#33 Neurologist, Rob Pace Explains How to Hack Flow State & Reset Your Brain (+ More)

We got to meet Rob Pace. And I can't believe people don't know about him yet. Uh, and if you are interested in brain science, brain chemistry, how we think, how thoughts, why we think, the thoughts we think, you're eventually going to come across Rob Pace. I found him because he's on TikTok and in his first like four videos, he got like a over a million plays because he's just spitting knowledge. Um, he's a neurologist. He's been a professor for over 15 years and we got to sit down and talk with him and really just ask him as many questions as we could possibly think about how the brain works. And I took away so many good pointers for how I should operate throughout the day, what do I do with these recurring thoughts, these ruminating thoughts, how do I what what sort of steps can I take to uh be more mindful, be more present? And honestly, Rob's just an incredible guy. I can't. He told us afterwards that we were the first podcast he's done. And I am confident that this guy is gonna be on Huberman and he's gonna be on all the podcasts that are much larger than the Austin and Matt podcast. But I'm grateful that he came on to ours before he blows up. So, I hope you really enjoy the conversation. Um, again, if you like brain stuff, you're going to like this. Oh, and like and subscribe below. If you haven't subscribed yet, please keep doing it. The algorithm is really helping us, and we wouldn't be here without people like you. So, thank you for listening. This is the Austin Matt podcast. Well, Rob, you strike me as a guy that's got a lot of energy. I really want to know what your morning routine was like. Morning routine. Um, my morning routine should be more routine cuz uh I So, I I can tell you what my ideal morning routine or when when uh I feel like I have really good days is uh wake up um activity, move around, do something and think about stuff. So have some time to just sort of mentally wake up, process stuff. So whenever I do I I I would love to be one of those people that gets up at 4:30, goes to the gym and works out. I've tried many times and it works for like a week and then it stops. So uh but I do feel good when I get up and go for a walk, go for a run, do something like that. Uh so ju that's that's that's what I got. Rob, your Tik Toks are unbelievable. I just I I can't believe you you did you just start because you only have a few thousand subs on Tik Tok but but there your views you have like millions of views already. Yeah. Um so I've uh I love teaching and I I've been you know doing neurology so I always teach the med students and it it it goes well. I usually get good feedback. So, I've been meaning to uh do something, you know, start something on YouTube or start on TikTok, but I'm kind of disorganized. So, it's taken me a long time to figure. So, a couple of months ago, I don't know what got me in the mood. I just sat down and and you know, put the camera on and started saying, "All right, you know, let's talk about neurology stuff." And that got a bunch of views. And I don't I didn't really plan anything or think about anything. So from there I I realized there is endless stuff to talk about with neurology. I mean it's it's endlessly, you know, to me it's endlessly fascinating. So uh it's seems like oh I now my problem is narrowing things down enough to talk about one topic before I jump onto something else because I'll I'll I've said something and then got a lot of great questions. I'm like, "Okay, we should talk about that." and then I'll start to go off on that tangent and then all of a sudden I'm like, "Oh, wow. We're really deep into X, Y, or Z." So, it's super fun. I really love it. How long have you been teaching? How long have you been teaching? Um, I finished my residency like 2012, 2013, something like that. So um uh and it so around 2008 2009 when I became a resident was when I started to really work with a lot of students a lot of med students and then uh it's just something that if you enjoy doing it you get a lot of opportunities to because not a lot of physicians really like to it kind of it can take a lot of time out of your day and it can slow you down and whatnot. So, uh, I I've always liked doing it. So, it's that's I've had plenty of chances. I feel like teachers are starting to have their moment. Like, there's Professor Jeang, if you've seen him, and he's he's just blown up out of China, and he he's got millions of subs. Uh, we talked to a different professor of esoteric knowledge, and it just it's like getting on YouTube if you're a good professor. It feels like the world is actually hungry for knowledgeable people that can communicate. Well, it's crazy. I really feel that this the I know that you know you could go on a rabbit hole of how social media is and you know YouTube and those kinds of things but it is really opening up the world to so many everybody has has some sort of knowledge that they know more than anyone else on the planet and everybody has uh some insight into something that other people don't. It's just finding them. How do you get that to somebody if you're in, you know, the middle of Michigan, middle Indiana or something? Um, well, you you just get up here and you talk and uh it it it it kind of fuels itself because you you start talking about something, people ask questions, and then it it just kind of goes from there. It's it's I think we live in a very very cool time in history because of stuff like this. Did you experience any stage fright when you first popped on your phone and started recording? Oh, yeah. I'm [clears throat] I'm I'm a little anxious by by nature. Uh am I'm an overthinker and I've if I wasn't so and if I just kind of got up and just started talking, I probably would have had 5,000 videos. Uh but I I overthink it. I'll I'll I'll do a video and then I make the mistake of watching it because then I'll say, "Oh man, I should have said it like this or I should have done that." So yeah, I I uh I I am prone to that a little That's so interesting because being a professor it feels like you've been standing in front of people for a long time and I would think you'd be very I mean you're very good at it and it feels like it might be comfortable but maybe it feels different staring at your phone versus staring at a crowd actually. Well, it's the it's it's it's not the doing of it. It's the the the inertia getting there. It's that, you know, it's it's like anything else when you're about to dive off a high dive or something like that or you're, you know, if you ever like gone bungee jumping or something like that, the actual act of it once you've decided, once you've done it, is an easy thing to do. Then you're just doing whatever you do. But the lead to that is where our minds create all of this resistance that we have to sort of overcome. And uh uh sometimes that resistance gets pretty high. And uh that's that's the only difficult part. It's not actually doing it. You know, this feels a little bit like a paradox. Uh because in my mind, like the more we know about our brains, it feels like we should have more control over our brains uh just by studying it. And it sounds but I don't like I think that should be true, but I also know that's not really true in some capacity because well, it's just hard, right? Like we said, like you can go to the gym for a week and then you fall off and but we know we should go to the gym and you know Michael Pollen wrote his book how to change your mind and he went on a bunch of different you know substances on how to change your mind and it really is fascinating to me that even as a neurologist you also can struggle with activating your mind to do something. Isn't that so interesting? Like why is that? Our so our minds are abs they are wild horses. they uh are incredibly powerful and the more uh you sort of move in any direction, the more that becomes. So, you've got uh I guess I would liken it to to somebody who's uh exercising. If you if you're never used to exercising and you and you're just sitting on a couch all the time, when you start to get up and move, it is a difficult it's a slog. If you do that, you get into it and you start exercising more and more and more, but you can still get to a point where you're doing more advanced stuff, but it still feels to you the same way [snorts] it did when you were just walking up those stairs after not being someone that's exercised, even if you're doing crazy uh lifts and what whatever it is that people are doing. So your brain is like that where you've got um moments where there's very simple concrete information that we're dealing with and it's relatively easy to to to manage from a certain point. But once you move up into sort of higher higher uh sort of dimensions of of thought then things become exponentially more complicated which means the the complications that you're dealing with now are are are bigger. They're more they're more uh so it's it's it's like a I think your mind is kind of like a uh uh like a a role- playinging video game where uh you you just get every level you get your character gets stronger but the challenges become uh harder. Can you help me understand what neurology is exactly? Because I kind of get this image that's between brain doctor and psychologist or psychiatrist somewhere. Yeah. So that's that's right. So um so medicine um back in the 1900s uh was all the so 1800s. So that was all the same. Psychiatrists, physicians, surgeons, they they all kind of did one thing and then it started to branch apart. Neurology and psychiatry were always closely linked. In fact, there's still when we're board, our board certification is in both of those things. So neurology and psychiatry but they became very very different in practice because uh we don't we don't know a ton about the brain um when we compare it to other organ systems like you're you're you we can figure out the workings of the kidney say which is complex and fascinating um but uh we can kind of wrap our heads around it. We know why your kidney does this and why it leads to these outcomes. But your brain leads to these psychological outcomes that are way way way way far removed from what we understand. So there became a split where uh psychiatry started just dealing with the whole picture uh and and sort of moved towards psychology part of it and neurology became the medicine part of this. It's saying, "All right, right now you're having a stroke. We give you this thing. It stops your stroke. You're having a seizure. We do this. It stops the seizure." But there's this kind of huge gap in the middle of unknown. And that's kind of where I'm mostly interested as a neurologist. That's where my brain always goes to because that's the stuff that that uh I've been interested in since I was, you know, able to start thinking. Why Why were you interested in that, do you think? What what was it that got you interested in this? It was weird. I was an awkward I I I I remember very clearly being uh thinking about my own thinking and thinking about all the stuff that goes on in my head. And I remember one moment driving in the car where I was thinking, wait a minute, if I have this much stuff going on in my head and I'm just one of all these people, they've got all this in all this crazy stuff going on in their head. That's that's just it sort of blew my mind. So, um, it it always was something that kind of drew me and it was always something that I just found fascinating when I would I I love talking to people, uh, having sort of like deep conversations with friends. Uh, I was one of those kids that was, you know, not super great in big groups. Uh, but when I would sit down and talk to one person, we could get into all the, you know, gory details of everything. So, um, I always liked talking to people. I was like trying to talk to people about stuff that was going on with them. And then when I got into college, I didn't know what I was going to do with my life, but I thought, "All right, I'll go into psychology." And as part of that, I took a neuroscience class and I was hooked. Like, I was the moment I started thinking about, wait a minute, there's an electrical signal from here that can make this thing move. All right, that's that's it. That's the coolest thing in the world there. Do do you think that everyone thinks as much as every other person now that you've had a chance to look at this for a while or do you think some people actually think a lot more? Um, that's a good question. I think that it's different because our thoughts are um uh our our inner experience is something that um it well number one it's it's impossible to to to fully communicate. There's no way of me saying that my vision of the color blue is the same as your vision of the color blue. Um but uh that's when you add the complexity on to that there's no way of saying okay when you think of some sort of complex topic um uh or or comp or a topic for you that is really complicated uh in your mind there's no way of me being able to understand that complexity um I think that in general we all have the same or or we all have similar drives to thinking that is we all have similar uh like like the doors are there for for everyone to to sort of get into. It's a question of how much you want to dig into things because sometimes the energy that it requires the mental energy to think is exhausting. And uh if it's something where something is too abstract, your brain is never going to give you the opportunity to go there. it's just going to say, "Nope, I'm not I'm not even going to I'm not even going to entertain that." So, um uh I think everybody has different tolerances for that exhaustion and you know that that makes the inner world very different. But I think in general everybody everybody's brain uh is special. Everybody's brain is incredible. Um and the idea of like thinking more or thinking less kind of conjures up these ideas of like okay this person is a smarter person or a not as and that is faulty thinking that is that is absolutely not the way that it is and that that idea that exists in society is I think a huge problem because it makes people think that uh they they don't have their their mind is not able to do incredible things and it definitely is. It's just that everybody's focus is a little bit different and uh you know society will value certain things above other things that makes it seem like there's a there's a huge difference but I think that the big picture answer to that question is that everybody's mind minds are absolutely incredible and once you recognize that believe it and know it and then follow it in the direction that it's going that's where magic happens. I saw this thing the other day uh that talked about how we've taught gorillas sign language for like 50 years. And these gorillas, they know thousands of words and they can sign and communicate and all these things, but one thing that gorillas have never done in 50 years of teaching them language is ask a question. They've never asked why or who are you or they they're not they will answer everything you give to them, but they never ask why. And [clears throat] to me that refers to metacognition which to me seems like the biggest superpower of being a human is being able to ask why and then ask why am I asking why and then ask why am I asking why am I asking why and kind of going that way? Uh do we see that in the brain? What is it that causes metacognition? And maybe that's like too grand of a question but because I find that some people have more metacognition than others. And I don't and we're all learning we're all learning how to have more metacognition in all the areas of our life. And so what's your experience with that and like what what is it about metacognition? So the the I think the simplest answer to that is connectivi connectivity. So um your brain has a bunch of processes running in parallel and um you can think of them. So I always um think of the brain as a symphony. it's uh you know groups of instruments that are doing their thing that are then connecting to other groups of instruments and then are connecting to other groups of instruments. So if you have a huge symphony hall where all the lights are off, but you've got the the musicians that are filling in everywhere, you you shine a spotlight on some here that are kind of doing their thing, starting to work together, starting to create harmony. Then he's shine a spotlight on another place in the hall that are starting to do the same thing. But those are not necessarily working together um until they start to recognize that they're part of a bigger group. And then when that happens, you start to see uh uh synchrony. You you start to see parts of the brain that are acting not just randomly here and there, but as part of a bigger pattern, as part of a flow pattern. The more that that happens, the higher your perspective, the higher your uh essentially your dimensional perspective. Uh which sounds kind of wacky, but but really what I mean by that is just um you uh if you just think of a dimension as a degree of freedom. So one dimension degree of freedom in this way, two dimensions in a plane, three dimensions here. Um your your brain is um uh at different times at looking at those things in different ways. So when you're the more connection you have, the higher you are in this uh in this uh you're you're looking at things from a higher perspective. So, if you've ever heard like the flat land analogy, um, uh, the like that I've seen a bunch of videos on it. Carl Sean did a thing on it, but where if you're in a two-dimensional world, what you're seeing are random, you know, shapes and things like that that are moving around in a incredibly complex pattern. You might see like a circle that gets bigger and a square that gets smaller and all that kind of stuff. And it seems like it's an incredibly complicated pattern that you can't make sense of. But when you look at that from a three-dimensional world, you just see, oh, it's just, you know, cars driving through an over an underpass or balloons flying through thing. It's it be you're able to see it in a different way. And that's what your brain is doing with metacognition. It's moving up to different uh uh perspectives. And as that's happening, you're getting more activity. You're getting more connection within that symphony. and the music can then become uh more coherent. Do you think of the different brain organels as like the different players in the symphony? Is it literally like the amydala is one dimension, cortex is one dimension or is it is it more abstract than that? It's a little more abstract than that because it's not that those are the the the dimensions themselves. it's that those th that connectivity is working in loops between those. So um your brain uh um has these these network modes that uh it's running in at any given time that are kind of task specific. That is big picture. They're they're working towards one major goal of either insight, action, correction, or rest. And um those are not necessarily one spot of the brain turning on. They're one pattern of information that your brain is acting in that then all of the experience that you get fits within that pattern. So it's like a um they're like uh sort of musical keys where um you know your brain starts playing in you know an A sharp and all of the all of the other instruments started started sort of following along that pattern and your brain can switch those modes but the modes exist as patterns of connectivity between these sort of organels between these different brain regions. What? So, does that define a flow state? Like, is a flow state when all of those are kind of in synchrony together and they're spinning really rapidly and kind of just like, is that a flow state or or am I Yeah. Yep. So, coherence. So, um coherence. When you've got one part of the uh orchestra that is playing one thing and another part of the orchestra that's playing another thing, it creates clashing. It creates tension. And we experience that. How we feel when that happens is slowness. [snorts] We feel time start to get heavy. We start to feel uh uh start to feel like we're not moving forward and it takes a ton of energy. Oh, it's like a slog. Not not being in coherence is like a slog. Exactly. It is exhausting. And once coherence starts to happen, the more coherence that happens, the more things move, the the easier it is and things become effortless or at least towards the direction of effortless. So once there's coherence not just within your brain but within your body as a whole um that is what a so a pure flow state is where everything is the the conductors is uh is has all the little subgroups working together and it's literally something where there's timing that is connected that works towards whatever goal you are you are uh you're working toward you're So yes, that's flow. When I was an athlete, I remember dropping into a flow state and just to your point, it's it's one of the most incredible feelings ever. You're you're 3 seconds in front of everybody else. You're seeing everything going every you you have perfect, you know, mind body connection of of of everything. And I I don't I think I think once you drop into that, if you've ever experienced it, you you can kind of chase it. you kind of want to figure out how to get back into it because it's one of the most beautiful feelings ever to exist that way. And why don't we exist like that all the time? Like why wouldn't natural selection get us there or why wouldn't like if the brain really loves that and I really love that and I want to do that, why can't we just do that all the time? So it's getting there. It actually so it is it's something that's moving in that direction. Um but be it's such a high level of complexity. So once you get to those higher order those that higher level of metacognition the degree of complexity of getting everything lined up at becomes exponentially higher. So if you are a um you know think of a an animal that is just living their life uh they are in an environment that works for them. they are within a place where they can get food and shelter and all the things that they need. Um that's a flow state from a limited perspective. That state to them would feel most likely as far as we can say, as far as we can tell. Um like we feel when you're in the state that you're talking about as an athlete where you're 3 seconds ahead of every Yeah. I think that animals are always in a flow state. They're just in a lower complexity level of flow state as humans. But it's it's ex it's it's whatever that means for for their lower level of complexity. They're always in a flow state because they kind of never wreck themselves out of it through their brains. Yes, we have the uh blessing curse of uh being able to look at that higher higher picture. And we also have the blessing curse of being able to sometimes jump to that higher level of cognition and then fall back down. but remember that we were up here at one point. So we we will uh get here see things clearly and then sort of fall back down say ah [ __ ] what the hell you know where did it go or why can't I do that? Um and it's a it's it is a I would say that it is a uh challenge that we're all sort of working towards in a way. Um but flow states are trainable. They are things that you can improve. Um, and it it's uh there isn't a straight path to do it, but but they are things that you can work towards getting into more rather than just the random happen stance of getting into it whenever fate decides. Is there a faster on-ramp to flow state other than pingpong? For me, ping pong gets me straight in in like two seconds. Same. Uh, absolutely. Um, so yeah, actually I've been um, so my girlfriend and I about six months ago, so we started working on a flow state app. So we started working with an app developer to help us do this because um, the key to that is timing and it is timing and I mean that in the most literal sense. It is timing of uh, body systems and brain systems. So um when our body has several different rhythm generators. So there there is there's lots and lots of them but the big main ones are our heart, our breathing and then our thoughts. We don't have uh easy direct control over our heart. Uh you can get some it takes a lot of work and time and effort. Uh but basically that rhythm is kind of more of a a secondary thing that happens. We do have good control over our breathing at times or at least some control over our breathing and we do have control of where the spotlight in our brain goes um to and what our bodies are doing with that. So creating rhythms um is what you're doing when you're playing pingpong or when you're, you know, painting or whatever it is that's getting that person into flow. It's creating physical rhythms that are starting to naturally line up with all the other systems. So you'll your your heart rate will start to match the output. You you you're literally getting these these uh little subgroups that are all kind of saying, "Oh yeah, I know where we're going with this." And once that happens, it's it's it's a it's a natural attractor state for your brain. It's it's sort of how your brain will default. Your brain wants to default into that, but there's just so much noise with everything else. There's so much noise from the rest of the world that it's it's it's just hard to see that. You can see it for a moment and then something else happens or some thought goes somewhere else and it it it becomes chaotic. So timing is key and this is probably at least one of the main reasons that breathing is something that everybody talks about and and all and and have talked about for thousands of years and why it's so important because it allows us to sort of reset the timing when things are off and get you into a state where things are right more rhythmic and then your brain can start to follow suit and your your thoughts and perceptions can start to follow along with it. Are are there any substances that help because it because a flow state is like the holy grail? I mean, anybody who can figure out how to get a human into a flow state on a repeatable basis in some short amount of timeline. I mean, not just professional athletes, but like software engineers. I mean, who wouldn't who wouldn't? If I could take a Red Bull and that just put me in a flow state every time, I would have a I'd be drinking Red Bull all the time, right? And so are there any substances that kind of help uh maybe it's like you said you got to stop thinking like the the brain is the one thing that can get into the flow state but also knock itself out of the flow state. So it's this like complex equation of what that means but anyway. Yeah. What are there any substances that we found that help kind of entrain the brain? Yes. So, so this so um this is where things like psychedelics will help um by uh sort of disrupting these stable patterns that we have that we've created over our life that um kind of pull us out of a flow state. Um it it it uh however the the problem with a substance as anybody that's ever been you know struggling with substance you know problems could tell you is that it doesn't it doesn't work consistently or it doesn't work the same way each time because the the groove that your brain gets into still exists. So your brain has a bunch of different patterns that it will naturally sort of fall into and you can break that pattern by doing a bunch of things by you know breathing techniques by you know cold exposure by uh you know activity athletic activity by psychedelics all kinds of things. But if your brain still has this attractor state of pulling you back to where you were before then uh then it won't be consistent for you. But um those states so substances can show you uh and show you sort of give you the feeling of how that pattern should be which if you're looking for it and if you're understanding what it's doing can actually help to change the groove change that that that track that your brain gets into. So when when if you look at things like psychedelic therapy, uh it it's phenomenally effective compared to therapies that we have been doing for the last 50 years are a joke compared to in terms of how well they work. Except lots of people try to use psychedelics and don't really get anywhere. Um, and that is sort of like seeing a sort of giving you a a sense of where you're going but without any sort of map to get there. So, a good therapist that can walk you through or when people do sort of guided ceremonies, what's likely happening is that they're using something their brain is softening. they're they're no longer stuck in this rigid groove and able then to recreate these connections. Um but the guidance is what would show you uh either self-guidance or from external somebody that's walking you through it is what would show you all right this is how to get back here consistently without having to worry about taking a thing or changing your state. Yeah, it I know. I've heard that the neurons that fire together wire together. And so basically, it's like lightning going off in our brain. We're just the same branches keep getting hit. And so the same lightning bolt over 40 years of living, your brain is used to firing kind of that exact same lightning bolt. And so psychedelics can kind of put, you know, reset that a little bit and a new shape lightning bolt can kind of go and and that new shape could actually take hold. Um I think maybe we it's usually called like integration afterwards. So like if you can then re take that experience and reintegrate it. Um and that can also happen negatively like I've heard with the the study they the studies they've been doing with PTSD with soldiers is that uh the worst thing you can do after a very traumatic event is go to sleep actually. And they found that once like if you're if you're in a big bombing right as a as a in the military or something happens they they come back and they're exhausted and they'll sleep for like 12 hours. And they've actually found if you sleepdeprive them and keep them awake for 24 hours, like as long as humanly possible, that actually dissipates it out and the long-term effects of PTSD severely decline. So, it does seem like sleep is one of those things that will integrate and kind of resolidify whatever just happened and kind of like wire those neurons together. Yep. And that's that's that's very much what sleep is doing. Sleep is uh is a state where you're it's sort of like going into the safe mode of your brain where you are able to sort of look at specific patterns and say cancel, amplify, add uh um adjust that kind of thing. But it's not something that you're you're doing uh consciously. It's something that is being guided by your inner sort of template. So if your inner template is set as say trauma, say you're someone who has had uh no um no structure, you're someone who has you know been raised say an environment where uh you have no self-confidence or or whatever it is. Um that's the template that sleep is going to reinforce. And if that happens along with some sort of very awful external circumstance, then that template can just as just as well pull you into a an area where you you you don't want to be where it's it's causes a lot more struggle. Well, that's interesting. Are there any like pitfalls? So, I've taken like a lot of mushrooms and I' I've done it out in the woods and like on my own sometimes, sometimes with shamans and there's all sorts of like different results you can get like you're kind of saying. Is there any pitfalls that you would say definitely avoid if you're going to go off and venture to do psychedelics without without like a trained professional? Just because I know there's a lot of people that are genuinely going to do it. So, I wonder if there's anything that'd be useful for them to know. Uh I think that it is something that when you go into it and uh when you go into it with the respect of knowing that this is going to be something that is that is uh showing you a lot of information and recognizing that that information is going to come at you differently than you see it in the the rest of the world. So it might not be as easy as you know, taking mushrooms and then, you know, feeling better when you're out of that state. Then the the I think the biggest problem with those are when people either are sort of I don't want to say if you're not recognizing what it's doing. If you're just kind of doing it and it's it's uh it's something that you're not thinking about, you're not integrating, then it could just drag you along a path that you don't want to be. But if you're if you are if you're in a state where you're sort of curious, open and understand, all right, I'm about to learn some stuff about myself, then it can be very powerful and very helpful. These these things exist in the world for a reason. Um there's a reason that we are not the only animals that uh change our state with substances. Um and the we have created we have a lot of different substances external things that will change that state for us. Um and there's a reason that that happens. There's a reason that you can find psychedelic compounds everywhere on the planet in different ways and a reason that people have been using these things for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. Um uh but it's it's like we were talking about where we first started in you're you're you're looking at things from a bigger p a wider perspective and if you don't um if you don't know where that's where you want that to go uh it could it could potentially make things more complicated for you. Do you know if older people struggle with this? Cuz I like I've been trying to convince my mom to take mushrooms and she's just like not into it. And actually I've taken some trips with some older people who are like in their 60s and 70s who have had terrible trips for the first time and also some who have had great trips. Do you know if there's something about like neuroplasticity and how mushrooms might just come in and like wreck you if you're not that neuroplastic anymore? Well, the thing that the thing that happens is as we get older in general, um, and I don't know if this is if this is the the actual answer, but this is my what my guess would be to what you're you're saying is that, um, we get in our brain gets into different grooves. So, um, the one thing I the one saying I think that is the one of the worst sayings that humanity has ever come up with is that you can't teach an old dog new tricks because that puts in your mind the idea that you can't learn or your brain can't look at things from different perspectives. It can do that just fine. It's just that when we have all this other programming that we've built forever, you those attractor states that your brain gets into become stronger and stronger and stronger and stronger. So, if you're trying to step out from that uh and you don't recognize that that's the case, then let's say the template that your brain falls into is one of profound anxiety or profound uh you know, shame or something like that. Uh, and then you you you you step out of your step out of your current moment and look at that from a bigger perspective. That could be awful. Um, because now you're amplifying that anxiety or you're amplifying that shame state. Um, so we have more of a tendency over time to fall into those grooves, but we have uh we have our brain is able to learn things forever. That's what your brain does. That's what it's for. It's amazing at that. So, I think what I did one of the videos at some point on the Tik Tok about um why that old dog new tricks thing doesn't actually hold water, which is that if you think about an example of the the example I always used to talk about this is language. You you you know, you have me try to learn Spanish and it's horrible and even if I were to move to Mexico City and speak Spanish life, I would still have an accent. I would still not be able to move as fluidly as a native speaker. But you put a four-year-old in a Spanish speaking or bilingual household and they'll pick it up quickly without any uh any sort of uh any sort of accent. And so that reinforces to us, oh yeah, you know, that four-year-old learns much faster than I do or better than I do, which is not the case. just that I have been speaking my language, my native language so much for so long that it gets that to be the the the the very very strong attractor. It's like a magnetic pull and moving away from that becomes more difficult because I've got more stuff to override. So that phenomenon when it comes to how everything works together be can become more solidified as we get older. you can sort of lock into patterns that might not suit you very well. Uh and and and that's that's that's probably where people get an older individual if they're not aware of that. If they don't if if they're not open to it, if their brain is not able to sort of see things from those higher perspectives can cause a lot of cause a rough uh rough Yeah. How do you go how do you go about changing your mind? Uh because I agree that I think our brains are are pattern matchers. And so the longer you've been around, the more your brain keeps pattern matching. And maybe that's a survival mechanism. Maybe that's, you know, for whatever reason. Maybe it's a a a conservation of energy mechanism because now I don't have to think about it because I just pattern match it and I'm lazy in that way. So how how does one really go about changing that? Like how do you go about if you want to change your life? How do you do it? Um, so the answer I think could be several hours long, but the answer could also be as short as recognition, understanding. So metacognition once you Yes, metacognition. So it is once you start recognizing the patterns as things, once you start saying, "Oh, this square that keeps popping up in front of me is actually uh my own um my own self, my own [snorts] the shame that I have built into my head that's showing up in a bunch of different ways or the the fear that I keep having that keeps showing up in different ways." Once you see that, then it becomes much much easier to to deal with. But there's so much stuff, there's so much noise in the world that it becomes hard to slow down and look at it, which means that you just kind of get into a groove and you survive. You just go. So, so if we the more we stop surviving and start seeing what's actually happening, um, then it becomes a matter of just following what your brain is showing you, following following the patterns. [clears throat] So, it's getting out of autopilot essentially. And like I've actually heard this from therapists where they're dealing with alcoholics or someone with a substance abuse issue and they say what you know what you what we want to challenge you to do is you don't even have to stop drinking. It's just when you're going for that drink, take a pause and just pause for 10 seconds and go, why am I doing this? What do I want to do this for? What's happening inside of me? And if in 10 20 seconds you still want to have the beer, go ahead and have the beer. But like the more you keep bringing that awareness before that moment every time that sort of strengthens that metacognition and they said over time that is by do every once in a while you'll go actually I'll put the beer down I don't want to have it this time or something because you get out of that autopilot moment and so maybe it's sort of incorporating things into your day that keep knocking you out of these rhythms like almost fighting pattern matching as much as possible. Yep. Yes. That's that, you know, you could say it as simply as presence. Uh just being present in a moment. But that's exactly right. Every time I I I have the same conversation with every patient I've ever talked to that smokes cigarettes and saying, "All right, number one, um everybody knows cigarettes aren't really good for you, but how many cigarettes do you smoke?" And I I don't care if the answer is two or, you know, 200. Um, but the main question is of those 200 cigarettes or 20 cigarettes or five cigarettes, how many of those provide you with benefit and joy? How many of those improve your quality of life? And when that happens, smoke a cigarette, go for it. Um, and don't shame yourself for it. But, but most people will find if I'm like smoking 20 cigarettes a day, uh, two of them are things that I actually kind of want to do. the mo rest of the time it's just me feeling anxious and or me just it's the time of day or whatever it is that autopilot thing uh is useful for us but it gets us into a lot of trouble particularly on addictions. Do you think because I've met a few non-smokers who like they're really fervent with this idea that you can't call yourself a non-smoker because as soon as you call yourself a non-smoker you want to go smoke because you don't want to have limits like that. So, they just say, "I am a smoker. I just haven't smoked in a while." And a lot of people have told me that's the best way for them to handle not smoking and especially if it's still in their environment if they still are hanging out with friends that smoke. Do you do you think there's anything to that? For sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Don't all of our w our minds in some way are wired to don't tell me what to do. Including from ourselves, including we we uh we we fight against that as we should. we we we are we are you know we're expressing ourselves in in in our own unique ways. So um when that's reframed uh as oh no what I want to do is feel the best that I possibly can and this just kind of makes it harder to do then it becomes something you always say all right I want to do it and then then it's easy to do once you want to do something your brain will do it. It's it's it's uh that we we we get told all the time to do something or not do something or that you do this and you're good, you do this and you're bad. Um anytime that I I talk to people that are um uh alcoholics or or the one that I see the most commonly is people that are addicted to opiates. Um, uh, there's nothing wrong with people trying to feel better. There's nothing wrong with that at all. We shame it and we, you know, we we tell people that they're worse or they're bad for doing it. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's it makes a ton of sense that if you find something that makes you feel less resistance internally, that's something that you would go back to. The question is how do you get that to maintain itself consistently? Opiates for an example, the way that they work in your brain is by shutting off the affective component from the sematic component. Like you can it it means that you can still feel pain. You can so you're you're you're uh you're still getting signals that pain is happening. You cut your hand. That sensation will still be there, but you won't care. It won't be something that causes a negative feeling for you. However, your brain is dealing with trillions of little bits of information all the time, including pain signals that are always coming from your body. They're supposed to to help us know when to shift and when to like stand up and that kind of thing. So, almost all of it is getting filtered out all the time. You're not because if your brain didn't filter out information, that's what your brain is doing with the world because otherwise we'd all go insane because our sense organs have the capacity to to hear a door closing from two miles away. Uh but all that gets blocked out be before it ever comes to conscious awareness. Except when you're blocking that artificially with something like an opiate, your brain will start to go, "Wait, where is all that stuff?" and it will start to loosen the the uh the filter mechanism of that pain. So you get increased pain over time at the expense of or when you when you you you lose uh you drop down pain temporarily with the opiate, but then your set point for feeling pain um starts to drop down and you feel more pain. So it's like a payday loan. uh yeah, it'll give you some cash right up front, but you are gonna pay for it in the long run, which is just the opposite of what you want to do. It's just making it harder. So, how do you how do you optimize that over time? Um, and then once people see it from that standpoint and not as like I'm bad because I'm doing this thing or I'm wrong or whatever, then people will say, "Oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense." And then then it's it's easier for them to do. That's so interesting to shape it in terms of a loan. Like opiate, doing opiates is just like taking a high interest loan. It's like don't do it. That's there's it's not moral. It's just hey, you're you got you're going to get charged a ton of interest and you're not going to be able to pay that back. Exactly. Yeah. It reminds me of cocaine what they say like you're using tomorrow's happiness today and if you if you run a bunch of lines of cocaine, you know exactly what it means because you just feel terrible the next day. It's like you feel the same but except for you don't want to be alive. basically it. [laughter] Yeah. Which is terrible. It's a terrible way to be honestly. But and speaking of substances though, one one of the substances that's probably especially in Michigan is really coming into debate is marijuana. And I think a lot of people are using this argument of like well it helps me stop ruminating. And I know that you've talked a lot about network modes and how uh you have like insight leads to action, action to correction and correction sort of rest and rest. Hope hopefully you get the insight again while you're resting and I know you can get stuck in rumination sometimes. I think that's more on the insight phase. Do you have any thoughts of like if marijuana can be helpful or if maybe people are giving themselves a little too much leeway with with that particular substance? So it it can be pretty helpful. Uh it it's something that is sort of a state uh it is a it's sort of a pattern disruptor. So, it's something where when people are getting into a rumination phase or any, you know, particularly with the rumination phase, it's able to kind of shut that down and allow things to start to flow a little bit more uh freely. Um, so I I I I used to um sort of think of this as a well, you know, I I I would used to see people that say, well, marijuana cures all the that's the key to everything is use marijuana. And that's, you know, not true. Um, but I used to think of that as a, well, that's, you know, just somebody that is trying to justify what they're doing. Um but then over time as people have actually been able to research it and actually been able to look at it in detail sort of saying well it could be very much help you get out of those brain patterns that cause a lot of problems for you. So it's not to say that your brain patterns cause all your physical illness but they certainly contribute a ton to all the things that are going on. If you are h if you are developing high blood pressure, diabet all those things, the one factor that you can change, it's not your genetics, it is not your diet, it is not your activity, it is your mind, um that can reduce the chances of all of those things. So, um, marijuana is an example of something that, uh, it's a sort of a can be a cheat code, but just like the, um, just like the what we're talking about with the psychedelics, it can also get you stuck in a different rut if you're not aware of what's happening and if you're not doing it with insight. Because the point of it is not to, you know, just get high and laugh. Well, sometimes that's the point, but um uh the point is to to start to get yourself moving in a flow that you're able to uh maintain when you're back in a say regular state. So, it's a it's a it's a kickstart that can be be useful for people. But the ideal instate would be to leave it eventually. The I the ideal state is for your brain to never have to worry about anything, never have to have anything to get to wherever it needs to go. Your brain is a chemical fac. It's an electrochemical factory and the states that it's in are not unique to any substance at all. Uh they're not unique to, you know, the exercise high or the high people get from uh from a substance. uh the there it's just that it's hard to do that naturally because you you know you're trying to you're trying to fit a uh you know you're trying to thread a needle uh out of you know in a sea of information that your brain is always presenting to you. So it it it can be a difficult thing to do without having some sort of guidance. Where do you think the line is? Um because it does seem like, you know, I'm seeing all these brain supplements come out and it seems like your diet and what you eat can affect your brain. And what's the difference between that and and a substance like mushrooms or weed where you know just like I got to take fish oil or something on some sort of regular cadence maybe there is an argument to be made to have weed or mushrooms or something on some sort of regular cadence like how like what is actually what can we do from a dietary perspective or ingesting things perspective to kind of optimize the brain because like you said it's let's get the brain to a point where it can kind of do all this on its own but but is that even achie I mean at the end of the day you're eating every day and and I feel like that has to affect what's going on. So So what does that to you? What does that kind of look like? Well, um the I think that the the difference to is perception. It's it's just kind of how So what is the difference between a supplement or you know taking a psychedelic once a week or doing a you know a five mile run uh every morning. It's just how we perceive it. and how we perceive it is influenced by our own internal state and the external state of the world. So, uh this is the um this is why uh the the the dogmatic and rigid ways in which we tend to look at substances or or has caused a lot of harm to people because um it has made it seem uh that it has made it seem that things that are getting you into a brain state that's more favorable to you are bad. Um, so the the the the thing that it it just so there was the um there's a guy David Nut who did a a study that's amazing out of uh somewhere in England and looked at the net harm score of drugs and it created a he created a harm you might be familiar with the study but uh it created a harm score for everything and then looked that that based on like how often it causes internal damage, how often it leads to problems with addiction, how often it leads to like violence and crime and all those things. And uh marijuana was on the list for an example at like number nine or 10 or 11 or something. It was it was close to caffeine. and caffeine's on the So, it was something where substances that change your state, uh, when you look at how dangerous they are really actually aren't all that dangerous. The number two most dangerous thing on the list, uh, was opiates, um, which include heroin, fentanyl, Oxycontton, and all that stuff. And number one by a landslide was alcohol. By an absolute landslide. And yet if you turn on TV watching sports game every other commercial is you know drink alcohol drink alcohol or you go to a thing it's like a so um this perception is that well you know these substances here are bad but these are okay is it has nothing to do with physiology or it's just external stuff that gets propagated and told and we all sort of take it yeah that's bad you you. Yeah. So, so this guy's name is David Nut and he's an English neurossycho pharmarmacologist and he did this whole study. You're right. And yeah, English uh neurossychoppharmacologist. [laughter] Nice. Uh and his list, you're right. Number one was alcohol, two is heroin, three is crack cocaine, four is meth, five is cocaine to then tobacco. Man, cannabis is eight. Ketamine. Magic mushrooms is the last. It's 20. It's actually a negative number. It's [laughter] better for you. The others are all these like positive terrible. The higher the number, we'll put the graph or something on the screen, but the higher the number, the worse. And the and mushrooms and LSD, all of them are negative numbers. I think it means it's it actually helps you. At least according to this this guy's study. That's crazy. It's wild. I mean, [clears throat] but the the sometimes the uh the science is not as loud as the uh the external stuff that gets added to it. So, what happened? I mean, I as far as I understand it, the reason alcohol kind of really is a part of humans and has been for thousands of years is because it was the way to purify water. It's because like drinking water was never really clean. And so by the fermentation process, I mean like if you look in Europe, most of the uh like the like the Belgian Trappist breweries are really close to the churches and the hospitals, they all kind of went together because you'd like everybody was basically a little bit drunk for hundreds of years, kids included, because it was the safest thing to drink. And that's why the monks would brew the beer is because it was the safest liquid to ingest. And so it does seem crazy to think that like for hundreds of years, thousands of years, you know, we had to drink alcohol just to survive so we didn't get bacteria and everything. And then the enlightenment comes and that's when coffee comes out, but you got to boil water to make coffee. So all of a sudden, we could have this drink with a stimulant in it that didn't have the bacteria. And a lot of people think it was just because humans kind of switched from beer and alcohol to coffee and we just weren't as as drunk all the time. Like, isn't that crazy to think that that's the evolution of our species is that we've had to take this diminishing substance for that long. But you're right, if alcohol came out today, it would never be approved by the FDA and like it would never come out. Everybody's like, "Yeah, let's do this." But for some reason, it's like permanently inside of our culture in all cultures. Well, yeah. The the thing that I think is underlying all that is that um that people might not want to admit, but there is a very very very strong drive for us to change our state and a very very strong drive for us to try to get more flexibility within our mind. And it's something that uh there's a lot of you know there's a lot of emotion that comes up around it. It's bad, it's good, it's it's all these other things. Um, but uh we've been doing this we've been trying to do this in different ways forever and it gets to be something that is so ubiquitous. Uh, that's that's cool. I didn't uh I had never heard about the the purifying water thing, but it makes a ton of sense. Seems like in the modern day you're supposed to like drink coffee in your 20s to kind of have that drive and go like help fix the world. And then in your 30s, you're probably supposed to settle down, have kids, at which point you probably need marijuana because you're dealing with these little monsters all day. And then once they get older, then you go totally clean because now you need to be a good example. That's kind of how I see it. [laughter] Actually, you're a guy with kids, right? Yeah. How do you How do you think about their childhood development? Like especially where where your mind spends most of its time. Well, I So, um I think that I don't know. I We'll see how they end up turning out. [laughter] should know if TBT nothing. That's such an honest answer, man. That's fair. [laughter] I think that the most important thing that kids can do or is be themselves as much as possible, whatever that means, to just try to be themselves. And um I think that our generation like that was not the goal. The goal was, you know, be productive or be polite or be uh, you know, have you be accepted. Um, and that meant doing this, that, or the other thing. It meant, you know, you know, fitting into a box. And that just doesn't work. You know, it it doesn't it doesn't work for our mental health. It works for production. It works for making things happen, but it doesn't work for flow. It doesn't work for confidence. It doesn't work for long-term happiness as well as it could. So, [clears throat] um, I'm obsessively always trying to think about, all right, I know that they're saying this and I know it makes me mad because it goes against something that I'm thinking. Um, but I'm going to try not to react to it and I'm gonna try to figure out how to reframe it so that it works for them. Um, but I I don't know how to What What do you think about corporal punishment? What do you think about spankings? Uh, I mean I think it's I don't think it's something that's really helpful. I think that um the idea of it makes sense which is to say all right you you you have um a a swift easy direct thing. You do this this happens to you and now you don't do this thing anymore. Except we don't have a great sense of what they're doing when they're doing this. And we don't have a great sense of what that means for them in the bigger picture. So, automatic strong, you know, hardwired uh lessons don't don't really make a ton of sense. So, um I'm not a I've never been someone that goes to any sort of corporal, not because it I think it's wrong or bad, just because I don't think it's going to help them in the long run. uh we we the stronger seeds are are planted especially with kids because I I can look at my own life and look at things that have caused me a ton of struggle and said oh that was planted by this seed from this thing I don't want to do that uh and and uh physical pain is something that creates a strong emotional uh attachment so if I was confident that I knew everything and that I know exactly what's best for them then yeah maybe maybe try that, but I certainly don't. And uh therefore, I don't want to uh uh sew the wrong seeds. Uh behavior modification really doesn't work. To your point, it works in the short term. If you do this, this happens, but it doesn't actually it has long-term consequences that don't actually uh work. And it seems like I mean it seems like I'm with you because I'm thinking about it as well because I have kids and but it to some degree it feels like a lot of it is just helping them activate metacognition that that almost feels like if my kids just start asking why why am I doing this why like and and you know there's brain development as a 5-year-old that they can't do some of that as easily as a 15year-old or a 25-year-old or you know whatever. But I think that that's almost it is is getting back to like trying to activate their metacognition seems like a good long-term bet. Absolutely. That's a that's that's a perfect way of describing it which is it's like we have over time and you know trial and error the benefit of a bigger view and our job is as a you know when you're parenting a kid is to try to get them uh as functional as possible get them to be able to handle any situation and the best way of doing that that the thing that has helped the most for me is that med is being able to see things from a different perspective and say, "Oh, okay. This thing right now isn't actually the the terrible thing that my brain is making it, or this thing is worth committing to and doing over and over again. Um, so yeah, that was a great way of putting it. What so probably similar with this like phenomenon of throwing people in jail cells on this planet, do you think that imprisoning probably also is not a good corrective behavior?" Well, yeah, there there are many many things with that that that are uh flawed. Not not the least of which is that the way we focus the justice system I is something that is backwards and politically motivated and uh not not uh not aligned with uh like true reform. True reform. Um but but yeah the um punishment in general is something that I think that we we get the idea that we get you know fear of things that makes you emotional and that then says oh you got to do this eye for an eye do this kind of thing except we don't know the outcomes of these things and yes If somebody is murdering people and you know doing all kinds of things that are harming other people, yeah, you got to do something to to to to fix that. Yeah. But um but just putting people away for doing you know you know not not being shown a good path or not understanding their own mind uh which is what it comes down to a lot is not helping anybody. it's just getting rid of a problem or or it's just just hiding a hiding a problem instead of finding a solution. So, it's like how they're teaching kids in detention and uh correction facilities to meditate and they're just bringing in someone. So, maybe they're in there because of problems and they found like these meditative sessions are just having the hugest outcome on helping these kids actually change as opposed to like physically punitive measures. Um, you know, you said something in one of your TikToks that I was fascinated by. I wanted to ask you about. I think you said that learning uh when you learn something, it's the same as like remembering something. Does that does that ring a bell or like how it triggers the same thing neurologically? I I wanted to ask about that again and can you explain that? Yes. So um this one uh well this one sounds um controversial in the sense that because people have been saying this for thousands of years. It's not something that is new uh that you know you're remembering information. You're sort of coming back home. You're you're you're you're uh um you're tapping into the universal knowledge. Yeah. Yes. Um, so that but it makes perfect sense when your brain is not a generator, when it's a receiver. Um, so when your brain is not generating consciousness, which is the way that we just sort of naturally think or at least the way that we've been sort of programmed to think or whatever, um, then learning new things makes sense. it makes sense that there's some information that is unknown and we piece it together. But if your brain is receiving consciousness, which there's evidence to show that your brain is acting as a receiver there, there's no doubt about that. The question is what's it receiving? Is it receiving signals in general that you're generating or is it receiving signals from, you know, some space person or God or anything? Um so so and and that's you know I that's what I firmly believe that that is you know there is a whatever you want to call it some sort of thing that is there that is uh that we are tapping into rather than forging some new path but um learning information. So um have you ever um uh you ever if you look back at things you had this phenomenon happen to you where you find something really interesting but you don't know why. So uh like you think about something that you learned or some conversation you had when you were 16 years old or some sort of thing that happened that you don't really understand at the moment but it sticks with you. You remember it. You think about it from time to time, but then later on you can think of that and say, "Oh [ __ ] that was that was something that was showing me that this thing that now I'm starting to understand uh fits. It sort of makes sense. I always think of it like a puzzle piece like like I was given a puzzle piece a long time ago and I didn't know what it does and but like it's still there and then the in the future one day you're like oh my gosh click that puzzle piece that I had a long time ago goes right here where I'm where I need it now. Yes. Yes. So the the um the the the reason that this makes more sense is because your brain goes into uh your brain falls into stable attractors. That is randomness. Um uh so if you if you take a system and you generate something randomly so if you take our minds and you just sort of randomly generate things you don't come up with infinite variety you come up with specific attractors. So this is uh um probably what Carl Young was alluding to when he talked about archetypes which is that it's not that people will fall into any personality that you can imagine. there are specific things that people will gravitate towards and move to and um that is something that physics is starting to figure out is oh well that's just how energy works. That's how energy actually sort of condenses. So if your brain is moving towards stable attractors, it means that there has to be a stable attractor there to begin with for you to move towards which is why you you can sort of uh justify the concept of you're actually remembering something which is that your brain is getting into a pattern that already exists. And we know it already exists because it happens over and over and over and over again. It looks different but it is the same pattern that you you see and uh so that's the the we're talking about iigen patterns that's the um that's the the stable recurring pattern that your brain will interpret in different situations. So because those patterns exist and because our brains will consistently fall into them, there's uh historical anthropological uh uh explanation for that's what we're bring that's what we're doing. We're not we're not creating our consciousness out of our mind. We're not creating information. We're actually coming back to the information in a way because our brain is composed of these like fractal iigen patterns that we're we're finding our way back to. So they sort of already existed because we're made of the same stuff the universe is made of. Is that kind of the idea? Yeah. Yes. essentially that that um uh if we were creating every thought then all of our thoughts would be they wouldn't necessarily fall into patterns and they don't necessarily fall into p it's not saying that you can only think in this specific way but because there is such this strong pull for your brain to work in certain directions and that's depending on what field you're looking at that manifests in different ways so if you're thinking about like young and archetypes. There are specific ones that keep happening. If you're thinking about um uh chemicals, um there are specific attractor states that lead to chemistry happening because of the way that molecules or because of the way that atoms will interact with each other. They lead to very specific categories of matter that is able to exist. Um, so because those grooves sort of exist, because those attractors are there, um, it it it it shows us that we're not creating them. We're not making them up. They're they're ways that we're sort of finding. Ah, that's interesting. Um, man, this this has been incredible. Well, I think we're coming up to to our time here, but it I I feel like I want to encourage everyone to go just binge on your TikTok because for me, it's been like sort of going to therapy without having to feel feel any of the weird bad feelings that I normally get in therapy, you know? But it still helps. It's supposed to be that's what I'm Yeah, that's what I'm going for. Yeah, it's awesome, man. Really appreciate what you're doing and taking some time to chat with us. Do [snorts] you have a goal for how often you're trying to post? I so more often than I do, I recorded and this is where I get into that like I just think too much about it. So I I uh we recorded a couple of things. My girlfriend and I recorded a few uh because I had been talking about the modes recently and the network modes and um so I felt like I got to further explain these. I got to further this and in my head I say all right I got to finish with modes before I start talking about the next thing. But then my brain will kind of go to, oh, but I really want to talk about this. I really there's a few of them that I'm really itching to do, but I was like, okay, I can't do them until we get the mode things out. And that is more a function of uh having the time to do it because I, you know, just having time for your brain to think about uh stuff is the prerequisite for anything that is creative. So, um, my I think the answer is more frequently or more more frequently than I do. Um, but I think that hopefully once I get into a better fl once I know what I'm doing because I I don't know. I just turn the phone on and hit the button. But once I have more of a Nobody knows what they're doing. Yeah, that's that's true. We don't know what we're doing. That's the key. That's the key. And even to interrupt the pattern, post more. Post more. I love every time you post. I watch all of them. Uh, I don't think you're gonna make a mistake. And I think that the more you do it, it's like that study they did where half the students had to make a piece of pottery and they could only make one the whole semester and the other half had to make a hundred pieces for the whole semester. And the guys who made a hundred, their hundth piece was better than the guys who made one piece and tried to perfect it the entire semester. So just yeah, they tried to figure out what what would make the best masterpiece, right? and and you could either focus on one thing and do it and and do it for four months or you just repetition bang bang bang bang bang new one new one new one and they found that the ones who just did repetition the hundth piece was better than the other half of the class that just did one and worked on it the entire semester so if I can interrupt your pattern at all it would be please post more obviously working and everybody's responding to it thank you I yeah I love doing it it's a lot of fun and the and the internet's the internet's memory is so short like even if you you're not going to bat a thousand, right? And so like you just keep putting them out, but you just put the next one out and the old one's gone. Like you know, it's like just keep going. And so anyways, I've really appreciated your content, uh, Rob, and thanks for thanks for doing it. I'm I'm glad we got to have this conversation. Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. This is this is great. I love talking about this stuff. Uh, so yeah, thanks for thanks for taking the time to stuff me. Peace out there. You got it. And we'll put we'll put all the links to your stuff in the comment in the put put them down the details. So, thanks. See you everybody. That was awesome. Yeah. Thank you, man.