Transcript of Unlock Your Brain’s Hidden Power: 6 Tools to Boost Focus, Confidence, and Creativity

It's so easy to get buried alive by your to-do list and to feel like you're just on autopilot and you're barely surviving that you forget that there is an evolutionary design inside of you that you can tap into.

Today, I'm going to share tools that have literally lit up my life and allowed me to get on a path to attune to the rhythms of life.

I want that. I want to make sure anybody that feels stuck understands that there's these four short steps that you can go through. And that there is another way. And so step one is what?

Noticing your inner desire for possibility.

Fabulous. What's the second step?

Is to take stock of what's working and what's holding you back.

And step three then, once you taken stock, is?

To notice other possibilities and other ways of thinking.

Then you said the fourth step was?

Taking...

Hey, it's your friend Mel. I am so fired up today. Can you tell that I'm fired Well, before I tell you why I'm fired up, let me just first welcome you to the Mel Robbins podcast. It is always such an honor to spend time with you, to be together. I also want to say, if you're brand new, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family. Because you're listening to this episode, I know you're the type of person who values your time, and you're also interested in learning about ways that you can improve your life. Well, today, holy smokes, we're going to do that because you and I are going to spend some time learning from the incredibly inspiring Dr. Jeff Karp. Now, you may not have heard of him because he's so busy revolutionizing science. But trust me, after today, you'll know exactly what he's all about, and what he's about is innovation, creativity, and possibility. Dr. Jeff Karp is a medical genius who teaches at MIT, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Withmans, and his ground-breaking innovations are transforming the future of health care. He is driven by a passion to improve patients' lives. His team has invented technologies that have led to the formation of 13 different companies.

These inventions include tissue glue that can seal holes inside a beating heart. Targeted therapies for, I can't even say that word, so I'm not going to. But Crohn's disease, I can, and brain disorders, he's way smarter than me, so I don't have to say these words because he's going to help me with them. Cancer, fighting, immunotherapy. I can't even say that word either. This is going to be a hell of a conversation. But Dr. Jeff Karp has a huge, huge, huge heart. He also has 170 peer-reviewed studies that have been cited 35,000 times, and he holds over 100 patents for his inventions. And one thing I want to say right up front, this is not an episode about all the scientific breakthroughs that he's had in his lab. I think that stuff is really cool, and you're going to learn a little bit about it. This is really an episode about how Dr. Karp had this life-changing epiphany and how he took the same things he was learning in his lab about innovation and creativity and tapping into whole new possibilities and discovered these simple tools that he's used in his life that ignited a whole new possibility for him in his marriage, with his kids, in his day-to-day life.

And here's the cool part. These same tools that created more connection and presence actually made him more successful and productive at work, too. And so today, Dr. Karp has stepped out of the lab and into your life in really big way to teach you what he calls these simple life ignition tools. So please help me welcome Dr. Jeff Karp to the Mel Robbins podcast.

I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much.

And I'm very impressed that you actually hopped on a bike and rode over from your lab. Are you across the river?

Yeah, I am. I'm at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, and I'm still wearing my bike shoes.

Well, I'd love to start by having you speak directly to the person who is listening and tell them what they might expect to have change about their life if they truly take to heart everything that you are about to share with and teach us today.

Yeah, thank you for that question, and thank you for tuning into this. Oh, my goodness. Wow. There are tools I'm going to share today that have literally transformed my life. They've transformed so many moments that have taken me from being in a rut, from hitting a plateau, from being disconnected from my family and friends, from being on a path where I just feel like I'm trapped in a cage and life is out of control. And today, I'm going to share tools that have literally lit up my life and allowed me to get on a path of intentionality, infuse creativity into every day to help me lead with curiosity, to connect deeply with the people that I love and care about, and to attune to the rhythms of life and connect deeply with nature.

I want that. Can you put that in a powder that I can put in my drink? I'm really excited that you're here And one of the reasons why is that, Dr. Karp, you run one of the most successful and accredited research labs in the entire world. I mean, your lab is looking at everything from cancer research to heart repair. And you've taken everything that you've learned as a researcher and a scientist and all of this experience on the cutting edge of medical innovation, and you've applied it to your life. And you've come up with these things that you call life Ignition tools that absolutely anyone can use to tap into their potential to improve their life, to be happier. I'm so excited to learn about these simple tools. But before we jump into the life Ignition tools. Could you just tell the person listening a little bit more about the work that your lab does and what you're excited about?

Absolutely. So my lab is literally focused on the process of medical problem solving. It's an ever evolving process. It's highly iterative. And the major focus is how can we make academic discoveries and move them as quickly as possible to patients. And We do this like just how we approach problems, how we infuse fresh energy, how we disrupt linear thinking and single possibilities that we might find ourselves within. And this has has allowed us to create all sorts of technologies that are in clinical trials and have actually made it to patients. For example, we developed a nasal spray in the lab that we demonstrated could neutralize 99.99% COVID-19, H1N1, Influenza A and B, and a form of pneumonia. That's one example. We developed a needle that can stop in between the layers of the eye to deliver gene therapy to the back of the eye. It's really difficult to get drugs to the back of the eye, for macular degeneration, and that's on route to a clinical trial. We've developed therapies to violate cancer, therapies for osteoarthritis, and it's really like a playground, if you will. People from all over the world, people with tons of different experiences and backgrounds and expertise, but we really have a North Star for every project, which is to help patients as quickly as we can.

Dr. Karp, you're one of the most innovative minds and award-winning researchers alive today. I'm just curious if you can talk a little bit more about how you run your life and how you run your lab and the role of creativity and how you use creativity in sparking innovation in your lab. I mean, how do you get people to tap into the full potential of their own brain power when they're doing research for you?

Yeah. Creativity is... I think, I think creativity is one of these life forces. It's something that we can tap into. It's something that we are all born with. Something that is flattened by our society, and perhaps through the education system, depending on where we were educated and the circumstances. But I think with this algorithmic lifestyle that we all lead. For example, I think if you look at... I have so many thoughts in my mind. I'm like, whoa. I'm like, yeah, because creativity, it's like, to me, it's just so It's exciting because we all have this ability to tap into creativity. And when we do, we surprise ourselves. It's literally this thing that just lights us up when we tap into it. And I think that it's magnetic. There's gravity to it. When somebody is being creative, it just attracts other people. Everyone wants to like, oh, what are you doing? Oh, that's so interesting. How did you think of that? Something magical about creativity. And so for my laboratory, So it's like it's one thing to try to make academic discoveries. It's another to then take those discoveries and turn them into products that can help patients.

So the level of difficulty just escalates. And so I spent a lot of time trying to figure out and actually experiment in my laboratory with processes to maximize creativity. So one of the things that I've noticed is that the lab composition is critical for creativity. And so I've tried intentionally on purpose to limit the overlap in expertise. Most laboratories, you have the same expert. Everyone in the lab has the same expertise. What I've noticed is that if we minimize the overlap, that we can really leverage the power of thinking differently and the sparks of creativity just start flying. In the lab, we've had chemists, we have material scientists, we have biologists, immunologists, but we've also had a gastrointestinal surgeon, a cardiac surgeon. We've had a dentist in the lab. It's constantly changing. And I think when you start interacting with people who think differently, who have different skills, we've had people from 30 different countries in the lab. And when you're from a different country, you have a different education system. So you think differently, you have different wiring, you have different experiences. And to me, that's how you start to generate the sparks of creativity.

And something else that I experimented with in my lab, which actually was transformational, was I set up, and I hadn't seen this before, but I just was like, I need to somehow figure out how to get things more creative and people to connect. And so I thought, okay, presentation competitions. So I came up with this idea.

You're giving me anxiety about work. I'm like, if I were to do presentation competitions, people would quit. Okay. So you have presentation competitions at work in this world-round academic research lab?

Yes. In this world And then there's some guideposts. So you can't present on your research. You have to present on something that is one of your passions or one of your interests or something you're curious about. I love that. And the goal is to take risks. This is a safe environment where no one's going to be shamed and everyone's in the same boat from a high school student to a PhD student to a postdoc to a young faculty. And everybody presents for three minutes. And then afterwards, the questions are focused on constructively, what could you do to improve your talk? What did you really like about the talk? And then at the end, I give prizes for people. Everyone votes. I don't vote. And who gave the best presentation, who took the most risk, and who gave the best constructive feedback. And we've had people in the lab. It's been like, I couldn't have expected this. Somebody did a rap about the hamburger restaurants in Boston. Somebody showed up in a wetsuit and talked about surfing. Somebody played guitar and had slides going behind them. They didn't say anything during their talk. Somebody spoke about this permaculture effort they did in their backyard with hundreds of edible plants.

Somebody talked about a bakery that their family had started and then had to shut down during COVID, and they really want to set it up again. And what happened was this created this constellation of energies where people now were open. They were learning about other people's curiosity, what other people's interests were. And when you get people talking, when you get people connecting, it creates this creative energy. It just this energy just starts to flow. And it's just been it's been unbelievable.

I love this. And you know what I love is I'm listening to you. I'm jealous. Now I want to be there. I want to feel that expansion and that connection and that creativity. And that brings us to the subject of your book, Lit, which is filled with all of these simple, proven, what you call life-ignition tools that we can use with ourselves to unlock in an instant that possibility and to spark ideas and tap into our brain and shift where we're at. And what exactly is a life-ignition tool? A Life Ignition Tool.

A Life Ignition Tool is a strategy, a way to tap into something that you don't see in this very moment, something that could illuminate not just this moment, but your entire life.

It's like there's all this hidden potential, and these Life Ignition tools unlock it.

They unlock it, and everybody has access to it. These tools allow you to access your evolutionary inheritance.

What is my evolutionary inheritance?

Your evolutionary inheritance is the biology that you have that's working for you. It's the ability to sense the world, the ability to make decisions, the ability to evolve and to learn and to be inspired and to sense awe and to tap into creativity. It's It's what we all have access to. And when we tap into it, not only does it light up our lives, it lights up the lives of everybody around us.

You know what's so exciting about this conversation is that it's so easy to get buried alive by your to-do list and to get drawn into social media and to feel like you're just on autopilot and you're barely surviving and overwhelmed with worry and the things that you need to do, that you forget that there is an evolution evolutionary design inside of you that you can tap into your own creativity, what you just said. And these are the tools that help us cut through modern life and unlock that for ourselves? Exactly. Oh, my God. Let's dive in. What is the What is the first life ignition tool that you want to share with us today?

One of the tools that I'm like, is Do-New, because every moment there's limitless possibilities, and we don't see those possibilities because of a lot of different reasons. I think one of the major reasons is that when we're younger, everything is new to us. First time crawling, first time walking. Every grade is a completely different experience. Every sport, everything's completely new. But as we get older, we lead these algorithmic lifestyles. We wake up at the same time, we have the same breakfast, we go to work at the same time, we scroll social media at the same time, we We go to the same sites, we interact with the same people, same friend group. And so there's not that much new in our lives. When you start to infuse new in your life, and we do have this fear, we have this hesitation to do new, but when you start to do it, it just illuminates everything.

I love that. I love that. So it's almost as if these tools that you're teaching us, these life, ignition tools, right? Yeah. Unlock greater possibility. They interrupt the patterns that you've gotten used to as an adult in your life, and they tap into something different. How do you use the tool do-new, do-different? Different in your life? Give me an example.

There's so many ways that I use this. One example, actually just something I've been practicing recently, just to intercept rumination and to just shift my mind is I visualize, and this is just one of many possibilities.

Great, but we're going to do new people. We're not going to worry about everything that's happening. We're not going to run on that negative loop. So when that happens, we're going to use this tool from Dr. Karp. We're going to do new, do different. You can do a thinking pattern. What do you do?

Can I just...

I brought something here. What do you got?

This is a prop.

Okay. Okay. So he's passed me... These glasses are like these. The glasses you put on when you go to the IMAX movie 3D movie.

Okay, put them on and take a look. This is something that is really simple to do new. And again, it's like a mind to shift your mind, to change your frame.

So I'm putting on glasses. And look around. Oh, it's making all the lights have rainbows. It's like a prism lens.

Everything turns into a rainbow.

It makes me feel like you've just handed me still a cyber or something. Like these things are... Yes, we're like at a rave now. Yeah, we're at a rave. So just imagine as you're listening.

Yeah.

That you've put on glasses that tint the outside view. So you go from just looking at the screen to all of a sudden things are pink or they're Amber or they're Purple or they're whatever the sunglasses lens is. It changes things. Why is this a tool that can help you ignite something?

This is a tool that can help you see your environment in a different way. It can get you out of of one possibility and into another possibility. And there's so many different tools that we can engage to do that. And I think that there's lots of practices and rituals and all kinds of things that we can engage. And I think that's what One of the limiting things about life is that we stay on one track for too long. And so when we put on these glasses and now we look at the lights and everything is rainbows, then that ignites our curiosity, right? We start thinking like, oh, well, how does It's going to happen. And if you start turning your head, you can see the rainbows start moving.

Dr. Karp, you know what I'm thinking about is that in the news recently, tons of people all over the world have seen the Northern lights for the first time. It's been all over the news, particularly here in the United States. And they're all of a sudden super far south and in all these environments. And what I find absolutely electrifying is this idea that you walk outside and with the naked eye, you don't necessarily see it. But then you all of a sudden hold up your phone and the night camera screen, and it's like this kaleidoscope that is right there waiting for you to discover it. And what I really am getting from you, Dr. Karp, is that all of these tools that you're sharing with us are ways that you can see life in a completely different way, that you can tap into the possibilities that are right there, just like the Northern lights sometimes are right there and you can't see it. But if you use some of these tools and shift your perspective, it opens up something completely different.

Absolutely. It's like, let's say you're walking and you look up at the clouds. It's hard to see them moving. But if you stop and you look up at the clouds, then you can see them moving. And when you notice them moving, it has this awe. It's like, wow. And you can see them joining with each And as kids, kids can look up and see animals. But we can do that, too, as adults. And I like to do that because, again, it's a way of getting out of my mind. We always hear, get into the moment, be authentic. It's like, well, what's the process for doing that? I agree. Right? It's like, what are the steps to get there? And to me, to get into the moment, if we stop walking and look up at the clouds and we start thinking about the clouds, we're totally in the moment.

It's true. It's a way to access all these principles. It reminds me of one of the life ignition tools you wrote about in the book called Press Pause. Laying on the ground and looking at the clouds is an example of pressing pause, and then you see the world in a different place. But what is the power of the pause? And how do you use this in your busy, busy, busy life?

Yes. Pause is so important. Pressing pause. And And it's really we need a tool to slow down. We need a tool to tap into intuitive cues. We need a tool to allow our brains to sync up, to process information and experiences. And so I noticed I was doing these back to back to back meetings all day long. I get to the end of the day, felt like I'd done maybe two marathons of work. That felt great, but there was something missing. There was something I couldn't put my finger on it. And being someone who's constantly tinkering with everything, I started to experiment with, okay, what if I take a break in between my meetings? Five minutes, 10 minutes, and not a social media break or an email break or a texting break, but our true break where I do nothing or I just go for a walk. And I started experimenting with it. And what I noticed was transformational. I would basically start thinking about something someone had told me a few weeks before, a few months before, and it would connect to what the person I just met with said. And I'd be like, whoa, we should get together and meet because this could turn into something completely new.

I wouldn't have had that thought had I If I didn't press pause. And so it's like we have so much information coming at us from every meeting we have. And a lot of it's in our subconscious mind. We need to take time for these thoughts to swirl roll around our mind to process them and to place them. And I found that my best thinking happens when I do that, when I'm actually pausing. And there's a neuroscientist that I spoke to, actually interviewed for the book, and a musician, Molly Gerbrian is her name, and just amazing things that she said. So she said, actually, it's in the pauses is mind turns into matter. So when we're learning, it's actually our brains aren't rewiring in the moments that so much of just engaging, it's actually when we pause, that's when the circuitry is really changing and the remodeling is occurring, like during sleep, for example. And she said, actually, a lot of people, if they're practicing a skill that a lot of people will do is if they have one hour, they'll just practice for the whole hour. And she said, No, the neuroscience shows that's not the best way to do it.

She said, the best way to do it is practice for 15 or 20 minutes, take a five or 10 minute break, and then approach it again. And this engages something called the startle effect. And so the startle effect is where the next time that you approach something, you clue into your attention is focused on what you forgot, right? So let's say you try to build a skill, you learn something in 20 minutes, then you go back, you realize what you've forgotten now because now you're applying it again. That hyper focuses your brain on what you forgot and helps you to imprint whatever you're learning. And so by doing that over and over, that's how we start to rewire our brains and develop skills.

I've never thought about it that way. I love how you take your scientific mind, and it's clear you have a huge heart, and you've combined it into something It's simple that anyone can use. Immediately thinking about my kids and guitar and having them, when they're practicing, sitting up there toiling away for an hour versus trying to work on a piece, taking a five minute break and then coming back to it or anything that you want to master. One of the ways you can apply the pause is by simply taking a five minute break between meetings and not actually working or going for a quick walk or laying on the ground and looking at the clouds or taking a quick break as you're trying to learn a new skill or shutting yourself up in the middle of a conversation and not inserting yourself. Like that there is this need to slow ourselves down. Why is it so hard to bring ourselves to practice new skills or habits?

I think it's difficult to practice new skills because of the way that we practice. I think that, yeah, I think that... And that's why one of the tools is actually fall in love with practice. Because what I have found, and through some of the people that I've spoke to and interviewed for the book, is that practice can become monotonous really fast. It can become boring. But there are, just like with everything, there's limitless possibilities in the way that we can practice. I interviewed the five times US memory champion, Nelson Dellis, for the book. I specifically asked him, Nelson, at some point it's got to get boring, right? If you're just practicing the same thing over and over and over again. I said, What do you do? And he said, Well, sometimes when I get to that state, he said, instead of... He would memorize a 52 deck of cards in, I forgot how many, 20 seconds or whatever it is or 30 seconds.

Oh my gosh, in that order?

Like in a random order. Someone hands on the deck in 30 seconds, he could memorize the whole thing. And so I said, what do you do?

But was he born with that skill or did he actually teach himself that?

He wasn't. He had someone in his family, I think it was his grandmother, who got Alzheimer's, and he never thought he had a good memory. And he was concerned that that would be his fate. And he turned to memory games and learning how to build his memory. And so he told me that what he does is he will insert a few extra cards in the deck. So he'll change it up. And he said that presents a new challenge to him that activates his mind. And it makes it more engaging. And so you can think about what are all the things. And sometimes it may be that you're... Like when I was younger and I was always the last chosen for sports at school, right? Actually, it was me and this other kid.

You're hilarious, Dr. Karp.

And so I really wanted to get better at basketball. And I would go and I would throw the ball And just nothing, nothing. It's a plateau, just anger and whatever. And luckily, there's somebody actually who I recently connected with, which is pretty interesting, but someone who saw me doing this and came up and said, here, I'll show you. I'll show you how to do it. And he said, we're just going to focus on the layup. That's it. And I was probably maybe like 11 years old, 10, 11, something like that. And he would just stand with me and he would say, okay, shoot it there. Here's the angle. Here's how to do your hand. And over time, I got better it. I was almost getting it every single time. And to me, that was shifting from the possibility of me just standing there trying to do it on my own to having someone supportive there with me, showing me how to do it. And so it was just I was engaging in another possibility. It's finding the process that works for you. And when you start, I almost think of it as a knob. It's like, click, click, click, click.

There it is. Now I'm improving. And we need to be able to tune in to those increments incremental improvements in an incremental progress in order for us to continue to advance. And to me, it's like falling in love with practice is the key to persistence. It's how we become persistent in anything in our life. If we can find ways to infuse joy into practicing, then we can keep at it for longer and we can be persistent. And we all know that persistence is so important for progress?

It makes me think about the fact that it took me a long time with my brain and ADHD and dyslexia to do that click, click, click, click, oh, this is it. And I do think we get into these patterns of believing that there's only one way to do something or the way that you've always done it is the way that you should always do it, or that just because somebody else had success shooting the basketball a certain way, that that's how you it. And what I love about this tool, Fall in Love with Practice, is one of the biggest practices in your life is experimenting with yourself. And for me, I don't write books by writing them. I talk it out, and then I edit transcripts, which is a form of writing. Another discovery that I've made about myself, Dr. Karp, is that I'm a reactor, both emotionally and intellectually. But I'm working on the emotional part. What I've realized is the intellectual part is a superpower. If you ask me a series of questions, I can talk all day long. I can tap into this brainpower and a decade of research in the work that I've been doing, and I can just almost go into a state where I'm speaking in tongues and I'm a human encyclopedia.

If you give me a piece of paper and you ask me to just write a full page about a topic, I can't do it. And so this idea of fall in love with the practice and give yourself room to experiment, what you're actually practicing on is what works for you, what unlocks something in you. And that pursuit of being curious about it and Practicing and stumbling into things is it's true. It is what keeps you going back. Like I remember with our daughter who's a singer-songwriter, one of her mentors out in Los Angeles said to her because she kept going, I got to learn piano. I got to learn piano. She it, but she's like, I... Most people, they write music on piano, and he's like, You have one of the best instruments on the planet. It's your voice. Why are you not humming melodies? Why do you need to put it on the piano? Why are you working against the thing that actually comes naturally? And I think a lot of us do that to ourselves. We think we need to have our relationships look like everybody else's. You think that the way that you do your work product needs to fall in line, and giving yourself the space to tinker and practice taps into everything that you're trying to teach us.

You have another tool, Focus Beyond Failure. Why is failure so essential, Dr. Karp, to unlocking your full potential?

Wow. I've experienced so many setbacks and just nothing has ever come easy to me. And I would say, the way I would describe it, really, is that, let's say I ended up talking about my experiences, just all of my experiences in life, really.

Okay, well, here's a big failure.

You have a big failure. I have a lot of big failures. Okay, so for example, I applied to medical school, got rejected from all three schools that I applied to. I had so many failures. I was the kid in high school who got up to do a walkman sing and got booed off the stage. I'm that kid.

Wow.

I tried out to be on student council multiple times, and I didn't get on, although I actually did get on in my final year of high school from pattern recognition. I figured some things out. But yeah, I almost visualize it's like I'm in a boat. I'm trying to get to the end of the stream, right? And I am bumping into every single rock along the way, every overhanging branch. And as I go untangling myself, I'll look down, I'll look at the rock and I'll be like, Oh, that's interesting. I'll see a path on the side of the river, and I'll say, Oh, I wonder where that leads. I'll get out of the I'll start walking down, and then I'll be, Wait a moment. I'm supposed to be going down the river. And so I get back in, I bump into every single rock. I mean, that's my experience with everything. One of the massive failures that I had is with Ted Med. I was invited, actually, Jay Walker, the CEO of Priceline, was the CEO of Ted Med. And he gave me a call and he said, Hey, I would like to invite you to give talk on your bioinspiration work, how you turn to nature for inspiration over to develop medical technologies.

I initially said no because I was so frightened. I had not memorized anything since public school, but then I thought about it and I was like, okay, I will never be asked again to speak on this stage. And I went and I said, yes.

And by the way, just for you listening, this is like part of the Ted conference franchise. This is like academic super hero. This is the stage where all your peers are staring down at you. This is global. So this isn't like, come to the school basement and give a chat. This is an invitation to stand before every Everybody in the medical research community globally and just, boom, go. And what happened?

So what happened was I practiced like crazy. I rented out the Kresge auditorium at MIT, which is the biggest auditorium. I presented four people, my family, who were there. I present in front of so many different people. And I knew that talk inside and out. It was like 15 minutes, purely memorized. I had slides, I had animations, I had to get the timing right. I had to make it look like I didn't memorize it. There was all these stages. And I was ready to go. And I get to Ted Med. It was at the Kennedy Center in DC. And I practice my talk and they suggest some changes. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't I'm going to change it now, it's tomorrow. So I tried to figure out how am I going to because I've memorized it. Then we go on stage beforehand. There's a walkthrough, and they say, By the way, the clicker only goes forward. It doesn't go back. If you go too fast and hit it, You have to yell to the AV person, Can you go back? And I'm like, There's no way I'm doing that. And they said, Sometimes people freeze in the middle of their talk.

They said, The two reactions that we've seen is, one, they run off the stage. They said, Don't run off stage if that happens. The second reaction we've seen is people will actually start crying. They said, Don't do that either.

And the third reaction is when you dump in your drawers and have to throw out your pants.

I'm sure that's happened at some point. And then they said, Just stand there and smile. And so I am ready to go. I'm like, I get a pack of Halls in my hand. I'm eating them all right before I go up. I get up on stage. I have it so well-memorized that I can think about other things. It's five high definition cameras on me being livestream throughout the world. It's filled at this Kennedy Center in DC, the President of my institutions in the audience. And I get to the middle of my talk and I think to myself, I missed a line. There was a line that I forgot to say, and my mind couldn't get unhooked from that. And I stopped in the middle of it for 15 seconds. I said nothing. Now, 15 seconds is a very long time to pause on this type of a stage, on any stage.

Can you just put us in that moment?

Yeah.

What was happening for you?

Well, I was so nervous. I had this visceral reaction where it was like this negativity came within me. I'm trying to think, okay, I can't run off the stage. I can't start crying. They want me to smile. The swear words are going through my head. I'm holding the clicker, trying to use it like a lightning rod of energy. And you can see me coin this with it. I'm smiling. And I'm like, the only thing I can think of is to turn the slide. And so I hit the clicker to go forward. I turned the slide, a blank slide. And I'm like, what the fuck? And then I'm like, what is that? I go forward again and something magical happens, which is I'm like, wait a moment. I know what I'm supposed to say on this slide. Slide. The last slide was a cue. I know what I'm supposed to say there. And I just started up again. And as I'm walking off the stage, the stage manager whispers to me. She goes, We can cut that out for the YouTube version. And that was it. And then somebody came to me afterwards and they said, I noticed you paused in the middle of your talk.

And I'm like, I think everybody did. And they said, But the fact you were able to recover is really important. And think about And I had actually been shamed earlier in my life when I gave a presentation, just one presentation, I've given so many, that imprinted and created anxiety and fear. And every time I present it after that, And this allowed me to detach from that experience and gain more confidence because I knew that any time moving forward, if I stopped, that I could find my words again and keep going. And so it's like this This tool is focusing beyond failure. It's about finding ways to look at failure completely differently, to see it as opportunities where we can find our greatest insights and opportunities for growth. And to me, one of the key things in all the failures that I've ever encountered that is just huge, it's so big, is what you were saying before, we have these expectations. Even the first time we The first time we try things, we expect we're going to miraculously succeed in everything we do. That's our expectation. We go in with that. And what I've realized is that if we reframe failure, like we learn in school, failure is over here, success is over here, avoid failure, maximize success.

I see it as a prerequisite to success. I see failure as an opportunity to be creative, as an opportunity to explore other possibilities you didn't think of before. I see failure now as a way to learn. And that's the shift, right? So I'll give you an example where I think this will become really clear. The first talk that I was invited to give on Lit was at Stanford, right? Many months ago. I'd never spoken about it. I put all these slides together. I was super nervous. And I didn't even know how to talk about the book. I'd been writing it. I hadn't been communicating it. And I get there and I said to myself, it took me a lot of processing. And I said to myself, you know what, Jeff, you're to give it your best, but this is Gen 1.0. I said, focus on doing your best, but also tapping into the cues that you get from people as you're speaking. What are the insights so you can move to Gen 2.0 And 2.0 is going to be better than 1.0. So I was able to shift away from the expectation of giving a spectacular talk to focusing on the learnings, the insights I could gain to make the talk better.

Because I was like, there's probably going to be a generation 5.0, a 10.0, a 20.0, whatever it is. And that shift is basically focusing on away from success and moving that to learning, to gaining an insight. So you're focusing on the evolution. And that's changed everything for me.

I love that. So I relate to that because as I was writing the Let Them Theory book, I kept saying to the team, we're going to go through like 20 iterations of this. We're going to just... This isn't about getting something too perfect. It's about the iterations, step one, step two, step three. And so you're absolutely right. Focusing on, I got to have a failed first draft and then a failed second draft, and a failed third draft to get to the point where I actually love this thing. And can I give you some advice about speaking? Yeah, please. Because I think what the people said to you was horrible advice. So number one, it's always important to understand that the The audience has no idea what you're about to say or what you're supposed to say. And so if you can remind yourself that they have no idea what I'm supposed to say, so I'm not supposed to get it right. I'm supposed to actually get through it and try to enjoy myself. And if you're having a good time with it, then they're going to have a good time with you. Second thing I want you to understand is that there is a tremendous amount of research about what happens when another person sees somebody else screwing up, whether they're tripping up the stairs or they freeze for a minute or they slide.

I've had so many moments where I've literally been in front of 10,000 people and the clicker stops working. And you've got a stadium in your hands. And the amazing thing about those moments is that if you can get to the point where you're like, I just forgot what I was supposed to say. I guess I better hit the next slide. I guess it wasn't that important. Click. People root for you. We like and cheer for people when we see their vulnerability. And if you can give yourself that grace, and here's the final thing, always before you walk on stage, you will always, forever feel nervous, no matter how prepared you are, because you're about to be in the spotlight. And that activates the alarm system in your nervous system, because you're going to go into hyper pay attention mode. Instead of going, oh, my God, I'm so nervous and chomping on the halls and pacing back and forth and reiterating, reiterating, literally say to yourself, I'm so excited to get out there and share this. I'm so excited because that simple reframe, they have actually studied this at one of the institutions you're involved with, Harvard Meta School School.

Is that simple reframe, get your brain to tell your nervous system, we're not nervous here, we're actually in a state of excitement. And that helps you from having your nervous system hijack your prefrontal cortex, which means you can access Just the preparation. So true. But in that moment when you freeze, try to make a joke. I just forgot what I was going to say. And you'll be shocked at what happens.

Yeah. Rudi Tansy is a neuroscientist who spoke about some elements of what you just said in the book, and he said that before he goes to give a talk, he says to himself, I am here to serve. I'm here to serve. And it's more like It's not he's here for a performance. He's here to share. He's here to give what he has, his gifts, his work. And to me, again, it's just what's that other possibility that can switch us from fight or flight and put us into that moment where we feel empowered, we feel connected, we feel like we're truly sharing what we have with everybody.

Every Every single day, we get questions from people around the world who feel like they're just stuck. They're on autopilot, just going through the motions. Do you have a life-ignition tool that you can use if you find yourself living in autopilot?

Absolutely. Great. Okay. One of the tools that you can use in this situation is called Flip the Switch. And it's all about recognizing patterns that don't match up.

Can you give me an example? Where would you use Flip the switch in your life? Okay.

So here's an example of flip the switch. My ADHD really created a lot of struggles for me early on my learning differences. And in the seventh grade, I was actually identified as having learning differences in ADHD, and I got some accommodations. And that was really a pivotal moment for me. But what happened was that my My ADHD was still really problematic and troublesome for me, my learning differences, and it just presented daily challenges. And so I really needed... Everything took me two or three times longer than everybody else. I would constantly be staying after school. I'd go on weekends to meet with teachers, the ones that would be available all through high school whenever I could. It was always like I was trudging through, I don't even know what, but It was just slow, slow, slow progress and everything. And so I needed to find ways to become more efficient. And so I started to just focus my attention on efficiency. And I was just so, so focused on becoming more efficient that over time I started to become more efficient. I started to be able to do more. I started to be able to focus my attention at will.

I started to be able to navigate the world in ways that I had never navigated before, to be able to learn and to succeed in my classes. And I started to thrive. And what happened was I got so addicted to the dopamine hits from my work because now I was just able to just do almost like two marathons worth of work in a day. And when COVID hit, everything came crashing down in my living room. I had realized that I was completely out of touch. I would be going to birthday parties I'd be going to birthday parties, and I would be trying to network with other parents who were there versus focusing on the purpose of the birthday party, which was to connect with my children. And I would be at soccer practice is, and I would be trying to get my 10,000 steps. I'd be walking around the soccer field- You sound pretty intense. Over and over and over again to get my 10,000 steps. I'd be going for walks with my dogs, and I would have Netflix on the phone, and I'd watch an episode of Game of Thrones as I took them for a walk around the neighborhood.

You're that guy? I'm that guy. I was that guy. I was that guy. And it was all because I had been so focused on just I was just so addicted to the dopamine that I was getting from my work because I became very efficient. I was able to do way more than I had ever done before, but that was actually taking me off track. Got it. And I COVID was this unintentional pause where everything came crashing down, literally in my living room. And I was like, okay, I need to change. And that's where I engage, flip the switch, which is a four-step process.

What is that?

So the first step is to notice your inner desire for possibility. So it's this idea that in that moment, I knew that there was another way of living, another way of being. There was There was something I could do that I wasn't doing, and I felt disconnected. So I really was in touch with other possibilities that I needed to discover. The second step is to take stock of what's working and what's holding you back. And I had developed these incredible efficiencies in my lab, in my work. Things were going extremely well. But at home, it was a completely different scenario. It's like I looked up and all of a sudden, my son was quarterback of the high school football team. My kids were teenagers. All these years had passed. I felt there was something deep that was missing. There was something more that I needed to engage. I needed to figure this out. You. I needed to figure myself out. You were missing. I needed to turn inward. And so that was what was holding me back. And the third step was to consider other possibilities, other ways of thinking. And at the time, my wife was engaged in seeking out these answers to some spiritual questions that she had, and she was speaking to some spiritual leaders in the community.

And it took me a while to look around. I was like, Oh, my God, she's having these conversations. These are the conversations that I need to be having at this moment. I identified I did it. This was the third step, the other possibilities are right in front of me. And the fourth step is to take a deliberate step forward. And so I asked my wife to introduce me to these spiritual people that she was engaging, and she did. And I started to meet with them. And I started practicing meditation. And I tried it before, and it didn't really work like apps and all these things. But I was connected to transcendental meditation, which is this one word mantra that you say over and over in your mind. And what I started to notice as I practiced it, and I practiced it for two or three months, that's all actually I needed. And what I noticed was that these thoughts would come into my mind. There would usually be an emotion associated with the thought. And I'd be in the middle of meditation, and I'd be like, oh, my God, I didn't write that email. And I'd be jumping out of the meditation.

You need a seatbelt in your own meditation.

I needed a seatbelt.

Or a notepad to jot it down.

But one of the amazing things that I recognized is that as that was happening, I noticed that if I didn't jump out of the meditation, if I could hold myself there, that that thought and the emotion would actually subside. It would leave my mind. And all of a sudden, And that became this light bulb moment for me because what I noticed was when I was in conversation with my wife, with my children, I started to notice the energy of the conversation. I started to notice that If, let's say, my kids are teenagers and if they're speaking and all of a sudden I want to say something, I want to interject, the energy shifts from them to me and they stop speaking. And now it's on me, but that's not my intention. My intention is for them to find their voice, for me to be supportive of them and not for me to take over or for the attention to be on me. And so the meditation helped me develop tools for navigating conversations with people, with everybody. And now I'm very in my mind during conversations, it's wired in. I notice the energy of the conversation.

And I feel like the ADHD brain because it's bouncing around and people with ADHD often forget what they're going to say, and that can be painful. And so you want to just jump out and say it. And through this process, I've been able to Keep myself present so that I'm not jumping out and interjecting. And whenever I do that, I feel like it's almost like this box appears in my mind. It's a little checkmark because it feels like a win. And when I do that, when I pause and think about that, anytime I've had just these moments of intentionality in my day, and I just pause in that moment and put a little check, it feels amazing, and it fuels more intentionality.

So I would love to So on the flip the switch, you said four, because I want to make sure anybody that feels stuck understands that there's these four short steps that you can go through and that there is another way, that there's always another way to do life. And so I'm assuming that in any area of your life where you're bumping up against friction, whether you feel like you're on autopilot or you're sick of where your health and your state of being in shape or not is, if you're tired of your drinking habit, if you feel friction in your relationship, you're saying there is a life-ignition tool you should tap called flip the switch. And so step one is what?

Noticing your inner desire for possibility.

Fabulous. And for possibility, you mean, I don't want it to... Because for me, you're speaking in a way that sounds very empowered. I'm very negative when I feel frustrated. So I start to go, what the... I literally am like, I don't want it to be this way. And so notice that you don't want it to be this way, that there is a positive... You want positive change. What's the second step?

Is to take stock of what's working and what's holding you back. Because we always have things that are working for us, and it's important to acknowledge them because that's empowering.

Yes, it is. And step three then, once you've taken stock is...

To notice other possibilities and other ways of thinking. Because I think in our lives, we're often just living a single possibility. But in any moment, there's limitless possibilities. And to me, that's also one of the powers of diversity. One of the reasons why we need to flood our lives with a diverse ways of thinking and to spend time with people who think differently, who have different ways of being, different ways of acting, because what it can do is it can help you to identify other possibilities. It's what we use in my laboratory for solving problems. We use diversity as a superpower.

And I've done that in my relationship with Chris when we've been in situations where we're ready to kill each other, like reaching out to friends. Have you ever dealt with this? Like, what would you recommend? So there are other ways. And then you said the fourth step was...

Taking a deliberate step forward.

And for me, simply reaching out to somebody that I admire or that is a trusted friend, just reaching out for the advice makes me feel better. So I didn't realize I was using your tool, flip the switch. But that's exactly the way I've approached these moments, too, because there always is a better way. And one of my favorite ones because it's something I had never heard before, is this concept of pinch your brain. What is it? How do you use it? Why do I need it? What is, Pinching your brain, Dr. Karp?

Pinching your brain is using your intention to focus your attention, to think or redirect your thinking throughout your day in meaningful ways.

So how would you use this in your day to day life? How do you use it now?

Okay, I'll give you an example. I brought two pens, one for you. Okay. There you go.

I'm sorry to throw it at you there. If you're listening, I'm holding a pen that has a red end, and you're holding a pen that has a blue end, and I'm assuming this is intentional.

Well, maybe. We'll see. So the way that we can practice Pinch your brain, right? Is to take something in your environment and focus your attention on it and notice the nuances, right? And so this is something you can do anywhere in your life. You can do it inside, outside any room. And so if I say to you, okay, hold this pen in your hand. Like, typically we just grab the pen, we write with it and we put it back down. We don't think about it because our thoughts are moving all over the place. And so at this moment, we could say, what we're going to do is pinch our brain just Just by focusing on the nuances of the pen. So let's look at the pen together and say, okay, what are the different colors? What are the different textures? How is the light reflecting off the pen? Is there any writing on it? What does it say? Turn the pen around, start to look at it. And what we're actually doing here is we're using our intention to focus our attention. We're squeezing out the other thoughts, and we're focusing on the pen. Now, this seems really simple, and you're like, Okay, I'm just How is that helpful?

But what I found is that if you do this, if you make a practice of it, and you can do it outside as you're going for a walk, you can look at the texture of the bark on the trees, you can look at the clouds. There's so many things to look at. When you start to notice the nuances, you start to also not only focussing your attention, you're connecting with what you're looking at. And there's this energy exchange that happens.

You just said a whole lot there. So I want to make sure that I impact this, which This is a strategy and tactic of pinching your brain. I would imagine you can tap into this anytime you feel overwhelmed, anytime you feel stressed out, anytime you're doomscrolling, anytime you feel caught in that devastating cycle of ruminating, right? Over and over on negative thoughts. He's saying, find any object in your environment. And as you're listening to us, you can look around. It could be a coffee mug, it could be a cloud, it could be like anything, really. And by pinching finishing your brain, he's saying, you can squeeze out any of the worries or rumination or overwhelm that you feel by just focusing on the details of an object that is within sight. And what happens? What is the benefit? I can see the immediate benefit is you take control of your mind. But what have you found over time if you make this a practice when you catch yourself feeling overwhelmed, that you use this pinch your brain tool?

So every time that you do this, it's like a bicep curl for your attention.

Okay. So is this really good for somebody like me and you with ADHD?

Very good. Yeah. Okay.

Why is pinching your brain good for somebody with ADHD?

Because When you have ADHD, your mind is filled with multiple thoughts that are just constantly bouncing around. And you're frequently finding yourself not using your intention for where your attention is focused. So I think in today's society, our attention is so atomized because we have stimuli coming at us from every direction. Online, the goal of companies who operate online is to grab your attention. And there's a trillion dollars that's spent every year to hijack your attention. So on marketing and advertising every single year. And so our Or especially people with ADHD, they fall prey the most to these types of stimuli. And so what we need to do is it's like our attention, if you think of it almost like a muscle, the more we intentionally or on purpose, focus our attention, the more we are able to do that on command, on demand for other areas of our life that are most meaningful to us.

As we sit here, Dr. Karp, and have this conversation, I'm always thinking that there's one human that truly needed all of the things that you're talking about today. And because you've shared so openly about all of the things that you have struggled with from second grade forward, and I keep thinking about our son who had dyslexia and ADHD and wasn't diagnosed until later and had to repeat grades and how lonely he felt. You have gone on to run one of the most acclaimed academic scientific research labs in the entire planet. You are involved in over 30,000 studies that have been, where your lab has been cited. Would you talk directly to a kid that might be listening with their parent about what's possible? If you could talk to you as an 8, 9, 10-year-old, what you wished you knew back then?

Absolutely. I love that. Well, to me, I would first start by saying that one of the key things that really happened to me that was critical along my path is that I was a C&D student early on. I was nearly failing out because nothing was working. And I was thinking about this earlier today, and I was getting emotional about it because I don't like to think about that time too much because it was really difficult for me. All the labels I was getting, lazy. They asked me at one point, What do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, I want to be a doctor. And they said, You better set your sights lower because you just don't have what it takes to do that. They said, You're never going to amount to much. And that really took a toll. And the one thing that kept me going during that time is the support that I had from my parents. And in particular, my mom, there were these speech competitions at the school that started, I think, in the fourth or fifth grade. And my mom wrote the speeches for me, and she helped me memorize.

And I had never memorized anything before. And I was really, I had a lot of anxiety. I had, I felt lost. But she said, okay, let's start with one word. Let's move to two words. As soon as I had a sentence memorized, and then I had two sentences memorized, and then I had three and four. And I could tap into the fact that things were changeable, that I could actually memorize something. I didn't think I could. And then she would coach me in how to say it, how to give the speech. And what happened was incredible because I started to win competitions. I started be the kid to beat. And I think that every kid, every person needs to have that one thing where they can tap into the fact that things are changeable. That one thing where they can gain that incremental confidence and tap into it, feel it in a very visceral way, because when you do that, you can apply it to all the other areas in your life. And And that truly is what allowed me to keep going and to then start to develop these tools, which eventually I applied from surviving to thriving.

Is that what you wish somebody would have told you, that things are changeable? Because I find your story fascinating, and I know that there's somebody listening that feels that exact way about their son or daughter, and you have an extraordinary amount of resilience, and just like, I'm plowing ahead. There's a rock. I'm going here. I'm going here. I'm going here. And what is it that you want to say to some kid that is in that space right now that doesn't feel like things are changing.

Well, I would start by saying the following. I believe in you. I will always believe in you. No matter what labels you get, no matter who has shamed before, no matter what terrible things have happened to you, no matter what self-shame you induce on yourself, there is a way out. There are infinite possibilities. The possibility you're living right now is not the one that defines you. You can break out of it, and you just need some tools and strategies. You just need to experiment a little bit in your life just to see beyond that possibility. And I am here to help you. I will always be here for you, and I am excited for what the future holds.

Beautiful.

And no matter what, I want you to know that there is at least one thing that you are good at that you can tap into and develop, and it will inspire the world.

That is so beautiful. Dr. Karp, what are your parting words?

I just have so much excitement for for life and for what life holds for everybody. And I think that it's like, I have experienced so many setbacks, so many challenges, so many times when I said, I've heard it can't be done. You can't do this. You're not good enough. I've experienced so many moments where I feel disconnected from the people around me, where I don't feel innovative anymore. I don't feel creative. I don't feel like I can get myself out of this situation where I'm in a dark place, where I just don't know what the future holds, that I'm caught behind fear, behind hesitation. And I think that they're what I've learned in the process of my life and in writing this book and in listening to your podcast and all the tools and the reframes is that we need tools, we need rituals, we need practices, we need each other, we need diversity. We need to be seeing things from different angles and different frames of references. And this has a way of showing us new possibilities, other possibilities, so that we don't end up trapped in this linear way that our minds gravitate to towards this single possibility that we find ourselves trapped within.

I think it just ignites this. It illuminates us when we have tools and when we can actually do these reframes. And so I'm just really excited for everyone out there. I'm excited for you to experience lit and I'm excited to hear what resonates, and I'd love to hear your stories.

Well, Dr. Jeff Karp, thank you for opening up so much possibility and also doing it in a way where you have given us so many simple tools that we can put to use immediately. And just like Dr. Karp said, I can't wait to hear what you do with everything he just taught us and shared with you. And I can't wait to see what happens in your life and the people that you care about in their life when you share this episode with them. And in case no one else tells you, I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. And there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that everything that Dr. Karp has shared with you Every day will help you do that. There is so much more possibility, so many amazing things that you are capable of achieving and experiencing in your life. And every one of the things that he gave you is a simple way to look at things differently and unlock your potential are going to help you take that next step.

All righty, I'll see you in the next episode. And I want to make sure to also say thank you, thank you, thank you for watching all the way to the end. Didn't you love Dr. Karp? I mean, I just have a huge brain crush. Just hanging around it makes me feel like my brain is bigger and so is my heart. And so I love, love, love this. I love spending time with you. One other thing I want to ask you, it is my goal to make sure that 50% of the people that watch the YouTube channel are subscribers. Why? Because it shows me that you really love the work that we're putting out. It's making a difference for you. So if you could hit the subscribe, that's going to help me close the gap. We are 8% away from reaching that goal of 50% of the people that watch our subscribers. All right, good. You don't get what you don't ask for, so I'm asking you. Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting me, and I now know what you're thinking. All right, Mel, this is great. I've subscribed, but what do you want me to do next?

Where should I go next? What's the next best video? It's right here. If you love Dr. Karp, you're going to love this next episode, and I'll be waiting for you in it.