The Outworker
Stories of healing, personal development, and inner work. Founded on the idea that the relationship with oneself is the most important to develop, but the easiest to neglect, The Outworker shares conversations aimed at helping you develop that relationship.
The Outworker
#054 - Dr. Loretta Breuning - How Your Brain Wires Happiness, Stress, & Bad Habits
Dr. Loretta Breuning breaks down the brain’s chemical wiring—dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin, serotonin, and cortisol—and how they shape emotions, habits, and social behavior. She explains why people get stuck in thought loops, how to rewire them, and the role of neuroplasticity in changing deep-seated patterns. We also get into how mental health narratives shape our thinking, the impact of social comparison, and why happiness isn’t what most people think it is.
Timestamps:
00:00 The Inner Mammal
01:47 Taking Ownership Of Your Emotions
03:27 Brain Built For Survival
06:16 Conscious Thinking & Unconscious Feeling
09:29 How Dr. Breuning Found Her Work
12:34 Breakdown Of Happy Chemicals
18:28 How To Break A Bad Habit
24:01 Thinking Chemically Instead Of Emotionally
27:09 Physical Pain vs. Social Pain
32:13 Dependence On Therapy Language
36:24 Mental Anticipation Of Pain Turns Into Physical Creation Of Pain
40:07 How To Stop Making Narratives
44:22 Navigating Moments You Crave Stimulation
48:35 Needing A Greater Appreciation For Neuroplasticity
51:47 Linger On Your Gains Like You Linger On Your Losses
53:48 You Are The One Who Changes Your Life
56:05 Feeling Happiness From Being Unhappy
57:39 Thinking Happiness Means 'Privileged'
1:02:23 Taking Responsibility For Your Happiness
1:03:40 Reframing Your Understanding Of Happiness
1:08:37 Connect With Dr. Loretta Breuning
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What’s up outworkers. Dr. Loretta Breuning breaks down the brain’s chemical wiring—dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin, serotonin, and cortisol—and how they shape emotions, habits, and social behavior. She explains why people get stuck in thought loops, how to rewire them, and the role of neuroplasticity in changing deep-seated patterns. We also get into how mental health narratives shape our thinking, the impact of social comparison, and why happiness isn’t what most people think it is.
Tim Doyle (00:06.831)
What is our inner mammal and why is it important that we know what that is?
Loretta Breuning (00:11.982)
So the chemicals that make us feel good or bad are inherited from earlier animals. And we control them with brain structures that are inherited from animals. People may have heard of like the amygdala and hippocampus together, it's called the limbic system. And it's weirdly the same as animals. So animals don't control their emotions with philosophy. The chemical turns on when they see something good for them. It's like, wow, that's good for me.
or bad chemical turns on, wow, that's bad for me. And this is what we're doing all the time. So when you feel good, it's because you see something that's good for you. And how you define good for you is another whole story we could go into. But the bottom line is that we have a separate verbal brain that doesn't know all of this is going on. So it doesn't know why the good feelings turn on and off. And we make stuff up.
and we listen to what other people make up. And so if you know about your inner mammal, then you could accept your true feelings and then you could manage them because I'm not saying that you should act like an animal.
Tim Doyle (01:22.223)
You say that your work isn't intended for those who are in the habit of blaming their neurochemical ups and downs on others. How do you think shifting into this mammal mindset and understanding that component of it can also shift people out of this mindset of blaming external factors on their mental and emotional state?
Loretta Breuning (01:44.248)
Sure. So the simplest example is if I get upset and I say, you made me feel bad. Or like if I'm trying to pour something and I spill everything, it's like, you made me spill it. And even on the other side, if I say, you made me happy, but then if I lose you, then I don't know how to make myself happy. So it's much better to understand how we're triggering these chemicals with our own thoughts.
However, it's not the polite approved thoughts that trigger these chemicals because they're inherited from animals. And that's why it's so challenging to manage them. one other thing about like blaming external factors. If I think, well, I got born with a bad brain and so a doctor needs to fix me. So.
That would be nice if it were true. And if anyone is getting good results with that, you know, that's fine. doctors can't get inside your head and rewire you. So there's really no substitute for understanding your own wiring and understanding your power to build new wires.
Tim Doyle (03:02.225)
big thing about the brain is that it's focused on survival, but it isn't hardwired that way. How do we navigate ourselves out of that survival?
Loretta Breuning (03:16.6)
So this is the complication. So we're always going to be in survival mode from the perspective of our mammal brain because it evolved to promote survival. But how does a mammal brain define survival is survival of your genes. So animals are driving themselves crazy trying to spread their genes. And of course, in polite human society, that's not the thing at all. But the weird thing is animals are very competitive.
This is what got me into this. found it hard to believe, animals don't want to meet with just anybody. They're very picky and they want the best partners so they can have the most survival prospects of their genes. And so even though no one wants to consciously think that way, people drive themselves crazy of like, want to have the best partner and I want my children to have the best partner and I want my grandchildren to have the best partner.
and this is how our brain works. I'm not sure if I forgot what the question was. Did I answer it?
Tim Doyle (04:21.071)
No, yeah, that was good. was just wondering how, you know, how the brain is focused on survival mode, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's hardwired that way and we can.
Loretta Breuning (04:31.37)
yeah, yeah, yeah. OK, so the other parts of it is we're not hired that way. Animals are born hardwired. So you may hear like a squirrel knows how to find nuts. Squirrel separated from its mother going to find nuts. There's some learning involved, like where did I put my nuts? But the core skills are there. But humans are born in absolutely helpless, vulnerable situation.
and it takes us 20 years to wire up our brains. Now, the good side of that is that animals will die if you take them out of the niche, the environmental forces that their ancestors were wired to deal with. But humans, we have the ability to wire ourselves for our unique experience.
But the downside of that is we wire ourselves in our first 20 years of life. And then after that, it's hard to rewire. So that's a big part of it. And then the other part of it, to answer your question, is that focusing on survival has gotten like a negative image. It's like people say, you shouldn't survive. Just survive. You should be enjoying all the time. But our brain is not designed to create joy for no reason.
It's designed to motivate survival action and to motivate action to run away from survival threats. So when you understand that you could be a little more self accepting rather than having this crazy idea that other people run around with joy all the time and you're somehow missing out.
Tim Doyle (06:17.009)
You mentioned it briefly earlier, the relationship between what we think and what we feel. How big is that gap between what we consciously and verbally think and what we unconsciously and neurologically feel?
Loretta Breuning (06:32.182)
Yeah, so this is so interesting. The mammal brain or the emotional neurochemical operating system is not as connected to the verbal brain as you might think. So the verbal brain, what's called the human cortex that most people think of as the rational, logical, smart brain. And most people have this idea that, you you should control your emotions and that they're what's leading you astray.
It's not true at all. So the simple answer is your mammal brain is lower down and it controls your spinal cord, which controls your actions and it controls the chemicals that cause your feelings. So the human brain on top is sort of an afterthought. So anytime you're doing something an animal could do, don't need animals have perfectly good life with hardly any cortex at all. When I say good life, you know, so
The cortex, it does give you the ability to anticipate future consequences and to stop what you're doing and redirect, but and to come up with words and logically manipulate a mental representation. But it does much less than you'd think, and it has less power than you'd think. The mammal brain has the final say.
So usually what happens is like if you decide to go for it, the only way you could go for it is if your mammal brain gives the physical signal to initiate action. But because the mammal brain can't process language, it can't tell you in words, okay, I've decided to go for it. So your verbal brain is sort of like the narrator in an athletic event. And you're interpreting that as the real story because you don't have access to your mammal brain.
And Steven Pinker, he said, they're not on speaking terms. Your two brains are not on speaking terms.
Tim Doyle (08:37.765)
Where did the curiosity for this work stem from for you and how did you know that this is what you wanted to pursue?
Loretta Breuning (08:45.954)
Good question. So this is like you could say my third career. So I was a college professor for 20 years, did not especially like it. I took early retirement. I was fortunate to be able to take that at age 50 for not much money, but I sort of viewed it as like a get out of jail card. And my husband was willing to go along with this. So.
The reason I started reading so many books about the animal brain is and just learning everything I could about the animal brain because I was raised in very difficult circumstances and my mother was very unhappy. And then later on I learned like her circumstances were much, much, worse than mine. And historically, much you humans have always lived a much harsher life than ours today.
So my mother thought, you should be happy because you have plenty of food to eat and nobody's shooting at you. And then I thought, well, my kids should be happy all the time because their mother wasn't crying or screaming at them. And yet, can you guess that my kids were not happy all the time?
Tim Doyle (10:05.937)
I find that really fascinating. seems like with each generation that goes by, we're like, okay, you should be happier. You should be happier than I was.
Loretta Breuning (10:13.76)
Yeah, so that's why I was trying so hard to understand where does all this unhappiness come from. Also because I didn't know why my mother was unhappy. So I was always wondering why my mother was unhappy. And one of the main reasons that was offered to me for her unhappiness was that it was somehow my fault. So you could say in a deeper level that really motivated me to come up with another answer.
Now people may wonder where my information comes from because it's not the same information you generally get from psychology classes or degrees or counselors or whatever. So I'll give you a few examples. First, I have a reading list on my website, innermammalinstitute.org slash reading list, which is a large collection of the books that I read researching. First, I started reading about chimpanzees because that was like the cool thing.
But then I read about another species and another and another, and I saw that all mammals have the same core behaviors. And I started watching nature videos and I trained to be a docent at my local zoo before it got all politically correct and it was actually teaching the truth about animals. And I listened to a lot of audio books, so that's how I was able to.
not just read books, like while I'm exercising or cleaning the house or doing anything, I'm listening to a book.
Tim Doyle (11:43.323)
Just to give a quick vocab lesson about the happiness component and getting into the chemical side of things as well. What's the difference between dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin and serotonin and the role that they play within our brain.
Loretta Breuning (11:59.238)
Sure. So dopamine people have probably heard that a lot. By the way, my website has a very simple explanation of each of these. As soon as you go there with like in three words and then you can click on that icon. It has a whole page and links and stuff like that. But the bottom line I say, dopamine is I can do it. So it's the reward chemical, but it's
reward as defined by each person's past dopamine. So we're all born hungry, but we don't have the ability to feed ourselves. And the first time you're fed that food relieves hunger. So a reward is something that relieves a need or meets a need. And once that need is met, your body, your physiology is like, wow, that's great. So it's not this
philosophical, intellectualized thing at the core. then once you connect, so dopamine is like paving on your neural pathways. Like from a baby's perspective, getting that white liquid in my mouth feels good because it relieves hunger, even without a conscious understanding. And that paves a neural pathway to everything connected to that moment.
So that means the sight of the mother, the sound of the mother, the mother's footsteps before she arrives. So it's for most of us, most of the time is anticipating that thing that's gonna meet your needs. And the purpose of dopamine is because in the modern, in the adult world, the food doesn't come to you, you have to go out and get it. So if you look and you see a tree in the distance and you're like, if I walk,
to that tree, I'm going to find food. you release dopamine, it gives you energy and you walk to the tree. But every time you see yourself get closer to the tree, you get more dopamine. So that's the feeling we already all, we all want is like, I'm getting closer, I'm getting closer and this is going to be good. This is what I need. But then once you get it, the dopamine stops. And that's what we really need to understand, you know?
Tim Doyle (14:19.813)
And then with the other ones as well.
Loretta Breuning (14:21.226)
Yeah, so oxytocin and serotonin. So I wrote my first book about this 15 years ago. And since then, a lot of people have taken this information and spun it in a warm and fuzzy way, which is quite false. So the truth is, so first oxytocin people hear it's a social bonding chemical, which is true. But if it were that easy to just say, we feel good in a group and we want to be with the herd.
If it were that easy, then we'd just be doing it all the time. And if it were that easy, we wouldn't need a chemical to motivate the behavior. So the reality is there's always a trade off. There's a cost to following the herd and a benefit. And for animals, I just spent time on a goat farm and I learned like really graphic example. If you stick with the herd too much, you eat grass that was soiled by other goats and that
causes intestinal worms that can be fatal. So animals really prefer to spread out. And what gets them to stick together is the perception of predator threat. so common enemies is what keeps animals together. And oxytocin rewards you with a good feeling when you're, you know, the current cliche view is like.
These are my people or I got your back or this is the pub where everybody knows my name. But we all know that following the crowd has its downside. And again, I want people to know that. So serotonin, this one has really been misrepresented. So when I stumbled on this information, it was from books written in the 90s based on research that had been around for a few decades.
But since the invention of the internet, this information has been not just ignored, but sort of taboo. So the bottom, and so you hardly see it at all on the internet. So what I prize myself is the day that the New York Times reported this study in the 1980s. So animals are very competitive. They compete for food and as soon as they have enough food, they compete for mating opportunity. And serotonin is the good feeling of
Loretta Breuning (16:47.29)
I'm stronger than you. So I'm going to go for the food. I'm going to go for the baiting opportunity because I don't fear that you're going to bite me. And in the animal world, a bite can kill you. So you don't assert yourself unless you think you can win. So how do you know you can win? So there's two things. One is our mammal brain is designed for social comparison, which is why people are always driving themselves crazy over social comparison and why
Again, I'm so committed for people to understand this. And the other thing is serotonin, just like the other chemicals, it paves a neural pathway. So I feel strong in the context of whatever triggered my serotonin in the past, which is why one person, maybe they look to sports and another person looks to my drug dealer is better than your drug dealer, you know, or whatever it is. Like I'm
sarcastic and I can put other people down, whatever is a person's thing. So in the animal world, it's just an important thing is that serotonin is not aggression, but it's relaxation. Because it's like when I see that I'm bigger than you, now I can relax and now I can take the resource. Whereas if I see that I'm weaker than you,
Cortisol is released, which tells me that my survival is threatened and I pull back.
Tim Doyle (18:19.013)
When it comes to habits or experiences that don't serve us, you say the good feeling distracts you from the bad feeling, which makes it seem like the threat is gone for the moment. How can we switch that? How do we make it so that the bad feeling distracts us from the good feeling?
Loretta Breuning (18:38.348)
The bad feeling distracts us from the good feeling. This is not desired, but you're saying why do people do that sometimes?
Tim Doyle (18:45.433)
I'm saying like if we have a bad habit and I feel like this is something that I had gotten pretty good with when I was younger, like if I was cheating on my diet and I was like, okay, how can we make it so that we feel the bad feeling and it distracts us from the good feeling in the moment? Like I would almost like embody like, okay, I know I'm going to feel bad after this and like,
before I even do it. So I'm like not going to do it. Like even though it might feel good in the moment, I know that the bad feeling will last that much longer. So like it's almost like I got into the framework of, okay, I can embody the bad feeling of it before I even do it.
Loretta Breuning (19:28.568)
So bad feeling, is the chemical we call cortisol, which is often called a stress chemical. So you probably have heard that this is what makes an animal run from a predator. So our physiology is to run away from cortisol. Any time I have cortisol, it wires me, do not do that. And any time I have a thought that triggers cortisol, do not think that.
So then you would say, why would anybody do something bad? So the reason you do it is because in the moment when you did it the first time, let's say something terrible happened to me and I eat a box of cookies, the box of cookies distracted me from the terrible thing and the neurons connected and built a neural pathway that said the next time you feel bad, eat a box of cookies.
Does that answer the question you were asking?
Tim Doyle (20:25.105)
think it's very...
Yeah, I was just, think what I was trying to get at was like...
how do we make it so that like that next time I don't cheat on my diet where it's like, okay, I can rewire that.
Loretta Breuning (20:40.748)
Yes, okay, yeah, that's what I figured. Yeah, but you said you wanted to go to the bed. So you're thinking that the bad feeling is a good thing because it lets you know not to eat that.
Tim Doyle (20:52.985)
I guess we're thinking in different terms here, whereas like, okay, like the good feeling is the thing that you feel in the moment in the short term. And then like the bad feeling is like what comes afterwards. Exactly. So I think we were just looking at it from two different vantage points.
Loretta Breuning (21:04.374)
awareness of the consequences. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah. So the bottom line is a bad feeling is not going to work, because it's just going to demotivate you. And a good example for me is, let's not talk about dieting, because that's like so highly charged. And let's talk about smoking, because probably you don't smoke, right? So
If a person smokes and they really want that cigarette, and if I say you're going to die of cancer if you have that cigarette, and here's a picture of what cancer looks like. So that upsets you so much that you want the cigarette even more. OK, so a similar example is if I eat this box of cookies, I'm going to be fat and ugly and no one's going to ever love me. But that's such a depressing thought.
that I want the cookies even more. So the solution is to shift your brain to something positive. So a simple example would be, if I want a cigarette, that would be five minutes that I'm taking a break and doing something I like. So why not listen to comedy for five minutes or do something else that you like for five minutes? If a person likes to play the guitar or knit or whatever, listen to a detective novel.
something that grabs your attention. And I do not agree with this walking in the park or doing yoga, because it still leaves your mind free to worry to go to that. they're so mean to me. And they said this and then I said that. But then they said that, you know.
Tim Doyle (22:52.409)
Yeah, it's like you need to fill that with an equally charged void or something else.
Loretta Breuning (22:59.414)
Yes, exactly. And what this charge is, it's literally the electricity in your brain flows into the biggest pathways. And when you have this bad habit, everyone has a bad habit. It's the thing you did in the worst moment in your past. And that had the most chemicals. So it built the biggest highway in your brain and the electricity just flows into the biggest highway. So the challenge for all of us is to build a new highway. And that is as hard
as devoting, diverting a river into a soda straw. It's hard. Your electricity doesn't want to go into the new pathway. And so if you repeat the new behavior like every day and reward yourself for doing that, then the new pathway gets big enough that you could sort of push your electricity in there.
Tim Doyle (23:51.985)
I think it's very easy to isolate ourselves from the standpoint of thinking like, what was me? These emotions that I'm feeling and these sensations I'm experiencing, like, I'm the only one that's going through this. Like, nobody has felt this way like I have. How can thinking chemically and neurologically rather than strictly just emotionally help break that internal dialogue in that narrative that we create for ourselves?
Loretta Breuning (24:19.39)
Yeah, good question. So the narrative and the dialogue you told me is exactly the verbal brain because of the words, because we are aware of our power over our words and we're not aware of our power over our emotions. And of course, these neural pathways that we built in the past, power over them is limited. So
Tim Doyle (24:27.526)
Yep.
Loretta Breuning (24:45.934)
A simple answer is to start by changing the words. Now you said, you know, people think, well, my life is terrible. Nobody has it that bad. Excuse me. I call this victim Olympics. Like my life is worse than everyone else. But there's another thought loop that's just as bad, which is everyone's life is bad. Our society is bad.
ever not you know everything is awful because of whatever theory you want to embrace and I can't do anything about it so that's the disempowering part is there's nothing I can do because the world has gone to shit you know and that is a yeah so that's my new book so first
Tim Doyle (25:31.365)
Yeah, I like how you talk about in your book.
Loretta Breuning (25:39.766)
My original book is called Habits of a Happy Brain, Retrain Your Brain to Boost Your Serotonin, Dopamine, Oxytocin, and Endorphin. But my recent book is called Why You're Unhappy, Biology versus Politics. And that explains the flawed theory that happiness is effortless for normal people and happiness is pervasive in the past and in some tropical island.
and everyone will be happy all the time if it weren't for our society messed up. And they give you the illusion that animals are always happy, children are always happy, and hunter gatherers are always happy. But this is absolutely not true. Children are unhappy a lot, animals are fighting a lot, and hunter gatherers were at war almost all the time. But academics have just disappeared the evidence that doesn't fit the theory.
Tim Doyle (26:40.273)
Yeah, I like how you talk about in your book, obviously all humans like to think that, oh, I'm a one of one, I'm unique, I'm an individual, which is great in some senses, but I like within this conversation and within this topic, it can really help you to focus on thinking biologically and like you're a human rather than I'm this unique individual.
Loretta Breuning (27:03.798)
Yeah, well, we are unique individuals in the sense, I'll give you some examples. I hate the beach. A lot of people like the beach. When I go to the beach, like I'm uncomfortable, I hate the sweat, I hate the bugs. you know, sand gets in my eyes, I can't read, the sun gets in. I don't like that. But other people who had positive associations with the beach, like
probably they escaped there with peers when they were young and that wired in a positive association. And I have to confess that when I was young, my mother brought us to the beach and had one of her tantrums. And so in my nonverbal brain, I have wiring for a negative association for beach. Now, if there were some reason I needed to go to the beach, I could rewire that or I could just.
I enjoy going to the mountains, you know? So each of us has to decide, well, it's hard to build new pathways. It takes a lot of effort. I can do it, but I'm going to choose which ones matter to me the most.
Tim Doyle (28:12.891)
You talked about this briefly before in terms of happiness, terms of generations from your mother and then your children. Talk to me about the relationship with pain though, as well in terms of physical pain versus social pain and how we've evolved to feel like we have more painful life, but on a literal sense, like life is just a lot.
Loretta Breuning (28:38.498)
Yes, yes, so here's the...
Tim Doyle (28:41.7)
less physically painful.
Loretta Breuning (28:58.318)
We have no connection.
Tim Doyle (29:01.627)
think you're back.
didn't hear me?
Loretta Breuning (29:05.166)
okay, okay, good. Yes, I can, although your image is still frozen, but I think, okay. Yeah, so I understood the question, but you might wanna repeat it. So what I heard was about historically, why do people think that their life is harder today? But there were a lot of blips, so have that repeating the question.
Tim Doyle (29:30.927)
Yeah, talk to me about the relationship like you were talking about earlier in terms of happiness from one generation previous with your mother and then like your mom saying like you should be happier and then like getting that passed down to your kids and like with the relationship with pain as well about how there's physical pain and there's social pain and the world has literally become less painful.
Loretta Breuning (29:54.132)
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Tim Doyle (29:57.805)
in terms of physical pain, we perceive it as being more painful because of more social pain.
Loretta Breuning (30:05.918)
Yeah. there's, there's like so many topics within that question. I'm afraid I'm to forget them. So first let's, to focus on the positive, like if your parents saying, know, why aren't you happy or you should be happy is, every child has unhappiness because children are powerless and cannot meet their own needs. And on some level they feel that powerless and that's scary. So,
Are you hearing me?
Aren't you hearing me? You've been frozen. Okay, sorry. So your parent wants you
Tim Doyle (30:42.735)
No, we're good. Even if it freezes, it'll still record.
Loretta Breuning (30:49.612)
Okay, so your parent wants you to be happy. They're doing their best. They want you to be happier than them. It's not a bad thing, but also they want it for themselves because your happiness makes them happy. And also there's a thing called mirror neurons. So we mirror the rewards and threats of others. So for example,
If you see another student in your class get popularity, let's just call it, then you feel that and you want to do whatever they did. So when your parents sees you being happy, they feel it as if it's happening to themselves. But if a child sees a parent being happy, they feel it. And like if you see a parent being happy over opening a bottle of wine, then that wires you to be happy about opening a bottle of wine.
If you see a parent who's like, poor me, nothing ever goes my way, then that wires you to be poor me, nothing ever goes my way. Okay. Now let's talk about social pain. Currently there's this trend, which is to say social pain is just as bad as physical pain. And therefore if you hurt my feelings, it's equivalent to you hit me and that's
really wrong and unhealthy, I think, but let me just pick out the parts that are true. So pain is cortisol. So in the past, humans, know, it was cold and you had to go out in the snow to get firewood to make yourself a fire. And that was pain. then you put up with the pain of going out in the snow in order to get the firewood to relieve the pain of being cold.
So we're always defining pain in our head and we're always like learning from experience, like what actions can I take to relieve pain? If you grow up in a world like millions of years, people grew up, there was lice, there were rats, there were insects, there was hunger, there was infection, like you got a cut, you didn't have any antibiotic cream, like people were in pain all the time, okay?
Loretta Breuning (33:12.596)
Now in the modern world, things are so safe and like you're not even risk getting drafted and going to war. So the worst pain you have is social pain. So your whole cortisol system, your whole emergency alert system that has evolved for millennia.
from humans and animals that got ripped apart by wolves and still ran for their lives. This whole system is being applied to that one person in the cafeteria who laughed at you, or the person who didn't get invited to a party, who didn't invite you to their party, or you projecting when you see two people laughing that they're laughing about you, and then you're triggering your own cortisol.
So this is not a healthy mindset. And unfortunately, all of the wealth of the modern world has been wasted on this whole like counseling, nurturing culture to indoctrinate young people to think their lives are so painful and then to medicate them with medications that distract you from building mind management skills.
with medications that you will habituate to and therefore they will lose their effectiveness. So you'll need to take more. And with medications that will have terrible effects when you try to withdraw them in many cases, if you try to stop taking them.
Tim Doyle (34:56.017)
Do you think we've become too dependent on therapy and just that kind of language and mindset of, I'm dealing with something. This must mean something that it must mean something's wrong with me.
Loretta Breuning (35:10.904)
So therapy can have many good effects when used properly. let's first eliminate. So what you're addressing, which is a really good point, is this, let's call it disease labels. And the classic example is, I have ADD, therefore I can't do my homework. So needless to say, what kid wouldn't say, wow, all you have to do is, you know, or like,
We have a test today. I'm having an anxiety attack. I don't have to take the test. I'll take it tomorrow after my friends tell me the answers. If you give kids that option, what kid's not going to take it? You know, so that's not healthy to have that option. And also, like I said, drugging people has all these negative effects, but therapy can be used constructively if, you know, if you have anxiety before a test.
and it teaches you to manage that. However, once, a child ends up with a therapist because they're having that much anxiety, usually there's other stuff going on. so either sometimes, you know, you're having anxiety because
your parents are having anxiety and you're mirroring that. And it'd be more helpful if the therapist taught you that, but they don't because your parents are paying the bills. And then there's also that sometimes if a child says I'm having anxiety or if they actually have a panic attack or something, it's because their parents have rewarded that behavior.
And so many parents have reward that behavior. I've done it myself because I did not understand the brain when I was raising my kids. learned this all afterwards, after I got to take early retirement. So what are some ways that parents reward you for having an anxiety attack? One simple example would be your parents are fighting all the time, but when you have a meltdown, they stop fighting.
Loretta Breuning (37:36.298)
So a child brain perceives that as a reward. Another example, I was walking down the street and this dog ran toward me and almost bit me and their owner pulls them back and then hugs the dog. They hug the dog, which wires the dog. you see, so in the same way that when my kid had a meltdown, I hugged them and that wired them to have meltdowns. And now
That has become the prescribed way of raising kids. our core highways in our brain are built by age seven. so if you have been wired that having meltdowns, first, we all have meltdowns when we're born. So it's not that you have a disorder, that screaming and crying is a baby's core survival skill.
So we have to work hard to learn not to have the meltdown. But if you're rewarded for having a meltdown, then you don't learn. And then you're eight years old and your peak neuroplasticity is over. By then you have people saying, what's wrong with you? You must have a disorder.
Tim Doyle (38:53.317)
Yeah, these correlations get built and then it's hard to rewire them or you just believe that that is truth rather than something that was built within you over time. And you say the brain strives to avoid pain by storing details of the experience so you know what to look out for in the future. When you see things associated with past pain, your cortisol starts flowing so you can act in time to avoid future pain.
Do you see any drawback and danger in this though? Because, and I can talk about my own personal experiences as well. Can't the mental anticipation of pain, like, okay, I know that this caused pain in the past, so it's gonna cause pain again. Can't that mental anticipation be the physical creation of pain?
Loretta Breuning (39:45.454)
Absolutely, absolutely. So the most famous example is before a person's going to go on a date, right? Is that anticipation triggering pain. And then there's a learned thing where you tense your muscles because that's part of the pain of the self-protective response. And then that's a secondary loop where the tensing of the muscles restricts blood flow. And then that can even cause physical pain, especially
If you tense this part versus that part, the part that you're tensing, eventually it's going to have physical pain. So then a person can go to the doctor, then they could blame the doctor for not finding it without looking into this whole thought loop, you know, and using the example of, know, before a date, like who wouldn't be nervous before a date, right? And who wouldn't believe that it's a disorder when the whole medical system is, is using that mindset.
But many people have grown up with, say, a single parent who was dating. And you saw, like in a young, vulnerable age, you see your parents getting all anxious about dating, or you see your parents getting anxious about their alcohol consumption or their boss hating them or whatever. And you wire that in. but I wanted to give a healthy example so people can understand the healthy function of this.
Tim Doyle (41:07.717)
Yeah, things are.
Loretta Breuning (41:15.04)
Let's say you're a baboon and you smell a lion and you start to run. So can a baboon outrun a lion? Well, it's like they're almost exactly equal. it's real. And that's how evolution works is like predator and prey is like they're really close to being equal. That's why both species are still alive. So how does a baboon save itself? They climb up a tree, but where baboons live is mostly desert and there's very few trees.
So the baboon runs and runs until it finds a tree, climbs up the tree and then it's happy. It's like, wow, I saved like what bigger happiness can there be than saving your life? So that burst of happiness is connected to trees. So now the next time the baboon smells a lion, it immediately looks for a tree. And that's how our alarm system is designed to work. So
If you smell trouble because you see two kids in the cafeteria laughing and you think they're laughing at you and you think, I feel bad. I need to have a cigarette or a pill or a beer, whatever it is. It's you're running on that same alarm system that had an effective function. You know, also let me give another example, like cavemen. Okay. If they waited.
until they had no food left and no firewood left, you know, they might die. So in order to survive, they had to worry about looking for food and firewood before it was too late. So that's why that whole anticipation thing had a natural healthy function.
Tim Doyle (42:58.539)
using that example of, okay, I see two people in the distance laughing and I just have the belief that, they must be laughing at me. Not using that specific example for me, but that's definitely something that I struggle with and I have a conscious awareness that I struggle with, but I still am stuck in that wiring. Why is it that we take one action that occurs
We use that data point and then we just create this whole narrative around that. And then how do we break that?
Loretta Breuning (43:31.054)
Sure. So the simple answer is because those really deep physiological pathways are built at a very young age and they're really core pathways. So I'll give you my example. So yeah, in terms of people laughing at you, like I had a feeling of when I was at a meeting that nobody was listening to me. And then I'd walk out of the meeting and I'd feel so bad.
And then I really grew up like nobody was listening to me. So this was like the first seven years of my life. All of the core neuroplasticity of my brain was having this grieving about nobody listening to me. And so that's where the electricity in my brain goes because, you know, so what to do about it. So here's a related one that I actually, and I solve that partly just by becoming aware of it.
And then it's like, what other way could I explain my bad feeling during that meeting other than thinking they were ignoring me? Well, what was I doing to cause them to ignore me? Well, what I was doing is everything they were saying, I was thinking, that's such bullshit. I'm not going to dignify that with an answer. So I was sort of leaving myself out because I, you know,
I was not connecting to their bullshit. That's a simple example. I'll give you another one. So when I was young, my mother had a lot of rages and I was so scared of her that I didn't make eye contact. And I literally got wired not to make eye contact. And I didn't realize this until I was studying. I'm sorry. I was a college professor and I had a lot of students that were from China.
and they do not make eye contact with the teacher. And I could see how they get polite. And in the animal world, if a monkey looks in the eyes of another monkey, that means I'm going to beat you up. So that's a quorum mammalian thing. But in the modern world, you know, where we have this state of peace, we're supposed to make eye contact, but I never learned that.
Loretta Breuning (45:57.396)
and I had all of these fear pathways. I had to train myself and I practiced because when I would go to the store and pay the cashier in the olden days when there was physical money and physical cashiers and I would pay the cashier but I would never look at them. And then one day I thought I should look them in the eye and they did not look back at me.
because I think they have a job to do, they're busy, and they're used to other people not looking at them. And when they did not look back at me, I had this surge of bad feeling. And that trained me to understand like my deep childhood wiring. I was like, so I'm just afraid that if I look at them, they're not gonna look back at me.
And then to say, okay, that was a real thing when I was a child, but now I'm not a child anymore. So if I look at them, then that's just a way that I can feel like I'm a nice person. And if they don't look back at me, I could just feel that they're doing their job.
Tim Doyle (47:13.361)
Getting deeper into the role of happy chemicals and the fluctuation of them throughout different moments. And I'll give you a tangible example. like I'm at the gym, having a great workout, sun's on my face, listening to great music, great community with a lot of people around me. Those happy chemicals are at a high. And then I get back into my car and it's like, okay, that's starting to come down a little. And this is something that I've learned. I'm like, okay, like
I need that stimulation or I want more stimulation. So I go on my phone and I start scrolling through social media because I want to keep those happy chemicals at a high. What should a person be doing in those situations instead during those stimulating moments?
Loretta Breuning (48:00.952)
Very good question. And this is why both I never advocate exercise as a solution to happiness because stimulating that endorphin doesn't transfer to being happy about your daily tasks. So our real challenge in life is to find happiness while we're doing our daily tasks. Okay. And the way to do that is to have positive expectations.
Now, the really old fashioned way was the idea of like, if I do a good job, I'll get promoted. But I know that that's hard for a lot of people because partly there's so much cynicism and partly because people have such unrealistic expectations. Like I'll do a good job, I'll get promoted and in five years I'll be king of the world, you know? And when you have those unrealistic expectations, then you're to get disappointed and then your dopamine is not going to be triggered.
So the thing is to set yourself small goals and then take small steps towards your goal. So when you get in your car after your workout, know, what are you going to do if you think that, I have an endless day and every day is the same. have endless work. I'm never going to get enough done to really move forward. My goals, then you're going to be miserable. So instead, if you think, okay, I have
this one difficult task this morning and I'm going to tackle that task first and then I'm going to have a little treat after that difficult task. And you can't have treats all the time if it's food treats, but if you're going to have like a morning coffee or morning snack, do the hardest task first and then don't expect to drive yourself crazy. I'm going to do one hard task and then another hard task and another hard task.
because you can't get up your dopamine if you're having like endless, you know, so I'm to do one hard task and then I'm going to have a break. Now I know some people abuse that and then they have 95 % breaks. So it becomes a skill to structure this is like, but you know, well, depending on the individual, you know, I'm going to have one half hour work session and then a five minute comedy session.
Loretta Breuning (50:22.924)
Then I'm to have an hour work session and then a 10 minute snack session. And then I'm going to have do my hardest task of the day. And then I'm going to call a person who makes me laugh. But I also limit that because then if you say, but the person didn't answer the phone and blah, blah, you know, so, but we have to create our own reward structure by the end of the day, by the end of the week, I've gotten these certain things done and
If you feel like you're on an endless, hopeless loop, then if you have this more distant dream and you only spend five to 10 minutes a day on that dream, but you do it every day, that's enough to give you that dopamine feeling that you're moving toward the dream. But the bottom line is you have to take the steps and you have to have like somewhat of a realistic dream.
so that you actually perceive yourself moving toward it rather than some pie in the sky.
Tim Doyle (51:26.321)
feel like we don't have a true appreciation for neuroplasticity and being able to change the wiring of our mind. Like, when it comes to physical exercise and our physical appearance, I think we obviously have a very good understanding of like, okay, that can change. And I think a big reason for that is because you can visibly and visually see that change occurring when it's something that's mental, you can actually
see it, can only be felt or perceived. What are your thoughts on that? Where I think a lot of people can get into the framework of, okay, the mind I have is just the mind that I have and they don't have the belief that they can change the wiring of their mind. What are your thoughts there?
Loretta Breuning (52:12.77)
So I created a 45 day challenge that if you repeat the new choice every day for 45 days and then give yourself a reward at the end of the 45 days. And when I say the new choice, I don't mean diet and exercise, but how would I like to feel in this particular situation? And it has to be very specific. It can't be like,
I'm going to be confident because you can't totally rewire yourself in 45 days. So a simple example would be, say a person, I'll give you mine. Okay. So I have some tech challenges and I think I'm pretty good at it, but then I had a few failures and I got really upset and it wired me like now, as soon as I try to do some
repair on something goes wrong on my website. I get really upset quickly because it built a big pathway in my brain. And then it connects to a childhood pathway, which is I don't have anybody to help me. I got to do this myself. So, so then what would be an alternative to that? And how can I repeat it every 45 days and then give myself a big reward at the end of 45 days? So an example would be
Every day for 45 days, I'm going to tackle one tech challenge. I could put on a timer for 10 minutes and not do it forever, drive myself crazy, but I'm just going to do it 10 minutes and don't wait till like 11 o'clock when you're exhausted. And then right after that tech challenge, then I'm going to get up from my desk and maybe do something, even even make dinner, but just not stick with that bad feeling.
or have a tea break, but that at the end of the 45 days, I'm going to do something that's literally fun, not good for you, like, I'll take a yoga class, but like, have a day trip or a weekend trip or something like that, because that will link the sense of accomplishment, because if you can say, yeah, I'm gonna be a great tech pioneer, if my goal is not realistic, then.
Loretta Breuning (54:35.638)
I'm not going to feel good, you know. And I just did it recently. I'm like, what did I do? like you may have the same thing where like you have some basic software in your life that you've used for years and then it suddenly stops working. Like I like if I you wrote me an email and I'm going to search, where's that email? The search function on my email stopped working that I've used for years, you know. So that's like an eye.
I searched online, I found, and I went into like the deep kernel of programming to fix it. I was so proud of myself after.
Tim Doyle (55:16.323)
One of the mental changes that I like that you talk about, and I think it aligns with that, where it's like doing something each day for 45 days is how you say, linger on your gains the way you linger on your losses. And I think that's so fascinating because it's what everyone does that you can just linger on losses for days on end and months on end. And you kind of just completely lose sight of the gains that you have made. Is there anything that you
tactically think that like people can do to make sure they are lingering on the gains that they make.
Loretta Breuning (55:52.854)
Yeah, sure. first, you know, realistic expectations I always talk about, which is not that sexy. The other is to be conscious of your own social comparison. So if you say, well, I made gains, but this other person made much bigger gains, then you're going to feel bad. And that social comparison is inside yourself. And so
We don't notice it with our verbal brain when we're doing that. But again, I think it was wired. So most of our wiring is before age eight and during puberty. So simple example would be you were a younger sibling and you were always told that this older sibling was doing better than you. that would be.
one example of how a person feels like, you know, nothing they do is quite good enough. Or you had a parent who had that mindset of nothing I do is good enough or unfortunately some parents say that right out to you no matter how good you do, they put it down. So then you have to say, okay, that's a separate rewiring challenge to say, wow, that's a huge pathway in my brain and I'm gonna
break that down and make that a separate 45 day challenge.
Tim Doyle (57:19.057)
building off of the, what we were talking about earlier in terms of physical pain and how we can anticipate pain where it's not like someone who's necessarily just intrinsically painful, but we create that correlation. And I think that's really fascinating how you talk about as well in terms of just things that we naturally think are good or bad. It's not that those things are intrinsically that way, but it's our mental wiring and the circuits within our brain that
create something that's good or bad. And I have my own belief to that as well and something much grander in terms of thinking like things that change our life. And I think you always see or hear somebody's like, that book changed my life or this job changed my life. And I was the same way where I've had experiences where I'm like, that thing changed my life. But then I got
I had the realization, I was like, wait, like, you can't just look at things in isolation. Like it's the relationship between me and that book. And like the magic occurs when the two are put together rather than simply just that book by itself or that job by itself. And it's like, you are the one who truly is creating that spark. What are your thoughts on that?
Loretta Breuning (58:43.488)
Yeah, and then of course the challenge is well how to do that. And so first what you could give yourself credit for you went out and looked for books and read the books and then put in the effort of connecting what you read to your existing pathways because a lot of people sort of run away from it because it's uncomfortable. But a simple way for people who haven't done this to think about it, I call it an exit ramp. So you have these highways in your brain when you're young,
And you want to build a new highway, but it's hard. first focus on building an exit ramp is to say, when I'm having that bad thought loop, I'm going to stop and think about, OK, what other way can I think about this situation? And then you start looking for the various tools around and you're ready to take them in.
Tim Doyle (59:37.947)
On a chemical level, why is it that people can actually feel happiness from being unhappy?
Loretta Breuning (59:45.932)
So it's a real chemical and our brain is designed to have them on and off all the time like a car is designed either go forward or go back. And our happy chemicals are the signal to go forward toward a reward. And our stress chemicals are to pull back from a threat and sometimes no chemical, which is fine because that's the state of your brain saying
I'm taking in the latest update so that I could decide what is my best next step. Should I take this step or should I say take this step or should I pull back? know, and so should I give up or should I keep trying? Should I keep trying what I was already trying or try an alternative? So you have to stop and gather information before you make that decision. And that
moment you're not happy or sad. And that's valuable state. So I call that valuable state neutral.
Tim Doyle (01:00:53.713)
But in terms of like unhappiness, like, do you think that people can get enjoyment from being unhappy or having unhappy thoughts or experiences and they just get into that mental wiring?
Loretta Breuning (01:01:05.966)
okay. Okay. So, let's talk more about, I talked about serotonin is social dominance that when you feel like you're in the position of strength, I call it the one up position, then you get a little bit of serotonin. So one way of having social dominance is what people always complain about is like success. Another way is being strong or like, I have a hot partner.
is the classic mammalian way. But another is poor me. My life is worse than your life. And that gets wired in when you're young. It's like if you do the poor me thing, poor me, my life is so bad, you should give me your cookie. Poor me, my life is so bad. that's okay. You don't have to do your homework tonight. You could watch a movie, you know? Poor me, my life is so bad. So then everybody's suddenly nice to you.
So there's a thousand and one ways to wire. So the person who is unhappy, they really want to be happy and being unhappy makes them happy because of a neural pathway when they were young that they got a reward by being unhappy. But their goal is not to be unhappy. Their goal is to get the reward.
Tim Doyle (01:02:27.205)
Hmm, interesting. You may be...
Loretta Breuning (01:02:29.838)
And once you figure out how you wired that in each individual, then they can design an alternative for 45 days.
Tim Doyle (01:02:40.665)
You may be called privileged if you take responsibility for your own happiness. Why do you think there's been such a strong correlation there built where people just perceive, okay, if that person feels like they have a good life or if they feel like they're happy, then there must be some intrinsic reason for that, or there must be some privileged reason why instead of like, no, like I've done the work to create my happiness.
Loretta Breuning (01:03:04.398)
Yes, yes. And I grew up around this thought loop, just like all of us did. And so what got me out of this thought loop is I read a lot of history and a lot of biography. And everyone that you think of today, who was like some great figure, when you read about their life, you see how really horrible suffering was in their life. So you may think, these great historical figures, they were
successful because they must have had more nurturing and more advantages and all the cliches we've heard. But in fact, they pushed through horrible, horrible obstacles. And so they got some traction, but also lots of suffering. So I'll give you a couple of examples. Thomas Jefferson, his wife died in childbirth and
seven of his eight children, six or seven of his children died before they grew up and had children. So he just watched everybody die. George Washington, he had a stepson who was very spoiled in the ways that I've mentioned, and he did everything to help the stepson. But he was still a total alcoholic. And like then, just like now, you know, some young people
Not only were they alcoholic, but the popular bad habit at the time was gambling. And people from affluent families would just gamble away old family's money and borrow money and gamble it. This is literally true. When Washington signed the Treaty of Yorktown that gained America independence, he went right from signing that treaty to his stepson's funeral because his stepson drank himself to death.
after like decades of trying to rescue the kid. So those are just some examples. And John Adams, the second president of the United States, know, Jefferson was the third. So the second, so now we're three for three. His son was alcoholic and his grandson was alcoholic. And they were very prominent. They had all kinds of titles and everything, but they were alcohol. And if you wonder where I got this, it's
Loretta Breuning (01:05:27.086)
It's something like the the private lives of the founding fathers by Thomas Fleming something like that
Tim Doyle (01:05:37.425)
David Senra, not sure if you know him or not, but he's the host of the Founders podcast and he does a lot of work where he just does a deep dive into history's greatest leaders. he compiled a list of like, what are the top traits of history's greatest. And the number one thing on the list was that he said,
excellence is the capacity to take pain. Like out of everything that was on the list, like there was great stuff like, you know, growth mindset and all this stuff, but like the number one thing that he correlated between like history's greatest leaders is like, they all had an excellent capacity to be able to take pain, whether that's literal physical pain or some type of like mental stress that like came through their work. And I think that builds on this point nicely where it's like these things aren't just naturally
Loretta Breuning (01:06:20.792)
Hmm. Hmm.
Tim Doyle (01:06:36.549)
given to us or they're not just like we don't just naturally have them or we're just not naturally wired to be this way. But it's like it's that constant work that takes time.
Loretta Breuning (01:06:43.15)
you
Loretta Breuning (01:06:48.938)
Yes, yes. And if I could give you a couple of more examples of just how yeah, Sigmund Freud. And so you know, when I grew up, like he was like the icon of psychology. And so I thought, he was so lucky at this good life, you know, they had like a club of everybody who agreed with this new theory. And I wish I had a nice little club of people. You know, we've had such a nice conversation, I would love to have a
of people who got it like you. And why don't I have that? And what's wrong with my life? And where did everything go wrong? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then during COVID, I read 12 biographies of Sigmund Freud. And basically I learned that this group that he was linked to, they were at each other's throat all the time. was backstabbing and fighting and everything.
Tim Doyle (01:07:45.305)
In order to take responsibility for our happiness, what should people be doing?
Loretta Breuning (01:07:50.872)
So, and we have to be careful about our because most people when they say take responsibility for our happiness, they want to take responsibility for the world's happiness and the country's happiness and humanity. that's the exact, yeah, because that's the exact opposite because once your verbal brain will ignore how you're creating your own unhappiness,
Tim Doyle (01:08:06.201)
Individual happiness.
Loretta Breuning (01:08:19.798)
and it will come up with this theory that you are saving the world and it's the world's fault that you're unhappy and you're just doing what you're doing for other people. And so the goal is really to say, if you're doing something that's making you unhappy, you can stop doing it. And if you're having thought loops that are making you unhappy, you can stop having them. And, you know, most people don't see that they have a choice.
I've tried that's why I'm not a therapist. Like I've tried talking to people and like, no, I couldn't do that. No, I couldn't change my thought. No, I couldn't. I have to do this. I have to do that. I can't change.
Tim Doyle (01:09:03.537)
Your happy chemicals will not surge all the time, but you do not need to be having a peak experience at every moment. You can accept the inevitable dips in your happy chemicals instead of believing something is wrong. You don't have to mask the dips with unhealthy habits. You can just take them as evidence that your inner mammal is looking out for you in the best way it knows how. It's almost like those dips are those moments where we feel like we're coming down from a peak experience of happiness can be
reframed as, okay, I'm not experiencing stress or unhappiness. This is just a lesser feeling of happiness. And I think that shift in language can be really strong, where if you can just be in the mindset of, okay, I'm just on this dial of happiness. And it can just like, I'm just going to stay on this dial of happiness. And it'll, it'll go up at times, it'll go down at times.
rather than being in the mindset of like, okay, I'm happy now I'm unhappy. And like, you just like see song back and forth. And I think that's a really powerful reframe.
Loretta Breuning (01:10:11.946)
Yeah. And the idea that, if I'm not happy all the time, something's wrong with me is absolutely not right. And if it couldn't, we couldn't have a peak experience every minute of every day. It's just not realistic. And it's hard to accept that because so many people are trying to sell, sell, sell, sell. You can have joy, you know, this is the joy you've always dreamed of. It's hard to resist all that.
hype, right? The other thing is, I use this simple example in my first book. Let's say you're the person who discovered a planet, and you're so excited in that moment that you discovered the planet. Part of the reason you're so excited is because maybe
Tim Doyle (01:10:44.697)
Yeah, I mean, I'm a believer.
Loretta Breuning (01:11:04.462)
You worked your whole life. You deprived yourself of everything else. You slept on the floor of your office and all that dopamine anticipation. And finally is like, whoa, there it is. And also you're anticipating this Nobel Prize. So let's say you finally get some kind of prize. So now you have the serotonin of like, I'm the guy who won a Nobel Prize. So you walk into a cocktail party like, I'm the guy who won the Nobel Prize. But like, you're not going to feel that
every minute of every day, it's gonna go down. And you might even be at a party with like other people who won big prizes. So what are you gonna do? So you're gonna tell yourself, I have to discover another planet. Because to your brain, that's the only way to feel good. It's the only way it knows. It knows suffering, feel good. And classic example, anyone who's done something big, when you read about their childhood,
They had a really horrible childhood. And the only way they escaped that horror was to obsess over this thing that they finally did. So the minute they stop obsessing over that thing, they're going back to the horrible childhood memories. And it helps if we can be real about that. But most people don't understand that. So they just have to keep going after that, chasing that peak, whether it's.
an unhealthy thing like gambling or alcohol, or even if it's a healthy thing, but it's overwork or let's say love addiction or something like that.
Tim Doyle (01:12:41.969)
Yeah, I'm a big believer that one of the biggest reasons why joy and happiness feels so good is because we also have moments of pain and stress or potentially unhappiness. And it's just like creating that shift or like, Oh, wow, like this feels so good, because there have been moments where I have felt so bad. And it's like, if you just get into the mindset, also, like if you were at like peak happiness 100 % of the time,
then that like feeling would wear off on you and like you just like would become immune and like it's like, okay, like that's just like your base level and like you're not actually feeling some type of better sensation.
Loretta Breuning (01:13:21.582)
Yes. Yeah. And that's called habituation. But the big thing is if something feels really good, it's because you worked for it inevitably. And the classic example is maybe your grandparents generation where a bicycle was considered like the most expensive thing you could possibly get. And like a teenager would work for a year to save up for a bicycle. And it would be this ecstatic thing.
Worse today, like my five-year-old grandchild gets a bicycle and refuses to use it, and then she wants a different color, and every year she gets another one because she grew an inch, you know? So she's not having the experience of having had to work for something.
Tim Doyle (01:14:08.411)
Loretta, where can people go to see more of your work with the inner mammal method and everything there?
Loretta Breuning (01:14:16.6)
Thank you. My website is innermammalinstitute.org. Innermammalinstitute.org. And I want to thank you. You're so well versed in my work. So I really appreciate that, but also it makes me wonder what you've read. So I feel like you've probably read Habits of a Happy Brain, but I feel like you might also have read Why You're Unhappy. Or have you read another one or what?
Tim Doyle (01:14:44.101)
I have not, the only one that I've read is Habits of a Happy Brain, but potentially it's maybe some other reading that I've done as well that I'm honored to hear you say that you think I'm well-versed, so I appreciate that.
