Brain Hacks: 6 Secrets to Learn Faster & Unlock The Full Power Of Your Mind

Dr. Joseph Ferrari (22:52):

Everything shows that procrastination is a maladaptive lifestyle. There's that expression. If you want something to be done, you give it to a busy person. Why? That makes no sense. Why a busy person? Because the busy person values your time and values their time and knows that there are things that have to get done. Alright? So this is not an adaptive strategy. Let me stop there and say I'm not shaming or condemning anybody who's a procrastinator. I'm going to show you how procrastination is a learned tendency, and that means you can unlearn it. So that's how I would define it. It's irrational. It prevents you from reaching your goal. Everybody procrastinates, but not everyone is a procrastinator.

Mel Robbins (23:35):

What's the difference?

Dr. Joseph Ferrari (23:38):

Thank you very much.

Mel Robbins (25:00):

From who?

Dr. Joseph Ferrari (25:00):

You can unlearn it. Oh, from dads, but we'll get yous go here

(25:04):

First. Dads. Yeah. So you learn to be a procrastinator, alright? So you can unlearn it. That's very optimistic. That means you're not condemned this way. Yes, you can teach old dogs new tricks, you just use a different bone and it takes them longer. But you can unlearn it if you are born that way. If that's just who you are, then let's, then you're screwed. Let day, then it's over. Then nothing can do with it. And that's unfortunately too much of our culture is this way. Well, that's how they are. That's how people are. No, no, people can change. Let's be much more optimistic. Our culture reinforces procrastination. We don't reward doing things early. We punish for being late in our culture. If I don't pay my bills on time, I get a fine extra charge on my credit card. If they're like me and my wife in our 39 years of marriage, we pay ahead of time all the time. I get the bill, I pay it because I don't. I just want to get rid of it. Alright? Alright, so at the end of the year, did they ever come back and say, thank you very much, here's a little extra gift. Here's 2%. No, our cultures don't reward us for doing things ahead of time. They punish us for being late.

Mel Robbins (26:19):

What are the causes of procrastination?

Dr. Joseph Ferrari (26:23):

Fears. I'm afraid of failure. See, if I never finish, I can never be judged. So I'm afraid of failure. Lemme explain what I'm talking about. If I take my time doing something, if I don't meet the deadline and I delay, then I can simply say, I didn't have enough time. I know this is not the best thing, this is as good as I can get it. But if I had more time, I would've done better. So lack of effort is not a positive image, but it's a better image than I did it. And it's a piece of garbage If you put something together and it's good. So people would rather have other people think that they lack effort. Hence, I procrastinate then lack ability because I can't change ability the next time I can try harder.

Mel Robbins (27:06):

And so for a person who really is aching because they are in their own way, they see themselves sabotaging. 

Dr. Joseph Ferrari (27:24):

Start small. This is what cognitive therapists would ask you to do. What would be the worst scenario? First of all, what you're doing is you're looking at the forest and you're missing that the forest is made up of trees.

(27:37):

Okay? There's that old expression. Don't miss the forest because you're focused on the trees. That's not the procrastinator's problem, it's the other way around. They see the forest. Oh my god, this is a huge task. Holy cow, I can't get all of this done. And they forget that the forest is made up of trees. So listener, viewer, it's made up of trees. And so what if you cut down one tree at a time? Oh, that's too much for you. Then let's give me three branches. You can't do three branches. I'll take a handful of leaves because a body in motion stays in motion. Start small, do something. And so what if you fail?

Mel Robbins (28:17):

Don't you just love his passion and conviction? And I just wanted to take though a highlighter and highlight a few things because he does move fast like a Ferrari. First of all, you were not born a procrastinator. Don't you love knowing that your brain can unlearn the habit of procrastination? And to me, this is a very, very empowering message and I have seen this play out in my own life. I used to be a huge procrastinator. I had no idea what to do about it. I thought I was just stuck being that way and this is something you can change. And so I'm totally with Dr. Ferrari on this. It is true. You can train your brain to get things done on time. You can train yourself to chip away at it. Second, I want to make sure though, to really highlight this metaphor that he used so that it lands for you.

(29:07):

He was talking about the forest and the trees and just to make sure that it really sticks. This is the way I think about it. The forest is the outcome. It's the thing you want to achieve. And when you think about the outcome, it's easy to get overwhelmed and that's what makes procrastination kick in. You want to think about the action, that's the singular tree. It's the what do I need to wake up and do today. And I'm going to give you a couple examples because focusing on what you need to do today helps your brain beat procrastination. Here's how this works. So for example, if you want a beach body, just do arm today. Do not get overwhelmed with trying to lose 30 pounds and getting cut and what's going to happen way down the line because when you look far out at the forest, the research says it kills your motivation to keep going.

(29:54):

That's why you have to just wake up and focus on what's in front of you to today that singular treat, that singular action and completely forget about where it's going in the bigger picture. If you want to get ahead at work, here's another example and earn that promotion. Stop freaking out about the bigger. When is this going to happen? What's going on? It gets you so overwhelmed that you don't do anything right? I want you instead, focus on the one thing you can do today. One thing you could do today, you could have a conversation today with your boss about the fact that you do want to grow with the organization and ask what do you need to do to make that happen? That's one tree and that's one way to move forward instead of paralyzing yourself by looking at the bigger picture. If you want to move, here's another example.

(30:39):

You've always dreamt of moving somewhere else. Stop thinking about what it's going to be like a year from now. Just take one action today. Research a place that you've always thought about living and don't feel like you have to go there. Don't feel like you have to figure it all out at once because when you focus on the tree, the one action you're taking today and you forget about everything else around it helps your mind calm down and it keeps procrastination from slowing you down. Because the key here, what you're learning from the fast Dr. Ferrari is do not allow yourself to get overwhelmed by the bigger picture because it's when you're overwhelmed and your wheels are spinning, that procrastination kicks in. Just focus on the simple action that you can take today, and that is how you can use your brain to never, ever let procrastination slow you down.

(31:32):

Pretty cool, right? I am loving this and we have already covered so much. You've learned how to improve your memory. You've learned what foods you can eat in order to improve the overall health and functioning of your brain. You've learned how to use your brain to beat procrastination. You've also learned about the benefit of cutting back on alcohol and the immediate health impact that it can have. Next up self-talk, that little voice in the back of your head. I mean, imagine if it were possible just like you can brush the gunk off your teeth, that you could brush the negativity from your brain. I mean, just imagine that. Well, our next expert says That is exactly what you can do. Dr. Paul Conti is a renowned psychiatrist that trained at Stanford and Harvard and the way he taught us about the brain. It has stuck with me ever since I met him months ago.

(32:31):

Dr. Conti is an expert on trauma, which is connected to the subconscious mind and your self-talk. He's the author of the book Trauma and the Invisible Epidemic. In fact, lady Gaga credits Dr. Conti with single handedly changing her life. He is her psychiatrist. Now, Dr. Conti made a huge impression on me when he was on the Mel Robbins podcast and spoke about how to train your brain to have better. And I want you to listen to what he has to say because yes, improving your memory is really important. Eating the right brain food very important, but it's going to be a whole lot easier to start doing those things to take care of yourself and following through if you feel like you're worth it. And that's where your self-talk comes in. Your self-talk is tied to motivation, it's tied to self-worth, it's tied to everything, which is why it's essential that you learn these simple daily habits that help you clean it up and make it more powerful and positive. Now, before Dr. Conti tells you how to do that, 

Dr. Paul Conti (33:50):

There's often a sort of running dialogue or set of opinions inside of us that are in the background to our experience of life in the present. And this can make a huge difference to how we respond to life in the present, how we think about ourselves and how we think about the world around us. So there's a lot more going on inside of us than what we're taking in at the moment. Very often it paints with a broad brush or if it's not painting with a broad brush, it'll come at the thing that is most distressing to us. So the broad brush part could be just saying, oh, I'm a loser. Or even sometimes we see ourselves in the third person, you're a loser, you'll never make it. You're just not good enough or No one's going to want me, no one's going to want you. We're talking to ourselves and it's painting with a very, very broad brush that is really striking to the core. It's hard to argue with something like that because it is so pervasive. So instead of arguing with it, the idea is to recognize it and reject it. How do you do that? Broad brush is so important to realize because it will impact absolutely everything.

(35:10):

If it's not so broad brushed, then often it'll come at the thing that we most want. You'll never have a better job or your relationship will never be better. You'll never find anyone, you'll never reconcile with a certain family member, whatever it may be, you'll never be healthy or you'll never lose weight. You'll never be in better shape. Whatever it may be that this comes at us. And if you imagine, I mean imagine that someone shadowed a person all day and just whispered in their ear the worst possible thing we would be distraught. I mean is someone to follow someone around and just tell them that all day. But we can do that to ourselves. And that's not an exaggeration of what would it be like to have someone following behind doing that all day and going through and exploring some of that when we can reflect on, get a handle on wait, what is going on inside of me?

(36:02):

And it starts with curiosity. I think the starting place is always just a curiosity about ourselves. And a lot of times just as a person doesn't want to go look at the trauma, why do I want to go look at that thing that makes me nervous? That works very strongly against our curiosity about ourselves. And if we are sort of free to be curious about ourselves, it's not dangerous or threatening to be curious about ourselves. There's so much that we can learn. So just an example can be what is my self talk like? What do I say to myself in quiet moments? What do I say to myself if I do something wrong? What do I say to myself if I drop something? What do I say to myself if I approach a new social situation or a new challenge? So we become curious about what we can become curious about what is going on inside of us?

(36:53):

And now we start to put words to things. And sometimes we can do that. We can do it sometimes just by thinking, but what we think can kind of go over and over again sometimes in our mind without being super productive, is not always like that. But when we put it outside of us, it's different. Which is why if we're talking to someone that can make a difference, a trusted other about, Hey, I was thinking about, I'm saying this to myself over and over. I realize this has been going on to me for years. Can we say that to someone else or can we write it, writing it down? Journaling can make a big difference in that way, and the talking to another person can involve a therapist. So I very often will want people to understand we can change this, but it's going to take us, I'm not sure, I might say it is probably going to be in the four to six month range. We can really get our arms around this, and I want and hope that things can start improving a couple weeks down the road, but it's a several month process. Let the person know that because so often there's just a reflex that says, Hey, somebody threw a medicine at you, and that medicine's supposed to make you better, let alone if it's a couple therapy sessions and that's supposed to make a person better, we need a rational framing for what's going on inside of us and to plot out how do we actually get to change.

Mel Robbins (38:15):

One of the things that I love about Dr. Conti is that don't you just trust him? I don't know if it's tone of his voice or just the way he explains things, but he's so honest and realistic. And if you try this strategy once and then you don't feel good immediately, you're going to give up. And so I think it's super important that understand that yeah, you're going to feel better within weeks. It'll really stick within months, but this is something that you can do every single day that's super fast and simple that's going to have a big impact. And that's sort of like all the advice from every single doctor and medical expert on the show today, that there is this hope that's underlying all of it. That yes, you can build a better brain. And based on what you just learned from Dr.

(39:04):

Conti, that if you truly practice this every single day, just like you brush your teeth every single day within a few months, you can heal this pattern of negative self-talk and clean your brain, make it more positive. In fact, it reminds me of our son, Oakley. He's going to kill me for telling you this, but in elementary school, he literally barely brushed his teeth. I mean, we used to beg him, dude, you got to brush your teeth. And his older sisters, they would tease him about it because they were like, dude, your teeth are yellow and disgusting. And then all of a sudden it was like, I dunno if it was middle school or what, he just decided that it mattered to him to take care of his teeth. And all it took was a couple months of daily brushing and all of a sudden he's got the brightest, cleanest, most beautiful choppers you've ever seen.

(39:57):

Dr. Conti is here to say, your brain works the same way. You can clean it up, you can make it brighter and more positive. And it just goes to show you that every single one of these experts has told you your brain can change. And when you change the way you talk to yourself, you clean up that self-talk, you literally open a door to an entirely new world. And I so want that for you. Well, Dr. Conci was far from done when we had him on the podcast. And 

Dr. Paul Conti (40:51):

We can start feeling better, doing better, emboldening ourselves just by doing small, nice things for self, for ourselves and for other people. And it may sound trite, but it is not to a good hand. Say if you're in that line of the coffee shop and somebody drops something to pick it up for them or to give them a smile or do something nicer for ourselves because we often self punish. And if I don't feel bad about myself, I'll just walk that distance in the rain instead of putting an umbrella up. We do a lot of these things to ourselves where we could just in the moment, just be nicer to ourselves, more considerate to ourselves and to others. And that starts empowering. And embol emboldening us, emboldening us to do that, to see there's enough good in me that I can give somebody a smile. I can give somebody a helping hand, or I can even be a little nicer to myself. And it may sound small or trite, but I promise that it is not. And it's often that that gets the ball rolling towards something maybe more difficult, looking at something that I know is on my mind a lot, but I've been scared to look at. So I think we can start in simple ways, simple goodness to self and others.

Mel Robbins (41:57):

That example of putting an umbrella up was so poignant because I think of how many times I've had an umbrella and I've just been like, no, it's okay. I carry the umbrella, I walk a couple blocks, I pop my collar, I start a hunch down and I take the drops. And that moment where you stop and put up the umbrella, it is important. And I keep thinking about this visual of the raindrops being like the negative beat down.

Dr. Paul Conti (42:34):

Yeah, I like that.

Mel Robbins (42:35):

And the act of popping up the umbrella as a way to just have yourself not have to hear it.

Dr. Paul Conti (42:44):

Yeah, I really do love that because sometimes we'll say I the hell with it, but the idea, I get the umbrella out. But to hell with it. No, no, that's actually to hell with me.

(42:55):

So we want to stop and think, well, if I'm thinking to hell with it, what am I really thinking? To hell with me? I'm not worth getting the umbrella out. And it is awareness that no, I'm going to stop and I'm going to do that. I'm not going to say to hell with it, to hell with me. I'm going to make some protection, make a little bit more pleasantness or anything positive for myself. And I love that way of then the umbrella is shielding us from the negativity because we've had the wherewithal inside of ourselves to do something small but meaningful for ourselves. Yeah, I think that's a powerful way to move that example forward. I like that.

Mel Robbins (43:30):

I just love that. I want you to keep that image of an umbrella in your mind when you're training your brain to cheer you on rather than beating you down. I mean, it's so powerful and it's going to help you stay curious like Dr. Conti suggested as you examine those thoughts so you can let them go. And when you change your self-talk, you will be a happier person. And on that topic, our next expert says that one of the most important things your brain can do for you is help you be happier. I mean, that is a superpower that is right in your brain that you are about to learn today. And that's why I'm so excited about this next expert. Sean Achor is a friend. He's a New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and Big Potential, his Happiness Advantage training is one of the largest and most successful positive psychology training programs in the world. And he's here today to give you the most beautiful metaphor, happiness, and to let you know that there's always more happiness available to you, in fact, way more than you think. 

Sean Achor (44:47):

We get so focused upon whether or not a glass is half full or half empty, and then we decide our happiness based upon that optimism or pessimism. But I've always had this idea, this picture in my head of we're so focused on this glass being half full or half empty, but ignoring that there's a picture of water sitting right next to it that we could fill it up with.

(45:08):

And we're trying to determine whether or not our current life is where we want it to be. And I would say it isn't. And I think in many ways we all have a disordered life where we put the wrong things at the top or think the wrong things will create greater levels of happiness. And what we're finding is that when we do these habits and when we care and let other people in care for and let other people in, we're filling up that glass and that glass does not look like it did the day before.

Sean Achor (45:45):

We get people to write down each day for two minutes, three new things that they're grateful for that have occurred over the past 24 hours. And we don't let them repeat for 21 days in a row so that it's not what you're grateful for that matters. It's the scanning. We also got people to go on a 15 minute brisk walk four to five times a week, which we found is the equivalent of taking an antidepressant for the first six months for the next two years as a 30% lower relapse rate back to that depressed state. We find that if you take your hands off your keyboard for two minutes today and just watch your breath go in and out, you're training your brain to do one thing at a time. And 21 days later, not only your accuracy rates improving by 10%, the levels of happiness rise, stress levels drop, and the cortisol levels of the people that are around you change. So their stress levels are dropping as well. So you're literally changing other people's biochemical patterns based upon your habits. And finally, we've got people to write a two minute positive email each day praising or thanking one new person, a different person each day for 21 days in a row. So just thanking them for something or praising them for something, a weak tire or strong tie. But 21 days later, we find that it dramatically improves the greatest predictor of your long-term levels of happiness, which is your social connection score.

Mel Robbins (46:54):

Boom. That's not just the happiness advantage people. Those are the happiness actions. And I'm telling you, based on the research, the van is right, you got to do it. I always say, Sean, this is not just a listening podcast. This is a fucking doing podcast. So do those things for 21 days, and I think you'll be shocked at how the needle moves, or as Sean likes to say, you swing in a new direction. And Sean, anything else that you want everyone to know?

Sean Achor (47:31):

Accept where you are right now, but realize that this is not the end of the story. So I believe that change is radically possible from our genes and our environment when we change our mindset and change our behavior and we link in with other people as well.

Mel Robbins (47:45):

I believe that incredible change is possible too. And what you're learning today is your brain is just waiting for you to give it a nudge in the right direction. It wants you to take care of it and feed it the right foods and help it learn new skills. That's what it's made for. And after our conversation today, you now have the tools to get started. I promised you that absolutely everything that you learned today would help you build a better, sharper, stronger, and happier brain. I truly hope that everything that you learned from these six extraordinary experts not only empowered you, but they've motivated you to put it to use in your own life. Because I see a bigger possibility for you. And the second you start taking better care of your brain, you'll see it too. And one more thing in case no one else tells you.

(48:36):

I wanted to tell you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your power to create a better life. And what you've learned today is that a better life begins with taking better care of your brain. And after everything that you've learned, you now know exactly what to do to do that. Alrighty, I'll talk to you in a few days and for you on YouTube, I wanted to make sure to tell you in case no one else tells you that I love you and I believe in you, and I believe in your power to create a better life. And after what you've learned today, it's really clear that taking better care of your brain will create a better life. So I hope you not only use everything that you learned and you put it to use, but you share this with people that you love. Okay? And if you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to subscribe. It's how I know you enjoyed it. It also helps me bring you more videos and world-class experts like we did today. It takes just one second. Thanks for doing that. And I know you're thinking, oh my God, I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. I would love more. Great. Then I want you to check out this video where Dr. Amen is giving you his top three habits for optimizing your amazing brain. Check it out.