Insights on Happiness and Manifestation

if you look at our influencer culture you know you see all these people who are pretending that everything is perfect when in fact they are insecure themselves and are suffering and they know that they're an impostor and of course the uh Paradox of that is those watching these individuals buy into their narrative and they look at their own lives and they say God that person has it and look at me I'm nothing and of course that's a complete falsehood [Music] we're excited today because with the science background of the show have not talked about manifestation oh really and I know with a lot of people there's skepticism around it myself a little included here so I'm excited today to talk around the neuroscience and what mind magic is so I think that might be a good place to jump in what do you mean by mind magic well I think um what a a lot of people don't realize is that they give their agent away and what happens is so many people are looking for some sort of outside intervention that's going to make everything better or in some ways be magical and everything changes in their life and in fact as you know from the first line of the book the universe doesn't give a about you exactly and because there are no to give and um so part of the book is one so many people especially young people don't know the difference between what they think they want and what they need and the other was what I was just mentioning is that so many people are waiting for something in the universe to either guide them or uh give them what they think they want or need and so um both of those things uh actually disempower you so um one aspect of this is to make you learn the difference and you know in Western capitalist Society The Narrative is that if you make money have uh Power position that suddenly you're going to be happy and of course that's a false narrative and as a result people get those things and they're miserable and I can tell you from my own experience having you know gone to medical school become a neurosurgeon become a successful entrepreneur you know I would climb each of these mountains if you will and then I would get at the top and I would wait for magic to happen and I'm now whole I don't have any shape I'm not insecure I'm not an impostor and in fact uh nothing changed and I still had that sense of uh emptiness and so the question is how do you feel that emptiness and uh this has sort of been my own personal Journey as you may know from my first book I talk about my own personal background and all of us uh who we are today is a manifestation to some extent of our past and as a result a lot of people don't appreciate actually the baggage that they carry which impacts relationships decisions they make uh how they interact with others and as a result uh that creates unhappiness because they don't understand that baggage is influencing every action they take exactly and so one of the things of course is you have to become self-aware about that and I think also and this is one of the problems about manifestation uh I'm sure youve probably heard of a book called The Secret yes so you know the secret has been extraordinarily successful and uh the problem in my mind with it is that it is a narrative about what I want and this is where it goes off track okay because when you focus on what I want in some ways you're selling to people a narrative that when you get what I want uh everything will be fine and you'll be happy and and as I was just saying the problem is that you get that and uh you're still unhappy right so part of the book is one reclaiming yourself agency meaning you recognize the power you have within yourself it's not coming from outside yourself and that's the power one uh to uh choose if you're going to be happy and also recognizing that the way we evolved as a species as you know uh unlike other uh species uh our Offspring need to be cared for which means that uh you have to respond to their pain uh and whether that's because of hunger or physical pain and for our Offspring we have to take care of them for well over 10 years if not longer well what is the driver for you to care uh to expend the time and the resources well the driver is that our evolutionary imperative uh has actually created a system that rewards us when we care and uh while it involves a variety of neurotransmitters the one probably the audience has heard about the most is oxytocin sort of the love or bonding uh hormone so when you care you get the release of this hormone which then results in your uh reward or pleasure centers being activated in your brain but it does more than that it's when you care your physiology works at its best and as you probably know we have something called the vagus nerve which is a nerve that is found throughout the body and arises in the brain stem but it has two parts and um one part of course is the sympathetic nervous system which is associated with the flight fight or freeze response and it looks at the world through the lens of scarcity yeah and fear and then the other is the parasympathetic nervous system which is called the rest or digest system and when that's activated uh you feel open you feel generous uh you're much more thoughtful you're much more creative you're much more productive and again uh your reward centers are uh stimulated and your physiology Works its best and that's in the context of cardiac function peripheral vascular function as well as your immune system your levels of cortisol your stress hormones are decreased and so we are designed to care so when we focus on us it actually of course uh in some ways is very much like the fear response and as a result you you activate uh uh the various components of that through the vagus nerve the sympathetic nervous system well you can manifest in the techniques that the secret and some of these other books talk about are not necessarily wrong per se although they're more efficient ways to get access to those centers in your brain that will increase the likelihood of you manifesting uh but when you're focused on yourself uh that is not the best way to manifest nor is it one that I think will help you in the long run well one of the key points in the book and we can Dove a little bit more into your past is this concept that when many of us manifest things we we manifest islands and cars and external events in our life happening to in our mind be that marker of success status that other people respect us for and you experience that and as you said earlier it didn't make you happy so where do we think where do you think most of us go wrong with that manifestation around those external things versus what should we be focusing on with our manifestation to actually be whole to be living a rich and fulfilling life well it's exactly what uh you know I was alluding to earlier in the sense that we have been brainwashed by believing a narrative that success by Western capitalist definitions equals power position uh wealth uh or things yeah things and and then when you get those things you're not happy or at least you're transiently happy but it is not a deep it's not lasting lasting happiness conversely when you do activities for others that gives you meaning and purpose which is results in a depth of Happiness if you will which is quite different but in many ways is the one that will stay with you and actually Define you as what you should be as a human being uh and this is the difference between honic and emonic happiness honic happiness is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain and the Neuroscience is quite clear that's quite transitory when you do the opposite when you're of service to others where you look at the world through the lens of being of service two things happen one is obviously you are uh outside of yourself you're benefiting others which goes back to our Evolution as a species when we care for others we physiologically and mentally benefit but it also changes how you see the world because the things you think you want such as wealth position and power don't seem as important or you recognize are not important you recognize them for what they are uh which is yes it can give you transient pleasure but I believe what humans really seek is a deep uh seated type of pleasure and uh one that is longlasting ing one that when you reflect on it you have this warmth with ins within you and you feel good about yourself and then you can see the results because of the impact you have on others and I think that is a very very powerful thing and uh as I was saying when you are able to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system it has uh magical powers not only does it make your physiology work the best it actually increases your longevity and why is that if you look at the science associated with these areas called the Blue zones yeah or uh you look at the study that's been going on for 85 years at Harvard the Harvard I think it's called the adult development study but people call happiness study and this is uh now run by Robert waler but uh what are the important lessons from that well the important lessons are that when you actually think of others act in regard to others it has all the positive effects I was just mentioning to and the reason is it relates again to our Evolution we talk about the blue zones as these five areas in the world but actually if you go back a few hundred years that is how humans lived they lived in community you were born there you died there and everyone knew you and the thing is that you we talked about impostor syndrome briefly everyone knew you they knew the good and the bad and they still loved you you and they were there for you and they supported you and they created a community where you felt supported so you didn't have this voice inside of your head saying I'm not good enough I'm an impostor people are going to find out about me and and so what happens is uh you develop these deep relationships or connections to individuals and that is sort of the superpower of our Humanity that makes everything work better and that's why manifestation when it relates to being of service is also very the most powerful way to manifest yeah well what I would love to unpack is what's going on with these neural networks so I know we've talked a lot about the default mode Network you write in the book that there are other networks that we want to tap into to make manifestation as impactful as possible so if you don't mind just walking our audience through the networks and what we can do to really have a stronger impact on what we are manifesting sure when I talked about activating the parasympathetic nervous system and the physiologic benefit which relates to these cognitive networks part of it does uh uh in some ways relate to controlling your mind and uh one thing that's extremely popular is uh mindfulness types of practices but what this really tells you is that within each of us we have this incredible power which so often we give to others outside of ourselves and I'm sure you've lived through the experience of uh you have this this idea to do something or something you're just excited about and then you share it with friends or relatives they go you can't do that that's impossible and and it's horrible right because you're so excited and anxious these people tell you these things and as a result many people just give up because they believe it and the mind doesn't know the difference between truth and untruth and if you put in the narrative in your head that it is not possible that becomes truth convers if you look at the through the lens of anything is possible I'm responsible now this isn't to say that uh you know if you have these horrible external circumstances magically they go away because you say I'm empowered but what it does do is it gives you a change in Attitude which actually changes your physiology and this is why we see as an example you look at whm Hoff or some of these Tibetan Monks who can control their body temperature or uh their heart rate or other physiological responses theoretically these function independent of us but what it shows you you have the power within your mind to control these things and you also have the power and this is actually I'm sure you've heard of epeus or some of the stoic philosophers external circumstances often times you cannot control what you can control is how you respond and in some ways that's the nature of Happiness too you know there are people who have very challenging circumstances and you meet them and they're joyful and happy and you go what how is that even possible then you meet other people who have everything in the world and are absolutely miserable well what's the difference the difference is the choice inside their head and so in terms of manifesting there are multiple aspects of this the first one is what so many people don't appreciate is we are battered by information from sensory organs that are overwhelming now 99.99% go to maintaining uh homeostasis of our bodily functions and this is about 10 million bits of information a second but on a conscious level we have control if you want to use that term of about 50 to 100 bits so how do you take on a conscious level that information you want to embed into your subconscious to have it manifest now what I would also say there's a process called value tagging and in some ways that's exactly what we're talking about we are creating something of value that is Meaningful to us and now how do we embed it so there are these cognitive brain networks and one uh which was mentioned briefly is a default mode Network and this is when our mind wonders it's self reverential uh and but also you think about potential IAL tasks or events you want but the key is getting access to your salience network and your attention Network and what happens is is that when you value tag something you make it Salient to you okay and once it becomes Salient your subconscious then acts as a blood hound to be attuned to events in your surroundings that potentially can help you manifest but it Al again is very much related to the attention Network because that's what gives the fine focus to things okay as an example I'm sure you've been at a party or some event where there's a lot of noise but if you hear your name you suddenly turn right and why is that because on a a deep level your name or identity is always with you and you're always attuned to that and so this is the same with the power of manifestation as an example there's a project I'm working on and I was at a coffee shop a few weeks ago and it was very noisy but suddenly I heard these two individuals talking about the exact same thing that I was interested in and of course I turned to that and then I went over and introduced myself and connected with these individuals but the point is that was embedded so like a bloodhound the uh salance network was looking around saying you know how can we make this happen or I make this happen and then once it reaches that level then of course your executive control Network which is the to-do side of the house if you will and it gives you access to memory prior experiences Etc then that goes to work to actually have it manifest so it's not to say having a selfish desire uh gets blocked in all levels of manifestation it's to say that the highest likelihood of you manifesting though if it is focused on the other and the other good thing about that is though you realize often times what you believe you want to happen isn't in your best interest or you change how you look at the world when you're of service to others and many times the things you thought you wanted are not what you actually need right so default mode network is US starting to dream visualize think about things that are could be important to us Daydream sometimes it's it's negative sometimes it's positive once you value tag it then you're now telling your subconscious mind okay let's look for this this is now important to me and then we can start to act on it so it goes from Daydream thinking about what success looks like to actually motivating our subconscious mind to move towards that success that we're looking for no that's exactly right and how do you strengthen that well uh you strengthen this by uh techniques which I outline in detail in the book in fact there's a six- we course at the end of the book uh uh but many of it is uh familiar uh you write it down because what you want to do is um make it more and more impactful well if you use all your sensory organs to do that that's one of the things you do that so write it down uh read it to yourself read it aloud and then relax and think about you being that or getting what whatever that is and each of those things strengthens this and the more you do it as you know there's a saying that what fires together wires together right and so the more you strengthen that pathway the more likely it is to be deeply embedded and the more likely it is that your salience network or that blood hound will seek it out and this is where this concept of synchronicity comes in you know you don't appreciate well like well that's amazing I was just thinking about that well it's because it's been tagged and you know on some level Everyone is always manifesting or trying to it's just like an athlete if you've never done that before it sort of works here and there maybe maybe not right and the more you practice the more likelihood it is to happen Okay so let's let's walk through the steps because number one I think is really challenging for a lot of us right now in this hyperd distracted world of notifications dinging as we heard and everything else going on we have to tap into our focus and and actually start to move into okay what is it that I really want so what are your suggestions for those of us who feel distracted feel pulled in so many directions and and maybe don't feel as focused as they need to be well I think you probably described 99.9% of us it is very hard and as you well know uh the companies uh that are doing this mostly uh these social media Outlets actually they hire psychologists and neuroscientists to uh create if you want to call it hits of dopamine right to get your attention and therefore you become addicted to getting more and more hits of dopamine uh so of course one is to uh try to do a digital detox okay or to limit the time you're on social media now that is hard I think for most of us uh the other aspect of this is in some way self-compassion because uh what happen is you are unaware of the fact that we beat ourselves up all the time and often times we think that's just natural and in fact many of us are more critical of ourselves than anyone we know and so one of the challenges is to uh be kind to yourself and I mentioned mindfulness practice and while there are many different forms of mindfulness practice one is being able to do a body survey if you will will or uh I call it relax the body because what people don't understand is when you're in the modern world so many of us are are stressed and anxious and it gets back in some ways when I was talking about the blue zones or this uh adult development study at Harvard these people were not distracted they didn't have to run to a job and be there exactly on time they weren't criticized uh if they didn't uh were late or something or didn't have the impact uh people Comm communicated and the other aspect that's really important is is being authentic uh in the modern world because you don't have family siblings or people you've known a long time around people feel terrified of being judged by others so if they're their authentic self they don't think people are going to like them and that creates another level of stress and anxiety and so uh one of the first things is to learn to be kind to yourself at Manford where I run the center I founded called the center for compassion and altruism research and education of which his Holiness the Dal Lama is the founding benefactor we actually have very specific courses to teach self-compassion and the reason that's important because we're talking about looking through the lens of compassion towards others and let me just Define compassion it's the recognition of another's suffering with a motivational desire to alleviate that suffering the problem is if you're not kind to yourself it's hard to look at the world other than being hypercritical right and of course your own hyper criticality uh stimulates your sympathetic nervous system and which is of course a detriment working against any manif manifesting things so one of the things is to learn to be kind to yourself and uh we can talk about my own childhood how I uh overcame that and then of course then once you learn to be kind to yourself you you realize that everyone is suffering and that just because somebody looks as though they have it together doesn't mean they do uh and in fact if you look at our influencer culture you know you see all these people who are pretending that everything is perfect you know their makeup's perfect or just a snapshot even exactly all it is uh uh yes absolutely and it's not a true snapshot in any way shape or form the problem is and I'm sure you've read about this often is you these people are trying to project a sense of perfection when in fact they are insecure themselves and are suffering and they can't reconcile these so this creates despair oftentimes hopelessness and they know that they're an impostor and in this case a real impostor and of course that has a heavy psychological burden for these individuals and of course the uh Paradox of that is those watching these individuals buy into their narrative and they look at their own lives and they say God that person has it and look at me I'm nothing and of course that's a complete falsehood and uh the other thing that's important is to when I talk about self-compassion none of us are perfect all of us are failed flawed human beings and in the face of that the reality is we all deserve to be loved and cared for yes and everyone and so thinking that somebody is perfect or has their act together it's just not uh uh true at all and if you were to witness yourself let's say going through that exact moment but as a child you probably wouldn't be saying the things that your inner critic is saying to that childlike version of yourself of course not no I I I mean you'd never say that and this is the other thing that uh is often overlooked as well is that you know when you're a child you are acutely sensitive to what others say and words mean something abolutely so if you have a parent or a loved one or somebody you respect tell you a negative thought often times that gets deeply embedded and again we're talking about childhood trauma this is really a problem for a lot of people I uh was doing a program one time talking about this topic and this woman raised her hand and she started crying and she said as a child my father told me I would be nothing and here she is in her 50s she's a nurse she has a pH D she's uh the CEO of a health care company highly successful yet she's still caring that yes versus if her father had said you know you are amazing I love you you could do anything completely different impact on her life because she's still suffering from what her father said so honing Focus step one what I found in working with our coaching clients step two is often the hardest is defining what success actually is and really clearly defining what success is to you and we talked a little bit about how as a society in Western culture especially we look to others to guide us to what success should be for us and we follow what our fam say or what school says or what influencers say as guides for what success is and I'll often ask my clients you know what what does it mean to be successful what what does success look like to you and what I found is really fascinating is they'll they'll often look to okay 12 months from now they don't look far enough into the future and really paint that clear picture of what they truly want not just in the here and now or in a few months or 12 months but 5 years 10 years what they want their legacy to look like is often very hard for us to Define so what is the advice you have for getting really clear on what success looks like because if we aren't clear we can't tag it we can't activate all these other networks to work to our advantage no you're absolutely right you know the challenge though is that uh getting people out of the narrative they have in their head about what Society thinks success is and that's really hard for a lot of people because their whole lives they've chased that and when you sit there and say is that really what you think success is many of them to be honest with you haven't slowed down enough to even consider it to even consider it and uh and they'll also give you excl excuses like well I'm just too busy you know work is so demanding I don't have time to do ITC well you know there's this what was it John of kitty said if not now when when right and I think that's really the key is you need to slow down and uh there are many practices to do that as you know uh one is a mind training practice it could be mindfulness uh the practice we teach is a little bit different and I know John kitson very well uh who's a wonderful individual but my statement to him when we've had discussions is uh traditional mindfulness practice does really explicitly talk about self-compassion or compassion for others it's sort of in there but it's not the main point the reason I mentioned that is sometimes people use these practices that type of a practice to get more Focus if you're a hedge fund manager and it's not to improve yourself and to be of service to others it's how can I make more money by not being distracted by negative dialogue that's not what the ideal practice should be and so the practice we've developed very explicitly is to teach a body scanning or a relaxation practice a focusing practice but combine that very explicitly with self-compassion and then follow that with compassion for others and as I was saying earlier until you can be kind to yourself you look through the lens of hyper criticality the other aspect is one of the ways mindfulness works is you learn to ignore the negative but that doesn't necessarily down modulate the negative by actually having very specific positive affirmations to yourself I am worthy I deserve love that starts changing the narrative and certainly decreases uh volume of it yeah the impact of the negative yeah I think it's it's so fascinating how much of our own narrative around success is just tied to seeking love from others it's like if I get this then my family will be happy my friends will be proud my neighbors will give me status when in actuality we haven't really gotten in touch with what we truly want to be successful and it ends up chasing false gods and narratives that once you even reach them and for a lot of our clients they have reached those things got the house found the beautiful partner and then they're still feeling this emptiness because that's not how they truly define success for themselves no I think that's uh exactly right and and this is the sad thing because people go through their lives and they're so focused on this goal uh and this is fundamentally the problem with craving and attachment right that's what causes your unhappiness and the extraordinary thing for so many people is they chase that absolutely focused on that ignoring every other aspect of their life because they think if I have that then all the other problems will be solved and the reality though is there's nothing wrong with chasing a goal it's though being so attached to the goal that when it doesn't happen you feel destroyed and the other reality is that the greatest part of that is actually the interaction on the journey with the people you're with and enjoying that and experiencing that because when you're present which is what we're talking about how do you become present how are you able to attend that's where our Humanity blossoms when we're connected to others and as we're talking about uh the uh uh blue zones or this Harvard study what is the fundamental aspects of those studies that tell us uh about our true selves or how we should be every aspect of that points to the reality that depth of connection depth of relationships are the most important thing related to physical health Mental Health and Longevity period and and this is why you know you could look at Church Hill let see this obese fellow who drinks three or four whiskies and smokes cigars and he lives to be a h yeah it's well the other thing that is so frustrating for us here at the AR of charm is the amount of sacrificing of those relationships that we see in our clients who narrow their focus on that external goal not recognizing that those relationships can actually even get you to that goal faster no absolutely and in fact I'm very much a believer in that so many of my accomplishments are because of others helping me it's not because I told everybody to off and I said I'm going for this leave me alone it's because I say I need your help right or I'm working on this yes yes absolutely and it's so so important people get lost in in that yeah well step three so moving beyond what defining success is is obstacles and one of the biggest obstacles is a negativity bias and looking at things and searching out okay well what can go wrong what are the worst possible cases and of course that robs us of the ability to to see the Success Through no that's right and what so many people don't recognize is we all have these different biases and if you're not aware or don't seek out to understand some of these things then you're always blind and uh so it's really important to understand and we discuss many of these things in the book is what are preventing or what are the obstacles or what are the causes that are limiting your beliefs yeah I think one of the most fascinating parts for me in in my experience is how relationships can often help you overcome those obstacles and finding people who are zoomed out and looking at things bigger and allowing you to see an even bigger success for yourself than what you can naturally see just based on negative negativity bias or the way you were raised or some of the values and beliefs that you've adopted over time that hold you back from that greater success that you're actually uh possible to achieve no that's exactly right I'll tell you a story from my own upbringing uh and this is in my first book into the magic shop uh neurosurgeon's quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart uh it's a long title uh but uh yeah I grew up in poverty my father was an alcoholic and my mother had had a stroke when I was a child partially paralyzed seizure disorder chronically depressed attempted suicide we were on uh Public Assistance uh um we were evicted from different residences and of course as you know uh uh this idea of adverse childhood experiences you know the more of these things you have the less likely you are able to be quote unquote Successful by modern society terms and in fact many of these children uh become drug or alcohol abusers or have mental illness but what changed everything for me uh was going into a magic shop uh uh and having a woman there who was not the owner but the owner's mother who knew nothing about magic but she talked to me and she was one of these individuals with this radiant smile and presence that embraced you but the important part about it was she created an environment of psychological safety she didn't look down on you she didn't judge you she listened to what you had to say and after about 15 or 20 minutes and you have to remember this was before mindfulness or neuroplasticity was even thought of she said to me she said I'm here for another 6 weeks if you come in every day I'll teach you something that I think could really help You' and in the course of that interaction she did teach me fundamentally a mindfulness practice but it included a self-compassion practice a compassion practice and at the end of it a visualization uh practice which ultimately is a manifestation practice the problem with it was that I was 12 and she had had me make a list of 10 things I wanted which was a Rolex watch a portion a match at a million dollars the point of that is you can get misguided uh and you but you do have to take the time to have this internal examination and you mentioned Partners people around you in general I would say want to help you if you actually seek out and ask for help right uh and that can be one of the greatest gifts uh you can get and it also strengthens the other aspect of this which is uh human connection you know going back to that earlier step step two around defining success once you actually have a much clearer picture and you start to share it with others then others can actually help you achieve that success so much of what we we talk about we we think about we daydream about and then we don't commit to paper we don't commit to actual goals and we don't then share with others who can actually help us Leap Frog ahead in that Journey no I think that's exactly right and and one of the things you said I think is really important this isn't oh okay I wrote it down today and I'm done this takes work yeah uh even though I said the universe doesn't give a about you but it's true I mean you're only going to benefit if you treat it like as if you're an athlete you have to show up you have to do it every day and you have to mentally focus on that and that's really the keys uh the keys to it and as I mentioned earlier there is a practice aspect in the book and it gives you a step-by-step uh way to do so and much of it is a internal meditation type of practice but a couple other things I want to emphasize though is you know for some people when you mention meditation especially high-powered people they'll go you know I can't do it you know I can't sit on that mat I can't stop my mind and uh you have to separate that from that that's not the point yes and uh uh sometimes as tikn Han as an example talks about a Walkin meditation being in nature basically it's separating yourself from all the things that are so distracting to you and certainly being in nature brings us back to Who We Are are in some ways as human beings and it aligns us uh the other thing I talk about in there and you're talking about people wanting to help you even though in the woooo pseudo science world people talk about vibration and all of these things and it's not that what they're saying is 100% incorrect they add baggage to it which um either can uh not help you or is in fact a false Narrative of what is actually going going on what I mean by that is as an example we talk about vibration and there's no question that your brain vibrates or oscillates and there's certain wavelengths you can train in your brain that actually maximize the positive effects you can have with that type of training but the other thing is your heart has a certain amount of energy and what's amazing is that you can actually measure your heart energy five or six feet away and if you look at situations as an example if a a group of women become roommates after several months their periods sort of align right and this is the true this is true also when you have a presence that is positive that you carry with you you emanate that that has an impact on others and actually can have a very positive influence on others and the other example of this is to also look for people who give you positive feelings and not people who tear you down and and this is another sad truth is there are people who will go out of their way to beat you up and make you believe this false narrative about who you are and I can tell you uh I had as obviously I explained that challenging childhood and I wanted to be a doctor well you know I went to college and uh it was really hard for me you know I had to leave multiple times uh to take care of as an example getting my father out of jail dealing with my mother who's in the hospital because she attempted suicide and so you know I'm distracted obviously and so when I applied to medical school my grade point average was 2.53 the average grade point average at that time for entrance at the medical school was 3.79 and um at my college we had a Premed committee that you had to uh request a letter of recommendation from so I went to ask for this letter of recommendation and um the secretary uh said I'm not going to give you one and I said you know I wanted an appointment to meet with these people and she I said well why and she looked at me she said because it's a waste of everyone's time wow and could you imagine it's crushing crushing how somebody could say that to to you and and such a hurtful statement like you were nothing you were a waste of people's time so I looked at this woman and again this was the gift that this woman in the magic shop gave me this unassailable confidence I looked at her I said well I appreciate what you're saying but I am not leaving here until you give me an appointment now if you want to call security that's fine but I am not leaving here so she did uh now imagine though the next step of this where I get this appointment and I go into this office and have you seen those photographs where it shows Putin at one end of a table there these this massive yeah well this was like that in the S there are three guy people at the end of the table actually a man and two women professors I'm at the other end the guy in the middle who's in charge he takes my file he throws it on the table and he says he says say what you want to say so we can get this over with and again how can you do this to somebody and again fortunately I looked at him and I said I am not going to allow you to objectify me to a grade I refuse to do that I'm a human being and then I lectured them for about 20 minutes okay okay and at the end of it because I refused to let them do that uh uh they ended up all crying at the end right uh and because if you don't allow them to do that if if you stand up for yourself if you believe in yourself yeah that changes everything so they ended up giving me the highest letter of recommendation okay and as I was leaving this uh meeting if you want to call it that this makes me Tei still yeah after all these years uh that secretary she was in the room actually in the back and she says listen um I want to give you this and it was a application to a summer enrichment program for socioeconomically disadvantaged students and minority students and she and she says to me she says but I want you to know uh the deadline has passed but I don't think that'll stop you based on what I just saw so I ended up applied to that program and actually was accepted into that program I applied to one medical school which was where this program was which was at Tulane University in New Orleans so I applied to one medical school and got into one medical school and I actually got in with that grade point average and I didn't get a degree so so but I the other aspect of this is no one has the right to tell you what you can and cannot do only you can do that the other aspect is no one can predict another's ability so if you fast forward after Hurricane Katrina uh the Dean resigned the dean of the medical school and they were searching for another Dean and they had a fellow from Harvard uh who uh agreed to come but he wanted an endowed chair but they didn't have any money also the library had been destroyed after herur K Katrina so I ended up rebuilding the library and funding the dean's chair so to date the dean at tulan is the doie professor amazing and so again no one has the right to tell you what's possible and if you stay focused and you look at the world to the lens of being of service of caring for others and unleashing the power you have within yourself because these negative thoughts create a prison Brick by Brick and the walls get higher they come at you it gets darker you are able to do anything you choose to do you just have to believe it has to start with you believing uh in the power uh within you and then moving into setting that intention so going from conscious to unconscious and then as you learned that valuable lesson in the magic shock being open to Magic exactly and that is uh ultimately the key uh so it is uh defining your intention and uh uh having this unal belief within the power you have now I don't want to give the impression that if you say you know I want to land on Mars in five years right that is not going to happen probably but the reality is though that you can change so many things about your world if you believe in the possibilities if you change your beliefs from having them limited by your own self statements you can do so so many other things and while doing so you improve the lives of other people and you improve your own life and you improve every aspect of your life and ultimately it leads to action right so a lot of what we talked about from you know default mode Network to then working through what that success looks like getting the intentions in place to move forward are you acting on all of this it's all great if it's upstairs in your mind but all of those intentions have to be put into actions that move you closer and closer to what you ultimately want absolutely but I would also say that sometimes people start these things and they have starts and stops and fits that's okay yeah uh all of us do that and I just had a conversation with BJ fog who wrote tiny habits he's been on the show he's great yeah he's a wonderful uh individual and the thing is though don't try to do everything at once and start out uh with small practices and and then build on those versus and I've had a tendency to do this say you know I'm going to lose weight I'm going to I'm going to lose 100 pounds in three months yeah it sounds great yeah it sounds great and the first day or two it works now I will tell you I said that one time and I actually did it but it was the most unhealthy thing but the reason I did it actually was you remember Ted Kennedy when he looked his worst he was completely bloated and he couldn't get his so I actually was doing a uh a talk with Phil zardo okay and I I introduced him they videotaped this and I was watching the video tape and I look like Ted K you saw the tape you're like that's it yeah so at that point I said I can't do this so I I did indeed lose 100 pounds in three months but it was uh brutal I do not recommend that to anyone and it's unhealthy that's not in the book no it's not in the book but it tells you you know I'm uh I'm also a human being and uh I don't make every right decision and nor does anyone else the other thing I would just also say is you know there are these two ja Japanese uh Aesthetics if you want to call them that and I think that's important also for people to appreciate one is wabisabi which I'm sure you're probably familiar with this idea of imperfection uh impermanence and incompleteness and this is the reality of Our Lives the other is a related concept which is kugi and this is this uh 16th century uh narrative if you will about how Pottery was rare and uh would break sometimes and it would be repaired with metal Staples which looked ugly of course but somebody changed that to using glue that had gold in it and the reason that's important is because when it was repaired you see the lines of the repair but in some ways those are gift because it shows what the pottery's been through and the metaphor of course is that all of us have been through aspects that have hurt us broken us and those are not meant to be hidden and this is the problem of being authentic is it's okay to show that you've been through this but you've overcome it and you're still together and I think understanding the importance of self-acceptance and not being ashamed of what you've been through or who you are is another very important component of manifesting as well because you have to align yourself and I hate to use the word energy because that's so woo woo sometimes but you have to align yourself with who you are what's important what your goals are and also be okay with yourself uh because all of us are frail fragile humans who make mistakes and that's every one of us there is no person who's perfect exactly well what a beautiful point to end on thank you so much for stopping by where can our audience find out more about mind magic uh well it is available for pre-order on any of the typical platforms for books I won't say one because but uh independent bookstores please support them uh so it's available there it it I just actually did the audible uh for that which was uh a lot of fun and also my other book into the magic shop can be found at the same places and for anyone who's interested also uh you can go to the secare website where there are all sorts of courses and programs uh for compassion and self-compassion and that seare pc. stanford.edu the other thing I would mention as another project I'm working working on is called happy hai. a and what that is uh in some ways relates it's a platform that utilizes emotion assessment combined with a conversational AI knowledge base of compassion focused therapy and uh psychology connected to a human Avatar okay and you can actually interact with it and the great thing about it is that of course it's an avatar but it's non-judgmental it accepts you for who you are and uh it gives you a lot of interesting uh supporting uh uh ideas Concepts to benefit you and it's free to sign up and uh you can try that out too yeah that's beautiful we've learned from a lot of our clients they actually feel a lot safer with the anonymity of talking to GPT and sharing those deepest darkest Secrets than worth a human ours is a uh self-contained platform that is strictly focused so you can't head off into hallucination or as some people try to do flirt with or troll the Avatar right or add 10 Awards to your bio yeah well that's okay thank you guys for stopping by no thank you I really appreciate it [Music]

if you look at our influencer culture you know you see all these people who are pretending that everything is perfect when in fact they are insecure themselves and are suffering and they know that they&#39;re an impostor and of course the uh Paradox of that is those watching these individuals buy into their narrative and they look at their own lives and they say God that person has it and look at me I&#39;m nothing and of course that&#39;s a complete falsehood [Music] we&#39;re excited today because with the science background of the show have not talked about manifestation oh really and I know with a lot of people there&#39;s skepticism around it myself a little included here so I&#39;m excited today to talk around the neuroscience and what mind magic is so I think that might be a good place to jump in what do you mean by mind magic well I think um what a a lot of people don&#39;t realize is that they give their agent away and what happens is so many people are looking for some sort of outside intervention that&#39;s going to make everything better or in some ways be magical and everything changes in their life and in fact as you know from the first line of the book the universe doesn&#39;t give a about you exactly and because there are no to give and um so part of the book is one so many people especially young people don&#39;t know the difference between what they think they want and what they need and the other was what I was just mentioning is that so many people are waiting for something in the universe to either guide them or uh give them what they think they want or need and so um both of those things uh actually disempower you so um one aspect of this is to make you learn the difference and you know in Western capitalist Society The Narrative is that if you make money have uh Power position that suddenly you&#39;re going to be happy and of course that&#39;s a false narrative and as a result people get those things and they&#39;re miserable and I can tell you from my own experience having you know gone to medical school become a neurosurgeon become a successful entrepreneur you know I would climb each of these mountains if you will and then I would get at the top and I would wait for magic to happen and I&#39;m now whole I don&#39;t have any shape I&#39;m not insecure I&#39;m not an impostor and in fact uh nothing changed and I still had that sense of uh emptiness and so the question is how do you feel that emptiness and uh this has sort of been my own personal Journey as you may know from my first book I talk about my own personal background and all of us uh who we are today is a manifestation to some extent of our past and as a result a lot of people don&#39;t appreciate actually the baggage that they carry which impacts relationships decisions they make uh how they interact with others and as a result uh that creates unhappiness because they don&#39;t understand that baggage is influencing every action they take exactly and so one of the things of course is you have to become self-aware about that and I think also and this is one of the problems about manifestation uh I&#39;m sure youve probably heard of a book called The Secret yes so you know the secret has been extraordinarily successful and uh the problem in my mind with it is that it is a narrative about what I want and this is where it goes off track okay because when you focus on what I want in some ways you&#39;re selling to people a narrative that when you get what I want uh everything will be fine and you&#39;ll be happy and and as I was just saying the problem is that you get that and uh you&#39;re still unhappy right so part of the book is one reclaiming yourself agency meaning you recognize the power you have within yourself it&#39;s not coming from outside yourself and that&#39;s the power one uh to uh choose if you&#39;re going to be happy and also recognizing that the way we evolved as a species as you know uh unlike other uh species uh our Offspring need to be cared for which means that uh you have to respond to their pain uh and whether that&#39;s because of hunger or physical pain and for our Offspring we have to take care of them for well over 10 years if not longer well what is the driver for you to care uh to expend the time and the resources well the driver is that our evolutionary imperative uh has actually created a system that rewards us when we care and uh while it involves a variety of neurotransmitters the one probably the audience has heard about the most is oxytocin sort of the love or bonding uh hormone so when you care you get the release of this hormone which then results in your uh reward or pleasure centers being activated in your brain but it does more than that it&#39;s when you care your physiology works at its best and as you probably know we have something called the vagus nerve which is a nerve that is found throughout the body and arises in the brain stem but it has two parts and um one part of course is the sympathetic nervous system which is associated with the flight fight or freeze response and it looks at the world through the lens of scarcity yeah and fear and then the other is the parasympathetic nervous system which is called the rest or digest system and when that&#39;s activated uh you feel open you feel generous uh you&#39;re much more thoughtful you&#39;re much more creative you&#39;re much more productive and again uh your reward centers are uh stimulated and your physiology Works its best and that&#39;s in the context of cardiac function peripheral vascular function as well as your immune system your levels of cortisol your stress hormones are decreased and so we are designed to care so when we focus on us it actually of course uh in some ways is very much like the fear response and as a result you you activate uh uh the various components of that through the vagus nerve the sympathetic nervous system well you can manifest in the techniques that the secret and some of these other books talk about are not necessarily wrong per se although they&#39;re more efficient ways to get access to those centers in your brain that will increase the likelihood of you manifesting uh but when you&#39;re focused on yourself uh that is not the best way to manifest nor is it one that I think will help you in the long run well one of the key points in the book and we can Dove a little bit more into your past is this concept that when many of us manifest things we we manifest islands and cars and external events in our life happening to in our mind be that marker of success status that other people respect us for and you experience that and as you said earlier it didn&#39;t make you happy so where do we think where do you think most of us go wrong with that manifestation around those external things versus what should we be focusing on with our manifestation to actually be whole to be living a rich and fulfilling life well it&#39;s exactly what uh you know I was alluding to earlier in the sense that we have been brainwashed by believing a narrative that success by Western capitalist definitions equals power position uh wealth uh or things yeah things and and then when you get those things you&#39;re not happy or at least you&#39;re transiently happy but it is not a deep it&#39;s not lasting lasting happiness conversely when you do activities for others that gives you meaning and purpose which is results in a depth of Happiness if you will which is quite different but in many ways is the one that will stay with you and actually Define you as what you should be as a human being uh and this is the difference between honic and emonic happiness honic happiness is seeking pleasure and avoiding pain and the Neuroscience is quite clear that&#39;s quite transitory when you do the opposite when you&#39;re of service to others where you look at the world through the lens of being of service two things happen one is obviously you are uh outside of yourself you&#39;re benefiting others which goes back to our Evolution as a species when we care for others we physiologically and mentally benefit but it also changes how you see the world because the things you think you want such as wealth position and power don&#39;t seem as important or you recognize are not important you recognize them for what they are uh which is yes it can give you transient pleasure but I believe what humans really seek is a deep uh seated type of pleasure and uh one that is longlasting ing one that when you reflect on it you have this warmth with ins within you and you feel good about yourself and then you can see the results because of the impact you have on others and I think that is a very very powerful thing and uh as I was saying when you are able to stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system it has uh magical powers not only does it make your physiology work the best it actually increases your longevity and why is that if you look at the science associated with these areas called the Blue zones yeah or uh you look at the study that&#39;s been going on for 85 years at Harvard the Harvard I think it&#39;s called the adult development study but people call happiness study and this is uh now run by Robert waler but uh what are the important lessons from that well the important lessons are that when you actually think of others act in regard to others it has all the positive effects I was just mentioning to and the reason is it relates again to our Evolution we talk about the blue zones as these five areas in the world but actually if you go back a few hundred years that is how humans lived they lived in community you were born there you died there and everyone knew you and the thing is that you we talked about impostor syndrome briefly everyone knew you they knew the good and the bad and they still loved you you and they were there for you and they supported you and they created a community where you felt supported so you didn&#39;t have this voice inside of your head saying I&#39;m not good enough I&#39;m an impostor people are going to find out about me and and so what happens is uh you develop these deep relationships or connections to individuals and that is sort of the superpower of our Humanity that makes everything work better and that&#39;s why manifestation when it relates to being of service is also very the most powerful way to manifest yeah well what I would love to unpack is what&#39;s going on with these neural networks so I know we&#39;ve talked a lot about the default mode Network you write in the book that there are other networks that we want to tap into to make manifestation as impactful as possible so if you don&#39;t mind just walking our audience through the networks and what we can do to really have a stronger impact on what we are manifesting sure when I talked about activating the parasympathetic nervous system and the physiologic benefit which relates to these cognitive networks part of it does uh uh in some ways relate to controlling your mind and uh one thing that&#39;s extremely popular is uh mindfulness types of practices but what this really tells you is that within each of us we have this incredible power which so often we give to others outside of ourselves and I&#39;m sure you&#39;ve lived through the experience of uh you have this this idea to do something or something you&#39;re just excited about and then you share it with friends or relatives they go you can&#39;t do that that&#39;s impossible and and it&#39;s horrible right because you&#39;re so excited and anxious these people tell you these things and as a result many people just give up because they believe it and the mind doesn&#39;t know the difference between truth and untruth and if you put in the narrative in your head that it is not possible that becomes truth convers if you look at the through the lens of anything is possible I&#39;m responsible now this isn&#39;t to say that uh you know if you have these horrible external circumstances magically they go away because you say I&#39;m empowered but what it does do is it gives you a change in Attitude which actually changes your physiology and this is why we see as an example you look at whm Hoff or some of these Tibetan Monks who can control their body temperature or uh their heart rate or other physiological responses theoretically these function independent of us but what it shows you you have the power within your mind to control these things and you also have the power and this is actually I&#39;m sure you&#39;ve heard of epeus or some of the stoic philosophers external circumstances often times you cannot control what you can control is how you respond and in some ways that&#39;s the nature of Happiness too you know there are people who have very challenging circumstances and you meet them and they&#39;re joyful and happy and you go what how is that even possible then you meet other people who have everything in the world and are absolutely miserable well what&#39;s the difference the difference is the choice inside their head and so in terms of manifesting there are multiple aspects of this the first one is what so many people don&#39;t appreciate is we are battered by information from sensory organs that are overwhelming now 99.99% go to maintaining uh homeostasis of our bodily functions and this is about 10 million bits of information a second but on a conscious level we have control if you want to use that term of about 50 to 100 bits so how do you take on a conscious level that information you want to embed into your subconscious to have it manifest now what I would also say there&#39;s a process called value tagging and in some ways that&#39;s exactly what we&#39;re talking about we are creating something of value that is Meaningful to us and now how do we embed it so there are these cognitive brain networks and one uh which was mentioned briefly is a default mode Network and this is when our mind wonders it&#39;s self reverential uh and but also you think about potential IAL tasks or events you want but the key is getting access to your salience network and your attention Network and what happens is is that when you value tag something you make it Salient to you okay and once it becomes Salient your subconscious then acts as a blood hound to be attuned to events in your surroundings that potentially can help you manifest but it Al again is very much related to the attention Network because that&#39;s what gives the fine focus to things okay as an example I&#39;m sure you&#39;ve been at a party or some event where there&#39;s a lot of noise but if you hear your name you suddenly turn right and why is that because on a a deep level your name or identity is always with you and you&#39;re always attuned to that and so this is the same with the power of manifestation as an example there&#39;s a project I&#39;m working on and I was at a coffee shop a few weeks ago and it was very noisy but suddenly I heard these two individuals talking about the exact same thing that I was interested in and of course I turned to that and then I went over and introduced myself and connected with these individuals but the point is that was embedded so like a bloodhound the uh salance network was looking around saying you know how can we make this happen or I make this happen and then once it reaches that level then of course your executive control Network which is the to-do side of the house if you will and it gives you access to memory prior experiences Etc then that goes to work to actually have it manifest so it&#39;s not to say having a selfish desire uh gets blocked in all levels of manifestation it&#39;s to say that the highest likelihood of you manifesting though if it is focused on the other and the other good thing about that is though you realize often times what you believe you want to happen isn&#39;t in your best interest or you change how you look at the world when you&#39;re of service to others and many times the things you thought you wanted are not what you actually need right so default mode network is US starting to dream visualize think about things that are could be important to us Daydream sometimes it&#39;s it&#39;s negative sometimes it&#39;s positive once you value tag it then you&#39;re now telling your subconscious mind okay let&#39;s look for this this is now important to me and then we can start to act on it so it goes from Daydream thinking about what success looks like to actually motivating our subconscious mind to move towards that success that we&#39;re looking for no that&#39;s exactly right and how do you strengthen that well uh you strengthen this by uh techniques which I outline in detail in the book in fact there&#39;s a six- we course at the end of the book uh uh but many of it is uh familiar uh you write it down because what you want to do is um make it more and more impactful well if you use all your sensory organs to do that that&#39;s one of the things you do that so write it down uh read it to yourself read it aloud and then relax and think about you being that or getting what whatever that is and each of those things strengthens this and the more you do it as you know there&#39;s a saying that what fires together wires together right and so the more you strengthen that pathway the more likely it is to be deeply embedded and the more likely it is that your salience network or that blood hound will seek it out and this is where this concept of synchronicity comes in you know you don&#39;t appreciate well like well that&#39;s amazing I was just thinking about that well it&#39;s because it&#39;s been tagged and you know on some level Everyone is always manifesting or trying to it&#39;s just like an athlete if you&#39;ve never done that before it sort of works here and there maybe maybe not right and the more you practice the more likelihood it is to happen Okay so let&#39;s let&#39;s walk through the steps because number one I think is really challenging for a lot of us right now in this hyperd distracted world of notifications dinging as we heard and everything else going on we have to tap into our focus and and actually start to move into okay what is it that I really want so what are your suggestions for those of us who feel distracted feel pulled in so many directions and and maybe don&#39;t feel as focused as they need to be well I think you probably described 99.9% of us it is very hard and as you well know uh the companies uh that are doing this mostly uh these social media Outlets actually they hire psychologists and neuroscientists to uh create if you want to call it hits of dopamine right to get your attention and therefore you become addicted to getting more and more hits of dopamine uh so of course one is to uh try to do a digital detox okay or to limit the time you&#39;re on social media now that is hard I think for most of us uh the other aspect of this is in some way self-compassion because uh what happen is you are unaware of the fact that we beat ourselves up all the time and often times we think that&#39;s just natural and in fact many of us are more critical of ourselves than anyone we know and so one of the challenges is to uh be kind to yourself and I mentioned mindfulness practice and while there are many different forms of mindfulness practice one is being able to do a body survey if you will will or uh I call it relax the body because what people don&#39;t understand is when you&#39;re in the modern world so many of us are are stressed and anxious and it gets back in some ways when I was talking about the blue zones or this uh adult development study at Harvard these people were not distracted they didn&#39;t have to run to a job and be there exactly on time they weren&#39;t criticized uh if they didn&#39;t uh were late or something or didn&#39;t have the impact uh people Comm communicated and the other aspect that&#39;s really important is is being authentic uh in the modern world because you don&#39;t have family siblings or people you&#39;ve known a long time around people feel terrified of being judged by others so if they&#39;re their authentic self they don&#39;t think people are going to like them and that creates another level of stress and anxiety and so uh one of the first things is to learn to be kind to yourself at Manford where I run the center I founded called the center for compassion and altruism research and education of which his Holiness the Dal Lama is the founding benefactor we actually have very specific courses to teach self-compassion and the reason that&#39;s important because we&#39;re talking about looking through the lens of compassion towards others and let me just Define compassion it&#39;s the recognition of another&#39;s suffering with a motivational desire to alleviate that suffering the problem is if you&#39;re not kind to yourself it&#39;s hard to look at the world other than being hypercritical right and of course your own hyper criticality uh stimulates your sympathetic nervous system and which is of course a detriment working against any manif manifesting things so one of the things is to learn to be kind to yourself and uh we can talk about my own childhood how I uh overcame that and then of course then once you learn to be kind to yourself you you realize that everyone is suffering and that just because somebody looks as though they have it together doesn&#39;t mean they do uh and in fact if you look at our influencer culture you know you see all these people who are pretending that everything is perfect you know their makeup&#39;s perfect or just a snapshot even exactly all it is uh uh yes absolutely and it&#39;s not a true snapshot in any way shape or form the problem is and I&#39;m sure you&#39;ve read about this often is you these people are trying to project a sense of perfection when in fact they are insecure themselves and are suffering and they can&#39;t reconcile these so this creates despair oftentimes hopelessness and they know that they&#39;re an impostor and in this case a real impostor and of course that has a heavy psychological burden for these individuals and of course the uh Paradox of that is those watching these individuals buy into their narrative and they look at their own lives and they say God that person has it and look at me I&#39;m nothing and of course that&#39;s a complete falsehood and uh the other thing that&#39;s important is to when I talk about self-compassion none of us are perfect all of us are failed flawed human beings and in the face of that the reality is we all deserve to be loved and cared for yes and everyone and so thinking that somebody is perfect or has their act together it&#39;s just not uh uh true at all and if you were to witness yourself let&#39;s say going through that exact moment but as a child you probably wouldn&#39;t be saying the things that your inner critic is saying to that childlike version of yourself of course not no I I I mean you&#39;d never say that and this is the other thing that uh is often overlooked as well is that you know when you&#39;re a child you are acutely sensitive to what others say and words mean something abolutely so if you have a parent or a loved one or somebody you respect tell you a negative thought often times that gets deeply embedded and again we&#39;re talking about childhood trauma this is really a problem for a lot of people I uh was doing a program one time talking about this topic and this woman raised her hand and she started crying and she said as a child my father told me I would be nothing and here she is in her 50s she&#39;s a nurse she has a pH D she&#39;s uh the CEO of a health care company highly successful yet she&#39;s still caring that yes versus if her father had said you know you are amazing I love you you could do anything completely different impact on her life because she&#39;s still suffering from what her father said so honing Focus step one what I found in working with our coaching clients step two is often the hardest is defining what success actually is and really clearly defining what success is to you and we talked a little bit about how as a society in Western culture especially we look to others to guide us to what success should be for us and we follow what our fam say or what school says or what influencers say as guides for what success is and I&#39;ll often ask my clients you know what what does it mean to be successful what what does success look like to you and what I found is really fascinating is they&#39;ll they&#39;ll often look to okay 12 months from now they don&#39;t look far enough into the future and really paint that clear picture of what they truly want not just in the here and now or in a few months or 12 months but 5 years 10 years what they want their legacy to look like is often very hard for us to Define so what is the advice you have for getting really clear on what success looks like because if we aren&#39;t clear we can&#39;t tag it we can&#39;t activate all these other networks to work to our advantage no you&#39;re absolutely right you know the challenge though is that uh getting people out of the narrative they have in their head about what Society thinks success is and that&#39;s really hard for a lot of people because their whole lives they&#39;ve chased that and when you sit there and say is that really what you think success is many of them to be honest with you haven&#39;t slowed down enough to even consider it to even consider it and uh and they&#39;ll also give you excl excuses like well I&#39;m just too busy you know work is so demanding I don&#39;t have time to do ITC well you know there&#39;s this what was it John of kitty said if not now when when right and I think that&#39;s really the key is you need to slow down and uh there are many practices to do that as you know uh one is a mind training practice it could be mindfulness uh the practice we teach is a little bit different and I know John kitson very well uh who&#39;s a wonderful individual but my statement to him when we&#39;ve had discussions is uh traditional mindfulness practice does really explicitly talk about self-compassion or compassion for others it&#39;s sort of in there but it&#39;s not the main point the reason I mentioned that is sometimes people use these practices that type of a practice to get more Focus if you&#39;re a hedge fund manager and it&#39;s not to improve yourself and to be of service to others it&#39;s how can I make more money by not being distracted by negative dialogue that&#39;s not what the ideal practice should be and so the practice we&#39;ve developed very explicitly is to teach a body scanning or a relaxation practice a focusing practice but combine that very explicitly with self-compassion and then follow that with compassion for others and as I was saying earlier until you can be kind to yourself you look through the lens of hyper criticality the other aspect is one of the ways mindfulness works is you learn to ignore the negative but that doesn&#39;t necessarily down modulate the negative by actually having very specific positive affirmations to yourself I am worthy I deserve love that starts changing the narrative and certainly decreases uh volume of it yeah the impact of the negative yeah I think it&#39;s it&#39;s so fascinating how much of our own narrative around success is just tied to seeking love from others it&#39;s like if I get this then my family will be happy my friends will be proud my neighbors will give me status when in actuality we haven&#39;t really gotten in touch with what we truly want to be successful and it ends up chasing false gods and narratives that once you even reach them and for a lot of our clients they have reached those things got the house found the beautiful partner and then they&#39;re still feeling this emptiness because that&#39;s not how they truly define success for themselves no I think that&#39;s uh exactly right and and this is the sad thing because people go through their lives and they&#39;re so focused on this goal uh and this is fundamentally the problem with craving and attachment right that&#39;s what causes your unhappiness and the extraordinary thing for so many people is they chase that absolutely focused on that ignoring every other aspect of their life because they think if I have that then all the other problems will be solved and the reality though is there&#39;s nothing wrong with chasing a goal it&#39;s though being so attached to the goal that when it doesn&#39;t happen you feel destroyed and the other reality is that the greatest part of that is actually the interaction on the journey with the people you&#39;re with and enjoying that and experiencing that because when you&#39;re present which is what we&#39;re talking about how do you become present how are you able to attend that&#39;s where our Humanity blossoms when we&#39;re connected to others and as we&#39;re talking about uh the uh uh blue zones or this Harvard study what is the fundamental aspects of those studies that tell us uh about our true selves or how we should be every aspect of that points to the reality that depth of connection depth of relationships are the most important thing related to physical health Mental Health and Longevity period and and this is why you know you could look at Church Hill let see this obese fellow who drinks three or four whiskies and smokes cigars and he lives to be a h yeah it&#39;s well the other thing that is so frustrating for us here at the AR of charm is the amount of sacrificing of those relationships that we see in our clients who narrow their focus on that external goal not recognizing that those relationships can actually even get you to that goal faster no absolutely and in fact I&#39;m very much a believer in that so many of my accomplishments are because of others helping me it&#39;s not because I told everybody to off and I said I&#39;m going for this leave me alone it&#39;s because I say I need your help right or I&#39;m working on this yes yes absolutely and it&#39;s so so important people get lost in in that yeah well step three so moving beyond what defining success is is obstacles and one of the biggest obstacles is a negativity bias and looking at things and searching out okay well what can go wrong what are the worst possible cases and of course that robs us of the ability to to see the Success Through no that&#39;s right and what so many people don&#39;t recognize is we all have these different biases and if you&#39;re not aware or don&#39;t seek out to understand some of these things then you&#39;re always blind and uh so it&#39;s really important to understand and we discuss many of these things in the book is what are preventing or what are the obstacles or what are the causes that are limiting your beliefs yeah I think one of the most fascinating parts for me in in my experience is how relationships can often help you overcome those obstacles and finding people who are zoomed out and looking at things bigger and allowing you to see an even bigger success for yourself than what you can naturally see just based on negative negativity bias or the way you were raised or some of the values and beliefs that you&#39;ve adopted over time that hold you back from that greater success that you&#39;re actually uh possible to achieve no that&#39;s exactly right I&#39;ll tell you a story from my own upbringing uh and this is in my first book into the magic shop uh neurosurgeon&#39;s quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart uh it&#39;s a long title uh but uh yeah I grew up in poverty my father was an alcoholic and my mother had had a stroke when I was a child partially paralyzed seizure disorder chronically depressed attempted suicide we were on uh Public Assistance uh um we were evicted from different residences and of course as you know uh uh this idea of adverse childhood experiences you know the more of these things you have the less likely you are able to be quote unquote Successful by modern society terms and in fact many of these children uh become drug or alcohol abusers or have mental illness but what changed everything for me uh was going into a magic shop uh uh and having a woman there who was not the owner but the owner&#39;s mother who knew nothing about magic but she talked to me and she was one of these individuals with this radiant smile and presence that embraced you but the important part about it was she created an environment of psychological safety she didn&#39;t look down on you she didn&#39;t judge you she listened to what you had to say and after about 15 or 20 minutes and you have to remember this was before mindfulness or neuroplasticity was even thought of she said to me she said I&#39;m here for another 6 weeks if you come in every day I&#39;ll teach you something that I think could really help You&#39; and in the course of that interaction she did teach me fundamentally a mindfulness practice but it included a self-compassion practice a compassion practice and at the end of it a visualization uh practice which ultimately is a manifestation practice the problem with it was that I was 12 and she had had me make a list of 10 things I wanted which was a Rolex watch a portion a match at a million dollars the point of that is you can get misguided uh and you but you do have to take the time to have this internal examination and you mentioned Partners people around you in general I would say want to help you if you actually seek out and ask for help right uh and that can be one of the greatest gifts uh you can get and it also strengthens the other aspect of this which is uh human connection you know going back to that earlier step step two around defining success once you actually have a much clearer picture and you start to share it with others then others can actually help you achieve that success so much of what we we talk about we we think about we daydream about and then we don&#39;t commit to paper we don&#39;t commit to actual goals and we don&#39;t then share with others who can actually help us Leap Frog ahead in that Journey no I think that&#39;s exactly right and and one of the things you said I think is really important this isn&#39;t oh okay I wrote it down today and I&#39;m done this takes work yeah uh even though I said the universe doesn&#39;t give a about you but it&#39;s true I mean you&#39;re only going to benefit if you treat it like as if you&#39;re an athlete you have to show up you have to do it every day and you have to mentally focus on that and that&#39;s really the keys uh the keys to it and as I mentioned earlier there is a practice aspect in the book and it gives you a step-by-step uh way to do so and much of it is a internal meditation type of practice but a couple other things I want to emphasize though is you know for some people when you mention meditation especially high-powered people they&#39;ll go you know I can&#39;t do it you know I can&#39;t sit on that mat I can&#39;t stop my mind and uh you have to separate that from that that&#39;s not the point yes and uh uh sometimes as tikn Han as an example talks about a Walkin meditation being in nature basically it&#39;s separating yourself from all the things that are so distracting to you and certainly being in nature brings us back to Who We Are are in some ways as human beings and it aligns us uh the other thing I talk about in there and you&#39;re talking about people wanting to help you even though in the woooo pseudo science world people talk about vibration and all of these things and it&#39;s not that what they&#39;re saying is 100% incorrect they add baggage to it which um either can uh not help you or is in fact a false Narrative of what is actually going going on what I mean by that is as an example we talk about vibration and there&#39;s no question that your brain vibrates or oscillates and there&#39;s certain wavelengths you can train in your brain that actually maximize the positive effects you can have with that type of training but the other thing is your heart has a certain amount of energy and what&#39;s amazing is that you can actually measure your heart energy five or six feet away and if you look at situations as an example if a a group of women become roommates after several months their periods sort of align right and this is the true this is true also when you have a presence that is positive that you carry with you you emanate that that has an impact on others and actually can have a very positive influence on others and the other example of this is to also look for people who give you positive feelings and not people who tear you down and and this is another sad truth is there are people who will go out of their way to beat you up and make you believe this false narrative about who you are and I can tell you uh I had as obviously I explained that challenging childhood and I wanted to be a doctor well you know I went to college and uh it was really hard for me you know I had to leave multiple times uh to take care of as an example getting my father out of jail dealing with my mother who&#39;s in the hospital because she attempted suicide and so you know I&#39;m distracted obviously and so when I applied to medical school my grade point average was 2.53 the average grade point average at that time for entrance at the medical school was 3.79 and um at my college we had a Premed committee that you had to uh request a letter of recommendation from so I went to ask for this letter of recommendation and um the secretary uh said I&#39;m not going to give you one and I said you know I wanted an appointment to meet with these people and she I said well why and she looked at me she said because it&#39;s a waste of everyone&#39;s time wow and could you imagine it&#39;s crushing crushing how somebody could say that to to you and and such a hurtful statement like you were nothing you were a waste of people&#39;s time so I looked at this woman and again this was the gift that this woman in the magic shop gave me this unassailable confidence I looked at her I said well I appreciate what you&#39;re saying but I am not leaving here until you give me an appointment now if you want to call security that&#39;s fine but I am not leaving here so she did uh now imagine though the next step of this where I get this appointment and I go into this office and have you seen those photographs where it shows Putin at one end of a table there these this massive yeah well this was like that in the S there are three guy people at the end of the table actually a man and two women professors I&#39;m at the other end the guy in the middle who&#39;s in charge he takes my file he throws it on the table and he says he says say what you want to say so we can get this over with and again how can you do this to somebody and again fortunately I looked at him and I said I am not going to allow you to objectify me to a grade I refuse to do that I&#39;m a human being and then I lectured them for about 20 minutes okay okay and at the end of it because I refused to let them do that uh uh they ended up all crying at the end right uh and because if you don&#39;t allow them to do that if if you stand up for yourself if you believe in yourself yeah that changes everything so they ended up giving me the highest letter of recommendation okay and as I was leaving this uh meeting if you want to call it that this makes me Tei still yeah after all these years uh that secretary she was in the room actually in the back and she says listen um I want to give you this and it was a application to a summer enrichment program for socioeconomically disadvantaged students and minority students and she and she says to me she says but I want you to know uh the deadline has passed but I don&#39;t think that&#39;ll stop you based on what I just saw so I ended up applied to that program and actually was accepted into that program I applied to one medical school which was where this program was which was at Tulane University in New Orleans so I applied to one medical school and got into one medical school and I actually got in with that grade point average and I didn&#39;t get a degree so so but I the other aspect of this is no one has the right to tell you what you can and cannot do only you can do that the other aspect is no one can predict another&#39;s ability so if you fast forward after Hurricane Katrina uh the Dean resigned the dean of the medical school and they were searching for another Dean and they had a fellow from Harvard uh who uh agreed to come but he wanted an endowed chair but they didn&#39;t have any money also the library had been destroyed after herur K Katrina so I ended up rebuilding the library and funding the dean&#39;s chair so to date the dean at tulan is the doie professor amazing and so again no one has the right to tell you what&#39;s possible and if you stay focused and you look at the world to the lens of being of service of caring for others and unleashing the power you have within yourself because these negative thoughts create a prison Brick by Brick and the walls get higher they come at you it gets darker you are able to do anything you choose to do you just have to believe it has to start with you believing uh in the power uh within you and then moving into setting that intention so going from conscious to unconscious and then as you learned that valuable lesson in the magic shock being open to Magic exactly and that is uh ultimately the key uh so it is uh defining your intention and uh uh having this unal belief within the power you have now I don&#39;t want to give the impression that if you say you know I want to land on Mars in five years right that is not going to happen probably but the reality is though that you can change so many things about your world if you believe in the possibilities if you change your beliefs from having them limited by your own self statements you can do so so many other things and while doing so you improve the lives of other people and you improve your own life and you improve every aspect of your life and ultimately it leads to action right so a lot of what we talked about from you know default mode Network to then working through what that success looks like getting the intentions in place to move forward are you acting on all of this it&#39;s all great if it&#39;s upstairs in your mind but all of those intentions have to be put into actions that move you closer and closer to what you ultimately want absolutely but I would also say that sometimes people start these things and they have starts and stops and fits that&#39;s okay yeah uh all of us do that and I just had a conversation with BJ fog who wrote tiny habits he&#39;s been on the show he&#39;s great yeah he&#39;s a wonderful uh individual and the thing is though don&#39;t try to do everything at once and start out uh with small practices and and then build on those versus and I&#39;ve had a tendency to do this say you know I&#39;m going to lose weight I&#39;m going to I&#39;m going to lose 100 pounds in three months yeah it sounds great yeah it sounds great and the first day or two it works now I will tell you I said that one time and I actually did it but it was the most unhealthy thing but the reason I did it actually was you remember Ted Kennedy when he looked his worst he was completely bloated and he couldn&#39;t get his so I actually was doing a uh a talk with Phil zardo okay and I I introduced him they videotaped this and I was watching the video tape and I look like Ted K you saw the tape you&#39;re like that&#39;s it yeah so at that point I said I can&#39;t do this so I I did indeed lose 100 pounds in three months but it was uh brutal I do not recommend that to anyone and it&#39;s unhealthy that&#39;s not in the book no it&#39;s not in the book but it tells you you know I&#39;m uh I&#39;m also a human being and uh I don&#39;t make every right decision and nor does anyone else the other thing I would just also say is you know there are these two ja Japanese uh Aesthetics if you want to call them that and I think that&#39;s important also for people to appreciate one is wabisabi which I&#39;m sure you&#39;re probably familiar with this idea of imperfection uh impermanence and incompleteness and this is the reality of Our Lives the other is a related concept which is kugi and this is this uh 16th century uh narrative if you will about how Pottery was rare and uh would break sometimes and it would be repaired with metal Staples which looked ugly of course but somebody changed that to using glue that had gold in it and the reason that&#39;s important is because when it was repaired you see the lines of the repair but in some ways those are gift because it shows what the pottery&#39;s been through and the metaphor of course is that all of us have been through aspects that have hurt us broken us and those are not meant to be hidden and this is the problem of being authentic is it&#39;s okay to show that you&#39;ve been through this but you&#39;ve overcome it and you&#39;re still together and I think understanding the importance of self-acceptance and not being ashamed of what you&#39;ve been through or who you are is another very important component of manifesting as well because you have to align yourself and I hate to use the word energy because that&#39;s so woo woo sometimes but you have to align yourself with who you are what&#39;s important what your goals are and also be okay with yourself uh because all of us are frail fragile humans who make mistakes and that&#39;s every one of us there is no person who&#39;s perfect exactly well what a beautiful point to end on thank you so much for stopping by where can our audience find out more about mind magic uh well it is available for pre-order on any of the typical platforms for books I won&#39;t say one because but uh independent bookstores please support them uh so it&#39;s available there it it I just actually did the audible uh for that which was uh a lot of fun and also my other book into the magic shop can be found at the same places and for anyone who&#39;s interested also uh you can go to the secare website where there are all sorts of courses and programs uh for compassion and self-compassion and that seare pc. stanford.edu the other thing I would mention as another project I&#39;m working working on is called happy hai. a and what that is uh in some ways relates it&#39;s a platform that utilizes emotion assessment combined with a conversational AI knowledge base of compassion focused therapy and uh psychology connected to a human Avatar okay and you can actually interact with it and the great thing about it is that of course it&#39;s an avatar but it&#39;s non-judgmental it accepts you for who you are and uh it gives you a lot of interesting uh supporting uh uh ideas Concepts to benefit you and it&#39;s free to sign up and uh you can try that out too yeah that&#39;s beautiful we&#39;ve learned from a lot of our clients they actually feel a lot safer with the anonymity of talking to GPT and sharing those deepest darkest Secrets than worth a human ours is a uh self-contained platform that is strictly focused so you can&#39;t head off into hallucination or as some people try to do flirt with or troll the Avatar right or add 10 Awards to your bio yeah well that&#39;s okay thank you guys for stopping by no thank you I really appreciate it [Music]

Transcript for:Insights on Happiness and Manifestation

Transcript for:
Insights on Happiness and Manifestation