Kind: captions
Language: en
when i go
to go to a state of flow i just that oh
that would feel really good right now to
be you know and if you're any of your
viewers or listeners i haven't
experienced that i really
that that's a part of life that i feel
nobody should miss it helps
to have a passion
and i don't know that's a very important
part of life and not everyone has a
passion but if you have a passion
that's the way to get into flow is to
just devote yourself
take away all distractions
take away all time constraints i go to
the desert to write go to some place in
the middle of nowhere sometimes and stay
a week and right from 9am to midnight
every day whoa
leonard melodonov welcome to the show
glad to be here tom dude your background
is weird enough that i feel compelled to
like give people a quick nutshell so
theoretical physicist who's written
books with stephen hawking uh used to
write for tv which is crazy someone like
the seminal shows that i grew up with
including macgyver night court um but
you also write non-fiction books about
incredible subjects and the one we're
going to be talking about today is
emotional um and
did i get sort of the rough thumbnail
sketch right
that you did you literally vowed star
trek the next generation was always
people are always interested in but i
never i think i have seen maybe half an
episode of star trek full stop from og
star trek through all of them it never
um it somehow just didn't make my radar
in any sort of full and complete way but
now that i'm meeting you i'm very
excited well you know what next
generation is is the best one and of
those second season
my season if we may yeah
we're going to be talking a lot about
emotions today just to set people up
i think ultimately you and i agree on
sort of the role that emotion plays but
there's one thing that i'm so intrigued
to go back and forth on which is
if i'm getting your stance correct
emotions are incredibly important and we
would be absolutely paralyzed without
them and you i think it's paul dirac is
that the physicist's name um who
you sum up as sort of being as close to
a robot as a human can get and if you
don't mind give us a quote that he said
when asked how he was so successful
remember this this for everybody
listening this is the guy who's
considered to be sort of robot-like
robot-like and one of the top physicists
of the 20th century and responsible for
a lot of quantum theory which is what
the whole modern world
works on and when he was asked later in
life what his key to success in physics
was he said
be guided most of all by your emotions
that's so crazy so i knew a little bit
about uh dirac but i had not heard that
so i was super surprised um so i agree
and some of the most fascinating brain
science is around people who've had
their emotional centers destroyed and
they literally can't make a decision
because you need your emotions to push
you in a direction
but i don't trust my emotions
and so while i agree that my emotions
are what push and pull me in a direction
i'm super curious what your take is on
should we trust our emotions or should
we be trying to
shape them and can we shape them or are
they just whatever they are
well there's a lot there
[Laughter]
as a human member of the human species
we're given a certain emotional
machinery and that machinery has a very
important role to play in our thinking
so one of the mistakes that people make
when they talk about emotions is to say
that emotions are counterproductive or
even separate from rational thinking
people make a dichotomy between emotions
and rational thinking and one thing that
the last 10 20 years of neuroscience and
psychology research has figured out is
that that that's not possible that
emotions
go hand in hand with rational thinking
there is no rational thinking without
emotion if you think i'm just that if
you think at any point i'm thinking
purely objectively and rationally
without any emotion you're just wrong
and it's not just me saying that that's
i've been told that by many of the
leading researchers in the field
and here's how it works
your your brain is a information
processor
so
data comes in your sensory data of what
you're seeing and data about what your
situation is and
and your your brain processes that
information not really like a computer
does much differently which we can get
into if you want later but a much
different way
and it's but but like
a computer it processes that information
that data and it gives you some output
the output might be a thought a decision
a behavior
and think about what's going on in the
brain as it's processing
your brain has a certain capability of
executing logic for instance it knows
if a implies b and b implies c then a
implies c so this logical thinking and
rational rules are in in your brain as
it's processing but like any computer
any processing system when it's
processing it it's not just the the
grinding through the logic that that has
to happen you you need a question to be
asked
you need the the program to be designed
to to output something and you need data
to come in your brain needs to know as
it's as it's answering a question or
making a decision it's looking at
uh the situation
uh
your knowledge your beliefs your past
experience it's evaluating all that and
it's evaluating the probability that
certain things are true and certain
things aren't true it's it's weighing
how important is this fact that i know
or remember or believe how important is
that fact and only when all that has
been done can that
pure
uh rational logical calculation be you
know crunch through the data first the
data has to be presented and evaluated
and your emotions that's where they come
in they
they are key to what
data is going to be evaluated how it's
going to be looked at how skeptical
you're going to be about it how much
weight you're going to give it
and without the data and the question
being asked the data to work on the
processor does nothing so the processor
has to have the clothing of all this
data
and all this information and all these
goals that you want to answer in order
to in order to go in and go through its
life and process something so in that
way
the the processor and the emotion cannot
they don't operate separately they
always operate together
so when you ask the question should i
trust my emotion well
every thought that you have is
influenced by your emotions each emotion
is is a state a different state of being
of that processor
some emotions tend to weigh certain
elements more and other elements less or
give certain things more importance or
less or certain things
that's more skeptical or less and so
forth depending on your emotion state if
you're in a state of disgust that's one
set of
of parameters that governs your your
thinking if you're in a state of fear
there's another one and so forth
and so as you're processing
you're in a certain state that's
determined by your emotion that
determines how the processing turns out
and this is something that developed
over millions of years as we were
evolving and it's important to note that
we were involved in the wild not in a
society like this so so there are
situations where it's not optimal
where your emotions do take you astray
like perhaps you you have too strong an
emotion or it's not it's a kind of
emotion that would have been appropriate
out in the wild but not in today's
fast-changing world for example emotions
have something called persistence
which means that they don't go away
right away if i see a bear on the trail
and then he disappears into the bushes i
don't suddenly i go back to my cheery
self i remain afraid which is good
because he may still be there so that's
a purpose for that but if i'm in a
meeting with my boss
and we have a big fight and i'm angry
and then i go to the next meeting it's
not good that the anger carries on so
there are cases where emotions are
inappropriate or we overreact or because
of our upbringing we have a tendency to
over you know to exaggerate certain
feelings and so there are ways that we
can talk about to handle that but i
liken that to optical illusions
your eyes get fooled sometimes there's
mirages or all those optical illusions
you can find online that where you can't
believe what you're seeing yeah right
we don't say i better not use my eyes
anymore because sometimes they're wrong
we go no eyes
evolve for a purpose but there's some
artificial situations where they're
wrong and emotions evolve for a purpose
a very key purpose they're a key to our
thinking and our are are deciding but
especially in today's very weird world
there are that there are situations
where where they steer you wrong
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[Music]
yeah so we're recording this not too
long after the slap heard around the
world
um and that to me is a
what what i'm fascinated by is the
context in which emotions are created
and so i think about it i love your
analogy of computers and robots
you literally wrote the character data
in star trek
and i know enough about star trek to
know that data was a purely logical
creature unlike spock who was half human
and half vulcan
uh enough seeps in through the public uh
or popular culture that i get that far
but um
and you were like you know i'm glad i
didn't understand how emotions were made
back then because the reality is if he
didn't have directives that we could
equate to emotions that would compel him
to act in a certain way he would
literally just sit there blankly and
wouldn't even speak unless he had a
coded directive to speak and so emotions
give us that far more nimble brain
that's able to have a sense of i need to
do something i should move towards this
or away from this you know towards
pleasure away from pain sexual desire
whatever
and
i am maybe because i just have flaws in
my own mind i am way too aware of how a
context can get created where
somebody will think that it makes sense
to get up in front of a you know large
crowd in front of the whole world and
slap somebody
um which and people listening to this
may think i'm out of my mind for
thinking that that was crazy um but
that's the reason that i have a i fully
recognize that i must have emotions
otherwise i will not be able to navigate
this world so i don't bemoan having
emotions but i really try to be
thoughtful about what contextual thing
whether it's childhood trauma whether
it's an argument that i got in with my
wife this morning
whatever
the contextual clues that are changing
the emotion that i'm feeling and because
emotions are so malleable in fact the
subhead of your book is how our feelings
influence our thoughts
and
knowing that my feelings are malleable
and that if i change so going back to
your transitive property if a insinuates
b b insinuate c then a insinuates c
there's something very similar going on
at the emotional level that if i am
feeling a certain way about something
then i'm going to react in a different
way that's going to feel like the right
answer and so if my feelings influence
my thoughts then my thoughts influence
my feelings and if i can in some way
control my thoughts then in theory i can
control my feelings or at least
influence them
and so
my encouragement to myself and to others
is to recognize that it goes both ways
that thoughts influence feelings
feelings and influence thoughts and you
need to inject
yourself i don't know that i would say
you're injecting logic but you're
certainly shifting your context sure i
mean again there's a lot to unpack there
yeah i'll try not to go on for 20
minutes but
um
each emotion is a is a state of uh
calculation as i said and i think when
uh in that case in uh where will smith
uh heard the joke that his wife you know
found uh i guess degrading
or belittling that that that put him in
an anger mode so an anger mode is known
for certain qualities that it has one is
that it's uh it becomes much more
goal-oriented it becomes much more
you become much more risk
willing to take risks that serves a
purpose in anger because usually anger
is triggered by a dangerous situation if
you're not going to take risks you might
not
get out of it you might need to be
bolder to
to handle the situation
this case
which is a rather
artificial in the sense of what what
would have happened when we were
evolving uh he
he he did his calculation about what was
said how his wife felt what would mean
uh
to to chris rock i guess to to slap him
what it would whatever the consequences
would be and he
he evaluated that under the uh influence
of this emotion state
of anger if he had been in a state of
love and one of my friends uh is deepak
chopra
uh who who is not one of my
science colleagues but someone who talks
a lot about the other side of life and
preaches love and understanding if he
had been in that kind of a state which i
find deepak
sometimes gets into even when when he's
in a tough situation and it helps him
react in in a in a good way
he would have done all that calculation
and done something else he could have
gone up and said hey you know that hurt
my wife
you know that that would have been quite
a message to go up there and say that
people might have blamed them for being
a wimp or not understanding comedians i
don't know that but but uh he could have
done that
so the the um
so the first part of that i would say is
that it just illustrates how we should
understand ourselves and what he could
have gained from was an understanding of
i'm in an anger state right now i'm
doing a calculation it's like a
mathematical calculation what's my
behavior what am i going to do
now that i'm in this situation
and he might say wait a minute
let me try to understand what i would do
if i was in a different state can i put
myself in a different state
and there are ways
so the first thing is to be mindful and
conscious of what you're feeling and
what's driving you and understanding in
that moment i'm in an anger state so
alarm i'm going to do something that is
based on that is that appropriate or do
i want to explore something else so he
may have decided that that kind of
reaction might be counterproductive and
that's why that's where come we we get
to the point where
like you said you can use your thinking
to alter your emotions just as your
emotions alter your thinking because it
all works together
so for example in the book i have a
whole chapter on something called
emotion regulation
and that's where you you recognize the
emotion that you're feeling and and that
maybe that's not the optimal emotion to
feel at that moment and you seek to
change it it could be because you have a
tendency to overreact or it could be
because you're reacting to a situation
that's very unusual and you're not quite
sure that that's the right way to react
and you fight but important things be
mindful of how you're thinking and what
you're thinking and how you might want
to change it so in emotion regulation
one method is called reappraisal
so in reappraisal my favorite example
since we're here in l.a
is you're you're driving down the street
and somebody cuts you off and that tends
to make people mad you get angry
it's a funny thing to get angry about
that because it doesn't really cost you
anything you're back another 20 feet
you're gonna be a half a second later to
your destination or something but people
get their ego involved in it it pisses
people off and they get angry
and if you don't want to feel that anger
there there's something you can do about
it
you could uh that anger comes from an
appraisal we call an appraisal because
as your brain is creating the emotion
it's looking at the situation that
you're in interpreting in a certain way
and and connecting it with an emotion
that should that's supposedly
appropriate for that situation so
somewhere in your your your old
reptilian brain you're
someone getting in front of you is
associated with
i'm angry that's bad so
to reappraise it though you you you tell
yourself a different story you say
maybe that guy isn't cutting me off
because he's a schmuck and he doesn't
respect me he he maybe he's got a good
pee and he he's desperate to get off and
and go to the gas station or to get home
or he's late for a meeting he's going to
get fired or his kid is something going
on and he has to get home or which
happens to me sometimes he's just
oblivious the poor guy does not realize
what he's doing
any of these other stories you won't
feel that anger really you might feel
sympathy you might just roll your eyes
but you won't feel anger and so if you
which is what i really do and it works i
tell myself those stories about the guy
who pulls over i really don't get angry
i go well i'm i'm cool i'm above that
i'm not that petty that i'm going to get
angry uh it's actually just fine
and to do that in general in a situation
to tell yourself another story
that leads to a different emotion
is is a very powerful tool and that's
called
reappraisal do you have a north star
that you use to determine how to
reappraise something cause like even
when i think about the will smith thing
i'm guessing he had a north star whether
it was protect my wife whether it was
i'm not gonna let anybody mock me i
don't know but he there was some like
you said calculus that he was going
through
that either consciously or
subconsciously he had built a what i'll
call a value system
i think think kindly of people
so don't you know he could have thought
kindly of chris rock
and the guys reaching for jokes you have
to be very if you read my book elastic
which is about how you get ideas and
creativity
you have to you have to lower your
filters and and be really wild when
you're inventing uh artwork or new
physics or jokes you just have to let it
go and if you're doing the jokes in
front of a wall
that's one thing and when you're doing
them on stage sometimes they maybe they
are inappropriate but maybe he's just
doing his best
but i think what will smith should have
done now by the way with the reappraisal
story it's putting a spin on it it has
to be believable i'm not saying come up
with something you don't buy because
that doesn't work but think of another
thing you might think about this guy
that would make it okay
so he might be thinking about that that
he's he's reaching he's thinking he's
not funny enough and he's just trying to
throw in a you know a blast and another
you know great joke that he's coming up
he's he's loosing himself up to to come
up with better humor
and
this one didn't work he probably regrets
if i tell him afterwards that it hurt my
wife he'll probably apologize and i'll
be that
so something a little kinder i think if
he had if he had done that i don't think
that the north star is really to think
of
try to think well of people rather than
ill you know and and i'd say more than
half the time you're right
i'll be like
i remember i lived in new york for years
i'd be on on a train maybe on on a
commuter train because the subway is
always noisy but i'm trying to work
on my computer there's a guy two seats
in front of me on the phone right
yelling into that phone right just like
and i'm hearing about whatever it is and
it might be his uh business ventures
failing his marriage is failing whatever
the hell it is i don't want to hear this
i'm hearing one out of the conversation
i'm trying to to work or think about
physics some i just like to do physics
on the on the train
and you think what an ass and everyone
you look at they're rolling their eyes
you know
i would get up this i did this on
several occasions i would get up and i
would go to the guy
and i would and i would say in a very
nice way not accusingly or criticizing i
say excuse me sorry you know you
probably don't realize this but it's you
know you're being a little loud and you
know i'm having trouble reading
and usually not usually all the times
i've tried that they're very apologetic
and they quiet down and it's they're not
like an ass so you you know think don't
get angry and think that that instead
think they don't realize how loud they
are
and that it's bothering people when you
actually go to talk to them they're nice
about it
so it's a really interesting north star
i know enough about your background
um to be intrigued but for people that
don't know give us a little bit of
background on your parents whose stories
are so insane i can't believe they're
real
um
and i'm surprised like would your mother
would that ever be her north star
leave my mother out of this
[Laughter]
it would not have been my mother's north
star so my um
my parents went through the holocaust
my mother was in a uh
a labor camp like you saw on schindler's
list if you saw that movie
and uh she went through the experience i
think all her friends uh reject her
spit at her throw things at her even
before the nazis invaded poland
the non-jews uh and she was assimilated
so she wasn't in a jewish environment
and they would say oh wait till hitler
comes he's gonna get you jesus yeah this
is the way they were teasing her and she
was 15 16 at the time
and then when it happened she lost her
fat her um
her father her mother had already died
she lost her father and her sister whom
she really loved
and my dad lost his
four siblings and uh his wife and his
child a young child that he had and
ended up in the resistance anti-nazi
resistance and later in a book involved
concentration camp
and he was liberated by general patton
and um
so i grew up you know i write a lot in
my books in my writing i um
i try to be as far as from a textbook as
possible as close to a novel or
something you know
i like to tell stories i believe in
storytelling so i try to make my points
with stories whether they're
uh from the news uh or
from academia or from my own life
i'd like them to be fine stories they're
either dramatic funny or just compelling
interesting and i you know if they prove
the point that i want to make i try to
introduce things with stories and i've
always used my family my
both my kids i have three kids and my
parents
and of course i had a lot of extreme and
dramatic stories from my parents my
father
um
on at least five or ten occasions
went through an experience where he
should have died
and it's almost miraculous that he
didn't die and in various of my books
some of those stories come out my editor
at one point said to me
this is really weird with your father
people are going to think you're making
this up how could he have had so many
close calls
and i say guess what you know 90 of the
jews from his town were killed by the
nazis
and and everyone had that many close
calls and only the ones that survived
those close calls had kids like me most
of them the first second third fourth
fifth close call
they didn't make it right and we're not
talking to those people but the fact
that he survived almost guarantees that
he has a number of close calls because
that was what was going on in those days
and um
so
in in all my books i have a lot of i
have i there are
i think dramatic
stories that i find that i can use to
illustrate my points uh especially the
psychology given what your parents have
been through though how do you end up
with the north star of think kindly of
people so my mother
was
very
fearful and pessimistic
and
and so it's not from her
and it was a hard way to live because
she always felt that disaster was around
the corner and um if anything was good
it could be taken away from you tomorrow
with no notice which is pretty much what
what happened i mean she had to prove
yeah um
and that shows how context and earlier
experiences affect the way you you but
that's another story that's that's
exactly my point is you know you can
understand why she would be that way and
i can understand why you are the way
that you are and having grown up not
having to worry about that i definitely
err towards your side
but that context is ultimately
constructed
and i'm curious were you
building that construct because you saw
like i think that oh i think that so i
first of all i think i take more after
my father in that way
he was an optimist so much even after
the holocaust yeah that's how he got
through it i think he uh he got through
the hulk which was interesting because
there are people who say the optimists
had a harder time getting through the
holocaust and those that
because they always expected things to
change and then after so long they
didn't change they would get discouraged
and die
but he had a certain spirit and he was
head of the military wing of the jewish
resistance in his town and um
just
you know had this indomitable spirit of
uh just charging forward and and um and
when you know he started out working in
a sweatshop in the states as a refugee
and ended up we were lower middle class
but he wasn't in a sweatshop anymore
um
and i felt i i think i felt always got a
certain sense of heroism from him
because i would hear his stories and i
would feel like
well i'm not in those situations but
when i'm when i'm called to do it i
should be heroic so heroic might mean
getting the top grade on the physics
exam you know or even going into physics
where everyone goes that's a mountain i
can't climb i'm going man give me the
flag you know so it i always felt that i
always took on big challenges so i
became a theoretical physicist a
hollywood writer a
you know a a book a book writer
um
things that every time everyone said
well how do you just kind of quit that
and do that and i go yeah i'm going to
try and maybe part of it was i was
looking for those challenges because i
didn't have the challenges that he had
through the war
and um
but
by chance everything worked for me
and i think that's what
eventually made me
gave me this more optimistic viewpoint
because you know they told me oh you
can't be a theoretical physicist you
have to be a genius there's no jobs and
i got a job at caltech
and then i quit physics even though i've
always i should say i still do physics
as a hobby i always have
because i'm a theoretical physicist so i
can do it with just paper i don't need a
lab
but i quit that it's
cold to become a tv writer and everyone
said
that's crazy and i did that you know and
and um and then i ended up as an
executive in computer games eventually i
moved from tv to computer games i was an
executive in new york and um
when 9 11 happened uh we decided i had
to get my kids out of new york city
because they had a really bad we were
like involved in the middle of that
we lived by the world trade center
and um
so i just went in and quit my job one
day so i'm going to california to write
books
and i remember
what are you nuts
but then when everything worked um you
know eventually i i got in my head that
oh my dad was right
and my poor mom
i felt
had this burden of of pessimism and
sadness
and i mean my dad certainly had the
sadness from what he lost but but he had
this spirit of uh
of uh appreciate and joy
glom onto what's good that you have that
you that you can stay did they ever
collide your mom and dad over him being
optimistic and like was he ever trying
to cheer her up
he he did she she she told me that he
was a very good partner for her because
he saw things so differently
um
i don't don't remember any you know
being privy to any of their talks or he
might be trying to cheer her up but i
remember her saying that to me
uh he also was not around a lot because
he worked uh left the house at six a.m
sorry don't apologize
so that's
no i gotta i gotta put a spin on it he
had fun at work
he would get back to like you know 10
every night
so he had a kind of a hard life
and uh but yet he he always was um he
had a good spirit
now knowing that he had a good spirit is
is the memory hard because he just
what he went through or
yeah the whole thing i mean it's hard to
talk about the holocaust still for me
and and uh and then their struggle to
make a life in the states and uh
all that
is tough you know and i'm i'm i'm that
proverbial first kid to go to college
it's crazy actually first kid that
finished high school in our families
really yeah because they they they got
like a seventh grade education wow
man it's uh
i because they were young
uh when i first heard you telling
stories
about it i don't know just that that
feels so like i don't feel like there's
um
so many people connecting us to it
anymore but it's so visceral in the
stories that you tell it just made it
feel so recent it was very startling to
hear the stories
yeah i'm sure that's going on in ukraine
today and here here in the states people
are complaining because they have to
wear a mask
it seems crazy to me i mean my mother
had to drink water from mud puddles
she never complained about it
yeah it's uh
that's that's the thing about
emotions that really intrigued me in
reading your book was
it's just so potent that there's a sense
of malleability to the things that we
can change and you're very careful in
the book to point out this isn't about
suppression and if you suppress your
emotions you're going to shorten your
lifespan and i mean it's just bad news
all around
but that there is reframing techniques
there are things you can do to put a
spin to tell yourself a story the a
different story the thing i'm always
trying to
i teach um
a class if you will saying this to a
professor is you know feels very
different but
we have impact theory university and i
teach classes on mindset
and what i'm always telling people is
you want to look for an interpretation
of what happened that is both true and
optimistic
and there are going to be things that
are um optimistic and fake and that's a
bad scenario it's going to lead to chaos
there are things that are true and
pessimistic and there's certainly ways
to interpret what you've been through
like when you mess up you probably
really did do something that was stupid
but telling yourself that you are stupid
because you did the stupid thing is not
helpful and it's going to hold you back
so you need to find that thread that is
both true and optimistic
and the amount that that impacts your
life like so i
there i have one vice and that vice is
stress and i understand my relationship
to stress and the reason that i'm able
to so i work right now this isn't
typical but for the last five months my
typical is about 93 hours a week now i'm
working call it 110 to 120 hours a week
and
my wife looks at that and just doesn't
understand because she has a
physiological response where she can't
sure digestion will get messed up she at
one point was like losing her hair and
all this stuff because she
she does not handle stress well and she
has
microbiome issues
and so she looks at me and just doesn't
understand how i can work as much as i
do how i can carry as much stress as i
can but it's because i'm doing these
psychological
tricks is probably the wrong word but
that gets you close of i'm reframing
constantly or i'm doing something as
simple as breathing from my diaphragm
which at a physiological level is
lowering my stress
which because i'm then shifting out of
i use a
cosmological term background radiation
so my stress and anxiety creates this
background radiation where i don't even
understand why i'm i don't feel right so
core affect which you talk a lot about
in the book so my core affect will shift
i know something is wrong but i
understand how to get out of that at a
physiological level either by if i can
pinpoint it and i know i'm worried about
something specific then i can shift the
way that i'm thinking about it if it's
generalized and i can't grab a hold of
why i feel that way then breathing from
my diaphragm will shift me out but i am
i am so hyper aware
that if i can shift that emotional
context i can change
literally the the entire tenor of my
life
yeah that's true and that was one reason
i wrote the book because people need to
first become mindful like you are of
that
of what they're feeling why they're
feeling it and that it can be changed
and to know how you can change it and
then to take steps to do that
and the mind-body connection is is very
important it's very important in in your
emotional life it's very important as an
organism i mean one of my favorite
stories in the book
was uh there's a lot of weird ones but
this was the head transplant story that
actually someone was trying to do head
trans transplants to develop head
transplants human head transplants human
head transplants have they been actually
attempted uh they had they haven't been
attempted they've been planned and
they've been done to animals i was gonna
say i know they did a dog
yeah that well they did go they did a
dog i think i think they did a monkey
i'm trying to remember now all the way
there's a whole history of head and it's
in china that they're trying to develop
this system for head transplantation but
what i what i found most interesting and
the reason i talked about it was
uh
one of the famous people
who was
judging the this this possibility of
this work he said that that would not be
possible because when you connected the
new head
to the new to the other body let's say
you were able to do it just perfectly
the the new organism would die just
because of the mismatch of the of the uh
of the of the body a new body giving its
input to this head talk to me
not used to it so because your body you
mentioned core affect your your brain
your brain is constantly reading the the
the health and the situation of your
body and that that's a very big
um
uh source of how how what it decides to
do and that that's reflected in the what
they call core affect which is core
affect is a
kind of feeling that you have
all the time it's a barometer of your or
a thermometer of your health are you hot
cold uh sleepy
uh thirsty or are you fine or is there
is it something
um it has two
elements uh
one is uh good and bad and the other is
strong or weak so are you in good shape
strongly or just a little bit on the
good side or bad or strongly bad and it
that has a great effect on your thinking
and on the emotions that you develop
because it's one of the things that
feeds into it because the job the
purpose of it is
to read your body and tell your mind
something has to be done or it doesn't
have to be done
and but there's a lot of other
connections that ways that your body
talks to your mind so there's there's
there's all those nerves in those
readings that are going into your brain
to you straight to your brain there's
hormones and other chemicals bioactive
chemicals that your body is releasing in
different places that your your gut is
very important your microbiome is very
important
these are have
major
uh concrete effects on your thinking and
on your state of mind
with in in animals they're they're able
to raise um
mice that have a pretty sterile
digestive system then they take other
mice that are either uh bred to be
neurotic and very nervous or very calm
and they take they take their they may
do a fecal transplant of of their poo
from these mice from one kind or the
other to the blank mice and those mice
once they get the the once they get that
uh bacterial transplant into their gut
they become they take on the the
characteristics of the personality of
the donor mice so so if they get the
donor poo
from the nervous one they they're
nervous
and and vice versa so your brain is is
so connected to your body this person
was speculating that if you just took a
foreign body your brain wouldn't know
how to handle it it would just be so
confused it would die that the organism
would die
and it's not from
apart from all the horrible
physiological issues of
connecting all the arteries and the
nerves and everything else just this
alone the brain would not be able to to
run a different body because the brain
and the body have grown up and learned
to like mesh together
and you can't just pull one out and put
it in another one it's not a module like
that maybe a heart is is like that but
not the brain
do you agree with that hypothesis
well i i'm not it's not my place to
agree or just as a scientist i i would
only i would only agree or disagree if i
had evidence but but this person is an
expert and i it sounds reasonable to me
and and uh i hope we never test it
because i think that's the idea of
uh i mean one could look more kindly on
it and say well let's say we grew a body
from your own uh can't be friends no but
let's say someone died in a motorcycle
accident and it was brain dead had a
perfectly good body and someone else had
some kind of cancer had a perfectly good
mind and
you might think let's put them together
so
objectively speaking maybe it's
something that would be okay at some
point but there are so many issues
ethical issues
and i i would guess opportunities for
abuse in that case that uh
uh i don't know it's a very strange uh
thing to ponder but i i
i believe what the person said i i think
that i take it for what for what it's
worth it's a speculation to me what's
what's more interesting than whether or
not it happens to exactly be true or not
is that people might even would even
think that way would think that the mind
body connection is so important that you
can't just switch out the mind and the
body and have the organism survive
yeah the mind-body connection is really
interesting lisa feldman barrett's work
that you talk about in the book i was
blown away i had never considered that
emotions would have that sort of
reciprocal feedback of like what comes
first is it the way your body feels then
your mind is just painting a rationale
over that feeling or do you think
something and that triggers the response
in the body
and to be honest so i had lisa on the
show
and basically i was like all right is it
nature or nurture like what's the
difference and she gave me a phrase that
is just so powerful which is tom we have
a nature that requires nurture and i was
like damn like it your mind and body are
in concert like there is no to your
point about the sterile rats even
something as i mean
20 years ago we didn't even know about
the microbiome so something as
late to the party of our understanding
as that has such a radical impact and
has other impacts in terms of body
composition fat loss that kind of stuff
insane
and to think that
there's so much more going on that we
don't know like are mitochondria which
are essentially alien cells
do they have communication mechanisms i
mean
cells deep inside your body can respond
to light which is already pure insanity
uh
there's just so much that we don't
understand about the body but that
we have this
complex organism that controls so much
of our lives and we're just now
beginning to really wrap our heads
around you know what's going on
when you think about that so i come down
to i just latch on to the part that's
malleable
how much of our experience can we change
how much of it to ask my famous question
how much of this is nature how much is
nurture how much is locked in how much
can we
um
spin as you said earlier
well i think you can do a lot whatever
you think you can do you can do a lot
more than you think
it's not a
you can't 100 change things
and it varies from individual to
individual but if you really are mindful
and practice mindfulness and i recommend
meditation as well
and really get in touch with who you are
why you think things what you think what
your tendencies are
then you can really
take steps to to if you want to to alter
that and to change that i i have a
number of
pro
of questionnaires in the book to give
you an emotional profile i call it
these are not self-help questionnaires
but they're questionnaires developed by
real scientists who are studying these
emotions and they scientists always
always want to quantify emotions or find
out if if you're feeling it or not and
have have some kind of objective
uh determination so they they've
developed these questionnaires uh that
you you answer 5 10 20 questions and and
then you score yourself it'll tell you
what your tendencies are towards certain
emotions because
even though humans have the same
emotional we share the same emotional
machinery there's obviously individual
differences just as there are in vision
or or physique
and
and and a lot of that is also can be a
result of your early experiences so in
today's world in whatever state you're
in you can take this uh find out your
tendency toward anxiety or fear or the
other emotions that i have included
there
and and that's interesting because
it that helps you to know yourself
that's the that's the goal is to know
yourself and to go well i have a
tendency to be anxious
uh or i tend to be active in certain
situations
so i can try to avoid those situations
or i can say to myself when i hit that
situation i'm going to be anxious it's
it's okay
i you know i'm going to be anxious in
that situation maybe remind yourself
that you've been in those situations
before and it was okay like you're
flying on an airplane some people are
afraid of flying
if you if you know beforehand that you
that you
that that that's going to happen
and you think about all the times maybe
study the statistics about how often
people have flown how rare the the
the uh crashes are how much the wings
can actually flap in the wind and that's
fine they're designed to be that or
things like that or just to have your
honey next to you to hold your hand or
whatever it is you you you do things to
to make that better
there's something the cognitive
behavioral therapy there's different
therapies you can do
if you see a therapist
you can target certain aspects of your
life that that you think need
improvement so there's a lot of
proactive things you can do but most
people
don't do that they just go through life
uh
either you know accepting or being
miserable or
so trying to suppress which we've talked
to you mentioned suppression which which
which is like
makes you feel like maybe you're
you're not feeling it but you really are
and it's causing damage inside and it's
raising your cortisol levels and and
it's going to pop back out anyway so
that's not the way i would say
uh
the recommendation is the opposite of
that hello my friend you know that i
believe success requires you to see
failure as the ultimate learning tool
success requires you to be disciplined
and gritty and to never ever quit on
your dreams i say all of that because
one thing is certain the road to
achieving your goal is not smooth or
linear i wish it was but it's not it's
going to be bumpy sometimes scary some
days you'll take two steps forward and
slide 10 steps back and that's why
success also requires you to know how to
pull yourself out of a rut and get
unstuck fast life is short you can't be
messing around with your goals you've
got to make progress every single day so
i've pulled a class from impact theory
university called how to get unstuck
which you can watch for free with the
link on your screen or by clicking below
when you join me for that free preview
of that workshop from impact through
university i'm going to teach you my
strategy for how to
understand exactly where you need to be
going how to identify the obstacle
that's blocking you and the best way to
make the most progress towards that goal
and keep your momentum right click that
link and let's get to work all right
i'll see you on the inside
one of the things in the book that i was
blown away by and i've often wondered
about this is the wanting mechanism
which you
did a better job of explaining than i've
ever heard and walk people through one
what the wanting systems of the brain
are
and how wanting and liking
are different because that was the
example of the poor rat
that they had you gave an example of in
the book i was like that is drug
addiction
yeah well
so
all organisms
have to
have a way to approach their food or
whatever it is that they need
bacteria it's chemical they they move on
certain chemical gradients
they're programmed to to do that that's
the most that's the simplest and more on
multicellular organisms more complex
organisms they tend to have
certain rules that they
that are programmed into them like
if you see
food
go toward it and eat it
it's just a simple rule or it might be
have a maybe more slightly more
complicated because there's a maybe a
certain chemical that gets released into
their body when they're satiated and so
it there's another rule that says if
this is
above this level go that way if it's
below it go that way but they're very
simple rules they call them uh fixed
action patterns or in computers they
call them production rules if this than
that a thermostat for example if it's
over 80
turn off the heat if it goes down below
turn the heat back on or whatever it is
those are simple rules and most animals
live by those rules
even if they look like that they they're
not they really are i talk about in the
book the example of a goose and a nest
and how lovingly apparently lovingly she
will pull an egg from the grass back
into her nest if it falls out
but then scientists have come and they
put up put a baseball there and she'll
do it they'll put a tin can there and
still do it she'll do anything it's not
a loving mother's action it's a
thoughtless uh
uh
fixed action pattern it's a stimulus
response
that that that is uh programmed into her
and stimulus responses are really good
if you're not ever in new or
novel situations
if you don't have pesky experimenters
putting tin cans there so for most geese
it's fine because no one's putting a tin
can there
and geese still live in the environment
where they're in a nest and so forth if
they got became urbanized and had a new
way of living that might not work for
them anymore
so a more sophisticated flexible way of
doing things is wanting
if you have this wanting system
then it's more general and more flexible
so now
i as a human
want certain things they give me just
pleasure centers in my brain and i want
the something that they said when i get
it it stimulates my pleasure center it's
kind of a cycle
and and so that's how i i'll eat right
i'll go i want food i go to the food i
eat it and other animals they do the
same thing there's another way of doing
it that's even more sophisticated that
people found just recently which is
liking
so in the brain strangely
want it and this is something that
humans and maybe some primates have but
it's not really that distributed in
other animals
it's it's another step a level higher in
sophistication and think about it liking
is a little bit less direct than wanting
liking makes you want makes you do it
wanting makes you do it directly
so liking is is this we it turns out
that we have a system in in our brains
that that
is separate that is a a liking system as
well as a wanting system and this is
just something that was discovered
recently
and
you can you can see the at least the
remnants of those systems as far down in
mammals such as actually such as rats
and mice and the experiment you're
talking about they they
they they had uh they they showed that
by destroying certain parts of the brain
they could create rats that want
something
um
but don't but don't have the liking
system or rats that like something but
don't want it so they'll have a they'll
have a rat that you can tell it likes
sugar because if you put sugar on its
mouth it makes certain faces that show
us enjoying it but you'll put it the
sugar in front of it
and it'll just sit there until it dies
without ever going for it it doesn't
have the wanting system
and the on the other side you can have
something that has the wanting system
that's supercharged
and and you can see that it's going for
something but by the face it's making
it's not liking it so it wants what it
doesn't like or it likes where it
doesn't want so
we've now studied those we know what
circuits those are in the brain they're
complex nodes of uh systems in the brain
that govern that for for human beings
and you might wonder why do we have that
but all this all these things i've been
talking about like emotion
uh and like the core affect and the
wanting and the liking are there to give
you a more essentially a more nuanced
stimulus response methodology so what
happens uh with the pure stimulus
response is
something happens i go for it what
happens if you have a wanting system is
maybe i get hungry or something it
stimulates the wanting i go for it
with the liking it's one step more
sophisticated something happens and i
like it
but then my conscious mind has a chance
to intervene so
so i like cheesecake i see the
cheesecake
and uh now does my but my you know i
maybe i would if i didn't have the
liking i would just want it but i have
the liking that says i like the
cheesecake i'm driven toward the
cheesecake my conscious mind says
you're gaining weight don't do it don't
do it and then i manage to preclude my
wanting system from triggering so i can
get in between i can make a more nuanced
decision based on more more nuanced more
complex situation and information
so each different layer
in your behavior allows reflection and
and consideration of other of other
aspects of things that can that can make
you make a more nuanced or sophisticated
decision
so that's the the the economy between
wanting and liking in your brain and we
used to think
that uh that they used to say that
dopamine
right what what was your um
uh that was was your um
liking chemical
and these people who are who have this
study that found that dopamine is not
connected with liking at all it's with
the wanting side of things
but that people didn't even know there
was a difference and guess which
neurotransmitters are connected with
with your liking you might you might
guess it if you just think about the
drug use that people do
uh opioids opioids and endocannabinoids
yep so when we're smoking pot we're
hitting directly at the liking circuits
of our brain and we like
in it
and and it feels that way
but you don't want to overdo that
because you know they can get habituated
and so you have to be careful because if
you keep stimulating them too much they
become harder to stimulate
yeah an example you give in the book is
you know
drug addicts can get to a point where
they don't
even like the effect anymore but they
still have that craving and they go for
it even though like when they're doing
it they're like miserable and why am i
doing this
that's scary that's scary and that
that's another that's a and this this
work has a lot of application and
addiction because that that is the human
one one of the common human examples of
a dissociation between wanting and
liking showing that we have two separate
brain
processes for those two things and those
people who no longer like it or enjoy it
they still want it that's very sad and
you know that's they're trying to work
on drugs to target that to to help
people overcome their addictions
yeah the the bifurcated model of wanting
liking is really interesting so one i've
had that with food and then rich roll i
don't know if you know who he is but he
was on the show and so long time
alcoholic and has been sober for ages
and ages and ages and more than a decade
i think into his sobriety he had
something really bad happen to him in
one of his ultra endurance things he'd
been training for an entire year he gets
there
and like uh one day into a three-day
race he starts coughing up blood and so
he can't continue and he said literally
an hour later he found himself at a bar
already drinking and he was like i had
no
no inclination of going of like being
excited to drink nothing just that that
compulsion that want just drove him
there almost unconsciously and he was
like all of a sudden i was drinking and
i've had that with food if something
really stressful happens i will find
myself reaching for food and i'm i'm so
disciplined around food so disciplined
and so i'm like whoa like if i find
myself doing that where i'm like that my
my emotions have become dysregulated and
some part of my deep subconscious
it just knows like
there there is a thing i can use to
soothe myself it doesn't have anything
to do with liking at that moment because
i'm not even consciously aware i'm doing
it but there's obviously a want of like
yeah some part of my brain wants it and
it's gonna get it no matter what and
thankfully
i'm able to pattern interrupt that thing
because i use rules in my life so as
soon as i find my hands on i'm like what
am i doing like i don't owe myself
calories at this point so you know i
have to put it back but i just thought
wow like now i get how people get
themselves in trouble it's it is a
non-conscious
doesn't have anything to do with like
you can have and this the thing i find
most heartbreaking in the world is
somebody who's obese eating ice cream
and they're unhappy and you can see
they're unhappy and i'm like hey eat the
ice cream no judgment that's amazing but
enjoy it like don't eat it and be like
mortified that you're doing it but once
you realize there's a break between
wanting and liking
whoo
the behavior starts to make a lot more
sense yeah
and then you have to use your
mindfulness to break as you're doing to
break the patterns that's what you have
to realize where can i intercept the
pattern and there's a way i can deflect
it go in a different direction
the deep-seated nature of this though
you elucidate in the book the most
hilarious i don't know if that's the
right word example is the fruit fly
i i still can't believe this is real
walk people through
fruit fly
sexual courting and the response this is
bananas
so it turns out that uh when a male
fruit fly wants to have sex with a
female fruit fly it approaches it
approaches her
uh it does certain behaviors it moves it
jiggles itself it makes some noises too
with its wings it flaps around and she
considers him
and uh
and either will she'll turn in a way
that opens herself up to him or she'll
basically give him a slap and go away
it's just kind of like being at a bar
and i was comparing it to my son going
to a bar to pick up
to you know whatever meet someone you
know
as they do in that age and um but what's
really interesting is that uh okay this
is
uh this is fruit fly behavior and um
if you then take the male fruit fly
after that and you and you and you put
in a situation where it can get either
regular
uh
food like glucose or booze it'll go
toward the booze
it's a significantly more than a control
group that doesn't go through the sexual
thing first they'll go for the food but
once this fruit fly has been uh rejected
it goes for the booze which just shows
you on a very very
you know fundamental basic way what we
all as animals share i mean we we share
neurotransmitters we share
brain uh organization and structure i
mean i'm not that there aren't any
changes as you go through the animal
kingdom but there's a lot of that basic
stuff that we share we share even the
fact that there's emotions i mean
this is a story about fruit flies so
that was very amusing but the same
person who's studying the fruit flies
talks about fear and fruit flies and
studies the properties of fear and fruit
flies and the commonality it has with
how fear affects human thinking so
uh and you know the dna of the fruit fly
is very similar to our dna so
um
there's there's there's a lot of
commonality that we have with very very
simple organisms and and that's that you
know that's good to to to know because
it it maybe takes you down a couple
notches in your human superiority
complex or
makes you
realize maybe to me how close we are to
nature i feel more in touch with nature
and other
animals and plants around us because uh
you can see how how much we're all the
same kind of thing here on earth
what do you think about free will
do we have free will
well
no
we'll stop
as a scientist
look you can play games with the
definition of free will
and uh there's different brands of free
will that philosophers talk about um
the base the bottom line is that
as any theoretical physicist would would
have to say
the the
occurrences in nature happen
according to certain laws the laws that
we're studying that we know a lot about
the laws
there are no exceptions to the laws it's
not like
these you know the quantum mechanics
works except once in a while when you
don't want it to work
you know so you think no i want to go
left instead of right that's an
exception no it's it's all being
governed by
by the laws of physics and so if you
believe that the laws of physics they
say that given any
uh
state of uh the world or you or
everything
at any given time they dictate what
that's going to be for all future times
and for all past times and as laplace
famously said around 1800 if i had a big
enough he wasn't talking about quantum
theory but same idea if i had a big
enough machine
uh or i knew the mind of god i could
calculate
uh what the future or the past just by
knowing the present and that's what the
laws of physics say so if you don't
believe that if you believe in free will
in other words that that you can that if
you believe that you can choose now
whether to smile or not smile
if you believe that's really something
that you're doing that is not dictated
by the state of the atoms a minute
before that then you don't believe in
physics and in science and you think
there's exceptions or there's ways to
control it or make different things
happen but if you do believe in science
there's no room for that
but
there is something that you know like
effective free will it feels like we
have free will right
so
i'm i feel like i have free will my
system is so complicated that i can't
know what i'm going to do next and as
i'm as i'm doing things and making
decisions it feels like i'm deciding but
really what's happening is i because of
who i am
because of the body mind that i have
uh put me in a certain situation i'm
going to do a certain thing
nothing wrong with that i mean even
think about let's get away from this
from the pure physics of the free will
think of the psychological free will you
put me in a certain situation
in a certain circumstance i'm going to
do a certain thing you know if i see
uh somebody
you know beating up some somebody and
i'm standing there
i'm gonna go over and say something or
do something or i'm gonna run away
depending on who i am but that that's
that's not free will either because
depending on who i am i'm gonna do that
thing and you go but oh you might debate
it in your head and decide what you're
going to do
yeah that's true but who's debating
it's me who's deciding it's me so what's
the answer going to be well whatever i
decide i guess that's the answer that me
gives
so i mean what what does the question of
free will even mean you know it it just
means in a way to me free will is
is learning who i am as a person if i
ran away or if i stayed it's not so much
that i made a decision
to do that that i mean i made a decision
but the decision was preordained
and what i and what was really happening
was i'm learning who i am am i the kind
of person who sticks up for the person
or am i the kind of person who runs away
i'm learning something about it but
whatever i was going to do this person
was going to do
and and so from my own world view here
or my own spin on all this i have to say
or am i the kind of person that's going
to change who i am because i don't like
the way that i reacted and i want to
react a different way in the future
and this is a question i get asked a lot
and i will admit that the older i get
and the more that i self-reflect and the
more i engage with people asking me this
question i do wonder sometimes if i have
an overactive wanting system because man
well first of all i should at least
mention in passing i don't know if i'll
have time to get into it but that
determination is also a brain system
that you can stimulate and when you
stimulate that person's determination
system all of a sudden they're like man
i know i can do this i'm not going to
stop stop what i have no idea but i know
i'm going to do it i was like whoa
that's very unnerving so because i want
to take credit for the fact that i am
extremely determined and i am extremely
good at building desire in my life so
when people ask like
you know tom i want to uh achieve in the
way that you've achieved or work as hard
as you work or whatever i'm like you
just don't want it badly enough because
the things that i'm pursuing you could
very convincingly make a case that i am
i am pursuing it almost to the point of
mental illness because once i latch on
to something that's that and i give it
my everything and i go go go
now
not to derail but i keep buddha style
detachment in my back pocket so that if
it ever becomes sort of unhealthy or i'm
not enjoying myself anymore then i would
switch but i focus on building that
desire that may start as like a sort of
small spark but i know how to fan the
flames of that i walk people through it
all the time now for me it's reliable i
can go through this process of building
desire and six months later i will
really want that thing
but i try to get other people to do it
and it i don't some people it works and
other people it it doesn't and so i'm
like okay well maybe you're just not
running the process
but i know enough about
neuroscience to wonder sometimes if it's
just they don't have
they're not producing the neurochemistry
at the level i am or the region of their
brain isn't as big in that area
i don't know well i have a determination
uh test or inventory in my book i scored
off the charts he's okay off well there
you go i was only missing four points
very good well i mean good i shouldn't
say good it's not good there could be
mental health problems
right but so there are individual
differences and some people
are less determined and some people are
more determined and there's no good or
bad or evil or unev or you know good in
the sense of good versus evil or good
versus bad or it's just people are built
different and if you want to change that
you can you can work on that as well
but that's your that's a natural you
talk about that how do we um
if we want to increase determination
this is one that i remember specifically
from the book how do we increase our
determination well
other than stimulating that network with
an electrode right
well
one thing that you can do is find things
find things that that you can attack
that you you might want to do that you
can gradually build build up
discipline with
so for example exercise so if you don't
normally have a lot of determination and
you've never been running
go out and run
and go run it like a block don't push
yourself too much just run something
easy a block
and then
it's important that it's not painful
and then do it again and do it again and
do it again and then start raising it
two three four
and what what happens is you you start
to see that you can accomplish more you
start to feel what what you get by
accomplishing more
and eventually hopefully you'll get a
goal of running a marathon or a half
marathon or something that's that's much
longer and that that teaches you that
that you can accomplish things with the
proper determination but by getting
those little rewards along the way
by whatever it doesn't have to be
running whatever it is it could be
baking or it could be quilting
because in the book you use that example
and you talk about bdnf brain-derived
neurotropic factor
and
i don't know if it's pure coincidence
but the very thing that changed my life
was working out
and you can break my life into before i
started working out and after
and i've always used it as an example of
like gaining self-respect and like
understanding how malleable we are but
when i read your book i was like is it
the only way because man the number of
people for whom exercise becomes that
life-changing
thing
so i don't know is it this exercise is
one certainly that a lot of people have
mentioned as being as being
life-changing but i think that if
it doesn't have to be the only one and
if you if you look at other in other
areas
where you can have you don't have the
same
biochemical changes in your blood that
you do when you're when you're
exercising
but you'll experience
uh you'll experience the same
psychological factors of accomplishment
of flow ideally you'll find something
that that that you're
passionate in
and and you'll learn that that you can
achieve a lot by having the
determination hopefully you'll get
hooked on that
and do you think so going back to flow
is that you're triggering the liking
system where ooh i liked the way that i
was of no mind as the buddhist might
call it when you're inflow your internal
monologue stops you're just completely
in the moment and is that i think flo uh
and again i i'm i'm a little beyond my
pay grade here i don't think this has
even been studied and i did know mikhail
c the guy who
chick set me high yeah yeah yeah
may he rest in peace he just died
recently but um he
um
he came up with the idea of flow and i i
think it's your wanting system that it's
connected connects to it's almost an
addiction
at least for me my own feeling is that i
i achieve that both when i'm doing my
physics really deeply
and in my writing
and in both cases it's something that um
i can't describe anything
else in my experience that's like that
uh other than drugs
uh
something that um
what kind of drugs
various drugs but
my favorite drug
uh
really has been a disappointment i'm
sure it's a disappointment is i love
alcohol so fair so i mean pot is good
i've had some other drugs but but um
i may be old-fashioned and uh and and i
so i govern how much i drink because i
don't want to overdo it i could i could
drink too much
and um because you like the way it makes
you feel yeah yeah and i know what you
do is you learn to like the taste too
there's uh i think a um conditioned
response there too
but you think you like the way it makes
you feel because after some point
you habituate to it and you don't even
you're doing it because that's what you
do to relax not that it is really
relaxing you right but it's because
that's what you associate with
relaxation
and um so i noticed that i felt like i i
never was like an alcoholic but i
that i had a habit of um every night
having a couple of cocktails or
something and sometimes having a couple
more you know and and and i thought well
i shouldn't be drinking every night so i
stopped it
um
but i but that feeling of oh boy martini
would feel really good right now right
that that feeling is is very similar to
that you know when i when i go
to go to a state of flow i just that oh
that would feel really good right now to
be you know and if you're any of your
viewers or listeners i haven't
experienced that i really
that that's a part of life that i feel
nobody should miss
it helps
to have a passion
and i don't know that's a very important
part of life and not everyone has a
passion but if you have a passion
that's the way to get into flow is to
just devote yourself
take away all distractions
take away all time constraints i go to
the desert to write go to some place in
the middle of nowhere sometimes and stay
a week and right from 9 a.m till
midnight every day whoa and uh don't
even eat i eat breakfast at nine so i
start at nine i eat and i look over my
work
i'll pick up something
in the evening for later i won't eat it
and then i'll keep working to around
midnight
and then i'll
eat my dinner
maybe have a couple more margaritas
[Laughter]
and uh and then start again the next day
and and that flow that i'm in though is
such a blissful state even when the
writing's not going well and i'm
struggling with it the the this level of
concentration the world around you as
you know i guess you've experienced it
but it disappears
you don't you you close down your
sensory perception and i don't hear
stuff i've been on an airplane
and in a state like that doing my
physics and eventually i realized the
stewardess is like pounding my arm
because i don't have a seatbelt on or
something and she said what the hell is
wrong with you you know
why don't you answer me oh i was on mars
excuse me that's so interesting so um
anyway
so when you're in flow writing
do you ever feel like you're channeling
like oh yeah
yeah
yeah you do that's why i mean i don't
believe in god but uh i i i think that
woman who wrote eat pray love and she
said she used to get i think getting it
right but she said that she used to get
writer's block
and writer's block comes from uh
[Music]
a desperate
questioning yourself and being desperate
to get it and that's why one reason time
time um constraints constraints are
horrible uh because i gotta get done
because i gotta quit by that you know
and and uh she said that she got past
uh that that that
writer's block by imagining that that
she's not doing the writing god is
through her
and so so it's not her responsibility to
get the thing done and if it doesn't get
done it's god's fault it's whatever god
wants and then she
it works and and i don't feel that way
but i do feel like i'm channeling some i
feel like that what i'm channeling is
something in my unconscious mind i'm
letting it the filters go low and the
stuff come out
and i'm not worried if it's stupid or
wrong or i'm going to rewrite it or i'm
going to throw it away tomorrow i'm just
there getting it out and i can look at
it later as an editor and decide whether
to keep it or not so i don't have to
worry if it's good or bad right or wrong
that's important not to worry about that
and part of that unlimited time is that
you don't worry about because i have
unlimited time if you had unlimited time
in in life you never have to worry about
getting something wrong or not figuring
it out because you just keep doing it
till you get it right
and um
so that's a great thing and and um
so you get in that state it's like a
meditative or trance-like state where
the outside world disappears as i said
the sensory input is damped you don't
get you don't really ex doesn't register
very much you're on a you're in just a
world consisting of whatever it is
you're focused on
yes i know that feeling very well it's
um i heard stephen king describe it as
channeling and as soon as i read that i
was like oh my god that's exactly what
it's like
i think you're right that it's just
coming from the unconscious but
you don't know where it's coming from
like all of a sudden you just have these
visions or ideas and it's like oh my god
like this is i'm
as
much of a viewer in this or a reader in
this as the person who's gonna
ultimately read it because it's you know
just popping up into my mind
it is
deeply pleasurable it is incredibly
bizarre and
very fun addictive very addictive and
that's why i think it's connected to the
wanting because the liking isn't so
important
in addiction but it's it's the wanting
circuits very interesting
leonard i want more time with you but i
know we have to get you out of here but
man where can people connect with you i
have enjoyed very much this talk and
very much your book um how do people
connect or find your work well my
website is el moladnoff l
is leonardmaladenov.com sorry
l-e-o-n-a-r-d-m-l-o-d-i-n-o-w
dot com or my handles are el malodnov
l-m-l-o-d-i-n-o-w for instagram um and
twitter i'm not always great about
tweeting or putting up stuff but
sometimes i do and uh
and uh i uh and it's sometimes
interesting but that's where where i can
be found and of course my books are
available everywhere
amazing well after spending a lot of
time with you i can definitely say
um and and by that i mean i've
researched you for hours and hours and
hours and on top of reading your book
that it is
very fascinating and guys i highly
encourage you to read the book emotional
i will be diving into his other works
i'm sure they are also amazing and
speaking of things that are amazing if
you haven't already be sure to subscribe
and until next time my friends be
legendary take care peace
the key thing is there's an animal part
of our nature which is we completely
take appearances for reality that's sort
of the source of our problems and our
misery to be honest with you in life
so
the front that people present
the way they look the way they talk to
us their words
we sort of take at face value