with manifestation or that terminology there's a lot of woowoo and pseudo science actually the ability to manifest is fundamentally based in Neuroscience there is no woowoo there's no magic there's no law of attraction what people don't appreciate is you can't wait for somebody to magically take care of everything the reality is you have the power within yourself to change your circumstance so many people in our society they think somehow if you get this stuff that's going to fill the void all of us have and of course it doesn't you're manifesting all the time what people
don't realize though is that many of the decisions they make in their lives the relationships the jobs they have are actually based on the baggage that they carry and that is The Narrative of their story when you start there anything is possible what you just said fundamentally addresses the issue of how people create a prison for themselves by this negative selft talk every time they make a negative statement it's as if they're laying down a brick and the walls get higher and it gets darker yet all of us have the key in our pocket to
let yourself out of the prison that you created so many people make judgments about [Music] people and they don't recognize the path or the the problems or the adversities they faced in those situations ations you know you think there's no hope but hey it's your friend Mel I am so excited that you're here it's always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together if you're brand new welcome to the Mel Robins podcast family thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast and for hitting play on this particular episode because it
tells me that you're the type of person that sees bigger possibilities for yourself and you're interested in learning how you can use neuroscience and the science of manifestation to help you achieve it I love that I want to know all about that too which is why I am beyond thrilled to introduce you to someone who is truly extraordinary Dr Jim Dodie is here from California he's in our Boston Studios he is a Stanford neurosurgeon he's a world-renowned neuroscientist and New York Times best-selling author a philanthropist he's the founder and director of the Stanford center for
compassion altruism research and educ a he has done so much more than just that but to name a few he's a military veteran he has founded massive medical device companies he's one of the world's leading experts in minimally invasive spinal surgery and he was the former chairman of the dolly Lama foundation and he is here to teach you the science of manifesting and visualization why it works and how to do it properly according to the science you you and I are going to leave this conversation knowing exactly how to leverage Dr Dodd's extraordinary research and
wisdom so please help me welcome Dr Jim Dodie to the Mel Robbins podcast it is a pleasure and a joy to be with you I am so thrilled that you are here and I cannot wait for this conversation so where I want to start is can you speak directly to the person that's listening to us and tell them how their life might be different if they take to heart absolutely everything that you are about to teach and share with us today of course and I think the challenge for so many of us is that we
believe the negative selft talk we have and as a result we create limited beliefs that then limit our possibilities and we believe this ongoing narrative and the reality is we have more power within ourselves and it's understanding that you control this there is no outside force and as you know in my book uh uh it says the universe doesn't give a [ __ ] about you because there is nothing out there and I don't mean this in a negative way but I mean you can't wait for somebody to magically take care of everything the reality
is you have the power within yourself to change your circumstance and it's just believing it and listen I will tell you as you know I grew up in a challenging background my father was an alcoholic my mother had had a stroke when I was a child she was partially paralyzed chronically depressed attempted suicide we were evicted we were on public assistance and in those situations you know you think there's no hope but as I found and uh from my first book into the magic shop I walked into a magic shop and met a woman who
looked at me as a human being and what I mean by that is so many people make judgments about people and they don't recognize the path or the the problems or the adversities they faced and everybody deserves to be listened to so this woman in this magic shop she was a radiant being she had a smile a presence that made you feel safe and this is a key psychological safety to downregulate your stress response and she made me feel okay she didn't look down on me and I was 12 as a 12-year-old she looked at
me as an equal eye to eye and uh that interaction with her changed the trajectory of my life because it changed how I saw the world you've written about your past you've written about this interaction with this woman in the magic shop and still it brings so much emotion up in you how come uh one I'm appreciative two I mean uh having somebody take the time to look at you see you uh appreciate what you are and uh taking that interest it's very meaningful and I try never to take that for granted and even in
I hope every interaction you understand that that uh a lot of people are suffering they're carrying baggage from their past and that baggage is limiting them and often times just listening to somebody can profoundly change their lives because that's what people want to be heard and sometimes it's just hello sometimes it's just a hug so I always tell people never forget your own ability to change somebody's life and also to recognize that often times how somebody is interacting with you has nothing to do with what's going on it has to do with the baggage they're
carrying and so give people a benefit of a doubt and so you know if you grow up in a background like mine typically they're two path one is the path you become an alcoholic drug abuser have mental health issues the other is you overe Excel right overachieve then the path of the overachiever gets bifurcated there's a one group who say nobody helped me I did this all myself uh I'm not going to help anybody else then you have the other group which I probably typified maybe excessively uh where uh I understand the pain people go
through uh and very deeply so uh I'm very attuned to that um I personally cry all the time for the same reason and I don't think I've ever heard anybody explain um why I feel so driven to do what I do so thank you for that that was a real gift to me to hear somebody explain why tears come up all the time and why I end this podcast every single time by telling the person who's listen listening that I love them because I know for most people they actually don't hear it said by anybody
else no and which is a very sad statement because um and we can talk about this but so many people live in a fear mode all the time and of course it has all sorts of dilus effects and being in a love mode or a heart-c centered mode is very difficult especially if you have all sorts of challenges that distract you from who you really are and I think the gift you give people and hopefully I try to give people is a sense of hope and possibilities I want to go back to the moment in
the magic shop that truly shaped you forever and changed the trajectory of your life and so the person who's listening can really perhaps see themselves or someone they love in the story could you explain as a 12-year-old you're walking into this magic shop first just kind of how you felt emotionally at that point in your life going through all of the heartache and the hardship that you did that so many people do and how this interaction with an adult woman who you had never met who just interacted with you how that actually changed well um
what would happen in my situation at home was Whenever there was fighting or uh uh challenging events I would get on my bike and ride as far and as fast away as I could and I rode a great distance far from my house and ended up at a strip mall and I'd had an interest in magic for a while I used to have a a plastic thumb that I would do tricks with my son has one of those yes yes and uh I lost it and so I was looking for a plastic thumb but anyway
I saw the magic shop and I went in and what was interesting was this woman was there and who was in her m50s probably and I I still remember her vividly because she was wearing a blue and white Mumu remember these outfits because she was a larger lady and she had this flowing gray hair and she had these glasses that were at the tip of her nose and she had a chain on them and she was reading this paper backbook you you sound like you're describing the potions professor and Harry Potter and she may have
actually uh but uh uh anyway uh she looked up from her classes and I started quering her about magic and she said I'm just here babysitting in the shop because uh this is my son store and he's doing an errand but this led to her and I having a conversation and after about 20 minutes she said to me she said I really like you she said I think I can help you I'm here for another six weeks if you show up every day I think you could learn a lot and I had no clue what
she meant and this was before mindfulness or uh neuroplasticity were in the sort of common lexicon and I did show up every day now I have to tell you it wasn't because I had any insight or self-awareness I was a poor 12-year-old in despair with a feeling of hopelessness but I did show up and the reason I showed up was one I had absolutely nothing else to do to two uh two she was giving me chocolate chip cookies so those were the two drivers of uh my interaction with her but to sort of understand what
happened is she apparently had some exposure to Eastern uh meditation practices and she taught me if you will what is now called a mindfulness practice and what I never realized was that as a child I was in a war zone all the time a constant trauma because you never know what's going to happen it's chaos there's always unexpected things you can't rely on anyone or any person and as a result your muscles are always tight you're always looking around you can't focus and of course to learn you have to be able to attend if you
can't be present it's not possible to learn so she recognized this and she initially taught me a u relaxation technique and then she taught me the ability to focus or attend and then probably the most critical thing was she taught me that the negative dialogue that was going on in my head was not truth and often times when we tell ourselves we're not good enough we're not worthy we don't deserve love we think there's some truth in that yeah but we have as humans a negativity bias where negative statements have a tendency to stick with
us and this leads oftentimes to rumination and once you tell yourself it is not possible I cannot that becomes truth yeah and so we create our own Limited belief system and so she taught me a technique to respond with positive self-affirmation but also to not respond to those negative feelings uh and just let them drift by but also to constantly encourage positivity within yourself and this led me to look at the world in a different way and the reason I say that is if you're hypercritical with yourself you're hypercritical in your the lens through which
you see the world and you're very judgmental and what I tell people is once I understood what was going on in my own head it made me look at the world through a different lens one of kindness compassion and it also dissipated the anger that I had towards my parents because what happens is of course they're supposed to be the caregivers but if they don't have the tools to take care of their own pain they can't help you so that realization was very important as the realization that people carry baggage and uh their reactions often
time have nothing to do with you and so having a much more thoughtful gentle Kinder way to interact with people uh I think is extraordinarily powerful you went on to become a neurosurgeon how and when did you start m manifesting and can you talk about the kind of overlap and connection between being a neurosurgeon and the interest in the functioning and wiring of the Mind itself well the other thing uh I didn't mention was that at the end of this if you will mindfulness type practice um we had a discussion and the discussion was about
how to manifest or visualization so she taught you how to manifest and visualize at the age of 12 yes wow so she asked me to make a list of 10 things that I wanted now I have to tell you this is through the lens of a 12-year-old who's poor so uh in typical fashion I said I wanted uh To Be A Millionaire which in 1968 was a lot of money it seemed like uh I wanted to have a mansion I wanted to be a doctor and it wasn't so much listen I was always kind and
thoughtful but I want to be a doctor so people looked at me and said you're okay uh I wanted a Porsche I wanted a Rolex watch and all of these external uh um material things that so many people in our society think they need they think somehow if you get this stuff that's going to fill the void all of us have and of course it doesn't and uh but Society is oriented unfortunately toward seeking external affirmation with the belief that if you fulfill the societal Narrative of success which is money power position that will then
translate into happiness and of course this is a story that's been told over and over and over again and it does not and I'm sure you know many many extraordinarily quote unquote successful people who are absolutely miserable well you know one thing I want to highlight as you're listening to Dr DOD and I just am so blown away by um your gift of explaining things and how connected you are to why this is important to you and it's important to I think everybody to understand what you're trying to teach us is that I think a
lot of us know that chasing the external stuff is what what Society has been prioritizing but you're going a layer deeper which is it's not just about the belief that you think those things will make you happy it's that your lived experience when you feel invisible is that people that have those things are seen and that is an explanation that cuts at a way deeper psychological driver than happiness and that experience of feeling like you don't matter you're not seen you uh are not treated with a level of dignity and care that every human being
deserves I haven't heard anybody truly connect the dots between the obsession with chasing status and surface level items and actually not happiness but the fundamental need that we human beings have for connection and the sense that somebody actually cares about you and you think that that's going to happen because of the S shiny stuff that you acquire and you're here to say that actually it doesn't it doesn't uh at all and I think uh that's a challenge for so many people because uh they've been sold this narrative and it's a narrative of unhappiness and it's
a narrative of fear and I was saying earlier when you chase lanks like that that's because of your own insecurity and as a result that activates your sympathetic nervous system which of course is the flight fight or freeze response and when that happens actually that has a very negative effect on how your brain functions but also your peripheral physiology and can lead to a lot of very significant uh diseases and uh decrease your life uh expect versus if you shift that narrative if you will to the love mode and what I mean by that is
all of us have the ability to actually a shift from engagement of our sympathetic nervous system which is part of our autonomic nervous system which arises in the brain stem and is distributed throughout all the organs in your body but especially your heart to the parasympathetic nervous system which is really how we evolve to live uh as a species uh it's not that we were stressed every second we were stressed periodically and that stress mode was meant to activate in the face of threat and respond and either you survived or didn't survive but then you
immediately went back to engagement of your parasympathetic nervous system if you survived that is the system we were designed to live in that is the system in which you care which you're rewarded for caring where you have the release of oxytocin and these other neurotransmitters that activate your pleasure and reward centers when you care for another especially your Offspring but also within uh the context of our common humanity and that is the mode you want to be in especially if you want to manifest because that is when your cognitive brain networks your peripheral physiology work
at their best and that is from the love mode if you will I want to see if I can translate back because those were a lot of big words I realize that you are a neurosurgeon and you teach these Concepts all over the world but I want you and I to put our arm around the person that's listening and I want to see if I can't shorthand all this science so you keep using the word fear mode and heart mode which I love you also just beautifully explained if I'm hearing you correctly that there are
two uh modes to our nervous system sympathetic sympathetic rest calm and love fight ORF flight and that as we listen is it okay if every time you say fear mode we just go okay he's talking about the sympathetic figh ORF flight nervous system that a lot of us live in that shuts you off to possibility connection potential and love versus the heart mode which which is your parasympathetic nervous system and it is where the connection and manifestation and fulfillment and the potential of your life exists is that a way to think about this no no
that's uh the perfect way to think about it and uh when you're in that mode everything changes for the positive the heart mode yes and the possibilities of having your intention manifest are greatest when you were in that mode okay got it so I want to be in heart mode how did this amazing woman in the magic shop teach you to manifest when you were 12 well I have to tell you and I don't want to mislead people uh I thought it was a lot of [ __ ] initially uh and the reason is is
because of course I had never been exposed to anything like that I mean being able to sit and and relax your muscles with intention being able to breathe a certain way to calm your nervous system down were completely new to me uh so it took a little while for me to understand that but once I did understand it I realized how powerful it was because I didn't constantly have this negative selft talk going on and this fear constantly and so uh as you know uh these types of mindfulness practice which are very commonly discussed today
and have changed millions of lives uh are readily available to everyone and fundamentally what she taught me was this type of a technique a relaxation technique a focus technique and uh dealing with the negative selft talk looking at the world through a lens of compassion and we talked about visualization for you to maximally visualize that means you have to be relaxed you have to have calm you have to not look at what I want and this is the difference for a lot of people because they have a vision of what they want but not what
they need as an example we're talking about possessions I want a Porsche I want a Rolex which was what I did um and they think that if I just get that I'll be okay and the problem is that it won't make you okay and when you're sitting there self focus saying if I just have that I need this versus as an example saying I want to be a doctor now it's not I want to be a doctor so everybody looks at me and says how great I am which is what I did it's I want
to be a doctor because I want to help people those are completely two different narratives one is I want to be of service that is how we were designed as human beings not I want for me and when you change how you look at the world with when you change what you want you realize one a lot of what you think you want is worthless versus what is powerful what gives a person purpose and meaning which of course activates every aspect of your physiology both brain and peripheral physiology to work at their best is being
of service being connected caring for others and we know through the work of Bob Butner and the blue zones or the work of Robert waldinger and the 85-year-old harv study when you care for others when you look through that lens everything in your life improves and that is the place where you also have the ability to maximize the possibilities for your intention to manifest you said that human beings are wired for service as a neurosurgeon as a person that you know you're you're here in Boston to go teach about compassion you were the chairman the
dama Foundation yes so how are we wired for service as human beings well if you look at our Evolution as a species unlike other species one we have a small litter size that's a very clinical way I think if I were your wife and you said that I'd smack you Dr Dodie a small litter size well my wife has smacked me multiple times believe me and uh our Offspring do not run off into the jungle or or the forest they have to be cared for for well over a decade and why would you expend the
time the resources the energy to care for your Offspring unless you were rewarded the way you're rewarded when you care for your Offspring is the release of different neurotransmitters such as oxytocin or the love hormone and when those are released your pleasure and reward centers are activated your physiology works at its test and you look at the world through the lens of love and caring because you want your Offspring to survive as we evolved as a species and you're probably aware of that there's something called Dumars number uh so up to 150 people which was
typically the size of a tribe again it was important because you were in a hostile environment that you cared for the other or the group would not survive so these are very deep seated genetic imperatives uh that are with that allow our species to survive we are not meant to live chronically uh in the sympathetic nervous system we are meant as a species to live in our parasympathetic nervous system where we have openness generosity caring love the problem is the nature of how capitalist Society has been developed uh actually for many many people activates their
sympathetic nervous system chronically and they get distracted from their purpose our purpose is to love one another I love that and I love that you've simplified it to you're either in fear mode and heart mode and that you are hardwired for heart mode your purpose is to love yourself to love other people to be in that mode can you explain what manifesting is how do you think about it or describe and teach it to people around the world so as you know with manifestation or that terminology there's a lot of woowoo and pseudoscience and a
lot of people take it advantage of that and uh it turns unfortunately into a a money-making opportunity for some people the reality is though that actually the ability to manifest is fundamentally based in Neuroscience there is no woow woo there's no magic there's no law of attraction based on the history of it back in the first and second Cent the hermetics came up with this idea and it's been propagated through different Prosperity gospels and all sorts of other things as if if you have positive energy and you put that energy out in the world you
will be able to manifest the Porche the Ferrari the mansion and uh but if it doesn't happen it's your fault because you didn't care enough or you didn't do it the right way or just buy another book and I'll tell you the real way to do it uh but fun fundamentally it's based on neuroscience and what I mean by that is the way in which you manifest and I'll Define manifestation is the ability to take an intention and embed it into your subconscious in a manner such that it has the greatest likelihood to occur or
to manifest and what I mean by that is what people don't appreciate is every second we have about 6 to 10 million bits of information coming to us from our sensory organs that's what makes us who we are that creates our reality but on a conscious level we can only deal with 50 to 100 because 99.9% go to maintain our bodily function that 50 to 100 though you have control over 50 to 100 bits of information bits of information so how do you deal with that well you take the tools and what I mean by
that is the tools to EMB add something into your subconscious okay the best way to do that and I'm sure you've heard the term what fires together wires together but can you explain that for the person listening what does that mean so if you create habits this results in the creation of neurop Pathways and if the mere repetition of those habits actually lays down the circuitry that then gets embedded and then actually makes things happen and I'll explain it as follows when when you were able to use all of your sensory organs or abilities to
embed that intention and do it repeatedly that is when you're creating these neural Pathways as an example if you have an intention you take a pencil you write it down you're actually doing something physical tactile then you read it silently then you read it aloud then you visualize that and you do that over and over and over again what that will do is then embed that into your subconscious and then these different cognitive brain networks get activated now can we unpack that just a minute sure because everyone that listens to this loves to make sure
that they just got the instructions from you Dr Dodie because I'm like hanging on every word and so there were a couple steps to that because you had the physical pencil you had the act of writing you had this moment where if you're watching on YouTube you saw it but if you're listening let me describe it he he sat back in his chair he put his hands kind of in prayer at his chest closed his eyes and he started talking about repeating the thought is that the chain of events and that you do to encode
it in your mind yes absolutely so we so what is we walk us through it one more time yes so again what you want to do is to use all of your sensory organs as much as possible to embed that intention so by writing it down by reading it aloud by visualizing it that creates the process where this gets embedded and into your subconscious and what happens is once you get this embedded it activates different parts of your brain and without getting too technical one is something called the default mode network is that the same
thing as the reticular activating system no okay but they're related okay so the default mode Network yes so this is what happens when your mind wonderers uh or you're daydreaming and it's self-referential because it's internally focused but it's where you create The Narrative of who you are or what you want so if you have negative selft talk if you ruminate if you are like I'm never good enough uh nothing works out for me things like that don't happen to person like me I can never get it right that is in the default netor absolutely and
that gets really activated and results in rumination for some people can I ask you another question because one of the things that you said at the very very beginning is you painted this gorgeous picture of the ability to Leverage The remarkable power of your brain to help you get what you truly desire in life to help you live in heart mode and you said it's just about believing it and part of the reason why we have trouble believing it is because of the default mode Network and all of these stories you've repeated over and over
and over again is that is that fair to say no that's exactly uh correct and can we can reprogram or we can lay down a new track oh absolutely and it's available uh 247 and it doesn't matter what's happened to you before you know so many people get fixated well I don't deserve this because of we all deserve it so once this gets embedded and you create The Narrative of who you want to be or how you see yourself what you're doing is you're creating salience okay what's that word mean it means making it important
okay once something is important this activates what we call our task positive Network and the task positive network has three parts it has the salience network it has the attention Network and then it has the executive control Network and once something is Salient what you're basically saying is this deserves my attention and by doing it in a very specific way then that that becomes important to you that gets embedded into your subconscious as something to pay attention to once that is defined as something important to you then that activates your attention Network so that then
you cognitively focus your attention on whatever that intention is okay once those are activated and uh I use the analogy in the book it's as if you've have a file cabinet and you put this file into the file cabinet that says important stuff and once that is there then the attention network is activated which is as an example a blood hound that is says okay now there's something there I need to track this down and figure out what's going on here then you activate the blood hound and then that gets released and then once that
attention is focused then it starts looking around through all the possibilities in your environment and as soon as it identifies one then your executive control network is activated which in some ways is the thing that chases down what is in your subconscious and uh uh this is how it works there is no magic here this is fundamentally basic neuroscience and it's something that we all have the ability to master by just doing these techniques whereby you are able to embed your intention you do it over and over and it's not as if one and done
and what I mean by that is some people wake up and this is like a New Year's resolution I'm going to do this January first and then January 1 comes and you already fail the first day you have to not have excessive expectations at first what I mean by that is these are based on habit what happens with habit you start small you don't sit there and say I'm going to lose a 100 pounds in the next month you say I'm going to try to modify my diet where I'm not drinking sod that's the first
little one and each of these little winds strengthens you to actually then do the big thing ultimately so you don't start by running a marathon on day one you start by getting up out of bed and walking around the block I really appreciate you especially as a neuroscientist walking us through all those four parts of the brain and validating that based on the science this is the mechanism through which you can activate the ability to reprogram your mind when we talk about forming new habits through repetition I think most of us understand that if you
want to let's just take the example of stop drinking soda there is a specific physical action that I have to do every day whether I like it or not and the consistency of not drinking soda or probably better yet just focusing on drinking water or a non soda beverage that repetition I get it I know what I need to do where I see people trip up is that when it comes to negative selft talk it is so embedded in the subconscious you've been thinking this way for so long and because it's there in the back
of your mind unlike learning to drink more water or learning to go for a walk every day it's not a physical thing that you kind of see outside yourself this is actually programming deep within and so could you help me and the person listening understand let's say that you have for your entire life had this narrative in your mind we like I'm not good enough how do I use these four parts of the brain and the technique you just described step by step to program a completely different way of talking to myself in my default
mode Network and pick whatever because you have you you are the expert teaching people around the world this technique so pick whatever you believe is the most common default negative selft talker belief and then if you could walk us step by step that what am I doing Dr Dodie every day well I I think the first thing people need to recognize is the burden we carry as a human being is negative selft talk it is not going to go 100% away that's just the way it is in fact uh I was you know I speak
about these things and I have I say to people how many of you have negative selft talk and usually 90% of people raise their head and I say the other 10% are lying and and I don't care in theory I mean obvious viously you uh have examined these areas I have examined these areas I still have negative selft talk the key is though in the face of the negative selft talk you're okay and understand what it is and not let it overpower you where you sit there and go oh God I'm horrible I'm and you
just ruminate over this recognize for what it is and let it sit there you don't have to do anything with it and this is the fundament practice of mindfulness meditation but the aspect which I think is different and actually what we teach at Stanford is to have compassion for self and this is when you give yourself these positive affirmations and you say you're worthy you're good enough you deserve and a lot of the negative selft talk comes from where it comes from the baggage that we carry from our childhoods and this is what a lot
of people don't appreciate you're manifesting all the time what people don't realize though is that many of the decisions they make in their lives the relationships the jobs they have the decisions they make are actually based on the baggage that they carry and that is The Narrative of their story and so one of the first things I think you have to do is to sit back and whether it's with a therapist or just self-reflection where you're writing things down and trying to understand how you become you to have some awareness what created this and once
you have that Insight then that allows you to not be as affected or to believe it but understand that it's the nature of how humans are wired and it's okay that's not going to change and in some ways it's like also accepting your Shadow Self right all of us have a part of us that we're ashamed of we're embarrassed about we've done actions that are horrible sometimes and you can't push your Shadow away you have to accept it and integrate it into who you are and the same is true of this so once you're able
to do that that lessens the power of that inner critic so let me see if I can just again translate this because you've got a really big brain you operate on brains and you are friends with the biggest spiritual leaders of our time and you teach compassion manifestation visualization all of this and I'm I just want to make sure that I do my job and that as you're listening that you truly are able to take all of this extraordinary wisdom and the gift of Dr Dodie and apply it and so I heard you say that
if you were to take out a piece of paper and you were to just start journaling around what did my childhood make me believe believe about myself that that first step of seeing that in writing helps you separate from it and see it for what it is which is it is a story just like a story in a book that is something you've been telling yourself over and over and just separating yourself from it is the first step the thing I'm curious about though is how I start to learn a new story because for example
if we if we were to bring in a flute right and and and would you be able to play a flute if I handed it to you of course not yeah me either but if I practiced it for a year I could probably learn it and so I'm assuming that there's a technique even once I separate and go oh my childhood taught me to think X about myself what is the technique for for how you use the science of manifestation and visualization to start to write a new story about yourself no I think that's an
excellent question and in fact the first step is understanding what you've already been manifesting which is the negative yes and you've been manifesting it because you've repeated it in your subconscious and you've interacted with those thoughts all day long since your childhood and that is a form of manifestation it proves works because You' just repeated it over and over and over well I'm sure you've met people who go gosh I'm going through my third divorce and it's like I married the same person every time and you're like yes you did yeah because you manifested it
because you think the same way over and over and over again so we do have the power to change that narrative okay and then the next thing is which we discussed a little bit is understanding the difference between what you want or think you want and what you need but Dr Dodie I don't want to think about what I need I want to think about what I want you know what I mean like but I want the but I want that thing but I want this but I want that but I want the other thing
well you know it's funny you say that because people say gez Jim you know you you sort of lambas this idea about materialism listen I don't at all I like material things I drive a Porsche I live in a very nice house see you manifested all of this that is true but the difference though is one they're wonderful to have they're not necessary what I mean by that that is if all of these things were taken away from me it has no impact on who I see myself as I am not using them for external
validation I'm using them because I enjoy them and those are different things people who chase after stuff the eye part who need external affirmation that is their identity and that causes suffering because they never get what they want versus if you look through the love or the heart mode and focused on a image of you helping other people you get all of these other things they're available to you if you want them but the way the greatest way to manifest is to have yourself centered to be in a calm mode to look through the S
lens of how can I be helpful and then that gives you all the other stuff if you so desire but focusing solely on that doesn't get that you're not living a life of purpose and meaning you're chasing PL and avoiding pain and while that can sort of cause some people to say I'm happy if you actually look at the most of these people may be happy on one level but that happiness is transitory and shallow versus if you chase purpose and meaning that is deep and long lasting um you just said something that I want
to make sure I take out my magic highlighter and I call attention to that if you were to remove all of the material stuff do you actually still feel good about who you are absolutely and having those things to enjoy them is one thing but needing those things to Define your worth is a completely separate issue that based on Research you're saying leads to unhappiness and and since we're talking about material items though can you explain how the science of visualization or man are visualization and manifestation the same things yes okay so how does the
science of manifestation help you achieve goals or help you get material things if that's something that you would like to have in your life well let me give you an example I mean when I was 12 I had a list of all material things m and I got every one of them what was on the list I become a neurosurgeon a professor at Stanford uh I have all this material success I'm a successful entrepreneur I have millions and millions of dollars I'm uh I have a a home overlooking the bay in Newport Beach I have
a villa in Florence I have uh we're all starting to hate you right now go yes uh uh and you know I was single at the time and I was dating all these attractive women and all my friends said God your life is so great man look at you yet I was never more miserable in my entire life because I kept expecting okay I'm going to climb this mountain and then I'm G to feel good about myself then I'm G to climb the next Mountain I'm GNA feel good about myself and I never felt good
about myself none of that stuff made me feel good about myself and in fact I I don't you know I lost 80 million dollars during the dot crash and as a result uh of course that gets your attention because I was $3 million in debt and I had a $15 million loan and as a result I had I went through a period of steep self-reflection because I I wanted to understand what mistake had I made in this process because I had done everything I thought and it was because I was focused on look at me
I did this make me feel good about myself and that's what I was chasing and it didn't help me and so here I am having to deal with this massive loss I'm selling all of this you know I had a Ferrari a Porsche a Range Rover BMW a Mercedes uh I had a several million doll house overlooking the bay I had to sell all of this stuff and it was interesting uh during that situation I had to deal with my banker of course who wanted his money and I had to deal with my lawyers because
I had set up a variety of different trusts but I had set up a charitable trust and had put stock into it and on honestly it was probably a tax avoidance thing it wasn't because Jim doie was super nice right uh so uh I was dealing with my lawyer and he said look Chim I have some good news for you we actually never completed the paperwork for that trust so you don't have to give any of that stock away you can just keep it and I went through this period of of deep reflection about this
and uh uh at the end of the day I told him to go ahead and give the stock was it Google no no but it was $30 million uh but what that $30 million did was it changed everything I set up health clinics around the world I set up programs for adolescen who affected by Aids HIV I set programs for the disabled I funded research I set up endowed chairs and in some ways though it was an interesting trajectory because I went truly from Rags to Riches literally to rags again in terms of the spiritual
mhm okay what I was doing was not soothing my soul and so when I gave everything away being in the face of $3 million in the whole that is when everything changed this is where I started the center at Stanford that studies compassion I met his Holiness the Dal Lama I developed these relationships with all of these spiritual religious leaders which has been incredibly incredibly impactful in my life and so it's a different Rags to Riches right there are so many aspects of that story I want to unpack because I have been in a I've
been in many moments of my life where I had nothing and was on the verge of losing everything that I cared about but if I had heard somebody talking about Porsches and this and that and the other thing and then you lose it all and then you have a spiritual waking I would still as I'm listening go that's nice for you but I am having trouble putting groceries on the table and I still would love a Porsche and I know because I know some of your background how important it is for you to awaken something
inside of people about the deeper meaning of life and the way to use manifestation and visualization and the science of all this in a way to truly unlock your potential and how would you have somebody who's listening who is really struggling and never has achieved that moment of riches that is surface level truly grasp the power of what is available to them to use these tools of separating from your past story and identifying what you want to believe about yourself and then writing it and believing it and repeating it and trying to open up your
heart and live in this heart mode what is available to you if we lean in and trust you even when you're really struggling and it seems like money is the solution no no you're absolutely right and uh I don't want to give anybody the impression that look my worst day I was a neurosurgeon making uh more than 99.9% of people so even though uh I lost all this money and was in the hole I certainly had the ability uh to uh recover and most people don't have that so I certainly want to acknowledge that and
I'm not saying that my story is everyone's story listen I started uh from very very humble beginnings but the fundamental aspect of the story is it doesn't matter where you're at it's matters what you believe and when you have this negative selft talk and you create these limited belief systems that is the prison you're creating for yourself and and the first step though is to understand that yes circumstances can be very horrible yes circumstances can uh result in you not even being able to feed your family and I truly acknowledge that because I know what
it's like to be hungry but regardless you have possibilities when you're able to interrupt that negative belief system when you're able to look through the lens of possibilities because when you are negative when you say it's not possible the world is against me everybody hates me fundamentally you're changing your physiology and as you probably know uh we have oscillation or vibrations that come from our bodies and one of the greatest ones is from your heart if you have this negative selft talk if you create this negativity that goes out I mean the the bioelectrical energy
that comes from your heart extends three to five uh feet outside your body and I'm sure you've experienced you were mentioning something early gosh when you walked in you made me feel good that is a gift all of us have to give people and I'm sure you've met people who as soon as you meet them go I do not like that person all of us have the ability to become the former not the latter it's change it's how you look at the world and when you change how you look at the world from that one
of negativity because you know your situation is difficult to look at there are amazing possibilities here because what I tell people when I changed how I looked at the world the world changed how it looked at me because people reached out to me because I was open to it I was appreciative I was thankful I didn't sit there and say the world hates me nobody's going to do anything that energy changes when you change how you look at the world and the energy you're talking about is the ability to move yourself from a fear mode
absolutely into a heart mode and there's also a lot of research and science that you write about and how being in that heart mode where you're coming from a place of service where you are actively manifesting and visualizing positive beliefs about yourself I am good I am worthy I am loved what are the things that you say that help you drop into heart mode and this may sound strange but fundamentally the world we create is one we create it is a delusion that we have created for ourselves and that delusion can either be one of
the world hates me everybody hates me the world is against me versus saying wow look at the sunshine I am here look at all these amazing people around me look at the possibilities and I'm not saying this out of some uh Trope that is not true it is true when you change how you look at yourself now if you want to manifest there's several techniques and can you walk us through a couple sure one of the first things you have to do though is find a place a calm place where you can shift from being
in the fear mode to the heart mode where you're not distracted where it's not noisy where you're not taking caffeinated beverages or using mind alterate substances where you can simply be present and then you can begin a breathing exercise the very nature of that breathing exercise and this is a mindfulness practice Get You Into the Heart mode and then you start seeing the world through a different lens and then you start as an example talking about what have I already manifested and you sit there with that and you love yourself in the sense of saying
yes that happened but number one and this is oftentimes the case with children they look at say it's my fault it's not your fault you're okay and you're also okay no matter what's happened in the past you know all of us deserve a second chance and sometimes a third chance there most people uh are loving kind people inside and they have been battered by the forces often times that make them think that's not the case of that they don't deserve love everybody deserves love everybody deserves dignity and so when you can sit in that quiet
space and reflect on this and then think about what it is you truly want what would make you happy most people if they actually sit there and do it they realize the false Narrative of getting the Porsche or the Ferrari if they sit there and think about it what do they really want they want security for their family they want food on the table they want shelter and if you look through that list that is what am I doing to be of service to help my family and my environment which will ultimately help me and
so going through those exercises understanding the power that you have and also uh there's another aspect which is related to attachment one of the biggest things that causes suffering is attachment and craving and it's wonderful to have goals it's wonderful to utilize these techniques to manifest but there's certain caveats to that one is sometimes things don't manifest and it's not necessarily because you did anything wrong or uh the gods are looking down at you badly uh sometimes your subconscious may even know that it's not good for you and it doesn't allow that to happen the
other is that uh things don't happen always exactly as we VIs visualized they may approximate it but often times they're not exactly and I have things I've been trying to manifest for 10 or 15 years and I firmly believe they will manifest but you have to be patient you have to do the work you have to do the exercises and uh uh all of that is okay because I'm not attached to the outcome and that is a critical thing yes do I want it to happen absolutely should it happen absolutely will it happen maybe maybe
not and it's more likely that it will yes because you are training your mind using these techniques and putting yourself in a heart mode to make it happen you you wrote in your book your brain can't tell the difference between what is real and vividly imagined by focusing on the feeling of success you train your brain to expect it absolutely and when you activate your subconscious and I'm sure you probably experienced this if you're at a party and it's very noisy somebody says your name you immediately turn even in the dent of all this noise
you are attuned to your name because it's deeply embedded in you the same is true and this is the nature of synchronicities and coincidences because your subconscious is always searching for what is Salient I want to expand on the power of learning how to be in the heart mode and what you just brought to the table this dispositional optimism and the belief that things can get better the hope and the optimism that things will turn out and feeling grateful for that because when you're in the heart mode you've talked a lot about how we are
naturally wired to be in that mode calm connected open to service openhearted can you explain how positive emotions the emotions that you feel when you're in the heart mode like Gra attitude compassion love how do those emotions communicate to your brain and accelerate or make it stronger that what you're thinking about when you're in heart mode actually wires in a very strong way based on the emotions of heart mode you just said it oh I did how do how do positive em how do positive emotions like gratitude and compassion and love um create the ability
to manifest or like rewire your mind as we said or discussed earlier these types of positive belief systems make your physiology work its best both your brain and your peripheral physiology when all your cognitive brain networks function at their best that is the greatest likelihood for you to manifest uh your intention there's a lot of work that has been done on gratitude showing that simply sitting down down and writing three things you're grateful for changes everything it changes how you view the world how you look not from the lens of what I don't have but
how grateful you are as an example um half of the world's population lives on less than $2.50 a day I am extraordinarily blessed and so I no matter how bad it is and uh again and I'm not saying that I'm horribly suffering but that being said I still have ups and downs and have had situations which are incredibly demoralizing but at the end of the day I sit back and I have gratitude even in the face of these horrible things that were not as I planned or nor wanted happen and you just have to understand
that regardless of all of them you're very fortunate as a renowned neuroscientist and neurosurgeon what does your daily manifestation routine look like can you walk us through it sure now you have to understand I've been meditating for well over 50 years so in some ways that becomes the Habit right it is your mindset it is how you look at the world it is how you walk in the world and hopefully it's through the love mode although not always and I will assure you my wife will get mad at me and she'll say they call you
Mr compassion but you're an [ __ ] uh so it's good to know you're human yes I am very human so let me start with the morning first every morning I wake up and I sit at the side of the bed and I do a breathing exercise and the Very nature of that breathing exercise shifts me into the parasympathetic nervous system and what is the breathing exercise it's just slowly breathing in through the nose holding it for four seconds slowly letting it out and I do this for a minute or two you can sit you
can lay down uh there's nothing that is prescriptive and this is where people get lost about mind fulness practices they somehow think you have to sit like a Buddha and do this and they get all anxious about it there's no reason to be anxious at all it's just to find a place where you feel comfortable and then I go through this breathing exercise of slowly breathing in for four to six seconds holding it for four to six seconds slowly letting it out through the mouth and then that shifts me into the parasympathetic nervous system or
strengthens where I'm already at and then I think of the joy and awe of being in this world and I just sit with that for a minute or two and then literally I just go through that alphabet and uh uh and that centers me uh for the day and if I'm centered looking through that lens then that actually creates the environment for me to manifest because I am in the right mindset I'm calm I'm thoughtful I'm thinking about others I'm not self-focused and the Very nature of that allows me to manifest now I was going
to mention in the evening all of us have goals all of us have intentions and you can prioritize them from ones that are mildly important moderately important incredibly important and in the time frames and uh and then you focus on them and what I will do is I will again write them down whatever the top three are and then I'll go through the exact same exercise I mentioned which is to write them down to repeat it silently to repeat it aloud to see it happening and uh and over and over and over again all of
those things strengthen the power and put you in the right mindset to have the greatest likelihood of you manifesting your intention thank you for describing that how does the uh Habit that you just said active your brain's ability to help you act on those goals well I think used a key term which is authentic what makes somebody authentic uh when they let their mask down when they're able to show their's emot their own emotions and how they feel about things and the Very nature of that puts you in the right mental state where you don't
feel you have to hide yourself where you don't feel that you have to put on a show for everybody about how success uccessful you are and we're ju you're just feeling comfortable with who you are and accept yourself and the hardest hardest part for so many people is accepting themselves as they are not be lost in how they want to be or lost in what could have been and this is also a thing that distracts you from the energy you have to change things because if you spend 80% of your time on the past and
a future that hasn't happened lamenting then you can never be present to actually make things happen and this is the key you have to be present you have to be authentic you have to understand your past and you have to understand that when you want something to manifest yes it is a future intention but it's not something to get lost in it's something simply to sit with instead of be pathologically focused on as an example I'm sure you've seen people who have sacrificed everything to get to the top of the mountain well they've sacrificed everything
to get to the top of the mountain to stand there by themselves well what was the purpose of that our purpose in life is connection it's not to so be focused that you don't have any connections and you're walking alone it's to connect with people I mean many many of the aspects of what we're talking about are the journey with others not necessarily standing by yourself you've given me a huge epiphany because I've always thought about the science of manifesting as something that is tied to what's going to happen and in listening to you I
had this huge Epiphany where I thought oh wait a minute it's all about this daily practice of sitting in the present and dropping into the heart mode and the starting line is acceptance of self compassion and gratitude and love towards self and getting yourself at this almost like daily reset present moment and from there I can decide what I want to believe I can decide when I align with the wiring of my body and my soul I can decide what I want to believe I can decide what's important to me and practicing these tools both
of dropping into heart mode of being present with self of tapping into this wiring for service and compassion and love when you start there and now you're repeating the things that you want and why you want these things from your heart and anything is possible well and basically you've just unlocked the key to the prison that most people have created for themselves what do you mean by that well uh uh what you just said fundamentally addresses the issue of how people create a prison for themselves by this negative selft talk every time they make a
negative statement it's as if they're laying down a brick to build a prison and the walls get higher and it gets darker yet all of us have the key in our pocket which you just described to let yourself out of the prison that you created and I think this recognition is what's really really critically important and it's not woo woo it's not looking to the universe to save you it's understanding your own self agency and not believing that there's something out there now that being said and as you know I the first sense of the
book says the universe doesn't give a [ __ ] about you but at the end of the book my statement is you are the universe and that is your gift what are your parting words Dr Dodie well often times uh as we've talked about uh you know people look through the lens of negativity and uh and the real ity is and you discussed it also everyone wants to be seen everyone wants to be loved and what I would say to everyone listening is regardless of your circumstance regardless of your situation each of us has the
ability to improve the life of at least one person every day and whether it's a hug whether it's saying hello whether it's sharing a meal whatever it is when you can actually look through the world through that lens how can I help at least one person every day that is a habit that put you in the mindset to not only be of service and to help others but it also helps you and it helps you because it then gives you the power actually to see the world through the different lens and then be able to
manifest whatever your intention is and that is the power of our humanity and it all relates fundamentally to connecting with another with an open heart well Dr Dodie um thank you I I I don't even know what to say I just feel kind of blown wide open by the experience of getting to be together with you that's kind of you thank you I appreciate it well I appreciate everything that you shared and all the work that you're doing and thank you for being here thank you and I want to thank you for being here with
me and Dr Dodie and listening all the way to the end I am sure that your heart is wide open and I wanted to be certain that I told you in case nobody else does that I love you I believe in you I believe in your ability to create a better life and I am so excited about everything that you just learned and I cannot wait to hear how you put this to use in your own life all right I'll see you in the next episode and I want to thank you for being here with
me on YouTube making it all the way to the end of the episode didn't you freaking love that oh my gosh I loved it I'm so thrilled you got to experience it since you made it this far click here right there And subscribe to this channel because it lets us know that you're enjoying this content thank you thank you thank you for supporting me in that way and if you loved this episode and how could you not the next episode that you should watch is this one this one features Harvard psychiatrist Dr Robert waldinger in
fact Dr Dodie mentioned him during the video that you just watched waldinger is going to share the secret to what makes a good life based on the lessons from an 85 yearlong study at Harvard on happiness I'll see you in that episode
