This is the ten percent happier pod. Guess I'm Dyin Harris, hey, hey everybody! we're doing rerun today. This is one of my favorite conversations of twenty twenty one, and in case you missed it. I thought you might want to hear. I have often joke that as a man who were is can we far along on the barbarian spectrum, emotion, have not always been the most appetising subject for conversation. However, as I've learned, the hard way and repeatedly emotions are there whether you want to look at them or not? And if you choose the path of denial or compartmentalization, you inevitably be owned by those neglected and overlooked emotions? But what are emotion, anyway. What's the difference between emotions and feelings, why did we evolved? Have emotions in the first place and what does science save?

how we can manage emotion skilfully rather than being yanked around by them all the time. My guest today in this re run it forefront of understanding all of these questions from a scientific standpoint. She is doctor, LISA Feldman, bear it a university distinguished professor of psychology at north during university, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where my mom used to work shut up to the engage Doktor Barrett has written several, but including how emotions are made the secret life of the brain seven and a half lessons about the brain, and in this conversation we talk about how we can deconstruct that's her term, our own emotions, and we talk about the overlap between her research findings.

And Buddhism. As mentioned. This is a re run. We we first recorded it in March, say may hear some covert references that feel just a tiny bit out of date, but the content itself is as relevant as ever. It is, as we say, in the news business evergreen before we get to Lisa one item of business. If you are a regular listener to this podcast, you may have noticed that we ve had a lot going on over on the ten percent happier app this far, from meditation challenges to the brand new twenty percent happier podcast, There's never been a better time to join our community of Mediterranean on the app to make sure you have a chance to try it out were offering ten percent happier subscriptions a forty percent discount until December. First, we, Do discounts of this size all the time and, of course nothing is permanent, so get this deal before it ends by going to ten percent dotcom slush. Forty, that's temporary

one word all spelled out dot com, slash four zero for forty percent off your subscription, we'll get started with LISA Feldman bear it rested us when it comes to went truly matters at megatheria. It's the power plants and nourishing soil for quality ingredients to help grow a healthier world. they do what matters to them. So you can do what matters to you like being present, saying yes or maybe even taking some you time to listen to your favorite podcast and all making the most of each moment big and small, mega food supplements for what matters. If you're like me, you're feeling really cooped up right now. All you can think about is when I can go on my next vacation. I don't care if it's big or small. I just want to get away when you're right

to travel, you should check out price line. They can save you up to sixty percent off your favorite hotels and they even have exclusive deals on flights and rental cars. Price line makes it super easy to find a great price on your trip. They say: Average Europe is a big deal and that so true, especially right now so visit price line to get a big deal on your next trip Lisa Velvet Barrett they forgot on proceeded, I pleasure. Let's with a little background, I'm curious, how did you get interested in emotions. she's laughin already there are rules were low bad about. How do I get interested and emotions ice I got interested in emotions because it was a perplexing problem. When I was in graduate school, I was doing search and I had my own little replication crisis when I was in greater.

School in that I was attempting to replicate, published research findings which is what you do as a graduate student at first before you conduct your experiments you try to replicate experiments and have already been published peer, reviewed and someone, and I was unable to replicate eight experiments in a row which led me to think that maybe I was trying to have the wrong here. and there wasn't really cut out for science. But when I looked closely at all of the evidence when I just I've heard is that the measures of emotion, work, functioning, they should have been functioning based on. everything that I had read and so more I dug into it. The more I realise there were these really interesting paradoxes in the emotion research. Literature that no one was paying very measured,

and two- and I found it super intriguing, but I thought really optimistically there, I would just point out a couple of months away from my main dissertation topic and kind of solve this emotion in others. motion measurement problem wishes? I was thinking about it and then I would get back to my main topic, a dissertation and then you know fast forward almost thirty years, and here we are so the interested emotion. grow not out of some personal fascination very often say researches me search, it sounds like was quite a technical thing. I M also trained as a therapist and one of the things I am really good at is detecting what people tell themselves, isn't necessarily what the evidence from their own life indicates. So when there's a disconnect between what people leave and what the evidence shows in their own life I'm really always drawn

that as a therapist, I was always drawn to it as a person in my own life I'm drawn to it and as a scientist, undrawn too so really what happened was in the emotion, literature scientists for writing about emotion in a particular way, but then, when you we dug into the data it didn't match, what the site Yes, we're saying- and I I found this to be real Fascinating and also. really like perplexing scientific problem that there were these massive question that were dependent on answer and that other people didn't even seem to notice were questions, and this to me just seem completely fascinating and I just was hooked. What were the questions that people were overlooking? Well, for example, people

any introductory textbook in psychology, or you pick up many many popular books about emotion, many many research papers, and I will tell you that every emotion has its own signature in the body right that anger and fear and sadness, and so on can be distinguished from one another, by just looking at people's heart rate and their damage their sweating, and you know their respiration powders and so on, really that this idea that each emotion category hasn't something imprint comes from William James, the great William James, who is considered one of the founders of american psychology What were you going to read William James? He didn't say that in fact, he said the exact opposite of that I mean it literally the exact opposite. He said there is no physical entity for anger. Anger can be many things that can feel like many things. Your face can do many things. Your heart will do anything. So I mean thing.

but again, when you're angry. How often do you give that stereotypical scowl? That's supposed to be the universal expression of anger. Do you scowl frequently when you're angry I get angry love as one of my big emotional go Jews. I remember from your back and I'm just thank you when you think about when you're angry these sometimes but often I pretended not there and you know just revert to passiveaggressive behaviors. Do you ever scowl when you're not angry? I think my resting faces pretty close to scale. So, yes, okay, so interesting way. The evidence shows that people scowl when their angry about thirty percent of the time this more than chance and we'll get you publication in a really good journal, but what that means is seventy percent of

time. People are not scowling when their angry they're doing something else, that's meaningful with their face, and sometimes that might be smiling sometimes that might be crying or frowning. Sometimes that might be hitting silently and plodding the demise of their enemy and your house rate are your blood pressure, will go up or go down or stay the same in anger depending on what physical action your taking, some of you were looking at, was face in their body and trying to predict whether they were angry or not. You would be wrong. Seventy percent of the time and also people scowl when the not angry. So my point is that nothing what you do in anger is not reliable, but that you have many anchors. You don't just have one there's no entity, they're called anger. You have a hope, anger for you and for me and for everybody else in the western world is a population of variable instances, and you know your brow

this constructing anger, in particular situation, for you to achieve a particular wall and Expression of anger will be tailored to that call. Sometimes is unpleasant. Sometimes it's pleasant, sometimes anger. very high arousal. Sometimes it's not, and so the idea that there is one set of features that defines anger in the face in the body in the brain or would have you is completely a mess. But if you were to read most textbooks until recently were most popular size, boxer really. You would be led to a very different story, and I found that really really interesting and it doesn't really matter whether you're looking for studying the voice of the face of the body or the brain, it's the same story over and over and over again variability as the norm, and that's just in western cultures. That's actually just within a single person. So,

The idea that there are these universal signatures is not the evolutionary story of emotion. There isn't evolutionary service way more interesting and weigh more complicated and weigh more useful. Actually, can you tell us about it, the evolutionary, why do we have emotions I was gonna. Ask my one of my questions was like what our emotions, where whatsoever has been emotions and feelings, and why we have them in the first place, will not thoroughly grain question. So, let's start with feelings, first cause it so much easier for me described. So, let's go all the way back in evolutionary time to the EU to carry in period in the earth history when the earth populated with creatures that had no brains. These are really fascinating creatures, and some of them are still alive today, because their environment, their knees as it were, that's what it's called a nation and ecological niece hasn't changed very much, so they haven't changed very much. and these animals are interesting because.

They can move unsophisticated ways, but they have very few senses, They can't see they have no eyes no ears, no smell very simple touch, basically, if something like a literally touches their skin, their outside of their body, they react to it and they dont have eyes. They have an ice spot for light and dark. That's to regulate their circadian rhythm. and they don't have hearing, but they have one visit Mueller sell that less and keep their bodies operate in the water, for example. But they can move which means they have some kind of internal system that keeps all the parts coordinated so that they can move under their own steam if they want to end what these animals do. Is they kind of plant themselves in the sand, like a living blade of grass and they just color filter food until

food goes away and then they a jack themselves from the sand and the name move themselves random, to another spot where probabilistic leadership more food and then they plant themselves. They are so there like these little worms, essentially the no not exactly worms because they have little Gill slits, but their conall. If worse, feather shaped like worms, but they have these internal coordination systems that helps a move like coordinate the parts of their body, so they can move under their own steam. so when there's a looming darkness that happens really close to them or wins thing comes up, and not just them. That disrupts their internal coordination. So it's like they get a sense of the world for free. It's not a great sense because it doesnt tell them what's happening exactly in the dust tell them what to do about it exactly, but it just tells him something's going on out there that I need to care about, because my internal,

War nation has been disrupted, and that means something outside in the world is happening. So, if anything Lou, the above it like a piece of shell, were like a leaf or another creature. It doesn't really matter the animal will react and move in a particular way like an instinct kind of. So that's what it has okay, but if you fast forward in evolutionary time, you see animals that have developed fairly large bodies and because they have large bodies. Now they have internal systems like a heart and lungs and stuff like that which has to be coordinated with each other and they have, brain now, they also have eyes, and so when they see something at a distance. If it disrupts their internal coordination, they don't know what it is. They just now

important if they ve developed, with called a ladder align system to be able to sense things in the water, because I feel it actually involved in the water as a distant sense, so they can feel vibration and they won't necessarily know what caused the vibration but they'll know o something is disrupting my internal coordination. That means something outside of me is important, is happening and so on and so forth with all these distance sensors. So now their environment has become not just this little shell around their body, but this like very large expanse by time, because they can see at a distance and they can feel some out of touch at a distance and Our ability to here comes from that latter align system, so they can detect vibrations at a desk and so many things at a distance can now disrupt their internal coordination system. So.

What do you feel that, as you feel that, as as affect us feeling when you're internal systems is disrupted, you feel that you feel it as feeling pleasant, feeling unpleasant feeling worked up feeling com, That's what you feel it so when you feel unpleasant. What does it mean? I don't mean something's wrong, but like what could be any number of things really, so it's is really basic feeling that comes from this disruption of or synchrony of this internal set of systems that we have in our body. that have to be controlled. Now, why do we have a brain? You know which I actually found to be really interesting. Question like: why are we even have a brain cause? It's like a really expensive organ. some twenty percent of your metabolic budget. That's the most expensive in that you have down, is your brain: that three pound blob of meat is like super super expense

If so, why do we have it? And the answer is we haven't, because we have all these internal systems that have to be coordinated with each other? So the way I talk about this in my popular writing is to think about your brain is running a buddy for your body, your brain isn't budgeting money, it's budgeting, salt and glucose and water and oxygen, and so on, which are all the nutrients etc wire, to keep you alive and well, and your brain is budgeting for your body kind of like running a supply chain. In a way it has to make sure that, new trains are where they need to be before they need to be there in order for this cells to use them. So you stay alive and well to perform your most important job to pass your genes on to the next generation and make sure that duration lives to reproductive age, so regulating your body, the systems of your body is your brains, most important job and your body is constantly sending

information back to your brain, about how coordinated things are were how cope ascetic things are inside your body and you feel that your brain makes that available to itself as these feelings of feeling pleasant, feeling unpleasant feeling worked up feeling com, These feelings are always with you, their properties of consciousness. There always with you, because your brains always regulating the the sums of your body and the he's always sending sense data back to the brain about its state and you are always in a state of feeling always and sometimes will your brain has to make sense of that of the sense data that give rise to this feeling. So if you have a tag in your chest, you know what is it? Is it anxiety, is it that you eat too much at dinner? Is it the beginnings of a heart attack and what is that tug? Your brain has to make sense of what's going on inside Europe.

in relation to what's going on around you in the world, and sometimes your brain makes sense of that orchestra of sensations as emotions. So let me say that every state is if you just really so that I know that I got it. Feelings are like pretty simple ones way. There, the body early state evolved in a simple way want this. Don't want this safe, unsafe approach, run away or neutral. Emotions are what we evolved to layer on top of that way. more complex reactions to the raw data Felix almost. I might make a couple of a just answer

I would say again the sea from the professor there that's right now, but maybe a man. No, I mean what I would say is that your brain is always running a buddy for your body. So when I say it's running up, you for your body? What I mean by that is, you can think about everything that you do as in terms of deposits and withdraws sleeping is a deposit aiding is a deposit if you're eating helpfully Exercising isn't withdrawal cause you're spending resources, but it's kind of like an investment, because if once you replenish shit, you're actually gonna get something for you. What you ve spent, you know you get a healthier brain and a healthier body. Maybe you keep your memory a little longer, you know working intact, and so you can. about learning something new as also an expense it an investment. It's like a work out for your brain, just like exercises.

You can think about someone giving you a hog that you love as making things slightly cheaper for you to do. You can think about Someone gives you a hungry, you don't love and who you dont want touching you as actually making things slightly more expensive, like you're, paying attacks innocence, and these little taxes, you know, can add up over time to a really big deficit, see you're, always having some state a few in some state of feeling the feeling actually just tells you that you're running a deficit that there's some internal coordination, which is off it, doesn't actually tell what to do about it. It's not tied to action in any particular way No creatures without brains have what we would call instincts fuel responses. The idea humans have these simple institutional reflexes and

on top of that of these more complex emotions and layer. On top of that is rationality or rational thought. Is that also just a mess? The idea that reflexes are these? obligatory things that happened just like you know, see something you're here, something in that triggers this automatic obligatory, stereotyped physical response like he's or flee, or what have you is also not exactly correct reflexes in invertebrate are still very context, driven there still modulated by the context and so what I would say is that what you're brain is really doing is it has to guess at what the sand state a mean like when you hear a loud bang. What is that loud? Bang that loud bang, some slamming the door is that loud bang, some he dropped a box.

Is that loud bang somebody back their car backfired? Could it be a gunshot mean? That's actually reasonable question if you live in the United States were in certain parts of the world so pending on what your brain believes the meaning that it's making out of that loud bang. That will dictate what the brain does. What it plans to do in order to keep you alive and well, that's always true, always true every waking moment of your life. This is true. Let me back up and say where the information come, allow the brain for it to make meaning out of what that sound means. And the answer is it comes here. Your past experience. So your brain is using past experience to guess at what sense data means so that you can act in a way that will keep you safe and

what you experience about the world derives from that action plan and that's true all the time. it's just sometimes whenever your brain is using past experiences of emotion to make that guess, then, when it's doing as constituting an emotion in that moment, which may or may not be appropriate. Well, Propria it may or may not be advantageous. You write so, for example, this is an exemplary is a lot because I think I just one of my favorite examples: That has real meaning. I there's research find it, but there is also a real meaning there. You know when things are uncertain. Or when there are multiple meanings, that your brain could give to something or when you're preparing for a big met

all out way? So you know your brains, preparing you to do something super hard. You have an increasing arousal. There are systems in your body will increase arousal their systems in your brain that will increase arousal you'll feel jittery. How do we usually make sense of that region sense of it. His anxiety, sometimes fear, is not a com. will feeling, but you could make sense of it and other ways when my daughter was twelve years old. She was a tiny little thing, but you something for black belt and karate with this tense degree. Black bell. This guy is seriously powerful, guy and she's testing Amidst all these, like big hulking adolescent boys, who she has a spar with repay- and what does he say

her, he doesn't say calm down little honey. He says, get your butterflies flying in formation and I was like that's brilliant and it turns out there is this whole line of research about people who have difficulty with tests, anxiety who fail not just feel tests, but they feel courses and they can't graduate and that actually a college graduation massively changes your earning potential over your lifetime, so we're talking but hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime. and, if you learn not Do the arousal, because you don't want to do that. You have something hard you have to do. We have to do a test but if you learn to make sense of it differently in

tat of conjuring anxiety, you conjured determination, you can master those tests and you can pass those courses and you can change the trajectory. higher life. Now that may sound like jet. I mind tricks to you. If I wasn't a scientist might sound that way to me, but it isn't and in fact can train your brain to make sense of yours sensations very differently as emotions or sometimes deconstruct them into some. that is not an emotion, but just as those that simple feeling, which is really I mean in a sense what mindfulness meditations attempting to do right, but. In the example I like to give us your audience, like our listeners can't hear me now, but I'll just show you in all awfully they'll be able to, simulated us like if you pick up a glass of water,

Colleagues, I see you look at a glass of water now to you, it looks like an object. A three dimensional object, but let's say you wanted to pay this on a canvas. When I try to pay the sun, and as I would look at this object, and I would try to render this three dimensional object on a two dimensional canvas and it would look like a pretty rendering of a three dimensional object on a two dimensional canvas, but what a professional painter will do and artists will look at this object and deconstructed into pieces of light like others. Why? But there's blue and there's a little green and a little yellow and grow and then what the artist will do as will paint the pieces of late and poof. You have a reasonable. Looking three dimensional object on a two dimensional kind.

Unless you're me, in which case it will still it. But the point is that what you ve done, is you deconstructed the object and you ve constructed it closer to what you might call the stream of experience and my from She is attempting to do something very similar to that. Where you are, attempting to not construct not to grasp at perceptions and construct things out of them, but just to try to experience them in their most basic. Form, and one of the most basic forms is an so it would mean, for example, we not in the morning and feeling like crap immediately trying to make sense of that as like what happened yesterday with your spouse or why gonna happen today or no it could just be. You didn't get enough sleep, it could just be your dehydrated because it's the morning, it could just be that

maybe you know you're not a morning person and it's not your time of the circadian in Heaven feel a lot of energy. It could be that you know, for example, throughout this whole covert mass alot, times he would ask me, I'm feeling- and I would say my body budget is running a deficit today and that's not just simple word play. That's me saying well, I'm kind of feeling like crap today, but I'm not gonna blow this up in making it meaningful psychologically in my life that would lead to me engaging in actions with people. I'm not gonna Take this feeling as a sign that something is wrong with this relationship or something is wrong with not paying that bill or something is wrong with right. I'm just going to say well, I'm running a body budget does that this is really hard time. I'm paying a little extra tax there with me today cause

you know, I'm not feeling quite at my best, and I think this is a very meaningful difference in how to architecture experience. because you're not being asked around by the sensations in your body and adding on top of it. This whole story that can make everything worse yet mounting a different story, the difference is, my brain is running a body budget and there are feeling that come from their body budget and my brain tries to make sense of those as emotions or perceptions or whatever, to guide my action and so the action that is good guide is that I'm gonna go to sleep all earlier tonight. I'm gonna, drink a little more, maybe I might have I'm a little more tea today that I might normally because I need to use that calving to borrow a little energy from tomorrow, as I kind of really needed today. Again some and of internal coordination. That is going on right. I'm running a body budget deficit today, but what I'm not

to do is make sense of it as anger or is fear or his anxiety or a sadness were, as you know, any of the other very easy. Billy and justifiable emotions that would lead to different actions that I dont think are particularly productive in this circumstances. Maybe it is one of those things, maybe who's that You know it isn't. While there is no real, maybe it really here because there is your brain is making it. I said you know so here's the thing when you have the time your chest, sir. They give a tightness in your chest, you're at risk. A heart attack, theirs field there. There ok, Could you really have a heart and your are really does work in a particular way? Ok, but when you feel it tightness in your chest and that tightness is caused by anxiety,

I would say it's a sensation that you ve made meaningful as anxiety. The titans actually like with your brain, is making sense of something. It's not just. Always at the sensation is there and then you make sense of it like based on it's going on around you in the world right now and what the state of your body is right now your brain basically uses past experience to make again so what's gonna happen next and what is that gas that gas first? Is it attempts to change your physical state and preparing for an action and that actually, where your sperience comes from being with there's a rustling in the grass and based on past experience, my brain predicts that it will be a snake. The first thing that my brain is doing is changing my physical stay, its actual changing the state of my body, so I will start to fear, All arousal, anxious about sort of

like. I worked up the sort of feeling, and is preparing me to run, and that prepares me to potentially see a snake. These predictions are actually the brain changing however, if its own firing its changing its own neurons, basically firing. So when, piety is causing in scarecrows, causing you to have a tight chest, there's no like they're. There thought, like anxiety, lives in your body somewhere in your brain, is perceiving it accurately or inaccurately. It's that your brain is responding to the world and the body as it is to make a prediction about. What's going to happen next, those predictions are actual changes that your brain starts to execute, and so the tightness in your chest can be caused by your heart, but it can also caused by your brain preparing you to feel anxiety. And there's no real anxiety anywhere, except the fact that your brain makes it like

You go to the jam. You work out. Do you sweat? Yes, yeah? Do you feel that wetness? Is it real to you that work here sure of course right. But you have any witness answers in your whole body or in your skin. So how are you that you feel wet with sweat where nothing in your skin gives you the feeling of wetness, and the answer is because your brain constructs it because your brain takes temperature information. Cuz there are temperature, sensors and your brain takes touch sensation, cuz they're touch sensors and it combines them to completely construct and experience of what news That you take as normal and that's what your brain is doing when you feelings I or or sadness or anything. So yet, I would say your brain is constructing experience for you that you take us completely normal part of your life in Europe

completely unaware that your brain is doing out, but it is like your brain. Does it make itself aware that its doing? But it is an that's the same thing with creating emotion. It's exactly the same thing. Much more. My conversation with LISA Feldman Bear after this. What we eat can have a big impact on we feel that it can feel like a lot of work and be fairly expensive to eat. Healthy misfits market works directly with farmers to give there wide variety of fresh organic produce and high quality groceries at a deep discount up to forty percent off grocery store prices and because misfits Mark rescues, producing groceries that normally would have gone to waste. You can feel good about helping reduce food waste, while saving time and money misfits market will give you fifteen bucks after first order. All you need to do

is used our promo code, go to misfits market dot com and use happier for fifteen dollars off your first order. Pets promo code happier for fifteen dollars of your first porter. This offer is valid for first time, customers until January thirtieth, two thousand twenty two may not be combined with other offers. Misfits market is not available in all fifty states for more info visit. Misfits market dotcom Hi, my name is rough farmer therapies and I am at ten percent happy. You, sir, and I was a guess on the twenty percent happier protest. I'm excited to listen to twenty percent happier. Beak is listening to all people work through these with coach will help me normalize. My own struggles on my own difficulties with my meditation journey. So when I first met Matthew was exciting. He did it ray job making space I felt like I could be, I kept

to him and he actually coming moved a little intimidation journey, With the migration issue was exciting and it was empowering, I ask all my clients to download the ten percent happier I would definitely recommend the twenty percent happier broadcast to all my clients and you can find it on the temperate and happier. Are you saying that weaken choose to tell ourselves a different story, so we may feel feelings again. These are physical, sensations and, instead of for me

common to walk around with antagonism, my chest often produced while the story, I told myself is often because I mean I'm writing a book, and that feels anxiety producing to me, but I could choose, tells us off in a completely different story. Is that where you're taking this here I mean choose, is. hard word here, because I making it sound like oh so much simpler than it actually really is in real life. But you. however, will have as much control over this the stories that your brain tells itself, as you would like but you definitely have more control than you think that you do. The control, though, doesn't really happen so easily in the moment. You have, really, I think stand the horizon of control is what I would say so, for example, if you feel, worked up. You can try the hard to just talk to yourself differently and com of down and that won't work. As you know, really, you know

do, we actually you're affect them mood or these simple feelings that come from body budgeting is actually really hard to do, if not impossible to do, but it's not easy, I mean even just deep breathing unless you ve practice at it? Deep breathing isn't going to immediately call me down, and it sometimes will. But it's really you have to do it for a long time for that effect to a be able to occur, but you can definitely make the nations, though simple feelings give them a different meaning if you try to do it in the moment as its occurring. It's gonna be really hard for you, because you have to give a lot of effort to it. It costs something metabolic way to do it and you might not have those resources available, but if you practice doing it when you're not in those moments- and you practice. It's like any skill, you practice it and you get automatic at it like driving. You know at first when you,

DR. It's really hard and you have to give it all your attention in its metabolic expensive, because you're doing something new and its metabolic costly, but eventually we practice enough a pretty automatic skill and then you won't even to really think about it and it doesnt become very causing all cause. Your brain is predicting really really fluidly and really really easily. You know, and so it's kind of like that it becomes easier to do because it becomes automatic, and that means your brain is predicting easier. Constructing the of its regulating the body just much more easily, it just takes in practice. How do we book? As you know, it sounds like a madman. Imagine you have no small amount of practice here you talked of before about how occasionally your asked, how you doing uncovered ties, and instead of telling you of a big story about. or even repeating story allowed about sadness, anxiety, whatever you re frame it as the body running of the deficit. How is that a scale that we could develop? Well,

there's really really nice research to show that the more flax, ability you have to meaning of your sensations and multiple ways the more resilient you are, and so the waving you develop. This skill is that you practice making meaning of your sensations in different ways. So, for example, I have How are things I do in the morning every morning you know I wake up. I tell myself, I'm not gonna go my computer and read my email and then go to my computer, and I read my email and then I tell myself I'm good. go downstairs and have a protein shaking get ready for my work out, which do every morning, and so I go downstairs, I have my protein shake, I tell myself, I'm not going to get engrossed in reading and damn just going to scan. You know the front page while I drink my drink and, of course that never happened like everyday. You know and

as I am reading the newspaper, I would remind myself in, I would say, you're drinking something and if you are stressed within two hours of eating a meal. It's like adding a hundred four calories tier MIA, because, now your brain, more direct, your body to metabolize that food in a less efficient way. So it's like an equivalent of adding hundred four formalities, which I think I talk about this in seven and a half. it is about the brain, but does why these things? I find like really interesting as a scientist and saw a horrifying as a person right, and so I became myself don't read the newspaper while you're drinking like, and so those moments thorough and I have increase arousal and that's a great, community to practice deconstruction right. There. and so I would as go so. What does it look like when you're doing deconstruction? I might try to cultivate curiosity instead, so I might attempt to

take the sensations and conjure curiosity and instead of being infuriated by thing that happened or somebody you did something or didn't do something. I might be curious and, like honestly, like us, anticlea, try to be curious, were sometimes I might conjure determination to see what I can do to change things. And sometimes you know The only thing I could come up with was to beg my neighbour a loaf of bread, but one small act of kindness does a little to change the world and make it a little bit better rights? It was only that that was all I could muster that day. You know. One thing I often tell people is here's a practice that I still do. I still do this every day, but now I'm inherently a sceptical person. That's just me,

so there was this emerging literature you now on gratitude are, and how important it is in your psychological life. How benefit That is an effect. One of my colleagues actually is very well not me. You he's one of the people whose done this very excellent research on gratitude, but I am have, and so I'm like there's no way that all and gratitude can have that kind of an effect in your life and sorry just like. No, I just don't believe it. I just don't believe it, and so I don't you don't, but I'm reading the research and I'm like as a researcher Who asked me in general, I would say I will we believe the data in well designed experiment over my own experience, because they periods of one person is not really diagnostic, so you know So I'm reading this like incredibly well designed research funding, I don't believe you were once totally doesn't match my experience like occupied, so alright, I'm gonna try

I'm going to try every day ground curious easy, though hard These are for me anyway, so either every day for five minutes, I am going to practise feeling. Are I mean a practice feeling like us back for five minutes because of Europe's back then Europe problems are speck and then the burden on your body budget just goes right down right. So I made a practice this and I did- and I still practice it. There are some easy ones right like when I would drive to work every day along the mass pike. There was a billboard I too, but this in my other book how motions are made there was a billboard. This orderly. horrible rang it, and baby like you just want to eat this baby up. This baby is adorable actually

name for that. Emotion from the Philippines is called giggle, which is that you know you just want to squeeze something so cute, so that was easy to make are at every day I didn't anticipate was that my moments of all would expand into the yunkers. I could start simulating or pay directing, which is really like visualizing in your head, the image of that infant, for I even got to it, because I knew it was coming up because I could put my brain could predict because I drive on this road. All the time and so my moment of r word unites, be starting to smile like well in advance of reaching this So that's easy, but ones like you only on the sidewalk and you don't know We haven't you, but the Tipp of your shoe kind of catches the sidewalk and then you kind of look forward a little bit new serve you don't exactly trip. Is you know you, like kind of lose your smooth gate and trial of cool and try to look like a sign big deal with? almost like tripped over your own feet right and

Look down and then what do you see? You see this? ugly learn gnarly little we'd popping out of it. Back in the sidewalk the aegis tripped on, and you make a moment of. Ah, you can look at that we'd and you can see it is a thing of beauty of grandeur, of the breathtaking power of nature that will not be constrained by human attempts to constrain it to control it. and even now when I talk to you once I'm getting like little shivers, I know this might sound like psychological mumbo jumbo, but it's not it's just. You have to really practice that you have to take it seriously. Is there any danger that in the process of deconstruction you could Ethel or stuff or combined?

mental lies in a way that would be deleterious your psychological help out. For sure I mean there is a whole diagnostic section of. diagnostic and statistical manual, their dsm that we used to diagnose mental disorders. Well, we, but I mean I don't do that anymore, but you know the people used to diagnose mental disorders. That's called sometimes Asian, which means not acknowledging, may ass active will they would be called emotional, but that's cause they're, mistaking emotion in Africa which people are Do they not acknowledging the effective signal and some things and only experiencing them is physical symptoms and that's on healthy. So if I was, let's say, hypothetically having difficulty with my boss and I'm constantly experiencing, this is a stomach ache and nothing else that

not useful, either, because while it is true that you are experiencing a stomach ache that some egg, isn't telling you what to do differently, if not helping you solve the problem and it might be actually exacerbating the problem that you're not making a fuller, psychological meaning of it. So don't think that there is a right or wrong answer here. I dont think that you always make a mental meaning out of your physical sensations, and I don't think that you should always not. I think it really depends on. You have to understand that your book, and is using knowledge from the past to pray check your immediate future, which becomes your present when it's doing that. It's not just constructing your experience. It's also guiding your actions its planning your actions and

learning how to use that knowledge is a skill. It's a skill, like any other scale, that you can build an want to build that scale so that your brain does it pretty automatically, but that new brain of lots of options to choose from cause that gives you flags quality and that allows you to be resilient, and sometimes it's better have your actions guided by the physical sensation of a stomach ache, and sometimes it's better to the meaning, more productive for you for your body budget to make sense of the sensations as anger or as fear or as guilt or hunger sounds like art and science. You know it's like there's a lot of science here, but the application of the skill involve some. You know it's not black or white, you figure out for herself went to plan, went to listen to your feelings, Yeah I mean I was still see the science. I guess I would say it's like personalized metal

and really audit, as it's like there one anger? There's a population of anger is like, for example, if I, if I step, we published a study like those recently, if I instrument you out and like I measured all kinds of physical signals on you, your heart ray you're blood pressure year, respiratory rate and depth and maybe you're the electrical. It's called skin conduct ends, which is just like how much really measure how much you're sweating, which is a measure of your sympathetic, nervous system activity in the same measure your facial movements, I'm just measuring all kinds of things about. You measuring them you're out and about your day and K. If you're play changes and you aren't moving. That means something psychological is just happened like something in your brain has just shifted what is predicting, and at that moment you hear a little signal. You know. You're cute and you're asked to write you're a fact and then label your experience. What do you feeling right now, unless I just did this across like

weeks hypothetically cause, that's what we did. We did for two weeks with people, and sometimes those labels would be anger, and sometimes they be fear, and sometimes they be sadness and sometimes they be gratitude and sometimes they be happiness and sometimes to beat whatever effect. And if you just look at one person and you just look at their physiology, you can see that The physiology there are reliable patterns there, your brain is returning your body to particular patterns of physiology over and over again throughout all of these days weeks. Whatever. and the labels that you give have a many too many correspondence with the patterns, meaning sometimes when you're angry you're in one pattern, and sometimes when you're angry EU bodies and another pattern, and sometimes when you're angry bodies in the third pattern, Pattern can be a court, so it with more than one label. So what does that mean? What that means is that what's happening is that

your brain is making sense of that pattern as a particular emotion. and sometimes that that pattern can have Ben and your brain will make sense of it as a different emotion and that sense making when you know in airports like what does it mean to make sense of it means its preparing your actions in a particular way that your brain is learned in the pass occurred in the last, and that learning can be that you yourself experienced it or you watch the movie, or you heard someone tell you about it or you learned about it in a book. You might be thinking yourself. Well, it's my brain, does, is automatically doesn't always do it really productively, and that's because well Your brain is usually juggling multiple goals and so may not be protected for one thing, but it's definitely gonna be proactive for something else. Your brain in doesn't spend metabolic resources. Lake prison,

Firstly, the things that we sometimes label as lake, not rational or unproductive what that means that there are some other set of prediction, some other goal that your brain is attempting to optimize. and you just have to figure out what that is, if the. If that's, what you want to change, much more money rotation with LISA Feldman Bear after this with master class, you can learn from the world's best minds anytime anywhere and at your own pace, learned the order filmmaking with spike league for how to bring your create a vision to life with ease around. try songwriting with Alisha Keys and cooking with Gordon Ramsay, the past, melodies are endless with our a hundred war class instructors ready to teach you that thing you ve always wanted to do is closer than you think this holiday, one annual membership and get one free go to master class dot com, slash class fifteen. Today, that's master class dot com, slash class fifteen term supply when

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genes. Are this story? We tell our set the sense we make of this sensations. We are so let me just say that scientists own agree on how to define emotion, okay, so one site it will tell you and emotion is an action like when a scientist well there is a circuit in your brain for fear. The translation is there's a circuit in your brain. for freezing behaviour and the scientists has determined, as stipulated. Basically that freezing behaviour is fear. They have defined emotion as a specific action K. There are other people who define mode hence as feelings the feeling of terror, the feeling of delay, the feeling of the feeling of anguish? That's that's the emotions. But you ve said her feelings: were physical sensation started up in well

talking about aspect. I'm talking about simple feelings of feeling, pleasant, feeling, unpleasant feeling worked up. Feeling: com like tranquil quiet. Your body feels quiet, your body worked up your mind feels jangling your mind feels like you can focus and pay attention I'm saying those simple feelings, and I think every feeling I'm saying those feelings are very closely connected to your brains, modeling, the sensory state of your body. Your brain is making predict friends about what's going on in your body, your body is sending sense data back to your brain. It does a calculus that creates those feelings that these simple feelings, ass factor, move in the same way that your brain does a simple calculus, or maybe not so simple calculus to create flavour or to create a feeling of wet now,

right. It's creating a feeling that it doesn't have a sensor for you don't have a sensor for feeling, unpleasant feeling uncomfortable, there's no sensor for anywhere there's a circuit for that anywhere either your brains, constructing it out of a company vision of neurons firing in a particular pattern. So that's what I'm saying you know. when you see read your experiencing red, that's a feeling of redness, it's not like when you hear allowed sound you're experiencing the loudness of it you're feeling it I mean so experience and feeling in general are words that are used interchangeably and what I mean by a feeling. Is these simple feelings feeling pleasant, unpleasant or feel uncomfortable terrible feeling we worked up in jangling feeling he tranquil and quiet. They are simple feelings that come from

your brains, modeling, the state of your body, the conditions of your body. There's a whole drama going on inside your body that you hopefully are unaware of. If you're aware that I feel really bad for you, because something's wrong and you're really uncomfortable, but most the time, we're not really aware of all the Michigan going inside our bodies instead, whatever it has provided us with his brain that will make a feeling of feeling pleasanter unpleasant or using barometer for your body budget, like how is your body by doing ok in the red, you know, that's what I'm telling you basically and not much more So then, what our emotions felon oceans are, when your brain

tempting to make sense of that. What is it doing its using past experience to predict what to do next and predict what you'll see next and what you will hear next and what you will smell next and all of that and that whole show Bang is an emotion, the whole narrative Whole thing is the emotion, so is it a preparation for acting in a particular way? Yes, it is, but that doesn't mean that. fear is always preparing. IRAN or freeze, because sometimes fear, prepares you to approach. Something sometimes fear leads you to But what I'm trying to say is that war, Calling it an emotion calling it an emotion, because the information, the brain, is using the past experiences using our past experience. Instead of emotion, theirs, nothing, that's different about the cost.

fraction of an emotional event in your life than there is about an event of belief or an event of thought or an event of rationality or an event of perception? Let's imagine, I'm in my car I'm driving a work. I have passenger beside me and added peripheral, peripheral vision am unaware unaware, but my crucial vision. I can see a car about to drive into my late in coming off, just initially, my brain- is basically detecting the most the simplest slight change. In my personal vision, it's making a set of predictions about what's gonna happen. Next, what's gonna happen next and its predicting dean predicting, and so by the time I actually see that car consciously I already have a flush of adrenalin already, because my brain send it in preparation and actually prepared me to see

that car cutting into my lane- and I respond what is that person has? doing that right and as if the is it in the person greatest. a property like so my negative de there is like a property that persons now? Are you insane? What are you experiencing and I'd be like I'm experiencing, that person is in and an onlooker might say: no, no, angry there ain't there, that's anger! Well, who's right is that of perception of a person, or is that anger and answer is completely scientifically meaningless question because its both because an event has a bunch of features. One of the features is this: seeing a car cut me off. That feature is also constructed by my brain

but it's close to the sense data that are coming in from my retina. So we call it a property of the world, but really my brain constructed it. You see in your brain, you don't see in your eyes. my brain is also constructing the experience of my sweaty armpits and that moment, because I don't have any sensors it from, this on my body in like anybody else right. So my brain constructing that feature. So my brain constructing the feature of unpaid, feeling and my my brains constructing all of these features, and so that in anger up instance, sure yeah. You could say that the word anger might come to mind in mere in you, and so anger could be a feature of that event, and is it a perception of a person absolutely at two percent? There is also those features mean. Basically it's like a signal ground problem like a signal for ground background problem Basically, you know your brain is creating a set of features in that instance, and people who study, emotion,

the call, an emotion and people who study memory or call that memory and people who study perception they weren't collar perception, but it's all those things, and what it is for you, as whichever features in the focus of your attention, so labels, the country When you're trying to apply them to dynamic, multivariate processing you know, an engineer could not have said it better than you just did. I was looking for a better great. That's all I'm doing No, I would say you're totally up die actually gets you like, I would say Actually I was in a year, but then you can change the meaning. You can ask yourself consciously deliberately if you must but but if you ve done it enough in my automatically happen that your brain is predicting something different now because you practised you might say, maybe that person has to get there sit kid to a hospital or maybe,

person has to be somewhere really importantly, to help somebody else, or maybe that person just didn't have enough coffee this morning and just didn't see you any of those things could be true if your brain is prepared itself With enough variation and experience you have options to feel different, and eventually it will affect your ass back first, it might just affect the story that you tell and whether the effect is prolonged by the actions that you take, but eventually it might actually affect the ethic, because you are always cultivating Your past, as a means of predicting who you will be in the future. And I am saying that not as somebody who believes in mystical things, I'm saying this to you as a scientist who studies how the brain works.

and, as I understand it, while you're not a practising Buddhist, you ve done quite a lot of work with Buddhists. and there seems to be quite a lot of overlap between your research findings and twenty six hundred years of contemplative practice and thought. Yes, I will say that I am I'm a very big fan of philosophy in general, whether it's western philosophy or contemplatively, Lhasa fee. I think a philosophy is tools for living and to some extent I also think of science. This way as well and I've been very fortunate have conversations with people who are very learned, scholars and contemplative traditions, including, done, who actually works with Rich Davidson at the universe. If it was content- and one of my former post docs, actually works with them as well, and so what I ve learned through talking varies people

Including John is that there is an obvious karmic tradition, the DARPA tradition in Buddhism. That is very consistent with much of what my scientific work aligns with this Health is a fiction and that these fictions can interfere with your ability to experience the world authentic. We and I am that the world is made of dogmas. That experience, I should say, is made of darkness, but this is where things get a little tricky, causing the army doormat tradition. There are dogmas, fur pleasantness, unpleasantness her arousal, like surveillance and arousal. These sums Nina properties of simple feeling. I'm talking about, but there are also dogmas, anger and fear. And so on, and so that's where we diverge, I think because I also think of these things is constructed their constructed with the knowledge that you have from your past and we haven't talked at all,

concepts. But what I understand the brain to be doing when it's making a prediction is to generating an ad hoc concept basically of the past, and I can unpack that if we had more time, but what I will say is that interesting Lee in Buddhist Philosophy, There is also a revisionist version of that philosophy, which I think the key figure is Don Quixote, who, I think lived in there, I think its second century or seventh century something after the Buddha who came along, is it now. These documents are not actual essences of true experience there just constructed by the human mind. You know with human concepts, and I was like that's all. I can say that what we are driving out with the science that we do so in every western science, in physics and chemistry, in biology and hopefully in Sunday in psychology,

see science moving from this very essential list. View of the world to this more construction is a relational view right. So that's what Quantum Mechanics says. It's not saying that electrons don't exist, It saying, while this energy change, that we measure in the way that we measure it you know we can discuss, I've is an electron weddings. This is always in relation to whatever else is going on and that's very much a construction is view the brain of the mind, and it turns out that you know you see this kind of trajectory in all of these western sciences and then you see the same trajectory in both his philosophy, which is, I think, we call right, so you go from the army Dharuma where, yes, sure the self is constructed, but it still essentially in assuming that the dogmas asked incense and our real in nature, and then you

from that to you know, dharmu cure to use as now. Even these things that we think of his essence is not there actually constructed to you this really much more completely relational view of meaning and relational view of meaning doesn't mean like what postmodern you know like a series of Postmodernism views right, it's not like nothing is real and there's no meaning in anything. It's that everything meaningful in relation to something else and alive that meaning which is real, comes from humans, who impose that meaning together you know we impose meaning we impose functions on things that, by virtue of their physical nature, don't have that function, but we impose that function collectively and then proof they have. That function like little pieces they perceive as value as key carrying value for money, because we all agree that those little pieces of paper can be for material goods. And then, when someone decides, I can't anymore

then they dont have value anymore. You know I like that's what caused the mortgage crash rate in two thousand eight, so much of what we do work that way for him. when's and what I would say is there's no physical change in your body that is uniquely were distinctly meaningful as an emotion, unless you make it that way, and why would you make it that way, because somebody taught you that that's the meaning that you should make and that other we'll make that meaning to suggest in the same way that we impose a function on piece of paper and then prove this particular piece of paper? Have value is money we impose meaning on the rays of an eyebrow or the curl of a lap or the you know, beat of heart and and then

they haven't? They have real meaning, as that, maybe I close with one my favorite codes that comes to mind. Sometimes I'm having a discussion like this, I firmly set before the purchaser policies guaranteeing, in other words, real. There is a great Buddhist master said to one of the students once It's not that you're, not real you're, just not really real, and mean so yes, so things are coming monies real. that really real still on some level paper and Just depends on what angle you're looking at it for sure pressure So what is your name and address? protection, and so, as yeah exactly survival ray. I would yeah. I think the way I would say it is your brain constructs everything you experience. So when you experience redness, like you know apple is read. You know your brain is constructing that experience of redness. It's not in your retina,

even the coins in your retina. I have two three different kinds of concept to work together in order to send a signal. to the brain that will allow you to see red. It's not even a single code is like always a cooperation of things. It's always a powder, and so your brain is constructing the feature of redness its computing. That feature for you to experience now that feature tends to be really close to what in the world, which is a wavelength of light at six hundred nanometers? Then your brain also can construct features that are not so close to the world like wetness right in the sense that there is something wetness, the world, but your brain isn't sensing those sense data of what your brains using other San stated, a color hunger or put together a feature like wetness that you experience. So it's a little more distant from the actual whirl, and then there are some features that we just make up. We just make em,

but if we agree on them, then we can in certain cases, make them real, sir. You and I can agree that we can walk through walls, but that actually doesn't mean that it can happen right. We can't make that happen. We can agree with each other that we can eat glass as food, but that doesn't mean that we can write. I mean it doesn't change the physical reality, constrains the meaning making right. We could agree that cover is not incredibly contagious. virus and that way have to wear masks, but a virus really doesn't care what we think all it cares about. If you can say who cares about anything is that we have a nice wet set of lungs, but there are things We can do and say you know what this air space is air. This empty air between two buildings, we're gonna, call that air rights and I'm gonna sell it to you and then, if you give me, money

you can build anything. You want there and then proof, I agree, and we can is one made up thing called money to get another. made up thing called air rights that we can build something on and make it real. So all of this is what we call so in reality, it is a kind of reality and it has a very direct relationship, often to physical reality. There's so much more to say about this, we really have to wrap up. social reality is constrained by physical reality, but it can also influence physical reality and it does so all the time and does so when you make a stomach ache into an emotion, because that dictates what you do axed and that will influence not only your own body budget and whether or not your paying a little tax that will leave you to be vulnerable to a matter like illness in ten or twenty years from now, but it all influences how other people treat you in

moment, which then could set you on a very different trajectory So how do you make? Meaning of things is not just like. I said before: it's not well. If it isn't. Maybe like I'm John, trick in the sense that it actually is real implications. It's not just a game. This has been delightful and so interesting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you really brush. It yeah my pleasure. My pleasure, thanks again to LISA, as I said, That was one of my favorite conversations. At a year they show is made by Samuel Johns Gabrielle Sacrament, Dj Cashmere, Justine Davy came by Coma. Maria were tell and Jan Point out, with audio engineering from the good folks at ultra violet. Audio was you on Friday for a bonus from meditation teacher named Joseph Goldstein, and it's all about how not to be owned by Europe. ocean. So that's coming up on Friday.