Wendy Suzuki: 2 Powerful Tools To Use When You Feel Stressed Out (This Will Lower Your Anxiety in 1 Minute)

Transcript

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Speaker 6 How much do we actually know about the brain and its potential?

Speaker 1 We have years of knowledge, but there is an enormous amount that we still don't know. There are brain areas, we have no idea what they do.

Speaker 1 Every ping of the phone is anxiety-producing, producing, which then launches your stress response and that keeps us stressful for way too much of the day.

Speaker 1 So many people are appreciating at a higher level stress and anxiety and depression. A little bit of that is actually good for the brain.

Speaker 1 You want to live a long, healthy, energized life. Start paying attention to all the things you need to do to make your brain work beautifully.

Speaker 1 It defines everything that we do and everything that we are.

Speaker 20 The number one health and wellness podcast.

Speaker 1 Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty.
The one, the only Jay Shetty.

Speaker 45 Wendy, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 4 I'm so grateful to have you on on purpose. I was really looking forward to this.

Speaker 48 And even just the few words we've exchanged now, I'm like, all right, click record ASAP.

Speaker 3 Like we need to capture all of it.

Speaker 49 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.

Speaker 51 Well, let's dive right in.

Speaker 52 Yeah.

Speaker 25 The first thing I wanted to ask you was,

Speaker 6 how much do we actually know about the brain and its potential?

Speaker 1 That is such a great question.

Speaker 1 We have hours and semesters and years of knowledge that we have gained about the brain since we've seriously been studying it. But there is an enormous amount that we still don't know.

Speaker 1 There are brain areas. We have no idea what they do.
My favorite is called the Klaustrom. Somebody asked me, what's the most mysterious brain area that you know, Wendy?

Speaker 1 This is a brain area that connects to everything, cortically, subcortically. It should be integrating something critical.
We have no idea what it does. We have little idea of how consciousness works.

Speaker 1 We know a lot about vision. So it is a beautiful bag of information and mystery that our brain represents.

Speaker 25 There's something about that, right?

Speaker 55 That there's so much we've learned, but there's so much yet to uncover.

Speaker 57 Yes.

Speaker 53 But I feel when we talk about the brain and what's relevant to us, I think about what does a healthy and unhealthy brain feel like?

Speaker 57 Yes.

Speaker 60 And how do we know whether we have a healthy or unhealthy brain?

Speaker 1 I think that

Speaker 1 the answer to that is

Speaker 1 so many people are appreciating at a higher level their stress and anxiety and depression. A little bit of that is actually good for the brain.

Speaker 1 Chronic all the time, can't get out from under the cloud or the big rock around your neck that anxiety can feel like, that is not good for your brain.

Speaker 1 High levels of stress overall will start to first damage and then kill some neurons in your brain. That is not good.
So if you are at that level, that is not good for your brain.

Speaker 11 What about someone who says, and I'm sure you hear this all the time, Wendy, oh, you know, stress doesn't really affect me.

Speaker 53 You know, I can just keep going.

Speaker 6 I don't really notice it.

Speaker 13 What would you say to someone who says that?

Speaker 1 I would say I said that a lot to myself.

Speaker 1 And when I sat down to write my second book, Good Anxiety, I realized how much stress and anxiety that I was dealing with in my life. And also, I think

Speaker 1 the key was

Speaker 1 there were simple tools that one could use to

Speaker 1 address not all forms of your stress and anxiety, but a lot of those forms of stress and anxiety. And so the first step is awareness.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so becoming aware, why are we in denial about our stress?

Speaker 1 I think, well, I live in New York City. People like to wear a badge of stress.
Oh, you know, every time you answer, how are you? Oh, so stressed out. So much to do.
It's like a badge of

Speaker 1 a badge of honor so i think that that becomes has become part of our individualistic society and and that's not good i mean what you should be able to say at least a good chunk of the time is actually i'm doing well i feel good i feel energized and you don't hear that response all too often and that that's not just in new york but i think all over the country and all over the world yeah for sure no i think you're so right i think people are used to saying surviving yes Just surviving, just getting through this day.

Speaker 6 I'm just moving forward.

Speaker 54 And I think that's why we're doing this episode because we want people to be able to turn around and say, oh, no, I'm doing well.

Speaker 33 I'm energizing.

Speaker 34 But there's almost like we carry this guilt if we are about to say that, right?

Speaker 51 There's a feeling of like, or there's a feeling of...

Speaker 68 Shame that I'm not working hard enough.

Speaker 11 Yes. Right.

Speaker 4 So going back the other way with the badge of honor, there's a feeling of if I said, oh, no, I'm actually doing okay.

Speaker 53 Yeah.

Speaker 46 That's me saying I'm not working hard enough.

Speaker 1 Right. I've noticed that as well.
I've noticed that in myself and and my colleagues and it's about stepping back and realizing you know,

Speaker 1 I think one of the most profound pieces of advice that somebody gave me early on is making me realize how important

Speaker 1 and how complex my brain was. It defines everything

Speaker 1 that we do and everything that we are

Speaker 1 and making that work well should be high on our list. Chronic stress and buying into that I'm busy all the time culture is not conducive to brain health.

Speaker 1 So you want to live a long, healthy, energized life, start paying attention to all the things you need to do to make your brain work beautifully.

Speaker 56 Yeah, no matter how much you think you've got away with it up until now.

Speaker 57 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 71 It's not good to keep pushing that and testing how far the brain can go.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 46 Walk me through the difference between anxiety and stress and why is it important to know the difference?

Speaker 1 They are intertwined in a really complex way. So physiologically the stress response is

Speaker 1 enacted by the sympathetic nervous system and it's all those feelings that we are very familiar with.

Speaker 1 Increased heart rate, increased respiration rate, our eyes dilate, there's an upset stomach because actually blood is rushing away from our digestion and reproductive systems towards our muscles because the response is to get us ready to run away, to physically flee.

Speaker 1 Now, anxiety is the emotion of fearing something that is coming up in the future that could, that we don't like, that could harm us. In its essence, it is protective.

Speaker 1 So, you know, a woman 3.5 million years ago trying to protect her baby wanted to use those feelings of anxiety to keep that baby safe from those physical dangers that were there.

Speaker 1 The problem is that in today's world, every ping of the phone is anxiety producing, which then launches your stress response. And that keeps us stressful for way too much of the day.

Speaker 1 So the key, I think, is learning how to turn the volume down on those anxiety cues that then launch stress and learning what they are for yourself, but also using the tools of science to turn that volume down.

Speaker 1 It's a simple first step that everybody can take.

Speaker 72 How do we do that?

Speaker 1 So the first thing that you can do is first realize, you said, you know, how do we know we're stressed?

Speaker 1 Self, you know, self-reflect for a moment.

Speaker 1 Am I telling everybody I'm stressed all the time?

Speaker 1 Do I not sleep well because of stress? When you do that, there are my number one and number two tools that I immediately go to. And I know you've talked about this so many times on your show.

Speaker 1 Number one, because it is immediate, is deep breathing, breath work. Why?

Speaker 1 Because breath work activates the equal and opposite part of that sympathetic fight or flight system, the parasympathetic system.

Speaker 1 I told you all the things that stress activates, heart rate rays, respiration rays, you know, your blood rushing.

Speaker 1 I can't control where my blood rushes, and I can't really control my heart rate, rate, but I can control exactly how deep and profound and frequent my breathing is.

Speaker 1 So that's why just deep breathing, just two or three times can, you know, try it out. it can really calm you down.
And if you practice it, it gets even more powerful. That's my tool, go to number one.

Speaker 1 And it's number one, because if I'm getting anxious about this interview, I could actually do this in the background. You don't even know.

Speaker 1 And I can calm myself down even in the heat of a, this is not a stressful conversation at all, but I'm pretending that, you know, it could be.

Speaker 47 Yes.

Speaker 1 Number two is moving your body. And so

Speaker 1 10 minutes of walking outside or anywhere, up and down the stairs, down the hallway, has been shown to decrease your anxiety and stress levels.

Speaker 1 It's one of the fastest way that you can use physical activity to address your stress and anxiety levels. Those are my number number one and number two go-tos.
Anybody can use.

Speaker 1 You don't even have to change your clothes.

Speaker 45 That first one, I'm so glad you brought that up.

Speaker 38 And it's a practice I do still till this day.

Speaker 6 If I'm going on stage or if I'm doing something that's anxiety inducing.

Speaker 6 And I think people are always like, Jay, wait a minute, you experience anxiety.

Speaker 64 I'm like, of course I do.

Speaker 41 It's a part of everyday life.

Speaker 51 And if I'm about to do something that feels that way,

Speaker 6 I can notice the same thing.

Speaker 68 But now that I've noticed that cue, which is like you said, it's easy for me to think, okay, well, I know I need to breathe in for a four and breathe out for more than four, which is a pattern I like.

Speaker 65 Are there any patterns that you suggest, or is it just deep breathing?

Speaker 1 You know, the easiest is just deep, you know, for three or four counts in, three or four counts out. But I like box breathing, which I know you know about.

Speaker 1 Deep breath in for four counts, hold it at the top for four counts, deep breath out for four counts, hold it at the bottom for four counts.

Speaker 1 It's funny, every time I even say that, and I often say that in these kinds of interviews, I feel myself myself

Speaker 1 de-stressing as I do that because the muscle memory of when I do do that

Speaker 1 comes in. But yes, it is such a powerful technique that everybody can use.

Speaker 41 And how do we spot our cues more closely?

Speaker 64 Because, so for a long time, I used to say I don't get stressed.

Speaker 55 And then I started to realize when I was actually still that all my stress was stored in my body.

Speaker 74 So I wouldn't get stressed mentally.

Speaker 70 I wouldn't experience it in my mind. Yeah.

Speaker 65 And I wouldn't experience it in my chest or my heart.

Speaker 4 But then I started to notice that my upper shoulders or my neck is always tight, yeah.

Speaker 6 And it took me a while before I started to recognize that stress existed in different ways, yes, as opposed to this idea of, oh, well, it's not up here, so it doesn't exist.

Speaker 66 Right, right.

Speaker 75 How do we get closer to those cues?

Speaker 49 Because I think there's two questions.

Speaker 38 One is, how do we get closer to our cues?

Speaker 51 Yeah, and the second is, when you feel that cue or trigger, how do you remind yourself to breathe?

Speaker 1 I think to get closer to your cues, the easiest answer is

Speaker 1 to spend time in open awareness of your own cues. And just as you said, and it's the same for me, they don't suddenly appear on a list in front of you.

Speaker 1 You have to go and seek them out because for you, it wasn't in your head, it was in your body.

Speaker 1 I'll never forget multiple times I've had the experience of deep tissue massage in certain places that triggered just crying in me. And I'm so sorry what was happening.
They said, no,

Speaker 1 I've just touched a point in your body that you store a lot of stress.

Speaker 7 You mean like actually crying?

Speaker 1 Actual physical crying. And it wasn't like I couldn't help it.
And it's happened. It's happened just twice, but that was my very clear cue that I also store a lot of stress and

Speaker 1 anxiety in my own body.

Speaker 1 You have to go and look for that and you have to notice it and you have to remind yourself when you've been covering up your own stress and anxiety, which I am also a master of.

Speaker 1 It takes a little exploration. And I think that listening to others and

Speaker 1 actually asking a friend, do you notice times when you think I'm more stressed than others? And sometimes you might be surprised. That might be a really good moment of realization.

Speaker 1 And so then your second question was, once you realize you're in this moment, how do you remind yourself to breathe? And that's a hard one. And I think the best way is

Speaker 1 don't wait until say, oh,

Speaker 1 I'm anxious. I need to breathe, but never having any practice with this breathing.
It is wonderful to

Speaker 1 take a class time and go to a breath meditation class. You learn so much because there is literally thousands of years of breath work technique to learn.
And I've been exploring that as well.

Speaker 1 But you don't have to get super fancy. Sometimes it's just about, you said you like the inhale and exhale for a longer time.
That is a very basic but powerful one. Explore that on YouTube.

Speaker 1 There are thousands of free meditations you can do that. I always send people there, practice it.
See which ones you like. Sometimes it's

Speaker 1 too long of a hold for people and you have to find the one that you like. Practice it.
Get it comfortable with yourself.

Speaker 1 And then it'll be easier to call it up when you do notice that moment coming up.

Speaker 77 Yeah, I agree. I think, I think that's great advice.

Speaker 46 It's you can't have something help you.

Speaker 6 It's almost like I remember being at school and they'd always train you with what happens if there was a fire.

Speaker 68 Yeah.

Speaker 61 So you're training when there isn't a fire.

Speaker 52 Yes.

Speaker 4 And so it's like, hey, when there's a fire, you're going to walk through this door.

Speaker 3 You're going to line up outside.

Speaker 64 You're going to do this. And it's almost like we need that.

Speaker 46 Yes.

Speaker 68 But when the fires appear in our mind,

Speaker 71 and you've got to do the routine before it happens in reality.

Speaker 80 Right.

Speaker 1 And if you do do it, really think about how that made you feel. Do you feel that difference? And it's important to keep exploring how different things make you feel.

Speaker 1 Because maybe you chose just a bum breath technique. It doesn't work for you.
And there are those that just won't. hack it for you.
So try other things, but stay aware.

Speaker 1 And that practice of self-awareness, I think, is so so important

Speaker 1 for the rest of our lives. I think.

Speaker 36 What's actually happening to the brain when we ignore anxiety and stress for long periods of time?

Speaker 1 Stress very physiologically releases stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol goes through the blood-brain barrier, goes into the brain.

Speaker 1 And the danger is that there are key brain areas that you want to keep healthy and thriving and growing throughout your life that high levels of

Speaker 1 consistent cortisol will damage and then eventually kill cells. And the first brain area I'll focus on is called the hippocampus, critical for memory function.

Speaker 1 And here we know that long-term stress, for example, people with PTSD, monkeys that have low rank in the pecking order, male monkeys, have tiny little hippocampi because those cells have gotten damaged and then died.

Speaker 1 And that is not good. We need what I like to call a big, fat, fluffy hippocampus for the rest of our lives.

Speaker 1 This is the area that first gets attacked in Alzheimer's disease and you want to keep that beautiful and healthy.

Speaker 1 The other brain area that is attacked in stress is your prefrontal cortex, critical for decision making, being able to shift and focus your attention. And so you are starting to damage two key areas.

Speaker 1 You know, I lead 9,000 students. The two brain areas I want to to work best in these students are the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex.

Speaker 1 And it kills me that during finals, all that stress that comes up is damaging their ability to show us all the beautiful knowledge that they learn.

Speaker 1 Of course, not just my students, but all students around the world.

Speaker 1 How can we de-stress that process and thereby help learning,

Speaker 1 help recall, help their professors know what they do understand about the topic.

Speaker 66 Yeah,

Speaker 7 what are our daily activities that are damaging the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, it is that everyday stress. It's the anxiety provoked by scary news that we read every single day, by social media.
And here I'm thinking about

Speaker 1 younger people

Speaker 1 well known how much it damages self-esteem to spend too much time on social media. All these things, we all know these stressors in our lives, but it's actually hard to put the newspaper down.

Speaker 1 It's really hard to put the phone down, but that could be such a game changer for both adults and children. And you just ask, well, what am I going to do?

Speaker 1 Have a conversation with the real person, which is what I always try and push people to do. That is such a joy and a privilege in our lives to be able to do that.
Yeah.

Speaker 64 I've really found also that

Speaker 35 if we can just find a gap between when you wake up and when you pick up your phone,

Speaker 4 it just rewires the brain.

Speaker 34 And I think we have to think about it physically, where it goes, okay, well, if I don't put my brain in this, you know, noise

Speaker 53 in the morning, just as I would never wake up to like volume 100 on any song or whatever it may be.

Speaker 6 If I just allow my brain some time to like speed up naturally and catch up with the pace of the day, then actually I'll be better at doing everything else. Yeah.

Speaker 53 Rather than when I rush my brain from zero to 100 miles per hour with 50 emails and 30 notifications.

Speaker 6 I'm expecting so much of my brain and no wonder I'm stressed out immediately because my brain's trying to compute and formulate.

Speaker 6 It's like if your partner turned to you in the morning and said, I want to have a really deep discussion about life

Speaker 58 first thing in the morning.

Speaker 51 It's like, you'd be like, oh, I don't think I can handle that right now.

Speaker 65 And it's shocking to to me how many of us are putting ourselves in stress by looking at our phones first thing in the morning.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I have a morning routine that I've come to love, which is

Speaker 1 about a 45-minute meditation when I first wake up. So that's the first thing that I do.
And I do a tea meditation, which is meditation over the brewing and drinking of tea.

Speaker 1 Because not tea bag tea, but you know, loose leaf tea, where you have to seep it for a certain amount of time or else it doesn't taste its best.

Speaker 1 And then you pour it and then you drink it and then you re-seep it. So for me, that ritual

Speaker 1 really keeps me in meditation. And what do I mean by meditation? Just, I do body scans.

Speaker 1 I have... prayers that I that I go through every morning, which is, I think, the antithesis of looking at your email.

Speaker 1 And then I do a 30-minute workout, which is, I do it online.

Speaker 1 So I do open my computer, but I'm not, you know, looking at the newspaper at the same time I'm doing my workout I'm focused on that workout and that really prepares me for the day and if I miss either one of those I feel it the rest of the day yeah definitely I love hearing that how long have you done that for I've done the meditation for nine years straight and I've missed only a few days when I have those 4 a.m.

Speaker 1 you have to get on the cab at 4 a.m. to get to the airport

Speaker 1 and exercise I've been doing for even longer I've gone through lots of habits with my my exercise, but having the morning habit and really forcing myself, not forcing, it's a habit,

Speaker 1 having the habit of even when I only have five minutes, I'll do some sort of, you know, stretch or something for that five minutes every single day and feel good about that.

Speaker 1 In addition to my good 30-minute cardio strength workout where I really sweat.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, I think we're both talking about the habits that we choose for ourselves that um that improve our mental health strengthen our brain this is what

Speaker 62 so important to choose for ourselves yeah absolutely and and i think the point is you'll get so much more out of your day yes and your brain yes i think often we think well if i skip that i used to be like this with my wife she was the one who kept drilling into me how important physical activity was yeah yeah and I was just like, no, I'm fine.

Speaker 4 And she was like, imagine how alert you'll be.

Speaker 45 Imagine how focused you'll be.

Speaker 77 And I didn't believe her. And then when I started to do it, I was like, oh, she's right.

Speaker 1 And it's such an interesting thing it's so easy to think I'll accomplish more yes if I don't make time yes for meditation breath work and working out but you won't you'll actually accomplish less you'll you'll accomplish is that what you found is that does the science show that too You know, the science shows that exercise improves your mood.

Speaker 1 It improves your ability to shift and focus your attention. Long term, it will improve your memory.

Speaker 1 And so compared to subjects or, you know, animal subjects that don't do exercise, there is better brain function in those people that are exercising. So, yes, the science is behind it.

Speaker 1 And there's beautiful science in meditation showing that there are brain areas that are enhanced within monks, for example. That's going way.
I'm never going to be a monk.

Speaker 1 But the act of meditation is an act of learning how to focus better so that I could focus on your questions and not be distracted by whatever is going on on the outside.

Speaker 1 I mean, we have a nice quiet room, but sometimes, you know, I live in New York, we're on the subway, and there's so much noise.

Speaker 1 And when you practice the meditation, you realize how powerful that is for your life, that I could choose to focus on you. That's all I'm focused on.
I'm listening to you deeply.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking about it deeply. And that is,

Speaker 1 that is an experience that not enough of us are having on a very regular basis.

Speaker 82 Yeah, why does it feel like when we're trying to do that?

Speaker 6 It almost feels like it hurts,

Speaker 46 right?

Speaker 6 Like when someone's really trying to focus, it's like you're trying to put all the energy in.

Speaker 83 People can feel like, oh God, it's so tiring or it's exhausting to be present.

Speaker 6 And it almost feels like you're having to pull yourself in a certain direction, but there's some tension and resistance back.

Speaker 79 What are we experiencing?

Speaker 74 What's going on?

Speaker 1 You know, I think part of that is our lives

Speaker 1 have been focused on getting pulled in 10 different directions at the same time. We get used to that.

Speaker 1 And so, no, I can't focus on you for a whole hour because I have 30 other things that I usually get pulled into. And that becomes your habit.
If that is your habit, I think you need to rethink that.

Speaker 1 And it's a... It's a muscle that you build.

Speaker 1 I remember my undergraduate advisor, the woman who made me want to become a neuroscientist, she used to say that new learning, and this is a new habit that you're learning, will hurt.

Speaker 1 It'll make your brain hurt because it's those dendrites that are growing and stretching out and making new connections. It's not an easy thing.
It's a metabolic load.

Speaker 1 It is an effort to build new pathways. But that's what we're doing when we're trying to focus and connect for longer periods of time than we were used to.

Speaker 45 Okay, so it's okay if it hurts.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's supposed to hurt.

Speaker 45 Right. It's almost almost like you're walking through a path that doesn't exist yet.

Speaker 36 Yes.

Speaker 51 And so you're having to pave that way.

Speaker 60 Exactly.

Speaker 74 You're the first person walking in.

Speaker 54 There's nothing ahead of you.

Speaker 73 You're chopping down the trees and leaves in front of you.

Speaker 28 Exactly.

Speaker 71 You're building the bridge, the pathways. Yes.

Speaker 6 And that's why it hurts.

Speaker 74 And it's so interesting when you think about it that way.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 65 Because you go, oh, okay.

Speaker 20 So every time I walk over that bridge,

Speaker 46 it will become stronger. Yes.

Speaker 62 And every time I step on that step, that path becomes clearer.

Speaker 54 And now it's going to be easier for me every time.

Speaker 84 Yeah.

Speaker 67 Yeah.

Speaker 64 It's, It's fascinating to me just

Speaker 66 how

Speaker 67 everything that's good for you seems hard and everything that's bad for you seems easy.

Speaker 1 Well, yes, I think

Speaker 1 at a certain point of the journey, that is absolutely the case. But at a different point of the journey,

Speaker 1 when you've

Speaker 1 cut down those trees with your machete,

Speaker 1 it feels glorious to be able to have these deep conversations with your friends and build that habit with your friends and your loved ones and build that habit of first thing in the morning,

Speaker 1 no phone and meditation. And you know how much better you're going to feel.
And that is the part of the gratitude. Yes, I have a gratitude practice.

Speaker 1 It is that, is like being grateful for all those good habits that I have been forming and throwing those away that I don't and being grateful that I threw that away.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I talked to a lot about, going back to your point around monks' brains, I talked a lot about the science by monks' brains in my first book, Think Like a Monk.

Speaker 79 And I remember a simple practice that we used to do when I lived as a monk that was really helpful to me.

Speaker 58 So we would often meditate on beads, like prayer beads.

Speaker 56 And we were always told, because we'd be meditating on those beads sometimes for two hours at a time, four hours at a time, even more.

Speaker 6 And so we were always told, when you hear the word two hours, you're just like, God, how am I going to get through two two hours?

Speaker 58 And we were always told, just focus on one bead at a time, one mantra at a time, just one at a time.

Speaker 6 And all of a sudden, it became so much easier where it was just like, it's just about this bead. It's just about this mantra.
It's just about this step.

Speaker 59 It's not about two hours.

Speaker 6 And I think sometimes when we're thinking, oh, gosh, I've got to build this new habit.

Speaker 34 I've got to work out five days a week.

Speaker 27 And I've got to, it's like that just feels so insurmountable.

Speaker 68 Yeah.

Speaker 58 Why does the brain work better with small steps and habits and changes?

Speaker 1 That's such a great question. I think that

Speaker 1 it is part of the effort that goes into something new, the novelty of praying on a single bead and

Speaker 1 kind of fighting away that instructs like, oh, I didn't get through 100 beads. I'm a failure.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of cognitive noise. And I always say for exercise and meditation, those two things that could immediately decrease your stress and anxiety levels, it's great.

Speaker 1 In fact, I tell you, I tell everybody to start small. 10 minutes of walking.
Don't even have to change your clothes or your shoes. Just a minute of deep breathing.

Speaker 1 Just put your phone on, you know, just the clock and just so you know how much that minute is. And just doing that is

Speaker 1 good enough. And the effort comes in batting away all those feelings of failure and the difference between your one minute and 10 hours that you really wanted to do.

Speaker 66 Definitely.

Speaker 46 What's the difference between everyday anxiety and then having an anxiety disorder?

Speaker 65 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So anxiety is a normal human emotion. Everybody has anxiety.
I think it's been kind of clinicalized. Oh, I have anxiety.
Yeah, everybody has anxiety, but anxiety exists on a very, very large spectrum.

Speaker 1 So we all have anxiety.

Speaker 1 And yes, the highest levels of anxiety that prevent you from doing the everyday things that you need to do in your life, having a job, and having relationships, and going out and doing things, that's clinical.

Speaker 1 And it is just

Speaker 1 kind of going down that rabbit hole of anxiety and

Speaker 1 needing more help, clinical help to get you out with cognitive behavioral therapy, so many different techniques that you could use.

Speaker 1 So, it's all part of a spectrum, which, you know, I hope that makes people feel better because you can come back. Everybody has it.

Speaker 1 Let's just pull you back from that highest level and let you take advantage of,

Speaker 1 I think one of the things

Speaker 1 I love the most from my book, Good Anxiety, is that it's not about anxiety is so bad. Let me just tell you the tools to get rid of it in your life.

Speaker 1 It is the acknowledgement that anxiety is a protective mechanism. My invitation is, can I invite you to try and use your anxiety to help protect you, to actually give you some gifts or superpowers?

Speaker 1 Because there's a lot that we can learn from our anxiety and all our uncomfortable emotions.

Speaker 51 I think when people hear that, they may think, oh, that's cool, but I don't believe it.

Speaker 7 Like, how could I believe that anxiety could be my superpower?

Speaker 68 How do I do that? How do I make that switch from going, I'm scared to actually I'm prepared?

Speaker 60 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So I start with, I think, the easiest to implement.

Speaker 1 So this one is the superpower of productivity that comes from a very common form of anxiety that everybody has, which is the to-do list that comes up at inopportune times.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, you get overwhelmed. For me, it comes up right before I'm going to go to sleep.
And so it prevents me from going to sleep. So annoying.

Speaker 1 And so the flip for that is to take the to-do list. And first, I want you to notice that all of these things are things that you care about doing well.

Speaker 1 They're usually about your job or your relationship or money, money things.

Speaker 1 All good to be concerned about them. The trick is to take that

Speaker 1 what-if list and turn it into a to-do list. And so for me, I don't do it in the middle of the night.

Speaker 1 I wait till the next morning, but I've trained myself that I'm going to take care of each one of those worries and do something active.

Speaker 1 If there is an issue at work, I'm going to talk to three people about it and try and get input for that. There's something active that you can do for every single one of your worries.

Speaker 1 And the more people you talk to about it, you realize that very productive people are already doing this. So take advantage of that trick.

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Speaker 76 And make sure you use the code on purpose.

Speaker 68 Yeah, I really like that.

Speaker 55 And one thing that's really helped me is I always look at my anxiety as revealing to me a skill I haven't yet developed.

Speaker 59 Yes.

Speaker 61 And I really believe that.

Speaker 34 It's like

Speaker 73 it's a muscle that you need to develop.

Speaker 34 So I go,

Speaker 27 if I'm anxious about going to this event and having to do small talk, it's because I haven't built the skill to be able to do small talk.

Speaker 62 So maybe if I read a book or I spoke to someone or I sat down with an expert or I listened to a podcast with an expert on how to have good conversations, all of a sudden now I know what questions to ask.

Speaker 46 And at least it makes me feel comfortable.

Speaker 27 Exactly.

Speaker 65 Or if, A, I'm nervous about the fact that I've been asked to do something at work and I know nothing about it.

Speaker 53 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Hey, let me go and take a course on it or a class on it.

Speaker 70 And I feel I always look at anxiety as just a sign of what's a skill I don't have, a quality I haven't developed, an ability or a priority I haven't made.

Speaker 68 And now let me do that.

Speaker 55 It could be the skill of having tough conversations, the skill of learning to say no, the skill of setting boundaries, whatever it may be, it's just this one skill away to not, not that I won't feel that anxiety ever again, but that I can actually better manage that anxiety when it arises.

Speaker 1 Right. I love that because you've just

Speaker 1 created a new superpower of anxiety, which is the love of learning.

Speaker 1 So can you turn your anxieties into the next learning project that you have and then get better at small talk or whatever you're anxious about? I love that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, no, it's the only thing that's ever helped me for so many years subconsciously of just, I've always experienced anxiety, but I've found that it just got less and less and less as my skills developed.

Speaker 50 Yeah.

Speaker 55 And developing those skills was hard and that took time and effort and it wasn't easy.

Speaker 67 But as those skills grew, now it was just like, oh, I can manage this.

Speaker 68 I know I can deal with this.

Speaker 6 And of course, there are always going to be things that surprise you.

Speaker 4 And then you go, oh, God, I have no skills

Speaker 47 for this one.

Speaker 74 And that's okay, too. But even if the skill is resilience, or even if the skill is learning to develop how to deal with grief, I feel these are all skills and muscles.

Speaker 61 And if they're looked at that way, we can deal with them better.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. I mean, those anxieties are really

Speaker 1 telling you what you hold dear in your life. And you think, wow, that sounds good.
I want to know what I hold dear in my life.

Speaker 1 Because the flip side of your anxiety and the flip side of grief is deep love.

Speaker 1 And so I think that all of these more difficult emotions, when seen in that light, can be embraced in a new way instead of trying to kick them out the door and never experience them again.

Speaker 1 That is not a full life if you don't have grief, because it suggests you didn't have that deep love that turns into grief when something goes away. Not that I'm wishing people grief,

Speaker 1 but that helped me so much in my periods of grief to realize that that grief would never be so deep that I could never even imagine it before it happened

Speaker 1 unless the love for those people. were so deep in the first place.
And it's like, wow,

Speaker 1 I love them more than I even realized, which was

Speaker 1 a gift to realize that and pulled me out of my grief.

Speaker 54 Wow, that's so beautiful.

Speaker 56 Could you share more on that from your perspective of

Speaker 62 how you actually got to that realization?

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 60 And how was it before you felt that way?

Speaker 1 So that realization really... really defined the way I wrote this book, Good Anxiety, because I started the book before these events and it was going to be a neuroscience-based book on anxiety.

Speaker 1 And I was going to explain the science of it so everybody could understand and it was going forward in an exciting way. And

Speaker 1 then my father passed away and he was 85 and

Speaker 1 he had dementia and he had a sudden heart attack. And it was just so,

Speaker 1 so sad. And I remember

Speaker 1 being so grateful that my brother did the eulogy because that has been my biggest fear in life to have to do a eulogy and have to stand up and talk about somebody who's just passed without crying uncontrollably.

Speaker 1 He did such a beautiful job.

Speaker 51 But

Speaker 1 the next

Speaker 1 tragedy was that three months later, my brother, who's two years younger, also passed away of a heart attack. Suddenly, he was the most fit person

Speaker 1 that you would ever know. And

Speaker 47 that was

Speaker 1 devastating

Speaker 1 to lose both of them of the same thing within three months and I was trying to go through it and I stopped writing the book because I couldn't because I was grieving and then I realized I had to I had to do his eulogy because there was nobody else left it was it was only me

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 and so a lot of soul searching what am I going to say how am I going to get through this

Speaker 1 and It was in that search that I realized that

Speaker 1 that grief grief was coming from a good place. And it actually was inspired by a workout that I was doing where the instructor said,

Speaker 1 trying to get us to work out harder, she said, with great pain comes great wisdom.

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh my God, that's what I need to know right at this moment. What is the wisdom that's coming from this huge pain that I've never felt before?

Speaker 1 And I realized that the wisdom was that the deep grief was showing me how much I loved them.

Speaker 1 And so it was still the hardest thing I've ever done to write this eulogy and stand up. But

Speaker 1 I basically invited everybody

Speaker 1 to cry along with me at the one point that was hardest to get through. And

Speaker 1 I...

Speaker 1 I got through it that way. But it allowed me to

Speaker 1 approach grief in a very different way. And

Speaker 1 I want to say I'm almost thankful for that experience

Speaker 1 because it made me search for the beauty that comes from the pain in our lives in a brand new way.

Speaker 56 Thank you so much for sharing that.

Speaker 78 And I'm so sorry for that period in your life.

Speaker 36 I can't imagine how

Speaker 56 Yeah, how challenging and stressful that is talking about stress and anxiety.

Speaker 40 And I really appreciate how you connected the dots for us because it's one thing, you know, you're this incredible researcher, professor, you have so much amazing insight, but then to apply it in real life

Speaker 60 in extreme cases is so hard.

Speaker 53 What did you learn about the brain when going through that that you didn't know already?

Speaker 1 I learned that my brain was more resilient to

Speaker 1 more resilient than I thought it it was. I expanded the range of my emotions that I had experienced in my life, which is a good thing.
I think that relativism is beautiful.

Speaker 1 That dark feeling of deep grief helps me appreciate the joyous moments better. And I think about that a lot.

Speaker 1 after this has happened. It really,

Speaker 1 that was part of the gift that I got.

Speaker 1 And yes, and it changed the way I looked at,

Speaker 1 because then I did the eulogy, I came out of it, I was feeling better. Kathy, go back to this book on anxiety, but I couldn't write it in the same way anymore.

Speaker 1 I had to find the gifts or the superpowers that came from anxiety, which I've already shared that with you, but that's the reason why I never would have, like, I don't know what the gifts are.

Speaker 1 Well, I did learn, not trick.

Speaker 1 I learned that lesson through that experience. And I applied it to the emotion of anxiety.
And I think it changed the book. Well, I know it changed the book.
I wrote it in a completely different way.

Speaker 1 And I've used those lessons in a different way in my life since that experience.

Speaker 4 Wonderful.

Speaker 53 And what did you know about the brain already at the time that helped you get through it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, as a nerdy neuroscience, I'm a neuroscientist. I know all about the mechanisms and the receptors involved in stress.

Speaker 1 And not that I studied grief per se, but grief is one, you know, gives you a lot of stress when you have grief.

Speaker 1 I think it, I think, you know, my whole life has helped me bring my

Speaker 1 more academic study of neuroscience to life.

Speaker 1 There is the lessons that I could teach and that I do teach to students about what we know about the stress system, the memory system, your prefrontal cortex, decision making, all these fascinating topics.

Speaker 1 But then there is life that comes in. And I think that what I've been doing more recently in my career,

Speaker 1 I did a very traditional academic career up to a certain point. And then I started to try and apply kind of life's lessons to neuroscience.
And so what does that mean? That means

Speaker 1 going off book and thinking about, you know, other ways to convey anxiety not just the clinical part but the um useful part for your life so that's how i would describe it absolutely how do traumatic events like that what you went through over a period of three months and i know so many friends who've been through similar things and and different things that may and maybe are not to do with grief in that way but even grief of a life you could have had people who've had breakups like how does emotional trauma actually affect the brain What's going on?

Speaker 1 Yeah. So, you know, emotional trauma also, there's a relatively simple formula with what happens, which is going back to the stress hormone cortisol.
Depending on the

Speaker 1 actual stressor and the duration of that, it is going to first kind of alert your brain. It's like, I don't want this to happen again.
It's like, this will not happen again.

Speaker 1 And that's what it was supposed to do. It's supposed to heighten your senses so you can escape from the burning building.
However, in these other life circumstances, a breakup or death that,

Speaker 1 you know, the emotional effects linger for a long time,

Speaker 1 they might

Speaker 1 actually cause what's called fear memories to develop. These are memories dependent on a structure called the amygdala that, again, are trying to protect you, like don't have this happen again,

Speaker 1 and steer you away from events. So, I might have been steered away from eulogies or speaking in front of crowds, which I do all the time, but yeah,

Speaker 1 I would have been steered away from eulogies.

Speaker 1 When you have these

Speaker 1 broader realizations about what's going on, you could actually learn in a deeper way from them.

Speaker 1 And instead of being steered away, instead of developing a fear memory that is very strong and hard to get rid of, you can have a deeper learning that sharing those

Speaker 1 very personal, very deep, very difficult emotions to feel, talk about new synapses forming,

Speaker 1 is a deeply cathartic process

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 brought me closer to my family and to everybody. that was there, including all my brother's friends, many of whom I didn't know.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 yeah.

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Speaker 86 In your family at Thanksgiving, do you go around and say what you're thankful for?

Speaker 12 A lot of families do that and it's such a great tradition.

Speaker 2 Sometimes we just need to remind ourselves what's important.

Speaker 63 Family and friends.

Speaker 7 Real human connection.

Speaker 87 There's no better time to find that connection than Thanksgiving.

Speaker 11 Old friends are coming into town, reach out to them.

Speaker 32 It couldn't be easier.

Speaker 33 A quick Facebook post asking who's around. Somebody's got to get the ball rolling, right?

Speaker 4 Tag your friends.

Speaker 25 Maybe your high school class has a Facebook alumni group.

Speaker 31 Even just going onto Facebook and commenting on friends' posts can lead to a connection.

Speaker 91 Congratulations on a new baby.

Speaker 85 A happy birthday.

Speaker 76 Point is a little connection goes a long way, but you've got to make the connection first.

Speaker 85 And Thanksgiving really is the perfect opportunity.

Speaker 45 Happy Thanksgiving and say hello to your friends for me.

Speaker 50 Yeah.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Is it possible to prepare for future trauma or is the only only way to be prepared for it to go through it can we build resilience before a traumatic event yeah i think um i wouldn't recommend that everybody goes out to try and prepare for trauma but but you know everybody has some form of trauma and i think

Speaker 1 going back to your superpower of anxiety and learning learning from that um and also realizing this was another big realization for me

Speaker 1 You're not going to get rid of that deep negative emotion. It's there for a reason to warn you against this is a bad time.

Speaker 1 If you didn't have this warning, you would be walking in the middle of the freeway with no care in the world. So you're not going to get rid of that.

Speaker 1 to focus yourself on the learning that comes out of it. And that, yes, it might take some time.

Speaker 1 And to give yourself that time, maybe what I'm trying to get at is the self-compassion that can come from any trauma that you have and learning to

Speaker 1 apply that to yourself, I think, is a really good thing that you can prepare.

Speaker 54 Yeah, I think when you lose someone you love,

Speaker 65 that painful feeling inside is a reminder that life is sacred.

Speaker 60 Yes. That.

Speaker 62 You should tell the people that are close to you that you love them.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 62 That you should really value and prioritize time time together and moments together.

Speaker 36 It's a reminder that pain's just pushing you in the right direction, nudging you in the right direction to say, don't make the wrong priorities, don't set the wrong focuses in your life.

Speaker 53 Right.

Speaker 76 And if it went away, as it does, we also forget that.

Speaker 45 As the distance grows from when you've lost someone

Speaker 51 and the distance from that pain, it's not that the pain goes away, but it gets less and less and less.

Speaker 43 We also forget that.

Speaker 74 And then all of a sudden something else happens again and we've reprioritized, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 12 Why do we forget lessons that we learn?

Speaker 1 Well, if I could answer that,

Speaker 1 that would be the $64 million

Speaker 1 question. And actually, part of the answer is

Speaker 1 the brain evolved to help us remember

Speaker 1 those lessons around dangerous situations that we have. So we don't go in that direction anymore.

Speaker 1 yes we might forget but but actually our brain is has evolved to make those kinds of fear memories or difficulty memories uh the hardest to get rid of that is why ptsd is so hard to get rid of and those you don't want to be carrying around so i would ask a flip question which is

Speaker 1 How come we don't relive our most glorious memories more often in our lives. And in fact, I think of that because that is my favorite brain hack

Speaker 1 from Good Anxiety, which are tools that you can use to decrease your anxiety.

Speaker 1 And this tool is called joy conditioning. And it is designed to specifically counter fear conditioning dependent on the amygdala.

Speaker 1 Joy conditioning is dependent on another structure called the hippocampus, which allows us to form and retain our everyday memories for events.

Speaker 1 And so joy conditioning is simply using all the tools that we know about neuroscience that make those kinds of memories stick, which is reliving them.

Speaker 1 I just went on a beautiful week-long yoga breath work. It was actually not yoga, breathwork retreat.

Speaker 1 And I completely unplugged. And so what I'm practicing my joy conditioning on is what it felt to be in that circle every day, every morning, every afternoon.
I remember that the ocean was so loud.

Speaker 1 We were right by the sea. The heat was so hot.

Speaker 1 The food, the fruits were so amazing, just the flavor of the fruits. And those are the things that

Speaker 1 that revivifier of the what, where, why, when, the tastes, the smells, the sounds, that's what strengthens the memory. I am strengthening this joyous memory.
And I do that consciously.

Speaker 1 And I invite everybody to do this to kind of counteract all those negative memories that are hard to get rid of.

Speaker 1 Let's fill our brains with all the most joyous, funny, fun memories of our lives.

Speaker 55 Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 77 Joy conditioning is such a great hack and habit.

Speaker 64 There was, when I went on tour last year, we went to nearly 40 cities across the world.

Speaker 73 Wow.

Speaker 59 And at the end of them, I'd lead a meditation.

Speaker 68 And I didn't have a name for it, but that's exactly the meditation I'd do.

Speaker 6 I'd ask everyone to go back to a moment where they experienced the most love and joy in their life

Speaker 61 and to relive it in the feelings.

Speaker 73 And I was thinking about earlier this year, you reminded me, as you were talking about your breathwork retreat.

Speaker 49 Earlier this year, I visited Bhutan

Speaker 61 and I'd never been before.

Speaker 36 And for anyone who doesn't know, Bhutan is this.

Speaker 70 tiny, beautiful country landlocked between India and China, right in between.

Speaker 62 And it's got a beautiful culture.

Speaker 6 They're famously known for measuring GNH, not GDP, and GNH is gross national happiness.

Speaker 6 And so it's the culture of Bhutan is very, very much mindful and being present.

Speaker 55 And I was asked to lead a session there.

Speaker 4 And I remember we'd gone inside one of these old Bhutanese buildings.

Speaker 38 It was, we're in this beautiful courtyard surrounded by candles.

Speaker 73 It got really, really dark where even though I was giving a presentation, no one could see me.

Speaker 46 They could only hear me.

Speaker 4 And before it got dark, when it was just, the sun was about to set, I asked everyone to take a mental picture.

Speaker 62 And I always loved that technique, the 5-4-3-2-1 technique.

Speaker 49 And so I asked everyone to look at five things they could see, four things they could touch, three things they could hear, two things they could smell, and one thing they could taste.

Speaker 73 And I was like, this is how we take a mental picture.

Speaker 47 And now literally, if I close my eyes, I can go back there right now to that moment because I took in the colors, like you were just saying,

Speaker 4 took in the shade of the sky, took in the shapes of the bhutanese architecture

Speaker 43 like all of these and as you were describing the fruits and the colors and the breath yes and and i just feel like if we all

Speaker 34 i i love what you're saying because i do think we have so much joy in our lives yes but we relive the negativity more

Speaker 50 so much if if you had a tough journey coming here or i did we would talk about how tough it was the whole day yes but if we had the most beautiful journey coming here we wouldn't talk about it once exactly and we'd just ignore it yeah and feel like well that's normal yeah and but what's become normal is us repeating our challenges right when does talking about our problems and our anxiety actually help our brain versus hurt our brain I think it depends on how you talk about your anxiety.

Speaker 1 And I think, again, going back to this learning process, can you talk about your anxiety as

Speaker 1 what it brings you, what you learned from either either the fantastic way you handed your anxiety or the non-optimal way.

Speaker 1 And then think about, well, how will I do that differently the next time? That is the classic growth mindset. And if we can learn how to talk about our fear, our anxiety that way,

Speaker 1 that is beautiful. In my meditation this morning, actually,

Speaker 1 it was an auditory, you know, I was listening to a guided meditation. They asked me to think about four things, and I just loved it.
I didn't know this was coming up. It was, what do you fear?

Speaker 1 What scares you?

Speaker 1 What brings you joy?

Speaker 1 And what brings you hope? And I thought, wow, what great things to ponder.

Speaker 1 And it really kind of brought things into focus for me when I, the first thing that came to mind, what do I fear?

Speaker 1 Who do I fear losing more people?

Speaker 1 What am I scared of? And there it was, you know, I get scared of people's opinions about myself.

Speaker 1 What brings me joy, all the friends that bring me joy, and what do I hope for when I want to build in this world?

Speaker 1 So it's about approaching, and there's anxiety in that list that everybody will do when they, if they choose to do those four things. But again, anxiety is pointing you towards what you hold dear.

Speaker 1 And all of those questions

Speaker 1 point out what you hold dear and

Speaker 1 what your aspirations are. So

Speaker 1 to summarize, mindset is so critical as we are living, even as we're talking about our bad day, you know, our bad parking experience or driving experience. Is it to learn?

Speaker 1 Or is it to commiserate or just to, you know, or you're not realizing you are focusing too much on a negative thing,

Speaker 1 mindset and awareness.

Speaker 66 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I, and also what you're saying is this overamplification as well of something that actually was quite insignificant.

Speaker 41 Yeah.

Speaker 64 Or if it was significant, you're talking about looking at our challenges or talking about them in a way that takes accountability and future accountability.

Speaker 61 And that's what I love, this idea of, well, let me talk about what went wrong today.

Speaker 64 And maybe I shouldn't take that route to work anymore.

Speaker 6 Or, you know, maybe let me talk about what went went wrong in this conversation with someone I love.

Speaker 4 And maybe I've got to set better boundaries.

Speaker 3 It's always about a solution-oriented growth focus, as you said.

Speaker 40 Yeah, but so many of our conversations today, especially about anxiety and stress, are victim-based.

Speaker 38 And how do we make that switch?

Speaker 34 Because when you feel like the victim, it feels so real to you.

Speaker 30 It does, yeah.

Speaker 43 And you do feel so hurt that if someone said, Well, what could you do differently?

Speaker 73 You'd be like, Nothing.

Speaker 75 I did everything the best I could.

Speaker 68 So, how do we open up that switch from anxiety to growth?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think that something that has really helped me is to pay attention to who you are talking to, who is feeding you information in your life.

Speaker 1 And if it's too negative and if it, you know, you know, this person is the best complainer in the world and...

Speaker 1 And you join in because it feels good to complain, you know, with a friend about something, step back and instead choose somebody who has that growth mindset that can open up other possible ways to think about that.

Speaker 1 Do it yourself. Think, okay, you know, you can do an exercise.
Do the complainer mindset

Speaker 1 on yourself, by yourself, and then do the growth mindset. And ask yourself, how does that feel?

Speaker 1 What does it feel if I just go down the road of the complainer versus what if like, oh, I actually like that idea. What if I do that next time? Can you inspire yourself?

Speaker 1 So many different routes and coaches,

Speaker 1 therapists can, they're experts at doing this as well. So that's another route to go.
But podcasts are another,

Speaker 1 this is a common topic in podcast world these days.

Speaker 72 Definitely.

Speaker 59 What does healing actually look like in the brain from trauma?

Speaker 81 Like from a chemical perspective, like what's actually happening when we're healing?

Speaker 1 I must say, I'm more of an expert not on healing from trauma, but on

Speaker 1 growth in the positive direction. And so, here's what growth can look like based on the things that we've already talked about.

Speaker 1 So, we talked about the effects that the fact that moving your body can have an immediate positive effect on your anxiety, also on your depression, decrease your stress response.

Speaker 1 What's happening there? Every single time you move your body, you're releasing a whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain. I like to call it a neurochemical bubble bath for your brain.
I love that.

Speaker 1 And so you're giving yourself this bubble bath. What's in that bubble bath? Well, you've heard some of these neurochemicals before.
Dopamine, I know you love talking about dopamine.

Speaker 1 You and so many other people talk about dopamine in such interesting ways. Serotonin, neuroadrenaline, endorphins, that's what's being released in this bubble bath.

Speaker 1 And so, not surprisingly, you feel better after you walk. That is why you're feeling better.

Speaker 1 But the other thing that gets released is growth factors. Growth factors get released and they go to the hippocampus and they actually build new brain cells in the hippocampus.

Speaker 1 They help new brain cells grow in the hippocampus. Now, you want...
as many shiny new hippocampal brain cells as you can get, which means that, and they don't pop up like mushrooms. It takes a while.

Speaker 1 You need to keep up that physical activity. And for that, the best way to get high levels of growth factors in your bubble bath is to do an aerobic workout, any workout that increases your heart rate.

Speaker 1 Now, this gives you lots of options. You like to dance, go dance.
You like to take your dog for a walk, go take your dog for a power walk. Like to walk, go for a walk.

Speaker 1 Anything that gets your heart rate up, I don't care what it is,

Speaker 1 will help with this, but keep it up. And it's like I picture a watering can with growth factors going on your left and your right hippocampus, making it big and fat and fluffy.
And that is one of the

Speaker 1 harbingers to great brain growth.

Speaker 1 The other brain area, which I'm sure is huge in you, is your prefrontal cortex, living a life of a monk and doing that deep practice of focusing your attention, keeping it there makes your area 10, which is right behind your forehead, enhanced, enriched, not because of new neurons, but likely because of new synapses.

Speaker 1 And so basically, what a healed brain looks like is a bigger, fatter, fluffier brain that is kind of flush with good neurochemicals and is building new synaptic connections.

Speaker 1 That is kind of the beautiful picture of what I call positive brain plasticity.

Speaker 5 given and Chase Sapphire Reserve has been my gateway to the world's most captivating destinations.

Speaker 11 It grounds you, expands you, and connects you to something deeper.

Speaker 11 You're juggling a lot, full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family.

Speaker 79 And now you're thinking about grad school?

Speaker 9 That's not crazy.

Speaker 28 That's ambitious.

Speaker 77 At American Public University, they respect the hustle and they're built for it.

Speaker 82 Their flexible online master's programs are made for real life because big dreams deserve a real path.

Speaker 6 Learn more about APU's 40 plus career relevant master's degrees and certificates at apu.apus.edu.

Speaker 19 APU built for the hustle.

Speaker 12 A lot of families do that and it's such a great tradition.

Speaker 7 Family and friends, real human connection.

Speaker 87 There's no better time to find that connection connection than Thanksgiving.

Speaker 30 A quick Facebook post asking who's around.

Speaker 33 Somebody's got to get the ball rolling, right?

Speaker 76 Point is, a little connection goes a long way, but you've got to make the connection first.

Speaker 64 You make it sound so simple in terms of what we need to do.

Speaker 68 When you're talking about breathing and moving.

Speaker 47 Yes.

Speaker 49 Like it's as simple as that.

Speaker 65 What if we're doing breathing and moving and we're still not feeling positive benefits?

Speaker 20 What could be at play there?

Speaker 1 Well, you know, I think that sometimes it's hard to appreciate what's going on. It could be that you're not moving quite in the same way.

Speaker 1 I think it's easy to get in a habit of moving and so sometimes you need to push yourself a little bit more. If you're doing 10 minutes of walking, maybe try 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 And it's, you know, there are some pillars that not just me, but so many neuroscientists have shown are so important for brain plasticity, which is actually what my undergraduate advisor discovered as she was a young neuroscientist in the 1960s at UC Berkeley, Marion Diamond.

Speaker 1 And so exercise was one of the pillars.

Speaker 1 Stress reduction that comes from meditation.

Speaker 1 Social interaction. We are social beings.
I'm sorry,

Speaker 1 social media does not count. Person-to-person interaction.
That is what humans were evolved to do. Sleep, which we haven't talked about, but is so critically important.

Speaker 1 And the fifth pillar is good nutrition. Social interaction, sorry, I need to add that social interaction doesn't mean

Speaker 1 just

Speaker 1 conversations. I include love there.
Having love in your life is something that neuroscientists don't often talk about, but it is absolutely critical for the health of your brain.

Speaker 58 And how do you define love from a neuroscience perspective?

Speaker 1 Well, so you can study the neurobiology of love and compare the brain areas that get active when you look at the picture of an acquaintance versus the picture of somebody that you might have what would you see you would see you would see reward areas lighting up but other areas social interaction areas as well and one of the most interesting findings that i love from that neurobiology of love fMRI study of love literature is that they've also started to look at how does the brain response to your loved one change from the the first throes of romantic love when you can't get enough of each other to a relationship that has evolved to something stable but very, very loving?

Speaker 1 And what happens is it goes from

Speaker 1 just lots of lots of dopamine and lots of reward areas and kind of a suppression of the amygdala and kind of the fear. You're fearless when you are first in love.

Speaker 1 And I know, you know, I felt fearless. I don't know if in a good way, but we feel fearless.

Speaker 1 And it starts to evolve into a pattern that looks like the maternal or paternal pattern, that is that protective element. And we can't see everything from fMRI, but

Speaker 1 I thought that's such a beautiful pattern to think about, that, yes, I can't sustain that first, you know, flush of love for the rest of my life, but that deep love that you do feel for a child, that is what comes with long-term commitment.

Speaker 56 I'd never heard about that from a neuroscience. That's so interesting.
Yeah. That's so interesting, that romantic love.
Yeah.

Speaker 58 But the way it looks afterwards is more paternal and protective.

Speaker 47 Yes.

Speaker 47 Yes. Not in every single

Speaker 1 morsel, but when you look at the relationships that you admire, those long-term relationships, there is the devotion that is there.

Speaker 1 That of course you see what for, you know, protection for your young child. It's not identical, but that devotion is beautiful.
That's what's moving about those kinds of relationships.

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 54 And I feel like today it's become harder and harder and harder, even just in how people gather.

Speaker 18 Yeah.

Speaker 49 Like I feel like I was just watching, what did I just see? Gladiator 2.

Speaker 52 And

Speaker 68 I remember watching Gladiator 1.

Speaker 4 And I was just, while I was watching it, I was just thinking about the fact that the Roman Coliseum was so big.

Speaker 77 Yeah.

Speaker 4 And that people would gather every week.

Speaker 73 I mean, they'd gather for the worst reason whatsoever.

Speaker 4 But the idea that so many people would gather

Speaker 73 every week, or I think at one point it was every day.

Speaker 54 And I'm like, first of all, what is everyone doing in their spare time?

Speaker 45 But

Speaker 25 so many people would gather. So many people would be together.

Speaker 49 Of course, if we look at whether it's community centers, churches, temples, the places of gathering, today we have less and less places of gathering.

Speaker 61 Even though there's millions of people going to listen to this episode,

Speaker 55 they're not in the same place listening to it.

Speaker 61 And I know that if we did have a million people here right now,

Speaker 68 even if we had a portion of the people that listened to the episode here, they could then talk about it and discuss it and exchange it.

Speaker 85 And they could look at each other's eyes and be like, oh, you feel that too?

Speaker 51 Oh my gosh, I went through that grief and how amazing would that be?

Speaker 68 And we're losing that.

Speaker 46 And so the ability to create love and connection is becoming harder and harder and harder because our places of similar value are now digital.

Speaker 51 Right.

Speaker 55 If this is a place, I know everyone who listens to us has similar values, cares about similar things, but they're not meeting each other.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 53 And, you know, we're, we're trying to do that by when I go on tour, that's really one of my biggest goals. Yeah.

Speaker 61 Because I'm hoping when everyone walks out, they're all going to just talk to each other and ask each other questions.

Speaker 43 Should we be forcing ourselves to have places to gather of similar value?

Speaker 4 Like, should we make that a priority?

Speaker 1 Absolutely. And I immediately think of the university.
And that is a natural place of gathering.

Speaker 1 In-person universities, you're gathering every single day, multiple times a day. But sometimes I see the stress and the worry of, do I, you know, am I smart enough, you know, in this room?

Speaker 1 pushes people apart and then they go and they go on their phone and it's more comfortable to do that. That is what I'm trying to shift so that we take full advantage of this person-to-person

Speaker 1 place of gathering at our university, that they feel connected to each other. They feel like they belong there for whatever thing that you want to promote.

Speaker 1 I, as Dean, want to promote the joy of learning. That is what I want to teach them.
That is what I want them to feel like.

Speaker 1 And so, yes, all of you university professors out there, you have this power to make your place of gathering one of of these places where people are talking and interacting.

Speaker 1 And of course we all try that. It's harder because of the pandemic and we're not used to being together as much in society or

Speaker 1 in our growing up. So the answer to your question is yes.
It's our responsibility to do that. How can we do that more?

Speaker 45 Yeah, I love that example. I saw...

Speaker 60 I read a study that said 80% of us pull out our phone in a crowd just to avoid conversation and contact.

Speaker 61 And so I love what you're saying about building it on a college campus.

Speaker 81 And I think the same applies inside a corporation if people are coming to work, even if they're coming to work three days a week.

Speaker 60 As a dean yourself, how do you do that when you've got targets?

Speaker 48 I'm sure there's results you have to get to.

Speaker 46 You've got things, deadlines you have to meet.

Speaker 54 You've got a ton of stuff on your plate.

Speaker 62 As does a CEO of a major corporation or an organization.

Speaker 20 How do you prioritize a love for learning and belonging and connection?

Speaker 4 Not just as nice things that you say, but actually to do.

Speaker 51 How do you do that? Because I see it as very genuine from you.

Speaker 46 It's real.

Speaker 1 Absolutely. And so how do I prioritize it? I just make it a priority and I decide the actions that I'm going to do to get to that goal.

Speaker 1 So for example, I am literally strategizing about how I could get in front of

Speaker 1 as many of those 9,000 students that I have multiple times during four years with us. I see them all, every single first year student I see, every single one graduating, I see.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of time between that. What can I do to have a meaningful, how should I go on tour just like you do, but talk to the first years, the second years, the third years.

Speaker 1 I loved my college experience because I was imbued with the love of learning. And so I do that through the coursework that I provide for my students.

Speaker 1 That is, actually, I'm trying to develop it right now. It is an online class, but with an in-person component so that I could kind of gut up to scale.

Speaker 1 The first time I did it, it's called the fluffy brain course.

Speaker 1 So I want to give all the students in this course a fluffy brain, teaching them a lot about what we've just spent the last hour talking about. But there's always going to be an in-person component.

Speaker 1 And the goal of this class is to inspire them to do person, not inspire them. It's part of the class.

Speaker 1 that's a great thing about a class i could assign things to you so your assignment is to do a personal experiment about exercise how are you going to up your exercise for the next week but first you're going to just notice your mood your regular mood state so that self-awareness and the next week you are going to propose something do it increase your exercise and then self-reflect about that and we will we will explore that and talk about it together i love that and they have to do it they have to do it brilliant yeah I'm really happy that you're saying this because I do think as leaders in different institutions and organizations,

Speaker 55 there's such a, there's a responsibility, but there's also just a vision for what an amazingly happy, fluffy brain community looks like.

Speaker 80 Yes.

Speaker 50 And

Speaker 59 when I think about it coming from college, it's hard because

Speaker 6 People are coming from so many different motivations.

Speaker 53 Yes.

Speaker 70 Right. Someone's coming there for the best job in the world.
Someone's coming there for an amazing amazing social experience.

Speaker 70 Someone's coming there to compete with everyone else.

Speaker 72 Right.

Speaker 66 You've got all these drivers.

Speaker 72 And to kind of take everyone's drivers and point it in one direction is one of the hardest things to do in the world because everyone's got their background and their walk of life.

Speaker 6 And I remember in the monastery, it's similar to what you said, our senior most monk would always talk about three qualities above all qualities.

Speaker 70 And it was humility, tolerance, and compassion.

Speaker 51 That was it.

Speaker 48 And so if you went to one of his lectures, that's all he was going to talk about.

Speaker 60 And what you realized slowly was that, at least for me, I found that those became qualities that I aspired for because I recognized they were most valued in this place, even though I may have come from a different set of values before.

Speaker 81 I would have come from like ambition, drive, whatever it was.

Speaker 64 And all of a sudden, it's humility, tolerance, compassion.

Speaker 11 And then you saw those who accepted and those who rejected it as well.

Speaker 38 There were some people who just went, oh, yeah, whatever, who cares?

Speaker 56 And then there were some that went, no, that seems to be the truth.

Speaker 49 And so what do you find is the healthiest way to encourage people in the right direction?

Speaker 43 Because people don't want to be told. Right.

Speaker 4 And people don't want to be preached to.

Speaker 6 So how do you do it in a way that actually the brain digests?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I start with the official greeting of the College of Arts and Science, which is, Jay, you have a beautiful brain.

Speaker 1 And so I invite all the students when they see me on the street to come up and say, you have a beautiful brain. And of course, I will say it back to them.

Speaker 1 And I love starting from there because that is

Speaker 1 the truth, the neurobiological truth, that every single one of the brains of my students is beautiful. Your brain is beautiful.
My brain is beautiful.

Speaker 1 And no matter what your motivation for being in this space with me, it has a beautiful brain. And from there, we go from, which hopefully provides a sense of belonging.
We go to let's share.

Speaker 1 Let's share what you have to give from your beautiful brain, because your brain has something to give that is different than what my brain.

Speaker 1 And let's just provide a situation and an environment that's open to all of that sharing. And talk about the fact that, no, it's not about competition.
It's not about getting the highest mark.

Speaker 1 It's learning the deepest for whatever class you are. And I know these are hard priorities, but

Speaker 1 I'm building them over the last two and a half years and it's really a joy to be able to do that.

Speaker 11 It grounds you, expands you and connects you to something deeper.

Speaker 5 You're juggling a lot.

Speaker 11 Full-time job, side hustle, maybe a family.

Speaker 79 And now you're thinking about grad school?

Speaker 9 That's not crazy, that's ambitious.

Speaker 77 At American Public University, they respect the hustle and they're built for it.

Speaker 82 Their flexible online master's programs are made for real life because big dreams deserve a real path.

Speaker 6 Learn more about APU's 40-plus career-relevant master's degrees and certificates at apu.apus.edu.

Speaker 19 Apu built for the hustle.

Speaker 12 A lot of families do that, and it's such a great tradition.

Speaker 63 Family and friends.

Speaker 7 Real human connection.

Speaker 87 There's no better time to find that connection than Thanksgiving.

Speaker 33 A quick Facebook post asking who's around. Somebody's got to get the ball rolling, right?

Speaker 76 Point is, a little connection goes a long way, but you've got to make the connection first.

Speaker 78 They're so lucky to have you. Oh, thank you.

Speaker 34 They really are.

Speaker 36 That's such a, you know, to leave college with that mindset, with a love for deep learning, I think will set people up for so much more success

Speaker 73 than just a great job that eventually may end up being the job that they don't want to be in

Speaker 6 and a career that they don't enjoy.

Speaker 59 And then when you realize that and you don't have a deep love for learning,

Speaker 36 that becomes really, really hard. And that's kind of what I see.

Speaker 80 I feel like I speak to a lot of people who are kind of got the job that they thought they want out of college.

Speaker 78 And then five years in, maybe even quicker, they're like, it's actually not what I wanted.

Speaker 70 And now I'm trying to find meaning in life.

Speaker 59 But the problem is I didn't have that deep love for learning.

Speaker 54 And so now I have to build it later on.

Speaker 6 So it's so lucky to have you.

Speaker 81 Oh, thank you.

Speaker 6 It's really amazing.

Speaker 55 I wanted to ask you, when you say that affirmation, I love that you have a beautiful brain.

Speaker 36 Does positive thinking and positive affirmations, do they actually work?

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 I mean, there are studies showing that if you take a group of people and have them do positive affirmations, not just saying them a certain number of times every day, versus people that don't do those positive affirmations, their affect is better.

Speaker 1 It's higher, you know,

Speaker 1 less negative affect and more positive affect. Yes, it does have an effect, which makes sense.
Our brain takes in everything that's happening to us.

Speaker 1 So, you know, this is why we talked about looking at the people that you are, that you're, that's feeding you information are they cynical are they negative or are they giving you a growth mindset are they are they giving you interesting new possibilities to go to very important to ask yourself that i wanted to ask you wendy if it's okay a couple of questions from your first book about memory yeah sure uh because i just think it's such a fascinating subject and when we think about the brain and memory I think there's there's just there's so much connection there that I think would fascinate people.

Speaker 6 I wanted to ask you, why is it that we can remember different things about the same event when you're there with the same people?

Speaker 79 Why is that?

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So sorry to say, but our memory does not work very well generally. We think, oh, you know, I'm young.
I have a great memory. No, our memory is not great.

Speaker 1 And so the reason why

Speaker 1 two people at the same event remember different things is that we are focused on these different things. And let me just go over the four things that makes memory stick.

Speaker 1 This works at all ages ages based on the neurophysiology and biology of this hippocampus that we talked about, critical for forming and retaining new long-term memories. So what makes memory stick?

Speaker 1 Repetition. So you and I might be at the same event and you're focused on one thing and it's the same event, but event is big.
I'm focused on something else.

Speaker 1 So you're repeating something that I never saw and I'm seeing something that you never saw. Repetition.
Association.

Speaker 1 We remember things better when they're associated with other things that are in our long-term memory.

Speaker 1 So we might be easier to remember a friend of a friend that we know really, really well, and they introduce us versus somebody that you don't know at all and you're trying to remember them from anybody.

Speaker 1 Association. Novelty.
If it's really novel, you've never experienced this in your life, it tends to be more memorable because our brains are focused on novelty.

Speaker 1 It's a danger kind of, you know, we have to pay attention to novelty.

Speaker 1 And maybe there are things at the event that were really novel to you that, like, I've seen a million times, and my brain just completely ignores them.

Speaker 1 And the fourth thing that makes memory stick is emotional resonance. So, so we remember the happiest and the saddest points in our life.
That's what this structure, the amygdala, helps with.

Speaker 1 It kind of

Speaker 1 helps those really emotional memories stick better.

Speaker 1 And again, at this same event, you might be moved by something that either I didn't see or just I wasn't moved by because that wasn't in my in my life experience.

Speaker 1 So, so there's lots of different reasons why two different people will have sometimes very different memories of the same event.

Speaker 72 Yeah.

Speaker 44 And I have a friend who is very present, like, you know, in the moment, but if I was to say to them to remember something from one, two years back,

Speaker 7 even from like 15 years back, they cannot recall it at all.

Speaker 47 Yeah.

Speaker 68 Is that an issue?

Speaker 1 You know, memory is also, there's a lot of variability.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I remember at

Speaker 1 I met somebody with something called highly superior autobiographical memory. I don't know if you've heard of this.
They did this great show on 60 Minutes about People.

Speaker 1 It was actually discovered by colleagues of mine, neuroscientists at UC Irvine. And these are people that have extraordinary memory for detail.

Speaker 1 So they could remember when they were eight years old, what was on TV at 7 p.m., 7.30, 8 p.m., and

Speaker 1 this incredible memory, it gets in the way,

Speaker 1 but there's on one end that form of memory, and then all the way to, there's actually

Speaker 1 particularly poor memory in that same vein.

Speaker 1 I'm not sure if two years ago, memories don't stick as long as the person can, you know, live their lives and then they have regular memory for the things they need to live their lives for.

Speaker 1 But but um they're yeah there's a there's a wide variety of memory levels that that can exist in the world so that's not a sign for dementia or alzheimer's or like no how old are they no they're young they're young yeah so so so many people have this fear of dementia i have dementia in my family um

Speaker 1 it's uh uh

Speaker 1 our memories also um here's a tip for everybody they get worse as a as we age because we know and we've experienced more in our life. It's called interference.

Speaker 1 So I didn't know anything when I was in high school. My memory was better because I had nothing to interfere.
Now I have so much to keep track of.

Speaker 1 I give myself some slack when I don't remember certain things.

Speaker 1 That's why I have an assistant to tell me

Speaker 1 what I really need to remember. But I'm not worried because

Speaker 1 there is a lot of interference in my life and I take that into account.

Speaker 72 Yeah.

Speaker 64 And if we want to strengthen our memory, what would you suggest?

Speaker 1 Yeah. So strengthening your memory is all about being present to what you really want to remember using those four techniques.
Now, you can't make something

Speaker 1 emotionally resonant

Speaker 1 unless you try and make it funny. So that's actually one technique that I've used.
If I really want to try and remember somebody's name or something, I try and create a funny image about it.

Speaker 1 But sorry, repetition, repetition, repetition will help your memory. No, no problem.
Association can help.

Speaker 1 So if you can associate this person or this name or this concept with something that it reminds you of to help those kind of recall

Speaker 1 lines that you can have to this memory, that can help as well. You can't make something novel if it's not completely novel, but it's not, unfortunately, a magic bullet.

Speaker 45 Wendy, you've been so kind and gracious with your time today.

Speaker 48 I feel like I've learned so much.

Speaker 45 We've talked about absolutely everything.

Speaker 73 I really hope that everyone goes and grabs a copy of your book.

Speaker 62 Good anxiety. It's brilliant.

Speaker 20 I think there's a need for us to use anxiety in the way you're saying rather than this desire to avoid it.

Speaker 62 We end every episode with a final five.

Speaker 70 So these questions have to be answered in one word to one sentence maximum.

Speaker 48 Okay.

Speaker 62 So Wendy, these are your final five.

Speaker 78 The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 1 Your brain defines who you are. Take care of it.

Speaker 78 Question number two, what is the worst advice you've ever heard or received?

Speaker 1 Put your head down and work as hard as you can until you reach your goal. I'm the one that told me that, that bad advice.

Speaker 88 I love that.

Speaker 4 Question number three, what's something you can't wait to discover about the brain?

Speaker 1 I would love

Speaker 1 to discover

Speaker 1 how to enhance joyous memories

Speaker 1 more

Speaker 1 easily.

Speaker 84 I love that.

Speaker 56 Question number four, what's something that you used to think was true about the brain, but now isn't?

Speaker 1 Oh, well, we used to think back in the early 1960s that the adult brain had no capacity to change or grow. And my whole neuroscience career has been showing how that could happen.

Speaker 1 How do you make it happen more? And what are those activities that you can bring into your life to do that beautifully?

Speaker 34 Why did we believe that?

Speaker 44 Where did that come from?

Speaker 1 It came from

Speaker 1 the point in time we were in neuroscience, there was just no evidence that there were overt changes.

Speaker 1 We didn't have deep enough microscopes to see the molecular changes, even the structural changes that we can now see very easily with our more powerful tools.

Speaker 1 And so understandably, they said, oh, I see no evidence for change. Once you reach adulthood, I see no change.

Speaker 1 And so, of course, that was the dogma until somebody said, hey, I think let's look at this in a different way.

Speaker 1 And of course, that wasn't believed at first, but then with effort, that was the concept of brain plasticity. And now we know that so much can change in the brain.

Speaker 6 Is there an age at which certain things can't change?

Speaker 1 You know, yes, for certain things, language, there's a language

Speaker 1 that's changed. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think it is, don't quote me on this, around 10 years old. It's good to learn the languages before that.
That could be a little bit on the low side.

Speaker 1 Also, vision, it's really important to get bilateral good vision. And so if you have amblyoplia, it changes your vision.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 those are things that change with age.

Speaker 83 All right.

Speaker 27 Fifth and final question. Okay.

Speaker 64 We ask this to everyone who's ever been on the show.

Speaker 81 If you could create one law that everyone in the world had to follow, what would it be?

Speaker 1 You must make at least five deep friendships in your life.

Speaker 8 It's beautiful.

Speaker 56 Thank you so much.

Speaker 81 Dr. Wendy Suzugi, you are incredible.

Speaker 35 That was so much fun.

Speaker 27 I had a great time with you.

Speaker 54 Thank you for being so personal as well and open about your own journey with grief.

Speaker 27 And I hope you'll come back onto the show.

Speaker 1 I would love to.

Speaker 40 Thank you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.

Speaker 29 If you love this episode, you will enjoy my interview with Dr.

Speaker 90 Daniel Amon on how to change your life by changing your brain.

Speaker 92 If we want a healthy mind, it actually starts with a healthy brain.

Speaker 92 You know, I've had the blessing or the curse to scan over a thousand convicted felons and over a hundred murderers, and their brains are very damaged.

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Speaker 21 Trust me, discover more at chase.com forward slash Sapphire Reserve.

Speaker 1 Ready or not, here they come. The new generation of problem solvers, innovators, and greatness is heat.

Speaker 1 Girls who are strong, smart, and bold, who lift each other up and are forging their own paths forward. They're everything they set out to be and nothing you expect them to be.

Speaker 1 Our job is to make sure everyone recognizes the potential she already has and to give her opportunities to let it shine.

Speaker 1 With your support, these girls are well on their way to changing the world, whether you're ready for them or not.

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Speaker 94 Hey, audiobook lovers, I'm Cal Penn.

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Speaker 94 Ed and I are inviting you to join the best-sounding book club you've ever heard with our new podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.

Speaker 93 Each week, we sit down with your favorite iHeart podcast hosts and some very special guests to discuss the latest and greatest audiobooks from Audible.

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Wendy Suzuki: 2 Powerful Tools To Use When You Feel Stressed Out (This Will Lower Your Anxiety in 1 Minute)

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