Ep. 326 Dr. Caroline Leaf - Finding Peace When You're Overwhelmed, Anxious, or Stressed

When we live in constant noise and inner pressure, how do we learn to think clearly, live intentionally, and follow Jesus with our whole minds? In this episode, I sit down with clinical neuroscientist Dr. Caroline Leaf to explore the intersection of faith, mental health, and neuroplasticity. We talk about how renewing our minds is more than a spiritual idea - it’s a tangible, daily practice that can rewire our thinking and reshape our lives. Dr. Leaf shares practical tools to detox our thoughts, confront anxiety, and move toward healing and wholeness. This is a hopeful and grounded conversation for anyone longing to live with more presence, peace, and purpose.

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a researcher, communication pathologist, audiologist, and clinical and research neuroscientist specializing in cognitive and metacognitive processes and psychoneurobiology. Her passion is to help people see the power of the mind to change the brain, control chaotic thinking, and find mental peace. Dr. Leaf is the author of the bestselling books Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess, How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess, Switch On Your Brain, Think and Eat Yourself Smart, The Perfect You, and Think, Learn, Succeed. She’s also the host of the top-rated podcast Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess. When she’s not writing or hosting her popular podcast, Dr. Leaf conducts research, publishes her research in peer-reviewed science journals, and teaches at various academic, medical, corporate, and neuroscience conferences around the world. Dr. Leaf and her husband, Mac, have four adult children and live in Cleveland, Ohio.

Caroline's Book:

Help in a Hurry

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Transcript

Caroline Leaf: 0:00

People need to understand the difference, the need to create that gap, the difference between reacting and responding, and find the technique that works for you individually, so that when you are triggered in the team meeting, each person is taking responsibility for themselves to manage their reaction. You Joshua,

Joshua Johnson: 0:29

hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, we're constantly surrounded by noise, endless headlines, hurried schedules and the quiet weight of our own thoughts. It's really easy to forget that our minds aren't just along for the ride. They could be shaped. They could be renewed and healed. In this episode, I sit down with Dr Caroline leaf, a clinical neuroscientist who has spent her life exploring how our minds work and how we can reframe our thinking to live with more clarity and purpose. We talk about what it really means to renew our minds, not just as a cliche, but as a daily practice that changes the way we live and love. Dr leaf gives us practical ways to deal with toxic thoughts, untangle anxiety and step into a story of hope and wholeness. So join us and learn how to slow down, pay attention to what's shaping us and learn how God is at work even in the tangled mess of our thinking. Here is my conversation with Dr Caroline leaf, Dr Carolyn leaf, thank you for joining me on shifting culture. Exciting to have you.

Caroline Leaf: 1:42

Thank you, Joshua, it's nice to be on your show. Thank you. Yes, it's gonna

Joshua Johnson: 1:45

be good. So let's dive in. You have a new book help in a hurry, simple tips for finding peace when you're feeling overwhelmed, anxious or stressed. And I think we all need those tips at the moment. I think the world is feeling this way. Yeah, so sure. Thank you for for this. We you start your book out explaining a little bit about the mind and the brain and the body and how it intersects. And I think it's a good foundation for us to get started on these simple tips. So can you explain some of the the thoughts behind mind, body and brain and how they interact together.

Caroline Leaf: 2:23

Absolutely, that's a really great place to start. So I'm going to fuse a few props so those that are just listening, what I'm doing is I'm holding up a brain in a skull. It's not a real one. And basically, we have been very misled in our current culture Zeitgeist to think that the mind is the brain, but the mind isn't the brain. And so one of the key things to understand is that your mind is separate from your brain. And in understanding that, it's very hopeful, because it gives us the it empowers us to know that, well, with my mind, I can change the brain. I'm not controlled by this physical thing inside of my head. So the research, and I've been in the field now for 40 years, the research shows, and this research, research shows for the last 40 years, but for years before this as well, we've always actually understood, for 1000s of years, we've spoken about the mind and the soul, mind and the soul and the body. We've always made that separation. So it's quite an, if quite a modern idea, that the mind and the soul are one, or the mind and the brain are one. I said mindful. I mean mind and brain. That's great, but it's a modern idea, and it's not actually correct science. So the first thing is to understand that your mind is 99% of who you are. Your mind has different levels. Your mind is all powerful. Your mind is the dominating force your mind is you. It's how you think, how you feel, how you choose, how you experience life, how you love, how you understanding this conversation, how you make choices good, bad and ugly, the impact of that, how you show up in life, how you adjust that. So all of that is mind. Mind also drives our physiology. So the fact that your heart beating right now, the fact that we make 800,000 2 million cells every second, the fact that your lungs are helping you breathe, the fact that your hormones are working, all of that is driven by your mind. When we die, the life force goes out of asset, as we all know, within 10 to 20 seconds of the heart stopping, the brain stops and the body starts disintegrating. So the thing that separates an alive person from a dead person is the mind. It's a life force. So it's a big word that incorporates all those psychological and neurophysiological elements, and that's good news, because the mind is there for the thing that's doing, the stuff that enables us to be a human, and the brain and body simply act as hosts. So in this process, we as humans gather information from the outside with our mind. So mind is this filter, and what I always try and help people understand, just to get a visual, is if you just put your hands in kind of an arc around you that is a your in. Energy field, and this is nothing weird or Woo. Woo. Energy is the same thing that makes your cell phone work, enables us to talk over zencaster Like this. Energy is an electromagnetic force and radiates, and we what we see from science is that as As humans, we have our own energy force that is connected in to the world around us, and it comes from an original source, whether you believe that's God, godness, whatever one believes. Okay, so what we see from really hardcore science is it's this force that we pick up if you do an EKG on someone's heart, or if you do an EEG on their brain, or you have a sonogram, so anything where we are seeing a response in the body that when a person's alive that's been driven by mind that's on the physiological level, then the psychological level, how you show up, what you say, what you do in any one moment of the day, how you respond in your relationships, at work, etc, that's all mind. That's basically the mind, how the mind is showing up in the moment. Okay, so now, where does help and hurry fit in, and my work fit in. We know as humans, we think, feel and choose. We have free will. We can choose, and sometimes we are very reactive, and we don't always make the right choices. Every single experience we have, we react to, we respond to, we want to try and respond versus react. When we respond, we are going to be more organized, and we're going to access wisdom and that kind of thing, if we react, we're going to bypass wisdom. So where does wisdom set? This elusive wisdom concept, wisdom is the core of the levels of mind. So mind is, as I've explained, this big part of us, and it's got different levels. The conscious mind is awake when you're awake, sleep, when you're asleep, and that obviously our conscious minds operating now. But then we have another level, that's the main main level. It's called the non conscious inner end, and that's our spiritual level. It's where our wisdom resides. It has an eternal component. It's beyond space and time. It's where every single memory we've ever had and will have is stored. It's on our side, finding stuff that's disruptive and making us consciously aware of it. So it's quite brilliant. It's our core. And what we want is to in our life as we go through our day to day moment of life, we want to always make sure we're accessing that wisdom. So we want to manage our mind, so that manage our conscious mind. So with our mind, we want to manage our conscious mind. We want to consciously manage our conscious mind, because the conscious mind is a amazingly excitable. It's learning. It's like a toddler. It's up and down, and it needs guidance. So the toddler is learning in a really constructive way, but without a parent, the toddler could make a lot of mistakes and lot of things could happen. Same thing with our conscious mind. It's this driving, think, feel, choose, up and down, beautiful thing, messy thing, but it needs guidance. So what we as humans need to learn to do, and this is really now we're getting to the core of helping hurry this new book, is we need to be self regulating, moment by moment. So we need to catch that 63 seconds, the 60 seconds, it's a scientific there's a body of research showing us that in the first 60 seconds, if we can regulate the 60 seconds, we can we become much more effective at managing our mind in the next 63 in the next hour and the next day and so on and so on. We also can train ourselves by managing the 63 seconds. We can upskill our ability to self regulate the patterns in our life, so maybe the bad habits that we've built, or the new habits that we do want to build, or the trauma that we haven't dealt with, or those kinds of things, and then we can actually capture those patterns, and we can rewire those mind, brain, body networks. And that rewiring takes around 63 days. So I'm playing here with with numbers, but there's hardcore science that we see within a 62nd Second component. We can influence how the mind takes in the whatever's coming into the world and whatever thoughts are coming up, and we can control what that looks like in our mind, brain, body network. Why do we need to do that? Well, whatever wires in produces your behavior. So it's how you're going to show up. So it's important we regulate in advance. You can also use that this concept of 63 days is once we have managed the moment we see the patterns in our life that are disruptive, the bad habits and so on, the undealt with traumas, as I mentioned, then we need to actually take the time to over 63 days to work daily for around 15 minutes to rewire those networks, because you're not going to change something in your life unless you rewire the mind brain body connection. Because it's the mind, brain, body connection that's very solid and made of energy and proteins and chemicals, and they don't go away in one day or one minute. In one minute, you can start creating that awareness and capture the moment, but to change anything in your life that requires that commitment. Now we know that life keeps happening, so you can't just. Do 163 day neurocycle. It's called a neurocycle. What you do and think you're okay, you can't just do 163 second. It's a lifestyle. So I'm talking about helping people manage their mind in the moment and then manage their mind the patterns that are disruptive over time help in a hurry. Specifically, are 18 areas that we surveyed and from clinical research found that is the is what really worries people, things like you mentioned, people feel burnt out, people feel exhausted, people feel how do I deal with this anger that I'm experiencing, this reaction that I'm having to people, this regret cycle I'm being stuck in these people pleasing moments, these these triggers that are activating me. How do I capture those in the moment so I don't mess up my response in the moment and mess up meeting the conversation, the relationship, and then how can I stand back and say, Okay, this is a pattern in my life. I'm going to commit to working on this over 63 days. So that's what this book is. It's in. It's helping you in that gap. It's helping you in that moment.

Joshua Johnson: 11:04

Well, in that moment, it's really, really crucial, and it's extremely practical and it's helpful. This book is fantastic, and it's so so take me into something so one of the the tables that you talk through is you go from a mind hack, and then it goes into a mind shift. If I'm taking Christian language, spiritual language, you know, thinking about repentance, metanoia, which is a change of mind, then that actually, then moves into a change of direction and change, of course, change of habit. This is a practical way of what what repentance actually looks like, right? How you can change your mind. So take me into this table. What is this mind hack into the mind shift? And how do we start to rewire some of these connections?

Caroline Leaf: 12:33

Great question, fantastic. And I'm so glad you brought up those, those terms. And I'll throw in another one, besides the sort of repentance metanoia we are supposed to be capturing all thoughts, and we supposed to be renewing our minds. So if you think of capturing all thoughts, whether you Christian, whatever you philosophy, you believe in as humans, to be a decent human, we need to self regulate those moments. That's what the kind of answering the first question. So that's bringing all thoughts, not just the ones you feel like bringing into captivity, but all thoughts and then renewing is, at present continuous. We're supposed to be constantly renewing. So as humans, we're supposed to be living these lifestyles of being aware of what we thinking. Because not all thoughts have been created in the right, you know, with the right sort of foundation, they've they've been we've been reactive, or we've been angry, or we've been coming from a pace of pain or whatever, and they feel real, but they're not necessarily real. So we've always got to be very aware of the thoughts and how they are driving or functioning, and then we've got to, you know, recognize the patterns and so on. So essentially, in in this, in this particular book, my other books, and my neuro cycle app, neuro cycle being the formula for how you do this, the broad formula this book deals with the 63 seconds, the techniques that you've mentioned for the mind, like the mind deck and mind shift, and then the the neuro cycle app takes you through the five steps of the neuro cycle over time. So in the moment, let's say now that I someone says something to me in a meeting, and it's really no makes you angry. You You just think you know, like in your mind, you're going, what? How can you you know? Really, you know. And you just, you just want to you just feel yourself losing it. You can feel your heart palpitating, because immediately your blood pressure will rise. Because you're the minute that we get stimulated with something that's made us angry, we get a massive release of things like catecholamines, which can increase your blood pressure, which, if you don't manage, can become a problem, and all kinds of stuff. So in that moment, what can I do? So my mind hack portion is to say, in 63 seconds. Okay, in that 63 seconds, or 60 seconds, I'm playing on the word 60 number 63 but it's around 60 seconds. 63 because it takes 63 days to form a habit, 63 seconds to catch and before it becomes a problem. The first concept is not to deny or suppress or react, but to create a gap for yourself. The 6063, seconds is creating a gap like on a traffic light. You've got the orange and the red before you go green. We want to buy that time. So the mind hack portion is I've been activated with anger. I'm going to do something like breathing. Now, when we breathe, we all know we need oxygen to live, but maybe you didn't realize that the energy of that angry comment that has come at you and your angry response that is an energy, a burst of energy. It's like an actual physical collation of electromagnetic energy that attaches itself to oxygen. So if you don't control that, that reaction, not only is it wiring in as an actual network made of proteins and chemicals and energy in your brain, but it's also hooking on the back of the oxygen you breathe in, so you've got a double weight. Me battering your brain and your body and that just make you more mad and whatever. So what you can do is you think, Okay, let me breathe just to get my physiology under control, but let me make sure as I breathe that I'm telling myself it's okay to be it's okay to be angry, it's okay to be okay. I'm dealing with this. It's not going to affect me some kind of hack of it's okay to feel like this, but I'm not going to let this control me. And you say that yourself as you breathe in. And there's many different ways of breathing, but something like anger, I would use trigger breathing, which is where you take a deep breath, and then as you breathe in, as much as you can, you take another extra sip, and you can even feel your head feels almost like it's pounding, but it calms down your neurophysiology. And as you breathing, as you do that, it's almost like you could even close your eyes or look away. You do that breathing, and you say to yourself, it's okay, it's okay. Yes, they've made you angry, and it's justifiable. You feel angry. It's okay. We're going to get this under control. So it's saying some kind of little statement along with the breathing, and that's a mind hack. You're using your cognitive skills to face your conscious mind, to face this issue, to repeat it back, to tell you it's okay. It's okay. You're justified. Well, you're not justified, but it's okay. I recognize it's not who you are, you know, it's that kind of thing, and the breathing now we go into because that could take you maybe five seconds. Honestly, once you once you know how to do don't wait for a crisis to learn how to do these, read the book and practice them. So when you when you're in a good place, and so when you're in the crisis, you remember, okay, trigger breathing. It's okay to be not be okay. And then you move into a mind shift. But just so in between the mind hack, which is this breathing and self talk, facing this issue, not denying it, you then just want to say to yourself a little bit of you know what? They have made me angry, but I'm going to shift my mind. I'm going to do a mind shift. I am going to accept, accept those words, but I'm not going to make them I'm not going to let the anger be attached them. I'm not going to let them make me upset because where they where that's coming from, that's their opinion. It doesn't necessarily, I don't have to accept that that could be coming from there. They could be sad, they could be upset about something. They also have an opinion. They're entitled to their opinion. So there's also this self talk, but you're shifting your perspective. You're not aligned. You're not saying, Oh, this makes me so mad. How can they do that? You're not doing that because you're not going to get an answer to that. What you're saying is, okay, this does make me angry. Those words do upset me, but let me be curious and let me be compassionate. Mind shift is curiosity and compassion aligned. And when you align curiosity and compassion, what you do is you create a protective barrier around you, which generates energy to them and calms them down. It calms you down. And you say, Okay, well, there's another perspective. And let me be curious, they could be completely wrong, and maybe they are, but maybe there's something I can learn from that. Maybe there's something in that data that could help me grow. So it's that kind of thinking which can also take you, you know, takes me longer to explain it, then once you understand what to do. So essentially, it is hack the physiology through the breathing and a little self talk acknowledgement. So breathe and acknowledge. Then it is do this shift where you can shift the perspective, the compassion and the curiosity aligned. Now in the book, you mentioned a table. In the book, I've created tables for you that this is why I say, don't wait for the moment to practice this work through the book and find the techniques that suit you in these tables with QR codes that you can download, and you can work out the best these kind of phrases in advance. And have a little toolbox, build a toolbox, so when you in the moment, you can do that, that you can quickly move through the mind hack and the mind shift. And that's one. There's, so many different techniques. I mean, there's another thing for anger in the moment, for example, is you can visualize these little techniques, like you could visualize that person shrinking, or you could visualize, if it's critical self talk, a great way of dealing with critical self talk, which can come from someone saying something angry to you. It can affect your self confidence, and you can find yourself criticizing yourself, which means you've absorbed their anger and you've taken it personally, and you've made you've turned it inward, and now you're criticizing yourself. You could imagine that that comment that triggered the self talk, or triggered that react as being like a little ant, tiny ant, on a stage, and you watching it. So then you create this distance. So this is sort of psychological. It's like, think of the messy, the conscious mind being this toddler, and it's a parent you're saying, Okay, well, let's look at this objectively. That's an ant. So honestly, this works so well. If someone really upsets you and you get critical talk going, just see your critical talk as an ant on a stage, and immediately you've distanced yourself, and then you're curious about, you know, why are you saying this? And it's the same thing, that mind had mind shift concept. So there's just a couple of ideas

Joshua Johnson: 20:26

that's really helpful when we're walking through those first 60 seconds, to actually move us to a different mentality, to have this mind shift, and we can diffuse the situation. One of the chapters you talk through, you talk through technology. So I want to go into the 63 days before you've talked about, like a 21 day detox, you're moving into now 63 days with your neuro cycle app, and here, in helping her, you talk about 63 days of building a habit. So how do we move into 63 days? The problem with me trying to build a new habit is that within those nine weeks. I don't want to do this new habit anymore. I don't want to this isn't what I want to be doing. So what is, what does it look like for me to stay the course so I can get to those 63 days? So as you're talking about technology, maybe we talk about technology. So if I wake up in the morning, the first thing I want to do is I want to just scroll on social media, because my brain is not awake yet and I'm just waking up. But I don't want to do that. So I want to move into a new habit of maybe journaling or something, where I could just not be on my phone. Okay. What does that look like?

Caroline Leaf: 21:45

Okay, so two parts to your question, the 63 days and the 21 days. So let me clear that up. It's always been 63 days, three cycles of 21 so what we So, it's so what we find is that in the 21 day, idea came from a doctor in the 60s who was a plastic surgeon, who found that his patients were healing from surgery in cycles of 63 days, sorry, in cycles of 21 days. Stem cells work in cycles of 21 days. And so he then just wrote a book that became popular myth about, oh, well, that's how we change a habit, which is not actually accurate. We do a lot in 21 days. If you work daily, and you work, you follow a formula that manages, that helps you your mind, brain body connection, work properly, which is what the neuro cycle does. The neuro cycle just sort of side note here the neuro cycle. Neuro as in brain cycle, cycling through your if your mind cycling through your brain and body is a is a formula based on 40 years of research and clinical application, showing how, based on the science of thought, how does a thought form in the mind, brain, body connection, and though, what are the steps involved? And it's five basic stages that your your mind goes through in building receiving information and building it into the brain. And then you can reverse engineer those five steps to rewire something, and so for something to become part of the mind and body network, which means energy, proteins are made, chemicals, networks grow. That doesn't happen in five minutes, four days, 21 days, for it to be a stable network that drives how you show up as a human, in other words, not picking up your phone first thing in the morning and scrolling and rather doing something constructive, like maybe journaling your dream or whatever, or just even getting in a good mindset for the day, or whatever it may be. That won't happen in one day, 21 days, or 63 days. The first 21 days, you're going to get really good at at the process, because in the first 21 days, there's a lot of breaking down and building up of a new way of thinking. So the breaking down, the deconstruction, reconstruction process, happens there. So it takes about 15 minutes a day. The second two cycles of 21 which makes 42 days. Those in those two cycles, what you're doing is stabilizing the new network. So you built the new habit, but it's not a habit, yet. You build the new pattern in 21 days, but then you've got to grow it. So it's kind of like planting a seed. It's a seedling with tiny little leaves in 21 days, but for to be a plant that can withstand, you know, to go into a nice, big tree that provides shade and won't get knocked down with the first wind that comes. You have to keep watering it, and it has to grow. And that's what you're essentially doing with the second 42 days. You stabilizing it so that it moves into a state in your what we call the non conscious mind that I mentioned earlier on. And when something is in the non conscious mind, it's become wisdom, and it's become wisdom that is driving in a very intelligent way, where you learn the way that you whatever you're doing. So if you take the social media thing, that sounds like quite a simple thing to do, but you know, you stop, why would I need 63 days to stop scrolling? Because you've created certain responses and that kind of thing. So you want to find something interesting, and you may find the first couple of days, you need to find out why you you, that's what is that satisfying in the first place? That's scrolling, and you've got to define something as that's an alternative that's more constructive. So you there's a learning process going on. Once it's done, hit the 21 days, and you do the other 42 days, where you stabilizing something, there's still a learning process going. And an easy way to explain this is actually with like driving. For example, when you learn to drive, every you learn to drive, then you know how to drive. So there's a process of learning, and then it's become a habit. But a habit doesn't isn't you? Is. Isn't this automatic thing that hasn't got intelligence, which is what people think it's become that you controlled by habits. We are. We are. Our habits drive us. But there is always a learning component. So even if it's the scrolling on social media, every time I do it each morning, I'm still learning. I'm learning how to do it even more badly and I made I'm adding fuel to the fire. So there's a learning component in our habit formation. So like driving, if you get in the car, you've got a whole new experience each time you drive, because there's new traffic and there's different whatever. So there's constant learning going on in our habit formation. So in the 42 days, we establish a baseline, and then after that, we keep on growing, and we keep improving, and so on and so on. So when we talk about driving without thinking, you're always thinking, but you're thinking you've got your baseline. So that's why we need 63 days to, you know, get yourself to floss, even floss every day. That's very simple compared to dealing with a mental health issue. So when you're dealing with like trying to change a trauma or trying to change a bad habit, getting irritated or angry all the time. That's going to be a little harder to do, and is going to maybe require even multiple cycles of 63 days, something like getting yourself to floss or go to the gym or something like that, which are more mechanical type things. It's still to get that into really good habit. You're still going to need around 63 days, but you could spend maybe three minutes a day versus 15 if it's the more complex one, if that makes sense. You

Joshua Johnson: 27:05

know, in your book, you talk about stress, and you said it's a pressure that could cook a great meal or it could blow a lid, right? So we have different types of of stress. So stress can be good. I want to know, like within a team, when we're talking about these mind hacks, going into mind shifts, and we have all these stresses and stressors within our work as a team, how do, how have you organized? Or how do we organize around some of these things so that we can, if we do trigger each other, which we will in a team, we're going to trigger each other, and we're going to have stresses and stressors. What does it look like to implement some of these things within a team setting to help us move forward?

Caroline Leaf: 27:50

Very good question. So stress is good for us until we don't manage it, then it becomes bad for us. So stress keeps us alert and focused and but when we start becoming reactive, like when we get irritated with that team member who said something where they didn't do something, or they spoke with a certain tone that aggravated you, or you don't like how one team member wants to do something, and you've got your own way, etc, etc, that those kind of intolerances or things that create friction in a team are coming because each person isn't managing their own mind. So it does definitely start with a commitment of each team member to understand this concept that if I am triggered and angry, then let me do that little sip, breathing, mind, hack, whatever, and then let's talk about this. Because this is a regular thing that's happening in our team. When this tone is used by this person, it tends to create this kind of reaction in that team member. It's not productive, etc, etc. So two parts, number one is you have to educate. You have to people. Need to understand the difference that need to create that gap, the difference between reacting and responding, and find the technique that works for you individually, so that when you are triggered in the team meeting, each person is taking responsibility for themself to manage their reaction. So if there is that you know that your tone of voice tends to aggravate X person, then you know it's you speak about it, but you then have a way of when someone says something you want to irritatively say, but I've already sent you that document. That tone immediately will, you know, some people can ignore, but someone else will be aggravated. If you had that discussion as you want to react like that, you can do a little breathing, do a little maybe imagine the ant on the stage, or maybe imagine the tumble these, or these, whatever little whatever hack you've decided to use, and then get yourself under control so that when you do say, Oh, I sent you that document. But is it? Is that confusing? In other words, you're going to you're going to mind shift, and the words that come out of your mouth are not going to be an irritated tone. Without already sent you that document, it's going to be okay. I have sent that document. Maybe it was confusing the way I sent it, you know, it's which is kinder and compassionate, and that immediately will generate the other person say, oh my gosh, goodness, sorry, you actually did send that document, but it's kind of confusing like that. Could we maybe look at another way of whatever, versus, oh, I sent the document. Oh, you're always getting irritated or just shutting down, and then the meeting loses wisdom, because the minute that we are irritated with each other, we are not going to see the things we supposed to see. So education and taking, you know, what is this thing? What actually happens? What is the energy I'm generating when I'm getting irritated in that team? What is that doing in terms of shifting positive stress to toxic stress? How is that. Causing pressure in that team meeting, pressure is good. Like pressure and stress go hand in hand, as you actually really understood that very nicely. And the pressure a pressure cooker, which is the example I give, is a great way of cooking food, but it's got to be used in a certain way, or the pot will explode. And that's the same thing. We all need to be sharp and alert in our meetings. We need to be in good pressure and good stress. And to get into good pressure and good stress is to understand what pressure and stress are, and what are the triggers in the team for each other be honest and open, and then say, Okay, well, I'm going to work on that. And then you find your technique, and each person finds their technique and they practice. Does that make sense? That

Joshua Johnson: 31:19

makes a lot of sense, and it's very helpful. All of this has been extremely helpful. This book is really helpful. If you could talk to your readers, the people would pick up help in a hurry. What what do you hope your readers would get from this? What is your hope for this book?

Caroline Leaf: 31:33

I love that question. You know, the I feel like this book is the missing link, and the missing link, because when you tell someone and you actually already reacted to this in this way that I predicted is you tell someone you want to change a habit, and it's going to take 63 days. Their first reaction is, okay, 21 days was bad enough. Now you're telling me 63 you know, I've had people asking me, isn't there a way of fast tracking this neuroplasticity? Because essentially, what you're directing is neuroplasticity, which is the ability of the mind, as for the mind to change the mind, brain, body network, and there isn't a way to fast track. But what the but if you manage the missing link, which is if you manage the 63 second seconds, if you can manage that 62nd block, and how you react, suddenly your wisdom changes, your insight changes. You get access. You see things differently. It's unreal how these things work. You see things differently, and then suddenly, okay, I see the reaction that difference in my life in other people's lives, and I can see that that's a pattern, and therefore I can see that it's worthwhile spending the time. Unfortunately, you can't fast track a change of a network because of the fact that these proteins involved in chemicals and energy and and there's a whole, there's a there's a physics principle operating. And the physics principle is that we need that time. And as humans, we need that time to grow. And we do live in a zeitgeist of Make it fast, make it quick. Biohacking movement. You know, those biohacks are fine for the end, you know, that sort of end stage, but you still have to go through the

Joshua Johnson: 33:07

work. That's good. So go through the work. Don't stop, but actually go and so, as Dr leaf says, 15 minutes a day, that we could actually start to create these things and these habits. But we also need to create those, those 60 seconds mind shifts. It happened to me this morning as I was actually going through spiritual direction with my spiritual director identifying lies in my life that I'm believing. And one of the things that really helped was positive memory and going back into positive memories that actually counteract some of those lies that, then, you know, have triggered me in my life and to move a different direction. So positive memory, gratitude, things that you talk about but we haven't

Caroline Leaf: 33:52

talked about, yeah, you're quite right. I'm so glad you brought that up and well done for doing that in here. I do have a whole section there, because what our non conscious mind, which is that spiritual wisdom part of us. What it will do is not just look for the most disruptive thought and make you aware of those to work on in the moment, to catch them in the moment and start self regulating and then in the long term. But it'll also capitalize on the good stuff, the good memories, because those activate our endless resilience. We don't run out of resilience. We get exhausted, then we think we no longer resilient, or we think that we've got compassion overload or compassion fatigue, and those kinds of things, what we have is we haven't spent enough time also looking at the good stuff, which doesn't mean that you're just going to take a positive thought and replace it with a negative. What you want to do is draw from the energy you want to face that negative in its face, because and be curious about whatever that toxic thing is, because it's it's data, and you have to deconstruct and reconstruct. So you can't put a positive affirmation or a scripture on like a band aid. You have to do the work, but to have the resilience to stick out the 63 days and the moment by moment, stuff of the day to day life, of which you'll see my book as well. I talk about it's okay to not be okay. 95% of our day, we're not all smiley happy. We're just getting through the day. So in order to have the resilience to get through the day, you also want to definitely focus on those prompts that come up that are you deliberately and intentionally thought, hey, that really happy moment with your family member, or that great, inspirational discussion that you had with a team member. You want to also not just let them through your mind. You want to catch them in that 6060, seconds and and look at them and say, how did they make me feel my body feel? And, you know, spend that time, and then what you do is you add more energy to that. You make it stronger than that. Network activates in the mind and body network, and then it literally opens the door and adds more resilience to your toolbox.

Joshua Johnson: 35:48

Yes, perfect. Well, Dr leaf, thank you for this conversation. This was fantastic. I think very helpful. Really, want people to go out and get help in a hurry. It's going to be available anywhere you get books, so go and you could get that. Is there anywhere else you'd like to point people to?

Caroline Leaf: 36:05

Well, I think what's really helpful is the neurocycle app, which is available on iTunes and the Google Store, and also there's a web version and is a if with for your listeners, if they want to get the neurocycle app, they just have to put in the they go to the web version and put in the in caps, welcome. They can get 30% off a year's subscription, and that's the neurocycle app. And so that's a great toolbox. If you've got this book and the neurocycle app. I mean, I've got lots of other books too. You can get whatever. You know, there's lots of there's a whole book just explaining the neurocycle in depth, which is the system, the formula for what you do each day and what you do in that moment. But the neurocycle app, it's like, literally me giving you therapy, holding your hand through those 63 days, doing the five steps daily. So then the combination of that, plus this, I think it's a great combination to help you learn to self regulate. And that really shifts them, shifts the game, puts you into a state of mind management, truly catching thoughts and renewing the mind.

Joshua Johnson: 36:58

Well. Thank you so much for being here. It was a fantastic conversation. Really, really enjoyed it. So thank you so much.

Caroline Leaf: 37:05

Thank you so much. I love the questions. Thank you. You