TJ Power | Understanding neuroscience to better manage our mental health.

when you're below Baseline in dopamine you're not going to feel that good really low dopamine you're going to be looking at things like depression experiencing really low mood that depression from the neurobiological perspective when you can't be bothered doing things can't bothers get out of bed can't bother to eat all of these kind of things you're low in that driving energy that driving dopamine chemical so typically I've always been looking down this Narrative of you don't want to be Below based on dopamine because low dopamine is not going to feel good your brain also has

an additional chemical when you're going below Baseline called dinorphine when you go below Baseline dynorphin releases into the system which actually gives additional psychological pain mental stress anxiety whatever it may be as a mechanism to try and reinforce something wasn't right with what you just did to me there you took me too high too fast so I'm going to add in this chemicals and please say don't do this to me again when you have the big crash after a long Tick Tock scroll or the crash after alcohol the crash after junk food crash after porn

when you actually feel extra crap it's because of this dinorphan chemical is coming in to try and say please stop doing this CJ how are you doing hey man how's it going good to be here no thank you very much for jumping on I think first thing that I want to really set the stall out with is that today we're going to be exploring how the listeners myself from a selfish point of view can understand Neuroscience a little bit better to optimize our mental health so why don't you just start off by giving us a

little bit of background on you what Drew you to psychology from younger years to the position you are now just take us through it yeah so what drew me in early on I actually played a lot of golf when I was younger that was kind of my original Dream to go into the professional golf space throughout my youth and with that I also started experiencing a lot of the sport kind of performance-based psychology so that began to spark the interest when I was young and then throughout my teenage years in sort of like 16 17

18 had some pretty tough experiences with loss and family trauma and things like that which really like deepened my perspective on mental health and my own mental health and things like that chose to study it at University and began to love a subject for the first time in my life like I didn't fully connect really with school necessarily but once I discovered psychology I was like wow this is so super cool and then yeah I chose to master into the Neuroscience space and started getting really into these brain chemicals and we're super fortunate during the

Masters I was down at XT University South in the UK and I got off of this job to become a lecturer at the University and start building out some kind of third year university modules and start teaching and I was given quite a lot of freedom to teach which was really cool so that suddenly opened this door into like maybe speaking on Mental Health which I hadn't really foreseen and that opened some cool things I started speaking at other universities Oxford and Toronto uni and then I kind of was on this route down let's go

into kind of uni professing lecturing and I was in Toronto when covid kicked off so I came home and I had all this training that I had been delivering to students and I kind of thought maybe I could also use this in companies and schools and things like that because mental health was suddenly a big big challenge when covert hit and then yeah two and a half years on this is now kind of a company that's training schools and organizations in neuroscience and mental health fantastic and it's interesting that golf was what Drew you in

because I I well I don't play as much golf as I would like to mainly because I know how sadistic it can become the negative self-talk but I I do understand the fascination psychologically that comes from golf because it's a real Ball by Ball battle with yourself and it's actually an analogy I often use with more silver-haired gentlemen a company Executives board members that don't necessarily understand why there is a mental health conversation going on with these Millennials these gen Z all this stuff when in reality golf is an example I always use because how

many times can you come home and say oh Chutney clubs on the floor and be like I completely lost my head couldn't get back on I couldn't get back on the on the course from the 13th hole you know well if that can happen within 18 holes of golf then of course that can happen on a day-to-day basis so why don't we just dig into that a little bit deeper because growing up playing golf the the real battle that you had with it I can imagine from a good day versus Bad Day what thoughts start

to generate in your head what's up to actually draw you down that what were the initial questions that made you think I want to explore more about psychology I just found it so fascinating in golf how you could be having like a really good day and things could all be going to plan the pre-planned the night before plan you have a great day of golf and then like 16th hole you could kill your whole day and kill your whole mood because of one bad t-shirt and I just like would go through these huge psychological fluctuations

when I was playing and I was so young like I was really playing a lot of golf from like the age of like 10 years old so emotionally like I wasn't that mature it was maturing me fast because I was having to deal with it but it just began to draw me down this question of how do I learn to kind of let go of like a really powerful emotional state so that I can move forward and I was like every young girl for obsessed with Tiger Woods and Tiger Woods had this capacity to just

completely let go of chaos when he was playing and move on and that question of how the hell do I figure out how to let go of these emotions began to draw me down maybe psychology has got some answers and it seems like it's it's giving you some at the very least and one thing I want to use as a foundation for the rest of this conversation is something I actually saw on your social media which is the eight pillars of mental health that you refer to it's not the similar to a a sort of

framework I use when speaking to corporates or schools and I refer to mine as anchors in there are habits and behaviors that I know are beneficial to me they're obviously all different for each and every every person so mine is some obvious things and then some more specific things to me but yours are pillars for mental health in general terms so why don't you just run us through what those are and why they're important and why you think those are the most critical critical things to consider yeah definitely so when I look at these my

big Fascination is why are we now experiencing this big shift in mental health this is what the question like I'm constantly thinking about every day and when you share what you mentioned earlier about maybe how why Millennials having a tough time in their mind is it just because it's like awareness of mental health is that what's taking place I'm very keen to really explain that I don't think that's what's happening I think a huge alteration in how Society is living is causing this Mental Health Challenge and I think the awareness is fantastic it's bringing a

big problem to the Forefront of society but when I look at these pillars I'm really interested in how how are we really biologically designed to behave for hundreds of thousands of years we were running around tearing through forests and hunting and building and climbing and I think given we did that for so long we are just biologically designed to do things in a certain way and nowadays A lot of it is falling away in how we live our lives so when I look through these pillars that's the motive so first one when I look at

the pillars is the ability to focus basically I really believe our ability to concentrate is absolutely essential and it's something that's super hard now like many of us really struggle to concentrate on a task or concentrate in a conversation whatever it may be but being in a state of attention really really important something that social media is having a huge effect on and when we go into these chemicals I have this kind of formula for these chemicals I'd love to kind of take you through to help you and the audience understand them focus is a

big part then got things like connection our ability to connect with other humans massive our ability to connect with ourself which takes us into our third one which is our self-talk this is huge I think this is such a foundational pillar you mentioned self-taught with the uh the golf I definitely experience a lot of that negative critical self-taught when I was playing and whenever I'm working with organizations and schools I think understanding how you're communicating with yourself is so foundational because that loud critical voice can make making good quality decisions pretty hard whether it's to

do with booze or phones or anything food whatever it may be you've then got movement connects massively with I know what you're into we're just designed to really physically use our bodies it's a really key part of us movement goes in also with gut health so the quality of what we fuel our body with is a really foundational pillar you've then also got your sleep which again movement food and sleep I see them as just all kind of interconnected and then we also have our technology so our relationship with the tech I obviously this organization

is called digital mind and it's because I kind of come from the position that I love Tech like I was speaking at in Oxford Street yesterday and I was near the Apple Regent Street store in London and like for me going into an Apple store is so fun like I just love technology I find it so exciting to be around it but with the love for it I also massively understand the challenge that it's bringing to society and to our mental health and a good quality healthy relationship with tech I think is potentially the most

important thing we can have now I I entirely agree and there's so much that we can unpack from those eight pillars and I think it'll probably unfold as we go so I'm gonna bother it will come in the chemical step into that that real that real big question which is I'm constantly wrestling with the question of how do I cultivate a healthy digital relationship with the digital side of what I do from a work point of view the digital side of how I engage from a personal point of view where are the boundaries what's good

for me what isn't good for me oh my God look at my screen time for the day but a lot of what I do is is bound by that technology so I can't be too hard on myself which ties into the self-talk here we go the narrative is running through it but yeah from your experience and from an understanding of the science and understanding the people behind the science the people I you and me everybody else how in the modern world do we cultivate healthy digital relationships yeah so the biggest thing to understand is technology

has a huge effect on this dopamine chemical dopamine is is so vital for us as a human being dope means the chemical that is fundamental to keeping us alive that's why you have it within you it's basically to motivate you towards behaviors that are going to keep you alive so if you go back in the day it might have motivated you to hunt or forage for food or connect with people or build shelter it's like this really core motivating chemical and when we over hundreds of thousands of years experience the dopamine reward it would have

been Heaven because these are the most sought after things like successfully finding food or building shelter or having kids or having sex these are the moments we felt the best and over time we've began to basically realize oh maybe we can get that dopamine hit without having to put in tons of effort but the challenge is when you have a normal natural dopamine hit that you'll experience maybe when you're exercising and you're pushing yourself these kind of things that earn reward you have these nice gentle fluctuations in dopamine when we look at say social media

for example it's immediate pleasure straight into our brain like we go into Tick Tock and it's like wow that's so entertaining or wow she's really good looking oh wow that was really funny or whatever it may be and dopamine spikes fast so dopamine goes up really quickly as soon as you go on social media rather than gentle climb when dopamine spikes up fast it's forced to drop below your Baseline level in order to kind of get back to its equilibrium and it's in this below Baseline level that our mind goes into difficulty because you can

imagine if there's is chemicals designed to Keep Us Alive and we're low on it the system's not going to feel that good so with your question of how do we cultivate the healthy relationship with the tech it's all about frequency of usage and duration of usage when you're on it so if we're really frequently checking it like if we're working and then every five minutes go on a social little scroll on social you're never giving your dopamine a chance to climb back so frequency is really important to having prolonged periods of time offer the tech

and I teach this whole digital detoxing concept and then also when you're on it and when you're thinking oh it's end of the day like I definitely deserve a nice scroll on social media which is all good like I also love doing that it's just don't do it for too long because there's the longer you're in there just the same as don't drink too many drinks but it's all right to have some drinks it's the same concept if you drink 10 you're going to feel pretty crap the next day if you drink two you'll probably

be all right so frequency and duration is kind of the key with building a healthy relationship it's fascinating as well because my understanding of sort of recreational drugs in general is that a come down is where you sit below that equilibrium for longer you've gone so aggressively below so to put it into sort of realistic terms obviously it's a much more aggressively spiked in One Direction and then the other with that sort of thing when it comes to synthetic drug use but that is it's the same mechanism isn't it in terms of day-to-day human interaction

in our brain it's the same thing happening exactly the same thing happening and suddenly a recent discovery that I've been uh really researching and there's a chap called Andrew huberman you may have heard of him he's kind of becoming the king in Neuroscience now there's this whole concept that when you're below Baseline in dopamine you're not going to feel that good really low dopamine you're going to be looking at things like depression experiencing really low mood that depression from the neurobiological perspective when you can't be bothered to doing things can't bother to get out of

bed can't bother to eat all of these kind of things you're low in that driving energy that driving dopamine chemical so typically I've always been looking down this Narrative of you don't want to be Below based on dopamine because low dopamine is not going to feel good your brain also has an additional chemical when you're going below Baseline called dinorphin when dinorphine when you go below Baseline dynorphine releases into the system which actually gives additional psychological pain mental stress anxiety whatever it may be as a mechanism to try and reinforce something wasn't right with what

you just did to me there you took me too high too fast so I'm going to add in this chemicals and please say don't do this to me again so that is when you have the big crash after a long Tick Tock scroll or the crash after alcohol the crash after junk food crash after porn when you actually feel extra crap it's because of this dinorphan chemical is coming in to try and say please stop doing this so I I had heard of that often before right now so I'm immediately incredibly fascinated and it is

a a it's a deterrent it's an inherent deterrent that we all have as human beings to not negatively or not reinforce negative behavioral patterns I guess yeah exactly that which is fascinating how clever this thing is that we're living in very much so and I I often talk about how I try to be not not not to the point of making life boring and analytical but I try and be very analytical about the decisions I make on a day-to-day basis and we are what we consistently do and the decisions I make in terms of I

very rarely drink um on a recreational basis now because I know it affects my sleep I know it affects my overall circadian rhythm but I also know that there will be social occasions where I will enjoy having 12 Beers what I do now is I factor I factor in the surroundings and the lifestyle decisions and the brawl the metrics around that rather than being so black and white about things because I can analyze how I feel either side of these and I know on a day-to-day basis if I'm not drinking booze recreationally then I will

feel better but I also know if I miss out on a social occasion then I'll and I don't buy it buy in I'll spend the whole day thinking just I'd just be in this weird headspace so what do I do I look at look at it analytically and then make make informed decisions but that informed decision comes from the analysis I've made about previous decisions so it's interesting to know that there is a an actual chemical that is accentuating that within my brain 100 and it's super interesting because I'm sure you've heard of the endorphins

chemical before that's the one that really is designed to reduce pain physical pain and also psychological pain within us so from a evolutionary perspective the absolute core function of that chemical is if you were suddenly I don't know faced with fighting a bear or something I mean it had to be quite a small bear to have a chance but if you were fighting a small bear and it scratched you endorphins would release into your system in order to reduce the pain of that scratch so that you'd have a chance of surviving that situation similarly if

you're running away from an animal it would release to reduce that pain so whenever you're pushing yourself really hard and you're physically pushing yourself endorphins are going to come in to reduce the pain you're going through endorphins very selectively is the opposite word to die nothing so endorphins are reducing pain within us dying off into adding pain to us to their kind of sisters guiding one another so it it's fascinating isn't it because I'm now I'm not alcohol seems to be the buzzword here but if you're reflecting on a hangover which is something majority of

the UK it's a big topic I have experienced is you can often find that you lean into negative behavior patterns even when you don't feel as bad as you expected to because you are by definition hungover that day and that's potentially allowing down orphan to to beat you that day but there might be instances where it's where it's right to work against it because obviously resetting that equilibrium is the priority when we are in that situation so should we always take the lessons from dinorphin or are there times where there are methods and things that

we can do to try and reset and get ourselves back to like real equilibrium faster yeah that's a good question so there's kind of two sides of dopamine dopamine will always return to Baseline if it's left if you do nothing it will always come back on its own eventually as long as you're not harming it further so if it's really low a waiting game will bring it back so on a hangover you could do nothing and eventually you'll come back if you wanted to speed up the time in which dinos leaves the system and dopamine

returns to Baseline it very simply follows a rule that if you do things that are effort you're going to experience a reward of dopamine that's the core function it's just to make us put an effort to our life so even if you take something as simple as cleaning your home like you you think oh I really need to clean the bathroom in the kitchen I need to redo my bedroom or my cupboard these are things that are effort but typically when you do them it's like oh I actually quite satisfied now I've done that it's

like that feeling of accomplishment so on a hangover the best thing you can possibly do is just do a few things that are a bit of effort a bit of cleaning a bit of movement cooking yourself a good meal something like that effort is going to basically get you back faster than doing nothing interesting very interesting because it's something that again without knowing the science behind it I've intuitively sort of picked up on over the years that this is a better thing to do in this situation do this more Fergus and from a more relevant

example at the moment is I'm in a bit of a slump which I anticipated and have learned to experience so post kelp man which is the most recent podcast that I spoke about my Reflections on it was almost a fortnight ago now but I know there is this phenomenon of post-event depression post events love whatever you want to call it I don't want to coin it as post event depression because it's very temporary and it's it's you can anticipate it but it's that culmination of hard work equals reward that comes to an end and even

though I know there's there's more on the horizon I know that I've got plans for what's next I'm straight back into a working day I'm straight back into training I'm straight back into eating habits all these things the previous thing that was such a fundamental component in my day-to-day life is now gone so whilst that void has been filled the reward has been received and and there's that slump that's come from from that Spike upwards so for me it's understanding what can I do in these post-event periods which is always going to be improving I'm

always going to learn from what are the habits and the things I can do to try and bring myself back to the optimal position away from that slump and it's things like getting straight back into a positive training regime and having that mapped out beforehand it's having all my food bought from the supermarket before I get back from the event because I will just move away from I'll just think oh you've worked hard you've worked hard oh my God I thought life's passed and you haven't been to the shops just little things like this and

it's just it's trying to get ahead of it and I've picked up on that over time but I am still to be honest coming out the back end of a little bit of a period of a slump but I knew that was coming so it's a it's obviously it was a 15 hour race so it's a very big day out for for context for people that are listening but it's the same effect in many ways because it's the the result of a prolonged period of of effort and that can manifest itself in people's day-to-day work

their work relationships their family relationships can't it so it's a constant case of analyzing how you respond to certain things and then trying to better prepare as a result of the learnings from that for next time when those things come along and from a scientific point of view it sounds like you've just equipped me with all the information I need to better understand that which is fantastic that is good I think it is something important to recognize because the pro the process of dopamine what's actually really interesting is we've always thought of it as just

like a reward chemical like we do something and then we feel good afterwards in a lot of the more Innovative research that's coming out now the most pleasurable experience of dopamine is actually in the pursuit not in the reward of the girl so it's actually during the like during the countdown when you're really pushing yourself and during all the training up to it that you're actually going to experience more of the high and then when you hit that Peak point of dopamine that the pursuit the dope means being there helping you with the pursuit and

it's like oh the system is done I've managed to complete this it is just going to think finally I can drop myself back lower towards Baseline just like the other side it wants to normally climb and it is going to fall so often whether it's pushing yourself like physically and psychologically of course in that situation or it could be I even remember this like working really hard for my a levels and having this big moment like thinking oh my God it's gonna be amazing when I finish then afterwards almost crashing out a bit and thinking

like where's this big reward feeling that I was expecting to come what's this about I know but often the most pleasurable experience is actually in the pursuit of the girl which is I think quite a motivating factor if you know that pleasure is in Pursuit I think it can motivate you to pursue what you're seeking for even harder because you know that the joy is in there it's um yeah process not goal oriented and I think a lot of people no I don't wanna I don't want to paint with a broad brush drug but I

think a lot of conversations I have with with athletes aspiring athletes is that they have a goal in their head that they aspire to get to but when you actually dig a little bit deeper as to why they want to set that goal it's because of things in their day-to-day life that they want to alleviate or Rectify and I get so much more value from setting a terrifying goal and then knowing what the next six months of that Journey are going to do for me Isn't it as an individual so that actually when I get

to the goal itself it's just right let's get it done rather than having that pressure so it's another it's a pressure management tactic as well that I find very useful because if you've gained everything that you were going to gain from the process and you acknowledge that the process is just as valuable as the goal itself then the goal itself is just the chair Roundup and from a self-development yeah from a self-development point of view the big question I was asked is as long as you've done everything that you believe you could in the run-up

to within the context of your individuality job done execute 100 simple as that so from a going back to the sort of the day-to-day stuff you've you've mentioned obviously the differences in the in the Baseline chemicals that we need to understand but are there any other chemicals that are useful to understand before we dive a little bit more into how people can manage this from their own perspective because as you mentioned dopamine is understood One Way media and general narrative around this tends to make it very linear whereas it's obviously much more complex than that

so do you want to just almost go through a definition of terms as such before we dive into how people can manage this better at home yeah for sure so you want me to stay within dopamino explain the four that I think are important the four that you think are important I think just just really lay it out because um obviously we've covered them already but some people might be listening and trying to track back thinking which one's that again yeah cool so this is a really nice easy way to remember it so what we

have this is a very fortunate thing that I realized about three months ago with these words so you have four key chemicals that are really really key these are what your body biologically wants to be in harmony if they're not in harmony we don't feel as good if they are we feel bloody awesome so you have dopamine at the top Dover means your motivation it's wanting you to basically put effort into your life when you do things that crash out your effort and give you immediate pleasure it goes lower when you put in lots of

effort to your job or your work or your relationships it goes higher the next one you've got is oxytocin oxytocin is designed to connect us together as humans it's most predominantly released in The Human Experience when a mother gives birth both the mother and the child experience this huge spike in oxytocin which creates maternal bonding it then is experienced lows throughout our life any time in which you're deeply connecting with people or deeply connecting with yourself so it really connects into the self-talk and the internal relationship so you've got dopamine then you've got oxytocin then

you've got serotonin which is the one responsible for really like from a psychological perspective it's all about our mood and our happiness and our emotional state from what kind of behaviors help it it's really the chemical that wants us to be hunter-gatherers tearing through the forest like when you look into what kind of things help your serotonin it's basically nature sunlight movement gut health and sleep so basically being out in in the outdoors and behaving in our instinctive way recharges the system boosts our emotional state and then our final one is endorphins so that's the

pain tolerance one when you physically push the body really hard and if you look down that list you've got dopamine oxytonin serotonin endorphins down the side of those letters it spells dose which is heaven so you basically want to be thinking am I getting my dose of chemicals each day am I doing something that's effort am I doing something that connects me to myself or others am I doing something that connects me with my instinct so am I getting outside and getting into natural light first thing anything like that and then am I doing something

that physically uses my body because they've got to be used that's why we've got them I'm pleased to hear you say that because I I feel now reflecting on my own day-to-day habits that I am getting my dose which is obviously nice thing I don't feel under attack which is always nice on the other end of the podcast but do you want to just talk us through somebody with the knowledge that you have what are the things that you really prioritize in a day-to-day basis to get your dose um so that we can maybe find

some alignment parallels or think about them in our own lives yeah definitely that's cool question so first thing for me is when throughout your sleep part of the regenerative process of all the different things your sleep is doing is you are building dopamine you're building that Resource as a result of if you wake up in the morning it's pretty useful if you feel motivated and focused to do stuff in your day so it's a pretty key mechanism so when you wake you really want dopamine to continue on that track upwards rather than go into depletion

so waking and immediately going into the social media unfortunately sets it on a path down at the start of the day which is one of the hardest habits to possibly break because I know a lot of people love that habit but for me charging my phone on the other side of the room learning to use my iPad as my alarm because the iPad doesn't have the addictive pull for me so I have the iPad as the alarm I don't have social media on the iPad and waking up turning the alarm off and immediately what I

did to start kind of like breaking that pattern of straight into the phone which is like in my day state walking to the bathroom and picking up my toothbrush and immediately starting brushing my teeth so I started to kind of like replace the phone with the teeth brushing then I'll go downstairs I always go to the bathroom when I first wake up another time that I would have sat and scrolled the phone I now have a book in the bathroom so I'll sit I'll read a couple pages from a dopamine perspective reading is total heaven

for dopamine it's something that requires effort and focus that's why you get a satisfaction feeling after it of course it's also good for survival education that's what that chemical is designed to do so no phone immediately a little bit of reading only read a couple pages and then my next mission is to definitely see natural light so one of the biggest factors in our sleep is natural light first thing so then I step outside and get out into outside for a walk so getting Outdoors is a really key part I'm someone that doesn't I really

love to walk like walking is probably my favorite type of movement but I also know the body needs to be physically pushed a bit harder than that so each morning I do this process of going on a walk and then whenever I hit a hill whenever I reach a hill I Sprint the hills so that's my kind of light endorph and physically push it I do a little bit of press-ups and stuff like that when I'm out there so I get a bit of a buzz first thing so those are kind of the key mourning

Parts I think herbal tea is really really good on an empty stomach in the morning so that's something I've had in my routine for like a couple years now the serotonin chemical is being created in your gut 95 of it is being created in your gut and then via something called the vagus nerve which you may have heard of is kind of Distributing that information to your brain so herbal tea heaven for your gut heaven for your functioning um normally that morning period I really aim to have 60 Minutes without seeing the tech basically and

then I've had all this time to kind of think about business think about life think about like I do a bit of gratitude work when I'm out there these kind of things and then I kind of Step into the external world and let all of that kind of dictate how I feel but waking up straight into others worlds I think really throws our head off and then throughout the day things I think are important is getting into deep state to focus when I'm working the way in which I do that is not have the phone

on the desk when I'm working I think it's a really important thing to get good at and then also when you're working on a task closing email and WhatsApp and slack or whatever you're using so that you actually stay on task because distracted working really crashes out dopamine and focus working is really good so that's a really big part and then food is big for me really go for a kind of very unprocessed sort of diet I've explored a lot of different diets myself I've done three years as a vegan I've then also done like

a more meat based diet I've done lots of different things typically I find eating as unprocessed as possible and as natural and as we probably are designed to eat has been best for me and then yeah connecting with people and sleep is a massive thing for me just making sure like that I go to bed fairly early so I get good sleep I'll do those yeah a few different factors okay are there any additional habits around sleep that you think are worth mentioning because I know my the last hour before bed can make or break

a good night's sleep for me and as you said it's uh it's almost plugging ourselves into the Thunderbolt overpriced cable that Apple was telling us to recharge a dopamine from a human perspective so how do we how do we maximize that recharge overnight from your understanding yeah so a few different things the first thing it definitely starts at the beginning of the day the best thing I think you can do is natural light first thing because with that circadian rhythm if you imagine just like a bell curve if it if your circadian with them starts

hard and fast by light pouring in it goes up quick So eventually that curve is going to go down quick so the shutoff time is going to be much faster so the period you're going to fall asleep is going to be shorter so light first thing is big and then throughout the day I think the most important thing is just physically exhausting the body I think so many of us are psychologically shattered when we're like working so much in these computers and phones and then we get into the bed and our body actually doesn't necessarily

need rest it's lying there thinking I haven't done that much today I've been on like a short walk or something but I haven't really been used so I think natural light and movement is key and then in terms of into the evening I actually I always had this challenge of always needing a wee in the night which I found so annoying because I'd always have to get up and then simple change of no longer having herbal tea in the evening even though it is a healthy thing to do no longer having it like after 8

PM I found really useful and not really having that much liquid at all in the evening like after dinner I actually found really useful for staying deeper asleep for a longer period of time at night and then I really don't think you want to be in bad scrolling social media because it's just energizing the mind so much I think if we have to have Tech in bed because it's like so habitual and it's like not an option to not I think you're so much better with an iPad watching like some longer form Netflix or YouTube

content over like this quick move around style because that's energizing the mind and then a really big thing for me is having quite a cold room our body's cool as they go to sleep they're reducing temperature you can imagine they develop that because we slept outside for a hundred thousand years and I've always found that if the room is cold so that I always think a temperature that's good to imagine is you actually would want to be a bit cold if you weren't under the duvet I think that's the kind of temperature you want to

be at so opening the window I think is really key so much of that is all tied into the biological Rhythm the Circadian rhythm convention there and it's something that the more the more conscious I become of it the more I try and frame my day around it and that's from a training perspective from a psychological perspective what type of work I'm doing at what time of the day what type of meeting I'm having at what time of the day what type of training am I doing what type of the day and obviously this is

all very Ideal World situation and nine times out of ten I get to 8 pm and think oh I've got two training sessions to do how is this something Fergus but in theory the framework that I try and cultivate is better understanding my own circadian rhythm having a more sensible relationship with caffeine as well as a big one that I talk about on here a lot and generally six to eight hours I I think that the caffeine cut off is is something that's spoken about a lot in the sort of Fitness space in general space

on social media but I think the big key Nuance is it all comes down to when you wake up because once you've got that light in your system you have then sort of reminded your body of when what Rhythm it's working to so it should be six to eight hours after waking up is when I look at my caffeine curfew which tends to be around 11 or 12 Mark which yeah but for some people a training post-worker aren't tired after a full day work I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna have this kind

of monster before I go to go and go to gymbox after a tough day's work all that's doing is going to be putting you in the cycle of negatively reinforced oh I'm tired I'm gonna have more caffeine what's the caffeine doing it's making your quality of sleep reduced which means you're going to be more tired what you're going to do have more caffeine rinse and repeat oh 15 years have passed I feel terrible so from the office from your perspective what is I assume the herbal tea is somewhat of a replacement for any sort of

caffeinated beverages but are there any interesting studies or anything you'd like to reference on that space for people to consider yeah I think the caffeine Space is really interesting so because I've experimented with no caffeine and with caffeine because I do like caffeine it feels pretty good and I think it's something that can be utilized I just think it needs to be utilized in the in the right way so I definitely don't think it should be utilized to wake the system so I think there should be at least 90 minutes of after waking before caffeine

comes in because what's interesting about caffeine is we all kind of perceive it as it's something that's giving us energy because like you're drinking it's like well I'm more energetic but it's not actually technically giving us energy we have this chemical in our body called adenosine which is what creates fatigue and adenosine releases into your system in the evenings and it releases whenever the body is tired and when you have adenosine in you you're like well I feel quite slow and I feel quite exhausted all the caffeine molecule does is block adenosine so it blocks

the tired receptor it doesn't actually add any energy to us so you really want to be not using it to give you energy but using it I think in a bit of a different way so I'll normally use the herbal tea as my first drink I do that not necessarily for energy I do it more because I think it's going to really help my gut health to function well and when my gut functions well I just think I'm just like a little bit more optimal and then at about 11 which is where I'll begin to

experience my first like slight dip and normally a dip for me will be my concentration beginning to fall because I'm so I don't have like crazy good concentration is something I have to really really work on so I normally have a coffee around then and I think in general coffee slightly spikes dopamine caffeine's slightly spikes though for me so it will suddenly bring motivation and attention a little bit higher so I just think whenever you have it you want to optimize its usage so you don't want to have it and then go and chill and

have some conversations on like a more of a coffee break style thing I think you'd want to have your walks and whatever you would do at work come back have your coffee and go straight into work and actually utilize the added concentration and motivation it's providing because then it's going to use those chemical in a better way but I I'm similar with you I definitely don't think after midday is a good time to be having anymore as a general rule of thumb it obviously depends on if you're getting up at 11AM because you're uh you're

a nightmare or something then you don't need to be so hard and fast on the midday rule but interestingly one of the sponsors for this podcast who I will already mention for those listening the drink that I have from them called rise is 125 milligrams of naturally occurring caffeine with theanine as well to help balance out the anxiety-inducing effects nootropics and electrolytes so that's always the first thing I have every day around an hour around 15 minutes after I wake up and it means that the first thing I'm doing is hydrating with electrolytes with a

surge of caffeine and with nootropics at the point where generally that point in my day is where I'm sitting and doing 45 minutes to an hour of sort of work that requires no external platforms or phone usage it's stuff that I can just get down and do with my phone a completely different room because that's where I'm most focused so I think it's important I completely agree basically with the sense that using caffeine tactically is something or or not necessarily tactically but understanding why we're using caffeine is more important than oh I'm tired energy drink

let's go and I think another thing that I want to just mention from a personal perspective is the difference I feel in caffeine that comes without l-theanine and with because for example a black coffee makes me jittery and anxious whereas a Monster energy drink doesn't because it contains theanine and the same with human 24 drives has thinning which balances out a little bit more so there are things we can do to mitigate some of the symptoms that float around the swissphere when it comes to caffeine but there are things we can do to better manage

our circadian rhythm overall and caffeine management is one of them so going back to your general work with corporate schools organizations what are the key themes in the workplace that you see organizing that need more attention from a management point of view part one and then from an employee point of view part two because I think there's a bit of a generational divide in terms of how people manage this and approach these things from an intrinsic point of view that's worth mentioning yeah so from a management point of view I think this mentality of always

on is the is the real challenge that we're experiencing in the mind because and this is why I think covert is one of the factors in as to why covert has significantly altered society's mental health is this expectation to always kind of be checking the emails first thing and like throughout lunch like I was working with an organization yesterday and they're still kind of all throughout lunch not really resting in any way because they're still on they're out they've got the laptop or they're eating food at the desk or whatever it may be so from

an organizational point of view I think beginning to understand that the human mind and body needs rest and performance will only rise if people rest more like there's not this mentality of working harder is only going to reduce performance so I don't even want to add anything that the key buzzword is so will turn over so we'll income civil productivity which is often what gets people listening I found sadly it does get them listening but increase productivity and work performs equals increased turnover Revenue you and probably reduce turnover and staff all things which are good

so this is my opportunity to say anyone listening with the I don't want to use the word silverhead because there's plenty of silverhead men out there I've met that uh are lovely about this sort of thing but to play on a stereotype the age-old mentality of stiff uplit crack on corporate environment that we've all seen on TV and have seen caricatured all over all over the place that is actually a less product productive way of working for overall kpis as a business in my humble opinion I agree 100 and it's been very interesting with some

organizations that have really thought right let's give this a go let's really optimize break times and optimize lunches and in the evening give people proper time where they feel like they can be really off of their Tech and not have an expectation to respond how energy and then intrinsic in it motivation begins to rise if you feel like you're a little bit more respected in your role and you also have higher energy levels so I think rest is a really important thing from management perspective the other part is I'm very into the relationships employees have

within organizations with the management and with one another and how that then affects their mental health their value within the organization all of those kind of things and with the Neuroscience in mind the oxytocin chemical is going to enable you to basically build trust within within an organization and then also has a huge effect on your confidence and your belief in yourself within or not within an organization if you're high in this chemical so you see some companies they just feel really bonded together and they feel like they're working as a unit and you see

their performance is pretty high whereas when you have this more fractured organizations not so much and one of the biggest things with oxytocin is complementary Behavior so when you experience a compliment when someone has basically said that they value your contribution to a project or when you've experienced it in your life about your appearance or something you succeeded with a compliment as a human being is something that's really really nice to experience and from an oxytocin perspective you get this monster spike in oxytocin when you experience a compliment and I think when organizations really prioritize

valuing their employees by making it very clear as to oh this is how you contributed to that project and it's really cool that this was how you at this and when you begin to make that much more normal within all of their language and their comms inside a company I think can really help and then you have a more trusting organization so you have more belief that one another are going to execute the tasks so I'd say rest and value in the staff and being complementary and understanding contribution really really key and then from an

employee's perspective I really think it's about taking full power over your own mental health and really beginning to think I've got to prioritize some of this a bit more and I really from like when you're thinking employees in the workplace that's quite a dopamine environment because that's working and if you think when we will hunter-gatherers or whatever it may be the working environment would be hunting or building or finding food or whatever it may be so dopamine is a really working chemical and I really think understanding what is my primary thing that's crashing out my

dopamine you've basically got five options you've got too much booze too much junk food too much social media too much porn or too much drugs saying drugs would be synthetic drugs or vaping or something like that so those are your five and as you listen to that now if you think what is my number one is it booze is it social media is it junk food is it porn is it drugs and one of those probably is getting abused in some way recognizing that that is causing dopamine to crash and it's not about oh this

has to completely go like I'm a bad person if I'm doing this it's not our fault these things have been created in society and they tap into a deep instinctive part of us that loves to feel a certain way so it's not bad that we find these behaviors addictive it's very normal I have found many of those addictive myself over time and recognizing which one it is and thinking this one has got to go down a bit if I want to feel good in my Working Day and then understanding on the other side of it

I want to be rebalancing my dopamine so every day I've got to find an activity that I want to do that is quite a lot of effort so it could be I'm going to get much more organized with my life I'm getting a much more organized bedroom work set up workflow organization based stuff is really good it could be the cold shower stuff cold showers are crazy good for dopamine they've done some cool studies that have shown you can actually get a 2.5 x rise in your Baseline dopamine from a cold shower which is exactly

the same as the rice that you can see from cocaine which is just mental that cold water can do that cocaine will Peak at nine minutes and then fall below Baseline with a cold shower you'll get a rise for about two and a half to three hours so at the end of your shower putting it cold and just dealing with the pain it's a really good thing to do so you could have organization you could have cold water exercise is good focused and achievement based staff thinking about getting more in the zone when you're working

these kind of things really key from an employee performance and mental health perspective and that's a that's an empowering thing as well isn't it because it means that a lot of the power to manage this stuff on the day-to-day basis is within ourselves and we could sit here and go on a big long rant about how the NHS is underfunded and waiting lists for psychologists psychiatrists through the roof and it's only getting worse and I do think there's Merit to that conversation because it's something that needs fixed at root cause but I think there is

a lot more that our society as person to person we can do more in that sense I mean using oxytocin as an example it's it's inherent in our DNA in our history and our heritage human beings that connection and that looking out for one another and achieving common goals is a part of who we are so I think empowering people to understand that there is more that we can do on a day-to-day basis to find that equilibrium and therefore better manage their mental health is an incredible thing so with that in mind and with the

answers you just given what is your take on the most optimal work environment now given the balance between office at home commuting all of the the cluster of things that get thrown into this Melting Pot of what's best don't go on LinkedIn and have this conversation it's messy but hybrid working seems to be the one that most of the bigger companies in the UK are leaning towards from a corporates or white collar perspective but from your understanding what do you think is most optimal yeah I think this is a super interesting area to explore so

from my perspective I really think the office is very good for humans I do think being in person and having the social interaction is very good I do think it requires effort to go to an office effort to commute you slightly maybe reduce like time that you could be working because of the commute time I think with that argument I think it's very underestimated how much wasted time might be taking place on the phone when you're at home in comparison to when you're in the office so I think there's probably like a relationship to understand

there but I think offices are really good for your mind I don't think we need to be them every day though so I would say in my opinion optimal would probably be two and a half easing towards three days in the office and two days at home so two days to do your your own thing for me personally like I don't have an office that I go to but I really look at my own work process and find that if I have two or three days where I go into like co-working spaces I go into

weworks a lot and things like that I find it very good for my focus and it kind of the process of putting in effort build your energy higher and then when you're working it's like oh I'm really here and I've got to do some work just like if we're a hunter-gatherers and all the food was right next to us we'd have got lazy so we need to go and explore and we need to expand our minds like it's what it's what's required biologically so I think three days where you do put an effort you do

go into the office and you get all the social interaction benefits and you get the more teamwork environment I think is good and then also I think what's wonderful about this kind of situation is enabling you to have a couple days where maybe from a family perspective it could really be good to be at home or maybe sometimes it's just nice to have that more like restful home environment a little bit calmer for certain types of tasks so yeah that'd be my thoughts I I agree and I think I think it's immensely practical as well

to be able to take certain deliveries or to to go to your doctors or to do this before the work day starts little things that just become impossible when you're commuting every day and I we we pay out for an office it's an expense that you could argue probably we could we could drop but we do that because it means our overall productivity going back to that productivity income overall mental health how we approach things rather than just being on all the time I need the boundaries for certain types of work that the office gives

me whereas home gives me certain other well it gives me an environment that's better for other sorts of work like for example sitting here and having a podcast because it means that there's no noise outside there's no distraction sort of coming in and out there's no potential delays as a result of commuting to get into the office on time and that could cause me additional stress and mean that I'm not as present for this conversation and I've I've understood that for me generally two or three days a week of real Focus specific work that I

do at the office and then a bit more flexible things that don't need done by certain deadlines at home I can be a bit more varied with is the best way that I've found because it means that I get that social interaction but I also get that complete switch off shut off the world crack on with everything else when I close those doors and then at home I can I can approach things in the right way and I think oh my laundry Powers got absurd I can do that at lunchtime rather than yeah rather than

sitting in the office going oh no I forgot to put the washing on which is something that I've experienced before and it's it becomes stressful so I do agree to close off three low-hanging fruits that everyone listening can Implement in their day-to-day life from tomorrow to better look after their mental health go yes so I know it's not it's like a mid-angy fruit but not going straight into the phone when you first wake up I think it's one of the most significant things you can possibly do for your mental health so that would be number

one number two would be the natural light first thing so those two go together I think it's crazy significant if you don't have any kind of morning routine and it's kind of just wake up shower begin the commute or wake up showering straight into your desk I think having a slight delay where you get outdoors and you get into that more natural environment I think is crazy good and then the final one is really reducing the frequency in which you're checking the phone because it's the frequency that's the challenge when we check it all the

time the bass line is getting lower and lower and if you do it too often a whole Baseline reduces which is what puts us into these lower psychological States so starting to see your phone is something that's like more of a I need to earn the experience of going on it rather than let's just check it all the time so I've got to do some exercise or eat some food or do some work and then I can have some time where I chill and sit on my phone for a bit but just the I'm bored

or I can't be bothered with this task check check it's really not good so no phone first thing natural light when you wake up and then reducing frequency of checks I'd say would be crazy good for the mind all things I've personally implemented at different stages of my life and have all root rewards so fantastic I completely agree well DJ thank you very much really appreciate that and it's a better from a personal perspective to better understand the sort of Neuroscience behind why I make the decisions that I do and why I promote a lot

of things that you promote today with a lot more reinforcement which is always nice to know so thank you very much where can people find you online where would you like them to find you online and where wouldn't you like them to find you online yeah don't go look over here I would uh say best place for my content is Instagram so at TJ power on Instagram is the best one and then I'm now getting into the tick tock space which is exciting and uh LinkedIn as well from a corporate perspective all of the organizations

that I'm partnered with are on LinkedIn so if you search TJ power on any of those three those have left best places to connect fantastic well thank you very much once again and hope you have a fantastic rest of day awesome I've loved it thanks man