August 23, 2022 • 58 mins
Stan Rodski shows us how to "Recalibrate our brain"; shares how to "Harness your brain power" and explains the power of the "Napucino". Hosted by Duff Watkins
About Dr Stan RodskiDr Stan Rodski is an Australian neuroscientist in private practice specializing in brain performance. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology and a doctorate of science in biological statistics. Dr Rodski has worked as a psychologist for over 30 years and more recently has focused on the neurosciences. Stan has helped many people, schools, sporting teams and organisations with improving performance and in particular memory, concentration, agility and resilience.
It was through the discovery of the positive neurological effects of colouring-in using Dr Rodski's designs which has sparked a worldwide sensation resulting in three of Dr Rodski's colouring-in brain science books being featured by Oprah Winfrey in her 2016 Christmas Wish List. These three books, Modern Meditation, Brain Science Colourtation Technique and Anti-stress were a worldwide success.
His latest book The Neuroscience Of Mindfulness is available now.
Episode Notes
Lesson 1: In God we trust, all others must bring data 08:48
Lesson 2: Your brain: the more we know, the bigger the mystery 17:20
Lesson 3: Mind/Body connection is real 19:50
Lesson 4: Reflex to reaction in 0.25 seconds 26:32
Lesson 5: 20 minutes x 20 meters x 20 seconds = recalibrated brain 29:07
Lesson 6: Your Current View of Situation ≠ Best View of Situation 32:50
Lesson 7: Harness your brain power with infinity, circle, square, triangle exercises 39:40
Lesson 8: I’ll sleep when I die! No, you’ll die without sleep 45:53
Lesson 9: Time for a napucino 49:40
Lesson 10: On Mars a day is 24.6 hours but how will your brain cope? 52:21
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I, I can remember.
I was working with one of the big airlinesand I was with a group of executives and
we were we were discussing, they're makingbig changes and they were interested in
the application of some of these toolsthat I've developed and what have you.
And they we're talking aboutthe stress of the time.
And I said, well, what youknow don't you need some sleep.
(00:21):
And one of them piped up and said to me,you know what, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
And I said really well then letme tell you something that I know,
and that is that you're going to bedead a lot sooner than you expected.
Welcome to the podcast.
Tenodesis it took me 50 Years to Learn.
Where we dispense wisdom, not clichesbanalities or platitudes to an
(00:42):
international audience of rising leaders.
My name is Duff Watkins and I'm your host.
Our guest today is neuroscientist.
Stan Rodski.
Stan has worked for 30 years andwell he's worked with professional
sports teams, Olympic teams,men and women, boys, and girls.
And now he's here with you andme, Stan, welcome to the show.
Great to have you.
(01:02):
Cool.
Thank you.
Pleasure to be here.
Let me tell you why your true story.
I'm talking to a podcast producerRobert Hossary, years ago, and
he was telling me about thisphenomenon of adult coloring book.
I said, what is that a thing?
He said, yeah, it's a thing I said,it's gotta be some American bullshit.
(01:22):
Now I do some research and Ifound out, one, it's not American.
It's Australia too.
It's not bullshit.
It's neurosciece.
And you're the guy that started all this,the colortation and how do I know that?
Because I'm listening to your audiobook, the mindfulness of neuro science.
On my phone and it's in fact,there was a copy right behind you.
It's not just a thing.
(01:43):
It became quite a phenomenon.
Is it true?
Your books were featuredon the Oprah Winfrey show.
I mean, there is no higheraccolade than that, right?
I can absolutely tellyou that's the truth.
And you know, barring the fact thatyou can't have you in the word color.
I thought Americans seeing the book wouldwould never occur, but a San Francisco
(02:07):
publisher took it on with the others.
And and the story was, we got an emailsaying we were inbargoed which was a few
months before its official launch by her.
And we weren't allowed to talk aboutit, until she broke the news of the
book and and she, and her best friendjust loved the whole concept and I
(02:29):
was pleased that they did becauseit isn't an infantile activity.
It's actually a very powerfultool in the in, in the cupboard.
That can be used to help usperform better by relaxing first.
But neuroscience is what convinced me.
Yeah.
I mean, and that's why you're on the showand that's why, because I need so many
(02:51):
gaps in my knowledge, you know, we needpeople like let's let us start with, what
was your first business lesson Stan?,
Look, I'd have to say that.
They've been a lot for it for a start.
And I guess as a scientist the thingthat I learned was, you know, I'm not
(03:12):
sure whether these words will communicateacross every culture, but there's a lot
of mumbo jumbo in science and, and manyof my colleagues would use a lot of words.
Now I'll give you an exampleof where I'm coming with.
My first lesson.
What is a cognitive neuroscientist.
(03:32):
That's me.
I can sit here and sprawl to you about allof the other technical mumbo jumbo words
that would define me, or I could say toyou, you know what Duff, the way that you
can get your head around me is that I'm aplumber and an electrician for the brain.
(03:56):
I am about the pipes, the taps,the fluids, and the electrical
circuit board of the brain.
Now that's the lesson that I would givemy, I gave myself very early in the piece
and I give every, every student, doctoror whatever he came through my, through my
labs or businesses, the same lesson thatis turn off the mumbo-jumbo the jargon.
(04:22):
And turn on the insight.
People want to understand easilyand quickly, you know, stuff that
is usually out of their frameworkout of the the norm for them.
And just more words that needdefinitions will never cut it.
So the better you are, and so mybusiness lesson very early in the
(04:44):
piece was always make sure whatyou're trying to talk about is.
Understood, not just you raisingyour flag saying, you know, I've
got a doctorate in mathematicalneurosciences and it's about explained
to me in a way that I can understand.
(05:04):
And that was my first, particularlywhen you start thinking about
neuroscientists and people workingvery technical, specialized areas.
If you can't do that in, in, in,you're not going to get very far.
And by just told you what I do.
My doctorate is in psychotherapy.
So I know a lot of mumbo-jumbo myself,but I use the same analogy Stan.
(05:27):
I said, basically, it'slike being a plumber.
You serve an apprenticeship.
You keep doing, you get better.
You work with people who arebetter than you, you learn.
And eventually, hopefully you get kindof good at the psychotherapy thing.
It really is just that simple.
Look and as a behaviorist for me, thereare plumbers who just their expertise is
in the pipes and there are those that are.
That are involved in dealing withthe people who use the pipes.
(05:51):
And that's the, the, the, the use sideis what you're talking about for me.
It's which was where thecoloring books came from.
There was in all of the years that Iworked as a psychologist and, and I did
that for, you know, 30 more of thoseyears the thing that always, and you would
have found this in your own counselingtherapy and in your studies, the hardest
(06:13):
part is after their visit, keeping themmotivated to do what you've asked them
to do, or that they've agreed to do.
And we worked in a very busy executivepractice and the doctors on one hand
would say, send them to me as the neuroor the psych and, you know, Let's let's
(06:33):
get them, de-stressed practice somemeditation and go through a little bit
of therapy or whatever it might be.
And but inevitably the further theygot away from you, the less they
did, why would you not be motivated?
And then of course you see thatpeople would come through a
medical practice, diagnosed withcancers and not take their pills.
Why would you take your pills?
(06:55):
What would motivate someone to notdo something, to save their life.
And that's the, that's the core ofyou have to actually be in some form.
Yeah.
It's very hard to hear the messages.
It's very hard to practice thecontent be motivated unless you're
actually coming from a placeof peace place of homeostasis.
(07:17):
And the coloring was about that.
The coloring was about in my practice.
If I got them to color, and this wasjust purely coincidental, I happened
to have an EEG technology on, on thisyoung lady who was quite a serious mental
illness and, and it was just a chance.
I've been playing around with the ideaof the brain actually, does it rest
(07:39):
and, and settle and calm because yousee it with children when they colour.
Why wouldn't an adult do that.
And she colored and I'm watchingthe EEG and she's calming.
And the more calm she got, the moreable she was able to listen to the
messages, this science working acrossyour desktop, that you would suddenly
be able to understand that at the heartof our motivation, we've, we've actually
(08:05):
got to be able to take in these messages.
We've got to be.
From my view in this state of homeostasisin state of balance because we just, you
know, unless we're there, our brains,won't respond in the way that we wanted.
The pipes won't turn on when we want to.
The electrical circuit board.
(08:25):
Won't work the way we want it to.
Well, that leads, I think, to thefirst lesson, the subset is 10 wisdoms
you learned in 40 years of science.
So number one is.
In God, we trust allothers must bring data.
Yeah.
Yes.
And, I actually used thatsaying just a couple of days
ago at a, at a Catholic college.
(08:46):
And I said, look, I haveto to take a stance here.
I'm not sure where you're goingto come through when I say this.
But if we're going to implement someof these ideas they're only going
to be, ideas supported by data.
The coloring book ideawas supported by data.
You know, they, it didn't, it wasn'tjust a manufactured idea with an anecdotal
(09:08):
outcome and let it, we needed to seethat there was an actual influence.
And I think, you know,I've never left this.
I it's not that it, it,that it has to drive us.
It just has to support us.
We have a brain that requires data, youknow, it's built for distance evaluation.
(09:31):
It is built for evaluating danger.
It's built for.
Fear, whatever else you want to say.
You know, our, our original ancientbrain in our deep limbic system
on the top of our brainstem, it'snot changed in 400,000 years.
(09:53):
And of course the millionsof years of development to
get to, to our current state.
And it's still required.
You know, it's still relies on data, butoften not good data, you know, it, it the
b rian makes things up unfortunate becausethe real world in the fantasy world of,
(10:13):
of thought are the same thing to ourbrain, but still my, my, my contention.
Is that we still have ourbeliefs, but we really, as a
human, as a human, we need data.
And that's, to me, that's a great, that'sa great wisdom on pulling that off the
Americans a little bit there with, yeah.
That
I should say to the, I guess peopleknow on American coinage, there
(10:37):
is in blazed the phrase in Godwe trust and the joke being that
everybody else has to come with data.
And, but that's what.
Persuaded me, Stan.
I mean, the idea of coloring you, youcited the science, you, you pioneered
some of the research yourself.
It's like all simplify,coloring, believe it or not.
(10:58):
For whatever reason, it doesn't matter.
Coloring, relaxes the brain.
And thus allows for peak performancebecause, and you're an expert in stress.
I hope everybody knows this.
By now, the more relaxed, calm you are,the better able you are to perform.
And I can tell you from my own experienceand I use psychometrics, the more stressed
(11:19):
you are, the more your attention narrowsand your probability of making errors
forced or unforced rises significantly.
So whether business school studyingsports, whatever state of.
Relaxation, not sleepiness, butrelaxed alertness is optimal.
(11:40):
It, it simply can't.
The brain cannot do anything except thenot optimal in a stressed situation.
Now pressure is good.
Pressure is not stress.
Pressure is inverted byresilience into either stress.
Or performance.
We get up in the morning, we'repressured that doesn't necessarily
(12:01):
stress us with our amount of resilience.
You know, we then, and bounce inaccording to our resilience, you
know, every day is a new day.
Every day above ground is a good dayand, and our messaging starts to go and
we, and that turns into a performance.
We get out of bed, but if it turnedinto a stress, we stay in bed.
(12:22):
You know, I feel I can't function,but I'm sick of the world.
I'm sick of work.
It's that process.
And this idea of homeostasis in there,this whole system is lubricated.
You know, it is able to actoptimally, you know, that circuit
board that I've been talking about.
(12:42):
As much as we can stay in homeostasisor allostasis now, allostasis, of
course bear and allostatic load,probably being the thing that, you know,
the more I've got up every morning.
And I had the resilience to do that,and I convert it to performance
rather than stress and all thewring things, that process.
(13:03):
I mean, when we're much younger, webounce up, you know, it's another day.
But we're a little bit like a tree thatimage of a lone tree on a cliff, you
know, with the wind blowing it over.
Well, when we were young and ourhomeostasis, we bounced back homeostasis
being bounced back and coming back intothat, we bounced back, but you can imagine
(13:24):
where we humans are like that tree.
You know, the, the wind has blownand blown and blown and blown, and a
bounce back is not longer that far.
Our bounce back is well on a reallybad windy day where we're almost
touching the ground, but when we bounceback, we, we bounce back only so far.
That's called allostatic load.
(13:45):
An allostatic load is, the partin which most of us are operating.
We, we can get so far back, but evenso, you know, we, we need to have
that bounce back because the brain.
Once all those information come,comes into our sensory thalamus,
you know, I mean, but everything,everything that comes into your
(14:08):
brain goes into the sensory thalamus.
It decides whether it's sight sound,touch, feel it, then shoots it.
It's supposed to shoot it straightup there into your, into your frontal
cortex, which is sort of the commandand control part of the brain.
And it's sort of thinking,okay, that's a visual.
(14:29):
Okay.
I'm going to shoot that to that partof the brain and on its way, it jumps
into a thing called the hippocampus.
Which is where all our learning occurred.
It says, have you seen this before?
Have I done this before?
Have I, you know, what would Inormally do and then shoots it back.
And then in its final effort,remember we were talking millisecond.
I'm describing something overa minute, but it's taking
(14:51):
milliseconds and at the impact.
When operating in homeostasisfrom homeostasis, it will then
pass by the parts of the brain,that deep limbic system where
it's got all the emotional stuff.
And then it sort of goes, well, you know,is there something else I should add?
And then it turns into an actionbut when we're out of balance, when
(15:13):
we're not in homeostasis, it justgoes straight to the deep limbic.
It just goes to the amygdala.
It's hijacked.
It spins around in there for too long.
It gets more and more emotional.
And it was our ancient brain we'rebuilt for that, you know, something
jumping out of the dark at us.
There's no need.
If you're about to be run over the busto run it past your frontal lobe and
(15:36):
check wether buses are going to hurt you.
You're just going to react.
And that's and that'sthat emotional component.
Pointing out.
I mean, that system that we'retalking about, it's not a,
it's not a flaw in the system.
Let's just take a moment toappreciate that system for keeping
us and all of our ancestors alive.
So we can add this conversation.
(15:57):
No, absolutely correct it's justthat it goes out of balance.
When it gets locked in, that'swhy, you know, in a certain
flash moment you will act.
You know, you know, in, in everydaypeople language, you know, you'll just
act in a way that you never would.
Why have I just forgotten thename of the managing director?
Or why am I a footballer?
Who, who, who normally for aliving kicks this ball or hits
(16:21):
this ball a thousand times a day.
And today in a pressure moment, Ihit it or kicked it or whatever,
like I'm a, five-year old.
Well, why would that occur whenI'm I'm actually have my brain's
motor cortex is actually practiceto within a nanosecond of its life.
(16:41):
That act in exactly the same way.
Why would that have occurred?
Hmm, well that takes meto lesson number two.
The more we learn about the brain,the bigger the mystery it remains.
Absolutely.
And the number that webandy around is often.
It's three pounds of spaghetti.
Bolognaise in white sauce.
You know, this brain, it's an analogyI usually use when I'm hungry, That's
(17:08):
for obvious reasons, but that's itssize, you know, and, and yet it is
so unbelievably mysterious to us.
I would say back in 1970 79, whenI first started this sort of work,
which is my goodness, how old am I?
We're, we're looking at a world in whichwe always thought we'd had our, grasp
(17:31):
of about 10% and you know what, allthese years later I haven't changed.
All I've changed is the10% I thought I knew.
I no longer know.
And the, and I've got another 10%that I now think I know, but I'm
almost guaranteed not knowing.
And this will link back to mylast question that you have.
(17:53):
my goodness.
If I could just live another 40years, I would be in heaven because,
because we'd really, for me between1980 and 2000, 2005, we were in a,
the technology hadn't jumped for us.
(18:16):
You know, it was still big machines,hospital data, you know, it, we're
now it's mobile data, you know, youknow, we've even got machines now where
I can put the machine on my head inyour head and I can start monitoring.
Whether in fact we have, for example,this is a great debate for another,
(18:37):
another day, but debate free will.
If you truly have free will then whydid your brain actually sends you a
message before, you know, when I saidthat you thought that, that before you
thought that something else happenedin your brain and I just saw it.
So tell me again about.
(18:58):
Free will.
I know that I know this, I read this yearsago and I am still trying to wrap my mind
around it, which takes us to Lesson numberthree, the mind body connection is real.
I knew that, but I didn'tknow how real it is and how.
How fast it works, but that's what,you're what you were illustrating.
(19:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think we see that a lot.
If we move into the behavioral sciences,it's like the current work going
on with depression and, and certainbody hormones and my goodness what's
causing what in here, you know, theseare really this causation effect.
In terms of the mind and the body, but,but the best one has been, of course,
(19:44):
the, the, the discoveries in the autonomicnervous system, central nervous system,
autonomic nervous system, or autonomicnervous system para and sympathetic
systems push and pull, push, and pull.
Yeah, it, it, it controls allof our organs and it does.
So subconsciously even unconsciously,some things are subconscious.
You can affect your breathing.
(20:04):
But you can't affect how, how quicklyyour kid kidneys are operating or, you
know, these are, you know, there are awhole bunch of systems trying to keep
you currently at the right temperature.
Now you're not thinking about those.
It's busily trying to keep you in.
Homeostasis because that's thewhole point of our existence.
And few colleagues of mine went oninto neurosurgery and into the medical
(20:29):
profession, they use to always say yome, well, Stan, you know, when one day
when you can actually find physicalway in which a thought turned into
anxiety, if you can finally tell me that.
I'll believe the mind body connection.
And of course, when we actually foundthat the production when anxiety occurs
(20:52):
and cortisol, and we could see thecortisol occur in there as a result
of the para and sympathetic nervoussystems, trying to balance themselves.
And then we add in, we bring inthe bio scientists a little bit
more like me in this process.
Who'd go well, isn't that interestingwhen the cortisol goes in there and
(21:14):
stays in there too long, it producesa protein, a beta protein, and a
protein by definition has substance.
And that was why the first fewtimes we found that, that the
buildup in those proteins wouldhappen in the heart and the head.
And of course that's heart attack andanurism and so there was the link.
(21:38):
There was the mind body link.
That was like a, we just landed onMars you know, like really type of
link in that science of mind and bodyconnection because my mind, you know,
remember my brain doesn't differentiatebetween reality or not reality.
I can be anxious because I just thinksomething's going to happen to me.
(22:01):
It's not that something willhappen to me or is happening to me.
Will happen to me.
And if it's, and if I maintainthat for too long, as you would
know, as a behaviorist allof the consequences of that.
You know, you can see theconsequences, you know, people
break out, They start sweating.
They can't remember names.
They get headaches.
(22:22):
They feel sick, you know,but we could never find that.
That connection in there.
And then that we did find that thereit was, and now we're finding, oh,
well, you know the fluids in thebody though, don't go into the brain.
You know, the Brian's got its own fluid.
You know, you, you can't actuallyexchange fluids in there.
(22:43):
But in fact, the latest research,this is why I'm saying the 10%
before that actually they'refinding they are exchanging, they
are exchanging between those flu.
And, and this is again, youknow, new research, but it's
very, very powerful stuff.
So mind, body connection, you know,I wrote a whole book about it.
(23:05):
That was what the mindfulness and theneuroscience of mindfulness was about.
Why wouldn't mindfulnesshave these effects.
And, and the core of that was ourability to look at this autonomic nervous
system, the way it maintains things.
Here's my brief for executivesin, in the process here, why was
it in our practice over 20 years?
We've monitored stress levels inusing conventional psychometrics.
(23:30):
But then along came people likeme, we just started doing biometric
then as markers, et cetera.
But just for the sake of it we would,we, we found that progressively the
stress levels of this executive group,and we would have 1800 of them a
year come through for their executivehealth incoming because I was sick.
they came in because the company saidwe want, you know, you're worth a lot
of money to live and well but whatwe found was they were progressively
(23:54):
more, you know, something like 20%would say 25 years ago and they were
stressed and, and today, well, upuntil a year or two ago, nearly 40%
of them would say that they weren't,you know, struggling with with long.
Okay.
And then we would gofor, so are you drinking?
Nah, not that much anymore.
Smoking no.
Are you eating properly?
(24:15):
Yes.
I know all about that.
Are you exercising?
Well, clearly seniorexecutives and executive types.
They still sort of carry pounds.
But my point is we think ourlifestyles are much better.
And even though we've got all of thisworking in a certain way, we turn
around and we go, isn't that interestingdiabetes too, is raging amongst.
(24:36):
Why would diabetes too?
Which is an environmentallifestyle, diabetes, where they
are in fact, doing all the things,biologically, all the right things
to not be I'm talking borderline.
That your doctor would giveyou the pamphlet saying you are
borderline diabetes two nearlyall of them, nearly all of them.
(24:56):
It's that cost.
Why would that be when they're actuallygot so much going on that's right.
About, you know, because they're,well-educated, they know what they
should do and they're doing, and theirpartners are probably bashing them up,
all the time, keeping them, you know?
And the answer, of course, isthe one thing that was growing
in there, which was stress.
Stress for me.
is the release and the maintenance ofthose cortisol hormones in their system.
(25:20):
Cortisol.
And the release of these amyloid proteins.
This is the marker in here andis behind so much, that sort of
busying itself trying to kill us.
Sorry.
We're only up to number three.
But at that leads to the next lesson.
Which is, you will have totranslate this one for me.
(25:43):
Reflex to reaction andpoint two five seconds.
Yes.
Remember I was talking about thesensory thalmus and in comes, the
information through there, andit whips it through the brain.
When our brain operates in itsinformation, processing the average
adult person that takes a quarter ofa second to process anything that's
(26:06):
coming in, takes a quarter of a second.
The best the human brain can do is one.
Of a second in terms of processingand a reflex which is not a
reaction is 0.08 of a second.
So that's how quick the brain works.
Why, why is that important?
(26:27):
Because the, if I go backto my data is everything.
We now have techniques.
Where we can very quickly assess howquickly your brain processes information.
And if it's being hijacked,this was the point of this one.
If it's being hijacked, you can suddenlygo out to 0.3, five or 0.4, five.
(26:47):
It means I've got a way of knowingwhether you're brain is actually
processing efficiently or is beinghijacked by your emotional controllers.
And it gives me when I'm talking with.
Students who want to process informationquickly and more efficiently so that they
can get better results or athletes, forexample, it's the same, same thing, not
(27:11):
this ability to have a number of tests.
So I can know if a person came to seeyou Duff and they're anxious and you're
helping them through that process, butwouldn't it be lovely for you to be able
to in a couple of, in a couple of minutes,Say set their personal benchmark, you
know, where, where their brain's operatingand actually through your endeavors.
(27:35):
know, that you've freed upthat connection in the brain.
You know, you, you you've actually,you're, you're now able to
minimize the disruption comingout of the emotional controls.
And I think the point is our nervoussystems get hijacked all the bloody
time by fears, stress, imaginary fears.
Circumstances, conditions, things thatprayer in our mind and all the things
(27:59):
that we allow to pray on our mind,well, allow this hijack to occur.
And the hijacking of the centralnervous system has definite
measurable physiological results,
correct?
Hmm.
All right.
Lesson number five 20 minutestimes 20 meters times 20 seconds.
This sounds like my workoutroutine sounds like intervals.
(28:21):
Well, again, from a neuroscienceperspective, what we know is
that you need to change yourbrain's focus every 20 minutes.
You and I, and now 40 minutes in.
And if you actually want to recalibrateyour brain, Bring it back into not
jumping around everywhere, tryingto work out what I'm about to say
(28:45):
and what you're about to say to me.
And what have you, all of thepeople listening, the optimum
would be every 20 minutes youlook up from what you're doing.
You find a spot 20 meters away andyou focus on that for 20 seconds.
That's what that meant.
You have recalibrated
your brain.
(29:05):
Sure.
I understand this.
This sounds pretty idiot proof.
Every 20 minutes, I look atsomething 20 meters away.
Focus on it or allow it to gaze at it for20 seconds and that recalibrates my brain.
Excellent.
And we know that it does thatbecause we've really watched it
do so in the monitors, but justanecdotally, it sort of makes sense.
(29:26):
And we could, and we actuallyproved this with gamers.
So gamers are the one, know if we goback to the north 0.2, five gamers,
those are the professional kids thatthe video games and competitions that
these days make millions of dollarswith millions of people watching
them play for 20 minutes sessions.
(29:47):
And
they're, televised too.
They're on television.
I've seen them,
but they were the source of the studyfor me, because again, if they are
operating at no 0.2, five alive, theprevious one, they are already retired.
They operate between 0.1 and 0.15.
(30:10):
It's so fast.
And that's why there areabout 17 years of age.
Cause that processing is unencumbered.
Stan,, is that a reflex orreaction you were describing?
No, no, no.
A reflex operates below 0.1.
It operates at 0.08 and that'sthe reason for that is it
(30:33):
doesn't go through the brain.
It just operates throughthe nervous system.
When we have a reaction, it goesthrough the brain and it can't go
through the brain any quicker than.
point one of a second, but that'swhat the that's the way the 20,
2020 came from in the process.
Does processing slow with age.
Yeah,
I was afraid of that.
(30:55):
Let me ask you again,processing slow with age?
But we can also improve with that.
You and I will never operateat the level of the games.
We have too many other pathways inour brain for information, the process
itself along, you know, it's going togo everywhere and and we will never
(31:16):
have that because of our experience,because remember this is not reflex.
This is reaction and reactionmust pass across the emotional
controllers of the brain.
Yeah.
And, and the older we get, the more ofthose reactions and pathways and, you
know, and then into the hyper campus.
(31:37):
Oh, what happened when that happened?
You know, it's all goingon in a nanosecond.
Remember but boy,there's a lot going on in
that process.
Let's keep talking about rewiringthe brain point, number six, rewiring
the brain by C V S equals B U S.
Well, that wasn't quite right now.
This goes back to a very, this is not anew invention, but it's about pathways.
(32:01):
Let me put it to you.
The current view of the situation is notequal to the best view of the situation.
And the best view of the situationis at least 10 times better than
your current view of the situation.
Yeah.
Current view of the situation is notequal to the best view of the situation.
Let's just start with that.
Let's just start with that one.
This is, this is not new, but in thecontext of, of, of this neuroscience and
(32:25):
where it's going, it's just brilliant.
Because if I say to you black.
You say white?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If I say a company resembles a tortoisein its performance, you think hair?
No.
Well, that's it.
But what if you think of interms of a company that isn't
performing well, and I call it.
tortoise like, what wouldyou think the company's slow
(32:47):
moving slow to adapt, slow to change.
Now
you just said, because the current viewof your situation, which is that situation
is equal to the best view, which was thatit's slow, you know, that's the equals,
but what if I said it doesn't equal?
That, what if I said to you, you know,if you thought about that different,
you might've said stable, dependable,Giving always going to, you know,
(33:14):
add to your superannuation fund,but that wasn't your automatic view,
because the brain operates that way.
As soon as it's got a view, you willsay what it believes is the best
view because that's what engaged it.
But what if we can actually trainour brain to say that the current
view is not equal to the best view?
We find a different pathway.
And if I support that with thatview, that better view always be 10
(33:38):
times better than the current view.
Then maybe I'll bang mybrain into new pathway.
And if I then say to you, the otherpart of this formula is times 100.
If I said to you that if you said that.
A hundred times a day, the currentview of the situation is not equal
to the best view of the situation.
Then I would say to you, your brainwill actually consider the next
(34:00):
time I say to you, a company thatresembles a tortoise performs.
In what way?
You will go somewhere different.
Let me make sure I understand this.
So the point is the current viewof the situation is not equal to
the best view of the situation.
The best view of the situation isat least 10 times better than the
(34:20):
current view of the situation.
And the more I focus deal oringest or imbibe the best view of
the situation, the greater rangeof desired outcomes can occur.
Yeah.
Because there are other views, you know,our brain is short-cutting, it's going
Huristics is the word for that.
For that.
(34:41):
Correct.
But here's a way now, let me give you anexample about why a hundred times a day.
I'm sure you've learned your timestable somewhere along in this process.
So seven times three equals?
21.
Last time I checked.
Eight times eight
64.
Yeah.
Why do you know that?
Drill drilled into me as a kid.
(35:01):
You know, our brain isactually still no matter.
How many education professors Ihave this debate with our brain is
still structured to learn by here.
If you continue to learn your tables,you know, there's an argument now,
well, you don't need to know those.
You've got, you know, as long asyou got the two numbers and you
know what you're trying to do,but the fact of the matter is.
(35:24):
You know, built into your subsetsinto this world where I started of
data, we need to understand distances.
We need to understand differences.
We need, you know, we neednumbers for all of that.
And that's why you learned thosetables and you learned them
because you did it by rote.
I'm telling you the current viewof the situation, not equal to
the best view of the situation.
You say that a hundred times untilthe next time you and I meet.
(35:48):
And I say to you, so Duff, youknow, what's the thinking algorithm.
And you go to me, current viewof the situation, not equal to
the best view of the situation.
I know that your brain will actuallythink that isn't that fascinating that
you'll you'll create different pathway.
And again, that's you know, there'sbeen a, quite a few people who've
sort of worked in this space beforewe had the brain science and I just
(36:09):
think that's a, that's a great way.
To, to teach our brain to do things
differently.
Well, practice it, at least inmy experience is using different
words than you usually prefer.
I tell people life as a smorgasborgof behavioral smorgasborg and people,
you, I, everyone, we have patterns.
(36:29):
We have preference.
We tend to do the samebehaviors over and over again.
But there is a smorgasborg of bail.
So, so why not sample one ortwo and you will get a different
reaction that reminds me of rememberSeinfeld, did you watch Seinfeld?
Remember the Uber loser, George Castanza.
There was an episode wherehe reversed 180 degrees.
(36:52):
Everything that he normally did and said.
And he had unmitigatedsuccess in his life.
You know, the women liked him andhe got hired and he was desired.
And then I was talking about Seinfeldto a friend of mine who is a very
senior psychiatrist in Australia.
And he said, yeah, my brother,who is a psychiatrist also
does that with his patients.
(37:12):
I said, what do you mean?
He gets them to try the exact opposite.
Of behaviors that they have been doing.
And I experimented with this and I got totell you, it was a Eureka moment for me.
All of a sudden, the worldresponded differently because I
was initiating using differentwords, using different behaviors.
I was acting differently.
(37:33):
New pathways, which isalso one of my point.
Well, let's see if we're getting there.
By the way, before we move on,what is my thinking algorithm?
CVS does not equal the BVS.
Yeah.
And what does that say?
What does that mean to you?
The current view of thesituation is not equal to the
best view of the situation Stan.
And the best view of the situationis at least 10 times better than
the current view of the situation.
And if you say that to yourself,staying a hundred times a day,
(37:56):
you'll be surprised at the results.
Well, and how long will it take that?
Literally will take one minuteand 40 seconds of your day.
(laughs) I'm too busy, Idon't have time for that.
Well, just practice it on your walkfrom the, from the kitchen to your car.
I don't know what it is, butremember at the moment you've
(38:16):
only got it in working memory.
We've got to get it in deep into yourmemory, into your long-term memory, where
your times tables are, because that'swhere your brain will dig in when it's
processing that situation that you're in.
That's where it will go.
And if it finds that it will act on that.
Lesson number seven, this sounds likegeomotry to me, infinity circle, square
(38:41):
and triangle exercises for the brain.
Yeah.
So, so now I'm into practical.
Neuro-plasticity remember thatthree pounds of spaghetti bolognaise
well, let's turn that into threepounds of, of Play-Doh is Play-Doh
something everyone sort of molding.
Yeah.
I don't
know if they still have it,but I certainly played with
(39:02):
it when I was a kid.
The Play-Doh.
So I think of the brain Play-Doh.
So when we say now, which is thewhole world of neuroscience, now
regards the brain as plastic/Play-Doh.
So when you change one thing,something else changes.
The thing can't get bigger.
It does shrink.
(39:23):
You Know, as we get older,I hate totell you Duff.
But it doesn't actually add any mess.
So for example, whenever we look atpeople with specific skills, there's
areas of the brain, which are bigger,but they're to the deficit of other
parts of the brain, which are small.
So people who, who have great insight intomathematics you know, the Newtons, you
(39:45):
know, all of these people who have messes.
There were unable to communicate.
That was because of brain plasticity.
What we now know is that we canactually work with brain plasticity.
We can, we can actually helpour brain become more active in
certain areas, but how, okay.
You can sit there right now andstart, start thinking up for
(40:07):
yourself, how you would like to bemore mathematical, you know, really.
Okay.
Come on.
What are you going to do in that process?
And this whole idea of plasticityI condense down to let's just take
the infinities and, and what I'vedone there is I've laid it down for
everyone who's listening or watching.
(40:28):
It's just on its side there, youknow, and, and I'm, and, and you
can't, if you're listening, you can'tsee it but I'm with my right hand,
because I tend to use my right hand.
I'm just got my finger going.
In an infinity symbol.
Now I know that if I look atthe technology as I'm just
doing air infinity symbol.
(40:48):
and as I'm doing that I know my right handis actually being driven by my left brain.
And my left brain is communicating themovements to my motor cortex across
the brain, across the Corpus callosum.
Big U shape piece in the brain,which is its central processor.
And it's sending it throughthe central process.
It's pretty easy.
It's used to me using my right hand.
(41:10):
It sort of gets it, you know, themotor cortex is going and I'm doing
my infinity symbol and you can dothis with a pen on paper, which is
even been as part of the process.
But then what if I changehands, I got to change hands.
So this symbol with my other, andI'm doing this relatively well.
Because I'm used to doing this andshowing this and practicing it.
And if I put it in a pen andI put it on paper, look, it
(41:33):
gets, it's a little wobbly.
But I can do it.
And I'm now using my right hemisphere.
But what I'm saying to you is, ifyou now do this with both hands
you know, you, you have a try now.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if I'm thatathletic, but I'll try.
Okay.
That's beautiful.
So for those of you who aren'twatching this, Duff has done what
(41:56):
every human does first he's actuallymirroring the image his right.
Right-brain.
Are you right-handed Duff?
Yes.
You tend to use your right hand the most.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So your brain just said toyou to the other side, it said
just, yeah, just mirror wait.
Okay.
So you see how you go out and aroundand then, you know, you're really using
(42:17):
one side of the brain, but if I say toyou now Duff, start at the top of one
and Start at the bottom of the other.
Okay.
Now I gotta think here, Stan,thinking slows me down significantly.
Yeah.
You can see this much better with pens.
(42:39):
So if you're listening do thison paper, You know, you're
you're right will go, all right.
In the left will go everywhere.
And then all of a suddenit'll start to go that way.
And eventually you can even cross so thatyour left hand, if you're right handed
gets much better than the other hand.
What you're doing is you know,your brain is now communicating
across the Corpus callosum.
(43:00):
It's actually improving the pathway.
It's, it's making more partit's the use it or lose it.
Philosophy that's going on inneuroscience at the moment by now
activating the two hemispheresand coordinating them together.
The Corpus callosum you'redealing with things like dyslexia,
dysphasia, aphasia, all of thecommunication problems that so many.
(43:24):
Children and adults who undiagnosedor just covered it up have dealt with,
because that central processor, the Corpuscallosum has for whatever reason become
tangled and these sorts of exercises.
And I put there.
There's the infinity symbol, butyou could also do circles at the same
time with both hands in different.
(43:44):
You can do squares and triangles, trydoing a circle and a square at the
same time with one hand, do a circle.
And with the otherhand, do a square, maybe
off camera.
I'll try that.
Maybe, you know, again, I'mcovering a lot of neuroscience here.
Just so people know,correct me if I'm wrong.
The Corpus callosum is a thick bandof nerves between the left and the
(44:06):
right hemispheres of the brain.
And it transmits informationbetween the two hemispheres.
It's like a centralprocessor in the brain.
That's where the tangles occur, thatlead to all of those phasic disorders
and is probably the primary playgroundfor most cognitive neuroscientists, where
they're trying to unravel all of that.
(44:26):
And I do so with executives as well.
You know, this is a way to unblock,you know, create new pathways you're
actually doing neuro-plasticitywhen you do that exercise.
Yeah.
You're creating new pathways.
All right.
Well, let me go on to lesson number eight.
I'll sleep when I'm
dead.
Well, I think that in the last 10 yearsI've come to the opinion that sleep and
(44:49):
the understanding of sleep and beingable to improve sleep is one of the
greatest neurological finds of forever.
We all know it.
I can remember I was workingwith one of the big airlines
and I was with a group of.
Executives.
And we were we were discussing,you know, that making big changes
(45:10):
and they are interested in theapplication of some of these tools
that I've developed and what have you.
And now we're talking aboutthe stress of the time.
And I said, well, what youknow don't you need some sleep.
And one of them piped up and said to me,you know what, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
And I said really well then letme tell you something that I know,
and that is that you're going to bedead a lot sooner than you expect.
(45:32):
But I got to tell you in thisstory a month later, one of them
in that meeting have dropped dead.
There is a lot of machoness insenior executive is about sleep.
And Matthew Walker is probablythe reigning expert on this.
If you have a chance to listen to himon a podcast or read his book, I mean,
you want data, he'll give you some data.
(45:52):
And when people say to me, I'll sleepwhen I'm dead . I say, yeah, and you'll,
you'll be sleeping sooner than you thinktoo pal, because I mean, I thought I knew
a bit about sleep because I read Dement'sbook The Promise of Sleep, years ago.
And, but no Matthew Walker putthe daughter and the drop off
in productivity and longevity isprecipitous, not a slow, steady decline.
(46:14):
It's like jumping off a cliff.
Yes.
And, and part of that is understanding.
Sleep is not about an answer for fatigue.
Sleep is part of a 24 hour cycle inwhich the brain just switches functions.
For a certain amount of time, whichare necessary for its continuing
optimal performance study.
After study now shows thatit's not driven by fatigue.
(46:36):
That's not the reason though.
How many people don't sleep,even though they feel tired.
Hmm, it's just that it's it's part of a24 hour cycle, which in fact is important.
My favorite analogy for the brainthese days is that it's a battery.
You know, it's a circuit board with abig battery and it's whole processing.
You know, the reasons that, you know,some of the other things that I've
(46:59):
been discussing here and, you know,the shortcuts, it's habitual behaviors.
You know, the brain is not judgmental.
You know, when the taps are flowing, whenthe air conditioning unit is set for high,
it's just operating to get you to highor keep you in normal or whatever it is.
And there's no judgment process.
So, so why would it not do anythingother than what is optimal for it?
(47:22):
And that is.
Exactly.
Right.
So when we fall asleep and drive offthe road into a tree, the reason for
that is that it's run out of juice.
You know, it's at the point where I cannotmaintain you and keep you alive unless I
shut you down for the next few minutes.
Yeah, all day long, it operates on thebasis of if I have to stop and think about
(47:46):
this, I'm going to use too much energy.
That's why we have shortcuts.
Why would the brain arrangeitself with all these shortcuts?
Unless it had somebiological reason to do so.
And its biological reason ofcourse, is that it wants to conserve
our energy and energy is the keycomponent in, in this whole process.
(48:08):
It's, it's actually managing its energyflows, not over a sleep cycle or a day
cycle, but over a whole 24 hour cycle.
And my next book, which is theneuroscience of excellence, like
excellent looking forward to that one.
Well, that takes us, that takesus to Lesson number nine, Stan.
Time for a napucino . Andcan I get that at Starbucks?
(48:32):
Well, again, I, go backto have you heard of this
before?
No, no, I don't know whereyou're going with this.
So this is about coffee and sleep.
Let me explain when you have acup of coffee, the Chino, you,
you're not immediately stimulated.
It takes 20 minutesfor it to hit you in a.
(48:53):
Physiological sense in that you get the,the bang and coffee works like that.
It doesn't graduateitself into your system.
It bangs into your system.
If I've got you on an EEG at20 minute mark, I'll watch your
heart up, she goes now, now let'scombine that with nap theory.
(49:13):
Now by that.
I mean, napping and sleeping theory.
Imagine what would happen if youdrank a cup of coffee and you then
set your phone alarm for 20 minutesand you closed your eyes and napped
so that when the alarm woke you up in20 minutes, the coffee also hits you.
You are wired, wired, you are wired.
(49:37):
You are in supersonic speed.
Well, the next 10 to 15 minutes andthat's, what's called a napucino
And, of course that was abused bythe gamers in there because I would
just start trying to work out waysto, to, to get that even better.
(49:58):
And I I've actually moved intothe world of a decaf napucino.
I've actually, you'llfind this in the book.
I've come up with some exercises toreplace the coffee so that when you come
out of your nap you can actually wakeyour brain really quickly and effectively.
So that was the idea of, you know,that was one of the things, current
(50:20):
things that are about to hit.
So there's a number of littleexercises we can use from our
net because napping is brilliant.
If you need a nap.
Napping is not brilliant.
If you don't need to nap.
That's the key here.
Then people forcing themselves to net islike their five-year-olds on the nap mat
(50:41):
in the kindergartens, you know, some gooff and others just find it impossible.
And that's the same with us adult humans.
Stan, when is your bookon sleep being published?
Well, it's with thepublishers at the moment.
So, so they're they haven't givenme the date for its release.
Be sure to let us know so wecan promote it accordingly.
(51:02):
Lesson number 10 on Marsa day is 24.6 hours long.
But how would our brain cope with it?
It's like 24.6 hours, 23 minutes,I think longer than, than our day.
And believe it or not.
We don't know how the brain will copewith that, because this is back into
this whole, the brain is a 24 hours.
(51:24):
So we have a brain thatoperates on a 24 hour cycle.
Cause there's 24 hours in our day.
There's no, you can have more energy,but you can't have more hours.
And I just wanted to leave it withthe concept of how will we deal.
With being in an environment, which, whichhas a new definition on that, will it
(51:45):
take us millions of years adapt to that?
And have, can we define somescience to help us adapt to that?
Because what's happeningis that's accumulating.
You know, it's out of sync with us.
That small amount of timeis really a challenge.
So I'm leaving my last wisdom orinsight as the challenge here related
(52:06):
to, to our whole physiological system.
How will we, if we'reliving there deal with it?
Well, we won't find out,but somebody else will.
Indeed, no, I don't think theRover robots care too much.
Well, let me, let me ask you onelast question and we've been talking
a lot about things that, thatyou've learned over your 40 years
(52:27):
in science and 50 years in life.
What have you unlearned lately?
And by that, I mean, somethingyou absolutely positively
knew to be true then, but now.
No, it was not
the case.
It's come and it's gone forme a few times here and, and
for me, it's two brain theory.
And I just find this soamazing, you know, years ago.
(52:51):
I don't know if you saw it all or youbrought part of it as part of your
learning and your executive, work.
A lot of people went absolutelyballistic about two brain theory.
The left brain does this etc.
Remember that?
And it went into the schools, you know,oh, you know, if you're thinking with
your left brain, you're, you're beinglogical and, and the right brain you're
(53:12):
being creative and all the rest of it.
And the reason for that.
In those days was that limited amount ofability to see in there and understand it.
It made some sense because in the earlyscans, MRIs, before the pet scans and
all the other amazing stuff that'saround now, but we could see that most
(53:35):
of the activity happened on that side.
And, and, and over the years,that's sort of just evolved out.
You know, we just sort of, there'vebeen other things in the recent times,
and this is where the big discoveriesare while we know certain functions.
Do.
Tend to have a region that youcould define as being on the
(53:55):
left side or the right side.
But the new scanners now show us thatnot only does that region start to
glow under whatever instrument thatabout 20 other regions in the brain.
Also light up, maybe not as big, maybe notas dense or whatever it might be, but 20
(54:19):
other regions all over the brain light up.
And, and where the neuroscience is now is.
Why do they, lightup?
what, is going on in this brain?
Where that, even though, you know,that's the core area here that I'm
pointing at on my left side here, andI know where that fits into all the
(54:42):
other bits, but why is it lit, lit up,you know, over on the right side, down
the back, just behind this or that.
Why is that?
And that's where all ofthe science is right now.
Yeah, because we know brainwavesare the super highway.
So when we, when we get an alphawave, which is our pre sleep wave,
(55:03):
our relaxations wave, we know thatthat's occurring on one particular
side of the brain, but it's alsooccurring in all these other spots.
Around the brain that we found,all of those spots are connected by
these superhighways for the neuronsthat we couldn't work out for years.
How on earth could they all work?
The reason we didn't think thatwas going on is because how could
(55:24):
they communicate with each other?
And of course, what we've discoveredis that the brainwaves, which are
all different, you know, you getdifferent brainwaves in different parts.
They've become the super highway.
So they become the connected, all theparts of the brain that want to talk to
each other, jump onto the alpha wave.
and the alpha wave thenconnects them all up.
(55:46):
And that to me was the final demise of twobrain theory and hence the unlearning you
know, say goodbye, I'd held it there for,
even though it's sort ofspectacularly burned in my mind
a long time ago, but it was.
It sorta always, you know, it was part,but now it is well and truly in the grave.
(56:09):
Now we know better.
Thanks to guys like you.
And we will finish here on that notelisteners, you've been listening to
the international podcast and lessonsthat took me 50 years to learn.
This episode is produced by RobertHossary and is sponsored by the
Professional Development Forum PDF.
They provide webinars, social mediadiscussions, podcast, parties,
anything you want everything youneed Professional Development Forum.
(56:32):
You can find them online,profesionaldevelopmentforum.org
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(56:54):
In fact, that's our website,10lessonslearned.com.
Until the next episode,thank you for listening.
And remember, you've been listeningto the only podcast on the internet.
That's making the worldwiser lesson by lesson.
Thanks for joining us.
I, I can remember.
I was working with one of the big airlinesand I was with a group of executives and
we were we were discussing, they're makingbig changes and they were interested in
the application of some of these toolsthat I've developed and what have you.
And they we're talking aboutthe stress of the time.
And I said, well, what youknow don't you need some sleep.
(00:21):
And one of them piped up and said to me,you know what, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
And I said really well then letme tell you something that I know,
and that is that you're going to bedead a lot sooner than you expected.
Welcome to the podcast.
Tenodesis it took me 50 Years to Learn.
Where we dispense wisdom, not clichesbanalities or platitudes to an
(00:42):
international audience of rising leaders.
My name is Duff Watkins and I'm your host.
Our guest today is neuroscientist.
Stan Rodski.
Stan has worked for 30 years andwell he's worked with professional
sports teams, Olympic teams,men and women, boys, and girls.
And now he's here with you andme, Stan, welcome to the show.
Great to have you.
(01:02):
Cool.
Thank you.
Pleasure to be here.
Let me tell you why your true story.
I'm talking to a podcast producerRobert Hossary, years ago, and
he was telling me about thisphenomenon of adult coloring book.
I said, what is that a thing?
He said, yeah, it's a thing I said,it's gotta be some American bullshit.
(01:22):
Now I do some research and Ifound out, one, it's not American.
It's Australia too.
It's not bullshit.
It's neurosciece.
And you're the guy that started all this,the colortation and how do I know that?
Because I'm listening to your audiobook, the mindfulness of neuro science.
On my phone and it's in fact,there was a copy right behind you.
It's not just a thing.
(01:43):
It became quite a phenomenon.
Is it true?
Your books were featuredon the Oprah Winfrey show.
I mean, there is no higheraccolade than that, right?
I can absolutely tellyou that's the truth.
And you know, barring the fact thatyou can't have you in the word color.
I thought Americans seeing the book wouldwould never occur, but a San Francisco
(02:07):
publisher took it on with the others.
And and the story was, we got an emailsaying we were inbargoed which was a few
months before its official launch by her.
And we weren't allowed to talk aboutit, until she broke the news of the
book and and she, and her best friendjust loved the whole concept and I
(02:29):
was pleased that they did becauseit isn't an infantile activity.
It's actually a very powerfultool in the in, in the cupboard.
That can be used to help usperform better by relaxing first.
But neuroscience is what convinced me.
Yeah.
I mean, and that's why you're on the showand that's why, because I need so many
(02:51):
gaps in my knowledge, you know, we needpeople like let's let us start with, what
was your first business lesson Stan?,
Look, I'd have to say that.
They've been a lot for it for a start.
And I guess as a scientist the thingthat I learned was, you know, I'm not
(03:12):
sure whether these words will communicateacross every culture, but there's a lot
of mumbo jumbo in science and, and manyof my colleagues would use a lot of words.
Now I'll give you an exampleof where I'm coming with.
My first lesson.
What is a cognitive neuroscientist.
(03:32):
That's me.
I can sit here and sprawl to you about allof the other technical mumbo jumbo words
that would define me, or I could say toyou, you know what Duff, the way that you
can get your head around me is that I'm aplumber and an electrician for the brain.
(03:56):
I am about the pipes, the taps,the fluids, and the electrical
circuit board of the brain.
Now that's the lesson that I would givemy, I gave myself very early in the piece
and I give every, every student, doctoror whatever he came through my, through my
labs or businesses, the same lesson thatis turn off the mumbo-jumbo the jargon.
(04:22):
And turn on the insight.
People want to understand easilyand quickly, you know, stuff that
is usually out of their frameworkout of the the norm for them.
And just more words that needdefinitions will never cut it.
So the better you are, and so mybusiness lesson very early in the
(04:44):
piece was always make sure whatyou're trying to talk about is.
Understood, not just you raisingyour flag saying, you know, I've
got a doctorate in mathematicalneurosciences and it's about explained
to me in a way that I can understand.
(05:04):
And that was my first, particularlywhen you start thinking about
neuroscientists and people workingvery technical, specialized areas.
If you can't do that in, in, in,you're not going to get very far.
And by just told you what I do.
My doctorate is in psychotherapy.
So I know a lot of mumbo-jumbo myself,but I use the same analogy Stan.
(05:27):
I said, basically, it'slike being a plumber.
You serve an apprenticeship.
You keep doing, you get better.
You work with people who arebetter than you, you learn.
And eventually, hopefully you get kindof good at the psychotherapy thing.
It really is just that simple.
Look and as a behaviorist for me, thereare plumbers who just their expertise is
in the pipes and there are those that are.
That are involved in dealing withthe people who use the pipes.
(05:51):
And that's the, the, the, the use sideis what you're talking about for me.
It's which was where thecoloring books came from.
There was in all of the years that Iworked as a psychologist and, and I did
that for, you know, 30 more of thoseyears the thing that always, and you would
have found this in your own counselingtherapy and in your studies, the hardest
(06:13):
part is after their visit, keeping themmotivated to do what you've asked them
to do, or that they've agreed to do.
And we worked in a very busy executivepractice and the doctors on one hand
would say, send them to me as the neuroor the psych and, you know, Let's let's
(06:33):
get them, de-stressed practice somemeditation and go through a little bit
of therapy or whatever it might be.
And but inevitably the further theygot away from you, the less they
did, why would you not be motivated?
And then of course you see thatpeople would come through a
medical practice, diagnosed withcancers and not take their pills.
Why would you take your pills?
(06:55):
What would motivate someone to notdo something, to save their life.
And that's the, that's the core ofyou have to actually be in some form.
Yeah.
It's very hard to hear the messages.
It's very hard to practice thecontent be motivated unless you're
actually coming from a placeof peace place of homeostasis.
(07:17):
And the coloring was about that.
The coloring was about in my practice.
If I got them to color, and this wasjust purely coincidental, I happened
to have an EEG technology on, on thisyoung lady who was quite a serious mental
illness and, and it was just a chance.
I've been playing around with the ideaof the brain actually, does it rest
(07:39):
and, and settle and calm because yousee it with children when they colour.
Why wouldn't an adult do that.
And she colored and I'm watchingthe EEG and she's calming.
And the more calm she got, the moreable she was able to listen to the
messages, this science working acrossyour desktop, that you would suddenly
be able to understand that at the heartof our motivation, we've, we've actually
(08:05):
got to be able to take in these messages.
We've got to be.
From my view in this state of homeostasisin state of balance because we just, you
know, unless we're there, our brains,won't respond in the way that we wanted.
The pipes won't turn on when we want to.
The electrical circuit board.
(08:25):
Won't work the way we want it to.
Well, that leads, I think, to thefirst lesson, the subset is 10 wisdoms
you learned in 40 years of science.
So number one is.
In God, we trust allothers must bring data.
Yeah.
Yes.
And, I actually used thatsaying just a couple of days
ago at a, at a Catholic college.
(08:46):
And I said, look, I haveto to take a stance here.
I'm not sure where you're goingto come through when I say this.
But if we're going to implement someof these ideas they're only going
to be, ideas supported by data.
The coloring book ideawas supported by data.
You know, they, it didn't, it wasn'tjust a manufactured idea with an anecdotal
(09:08):
outcome and let it, we needed to seethat there was an actual influence.
And I think, you know,I've never left this.
I it's not that it, it,that it has to drive us.
It just has to support us.
We have a brain that requires data, youknow, it's built for distance evaluation.
(09:31):
It is built for evaluating danger.
It's built for.
Fear, whatever else you want to say.
You know, our, our original ancientbrain in our deep limbic system
on the top of our brainstem, it'snot changed in 400,000 years.
(09:53):
And of course the millionsof years of development to
get to, to our current state.
And it's still required.
You know, it's still relies on data, butoften not good data, you know, it, it the
b rian makes things up unfortunate becausethe real world in the fantasy world of,
(10:13):
of thought are the same thing to ourbrain, but still my, my, my contention.
Is that we still have ourbeliefs, but we really, as a
human, as a human, we need data.
And that's, to me, that's a great, that'sa great wisdom on pulling that off the
Americans a little bit there with, yeah.
That
I should say to the, I guess peopleknow on American coinage, there
(10:37):
is in blazed the phrase in Godwe trust and the joke being that
everybody else has to come with data.
And, but that's what.
Persuaded me, Stan.
I mean, the idea of coloring you, youcited the science, you, you pioneered
some of the research yourself.
It's like all simplify,coloring, believe it or not.
(10:58):
For whatever reason, it doesn't matter.
Coloring, relaxes the brain.
And thus allows for peak performancebecause, and you're an expert in stress.
I hope everybody knows this.
By now, the more relaxed, calm you are,the better able you are to perform.
And I can tell you from my own experienceand I use psychometrics, the more stressed
(11:19):
you are, the more your attention narrowsand your probability of making errors
forced or unforced rises significantly.
So whether business school studyingsports, whatever state of.
Relaxation, not sleepiness, butrelaxed alertness is optimal.
(11:40):
It, it simply can't.
The brain cannot do anything except thenot optimal in a stressed situation.
Now pressure is good.
Pressure is not stress.
Pressure is inverted byresilience into either stress.
Or performance.
We get up in the morning, we'repressured that doesn't necessarily
(12:01):
stress us with our amount of resilience.
You know, we then, and bounce inaccording to our resilience, you
know, every day is a new day.
Every day above ground is a good dayand, and our messaging starts to go and
we, and that turns into a performance.
We get out of bed, but if it turnedinto a stress, we stay in bed.
(12:22):
You know, I feel I can't function,but I'm sick of the world.
I'm sick of work.
It's that process.
And this idea of homeostasis in there,this whole system is lubricated.
You know, it is able to actoptimally, you know, that circuit
board that I've been talking about.
(12:42):
As much as we can stay in homeostasisor allostasis now, allostasis, of
course bear and allostatic load,probably being the thing that, you know,
the more I've got up every morning.
And I had the resilience to do that,and I convert it to performance
rather than stress and all thewring things, that process.
(13:03):
I mean, when we're much younger, webounce up, you know, it's another day.
But we're a little bit like a tree thatimage of a lone tree on a cliff, you
know, with the wind blowing it over.
Well, when we were young and ourhomeostasis, we bounced back homeostasis
being bounced back and coming back intothat, we bounced back, but you can imagine
(13:24):
where we humans are like that tree.
You know, the, the wind has blownand blown and blown and blown, and a
bounce back is not longer that far.
Our bounce back is well on a reallybad windy day where we're almost
touching the ground, but when we bounceback, we, we bounce back only so far.
That's called allostatic load.
(13:45):
An allostatic load is, the partin which most of us are operating.
We, we can get so far back, but evenso, you know, we, we need to have
that bounce back because the brain.
Once all those information come,comes into our sensory thalamus,
you know, I mean, but everything,everything that comes into your
(14:08):
brain goes into the sensory thalamus.
It decides whether it's sight sound,touch, feel it, then shoots it.
It's supposed to shoot it straightup there into your, into your frontal
cortex, which is sort of the commandand control part of the brain.
And it's sort of thinking,okay, that's a visual.
(14:29):
Okay.
I'm going to shoot that to that partof the brain and on its way, it jumps
into a thing called the hippocampus.
Which is where all our learning occurred.
It says, have you seen this before?
Have I done this before?
Have I, you know, what would Inormally do and then shoots it back.
And then in its final effort,remember we were talking millisecond.
I'm describing something overa minute, but it's taking
(14:51):
milliseconds and at the impact.
When operating in homeostasisfrom homeostasis, it will then
pass by the parts of the brain,that deep limbic system where
it's got all the emotional stuff.
And then it sort of goes, well, you know,is there something else I should add?
And then it turns into an actionbut when we're out of balance, when
(15:13):
we're not in homeostasis, it justgoes straight to the deep limbic.
It just goes to the amygdala.
It's hijacked.
It spins around in there for too long.
It gets more and more emotional.
And it was our ancient brain we'rebuilt for that, you know, something
jumping out of the dark at us.
There's no need.
If you're about to be run over the busto run it past your frontal lobe and
(15:36):
check wether buses are going to hurt you.
You're just going to react.
And that's and that'sthat emotional component.
Pointing out.
I mean, that system that we'retalking about, it's not a,
it's not a flaw in the system.
Let's just take a moment toappreciate that system for keeping
us and all of our ancestors alive.
So we can add this conversation.
(15:57):
No, absolutely correct it's justthat it goes out of balance.
When it gets locked in, that'swhy, you know, in a certain
flash moment you will act.
You know, you know, in, in everydaypeople language, you know, you'll just
act in a way that you never would.
Why have I just forgotten thename of the managing director?
Or why am I a footballer?
Who, who, who normally for aliving kicks this ball or hits
(16:21):
this ball a thousand times a day.
And today in a pressure moment, Ihit it or kicked it or whatever,
like I'm a, five-year old.
Well, why would that occur whenI'm I'm actually have my brain's
motor cortex is actually practiceto within a nanosecond of its life.
(16:41):
That act in exactly the same way.
Why would that have occurred?
Hmm, well that takes meto lesson number two.
The more we learn about the brain,the bigger the mystery it remains.
Absolutely.
And the number that webandy around is often.
It's three pounds of spaghetti.
Bolognaise in white sauce.
You know, this brain, it's an analogyI usually use when I'm hungry, That's
(17:08):
for obvious reasons, but that's itssize, you know, and, and yet it is
so unbelievably mysterious to us.
I would say back in 1970 79, whenI first started this sort of work,
which is my goodness, how old am I?
We're, we're looking at a world in whichwe always thought we'd had our, grasp
(17:31):
of about 10% and you know what, allthese years later I haven't changed.
All I've changed is the10% I thought I knew.
I no longer know.
And the, and I've got another 10%that I now think I know, but I'm
almost guaranteed not knowing.
And this will link back to mylast question that you have.
(17:53):
my goodness.
If I could just live another 40years, I would be in heaven because,
because we'd really, for me between1980 and 2000, 2005, we were in a,
the technology hadn't jumped for us.
(18:16):
You know, it was still big machines,hospital data, you know, it, we're
now it's mobile data, you know, youknow, we've even got machines now where
I can put the machine on my head inyour head and I can start monitoring.
Whether in fact we have, for example,this is a great debate for another,
(18:37):
another day, but debate free will.
If you truly have free will then whydid your brain actually sends you a
message before, you know, when I saidthat you thought that, that before you
thought that something else happenedin your brain and I just saw it.
So tell me again about.
(18:58):
Free will.
I know that I know this, I read this yearsago and I am still trying to wrap my mind
around it, which takes us to Lesson numberthree, the mind body connection is real.
I knew that, but I didn'tknow how real it is and how.
How fast it works, but that's what,you're what you were illustrating.
(19:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think we see that a lot.
If we move into the behavioral sciences,it's like the current work going
on with depression and, and certainbody hormones and my goodness what's
causing what in here, you know, theseare really this causation effect.
In terms of the mind and the body, but,but the best one has been, of course,
(19:44):
the, the, the discoveries in the autonomicnervous system, central nervous system,
autonomic nervous system, or autonomicnervous system para and sympathetic
systems push and pull, push, and pull.
Yeah, it, it, it controls allof our organs and it does.
So subconsciously even unconsciously,some things are subconscious.
You can affect your breathing.
(20:04):
But you can't affect how, how quicklyyour kid kidneys are operating or, you
know, these are, you know, there are awhole bunch of systems trying to keep
you currently at the right temperature.
Now you're not thinking about those.
It's busily trying to keep you in.
Homeostasis because that's thewhole point of our existence.
And few colleagues of mine went oninto neurosurgery and into the medical
(20:29):
profession, they use to always say yome, well, Stan, you know, when one day
when you can actually find physicalway in which a thought turned into
anxiety, if you can finally tell me that.
I'll believe the mind body connection.
And of course, when we actually foundthat the production when anxiety occurs
(20:52):
and cortisol, and we could see thecortisol occur in there as a result
of the para and sympathetic nervoussystems, trying to balance themselves.
And then we add in, we bring inthe bio scientists a little bit
more like me in this process.
Who'd go well, isn't that interestingwhen the cortisol goes in there and
(21:14):
stays in there too long, it producesa protein, a beta protein, and a
protein by definition has substance.
And that was why the first fewtimes we found that, that the
buildup in those proteins wouldhappen in the heart and the head.
And of course that's heart attack andanurism and so there was the link.
(21:38):
There was the mind body link.
That was like a, we just landed onMars you know, like really type of
link in that science of mind and bodyconnection because my mind, you know,
remember my brain doesn't differentiatebetween reality or not reality.
I can be anxious because I just thinksomething's going to happen to me.
(22:01):
It's not that something willhappen to me or is happening to me.
Will happen to me.
And if it's, and if I maintainthat for too long, as you would
know, as a behaviorist allof the consequences of that.
You know, you can see theconsequences, you know, people
break out, They start sweating.
They can't remember names.
They get headaches.
(22:22):
They feel sick, you know,but we could never find that.
That connection in there.
And then that we did find that thereit was, and now we're finding, oh,
well, you know the fluids in thebody though, don't go into the brain.
You know, the Brian's got its own fluid.
You know, you, you can't actuallyexchange fluids in there.
(22:43):
But in fact, the latest research,this is why I'm saying the 10%
before that actually they'refinding they are exchanging, they
are exchanging between those flu.
And, and this is again, youknow, new research, but it's
very, very powerful stuff.
So mind, body connection, you know,I wrote a whole book about it.
(23:05):
That was what the mindfulness and theneuroscience of mindfulness was about.
Why wouldn't mindfulnesshave these effects.
And, and the core of that was ourability to look at this autonomic nervous
system, the way it maintains things.
Here's my brief for executivesin, in the process here, why was
it in our practice over 20 years?
We've monitored stress levels inusing conventional psychometrics.
(23:30):
But then along came people likeme, we just started doing biometric
then as markers, et cetera.
But just for the sake of it we would,we, we found that progressively the
stress levels of this executive group,and we would have 1800 of them a
year come through for their executivehealth incoming because I was sick.
they came in because the company saidwe want, you know, you're worth a lot
of money to live and well but whatwe found was they were progressively
(23:54):
more, you know, something like 20%would say 25 years ago and they were
stressed and, and today, well, upuntil a year or two ago, nearly 40%
of them would say that they weren't,you know, struggling with with long.
Okay.
And then we would gofor, so are you drinking?
Nah, not that much anymore.
Smoking no.
Are you eating properly?
(24:15):
Yes.
I know all about that.
Are you exercising?
Well, clearly seniorexecutives and executive types.
They still sort of carry pounds.
But my point is we think ourlifestyles are much better.
And even though we've got all of thisworking in a certain way, we turn
around and we go, isn't that interestingdiabetes too, is raging amongst.
(24:36):
Why would diabetes too?
Which is an environmentallifestyle, diabetes, where they
are in fact, doing all the things,biologically, all the right things
to not be I'm talking borderline.
That your doctor would giveyou the pamphlet saying you are
borderline diabetes two nearlyall of them, nearly all of them.
(24:56):
It's that cost.
Why would that be when they're actuallygot so much going on that's right.
About, you know, because they're,well-educated, they know what they
should do and they're doing, and theirpartners are probably bashing them up,
all the time, keeping them, you know?
And the answer, of course, isthe one thing that was growing
in there, which was stress.
Stress for me.
is the release and the maintenance ofthose cortisol hormones in their system.
(25:20):
Cortisol.
And the release of these amyloid proteins.
This is the marker in here andis behind so much, that sort of
busying itself trying to kill us.
Sorry.
We're only up to number three.
But at that leads to the next lesson.
Which is, you will have totranslate this one for me.
(25:43):
Reflex to reaction andpoint two five seconds.
Yes.
Remember I was talking about thesensory thalmus and in comes, the
information through there, andit whips it through the brain.
When our brain operates in itsinformation, processing the average
adult person that takes a quarter ofa second to process anything that's
(26:06):
coming in, takes a quarter of a second.
The best the human brain can do is one.
Of a second in terms of processingand a reflex which is not a
reaction is 0.08 of a second.
So that's how quick the brain works.
Why, why is that important?
(26:27):
Because the, if I go backto my data is everything.
We now have techniques.
Where we can very quickly assess howquickly your brain processes information.
And if it's being hijacked,this was the point of this one.
If it's being hijacked, you can suddenlygo out to 0.3, five or 0.4, five.
(26:47):
It means I've got a way of knowingwhether you're brain is actually
processing efficiently or is beinghijacked by your emotional controllers.
And it gives me when I'm talking with.
Students who want to process informationquickly and more efficiently so that they
can get better results or athletes, forexample, it's the same, same thing, not
(27:11):
this ability to have a number of tests.
So I can know if a person came to seeyou Duff and they're anxious and you're
helping them through that process, butwouldn't it be lovely for you to be able
to in a couple of, in a couple of minutes,Say set their personal benchmark, you
know, where, where their brain's operatingand actually through your endeavors.
(27:35):
know, that you've freed upthat connection in the brain.
You know, you, you you've actually,you're, you're now able to
minimize the disruption comingout of the emotional controls.
And I think the point is our nervoussystems get hijacked all the bloody
time by fears, stress, imaginary fears.
Circumstances, conditions, things thatprayer in our mind and all the things
(27:59):
that we allow to pray on our mind,well, allow this hijack to occur.
And the hijacking of the centralnervous system has definite
measurable physiological results,
correct?
Hmm.
All right.
Lesson number five 20 minutestimes 20 meters times 20 seconds.
This sounds like my workoutroutine sounds like intervals.
(28:21):
Well, again, from a neuroscienceperspective, what we know is
that you need to change yourbrain's focus every 20 minutes.
You and I, and now 40 minutes in.
And if you actually want to recalibrateyour brain, Bring it back into not
jumping around everywhere, tryingto work out what I'm about to say
(28:45):
and what you're about to say to me.
And what have you, all of thepeople listening, the optimum
would be every 20 minutes youlook up from what you're doing.
You find a spot 20 meters away andyou focus on that for 20 seconds.
That's what that meant.
You have recalibrated
your brain.
(29:05):
Sure.
I understand this.
This sounds pretty idiot proof.
Every 20 minutes, I look atsomething 20 meters away.
Focus on it or allow it to gaze at it for20 seconds and that recalibrates my brain.
Excellent.
And we know that it does thatbecause we've really watched it
do so in the monitors, but justanecdotally, it sort of makes sense.
(29:26):
And we could, and we actuallyproved this with gamers.
So gamers are the one, know if we goback to the north 0.2, five gamers,
those are the professional kids thatthe video games and competitions that
these days make millions of dollarswith millions of people watching
them play for 20 minutes sessions.
(29:47):
And
they're, televised too.
They're on television.
I've seen them,
but they were the source of the studyfor me, because again, if they are
operating at no 0.2, five alive, theprevious one, they are already retired.
They operate between 0.1 and 0.15.
(30:10):
It's so fast.
And that's why there areabout 17 years of age.
Cause that processing is unencumbered.
Stan,, is that a reflex orreaction you were describing?
No, no, no.
A reflex operates below 0.1.
It operates at 0.08 and that'sthe reason for that is it
(30:33):
doesn't go through the brain.
It just operates throughthe nervous system.
When we have a reaction, it goesthrough the brain and it can't go
through the brain any quicker than.
point one of a second, but that'swhat the that's the way the 20,
2020 came from in the process.
Does processing slow with age.
Yeah,
I was afraid of that.
(30:55):
Let me ask you again,processing slow with age?
But we can also improve with that.
You and I will never operateat the level of the games.
We have too many other pathways inour brain for information, the process
itself along, you know, it's going togo everywhere and and we will never
(31:16):
have that because of our experience,because remember this is not reflex.
This is reaction and reactionmust pass across the emotional
controllers of the brain.
Yeah.
And, and the older we get, the more ofthose reactions and pathways and, you
know, and then into the hyper campus.
(31:37):
Oh, what happened when that happened?
You know, it's all goingon in a nanosecond.
Remember but boy,there's a lot going on in
that process.
Let's keep talking about rewiringthe brain point, number six, rewiring
the brain by C V S equals B U S.
Well, that wasn't quite right now.
This goes back to a very, this is not anew invention, but it's about pathways.
(32:01):
Let me put it to you.
The current view of the situation is notequal to the best view of the situation.
And the best view of the situationis at least 10 times better than
your current view of the situation.
Yeah.
Current view of the situation is notequal to the best view of the situation.
Let's just start with that.
Let's just start with that one.
This is, this is not new, but in thecontext of, of, of this neuroscience and
(32:25):
where it's going, it's just brilliant.
Because if I say to you black.
You say white?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If I say a company resembles a tortoisein its performance, you think hair?
No.
Well, that's it.
But what if you think of interms of a company that isn't
performing well, and I call it.
tortoise like, what wouldyou think the company's slow
(32:47):
moving slow to adapt, slow to change.
Now
you just said, because the current viewof your situation, which is that situation
is equal to the best view, which was thatit's slow, you know, that's the equals,
but what if I said it doesn't equal?
That, what if I said to you, you know,if you thought about that different,
you might've said stable, dependable,Giving always going to, you know,
(33:14):
add to your superannuation fund,but that wasn't your automatic view,
because the brain operates that way.
As soon as it's got a view, you willsay what it believes is the best
view because that's what engaged it.
But what if we can actually trainour brain to say that the current
view is not equal to the best view?
We find a different pathway.
And if I support that with thatview, that better view always be 10
(33:38):
times better than the current view.
Then maybe I'll bang mybrain into new pathway.
And if I then say to you, the otherpart of this formula is times 100.
If I said to you that if you said that.
A hundred times a day, the currentview of the situation is not equal
to the best view of the situation.
Then I would say to you, your brainwill actually consider the next
(34:00):
time I say to you, a company thatresembles a tortoise performs.
In what way?
You will go somewhere different.
Let me make sure I understand this.
So the point is the current viewof the situation is not equal to
the best view of the situation.
The best view of the situation isat least 10 times better than the
(34:20):
current view of the situation.
And the more I focus deal oringest or imbibe the best view of
the situation, the greater rangeof desired outcomes can occur.
Yeah.
Because there are other views, you know,our brain is short-cutting, it's going
Huristics is the word for that.
For that.
(34:41):
Correct.
But here's a way now, let me give you anexample about why a hundred times a day.
I'm sure you've learned your timestable somewhere along in this process.
So seven times three equals?
21.
Last time I checked.
Eight times eight
64.
Yeah.
Why do you know that?
Drill drilled into me as a kid.
(35:01):
You know, our brain isactually still no matter.
How many education professors Ihave this debate with our brain is
still structured to learn by here.
If you continue to learn your tables,you know, there's an argument now,
well, you don't need to know those.
You've got, you know, as long asyou got the two numbers and you
know what you're trying to do,but the fact of the matter is.
(35:24):
You know, built into your subsetsinto this world where I started of
data, we need to understand distances.
We need to understand differences.
We need, you know, we neednumbers for all of that.
And that's why you learned thosetables and you learned them
because you did it by rote.
I'm telling you the current viewof the situation, not equal to
the best view of the situation.
You say that a hundred times untilthe next time you and I meet.
(35:48):
And I say to you, so Duff, youknow, what's the thinking algorithm.
And you go to me, current viewof the situation, not equal to
the best view of the situation.
I know that your brain will actuallythink that isn't that fascinating that
you'll you'll create different pathway.
And again, that's you know, there'sbeen a, quite a few people who've
sort of worked in this space beforewe had the brain science and I just
(36:09):
think that's a, that's a great way.
To, to teach our brain to do things
differently.
Well, practice it, at least inmy experience is using different
words than you usually prefer.
I tell people life as a smorgasborgof behavioral smorgasborg and people,
you, I, everyone, we have patterns.
(36:29):
We have preference.
We tend to do the samebehaviors over and over again.
But there is a smorgasborg of bail.
So, so why not sample one ortwo and you will get a different
reaction that reminds me of rememberSeinfeld, did you watch Seinfeld?
Remember the Uber loser, George Castanza.
There was an episode wherehe reversed 180 degrees.
(36:52):
Everything that he normally did and said.
And he had unmitigatedsuccess in his life.
You know, the women liked him andhe got hired and he was desired.
And then I was talking about Seinfeldto a friend of mine who is a very
senior psychiatrist in Australia.
And he said, yeah, my brother,who is a psychiatrist also
does that with his patients.
(37:12):
I said, what do you mean?
He gets them to try the exact opposite.
Of behaviors that they have been doing.
And I experimented with this and I got totell you, it was a Eureka moment for me.
All of a sudden, the worldresponded differently because I
was initiating using differentwords, using different behaviors.
I was acting differently.
(37:33):
New pathways, which isalso one of my point.
Well, let's see if we're getting there.
By the way, before we move on,what is my thinking algorithm?
CVS does not equal the BVS.
Yeah.
And what does that say?
What does that mean to you?
The current view of thesituation is not equal to the
best view of the situation Stan.
And the best view of the situationis at least 10 times better than
the current view of the situation.
And if you say that to yourself,staying a hundred times a day,
(37:56):
you'll be surprised at the results.
Well, and how long will it take that?
Literally will take one minuteand 40 seconds of your day.
(laughs) I'm too busy, Idon't have time for that.
Well, just practice it on your walkfrom the, from the kitchen to your car.
I don't know what it is, butremember at the moment you've
(38:16):
only got it in working memory.
We've got to get it in deep into yourmemory, into your long-term memory, where
your times tables are, because that'swhere your brain will dig in when it's
processing that situation that you're in.
That's where it will go.
And if it finds that it will act on that.
Lesson number seven, this sounds likegeomotry to me, infinity circle, square
(38:41):
and triangle exercises for the brain.
Yeah.
So, so now I'm into practical.
Neuro-plasticity remember thatthree pounds of spaghetti bolognaise
well, let's turn that into threepounds of, of Play-Doh is Play-Doh
something everyone sort of molding.
Yeah.
I don't
know if they still have it,but I certainly played with
(39:02):
it when I was a kid.
The Play-Doh.
So I think of the brain Play-Doh.
So when we say now, which is thewhole world of neuroscience, now
regards the brain as plastic/Play-Doh.
So when you change one thing,something else changes.
The thing can't get bigger.
It does shrink.
(39:23):
You Know, as we get older,I hate totell you Duff.
But it doesn't actually add any mess.
So for example, whenever we look atpeople with specific skills, there's
areas of the brain, which are bigger,but they're to the deficit of other
parts of the brain, which are small.
So people who, who have great insight intomathematics you know, the Newtons, you
(39:45):
know, all of these people who have messes.
There were unable to communicate.
That was because of brain plasticity.
What we now know is that we canactually work with brain plasticity.
We can, we can actually helpour brain become more active in
certain areas, but how, okay.
You can sit there right now andstart, start thinking up for
(40:07):
yourself, how you would like to bemore mathematical, you know, really.
Okay.
Come on.
What are you going to do in that process?
And this whole idea of plasticityI condense down to let's just take
the infinities and, and what I'vedone there is I've laid it down for
everyone who's listening or watching.
(40:28):
It's just on its side there, youknow, and, and I'm, and, and you
can't, if you're listening, you can'tsee it but I'm with my right hand,
because I tend to use my right hand.
I'm just got my finger going.
In an infinity symbol.
Now I know that if I look atthe technology as I'm just
doing air infinity symbol.
(40:48):
and as I'm doing that I know my right handis actually being driven by my left brain.
And my left brain is communicating themovements to my motor cortex across
the brain, across the Corpus callosum.
Big U shape piece in the brain,which is its central processor.
And it's sending it throughthe central process.
It's pretty easy.
It's used to me using my right hand.
(41:10):
It sort of gets it, you know, themotor cortex is going and I'm doing
my infinity symbol and you can dothis with a pen on paper, which is
even been as part of the process.
But then what if I changehands, I got to change hands.
So this symbol with my other, andI'm doing this relatively well.
Because I'm used to doing this andshowing this and practicing it.
And if I put it in a pen andI put it on paper, look, it
(41:33):
gets, it's a little wobbly.
But I can do it.
And I'm now using my right hemisphere.
But what I'm saying to you is, ifyou now do this with both hands
you know, you, you have a try now.
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if I'm thatathletic, but I'll try.
Okay.
That's beautiful.
So for those of you who aren'twatching this, Duff has done what
(41:56):
every human does first he's actuallymirroring the image his right.
Right-brain.
Are you right-handed Duff?
Yes.
You tend to use your right hand the most.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So your brain just said toyou to the other side, it said
just, yeah, just mirror wait.
Okay.
So you see how you go out and aroundand then, you know, you're really using
(42:17):
one side of the brain, but if I say toyou now Duff, start at the top of one
and Start at the bottom of the other.
Okay.
Now I gotta think here, Stan,thinking slows me down significantly.
Yeah.
You can see this much better with pens.
(42:39):
So if you're listening do thison paper, You know, you're
you're right will go, all right.
In the left will go everywhere.
And then all of a suddenit'll start to go that way.
And eventually you can even cross so thatyour left hand, if you're right handed
gets much better than the other hand.
What you're doing is you know,your brain is now communicating
across the Corpus callosum.
(43:00):
It's actually improving the pathway.
It's, it's making more partit's the use it or lose it.
Philosophy that's going on inneuroscience at the moment by now
activating the two hemispheresand coordinating them together.
The Corpus callosum you'redealing with things like dyslexia,
dysphasia, aphasia, all of thecommunication problems that so many.
(43:24):
Children and adults who undiagnosedor just covered it up have dealt with,
because that central processor, the Corpuscallosum has for whatever reason become
tangled and these sorts of exercises.
And I put there.
There's the infinity symbol, butyou could also do circles at the same
time with both hands in different.
(43:44):
You can do squares and triangles, trydoing a circle and a square at the
same time with one hand, do a circle.
And with the otherhand, do a square, maybe
off camera.
I'll try that.
Maybe, you know, again, I'mcovering a lot of neuroscience here.
Just so people know,correct me if I'm wrong.
The Corpus callosum is a thick bandof nerves between the left and the
(44:06):
right hemispheres of the brain.
And it transmits informationbetween the two hemispheres.
It's like a centralprocessor in the brain.
That's where the tangles occur, thatlead to all of those phasic disorders
and is probably the primary playgroundfor most cognitive neuroscientists, where
they're trying to unravel all of that.
(44:26):
And I do so with executives as well.
You know, this is a way to unblock,you know, create new pathways you're
actually doing neuro-plasticitywhen you do that exercise.
Yeah.
You're creating new pathways.
All right.
Well, let me go on to lesson number eight.
I'll sleep when I'm
dead.
Well, I think that in the last 10 yearsI've come to the opinion that sleep and
(44:49):
the understanding of sleep and beingable to improve sleep is one of the
greatest neurological finds of forever.
We all know it.
I can remember I was workingwith one of the big airlines
and I was with a group of.
Executives.
And we were we were discussing,you know, that making big changes
(45:10):
and they are interested in theapplication of some of these tools
that I've developed and what have you.
And now we're talking aboutthe stress of the time.
And I said, well, what youknow don't you need some sleep.
And one of them piped up and said to me,you know what, I'll sleep when I'm dead.
And I said really well then letme tell you something that I know,
and that is that you're going to bedead a lot sooner than you expect.
(45:32):
But I got to tell you in thisstory a month later, one of them
in that meeting have dropped dead.
There is a lot of machoness insenior executive is about sleep.
And Matthew Walker is probablythe reigning expert on this.
If you have a chance to listen to himon a podcast or read his book, I mean,
you want data, he'll give you some data.
(45:52):
And when people say to me, I'll sleepwhen I'm dead . I say, yeah, and you'll,
you'll be sleeping sooner than you thinktoo pal, because I mean, I thought I knew
a bit about sleep because I read Dement'sbook The Promise of Sleep, years ago.
And, but no Matthew Walker putthe daughter and the drop off
in productivity and longevity isprecipitous, not a slow, steady decline.
(46:14):
It's like jumping off a cliff.
Yes.
And, and part of that is understanding.
Sleep is not about an answer for fatigue.
Sleep is part of a 24 hour cycle inwhich the brain just switches functions.
For a certain amount of time, whichare necessary for its continuing
optimal performance study.
After study now shows thatit's not driven by fatigue.
(46:36):
That's not the reason though.
How many people don't sleep,even though they feel tired.
Hmm, it's just that it's it's part of a24 hour cycle, which in fact is important.
My favorite analogy for the brainthese days is that it's a battery.
You know, it's a circuit board with abig battery and it's whole processing.
You know, the reasons that, you know,some of the other things that I've
(46:59):
been discussing here and, you know,the shortcuts, it's habitual behaviors.
You know, the brain is not judgmental.
You know, when the taps are flowing, whenthe air conditioning unit is set for high,
it's just operating to get you to highor keep you in normal or whatever it is.
And there's no judgment process.
So, so why would it not do anythingother than what is optimal for it?
(47:22):
And that is.
Exactly.
Right.
So when we fall asleep and drive offthe road into a tree, the reason for
that is that it's run out of juice.
You know, it's at the point where I cannotmaintain you and keep you alive unless I
shut you down for the next few minutes.
Yeah, all day long, it operates on thebasis of if I have to stop and think about
(47:46):
this, I'm going to use too much energy.
That's why we have shortcuts.
Why would the brain arrangeitself with all these shortcuts?
Unless it had somebiological reason to do so.
And its biological reason ofcourse, is that it wants to conserve
our energy and energy is the keycomponent in, in this whole process.
(48:08):
It's, it's actually managing its energyflows, not over a sleep cycle or a day
cycle, but over a whole 24 hour cycle.
And my next book, which is theneuroscience of excellence, like
excellent looking forward to that one.
Well, that takes us, that takesus to Lesson number nine, Stan.
Time for a napucino . Andcan I get that at Starbucks?
(48:32):
Well, again, I, go backto have you heard of this
before?
No, no, I don't know whereyou're going with this.
So this is about coffee and sleep.
Let me explain when you have acup of coffee, the Chino, you,
you're not immediately stimulated.
It takes 20 minutesfor it to hit you in a.
(48:53):
Physiological sense in that you get the,the bang and coffee works like that.
It doesn't graduateitself into your system.
It bangs into your system.
If I've got you on an EEG at20 minute mark, I'll watch your
heart up, she goes now, now let'scombine that with nap theory.
(49:13):
Now by that.
I mean, napping and sleeping theory.
Imagine what would happen if youdrank a cup of coffee and you then
set your phone alarm for 20 minutesand you closed your eyes and napped
so that when the alarm woke you up in20 minutes, the coffee also hits you.
You are wired, wired, you are wired.
(49:37):
You are in supersonic speed.
Well, the next 10 to 15 minutes andthat's, what's called a napucino
And, of course that was abused bythe gamers in there because I would
just start trying to work out waysto, to, to get that even better.
(49:58):
And I I've actually moved intothe world of a decaf napucino.
I've actually, you'llfind this in the book.
I've come up with some exercises toreplace the coffee so that when you come
out of your nap you can actually wakeyour brain really quickly and effectively.
So that was the idea of, you know,that was one of the things, current
(50:20):
things that are about to hit.
So there's a number of littleexercises we can use from our
net because napping is brilliant.
If you need a nap.
Napping is not brilliant.
If you don't need to nap.
That's the key here.
Then people forcing themselves to net islike their five-year-olds on the nap mat
(50:41):
in the kindergartens, you know, some gooff and others just find it impossible.
And that's the same with us adult humans.
Stan, when is your bookon sleep being published?
Well, it's with thepublishers at the moment.
So, so they're they haven't givenme the date for its release.
Be sure to let us know so wecan promote it accordingly.
(51:02):
Lesson number 10 on Marsa day is 24.6 hours long.
But how would our brain cope with it?
It's like 24.6 hours, 23 minutes,I think longer than, than our day.
And believe it or not.
We don't know how the brain will copewith that, because this is back into
this whole, the brain is a 24 hours.
(51:24):
So we have a brain thatoperates on a 24 hour cycle.
Cause there's 24 hours in our day.
There's no, you can have more energy,but you can't have more hours.
And I just wanted to leave it withthe concept of how will we deal.
With being in an environment, which, whichhas a new definition on that, will it
(51:45):
take us millions of years adapt to that?
And have, can we define somescience to help us adapt to that?
Because what's happeningis that's accumulating.
You know, it's out of sync with us.
That small amount of timeis really a challenge.
So I'm leaving my last wisdom orinsight as the challenge here related
(52:06):
to, to our whole physiological system.
How will we, if we'reliving there deal with it?
Well, we won't find out,but somebody else will.
Indeed, no, I don't think theRover robots care too much.
Well, let me, let me ask you onelast question and we've been talking
a lot about things that, thatyou've learned over your 40 years
(52:27):
in science and 50 years in life.
What have you unlearned lately?
And by that, I mean, somethingyou absolutely positively
knew to be true then, but now.
No, it was not
the case.
It's come and it's gone forme a few times here and, and
for me, it's two brain theory.
And I just find this soamazing, you know, years ago.
(52:51):
I don't know if you saw it all or youbrought part of it as part of your
learning and your executive, work.
A lot of people went absolutelyballistic about two brain theory.
The left brain does this etc.
Remember that?
And it went into the schools, you know,oh, you know, if you're thinking with
your left brain, you're, you're beinglogical and, and the right brain you're
(53:12):
being creative and all the rest of it.
And the reason for that.
In those days was that limited amount ofability to see in there and understand it.
It made some sense because in the earlyscans, MRIs, before the pet scans and
all the other amazing stuff that'saround now, but we could see that most
(53:35):
of the activity happened on that side.
And, and, and over the years,that's sort of just evolved out.
You know, we just sort of, there'vebeen other things in the recent times,
and this is where the big discoveriesare while we know certain functions.
Do.
Tend to have a region that youcould define as being on the
(53:55):
left side or the right side.
But the new scanners now show us thatnot only does that region start to
glow under whatever instrument thatabout 20 other regions in the brain.
Also light up, maybe not as big, maybe notas dense or whatever it might be, but 20
(54:19):
other regions all over the brain light up.
And, and where the neuroscience is now is.
Why do they, lightup?
what, is going on in this brain?
Where that, even though, you know,that's the core area here that I'm
pointing at on my left side here, andI know where that fits into all the
(54:42):
other bits, but why is it lit, lit up,you know, over on the right side, down
the back, just behind this or that.
Why is that?
And that's where all ofthe science is right now.
Yeah, because we know brainwavesare the super highway.
So when we, when we get an alphawave, which is our pre sleep wave,
(55:03):
our relaxations wave, we know thatthat's occurring on one particular
side of the brain, but it's alsooccurring in all these other spots.
Around the brain that we found,all of those spots are connected by
these superhighways for the neuronsthat we couldn't work out for years.
How on earth could they all work?
The reason we didn't think thatwas going on is because how could
(55:24):
they communicate with each other?
And of course, what we've discoveredis that the brainwaves, which are
all different, you know, you getdifferent brainwaves in different parts.
They've become the super highway.
So they become the connected, all theparts of the brain that want to talk to
each other, jump onto the alpha wave.
and the alpha wave thenconnects them all up.
(55:46):
And that to me was the final demise of twobrain theory and hence the unlearning you
know, say goodbye, I'd held it there for,
even though it's sort ofspectacularly burned in my mind
a long time ago, but it was.
It sorta always, you know, it was part,but now it is well and truly in the grave.
(56:09):
Now we know better.
Thanks to guys like you.
And we will finish here on that notelisteners, you've been listening to
the international podcast and lessonsthat took me 50 years to learn.
This episode is produced by RobertHossary and is sponsored by the
Professional Development Forum PDF.
They provide webinars, social mediadiscussions, podcast, parties,
anything you want everything youneed Professional Development Forum.
(56:32):
You can find them online,profesionaldevelopmentforum.org
listener, you've heard from us, we'd liketo hear from you and you can email us.
We'd like to hear sort of wisdomthat you'd like to learn about who
would you like us to to talk to.
Please contact us.
The email address ispodcast@10lessonslearned.com that's
podcast at 10 one zero lessonslearned.com.
(56:54):
In fact, that's our website,10lessonslearned.com.
Until the next episode,thank you for listening.
And remember, you've been listeningto the only podcast on the internet.
That's making the worldwiser lesson by lesson.
Thanks for joining us.
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