Ep 63 TJ Power | Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin & Endorphins | The Self Development Podcast

People might be sitting there really thinking like I'm really pissed off about this situation with my girlfriend or work or whatever it may be and not realize that it's largely just because the body is out of balance those thoughts aren't actually that truthful [Music] hi I'm the self-development coach Johnny Lawrence and welcome to the self-development podcast today is set to Be a fun episode no pressure TJ but on this episode I'm excited to be speaking with TJ power TJ is a neuroscientist International Neuroscience speaker an online mental health content creator who delivers Mental Health Training

to over 10 000 people and is the co-founder of neurofi he delivers highly engaging gamified Mental Health Training experiences and has built a new formula for mental health called dos that's d-o-s-e which stands for dopamine Oxytocin serotonin and endorphins the four main mental health brain chemicals and teaches employees and students to truly understand their mental health TJ's Instagram has almost 80 000 followers and he provides Neuroscience based mental health guidance every single day TJ how are you mate I'm good Johnny thank you for having me here I'm excited for this conversation yeah so am I

so am I just like I said to you just before you hit record I just Love your passion um and how you explain things and how you also just take like real life scenarios like a hangover like something that everybody encounters at some point um and you you try and sort of rationalize it in a way and when I say that I mean in Solutions you know like don't just sit there and give in to it like here's some stuff that you can do to feel better and I think that's really the one of the

things that really made Me want to reach out to is that that's what you're all about like how to make yourself feel better because there's so much science out there there's so much stuff that's really complicated and difficult to understand and you have a way of just bringing it down to sort of plain talk and saying right this is what you should do and it works truth it actually works that's cool to hear man yeah that is definitely what I may mean to do like I have a very realistic Perspective on Mental Health I know

everyone loves all these things like booze and scrolling social media and all these different things and I definitely believe there's a way to navigate the modern world and have all these fun things in our life but also feel good in our heads and I think that the sciencey Neuroscience staff can provide a good framework to do that yeah that's a really see just like that it's a lovely way of explaining it you're right you Know people shouldn't the answer's not always super super restrictive stuff is it sometimes it's about trying to find that I prefer

the word harmony to balance um I like the word harmony because it suggests that it's it's it's it's more changeable you know where it goes up and down yeah that's right and that's it that's the thing isn't it like we can get up with the best intentions in the morning but sometimes we don't feel like Doing the things we want to do um sometimes we don't necessarily feel that motivation sometimes we need to be a bit harder on ourselves and use discipline but all of that's okay it doesn't have to be like so like quite

often I've found with clients is that their approach to making themselves feel motivated is really quite horrible like just be horrible to myself like make myself do stuff and be be to myself so yeah I'm not overly keen on that Approach but I mean but I guess that might not come across you yet I mean could you tell people a little bit about yourself and your journey so far yes so I'm 25 and I work in this Neuroscience space I run this company called neurify I always was pretty interested in Psychology I played a lot

of golf as a kid golf was my original dream was becoming a professional golfer and that kind of from a really young age Like eight to ten years old I was having sports psychology training and stuff like that so super young I was learning about how our brains worked and then I actually discovered the world of having fun and girls and alcohol and decided golf wasn't necessarily the thing I wanted to pursue when I was 14 15. um which is funny and I went deeper into this psychology topic I had some pretty challenging life experiences

between like 16 and 20 and lost a lot of family Members that were close to me and stuff like that and it made me kind of mature in my thinking a bit dove into psychology at University got off the chance to lecture when I was at University and then yeah when covered began and I kind of thought maybe I could train companies in schools and it all kicked off from there wow wow that's that's quite the Deep dive for that I mean there's so much there isn't it I mean so you went from Golf yeah

I started with the golf to neuroscience good job that is it's quite a job is there any any bits of information in between them I think I was yeah I had this like psychology training in golf because golf if you've ever played it is like an absolute nightmare in your brain basically it's a very like mental game instead of like Physical like lots of the other sports and had the training and then during my like school years I never really connected with school education that much I found it quite boring and it just didn't really

like hit the money for me I managed to get through all the school education I enjoyed social aspects of school and then when I was going to college and uh When I was like 16 I was going to pick my a levels and for the first time I could study psychology I picked that because I thought oh maybe learning about people will be interesting and then that was the first time in my life I thought wow this is really really cool started psychology and then in that journey of studying discovered things like dopamine and thought

wow this is so cool this is such a clear reason as to why lots of us feel [ __ ] in our heads at Times and all that sort of stuff and yeah it kind of went golf psychology then neuroscience so how do you think if you don't mind me asking and you obviously don't have to go into details but how how do you feel that the the the unpleasant experiences you experienced during that time became that Catalyst for pursuing psychology what do you think changed for you in in that in that time span yeah

that's a good question so We just for a bit of context it was basically just some family members some who have been were quite young and there was like cancer and stuff like that so young people passed away and it's a while ago now and I've done all the processing on these kind of things but I'm the youngest of this big family we've got like 17 cousins loads of aunties and uncles and stuff I've got like a big family and I'm the youngest of the whole system and during the Experience of these losses I found

I naturally gravitated towards being quite good at the conversations at how we were all processing it and stuff like that and when I've discovered that I like I could do those conversations and I was a value to the family I thought maybe this psychology guidance stuff is something that I'm just naturally in tune with and yeah that made me want to study it harder and I found I was kind of helping some of my friends out and stuff like That with how they were feeling and then it was just one of those things where I

thought oh maybe this is just something I'm good at effectively and that's what made me want to dive into it deeper yeah I mean that's interesting because it's it's it takes a certain type of person to be able to sit in those very uncomfortable spaces where you're talking about difficult emotions that involve conflict that involve contradiction and paradoxes like you Know sometimes we can experience two very powerful emotions that are opposing at the same time and as humans we want to make sense of that but sometimes there isn't any sense to be made sometimes it's

just a feeling and I think and I think that you know for you to be I mean what was your age then uh so I was like 16. wow yes 16 and then between that sort of 16 and 20 years old that was like a intense period for like our family and Yeah definitely just like matured my brain quite a lot um put me on like a bit of a different part like where all my friends are at with like their things and whenever you go through like grief and loss in your life like it

does move your emotionally forward in a way and then yeah it was yeah a powerful time and I'm like grateful for the experience to be honest it's really connected us all together and stuff yeah that I mean That's that's some very intense post-traumatic growth isn't it and I mean it sounds to me like that your emotional maturity just like grew like rapidly in that in that moment which I think probably is what adds your to your passion of your knowledge around neuroscience um it sounds like I mean it might be wrong but no it does

it does if you like I rediscovered what it was like to feel really [ __ ] and then I thought I really Want to feel really good and in that process of also going through this experience I really dived into the party lifestyle I'm someone that is party oriented very extroverted love social environments and I also discovered how fun the party lifestyle can be but then also the challenges the party lifestyle can bring as well the consequences and it was pretty fun discovering both of the sides but uh yeah and that also Gave me good

insight into the brain into like what makes me feel good and what makes me not feel good and all that sort of stuff and simultaneously studying Neuroscience it was just pretty interesting to be honest yeah and I think sometimes when people are not in a good place emotionally um yeah the one thing that kind of has to be there in order for you to move forward is you have to want to you know and and sometimes that's really Hard you know because we have this natural tendency to gravitate away from the things that we kind

of know will make us feel better and gravitate towards the things that give us that short return but I often have a longer consequence you know like like getting drunk uh because that feels like a great idea at the time and then you spend two or three days um feeling a bit rubbish and and usually a little bit worse than you did before so I think you know we'll Explore that a bit later I think that the need to the sort of requirement for having to want to feel better because I think sometimes that's what's

lacking for people is that they want to imprison well they want to in principle don't they they obviously want to feel better no one particularly is is cultivating feeling bad but I think sometimes that that need that want to feel better that okay I'm willing to do what it takes now that even if I don't feel like it even If I wake up and everything just feels rubbish and I'm feeling rubbish and I just want to stay in bed I'm not going to because that's that as as simple and as straightforward as that advice is

and it would work it's really hard to do in that moment it's really difficult to really drag yourself up and out you know and that's why I admire you because some of the stuff that you tackle around like recently I've seen a lot more about like porn addiction and and alcohol and these Are things that like you know what I admire about that is these are areas of life that we know happen with everybody literally everybody but nobody talks about it no one talks about it you know but it's happening in the background and and

that really is Shane's power isn't it it's like right we're not going to talk about it which means it will always be here 100 100 and like when I when I was going through the price of do I start talking about these topics it's Like yeah effectively I concluded I'm just going to take one for the team because these need to be talked about like there is a very clear reason as to why a lot of people feel [ __ ] in their heads things like booze and porn they are core factors and they've got

to be talked about and it's interesting in a response like especially with the porn one like I don't want to be a guy that's talking on the internet about porn but I know it Needs to be talked about yeah and just the quantity of men dming saying like as a result of that video I just tried I just didn't watch porn for like I always say in the video like see if you cannot watch it for a week and they'll message me being like I'm so much more motivated and driven I had no idea that

perform was having any impact on me at all it was just like a fun thing I'd do at night and yeah these factors are significant so when I see that I think That's kind of reinforcement to just keep making it because if it's helping people and that is why I admire and respect you because you're right you did take one for the team I'm sure you know I don't know but it's possible you've got some probably less nice messages no and that's and that's that's difficult because you are taking a risk you know but one

of the things I found interesting about that was that um how porn which obviously essentially You're you're watching sex can can actually affect your libido and I was like wow like in a negative way I was just like that that kind of in a weird way does it make sense but actually when you think about it does you know so I think people really mistake like uh what would be the right wording like sex drive for just like feeling horny and it's like people you might think I've got really high sexual drive because I love

watching porn every day And I get really stimulated when I watch porn but then Sex Drive is more how much actual sex you're having with people and there's a lot of guys they're all like one person not necessarily people but um there's a lot of guys that think I've got really high sexual jobs I watch porn every day but then it's like how how well are you performing in the actual real act in your life and I think a lot of guys will message me saying Like for example they'll be on a night out and

they'll think yeah I should probably pursue like chatting to girls in bars and all that sort of stuff and then they get in their head that maybe I could just go home and watch important later and not bother with the pursuit of a woman and then that can become a very repetitive Loot and I'm someone that believes humans need to definitely be keeping that act as a big part of our society it's like the core of what makes Us human so yeah and taking over that isn't great and I think humans as well we will

always gravitate towards what's easy and I suppose there's a lot of anxiety that comes with talking to the opposite sex and for sure fear of rejection and all that sort of stuff but I mean one of the word two words that sprung to mind there that are really obvious is that porn can't provide intimacy and connection it just can't and it's I mean if we learned anything From you know the pandemic is that we we need that you know when we weren't able to see our friends and it's a bit of a leap obviously but

when we were able to see our friends and family like that that intimacy and connection was gone you know know and I think that we all realized that that was important and there was a lot of mental health challenges and emotional health challenges that surrounded that so oh yeah I I just wanted to say that to you Really that I admire actually you know you sort of jokingly say you took well for the tea but you did in a way yeah you don't want to be the guy like I was to the guy that girls

think [ __ ] how that goes right should be like this misunderstood yeah you're right yeah absolutely right it's got to be done yeah well well done mate well done you know what you did was uh you took one for the team and I'm almost positive you helped a lot of people with That so you know and and the knock-on effect will be that you know those relationships will improve as well so it has got it's got a big big sort of netcast there I think more videos will continue coming out the topic okay yeah

yeah I'm sure you're getting plenty of questions but I mean um let's let's go back to basics really so for those that aren't quite sure what is neuroscience Neuroscience is basically the study of Our brain so everything that's going on in our brain but then also the study of our nervous system so we have this whole parasympathetic nervous system sympathetic nervous system the thing that's governing effectively how stressed and calm your body is so it's effectively study of brain and body together so when you say like parasym parasympathetic nervous system and the other one I

forget sympathy that's it yeah Um what what are they they're these systems that like really control the level of arousal in our body so we have one that creates a lot of energy and fires us up if you went to like a really simple hunter-gatherer scenario one is going to lead to us only being able to run or fight or whatever it may be that's the sympathetic nervous system and then we have this other one parasympathetic it can really calm us back down and we effectively need two Systems one that gives us a load of

energy and one that can settle our system and that kind of intersection between how our brain works and how our body works that's like the Neuroscience topic so you can see how chaos can see refers to get confused yeah 100 yeah you can see our cows you know and and you know I often try to highlight the importance of understanding what we're thinking and feeling and how sometimes they can be Different and how sometimes one can impact the other and vice versa you know and it's important well it's how you feel affects what you you

know how how you think and how you think affects how you feel and they're both different scenarios and I think sometimes they can be easily confused you know I think they can and I actually think about this a lot because I think people underestimate how much the state of our body and how our body is feeling impacts how our Thoughts operate like for something so simple a lack of sleep really really leads to a lack of that serotonin chemical which is this mood chemical and literally a lack of Serotonin will make our mind much more

irritable and like annoyed at life and people might be sitting there really thinking like I'm really pissed off about this situation with my girlfriend or work or whatever it may be and not realize that it's largely just because the body is is out Of balance those thoughts aren't actually that truthful and I have to constantly guide myself with this like if I have a weekend for example where I party harder like have some late nights and I drink a bit more alcohol than I usually would I know that's going to mean that dopamine as well

is really low when our dopamine is low we feel like a laziness and a lack of excitement for our life and when I'm having these thoughts I have to check in with myself Even still now to this day I go yeah but remember the dopamine is low so these thoughts aren't probably that real and truthful and I think having that awareness makes such a difference to how you feel in your head that is so important because sometimes you can go off down a well and it starts that I say all the time to people about

how a fork can just create this wall like I call it a worry wall so you have a single four which is just a thought at that point And then you apply a little bit of meaning to it which applies a little bit of meaning to a bigger picture and a little bit of meaning to a bigger picture and before you know it you've built this if each of those thoughts or meanings create a brick you've built this huge wall which makes you unable to go forward and you just feel like not doing anything you're

just like I'm not going to do anything now you know I call it a worry wool and it's uh it's so true That you don't have to latch onto that four you don't have to apply meaning sometimes the thought you can have is oh nearly and again some people are going oh so stupid I always do that no no wait a second no you're not stupid you just nearly got caught out by that little trick again you know and it's a bit more play it's a bit more playful isn't it a little bit less unkind

to yourself you know but sure yeah because that's the other part of it isn't it and I think What you've pointed out there is so true it's been able to create an awareness and go wait a minute I know what's going on here because let's face it like most people uh it's a basic need that's causing so much stress like going to the toilet just go at the amount of women especially that hold it in and I'm like why yeah because I'm 42 and I don't have that option anymore if I need to go for

a whiz now right now you know you know So yeah if you're tired get more sleep which I recognize sometimes is difficult if you've got things going on um hungry being hungry that's where the word hungry comes from isn't it you know things like that angry is low serotonin as well that's why we get so irritable because literally when we're hungry our body is craving that serotonin molecule food is what like builds it so angry is a classic thing yeah human needs ideas said they're so true because I I hold the perspective that like this

mental health like epidemic we've got now is a bit more formulaic and easier to understand the society is is recognizing and I think there are a lot of really core human needs that humans require for our survival and I think we're losing a lot of them over time in our techie world and I think the brain in the body is just screaming at us and saying I will make you feel [ __ ] until you get these core things back whether It's food or sleep or movement or relationship yep so sunlight these like really core

natural needs that humans have and whenever people go through like the training and stuff we do if you add core things back into your life it's ridiculous how much just like little behavioral changes impact all these thoughts that are happening have you ever seen the film I think it's called idiotoxy Um I don't think I have but anything no but it's it's about um a society x amount of years into the future that um brands have become so powerful that they have dominance over people the way people think and one of the brands is Gatorade

yeah so they they've told everybody that the only thing you can drink is Gatorade the problem was though you skip forward a few decades and they're putting Gatorade on their crops because they no longer Focus on what water is because they just use Gatorade for everything and the crops start to die and no one understands why because you've got generations of people that have grown up like thinking Gatorade is is the only thing you can use and this guy transports from the past into the future and he's like guys why don't you just use water

and they're like what are you talking about I really don't understand and the whole idea is that that Society Slowly the boundaries get pushed so we get so far away from what the basics the core of understanding that we no longer just don't have that knowledge anymore and it takes someone who comes along and says something as simple to us it's like why don't you just put water on it and they're like what are we talking about you know but that's why Society is almost doing that we are losing some of our like really core

intuitive insights to how a human operates for sure yeah And I think as humans like we have this thing that's supposed in some ways is helpful in some ways it's unhelpful is that we naturally gravitate away from what causes us pain and towards what causes us Comfort but sometimes that that understanding of what Comfort is in the short term can sort of cast a big like doubt over what's going to be comfortable in the long term like you say like you know that's where I suppose people commit adultery and Um people get addictions because they

keep getting them small hits and not realizing that is impacting their life on a bigger scale you know um interesting can I tell you something wild about that away from Pain towards Comfort because this is quite cool yeah there's this book called dopamine Nation by this lady called Anna lembeck and she's one of the the biggest kind of dopamine addiction researchers in the world at Stanford uni and they've done a big analysis of this concept of pain and pleasure and dopamine this chemical is created in our hypothalamus in our brain which is basically like above

the roof of your mouth and dope means what can create all of our experience of pleasure and reward and all of that kind of stuff they've basically discovered that pain and pleasure are actually co-located they're in the same place and they Actually work on a seesaw so that if we experience a load of pain our brain will respond by making us that you feel a lot of pleasure and vice versa to give you some context of how that would work back in the days of hunter-gatherers and it's always important to look at this because 400

000 years of that and then five minutes of this effectively so that's really what our brain was for if we had to go out in the freezing cold hunting and finding food and building shelter That is just so much pain for our brain to take on but we have to have something in our brain that made us feel good about doing these things because otherwise we would have just given up and died effectively so when we had a lot of pain our brain would respond by giving us a load of pleasure for that on the

other side of it if we just decided actually I'm not going to contribute to the tribe and I'm just gonna sit around and eat fruit and shag or something like That and only have pleasure the brain would literally make us not feel good so that we would be forced to try and contribute again wow when you look at our modern Lifestyles how many painful things are we doing and pain might be exercise or really hard work or things like the cold shower thing is now massive this is paying stuff and then we've got so much

pleasure staff the social media and the porn and the junk food and foods and all these different Things and basically if we have loads and loads of pleasure our brain has no choice but to make us feel like crap and if in an attempt to try and get this seesaw to tip back which is just like it's crazy it's such a clear explanation as to why a lot of us feel appreciated wow that's just blowing my mind that's amazing no you're right that you're absolutely right because you can see you could that a thousand scenarios

played out in my head at once there just so Many examples of what you just said that's that's so true wow and hard things make us feel good like if you for example went out on a hike with your friends on like a Saturday afternoon it was really cold and windy and wet and you're like oh this is tough out here you can absolutely guarantee when you get home and you sit down and have a shower you're going to think wow I feel so good now and that is just how our brain Responds to difficulty

so we're designed to experience difficulty and nowadays we just live such comfy Lifestyles like people can't even bother to get like a train to the office anymore because that is too much effort that's literally too much effort I laugh but it's true it's true people it really is like food shopping delivery apps like to deliver things that are like five minute walk away and it's like we need humans are designed to put in Effort so we need these things yeah you're so right I mean it's interesting you say that about hiking because I've got a

friend called sober Dave I don't know if you've heard disable Dave and uh he he I have actually yeah I remember connecting with him yeah he's a such a great guy he's such a great guy but he he was um he's doing a trip to Morocco to climb the Atlas Mountains and he said it sounds like it's going to be terrifying so who would I like with me When when I do that I was thinking of you Johnny and I was just like my immediate reaction was nah that sounds that sounds really hard and really

scary but that's when I thought that's exactly what I'm gonna do it because it does it scares me a little bit you know because it's really there's so many unknowns there I'm not going to go into it it'd be boring but there's so many unknowns there even from the people I'll be with to the environment I'll be in and all of The challenges but that's exactly why I want to do it because that to me is living is having those challenges and just thinking I don't know how I'm going to get through it is but

I know I will you know 100 that's a good human thing to do that is just like the kind of Adventure that a human is like ultimately designed for and one that basically no one does anymore like people don't really do these sort of things so yeah no instead of well I Don't approve me yet let me see what altitude I've got to stop reading about this yeah don't give yourself too many things to worry about I know how you survive in the situation I think you're probably right yeah so one of the questions I

had was uh how does the nervous system and the brain impact our mental health and emotional health um I'm not sure you might have really answered that already really The nervous system again it's just like a system that can either make us like stressed very energetic or calm and slowed down and it impact is mental health massively because if we're too overly relaxed we'll end up just not doing anything at all so we need some things to stimulate us and give us some drive but equally if we're overly stressed our brain gets like super worried

and overwhelmed and we have a lot of things in our modern World that are activating the stress system the Energy System the news is like a massive massive thing on this like we have these alerts all the time that the world's in chaos the world's in chaos that would be something that's not great for the nervous system and equally a lot of the things on the other side the calming system which is largely rest is good like actually sitting on the sofa and just watching some Telly and like not having a phone in your hand

Frantically watching it on your phone or getting out into natural environments sunlight calm breathing if you look at how a human lives although we're not necessarily putting that much hard work we actually don't have that much like real proper chill time like yeah absolutely optimal would be you with three friends on the grass in a park in the sunshine and that would be optimal nervous system experience and if you think about that imagine you with your Best friend in the sun on the grass that does sound pretty designing yeah yeah it's a straight way yeah

that's largely what we did for 400 000 years again suddenly we're doing less of that and we need more of those sort of activities that really just chill us out and a bit less of like the franticness of the modern world yeah it's funny you mentioned phones because it's the the sort of purpose of the phone is to connect us but actually I think in some Ways it's disconnected us so much you know 100 I definitely believe the phone is the core of the mental health challenge in the modern world I think it's like the

number one core of the problem and it's also enabling mass mass progress my whole entire life and career is built off the fact the phone exists yeah yeah definitely not that I think it should just disappear but like especially I spend a lot of time working the younger people space training Schools and teenagers and stuff like that and the shift in mental health over the last decade is so unbelievable from when I was at school to to what's happening in schools now and really the only the only difference is the phone so yeah it's a

big thing this and no it is manager is huge well just just then like you said you know watching TV without being on your phone um meeting up with your friends instead Of speaking to them on the phone you know like I remember not so long ago well like the lads group chat you know we're all in there all chatting we're laughing sending each other memes and having fun in there but we're not really together we're we're doing it for a phone but it gives us enough for us to not ever really sort of go

oh should we get together Saturday or anything like that you know I know and if the option was sit at home every day talk to no one Or go to the park and see my friends you'd always be going to support to see your friends but now because the opportunity to connect is there we are doing all these things so much less and then coming back to that human needs things having fun and balance with your Mates is just like at the core of what we need yeah it is and you wonder you always ask

yourself why don't you do it more and all those things and I mean what's funny to me is that you know when We came out of the pandemic and we were able to see people and I'd start going to events and doing you know speaking at events and I'd see people that I felt really close to but I realizing in that moment I've never actually met you you know I I I've I've had some great conversations with you I've told you things that I've not don't tell many people but yeah I've never met you like

that's that's crazy I don't understand how that's happened It's wild it is it is um okay so that's the nervous system and the Brain I mean you know you mentioned dos is that how you say it dos yeah dose dose sorry obviously those those I'm going to shut up and move on for that um yeah and you mentioned like dopamine and oxytocin and serotonin and endorphins I mean all of that that they're the sort of mental health brain chemicals that we need so where do we First of all where do we get them from what

are they I mean what is how do want to go through it you want to go through it separately all together or uh I'll give you a little a little version on each one I think if we go through from dopamine and give you a bit of an insight into each one and like the core things that impact it basically yeah as I say these are very much the mental health brain chemicals they impact a number of core things the the dopamine Largely is creating all of our drive all of our desire to do anything

in our life is created by the dopamine and if you took it to the hunter-gatherer scenario for them to want to put into the effort to go hunting and build shelter find new places to live all these things dopamine basically comes into the brain and gives you desire and then as you're pursuing the goal it makes you feel good about pursuing the goal and if you think in your life when you're really chasing Down a goal it does feel quite good when you're making progress on the goal and then you successfully achieve the goal and

you're like wow that feels really good I'm so happy I'm putting all that effort and then the dope have been reset and it basically keeps you on this constant Pursuit anything in our life that is effort that makes us feel good if you give something super simple that I talk about Instagram sometimes something like cleaning our home is Something that is effort something we procrastinate and put off a lot and then when we do it we think oh it's actually pretty good this feels quite good that I'm doing this then afterwards you get this satisfaction

and accomplishment so dopamine is largely if you put an effort then it makes you feel good after these things build dopamine the challenge we have with dopamine these days is we've created a lot of ways to experience the pleasure the end result without any of The prior effort and anything this kind of works on like a a graph that if you imagine like a graph going up slowly like you gradually put an effort and then you feel good and then it calms back down like a slow curve and then a slower curve back down that

would be fine and dopamine is going to stay quite consistent if we take something like alcohol the dopamine surges up really quickly and that's why when we drink the pint of beer we'll Feel so good right now but it started out really quickly but because it surges up quickly it has to drop down quickly as well because everything works like that and all these things that create big surges they create big drops and for a lot of people the dopamine rather than just like slowly up and down it's like going up down up down up

down and when it's down when it's low we really feel very low in motivation we procrastinate our brain gets a bit anxious and stuff Like that do you think that loneness and that the feeling of that loness is in direct comparison to how high the height was that is such a good question yeah I think they perfectly correlate almost because if you take something like the difference between a hangover or like taking cocaine like a powerful drug the low is going to be even lower on the cocaine because it took you higher with the dopamine

effective play yeah And finding that like dopamine balance is something that's very hard to find tune in our modern world because we wanted to go on the social media and we want to like drink with our friends and stuff and I don't guide anyone to try and live like some perfect healthy lifestyle I think it's just unrealistic in our modern world but it's basically learning to slightly reduce the like dosage of the crappy behaviors and then increase all the things you're doing in Your life that are effort so whether you can like play sport or

really chase down your career or whatever it may be anything that's effort for you is going to effectively counteract these high pleasure behaviors but a lot of people are living in a life of largely just High pleasure behaviors so the dopamine super low makes you feel like [ __ ] I think also it's worth acknowledging sort of what you say to sort of nurture and awareness that marketing companies know This now so they're using this tactic to to make you want to stay high you know by by maybe offering you something that makes you you

get a big dopamine here but then telling you oh you shouldn't feel like this when you get the drop oh you shouldn't feel like this you need to do it again you need to do it again you need to do it again for sure that's it that's [Laughter] annoying but you know they're very aware Of how these things work like tick tock's like the optimal dopamine platform they've really just mastered the dope means of the brain you just know that if you open that app you're feeling pleasure immediately yeah that's true it's just the faster

like even when you go between Instagram and Tick Tock you know you're going to get pleasure faster from Tick Tock than Instagram now like they have achieved that as a goal and you're now watching every platform Copy reals has completely copied it YouTube shorts even Reddit basically has Tick Tock in there even Netflix even on Netflix on your phone if you go on the Netflix on your phone now has basically Tick Tock in it which is I didn't know that no that's that's crazy you know that's addictive stuff to get recommend you guys [Laughter] um

but it is tricky and when we're yeah the challenge is if the dough if you Start doing more of these behaviors the dopamine starts fluctuating more and then you the more you feel like [ __ ] the more you constantly seek for the quick rewards to help yourself climb back out but the only if you are in that space which I have no judgment if you are I've been in that space many times the only way out is effort basically I love get the dopamine climbing back so that could be so small that could be

like okay today I'm gonna go to the shop buy some Good food and I'm gonna cook a healthy meal like I'd say that's effort doping stuff coming back cleaning your home would be good A little bit of exercise would be good but finding your little area of how can I get more effort into your life is the only way it's the only way to recover the dopamine but is uh that's a brilliant message I love that like how can you put the effort back into your life that's that's perfect I really like that and I

think also There's there's something to be said from sort of like normalizing the low instead of demonizing it and saying you shouldn't feel this way is to say no this makes sense because I had such a great night last night I'm probably gonna pay for it a little bit like everything has consequences you know it does and the awareness is key because like for example one of the videos that whenever I talk about it it really Trends on my page is talking about the impact of alcohol and your thoughts on Monday and Tuesdays because everyone

like you say you get drunk on Friday you have the really big hangover on Saturday and you feel like headachy and just like that crappy feeling but people really think of a hangover is a very physical experience not as much within their thoughts and alcohol will take about 72 hours to leave the system and when it leaves say on the Monday and Tuesday the Dopamine will really drop because literally the alcohol is no longer in there anymore it's no longer in your body so the alcohol really drops the dopamine it really drops down and then

our thoughts change our thoughts are like more irritable than annoyed and low if in that moment you can tell yourself this isn't my current situation that's that's creating these thoughts it's just the alcohol leaving just that awareness makes it not as bad but if you don't Have the awareness and you think oh I hate my job and I hate my girlfriend and all this sort of stuff start making big life decisions amazing Mondays and Tuesdays make no life Thursday it's always a day in the week but everyone feels pretty good that's all everyone's like Thursday

yeah I feel pretty good at Fridays I feel really good and it's really just because the dopamines recovered from the weekend That's the only thing that's happened so life decisions on Thursday afternoon probably the best time yeah don't start talking to your partner about whether this is working out or not on Monday so save it for later in the week once yeah back in the balance yeah because I mean I I don't drink anymore I I've been sober for a couple of years but I remember wow it's a decision that had to happen really it

was one of those I was I was Kicking the can down the road and then one day it just became very apparent that I needed to make that I think it's a wise idea yeah it was hard it was hard in the short term um there was a difficult year the first year but now I'm at a point where I genuinely and honestly don't think about it anymore um that's cool you know I really don't you know but like I say that it was a hard road to get there but here it is Um so

the next one was oxytocin yeah yes so this is the uh human bonding hormone and basically creates all the desire for us to connect with each other when uh when we are born when our mum gives birth to us the mom and the baby get this giant surge of oxytocin which creates this connection and it creates this massive desire for the mum to like care and love this baby and then for the baby it creates this initial desire to be like okay all these big older people I need to just like make sure I'm always

around them so that I can survive so it's just like this human connector and anytime in our life that we receive love or very importantly we give love and we contribute to others this oxytocin chemical goes up and makes us feel connected to people it massively calms us when we feel connected to people you can imagine from an evil evolutionary point of view if you ever were suddenly excluded from the tribe you are Completely effed effectively like you're not surviving in a jungle on your own so we have this real need to be connected into

into groups effectively and if you look at your life whenever you've had a moment of feeling excluded even from like a dinner or like a birthday or something it like really makes us quite anxious and that's because of that hunter-gatherer drive to always make sure we're connected into a group so big thing with oxytocin making sure we're in Environments where we receive love from people and then massively massively important making sure we're contributing to the people in our life we're showing them kindness giving them love complimenting them just like being a support system leads to

this one going up I wonder if like shame is like oxytocin's weapon to bring us back in again you know because sometimes if you think about it like in a hunter-gatherer State you know if we start to get a bit Uppity and think oh I I'm better than the tribe I'm going to leave the tribe and it's like who do you think you are to go off and leave the tribe you think you're good on your own dear that's like shame isn't it it's like flicking shame at somebody very true very true and these mechanisms

100 like there will be subtle ways in which all of these different behaviors are impacting these things like these chemicals are just like a core communication system to help Us survive as a human effectively and all of these little things it's interesting work in this space because some of it you're making like slight assumptive ideas and a lot of it is just like very researched hard data but these chemicals are new for our society to really understand that's why they're trending so much because it's like a new thing to learn and read about so shame

100 is going to be impacting it yeah wow uh serotonin Serotonin is uh the one responsible really for our mood and our emotions and it really connects to this whole nervous system this whole system that's calming or stressing out our body and interesting thing with serotonin is with the other chemicals they're all made in your brain in that hypothalamus thing and 95 of this serotonin is actually made inside our gut inside our digestive tract and it largely means that anything that leads to our body functioning Really well leads to serotonin being built and then as

a result the body feeling good the body tells the brain I feel good and our mood gets a lot better and when you look at the core behaviors that impact serotonin first one nutrition is absolutely massive because if you imagine the stuff's actually made in your stomach if great food turns up serotonin builds because it was like a useful resource if the McDonald's turns up it's like what the [ __ ] is that I Can't build serotonin out of a McDonald's so that is why and that's why food is so influential on our on our

mood like it's we and McDonald's and we think ice is so delicious are this Big Mac but then we do feel [ __ ] afterwards and that is like our body very quickly telling us you can't build territory that was a mistake that was a mistake and as I say this is a survival machine that we live within and then on the other side if you chose To like cut up some pineapple and that's like something fruit is something I think Society should eat way more of in general but if you did cut up some

pineapple and you ate some like really nice fresh pineapple eating it eating is gonna be delicious and afterwards you're gonna think wow I feel quite good after that and then that's just nutritious food leads to the serotonin going up so food absolutely massive and in general with food I think the more we can Connect with like a hunter-gatherer style of eating it goes natural as possible with the food we eat and if you look at your food and think could this have come out of the Jungle or the ocean if it could it's probably pretty

good for you if not probably kind of [ __ ] for you so the food is big and then we have nature and natural environments and sunlight is massive for the serotonin Again lack of sunlight something most humans hardly get any sunlight now it's huge this is why especially especially as British people like when it's sunny outside everyone loves each other loves the government loves the world it's all great suddenly it's gray outside and we all feel [ __ ] serotonin is is really the thing causing that so I think we should have a massive

relationship with the sun and if it's sunny you should you should See that situation as the sun is saying come and say hello you've got to get out there and spend time in it for sure so you're the natural environments the food and then the sleep is really really big here so sleep really creates serotonin whilst you're sleeping serotonin builds a lack of sleep leads to it getting a less yeah yeah and that's not I think that's one of the questions in a little while actually um what are endorphins and why is it why Are

they so important and how can you improve them yeah so just to run over actually dopamine or your desire oxytocin human connection serotonin is your mood and your emotions and then endorphins is actually our capacity to deal with a high level of stress in our mind and physical pain that's actually why we have this one and again back to the hunter-gatherer if you were suddenly faced with a bear being in front of you A bear that's your crap example because you're dead if there's a bear if you imagine like some kind of small animal that

you might have a chance against let's go for a tiny bear cub if you had that situation where you've got to fight this bear in that situation if you got really stressed in your mind I'm like oh my God I'm gonna die I'm going to die I'm gonna die that's not gonna be very useful and similarly when you start fighting it if it scratches you and Stuff if you really focus on the pain and you're like oh my God this hurts so much it's hurt so much again it's not gonna be very useful so we

have this endorphin system that releases through our brain and body and takes away the stress in our mind and takes away the pain that we're experiencing in our body and something like morphine the drug that we have that you get in a hospital literally eliminates pain morphine was built off of our understanding of this So this is like a natural pain reliever if we get the endorphins pumping up our mind is a hell of a lot calmer and less stressed out effectively and given the scenario of what its function is is like physical encounters any

time that we physically exert our body our body puts in effort the endorphins rise so exercise running up a hill for example anything that's Hard Exercise super good saunas really really good for this it's the body like worked hard in a sauna Singing is something that's like massive for endorphins yeah and in our training experiences we have all these different challenges people complete one of them is people have to sing for five minutes every day for seven days and just that simple thing makes a massive difference especially if you really sing like if you're driving

your car yourself out because the body is literally putting in physical effort the endorphins release so you've got singing laughing is Big Stretching our body so anything that gets the body physically going the dolphins go up the mind gets less stressed effectively oh so that explains I used to be a pro wrestler a long time ago a very long time ago well yeah that's it it's like I used to love it but then I'd spend like the rest of the time just aching and thinking well it must have hurt when it happened so like what

if I had to like carry on it's like my son plays rugby and that's Bet that's something similar to um so all of these different like chemicals and stuff how can we improve them in a nutshell is it just diet Sunshine um connection is it just giving giving them what they want in a way yeah it's basically asking yourself a question with all the behaviors that you're doing would this be advantageous to like the survival of a human that so the simplest Way to put this down to the course so like deciding to sit and

really focus on your work and you know when you get like really focused and you Zone in for a long period of time you feel like really good after you feel really satisfied and on the other side if you sit there and do a little bit of work and it's got some Tick Tock a little bit of work scarcity you feel like [ __ ] and something like deep focus really really good for dopamine if you imagine with a Human being a human is really really distracted all the time or being one that can really

focus and pursue a girl in your head you're thinking oh yeah it's really good if I can practice focusing it's good for human survival effectively so if you ask yourself the question that's the best thing you can do so then you come to all these different behaviors dopamine anything effort oxytocin you've got to connect with people and massively prioritize In-person connection serotonin getting into the most natural environments with your food sleep and nature is huge and then endorphins physically pushing yourself these are the the core behaviors that really lead to them all boosting up below

me they're just that your example earlier like you know a picnic in the sunshine with your friends is literally all of it that's all we need to do yeah just need to be outside eating all the time with our Mates but like these things can happen more for sure we just need these moments and if you can yeah put yourself in those situations up for like for long periods of time get away from the phone is massive because the phone is constantly depleting the dopamine that's why we love it so we get these quick hits

and I'm a big believer in like the concept of phone fasting which is like a window away from our phone and I think we need at least 60 minutes a day at Some point in our day where we don't see a phone and you could achieve that in the morning you could achieve that in the evenings it's really good if you can just like get rid of it I've had to build in like a big process for me with the phone because I find the phone super addictive I love checking my Instagram I love all

these things and I now have this pattern where I'll actually leave the phone at home when I go to the gym and goes to the gym in the evening I Play some tennis and I go to the gym and I'll have this and I've built up to this you can find your own balance but now I have this like two to two and a half hour window off a phone each evening and it's ridiculous how good it is for my brain because these chemicals restore you disconnect from all the stress of the world you disconnect

from your email and your work and all these different things so for the dopamine a big big thing is like getting away from the Phone however you're going to do it you have to find a way to get away from it I love that phone fasting that's that's a really really interesting concept I love that um so I know we're gonna we're sort of running out of time so I'm gonna have to be selected for these questions I think but I think I think I think a big one that a lot of people want to

understand is how can people improve their quality Of sleep yeah that's a good question um improving the sleep is massive it impacts so many things about how how we feel in our heads and there's kind of some core steps throughout your day that really impact it the the first thing is when we wake up we really need to have sunlight going into our eyes because we have this circadian rhythm like our sleep wake system and effectively if a load of sunshine comes into our eyes First thing the system really wakes up they wake up fast

and if something goes up fast as we talked about earlier it goes down fast so the more sunlight in your eyes in the morning the better your system will turn off effectively at night time and most people are in their mornings indoors so in the mornings in that morning routine process you've got to have at least five or ten minutes when you walk around outside so that's like a non-negotiable if you really want To sleep well right the net the next thing is our body really has that exercise in some way and this exercise time

everyone knows and needs to do some exercise but a lot of people lie in bed really struggling with like thinking and not being able to sleep and a huge part of the reason we sleep is to restore our body because you can imagine back in the day we were doing like eight hours of walking and hunting and all this stuff At sleep time all the muscles would regenerate and when we can't sleep a big part of that is the fact that our body just isn't tired it's not physically needing the sleep so it's like I

don't need sleep so I'll just stay awake our brain is [ __ ] exhausted and our body is like not tired at all so the sunlight first thing the body has to move if you're under move they won't sleep and then some really cool factors are late night sugar really really bad if we uh If we take on like a lot of chocolate or something just before we go to sleep that's not going to be ideal so trying to finish up your eating like by 8pm would be really really useful and then with the social

media and 100 this is the biggest Factor is loads of us love to get in bed and and scroll to tick tock as the last last activity we do and the challenge is that dopamine is obviously what we're getting from the the tick tock feed or the Instagram Reels or whatever it may be dopamine's cousin or like brother in our system is adrenaline and as I said before dopamine was all about effort adrenaline is the assistant that gives us tons of energy so you can imagine it makes sense why they're paired together yeah if it's

that effort and energy and when we search the dopamine up we surge the adrenaline as well and it means that if the last thing we do is scrolling our phone really hard adrenaline's going up Then we put the phone down we lie then we're like I can't sleep but you're literally just giving your brain tons of journal and an energy effectively so for that last 30 minutes you really don't want any of these short videos that's the big thing you could check your phone you could send some whatsapps but if you can for that last

period watch Netflix or read or watch longer YouTube videos but that laughter is massive for the quality of sleep all right I love that That's brilliant so we've got um sunlight first thing in the morning 10 minutes outside and then before you go to bed no phone or at least reduce the amount of sort of like a short form content that you're that you're watching the short form content's the biggest thing ideally no phone like or there's obviously like an optimal with all of these things oh yeah sometimes and all that stuff but um yeah

it's just the short video it's Late at night and I scrolling the stories and stuff and yeah maybe refreshing your email these kind of things the energize our brain it's very these things are all super tempting to do so they are they are and they're that way on purpose you know so it's it's a difficult one to go up against it and then the last one you said I think was no sugar after 8 P.M um so just try to sort of reduce that and I suppose like any behavioral change Anyone that's struggling with sleep

and wants to implement all these things maybe be realistic uh maybe try one at a time um and and form a habit with that and then um just be kind to yourself like you know if you're not having phone and you're not having sugar and you used to sit there eating maltesers while on Tick Tock yeah you're gonna find out quite challenging I think you know so and if you've not got a lot of sleeper you aspire to go outside for 10 minutes first thing in the morning that might be a bit strange for you

too so be kind to yourself for sure for sure the fine the thing on the sleeve which is big is when we lie in bed and we eventually put the phone down a lot of people struggle with like the fear and worry that happens in their mind like we think about our problems and things that aren't going well and Analyze ourselves effectively and that kind of anxious fearful stay is not particularly enjoyable and really at least it's not being able to sleep and then we want to pick the phone back up to distract ourselves from

the thoughts the kind of antidote to fear and anxiety is that whole gratitude concept because fear and anxiety is like this apprehensive State about something in the future or something that's not you're not happy about in the past and Gratitude is like a a state of mind that literally forces our brain to come into the present and if you lie in bed and you say to yourself what has gone well for me recently what am I happy about that's happened recently and you just really try and think of some things and you get better and

better this better and better at this over time and you think through oh did I have a nice conversation with someone today or did they eat some good food or did something Go well with work or anything that's made you happy maybe watched a good episode of TV that you really enjoyed but if you go towards that gratitude what you're happy about today it calms that fearful thinking it's so that's final step as you're going to sleep and really every day go through that gratitude process it's insane for the oxytocin it's insane for our anxiety

levels oh that's brilliant yeah I love that that's yeah gratitude yeah Absolutely like reminding yourself what to be good and keep it simple as well don't don't don't go too mad of it just like you just said it could just be a great this conversation it would be my gratitude for for getting to sleep tonight and if I think we're just disconnected a bit from the word gratitude in our world if you just say to yourself what am I happy about that's all you've got to say what am I happy about and there will be

a lot you're Happy about it's very easy to be focusing on what you're not happy about I think we have this real orientation towards the negative in our brains yeah and what am I happy about just start listing it out because it makes a big difference uh grateful for you mate this has been a great conversation it really has and uh I I had some questions around Norway diversity but we'll just have maybe we'll jump on the live one day and have Our conversation that would be cool yeah that would be really cool um but

just just to wrap things up is there anything that you'd like to pass on to people that you feel could help them with their self-development what a great question the number one the number one thing in your minds to be how do I disconnect from my phone more often I think that's a really good goal in your life how do I maybe stop waking Up and immediately checking the whole thing in a frantic way because that really stresses our brain out so first thing in the morning last thing at night and then when you're with

your friends and when you're socializing gotta start getting away from it and like really just being a human that's connecting with people because this is underestimated this phone and if you're building a healthy relationship with the phone I think it leads to a lot of other Things transforming in your life as well yeah love that being a human being a human with experience in the grass with the pineapple that's that's it right it sounds amazing um so just to finish up what's next for you and where can people find you yeah so where you can

find me is just at TJ power on all the social medias Tick Tock and Instagram and Linkedin and everything like that and interestingly I can now announce this as Of Friday is neurophy has been this company that trains companies and schools across Europe and we've really built some amazing like training experiences that help you implement all of this stuff into your life in a really realistic way and we've really wanted to bring this to people over to bring these like to the general public instead of companies and schools having to buy it and next week

we launched something called neurofi plus which is a Subscription platform it's eight pounds a month and you get live training q and A's there's a dose video course a course for your phone it's a ridiculous amount of value basic but we're going super accessible because we just want people to experience this stuff so if you follow on the platforms eurofi plus is going to launch and I'm very confident it could be a really cool thing in your life yeah that's amazing well done mate that's that's fantastic news Congratulations and uh well done well thank you

man thank you for this conversation it's certainly going to be part of my gratitude this evening and um yeah it'd be lovely to catch you on the live and talk about neurodiversity there's a few questions that people had about that but we'll get to that another day I think but thank you so much for today I'm grateful for you man thanks for the great question [Music] Foreign