The Key to Breaking Through Stress | With Hosein Kouros-Mehr

Michael: Hey, what's up on broken nation. Excited to be back with you with another episode with my guest, Dr. PhD MD, Hosein Kouros-Mehr, my friend. Thank you for being here.

Hosein: Absolute pleasure to be here, Michael.

Michael: Dude, when you and I were able to connect prior to this I knew that I wanted to have you come on the show because we're talking about a very important conversation and that's breaking through. And breaking through stress, breaking through chaos, breaking through addiction, breaking through all of these things that kind of keep us stuck as human beings and your story and your journey is really phenomenal and what I think is so fascinating on if somebody probably saw you on the street, they would make an assumption about you. And it probably wouldn't be many of the things that you've been through. And so I'd be really curious for you to start us off and tell me, if you were to define your childhood in just one word, what word would that be?

Hosein: What word? It'd probably be like first generation American or immigrant, I guess would be the one word. There's struggles associated with being an immigrant and, but also opportunities, right? From all of that, from all of that challenge that, that many immigrants face.

Michael: Yeah. And I would assume now I'm obviously not an immigrant. I grew up in the United States. But I would have to assume that carries a lot of, weight with it in terms of performance and who you become and how you become that version of you. And I feel like many times, and again we're sussing this out together, but would I be right in assuming that might hold true in this case?

Hosein: Yeah, there are, the American journey, and the stresses that, that come with that and the expectations that come with that. I was in Iran. So I was born during the revolution there. And, my parents were very progressive, forward looking educated, and they didn't want to be a part of what was going on there in, in Iran. And my parents had their sights in coming here, but didn't know what to expect. It was a very difficult time. Generally, people from the Middle East we've had a hard time adjusting. But it's been that drive that those expectations and all of the pain and suffering that's come with that's made me who I am today and in doing that, what I'm trying to do with this book is help others out there, people, all Americans, really everyone who might be struggling with stress, anxiety, depression, emotional pain, addiction and part of this is helping people self discover, self understand how their brain works. It's a sort of a new way of looking at this age old problem. But that's the purpose of writing this book.

Michael: Yeah. And one of the things that's really interesting is that, that journey and chasing the American dream can create so many negative implications on this default mode network that we have, right? This thing that you're specialized in that we're going to really get into today. And because I want to make sure that we can create a lot of context and understanding for people. My hope is to make this remarkably practical in terms of our conversation. So, I think it'd be really important first to talk about your journey and what has led down the path to writing and creating this book. And then we'll break down and get into what this default mode network really is. So tell me a little bit more about your journey and the experiences of your life leading up to now.

Hosein: Yeah, we came to the US I was like, four or five, this is mid eighties. Grew up in LA, actually had a fun childhood, pretty normal kid. Grew up with, Showtime, Lakers with magic and, had a blast at, childhood growing up. But one of the things I remember from being, as, early as six or seven, is wanting to help people. And for some reason I kept hearing about AIDS on the news back then and I wanted to cure AIDS, I didn't know what it was. I was like seven years old. But I've had that lifelong passion to help people by curing disease. So what I actually ended up going into was cancer, so I went to medical school. And so this is back in the mid nineties. My mission became to try to help advance cancer and through developing new drugs for cancer. And that's what I've been doing for the last 24 years now. What I recognize in the mid nineties was there was something going on called the human genome project. We were sequencing our DNA. And I had a feeling this thing was going to open up the field of oncology. We were going to understand cancer, the genes driving cancer and find new drugs for cancer. And so 24 years later, that's coming true right now. Like we're, the, what we are doing right now in oncology, the drugs we're developing, pretty mind blown, couldn't have imagined this 25 years ago. What I'm seeing now in neuroscience and understanding the brain right now is how I felt about oncology 25 years ago. What we're understanding about the brain now is gonna open up the field of mental health, mental being because we're understanding how the brain works. This is happening now. And the implications for. for mental being. It's enormous. And we'll talk about it. But so my background has been helping people through medicine and science.

Michael: Yeah, which is so incredibly important. And if you look at so many people who are on their personal journey and their paths, the thing that I see that as unbelievable is the world that we live in today. And the fact that we can take advantage of not only conversations like this, but dude, without the internet, I would not be here. I just can't imagine what my life would be. Probably still 350 pounds smoking cigarettes, getting drunk every night, a very different experience because addiction is this thing that until you, you wrap your head around it, you don't even really know what's happening and it's. Such a survival mechanism for us and With the stressors of life I know that you went down your own path which I think would be beneficial to get into before we start breaking into the framework of this, what was your experience going through stress through addictions through whatever those various things may have been in your journey?

Hosein: It's been a it's been a very difficult journey uphill battle. And so in this book, I talk about 11 mental conditions. I call them knots, like knots in a rope. They're stuck. You've got to untie it. So the 11 are things like stress. You mentioned addiction, which I call addictive craving, it's a little softer term. Emotional pain, loneliness, negativity, anxiety. And a few others. And I had all of them. So, you mentioned addiction. My addiction and, as you mentioned, survival mechanism, coping mechanism. We can talk about addiction and what happens in the brain. But for me, what I ended up getting addicted to was, like, stock market. I call it addictive craving, right? It's a craving that's harmful. Not all cravings are bad, right? Sometimes cravings are good. If we listen to our body, when it craves sleep, we're going to, it's the body's going to heal, but when those cravings become harmful, and hurting us or our family, those are addictive cravings. So for me, it was the stock market, which is like a gambling type of addiction, but surrounding that, yeah, there was, nicotine was part of that drinking was part of that. I wasn't smoking a pack a day, but definitely vaping and drinking and all of that, part of that rewiring of the brain that happens with addictive craving. But stress, big time, and I wasn't coping with stress the right way. We can talk about how stress forms in the brain. Anxiety, negativity, loneliness, I had all of them. But it was about a six month period that I was able to literally break through all of these By Understanding how my brain was actually working and it made it was a it wasn't overnight, but it was a six month process.

Michael: I would be remiss not to ask as someone who's clearly a high performer. How in the world does that happen?

Hosein: Okay. I have friends who are doctors lawyers scientists and they suffer from all of these. I have friends who are lawyers who can't sleep. At night They need, an Ambien to sleep. They need an Adderall to get going on the day. High functioning people who have a poor quality of life, poor mental well being. And it's very common. And so I, many of the people listening to me, they might be high functioning, but not happy. Not sleeping well, right? And I was one of those until a couple of years ago.

Michael: So in June of last year, I was ready to close down everything. The podcast, coaching, books, speaking, everything. I was exhausted, stressed to the max, burned out. And the interesting thing about it too is my thought was, oh, I'm being of service. I'm going and I'm doing my version of healing the world and showing up and I realized that like the stress was so overwhelming that it was leading me down a path. I didn't want to go and that's why I was getting ready to close everything down because I know my behavioral patterns and if I would have stepped up. A couple more feet in a certain direction. I might've reset a whole lot of effort, right? Not that it goes away entirely, but do you think stress is the precursor to what happened with you? And if so, like, where does the stress come from?

Hosein: Perfect. So yeah, so the 11 mental knots that I talked about, they're presented in a particular order and it starts with stress. Stress is number one. And, but there are other things that can build on that stress. Things like emotional pain, which was number two. An addiction, stress, emotional pain, those three, they're all interrelated. And, too much stress on the one hand can aggravate, let's say, an addiction on the other. But to talk about stress, I want to just mention a little bit about how the brain works. Okay, because this will help frame everything. The brain, okay, we've got seven networks in our brain. And we're just figuring this out now. So what is a network? A network is just different parts of the brain that connect to do a function. So the visual network helps you see. Auditory network helps you hear. Sensorimotor, cerebellar network help you move and sense. Then you've got three networks that are basically the key to mental well being, happiness and peace. addiction and all these other problems. One of them is default mode network, which is basically the ego. It's me, it's I, it is the location of self in the brain, and it, you'll notice it anytime your mind wanders away from the present, it'll turn on, and we're all different. For me, it's when I'm driving a car or brushing my teeth. As soon as I start that, boom, default mode network turns on. And I go off into the past or the future and the thoughts come, fast and furious. Default mode tends to be judgmental, reactive, and very emotional. So when it's overactive, it can cause stress, let's start with stress. So you're, let's say driving your car and suddenly you remember an argument from yesterday that you had. Or some childhood memory gives you some stress. Just the memory of that. So what happened is your default mode. gave you this memory of something that happened and has just given you stress, right? So that's the default mode. Now, the purpose of stress, what is the purpose of stress, right? We evolved thousands and thousands of years ago in a very different set of circumstances, right? We lived in a time where there was natural disasters and famine and life was very difficult, right? The stress response helped us survive. It told us, crap, there's a predator coming. I gotta get out of here or I gotta put up a fight or like We're gonna we're gonna go hungry the next couple of weeks. So cortisol kicks in stress response All of that helps us survive And that's why we're here. But today, the stress response is caused by our phone or our memories or thoughts. That aren't really threatening our survival, but it's triggering those same pathways. And this, all of this stress is causing damage to our bodies. It's causing, it's leading to heart disease and strokes and cancers and all kinds of problems. So this stress response, it served us a good purpose back in the day, but now it is, it's on overdrive and our thoughts are on overdrive. The default mode is on overdrive and our stress levels are through the roof.

Michael: Do you think that the and thank you for that explanation, do you think that stress today is different than stress for our parents or 50 years ago? 100 years ago? Is it more intense? Is it if you were to like, put stress today in a box versus previous decades or generations, would it be the most stressful time in history outside of maybe World War II?

Hosein: Yeah, yeah. I think so, because we're glued to our smartphones at least four hours a day, most of us on average. And anytime we look at our phone, let's say what happens in the brain is you have signals of glutamate. It's called glutamate. It's how we have thoughts. And when we have too much thoughts and too much stimulation, basically, and we got a lot of glutamate, it sets the brain up for that stress response. We're more likely to get a stress response. So 50 years ago we got stressed. There were things that made us stressed. There were probably things that were maybe more likely to threaten our survival or let's say, about to get into a car accident or get in an argument with our neighbor or something like that. But that stress response kicked in. It saved us in the moment. And stress is important. It helps us. It saves us. But now the stress response is on all the time. And when an actual stressor happens we're less able to actually deal with a real stressor.

Michael: Is the stress being on all the time? Is that exclusively because of our phones? Because of social media? Because of work? What is keeping it on so much now?

Hosein: Employers right now they're encouraging their workers to multitask, to, answer emails, and to be on calls, and it's, it's pretty demanding in corporate America. So, all of this is contributing to high levels of stress. And I, yeah, I think it is part of the workplace. So, I am seeing companies now investing in like mindfulness exercises and classes and things like that. I don't know how much that's helping but the culture now is gearing and moving towards a place of greater stress, which damages our bodies.

Michael: Let's go into that a little bit more, because obviously there's good stress. We need to have good stress. There is bad stress, but too much of either is incredibly detrimental you'd mention a few things that can happen as Stress impacts our bodies and our brains I'd love for you to break that down a little bit more for us because my fear is People might be having some symptomatic responses to stress and they don't even know that it's happening.

Hosein: Yeah, so you, what is stress, right? What happens in the brain is the brain perceives something as let's say anxiety, something as being threatening. So, what the brain actually does is it releases stress hormones into the blood, things like adrenaline, things like cortisol. So, what those chemicals do is they cause our heartbeat to race faster, dilates our pupils, has a sweating and, increases our blood pressure. These are physical changes, right? Cortisol is an interesting one because what cortisol does is it shifts energy away from let's say the reproductive center the immune system shifts it towards the brain. So 20,000 years ago, cortisol helped us survive when there was a famine, we had no food for a couple of weeks it shifted the energy to the brain, but the consequence of that is our immune system is weaker, we're less able to have kids. So chronic stress, when the stress pathway is on all the time does some real damage to our bodies and it's through that cortisol. And so I think what are the signs of chronic stress if you're fatigued, right? Poor sleep, irritable. If you're eating too much or too little, if you're withdrawing from loved ones there are some signs of stress. And yeah, some people might have chronic stress, not even realize it. So I would take a look. I've talked about it in the book, what the symptoms are. And if you think stress might be the problem. That's actually step one. You've identified the potential problem. Step two is having an intention that I want to improve the stress in my life.

I want to prevent stress from happening. And there are ways of doing that, which we can talk about.

Michael: Yeah, and I want to get into that because it feels almost seemingly impossible in the time that we live in. Presidential debates, dating and relationships, children, airline travel cost of living food. Just being a human being, being a man now, I'd argue is probably more difficult than it's ever been in the history of the world. Being a woman is the hardest it's ever been in the history of the world. Can you say this? Can you not say this? Everyone, constant eggshells. So how in the world do you navigate this world?

Hosein:  So let's talk about how the brain normally does it. So I mentioned glutamate. Glutamate is thinking thoughts, right? We get a thought every two to six seconds, glutamate. The brain, the body and the mind, they have the natural balancing mechanisms all already there. So the balance to glutamate is called GABA. GABA is a neurotransmitter that calms you down. GABA is what you need to sleep at night. And there are ways of, releasing GABA in the brain, okay. Which has been shown to improve your health, reduce your stress. So part of this is self discovery, is understanding what helps you to trigger that relaxation response, right? And we're all different, but trying to, spending 10 minutes every few hours to get some of that GABA to calm yourself down can prevent the stress from happening, and I think that's part of it. Part of it is also is exercising some restraint and asking yourself, do I really need to be on all these apps? Do I really need to be multitasking? Is this worth the state of stress I'm in? And if you can cut some of those out, it is worth it. And you'll see that you'll see the result, but the key here and my remedy. So for each of these knots, I have a remedy, the remedy for stress. I call it mindful relaxation, where you spend 15 20 minutes relaxing but doing it mindfully. If for you, I don't know, if it's, going for a walk, taking a bath, doing a prayer, mindfulness, whatever it is, spending 15 minutes doing it, not reaching for your phone a couple of minutes in, right? That's not mindful relaxation. But spending the 15 minutes as best as you can, extending that relaxation. When you start out, it may only last for a couple of seconds, but every day try to get it longer and longer. If you can go 10 to 15 minutes relaxing mindfully, it will turn on the GABA and you'll see your stress level go up.

Michael: Yeah, and you have to be willing to this is where self-discipline comes into play, which is, it's such a crazy thought. If we rewind, we're not that far in age from each other. We rewind to the early 2000’s and brick Nokia phones. And I told you one day you were going to be addicted to this. You'd be like, what are you talking about? And yet today, the amount of self restraint needed in order to navigate the world with a device that has been designed and engineered for you to be addicted to it in your hand every single day is probably the most dangerous thing that's ever happened to humankind.

Hosein: I agree.

Michael: And it's funny, I interviewed Dr. Anna Lembke on my show. She, years ago, she wrote a book called Dopamination. And her study at Harvard Institute at Harvard University or Stanford, excuse me was entirely tied to our dopamine receptors and to the things that we're addicted to. And even as the leading researcher, possibly in the world about dopamine, particularly, she even mentioned she was addicted to things. And one of the things that I recall her mentioning was like watching stuff on her phone. And you look at this and you go, how in the world do we navigate this? And so it's I hear you on this one part where you're like, okay, 10 to 15 minutes, dude, I would argue there's some people that can't go 10 to 15 minutes.

Hosein: I agree. I agree.

Michael: So if I'm one of those people, what do I do?

Hosein: It starts with an understanding, right? And understanding that you just, you mentioned it. There are corporate executors out there who are designing these products to make money and they're causing you harm. And understanding that, your stress is caused by this and having an intention, I want to be happy and healthy. It starts with that intention. You start walking on the road appears, right? So step one is I want to be happy and healthy. Start with there. This is gonna be a long journey. You're not gonna get there overnight. Initially you, and there's tons of exercises I talk about in this book for, some for religious people, non-religious people, scientists, atheists, whatever. But it starts with the first step. And like you said, at first it may last only a few seconds, and you're back into those thoughts and, but as long as you stay on that intention, remind yourself of that intention. It took me six months. It may take others one month. It may take some people a couple of years, but it's the best thing I've ever done, best thing. And we can talk about addiction, that's another chapter we can talk about.

Michael: Yeah. What I want to know is what did that look like for you? For it to take you six months. First off, what took you six months and then what did that process actually entail?

Hosein: So it was on the six months was unraveling all of these knots. So stress. I had severely emotional pain Addiction or addictive craving as I call it negativity and loneliness all of that It took six months the first part of it actually the first month there wasn't much change But I still had the intention and then after the first month I started to see Mom like minutes and minutes where I was just in this happy state this Blissful piece. And I got glimpses of it. And then it built momentum on its own. And that light grew and grew. And it took out the darkness completely. And six months later, I'm like, wow, I'm in a completely different place, but most important was having the intention. And for me, I found that unraveling these knots, I did it in a particular order, I noticed it all started with stress. Once I was able to get that stress under control. Number two, emotional pain. I realized I had a lot of emotional pain from childhood, things that were inherited, right? Ancestral emotional pain. There's a lot of emotional pain in the world right now, but unraveling that one then when I, that was a huge one too. And then by the time I got to addictive craving, there was so much momentum into this. It got a lot easier. So it, yeah, so these knots are listed in a particular way.

Michael: What did your day to day look like? And the reason I ask that is because I want people to be able to apply something very practical to their life. When I started my journey, so I'm, 25 years old, 350 pounds, two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep. For me, it was very much like an intention had been set and it was, I was making a decision to move away from the life that I had and towards a life that I thought I might be able to have. And in that process, it was just a very difficult path for multiple years. And even to some extent still is. Of just showing up every day, but in the showing up every day, the thing that I didn't have that I wish I did that I now do that I give to other people is the practical because I was just trying everything. And I think sometimes you like you have to try everything. But what did your day-to-day look?

Hosein: Yeah. Cool. So, I've got three young kids. I would have loved to take 14 days to go on a Vipassana retreat. That would have been amazing, but no time for that. So, I did all of this on my own, a lot of research on my own waking up, early in the morning with that intention. So for stress, for example, Breathing exercises, really helpful. Prayer, mindfulness exercises. Breath meditation, insight meditation. Breathing exercises are really powerful. They take a couple of minutes. There's four, seven, eight breathing. I'm sure you're familiar with that, right? And if you think about it, when you're stressed and you're anxious, your breath is shallow, it's irregular, and that's contributing to the stress. When you yawn what that yawn does is it releases GABA. It gets you ready for sleep. It relaxes you. Breathing exercises are the same thing. It's just like a yawn. You do it for five minutes and you start off by just looking at your mind. Okay, how am I feeling right now? Oh, anxious. Oh, stressed. You do five minutes of the 478 breathing and then you look again in your mind and you say, wow, I see a difference, it's very practical. You don't need to believe in anything. You don't need to subscribe to anything. You just, so that's a five-minute thing. Once you realize, wow, my stress level has just fallen through this five-minute breath meditation. What if I were to do that three, four times during the day? And then you do that after a couple of days, you realize, wow, my stress level has decreased. And it gives you some That's some encouragement, right? That you're on the right path. There's a lot of other really practical things in this book.

Michael: Yeah, and I think for me it was yoga. Played such an important role in my journey. And I didn't know it at the time, I was just like, Oh, I'm trying to get in shape, so I'm gonna do yoga. And in doing yoga, what I really discovered was this was a moving meditation for 60 minutes or 90 minutes every day. For months and years and it was a game changer and I didn't understand GABA at the time, now understanding it, and I've also learned that from me. I don't know if you want to speak to this or not. Supplementation did not work effectively well. And in fact, it made me feel like I was a crazy person. Which I've heard some people have said that as well. Because I think that is putting a Band Aid on a wound, right? If somebody's looking at this journey and they're like, Okay, I get the stress thing, but I'm so tied to emotional pain. What do I do about that? Do I do therapy? Do I do coaching? What is that?

Hosein: I haven't done any supplements, Yoga I love. I've done a few times. Again, with three kids, it's hard to do to spend much time in that, but to talk about emotional pain and stress. So let's get back to the, those three parts of the brain, right? Default mode network. That's your wandering mind, your racing mind. So a lot of times, let's say you do a breath exercise, you feel good for a couple of minutes and then suddenly your default mode kicks in and the thoughts come in, right? Old memories from the past, your cravings anxiety, future worries, your default mode kicks in. So the key here is to silence and heal the default mode. And what you're doing is turning on another part, one of the other seven networks. And this other network is the key to your higher self. This is the key to spirituality and higher consciousness. It's called the Central Executive Network. That's the name of it. And so that's one of the seven. The central executive, while the default mode network is your wandering mind the central executive is your observing mind. And you'll notice that when you're fully present, when you're doing your yoga or when you're doing mindfulness and you're present and you can hear and you can see, and the mental chatter is off, that's when your central executive is on. So it's a very different, it's not about me and my, if you noticed, when you're in that state, it's not about me and my thoughts in the past and the future. You're just present. It's the consciousness is more expansive. You're more likely and if you notice in that state when you're in that observing mind It's more peaceful, it's more rational And so the key to all of this is learning to silence your default mode and strengthen your central executive That takes time, doesn't happen overnight. But when you're doing mindfulness practices, when you're doing prayer, that is essentially what you're doing. You're shutting off your default mode, you're strengthening your central executive. That's what took six months for me. And there's a seventh network, it's called Salience Network. It's the thing that shuttles you back and forth between these two. For example, you'll n notice if you do a mindfulness exercise or yoga, let's say, and you're, you feel good, you're in the central executive, but then you start doing something like Brushing your teeth or whatever and you notice the default mode switches on all those thoughts come That's because your salience network has shifted you over. So that's what this salience network does Is it based on what you're doing? It will either cause you to tune out, or take you back to the central executive. So that's the point of the book.

Michael: I have friends who are high performers Who are guys like you and I and gals like you and I who are going out here getting after the world trying to make it a better place. They have a ton going on, I also have friends who are not and they just, they enjoy their lives, they have a regular job, they come home and they just chill. But we're all impacted whether we like it or not by these networks. They are, they're mechanical in a lot of ways. They are a part of who we are and we don't fully understand them. And so when you talk about this observing mind in the central executive network when we get to, This space of presence, right? I've been reading Eckhart Tolle's power of now again, and we get to this place of presence. Everything feels lighter. The world feels like bigger. The sky is a bluer. The sun is brighter. All of these things. But we can so you talked about the salient thing and shifting. It is so immediate that you could go from, I walked into yoga class. I walked out of yoga class. I got in my car, guy cuts me off. I'm mad at the world. How is there a way to stay in the central executive network with more frequency?

Hosein: Yeah. So Part of this, we all need a healthy default mode network to live. So I think it is possible to heal the default mode network. But you can't ever get rid of it. Like we do need it to function, right? So there are people out there without a functioning default mode. Unfortunately, people like with Alzheimer's disease, dementia.

Michael: What about schizophrenia?

Hosein: Yeah. Schizophrenia. That's an interesting one. I'm not entirely sure. This is an emerging area, but I think in schizophrenia It's overactive to the point that people are not present. Okay, I think there's some malfunctioning there but so I think a lot of this is coming to understand how your brain works and you need the default mode to be healthy and working to help you reflect, to help you plan, to help you process memories, process information, decide what things to keep. So, you, we all need the default mode. You can't get rid of it, but by understanding it and strengthening your observing mind, you can spend much more time in that observing mind and be grateful when that default mode kicks on because it's trying to help you. It's trying to help you. Survive. And so I think part of this is having gratitude when you're observing mind is on, when you see you've switched off to default mode, realizing, Oh, that's just my default mode and observing it. As soon as you observe it, it's gone.

Michael: That's being cognizant of that feels like it would be a really tremendous tool. Absolutely. If I were in that scenario, what would that scenario look like in a real-life scenario?

Hosein: So, I was two hours, I was two hours late to this. My flight was delayed. The flight was delayed. We were sitting on the tarmac. And that default mode was coming on, right? The world is against me. I'm two hours late for this thing. You were very gracious. Thank you for that. And that could have easily spiraled into severe anxiety, severe stress. But Again, it was turning on my observing mind and looking at this rationally. This delay has nothing to do with me. This is how this has happened. And and I'm perfectly fine now and we're having a great meeting. So the more you strengthen that observing mind, the more power you have over your, of your emotions. And that's the key to wisdom, and that's the key to happiness.

Michael: Control your emotions, control your life. It's the one thing that I've learned. And in that is what you just said is the letting go. If you try to hold on to this you don't control the plane, you don't control the stewardesses, you don't control the air traffic control. The only thing you control is what you do at that moment. That was the hardest thing for me is because many people who grew up in traumatic backgrounds, high stress backgrounds, chaos, and childhood, they're used to chaos. They're used to everything being overstimulating, right? They're used to being hypervigilant and a lot of chaotic experience. And what's really fascinating in my own journey, Is a lot of it feels a irrational when you look at the behavior that one has when they are deeply tied to that default mode network that is more. So really more than anything nature versus nurture. That question can come into play here, but more so than anything, what it is life. Creating a framework of understanding at a very young age. And so now here you are, let's call it 37 years old, 42, 55. You're still in a chaotic state and to be able to shift and get into, it really is weird to call it rational thinking because it does go like, why am I upset about the plane being delayed? No one's going to die if I'm two hours late.

Hosein: Yeah. So, our brains are also wired to focus on the negative. We, it's called negativity bias. And so for, and if you couple that with emotional pain from childhood, it can set up for a lifetime of suffering. And every, when the default mode turns on, you remember these old memories, these traumatic memories from a long time ago, and those emotions come right back and you're living, in this state of trauma, right? I think step one again, intention, realizing that you can completely heal your emotional pain. It is possible, even the most severe trauma, you can completely overcome it. And part of it is understanding this default mode. How to silence it. Part of it is severing that connection between the memory and those emotions. How do you do that? You can see a therapist. You can do, radical acceptance, therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, or you can turn to something at the core of religion, right? The power of forgiveness. It's in every single religion. It's the bedrock of Christianity truly forgiving what happened in the past or forgiving yourself for what you did in the past, taking accountability, feeling that remorse, allowing it to, to restore and renew. You can overcome emotional pain. Again, it starts with that intention. And even negativity. Our brain is wired for negativity. That's why the nightly news starts with the most horrible stories. No kidding. You can overcome negativity by cultivating what's called equanimity. Equanimity is the ability to look at what's happening, both positive and negative and not focus on the negative. It's the cornerstone of stoicism, the stoic philosophers. And you'll see it in many religions as well. But that equanimity critically important and forgiveness as well. You combine those two, you can overcome any.

Michael: Forgiving is healing, like it just is. And I think so often about how much anger I let roll my life for a very long time. I was mad at the world. And look, and I'll say this too, a lot of people have every right to be mad at the world. They do. I was homeless as a kid. Mom and dad were drug addicts, alcoholics. Mom abused me, cut my finger off when I was a kid. Started drinking, getting high as a teenager. Got kicked out of high school three times. No, no high school diploma. Went and worked at a Fortune 10 company. Made a lot of money. Friends got murdered. Like my shit was crazy. Like a movie is my life. And it's like the realest thing. And it's like the anger that I held for so long. Yeah. Which is interesting, because it's golden handcuffs, because on this one hand, it had given me the ability to navigate the chaos of life, but on the other hand, it was keeping me trapped in the chaos of life, and it wasn't until I read a book called Radical Acceptance by Tara Brock, and it's one of those few books in the world that I've ever went, and I was like, this actually changed my life. And I'm very studious. I've read a lot of books just like your book. This thing's unbelievable, but it was in that and you pointed to it as well. It's like you gotta let go, you gotta let go. And this thing that you talked about, because you, you did say that these kind of walk in this order where you go from stress to emotional pain, to addictive craving. When people are at their highest levels of stress with the most emotional pain, what do they do? They numb. They run. They escape. That's the same for you, whether you're a doctor, or a lawyer, or a teacher, or the bus driver, or the guy at the deli counter. We all have our things. It's actually What's so frustrating, and I don't know if you'll agree with this or not, but I'm willing to say you would. What's so Frustrating about being cognizant to the fact that we are easily addicted to many things is the fact that we are cognizant to the fact that we're easily addicted.

Hosein: So, addiction, addictive craving it starts with good intentions. Like you mentioned, stress, emotional pain, it's overwhelming. We need something to numb it, we turn to dopamine. You mentioned dopamine. So there's a part of the brain nucleus accumbens, and it's what releases a dopamine and. That allows us to self-medicate our stress and emotional pain. And unfortunately, there's a lot of things we can get addicted to. Not just, alcohol and nicotine, but money, status, title, food, all kinds of, oh, internet, social media, all kinds of addictions out there. But what happens in all of them, there's a rewiring of the brain. That addiction goes outside of our control. And what you'll notice across all of these conditions is basically that nucleus accumbens and the default mode network take over the brain. You lose the rational control. You want to get out of it. You feel helpless and you can't. There was a 60 minutes, a couple of minutes ago, they had a heroin addict and they were able to basically zap his nucleus accumbens. They just zapped it with like some ultrasound waves. And that moment he's wow, I don't feel any addictive urge. So this is literally a pathway in the brain that takes over. I think admitting to yourself, this is not working. There's a pathway in my brain that's taken over. I've lost control. Family members have been asking me to just quit it, but I can't. It's outside of my control. So again, step one, intention. I want to be in a better place. This is not working. And it's surrender, right? That's surrender is the key. You got to surrender and you got to also silence that default mode as well. Many different ways of doing it. But you can surrender, right? AA is based on surrender for, more Christian based. Buddhist surrender to the Dharma, surrender to the present moment. It's the same surrender. And actually, if you look at plant medicines, psychedelics, they also shut down the default mode network and they help you surrender, which can be really painful. But that is what plant medicines do, they shut down the default mode network.

Michael: Yeah, there's and that rewiring of the brain around addiction is so interesting because that dopamine you It's the same thing and when you see in heroin addicts where they go Once you get that level of high the first time you will chase that's why they call it chasing the dragon you will chase after this you will do anything for that but you never achieve that level of bliss or serenity ever again, and it's what's so crazy because that hit is so cool big, it does actually rewire your brain and the surrender, especially around plant medicine and my own journey has been tremendous. I look at a couple of the most healing moments and occurrences of my life. They were with plant medicine, whether psilocybin or Ayahuasca, many of those things I don't share publicly cause they're for me, but they were beautiful. And they were life changing and life affirming in a lot of ways, but it did require surrender. And I did one experience with an amazing group of people and some people saw the dark side because it was the first time that they ever had to step into letting go, to not be in that hyper state of arousal constantly.

Hosein: It can be a painful process, that process of surrender. So I am a physician scientist, so I have to say this, right? Plant medicines are powerful. They're not legal yet. They are extremely powerful in the United States in the United States, but I would compare them to chemotherapy for cancer. If you have cancer, God forbid Somebody has cancer out there. You wouldn't want to experiment with chemotherapy. You wouldn't want to buy it off the internet and experiment. It's way too dangerous Plant medicines deserve the same level of respect. And I, this book is endorsed by Rick Doblin, who's been working for 50 years to get these approved. And I think he deserves a Nobel prize personally.

Michael: Yeah. If you don't know him, his work is phenomenal.

Hosein: Yeah, absolutely. And will be on the market, they will be approved. I would recommend doing this legally if possible with the help of a licensed therapist who knows what they're doing. Because if you don't, there might be, there, there might be side effects. There can be some ramifications. Yeah. You see it all the time. The pilot, there was a pilot, right? It was on the news. He was experimenting with psilocybin, I think, and on the middle of a flight, he got suicidal. Do you remember that story? So I would approach these with caution, as you would with chemotherapy. These are serious medicines. They can do amazing things. We're figuring that out now. And it's going to help a lot of people in the next generation, new tools are coming.

Michael: That's a really great analogy. Because when I think I was so hesitant, I didn't do any plant medicine at all outside of marijuana and weed. Like it's the same thing. I didn't do any plant medicine at all until I was 31. Terrified of it, man. Terrified. And I used to sell drugs. Like I sold that stuff to people. I never tried it cause I was so scared of it. And I would agree with you. Doing it in the, in a right way, in a safe way, not just because you have access to it is so incredibly important and it opens up and changes your life even more. I want to go into a couple of these other knots here. Obviously we want people to check out the book, ‘cause there's so much content here. We're just barely touching the surface, but you know what? The, these things impact us all. And one of the things that I want to talk about, ‘cause I think it's really important and overlooked something that I push in my community, something that I push in my personal life is moving away from loneliness, moving away from. And so I would really love to know for you, what was your journey with loneliness?

Hosein: So I had a really overactive default mode. It was for me as an immigrant, a lot of times it's about you succeeding. You got to be the valedictorian. You got to get the scholarship. You got to get to Harvard, blah, blah, blah. It's all default mode network. It's all ego. And what, when it's on all the time, that's what breeds loneliness, ‘cause you have the default mode. The default mode network is what makes you feel. Separate from others, different from others. And it creates this loneliness and loneliness. Unfortunately, our surgeon general, who I know he's written a book that loneliness can take off 15 years off your lifespan. Yeah, it's unbelievable. It's a big problem. We saw it in the COVID pandemic social isolation led to all kinds of problems, mental, physical. So loneliness is a big problem impacts your health. How do you overcome it? Again, it goes to self-understanding, it goes to intention. I want to end this loneliness and be, have more friends and be in a more social, with more social support. So part of it is understanding this default mode network, healing it, silencing it. Part of it is cultivating compassion. Compassion is a critical part of it. And compassion is just the intention of wanting to help others. Compassion is the intention of feeling the suffering of others. And, these days, it's actually it's actually hard to help other people, right? I if you say today, you wake up and be like, I want to go help somebody, it's actually pretty hard. You can give some money to the homeless guy in the street and it's actually hard. But having that intention, of wanting to help, just try it out. Try having that intention. I just want to help someone. See how it affects your happiness. It's pretty amazing. Compassion is at the heart of Christianity. It's at the heart of Buddhism, all the world's major religions. It's at the heart of who we are as humans, right?

Michael: Yeah. And what's so interesting is battling that ego and that default mode network of wanting more is actually doing more harm than good. And this is something I've had to experience and I probably will experience again in my life because I went, and I'm not exclusive to this. This isn't a Michael problem, but I went from having nothing to creating an amazing life. I love my life. I've lived all over the world. I wrote my first book on the beaches of Thailand. I've lived in Bali and Europe and South America. I've been on more flights than even though they're stressful than anyone that I know. And there was this chase of more for a long time. A long time, I need more. I need to go and help all these people. I need to go and do all of these things. I need all of these. And what I came to realize was like, actually don't. And here's why, cause you're going to die and it doesn't actually matter. Dude, it doesn't matter if you're a valid Victoria. No one gives a shit. Nobody cares. Which is like such a crazy thought to have. And you put all this pressure on ourselves. We isolate ourselves chasing our dreams. And then we're lonely and now we've shed 15 years off of our life. But then here's the thing, because you said, now we have to cultivate compassion. How in the world do I cultivate compassion when I'm so addicted to this idea of more?

Hosein: Yeah. Yeah. That's what happens for many of us, right? We were taught and we're told that you've got to make it, you've got to succeed. And it takes us unknowingly down this road of loneliness. And so I think. I think we're at a time now where we, we got to start cultivating this compassion because we understand the effects of it. There was this Harvard study, one of the longest studies ever looking at what predicts health and happiness and into old age. And the single best predictor of that was having close relationships. Better than cholesterol. So if you're 50 years old. Having close relationships is, makes you more likely to live a happy, life into old age. Yeah, that's the science, that's the data.

Michael: You can't argue. And it's also, there's a documentary on Netflix. So the name is lost on me right now, but it's about the green zones or the balloons, blue zones, excuse me. And they went to all of these places around the world, Costa Rica, Greece, Asia, and they were, they all had one thing in common community. Every single one of those places where these people live healthy, happy lives of community.

Hosein: That's right. There was some impact to diet. I do talk about. Diet and exercise and we can talk about that. There, some of these places do have the longevity diet or the Mediterranean diet, which is low in saturated fat that definitely contributes. But you're right. Community is a big thing. These places I'm in common.

Michael: Yeah, for somebody, what I always tell people is if you're lonely and you're depressed, it's because you're selfish. And that's a really hard thing for people to hear, but it's like you're depressed because you're at home watching TV all day. You're not going and being of service. I dare you to go to a nursing home or to the children's cancer ward. I dare you, and tell me that you're depressed. Tell me that you're lonely when you're going and being of service to other people. I encourage this of my clients I do it for myself, obviously But I also cultivated my own community, especially I host a guy's night with a lot of frequency every single month, I'm always the one leading the charge because my thought has always been If I don't do it, no one's going to come knock on my door. And I think that there's some social responsibility that we have to be able to navigate that, especially on the backside of this COVID nonsense, where we all were so isolated, we still don't know the long-term detrimental ramifications of this for people like looking at your life and your journey, particularly, what did you do to call this loneliness?

Hosein: Yes. So number one intention, right? I want to be happy and healthy. And coming to understand the core of loneliness was this selfishness coming to understand that I had to cultivate compassion, which again, I've got three young kids full time job. I would love to go volunteer. I don't have any time. So for me, it's when I'm walking down the street and I see somebody walking this way, sending them some well wishes. I care for you. Sometimes I'll just put some cash in my wallet and I'm walking around and I have an intention of just handing it out. Having an intention of just helping somebody. Just having that intention makes me happy. It's like part of who we are as human beings. I, and there's a story like this, like 70,000 years ago, there was a massive volcano that erupted, the Toba Subra Volcano. Which made us nearly extinct. The human race fell that they think to a few hundred. There was 10 years,

Michael: Less than a thousand, right?

Hosein: Yeah. There was 10 years of just winter and no food. The only people who made it through that 10 years were people with compassion and altruism, unconditional care for their kids, right? That's who we are, that compassion. That's who we are as human beings. When we shift over to that selfish side, we get away from who we really are. And that's why we're unhappy. So you see any kid, I've got a, two and a half year old and it's just pure compassion, pure love, right? And his default mode yet hasn't formed yet. My five year old, it's starting to. She started, that default mode is starting to kick in. But we are born into that state of just compassion and love. It's who we are. And the rest of our ego forms into that ocean, right?

Michael: What happened to our compassion?

Hosein: I think our values have been ever since, the last age of enlightenment, right? Where we discovered how the universe works and capitalism. And we built this amazing world in the technology. It's been about growth and. But what that's done to us is it's focused on individual success and that's all great. Look, we're all connected. The world is connected, but I think it's a time for us to return to center. So, I think it's maybe time for a second age of enlightenment where we put this self, this ego aside for a little bit and go back to who we are, return to center a little bit. I think that's what's coming. Eckhart Tolle has been saying that, right? I think it's time for that more spiritual sort of connection.

Michael: Yeah, I hope so because I think that we have been focused on the wrong things for too long and it's almost impossible not to it really is because we think that life is about success and money and the super attractive husband or wife about having all of the things and the initials and then you look at it and you go Does it really matter? Because if you can't be one of the things that drives me crazy about people's if you're unkind to people for no reason It's like what in the world are you doing?

Hosein: Yeah, right, there's no fulfillment if you've if your goal was to Make a lot of money buy a second house and whatever and you made it to that and it you feel unfulfilled It's natural to say maybe I just need another house and maybe I just need more money, maybe at that point, and then now you're actually stuck in addiction, you're actually stuck. You're trying to find success and happiness. You're actually stuck in addiction. So Henry David Thoreau said, wealth is the ability to fully experience life. And there's a lot of people who are, let's say, billionaires, who are emotionally poor, spiritually poor. They're actually poor, they're not there, they have a billion dollars, but they're poor because they're not able to experience life emotionally and spiritually So if you do something and it doesn't you don't feel fulfilled. That's a signal that thing may not bring fulfillment.

Michael: Yeah, that's a great point because if you look at it, it's almost like an Ouroboros, right? You have this inner locking infinite loop where lack of fulfillment equals addiction. And then you're addicted so now you're unfulfilled it's like somewhere in there you break that cycle you break through which is the whole point? This is a reason why you've written the book and obviously there are some other things that we didn't get into that We that I highly suggest people do buy the book and have this conversation Personally with themselves about what are these knots? Why are they stuck in negativity and anxiety and dishonesty? Actually, I want to go into this I know we're out of time, but I think this is sure important. Let's talk about dishonesty.

Hosein: Yeah. Dishonesty and denial. Again, corporate America, it's all about the profits. We've seen companies bending rules and dishonesty, pretty pervasive. Denial, pretty pervasive. The problem is if you're trying to heal your knots, if you're trying to heal some emotional pain, you've got to be fully honest with yourself and you've got to look inside with full honesty. That's how you get to the root causes of these problems. A lot of times we have a denial and that's why our problems are there in the first place. So studies have shown that, and how do you overcome dishonesty is integrity, right? And cornerstone of every religion is having that integrity, doing what's right, even if people aren't watching, because when you have that integrity, you can look inside and you can break through to that awakened state, that enlightened state by fully seeing yourself You know and what you're experiencing as it is not as you think it should be or denying it but looking at it with full honesty and That's a key to getting to that enlightened state.

Michael: Yeah important, and I think it's very difficult as well because at some point and this was in my personal journey At some point I started being honest and then life got really difficult And it got harder before it was ever easier because there were relationships that I had to work on and tell the truth. There were friendships. I had to tell the truth. I had to tell the truth to the mirror. And dude if You would have told me how unbelievably difficult being honest would have been. I don't know if I would have done any of this work. If someone had sat down like this and Hey man, you wanna change your life? Stop being a liar. I'd be like, I don't know. I don't know, man. This sounds fucking insane. Why would I do this? And it was, and that is why honesty to me is such an important cornerstone in my life. And it's not, I'll do it. I'm a human. I'm going to say dumb shit. I'm going to make white lies. It is. But what I've done of what I've learned to do and cultivate it and crafted it in my life is if I do, I just go, I don't know why I said that. People think I'm not to go. I don't know why I said that. I just totally made that up and it's laughable because most of the time it is. And Mark Twain said, if you always tell the truth, you never have to remember a lie. And you talk about stress, if I were to take a circle and I would go back to the beginning of all of the stressors in my life, dishonesty would be the number one reason why.

Hosein: Study, yeah, studies are showing that that, that dishonesty impacts your health. There's a study where they took people and they put them into two groups.  And one of the groups, they said, you cannot tell any lie. And they actually had a polygraph test. For two months those people who didn't tell lies actually had better health. I believe it, you know I believe again and it's anytime There's a reason why you can detect a lie on a polygraph test because when you lie It creates the stress response and those hormones damage your body. So But it's that self denial that self dishonesty That's the most important thing. When you lie to yourself, you're holding yourself back.

Michael: And when I go look at five panic attacks a day for years in my 20s, the one thing that cured them was not going to therapy, was not having a coach, was not a single prescription I tried, was not meditation, journaling, yoga, nothing. It was telling the truth. Because that stress response was so I was in fight or flight so intensely because of the fear of being found out. But I had learned like many people who come up in a traumatic home. I learned that lying is a survival mechanism. The hard part though is, again, that survival mechanism starts to make you sick. It starts to ruin your life.

Hosein: It does, yeah. So that, that knot is later on in the book. And again, once you overcome stress and emotional pain, it becomes a lot easier to address that one. But yeah, it, this is not easy, yeah none of it is.

Michael: And I love your honesty and your vulnerability because when I, when people think about doctors, especially we hold doctors to a high regard. We go, Oh, their lives must be perfect. They make quarter million bucks, 500, 000 a year. They don't have problems. They're not addicted to online marketplaces and stocks and not sleeping in isolation and chaos and addiction. No, they're fine. And so I just have a lot of gratitude first and foremost for you and your willingness, not only to write the book, but to have the conversation, because most people aren't going to see this. My hope is that most people will see and hear this conversation. And recognize that it doesn't matter what kind of credentials you have, that you're still just a human. And these are human problems.

Hosein: That's right. Yeah. I specifically wrote this book for people who've maybe they've tried AA, they've tried mindfulness, they've tried yoga. It hasn't worked for them. Maybe they're very practical. This is especially for those types of folks, maybe who are, Maybe more on the stubborn side or who need to see the science and the data. They want to driving me to a

Michael: Seriously, because I always looked at my life and I was like, I'm practical. Show me that a plus B equals C. Give me the steps. Don't tell me these highfalutin ideas about psychology and psychoanalysis. Show me how I changed my life. That's why I like something like gashalt therapy was so powerful for me, but my hope is like, people will go and get breakthrough. They will master their default mode network and that they will thrive because it's so important. We are at the crux of probably, I don't think the chaos has actually started yet in our lifetime. We've dealt with a lot, right? Especially if you're like our age, you went through nine 11, you went through the oil crisis in the nineties, some crazy president, right? Whatever those things are, but like whatever the real chaos is, I just have a feeling it's right around the corner.

Hosein: Here's the thing. Suffering is the fuel to get to that spiritual state, to get close to God, to get to the enlightened state. Suffering is the fuel. So if we're about to enter a period of suffering, that is an amazing opportunity. for people to break through, right?

Michael: Yeah I agree. My friend, before I ask you my last question, where can everyone find you and get a copy of this book?

Hosein: So my website is yourdefaultmode.com. Got some videos on there. I'll put the podcast up there. The books on Amazon. I launched it on Christmas day last year and yeah, it's I'm doing a signing at mystic journey next week and yeah, you can get out on Amazon. My email is yourdefaultmode@gmail.com. Would love to hear your thoughts. And if this book has helped you.

Michael: Amazing. Yeah. And guys, of course, go to think I'm broken podcast. com where we will have this and more in the show notes. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Hosein: I think, being unbroken for me is resilience. Resilience and that's the very last knot in the book is a lot of times we may break through to a happier state, but something happens that takes us back. Maybe it's a car accident, a divorce or whatever. So, maintaining that resilience at all costs is the key to getting through life. So, resilience is the way to stay Unbroken.

Michael: Love that. Could not agree more. That's played such a huge role in my life. If there was a word that I'd use to describe myself, it would be resilient. And that only comes through breakthroughs.

So guys, please check out breakthrough. And remember, every time that you share this episode, you're helping other people transform their trauma to triumph, breakdowns to breakthroughs, and helping them become the hero of their own story.

And Until Next Time,

My Friends,

Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.