March 5, 2024 • 21 mins
Please enjoy this presentation I did at the EPIC Community event all about deep focus, music and neuroplasticity.
Let me know if you have any questions via @drgregwells on social.
Also you can ask me questions via the Dr. Greg Wells GPT that is trained on my books: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-AetMyeiiv-dr-greg-s-wellness-gpt
Have a great week everyone!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey everyone, welcome back. Great to be with you.
Thank you so much for joining mefor another episode of the
podcast Super Psych this week tobring you a section of a
presentation that I did all about deep focus music and
neuroplasticity. Basically our ability to get
into a beta brain wave state that's hustle, focus, execute,
(00:20):
get stuff Done mode the. Achilles heel for?
All of us on this right now is distraction, which is a common
challenge in this era of distraction that we are living
in. So this is.
Probably one of the more important episodes that I'm
going to post this year, becauseit all leans into the philosophy
of defending your attention, protecting your mindset, putting
(00:41):
yourself in the best possible position to have the positive
impact that you want to have in the world this year.
So I hope you got some good ideas out of this.
We want to learn how to focus better, we want to leverage the
power of music, and we want to change our brains for the
better. And that is all what I try to.
Present. During this session I did and
here is a snippet of that presentation.
(01:04):
As per usual, if you have any questions, comments, opinions.
Thoughts. Concerns.
Let me know via social at DoctorGreg Wells or through the
contact section of my website doctorgregwells.com.
That way we can make sure that we are sending you the
information that you want to hear about this year and elevate
your life. And today is all about elevating
your focus, controlling your attention so that you can direct
(01:26):
your attention and energy towards what matters to you the
most. All right?
Please enjoy my conversation andpresentation all about deep
focus, music and neuroplasticity.
Today is very much about you. Yesterday was about the body
that was sleep, nutrition, exercise, plus all the other
eight million things we covered.And today is going to shift up
(01:47):
into the brain, and we'll talk about 3 specific things maybe
about the brain and do our very,very best.
So I would like you just to use this time to think through how
you think, practice metacognition, give yourself
permission to contemplate. Maybe there's a new path
forwards. Maybe by adjusting certain
(02:09):
things, I might be able to move in the right direction.
And really give yourself permission to ID 8 and innovate
yourself for the next 70 minutesor so that we'll be together.
And I wanted to begin today by just highlighting that a little
tiny thought for you. The little tiny thought is that
I have one very specific irrational fear.
(02:33):
I'm sure that this is how I diedin a previous lifetime,
actually, And it is drowning, believe it or not.
So I'm a swimmer, spend most of my life in a pool, a lake and
ocean, rivers, paddling, swimming, diving.
But for some strange reason, I'mterrified of of drowning.
Which is fascinating given how where I've spent the majority of
(02:54):
of my life, and there's a very specific fear of drowning that I
have, which is fear of drowning in a cave.
I don't know why that exists, but it does.
And it's always it's always beenthere.
A couple summers ago in August, I took my family to go have an
adventure and Stu texts me and and this happened to text me at
(03:15):
the same time said hey Greg, what are you up to?
And all I did was I just opened up my map and took a snapshot of
the screen and sent it to him and there was a little blue dot
in the middle of the ocean. There was a a piece of land
sticking out onto my phone GPS screen and all it said was
Somalia. And I sent that to Stew and I
(03:35):
didn't say anything and I left it for like a month and then I
got back, I was like I was just on vacation, dude, it's going to
be OK. But while we were out in the
ocean in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I had the
opportunity one day to put my family and they were just on the
beach and everything was fine. And I was like, I think I can
actually go dive into a cave because it just the water was
(03:57):
the way that it was and it was perfect.
So I went to the ran over to thethe place where you can go and I
asked the two like top people, Iwas like what's the up what's
what are my options today And like well we can take you diving
to fulfill this fear that you have.
Weird. But anyway, and they're like,
but here's the deal, you got to go out, We put go out on top
onto the top of a a reef. But then you got to go down
(04:18):
through a tunnel, a very thin cave underneath massive, huge
granite boulders through and around these things.
They're like, they're like, it'stight.
It's like, OK, whatever. But then you get to what's known
as the cathedral, and it's a space where you open, everything
opens up underwater, and you're just surrounded by what they
(04:41):
refer to as the cathedral. And so we go out onto the boat,
we move out, we go out there. And I'm just doing everything I
can because I love leaning into the things that sketched me out
the most. Because I find it when I'm
training, when I'm pushing myself, when I'm climbing, when
I'm up on the mountains. And now when I'm into the ocean.
That is when I find all of the things that I don't love about
my psychology, which I can then work on, deconstruct, and then
(05:02):
try to build out later. So we got there, we drop in, we
swim over this. Hole which is.
Probably about the size, maybe about even the size, about half
the size of this stage. So I'll go over here, this this
part right here and we drop in two guys go, I follow them and
straight away I look to my left and there is like a 10 but
(05:24):
sharks sleeping on the rock right to my left.
Like could it be like any worse?We go down and they go
underneath this first massive boulder and it is pitch black.
I'm like and I follow them down and we go underneath the rocks
and we're swimming in and amountstuff and you're just trying to
stay as calm as possible becausethere's only about 3 1/2 feet of
(05:46):
space for you to go through. So with the tank, you're like
your face is on the ground and you're kind of like looking off
the side to see stuff. And eventually you see the light
literally, and you emerge out. And it is just like this most
unbelievably stunning place thatis just like, I can't even begin
to describe the magic of that particular spot was just
(06:07):
awesome, worth every single second.
Now when I was going down through that space, leaning into
fear, managing it at the best that I possibly could to come
through and have this most unbelievable experience on the
other side. The reason why that I think,
popped into my brain this morning as I was trying to
figure out what I was going to do today, which may not end up
(06:29):
being what I do today apparently, is that I felt like
that was a really good analogy for what a lot of you are going
through right now. And I feel that all of you are
either at the point where you'relike as you can see the the hole
you're contemplating going down through the hole, you're looking
at the shark, maybe you're in and amongst the boulders.
But hopefully what I can do today is help you manage that
(06:50):
such that we can all get to thatcathedral in whatever shape or
form that happens to take. For each of us and for our
minds. There are four very specific
states in which we can get to which enable us to navigate the
difficulties of our life. The very first state that you
(07:11):
can enter into is a state calledfocused attention, which if we
were to put electrodes all over your head and measure your brain
activity as you were doing that,it would cycle through about 16
to 30 Hertz. You can actually measure this 16
to 30 Hertz of cycles per second.
So when you are in focused execution, that is the state
(07:32):
that your brain is in. I put you into that state just
now by telling you the story of dropping through that hole in
the ocean, seeing the shark, going through the fear state of
the darkness and the boulders like I described that to you and
you were all staring at me. So I put you into that focused
execution state. I put you into beta brain wave
(07:53):
mode by sharing that story with you just now.
The challenge that we have I believe is that that state of
deep focus, that state where we are dialed in and our attention
and concentration is right wherewe want it to be, it's a very,
very, very high performing statefor us.
We get more done in less time. Your brain functions optimally
(08:15):
when you're in deep focus. One region of your brain becomes
active. Blood flow goes to that one
region of your brain to supply it with oxygen and glucose so
that you can think, you can draw, you can take the
photograph, you can have the conversation, whatever it
happens to be. The issue for us right now in
our world is that all of you need to focus, you need to
(08:36):
concentrate. You need to be able to control
and direct your attention to where you want it to go such
that your energy follows and youcan have the impact that you
want to have to ultimately elevate the world.
The challenge right now though, is when it comes to attention
and focus, is that we are being constantly and unrelentingly
distracted. And so I would love for you to
(08:57):
consider your ability, your willingness, your commitment to
controlling your attention, defending your attention, which
mirrors the first section of what we did yesterday, which was
defending your last hour to sleep better.
I want you to defend your attention so that you can live
(09:18):
better in an era of constant, unrelenting distraction and
addiction to distraction. These devices are incredible.
We have the entire history of all human knowledge in our
pockets at all time. Every song ever made, every
movie ever made. I can FaceTime my children
(09:38):
anywhere in the world. It's absolutely incredible.
But what I want for you is the intentional use of technology,
not the compulsive use of technology.
If you're looking something up to connect with someone
fabulous, If you're doomed, scrolling through social at 3:00
in the morning probably not serving you right.
(09:59):
So. But also consider Johnny I've,
who designed this for Apple, would not allow his children to
have one pretty powerful messageright there.
So let's work on that as a fundamental principle in
practice, to set the stage for the possibility of being able to
control your attention and direct it to where it needs to
(10:20):
go, where you want it to go, where you want your energy to
flow. Simple practice.
Dinner with your family, dinner with your loved ones.
These can't be around because even if they are turned over and
on the table, they still capture25 to 30% of your attention.
Think about that. If you're meeting with a client
(10:41):
and you have your phone up, you put on the table and you turn it
over, it really means the clientlike you're important.
But just in case, get it away, put it away.
Lean into what we need to do. My son is 9 years old.
He does not have any video games.
Ingrid Wells is 13. She has a phone, but she has no
social media, and she sees what social media is doing to her
(11:03):
friends and she hates it. I consider that one of the
greatest achievements as a dad, right?
Just like that's. I'm just going to win that for
right now. Lean into it and be like, OK,
that was fine. Onwards next thing that we're
going to try to do. So defend your attention
relentlessly. In an era of constant
unrelenting distraction. This is a practice.
(11:25):
This is a yeah, it's a practice that requires you to put up
guardrails, but then also work as much as you possibly can on
learning how to allow your attention to go where you want
it to go. So I'm going to play a little
piece of music now. It's about two to three minutes
long. And during this time I would
(11:48):
love for you just to sit, stand,just take a moment.
And the reason why I'm going to play you this music is what I
would love for you to do is to allow the music to play, ask you
to allow your attention to go tothe music, notice when it
wanders away from the music and then bring it back.
And we're just going to practicethat together.
(12:08):
We're going to practice focus, we're going to practice
controlling our attention. When I did this with the Olympic
team, what we would do is we would put two sources of music
up at the same time and ask people to shift their their
attention from classical to rockor back and forth.
I'm just gonna put one U for youright now.
Let's just lean into this for a minute and maybe if the guy's at
(12:28):
the back and just hoefully this comes through, there we go.
(14:22):
How awesome are you guys? Anything that you can do to
practice capturing your attention, directing it to where
you want to go, staring into theeyes of a loved one, listening
to a beautiful piece of music, writing, journaling,
appreciating art, connecting with the people that matter to
you the most. All of that is, I believe, one
(14:46):
of the single most important unlocks to elevating our lives
in an era of constant, unrelenting distraction, and
especially an era of tension, stress, and anxiety.
By no means do I mean we need toclose ourselves out and not
recognize the fact that there are injustices in the world that
we all in this room can positively impact.
But I want your attention to go where you want it to go, not
(15:08):
where the algorithm wants it to go.
And we practice that by putting up guard rails, turn off all of
your notifications, and also practicing capturing and holding
your attention through art, music, love, whatever that
happens to be. I will pause there, just talk,
Wait a moment. See, like any questions at all
about what we'll call beta brainwave mode, hustle, focus,
(15:30):
execute, concentrate, control your attention in an era of
constant, unrelenting distraction.
Any research on the frequency ofsound?
Yes. So I played you a very specific
frequency that was designed to pull you down into an alpha
brain wave state to enable you to which is where we're going
next. Actually kind of deliberate
deliberately to go there. However, the real hack for
everyone in the room that's the easiest is that if you want to
(15:51):
focus and direct your attention to one thing, let's say have
music playing in the background,you want to have music that you
are very, very, very familiar with music that you have heard
1000 times before you 2 Joshua Tree listen to that album 5000
times. I can play that in the
background as I'm working with no problems whatsoever.
Dr. Robin plays movie soundtracks any other, like
(16:14):
people who have music that helpsthem to do certain things.
Whatever that happens to be, it's all good.
I'm just, I am going to show youone slide.
I'm scared to show you guys slides, but anyway, we'll try
and see if I can get through 3/4.
There is a reason why athletes listen to music right before
they compete. It helps them to concentrate.
It helps them to focus. Look at Serena Williams, Michael
(16:35):
Phelps, Usain Bolt. The great ones do this.
If we dig into the science and look at this and unpack it,
there are 7 regions of the brainthat increase their activity
levels. When we listen to music.
These are the same 7 regions of the brain that down regulate
when we're depressed. We can use music to elevate our
mood. We can use music to help us
(16:56):
concentrate and focus. There's very cool research that
shows that music has these seveneffects.
That is Ingrid front row. At a concert that's eight years
old, it was relatively easy to get front row at Bryan Adams.
Trust me, she's now into Taylor Swift, and I'm going to have to
mortgage my house. But the one that I'm most happy
(17:20):
about on this is #3 copathy, which is empathy in two
directions. And what is most lacking in our
world right now, Empathy. The ability to understand other
people. So let's listen to some music,
right? Let's play some amazing.
Let's create a soundtrack for our lives and share that with
(17:41):
the people that we love the most.
Like, what music do you want to be listening to during your
workouts? Have a playlist.
What music do you listen to on the way to work that's going to
psych you up? What music are you listening to
on the way home from work? Calm you down?
What music are you listening to when you're having dinner with
your family? So many cool things we can do
here. Yeah, that might be the most
complicated question that I've ever received and it's awesome.
(18:04):
So let's just level it up a little bit here and see if I can
answer that question. So basically, can your brain
change? The answer of course is yes.
And the answer what? Like how does the brain change?
It's called neuroplasticity. Probably heard of it.
There's also bioplasticity whichis a bit easier to understand.
So if you go for runs on a regular basis, what happens if
(18:24):
the body changes? You get fitter.
If you lift weights consistently, what happens?
You get stronger. The exact same thing happens in
the brain. However, the body and the brain
are hyper adaptable based specifically on the inputs
combined with your genetics. So someone lifts weights, it
(18:45):
creates molecules, those circulate throughout your body,
they hit your DNA and they trigger the growth of new muscle
tissue. You get stronger.
Two people can do the same workout.
One of them will maybe respond differently than the other
because it's the environment plus your.
Genetics that determines. That outcome.
The same thing with distance exercise.
Two people go for runs. One person's VO2 Max improves
(19:07):
faster than the others. The exact same thing happens in
the brain. It's just not muscle fibers,
it's neurons and cells inside your brain.
Everything that we do interacts with the genetics inside your
neurons to change the way that they interact with each other
and their function themselves based on what you are doing
consistently over an extended period of time.
(19:29):
If you just imagine this scenario a full year from now,
between now and next year at Epic, at this particular moment
in time, the 30 minutes before you fall asleep, you either doom
scroll through social and check the news or you read biographies
of the greatest people in history.
How's your brain in a year Unrecognizable if you wake up
(19:51):
first thing in the morning, you practice the three WS, wake,
water, and walk. And on your walk you're
listening to audiobooks that help you to learn something
that's super important for your craft.
What does your brain change and what's that look like over the
course of a year? And memory learning is simply
the growth of new neurons that make connections to each other.
(20:12):
It's hard wired. These are physical structures
that change. And that happens when we sleep.
You build those new neurons based on your nutrition and you
can spark the growth of new neurons through exercise,
nature, meditation, music, art, journaling, all of these
practices. You fundamentally change the
(20:33):
structure of your brain. That can happen from the instant
that you are conceived all the way through, till the moment
that you die in a positive or negative way, depending on what
you do and of course your genetics.
So we can't control our genetics, we can control what we
do. So to some extent.
All right everyone. Thanks for tuning in, I really.
Hope that was helpful. Obviously it's a little bit of a
(20:54):
different format, but super psyched to be able to.
Share that information with you I.
Hope that it was helpful if it was.
Please share this with your community.
Please let someone else know about the show.
Let someone else know about the episode, forward it to.
Them and. That helps us tremendously If
you could also leave a review onyour podcast platform of choice,
(21:15):
whether that's iTunes or Spotify, that also makes a
massive difference for us and really helps us out.
And of course, if you can followme on social at Doctor Greg
Wells or on LinkedIn forward slash Doctor Greg Wells, that
would be tremendously wonderful as well.
Ping me with questions. Make sure that this is all about
you. And we will continue to build
content for you this year that helps you to be healthy, to
perform better and to get to a place where your well-being is
(21:39):
exactly where you want it to be.All right, everyone.
Thanks again. We'll see you in the next
episode. Really, really soon.
Hey everyone, welcome back. Great to be with you.
Thank you so much for joining mefor another episode of the
podcast Super Psych this week tobring you a section of a
presentation that I did all about deep focus music and
neuroplasticity. Basically our ability to get
into a beta brain wave state that's hustle, focus, execute,
(00:20):
get stuff Done mode the. Achilles heel for?
All of us on this right now is distraction, which is a common
challenge in this era of distraction that we are living
in. So this is.
Probably one of the more important episodes that I'm
going to post this year, becauseit all leans into the philosophy
of defending your attention, protecting your mindset, putting
(00:41):
yourself in the best possible position to have the positive
impact that you want to have in the world this year.
So I hope you got some good ideas out of this.
We want to learn how to focus better, we want to leverage the
power of music, and we want to change our brains for the
better. And that is all what I try to.
Present. During this session I did and
here is a snippet of that presentation.
(01:04):
As per usual, if you have any questions, comments, opinions.
Thoughts. Concerns.
Let me know via social at DoctorGreg Wells or through the
contact section of my website doctorgregwells.com.
That way we can make sure that we are sending you the
information that you want to hear about this year and elevate
your life. And today is all about elevating
your focus, controlling your attention so that you can direct
(01:26):
your attention and energy towards what matters to you the
most. All right?
Please enjoy my conversation andpresentation all about deep
focus, music and neuroplasticity.
Today is very much about you. Yesterday was about the body
that was sleep, nutrition, exercise, plus all the other
eight million things we covered.And today is going to shift up
(01:47):
into the brain, and we'll talk about 3 specific things maybe
about the brain and do our very,very best.
So I would like you just to use this time to think through how
you think, practice metacognition, give yourself
permission to contemplate. Maybe there's a new path
forwards. Maybe by adjusting certain
(02:09):
things, I might be able to move in the right direction.
And really give yourself permission to ID 8 and innovate
yourself for the next 70 minutesor so that we'll be together.
And I wanted to begin today by just highlighting that a little
tiny thought for you. The little tiny thought is that
I have one very specific irrational fear.
(02:33):
I'm sure that this is how I diedin a previous lifetime,
actually, And it is drowning, believe it or not.
So I'm a swimmer, spend most of my life in a pool, a lake and
ocean, rivers, paddling, swimming, diving.
But for some strange reason, I'mterrified of of drowning.
Which is fascinating given how where I've spent the majority of
(02:54):
of my life, and there's a very specific fear of drowning that I
have, which is fear of drowning in a cave.
I don't know why that exists, but it does.
And it's always it's always beenthere.
A couple summers ago in August, I took my family to go have an
adventure and Stu texts me and and this happened to text me at
(03:15):
the same time said hey Greg, what are you up to?
And all I did was I just opened up my map and took a snapshot of
the screen and sent it to him and there was a little blue dot
in the middle of the ocean. There was a a piece of land
sticking out onto my phone GPS screen and all it said was
Somalia. And I sent that to Stew and I
(03:35):
didn't say anything and I left it for like a month and then I
got back, I was like I was just on vacation, dude, it's going to
be OK. But while we were out in the
ocean in the middle of the Indian Ocean, I had the
opportunity one day to put my family and they were just on the
beach and everything was fine. And I was like, I think I can
actually go dive into a cave because it just the water was
(03:57):
the way that it was and it was perfect.
So I went to the ran over to thethe place where you can go and I
asked the two like top people, Iwas like what's the up what's
what are my options today And like well we can take you diving
to fulfill this fear that you have.
Weird. But anyway, and they're like,
but here's the deal, you got to go out, We put go out on top
onto the top of a a reef. But then you got to go down
(04:18):
through a tunnel, a very thin cave underneath massive, huge
granite boulders through and around these things.
They're like, they're like, it'stight.
It's like, OK, whatever. But then you get to what's known
as the cathedral, and it's a space where you open, everything
opens up underwater, and you're just surrounded by what they
(04:41):
refer to as the cathedral. And so we go out onto the boat,
we move out, we go out there. And I'm just doing everything I
can because I love leaning into the things that sketched me out
the most. Because I find it when I'm
training, when I'm pushing myself, when I'm climbing, when
I'm up on the mountains. And now when I'm into the ocean.
That is when I find all of the things that I don't love about
my psychology, which I can then work on, deconstruct, and then
(05:02):
try to build out later. So we got there, we drop in, we
swim over this. Hole which is.
Probably about the size, maybe about even the size, about half
the size of this stage. So I'll go over here, this this
part right here and we drop in two guys go, I follow them and
straight away I look to my left and there is like a 10 but
(05:24):
sharks sleeping on the rock right to my left.
Like could it be like any worse?We go down and they go
underneath this first massive boulder and it is pitch black.
I'm like and I follow them down and we go underneath the rocks
and we're swimming in and amountstuff and you're just trying to
stay as calm as possible becausethere's only about 3 1/2 feet of
(05:46):
space for you to go through. So with the tank, you're like
your face is on the ground and you're kind of like looking off
the side to see stuff. And eventually you see the light
literally, and you emerge out. And it is just like this most
unbelievably stunning place thatis just like, I can't even begin
to describe the magic of that particular spot was just
(06:07):
awesome, worth every single second.
Now when I was going down through that space, leaning into
fear, managing it at the best that I possibly could to come
through and have this most unbelievable experience on the
other side. The reason why that I think,
popped into my brain this morning as I was trying to
figure out what I was going to do today, which may not end up
(06:29):
being what I do today apparently, is that I felt like
that was a really good analogy for what a lot of you are going
through right now. And I feel that all of you are
either at the point where you'relike as you can see the the hole
you're contemplating going down through the hole, you're looking
at the shark, maybe you're in and amongst the boulders.
But hopefully what I can do today is help you manage that
(06:50):
such that we can all get to thatcathedral in whatever shape or
form that happens to take. For each of us and for our
minds. There are four very specific
states in which we can get to which enable us to navigate the
difficulties of our life. The very first state that you
(07:11):
can enter into is a state calledfocused attention, which if we
were to put electrodes all over your head and measure your brain
activity as you were doing that,it would cycle through about 16
to 30 Hertz. You can actually measure this 16
to 30 Hertz of cycles per second.
So when you are in focused execution, that is the state
(07:32):
that your brain is in. I put you into that state just
now by telling you the story of dropping through that hole in
the ocean, seeing the shark, going through the fear state of
the darkness and the boulders like I described that to you and
you were all staring at me. So I put you into that focused
execution state. I put you into beta brain wave
(07:53):
mode by sharing that story with you just now.
The challenge that we have I believe is that that state of
deep focus, that state where we are dialed in and our attention
and concentration is right wherewe want it to be, it's a very,
very, very high performing statefor us.
We get more done in less time. Your brain functions optimally
(08:15):
when you're in deep focus. One region of your brain becomes
active. Blood flow goes to that one
region of your brain to supply it with oxygen and glucose so
that you can think, you can draw, you can take the
photograph, you can have the conversation, whatever it
happens to be. The issue for us right now in
our world is that all of you need to focus, you need to
(08:36):
concentrate. You need to be able to control
and direct your attention to where you want it to go such
that your energy follows and youcan have the impact that you
want to have to ultimately elevate the world.
The challenge right now though, is when it comes to attention
and focus, is that we are being constantly and unrelentingly
distracted. And so I would love for you to
(08:57):
consider your ability, your willingness, your commitment to
controlling your attention, defending your attention, which
mirrors the first section of what we did yesterday, which was
defending your last hour to sleep better.
I want you to defend your attention so that you can live
(09:18):
better in an era of constant, unrelenting distraction and
addiction to distraction. These devices are incredible.
We have the entire history of all human knowledge in our
pockets at all time. Every song ever made, every
movie ever made. I can FaceTime my children
(09:38):
anywhere in the world. It's absolutely incredible.
But what I want for you is the intentional use of technology,
not the compulsive use of technology.
If you're looking something up to connect with someone
fabulous, If you're doomed, scrolling through social at 3:00
in the morning probably not serving you right.
(09:59):
So. But also consider Johnny I've,
who designed this for Apple, would not allow his children to
have one pretty powerful messageright there.
So let's work on that as a fundamental principle in
practice, to set the stage for the possibility of being able to
control your attention and direct it to where it needs to
(10:20):
go, where you want it to go, where you want your energy to
flow. Simple practice.
Dinner with your family, dinner with your loved ones.
These can't be around because even if they are turned over and
on the table, they still capture25 to 30% of your attention.
Think about that. If you're meeting with a client
(10:41):
and you have your phone up, you put on the table and you turn it
over, it really means the clientlike you're important.
But just in case, get it away, put it away.
Lean into what we need to do. My son is 9 years old.
He does not have any video games.
Ingrid Wells is 13. She has a phone, but she has no
social media, and she sees what social media is doing to her
(11:03):
friends and she hates it. I consider that one of the
greatest achievements as a dad, right?
Just like that's. I'm just going to win that for
right now. Lean into it and be like, OK,
that was fine. Onwards next thing that we're
going to try to do. So defend your attention
relentlessly. In an era of constant
unrelenting distraction. This is a practice.
(11:25):
This is a yeah, it's a practice that requires you to put up
guardrails, but then also work as much as you possibly can on
learning how to allow your attention to go where you want
it to go. So I'm going to play a little
piece of music now. It's about two to three minutes
long. And during this time I would
(11:48):
love for you just to sit, stand,just take a moment.
And the reason why I'm going to play you this music is what I
would love for you to do is to allow the music to play, ask you
to allow your attention to go tothe music, notice when it
wanders away from the music and then bring it back.
And we're just going to practicethat together.
(12:08):
We're going to practice focus, we're going to practice
controlling our attention. When I did this with the Olympic
team, what we would do is we would put two sources of music
up at the same time and ask people to shift their their
attention from classical to rockor back and forth.
I'm just gonna put one U for youright now.
Let's just lean into this for a minute and maybe if the guy's at
(12:28):
the back and just hoefully this comes through, there we go.
(14:22):
How awesome are you guys? Anything that you can do to
practice capturing your attention, directing it to where
you want to go, staring into theeyes of a loved one, listening
to a beautiful piece of music, writing, journaling,
appreciating art, connecting with the people that matter to
you the most. All of that is, I believe, one
(14:46):
of the single most important unlocks to elevating our lives
in an era of constant, unrelenting distraction, and
especially an era of tension, stress, and anxiety.
By no means do I mean we need toclose ourselves out and not
recognize the fact that there are injustices in the world that
we all in this room can positively impact.
But I want your attention to go where you want it to go, not
(15:08):
where the algorithm wants it to go.
And we practice that by putting up guard rails, turn off all of
your notifications, and also practicing capturing and holding
your attention through art, music, love, whatever that
happens to be. I will pause there, just talk,
Wait a moment. See, like any questions at all
about what we'll call beta brainwave mode, hustle, focus,
(15:30):
execute, concentrate, control your attention in an era of
constant, unrelenting distraction.
Any research on the frequency ofsound?
Yes. So I played you a very specific
frequency that was designed to pull you down into an alpha
brain wave state to enable you to which is where we're going
next. Actually kind of deliberate
deliberately to go there. However, the real hack for
everyone in the room that's the easiest is that if you want to
(15:51):
focus and direct your attention to one thing, let's say have
music playing in the background,you want to have music that you
are very, very, very familiar with music that you have heard
1000 times before you 2 Joshua Tree listen to that album 5000
times. I can play that in the
background as I'm working with no problems whatsoever.
Dr. Robin plays movie soundtracks any other, like
(16:14):
people who have music that helpsthem to do certain things.
Whatever that happens to be, it's all good.
I'm just, I am going to show youone slide.
I'm scared to show you guys slides, but anyway, we'll try
and see if I can get through 3/4.
There is a reason why athletes listen to music right before
they compete. It helps them to concentrate.
It helps them to focus. Look at Serena Williams, Michael
(16:35):
Phelps, Usain Bolt. The great ones do this.
If we dig into the science and look at this and unpack it,
there are 7 regions of the brainthat increase their activity
levels. When we listen to music.
These are the same 7 regions of the brain that down regulate
when we're depressed. We can use music to elevate our
mood. We can use music to help us
(16:56):
concentrate and focus. There's very cool research that
shows that music has these seveneffects.
That is Ingrid front row. At a concert that's eight years
old, it was relatively easy to get front row at Bryan Adams.
Trust me, she's now into Taylor Swift, and I'm going to have to
mortgage my house. But the one that I'm most happy
(17:20):
about on this is #3 copathy, which is empathy in two
directions. And what is most lacking in our
world right now, Empathy. The ability to understand other
people. So let's listen to some music,
right? Let's play some amazing.
Let's create a soundtrack for our lives and share that with
(17:41):
the people that we love the most.
Like, what music do you want to be listening to during your
workouts? Have a playlist.
What music do you listen to on the way to work that's going to
psych you up? What music are you listening to
on the way home from work? Calm you down?
What music are you listening to when you're having dinner with
your family? So many cool things we can do
here. Yeah, that might be the most
complicated question that I've ever received and it's awesome.
(18:04):
So let's just level it up a little bit here and see if I can
answer that question. So basically, can your brain
change? The answer of course is yes.
And the answer what? Like how does the brain change?
It's called neuroplasticity. Probably heard of it.
There's also bioplasticity whichis a bit easier to understand.
So if you go for runs on a regular basis, what happens if
(18:24):
the body changes? You get fitter.
If you lift weights consistently, what happens?
You get stronger. The exact same thing happens in
the brain. However, the body and the brain
are hyper adaptable based specifically on the inputs
combined with your genetics. So someone lifts weights, it
(18:45):
creates molecules, those circulate throughout your body,
they hit your DNA and they trigger the growth of new muscle
tissue. You get stronger.
Two people can do the same workout.
One of them will maybe respond differently than the other
because it's the environment plus your.
Genetics that determines. That outcome.
The same thing with distance exercise.
Two people go for runs. One person's VO2 Max improves
(19:07):
faster than the others. The exact same thing happens in
the brain. It's just not muscle fibers,
it's neurons and cells inside your brain.
Everything that we do interacts with the genetics inside your
neurons to change the way that they interact with each other
and their function themselves based on what you are doing
consistently over an extended period of time.
(19:29):
If you just imagine this scenario a full year from now,
between now and next year at Epic, at this particular moment
in time, the 30 minutes before you fall asleep, you either doom
scroll through social and check the news or you read biographies
of the greatest people in history.
How's your brain in a year Unrecognizable if you wake up
(19:51):
first thing in the morning, you practice the three WS, wake,
water, and walk. And on your walk you're
listening to audiobooks that help you to learn something
that's super important for your craft.
What does your brain change and what's that look like over the
course of a year? And memory learning is simply
the growth of new neurons that make connections to each other.
(20:12):
It's hard wired. These are physical structures
that change. And that happens when we sleep.
You build those new neurons based on your nutrition and you
can spark the growth of new neurons through exercise,
nature, meditation, music, art, journaling, all of these
practices. You fundamentally change the
(20:33):
structure of your brain. That can happen from the instant
that you are conceived all the way through, till the moment
that you die in a positive or negative way, depending on what
you do and of course your genetics.
So we can't control our genetics, we can control what we
do. So to some extent.
All right everyone. Thanks for tuning in, I really.
Hope that was helpful. Obviously it's a little bit of a
(20:54):
different format, but super psyched to be able to.
Share that information with you I.
Hope that it was helpful if it was.
Please share this with your community.
Please let someone else know about the show.
Let someone else know about the episode, forward it to.
Them and. That helps us tremendously If
you could also leave a review onyour podcast platform of choice,
(21:15):
whether that's iTunes or Spotify, that also makes a
massive difference for us and really helps us out.
And of course, if you can followme on social at Doctor Greg
Wells or on LinkedIn forward slash Doctor Greg Wells, that
would be tremendously wonderful as well.
Ping me with questions. Make sure that this is all about
you. And we will continue to build
content for you this year that helps you to be healthy, to
perform better and to get to a place where your well-being is
(21:39):
exactly where you want it to be.All right, everyone.
Thanks again. We'll see you in the next
episode. Really, really soon.
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