--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Oh my God, I just finished recording the episode you're about to listen to. I have to tell you, hands down, this is one of the single best episodes we've ever done. It is a conversation that has fundamentally changed how I view the world and how I view what's possible. It's about manifestation, neuroscience, magic, and how you can unlock the power of your brain, your heart, and your deepest purpose in life.
--:-- You're about to meet Dr. Jim Doty. He just walked out of our Boston studios literally a minute ago. I came racing back in here to talk to you, and wow, let me tell you just a little bit about him. He's a world-renowned neuroscientist, a pioneering Stanford neurosurgeon. He's also the founder and director of the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. He was the former chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation. I kid you not.
--:-- What you're about to experience will change the way you think about your life, about what's possible. And more importantly, Dr. Doty is going to walk you step by step on how to unlock the power of your brain and experience the extraordinary possibilities of your life.
--:-- [Intro music fades out]
--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so excited that you're here. It's always such an honor to spend time with you and to be together. If you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. Thank you for choosing to listen to this podcast and for hitting play on this particular episode because it tells me that you're the type of person that sees bigger possibilities for yourself and you're interested in learning how you can use neuroscience and the science of manifestation to help you achieve it. I love that. I want to know all about that too, which is why I am beyond thrilled to introduce you to someone who is truly extraordinary.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty is here from California. He's in our Boston studios. He is a Stanford neurosurgeon. He's a world-renowned neuroscientist, a New York Times bestselling author, a philanthropist. He's the founder and director of the Stanford Center for Compassion, Altruism, Research, and Education. He has done so much more than just that. But to name a few, he's a military veteran. He has founded massive medical device companies. He's one of the world's leading experts in minimally invasive spinal surgery. And he was the former chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation.
--:-- And he is here to teach you the science of manifesting and visualization, why it works, and how to do it properly according to the science. You and I are going to leave this conversation knowing exactly how to leverage Dr. Doty's extraordinary research and wisdom. So please help me welcome Dr. Jim Doty to the Mel Robbins Podcast.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: It is a pleasure and a joy to be with you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I am so thrilled that you are here and I cannot wait for this conversation. And so where I want to start is, can you speak directly to the person that's listening to us and tell them how their life might be different if they take to heart absolutely everything that you are about to teach and share with us today?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Of course. And I think the challenge for so many of us is that we believe the negative self-talk we have. And as a result, we create limited beliefs that then limit our possibilities. And we believe this ongoing narrative. And the reality is we have more power within ourselves. And it's understanding that you control this because there is nothing out there. And I don't mean this in a negative way, but I mean, you can't wait for somebody to magically take care of everything. The reality is you have the power within yourself to change your circumstance. And it's just believing it.
--:-- And listen, I will tell you, as you know, I grew up in a challenging background. My father was an alcoholic. My mother had had a stroke when I was a child. She was partially paralyzed, chronically depressed, attempted suicide. We were evicted. We were on public assistance. And in those situations, you think there's no hope. But as I found, and from my first book, *Into the Magic Shop*, I walked into a magic shop and met a woman who looked at me as a human being.
--:-- And what I mean by that is so many people make judgments about people. And they don't recognize the paths or the problems or the adversities they faced. And everybody deserves to be listened to. So this woman in this magic shop, she was a radiant being. She had a smile, a presence that made you feel safe. And this is a key, psychological safety, to downregulate your stress response. And she made me feel okay. She didn't look down on me when I was 12. As a 12-year-old, she looked at me as an equal eye to eye. And that interaction with her changed the trajectory of my life because it changed how I saw the world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You've written about your past. You've written about this interaction with this woman in the magic shop. And still, it brings so much emotion up in you. How come?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: One, I'm appreciative. Two, I mean, having somebody take the time to look at you, see you, appreciate what you are and taking that interest, it's very meaningful. And I try never to take that for granted. And I hope in every interaction, you understand that a lot of people are suffering. They're carrying baggage from their past and that baggage is limiting them. And oftentimes just listening to somebody can profoundly change their lives because that's what people want—to be heard. And sometimes it's just hello. Sometimes it's just a hug.
--:-- So I always tell people never forget your own ability to change somebody's life and also to recognize that oftentimes how somebody is interacting with you has nothing to do with what's going on. It has to do with the baggage they're carrying. And so give people the benefit of the doubt.
--:-- And so if you grew up in a background like mine, typically there are two paths. One is the path where you become an alcoholic, drug abuser, have mental health issues. The other is to overexcel, right? Overachieve. Then the path of the overachiever gets bifurcated. There's one group who say, "Nobody helped me. I did this all myself. I'm not going to help anybody else." Then you have the other group, which I probably typified maybe excessively, where I understand the pain people go through very deeply. So I'm very attuned to that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I personally cry all the time for the same reason. And I don't think I've ever heard anybody explain why I feel so driven to do what I do. So thank you for that. That was a real gift to me to hear somebody explain why tears come up all the time and why I end this podcast every single time by telling the person who's listening that I love them. Because I know for most people, they actually don't hear it said by anybody else.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: No, and which is a very sad statement because—and we can talk about this—but so many people live in a fear mode all the time. And of course, it has all sorts of deleterious effects. And being in a love mode or a heart-centered mode is very difficult, especially if you have all sorts of challenges that distract you from who you really are. And I think the gift you give people, and hopefully I try to give people, is a sense of hope and possibilities.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to go back to the moment in the magic shop that truly shaped you forever and changed the trajectory of your life. And so the person who's listening can really perhaps see themselves or someone they love in the story. Could you explain as a 12-year-old you're walking into this magic shop—first, just kind of how you felt emotionally at that point in your life going through all of the heartache and the hardship that you did that so many people do—and how this interaction with an adult woman who you had never met, who just interacted with you, how that actually changed?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, what would happen in my situation at home was whenever there was fighting or challenging events, I would get on my bike and ride as far and as fast away as I could. And I rode a great distance far from my house and ended up at a strip mall. And I'd had an interest in magic for a while. I used to have a plastic thumb that I would do tricks with.
--:-- Mel Robbins: My son has one of those.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yes, yes. And I lost it. And so I was looking for a plastic thumb. But anyway, I saw the magic shop and I went in. And what was interesting was this woman was there who was in her mid-50s probably. And I still remember her vividly because she was wearing a blue and white muumuu. I remember these outfits because she was a larger lady. And she had this flowing gray hair and she had these glasses that were at the tip of her nose and she had a chain on them and she was reading this paperback book.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You sound like you're describing the Potions Professor in Harry Potter.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: And she may have been actually. But she looked up from her glasses and I started querying her about magic. And she said, "I'm just here babysitting the shop because this is my son's store and he's doing an errand." But this led to her and I having a conversation. And after about 20 minutes, she said to me, she said, "I really like you." She said, "I think I can help you. I'm here for another six weeks. If you show up every day, I think you could learn a lot."
--:-- And I had no clue what she meant. And this was before mindfulness or neuroplasticity were in the sort of common lexicon. And I did show up every day. Now, I have to tell you, it wasn't because I had any insight or self-awareness. I was a poor 12-year-old in despair with a feeling of hopelessness. But I did show up. And the reason I showed up was, one, I had absolutely nothing else to do. Two, she was giving me chocolate chip cookies. So those were the two drivers of my interaction with her.
--:-- But to sort of understand what happened, she apparently had some exposure to Eastern meditation practices. And she taught me, if you will, what is now called a mindfulness practice. And what I never realized was that as a child, I was in a war zone all the time, constant trauma because you never know what's going to happen. It's chaos. There's always unexpected things. You can't rely on anyone or any person. And as a result, your muscles are always tight. You're always looking around. You can't focus. And of course, to learn, you have to be able to attend. If you can't be present, it's not possible to learn.
--:-- So she recognized this and she initially taught me a relaxation technique. And then she taught me the ability to focus or attend. And then probably the most critical thing was she taught me that the negative dialogue that was going on in my head was not truth.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And oftentimes when we tell ourselves we're not good enough, we're not worthy, we don't deserve love, we think there's some truth in that.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yeah. But we have, as humans, a negativity bias where negative statements have a tendency to stick with us. And this leads oftentimes to rumination. And once you tell yourself, "It is not possible, I cannot," that becomes truth. And so we create our own limited belief system. And so she taught me a technique to respond with positive self-affirmation, but also to not respond to those negative feelings and just let them drift by, but also to constantly encourage positivity within yourself.
--:-- And this led me to look at the world in a different way. And the reason I say that is if you're hypercritical with yourself, you're hypercritical in the lens through which you see the world, and you're very judgmental. And what I tell people is once I understood what was going on in my own head, it made me look at the world through a different lens, one of kindness, compassion. And it also dissipated the anger that I had towards my parents. Because what happens is, of course, they're supposed to be the caregivers, but if they don't have the tools to take care of their own pain, they can't help you. So that realization was very important, as the realization that people carry baggage and their reactions oftentimes have nothing to do with you. And so having a much more thoughtful, gentle, kinder way to interact with people, I think, is extraordinarily powerful.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You went on to become a neurosurgeon. How and when did you start manifesting? And can you talk about the kind of overlap and connection between being a neurosurgeon and the interest in the functioning and wiring of the mind itself?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, the other thing I didn't mention was that at the end of this, if you will, mindfulness type practice, we had a discussion and the discussion was about how to manifest or visualization.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So she taught you how to manifest and visualize at the age of 12?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: So she asked me to make a list of 10 things that I wanted. Now, I have to tell you, this is through the lens of a 12-year-old who's poor. So in typical fashion, I said I wanted to be a millionaire, which in 1968 was a lot of money, it seemed like. I wanted to have a mansion. I wanted to be a doctor. And it wasn't so much—listen, I was always kind and thoughtful, but I wanted to be a doctor so people looked at me and said, "You're okay." I wanted a Porsche. I wanted a Rolex watch and all of these external material things that so many people in our society think they need. They think somehow if you get this stuff, that's going to fill the void all of us have. And of course it doesn't.
--:-- But society is oriented, unfortunately, towards seeking external affirmation with a belief that if you fulfill the societal narrative of success, which is money, power, position, that will then translate into happiness. And of course, this is a story that's been told over and over and over again, and it does not. And I'm sure you know many, many extraordinarily quote-unquote successful people who are absolutely miserable.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, you know, one thing I want to highlight as you're listening to Dr. Doty, and I just am so blown away by your gift of explaining things and how connected you are to why this is important to you. And it's important to, I think, everybody to understand what you're trying to teach us is that I think a lot of us know that chasing the external stuff is what society has been prioritizing, but you're going a layer deeper, which is it's not just about the belief that you think those things will make you happy. It's that your lived experience when you feel invisible is that people that have those things are seen. And that is an explanation that cuts at a way deeper psychological driver than happiness.
--:-- And that experience of feeling like you don't matter, you're not seen, you are not treated with a level of dignity and care that every human being deserves—I haven't heard anybody truly connect the dots between the obsession with chasing status and surface level items and actually not happiness, but the fundamental need that we human beings have for connection and the sense that somebody actually cares about you. And you think that that's going to happen because of the shiny stuff that you acquire. And you're here to say that actually it doesn't. It doesn't at all.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: And I think that's a challenge for so many people because they've been sold this narrative and it's a narrative of unhappiness and it's a narrative of fear. And I was saying earlier, when you chase things like that, that's because of your own insecurity. And as a result, that activates your sympathetic nervous system, which, of course, is the flight, fight or freeze response. And when that happens, actually, that has a very negative effect on how your brain functions, but also your peripheral physiology, and can lead to a lot of very significant diseases and decrease your life expectancy.
--:-- Versus if you shift that narrative, if you will, to the love mode. And what I mean by that is all of us have the ability to actually shift from engagement of our sympathetic nervous system, which is part of our autonomic nervous system, which arises in the brainstem and is distributed throughout all the organs in your body, but especially your heart, to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is really how we evolved to live as a species.
--:-- It's not that we were stressed every second, we were stressed periodically. And that stress mode was meant to activate in the face of threat and respond, and either you survived or didn't survive, but then you immediately went back to engagement of your parasympathetic nervous system if you survived. That is the system we were designed to live in. That is the system in which you care, which you are rewarded for caring, where you have the release of oxytocin and these other neurotransmitters that activate your pleasure and reward centers when you care for another, especially your offspring, but also within the context of our common humanity. And that is the mode you want to be in, especially if you want to manifest, because that is when your cognitive brain networks and your peripheral physiology work at their best. And that is from the love mode, if you will.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to see if I can translate back. This is where a lot of big words. I realize that you are a neurosurgeon and you teach these concepts all over the world, but I want you and I to put our arm around the person that's listening. And I want to see if I can't shorthand all this science.
--:-- So you keep using the word "fear mode" and "heart mode," which I love. You also just beautifully explained, if I'm hearing you correctly, that there are two modes to our nervous system. Parasympathetic, sympathetic, rest, calm, and love, fight or flight. And that as we listen, is it okay if every time you say "fear mode," we just go, "Okay, he's talking about the sympathetic fight or flight nervous system that a lot of us live in that shuts you off to possibility, connection, potential, and love," versus the "heart mode," which is your parasympathetic nervous system. And it is where the connection and manifestation and fulfillment and the potential of your life exists. Is that a way to think about this?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: No, no, that's the perfect way to think about it. And when you're in that mode, everything changes for the positive.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The heart mode.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yes. And the possibilities of having your intention manifest are greatest when you are in that mode.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, got it. So I want to be in heart mode. How did this amazing woman in the magic shop teach you to manifest when you were 12?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, I have to tell you, and I don't want to mislead people, I thought it was a lot of bullshit. And the reason is, is because, of course, I had never been exposed to anything like that. I mean, being able to sit and relax your muscles with intention, being able to breathe a certain way to calm your nervous system down were completely new to me. So it took a little while for me to understand that. But once I did understand it, I realized how powerful it was because I didn't constantly have this negative self-talk going on and this fear constantly.
--:-- And so, as you know, these types of mindfulness practices, which are very commonly discussed today and have changed millions of lives, are readily available to everyone. And fundamentally, what she taught me was this type of a technique, a relaxation technique, a focus technique, and dealing with the negative self-talk, looking at the world through a lens of compassion. And we talked about visualization.
--:-- For you to maximally visualize, that means you have to be relaxed. You have to have calm. You have to not look at "what I want." And this is the difference for a lot of people because they have a vision of what they want, but not what they need. And as an example, we're talking about possessions. I want a Porsche. I want a Rolex, which was what I did. And they think that if I just get that, I'll be okay. And the problem is that it won't make you okay.
--:-- And when you're sitting there self-focusing, "If I just have that, I need this," versus, as an example, saying, "I want to be a doctor." Now, it's not, "I want to be a doctor so everybody looks at me and says how great I am," which is what I did. It's, "I want to be a doctor because I want to help people." Those are completely two different narratives. One is, "I want to be of service." That is how we were designed as human beings, not "I want for me."
--:-- And when you change how you look at the world, when you change what you want, you realize, one, a lot of what you think you want is worthless versus what is powerful, what gives a person purpose and meaning, which, of course, activates every aspect of your physiology, both brain and peripheral physiology to work at their best, is being of service, being connected, caring for others. And we know through the work of Robert Waldinger and the 85-year-old Harvard study, when you care for others, when you look through that lens, everything in your life improves. And that is the place where you also have the ability to maximize the possibilities for your intention to manifest.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You said that human beings are wired for service. As a neurosurgeon, as a person that—you know, you're here in Boston to go teach about compassion. You were the chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So how are we wired for service as human beings?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, if you look at our evolution as a species, unlike other species, one, we have a small litter size.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That's a very clinical. I think if I were your wife and you said that, I'd smack you. Thank you, Dr. Doty, a small litter size.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, my wife has smacked me multiple times, believe me. And our offspring do not run off into the jungle or the forest. They have to be cared for for well over a decade. And why would you expend the time, the resources, the energy to care for your offspring unless you were rewarded? The way you're rewarded when you care for your offspring is the release of different neurotransmitters such as oxytocin, or the love hormone. And when those are released, your pleasure and reward centers are activated, your physiology works at its best, and you look at the world through the lens of love and caring because you want your offspring to survive.
--:-- As we evolve as a species, and you're probably aware that there's something called Dunbar's number. So up to 150 people, which was typically the size of a tribe, again, it was important because you were in a hostile environment that you cared for the other or the group would not survive. So these are very deep-seated genetic imperatives that are with us that allow our species to survive. We are not meant to live chronically in the sympathetic nervous system. We are meant as a species to live in our parasympathetic nervous system where we have openness, generosity, caring, love. The problem is the nature of how capitalist society has been developed actually for many, many people activates their sympathetic nervous system chronically and they get distracted from their purpose. Our purpose is to love one another.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I love that. And I love that you've simplified it to you're either in fear mode and heart mode and that you are hardwired for heart mode. Your purpose is to love yourself, to love other people, to be in that mode. And Dr. Doty, we need to take a quick pause so we can hear a word from our sponsors, but don't you dare go anywhere. In fact, while you're taking a listen to the sponsors, share this with someone. This is one of the most powerful conversations I've ever had. And so I want everybody that you love to experience this life-changing wisdom too. And don't go anywhere because Dr. Doty and I will be waiting for you after a very short break. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. And today you and I are spending time together with Dr. Jim Doty from Stanford. And we're digging into the science of manifestation. So, Dr. Doty, can you explain what manifesting is? How do you think about it or describe and teach it to people around the world?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: So, as you know, with manifestation or that terminology, there's a lot of woo-woo and pseudoscience. And a lot of people take advantage of that. And it turns, unfortunately, into a money-making opportunity for some people. The reality is, though, that actually the ability to manifest is fundamentally based in neuroscience. There is no woo-woo. There's no magic. There's no law of attraction. Based on the history of it back in the first and second century, the Hermetics came up with this idea. And it's been propagated through different prosperity gospels and all sorts of other things, as if you have positive energy and you put that energy out in the world, you will be able to manifest the Porsche, the Ferrari, the mansion. But if it doesn't happen, it's your fault because you didn't care enough or you didn't do it the right way. Or just buy another book and I'll tell you the real way to do it.
--:-- But fundamentally, it's based on neuroscience. And what I mean by that is the way in which you manifest—and I'll define manifestation—is the ability to take an intention and embed it into your subconscious in a manner such that it has the greatest likelihood to occur or to manifest. And what I mean by that is what people don't appreciate is every second we have about six to 10 million bits of information coming to us from our sensory organs. That's what makes us who we are. That creates our reality. But on a conscious level, we can only deal with 50 to 100 because 99.9% go to maintain our bodily function. That 50 to 100, though, you have control over.
--:-- Mel Robbins: 50 to 100 bits of information. How do you deal with that?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, you take the tools, and what I mean by that is the tools to embed something into your subconscious.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: The best way to do that, and I'm sure you've heard the term, "what fires together, wires together."
--:-- Mel Robbins: But can you explain that for the person listening? Sure. What does that mean?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: So if you create habits, this results in the creation of neural pathways. And the mere repetition of those habits actually lays down the circuitry, that then gets embedded and then actually makes things happen. And I'll explain it as follows. When you are able to use all of your sensory organs or abilities to embed that intention and do it repeatedly, that is when you're creating these neural pathways.
--:-- As an example, if you have an intention, you take a pencil, you write it down, you're actually doing something physical, tactile, then you read it silently, then you read it aloud, then you visualize that, and you do that over and over and over again. What that will do is then embed that into your subconscious. And then these different cognitive brain networks get activated.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Now, can we unpack that just a minute?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Sure.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Because everyone that listens to this loves to make sure that they just got the instructions from you, Dr. Doty, because I'm like hanging on every word. And so there were a couple steps to that because you had the physical pencil, you had the act of writing, you had this moment where if you're watching on YouTube, you saw it. But if you're listening, let me describe it. He sat back in his chair, he put his hands kind of in prayer at his chest, closed his eyes, and he started talking about repeating the thought. Is that the chain of events that you do to encode it in your mind?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yes, absolutely.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what is—will you walk us through it one more time?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yes. So again, what you want to do is to use all of your sensory organs as much as possible to embed that intention. So by writing it down, by reading it aloud, by visualizing it, that creates the process where this gets embedded into your subconscious. And what happens is once you get this embedded, it activates different parts of your brain. And without getting too technical, one is something called the default mode network.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So the default mode network.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yes. So this is what happens when your mind wanders or you're daydreaming. And it's self-referential because it's internally focused, but it's where you create the narrative of who you are or what you want. So if you have negative self-talk, if you ruminate, if you are like, "I'm never good enough, nothing works out for me, things like that don't happen to a person like me, I can never get it right," that is in the default mode network. And that gets really activated and results in rumination for some people.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can I ask you another question? Because one of the things that you said at the very, very beginning is you painted this gorgeous picture of the ability to leverage the remarkable power of your brain to help you get what you truly desire in life, to help you live in heart mode. And you said it's just about believing it. And part of the reason why we have trouble believing it is because of the default mode network and all of these stories you've repeated over and over and over again. Is that fair to say?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: No, that's exactly correct.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And we can reprogram or we can lay down a new track?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Oh, absolutely. And it's available 24/7 and it doesn't matter what's happened to you before. You know, so many people get fixated. "Well, I don't deserve this because of..." We all deserve it. So once this gets embedded and you create the narrative of who you want to be or how you see yourself, what you're doing is you're creating salience.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's that word mean?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: It means making it important.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Once something is important, this activates what we call our task positive network. And the task positive network has three parts. It has the salience network, it has the attention network, and then it has the executive control network. Once something is salient, what you're basically saying is this deserves my attention. By doing it in a very specific way, that becomes important to you. That gets embedded into your subconscious as something to pay attention to.
--:-- Once that is defined as something important to you, then that activates your attention network so that you cognitively focus your attention on whatever that intention is. Once those are activated, I use the analogy in the book: it's as if you have a file cabinet and you put this file into the file cabinet that says "important stuff." Once that is there, the attention network is activated. It's like a bloodhound that says, "Okay, now there's something there. I need to track this down and figure out what's going on here."
--:-- Then you activate the bloodhound, and that gets released. Once that attention is focused, it starts looking around through all the possibilities in your environment. As soon as it identifies one, your executive control network is activated, which is the thing that chases down what is in your subconscious. This is how it works. There is no magic here. This is fundamentally basic neuroscience, and it is something that we all have the ability to master by doing these techniques whereby you are able to embed your intention.
--:-- You do it over and over. It's not a one-and-done thing. Some people wake up and treat this like a New Year's resolution. "I'm going to do this January 1st." Then January 1st comes and you already fail the first day. You have to not have excessive expectations at first. These are based on habit. What happens with habit? You start small. You don't sit there and say, "I'm going to lose 100 pounds in the next month." You say, "I'm going to try to modify my diet where I'm not drinking sodas." That's the first little one. Each of these little wins strengthens you to actually do the big thing ultimately. You don't start by running a marathon on day one. You start by getting up out of bed and walking around the block.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I really appreciate you, especially as a neuroscientist, walking us through all those four parts of the brain and validating that based on the science, this is the mechanism through which you can activate the ability to reprogram your mind. When we talk about forming new habits through repetition, I think most of us understand that if you want to stop drinking soda, there is a specific physical action that I have to do every day, whether I like it or not. The consistency of not drinking soda, or focusing on drinking water, that repetition I get. I know what I need to do.
--:-- Where I see people trip up is when it comes to negative self-talk. It is so embedded in the subconscious. You've been thinking this way for so long, and because it's there in the back of your mind, unlike learning to drink more water or learning to go for a walk every day, it's not a physical thing that you see outside yourself. This is actually programming deep within. Could you help me and the person listening understand: let's say you have had for your entire life this narrative in your mind where you think, "I'm not good enough." How do I use these four parts of the brain and the technique you just described step by step to program a completely different way of talking to myself in my default mode network?
--:-- Pick whatever you believe is the most common default negative self-talk or belief. Walk us step by step. What am I doing, Dr. Doty, every day?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, I think the first thing people need to recognize is the burden we carry as human beings is negative self-talk. It is not going to go 100% away. That's just the way it is. I speak about these things and I say to people, "How many of you have negative self-talk?" Usually 90% of people raise their hand, and I say the other 10% are lying. I don't care in theory. Obviously, you have examined these areas. I have examined these areas. I still have negative self-talk.
--:-- The key is, in the face of the negative self-talk, you're okay. Understand what it is and not let it overpower you where you sit there and go, "Oh God, I'm horrible," and you just ruminate over this. Recognize it for what it is and let it sit there. You don't have to do anything with it. This is the fundamental practice of mindfulness meditation. But the aspect which I think is different, and what we teach at Stanford, is to have compassion for self. This is when you give yourself these positive affirmations and you say you're worthy, you're good enough, you deserve.
--:-- A lot of the negative self-talk comes from the baggage that we carry from our childhoods. This is what a lot of people don't appreciate. You're manifesting all the time. What people don't realize is that many of the decisions they make in their lives, the relationships, the jobs they have, are actually based on the baggage that they carry. That is the narrative of their story. One of the first things you have to do is sit back, whether it's with a therapist or just self-reflection where you're writing things down, and try to understand how you became you. Have some awareness of what created this. Once you have that insight, that allows you to not be as affected or to believe it, but understand that it's the nature of how humans are wired. It's okay. That's not going to change.
--:-- In some ways, it's like accepting your shadow self. All of us have a part of us that we're ashamed of, we're embarrassed about. We've done actions that are horrible sometimes. You can't push your shadow away. You have to accept it and integrate it into who you are. The same is true of this. Once you're able to do that, that lessens the power of that inner critic.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let me see if I can translate this. You've got a really big brain. You operate on brains and you are friends with the biggest spiritual leaders of our time. You teach compassion, manifestation, visualization, all of this. I want to make sure that I do my job and that as you're listening, you truly are able to take all of this extraordinary wisdom and the gift of Dr. Doty and apply it.
--:-- I heard you say that if you were to take out a piece of paper and start journaling around what did my childhood make me believe about myself, that first step of seeing that in writing helps you separate from it and see it for what it is: a story, just like a story in a book, that you've been telling yourself over and over. Separating yourself from it is the first step.
--:-- The thing I'm curious about is how I start to learn a new story. If we were to bring in a flute, would you be able to play a flute if I handed it to you? Of course not. Me either. But if I practiced it for a year, I could probably learn it. I'm assuming that there is a technique, even once I separate and go, "Oh, my childhood taught me to think X about myself." What is the technique for how you use the science of manifestation and visualization to start to write a new story about yourself?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: No, I think that's an excellent question. The first step is understanding what you've already been manifesting, which is the negative. You've been manifesting it because you've repeated it in your subconscious and you've interacted with those thoughts all day long since your childhood. That is a form of manifestation. It proves that it works because you've just repeated it over and over and over. I'm sure you've met people who go, "Gosh, I'm going through my third divorce and it's like I married the same person every time." And you're like, "Yes, you did." Because you manifested it. You think the same way over and over and over again. We do have the power to change that narrative.
--:-- The next thing, which we discussed a little bit, is understanding the difference between what you want or think you want and what you need.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But Dr. Doty, I don't want to think about what I need. I want to think about what I want. I want that thing, but I want this, but I want that, but I want the other thing.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, it's funny you say that because people say, "Geez, Jim, you sort of lambast this idea about materialism." Listen, I don't at all. I like material things. I drive a Porsche. I live in a very nice house.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So you manifested all of this.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: That is true. But the difference is, they're wonderful to have. They're not necessary. If all of these things were taken away from me, it has no impact on who I see myself as. I am not using them for external validation. I'm using them because I enjoy them. Those are different things. People who chase after stuff, the "I" part, who need external affirmation, that is their identity. That causes suffering because they never get what they want.
--:-- If you look through the love or the heart mode and you're focused on an image of you helping other people, you get all of these other things. They're available to you if you want them. But the greatest way to manifest is to have yourself centered, to be in a calm mode, to look through the lens of how can I be helpful. That gives you all the other stuff if you so desire. Focusing solely on that doesn't get that. You're not living a life of purpose and meaning. You're chasing pleasure and avoiding pain. While that can cause some people to say, "I'm happy," if you actually look at most of these people, that happiness is transitory and shallow versus if you chase purpose and meaning, that is deep and long lasting.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Wow. Dr. Doty, this feels like a good time to hit the pause button. We're going to continue after we hear a short word from our sponsors. If you're getting something out of this, and how could you not, I want you to share this with everyone. Dr. Doty is a life-changing gift to all of us. Everybody deserves to learn this, to know this, and to be able to use it. Thank you in advance for sharing this with the people that you care about. Don't go anywhere because we're going to be waiting for you after a very short break, and we've got a lot more to cover on the science of manifestation. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel Robbins. Today you and I are learning all about the science of manifestation from Stanford neurosurgeon Dr. James Doty. You just said something that I want to make sure I take out my magic highlighter and call attention to. That if you were to remove all of the material stuff, do you actually still feel good about who you are?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Absolutely.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Having those things to enjoy them is one thing. Needing those things to define your worth is a completely separate issue that based on research, you're saying leads to unhappiness. Since we're talking about material items, can you explain how the science of visualization or manifestation—are manifestation and visualization the same things?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay. So how does the science of manifestation help you achieve goals or help you get material things, if that's something that you would like to have in your life?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, let me give you an example. When I was 12, I had a list of all material things and I got every one of them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What was on the list?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: I become a neurosurgeon, a professor at Stanford. I have all this material success. I'm a successful entrepreneur. I have millions and millions of dollars. I have a home overlooking the bay in Newport Beach. I have a villa in Florence. I have an island.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We're all starting to hate you right now.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yes, yes. I was single at the time and I was dating all these attractive women. All my friends said, "God, your life is so great, man, look at you." Yet I was never more miserable in my entire life because I kept expecting, "Okay, I'm going to climb this mountain and then I'm going to feel good about myself. Then I'm going to climb the next mountain. I'm going to feel good about myself." And I never felt good about myself. None of that stuff made me feel good about myself.
--:-- In fact, I lost $80 million during the dot-com crash. That gets your attention because I was $3 million in debt and I had a $15 million loan. I went to a period of deep self-reflection because I wanted to understand what mistake I made in this process. I'd done everything I thought. It was because I was focused on, "Look at me, I did this, make me feel good about myself." That's what I was chasing, and it didn't help me.
--:-- Here I am having to deal with this massive loss. I'm selling everything. I had a Ferrari, a Porsche, a Range Rover, BMW, a Mercedes. I had a several million dollar house overlooking the bay. I had to sell all of this stuff. During that situation, I had to deal with my banker who wanted his money. I had to deal with my lawyers because I had set up a variety of different trusts. I had set up a charitable trust and had put stock into it. Honestly, it was probably a tax avoidance thing, not because Jim Doty was super nice.
--:-- I was dealing with my lawyer and he said, "Look, Jim, I have some good news for you. We actually never completed the paperwork for that trust. So you don't have to give any of that stock away. You can just keep it." I went through this period of deep reflection about this. At the end of the day, I told him to go ahead and give the stock away.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Was it Google?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: No, but it was $30 million. What that $30 million did was it changed everything. I set up health clinics around the world. I set up programs for adolescents who are affected by AIDS/HIV. I set up programs for the disabled. I funded research. I set up endowed chairs. In some ways, it was an interesting trajectory because I went truly from rags to riches, literally, to rags again in terms of the spiritual. What I was doing was not soothing my soul. When I gave everything away, being in the face of $3 million in the hole, that is when everything changed.
--:-- This is where I started the center at Stanford that studies compassion. I met His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I developed these relationships with all of these spiritual and religious leaders, which has been incredibly impactful in my life. It's a different rags to riches.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There are so many aspects of that story I want to unpack. I have been in many moments of my life where I had nothing and was on the verge of losing everything that I cared about. If I had heard somebody talking about Porsches and this and that, and then you lose it all, and then you have a spiritual waking, I would still, as I'm listening, go, "That's nice for you. But I am having trouble putting groceries on the table and I still would love a Porsche."
--:-- I know, because I know some of your background, how important it is for you to awaken something inside of people about the deeper meaning of life and the way to use manifestation and visualization and the science of all this to truly unlock your potential. How would you have somebody who's listening, who is really struggling and never has achieved that moment of riches that is surface level, truly grasp the power of what is available to them? To use these tools of separating from your past story, identifying what you want to believe about yourself, writing it, believing it, repeating it, trying to open up your heart and live in this heart mode. What is available to you if we lean in and trust you, even when you're really struggling and it seems like money is the solution?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: No, you're absolutely right. I don't want to give anybody the impression that my worst day—I was a neurosurgeon making more than 99.9% of people. Even though I lost all this money and was in the hole, I certainly had the ability to recover. Most people don't have that. I want to acknowledge that. I'm not saying that my story is everyone's story. Listen, I started from very, very humble beginnings.
--:-- The fundamental aspect of the story is it doesn't matter where you're at. It matters what you believe. When you have this negative self-talk and you create these limited belief systems, that is the prison you're creating for yourself. The first step is to understand that, yes, circumstances can be very horrible. Yes, circumstances can result in you not even being able to feed your family. I truly acknowledge that because I know what it's like to be hungry. But regardless, you have possibilities when you're able to interrupt that negative belief system, when you're able to look through the lens of possibilities.
--:-- When you are negative, when you say it's not possible, the world is against me, everybody hates me, you're changing your physiology. We have oscillation or vibrations that come from our bodies. One of the greatest ones is from your heart. If you have this negative self-talk, if you create this negativity, that goes out. The bioelectrical energy that comes from your heart extends three to five feet outside your body. I'm sure you've experienced—you mentioned something earlier, "Gosh, when you walked in, you made me feel good." That is a gift all of us have to give people. I'm sure you've met people who, as soon as you meet them, you go, "I do not like that person." All of us have the ability to become the former, not the latter. It's how you look at the world.
--:-- When you change how you look at the world from one of negativity—because your situation is difficult—to look at the amazing possibilities here, what I tell people is: when I changed how I looked at the world, the world changed how it looked at me. People reached out to me because I was open to it. I was appreciative. I was thankful. I didn't sit there and say, "The world hates me. Nobody's going to do anything." That energy changes when you change how you look at the world.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The energy you're talking about is the ability to move yourself from a fear mode into a heart mode. There's a lot of research and science that you write about, how being in that heart mode where you're coming from a place of service, where you are actively manifesting and visualizing positive beliefs about yourself: "I am good. I am worthy. I am loved." What are the things that you say that help you drop into heart mode?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: This may sound strange, but fundamentally the world we create is one we create. It is a delusion that we have created for ourselves. That delusion can either be one of "the world hates me, everybody hates me, the world is against me" versus saying, "Wow, look at the sunshine. I am here. Look at all these amazing people around me. Look at the possibilities." I'm not saying this out of some trope that is not true. It is true when you change how you look at yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: If you want to manifest, there are several techniques. Can you walk us through a couple?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Sure. One of the first things you have to do is find a calm place where you can shift from being in the fear mode to the heart mode, where you're not distracted, where it's not noisy, where you're not taking caffeinated beverages or using mind-altering substances, where you can simply be present. Then you can begin a breathing exercise. The very nature of that breathing exercise, and this is a mindfulness practice, gets you into the heart mode. Then you start seeing the world through a different lens.
--:-- Then you start talking about what have I already manifested. You sit there with that. You love yourself in the sense that you're saying, "Yes, that happened. But it's not your fault. You're okay." You're also okay no matter what's happened in the past. All of us deserve a second chance and sometimes a third chance. Most people are loving, kind people inside, and they have been battered by the forces that make them think that's not the case or that they don't deserve love. Everybody deserves love. Everybody deserves dignity.
--:-- When you can sit in that quiet space and reflect on this, then think about what it is you truly want. What would make you happy? Most people, if they actually sit there and do it, they realize the false narrative of getting the Porsche or the Ferrari. If they sit there and think about it, what do they really want? They want security for their family. They want food on the table. They want shelter. If you look through that lens, that is, "What am I doing to be of service to help my family and my environment, which will ultimately help me?"
--:-- Going through those exercises, understanding the power that you have. There's another aspect related to attachment. One of the biggest things that causes suffering is attachment and craving. It's wonderful to have goals. It's wonderful to utilize these techniques to manifest, but there are certain caveats. Sometimes things don't manifest, and it's not necessarily because you did anything wrong or the gods are looking down at you badly. Sometimes your subconscious may even know that it's not good for you and it doesn't allow that to happen. Things don't happen always exactly as we visualize. They may approximate it, but oftentimes they're not exactly.
--:-- I have things I've been trying to manifest for 10 or 15 years, and I firmly believe they will manifest. But you have to be patient. You have to do the work. You have to do the exercises. All of that is okay because I'm not attached to the outcome. That is a critical thing. Do I want it to happen? Absolutely. Should it happen? Absolutely. Will it happen? Maybe, maybe not. Is it more likely that it will? Yes. Because you are training your mind using these techniques and putting yourself in a heart mode to make it happen.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You wrote in your book, "Your brain can't tell the difference between what is real and vividly imagined. By focusing on the feeling of success, you train your brain to expect it."
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Absolutely. When you activate your subconscious, and I'm sure you've experienced this: if you're at a party and it's very noisy, somebody says your name, you immediately turn. Even in the den of all this noise, you are attuned to your name because it's deeply embedded in you. The same is true. This is the nature of synchronicities and coincidences, because your subconscious is always searching for what is salient. It shows you that you're constantly listening for the possibilities. This happens to me over and over again.
--:-- There's this attitude of dispositional optimism. This is really critical. Regardless of everything, I always remain optimistic of possibilities. There was a study done on prisoners of war in Vietnam. There's a particular case of an individual who was in prison for like seven or eight years. He said, "What kept me alive was I didn't put a time frame on me getting out. I just had this deep feeling that I would get out. And I was thankful for that." No matter how dismal the circumstance, they still believed in the possibility. I think that's critically important.
--:-- This idea of dispositional optimism has been studied. Again, it's like being in heart mode. Your physiology works at its best. When you are focused on others, when you're trying to be of service, when you have this constant feeling of the amazing possibilities that exist, it stops you or limits you from going down the spiral into your default mode, ruminating about what can't be versus looking at the world through the lens of what could be.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to expand on the power of learning how to be in the heart mode and what you just brought to the table: this dispositional optimism and the belief that things can get better, the hope and the optimism that things will turn out, and feeling grateful for that. When you're in the heart mode, you've talked a lot about how we are naturally wired to be in that mode: calm, connected, open to service, open-hearted. Can you explain how positive emotions—the emotions that you feel when you're in the heart mode, like gratitude, compassion, love—how do those emotions communicate to your brain and accelerate or make it stronger that what you're thinking about when you're in heart mode actually wires in a very strong way based on the emotions of heart mode?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: You just said it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, I did? How do positive emotions like gratitude and compassion and love create the ability to manifest or rewire your mind?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: As we discussed earlier, these types of positive belief systems make your physiology work its best, both your brain and your peripheral physiology. When all your cognitive brain networks function at their best, that is the greatest likelihood for you to manifest your intention. There's a lot of work that has been done on gratitude, showing that simply sitting down and writing three things you're grateful for changes everything. It changes how you view the world, how you look, not from the lens of what I don't have, but how grateful you are.
--:-- As an example, half of the world's population lives on less than $2.50 a day. I am extraordinarily blessed. No matter how bad it is, and I'm not saying that I'm horribly suffering, but I still have ups and downs and have had situations which are incredibly demoralizing. At the end of the day, I sit back and I have gratitude, even in the face of these horrible things that were not as I planned or wanted to happen. You just have to understand that regardless of all of them, you're very fortunate.
--:-- Mel Robbins: As a renowned neuroscientist and neurosurgeon, what does your daily manifestation routine look like? Can you walk us through it?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Sure. You have to understand, I've been meditating for well over 50 years. In some ways, that becomes the habit. It is your mindset. It is how you look at the world. It is how you walk in the world. Hopefully it's through the love mode, although not always. I will assure you, my wife will get mad at me and she'll say, "They call you Mr. Compassion, but you're an asshole."
--:-- Mel Robbins: It's good to know you're human.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Yes, I am very human. Let me start with the morning first. Every morning I wake up and I sit at the side of the bed and I do a breathing exercise. The very nature of that breathing exercise shifts me into the parasympathetic nervous system.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What is the breathing exercise?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: It's just slowly breathing in through the nose, holding it for four seconds, slowly letting it out. I do this for a minute or two. You can sit, you can lay down. There's nothing that is prescriptive. This is where people get lost about mindfulness practices. They somehow think you have to sit like a Buddha and do this and they get all anxious about it. There's no reason to be anxious at all. Just find a place where you feel comfortable.
--:-- I go through this breathing exercise of slowly breathing in for four to six seconds, holding it for four to six seconds, slowly letting it out through the mouth. That shifts me into the parasympathetic nervous system or strengthens where I'm already at. Then I think of the joy and awe of being in this world. I just sit with that for a minute or two. Then literally, I just go through that alphabet and that centers me for the day. If I'm centered looking through that lens, that creates the environment for me to manifest because I am in the right mindset. I'm calm. I'm thoughtful. I'm thinking about others. I'm not self-focused. The very nature of that allows me to manifest.
--:-- Now, in the evening: all of us have goals. All of us have intentions. You can prioritize them from ones that are mildly important, moderately important, incredibly important, and the timeframes. Then you focus on them. I will write them down, whatever the top three are. Then I'll go through the exact same exercise I mentioned: write them down, repeat it silently, repeat it aloud, see it happening, over and over and over again. All of those things strengthen the power and put you in the right mindset to have the greatest likelihood of you manifesting your intention.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank you for describing that. How does the habit that you just said activate your brain's ability to help you act on those goals?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, I think you used a key term, which is authentic. What makes somebody authentic?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: When they let their mask down, when they're able to show their own emotions and how they feel about things. And the very nature of that puts you in the right mental state, where you don't feel you have to hide yourself, where you don't feel that you have to put on a show for everybody about how successful you are. You're just feeling comfortable with who you are and accept yourself.
--:-- And the hardest, hardest part for so many people is accepting themselves as they are, not being lost in how they want to be or lost in what could have been. This is also a thing that distracts you from the energy you have to change things. Because if you spend 80% of your time on the past and a future that hasn't happened lamenting, then you can never be present to actually make things happen.
--:-- This is the key. You have to be present. You have to be authentic. You have to understand your past. And you have to understand that when you want something to manifest, yes, it is a future intention, but it's not something to get lost in. It's something simply to sit with instead of being pathologically focused on.
--:-- As an example, I'm sure you've seen people who have sacrificed everything to get to the top of the mountain. Well, they've sacrificed everything to get to the top of the mountain to stand there by themselves. What was the purpose of that? Our purpose in life is connection. It's not to be so focused that you don't have any connections and you're walking alone. It's to connect with people. Many, many of the aspects of what we're talking about are the journey with others, not necessarily standing by yourself.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You've given me a huge epiphany, because I've always thought about the science of manifesting as something that is tied to what's going to happen. And in listening to you, I had this huge epiphany where I thought, oh, wait a minute. It's all about this daily practice of sitting in the present and dropping into the heart mode. And the starting line is acceptance of self, compassion and gratitude and love towards self, and getting yourself at this almost like daily reset present moment.
--:-- And from there, I can decide what I want to believe. I can decide when I align with the wiring of my body and my soul, I can decide what I want to believe. I can decide what's important to me and practicing these tools, both of dropping into heart mode, of being present with self, of tapping into this wiring for service and compassion and love. When you start there and now you're repeating the things that you want and why you want these things from your heart, anything is possible.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, and basically you've just unlocked the key to the prison that most people have created for themselves.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What do you mean by that?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, what you just said fundamentally addresses the issue of how people create a prison for themselves by this negative self-talk. Every time they make a negative statement, it's as if they're laying down a brick to build a prison and the walls get higher and it gets darker. Yet, all of us have the key in our pocket, which you just described, to let yourself out of the prison that you created.
--:-- I think this recognition is what's really, really critically important. And it's not woo-woo. It's not looking to the universe to save you. It's understanding your own self-agency and not believing that there's something out there. Now, that being said, and as you know, the first sentence of the book says the universe doesn't give a fuck about you. But at the end of the book, my statement is you are the universe. And that is your gift.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What are your parting words, Dr. Doty?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Well, oftentimes, as we've talked about, people look through the lens of negativity. And the reality is, and you discussed it also, everyone wants to be seen. Everyone wants to be loved. And what I would say to everyone listening is, regardless of your circumstance, regardless of your situation, each of us has the ability to improve the life of at least one person every day.
--:-- Whether it's a hug, whether it's saying hello, whether it's sharing a meal, whatever it is, when you can actually look through the world through that lens — how can I help at least one person every day? — that is a habit that puts you in the mindset to not only be of service and to help others, but it also helps you. And it helps you because it then gives you the power actually to see the world through a different lens and then be able to manifest whatever your intention is.
--:-- And that is the power of our humanity. And it all relates fundamentally to connecting with another with an open heart.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, Dr. Doty, thank you. I don't even know what to say. I just feel kind of blown wide open by the experience of getting to be together with you.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: That's kind of you. Thank you. I appreciate it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, I appreciate everything that you shared and all the work that you're doing. And thank you for being here.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And I want to thank you for being here with me and Dr. Doty and listening all the way to the end. I am sure that your heart is wide open. And I wanted to be certain that I told you, in case nobody else does, that I love you. I believe in you. I believe in your ability to create a better life. And I am so excited about everything that you just learned. And I cannot wait to hear how you put this to use in your own life. All right. I'll see you in the next episode.
--:-- [Sound of movement, possibly walking outside]
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Okay. Well, hold on a second. Here we go. Hold on a second. Let's save this for, let's get started.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That is a Buddha. That's water? That's a Buddha?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: And that's a Buddha centered on the pool. So you see it as you walk in.
--:-- Mel Robbins: No way.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: And it's a headless Buddha.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why headless?
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Because it reminds you to not get lost in your head.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, here's the backyard. Oh, it looks great. Oh, how fabulous.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: And then that's where I'm going to stay when my husband and I come visit.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Yeah, absolutely. It's fantastic.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Mister, I don't really know what I'm doing.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Well, having complete lack of knowledge is actually a benefit oftentimes. Because you're not restrained by other people's opinions.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: You know what? I'm going to actually use that quote. You're pretty cool. I think we're supposed to be friends.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I think we already are.
--:-- Dr. Jim Doty: Oh, my God.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
