've picked up in South Africa. So use this as a thought tree to show a toxic tree. So there's the roots they may I bought this in Cape Town. Well actually this was bought for me in Cape Town by someone and um my previous one got stolen that I bought in in a hotel someone stole my other toxic tree from South Africa. Anyway so I've got a this one that I've been dragging around for like 10 years now. So here's now the tree structure healthy roots branches is toxic so it's made of wire so this is just to show the toxicity and there's your branches. So this would be the source the abuse the trauma the covert experience whatever and that's your interpretation. Source interpretation okay always and that's a thought tree made of proteins and that's the product of mind. So nothing can just disappear whatever you go through becomes something. And if you think about it long enough it becomes a bit wired into the neural network and then it influences how you show up because this influences how you show up. So if you have an experience it builds because that's how you experience it. If you don't pay attention to it it converts to heat energy and it won't influence you. But if you pay attention to it so if it's repeated thinking repeated experiences then this after period of around about 63 days which is nine weeks turns into a wired habit in your brain. So habits take 63 days to form. So the neural cycle is recognizing when bees build in that are toxic and and being able to deconstruct them and reconstruct them into these because these the body and there's no neurobiology for toxic bees so there's no for toxic thoughts there's no our brain and body are wired for love quite literally so all the structures of our brain and our body are designed for us to may be messy, have a messy mind but to also manage it. So it's totally normal to have a messy mind. It's totally normal to get thrown into an experience react negatively and catch it and fix it. That's what we're supposed to be doing. What a lot of us do do is we in a negative experience we don't catch it we stay immersed in it. That then keeps a cycle going where this is strong and it creates a response in the body this is made of proteins your the COVID the COVID virus is made of proteins the immune when the COVID virus enters the body the immune system responds by sending out immune factors inflammation occurs and it's trying to fight it this toxic issue this trauma willing at work the COVID loss of finances through COVID whatever you being exposed to racism in the products whatever it is that you've gone through all of us have lots of these experiences big ones small ones all of these are made of protein they are made of protein with vibrations in them and these gravitational fields and neurochemicals this is substance thoughts have weight these weigh you down these lift you up but they still have weight when someone's dead the the life of these goes so your weight literally changes okay so these things are real as real as COVID virus. So your brain and body see this as a as an immune as a threat so your immune system says hey you got a toxic suppressed issue you and sends out immune factors which then increase inflammation which changes and disturbs this and then the non-conscious mind which is in these fields picks this up because it's in the nonconscious mind too and then it sends you signals what are those signals depression anxiety frustration guilt shame condemnation all of those plus the gut ache the tension in your muscles the adrenaline pounding heart pumping all of those kind of things the migraines or whatever the physic the emotional and physical signals are clues that you need to fix something that something's going on in your life that you're going to need support with it's not just you as an individual because it could be a systemic reaction that you've that you've gone through like you know consistent racism or something or consistent bullying or something but it's a signal for you. So it's not an illness that you have to suppress it is a warning signal that you have to pull up and reconstruct. Okay and so that's for the little stuff our little bad habits that we have and for the big stuff and for the ones in between. So you can and then at the same time you can use the neuroscycle to build new habits. So that's good stuff if you want to change something in your life that you know you want to build something new into your life like a different you know business routine exercise routine or different way of whatever you know more rest or um diet or ex whatever or just different ways of responding to situations you can also use the neuroscycle for that. And you can use the neuroscycle for learning new information which is one of the most brilliant ways of building mental health resilience in the brain and body okay so I've only said the worst first one but you can ask me some questions.

SPEAKER_03 55:45

Yeah yeah no it's bringing the rest it's like it's like a letter I know there's so much there's a lot I tell you to get the books.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

I think yeah exactly and no wonder you've written 19 books because there's a lot to say there's a lot to say and also it's important Matt that people understand that there's no quick fix because I get interviewed so much as you know and people say okay give me the five steps you know give and you see that I don't just give them to you because if you don't understand what you're trying to achieve I'm just gonna add to the current wellness movement positive psychology quick fix technology era and I'm not gonna I refuse to do that. There is no quick fix this takes time to to really get to grips with these concepts if I can um share a personal story for a sec.

SPEAKER_03 56:28

I think I think I'm gonna have to get you back because I literally have like a small army of questions waiting to come. But um we've run we we've always run out of time uh unfortunately but almost but um my my mum is um you know and I don't like to talk poorly about anybody especially my my mom but um she's she I would say um maybe this maybe this will resonate with you or not but you you have this so I firstly believe just to go back to something that you said you you know going back to the Soweto story is that I believe that you you're not a product of your environment you're a product of your decisions and that that that links to your first uh you know your things your thoughts feels and then your choices right but it's both it's both is it both because you're thinking feeling and choosing it's that's it age I don't mean to interrupt you but it's the age old nature nurture debate but there's a third factor that's called the I factor so that's where you've got to look at all three it's you've got to look at in at your biology yes nature you've got to look at your nurture which is your environment and then you've got to look at your I factor which is that's where the decision the think field choose comes in.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

So all of those work together you cannot eliminate one or the other and it's not a it's not an either or it's an and nature and nurture and I factor. That's the I factor is the thing filled choose.

SPEAKER_03 57:46

Okay got you so um but decisions also are your are your ultimate power and if you make over time if you don't all the things you said around the tree and you know if you don't if you don't catch these things and you don't work on yourself because the hardest work you can do is working on yourself, you wind up in a state of mind that is very negative. Toxic like that's actually a much better word. So so my mom I I look at myself and I look at her and I and I and I think about that because it's acute for me and it's acute for my brother and my sister who have you know we all try to to support her um but it seems that we never quite get anywhere. So I'm using that context to to maybe ask you a question around where does it where does it go? Why doesn't it work? Because I think in many of us we we all aspire to become better versions of ourselves and you can see someone who is a high performance individual the mindset that that person has versus somebody that's just you know she's like battling to get off the couch sort of thing. So I you know just in your experience is there a commonality that you see around this this cycle of neurogenesis where you know everybody has the same potential to rewire themselves and create a better life for themselves sell more achieve more do whatever they want to do for themselves and you know having said that where it breaks oftentimes you get people who don't do those things despite knowing theoretically you know the five-step process or whatever um where does it go wrong for you?

SPEAKER_01 59:23

So the five-step process to answer that is your internal wisdom it's something what I've done is I've taken something we all instinctively know because you you said it in your last statement you said that I know what I should do but I'm not doing it. Everyone all of us have got that in us that we can become so what you're asking me basically is why do some people get stuck and just don't seem to move forward and seem to just no matter how much support you give them et cetera et cetera and that's where you ultimately got to be that led to your first thing that ultimately from you see from your life is that it's been the decisions that you've made that you didn't get stuck the same way that your mom did or has or is because there is that epigenetic factor of the nurturing that you've received the potential it doesn't mean that you're going to be like that but the potential would have come through the sperm and the over and is in you and your and your siblings but you've all chosen to to not live like that because you've seen that and you've chosen to override that so you had the nature you've had the nurture but you've used your eye factor so there's just I'm just confirming what you've already said giving you a little bit of the science behind it. So what is the difference between your question essentially if I understood you correctly is what is the difference between you and your siblings and your mom and we're not running your mom down because you you just that's your life experience and that's where you've come from and we've all talked about people like this in our lives okay we can all say this we've all of us got people like this in our lives okay and maybe we've been there at that point some at some point um and that's okay so here's the thing generally there's never one cookie cutter answer for anything but when people have not dealt with issues so there's suppressed trauma suppressed trauma is one of the most common things that is undealt with it's one of the most common things to humanity because we haven't allowed enough in in the development of us as humans we haven't met the basic need. And that and there was a time when we did meet it better and even then there were other things that went wrong but there's a basic need that we have as humans and that is that if I've experienced something I don't understand I need someone to help me process it and just to give me some perspective and I need to be in an environment where I'm allowed to process it. Now your mom I don't know how old she is but there is um if if she um if the if she I she's grown up I can seven sure she's your mom sever okay so she's grown up in an area where you don't talk about depression you don't talk about your feelings you basically put on a brave face and whatever's gone on you just you know you deal with it and there's you know there's feminism there's sexism there's a lot of other issues that can create have created different environments at different in different um in different generations and I'm just you know giving you the context of of um someone who's in the who's in their 70s she would have potentially grown up with that kind of nurturing and the in and the system where you just as a mother you as a woman you were mother you feed your kids you do yourself you just but there's may have maybe something happened to her as a very young child that she's never ever dealt with or in as a young adult or as a and she's never ever been really able to speak about it because she wasn't her train her her neurological wiring her predictions of her life are you don't talk about those you just handle them but these things are volcanic in nature so you cannot not did a podcast on this where you cannot simply just forgive and forget and you cannot just forget anything. I was actually interviewed about a podcast can we about COVID can we just forgive and forget no you cannot just forgive and forget you have to reconceptualize. You have to do the work because these things never go away they are so filled with energy they're generating energy they influence everything about you and whatever you push down and suppress if it's a a trauma is pervasive. It's invasive it's viral in its nature so it invades I don't know if you've ever ever heard about the redwood in California but they it's a perfect example of toxicity in in in a negative in a positive negative sense they have the biggest root system of trees the redwoods and there it's so extensive that's what trauma does it has an extensive pervasive influence um and it's and it's so distorted and if it's suppressed over time instead of it staying if you think of a big forest and you think of a trauma being just a part of the forest most of it's green because those are experience most of our experiences will be like this and then there'll be these in between a trauma that's undealt with seems to be very pervasive. It has a big very strong root system and so it grows it influences eventually it influences all one's functioning and if you never allow to actually go dig down and deal with that trauma it will influence how you function and it'll that how you show up very often is stuck. And like your mom I'm telling you she'd be able to probably list out all the things that she shouldn't be doing. Probably had those conversations with you but the bridge between knowing and doing um will only happen when the deconstruction process she has to embrace process and reconceptualize which means that you don't have to you never take someone's story away but you change how it plays out into the future. But that requires a lot of work it gets worse before it gets better. It's very scary and the first thing that's going to have to happen before anyone who's who's suppressed trauma for years is you have to give yourself permission to actually face the trauma. You have to get rid of that other toxic mindset that's kind of chained this in it's almost like shut this thing off which is like a trauma on top of a trauma which is I'm I should have coped with this or I'm bad or this some distorted perception that has locked literally locked the mind into this thinking I don't deserve to deal with this or I deserve that terrible thing. But that terrible thing that maybe happened and that's pervasive is at the time as a let's say a three year old goes through a trauma or a five year old goes through a trauma or something. Even a 12 year old even a 50 doesn't really matter what age if you don't understand what you're going through which we don't with trauma it's so and it's the antithesis of how we function as humans you're building the coping mechanism and that can that can become so strong that you think you've suppressed it but it's getting stronger and stronger and more pervasive and and it blocks your ability to function and then you've got this other thing on top of it that oh I deserve that or I'm not allowed to talk about that or women don't do this or toxic masculinity men don't talk about the emotions all these stupid things that we've had over the years these myths that lock people in the cultural things religious trauma religious beliefs the other day I was interviewing someone who is from South Africa in the African American African American background um very fundamentalist religious had depression and was thought okay I'm bad because I don't pray enough I don't have enough faith I don't say enough prayers I don't read my Bible enough um you don't ever say that you're depressed in in the African in that particular tribe from Zimbabwe etc etc and that that blocked this person's healing and it was only when that person could lift that toxic tree off could the person then go do the work of why they In other words, I'm saying we've got to uh give ourselves permission to feel depressed, to feel those emotions. That's been very blocked. And the cultural upbringing center. So I would I'm guessing, but in someone like your mom's case, there is you you've got to peel away the first thing, hey mom, it's actually okay to say you're depressed. It's okay to feel this. You know, let's talk about this, let's get it out, but now let's move forward. Not hamster wheel, let's now progress forward through these are something that you need to put. Maybe she should go to therapy. So start working, use the neuroscycle.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:28

Yeah, I was actually saying to my sister, I can't actually, I don't think she's ever been in the sort of help. And I think it's such an important thing maybe to end to land and and maybe end on because um I think everything that you're saying, you know, as I mentioned earlier, like the hardest work you can do is the work you can do on yourself. And um if you don't, you can wind up in a place that's it's all it, you know, I do emp I'm very empathetic, obviously, because I love her. Absolutely. But uh but it's like I just I just I I you know I I I think about the therapist who would have to deal with you know 78 years of trauma because he that he or she would have to be the first person ever to have that space with her, you know. Um exactly, but the broader message is you know, you have to do this work, you have to do it, and it takes cycles of 63 days and you put the five steps on, yeah. Yeah, it's like six. There's this quote I love which is like success is is rented and you have to pay rent every single day. Um, and very good success, your rent is working on yourself, like making time to meditate or whatever you feel that go to go to therapy or you know, run through your your five-step uh sim as you described, whatever that thing is to you, but you have to do the work because no one's gonna do it for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:46

Uh no one's gonna do it for you. Yeah, you have to in talking about that renting. I actually explained in the book, I give the last chapter, I give sort of an overview of how I run my day. But with the, let's say if your mom's working on trauma, she would have to work, you go to go to your therapist once or twice a week, but you've got to live with your mind 24-7 so that you you you can use the neurocycle concept within a therapy context. We have therapists around the world, thousands, using it with their patients with tremendous success. But you've got to live with yourself between therapy, and you've got to live with yourself when you wake up at night, and that's where the neurocycle trains you how to not just get stuck, but to actually adjust to immerse, but to actually so there's a system like for detoxicoma, you spend 15 to 45 minutes doing the five steps over 21 days, and then for 42 days you do the first step. In other words, you can hear there's a system in place, and into that you start with brain preparation, which could be your meditation or whatever, but you've got to go beyond. You can't just become aware. I show in in my research, if you just bring up something, but you don't manage it, you'll get worse. You'll get way worse. Your brain will and body will get way worse. And we show that we showed people um wellness in their body, the cells of the body getting so sick, and people were actually um older um than their biological age. So the their biological biological age was older than their chronological. So someone who's saying their 30s were had a body of a 60, 65 year old. And with that kind of that kind of setup in your body, you're more vulnerable to disease and mind issues because it's a feedback constantly. So, you know, that's where we've got to go back step by step. When you're in such a bad place that you can't begin to think, okay, step one, I can do this, step two, I can do that. We need those very basic things to to keep us focused.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:24

Caroline, um there's literally so much I want to get into, like literally so much. Um, that uh obviously I'll have to get you back to the video.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:32

Yeah, I have to go to another interview, and you've got to put another interview.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:36

But I want to wrap up, I always ask my guests this. Uh it's an important question. Why do you do this? Like, what is it about this work that matters to you so much?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:45

Because it's such an uh uh it's it's what it means to be a human. It really is. How can we be it's so some I have had so many people in my years of practicing and the work that I do and in my own family and even my own experience, because I'm very self-regulated, and I'm observing myself all the time doing this kind of work, is that when you when you get a handle on your mind, there's a sense of freedom that comes that enables you to then bring your speciality to the world and enhance the world. And that's what drives me. That's where my curiosity lies is how can I get people to get an understanding that this is my mind and and it's okay to be depressing these things, but this is how you manage it. You know, so the messy mind versus the wise mind. We've all got both. And I want people to understand that it's okay to be a mess, it's in the mess of European growth, and this is it's okay to be a mess at our wise mind. So I'm really driven to help people to get that understanding so that they can then go out and do what they're supposed to do. Without that, right, if your mind's a mess and nothing else, you can read all the motivational books, do all the business seminars, you're always going to feel like under under the sort of under the whip.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:49

Well, on that bombshell, uh, go and clean up your mental mess by reading Dr. Caroline Leave's book, uh, Five Simple Scientifically Proven Steps to Reduce Anxiety, Stress, and just a whole bunch of suffering. So, on that bombshell, uh, Caroline, thank you so much for your time. It really has been a privilege and an honor hosting you on the show. I will get you back for sure. I'll get my team on that. Uh, but uh, thank you once again for your time. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:14

My pleasure. Thank you so much. It was great talking to a fellow South African, and I love the questions, and we got really deep there, so thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:22

Thanks for listening to the MapRound show, guys. Don't forget, you can catch me on all social media platforms for the latest updates, news, and a show history. So if you've been catching this on the podcast, please head on over to our YouTube channel and pound that subscribe button. It would be great to catch the video version there. And if you want a free copy of my number one Amazon best-selling book, You're in a game for free right now today, you can grab that on mapbrownshow.com forward slash ebook. Ever wanted to become a best-selling author? Well, I'm in the influence business and I work with business owners and CEOs and business leaders to help them scale their influence. And we do this as a team by helping you to become a best-selling author, sought-after speaker and industry influencer in only 30 days. My team and I have developed a system that delivers a best-selling book and a launch campaign 300% faster and a 50% less cost than anyone else in North America. This system is incredibly efficient. One of my clients, haiku, went from a 2% share of voice globally to an 11% share of voice globally in only seven days. If you'd like more information, head on over to showworksmedia.com for more. That is showworkswithinx.com. Ever wanted to become a best-selling author? Well, I'm in the influence business and I work with business owners and CEOs and business leaders to help them scale their influence. And we do this as a team by helping you to become a best-selling author, sought-after speaker and industry influencer in only 30 days. My team and I have developed a system that delivers a best-selling book and a launch campaign 300% faster and 50% less cost than anyone else in North America. This system is incredibly efficient. One of my clients, haiku, went from a 2% share of voice globally to an 11% share of voice globally in only seven days. If you'd like more information, head on over to showworksmedia.com for more. That is showworkswithinx.com.