You Can Change Your Brain: Neuroscientist Explains How to Rewire Your Mind & Stop Negative Thoughts

Mel Robbins (00:00:06):

Dr. Caroline Leaf is a world renowned researcher and a psycho neurobiologist. Since the early 1980s, she has been researching the mind brain connection, the formation of memory, and she has also one of the original pioneering researchers to figure out that your brain can change. She's also the author of 18 bestselling books that have been translated into 24 languages.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:00:33):

You can't change your story, but you can change what it looks like inside of you and therefore how it plays out into the future. The mind is 99% of who you are. It's fundamental.

 

Mel Robbins (00:00:43):

Okay, now hold on. I'm wiggling my toes right now thinking my mind is in my toes right now. This is so crazy. I've never heard anybody explain it like that. I just think I got It.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:00:52):

The mind and the brain, the words are used interchangeably as though they're the same thing, and the research shows that 95% of lifestyle diseases come from all thought life. So what the truth is, Mel, is that

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:01:23):

Mel, it's an honor and a privilege. I'm one of your biggest fans and really love what you do. Thank you. It's so great to be here. I'm so excited.

 

Mel Robbins (00:01:31):

Well, I'm excited to dig into your more than 35 years of research and the tools that you're going to share with us today that come from being a world renowned psycho neurobiologist. But the way that I want to start is I would love for you to speak directly to the person who is listening to us right now who feels trapped in negative thoughts, that their mind is just a complete mess. What would you tell that person who's listening to us right now that feels that way?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:02:04):

95% of people according to research actually battled negative thinking. So it's very common. It's much more common than we realize, but people get stuck there because they're drawn to the imbalance that it creates actually, as soon as you're aware of that, you can change it. And some of the typical things that people get stuck with are things like they feel under pressure. That's such, I feel so pressurized, I just can't do it. Black and white thinkings and other huge one, it's this or that. Nothing's ever life's a spectrum. Nothing's ever black and white, but it really gets people stuck. Things like, my brain won't shut up. That's something that people will often say to me, how do I switch my brain off? That's a common statement that people make. A couple of others are things like, my past is haunting me. How do I deal with that? It's coming right into it haunted. It's there to over me all the time.

 

Mel Robbins (00:02:51):

I appreciate you sharing what you just shared because I think it's so important that number one, that the person listening understands that they're not alone and feeling how they feel and more importantly, number two, that there is something that you can do about it, that it's based in evidence and that based on your clinical research, it's going to work. And I would love to have you just start by telling the person who's listening, what could change about their life or the life of people that they love, if they really take to heart everything that you're about to teach us today and they apply it themselves.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:03:29):

That's such a good question. And I think the biggest thing that I have found over the nearly 40 years I've been in this field and reached now a lot of people and 25 years of clinical practice, the key thing that is so helpful and that is that your mind is not your brain. They're not the same thing and that you can manage your mind. You can actually change your mind and change your brain. You're not stuck. I think that's absolutely key for people.

 

Mel Robbins (00:03:56):

Dr. Leaf, you just said that the brain is different from the mind. What does that mean?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:04:02):

Yeah, and that's the key question because when you get that concept, it changes your life. It brings hope. We have a lot of messaging for come about 40 years now. The mind and the brain, the words are used interchangeably as though they're the same thing. So what the truth is, Mel, is that your brain and your body or your physical part of you, so I've got a little brain down here, lemme grab a little brain. This brain does absolutely nothing except what you tell it to do with your mind.

 

Mel Robbins (00:04:32):

Okay, now hold on, let me see if I can understand this. Because if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that she has a little model of a brain. It looks like two chicken cutlets together. It does. And you're basically saying that on its own, that blob right there that we call the brain, the physical structure does absolutely nothing on its own.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:04:59):

On its own. Nothing on its own. So then what is the mind? So the mind is the energy force that actually drives the brain or makes it work, which is enabling us to have a conversation and part of memory and remembering what we are saying and so on. Because your mind is doing the work. So the easiest way to understand this is that if you die within seconds of your heart stopping under 20 seconds, your brain basically, that's it, and your body disintegrate. So the brain and the body disintegrate. What's the difference between a dead person and an alive person? It's actually your mind. So mind is a big word and it represents your spirit, your soul, whatever word you want to use. It's that maleness. It's your ability to perceive what I'm saying, to think and feel and choose about that, to love to have relationships to the way you see the world, the way you learn knowledge, the way you perceive every moment of every day.

 

(00:05:50):

That's mind. That mind drives your physiology. So the mind makes the brain work, it makes the genetics, and then you're a hormones. And then you're a chemistry. It makes the heartbeat, if you didn't have a mind, your heart couldn't beat. It's your mind that's making your heartbeat, that's making your lungs work, that's making you breathe. So it handles your mental aspects, your psychological aspects, it handles your neuro aspects and it handles your biological. So psycho neurobiological. So I'm actually a psycho neurobiologist looking at this relationship, this network that we have. And the interesting thing, Mel, is that the mind is 99% of who you are. It's fundamental. It's the prism through which life is processed. The brain is just a host. So the mind is taking this conversation and putting a copy of it into the brain and that then activates the brain to respond chemically and electromagnetically and genetically. And then it wires this conversation as we are talking, it's wiring it into the brain, the mind's doing the work. So you with your mind and your listeners, they're taking my words, which are electromagnetic impulses, taking those into the mind zone. We've got a zone around us of electromagnetic field. It's a field of energy. It's exactly the same energy that runs your cell phone. So the thing that makes your cell phone and anything work, the lights, the studio lights, et cetera. Everything that works, it's electromagnetics. But each of us has our own unique electromagnetic field. So you have yours, I have mine. We all have our own unique ones. So your mind is that thing on a physics level. I know it sounds hard, that's why I say think of a cell phone.

 

Mel Robbins (00:07:31):

I actually think it makes a lot of sense. So I want to try to give it back to you.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:07:35):

Yeah, go for it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:07:38):

So I completely understand what you're saying, that the brain is the physical thing.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:07:43):

Yeah,

 

Mel Robbins (00:07:44):

The mind is the energy force and the programming. And so if you take the example of the cell phone, if the cell phone isn't charged, it's dead. Exactly. Same thing with a human being. And what charges you is the energy of your mind.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:08:00):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:08:00):

And if a cell phone actually was stripped of like when you go to reset to factory settings or whatever, you wipe it clear of everything. It doesn't work.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:08:10):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:08:11):

And so you have to both have the energy to power it, and you also have to have the programming and the language and all of that that tells it what to do. Otherwise the thing is dead and useless. And you're saying the same thing about the brain and the mind.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:08:24):

Exactly. This is useless until you with your mind create the program, put the programs in, power it up, charge it, use it. And even when the cell phone dies, it doesn't mean that the mind has died. The mind still goes on. It never stops. That's the thing the mind just carries on.

 

Mel Robbins (00:08:39):

Wait, what

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:08:40):

Never stops? You are always, you carry on. So if you think of the mind, it's driving all your psychological stuff and all your physiological stuff. So when you have, for example, we use EEGs and Q EEGs in our neuroscience research, which looks at the energy waves in the brain, looks how the brain is responding. What we are looking at is the mind in the brain. When you have an EKG, they look at your heart. That's the mind in your heart. The fact that your blood is pumping. It's a whole different conception.

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:10):

I've never thought about it that way before. Whenever somebody says the word mind, I think about what's in between my ears.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:09:16):

Exactly. Because

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:17):

But you're basically saying if you wiggle your toes, what's making your toes wiggle Is your mind.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:09:21):

Your mind. Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (00:09:22):

You're, your minds are in your toes and your fingertips and everywhere you've got, if you feel like a shock, even when you touch a sweater that's kind of like fuzzy and you get that little, that's your mind helping you experience that. You got it. That's crazy. I've never heard anybody explain it like that. I just think I got it for the first time. I love it. So I got the difference between the physical versus the energy that powers it, but I've never actually extended that insight of the energy and the programming. That is your mind. The life force that drives you is in your entire body. That is crazy.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:09:59):

It's crazy. It's a mind, brain, body network. Three things. And it's a network that works together like the worldwide web. We have our own unique worldwide web within our mind, brain, body connection. Can I blow

 

Mel Robbins (00:10:12):

I'm wiggle on my toes right now thinking my mind is in my toes right now. This is so crazy.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:10:16):

Totally. But here's the really amazing thing. As I'm speaking now, as I mentioned, I'm sending out the electromagnetics waves, photons, auditory sound, all this energy, fantastic physics stuff, okay? Gravitational field, all this fancy stuff. So all my words are coming at you and the listeners, your mind takes that and it's not in your brain yet, and it forms it into little clouds, thought clouds. So every word I'm saying is grouping into a little cloud like raindrops form a cloud. My words are like drops of information, forming a cloud as that's forming. And this is happening at 400 billion actions per second and faster. So now we've got this cloud. Now your mind, your brilliant mind makes a photocopy of that. I mean, it's obviously more sophisticated than a photocopy, but it makes a copy, puts that into the brain, and the brain responds genetically neurochemically electromagnetically, and it wires in a network and that network looks like a treat. So more drops are added to the cloud, the more branches you grow. So we've got a cloud in the mind, we've got a copy of this is in the brain, and every single cell of your body gets a little mini teeny weeny version inside every cell of your body. So every single cell of your body is building this conversation that we are having your mind is,

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:29):

Lemme, I can explain this back to you, okay, because this is crazy. And first of all, as you're listening to Dr. Leaf, I just want you to wiggle your fingers or wiggle your toes and have this experience of saying to yourself, oh my gosh, that's my mind in my fingertips and my toes. And so you can feel it everywhere. What you just explained, if I'm processing it correctly and I'm grabbing the droplets and turning it into the bush in my mind,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:11:55):

Very good,

 

Mel Robbins (00:11:55):

Is that as you are talking, the language that you are speaking is converted into energy and clouds and patterns that come through the air that in electro mag, whatever the heck the word was,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:12:12):

Electromagnetic. You got it.

 

Mel Robbins (00:12:13):

It's so energetic, electromagnetic form and my mind, which is wiggling my fingers and toes, has the ability to grab that electromagnetic field that we would call language ideas and words. Grab them from you as energy

 

(00:12:30):

And then translate it into something that the brain, the physical structure can now encode and remember. And this is the process of how your mind is taking the electromagnetic signals from all around you and encoding it into the mind so that you can do basically everything, walk around, recognize the environment that you're in, recognize somebody's faces, remember a voice that sounds familiar. Everything. Everything. And what's interesting is that other than the programming that is part of the human design that helps you grow and breathe and know how to do the things that the body has to do to keep you alive, your mind is designed to constantly be learning and absorbing new electromagnetic patterns that it then puts into your mind, which is where the neuroplasticity that your brain can always change.

Mel Robbins (00:13:38):

Wow, I have a question about this. It's so good because you're going to teach us no matter what you've been through, no matter how messy your life is right now, no matter how scrambled your thoughts may be, no matter how stuck you think you are, you can absolutely make your mind bud and sprout completely new thoughts, completely new ways to go through life. And you have the research to prove it. When did you actually realize that this was possible?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:14:15):

I'm 61. I trained back in the eighties. And in the eighties we were told that once the brain was damaged, that's it. This neuroscience lecture was saying, okay, so once you've got brain damage, once you've had trauma, that's it. You've got to teach your patients to compensate. And I immediately remembered putting up my hand. Now this is back in the eighties, I'm a female, it's in science. There's majority males in my class and majority male lectures. And there was bias. And I immediately put up my hand and I said, I wasn't trying to be difficult, but I challenged that and said, but we constantly are changing, growing, learning, all the stuff that philosophers have spoken about for thousands of years. So therefore that means that our brain must change because our brain is the host, our brain hosts our mind and the brain has got to change. So this professor kind of facetious, he said, well go do research. I thought, well, let me do that. And I started working with people with traumatic brain injuries and saying, okay, well if I can help them manage their mind, if I can help them rebuild and change how they're thinking, can that change the brain? I took people that had severe traumatic brain injuries. And

 

Mel Robbins (00:15:18):

So give me an example. What is a patient that has severe traumatic,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:15:22):

okay, so I'll tell you a story. Can I tell you one of my most amazing stories that I tell me telling this story now since then, and I have permission to tell it with one of my patients called Lee. And she, I had just started this research and Lee was a 16-year-old and she had a terrible, her brother had a terrible car accident. She was thrown far from the car and she went into a coma in that time in the eighties, if you were in a coma for longer than eight hours, the brain damage was considered irreversible. But these parents were, we are not going to accept this. There's no way that this is going to be the case. And they said, look please. And they begged me. So I said, okay, well if you prepare to work with me, we are going to work together. And that's what we did. And we worked for eight months now.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:03):

And so you've got, their daughter was thrown from a car, she's in a coma. The parents are told after eight hours there's irreversible brain damage.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:16:14):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:15):

And even without being a doctor, it makes sense because you're like, okay, you've been thrown from a car, there's clearly damage, physical damage to the brain.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:16:24):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:25):

And there's nothing that can be done. And now you enter Dr. Leaf and you're like, oh, no, no, no. We're going to look at the mind, the thing that's wiggling your hands and your toes, and we're going to see if we can actually use the energetic power system. You got it. To reverse the traumatic brain injury.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:16:43):

Yes. So they didn't reach out to me in the coma. They reached out to me when she'd come through the coma and she was sort of functioning, but at a second grade level, this is a 16-year-old who's now almost 17, who can't even function at a second grade level.

 

Mel Robbins (00:16:56):

Got it. And it's due to the traumatic brain injury injury that she experienced during the car accident.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:17:01):

Exactly. Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:17:02):

So enter Dr. Leaf and what happens?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:17:04):

So then I work, I said, okay, we'll try this. We'll work together three days a week, two hours each time, but you're going to have to work in between. I mean, this is the key thing, Mel. What I want to say is that I can give you these techniques you can help anyone with, but at the end of the day, you have to do the work. And I developed the five step process. I developed the theory clinically and after eight months, not only did this child restore function, she went back to school. Now she had missed most of her 12th grade at this stage, and she was an average student before. So getting C's and D's and whatever didn't do very well. She goes back to school, she's got to catch up most of her 12th grade year. That was her goal. She did it. She finished school with her peer group. She finished with, not only did she finish, she finished with flying colors, for example. She suddenly became a brilliant mathematician. She was brilliant at math. She went on to get a university degree. Her emotional, cognitive, social, emotional, all of that changed. She had a funny sounding voice because she had damage to her laryn. She couldn't walk properly. So there were physical things, but mentally she restored.

 

Mel Robbins (00:18:07):

First of all, it's extraordinarily compelling where you've got somebody with a traumatic brain injury and using the five steps that you're about to teach us today, the fact that you can help somebody in these severe traumatic cases to use the mind to heal the brain and to change the way that you experience life and to change the functioning of your mind and your body, that is so exciting. And it also gives me hope because I feel like whether you're listening right now and you're struggling with a messy mind, you overthink, you beat yourself up. You're just can never kind of focus or you can't let go of worry or rumination or you have somebody that you love that has concussion damage or that has experienced trauma. I'm excited because if those extreme cases are cases where you have been able to use these five steps to leverage the mind and the power and the energy to change somebody in that situation's experience of life and the way that their brain functions, I think this would work for all of us.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:19:22):

We're human. If you're human and you're alive, you have a mind and you need to know how to manage your mind. And this is, you're quite right, Mel. You've summarized it so beautifully. It's mind management. That's essentially what we need.

 

Mel Robbins (00:19:33):

So Dr. Leaf though, the mind management technique and neuro cycling that you're going to teach us is five step approach based on your clinical research, you can use it to both better manage stress and burnout and anxiety and depression, and you can also use your mind to heal the trauma from violent things that happen from the outside world.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:19:56):

Exactly. The one is the healing management process. The other is the managing process. What's really key here is to understand the levels of mind. And so the reason, the question you asked me earlier on is that how does the same system work for everyone? It sounds like a magic trick. It sounds too good to be true. So first of all, these years of science behind this, patients that sit in front of me that have been through sexual trauma, they're not going to want to know about a complex scientific formula, nor is the traumatic brain injured patient, nor is someone who's a rushed mom, who's dad or whatever, who's just come home. I've got to be able to say, okay, do this, this, this, and this. So I had to take complex science, which took me years to turn it into something very, very simple.

 

Mel Robbins (00:20:35):

I want to just translate what you just said though, because I think I got it. I think I did. I'm sure you did. So basically, if you are in a mode in your life where the stress feels relentless or your mind feels very, very negative, if you think about how you explain conversation that again, your mind is powering your brain and your body, your mind is literally taking the energetic signals from life and then it brings it into your brain and body. And if your thoughts also start to become negative, I can't handle this, I can't handle the stress, I have no support, I'm never going to make it through this, then what happens, you're right, is that you are creating a negative feedback loop inside your body, brain, inside your cells.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:21:34):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:21:35):

And it's why you start to feel so heavy. It doesn't change the fact that you have very real stressful things you're dealing with, but because your mind is starting to now focus and repeat negative thoughts, you're creating additional negative programming. And so if that's true, if that's true, it's interesting because on page 45 of your book, you say, everything we do begins with a thought. If we want to change anything in our lives, we first have to change our thinking, our mind. When we know how to change our mind, we rewire neural networks in the brain that then create useful, sustainable and automatic actions and attitude, good habits that make us happier and healthier, hence the term mind management. And so the process that you're about to teach us is both recognizing when your mind is absorbing negative energy and negative thoughts, and you're converting it into a negative thinking loop. Exactly. And unintentionally programming this network to be heavy or negative or to bring you down that you can recognize that and you can use the exact same science to consciously choose positive energy and positive thinking, which then changes the neural network, the energy, the powering in your body, which only makes you more able to meet the things going on in your life.

Mel Robbins (00:23:22):

While we're on the topic of your book, when I was reading it, I noticed that there was this whole section about how labeling a mental health issue. For example, when you say I have anxiety, I have depression, I have PTSD, that that's actually harmful as a neuroscientist, what do you mean by that?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:23:42):

Oh wow. I'm so glad you asked this question. The last 40 years we've had the biomedical model. And the biomedical model basically has taken our experiences as humans and put them into a diagnosis and a label and a treatment. Now that works brilliantly if you have diabetes or cardiovascular heart issues or anything like that, that model is medical. It's a good model, but the mind doesn't work like that because the mind isn't driven by the brain. So that model is based on the fact that your brain is it and your brain produces mind, your brain produces nothing. Your brain is a responder, it's a host, and it just does what the mind tells it to do. And if your mind keeps feeding it all the stuff like we've been describing, eventually it'll over time cumulatively your body and mind break down so you become vulnerable to disease. And the research shows that 95% of lifestyle diseases come from all thought life, 95%. So that's establish scientific fat. The labels of PTSD, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, they seem as though they're the same as something like diabetes, but they're not at all. The word anxiety, and we'll see this when you do the neuro cycle and depression, those are not things, those are emotional warning signals.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:57):

They're telling you that you're out of alignment with how you should be feeling

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:24:59):

And you need to pay attention. Yes. Otherwise it's going to get worse. So if you put your hand on the stove and it's burning, you can take all the ibuprofen in the world that you want and painkillers, but until you remove your hand from the stove, you're still going to have, it's going to burn a hole through your hand. So what we are doing is toxic positivity, ignore labeling, medicating. That's just trying to deal with the symptoms. What we have to do is embrace all the scariness, sadness, darkness of life, and you use that to learn and to grow. That's essentially what we need to do. So labeling locks you in because PTSD is not an it, it's a behavior. Depression and anxiety are not an it. They're emotional warning signals. PTSD is a behavioral warning signal.

 

Mel Robbins (00:25:46):

What does that mean it's not an it, it's a signal.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:25:48):

So it's not a fixed thing. So when you label something like diabetes, it's something wrong with your pancreas. These insulin, it doesn't produce enough insulin. They can do a test and they can target a medication. When it comes to PTSD, it's not the same thing. It's not something that you can target specifically with a medication. PTSD is a big word for a bunch of reactions that we have to adverse circumstances. So whether you're in war, whether you've been raped repeatedly as a child, whether you've been in a tremendous socioeconomic strain, whether you've had a bullying relationship at work, all of that is not PTSD. Each one is its own unique story. You can't just take that hugeness, stick it in a label and say, oh, your brain is broken here, let's fix it here. It's not about your brain. What is it about? It's about your mind. It's about the experience. So it's about the experience that you've had. So adverse response to adverse experience is very normal. Yes

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:47):

And it makes you healthy.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:26:48):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:48):

And when you say mind, I want to be very, very clear that what you are saying when you say mind is your saying that the experience that you had that was creating the traumatic response was recorded by the mind. It was programmed into the brain and the body and the nervous system. And by labeling it and by focusing on it, you make that experience stay around,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:27:22):

Locked in, you're locking it in. It's like putting it lock a key, and then you're shifting to that and then that becomes your defining.

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:28):

How do you want us to think about it? Because you're a neuroscientist that has success, healing, traumatic brain injury and also healing other traumas in the brain and the body by beginning with the mind. So how do you want us to think about trauma, anxiety and depression?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:27:46):

Okay, so great question. So I want you to think about them as simply how you're showing up as words descriptions for how you're showing up as opposed to diseases of the brain. They will impact your brain. We've heard that whole story already from the beginning. How whatever goes in the mind then goes in the brain and the body. And because our brain and our body are not wired for that, the network's not wired for that. It creates a disruption in telomeres and cells and all that breaks down and we get vulnerable to disease. So there's an impact, but it's not the cause. So the brain's not the cause. Life is the cause because you aren't depression. You are feeling depressed because of. You aren't PTSD. You are experiencing PTSD symptoms because of, so we need to find the, because of

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:31):

Dr. Leaf as a neuroscientist who has been studying the way that you can use the mind to heal the brain and the body, you look at these as responses to adverse experiences in life that can become your default response to life because nobody understands how to use the power of the mind and the programming and energetic force that the mind is to create a different network inside the body that heals the response that you had to traumatic or very overwhelming situations in life.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:29:14):

Absolutely.

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:15):

And that's what you mean's by the mind has the power to heal your trauma, your anxiety and your depression.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:29:23):

Exactly. And it's not like they're going to just be replaced. We've got to keep stressing that you, we are not just putting out one thought and putting in another. You actually embracing processing and reconceptualizing very different to just pulling a thought out and trying to replace it with a positive thought. You're actually looking head on at that intrusive thought that is associated with that. Because if used

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:44):

Or that response,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:29:45):

That response

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:46):

That is coming from a traumatic experience.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:29:48):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:49):

So it's become your response to withdraw or freeze or run or whatever it might be,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:29:53):

Whatever those are, you're looking at the whole cluster and you start, that's exactly where you start. You start with the responses. Those are signals and the signal and along with those signals is as soon as you look at the signal that run the anxiety, the PTSD, those, the

 

Mel Robbins (00:30:08):

Heaviness of depression,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:30:09):

The heaviness, those things, that's how you're showing up. It's a big broad description of how you're showing up. And once you've got that, the minute, what neuroscientific research shows is that the minute that you are aware of something, that's when you start weakening it and you can change it when something's strong and stuck, labels lock you in that kind of concept or stuck in a pattern. It feels like you can't change it because you aren't depression. You are feeling depressed because of you aren't PTSD. You are experiencing PTSD symptoms because of, so we need to find the because of, and then we don't need to, as I mentioned earlier on, we don't need to get stuck in the sinking sand of why did they do that to me? You'll become a victim, you won't move forward. But then I need to start, okay, how do I want this to play out in my future? I reconstruct and then I reconstruct that thought, that toxic thought, part of the thought has now lost salience. It's shrunk. It never goes away. I can remember what happened to me, but it's now, instead of being a,

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:12):

It doesn't hold power

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:31:14):

No it doesn't hold power

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:14):

Because you are able to leverage the energetic programming force

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:31:21):

Exactly

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:22):

Of your mind to go back into your body, brain, and nervous system and flood it with a completely different programming related into the experience, the response, all of it.

 

(00:31:33):

And there's so much optimism about this. You call this five-step process cycling. And I just want to read from your book, this is on page 1 0 6 of cleaning up your mental mess. So this is what the science means for you. You can transition from just being aware of your chaotic and toxic thoughts to being empowered to catch these thoughts in the early stages, manage them and improve your overall peace and wellbeing with appropriate mind management, training and self-regulation, which is what cleaning up the mental mess using the neuro cycle is all about. You can systematically use your mind to take advantage of the neuroplasticity of your brain to rework and rewire your thoughts. And there's even more, you'll become equipped to prevent the development of toxic thoughts, reconceptualize traumatic thoughts and change and improve all areas of your life, including managing depression, anxiety and burnout that can come from chronic and recurrent stress, trauma, identity issues, isolation, sleep difficulties, challenges with exercise and diet and so much more. It's incredibly exciting to see. And this is what I really want you to hear that after 21 days of using this neuro cycle process, check this out, 81% reduction in depression and anxiety in the clinical trial, 81% reduction in 21 days simply using the power of our minds and our thoughts and the energy it brings to reprogram the experience of our life and to completely change and reconceptualize trauma. How the heck we do this? There's five steps, and I want to use an example. So intrusive thoughts, which we now are best friends, right?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:33:38):

Yeah.

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:39):

Because it's signaling something to us.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:33:41):

Exactly.

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:42):

Let's say that you're just got something going on at work and you don't have the greatest relationship with your boss and you're having trouble sleeping and you are chronically feeling like you're going to get in trouble or it's going to be a bad day, or you're not doing a good job or you're not going to make your numbers or you're not going to get that thing that you want, or you just hate bracing. You got a conversation with your boss today, you don't want to deal with it and you're kind of in that negative loop. It's causing stress. You don't know how to shake it. How do we use your five-step process, the neuro cycle in that situation?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:34:18):

Okay, great example. Okay, so first thing is gather awareness. Second one is reflect. Third step is to write slash mindstorm, which I'll explain. Recheck is the fourth step. And active reach is the first step. It's not a technique. We're talking about a formula that helps you go from the signals all the way to the thought, to the root, reconstruct and change how it plays out into your future.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:42):

So it's gather information,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:34:44):

Gather awareness,

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:45):

Reflect, write, recheck, and then active reach.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:34:51):

So first thing before, let's say now that you're about to go to work, the first thing is you need to do a mind brain body prep. And that you can do, there are so many different ways of doing this.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:59):

So is this gathering awareness part?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:35:00):

No, this is before that. Okay. So the first thing is to just prepare yourself neurophysiologically, and that you can do anything from a visualization to a breathing, to a meditation. You don't even have to close your eyes when you meditate. But one that really does work is a ten second pause. There's a lot of science behind the ten second pause.

 

Mel Robbins (00:35:18):

What is the ten second pause

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:35:20):

Can use? You count to 10, you do 10 breaths, but you can do it in any combination you want. So let's say for example, you feeling really angry and you feel that you think of the boss and you want to get that anger under control. The predominant like, oh, I'm so mad that I have to, then I would recommend something like breathe in for two counts, hold for two counts, and then breathe out for six. But in the first three of the six, you say let, and the second three of the six you say go. So it's in hold and then out. But as you count, and I'll count to six and you can try it. As I count to six, you're going to say, let go in the six part. So let

 

Mel Robbins (00:35:59):

To myself

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:36:00):

To yourself,

 

Mel Robbins (00:36:00):

Because breathing, so I can't say it.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:36:02):

Yes, you can't say them. So you're breathing in one, two, hold, one, two, out, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In the 1, 2, 3, you say let, and the 3, 4, 5, 6, go. This is let them theory, I mean it's like literally lines up with your let them theory that oxygen isn't just breathing. We hear so much about breathe, breathe, breathe. You've used 10 seconds. 10 seconds is very significant in terms of the conscious mind. The conscious mind works with little bursts of 10 seconds. So the non-conscious mind works with an infinite speed. The conscious mind can only handle one little conversation at a time, which is like a ten second little burst of activity. So what you do is you keep your conscious mind in its zone, which is a ten second zone, so don't overwhelm. So it takes the overwhelm away and unconscious can handle everything and you can do it once or up to six times. So 60 seconds of that just to get yourself. So that's an example, millions.

 

Mel Robbins (00:37:02):

So the ten second breathing method that you just taught us, that works for the conscious mind, which kind of pulls you into the moment, into the moment. And that allows you to then do this five step process. You not focused any moment that you feel negative thoughts, a negative emotion, a response that feels like a freeze or an odd edgeness. You do the ten second breath. And then how do we do the neuro cycle?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:37:29):

Okay, so gather awareness is step one, the four sentences you ask yourself, what am I feeling? And you answer, I am feeling, and it may be one or two words, frustration, anger, nervous. I'm feeling nervous. There you go. Then you say, where am I feeling this in my body? Bodily sensation. And so maybe shoulders are tense or your heart's beating fast or you're sweating, whatever. What are my behaviors? What am I saying and doing? What am I about to say and do? I can feel my face contorting. I can feel myself building up to snap or whatever. And then the fourth signal, what's my perspective at the moment? How am I looking at the day in this moment? It's going to be a lousy day. I can't handle this, I hate this. So you just gather awareness. So you very, very calmly stand back and observe. You are taking control. See what makes us feel terrible is all of this stuff just come at us.

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:24):

It is so messy. It's just like all over the place. And then I don't know how to gather the thoughts. They're all over the place. But now I'm grounding myself by asking how do I feel?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:38:33):

And it's organized. It's not just random. It's very, very clear what your brain, mind, brain, body network is.

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:39):

Okay, so it's what do I feel? Yeah, emotions. It's where am I feeling that in my body? Yes, body sensation, it's what am I doing or behaviors. Behaviors in response to it. And is there's something about my face, perspective. Perspective. Perspective. Lemme say that again. I want to make sure that the person listening gets this to how am I feeling? Where am I feeling it in my body? What are the behaviors, the thoughts and the kind of actions. Actions and what's my perspective or thought about this?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:39:09):

How am I looking at life?

 

Mel Robbins (00:39:10):

How am I looking at this?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:39:10):

Let's talk about

 

Mel Robbins (00:39:11):

Negatively. I can tell you right now if it's bothering me, it's like death day for me.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:39:15):

There we go. So perspective is putting on a pair of glasses and if it's all broken and shattered and whatever, you can't see. So what is your perspective? Life is lousy. Life sucks life. So it's an attitude. It's not a thought yet

 

Mel Robbins (00:39:26):

Nothing ever goes my way. I'm going to be lone forever. I always screw up. Got it.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:39:29):

Yes. Okay. It's always going to be like this. That's what you want to capture. So what you're doing is you are objectively in a very kind and compassionate and loving way. This is okay. You got to kind of start out by saying part of that mind, brain, body purpose to say it's okay to be a mess. All of us are messy. Most of us walk around for most of the day, not happy, just going through the motions of life. This whole thing of trying to be happy all the time has also been a disaster. It's really made people feel worse. So part of that first mind brain body prep is to really bring in an attitude towards yourself of kindness and compassion. And it's okay to be a mess. This is not Mel, this is

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:05):

Well, I think if you even have the presence of mind to collect yourself and do the ten second breathing and now you're gathering information instead of running yourself over mentally. Exactly. You are being kind to yourself.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:40:18):

You are, but you.

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:19):

And what I find nine times out of 10 when I do this, it's the same thing. I've done something wrong. That is the core thing that it comes back to for me. And I think as people start to use your process, you find that you start to find it's like I'm not good enough. I'm not lovable. I'm always alone. For me it's like I have done something wrong. 

Yes.

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:44):

What do you do?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:40:45):

So reflection. If you think of a reflection, you look at yourself in the mirror, you see the reflection of yourself. There's also the concept of a reflection of light through a prism. If you shine a white light through a prism, it comes up with yes. So there's depth and there's reflection. So you're reflecting on how am I seeing myself in relation to those four questions? So you keep very organized, don't jump all over. So you say you reflect on why am I seeing myself this way and what does it mean? So you look in the mirror and you go deep and you use the WH questions, the who? The what, the when and the where, the why, the how.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:17):

Okay, so how do I do that?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:41:18):

So why am I feeling like this in this moment? Why am I specifically feeling it in my stomach? Is it always in my stomach when I feel this? Where is this happening? Is it only happening at work? Is it happening before? How often is it happening? Is it happening every day or just now? And then, so you just start the process. You're not going to solve it all, but it's very specific. I'm looking at myself in the mirror, I'm reflecting back and I'm going deep. Who, when, where, why, how? Got it? I don't have to answer all of them, but what makes sense to one? Now those two, three steps, people are pretty good at the meditation, the breathing, all that stuff. They're pretty good at saying how they feel, but that's when people crash.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:58):

Well, it's sort of like people who go to therapy for years and years and years and just get good at talking about their problems. Dont ever forward move to the solution part or the attacking the problem.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:42:09):

There is no moving forward.

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:10):

So how do we do that here? Because we're now becoming aware of the cycle that you're normally in, which is very important to separate yourself from it. And you're doing it in a way where you're calm,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:42:22):

Very organized, very calm, very organized.

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:24):

The next part is write?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:42:26):

What am I right? So now what we do is we go to, so I've got all this stuff come up. I've got my whole network's now activated. I can change. Now you're going into a writing mindstorm phase. So I'm adding the word mindstorm on because that's in Write a Mindstorm mind. So it's an easy way to understand.

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:42):

So this is standard is like a tsunami of trash and garbage and toxic crap.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:42:46):

Everything that

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:47):

Swirling in my brain,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:42:48):

Everything related to what you've just done. So keep

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:50):

I hate my boss. I've made another mistake. I'm about to get fired. I'm a loser. I'm never good enough.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:42:55):

Exactly. All the stuff you threw out at the beginning

 

Mel Robbins (00:42:57):

Mindstorm,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:42:58):

That's what you do. So what we did was we calmed, we gathered awareness very specifically, four questions, four answers. We reflected and sold of the who, what, when we, why. So now you're very organized. Notice I keep saying we are bringing order out of chaos. Very specific. When you do that, there's all kinds of neuroscientific things happening now that has shone the light on that network. So now that network's got lots of branches. So that's what the third step's doing. It's pulling up all this stuff. Might even bring up the shopping list.

 

Mel Robbins (00:43:24):

What am I writing?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:43:25):

So you can words, phrases, whatever. So this is where it's good to get a blank piece of paper. Door circle in the middle, draw a circle in the middle, okay? Literally door circle in the middle. Okay? And this is what I call a metacog. It's a big who? M-E-T-A-C-O-G. Meta.

 

Mel Robbins (00:43:42):

Meta

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:43:42):

Cog.

 

Mel Robbins (00:43:43):

Cog. Meta cog. Okay, I got a metacog circle right here. What am I doing with it?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:43:47):

Looks a bit like a concept map or a mind map if anyone knows what those are.

 

Mel Robbins (00:43:50):

No, I don't.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:43:50):

Okay, so start. Okay, nevermind. You start in the middle. Yeah, not over here and work left to right because that limits your ability to think in a broader way.

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:00):

Oh, okay. So what am I doing in the circle?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:44:03):

So all you're going to do now is you're just going to write what you think the thought of a hate boss. You're going to write their hate boss. You write what you think is, is the thought you're working on, what is the thought that's bugging you? I hate my boss or whatever,

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:15):

Or I'll never be successful. I always screw up. I am always getting passed over. I'm never going to make the money. It could be.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:44:21):

I want you to get more specific than that,

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:23):

Okay?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:44:23):

Because this is not in life in general. We are going to go specifically to the example you chose. So this particular example, we are not going to go broad. This is the mistake everyone makes, all of us. This is not pointing fingers at anyone. We all do this. We go, no, no, no.

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:37):

That's why my mind's a mess, Dr. Leaf, because I go all over the place.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:44:41):

All of us are we all a mess.

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:43):

Okay? So

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:44:44):

Let's zone in

 

Mel Robbins (00:44:45):

About a work problem. And you have a lot of stress around work, and so you're literally going to stay focused on that.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:44:51):

That's what you want to solve now because you woke up this morning and that's the problem that's worrying you right now. That's your intrusive thought. That's your best friend. That's what's popped up. That's what the non-conscious found. It shone a light on that ugly tree in the forest and it stuffed it into your subconscious.

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:04):

Is there a question that helps you narrow it? Because if I've got a mental mess and my thoughts are all over the place, and I can easily go from one intrusive thought of feeling,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:45:16):

I'm give you a trick to do that.

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:17):

Please.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:45:17):

There's a trick. So it's called a thinker moment.

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:20):

Thinker moment

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:45:21):

As in think thinker moment. So what you do is you think, oh, I dunno what thought to work on my minds everywhere you've just described. So you shut your eyes, you close off the external world and you switch onto your internal world. That creates a beautiful activities through the mind, brain, body network that enables you to then just allow the free flow of thoughts in that free flow of thoughts. What you do is your observe that free flow of thoughts and you see which is the one that's popping up the most in this moment. There's probably 10 things popping up or 20, which one pops up the most?

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:50):

You know what actually just happened for me when I closed my eyes,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:45:52):

What happened,

 

Mel Robbins (00:45:53):

And I don't even have this issue right now with work, but when I closed my eyes and imagined moments in my life where I absolutely hated my job, I'm talking, I was in my twenties, I was working for this big law firm here in Boston. I had left my dream job of being a public defender in New York City. I would commuted on the train and as the train was like the closer we got, I just felt more and more of a pit in my stomach as I would walk from the commuter rail through the blocks past the Dunking Donut, take a right, I think it was on high street, HIGH. I would then walk up to the building. I would then go into the lobby. I'd say hello to Ralph who's sitting at the front desk. I would get into the lobby with every other miserable person in a corporate building and I'd go all the way up to the 17th floor and I'd always contemplate that there was no 13th floor in this building.

 

(00:46:55):

So they must have been superstitious. And then I would get out and I just felt dread when I closed my eyes and put myself there. It's kind of cool. All of that noise left and I literally thought, I'm stuck here. I have no, there's nothing. It was this sense of I am going to feel like this. I'm stuck. I've made the wrong, made the decision, sort of like I can't get out of this how to land up here. And so it became so much deeper. Like you talk about the root, you talk about the program you've taught us that our mind goes not just upstairs between the ears, it's down to the toes. When you close your eyes and do that, it goes a lot deeper because it wasn't about the boss at all. It was about this core feeling of being alone and stuck and yeah, the dread

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:47:51):

Stuck. And what you did was you allowed yourself to tap into an unconscious. Your unconscious knows exactly what's disruptive to you in this moment.

 

Mel Robbins (00:47:58):

Alright, now what do we do next?

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:48:00):

Okay,

 

(00:48:01):

So you asked what to write. You would write those four signals. What were the emotions, right? The emotions on what were the behaviors? What were the perspectives? What were the body sensations? What words came up? Just write them all over the page. They can be lines in bubbles. Just put it all over the page.

 

Mel Robbins (00:48:16):

I just had this huge insight about the stuckness. If you have an insight like that, when you close your eyes, is that enough or do you still need to Because I get, yeah, because you're not going to get everything that you do has branches. And I'm starting to realize it's because we're not Everything's connected. Yes. And it's also that you're catching yourself in the moment, but you're also doing the work of getting to the deeper program.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:48:39):

And that's why you need tomorrow and the next day, and you're not going to solve it today. You're not. You'll get control of the dread for today. But walk yourself through the ten second pause. Walk yourself together when it's, walk yourself through, reflect, walk yourself through this. Now you say, okay, let's have a look at this. Okay, Mel, let's have a look at this

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:48:54):

Recheck Step four. We are going to reconceptualize. We're going to look at this from another angle. This is what's happened. What can we do about it now, not forever, not next week. Now how do I get through today?

 

Mel Robbins (00:49:04):

Today,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:49:05):

This moment? How can I see this differently? Well, today maybe it's day one. So you might just say, oh, I just realized that you described in absolute depth about the 13th floor right up to the 17th and the high street that you realization there. What I would say with your reconceptualization as you recheck this is wow, it's imprinted so much on my mind. Every moment of getting to that office to the 17th floor was pure and utter dread. And every day I just reinforce. It grew more and more in my head. Wow, that's what's happened. That's enough for the recheck for that day. Just that awareness on day one. Tomorrow you can start doing some more on it. But just the awareness, wow, that level of detail, that attention that I paid to that process, it's linked to that dread. It's linked to I'm in the wrong, I think I must be in the wrong place. I don't have a solution yet. I've got to go to work today. I don't have another job. I don't know if that's the solution. I don't know yet, but it's okay. It's okay to not be. Okay, so now what can I do? First step, active reach, actively reach for something that you can do to get you through the day.

 

Mel Robbins (00:50:07):

What if you don't know what to do? I think that's the thing when you first start this,

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:50:11):

That's the hard

 

Mel Robbins (00:50:13):

When you actually become present to what you're feeling, which is the first step. What is one thing that somebody who is starting to apply this to interrupt and to work this neuro cycle, which is you actively, consciously using your mind to interrupt the negative thoughts and energy in these five steps. What is one thing that you could do as an example of active reach? If you can't think of something.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:50:46):

So something really simple is just repeats. It's okay to be a mess. It's okay to feel like this. It's a statement, a phrase. It could be a visualization and what you do. So it could be something as simple as, wow, I'm actually starting to see something well done. It could be a simple phrase like that. And you could imagine if you like to visualize, you could imagine a beautiful flower. And then what you do is you take the phrase, you attach it to the visual, and then as you go through the day, each time you feel the dread emerging, you're not suppressing, but you're going to deal with a tomorrow. And the reason you deal with a tomorrow is because our physical brain, body and conscious mind don't have the same level of energy as the unconscious. The unconscious has unlimited energy

 

Mel Robbins (00:51:26):

So it's always going to be popping stuff up. It's always, always. So it's always going to keep coming up. It's always, you can go through this and then just literally, even if you're like, okay, I'm recognizing it, this is a good thing, or I'm capable of figuring this out. Exactly. That's my favorite. I'm capable of figuring. You're reaching for something positive.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:51:41):

I can mindset. I can mindset. I dunno what is, but somehow I can get through this. I've got two things before. So is to find something. It could be

 

Mel Robbins (00:51:47):

I can

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:51:48):

I can mindset.

 

Mel Robbins (00:51:49):

Mindset. I can get through this. I can figure this out. I can create a different experience in my life. I can use the tools Dr. Leaf taught me.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:52:00):

I can

 

Mel Robbins (00:52:01):

I can use my mind to heal my body and my brain to get me out of this job I hate. No i'm just kidding

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:52:08):

Exactly. Exactly. So you take that and then what you would do is, the key thing is you don't have to put it onto a visual, but you can is to then every time that you go, as you go through the day, every time you feel the dread emerging and you don't allow yourself to go there, you grab the active reach. The active reach keeps you anchored in the moment and keeps that thought up with a deconstruction process happening. Then the next day you pick up where you end it, okay, now let's see what do I feel today? And then you go through the same cycle again. And so you move through after 63 days, you would've recreated a new habit. It doesn't take 21 days to build a habit. It takes 63. The 21 days is the hard work, and then the other 42 days is much easier. Still the neuro cycle, you do it daily, but it stabilizes the thought

 

(00:52:53):

And there's an up and down journey there. So for people to realize that if I'm changing a habit or I'm healing a trauma from the past, it's not going to happen in one neuro cycle. You need a neuro cycle daily. The first 21 days are hard up and down and in the balance of 42 or where you stabilize it into a habit, people are good at intending to change, but they tend to stop around day 14, day 21, day 28. Those are the days where you think, oh, I kind of got this. I've been working at this. And I feel okay. But if you stop there, you'll go straight back. If you stop at day 28, you'll go straight back. If you stop at day 36, you'll start reverting. It's for people to know that in the journey there is an actual 63 day process to turn it into a habit. It's like watering a plant. If you don't keep adding water, it's going to die. So you've got to grow that network. It has to be grown with energy added daily. And then once it's grown to a certain point, then you just do it without even you are thinking. But it's become automatized. Habits are built one tiny bit at a time. You will not solve this on day one. This is a big issue. You can't just leave the job, as you mentioned, you can't just get rid of months of dread

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:02):

And you're never going to lead the job though if you continue to allow your mind, you just going to break to power you with negativ negativity and nasty thoughts and

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:54:10):

You're just going to become an unhappy victim person who's just victim mentality, nasty, unhappy, hate life, depress, whatever. And you don't need to go there. You really don't. But you're not going to solve it in one day and that's really key.

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:23):

I don't want to hear that

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:54:23):

And I know you don't want to hear that, nor does anyone. So the first 21 days is hard work. It's quite stressful. You'll go up and down.

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:28):

Tell me the good news that there is amazing news though, because just like you say, using this simple five-step process and even understanding that you can is a giant step forward.

 

Dr. Caroline Leaf (00:54:41):

That's huge,

 

Mel Robbins (00:54:42):

But there's even better news here. Yeah, there is.