What is YOUR brain's favorite way to fail? 🧠 Let us know down below - we're breaking down the results on a very special IG Live on @bialikbreakdown coming up!
Reminds me of the circular logic I heard, I believe, if I recall correctly, from the "Cult Classic" Mystery Men: "When you don't plan to fail, you fail to plan."
When she's talking about people who can "cold turkey" or switch gear and just change "I used to be that person". I recall watching a neuroscience discussion about this and I believe it had to to with the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, if I'm not mistaken. There's also something to be said about the neurobiology of our Gut-microbiome and how thought patterns change when we share our environment and adapt a microbiome from others.
@@MayimBialik o meu cérebro tem falhado diante de inúmeras atividades diárias, (trabalhar como mecânico, cuidar de neta, cuidar de idosa com esquizofrenia, cuidar de meus 3 cães, e 5 gatos, cuidar da casa, etc) realmente isso faz com que meu cérebro às vezes venha a falhar.
I find that I always fail when I set big goals for myself. I'm listening to this episode, and wow, it explains so much of why I feel so disillusioned and demotivated when I fail to hit those goals because life gets in the way. Thanks for this conversation!
@@MayimBialik let me count the ways… lol almost everything I can think of at this point, but probably “getting organized and decluttering” has been the longest standing ongoing failure. My life experience has created the perfect storm, as I’m learning as I listen to the audiobook. Those with ADHD have habenula misfiring in spades. 😟 At least this research gives me hope!
I started doing two lists - the things that I absolutely have to do (which is usually empty but every now and then there will be something that can't be cancelled or rescheduled) and things I want to do like laundry, breath work, go to the gym etc. it takes the pressure off if I don't have the energy to get to something then it's not like I failed at something I had to do, I just chose not to do something and that's ok.
I was a quarter into this and paused to order the book. This explains so much of my life, good and bad, and I'm pissed I didn't learn about it until I was 60.
I Share my food with 14 rescued dogs. Also moved to a small town in Panama without a car. My hubby and I took off 70 lbs each in a year and a half. Keeping it off because of lifestyle changes. I bake my own low carb bread and cook our meals, something I never did in the U.S. We go out for pizza once a month and it's such a treat. Thank you for this video, I know it will change my life. I shared it with everyone I care about. Getting her book on Audible. Chronic fatigue sufferer. Doing all I can to heal. Appreciate you all so much.
Actually, I rarely have an orgasm when I’m having sex with my partner. I can only do it for myself. I know where the perfect spot is I know where the perfect pressure is and that’s just an impossible thing for any other human being to try to figure out.
FINE means I am feeling “Fuc&&up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional” and it is a social construct to say Fine because people rarely have time to listen deeply to our inner truth. ❤
An episode that begins with “faking orgams” words it will be for sure a fabulous one! And surely it was! And for the first time since MBB podcast began, I found an author I knew before MBB! My Boston living MD and PhD in Genetics sister gave this architect (so a designer herself) Dr. Bobinet’s book ‘Well Designed Life’ one Xmas years ago. To teach a designer to design her own life and avoid that day to day problems design it. And you know what? Applying what I learnt there I loose 14 kg (~30 pounds) forever and took quite control of my own stressed life. Watching her here is another truly gift! So much to humbly learn!!! THANKS! Going to buy her new book asap!
1.09.41 Mayim starts talking about her reaction to the news. I had this during the pandemic, with the ongoing repetition we experienced from the news everyday (mostly the same speculation) I got really stressed out by it. So I set up a large piece of cross stitch embroidery which I worked on for an hour every morning. It soothed me - the repetitive action helped to centre me and prepare me for the day. I need to start doing it again!
I did the same they both did. I Uninstaller facebook/twitter/Instagram, so if I wanted to view them I had to open a website and log in. I gained back so much time and significantly improved my anxiety. I lost contact woth some people, but the important ones I found a better way to interact with them.
Favorite way to fail: Deadlines. It’s right there in the word, DEAD. I love to fail by missing deadlines. Call it procrastination, call it fear, call it whatever you want, If you put a date on it (Especially a clearly arbitrary date) my brain will fill the time with other tasks that have nothing to do with accomplishing what needs to be done to make the deadline. The more important the thing is the more my brain resists. Crazy making for sure. I’ll be working with the info provided (and the book) to see what works for me. One hack. I reframe “I/m sooo busy!” to “My life is full.” To me busy has connotations of work being externally demanded, full connotes that I’ve chosen goals or desires that require specific work. And it is true! I wouldn’t make different decisions, this is the life I’ve chosen and it is full.
I like that approach. Do you have any suggestions on what to rename "deadline" as something more positive? I need to operate with deadlines in my work however I want it to be something positive as "finish point" but it just doesn't sound good hahah
@@catrin3694 That’s a challenge in part because deadlines are often a part of the workplace culture and are often imposed as a part of the measurable aspect of work performance. One possibility might be to use the plate analogy. The work you want to get done is what is on the plate and one’s daily work is to empty the plate. Tomorrow you’ll take servings of tasks onto the plate. It can also help you figure out when to push back because your plate to full. Another option is to do a pick three process. At the start of the day, pick three bigger things you want to get done. It can be three steps on one project, or three different projects, but keep it to three. Work on those three pieces. Pieces are defined by you. One page of writing could be a piece for example. Try to avoid assigning need to getting those pieces done and reframe it as want. If you can want to make a deadline instead of need to make a deadline you’re already in a better place. Hope that’s helpful.
This has been incredibly interesting. In the past year and a half since my dad died and I've felt like I could finally live my own life, I have been learning a lot about myself and working through stuff that's had a cork on it forever. One thing I noticed was that I've always avoided stuff that I was not immediately good at or would secretly try things and only let others know about my interest if I could get to a high enough skill/knowledge level to be able to perform well in it. I realized that I've missed out on a lot of things and held myself back because of this need to perform well in everything. To break that, I found that I had to stop judging myself for failures. And to do that, I had to stop thinking of things as failures and instead be okay with not being an expert. As practice, I took up dancing because it hits a lot of the triggers that I've been avoiding but also has a lot of benefits that I need. It's been hard at times, but it's taught me that I can have way more fun with things than I ever thought possible, especially when I'm doing something I'm not good at. The process of learning something difficult is incredibly rewarding when it's okay to not already know it. The change in thinking that this has brought me has let me really enjoy a lot of things that I would have been too scared of before or that I've found purely frustrating in the past. I've continued to struggle with finding motivation to do things, though -- even the new activities that are so much fun once I get around to doing them. The idea that it's self-judgement somewhere has the ring of truth to it considering what I've been learning about myself lately and considering that self-judgement was what I identified years ago as the source of a major depression that I went through. I thought I had gotten past that and now just needed to learn how to be more disciplined, but I guess it might help to take another look at what other "sharp objects" I might still be holding onto. Even considering doing this is relieving a significant amount of mental/emotional tension that I didn't realize was there.
I know y’all frequently discuss addiction & addicts. Out of curiosity, have y’all ever discussed the effects of addicts on family members & what all it does to our brains? And not just their children, but their siblings & parents too.
I used to not be able too, but I'm one of those people who can quit cold turkey. When something stops doing what it was doing for me (making me feel good, relaxed, whatever), it becomes so much more miserable mentally and emotionally that I just walk away and suffer the withdrawl because I know once I'm past that it is better. But I don't put it on myself that I'll never do it again. If I'm with my sister, I'll smoke with her, but I don't see my sister all the time so it is more special now than it was when needed them just to function. And it doesn't scare me because I know I can Cold Turkey if i slip up because I did it before. Some context though is I have never had an addiction as hard hitting as some drugs out there. For my addictions I've found I simply have the confidence in my ability to get over and stay over it. It wasn't something I could do before i got a bad Mt. Dew addiction but this mindset has helped me stop a lot of other stuff. Climbing that hill helped me climb the mountains that came after it.
Learning the observed skill and also learning to be aware of what happens in my body when I am triggered with certain things... I finally realized that my procrastination comes from being gaslighted. Every time my father would gaslight me it caused procrastination, and now I understand why I had such a hard time in school.
I find something similar where I need to fight functional freeze on a level after a betrayal from a friend or partner, or family 'acts up' stirring old triggers, etc.
This is so interesting. I have a degree in Psychology and never once learned about that part. I even took neuroscience and it didn’t mention this. So interesting! Didn’t realize the “I don’t know when to quit” is iterating - always thought about resilience but never iterating
i am recently divorced, and part of that process has been going from STUCK to taking action/doing/starting many new things, and/or restarting old patterns. I got stuck on thinking I had to know all the steps and possible consequences for everyone involved. Yup - slightly over the top expectations ;) One of the keys has been i don´t have to know all the answers in advance and I don´t have to have a detailed plan - and even if I have a plan - it´s ok to adapt that plan to life as it pans out - reality.
I’m crawling out of a few years of Occupational Burnout. After being passed over for a promotion twice, I fell into the hole of failure. The whole world of psychology is a vast landscape on RU-vid. Thank you, I learned a lot. Do you spell it hebenula?
Amazing facts. A news junky, I broke from news 2016 to 2019. Then a horrible text about the US House Speaker came to me. Shocked at years of constructed rage, I needed news. Then frustration from lack of. Off with corporate news still needing facts I go online for lawyers, judges, scholars. My brain has Satisfaction! Thank you ladies for scholarly facts.
1:20:37 - iteration did not click for me even after being given the definition earlier. Right here is the point where the examples enabled my simple brain to understand. Iterations to me appear to be ‘baby steps’. With each small achievement (baby step), you see you can do it and encourage yourself to be positive and continue down that path. As you get used to this thought process, a baby step for you is now a full or big step when compared to your old self. Your wins start to outweigh your losses and the losses start to mean less. That is also the key to me. When you have setbacks or losses (from your point of you), you learn to temper those losses.
It's not necessarily about constant improvement. Iterative processes focus on making incremental changes and then assessing the success or otherwise of each step and setting up the next change. It's a feedback loop that's always correcting towards the desired state, even when the system is temporarily moving away from that state
I had to take a news fast during CovId. After this last few weeks I told my partner today I need another. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.
One of my favorite episodes ever!!! Tickled my brain! ThankYou so much! Also maybe You could give us heads up about the books to read before the episodes, that would be so great to feel like being in the loop.
Thank you thank you! I love this! I am a therapist and just needed to see this today! Already sharing with many of my clients. I have already bought the book. I also sent the video to some family members as well! I am def interested in where this research goes! I will be using the Acronym in my practice.
“Everything leads to failure”??? No. Everything leads to success. Once you achieve the specific goal you wanted, you see the next step. The next goal. Sometimes that means adjusting the original goal. Sometimes that goal is a jumping off point to the next thing. In any case, we learn, and grow, and that is always a success.
"Itiritive" sounds like discipline to me. I am not good at discipline because I get bored. Lol. It actually sounds like functional behavior assessment, too. This information is so spot-on for me. I work with children and families on motivation and growth mindsets. This information is gold for academic and life coaches. Just ordered the book. Thank you.
the element of weighty-callback to a perceived failure with this intrigues me, it’s a really prominent hangup for me! i‘ve struggled for a while with a repeated internal statement (a throw-in of „i am insane“) and at some point realized that it comes up just to signal that there’s been a return to a memory of perceived social-failure (often just a flicker of recall which is why it took a while for me to understand the pattern to this irritating i-am statement wrapping itself around a distress-of-failure coming up). found the image of the „second arrow“ (of adding insult to injury while suffering) helpful in conjunction with this. struggle to word the depiction out but believe it’s also a buddhist philosophy. love the idea of i-am as is!
"Performing uses a neural network that terminates in the area of disempowerment and extrinsic motivation" 9:02 That's whan I realised I woud have to listen to this episode after work, not during, to give it the attention it deserves.
The best hack for preventing overeating is counting your chewing. I watched a documentary on how people ate during various periods of time and one thing that really stuck with me is that during the Victorian era they would eat everything on their plate one at a time and count their chewing so that every items was chewed 100 times. That means if you have a bowl of peas they ate every pea one by one and chewed it 100 times each. Now this is a very extreme example so obviously you might want to decrease the number of chews. I think the most I can chew a pea is 30 before it disintegrates in my mouth but regardless of how much you choose this tip really helps. If you eat something tonight take notice if your chewing. How often do you swallow a piece that’s still pretty large? Do you need a drink to push it down? Do you hear sounds in your stomach after (this is your body trying to break down the food and only happens when the pieces are large). Now the next time you eat pick a number and chew everything that many times. Not only will you notice it takes longer to finish your plate but you will feel fuller because you gave your body more time to acknowledge it is being fed. And the fact that your food is chewed more throughly will mean you digest it faster. My grandfather was in the Air Force and was a very ritualistic person. He did this his entire life and he never had any issues with his weight. He was mindful of his eating and took the time to be present in the moment and allow himself to appreciate the food in front of him. It’s a hard habit to do because you can get bored of chewing but it is so helpful and really is what I would refer to as hack.
Eat half Laugh daily Take life in small steps Fabulous daily mantra to wake up to: “Every day you wake up try to be a better person than you were yesterday”
Even though I can relate to SOO much said in this episode... listening to it and feeling validated by what I am hearing is helping me to feel more normal.. Thank you ♥ I feel guided now to move forward and know what I need to do next.. Wish this Dr's book was on Audible..
News just got very graphic and tabloid like. Half way through this episode and will resume listening later this weekend, but my antidote to the hijacking of my sensing has been chanting Om or AUM and a lot of music, cleaning and some cooking.
Isn’t it true that that the first bite is the tastiest? That’s what I’ve always told myself. I believe that the tastebuds get desensitized the more you partake of food that you desire.
This is fascinating. I have Rheumatoid Arthritis, am an addict in recovery, have ADHD and have been overweight almost my entire life. Makes me wonder my habinula (sp) is malfunctioning in a major way???
Hi Mayim and Jonathan! Let me 1st say that I thoroughly enjoy and learn so much from your podcast and this is another gem!❤ I will probably listen to this once again since there’s always information overload but in a good way and will also buy the book to help me understand my struggles better. More power to you both and THANK YOU very much for such enlightening and educational topics. Definitely helping to hopefully not have the break down I once had. 😊
don’t have the means to buy this book bc just having meals has been hard but this was so helpful anyways and has been super insightful hope to be able to buy it soon.
I’m curious to know what Dr Kyra thinks about training the Habenula to accept the failure rather than avoid and deal with it. ie “100 Days of Rejection”. A practice to harden your emotions to rejection by asking strangers for something everyday for 100 days.
Excellent show. I’m ready to learn more. I think my therapist is on to this. He mentioned about four week fasts and social media dopamine hits. Okay thanks. Got an AudioBook.
@@MayimBialik 💜 I’ve been in a dark place lately of stuckness and shame, trying to really understand how to hack my rumination and get myself progressing again. This is so helpful. I’m definitely buying the book!!
When I'm reviewing how an art project, situation, personal interaction evolved, I take note of the parts I liked and I the parts I'd like to tweak, change, and try differently next time. Plus, it's good to have a Plan B 😄
What about childhood abuse, and fibromyalgia? I was a powerhouse until 51. The health issues galore unless you experienced fibro pain and fatigue you will never understand how debilitating this is with no cure. I have healing for the past 4 years but I still cannot do half the things in my 40s I practice self care every day. These talks are fine but when one experiences a health condition with no cure, what does one do?
Michael Singer was on your show once. This is esentially his message but he says it so much simpler. The performative me= the ego, the voice in your head that mostly talks negatively. You can't fix an inside problem on the outside.
Adonai is SO The Creator, period. This episode, in particular, might be my favorite: disclaimer: I subscribe because I like, I love your choices of programs 💜thank you for pushing the envelope & presenting for excellence consistently 💜
I am curious about how little this part of the brain has been noticed. Is this just flavour of the month science? I will definitely look for more neuroscience about this.
very informative and an eye-opener. however, as a psychotherapist, even I found it too 'technical'. saying that, we do recognise avoidant behavior in clients which is similar to what is being said here and using distractions to avoid the pain. thankyou Mayim - am a big fan!!
You guys are amazing and so helpful. My problem is what Johnathan was speaking on, the feelings of “EH”. Like I no longer enjoy things I once greatly enjoyed. Spiritually, physically, emotionally, relationships all eh. No zest. I hate to even admit it, I feel like I’ve given up even though deep inside I don’t want to be this way.
Yes, I have been there and found that it's a big bad trap/threat to our normal existing/ living...cause it creates a habit of being dissatisfied /demotivated mentally and if we keep engaging in this for long it can lead to a loop of depression and even unwillingness to function properly in day to day life. it's like a trap of being in a bad mood, feeling sad, and making life miserable more than it's necessary...so I feel like it's better to find a healthy way out instead of being a victim of it for life!!
I love this episode. One day at the time. In terms of hookups, I would like to have a deep connection relationship but it ended up a temporarily one. 😢
OH MY GOD. I WAS LITERALLY JUST CRYING OUT 2 GOD IN FRUSTRATION THE OTHER DAY, SAYING THAT EXACT THING! "Why is it that i know what i should do, what i need 2 do, ik the 'right' things 2 do, YET I DONT DO THE THINGS!?" 😳🤯😮😩😅🙌🥹 God is good y'all! ❤
So'ham means I am that, not simply I am. What they mean by That, and I learned this principally from the late Baba Ram Dass though for many years I was exposed to it, not understanding much, is CONSCIOUSNESS.
Would love to have you interview Dr Chris Palmer, a metabolic psychiatrist from Harvard. He has been all over the podcast world promoting his book Brain Energy and uses a medical ketogenic diet, among other things, to put serious psychiatric disorders into full remission. He changed my life and gave the control of my future back to me.
Yes, faking orgasms is common, and solution, finding the Divine Feminine self begins with compassionate admission, and in realizing one's partner is also coming from (pun) injuries to the Masculine Psyche. As a 79 years young tantric yogini, whose path of practicing and teaching "sacred sensual and sexual" love-making began decades ago, the more of us who fess up, find kindness, curiosity, willingness to heal ---can and do. Not only do lover partnerships mend, but solo or partnered, you discover 'intimacy with all things' and 'divine' love experiences.
Famous-last-words quote for the episode: “Whatever, I’m done changing.” 😂 All that aside. This was a fascinating episode! Thank you (x3) for this interview and for bringing your authentic selves to the table. I’d like to hear about how all this relates to folks with ADHD and autism - partially b/c the topic fascinates me, and partially b/c I was diagnosed with ADHD this summer. (On the waiting list for autism and other ND stuff.) P.S. Nice hair, Mayim! :)
What does all this mean for people whose lives are such that the inability to do things is physical so that such people don't quite develop the expectation of success in the first place?
If this is something more new, discovered not that long ago, does that mean that there is research to create medication that affects the habenula directly for ex. depression. More targeted like the immunotherapy for cancer?
45:56 What about non physical energy? I am constantly feeling, and seeing I am never alone, and I feel none physical energy has and is always assisting me
