151 Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess: Halfway To A Clearer Mind

We reach the practical heart of Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess and unpack the five-step Neurocycle that turns insight into change over 63 days. Simple on paper, hard in practice, the method helps us embrace tough thoughts, find root causes, and stabilize better habits.

• shifting from science to application
• the knowing versus doing gap
• five steps of the Neurocycle explained
• why embracing emotions is essential
• reflect and write to reach root causes
• recheck and reconceptualize with care
• tree analogy for pruning and grafting
• active reach and 63-day stabilization
• integrating grief and growth without denial
• setting up next steps to direct the brain

Read this book with us — join the discussion on Substack and find the link on our LinkedIn

Transcript

Welcome And Halfway Milestone

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Welcome to What's on Your Bookshelf, a life and leadership podcast where we live out loud the pages of the books that are on our shelves. With your host, Denise Russo and Sam Powell.

SPEAKER_02 1:29

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf. This is our Life and Leadership podcast where we're living out loud the pages of the books that are on our bookshelves. My name is Denise Russo. My friend is Sam Powell, and together we are reading Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess by Dr. Caroline Leaf. Today we do hit the halfway mark in the book. How are you doing today, Sam? Good, good. I I can't believe we're I think I say this all the time.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

It just feels like one of those things that um I'm I'm reminded of the quote. There's like two quotes that are similar-ish, but it's essentially the idea of like things happen slowly and then all at once. And I all the books always feel this way because we're just doing it chapter by chapter. And I'm often reading them as we go. Like I'm reading and recording, you know, with you. You you get you're better at reading farther ahead or of like rereading books or things like that. But um, so it just feels like this iterative little bit, and then all of a sudden we're halfway through, all of a sudden we're done. All of a sudden we've done three years of this, and it just feels um crazy. But I think that I don't know, I think that's kind of what she's sort of getting at in, you know, how even just you know, re cleaning up your mental mass, re-reimagining your brain and things like that. It it happens bit by bit, and then all of the sudden type of a thing.

Simple Steps, Hard Work Reality

SPEAKER_02 2:54

I look back to some of the books that we've read, and it's almost as if you could see the threads from the other ones and how they fit into this one. And to your point, some of these books we read over three years ago, but there's still things that I remember, and then there's lots of things that I don't remember. But I feel like since this book was set up so that the first half was teaching us the science, it's hard to remember all that part, but at least it sets the stage for this next part, which is about how do you actually apply this into your life? It's the this part, actually, is part two is the practical application of the neurocycle. And even in reading these last chapters of the book, I think you're gonna find, and the listeners that have been with us for a while will find these glimpses of some of the things we've already learned about obstacles and about taking control of your life during difficult times and how to be happy despite your circumstances and how to learn lessons that will survive past you to become your legacy. So I'm looking forward to diving into the five steps of the neurocycle, which is chapter eight, where we are today, because I don't think that it is what she says on the cover, which is simple. Five simple steps. I don't really think it's simple, but let's see how it goes because we're gonna have to do some experiments on ourselves. I think I do.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

I was thinking about that as I was reading this part, is like I I need to pick something and I need to go through a cycle of of this and really, really, really test this out. And it's funny because I think that the steps are simple. Doing them is hard work. And I think that that's I think that that's all the stuff that's the best in life to me, right? And like it's that dichotomy of it feels like it's easy, right? Feels as if it's a simple thing, but to actually make changes, to actually go get the life you want, to actually clean up your mess, to go get happiness, to embrace your obstacles. It's hard work, but it's worthwhile work, even as you work through the simple path to get there. It's hard.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

If you think about going to the gym, I was thinking about this recently because I actually was was touring this facility that has a gym inside of it, and the layout was super simple. There's some treadmills, there's some bicycles, and there's some weights sitting on a shelf and maybe like some balls and yoga mats. That was it. But as simple as it may seem, that yes, you pick up these heavy things and put them down, or you walk on this thing that helps you to get stronger in your heart. It's not easy to get into the habit of doing those things to get stronger. And this 63-day cycle that we're gonna have to try, maybe it is that it's simple on the surface, but that it is going to feel heavy or it is going to be challenging. But to your point, it's going to be worth it if we can sustain past just the 21 days. Yeah.

Knowing Versus Doing Gap

SPEAKER_01 6:09

Yeah. And I think that that's, I don't know, I think that that's so true with a lot of things, right? Like it's it's simple, the steps to being physically healthy, right? Like eat eat healthy foods and exercise. That's it. There is no secret, there's no shortcut, there's none of that, right? Especially in the like Ozempic world we live in right now. Like there actually really isn't a shortcut if you're trying to get to sustained long-term, you know, self, self-fulfilling health. But it's hard to do those things, right? There's so much that's in our way, right? Like a simple gym can absolutely get you physically, you know, in the healthy direction, can get you fit, can get you those things. But you gotta show up, you gotta go, you've gotta do the reps, you've got to put in the work. And this is the same kind of thing. And and and everything's like that, right? Like if I wanted to learn the piano, learning to the piano is not hard in theory, but it's very difficult to sit down and do, right? Like you have to be willing to do the hard work, to put in the reps, to, you know, to make that happen. And and this five cycle, you know, this five-step cycle is is like that. And she, you know, I love that she describes the five steps. They she says, at their core are a delivery system. They deliver the parcel of knowledge to your brain and body. So you can go from knowing how good something is for you to actually living a good life. This is what it what this means is that you can learn to use your mind and discipline your mind, your thinking, feeling, and choosing to go from knowing about good lifestyle decisions to actually making good lifestyle style decisions, right? And I think that that's that is the that's the gap we're all struggling with in some aspect of our life, right? There's the we know what we want and we know how to get it, but and actually right, making those decisions, making spending the time on them to close that gap is where most of a struggle, right? I think you and I know that for us coaches, right? Like we can usually sit down and untangle something with someone, get them pretty clear in a session, right? Like I can get you to define what you want next in a single session. Getting there is work, right? And that takes time, and that's the difference between knowing and making and doing, right? The you know, the thing that you want.

SPEAKER_02 8:53

I think people, Sam, just want answers, almost like easy answers. Maybe it's like this new life of Chat GPT where you just type something in and expect it to tell you everything. And then you get frustrated because you start yelling at your at your bot about the fact that it's not listening to you and it's not really answering you the way that you want it to. She actually starts this chapter with a really interesting quote. I don't know this person, Chris Jamie, that she quotes at the beginning of the chapter, but I thought that in this day and age where people are relying on somebody else to answer everything for them, or something else to answer, it was a really interesting quote to start this off, which is that in the age of technology, there's constant access to vast amounts of information. The basket overflows, people get overwhelmed, the eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it's the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what's going on. And so when we are going through this chapter, it's important to remember that your brain not only never stops thinking and your mind never stops processing, but at tremendously fast, enormously high volumes of synapses in your thinking, right? So she said you can't go three seconds without thinking.

Information Overload And Deep Thinking

SPEAKER_01 10:26

Yeah, and I think that that's I love that quote. And as we were talking, I was actually just flipping back to it, and then you started to quote it. So yeah, I think it's that. Like it's the in this world we live in, you can find out any piece of information that you want. Everything we know is is accessible, but the problem is what do you do with it, right? Like, what do you do with this? And this is where I think uh this approach is the difference between the people like right, the people who really embrace something like this and get to this deep level of like taking control of their mind. That's the difference between like a real, sustainable, peaceful, like successful life that you want versus somebody who might accumulate. I I've seen a few things this week where people are talking about more, or you know, there's a concept of like kind of this hustle culture of like I go, go, go, go, go, I get, get, get, get, get, I accumulate, and then it feels empty, or it feels, you know, like I'm just hustled for what at the end of the day. And it's, you know, I think she made the argument in the first half of this book, like it's deep thinking that we're wired for. It's the what do you do with the information? Like, okay, that's great. Like, and I think about scrolling TikToks or reels, like the short form videos. So much information that like lights up my brain for a hot second, and then I move on. It lights up my brain for a hot second. And honestly, I'd be better off watching one, one short video, and then spending the rest of that time I'm scrolling thinking about it, right? Getting into the depth of it. And that's really what these five steps are about. And I don't think we've actually talked about them, but the five steps is one gather, two, reflect, three, write, four, recheck, and five active reach. And like, I think about the first half of this book and all the scary, scary things and all the data and all of the like, we will change your whole life by you implementing it. And then these are the five steps, and I'm like, what? This is this is how I'm going to clean up my mental mess and get myself in this like extremely healthy, just great, peaceful, wonderful space I'm gonna be in. It's like, I can this it feels too easy, right? It and it goes back to like what you said. Like, I don't think they're simple, but she says simple. Like they these are simple things at the end of the day. And we should probably jump in and like talk a little bit deeper about what you disease are. But like when I read the list, I was like, huh, this I don't know. There's this is the magic sauce, but as we get into it, it's like, oh, this this is the magic sauce. And I've I've done this in different spaces over time. Like, I didn't know I was doing it really, maybe, but it is it is it. It it it is absolutely the thing that can change your life, your thought, your trajectory. It's kind of crazy simple, but very hard.

SPEAKER_02 13:24

So maybe the way we do this part, Sam, is since some of our listeners maybe aren't reading the book at the same time we are, or at all, they're just listening. And maybe you are somebody who is listening and reading along. If you are listening and reading along, we're in chapter eight. Okay. And so if you're not reading the book, first of all, I want to encourage you to get the book. And we should have uh links in our LinkedIn for sure. I share links to the book, and I think we just probably need to put the link over on the Substack. W-O-I-B is on there. Yeah. So so here's the gist. First of all, before we start the foundational principles of this, is think about something that is bothering you. It could be a thought, it could be a habit, it can be something traumatic for you right now. It could be personal, it can be professional, but there is something that you are experiencing. It would be unlikely there's not something you're experiencing that that caused you to want to listen this far, at least with us about this book. There's something causing you to want to clean up something in your thinking, right? I know for sure there's something that this entire last half of the book has challenged me to think about. It's a very personal thing for me. And so step one is to gather the information, and she calls it embracing, which I think sounds not the way I like it to sound, because she says you have to embrace this toxic thought habit or trauma. And what she then ends up by saying is that you're basically cutting open this thought with a scalpel, which sounds super violent.

The Five Neurocycle Steps Overview

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Yeah. You know, so what's the thing? It's funny, I like embracing. It's and maybe it's because I've done this in some harder spots. Like I've spent some years in therapy, right? Like I think uh this is some space that I've done, but I I I think I like embracing, but it's very uncomfortable. Very, very uncomfortable. And she says embracing means acknowledging, facing, accepting, and willingly and mindfully gathering awareness of the emotional and physical warning signs of your brain body that your brain and body sent you. And it's funny, I was listening, this was years ago. Um, I always encouraged like different kinds of professional personal development on my team when I ran an organization. And one of the managers on my team, who I just absolutely adore, he brought this podcast series that Brene Brown did. And it was my very first exposure to her, like years ago. And the big takeaway, the thing that still like probably the big thing that changed my life was she talked about emotions as your warning signs, right? And in a world where we grow up, where it's like emotions are, I think especially as women, it's like, oh, don't be so dramatic, don't be so, you know, like, don't show me all your feelings, right? Like we live in this, like it's talking toxic masculinity at the end of the day, right? Like of we're tough, we don't feel things, you know, emotions are bad. All emotions are bad, right? And the only acceptable place to show them is in sports for some reason. The uh she talked about emotions as your flagposts. They're your little flags that are being waved and saying, pay attention, right? And they're nothing more or less than that. They're just letting you know what's going on. And this is what this first step is all about this gathering, this embracing step is you looking at it in the eye, even when it's painful, and saying, I see you, I will think about you, I will understand what you're trying to tell me. And that's really what this is. And I think this is the hardest step. This is the one that if you haven't had experience doing this, if you haven't grown up in an environment where people do this, which most of us haven't, like let's face it, society-wise, we just haven't. This is very, very hard. And I think a lot of people don't get past this step because everything afterwards, there's difficult parts to it for sure. But if you aren't in the habit and you haven't rewired your mindset around what emotions really truly are, and that they're they're not negative or positive, they just are. You're gonna struggle really hard with this first step, I think, at first. But I think embracing to me feels right because it really is. It feels like it's wrapping your arms around it and looking at it regardless of how painful it really is, and knowing that that pain is telling you something, or even that joy, right? There's the up, there's all sides of it. It's telling me something. What is it that it's telling me? What is it like it's the naming of the emotion? And I think that that's no, sorry. I needed to pause there because I just think that this is the step that people struggle with the most because of how we collectively are raised by society.

SPEAKER_02 18:21

This is sort of like a tool section. So imagine if you're somebody who doesn't feel well, you maybe can't self-diagnose why you don't feel well for some reason. And we were talking about this before we got on the camera today that you sometimes have to go to the doctor and they have to run a test. So maybe it's an x-ray, maybe it's a CT scan, maybe it's an ultrasound. It's an assessment of the thing that is traumatic in your body. But the X-ray, CT scan, and MRI and ultrasounds, they don't fix the problem. They're just illuminating it, right? And so then you have to process what's going to happen next. And so she calls the next part, the step two, and the step three, the reflect and write part, the processing steps, which is you taking the scalpel of that thought or that trauma and you cutting it out, and you're performing this surgery, and the processing of it is it's deep, and it forces you to have to go underneath that. What was it called? The like the one layer down, not like the subconscious, but there was like a different word for it when you get one layer below.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

I think that is the I think it's conscious, subconscious, non-conscious, the subconscious.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

So it's in this, it's in this thing that's under the water, and that maybe if you had goggles on, if you were scuba diving, you could see it, but you would only see it if you were right at underneath the water. But it's not the deep where you can never go. And so this processing part, the surgery part means that this is you taking what you've acknowledged and and the MRI and the ultrasound and the CT scan of your thinking. And now you have to do something about it. You're writing things down, you're reading about things, you're learning things, but then to the point that we always talk about, even in our own model, is if you want something different in your life, you have to do something different, which means that your actions or inactions have to be looked at, which in in her case she calls the reconceptualizing.

Step One: Embrace And Gather

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah. And and that's um, right, and you think about this of like, and I think your analogy is perfect, right? It's like if you were using a physical symptom of like something hurts, like, oh my stomach hurts. It's and it's chronically hurting. It's all the time, like or it's every time something happens, it's hurting. And you instead of ignoring it, right, you look at it, and that's that that first part of the acknowledging, the embracing part of it. Okay, I see you pain, I see you trigger, I see you thing that is happening. And then those the second step where it's the you know, processing is like you said, okay, now that I've got the CT scan and I'm looking at it, what is it telling me? Right? Like what are the what's the impression of it? I just had a CT scan last week. And it was like, what's the impression of it? What when I go and look at everything, is it telling me is the thing that's there? And what could be the cause of that? And going to that deepest level of, okay, I'm seeing that, you know, there is this obstruction or there is this thing that's going on, but why is that there? Right? Like what caused it? And she talks later about you using the five Y process, which I use in business all the time, of like, why is this happening? Well, why is that happening? Well, why is that happening? Well, why is that happening? And if you do it five times, you get down to like root cause essentially. And it's really that like getting to that super deep. Well, what is the actual thing that's creating this um, you know, obstruction? Like I think about like kidney stones, right? Or like an easy thing, like, oh, I have this pain all the time. And it's like, okay, we ran the CT scan and it's kidney stones, and you're like, okay, but what's causing the kidney stones? It's like, oh, well, you drink an inordinate amount of sweet tea. And like your body can't process that, right? Regularly. And so it's like that. It's like, well, what is that? Right. It's like between your body and you know, the thing that you're doing to your body, it's having this issue, right? And so it's it's really getting down into it. And then when you're getting into that, the step four and step five of the recheck and the act of re the reconceptualizing. And I love like she gets deep into reconceptualizing, but it's that, okay, well, if my body can't handle sweet tea and I love sweet tea, what do I need? Like, I have to accept that and figure out what I do about it, right? Like, is there an alternate? Is there something else I can do? Is there, you know, a new way of doing it? It's not just being like, whoa, it's like you know, adjusting it entirely, like it's really embracing it. Again and thinking about it totally differently. But yeah, I think your your analogy is spot on of the the medical, the medical piece of it. That's really what we're doing, but with our mind and brain here.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

So if you think about whatever that thing is that you're thinking about um awareness, this is not like woo-woo mindfulness stuff. This is science. We spent an entire first half of the book talking about the science. And here's the gist. Once you know what that thought is or that thing that's bothering you personally or professionally, it could be a relationship thing, it could be something about the tasks that you're doing. It could be about how you use or misuse your time in your life, whatever the thing is that's bothering you. What happens is once you become aware of the thing and you accept it and I guess embrace it is the point, that actually tells your body to release some specific chemicals and that switches your genes on and off, and that flows your energy to your brain and blood flow and oxygen to the front part of your brain. And if you do this with this process that Dr. Leaf has, she says that you can repair damage. This is, remember, we said um last week, I think it was that your brain is damaged. That's just truth, and that's the science behind this, but it doesn't mean your brain is broken, it just needs to be repaired. And so you repair the damage from this emotional intensity and chronic unmanaged stress by acknowledging and accepting and reminding yourself. And then you move to the next step, which is well, what do you do with this piece? And it goes into even more science of what happens to your body physically, because you actually have to get rid of the poison, if you will. And so you might feel sick or first, right? Like when we were talking about having the flu and stuff. You have to throw up and you have to have other things coming out of you in order to get the sick out.

Processing: Reflect And Write

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I think that that's where, like, you know, this is this is where it's it's a simple process, but it's a very hard process because you are facing things that are deep, that are from your childhood, from events that have happened to you, right? That are things that are really in your way. And you know, I and like you said, you you then you get into the place of, well, what do you do with that? And she talks about this reconceptualizing. And that, you know, she says that reconceptualization is the recognition and removal of the chains that bind you to the past. It's the trial becoming the testimony. It's incorporating your story, which is now redesigned with the pain accepted and neutralized. And like that's different, right? Because I think about like surface level stuff where they're like, oh, you have a negative thought, replace it with a positive thought. And it's like, that's not what we're doing here. That the part of the strategy, right, that we get into of like one of the things that we we do in some spaces, but that's not what this really is. This is again like facing it dead on, accepting it for what it is, knowing that, like, yeah, I went through this pain, I went through this entirely and integrating it into your life. And like this to me, this reminds me so much of like the grief journey that I went through when we lost our son. Is that like I think grief is so misunderstood. It and I had somebody the other day, like somebody who like is a professional, like therapist, like talk to me about like I was talking about something and I said, this is a grief to me. And they were like, well, you don't need to be sad about it all the time. And I was like, I don't mean that's not what I mean with grief. Grief is it's so much deeper and broader, but like the thing about deep, deep grief is, and especially on a loss, that like on the other side of it, is that you have to integrate it into your being. And I think that's what this reconceptualizing really is, right? It's not, we're not avoiding, we're not doing it, we're making it part of our story, but we're making it not hurt as much every time we touch it, right? It's like you're uh you're making it part of who you are, what you've gone through, how you face things, how you adjust things, and you're finding the path of like peace and acceptance in it that helps you when it comes up, because like again, grief never ever ever goes away. There will never be a moment, a day in my life where like the grief of losing my son isn't part of it. But I can either let that drown me in toxic sadness and never move forward with my life, or I can integrate this through this like reconceptualization of it. What am I going to do with this? What am I, how does this change how I show up and what I do in the world? And you know, she's she says, you know, rather than honoring the past, um, it's not about ignoring or suppressing what you've gone through, but rather honoring the past for the growth it has brought into your life and incorporating this change into your day-to-day living. And like that is a huge difference. And again, like I've experienced this firsthand in a very big way. And it is absolutely like is a feel like I can give a testimony to this. Like it very much is a big thing. And I especially when I see how I approach and handle this compared to other people in, you know, who've gone through something similar, it's it changes the entire trajectory, right? And if you go back to atomic habits, you should be far more concerned with your trajectory than your current outcome or situation. And and I think that that reconceptualizing is like the the big difference in this whole system, that you've got to know you're going for something much deeper than we're just replacing the sad with the good, right? The hurt with the pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

It's my hope, not really for myself, but for the listeners as well, that what the ultimate end to this book will be is the realization that this is about evolution. Every day you have an ability to not replace who you are, but to adapt and remodel who you are, and not just to focus on who you're becoming, like my word of the year is becoming, and I'm focusing on that, but I'm focusing on it in the moment of each of the days. And so we were talking earlier about how the weather has been a little bit cold for Florida recently, not at all like Pittsburgh, but cold for Florida, and all of the plants are just dying. We got a message from our HOA, and the message said, do not hastily chop down all of your bushes and your trees and your plants until the weather warms a little bit, and we can see if the roots are still intact. If the roots are still intact and the ground warms up, there's potential for regrowth, rebirth, renewal, revitalization of what looks dead on the surface. I'm looking at this stuff outside and thinking, I just really want to pull all this stuff up because it looks terrible in the yard. There's things wilting, they're brown and dried up or too oversaturated from being cold and having the frost. And she actually talks before she ends this chapter with the analogy of these five steps like a tree. And and that part I highlighted almost the whole entire section of going deeper into this because she says that step one part is you looking at the tree and gathering an awareness. Like if you could look out your window right now, I have a tree outside my window, and and she says, be aware of branches and leaves. Those are the behaviors that you attach to remotions, which is the tree itself. So I'm looking, and that tree right now, because it's winter time, doesn't have a lot of leaves, but I live in Florida. So there's a lot more leaves than are on your trees right now in Pennsylvania. And as I'm looking at it kind of waving back and forth out my window right now, I can see some of them falling off, but there's a lot that are hanging on. There's a lot that are hanging on by a thread that you could tell are about to fall off. But there's also ones that I'm looking at out the window, Sam, that look really strong. They're not moving at all and they look stable. And so that's really around what's the awareness about those things that we attach to these emotions. The and remember, this is about bad, traumatic, stressful, the bad thinking, and how we're changing that. Because we may not always want to focus on just the bad, but you don't need to right now focus on changing something good unless you want good to be great. Right. This is about changing all the bad stuff to make way for better stuff.

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Right. These are the things that are in your way, stopping you, preventing you, slowing you down, causing you stress over and over and over again. Like you don't have to attack every single thought in your head. Some of them are just fine. This is about really finding the ones that are in your way and identifying those and embracing them. And and I love the tree, I also highlighted the entire tree analogy because she goes on to talk about like when you get to step two, it's really about like focusing on the tree as a whole, right? The branches, trunk, roots, um, which are really the details of like your behaviors, emotions, you know, what perceptive, like what perceptive they bring and where they come from, right? So it's really like taking that step back of like, I look at the tree, I look at the leaves, I look at everything observable and observe what it is. Then I understand why it is what it is, right? Like what is happening, what is it telling me? What's the story here? And then, you know, and she talks about like step three is writing, which is like revealing the process. And then she goes into step four is when you get into the um, you know, reconceptualization. It's the pruning and grafting process. It's not the, well, I gotta rip everything out. It's I can't rip everything out. And so I need to um, you know, figure out which parts of this are still healthy, which are good, which need to be adjusted, which needs something new grafted onto it. And then that's step five is stabilizing and consolidating. It's where you allow the new plant to settle a little bit before you do more work on it, right? This is a process. It is not something where it's like, I go through the five steps, one, two, three, four, five, and it's done. It's the work of one and then two and then three, and then four, and then five ends up in a bit of a cycle for a while or ever, really, right? Until it becomes part of who you are and how you show up in this world.

Recheck And Reconceptualize

SPEAKER_02 34:07

She kind of ends this chapter, Sam, by saying that you can change something only when you're conscious of it. And so that's the point of this is learning what this cycle is is really learning about what that thought is that you have and what you're gonna do with that thought. And then next week we're gonna talk about how you direct your brain to change that thought and to change your physical nature as well. Because we did say, I think every chapter so far that she drives home the point that if you don't change your thinking, that you literally are killing yourself. Yep, which is terrifying.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

I was told my friends about this over the weekend, and I was like, listen, I'm scared out of my mind after reading this book, but like I think it's critical for the life that I want moving forward.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Yeah, this book I mentioned to you, I got years ago when I heard Dr. Leaf speak at a John Maxwell conference. And I got the book because she was really impactful in the moments that I heard her speak, and I thought, oh, I want to read that book. And then I didn't. And it sat on my shelf, and it's a really pretty cover, and it looked great uh as a decoration on my shelf. And I'm so happy that when we decided what this year was gonna be about with decluttering, that this became the first book because really getting our mind right is gonna set the stage for how we get our lives right. So, Sam, thanks for joining in on this book for this part of our series and this part of the year.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Yeah. And for anybody listening in, like I said, read this book with us. Um, you know, join the discussion with us on Substack. But um, the the beginning part of this book's difficult to read, I think a bit because of all the research and you know, medical, like if you're not a scientist or medical professional, it can get a bit harder. I found it when we turned the corner today into this section of the book, it um was much easier to read, but I was grateful for the foundation of the first half of the book to really understand what this is. So if you're reading along, you know, like come on, you gotta push through with us because it's a little bit uh a little bit of a harder read on the front side, but then I think it gets much easier on the back and it's worth it getting to to this point.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Yeah, this is about changing your thinking, and we want to change your mind. So keep coming back for more. Next week, we will be back with chapter nine, which is directing your brain for change. But for this week, my name's Denise Russo, and on behalf of my friend Sam Powell, this has been another episode of What's on Your Bookshelf.