So you said when you feel like you belong, you have this state of flow. I would also guess that other words that people say is that they're very present, that their minds are not racing ahead, that there is nothing in the moment that you need to manage, and that there is this peace and freedom.

Like you're calm, you're anchored. There's the absence of the panic, or anxiousness, or activation.

Yes. And the activation is an interesting word because I can think to certain friend groups that I was a part of, or certain people I was dating, or certain classes, for example, that I was taking in college, or certain jobs that I hated, where the moment I was walking into the classroom or into work, or I was sitting at a table with my supposed friends and air quotes, I was not anchored and at peace. I was so active in my mind and thinking about other things and worried about something and not able to feel anchored or at peace in those experiences. And I personally believe, based on the number of people that write in and the size of the audience on our social channels and the podcast asked that most people have a day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute experience of being activated and not belonging.

Yes.

How does somebody know? And I want you listening to us. I want you to think about where is the easiest place for somebody to spot this for themselves so that they can recognize a place in their life where they're not able to be their authentic self and where they get into this particular part of their life, and it's very activating.

So I love, love, love, love, love this question for so many reasons. So first of all, in my book, We've Got This, I introduce this concept, which I call our core wisdom. And in fact, Mel, you said to me, Ritu, tell everyone today what is the number one thing that you did to bring more belonging and authenticity into your life, to bring more ease ease and joy and flow and peace into your life. What was that?

Ritu, tell us the number one thing that you did to bring more joy and ease and peace into your life. I could pick up what you're putting down, woman. So tell us because I want to know.

And by the way, I'm a work in progress, everyone. Before you think like, oh, wow, Ritu really has it all figured out. Her life is perfect and whatever. I would tell you my life feels like it's a fucking mess all the time, and I'm constantly feeling overwhelmed and, and, and, and. However, I am always anchored to who I am. I often will say, here I am anchored, the good swirls around me, the bad, the ugly, everything is swirling around me, and I am anchored. And why? The number one thing that I did to bring more authenticity, belonging, and joy into my life is cultivate what I call my core wisdom.

What the hell is that?

Yeah, right. Good question. So our core wisdom is the inner knowing that pushes us to tune into ourselves and say to ourselves, in any situation, any interaction, any moment we're in, whether it's a moment of joy or a moment of feeling stressed or a moment of deep pain, whatever it is, we tune in and we say to ourselves, what's my mind saying right now? And in a moment of joy, we'll be saying, oh, I feel so good. This feels really good. Or I really like her. For example, right now, I'm really enjoying this. But in a stressful moment, it'll say, Oh, my God, I'm such a loser. See, I'm always a loser, and I can tell he's judging me. And this is why I shouldn't speak. And no, don't speak. And I knew you didn't like me. So we hear the narrative in the head, in the mind. We hear the voice. The So our core wisdom also pushes us to say, what am I feeling in my body? So let's go back to what I was sharing earlier. Belonging is a feeling. A lack of belonging is a feeling. What is the difference between fitting in and actually being who we are?

You'll know the difference based on what your body is telling you. So our core wisdom says, in this moment, in this experience, what is my body feeling and sensing? And we start to tune in. We feel the stress in our chest, and we'll feel that we're starting to sweat, and we'll feel the heat on our face. And then coupled with the negative narratives in our head, you're a loser. You suck. See, don't speak. Don't be who you are, they're going to judge you. We hear all of this and feel all of this happening. And in that moment, we leap into using our core wisdom strategies, which include, Oh, no, negate inner saboteur. I'm not going to let you talk to me that way. And we have our affirmations or our mantras, our self-coaching ready to go, because we're like, no way. Ritu Baseen, stand in your power. Ritu Baisin, speak. Or my favorite thing, Ritu Baisin, you've got this. If you don't speak, who will? So So then my affirmations and mantra start going. But then my body is still activated. So then I start doing my deep breathing work in that moment. And I start this deep breathing.

I take my hands, I rub it on my thighs, I put it on my chest, rub my fingers. I feel the tears coming up and I say, cry, let it out, let it out. Oh, you don't want to do it right here because they're watching, you don't feel comfortable? That's okay. Come back to this later. It's called emotional release or emotional discharge. It goes back to the activation. When we feel like we're being judged, what's actually happening in the body is that as human beings, we're animals and we're governed by our nervous systems. All day long, our nervous systems are clocking for harmful things in the environment. Back in the day, although for some people, I think maybe you, Mel, given how your early morning hikes, we're clocking for bears in forests. Most of us are not clocking for bears in forests. What's happening is Oh, see, you didn't say my name right, or you rolled your eyes when I was speaking, or you raised your eyebrow when you saw what I was wearing, or you keep interrupting me, or I hear the tone in your voice when you're talking to me versus talking to him, whatever it is, those disrespects, those hurtful things that we're clocking, the body intakes as attacks.

It's not the same as being attacked by bear, but it doesn't matter. The body is like, See, you don't like me. And that's what causes this activation. And when this is happening, energy is generated in the body, which could show up as trembling, shaking because we're so shocked or we're so upset. Could be tears. But the problem is, as humans, we override. And so what happens is the surge of energy comes up, the activation, the tears want to start. We want to start shaking, trembling, let out a moan or a cry. We say, no, don't do that because you'll be judged. And we push those sensations down. Our core wisdom says to us, come back to it. So for example, I literally, after I've had a stressful thing happen or I'm grieving right now because my mother is dying of Alzheimer's, all day long, I feel the grief. I'm like, No, you're at work. Keep going, keep going. But I come back to the moment later in the evening, and I'll take my memory back to my mom or whatever has happened during the day that it's difficult. And then I'll put on my music, my calming music.

I'll feel the tears come up, and I let the tears out, and I cry and let it out. Why? Because I don't want that energy to be trapped in me. But the other thing I'll mention here as it ties to our core wisdom is that I also do this with joy, because I feel like for a lot of us, we have capacity or we spend a lot of time with the pain. And what we're not doing enough of is spending time with the joy. And joy isn't just a mind thing. Oh, this is so nice, and I'm really enjoying this, and isn't this experience with my family pretty and nice. It's the actually feeling it in my body. And then the very last thing I'll say about core wisdom is that, first of all, it can be developed. The more we do it, we develop it. It's like a muscle, of course, is that we want to develop our core wisdom so that we build more settled nervous system so that we are more settled, so that we're less likely to be activated. And when we are triggered by the horrible shit that happens to us, We're able to address it.

And so like many experiences, there is no blue pill or red pill that we can take and like, oh, look at that, instantly, I am healed. It's not like that. It's a journey. But the better we get, the better and better we get, the less rattled we are and the happier we are or more joyful. Let's say more joyful.

Let me see if I can translate that to two examples. So let's just say an example that everybody can relate to, and it's is that you have a friend group, and you recognize, as you're listening to this conversation, that you are very activated within this friend group. You're always worried about what you're going to wear. You're typing your text to them three or four times, and then deleting it, putting a lot of emojis, and you are out to dinner with this friend group, and you realize, oh, my gosh, they've made plans to go away for the weekend two weeks now, and I'm not invited with them. And you have that moment where the buzzing really starts, your face turns bright red, you feel the lump in your throat, and you immediately do what we all do, which is either just take a big slug of your margarita or excuse yourself and go cry like a child in the stall of the bathroom, or you just shove it down and pretend you don't care. Yeah. In that moment, is there anything subtle or not subtle that you would recommend that somebody do, or is it easier to come back to it when you're alone so that you can be freer in how you process it?

What do you recommend to people who are just starting to become aware of this and tap into that?

Yes. So in We've Got This, my new book, I talk about plans planning in advance of situations happening. Because here's the thing, everyone, in the moment when we're activated and the shutdown starts, it's really hard in that moment to be like, Okay, here's what I'm going to do, because in that moment, we literally feel like we're going to cry or throw up or we want to run from the building or we want to die, literally. And after the fact, yes, let's come back to it. But in advance of situations happening, we plan out what we will do in that difficult moment arises. So first of all, I call it scripting. There's There are three things I want to leave you with. Step one, script. Scripting is the act of planning out in advance of a situation happening. What is it that I'm going to say in this moment when something difficult happens to me? Or let Let's say you're going to tell someone you're dating that you love them for the first time, and you're like, I know this is going to be hard for me. I know I'm probably going to shut down. I'll be nervous.

Scripting is the act of planning out what you're going to say in advance, because what happens is we move it from conscious brain into unconscious brain. In the moment when we are activated, we're like, Oh, my God, I'm so nervous. It's like the words will be there. Why? Because you implanted them in your brain for future retrieval. So we always script out what we're going to say in these moments. In advance and have myriad versions of them. I, by the way, you're like, where do you do your scripting? You can do it at your desk and write it down. I do it in the shower. I do it while I'm walking down the street.

So it can be both mental or written down?

Yes. I mean, it's better. It's always It's always better everyone to write things down. Why? There's a cognitive process that happens in the brain. It ties back to neuroscience that enables us to engage in better information retention. But here's the thing. If someone were to say to me, I'm not going to write it down, fine. I'd rather that you just practice it in your head, at least. Something is better than nothing. Do something, everyone. So step number one, script. Step number two, choose in advance. What am I going to myself in that situation, like self-coaching? When the moment happens and I feel the shutdown start, what am I going to say to myself? So you choose your affirmations or mantras in advance, always in advance. And so, for example, I already modeled a few. I like to say to myself, Ritu Baseen, stand in your power. And the reason that really works for me is because for decades, I didn't stand in my power, and I'm now all about it. I'm like, I'm standing in my power, I don't give an F, what's happening around me. Or Ritu Baseen, you got this, I love that.

Or you You can do this. I'm worthy. You choose your month or affirmation, whatever it's going to work for you in advance. The third thing we do, and this is important because let's remember, the body leads, not the mind. We say to ourselves, When I get activated, what am I going to do to settle myself in my body? So for me in particular, it's breathwork. In fact, if you said to me, what's the number one thing I can do for my body to calm myself in any situation? It's deep belly breathing. You can just go to Dr. Google and put in deep belly breathing. I talk about belly breathing in both my books. That deep calm breath, focusing on the exhalation in particular because it engages the parasympathetic or the flow part of our system. The exhalations And the reason I love breathwork to calm ourselves in situations is you're breathing anyways, number one. You might as well do it in a better, more effective, healthy, productive way, and no one can see you doing it. So if you're worried that... I would say I put my hand on my heart a lot, or I'll rub my leg, or I'll just give myself a quick embrace.

I'll be like, You're good. You're safe. You're telling your body you're safe. If you're like, I can't do that in front of people. I hear that. Then just start your deep breathing. And so those three things. You have your scripts, You have your self-coaching affirmations ready to go. And you've told yourself, as soon as I feel activated, I'm going to start this bodywork in this situation, calm myself. The very last thing we do is we visualize. So in advance, we We picture ourselves doing these three things. Why we're implanting, let's go back to neuroscience, future patterns of behavior. And we go into situations with these tools. So that way we're ready, we're ready to go. And one And the other thing I'll mention here, because I get access all the time during my interviews, Ruthieu, isn't it unfair that I'm the one having to deal with horrible shit? Like negative, hate's coming my way, people are being mean, inequities, sexism, Racism, homophobia. Why do I have to plan out in advance? And I hear that. And in fact, in social justice circles, we call this the burden of the oppressed. It's like, bad things are happening to me, and then I have to prepare for them.

And I hear that, and I honor that. And I would still say, I would rather us go into situations prepared to stand in our power. Why? Because this is what it looks like to claim belonging. And secondly, and more And importantly, it feels beautiful when we come out on the other side having used our scripts and we did what we were planning on doing. And then the very last thing I'll mention here is because I do a lot of work on allyship, too. We claim belonging for ourselves, but we also have to create belonging for others, especially in the last few years with the spotlight on, are you being an upstander or bystander? When the things are happening around you where you're like, That's not right. That's disrespectful. And we stand silently as we watch things happen around us. We can also plan it in advance for those situations. We plan out what we're going to say the next time we hear something inappropriate. This is what I'm going to say to myself, Oh, I shouldn't say it as a stranger. I can't say that to my family member at Sunday dinner because they're going to hate me.

And then I'll be like, no, here's what I'm going to say to myself when I start to shut down. Here's how I'm going to calm my body. We picture the visualization of it so that we can help to do this so that other people at the table who are rightfully shut down because of inappropriate things being said, we can be an ally by using the same three steps. So these are the three must-dos in advance of situations.

I love this. And just so everyone listening understands, because I want to be sure that we're visualizing the right thing. You gave us two examples. The first example being, you're going to tell somebody that you love them for the very first time, which is clear It's literally a very activating moment. Even if you think they're going to say it back and respond positively, we all have that moment where we're like, Oh, should I say it? Should I not say it? Is it too soon? How are they going to respond? In order to stand in your power, you're saying to rehearse how you're going to be in your power, even if you say, I love you, and the person's face goes blank, And they say nothing back. And then you realize they're not going to say it back, and you visualize that very activating rejection, and And by visualizing it, you are socializing your brain to be able to be powerful. And you will also know, and will have rehearsed and have encoded in your subconscious, how you're going to show up in that moment. And I want to be clear about something, because I know we're going to get this question.

You are not manifesting the bad thing to happen. That's not what's happening, right? You're doing something else. So can you just explain for this example how this is different than attracting the bad thing to happen?

Yeah, absolutely. So it's like decision treeing it. So we go into a situation knowing we're going to have a conversation with someone, and it's like, if they say this, here's what I'm going to say back. If they say, choose your own adventure flow. If they say this, I'm going to say this. If they say this, I'm going to say this. And so we literally decision tree out what the conversation could look like or might be. But this isn't about manifestation negativity. We are always going into a situation, creating, putting energy towards the outcome we want. We are always in that place where we are driving our intention and the impact to be the You're having an aha.

I am having a big Aha moment.

Tell me about your Aha.

By rehearsing the worst case scenario and preparing to stand in your power, you are aligning with what you want most Most, which is the ability to express your love freely.

Precisely.

So the second example that you gave is, though also very important, which is training yourself to be upstanding in those moments, which means to speak up when you see something going down that is racist or that's insulting or that is discriminatory or that's just downright rude. You see somebody getting shut down. It might even be that somebody on your team is getting interrupted in a meeting. What you're saying is you use this exact same strategy to also coach yourself to be more confident, visible, and vocal in those moments?

Yes. Because here is the thing, and Mel, I know this is going to resonate with you, and I hope with everyone. We can't control other people's behaviors. We can We can never control anyone else. We can only control our own actions. And what matters more is not how someone responds to how we're behaving. What matters is that we behave in a way that's in alignment with our truth. If someone is uncomfortable with our truth, that is on them. What we need to deeply anchor to is that I did me. I told you I loved you because that is my truth. You may not have received it in the way that I wanted you to receive it, but I am now free and liberated because I spoke my truth about how I'm feeling. And in fact, someone else's reaction and response to us saying, I love you, it's not an alignment with how we're feeling. That's not even actually about us in the end anyways. They have their own thing going on that is doing something to them that may not give them the capacity to love us back in the way we need to be loved.

That doesn't matter in the end. Yes, it matters in the moment. It really hurts. And I'd be the first to tell you, how many times have I told someone I love them or want to date them and I've been rejected. The list goes on. But it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, I spoke my truth, and all of this was part of my healing and growth journey.

I think this is I think the topic of authenticity is so hard for everybody to grasp, because authenticity is about you not censoring yourself. It's about you being able to show up in your full self-expression, in your full power, and not edit, censor, silence, or somehow be different because Because you're worried about how other people are going to react. And so in the case of the... So in the example of telling somebody that I love you, if you are truly authentic, and you're standing in your full authentic self, It would be authentic for you to tell somebody that you love them without any attachment to what they say back, because it's not about you saying it in order to get the response. It's about you saying it because that is what's true for you.

You got it.

And so I want to pivot because we've talked about belonging, and we've talked about how to tell when you're in a situation where you're trying to fit in versus you truly belong. We've talked about that activation that happens when you're in friendships or you're in a relationship or in a work setting where you know you're You're fitting in, but you don't truly belong. But in order to get to belonging, we have to go through the personal journey of authenticity first. And in your first book, you identified the three different versions we have of ourselves. And I love frameworks like this because they are so helpful in allowing us to locate which version of ourselves are we being right now. And when you know which version you're being of the three, you now have the ability to choose whether or not you're going to stay in that version or you're going to swing toward the authentic you. So can you walk us through what are the three versions of ourselves? And then we're going to take them one at a time.

Got it. So it's called the three selves framework. And I developed this framework based on my work and research because I was finding that people were in situations in the workplace and relationships where the The surface level message was, be you. Of course, I want you to be authentic. Of course, I want you to bring your whole true self to this experience. But in the very next breath, it would be like, do the behavior, just kidding, don't actually be you. So it felt very complicated and confusing. It's the, how do I show up? So that's what led me to develop the model. We all have the three selves, and I'll take us quickly through the three selves, and then we can dig deeper into each of them. Great. So the most important self of all is what I call the authentic self. Your authentic self is a self, where if there were no negative consequences for your actions, this is how you would show up. This is how you would speak. This is how you address. These are the words you'd use. This is where the content you'd share. It's where you draw a line, your boundaries, yes, no, who you would love.

It's the good, the bad, and the ugly of who we are But because it's the truest reflection of our core self, it feels the best to do. So that's the authentic self. Resonating?

I love that, and I love the definition, If there were no consequences. How would you show up if there were no consequences? You're not getting arrested. You're not losing friends. You're not going to be embarrassed or ashamed by what you do. You just get to do you, and there are no consequences. That is very clear. What's the second version of ourselves?

I'm going to go to the other side of the continuum, which is the third self, which is the performing self. So I've talked a lot today with you about the performing self. The performing self is the self that feels like we don't have a choice but to change who we are, mask aspects of our identity, cloak, hide, in order to shield from bias and judgment. It feels exhausting, humiliating, disrespectful to do, but we feel like, if I don't change my accent or anglicize the pronunciation of my name or hide my experiences with anxiety, depression, or not talk about being transgender or whatever, whatever it is that we feel judged about or we feel ashamed of. We feel like we need to push it down. And of course, it feels completely disempowering and exhausting. And of course, the message coming out of today is to really take a step back and think about around whom are you performing? Why is that happening? What are the judgments coming your way? And most importantly, scripting, self-coaching, body-based, settle myself for those situations so we can push out of it. But that's the performing self, which I'm guessing Mel resonates, given what we've talked about.

Well, I think that every single one of us became the performing self in middle school, and we've been doing it ever since.

A hundred %.

And I would say until recently, I was the performing self in just about every aspect of my life. The dutiful daughter, the hard work, whatever had I thought I was supposed... Because I felt like everything had a consequence. Everything was high stakes. So everything required me to anticipate what I needed to do and to perform as such in order to succeed or be accepted or get ahead or whatever. And so I think I would imagine based on your research, is that where most of us spend the most of our time?

Absolutely. And for those of us who have come from cultural communities that have heightened judgment and bias coming our way, we actually spend extensive time there. We spend most of our time there, and this is the problem. But it's the adapted self, the self that lives in the middle that we've never explored before in this way and is a really powerful self, because when we spend time with it, what we realize is, wow, number one, I have more agency in my life than I thought I did. And when I say agency, it's just a fancy way, Mel, of saying choice and control over how I behave. So agency, choice and control over how I behave. I have more of it than I thought I did. Number two, oh, look at that. I'm behaving more authentically than I thought I was. And Which in and of itself can be so empowering, because when we realize, wow, I'm already doing this. I could do more of it. That can be very liberating. And then the third thing is that it can also be a really safe place to stay in moments and situations where we don't feel safe to be our full authentic self, or frankly, we're exhausted.

You know what? It's Friday night, the meter's off, and I don't really feel like talking about my day job. And so I'm just going to be more adaptive at this cocktail party, whatever. And so your adapted self is the self that says, All right, Ritu, I hear you. I'm going to push out of performing as much as I can after today. But I look at my authentic self, and I can't be authentic 100 % of the time because I want to keep my family. I don't want to go to jail, as you mentioned. I want to keep my job.

Yeah. I want to keep my job.

I want to keep my spouse.

What I like about what you're saying is this. You're offering something that is empowering and doable and realistic. There are times in your life where you have to freaking perform, because for some of you, you are listening to this or watching this in a part of the world where just being you could cause major harm to you because of your religion or who you love and where you live or what's going on. And so you performing a role is necessary. But what you're saying is that for so many people, that performance has been reflexive, subconscious. It's been a trap. It's become part of your identity. And what you're saying is that when When you become aware of those areas of your life where you are performing, either because you are trying to adapt, right? You're performing consciously, strategically, because it aligns with what you want in your life, meaning you are adapting your true self in specific situations because it serves you, not because you feel like there's something wrong with you. You are the manipulator. You are the one that has something in it. You are the one that is deciding that it serves me to adapt my authentic self.

Normally, I would pick a fight with my parents, and today, I don't have the emotional energy for it, so I'm adapting to the situation consciously, strategically, which means I don't compromise who I am. I'm just being smart about where I put my energy. Is that a fair... Yes?

You put your finger on it. So you're ding, ding, ding. Your adapted self is a self. A few elements. Your adapted self is a self that willingly, happily chooses to adjust your behaviors to meet your needs and the needs of others. It's a choice. It's willing. It still feels good to do. It's still a manifestation of your authenticity. It meets your needs and the needs of others. And so it's still empowering to do. The difference between our adapted self and the performing self is how it feels. So the more you adapt, the more you adapt. I have the model for the three selves on my website, ruthibasin. Com, you can take a look at the funnel. But the more you adapt, the more you adapt, the more you adapt, you get pushed into the performing self vortex, and your body will tell you, this does not feel good. Whereas adapting your behavior feels perfectly fine. It feels good to do. And let me give you a really quick example. I mentioned being exhausted on a Friday night. I was once at a party with my sister, and we're talking to people we had just met, and they turned to me and they said, Oh, so, Rithu, what do you do for a living?

And in that moment, I had a choice because I knew that if I said to them, I am a belonging expert. I speak on authenticity. I'm a professional speaker. I talk a lot about diversity, equity, inclusion. I knew that if I said this, it would open up a full discussion and they want to unpack their stuff with me and yada, yada, yada. And in that moment, I was like, the meter is off. I'm exhausted. I just don't want to... I don't have the bandwidth for this. So I looked at them and I said, I'm in HR, which, by the way, is not a lie, although nothing kills a conversation more than telling someone you do HR for a living. I am in HR. I speak to companies around the world about talent management and human resources and how do we create teams that are rooted in authenticity and belonging. But my sister looked at me afterwards and she's like, Why did you do that? What was that about? And I said to her, It's true. I do HR for a living. My authentic self would have been to just give the full enchalada and dig deep and get into the...

But my adapted self said, No, not this moment. I'm going to just adapt my needs. Or my parents, for example, from Indian culture, really indirect. I'm super direct as a communicator. I adapt all the time because I know it will ruffle their feathers, and it serves me, too. I don't want their feathers to be ruffled. On the other hand, so I do adapt a lot. On the other hand, sometimes I'm like, no, you need my directness, and you need my authentic self to shine here. Why? Because I need it. It's important for me to do. The important thing to take away with the three selves framework is this. It's important for all of us to be mindful of what's happening in any situation, which of the selves is showing up. Try your best to push out of the performing self, adapt wherever you want to and need to, and then do your best to show up as the good side of your authentic self. The bad and the ugly, we're adapting on. We don't want our bad and ugly. For example, if you're a yeller, you're a anger management problems. You're racist. Your authentic self is racist.

I would say, no, not the bad and ugly in our interactions, personal interactions, work interactions. We adapt on the bad and ugly. Bring your good, your best authentic self-side to interactions as much as possible.

Amazing. I think this was so fascinating and interesting and amazing. I just can't thank you enough. Congratulations. I'm so excited to support your book. And And that brings me to our very first question about happiness from a listener named Andrea. Hey, Mel.

It's Andrea. Can you talk about happiness?

I can't think of a time that I have felt true happiness.

I'm just living, I I feel that something is missing, and I believe it's happiness.

Andrea, I love the way you frame that question. And for you listening, I'm going to put that question I'll get you to the question right back to you. Can you think of a time that you felt true happiness? Or are you, like most people, that you feel like something is missing from your life and you can't quite put your finger on it. When I hear Andrea's question, I can totally relate to it because I know I felt the way that she's feeling. And one of the mistakes that I was making when I felt like something was missing is I, of course, went on the search. I got to find happiness. And here's the first piece of research that I want to talk about. Research says that happiness or that feeling that we're seeking of happiness, it's often fleeting because we are searching for happiness in the wrong places. In fact, researchers at Rutgers and the University of Toronto found that people who pursue happiness, you're chasing it, you're looking for it outside yourself. You often feel like you don't have enough time in the day. And this, paradoxically, makes you feel unhappy. Because when you feel like you don't have enough time in the day because you're constantly chasing all these things outside of you, you start to feel like you're not in control your life.

And I think that's what Andrea is talking about, that we're all chasing down some version of happiness that we think we're supposed to be chasing, right? That society has marketed some version of life to us And that's why you probably are familiar with that phrase, I'll be happy when. We all succumb to that thinking. I'll be happy when I lose the weight, I fall in love, I land that dream job, I pay off my bills, I get into my dream school, I find the perfect apartment. And there's multiple problems with thinking like this. First of all, if you think that you'll be happier when you achieve something, what always happens is when you achieve it, you're not as happy as you thought you would be. And then all of a sudden, because you don't have this big goal in front of you anymore, your happiness plummets. And so the research is very, very clear that these big events that we're chasing, that we think are going to give us a boost of happiness, that happiness doesn't last. And there's a second reason why this thinking that you'll be happy at some point in the future, why this is really problematic.

It's because you are anchoring your happiness on something that hasn't happened yet. That means your happiness is something you have to earn. Your happiness is something that's outside of you. And that's not what happiness is at all. Happiness is always within your control. Happiness is something that you want to cultivate in your life where you are right now. And the good news is, you don't have to wait to be happy when. You can learn to be happier now. So let me explain, based on the research, how happiness works when it comes to you individually. So there's this formula that's supported by the science that says, you have 100% capacity for happiness. That's what you got. Your cup can be full and runneth over. 100%, baby. Happiness is for you. 50% of that capacity is genetics. That's your default. So you might be somebody that has 50% genetics that are preset to being very sunny and bubbly and happy. Or 50% of your genetics might be like, you're grumpy. That's okay, because you still have the other 50% to play with. 10% of the rest is based on the circumstances that you're facing right now, and 40% of happiness, period, in your life right now is completely under your control.

And that's what we're going to focus on, because that's awesome. No matter what family you were born into, no matter what you're facing right now in your life, 40 % of your capacity for happiness right now, completely in your control. And so before we go forward, I want to make sure that as we're talking, that we're in complete agreement about what the word happiness means. Because when you and I use the word happy or happiness, we might be saying totally different things. There's a huge spectrum when people use this word. Researchers even talk about the fact that happiness is all over the map. Some people, when they say happiness, they mean laughing and having a good time. Other people mean fulfillment or thriving or kicking ass in life. And so you and I are going to have a conversation right now about what you mean when you say happiness. Where are you on this spectrum between laughter and having a great time to feeling completely fulfilled and thriving in life. And so in order for you and I to get on the same page, I'm going to bring a metaphor in. You know Mel Robbins.

She loves her metaphors. She loves her visual explanations for these big heady concepts. And thankfully, I got a great one for happiness. So whenever you hear the word happiness, I want you to think about an ocean. There are waves in an ocean, and that's one spectrum of happiness. And waves come and they go. And having fun in the waves requires you to jump in the waves, to get into the ocean, to decide that you're going to go have fun. But then if When you think about the ocean, there are days that there's no waves at all. It's perfectly still. And the ocean itself, and your ability to stand in that ocean, to float and to swim, that's a deeper form of happiness. Or what about the days where the ocean is stormy and you wouldn't dare go in? But on those days that you're on the beach, aren't you so present to the wind, to the salt, to the waves crashing on the beach? That's what I want you to think about, that huge range of how an ocean shows up. And I love this metaphor of an ocean for happiness, the waves being fun and the Still Ocean being your ability to just experience happiness and you being present even on the stormiest days to the little details.

I love this range because it ties right back to all of the research, but it gives us a visual. So when you look at the research around happiness, researchers have put happiness into two big categories. One is hedonic happiness. Hedonic happiness is, am I having fun right now? It's the moment to moment fluctuating experiences that you have. And let's go back to the metaphor. It's like the waves in the ocean. They come and they go. You can jump in, you can play, you can have fun, and then it's over. And then there is the deeper happiness, the eudemonic happiness, which is the sense of your life having meaning, of you feeling fulfilled and thriving in that life of yours. And it's important for you to understand that happiness has these two buckets, because I think what happens for a lot of us, and this gets to Andrea's question, is that maybe you have one type of happiness. Maybe you're having a lot of fun on the surface, but life doesn't feel very meaningful. Or maybe you're deep in it, but you're not having any fun. And so I really want to unpack the difference between these two things and why you need both before we jump into the three different ways that you can increase happiness in your life.

And so let's go to another question from a listener named Rachael. Hey, Mel. I absolutely love your podcast and all of your work. I have a very loaded question, and I know a one-size-fits-all answer might not exist, but I wanted to ask anyway. How can I truly be happy? How do I cultivate happiness? I read so many self-help books, read a lot about the effects of childhood trauma. I journal. I try to be conscious of my habitual thoughts and patterns and work to reframe them.

I exercise.

I'm always listening to inspiring and transformational content like you. I feel like I do all the things, but I still struggle just to be happy and to feel happy.

And I feel very stuck in the same emotions, and I really want to change.

I really want to enjoy my life. Do you have any advice? Rachael, I so relate to you, and I want to just pass the mic to you listening right now. When Rachel said, I just want to enjoy my life, didn't you get the chills? Didn't you nod along and say, Yeah, I just want to enjoy my life, too? And this is really on my mind Because I think that's the point of life, right? To really try to enjoy it. And one of the things that I notice can happen when you are in a period in your life where you're trying to heal, you're investing in your yourself in your personal growth. You mentioned that you're working on trauma. You're trying to dig out of some of the holes, maybe, that you feel like you fell into. You're trying to change your mindset. That's serious work. That was me for years, too. Here's the problem with having a big healing journey. You're not having any fun. I think about periods of my life when I was going through a lot of change, and I was working on myself, and I was doing everything that you're doing.

Every book I picked up was self-help. Everything that I listened to was self-improvement. I couldn't even remember the last time I read a fiction novel, or I went to a concert, or I went to a party. Everything got so serious because my focus became so serious, and my focus was about improving my life, improving my life, improving my life. And doing the work to change your life, it's important. Doing the work to identify toxic patterns that you have or bad thinking patterns patterns that make you feel like shit. That's super important. But you must also double down on the fun while you're doing the deeper work. And so the first thing that I want you to do is I want you to set an intention that your number one goal this year is to have more fun, to invest in that first category hedonic happiness that researchers say is so important because, yes, it's meaningful. Yes, it's fulfilling to do the hard work to change your life for the better. But changing your life for the better also means that you need more moments of fun in your life. And I worry a lot about this based on what we've all experienced in the past three years.

We've all become hermets. It's hard enough to get yourself out of your house. But the other thing that's happened is if you're not going into work, if you're still working from home, you're also missing out on all of the spontaneous stuff that happens when you bump into people when you're out and about. In fact, I can tell you a story. Just the other night, it was Sunday night. And as a bit of background, my husband and I had gotten some really awful news last week that a very, very close friend of ours suddenly died. Age 47, heart attack, gone. And I had been hauled up in my house ever since hearing the news. I was super sad, feeling down, and I hadn't left the house in days. And so on Sunday, Chris says to me, Mel, I made a 4:30 reservation at the Padel Tennis Courts, which is a form of almost like ping-pong that you can play, like pickle ball in the middle of the winter on these tennis courts outside with some friends. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to just curl up on the couch and suck my thumb and feel sad.

We got into the car, and the entire ride over, I was sitting there thinking, Should I tell Chris I'm pissed that he made this date with this couple to go play paddle? Should I tell him this is the last thing that I want to do? I kept saying to myself, Should I say this? Should I not say it? And then I would say, Don't shit on his parade. Just suck it up. It's going to be okay. We pull up. The sun's starting to go down. It's freezing. I've got a hat on and mittons on, and I'm grumpy, and I don't really want to be there. And then I see our friends, and I felt a little lighter. Do you know it took about five seconds of hitting that ball around for me to feel totally different? The truth is, I needed the fun. I needed the laughter. I needed to not be thinking about something so heavy. I needed to see people that I really like. I needed to do something that wasn't that serious, like working on myself or feeling sad or grieving. I needed fun. And getting out on that paddle court, it was fun.

And there's a part of me that is sitting here going, Mel, are we really Having a conversation right now on this podcast about the obvious? That we need to schedule time to have fun, that we need to force ourselves out of our houses, that we need to break this habit of being isolated and lonely. Yeah, we do have to have this conversation, because I don't think you and I have truly grasped the extent to which our day-to-day lives and our happiness has been impacted by these past three years. I mean, even those of us who really enjoyed that period of lockdown, where we were trapped inside with our families, this new normal, this part of it, where we're back to normal, but we're not, but we're coping, but this situation, the loneliness and isolation, it feels like it's become everybody's new lifestyle. It's our new default. But this isn't just obvious, it's well-researched. Researchers have proven that the difference between people who are happy and those of us who aren't is that happy people prioritize doing things that make them happy. I know, it's so dumb, but I need the reminder, too. So Now, let's go back to my analogy about the ocean and the beach and waves and happiness.

And I want you to just imagine that you're sitting on the beach, and those waves are rolling in and they're rolling out, and there's a boogie board sitting next to you. At some point, you have to get off the towel, and you got to run into that ocean, and you got to go play. And the fact is, it just takes one person to get everybody else to go. There's always that one person in a group of people at a beach who stands up first and grabs the boogie board and says, Let's go body surfing. Come on, guys. Let's go into the waves. And thankfully, this past Sunday night, for me, it was Chris. He was that one person. And look, being intentional about enjoying your life, about having fun, particularly during those periods of time where you're grieving, where you are going through something difficult, where life feels heavy, prioritizing fun is critical. But that's just one of the three things that you and I are going to discuss when it comes to getting intentional and amplifying up the 40% of happiness that is within your control right now. And if you're sitting there scratching your head going, Oh, my God, this is so me.

But Mel, I think I forgot how to have fun. Don't worry about it. I've got an entire episode that we a while back called How to Have More Fun, and I will link to that along with all the studies that we're talking about in the show notes. And so now that you and I have been playing in the waves, and you understand that dragging yourself out of the house, to the beach, off the towel, into the ocean, and forcing yourself to do things that are fun, that that is part of happiness that we cannot escape, you and I are now going to go deeper into the ocean. We're going to talk about the two other elements that you can tap into to create more happiness in your life right now. We're going to do that using more questions from fellow listeners of the podcast when we come back. Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and you and I are talking about what research says about creating more happiness in your life. We've already talked about the fact that researchers have identified two types of happiness, hedonic happiness and eudemonic happiness, both of which are critical to your Overall Feelings of happiness.

We've talked about why getting intentional about having more fun is critical to you feeling happier now. Now we're going to jump into the deeper part of happiness. And that is the eudemonic happiness, whether or not your life has meaning. Because when you go through periods of life where life is monotonous, it just feels blah, you're on autopilot, you're not going to feel that happy. Happy. Just ask Jenna.

Hey, Mel.

My name is Jenna, and my question for you is, how do you truly find happiness in everyday ordinary life? I'm a mom of two boys, and I struggle most days with being as joyful as I was when they were very little. As a mother of three kids who are now young adults, I can relate to what you were saying about how you were joyful when they were I love that you use the word joyful because I want to go back to that metaphor that I introduced at the very beginning of an ocean, and thinking about an ocean when you think about happiness. And so to me, when you go to the beach and it's a very, very calm day, there are no waves, there might not even be a cloud in the sky. Boy, it sure is beautiful. Happiness is like a still ocean on those days. It's your ability to stand in that ocean and feel this state of presence and connectedness and gratitude to simply being in the ocean. And I want to come back to something that you also said that I absolutely loved. You used the word ordinary. And the reason why I think it's important for us to focus in on the word ordinary is we often make the mistake of thinking that happiness is this big thing, this big burst, the big wave.

And when it comes to the eudemonic happiness, the deeper meaning in your life that creates the sense of happiness and fulfillment for you, I want to flip this perspective because true happiness comes from finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. That's right. True happiness is actually pretty ordinary. And researchers have identified the number one factor in you living a happy life, and it is the most ordinary thing on the planet, which is why most of us miss it. And that's the quality and depth of your relationships. So let's unpack this. The Harvard study of Adult Development is the longest in in-depth longitudinal study of human life that's ever been done. I mean, this has been going on for 84 years and counting. And for those of you super geeks like me out there, this used to be called the Harvard Men's Study. So when you hear people talking about the Harvard Study of Adult Development, that's the new name for this. It now includes three generations of people that they've been studying. The original 724 participants now include 1,300 descendants. How cool is that? Here's the thing about this study. This study followed people through their life, asking them all kinds of questions as people aged.

One of the reasons why this study is so profound is because it tracked people as they lived. Most studies have people looking backwards, which means when you look backwards, you often change the details. That's why the Harvard study of adult development is so exciting and so accurate, and the most accurate important study of happiness that's ever been done. Not only because they have so much data and brain imaging scans, but they've also been studying people in real-time, tracking them forward as they're living their lives. Dr. Robert Woldinger is the fourth director of the study, and he and past study leaders have published these amazing findings that you and I can apply to our lives. These results from the Harvard Men's Study, they've been replicated in five other huge global studies. I'm telling you all this because there's one singular conclusion from all of this data, all of this research, all of these fancy institutions, and it's this. Good relationships keep you happier and healthier. Good relationships make you happier and healthier. The single best decision you can make to improve your health and happiness is to cultivate what researchers call warm relationships. I know what you're thinking, Mel, what the hell are warm relationships?

Well, from a clinical standpoint, warm relationships are relationships that don't cause conflict, and you feel positive emotions around the people that you have a warm relationship with. Said in a normal person's way, it's basically people that make you feel warm and fuzzy. That's what warm relationships are. I want you to stop and think right now. Let's apply the science. If you think about people in your life, I just want you to put two columns in your mind. Who would you put under the column labeled warm? They give you the warm and fuzzies. You get a text from them, you're like, Oh, yeah, okay. You're excited to see them. You feel energized when you make plans. Now, there's the cold column. These are people that put you on edge. These are people that drain your energy. These There are people that when they call or text you, you're like, briefing for something. I can boil 84 years of research down to one takeaway. You want to be happier? Put all your energy into warm relationships, building them, strengthening them, spending time with those people in the warm column. You do that, you will be a happier you right now.

And the second way that you can do that, by the way, prioritizing the warm, is spend less time with people in the cold column. You either need to stop hanging out with them because they're sucking your energy dry, or you got to put some effort into warming them up by forgiving them or reframing how you see them, or working on your boundaries so that you're not triggered by them and their negativity doesn't impact your happiness. So keep that visual of a warm and a cold column. And as you meet people in your life, you can immediately feel what they're like. Are Are they warm? Are they bringing out the fuzzies? Or are you feeling on edge? Because when it comes to happiness, your happiness right now, not the I'll be when happy, the happiness that truly matters, standing in that deep end of the ocean, the quality of your relationships is truly the most important thing that matters. And I can explain why at an even deeper level. The reason why this matters so much, it is the number one indicator of a happy life. Good warm relationships, floating in that ocean with your warm buddies, keeping you boiant.

The reason why is evolution. See, positive or warm interactions with people, you know what that does, that warm, fuzzy feeling? Those people in your warm column, they make you feel safe. When you're around those people, you're not on edge, so your body feels safe. And the opposite is true when you're around people that you would put in the cold column, because when you're around negativity, when people trigger you, when they put you on edge, when you feel like you can't be yourself, you're now in a stress response of fight, flight, or freeze. And this response to other people, it's wired in you. Early Homo sapiens survived because their bodies and their brains, they not only encouraged connection, but they also signaled when somebody might be unsafe. You and I survived because we're social beings. So this is hardwired into us. And here's where it gets interesting. When you feel loneliness, your brain perceives that as life-threatening. And loneliness is not just If you're thinking about physical separation from other people. You can feel very lonely in a crowded room. You can feel lonely in a bad marriage. You can feel lonely in a toxic friendship.

And if you're nodding your head right now thinking, Wow, Maybe it's not unhappiness. Maybe the core issue for me is I'm lonely. Well, 75% of adults feel moderate to high levels of loneliness. And loneliness is about the quality of your relationships. I want to tie this back to evolution. Loneliness feels threatening because you're meant to survive in a tribe of people. You're meant to be connected with people that make you feel safe and warm. It's not only part of happiness, this goes down to your mind and body needing protection. And they've even proven that when life is really hard, when it can come at you in full on attack mode, when you're in survival mode, warm connected relationships protect you from the stress of life. So how do you do this? How do you tap into relationships? It sounds simple, but again, make the column warm and cold, and then call your friends. Text them. Arrange time to meet them. So when you feel a pang of loneliness, I want you to understand it's an alarm, just like anxiety. It's a signal that you're missing connection. Please do not ignore it. You may be surprised to hear that I felt this way for a very long time.

I kept saying out loud, I'm not happy. I don't feel fulfilled. But when I dug deep into what was really going on for me, the core issue was loneliness. I was having fun. I was really busy. I was doing meaningful work. But deep down inside, I was really lonely. It may also surprise to hear that it was during one of the most successful stretches in my career. I was on the road all the time. I was booked nonstop to give speeches. I was working on all kinds of projects with Audible. The business was booming. I was making lots of money. And I have never been unhappier because I was lonely. I was traveling so much, chasing success, chasing achievement, going the next thing, staying busy that I never saw my friends. I barely saw Chris. I missed out on a ton of time with our daughters while they were in high school. It was just go, go, go. Now, I had a lot of fun on the business trips. I would laugh a lot. I was always traveling with colleagues, so I wasn't alone, and I was having fun in the waves of life. But when you talk about floating in the deep end of the ocean, I was profoundly lonely, and that meant I was profoundly unhappy.

And it can be powerful when you admit this to yourself, because when you realize what you're dealing with is loneliness. That helps you identify the issue you need to improve, which is you need to start reaching out to people. We underestimate the impact that simply getting an unexpected text from an old friend can have on you. I mean, think about how amazing it is when you have a birthday and everybody on social media that gets the notification that it's your birthday, they come out of nowhere and they wish you happy birthday. It's like, that's unbelievable. It feels so good. You haven't talked to that person since high school, but it feels good to have somebody just give you a quick comment on your birthday. And so if you're sitting around saying, I'm really lonely, but you're not reaching out, you're not calling people, you're not the one making plans or inviting people over for dinner, guess what? You're going to stay lonely. Because when I really looked in the mirror and said, I'm lonely. I need to do something about this. I never get invited anywhere. I don't see anybody. Well, I wasn't inviting anybody over.

I wasn't making any plans. It starts with you. And look, it could be anybody. It could be friends, family, coworkers. All you need to do is identify old relationships or cold relationships or warm relationships where you haven't seen somebody in a long time, and reach out. And by the way, it could be old relationships. It could be people you haven't seen in a long time. Just anybody at all that makes you feel warm, start putting energy into talking, texting, texting, commenting, and making plans to see them. And be careful of the cold people, because research shows that spending time with the people in the cold column, it can actually make you feel more lonely. And it even worsens your health to be around people like that. And so you've got your friend Mel Robin's permission to stop putting energy into draining relationships, because that's only going to make you feel more lonely and spend more time with warm relationships. Relationships. And that brings me back to Jenna's question, because she mentioned, did you notice that she felt happier when her kids were little? I suspect that when your kids were little, you were probably part of mom groups.

You saw young moms all the time at drop off, at pick up, at playgroup, and you felt like you were part of something. You had more warm relationships in your life. That's a sign that you're just missing connection. I know I said it already, but I can't highlight enough how profound of a difference it can make to simply admit to yourself that you're lonely. That was the turning point for me when I realized a couple of years ago, holy cow, I'm unhappy because I'm profoundly lonely. I don't see Chris enough, so I'm lonely in my marriage. I am lonely in my family because I'm not around. I'm working all the time. I never see my friends. And so once I said it was loneliness, that was the cause of my unhappiness, I could do something about it. And you want to know the first decision I made? I made a decision that I was going to change my work life, that I was going to get off the road, that Oakley being in high school was like a melting ice cube. And once the time was gone, I was not going to get it back.

And so I reorganized my entire career my entire business. Instead of sitting on a plane, I'm now sitting above my garage talking to you in a microphone so that I can be home. And it took a lot of work, but I'll tell you what, realizing that Traveling that much for work was making it hard to cultivate those warm relationships, that was a huge wake-up call. Because on the surface, it looked like I was having a great time. I was in the waves, but I sure as hell wasn't when it came to the deeper stuff. I know what you're thinking. Well, Mel, at least you have friends to go back to. What if I don't have any friends or many many friends. Well, I would say this. Here's where you can start. Part of warm relationships and happiness is also cultivated by social interactions, the tiny ones you have every single day. Just talk to strangers. This is a great thing to do, by the way. There's a study that was done by the University of Chicago that you have no clue how happy a random social interaction with a stranger can make you. You inflate in your mind that it's going to be messy to talk to other people, but you underestimate the actual benefits of talking to other people.

People who talk to strangers on a train or on a plane or at a bus stop or just at At a coffee shop, they're much happier after they talk to the stranger, even if they don't think beforehand that they will be. You know who's great at this? My mother. I was just visiting my mom down in Florida, and when I was little, I used to think it was so annoying, but I now admire this about her. Absolutely everywhere we go, my mom talks to everybody. She talks to everybody about everything. She's constantly commenting on, Oh, I like that sweatshirt, or, Hey, how are you doing? Or, Nice day. And people stop and they talk. And next thing you know, they've made a connection, or they're talking about a restaurant recommendation. It's just amazing. And the energy is immediately boosted. And if you're not good at this, here's a great tip. Always compliment somebody's nails. If somebody is waiting on you or standing in front of you in line or you're sitting next to them, just compliment their nails. If you see somebody reading, ask them what they're reading and if they like it. That's a simple way to complement somebody, to open up the dialog, and it always boosts the energy.

One of the things that I'm really concerned about, and I've talked a lot about this on the podcast, and I know the researchers at Harvard are concerned about this, too, and that's How do we promote work? Everybody being at home. When we're at home, we miss out on these tiny social interactions with coworkers, with the barista, with the lady at the checkout counter, with the guy that you always see at the grocery store, with the customers that you're used to seeing come into the store. These tiny social interactions go a long way to making you feel warm. So bottom line, Relationships, relationships, relationships. Talk to that stranger in line, push yourself to reach out to people. Text somebody every single day. And don't forget your family. You put family on the back burner, don't you? Because you think they're always going to be there. Make an effort. There's a lot of people in your family, maybe even cousins you haven't seen in a while, that you have a warm relationship with. I'm prioritizing happiness, which means I'm prioritizing the relationships in my life. But you got to push yourself, okay? Let's make ourselves a promise that we're both going to do this because you got the research and you now know why it matters.

I know you have a specific breathing pattern that is associated with a calmer mind. Can you teach it to us?

I love it so much. It's the 15 second breath. So if you're having a panic attack, this is going to fix it in two minutes or less. And what researchers discovered is you take twice as long to breathe out. As you breathe in, it produces an automatic relaxation response in your body. So the pattern Turn is this. It's four seconds in. Hold it for a second and a half, eight seconds out. Hold it for a second and a half.

Were you Can you walk us through it?

So four seconds in. Hold it. Eight seconds out. Hold it out. And then repeat. And I have an app called Happy Brain, H-A-P-I, Brain, and it actually has a Pacer that does that for you. And all you have to do is when you see the circle get bigger, breathe in. When you see it get smaller, breathe out. And it's so simple. And try Try to breathe more diaphragmatically or more with your belly. So let the energy of breathing go lower in your body. And if you just practice this on a regular basis, cortisol will go down, and you're just going to get flattered with a feeling of calmness and relaxation. Now you got to practice. You have to create a pathway in your brain of relaxation.

Why does this 15 second breath work?

Because it stimulates and encourages your brain to go into a parasympathetic state. So there's a difference between stress, what scientists call sympathetic state, has nothing to do with sympathy. It's a bad word. But a sympathetic state is where I was on the beach at Corona Del Mar walking my dog, and I saw two pitbulls running toward me.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. So my heart went fast. I mean, it was panic and ended up turning out okay.

Well, what happened? Now I'm on the edge of my seat. Did you pick up your dog? Did they just jump up? No, he was a big white shepherd.

And I got bit. He ended up in the ocean. Yeah, it was a disaster. I still get triggered sometimes, which we should talk about a little bit because in my elite brain training program, it is critical to eliminate trauma, or at least to learn how to dissipate trauma, because I love walking on that beach so much. So I actually did a session of EMDR. I don't know if you've talked about EMDR. It's a specific psychological treatment for trauma. It's actually really cool. I have my Patients write down 10 of their worst traumas. And then through a specific protocol, I'll have their eyes go back and forth while they bring it up, and it tends to help dissipate it. It's very powerful. Or when I go on that beach now, I often find myself doing this.

And what you're doing is rubbing your hands back and forth.

Right. And it's bilateral hemisphere stimulation in my brain. I feel it on one side, then the other side. And that just takes the anxiety that I might associate to that beach and washes away. Which can be so helpful. So many people, they drink to manage their anxiety from past trauma. They're using marijuana, now more magic mushrooms. And I'm like, no, no, no. There are way better ways to do that that are not potentially toxic for your brain.

Wow. We're going to have to come back and do a whole another episode on that for sure. How do you calm a very every busy brain?

So the first simple thing to do is the diaphragmatic breathing, the breathing pattern that we just talked about. The second thing that we haven't talked about, but so important, is to direct your thoughts. I was 28 years old before I learned I didn't have to believe every stupid thing I thought. And I'm in class when I was a psychiatric resident at the Walter Reid Army Medical Center, and I heard my professor say that, and I'm like, no way, because my mind would fairly torture me. I'm one of seven children. I was pretty much irrelevant. I have five sisters. There's a lot of chaos in my family, and my mind would torture me. And if you start writing down your negative thoughts and just ask yourself whether or not they're true. And there's a whole process I teach my patients. It's just so helpful that I need to be the director of my mind rather than my ancestors' directed, or the voices of my parents' directed, or the news, or the gossip at work. I need to be the director. And since I want to be happy, connected, purposeful, I often go, well, does this thought fit me being happy, connected, and purposeful?

And so Mel, just because you have a thought has nothing to do with whether or not it's true. Are we Whether or not it's helpful. Everybody has crazy thoughts. Jerry Seinfeld once said, The brain is a sneaky organ. All of us have weird, crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear. And just because you have a thought, it doesn't say one thing about you. It's just like the weather. It's not the thoughts you have that make you suffer. It's the thoughts you attach to that make you suffer. And when you really understand this, so we talked about the physical functioning of your brain. Well, now we're talking about programming.

Yeah. Let's stop real One quick, because I want to ask you a question. Because I want you to talk to the person that has never considered that they could direct their thoughts or that the things that they think aren't necessarily true. If there's a person hearing this, just like you were 28 years old sitting in a class when it first entered your mind, Other than taking out a notebook and just start to write down the things that are popping in your mind, is there some other way to help someone kick the door open? Because this is a revolutionary and life-changing concept when somebody first entertains the notion, Dr. Amen, that you can direct what you're thinking about, and you can dismiss some of the crap that you torture yourself with as untrue. How do you begin this mental training and reprogramming?

I don't have any tattoos, but if I I got one, one of the first tattoos I would get is, Is it true? It's just start carrying that question around in your head. And so When you get a thought, my wife never listens to me. I've had that thought. If you have that question, then you don't automatically have to attach to it. You can talk back to it. I don't know if you were good at talking back to your parents when you were a teenager, but I was excellent, and no one had ever taught me to talk back to myself. And so We don't have to believe the nonsense that's going on in our head. Just begin to think about it like the weather and then go, does this thought serve me? Does it help me? Is it even true? And it's so often the lies we tell ourselves that keep us overweight, depressed, and feeble-minded. And it's a revolution, I think, all second-graders. I actually have a children's book called Captain Snout and the Superpower Questions, where I teach kids not to believe every stupid thing they think. I call them ants, automatic negative thoughts.

So You need a little anteater patrolling the streets of your mind.

You said that you rarely see anyone with chronic anxiety who is not addicted to something. Yes. And that there is a tight connection between anxiety and addictive behavior. Can you explain that and help us understand that?

Sure. So I'm going to mention the E-word here, and I hope you don't shut off it. Ego?

I won't even understand it. Can you explain it without the ego? What's it?

Your ego Ego is like an overprotective mother. It doesn't want you to go and play on the swings because you might fall off. It doesn't want you to talk in front of people because when you did that, when you were in grade six, people laughed at you and you never- Is the ego the same thing as the alarm? It's related to it through the amygdala as well.

See, I'm already confused.

Yeah, I know. So I'm not going to get into too much neuroscience. But basically, your ego is hooked into the amygdala, and your amygdala says, We're never doing that again because that hurt us. Whatever was. And the amygdala never forgets. So it's basically getting into that... Bypassing that ego because the ego is so overprotective that it will not let you go back into your old alarm.

So the ego is thinking?

Yeah, more or less. Yeah, it is something that it talks to us with thinking.

Okay. But let's talk about the connection between anxiety and addiction. Okay.

So basically, Basically, we need something to help us through this alarm.

Wait a minute. I think I just got it. Hold on. Let me see if this is the answer. You ready? Is addiction typically somebody's coping mechanism for the alarm? So for example, you reach for alcohol because it drowns out the alarm. You reach for porn, or drugs, or stress, or whatever because it- It will work.

Achievement.

Yes. Got it. Okay, I got it. So if somebody is struggling with addictive behavior, whether it is alcohol or cigarettes or vaping or it is any of that stuff, you are more than likely not addressing the root issue, which is the anxiety and alarm that's continuing to go off in the background.

Yeah. And on top of that, basically, the ego is very powerful. It doesn't want to let you go back into that. So the only way that you can feel love, connection, whatever is alcohol, is codeine, is cocaine, whatever you're addicted to.

So wait, but you feel the connection to the alcohol or the coding. That's what you're saying. So this is why I get confused with the ego, because I'm like, I don't give a shit about the ego. The alarm. And then what makes sense to me is that addiction mutes the alarm.

Totally.

And that you become bonded and connected to... For me, it was stress. For my husband, it was a daily weed happen. And that addiction is what's muting the alarm. This is really cool. So where does mindset come in? Because there is so much out there about mindset and mental wellness. And it's interesting because this conversation with you makes me desperate for a different word than mental health, because even the word mental health makes me go neck up, makes me think thoughts, makes me go to just what's going on in my mind. And what you've taught me today is a game changer, because what you've taught us all is that, no, no, no, no, And they start with this reaction that happens in your body to stored trauma, or to a threat, or to uncertainty. And then that signals our minds, and our minds then start spinning thoughts. And if we don't address this alarm system in our body, which has a purpose, which is there to protect us, which is supposed to agitate you, but we exacerbate it, we try to mute it. We try to If we don't learn how to turn inward and heal all of this in our body and turn toward this alarm and soothe ourselves and love ourselves and give ourselves the reassurance and the support or whatever it is that we didn't get in childhood or what we need in that moment, that is actually the beginning of all healing.

That's what I'm getting from you.

Yeah. And that's exactly what it is.

Why do we call it mental health then? Can we come up with a different word that would actually signal you that when you're struggling with depression, or you're struggling with anxiety, or you're struggling with addiction issues, that it's not a mental health issue. It is a body something. I don't even know how to describe this because it's the exact opposite of the way that we think about things right now.

It is the opposite. And I love to come up with a better term than body set.

But I think that's- Body set? What is that? That feels like weight lifting.

Well, it's It's like mindset, body set. What is the place in your body? Can you regulate your body? Because if you regulate your body, your mind will get regulated. If you regulate your mind, your body might get regulated. So what I'm saying is that if you go into the body, your body is much more likely to relax your mind than your mind is to relax your body because you can say, Hey, relax.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you guys hear that? That was a wake up call for me right there. You were just dropping freaking knowledge, Russ. Okay, hold on. I'm going to state this again. And now I have menopause brain, and so I've just forgotten what I said. You said something like, if you regulate your body, it will regulate your mind. But if you regulate your mind, right? You say it because you're the one who said it.

Yeah. It's much more effective to regulate your body first, which will automatically regulate your mind, than to try and regulate your mind to regulate your body. Because your mind lies to you all the time. Your body never can.

Is this why exercising is such an effective thing to do when it comes to anxiety and focus?

Partly. But there's something beyond exercise. There's something within the somatosensory cortex, the part of the brain that controls our movement and our sensation. When When we activate that, we start getting into the sense of the body and out of the rumination of the mind.

And so by activating that, is that what you're saying, you can activate that part by doing the exercises you've already talked about in terms of locating where the alarm is and then finding a neutral part in your body, breathing into it?

And just movement. That's why yoga is so effective, because it brings you into your body. Anxiety at its root is really a mind-body disconnect. We go up into our heads and we stay in our heads because we don't want to go down in our body because that's where the pain is. So we don't want to go into a feeling town, down in our body. We don't want to stay up in our thoughts. And that's another addiction. So we get addicted to worry. And that's why it's so hard to treat anxiety just by trying to fix thoughts, because we're addicted to thinking already. We don't need any more thinking. We We need a lot more feeling, but we don't want to feel because that's where the freaking pain is.

Wow. So I've gotten a couple of huge things from this. That, first of all, all anxiety results from a separation of some anxiety that has some separation experience or feeling separate from other in childhood.

And self.

And self. But what you just said, too, is really interesting, which is our response to that alarm or that feeling of being separate from self or separate from others or attacked by others or whatever, is that we actually do separate from ourselves. Anxiety and the alarm system, the way that most of us respond to it is to separate from our bodies, go up in our heads. And the way to quiet the alarm and ultimately turn it off is to come back and join in with yourself and come back to where the alarm is sounding off in your body, and then find a neutral or safe space in your body where you can draw your attention and breathe into back and forth and back and forth. And that when you quiet the alarm and when you go toward it and soothe your own body. That is the step that you need to take if you want to heal this. And that the thinking is part of the toolkit. Like, what would you recommend as a as some sentence that we could say, if we're trying the tools, we go into our body, we're soothing ourselves. Is there something that people could say or repeat to themselves that you find is effective with the more neck down approach?

Absolutely. What do you say?

Basically this, am I safe in this moment? Am I safe in this moment? I know I've got a presentation to do Friday. I know I've got a big tax bill. I don't know how I'm going to pay for it. My mom is sick. But am I safe in this moment?

Why a question? Because I like saying, I am safe. I am okay. You could do both. You can do both in a place.

I find that people with anxiety, though, this is the thing about saying, I love you in the mirror is that people don't allow that in. The reason why you're anxious in the first place is because you block love. So when you say, I love you- The reason why you're anxious is because you block love? For yourself, yes.

What?

You're separated from yourself. That's exactly what it comes down to. That's what anxiety, our alarm, really is. It's a separation. And this is what I do. We didn't get into my little intuitive thing here.

We're going to in a minute. Hold on. Okay. We saved the best for last, but hold on. Okay, keep talking about the fact that when you have this alarm going off, you are blocking... Just say it again. I'm processing, hyper-processing now. I'm just like, Oh, my God, I think I got it. I think I got it. I think I got it. That literally, your alarm is asking for love and reinsurance.

Absolutely.

When you go into your head, you block yourself from receiving it. Yes. When you go into your body and you breathe into the alarm and soothe yourself, you are actually giving yourself love. Yes. Holy shit.

A lot of people with anxiety, they're uncomfortable with love in the first place. I'll give you a very quick example from my own life. My dad, before I 10 years old, was this wonderful guy. He was so connected to me and nurturing, taught me how to hit a ball, play chess, all this stuff. Very, very connected to him, and I loved him greatly. Then as I got to be a young teen, and his schizophrenia got worse and worse and worse, and it that he came suicidal and a bunch of other things, I withdraw from him because to see him in horrible depression was just too painful for me. I blocked my love for him because it was just too painful to feel it. And that you can't block love from from a parent without blocking love on some level to everyone. So there's a reason why I've been married three times. So this is one of the things. So when you find the blocks that you have to loving yourself, this is how you heal. And this is basically my little intuitive gift is I can tell people where their blocks are to loving themselves.

Then when you remove those blocks, the anxiety, the alarm just fades away. This is really going at the root cause protocol as opposed to just trying to make you think better.

Wow. So how do you help people find that place where they've blocked love?

Well, I go through their body. What I believe, the short version of what I believe happens to you is as a child, you experience an overwhelming stress. It's too much for your conscious mind to handle, so you stuff it down. Freud would call it repression. You stuff it into the unconscious, and the body That keeps the score, just like Bessel Van der Koke says. Because the body is a representation of the unconscious mind, and the unconscious mind is where these old damaging programs are stored, they'll show up in the body. I will find in your body where you feel that alarm and reverse engineer it to get into the same room with those unconscious programs, and then I can change them.

Wow. That's pretty cool. I think my biggest takeaway, and I keep saying this because clearly every 10 minutes, I have a life-changing takeaway from this conversation. But my biggest takeaway is the connection between the alarm that goes off and the love that you're not allowing yourself to receive. Totally. And that it's beautiful to think that loving yourself is the way you cure anxiety. And what a beautiful thing. And it reminds me of something pretty amazing that my son, Oakley, he shared with me. I said to him the other day, I was like, Dude, one of the things I love about you is that you, more than almost anybody I have ever met, are just so comfortable with yourself. You really seem to like yourself. And now, I should preface this by saying that this is a kid that really struggled. Three different schools before he was done with eighth grade, severe dyslexia, got so severely bullied at a camp that we had to pull him out of it. And the director wrote a long letter apologizing for everything. This kid has been through the Ringer. And he said to me, Well, Mom, he said, I Realized, and he said, this happened during quarantine.

During quarantine, when I got to hang out with you and dad and my two older sisters, all four people who love me, I just started to realize Just because other people pick on me or hate me, doesn't mean I have to hate myself. I could actually just like myself. I could really just allow myself to love myself. And I got to be honest with you, from that moment, I can really almost pinpoint that during the pandemic, this kid's chronic anxiety was gone. He developed this very positive attitude, and it all began from this insight around, Hey, if the world is not giving me the acceptance and the love that we all are seeking, maybe I can just give it to myself.

Yeah.

It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. I never thought about meeting the alarm of anxiety with acts of self-love.

Yeah. It's counterintuitive on some level, because when you're anxious, you don't feel loving. Basically, your social engagement system is shut off. You're in survival mode. So when you're in survival mode and survival physiology, you go into the emotional part of your brain, which is evolutionarily programed to look for threat. And if there's no threat in your environment, if you're just lying there in bed with the sheets up to your neck, you will find threat because you can make it with your big pre-frontal cortex. You can make worries.

Well, not anymore, because we now know that the second you feel the alarm go off, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, you do not go upstairs. You go downstairs. You go downstairs. I love to leave people in action. Obviously, everybody. There will be links not only to Russ's Book, Anxiety Rx. There will be links to his social media accounts. You will find all kinds of resources in the show notes. But I want to leave people in action. Sure. This is one of those incredible conversations conversations that really changes how somebody thinks about a massively overwhelming topic like anxiety and mental health. Now, what I want to do is leave people in action with one simple new practice or habit that I want everyone to try every day for the next seven days. And And what is the exercise that you want each one of us to practice for the next seven days so that we can start to use the tools that you have been researching and changing lives with? What's the one thing you want us to do?

Can I do two?

Yes. As long as it doesn't involve the ego.

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, well, that's it. That's the end of that. All right. So the first thing that I would say is what I said earlier. Am I safe in this moment? Or I am safe in this moment? Because this moment is all we ever have, right? Think about anxiety is it always projects you into the future. So if you bring yourself back to the moment, and this has worked for me. It saved my ass a number of times in the middle of the night when all my defenses are down and I think the world is horrible. I am safe in this moment. I am safe. And really feel it, too. Like, I am safe in this moment.

Is there anything we should do with our hands? Do you want us to close our eyes? Do you want us to...

You can do the high five your heart if you want.

Okay, which is putting your heart right in the center of your chest. Take a deep breath. I'm safe.

If you find...

Yeah. Okay. What else could you do?

If you find your alarm, if you know where your alarm is, track the alarm. When you feel anxious, go into your body and say, Where am I feeling this? Is this in my belly? Is this in my chest? Is it in my throat? Put your hand over the place where you feel your alarm. Okay. And breathe into that.

Okay.

There is a little thing, too, that I've taken from Andrew Huberman about the physiological sigh. Physiological sigh is something that humans do, and animals do it, too, to calm themselves. It's usually one quick sniff through your nose, and then another one, and then a long, slow breath out through your mouth. Now, with my anxiety people, I modify that. Basically, this is the process that I do when I get into alarm, is I take three breaths through my nose really quickly. At the top, I hold it for about 3-5 seconds, which shows me that I'm actually controlling my breath. My breath isn't controlling me. Then I close my teeth, and I breathe out through my teeth and make a histing sound like...

All right, I'm going to try this. Ready?

And as I do that, I imagine a tire that's overinflated just deflating in front of me. That's my mental image.

All right, let me try this. Hold on a second. We're going to all do... I think we should do this one. We're going to do two. So everybody, number one is one time a day, if you notice an alarm in your body, and that could be tension, it could be frustration, it could be anger, it could be anxiety, it could be that worry is starting to grip you. I want you to find where that alarm is. I want you to put your hand where the alarm is, and I want you to breathe into it. Then you can add, I'm safe in this moment. That's number one that you're going to practice. Anytime you feel the gripping, the tension, the frustration, the overwhelm, the alarm is signaling. Remember, that's an alarm asking for love. You're the one that is going to provide the love and reassurance that you need. That's number one. The second one is, let's try this breathing thing. Okay, if you want to see it, go to our YouTube channel because we have video episodes uncut of these podcast interviews that are amazing because they're a lot longer and they're behind the scenes.

But you should see Russ's face when he does it. He looks like he's about to rage on somebody, and he's actually deflating like a tire and taking control of things. Now I'm going to look completely ridiculous as I breathe in three times, and then I clench my teeth and hisse out like a tire. Ready?

Let me do it first. Let me do it first again because It has a few parts to it. The first thing is three breaths in through your nose so quickly. Then at the top of that, you hold your breath for about 3-5 seconds. Then you close your teeth. As you exhale, slowly exhale, you make a histing sound. As you make that histing sound, you imagine a tire deflating.

Okay, I'm going to do this. You ready? Ready? Okay.

I want you to elongate that. The whole thing about the physiological sigh is that you're creating a long exhale. That's what really relaxes us is the long exhale. When people say take a deep breath, really what you need to do is just take a long exhale. Again, it's like three breaths in, hold, and then... I'm going to try it See if I can go longer. Fill your lungs up, Mel. Really fill them up.

Okay, here we go. Wow. What's interesting about that is it requires so much focus that you can't really think about anything else.

Totally. That's one of the other things. It takes you off your worries. Exactly.

You How do you feel this relaxing and collapsing feeling inside you? Yeah. Wow.

Okay. Relax your shoulders, relax your jaw. There's stuff to it. I'll make a YouTube video about this or whatever, or I'll put it on my Instagram.

Awesome.

Basically, it's really about expanding your lungs, because when you expand your lungs, you send a message up to your brain that you're okay, because when you get stressed, the stress starts breathing you. You aren't breathing for yourself. Yourself. The stress will start breathing you. So it's really important that you do the three breaths in, hold, and then breathe out with a sss, and really elongate that exhale. So the more breath you take in with the sniffs, the easier it is to have that nice long exhale.

Wow. Well, thank you so much for my personal therapy session. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.