It's so easy to get buried alive by your to-do list and to feel like you're just on autopilot and you're barely surviving that you forget that there is an evolutionary design inside of you that you can tap into today I'm going to share tools that have literally lit up my life and allowed me to get on a path to attune to The rhythms of Life ooh I want that I want to make sure anybody that feels stuck understands that There's these four short steps that you can go through and that there is another way and
so Step One is what noticing your inner desire for possibility fabulous what's the second step is to take stock of what's working and what's holding you back and step three then once you've taken stock is to notice other possibilities and other ways of thinking and then you said the fourth step was [Music] Taking hey it's your friend Mel I am so fired up today can you tell that I'm fired up today well before I tell you why I'm fired up let me just first welcome you to the Mel Robins podcast it is always such an
honor to spend time with you to be together I also want to say if you're brand new welcome to the Mel Robins podcast family because you're listening to this episode I know you're the type of person who values your time and you're also interested in learning About ways that you can improve your life well today holy smokes we're going to do that because you and I are going to spend some time learning from the incredibly inspiring Dr Jeff karp now you may not have heard of him because he's so busy revolutionizing science but trust me
after today you'll know exactly what he's all about and what he's about is innovation creativity and possibility Dr Jeff karp is a medical genius who teaches at MIT Harvard Medical School Brigham and wiman's and his groundbreaking Innovations are transforming the future of healthcare he is driven by a passion to improve Pati's lives his team has invented technologies that have led to the formation of 13 different companies these inventions include tissue glue that can seal holes inside a beating heart targeted therapies for I can't even say that word so I'm not going to but Crohn's disease
I can and brain disorders he's way Smarter than me so I don't have to say these words because he's going to help me with them cancer fighting immune the I can't even say that word either this is going to be a hell of a conversation but Dr Jeff cart has a huge huge huge heart he also has 170 peer-reviewed studies that have been cited 35,000 times and he holds over a hundred patents for his inventions and one thing I want to say right up front this is not an episode about all the scientific Breakthroughs that
he's had in his lab like I think that stuff is really cool and you're going to learn a little bit about it this is really an episode about how Dr karp had this life-changing epiphany and how he took the same things he was learning in his lab about Innovation and creativity and tapping into whole new possibilities and discovered these simple tools that he's used in his life that ignited a whole new possibility for him and his marriage With his kids in his day-to-day life and here's the cool part these same tools that created more connection
and presence actually made him more successful and productive at work too and so today Dr karp has stepped out of the lab and into your life in a really big way to teach you what he calls these simple life ignition tools so please help me welcome Dr Jeff karp to the Mel Robbins podcast I'm so excited to be here thank you so much and I'm very Impressed that you actually hopped on a bike and rode over from your lab just AC are you across the river yeah I am I'm at the bringo women's hospital and
I'm still wearing my bike shoes well I'd love to start by having you speak directly to the person who is listening and tell them what they might expect to have change about their life if they truly take to heart everything that you are about to share with and teach us today yeah thank you For that question and thank you for tuning into to this um I H oh my goodness wow it uh there are tools I'm going to share today that have literally transformed my life they've transformed so many moments that have taken me from
being in a rut from hitting a plateau from being disconnected from my family and friends um from being on a path where I just feel like I'm trapped in a cage and life is out of control and today I'm going to Share tools that have literally lit up my life and allowed me to get on a path of intentionality Infuse creativity into every day um to help me lead with curiosity to connect deeply with the people that I love and care about and to attune to The rhythms of life and and connect deeply with nature
I want that can you put that in a powder that I can put in my drink I I'm really excited that you're here and one of the reasons why is that Dr karp you run one of the Most successful and accredited research labs in the entire world I mean your lab is looking at everything from cancer research to Heart tissue repair and you've taken everything that you've learned as a researcher and a scientist and all of this experience on The Cutting Edge of medical Innovation and you've applied it to your life and you've come up
with these things that you call Life ignition tools that absolutely anyone can use to tap into Their potential to improve their life to be happier I'm so excited to learn about these simple tools but before we jump into the life ignition tools could you just tell the person listening a little bit more about the kind of work that your lab does and what you're excited about absolutely uh so my lab is literally focused on the process of medical problem solving it's an Ever evolving process it's highly iterative and the major focus is how can we
make Academic discoveries and move them as quickly as possible to patience and we do this like just how we approach problems how we Infuse fresh energy how we disrupt um linear thinking and single sort of possibilities that we might find ourselves within and this has allowed us to create all sorts of technologies that are in clinical trials and have actually made it to patients for example uh we developed a nasal spray in the lab that we demonstrated could um Neutralize uh like 99.99% covid-19 H1N1 influenza A and B um and um a form of pneumonia
uh and um so that's like one example we developed a needle that can stop in between the layers of the eye to deliver gene therapy to the back of the eye it's really difficult to get drugs to the back of the eye like for macular degeneration and that's on route to a clinical trial um we've developed a a um therapies to annihilate cancer um Therapies for osteoarthritis um so and and it's really like a playground if you will um people from all over the world people with tons of different experiences um and backgrounds and expertise
and but we really have a Northstar for every project which is to help patients as quickly as we can you know Dr karp you're one of the most Innovative minds and award-winning researchers alive today and I'm just curious if you can Talk a little bit more more about how you run your life and how you run your lab and the role of creativity and how you use creativity in sparking innovation in your lab I mean how do you get people to tap into the full potential of their own brain power when they're doing research for
you yeah creativity uh is I think I think creativity is one of these life forces it's something that um we can tap into it's something that we are all born with It's something that is flattened by our society and uh perhaps through the education system depending on you know where we were educated and and the circumstances um but I think you know with this sort of algorithmic lifestyle that we all lead um for example I think if you if you look at um so many thoughts in my mind I'm like whoa I'm like yeah because
creativity it's it's like to me it's is so exciting because we we all have this ability to To tap into creativity and when we do we surprise ourselves like we it's literally like this thing that just lights us up when we tap into it yep and and I think that it's magnetic there's gravity to it when somebody is being creative it just attracts other people like everyone wants like oh what are you doing like oh that's so interesting how'd you think of that like something magical about creativity and so for my laborat you know it's
like it's one Thing to try to make academic discoveries it's another to then take those discoveries and turn them into products that can help patients so like the level of difficulty just escalates yeah and so I've spent a lot of time sort of um trying to figure out and actually experiment in my laboratory with processes to maximize creativity so one of the things that I've noticed is that the lab composition is critical for creativity okay and so I've tried Intentionally on purpose to limit the overlap and expertise most Laboratories you have the same kind of
expert everyone in the lab has the same expertise what I've noticed is that if we minimize the overlap that we can really Leverage The Power of thinking differently and that Spar the Sparks of creativity just start flying like in the lab we've had chemists we have material scientists we have biologists immunologists but we've also had a Gastrointestinal surgeon a cardiac surgeon we've had a dentist in the lab it's constantly changing and I think when you start interacting with people who think differently who have different skills we've had people from 30 different countries in the lab
and when you're from a different country you have a different education system so you think differently you have different wiring you have different experiences and to me that's how you start to Generate the Sparks of creativity and something else that I experimented with in my lab which actually was like transformational was I set up uh and I hadn't seen this before but I I just was like oh we I need to somehow figure out how to get things more creative and people to connect and you know and so I thought okay presentation competitions so I
came up with this idea you're giving me anxiety about work I'm like if I were to do presentation competitions Here people would quit Okay but so you have like presentation competitions at work yes in this like World round academic research lab yes and you and then there's there's some guide posts so you you you can't present on your research you have to present on something that is one of your passions or one of your interests or something you're curious about and and the goal is that um to take risks this is a safe environment where
no one's going to be Shamed and everyone's in the same boat from like a high school student to a PhD student to a postdoc to Young faculty and everybody presents for three minutes and then afterwards the questions are focused on constructively what could you do to improve your talk what um did you really like about the talk and then at the end I give prizes for um people Everyone votes I don't vote and who gave the best presentation who took the most risk and who gave the best constructive Feedback and we've had people in the
lab it's been like like I couldn't have expected this somebody did a rap about the hamburger restaurants in Boston somebody showed up in a wet suit and talked about surfing somebody um played guitar and had slides going behind them they didn't say anything during their talk um somebody spoke about this permaculture effort they did in their backyard with hundreds of edible plants um somebody talked About a bakery that their family had started and then had to shut down during covid and they really want to set it up again and what happened was this this created
this this constellation of energies where people now were open like they were learning about other people's curiosity what other people's interests were and when you get people talking when you get people connecting it it creates this Creative Energy it it just this energy just starts to flow and um And it's just been it's been unbelievable I love this and you know what I love is I'm listening to you I'm jealous now I want want to be there I want to feel that expansion and that connection and that creativity and that brings us to the subject
of your book lit which is filled with all of these simple proven what you call Life ignition tools that we can use with ourselves to unlock in an instant that kind of possibility and to spark ideas And tap into our brain and shift where we're at and what exact is a life ignition tool a life ignition tool is a strategy a way to tap into something that you don't see in this very moment something that could illuminate not just this moment but your entire life o it's like there's all this hidden potential and these life
ignition tools unlock it they unlock it and everybody has access to to it these tools allow you to access your Evolutionary inheritance what is my evolutionary inheritance your evolutionary inheritance is the biology that that that you have that's working for you it's it's the ability to sense the world the ability to make decisions the ability to evolve and to learn and to be inspired and to sense awe and to tap into creativity it's it's it's what we all have access to and when we tap into it not only does it light up our lives it
lights up the Lives of everybody around us you know what's so exciting about this conversation is that it's so easy to get buried alive by your to-do list and to get drawn into social media and to feel like you're just on autopilot and you're barely surviving and overwhelmed with worry and the things that you need to do that you forget that there is an evolutionary design inside of you that you can tap into your own creativity what you just said and these are the Tools that help us cut through Modern Life and unlock that for
ourselves exactly oh my god let's dive in what is the first life ignition tool that you want to share with us today you know um one of the tools that I'm like ah is do new because every moment there's Limitless possibilities and we don't see those possibilities because of a lot of different reasons it I think one of the major reasons is that you know when we're younger everything is new to us You know we first time crawling first time walking every grade is a completely different experience every sport everything's completely new but as we
get older we lead these algorithmic Lifestyles we wake up at the same time we have the same breakfast we go to work at the same time we scroll social media at the same time we go to the same sites we interact with the same people you know same friend group and so there's not that much new in our lives when you Start to infuse new in your life and you know we do have this fear we have this hesitation to do new but when you start to do it it just illuminates everything I love that
I love that so it's almost as if these tools that you're teaching us these life you know tools right yeah unlock greater possibility they interrupt the patterns that you've gotten used to as an adult in your life and they tap into something different How do you use the tool do new do different in your life give me an example there's so many ways that I use this um you know one example actually just something I've been practicing recently um just to intercept uh rumination and to um to just shift my mind is I visualize right
and this is just one of many possibilities but we're going to do new people We're not gonna we're not GNA like worry about everything that's happening we're not Going to run on that negative Loop so when that happens we're going to use this tool from Dr karp we're going to do new do different you can do it with a thinking pattern what do you do can I just can I I brought something what do you got this is a prop okay okay so he's passed me what these glasses are like these the glasses you put
on when you go to the IMAX movie or 3D movie okay put them on and take a look this is something that you can is really simple It's a do new and again it's like a mind to shift your mind to change your frame so I'm putting on glasses that look around oh it's making all the lights have rainbows it's like a prism lens everything turns into a rainbow it makes me feel like you've just handed me Sil ayon or something like these things are yes we're like at a rave now yeah we're at a
rave so just imagine as you're listening yeah that you've put on glasses that Tint the outside view so you go from just looking at the screen to all of a sudden things are pink or they're Amber or they're purple or they're whatever the sunglass lens is it it it sh it changes thing why is this a tool that can help you ignite something this is a tool that can help you see your environment in a different way like can get you out of one possibility and into another possibility and there's so many different tools that
we can engage to do That and I think that there's lots of practices and rituals and and and all kinds of things that we can engage and I think that's one of the limiting things about life is that we stay on one track for too long and so when we put on these glasses and now we look at the lights and everything is rainbows then that ignites our curiosity right we start thinking like oh wow how does that happen and if you start turning your head you can see the rainbows start Moving you know Dr
karp you know what I'm thinking about is that in the news recently um tons of people all over the world have seen the northern lights for the first time it's been all over the news particularly here in the United States and they're all of a sudden super far south and in all these environments and what I find absolutely electrifying is this idea that you walk outside and with the naked eye you don't necessarily see it but then you all of a Sudden hold up your phone and the night camera screen and it's like this collidus
scope that is right there waiting for you to discover it and what I really am getting from you Dr KP is that all of these tools that you're sharing with us are ways that you can see life in a completely different way that you can tap into possibilities are right there just like the Northern Lights sometimes are right there and you can't see it but If you use some of these tools and shift your perspective it opens up something completely different absolutely it's it's like let's say um you're walking and you look up at the
clouds it's hard to see them moving but if you stop and you look up at the clouds then you can see them moving and when you notice the moving it has this a this this it's like wow and you can see them sort of joining with each other and you know as kids kids can look up and see animals but we Can do that too as adults and I like to do that because again it's a way of getting out of my mind it's getting that's I you know we always hear like get into the
moment be authentic it's like well what's the process for doing that and I agree right it's like how do we what what are the steps to get there and to me to get into the moment if we stop walking and look up at the clouds and we start thinking about the clouds we're totally in the moment it's true It's a way to access all these principles it reminds me of one of the uh life ignition tools you wrote about in the book called press pause laying on the ground and looking at the clouds is an
example of pressing pause and then you see the world in a different place but what is the power of the pause and how do you use this in your busy busy busy life yes um pause is so important um PR pause and it's it's really we we need a tool to slow down we need a tool To tap into intuitive cues we need a tool to allow our brains to sync up to process information and experiences and so I noticed I was doing these backto backto back meetings all day long I get to the end
of the day felt like I'd done maybe two marathons of work that felt great but there was something missing I like there was something I couldn't put my my finger on it and being someone who's like constantly tinkering with everything I started to experiment with Okay what if I take a break in between my meetings like five minutes 10 minutes and not a social media break or an email break or a texting break but a true break where I do nothing or I just go for a walk and I started experimenting with it and what
I noticed was transformational I would basically start thinking about some something someone had told me like a few weeks before a few months before and it would connect to what the person I just met with said And I'd be like whoa we should get together and meet because this could turn into something completely new I wouldn't have had that thought had I didn't you know if I didn't press pause and so it's like we have so much information coming at us from every meeting we have and a lot of it's in our subconscious mind we
need to take time for these thoughts to swirl around our mind to process them and to kind of place them and I found that like my best Thinking happens when I do that when I'm actually pausing and um there's a um a neuroscientist that I spoke to actually interviewed for the book um and a musician um Molly gerrian is her name and um just amazing things that she said so she said actually um it's in the pauses is when mind turns into matter so when we're learning it's actually our brains aren't rewiring in the moments
that like you know so much of just you know engaging it's actually when we Pause that's when the circuitry is really changing and the remodeling is occurring you know like during sleep for example and she said actually a lot of people if they're practicing a skill that a lot of people will do is they'll they have one hour they'll just PR practi for the whole hour and she said no no no that's not the Neuroscience shows that's not the best way to do it she said the best way to do it is practice for 15
or 20 minutes take a Five or 10 minute break and then approach it again and this engages something called the startle effect and so the startle effect is where the next time that you approach something you clue into your attention is focused on what you forgot right so let's say you try to build a skill you you know you learn something in 20 minutes then you go back you realize what you've forgotten now cuz now you're applying it again that hyper focuses your brain on What you forgot and helps you to imprint whatever you're learning
and so by doing that over and over that's how we start to rewire our brains and develop skills you know I've never thought about it that way I love how you take your scientific mind and it's clear you have a huge heart and you've combined it into something simple that anyone can use immediately thinking about my kids and guitar and having them you know when they're practicing sitting up there Toiling away for an hour versus trying to work on a piece taking a five minute break and then coming back to it or anything that you
want to master and so one of the ways you can apply the pause is by simply taking a f- minute break between meetings and not actually working or going for a quick walk or laying on the ground and looking at the clouds or taking a quick break as you're trying to learn a new skill or shutting yourself up in the middle of a Conversation and not inserting yourself like that there is this need to slow ourselves down why is it so hard to bring ourselves to practice new skills or habits I think it's difficult to
practice new skills because of the way that we practice I think that yeah I think that um and that's why one of the tools is actually fall in love with practice because what I have found right and through some of the people that I've Spoke to and interviewed for the book is that practice can become monotonous really fast it can become boring but there are just like with everything there's Limitless possibilities in the way that we can practice and so um I interviewed the five times us memory Champion Nelson delis for the book and I
speciic specifically asked him Nelson how like at some point it's got to get boring right like if you're just practicing the same thing over and over And over again and I said what do you do and he said well sometimes when I get to that state he said instead of like he would memorize like a 52 deck of cards in I I forget how many like 20 seconds or whatever it is or 30 seconds in that order like in a random order someone hands him the deck in 30 seconds he could memorize like the whole
thing and so I said what do you do but was he born with that skill or did he teach himself that he wasn't his um he had someone in His family I think it was his grandmother who um got Alzheimer's and he never thought he had a good memory and he was concerned that that would be his fate and he turned to memory games and learning how to yeah build his memory and so he told me that um what he does is he will insert a few extra cards in the deck so he'll change it
up and he said that presents A new challenge to him that activates his mind and it makes it more engaging and so that you could Kind of think about you know what are all the things and sometimes it may be that you're PR like when I was younger and I was you know I I was always the last chosen for sports sports at school right actually it was me and this other kid and you're hilarious Dr and um and so you know I really wanted to get better at basketball and and I would go and
I would throw the ball and you know just nothing nothing Plateau like what like Just anger and whatever and luckily there's somebody actually who I recently connected with which was pretty interesting but someone who um saw me doing this and came up and said here I'll show you you know I'll show you how to do it and he said we're just going to focus on the layup that's it um and I was probably you know maybe like 11 years old 10 11 something like that and he would just stand with me and I he would
say okay shoot it there here's the Angle here's how to do your hand and and over time I got better at it like I was almost getting it every single time and to me that was shifting from the possibility of me just standing there trying to do it on my own to having someone supportive there with me showing me how to do it and so it was just I was engaging in another possibility it's finding the process that works for you and when you start you know I almost think of it as like a knob
like it's Like click click click click there it is now I'm improving and we need to be able to tune in to those incremental improvements in and and incremental progress in order for us to continue to advance and to me it's like falling in love with practice is the key to persistence it's how we become persistent in anything in our life if we can find ways to infuse joy into practicing then we can keep at it for longer and we can be persistent and we All know that you know persistence is so important for Progress
it makes me think about the fact that it took me a long time with my brain and ADHD and dyslexia to do that click click click click oh this is it and I do think we get into these patterns of believing that there's only one way to do something or the way that you've always done it is the way that you should always do it or that just because somebody else had success Shooting the basketball a certain way way that that's how you do it and what I love about this tool fall in love with
practice is one of the biggest practices in your life is experimenting with yourself and for me I don't write books by writing them I talk it out and then I edit transcripts which is a form of writing another discovery that I've made about myself Dr karp is that I'm a reactor both emotionally and intellectually but I I'm working on the Emotional part what I've realized is the intellectual part is a superpower if you ask me a series of questions I can talk all day long I can tap into this brain power and a decade of
research in the work that I've been doing and I can just almost go into a state where I'm speaking in tongues and I'm a human encyclopedia if you give me a piece of paper and you ask me to like just write a full page about a topic I can't do it Yeah and so this this idea of fall in love with the practice and give yourself room to experiment what you're actually practicing on is what what works for you what unlocks something in you and that pursuit of being curious about it and practicing and stumbling
into things is it's true it is what keeps you going back like I remember with our daughter who's a singer songwriter one of her uh mentors out in Los Angeles said to her because she kept going I got learn piano I got to learn piano she she knows it but you know she's like I most people they they write music on piano and he's like you have one of the best instruments on the planet it's your voice why are you not humming Melodies why do you need to put it on the piano why are you
working against the thing that actually comes naturally and I think a lot of us do that to ourselves we think we need to have our relationships look like everybody else's You think that the way that you do your work product needs to kind of fall in line and giving yourself the space to Tinker and practice Taps into everything that you're trying to teach us you have another tool Focus Beyond failure why is failure so essential Dr karp to unlocking your full potential I uh wow I've experienced so many setbacks and you know just nothing has
ever come easy to me and I would say you know the way I would describe it Really is that let's say I and talking about my experiences just all of my experiences in life really a big failure like you have a big failure oh I have a lot of big failures okay so for example um I applied to medical school got rejected from all three schools that I applied to I um you know I had so many failures I was the kid in high school who got up to do a Walkman sing and got booed
off the stage right I'm that kid wow um I tried out for to be on student Council multiple times and I didn't get on although I actually did get on in my final year of high school from pattern recognition I figured some things out but uh yeah I almost visualize it's like I'm in a boat I'm trying to get to the end of the stream right and I am bumping into every single Rock along the way every overhanging branch and as I sort of go you know kind of untangling myself I will look you know
look down I'll look at the Rock and I'll be like oh hm That's interesting I'll see a path on the side of the the river and I'll say oh I wonder where that leads I'll get out of the boat I'll start walking down and then I'll be wait a moment I am I'm supposed to be going down the river and so I get back in I bump into like every single Rock I mean that's sort of like my experience with everything and so um one of the massive failures that I had um is with tedmed
I was invited actually Jay Walker the CEO of Price Line um was The CEO of of of tedmed and he gave me a call and said hey I would like to invite you to give a talk on your bio inspiration work how you turn to nature for inspiration you know over to to develop medical Technologies I initially said no because I was so frightened um I had not memorized anything since um public school and I um but then I thought about it and I was like okay I will never be asked again to to speak
on this stage and I went and I said yes and By the way just for you listening this is like part of the Ted conference franchise this is like academic superhero this is the stage where all your peers are staring down at you this is global re so this isn't like come to the school basement and give a chat yeah this is an invitation to stand before everybody in the medical research Community globally and just boom go and what happened so what happened was I Practiced like crazy I rented out the kresy auditorium at MIT
which is the biggest Auditorium I presented to four people my family who were there um I presented in front of so many different people and um I knew that talk inside and out it was like 15 minutes purely memorized I had slides I had animations I had to get the timing right I had to make it looked like I didn't memorize it you know like there was all these sort of stages and I was ready to go and I Get to tedmed it was at the Kennedy Center in DC and um and they I practice
my talk and they suggest gu some changes and I'm like oh my God I can't change it now it's tomorrow so I try to figure out how am I going to cuz I've memorized it then we go on stage beforehand there there's sort of like walkth through and they say by the way the clicker only goes forward it doesn't go back if you go too fast and hit it you know you have to yell to the AV person can you go back As and I'm like there's no way I'm doing that and they said sometimes
people freeze in the middle of their talk they said the two reactions that we've seen is one run off the stage they said don't run off the stage if that happens the second reaction we've seen is people will actually start crying they said don't do that either and the third reaction is when you dump in your drawers and throw out your pants so I'm sure that's happened at some point so I Mean so and then they said just stand there and smile and so I am like you know I'm ready to go I'm like I
get a Packa halls in my hand I'm eating them all right before I go up I get up on stage I am I have it so well memorized that I can think about other things it's five highdef cameras on me being live streamed throughout the world it's filled at this Kennedy Center in DC the president of my institutions in the audience and I get to the middle of my Talk and I think to myself I missed a line I there was a line that I forgot to say and my mind couldn't get unhooked from that
and I stopped in the middle of it for 15 seconds I said nothing now 15 seconds is a very long time to pause on this type of a stage on any stage put us in that moment yeah what was happening for you well I my I was so nervous I you know had this like visceral reaction where it was like this negativity came within me I'm trying to Think okay I can't run off the stage I can't start crying they want me to smile the swear words are going through my head I'm holding the clicker
trying to like use it like a lightning rod of energy and you can see me like coin like this with it like I'm smiling and I'm like the only thing I can think of is to turn the slide and so I hit the clicker to go forward I turn the slide a blank slide and I'm like what the [ __ ] and then I'm like what is that I go forward Again and something magical happens which is I'm like wait a moment I know what I'm supposed to say on this Slide the last slide was
a Quee I know what I'm supposed to say there and I just started up again and as I'm walking off the stage the stage manager Whispers to me she goes we can cut that out for the YouTube version and that was it so I and then somebody came to me afterwards and they said I noticed you paused in the middle of your talk and I'm like uh like You know like I think everybody did and they said but the fact you were able to recover is really important and you know think about that and I
had actually been shamed earlier in my life when I gave a presentation just one presentation I've given so many that imprinted and created anxiety and fear and every time I presented after that and this allowed me to detach from that experience and gain more confidence because I knew that anytime moving forward if I stopped that I could find my word again and keep going and so it's like this this tool is focusing Beyond failure it's about finding ways to look at failure completely differently to see it as opportunities where we can find our greatest insights
um and and and opportunities for growth and to me one of the key things in all the failures that I've ever encountered that to is just huge it's so big um is what you were saying before Like we have these expectations even the first time we the first time we try things we expect we're going to miraculously succeed in everything we do right like that's our expectation we go in with that and what I've realized is that if we reframe failure like we learn in school failures over here success is over here avoid failure maximize
success I see it as a prerequisite to success I see failure as an opportunity to be creative as an opportunity to explore Other possibilities you didn't think of before I see failure now as as a way to learn and that's the shift right so I'll give you an example where I think this will become really clear the first talk that I was invited to give on lit was at Stanford right many months ago I'd never spoken about it I put all these slides together I was super nervous and I mean I I didn't even know
how to talk about the book I'd been writing it I hadn't been communicating it and I get there And I said to myself it took you know took me a lot a lot of processing and I said to myself you know what Jeff you're going to give it your best but this is Gen 1.0 I said focus on doing your best but also tapping into the cues that you get from people as you're speaking what are the insights so you can move to gen 2.0 and 2.0 is going to be better than 1.0 so I
was able to shift away from the expectation of giving a spectacular talk to focusing on the learnings the Insights I could gain to make the talk better cuz I was like probably going to be a generation 5.0 a 10.0 a 20.0 you know whatever it is and that shift is basically focusing on away from success and moving that to learning to gaining an Insight so you're focusing on the evolution and that's changed everything for me I love that so I relate to that because as I was writing the let them Theory Book I kept saying
to the team we're going to go through like 20 Iterations of this we're going to just this isn't about getting something too perfect it's about the iteration step one step two step three and so you're absolutely right focusing on I gotta have a failed first draft and then a failed second draft and a failed third draft to get to the point where I actually love this thing and can I give you some advice about speaking Yeah please because I think what the people said to You was horrible advice so number one it's always important to
understand that the audience has no idea what you're about to say or what you're supposed to say and so if you can remind yourself that they have no idea what I'm supposed to say so I'm not supposed to get it right I'm supposed to actually get through it and try to enjoy myself and if you're having a good time with it then they're going to have a good time with you yeah second thing I want you to Understand is that there is a tremendous amount of research about what happened when another person sees somebody else
screwing up whether they're tripping up the stairs or they freeze for a minute or they slide like I've had so many moments where I've literally been in front of 10,000 people and the clicker stops working and you've got a stadium in your hands and the amazing thing about those moments is that if you can get to the Point where like I just forgot what I was supposed to say guess I better hit the next slide um guess it wasn't that important click you know people root for you we like and cheer for people when we
see their vulnerability and if you can give yourself that Grace and here's the final thing always before you walk on stage you will always forever feel nervous no matter how prepared you are because you're about to be in the spotlight and That activates the alarm system in your nervous system because you're going to go into hyper pay attention mode instead of going oh my God I'm so nervous and chomping on the halls and pacing back and forth and re like reiterating reiterating re literally say to yourself I'm so excited to get out there and share
this I'm so excited because that simple reframe they have actually studied this at one of the institutions you're involved with Harvard Medical School is that simple reframe get your brain to tell your nervous system we're not nervous here we're actually in a state of excitement and that helps you from having your nervous system hijack your prefrontal cortex which means you can access the preparation so true but in that moment when you're freeze try to make a joke I just forgot what it was gonna say and you'll be shocked at what happens yeah Rudy tany um
is a neuroscientist who Spoke about some elements of what you just what you just said in the book and he said that um he he he said before he goes to give a talk he says to himself I am here to serve I'm here to serve and it's more like he had it's not he's here for a performance he's here to share he's here to give what he has his gifts his work he's and and to me again it's it's it's just what's that other possibility that can switch us from Fight or flight and put
us into that moment where we feel empowered we feel connected we feel like we're we're we're truly sharing what we have with everybody you know every single day we get questions from people around the world who feel like they're just kind of stuck they're on autopilot just going through the motions do you have a life ignition tool that you can use if you find yourself living in autopilot absolutely yeah great okay one Of the tools that you can use um in this situation is called flip the switch and it's all about um Rec recognizing patterns
that don't match up uh can you give me an example like like where would you use flip the switch in your life okay so here here's an example of flip the switch okay um my ADHD uh really created a lot of struggles for me early on my learning differences and um in the seventh grade I was actually identified as having learning differences in ADHD and I got some accommodations and that was really a pivotal moment for me but what happened was is that my ADHD was still really problematic and Troublesome for me my learning differences
and it just presented daily challenges and so I really needed everything took me two or three times longer than everybody else um I would constantly be staying after school I'd go on in on weekends to meet With teachers the ones that would be available all through high school like you know whenever I could I just it was always like a it was like was trudging through um I don't even know what but it was just slow slow slow progress and everything and so I needed to find ways to become more efficient and so I started
to just focus my attention on efficiency and I was just so um so focused on becoming more efficient that over time I started to become more Efficient I started to be able to do more I started to be able to focus my attention at will I started to be able to navigate the world and ways that I had never navigated before to be able to to learn and to to um succeed in my classes and and you know I started to thrive and what happened was I got so addicted to the dopamine hits from my
work because now I was just able to just do almost like two marathons worth of work in a day and when Co hit um Everything came crashing down in my living room um I had realized that I was completely out of touch I would be going to birthday parties I would be going to I'd be going to birthday parties and I would be trying to network with other parents who were there versus focusing on the purpose of the birthday party which was to connect with my children and and and I would be at soccer practices
and I would be trying to get my 10,000 steps I'd be walking around The soccer field you sound pretty intense over and over and over again to get my 10,000 steps I'd be going for walks with my dogs and I would have Netflix on the phone and I'd watch an episode of Game of Thrones as I took them for a walk around the neighborhood you're that guy I'm that guy I'm that I I was that guy I was that guy and and it was all because I had been so focused on just that I was
just so addicted to the dopamine that I was getting from my work Because I became very efficient I was able to do way more than I had ever done before but that was actually taking me off track got it and I co was this unintentional pause where everything came crashing down literally in my living room and I was like okay I need to change and that's where I engage flip the switch okay which is a four-step process what is that so the first step is to notice your inner desire for possibility so it's this idea
that you Know in that moment I knew that there was another another way of living another way of being there was something I I I there was something I could do that I wasn't doing and I felt disconnected so I really was in touch with other possibilities that I needed to discover the second step is to take stock of what's working and what's holding you back okay and I had developed these incredible efficiencies in my lab in my work things were going Extremely well but at home it was a complet different scenario it's like I
looked up and all of a sudden my son was quarterback of the high school football team it was you know my kids were teenagers all these years had passed and I I I I felt there was something deep that was missing there was something more that that I I needed to engage there was I I needed to figure this out you I needed to figure myself out you were missing I needed to turn inward and And so that is what uh that was what was holding me back and the third step was to consider other
possibilities other ways of thinking and at the time my wife um was engaged in in sort of seeking out these answers to some spiritual questions that she had and she was speaking to some spiritual leaders in the community and um and I was like you know it took me a while to kind of look around I was like oh my God she's having these conversations these are the Conversations that I need to be having at this moment so I ident I identified this was the third step the other possibilities are right in front of me
and the fourth step is to take a deliberate step forward and so I asked my wife to introduce me to these spiritual people that she was engaging and she did and I started to meet with them and um I started practicing meditation and it it it I tried it before and it didn't really work like Apps and all these things but I I sort of was connected to Transcendental Meditation which is this one-word Mantra that you say over and over in your mind and what I started to notice as I practiced it and I I
practiced it for two or three months that's all actually I needed and what I noticed was that these thoughts would come into my mind there would usually be an emotion associated with the thought and I'd be in the middle of meditation and I'd be Like oh my God I didn't write that email and I'd be jumping out of the meditation you need a seat Bel in your own meditation I needed a seat Bel yeah notepad to JW it down but one of the amazing things that I recognized is that as that was happening I noticed
that if I didn't jump out of the meditation if I could hold myself there that that thought and the emotion would actually subside it would leave my mind and all of a sudden that that became this this Light bulb moment for me because what I noticed was when I was in conversation with my wife with my children I started to notice the energy of the conversation I started to notice that if let's say you know my kids are teenagers and if they're speaking and all of a sudden I want to say something I want to
interject the energy shifts from them to me and they stop speaking and now it's on me but that's not my intention my intention is for them to find their Voice from for for for me to be supportive of them and not for me to take over or for the attention to be on me and so the meditation helped me develop tools for navigating conversations with people with everybody and now I'm very um you know in my mind during conversations it's wired in I notice the energy of the conversation and and and I feel like the
ADHD brain um because it's bouncing around and and and people with ADHD often forget what They're going to say and it it that can be painful and so you want to just jump out and say it and through this process I've been able to sort of um keep myself present so that I'm not jumping out and interjecting and whenever I do that I I feel like it's almost like this box appears in my mind and it's a little check che check mark because it feels like a win and and when I do that when I
pause and think about that anytime I've had just these moments of intentionality In my day and I just pause in that moment and sort of check you know put a little check um it feels amazing and it sort of fuels more intentionality so I would love to on the flip the switch you said four because I want to make sure anybody that feels stuck understands that there's these four short steps yeah that you can go through and that there is another way that there's always another way to do life and so I'm assuming that in
any Area of your life where you're bumping up against friction whether you feel like you're on autopilot or you're sick of where your health and your state of kind of being in shape or not is if you're tired of your drinking habit if you feel friction in your relationship you're saying there is a life ignition tool you should tap called flip the switch and so Step One is what noticing your inner desire for possibility fabulous and for possibility you mean I Don't want it to like because for me you're speaking in a way that sounds
very empowered I'm very negative when I feel frustrated so I start to go what the f you know like I literally am like I don't want to do so notice that you don't want it to be this way that there is a positive you want positive change yeah what's the second step is to take stock of what's working and what's holding you back because we always have things that are Working for us and it's important to acknowledge them yes because they're that that's empowering yes it is and step three then once you've taken stock is
to notice other possibilities and and other ways of thinking because I think in our lives we're often just living a single possibility but in any moment there's Limitless possibilities and to me that's also one of the powers of diversity one of the reasons why we need to flood our lives with with diverse Ways of thinking and to spend time with people who think differently um who um you know have different ways of being different ways of acting because what it can do is it can help you to identify other possibilities it's what we use in
my laboratory for solving problems we Max we use diversity as a superpower and I've done that in my relationship with Chris when we've been in situations where we're ready to kill each other like reaching out to friends have you Ever dealt with this like what would you recommend so there are other ways and then you said the fourth step was taking a deliberate step forward and for me simply reaching out to somebody that I admire or that is a trusted friend just reaching out for the advice makes me feel better so I didn't realize I
was using your tool flip the switch but that's exactly the way I've approached these moments too because they're always is a Better way and one of my favorite ones because it's something I had never heard before is this concept of pinch your brain what is it how do you use it why do I need it what is pinching your brain Dr carp pinching your brain is using your intention to focus your attention um to think or redirect your thinking throughout your day in meaningful ways so how do you you like how would you use this
in your day-to-day life how do you Use it now okay I'll give you an example I brought I brought two pens one for for you go sorry thr there I'm holding a a pen that has a red end and you're holding a pen that has a blue end and I'm I'm assuming this is intentional well maybe we'll see um so so the way that we can practice pinch your brain right is to take something in your environment and focus your attention on it and notice the nuances right and so this is something you can do
anywhere in Your life you can do it inside outside any room and so if I say to you okay hold this pen in your hand like typically we just grab the pen we write with it and we put it back down we don't think about it because our thoughts are moving all over the place and so at this moment we could say what we're going to do is pinch our brain just by focusing on the nuances of the pen so let's look at the pen together and say okay what are the different colors what are
the Different textures how is the light reflecting off the pen how is is there any writing on it what does it say turn the pen around start to look at it and what we're actually doing here is we're using Our intention to focus our attention we're squeezing out the other thoughts and we're focusing on the 10 now this seems really simple and you're like okay you know I'm just you know how is that helpful but what I found is that if you do this if you make a practice of It and you can do it
outside as you're going for a walk you can look at the texture of the bark on the trees you can look at the clouds you can look there's so many things to look at when you start to notice the nuances you start to also not only focusing your attention you're connecting with what you're looking at and there's this energy exchange that happens you just said a whole lot there so I want to make sure that I impact this which is this strategy and tactic Of pinching your brain I would imagine you can tap into this
anytime you feel overwhelmed anytime you feel stressed out anytime you're Doom scrolling anytime you feel caught in that devastating cycle of ruminating right over and over on negative thoughts he's saying find any object in your environment and as you're listening to us you can look around it could be a coffee mug it could be a cloud it could be like anything really and by pinching Your brain he's saying you can squeeze out any of the worries or rumination or overwhelm that you feel by just focusing on the details of an object that is with ins
sight and what happens like what is the benefit I can see the immediate benefit is you take control of your mind but what have you found over time if you make this a practice when you catch yourself feeling overwhelmed that you use this pinch your brain tool so every time that you do this it's like a bicep Curl for your attention okay and so is this really good for somebody like me and you with ADHD very good yeah okay why is pinching your brain good for somebody with ADHD because when you have ADHD um your
mind is filled with multiple thoughts that are just constantly bouncing around and your frequently finding yourself um not using your intention for where your attention is focused so I think in today's society our attention is so atomized because we Have stimuli coming at us from every direction um online you know the goal of of of of companies who operate online is to grab your attention and there's a trillion dollars that's spent every year to hijack your attention so un mark and advertising every single year and so our especially people with ADHD they fall prey the
most to these types of stimuli and so what we need to do is it's kind of like our attention if you think of it almost like a muscle um the more we Intentionally or on purpose focus our attention the more we are able to do that on command on demand for other areas of our life that are most meaningful to us as we sit here Dr carp and have this conversation I'm always thinking that there's one human being that truly needed all of the things that you're talking about today and because you've shared so openly
about all of the things that you have struggled with from second grade forward and I keep thinking About our son who had dyslexia and ADHD and wasn't diagnosed until later and had to repeat grades and how lonely he felt and I just you have gone on to run one of the most acclaimed academic scientific research labs in the entire planet you are involved in over 30,000 studies that have been you know where your lab has been cited would you talk directly to a kid that might be listening with their parent About what's possible you know
if you could talk to you as an 8 n 10year old what you wished you knew back then absolutely I love that um well to me I would first start by saying that um one of the key things that really happened to me that was um critical along my path is that I was a c and d student early on I was nearly failing out um you know cuz nothing nothing was Working and I was thinking about this earlier today and I was kind of getting emotional about it because you know I don't like to
think about that time too much because it was really difficult for me I all the labels I was getting lazy um you know they I they asked me at one point what do you want to be when you grow up and I said I want to be a doctor and they said you better set your sights lower because you just don't have what it takes to do that um they said you're Never going to amount to much and um and that really took a toll and the one thing the one thing that kept me going
during that time is the support that I had from my parents and in particular my mom um there were these speech competitions at the school that started I think in the fourth or fifth grade and my mom wrote the speeches for me and she helped me memorized and I had never memorized anything before and and I was really I had a lot of anxiety I had you Know I felt lost but she said okay let's start with one word let's move to two words let as soon I was I had a sentence memorized and then
I had two sentences memorized and then I had three and four and I could tap into the fact that things were changeable that I could actually memorize something I didn't think I could and then she would coach me and how to say it how to how to give the the speech and what happened was was incredible because I started to win Competitions I started to be the kid to beat and I think that every kid every person needs to have that one thing where they can tap into the fact that things are changeable that one
thing where they can gain that incremental confidence and tap tap into it feel it in a very visceral way because when you do that you can apply it to all the other areas in your life and and and and that truly is what allowed me to keep going and to then start to develop these Tools which eventually I applied from from surviving to thriving is that what you wish somebody would have told you that things are changeable because I find your story fascinating and I know that there are there's somebody listening that feels that exact
way about their son or daughter and you have an extraordinary amount of resilience and just like I'm plowing ahead there's a rock I'm going here I'm going here I'm going here and What is it that you want to say to some kid that is in that space right now that doesn't feel like things are changing well I would start by saying the following I believe in you I will always believe in you no matter what labels you get no matter who has shamed you before no matter what terrible things have happened to you no matter
what kind of self shame you induce on yourself there is a way out there are infinite possibilities the possibility You're living right now is not the one that defines you you can break out of it and you just need some tools and strategies you just need to experiment a little bit in your life just to see beyond that possibility and I am here to help you I am will always be here for you and I am excited for what the future holds beautiful and no matter what I want you to know that there is at
least one thing that you are good at that you can tap into and develop and it will Inspire the world that is so beautiful Dr karp what are your parting words I just have so much excitement for for life and for what life holds for everybody and and I I think that it's like you know I have experienced so many setbacks so many challenges so many times when I said I've heard it can't be done you can't do this you're not good enough I I've experienced so many moments where I I feel disconnected from the
people around me where um I don't Feel Innovative anymore I don't feel creative I I I don't feel like I can get myself out of this situation where I'm in a dark place where I I just don't know what the future holds that I'm caught behind fear behind hesitation and I think that there what I've learned in the process of my life and in writing this book and in listening to your podcast and you know all the tools and the reframes is that we need tools we need rituals we need practices we need Each other
we need diversity we need to be seeing things from different angles and different frames of references and this has a way of showing us new possibilities other possibilities so that we don't end up trapped in this linear way that our minds gravitate to towards this this single possibility that we find ourselves trapped within and this I think it just this illuminates us when we have tools and when we can actually do these Reframes and so I'm just really excited for everyone out there I'm excited for you to to experience lit and to and I'm I'm
excited to to hear um what resonates and I'd love to hear your stories well Dr Jeff karp thank you for opening up so much possibility and also doing it in a way where you have given us so many simple tools that we can put to use immediately and just like Dr karp said I Can't wait to hear what you do with everything he just taught us and shared with you and I can't wait to see what happens in your life and the people that you care about in their life when you share this episode with
them and in case no one else tells you I wanted to be sure to tell you that I love you and I believe in you and I believe in your ability to create a better life and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that everything that Dr karp has shared With you today will help you do that there is so much more possibility so many amazing things that you are capable of achieving and experiencing in your life and every one of the things that he gave you as a simple way to look at things differently
and unlock your potential are going to help you take that next step all righty I'll see you in the next episode and I want to make sure to also say thank you thank you thank you for watching all the way to The end didn't you love Dr karp I mean I just have like a huge brain crush just hanging around it makes me feel like my brain is bigger and so is my heart and so I love love love this I love spending time with you one other thing I want to ask you it is
my goal to make sure that 50% of the people that watch the YouTube channel are subscribers why because it shows me that you really love the work that we're putting out it's making a difference for you so if you could hit The Subscribe that's going to help me close the gap we are 8% away from reach reaching that goal if 50% of the people that watch are subscribers all right good you don't get what you don't ask for so I'm asking you thank you thank you thank you for supporting me and I now know what
you're thinking all right Mel this is great I've subscribed but what do you want me to do next where should I go next what's the next best video it's right here if you love Dr Karp you're going to love this next episode and I'll be waiting for you in it
