Dr. Caroline Leaf: How to Clean Up Your Mental Mess and Find Peace in Chaos | Wellness | E33

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That's Global SKU. Hello, my name is Tim Story. Welcome to Miracle Mentality. Remember rooftops, drawing spaceships on the ground. It's for the dreamers, the doers, the believers in something greater. In each episode, I'll invite you to rise above the mundane, to push past the messy, and learn to live boldly in the miraculous. Every episode will have practical wisdom, spiritual insight, and my guests will explore what it takes to activate your miracle mindset. Remember to subscribe, follow, and like. Welcome to the Miracle Mentality Podcast. I want to thank you guys for liking, subscribing, telling a friend, and always doing comments. That has put us in the top 10 every single week in a row, usually at number four. And thank you for that. Because there's a lot of people in this space, hundreds of thousands. So to stay constantly in the top 10 says that you're liking my guests. So thank you for that. Today I have somebody with me that I really look up to and that I learned from. Because I believe what Carol Dweck says, there's a difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. And this guest that I'm about to bring on has a growth mindset. Helping us through trauma, helping us through pain, helping us not to be just stuck in our lives. And so let me just tell you a little bit about her. Dr. Caroline Leaf is a true pioneer, a woman who has stepped into the world of neuroscience long before it was popular. And she really has helped us to understand that the brain can heal and that your story is never over. and I'm going to talk a little bit about her new book today called Help in a Hurry because all of us have been there before where we needed help not next week or next year but help in a hurry. Let's welcome to the program Dr. Caroline Leaf. Hi Caroline. Hi Tim it's so good to be with you. I always enjoy chatting with you and been one of your biggest fans for close to 30 years now if not longer. Thank you for that. And we originally connected with each other in South Africa. Tell us where you're originally from and what part of that country. I was born in Zimbabwe and I grew up in South Africa and we moved to the States around 17 years ago. And now we live on Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio. So I've been to Zimbabwe only twice, but I've been to South Africa 38 times. And it's one of my favorite countries in the world. Give me something you love about South Africa that some people that have never been there can relate to. I think it's one of the most beautiful countries because even though I've traveled the world like you, Tim, the mountains and the sea, for example, in Cape Town and the Drakensberg and the desert, it's got everything. The beauty is indescribable and you can drive two hours and you just don't see ugliness. It's beautiful and so different. But what I do love is the people. I have never been in a country with people who have such a great sense of humor. South Africans will find something funny in everything. And it's definitely a coping thing, but it's also very authentic. They just see life and can make fun. I love that. I really miss that a little bit in the States because it isn't that much here. So that's two little tidbits that are beautiful. One of the things I love about the South Africans, and then we'll move on to other subjects, is when they will say, now, now. Instead of just saying now, they'll say, can you bring it now, now? Tell us what now, now means. Well, you get just now, and you get now, now, and you get now. All of them are sort of different time frames in the very immediate sense. So just now could mean any time. Now, now means quite soon. South African time is another one of South Africa's quirks. They're so chill about time. Yes. If you're five minutes late, well, you're not late. You're just early, you know. We're here. We got here sort of thing. Yeah, so now is pretty soon, but just now could be anything from 10 minutes to an hour to two hours. So, yeah, you got to do a little bit of guessing there. So when I look at my notes, doctor, it talks about for decades, we'll say decades, you've studied thoughts, habits about trauma and emotional patterns, and you are one of the first scientists to study how the brain can change with directed thinking. And another thing that I know about you is that you're very good at helping people cleaning up the mental mess in our lives. So let's go there for just a second. So I think that many times people get caught up in what I call the mundane, the messy, and the madness. The mundane is where they just feel like their life is just status quo, just going step by step. And then the messy is a lot of what you talk about and things I've even learned from you. And the madness is that escalated messy. If somebody is feeling very messy in their mindset, give me maybe one or two things that can help them with that mindset that they're dealing with. Messy is very normal. That's one of the first things that's really important to stress. Messiness comes from our learning on a day-to-day basis. We are learning and we're experiencing. And we're on this earth to learn, grow, and grow in love, which is the ultimate thing. In that process, we obviously have free will, which is absolutely key, choice. So because of choice, we can make some bad choices and we can make good choices. And the bad choices tend to lead to a sense of messiness as well. But in the process of learning, messiness has a positive connotation too, because it's kind of like if you think of a scientist, I'm a scientist too. I do research, we do clinical trials, we have hypotheses, and then we explore, and then we see, have we achieved this? Whatever you find from research is something you've learned, whether it's a positive change, etc. And that's quite a messy process. All of us are like little experimenters or scientists all day long, dealing with incoming information, seeing it through the filter of past experiences, which may be good or bad. And that tends to influence the choices we make and we can get messy. The key thing here is to recognize that that messiness isn't who you are. It is who you have become because of. There's a because of behind it. And that's really key. When you can start being curious about the because of, you then step back and you tap into the deepest part of you, which scientifically we call the non-conscious, N-O-N, not unconscious, not subconscious, but the non-conscious, which is basically your spirit level. And that spirit level, the non-conscious is where wisdom resides, insight, intuition, etc. And what we want to do, Tim, is to learn to live lives where we embrace that messiness, but in the arms of wisdom. So in other words, not speaking a very language, we need to be able to recognize that when I say, oh my gosh, I feel so overwhelmed today. I'm so under pressure. There's just so many things going on. I feel like everything's just too much. Very commonly said, very common experience, very normal. But we can either get sucked in and just get worse and worse and more and more worked up. Or we can say, okay, let me stand back and observe. The moment you do that, you step out of the soul realm, out of the conscious mind, which is not a bad part. It's the basic part. It's the learning. It's the workhorse. And you then connect with the non-conscious, which is your wisdom. And as soon as you operate in that way, you can then start managing that mental mess. Otherwise, you're going to create a conscious mind-brain loop that is going to reinforce itself. and you can get stuck in messiness. Or you can stand back and you can clean up the mess. And this is something that you can learn to do. This is what I've spent 40 years researching. Nearly 40 years now. I love what you're saying with this because I think it gives us the opportunity to understand that we're human and we're all working through something. So when I'm life coaching people, many times I'll say to them, on a scale of one to 10, how is your job? and they may say, oh, my career's doing well, Tim. I'm at a nine. How are your finances? You know, I do well. I'm at an eight. How is your mindset, the clarity of your mind and the strength of your mind? I'd give it about a three. And when I talk to these people, most of them are men that are very high powered. They will talk about, I feel like I lack peace in my mind. So how can somebody find peace in their mind if they are lacking peace in their mind? It's such a great question and good foundation that you laid there for the question. So essentially, peace is fuel. Peace is like gas for your car. It's fuel. And you've always got access to peace. And peace doesn't mean that you're going to be walking around smiling all the time. Peace enables you to embrace the ups and the downs. It's not being scared of things like depression and anxiety and jealousy and frustration because those aren't you. Those are data points. They're information that tell you something. So peace comes from the recognition that I am feeling under pressure or I'm feeling frustrated or I'm feeling jealous or guilty or anxious or depressed. But that doesn't make me bad, brain damaged, wrong, a sinner. It just means that I am a human and this is data. And if I embrace that data and look at that data, I am going to get information that's going to help me grow. And that's a growth mindset. Because a mindset is like a, and we should probably talk about what a thought is in the mind-brain difference, because mindset is generated from our thoughts. And if our mind is leading, which it should be, then we can manage those mindsets. And then we can manage the data inside the mind that the mindsets are attached to, which are the thoughts and things that generate these signals that like anxiety and depression and that sort of thing. And so essentially we, I don't want to divert from your question because I want to keep on track and then we can dive a little deeper. Did I answer your question? Because I can give long explanations. You did, but I want you to dive in deeper because I feel from coaching people for now for decades, the mindset is such a big one with the people that are doing well in life, but also people that are struggling because they have these life interruptions that happen, whether it be a marital situation or problems with their children. So I would like you to dig deeper if you could. Absolutely. Okay, so the first depth that we'll go to is to understand the difference between the mind and the brain, which then will show us why mindset is so vital. So according to the research, and I've been in this field, as I mentioned, 40 years, there's 100 years of neuroscience. And then there's thousands of years of spiritual teachings from all walks of life, all religions. And they all say one thing in common. There's one thread that goes through. And that is that your mind is dominant and your physical brain and body are not The boss is your mind And your mind is this very ancient word that is used for the concept of spirits and soul and consciousness Your brain and your body are only 1 of who you are. Your physical brain and physical body are not all of you. They're only 1% of who you are. Now we understand that, but most people may not know that percentage, because that's quite an eye open. To think that your brain and body are only 1% and your mind is 99%. But your mind is your spirit and soul and your brain and body or your physical part, they 1%. So your mind therefore is dominant. And this is key. Your mind is the boss, the leader, where we should be focusing on energy. But we live in a world that has put a lot of energy into the 1%. And if you live in the 1%, you really do make your life much harder because the brain and the body don't think. They are simply housing the power of the mind. The mind animates the brain and the body. When you die, within 20 seconds of your heart stopping, your brain basically flatlines and every cell starts disintegrating. So physical death means the disintegration of the 1% physical and the reintegration of the soul. It's a disintegration of one and a reintegration of the other. And what's really, really interesting, Tim, and I don't think I told you this before, but there's more research confirming that consciousness, mind, spirit, and soul extend beyond the physical than there is for a drug like a statin that is used to control cholesterol. Now, a statin drug for controlling cholesterol is considered one of the most successful drugs because it has what we call a probability factor, a significance level of one in a hundred, which means that basically for every 100 people, there's only one chance it won't work. Now, that's pretty amazing. For any kind of publication, anything considered successful, you have to have a 1 in 100 significance or a 1 in 1,000. So when I publish, for example, in a journal and do research, I need to have those levels of significance, at least 1 in 100. Now, here's the point about mind. The research on mind, mind-brain, that the mind is this big part and it's the dominant part. It doesn't have a significant level of one in 100, one in a thousand, which is great. It has a significant level of one in a million, one in a trillion, one in a billion. That's absolutely mind-blowing. What it means is that the research that our mind is boss or mind carries on forever is much, much, much more stronger and accurate than the physical research that we have. So I say that to say that mind is dominant. where we should be putting our energies in mind. And what does mind do? Mind takes life experiences like this podcast. People are listening. This is an experience. People are listening to you and I discuss this to help mind brain. This is an experience. So people are hearing my words and your words. And those are the details. And as we're talking back and forth, they're getting more and more details. Where does that go? It's all words, which are electric, light speeds, gravitational fields, quantum energy. It's energy. It's light. The most basic form of what we are saying is light, okay, and all the other physics, but you could just think of the concept of light because that's eventually what it all becomes. So our words are creating this energy. This energy is grabbed by your mind, not your brain, not your body. Your brain doesn't think. Your brain doesn't. It just stores data, and your body just stores data, and then your mind makes everything work, your heartbeat, et cetera, et cetera. So your mind grabs information and builds it into like a cloud. I keep doing this, but think of the sky with clouds and all the different clouds. Yes. Every experience is a group of details forming like a cloud of energy, and that's what a thought is. So your mind creates thoughts out of life experiences. Now your mindset in the moment of creating the thought is vital. Because if I wake up in the morning or I go into a meeting or I go into the day or whatever, and something happens and I say, oh my gosh, this pressure, life is just terrible. And then something happens in that moment. That is the mindset that will drive that influence. Instead of a beautiful rain cloud, we have a storm cloud. Now, here's the interesting thing. That's 99%. That is the workhorse of the conscious mind, non-conscious mind. The interesting thing is that as soon as that is built, it then gets put into the body and the brain by the non-conscious, the spiritual part of us. The spiritual part grabs it and builds it. And it makes a photocopy, not really a photocopy, but a copy and puts it in the brain and the body. So this conversation is a cloud of energy in your mind, and your mind is this area around you. You know when people say, oh, they've entered in my space? Yes, they've entered into your mind space. It's three-dimensional. So this conversation is built by the non-conscious mind into this cloud. So we've got all these clouds around us, but they don't just live there. Your mind makes a copy and puts it in your brain and your body. As soon as that energy hits your brain, it grows these tree-like networks. As soon as it hits your body, it grows these little hedge-like networks, It's all made of proteins and chemicals. So now we have a thread or a connection, cloud, a tree in the brain, and hedges in the cells of our body. You have 37 to 100 trillion cells. You're making 37 to 100 trillion physical memories of our conversation. Each part, like your cardiovascular system, your neural system, your immune system, all building different versions and perspectives of our conversation. All of this is data stored in different ways. So your mind creates matter. If my mind is unmanaged, and an unmanaged mind means that the conscious mind is not working with the non-conscious. A managed mind means that my conscious mind is working with the non-conscious, the spirit level. You always want your soul to work with your spirit. You never want them to work separately. When they work separately, you're going to create a mental mess. You're going to have chaos. So mindset then determines what it looks like. Fortunately, we can build a mess into our brain and our body, but if we've wired it in, we can wire it out. And that's neuroplasticity. That's the work that I did, started doing back in the late 80s in South Africa. This is just so amazing, but I am taking it in. But part of it is I have such a good foundation because I've read four of your books. And I know that sometimes when you are giving a lecture, talking or doing a podcast, you have like a brain literally on your table. Here's what I want you to help us with, because I hear a lot about brain hygiene and brain health. And so what you're telling us about the brain is, I think, a lot different than some other teachers have taught in the past. So if you could just show me where is my brain, and then I'm going to ask you where my mind is. So I know where my heart is. I know where my lungs are. But where is my brain? Brilliant question. So your brain is not your mind. They're two different things. And People can be forgiven very quickly for thinking that they are because we are very indoctrinated by the media that brain and mind are the same thing. That's very recent. It's only been since the mid-90s. Never before that was mind and brain ever used in the same context. They were seen as separate. So your brain is that physical that is pretty much three and a half pounds, about the size of your two fists in your skull. And it's amazing, but it doesn't do everything that they say it does. For example, we're told that memory is stored in the brain. That's only one place where memory is stored. Memory is even in my fingertips. What I'm saying to you now is growing in your fingertips as much as it's growing in your brain. So we grow memory throughout our entire brain and body. But the most dominant part of that memory form is in the mind. So the mind, what is the mind? The mind is an energy force. We've all heard of Einstein's equation E equals MC squared. Probably the thing that most people think of Einstein. Energy equals matter. That's basically energy makes matter. So we as human beings have the power, this power that we have been given by God, Godness, whatever you want to call God, to create matter. And so our mind is what creates matter. Our mind is this force all around us and through us. So when someone dies, that force moves out, doesn't go away. That's what I was talking about earlier on, that eternal life, that extension. When the body disintegrates, the mind continues. And the research, there's more research confirming that than there is a statin. And that was what the example I was saying earlier. So the mind is all around you and through you. So in this moment, as we're talking, we're breathing, our lungs are working, our heart is working. Every system is working. This is how we are physically alive. But the only reason that that's working is because your mind is driving it. So your mind drives your physiology and your mind drives your psych, your mental side. It does both. It runs both. And it's all around and through you. So if you want to get really visual, I use a lot of QEEG technology in my research. And when we put the little thing on the patient's heads, we're going to read brainwaves. And those brainwaves are energy that travels through the entire body. If people do an MRI or any kind of technology, what we're seeing isn't thought. It's simply a response in the brain or the body. It's the mind. So when I look at a QEG, I'm seeing how the mind is moving through the brain. When I look at an EKG, how the heart's pumping, I'm looking at how the mind is moving through the heart. So that when you do any kind of blood work, you are seeing the impact of mind in our blood. So if someone, for example, is very traumatized, they've gone through a shocking experience, that experience would have been built in the mind, brain and body, and it will affect your biology. And so you may be increased cholesterol, increased blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera. So the mind changes the brain and the body. So the mind does the stuff. We live in a neurocentric society. And what that means is that the excitement around the development in the brain over the last 40 years, which is phenomenal, the biology of the brain is phenomenal, but it's made people think that the brain is it. So a lot of people think that the brain makes thoughts. No, the brain doesn't do anything. The brain just holds the data and is doing what the mind tells it to do, simply responding to what the mind tells it to do. And that's why I said in the beginning, mind is 99%, this energy force around and through you, the brain and body together are 1% physical. Thank you for watching the Miracle Mentality podcast. So many of my friends are texting me, DMing me, speaking to me and saying, Tim, thank you for these great guests that you're bringing on. So share it with somebody, a friend, a family member, a colleague, and then make sure and reach out to us at Tim Story Official and let us know that you love what we're doing. Thank you for being a part of this movement. So good. We're talking to the amazing Dr. Caroline Leaf. So, doctor, let me just ask you a question. So, again, when I'm life coaching people, they'll say, you know, Tim, I'm just overwhelmed and I just feel like I need to get away. And so I say, okay, what do you think that's going to do for you? Oh, we're going to go to Maui. We're going to stay at the Four Seasons. And I just love being around the water. And that's going to clear my mind. Or there's a lot of men and women that will either play golf or pickleball to allegedly clear their mind. Or they'll go to a concert or a play. And they think that it's clearing their mind. Tell me if that is actually working in some cases to go somewhere and you can clear your mind, whether it be on vacation, to a concert, to a play, if you could help us with that. I love that question. It's a temporary fix. If we don't go to the source of the problem, we end up playing whack-a-mole. And remember the whack-a-mole where you whack one thing and then it pops up, you know, that kids love playing? Because what we're doing is we're addressing and giving ourselves a little bit of immediate relief. So I'm not saying don't do that. But that's not the peace you asked about earlier on. Peace is being able to be crying in the midst of chaos, but still being able to carry on. Falling down, but getting up. It's how you're looking at something. So going away, having a break, clearing your mind, the common thing that people say all the time, in a way, it is giving you a chance to calm down your neurophysiology. But it's not actually clearing your mind. It's clearing the accumulation and buildup of toxic energy in your physical brain and body and conscious mind. So the mind, as I've been saying, has got different levels. I said it's got the conscious, you've heard me say conscious mind, and you've heard me say non-conscious. So to understand your question, let's just make that distinction quickly. So the non-conscious mind is that spirit level. It the biggest part of you operates 24 beyond space and time It is building everything every experience you ever had but it has some additional features that are phenomenal It is the core of who you are. It is your spirit level. It's made in the image of God. It is perfection. It has all the problems you have had in your life, all the traumas, all the happy stuff, all the good stuff. And it also has all the solutions because it's pure wisdom and it's connected to the source of pure wisdom. So when we tap into that level, We are tapping into a whole different level of functioning. So essentially, in a nutshell, your non-conscious mind is what we want to talk to. It's what we want to connect with. But it's so big, the physical body can't hold it. We would explode because it's got this eternal nature. It's beyond space and time. So therefore, it has to be filtered through the subconscious into the conscious mind. And we have to set up this relay connection. We have to set up this connection between the conscious mind, subconscious, and the non-conscious. And if we don't, we will feel like we need to clear our mind. So this thing of us saying, I need to clear my mind, it's more one of reflecting my conscious mind is feeling overloaded. Your conscious mind, if you just let it work alone, it will just get that messy feeling. But the way to clear our mind really is to stand back and observe and do a little bit of mental work because that's the 99% and say, okay, well, I'm feeling overwhelmed. Going away to Maui and the beautiful Four Seasons, so many of my patients and clients, and I'm sure your clients did as well, their anxiety levels go crazy. I was speaking to a client the other day who goes to this beautiful place for three months and they took a three-month sort of hiatus from their life and all these Amalfi Coast and you name it, paradise. She said she was a nervous wreck. She broke down. I had another one who said to me yesterday morning, every time I've got a break coming up, I'm anxious. So it's not the place, it's you. You're not going to enjoy Maui unless you actually, you may have a little bit of excitement, but you have to be working on your mind constantly. And if you do have times where you feel overwhelmed and messy, you're not bad, you're not broken. It's not brain, brain, brain. It's your mind. Brain health isn't you giving your brain supplements. That'll just support. It will help. But unless your mind is managed, you've got to focus on the 99%. So instead of just saying, I'm going to go to Maui, I can go to Maui, but I need to prepare for that holiday. I need to actually prepare for that rest. I need to find out why am I feeling so overwhelmed. Maybe I'm working nine-hour days or 15-hour days. Maybe I'm just swinging from one meeting to the next. Maybe I'm in my downtime, I'm worrying. So there's never any restoration happening, which is affecting sleep. No amount of Maui, Four Seasons, Amalfi Coast is going to solve that problem. You're going to have to deal with the mind stuff first. And another interesting fact, and I can tell you so many millions of facts here is another interesting fact is that our mind drives our DNA as obviously it drives neuroplasticity. The DNA wrap themselves up into chromosomes which look like Xs. The ends of the chromosomes we've got are telomeres, my fingernails for the analogy we're using now. Those are the things that help us make cells. Just while you're listening to me now, every second you've been making 800,000 to a million new cells. Those cells, and you do this all day long and at night, Those cells make up your organs, your systems, and your physical. Telomeres are managed by your mind. Their functionality is based on your mind. They tell you your biological age. So what I showed in my research is that if we don't manage our mind, you can go to Maui, and if you're not managing your mind, your telomeres are not working like they should. They're getting weaker and weaker and weaker. So I've had clients in my clinical trials, for example, that have subjects in my clinical trials that are in their mid-30s. But from looking at the telomeres and how the telomeres are functioning, which tells us how they're managing their mind, their bodies are over 65-year-old. And we've shown that in nine-week training on mind management, we've reversed that and they've gained 35 years of biological health. I mean, that's incredible. So your mind has to lead. The mind has to lead you all the way to the four seasons for once of the landing the analogy. I'm loving how you're breaking this down. So let's go to childhood for a second. So I've noticed by being around so many children and my friend's children, I have two children myself, that a lot of young kids, four, five, and six, seem to still have a, I call it a glide in their stride. They're feeling good. Little girls are playing hopscotch. They're playing jump rope. They're chasing down the ice cream truck. Little boys are just happy, joking. Not all, but many. Why is it that we start to see many young children become like 9, 10, 11, 12, starting to get grumpy? In your opinion, is that more hormones or is it more mind? Combination. Remember, mind always leads. So mind's 99%. So the mind is taking us through a journey of learning. And that's why I actually released a book a couple of years ago, Tim, How to Help Your Child Clean Up Their Mental Mess. Yeah, can you hold that one up? Because I love this book. So how to help your child and then to do what? Clean up their mental mess. This is the one I think you interviewed me about last time, How to Clean Up Your Mental Mace. Yes, which is a best-selling book. So I'm telling everyone, she has helped me so much in helping me with my clients. And a lot of you guys know this, that I coach over 300 entertainers. And so many of them, they're living these lives at a high profile. Their problems are amplified and they need to clean up their messes. So we'll talk more about your books and how to get your books in just a little while. But this idea of why do children seem to be happier and more free and more clear in their mindset? What is that innocence that we're seeing? The simple answer and the most profound answer is that they live in the non-conscious more than the conscious mind when they're younger. So the younger you are, you grow from your non-conscious. And as you get older, you have to live on this earth. And it's part of how we structure it. It's part of what we have to do to grow as a human is that for you to actually grow as a human, you start off in the depths of your non-conscious. And then as you're getting older, you're becoming more and more, using your conscious mind more and more. Now, if we can get ourselves to balance and help our children to balance the conscious, recognize when they're living only in the conscious mind and they've cut off the non-conscious and how to get back into that, which is what my whole life's work has been. How do we keep the connection going so we build healthy thoughts and manage them? Then you can help the children. So that's what's happening. Part of it is learning how to then work in a collaborative way with the conscious mind. And that conscious mind is very experiential. We think about it. We live through our nervous system. So even though our nervous system in our body is 1%, it's in your face. So when I've got a sore stomach or someone's just upset me or I'm under tremendous pressure. I feel it everywhere. It's really hard to think that this is only 1%. It feels like 100%. So a child and adults too, but children are suddenly realizing the impact of living in this physical world. For example, a two-year-old up until the age of two, a child thinks they're connected to the parent and then they realize that they are separate and that kind of thing. And there's various different stages that we go through and we see it being reflected in the brain and the body that there's some key stages where we see major shifts in neuroplasticity and physical change. And that's because there's been major shifts in the mind. So it's not the brain changing the mind. It's the mind growing the brain. So the brain has to be grown. It has to be slowly trained by the non-conscious. In that process, life happens. We have free will. We're going to make mistakes. Kids are going to be teased. Parents have arguments. Parents come into parenthood with their own baggage. And no matter what we say, as much as we love our children, we do mess up our children our parents messed us up some worse than others the big thing is what do you do with that mess the reality is we must we know that's going to happen so it's not you can't get away from that it's part of being a human what are you going to do about that are you going to sit and blame your mother for the rest of your life or whatever are you going to say okay that i deserve to work on the impact of how that affected me because it's changed i need to work on that but at the same time, I can honor. I don't have to, it's not and or, it's both. I can hold both emotions. I can be sad at a parent's something or upset or whatever, but still love them and still have the right to work on my own issues. And it's that mentality that we need to bring through because we live in a biomedical world that says, if you're depressed, you've got a broken brain, blame your parents for everything. It's all mixed up. We're aggressively growing people into being victims. And that doesn't help people because life will happen. What are you going to do about that? If you know that it was wrong, what happened? If you can understand that I'm showing up like this because of this experience and this experience had a root. And if I understand the root, I don't have to understand why that person did that because that's not your role. But at least I need to understand that the way I'm showing up has a root. And once I understand the root, I can reconstruct my life. And we can teach this to children from as young as, literally from as young as two and three years of age to start learning how to recognize this pathway and how to design how you want your future to play out. And that's a skill we can all learn. I love this. So Dr. Caroline, I want to take you into a story. About two weeks ago, I went to a retirement home because my mother is actually there. She's going to be 95 years of age. And she felt that she did not want to live in her house anymore with somebody that we had living there because she just wanted to be around more people. So for the sake of community. Okay. So now I've become like a happy person that shows up to the retirement home that these people want me to sit at their table and joke with them, talk to them, et cetera. Okay. So I went up to a table of four ladies, like I said, about two weeks ago, I said, ladies, this holiday is coming up. isn't it going to be exciting? And one said, what's to be excited about? And I said, well, it's exciting because it's this holiday. And then I said to the other one, I said, how do you feel about it? It's exciting, right? The holiday is coming up. Tim, what's to be excited about? All four of them gave the same type of answer. So I think many times people think that, oh, when people are elderly, they get soft, they get calm, and they just enjoy. That's not how these four ladies were, at least on that day. Okay? So when I tell you that story, what goes to your mind? I'm smiling to myself because I just did a talk for recently at a conference for a company that does basically programs for retirement homes. And I've got a podcast coming out in, I think it's in about three or four weeks time on the aging mind and the aging brain and how our brain actually never really ages depending on what we do with it. Okay. So in a nutshell, just because you get older, yes, we assume, oh, they're going to all be happy. So why are they negative? Exactly for your story. Well, it's all about what have you done with your mind up to that point? You know, Alzheimer's and dementias, not everyone's going to get those. A very small percentage of the population have a potential to get them. It's only under 10%. But the way you would hear about it and the way how many people actually are experiencing symptoms of cognitive decline and that sort of thing is because we have been told we've been conditioned we've wired in a network from the the clouds to the trees to the the networks in your body it's wired in this thing that when you get old you're going to be sick but you're also going to be happy because you don't have any pressure anymore so it's a very confusing wiring in and whatever your mind your mind is king whatever perception you create, your mindset, your attitude, that is going to influence the health of your brain and your body. So we see people with an attitude, a great attitude. I'm 62. I don't know how old you are, but I mean, I'm never going to retire. I'm never going to stop. Literally, you're going to have to carry me off the stage in high shoes. I'm whatever, who knows, but it's your attitude. So the shift there is that, yes, they're still dealing with stuff. It doesn't mean because you're old. If you haven't dealt with your stuff, if you haven't dealt with those traumas if you have developed bad habits and you now 70 80 90 it doesn mean they gone away They just got bigger They enmeshed They are still going to affect you So when I do programs in retirement homes and that kind of thing it is to teach them let go and look at that trauma Why must I look at trauma when I'm 90? Of course you must. You want to spend the last few years of your life with healthy people. Yes. In other words, no matter what age, if you haven't dealt with your stuff, it doesn't go away. You have to deal with your stuff. In my opinion, you're teaching us how to be steady even in unsteady times. and I love the fact that you're also teaching us that it's not that we're ever going to go into a state of bliss and just stay there. No. There's always something we're going to be dealing with. Is that true? Yes, always. We need to realize this is the reality. The reason people get so hard on themselves and so self-critical and do things that they don't really want to do and get so caught up in the pressures is because they keep thinking I'm going to conquer that. Why haven't I conquered it yet? I should be at peace. I know all these things. I've earned this money. I'm this age. I'm that. I'm this. I've got this. Listen, if you have a bad day, don't beat yourself up. Just say, I'm having a really bad day. Embrace it, process it, and reconceptualize it. You either can sink under it or you can move through it. People get stuck in it and they think that's it. It's not that. And then they feel guilty. If you feel any kind of guilt, say to yourself, okay, I'm feeling guilty. Now, what's it telling you? As opposed to, oh, I'm guilty. Oh my gosh, I feel so, oh, this is so terrible. And you just talk yourself into a hole. Instead of that, you say, I feel bad. Okay, let me feel bad for a few moments, time it, and then I'm going to move on. Why am I feeling bad? What is the data? What else can I do? What else comes up? What could I do differently? What can I do right now? You go through a process, this formula, an actual scientific formula that I've developed that is clinically trial tested, 40 years published, scientific, where if you follow, literally apply that formula, you can manage the moment. You can manage within a 63-second moment. You can manage that moment. You can prevent it from becoming toxic. And then it takes a roundabout. You're applying that formula over 63 days to rewire habits. Most people, Tim, that's the other thing, is people know they have a great intention. And tensions are only 4% of the journey. The others, 96%, are you actually daily working, running that race for another 63 days at least to rewire that network. Otherwise, you're just going to go round and round and round and round. That's why people hit 90 and they're still moaning. Does that make sense? You are a must. People need you in their lives because I'm telling you again, people like to talk about these hacks, like health hacks, life hacks. But I think that you are bringing such great information to us that it's okay not to be okay. We're all a work in progress. We're all a miracle in motion. So you wrote a new book called Help in a Hurry. Why that title? I'm telling everyone, get this book, and I can get it today on Audible. Is that correct? Audible. And Tim, we also have a course that goes with it. And if they get the course, they get the book for free, and I've signed it. So there's an actual course called Help in a Hurry as well. Okay, well, tell us, because we're friends, so tell us how to get that course. We can send you the link, but basically they can go to my webpage, drleaf.com and they can see help in a hurry course or there's a web it's very easy you'll see where the courses are we've got another one coming out in january so all of my stuff i'm doing in courses as well to help people and i also tim i also do one-on-one coaching we just bought that back again out of demand people have been wanting coaching so we've got that started again and we're doing group coaching so i'm doing all of it again so we can give you all those they'll be able to find everything on my website drleaf.com okay so go to her website because the fact that you're Back in one-on-one coaching is just amazing. Then the group coaching side, she will also executive coach companies. And I'm not just saying this. You are the best at what you do. You are the best at what you do. All right, help in a hurry. Tell me why I need help in a hurry. So this title came, and I'll actually quite, I really love this title. It came really out of working with my clients and also surveys we did with all the people that we are very honored to have followers and so on. One of the common things people say, I just need help now. I know I must do the 63 days to rewire networks because a lot of the work I've done on habit formation, if you want to really change something in your life, it doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen in one minute. So I'm not contradicting myself. I'm going to tell you two levels. We all know it takes time to change. And I tell you the numbers that take 63 days at least to change. But what do I do in this moment? So now you're sitting in a meeting and someone says something and you are triggered. And this person has said that kind of thing. I'm just creating a scenario multiple times in meetings. And you just know it's going to happen probably again. So you already walk into the meeting with the mindset and that you just activated that memory. So you've got the memory in the mind, brain, body activated, and you go into that meeting and they say something and they trigger you. And you are about to say something sarcastic back or get very worked up or get hurt. You're No one can upset you. No one can hurt you. Yes, they can hurt you physically, but no one can actually hurt your spirit and soul, your mind, unless you let them. So you are not porous. You make yourself porous. Like a sponge sucks up. You don't, you let people in. So energetically, those photons of energy coming from those thoughts that they're generating, that energy, you can block or you can absorb. If you absorb it, you are going to feel that reaction. You're going to revert to an argument, punch them in the face, people pleasing, whatever. Imposter syndrome, you name it. I've got the top 18 areas in this book. I broke it into 18 areas from a survey of what people do when they're in those challenging moments. So what we need to do is catch the moment. And from the science and scientific work I've done, I've worked out that it's a whole scientific formula, basically, a calculation. but within a 60 second moment, you can catch yourself before you react and you can turn your reaction into a response. As soon as you do that, guess what? You activate the non-conscious mind. You then lead that moment. That person can be saying the nastiest things to you. You stay at peace. One of your first questions, you keep peace. Yes, what they may be saying is terrible stuff, but you still don't have it absorbed in you. You can then stay in a state of calm, access your wisdom. If you lose peace, you don't access wisdom. You don't access the non-conscious. And when you don't access the non-conscious, you're not going to find the solutions. Because in the depths of your non-conscious mind, if you think of it as being a big forest, you have that toxic thought of that person and the constant irritation that you've had with that person, this ugly, toxic-looking thought. But what we do, because of wisdom, we generate solutions around that. So for every toxic issue, so this person, which is our story that we're using, is the toxic. But around that, there's a bunch of beautiful green trees. So automatically from wisdom inside the depths of an unconscious, any issue, any trauma, anything that we experience immediately generates possibilities. Beautiful little green trees surrounding them that need to be cultured and developed. So when you step into help in a hurry moment, you are now looking into the depths and you are starting to see the other options and then wisdom will come out of you. So you will learn to respond instead of react. And that's what this book is. It's all kind of like your first step. We've become such a reactive society, such a quick fix, such a hacking society, hack this, hack that. This, if you want a word for a hack, I don't think a hack is a good word, but it could be used. I'm hacking the moment, but I'm not, it's not a quick fix because quick fixes aren't sustainable. I'm telling you, this is how you catch the moment. Then you move into looking at your patterns. So I talk about in this book, catch the moment and then see, okay, I'm people-pleasing or I'm about to react in a very negative way or imposter syndrome, self-critical talk, whatever it may be. And then say, okay, I'm going to observe myself for seven days and I'm going to see the patterns. When do I react like that? How often? Who activates it and find your pattern? As soon as you find your pattern, that's the thought you need to change. Then you do a 63-day cycle, applying the formula that I call the neuro cycle. So that's kind of where the help and the hurry comes from. Catch the moment, find the pattern, do the work. Help in a Hurry is a must-read book, and we're all going to get it. And I'm going to keep talking about it, and I'm going to get my clients on it, and it just has to happen for people. All right, I have one more question for you. But this is going to be a very simple one, and I'm going to see if you give me just a short answer because I'm going to put this conversation we're having, we're going to put you in 96 airports around the world. So this podcast is in 96 airports around the world. So I'm the only one that during the pandemic, the people that run the airport TVs of 96 airports around the world, from London to Paris to New York, you see me every two to three hours talking for like five minutes about life. So you're going to be everywhere. So I need to ask you a question. What does it mean to you to lead with love? So what does it mean to you, Dr. Caroline Leaf, to lead with love? It means that I actually can step into my wisdom, that I actively choose to step back and observe my reactions or observe my signals. Let me say that again simplistically. It means that I have the ability to stand back and observe myself. And what does that mean? How am I showing up in the moment? What are my emotions? What are my behaviors? Where do I feel those emotions in my body? And what is my perspective in that moment? Grab those and then immediately say, why am I feeling those? What's the data behind that? And then say, okay, well, what could I do differently? And then do it. And that is a little five-step formula called the neurocycle that you can use in 10 seconds, 60 seconds, 63 days. But that trains you to not get stuck in a conscious mind-brain loop, but to get into a very wise, insightful, intuitive response state. And that'll give you peace in the chaos, and you'll start seeing the solutions. When you see solutions, you automatically operate in love, because love is not just that gooey-ooey feeling. It is the ability to operate in kindness, creativity, compassion, imagination, intuition, insight, wisdom. It activates all of those. And those aren't up here. They're in the depths of your unconscious. So love means I have to find them. And that little five-step formula that I mentioned gets you there. That is how to lead with love. So I want to thank everybody for watching and listening to this podcast, The Miracle Mentality. and I think Dr. Caroline Leaf has taken us on a journey that you don't need to end. So all her information is right there below. Go to her website, find out what she's doing. She's life coaching people one-on-one. She has other programs. All of her books are fantastic. Her new one, Help in a Hurry, I think is really essential reading. But I want to thank you guys for continuing to watch and listen to this podcast. Don't forget to subscribe, to like, and to tell a friend. You must be telling a lot of friends because it's working. But also I want you to comment on this segment because I think this is one of my favorite segments by far because she's giving solutions about life. Yes, you can have a life of peace, but there's also challenges at the same time, but you can still live a wonderful life. So as I often say, you may not be what you want to be, but thank God you're not what you used to be. Keep going forward. Thank you for sharing space with me on this episode of Miracle Mentality with Tim Story. If today sparked your courage or helped you understand why you're created for success, I invite you to carry that miracle mentality forward. Visit me at timstory.com. That story with an EY on the end. Until next time, walk by faith, embrace possibility, and create your own comeback story.