Here is the full transcript of Dr. Amit Sood’s TEDx talk presentation Happy Brain: How to Overcome Our Neural Predispositions to Suffering at TEDxUNI conference.
Listen to the MP3 Audio: Happy Brain – How to Overcome Our Neural Predispositions to Suffering by Amit Sood, MD at TEDxUNI
TRANSCRIPT:
Dr. Amit Sood – Professor of Medicine at Mayo Clinic College of Medicine
How are you doing this evening? Good. Motivated inspired, wonderful speakers — I bet you have not heard Slumdog Millionaire accent so far, so here I bring that right in the middle of Midwest.
So I came to U.S. in 1995. I had been in medical training for 10 years before I came. In my first year of medical school in 1984, I witnessed one of the worst industrial disasters Bhopal gas tragedy where we lost maybe tens of thousands of people overnight. I was a first-year medical student at that time.
So over the next eight to ten years I saw a lot of disasters, lot of challenges because of malnutrition and infections and so on. So by the time I was preparing to come to the U.S. in 1995, I thought I was going to come to Disneyland. I thought everybody here is going to be very happy. I thought as a child here you grow up in Disneyland, when you’re an adult you play slots in Las Vegas and you retire in Florida playing bingo. I thought that’s what pretty much American life is, I was seeing too many movies.
So when I came here and I saw that it was almost as much stress and suffering here as I was seeing overseas, that sort of shocked me. I had come here to become a cancer specialist, or change my direction.
And so I’ll share with you a few pearls I have learned on that journey and we’ve sort of put together a program that we offer to over 50,000 people every year at this time.
So there are some neural predispositions that predispose us to suffering, there’s the external situations of course but there are some neural predispositions. For example, we spend a lot of time mind-wandering when you are doing dishes. You know, right at that time your brain is not doing dishes, your brain is going through all of that. And you’re not saying, “I have the most wonderful partner in the world. I have the best children; how come I have so much more money than I ever needed?” We’re focusing on all the imperfections, all the challenges. Our mind is wandering. An average person has about 150 undone tasks at any time. So we spend a lot of time with wandering attention. So this is one big challenge of human brain.
And do you want to guess what proportion of the time we are like that? About 50% to 80% of the time during the day. So our colleagues at Mayo actually took a few patients and tried to scan them how — and see how their brain looks at rest — at rest, when they were doing nothing. And this is the scan of brain at rest. So I know many of you don’t have a degree in radiology but perhaps you can see that it seems like a pretty busy place. It seems a bit like fish market. What you’re seeing is blobs of blue and red forming and dissolving, those are actually networks in the brain.
So the way our brain operates — our brain is designed as a giant network of about 86 billion to 90 billion neurons. So these networks collaborate to create two modes of the brain. The first mode of the brain is the focused mode. Focused mode is engaged when you’re processing something very interesting, very novel, very meaningful. For example, if you step out and you see a baby elephant jaywalking in the parking, that’ll get your brain in the focused mode, right, or when you’re bungee jumping, right at that time in the middle of there you don’t say what was that email I had to answer; boom it’s too late. You know, playing with a little baby gets you in the focused mode. Having the baby happy with all the attention that she is getting. So that is the first mode of the of the brain, the focused mode — our brain loves to be in this mode. But we don’t give ourselves enough those of that.
The second mode of the brain, I realized was, is the default mode. Have you ever experienced — you’re reading a book, you read half a page, you say what was I reading? But where were you at that time? You were mind wandering, you were with all your open files, and an average person has about 150 undone tasks at any time. So we spend — do you want to guess what proportion of the day we’re like that, with a wandering attention? 50% to 80% of the time. So right now as we speak 2 billion to 3 billion people are walking around the planet with no idea where they are, because they are experiencing wandering attention. That’s the reality. It’s kind of scary; isn’t it?
So I’m sure you have experienced this or not experienced this, you tell three things to your partner and this is how they look totally blank as if you’re sound, like clicking sounds your words? Yeah, I can see some of you resonating with that, right? Have you ever read a book to a child and you have no idea what you read and maybe try to skip pages and then you get caught skipping pages? Yes, yes, yes.
So those are the two modes. So this is the default mode where we spend a lot of time. What research is showing is that the more time we spend in default mode, greater of a risk of anxiety, depression, attention deficit, perhaps even dementia. And the way the brain operates — when you use a particular network it becomes stronger, so we get stuck here.
So we see between these two modes all day long but what happens is when we have too many open files which everybody does — is there anybody here who has less than 20 user IDs? We all — our brain didn’t evolve around our need to process 20 user IDs, right? So we were focused on safety and survival; so that is a challenge. Our brain evolved around safety and survival. We wanted to deliver peace and happiness. And that is why we get stuck.
So this was the first challenge I realized — the neural predispositions. Our tendency of our mind to wander. The second challenge is our focus on threat and imperfections. So I have personally had multiple medical problems. I’ve had several heart attacks, I have had multiple strokes, several cancers, nearly died many times, all in my head; none of this actually happened. I’m imagining all these illnesses. So I have, yeah, looked pretty preserved for all of that, right? One of my oncologists said that. So I spent a lot of time living with imaginary fears.
And so when you’re looking at this picture I’m sure your attention is going to that spider, right, because spider has immediate threat focus. But let me ask you this: what is more threatening in 2015? Is it spiders or donuts? What do you think? How many of you think it’s donuts? So let the record show everybody is saying donuts. So when you go to a party and they’re serving a box of donuts, you’ve got 20 donuts staring at you; shouldn’t you run away shouting out: Oh my God! They’re serving donuts; they’re out to kill me? Will never go to Smith’s again because they tried to kill me by feeding donuts, right? No, but we get attracted to them because our ancestors got attracted to calorie-dense foods. So we’ve got some evolutionary predispositions that are not very adaptive. So this is the second challenge: negativity bias.
Another challenge is hedonic adaptation. I’m sure you’ve realized this: “Honey, I love you but now please change.” Has it ever happened to you? First year of marriage, it’s all wonderful; 20th year of marriage — and we have been married 21 years, I’ve said this in front of my wife; partners become borderline boring after 20 years. So 30 years even worse. So we get used to good. One of my patients said, “I divorced the wife I loved” which is a very sad thing to hear, because what happens is we get used to the goodness and start focusing on imperfections.
And there are several other neural predispositions; I’ll just share a few of them. So what happens is these neural predispositions take away from enjoying life, and that is what I realized. So happiness is very little to do with having too much resources or not having malnutritional infections. Happiness is really that inner state.
So how do we cultivate that? And I’ll give you a little sample of that. So what I will do is share with you a few sprinkles, a few practices that you can apply in your life right now. We’ll do a couple of practices right here so that you can bring those to your life and I’ll do what we call 5-3-2 program.
The first skill is with 5 people. So let’s say when you wake up in the morning, how long does it take for your mind to wander after you wake up? Is it less than a few seconds or is this minus five seconds? Minus 5 seconds, right? What should I do? What should I dread?
So here is my suggestion: when you wake up tomorrow morning, think about five people in your life you’re grateful for, before you step on the carpet. Let us practice this together, so I can explain what I mean by this. Let us all sit with eyes closed for the next two minutes and I’ll guide you through this practice. And if you’re watching it on video, if you’re in a safe place, you can please do that.
So I’ll take you through this practice. Imagine you’re waking up this morning. Notice the color of the floor where you woke up. Think about the first person in your life you want to be grateful for. Think of the many ways this person has touched your life and send your silent gratitude to this person.
Second person: look into the eyes of this person and notice the color of the eyes. And then send silent gratitude.
Third person: go back to the first memory of this person. Then send your silent gratitude.
Fourth person, and imagine this person is very happy where he or she is right now. Then send your silent gratitude.
Go back in time and look at yourself when you were eight year old. Notice your hairstyle at that time and send silent gratitude to your eight-year old self.
Think about someone who has passed away who you loved. Give that person a virtual hug; send silent gratitude to that person.
When you’re ready, you can open your eyes. I didn’t even know where I had reached because my eyes were closed. So I am glad I was on a red carpet. So this is the first practice; it will help you focus on what is most important in your life.
How many of you have someone who’s worth several trillion dollars to you? Everybody, right? So I invite you to focus on your maximum net worth, what is most valuable to you? Do not wake up thinking what should I do, what should I dread or chasing deadlines. And then in an afternoon at three o clock you feel like you’re being judged — anyone here has struggles with being appreciated too much in life like you’re appreciated too much, nobody judges you negatively; that’s not the challenge, right?
So when your self-esteem is lower, when you are on the rumble strip, think about three people who care about you and will bring you back to the highway. The idea is not to end on the rumble strip, because we will all be there; how quickly we recover, that’s the key, so that we don’t end in a ditch.
So this is the first practice. One suggestion, take a post-it note and write the word ‘gratitude’ on it and stick to your bathroom mirror. When you wake up tomorrow morning if you forget this exercise find yourself in the bathroom see that note, go back to bed and start over. That’s how it will become a habit. So this is the first practice.
The second moment of intentionality is when you get back home. Let’s say you were sitting with your spouse and your high school buddy shows up, who will be more interesting for the next five minutes? High school buddy, right? Absolutely; why? Because there’s novelty — between you and your high school buddy is novelty; between you and your spouse I assume is love. So see how novelty beats love 100% of the time. If you want to enjoy your personal life, the key is to find novelty where love is.
So let’s say you have not met your partner for 30 days; are you going to find them a little more novel after that gap? Yes. So the idea is to meet your family at the end of each day intentionally as if you’re meeting them after 30 days. So what I do is I don’t have my cell phone with me right now, assume this to be a cell phone. The first thing I do when I’m in the garage is, I look at my cell phone, I check all my emails — I don’t want to be — you know, there was a recent picture on the Internet where husband and wife are hugging each other and behind their shoulder they’re both checking their emails. You know, I don’t want to be doing that at home, so I get that out of the way, I tell myself I’m going to meet a bunch of very special people who I haven’t met for quite some time and for 3 minutes I meet them as if I haven’t seen them for a long time.
Remembering transience, because our 10 year old daughter will be off to college in 2000 evenings, I have finite time, we have finite time with everything. And third and very important and very difficult thing to do will be — for the first three minutes when you’re with your family, don’t try to improve anybody; that’s going to be very difficult. Because we have this fall finding machine, right? Your smile is an admission of guilt.
Now two supporting ideas here is — one is be genuinely interested in what is of interest to them. And second is creatively praise. Probably this is going to be my most useful line of this evening: whenever you’re not getting your spouse’s attention or partner’s attention, remember these words, they will work 100% of the time; they start with something like this: “Honey, you were really right when you….” and then fill anything after that. It worked; everybody loves to hear how they were right. You’ve got five minutes of undivided attention. “Yes, yes, tell me how was I right?” Right, we don’t do that enough.
The third practice is two seconds, and that is how we look at each other, how we engage with each other. So let’s say you were doing barbeque in your backyard and this gentleman shows up. Are you going to invite him to join you, come please have my dinner or please help me for dinner, or something like that? You’ll probably call 911, right? But our ancestors didn’t have 911, so they had to make a quick judgment: is this person trustworthy? Can I trust him with my cattle, my house, my family, right? So we developed a judgmental attention. So when you look at this gentleman, looks perfectly fed but that is how long it took for you to make those five judgments. You know it takes 30 milliseconds for us to decide if someone is trustworthy or not. 30 milliseconds! Before we even know who that person is.
But when you look at him, you know he has the same neural predispositions. He spends a lot of time mind wandering; he focuses on threats and imperfections; he carries negativity bias; he adapts to the good; he compares, doesn’t feel good about himself. So kind attention is very simple. When you see people before your mind starts judging others for the first two seconds instead of seeing negatively or neutrally, align your heart and send them a silent ‘I wish you well’. I wish you well, I wish you hope, I wish you healing. This is how we need to create a world where we keep silently wishing each other well. You don’t have to say it, it’s just a private intention. You can consider a two second prayer for the other person if you have a faith based practice.
So what happens is that your whole engagement with the world changes, your threat perception goes — now I don’t want you to start this in downtown at 2 a.m. in the morning when two big shadows are coming towards you, you want to start it the place where it feels safe etc.
So looking at the world the way we want the world to look at your kid, so these are all intentional sprinkle practices, we are not meditating on emptiness or breath, we are meditating on wisdom and love and relationships. And that is what we need and we’re sprinkling it. So we are not adding more milk to your glass of milk, we are adding chocolate powder to your milk. So the whole life becomes better because they lift — they together joint lift your entire day.
The next group of practices once your attention is in your control is to reframe life challenges using higher order principles. And these are the five principles in our life: gratitude, compassion, acceptance, meaning and forgiveness. The way we have structured our program is Mondays are our days of gratitude. On Monday be a little bit like Matthew Henry, he was once robbed in the streets of London, he said “I’m so grateful, this is the first time I am being robbed, never been robbed before in life.” How nice it is! And I was the one robbed, not the one doing the robbing.
Tuesday’s compassion, be kind to others. Wednesday’s acceptance, be creatively working with what is; think about will it matter five years from now? Thursday’s is higher meaning and Friday’s forgiveness. Note that in our program you only have to forgive on Friday, you don’t have to forgive the entire week. Now this doesn’t mean that you’re very nerdy, that on Friday you don’t say I can’t be compassionate today because compassion is only on Tuesday, and it means to be flowing and easy.
So the idea is by applying these principles when science has matched spirituality, it creates a milieu for transformation. This is wisdom; this is timeless wisdom that sages have told us that scientists are finding. Science is nothing but systematic study of spirituality. That’s what I believe. Science doesn’t know it. Science will know it at some point. I believe this is what the children of our world need. They want us, adults, to be grateful, to be compassionate, to be accepting, to live our life with meaning and have forgiveness and if we do that we will create a wonderful world for them.
Thank you.
Related Posts
- The Dark Subcultures of Online Politics – Joshua Citarella on Modern Wisdom (Transcript)
- Jeffrey Sachs: Trump’s Distorted Version of the Monroe Doctrine (Transcript)
- Robin Day Speaks With Svetlana Alliluyeva – 1969 BBC Interview (Transcript)
- Grade Inflation: Why an “A” Today Means Less Than It Did 20 Years Ago
- Why Is Knowledge Getting So Expensive? – Jeffrey Edmunds (Transcript)