>> Hi.

I'm Lewis Howes, New York Times best-selling author and entrepreneur.

And welcome to "The School of Greatness," where we interview the most influential minds and leaders in the world to inspire you to live your best life today.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neuroscience and psychology expert who shares with us the complexities of anxiety and how it can be used as a superpower.

I'm so glad you're here today, so let's dive in and let the class begin.

♪ ♪ >> We think that 90% of the population identifies as suffering from anxiety and those last 10%, they're also suffering from anxiety.

They just don't want to say.

>> Is it possible for us to change the way we think about anxiety and start to heal our brain, heal our mind-set around the topic of anxiety so that it doesn't affect us or consume us in our life?

Is that possible?

>> Absolutely, it is possible.

I think the first step is to realize that anxiety and our stress response, which is causing all those negative feelings, evolutionarily, that is a protective mechanism.

It is necessary for our survival.

It was and it is necessary.

So it was evolved so that if there is a lion coming at us that you automatically have that increased heart rate, that increased respiration, all the blood goes to your muscles so you can run away.

Our problem is that in this day and time, there's not a lot of lions coming at us, but there's all the worry that we see every single day when we look in the newspaper and look at our Instagram feeds and that worry of a possible terrible thing that might happen, that also activates our stress and anxiety systems.

But it is there for protection.

How do we harness that and bring it back into submission so it can help us in the way that it was developed or evolved to help us?

That is, to put us into action.

One of the superpowers in good anxiety is the superpower of empathy.

So -- >> For yourself or others?

>> First for yourself and recognizing it in yourself and then giving it out to others.

Because just as you described your journey, a lot of our own anxieties have been with us since we were little.

Same anxiety.

>> It stayed for decades.

>> For your lifetime sometimes.

>> What was yours?

>> I have many, but the one that I talk about here is shyness and kind of social anxiety.

And I've learned because I'm a teacher and because I want to become an author, I've learned the skills not to have those kinds of anxieties.

But I was painfully shy as a young girl, and even into college I found myself in social situations wanting to join in, not feeling comfortable, or even in class.

And I realized that that has become my superpower as a teacher, because I know when I'm standing at the front of the classroom -- >> Shyness is a superpower?

>> My shyness.

>> Really?

Why is that?

>> Because when I'm standing at the front of the classroom, there are always those students.

They say, "Oh, I know the answer, I know the answer!"

And I know that there's many more that want to talk to me, that want to show me what they know, want to have that interaction, but can't do that.

And so what do I do?

I make sure that I am there 15 minutes before.

I stand there.

I talk to the students before.

I stay after class.

Anybody that wants to come up for a casual conversation where you don't have to be the one raising your hand, and I have that particular form of empathy because of my particular form of anxiety, my social anxiety.

>> Interesting.

>> And so imagine the 90% of people that have their particular form of anxiety.

They know what it feels like.

They know what's going through many others, of our minds.

And what if you turn that around and you do what you do and say, "How can I help somebody else in this way that I know I've struggled, but I also know what can help?"

>> Sure, sure.

And what does anxiety do for us when we don't have attacks coming our way?

Like if we're constantly in a state of anxiety, what does it do to the brain and what does it do to our immune system and to our body and our emotions?

>> Yeah, long-term anxiety will have terrible effects on all of the physiological systems that are being activated.

So what's happening when you have a stress response?

Your heart rate is going up, your respiration is going up.

So long-term effects of anxiety and stress are heart disease, ulcers, reproductive problems, long-term reproductive problems with long-term anxiety, PTSD.

If you have PTSD, classic example of long-term stress.

Your whole temporal lobe gets smaller.

Why?

Because you first start to degrade the size of your individual brain cells and then you start to kill them off.

And so memory problems ensue.

>> What are the common things that most people have on a daily anxiety basis, I guess?

What is it?

Fear of what?

>> Fear of public speaking is one of the most common.

Money fears, another big one.

Social anxiety is -- You know, they mirror the clinical levels of anxiety.

One is general anxiety disorder.

It's just kind of life and situations and interacting with anything.

>> How do we get comfortable with uncertainty so it doesn't consume us?

>> Yeah.

>> How do we embrace it and enjoy uncertainty and have fun and play and connect with it in a different relationship?

>> Yeah.

One strategy that's easy to understand is how do you create more joy in your life to kind of counteract all of these negative things coming out?

And so joy conditioning is mining your own memory banks for those joyous, funny -- pick your favorite positive emotion events in your life and consciously bringing them back up and revivifying them and bringing up those emotions.

And my little trick for that is try and find a memory that you love that has an olfactory component to it.

>> A what component?

>> Olfactory.

So a particular smell associated with it.

Why?

Because smells are really evocative of memories.

It's very easy to bring up everything associated with that memory if it has a smell.

It's okay if it doesn't.

And it's really a direct antidote to fear conditioning, which we all experience automatically.

>> Is there some benefit to having some anxiety or is it better to just have this kind of worry-free life, happy-go-lucky, I'm not going to let anything bother me, I forgive everyone, you know, it doesn't matter what you do.

I'm just a happy human being.

Is there some benefit to that or no?

>> Yeah, I think about anxiety now and all that worry and anger and all these other things that come with anxiety.

I really think of it as kind of the wind in my sails.

That is the little fire under my backside that gets me to do things, gets me excited, gets me to go towards the fear and get through it because I know there's something good on the other side.

I think it is very beneficial to learn how to take that fear that is depleting us.

It is exhausting us, it's making us look older and turn that into something that makes you feel better about yourself.

It decreases the overall stress in your life.

And frankly, it is more practical to say, "Look, I'm not going to be happy-go-lucky all the time.

Nobody's happy-go-lucky all the time.

I'm -- But I'm going to use that bad stuff that is inevitably going to come in and I am going to learn from it.

I'm going to use it to my best advantage."

And one thing we haven't talked about yet, I'm going to learn about myself through thinking about my anxiety rather than just trying to say, "Oh, I hate it.

Go away."

What does it tell us about ourselves?

And like for me, my social anxiety told me how much I love and I appreciate deep friendships because I didn't have them, because I was too scared to start them.

>> Really?

You were so shy?

>> I was so shy and it kept me isolated.

Part of the time it's like, "I'm a lone wolf.

I like being alone, you know?

It's okay."

But actually, the truth was, I love being with people.

It motivates me.

So I had to get through that shyness to get that joy on the other side.

>> When someone says they like being a lone wolf, what is it?

I mean, no one likes to be alone.

Really.

I mean, we like to be alone in moments, but no one wants to be alone and not have close friendships, right?

>> Yeah.

We were evolved to be social.

But it is scary, and some of us have that fear.

>> I think it can be terrifying if you don't know how to handle the emotions of it, if you haven't learned the tools on how to navigate when someone lets you down or when someone talks behind your back or when someone lies to you or when someone breaks their commitment or whatever it is, it's hard to learn these things.

>> It is.

>> And we can wall ourselves up.

We can protect ourselves.

But I think that creates more stress and anxiety.

It's like feeling alone and feeling disconnected to people, I think it's even harder.

>> Yeah.

>> But it seems safer in the moment.

>> You get what you give.

And so you are building so much goodwill in the people that do appreciate it.

It is like this, like, protective cocoon.

So the more you do go out there and give to people, the more protected and that is going back to vulnerability, the more vulnerable you are.

You know, I want -- I like you.

I want to help you.

Here's what I can do.

This would make me feel good.

That's a very vulnerable thing to do and to offer.

I think that that -- But that pays even though sometimes it's hard and it's scary to reach out.

>> Yeah, absolutely.

>> I was that 10% that -- "I'm not anxious."

>> Really?

>> "I am happy all the time."

You know?

>> Got a smile on your face, yeah.

>> And the truth was that I wasn't.

And it was fear of well, if they saw the real me, then they would never want to.

And I'd be, you know, with fewer friends than I have right now.

And that's terrible.

But you have to learn how to share your authentic self or else you get inauthentic friends.

>> That's true.

>> I learned.

>> We both said this -- "You know, if people actually knew this about me, then they wouldn't love me or they wouldn't like me" or "I'd be alone or they wouldn't want to spend time with me."

>> Yeah.

>> Is that something you think is a fear for a lot of people, "If people actually knew this about me"?

>> Yeah.

>> What I was most afraid of or what I'm most ashamed of.

>> Yeah.

>> What I'm most insecure about.

"If they actually knew this is how I felt, they wouldn't love me."

Do you think that's a common theme in the world?

>> I think every single person -- I think that same 90% that are suffering from anxiety has that about something in their life because it's hard to share even the most -- I'm sure Oprah even has things that, you know.

>> You've come from a very academic approach to your research.

>> Mm-hmm.

>> But a year ago, you unfortunately lost your father and your brother.

>> Yeah.

>> Around the same time.

>> Yeah.

>> Can you share more the biggest lessons you learned from these types of losses for yourself and how you emotionally had to navigate it when maybe you didn't have the answers?

>> Yeah.

First, just that pain and grief that I was experiencing is not the same as anxiety.

It shares some of those negative emotions.

It forced me to explore these feelings that I'd have had inklings of in the past, but never to this extent and kind of in this wave of first my dad and then my brother and I slowly came back from it and I used some of the tools that were already in place for me -- morning meditation.

So, I do a morning tea meditation, a meditation over brewing and drinking tea.

So that helped me, helped me come back to "I am alive.

I'm so lucky to be alive."

>> Yes.

Perspective.

>> Yeah.

So lucky to have the family that's still with me.

>> Yes, yes.

>> And in working out, with great pain comes great wisdom.

>> Ooh, I love that.

>> Every single time you move your body, it's like you're giving your brain a wonderful bubble bath of neurochemicals.

>> Really?

>> Yes.

Those neurochemicals include dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, growth factors.

And the dopamine and serotonin.

What does that do?

It makes you feel good.

It makes you feel rewarded.

That's why just going out for a walk outside when you're, you know, things are going up to here and you can't handle it anymore, it immediately makes you feel better.

Did you know that all of those workouts that I know you've done all your lifetime is actually growing you a big, fat, fluffy hippocampus?

>> Hippocampus, not a brain, but a hippocampus.

>> A hippocampus, and it's not going to cure aging.

It's not going to cure neurodegenerative disease states, like Alzheimer's.

But it'll give you the biggest, fattest hippocampus that you could have when you get to that age where the neurodegeneration might start happening if it's in your genes.

So it'll take longer for enough brain cells to go.

>> I gotcha.

What are some of these -- So there's six superpowers.

Is that right?

>> Yeah.

>> Can you explain these superpowers?

>> The first one is resilience.

>> Yes.

>> Every single time we're able to get through that anxiety, even if we get through and we don't feel so good, you've gotten through, you made it to the next time.

And that can help you build your resilience.

>> Yes.

>> Little by little.

>> Well, anxiety gives us the ability to experience courage.

Right?

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> Because if you didn't have that fear and anxiety, you wouldn't have to bring the courage out to prepare, to show up, to know, like, "Okay, I'm going to cry at some point in front of 200 people."

>> Yeah.

>> "And I'm a shy person.

I don't like people seeing me this way."

It gives you the courage to become something you've never become before.

Yeah.

>> And step into a different version of yourself.

>> Yeah, yeah.

>> Or step into who you truly are, that you've been holding back.

>> Yeah.

And that courage is a skill that is so beautiful.

And you know, people say, "Oh, how do I get more courage?

How do I do it?"

And it really is going back to that action.

That anxiety and that activation was designed and evolved to put us into action, including to act in that courageous way.

The number-one predictor of a long life is the number of positive social connections that you have.

>> Really?

>> Yes.

And it doesn't have to be that, you know, girlfriend that you've had since third grade.

It can be positive interactions that you have with the barista at your coffee shop, having that positive banter, giving them, you know, giving them a little punch in the arm and they give it back to you.

That counts, that happiness and joy that you can bring.

It costs nothing for you and it is giving you a longer life.

>> Absolutely.

>> So the part of the nervous system that is controlling all of those stress responses that we talked about, the blood going to the muscles, the high heart rate, the high respiration is called the sympathetic nervous system.

Luckily, we have an equal and opposite part of our nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system, not stimulating to love specifically.

But it helps calm everything down.

It decreases the heart rate, it decreases respiration, it brings blood back into our digestive and reproductive systems.

It's called the rest and digest nervous system.

>> Yes.

The parasympathetic?

>> Parasympathetic.

>> Rest and digest, yeah.

>> Parasympathetic, rest and digest.

Sympathetic, fight or flight.

>> Okay.

>> Okay?

And the best way to lean into parasympathetic when you start to feel that really bad anxiety come on is deep breathing.

>> Yes.

>> Deep breathing because that is the only thing in that list that I gave you that we have conscious control over.

I can't make my heart rate go down.

I can't bring blood into my digestive tract, but I can breathe deep and long.

And people would be -- If you haven't tried this before, just deep, four-part breath where you breathe in for four counts, hold it for four counts, breathe out for four counts, hold it out for four counts.

Easiest way to bring some of that calm back in because you are actively stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system.

>> Absolutely.

>> But love can also stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system in the sense that it decreases your heart rate.

Then what happens after you're together for five years?

Does that disappear?

>> Then what happens?

Yeah.

Have you seen the research that shows you can sustain that for decades?

>> It evolves.

It evolves.

Those people that are still in love, that still have a strong relationship, what it comes to evolve into is that kind of activation that you see in parent and child.

So that strong family connection, you not only see it in parent and child, but between long-term partners.

It would be hard to sustain that honeymoon feeling for years and years, 20, 30 years down the line.

But it evolves into a different kind of social connection that has a different brain signature.

And they've shown that that brain signature is similar across cultures, which is interesting.

And is it only in the United States or they've done these studies in China, throughout Europe, and it's the same patterns that are quite unique in the early throes of love, and it evolves into something different later on if you stay together.

>> But what does that do when you sexually bond with someone, whether you've known them for a day, a week, a month, How does that accelerate the feeling of love and like, "we're supposed to be together?"

>> There is release of those love hormones, oxytocin and vasopressin, and that does give you that feeling of bonding.

The more sex you have, the more a kind of physical connection that you have.

So, you know, I think our goal is to step back and think, "Do I need more physical connection or do I need to get to know this person a little better, see what their values are, have more verbal conversations before I get myself bonded to this person?"

>> Because it's hard to unbond.

>> It's hard to unbond.

>> You feel more and more connected.

>> Yeah.

>> And you might oversee certain behaviors or actions because you feel the connection.

>> Exactly.

It really heightens the importance of your prefrontal cortex, which is that decision making brain area.

You don't want it clouded.

And two things we've talked about today can cloud the prefrontal cortex.

High levels of anxiety literally shut it down.

We know the neurochemistry and the molecular biology of that.

That absolutely happens.

And so when you have too high of levels of anxiety, it depletes your decision making process and you default to the automatic, just whatever, whatever is most common I do in my body.

That's what I do because I've lost my ability to evaluate.

And similarly, those, you know, that connection that could happen through sexual encounters can also block off your decision making processes.

I think that lots of people have.

It's like, "Yeah, I think I wasn't making the best decisions there."

>> Yeah, right?

>> Sometimes.

Right?

>> We've all done that.

Yes.

>> So preserve your prefrontal cortex, use that part of your brain.

And that is the antidote to my warning there.

>> And another superpower is about opening the door to flow?

What does that mean?

Like enhancing your performance and open the door to flow?

>> Yeah.

One of the things that anxiety does beautifully well is it shuts flow down.

So flow -- >> You can't get into flow when you're stressed.

>> No, exactly.

>> You got to be fully in the moment and feel freedom, essentially, right?

You've got to feel free.

>> Yes, exactly.

And so I coined another term, which is micro-flow.

Look, I may not have the flow that Yo-Yo Ma or Serena Williams gets in that beautiful moment right before they're going to win the prize.

However, I can tell you that I do enjoy flow in my life.

Going back to my joy conditioning.

I have micro-flow when I'm in Savasana at the end of a yoga class.

I felt really sweaty.

All that sweat is drying.

I feel so good.

That is flow.

>> Yeah, for one minute.

>> For one minute it is flow.

And we were talking about building up those positive events in your life and just the realization that we have many moments of micro-flow that might flip by.

We didn't even recognize them.

Recognize them.

That is like, "Ooh, I love micro-flow of having a wonderful cup of tea right before I needed it" or at the end of the day.

It is that appreciation.

It is the savoring.

Learning how to savor is a wonderful antidote to anxiety.

>> I just stop.

I say, "Man, what a beautiful moment."

>> Yeah.

>> When I savor these multiple times throughout the day, I just feel better.

>> Yeah.

>> A lot of times we're just on to the next, on to the next, on to the next.

>> Yeah, exactly.

>> We're not thinking about this moment.

But let me look in the sky and just be like, "Oh, do you ever imagine, like, we're in the middle -- We're dust of sand..." >> Yeah.

>> "...floating around in an infinite universe.

This is unbelievable."

>> Yeah.

>> You know, just the awe of what this is, is amazing.

>> Yeah, that's a moment of micro-flow.

>> Right?

Nurture an activist mind-set.

What does that mean?

>> So, this is really about the power of mind-set.

Is this an experience that's going to batter me down because anxiety's out to get me?

Or is it a challenge that I can do an experiment, as you were talking about, to see whether I can do it?

And it really doesn't matter if I fail, I win or lose.

I learn so much from the failure.

Okay, I'm not going to do that again.

And I do it the next time.

And that shift of mind-set, there's so many things that can put you into that bad anxiety.

If I'm hungry, if I'm hangry, you know, all those things, it's harder to pull myself out.

But I reminded myself of what a positive mind-set can do.

It not only shifts your brain networks, it shifts your whole physiology, it decreases cortisol.

What is that belief, that idea that will change your day?

That is a wonderful thing to ask yourself every day that you go in to a difficult situation or just your regular situation.

>> That is beautiful.

>> Somebody asked me once, "How do you give -- How do you give your talks?

You know, what is your process?"

And for me, it goes back to my science training.

Science, it turns out, is all about the story.

What is that story that you're going to tell in this science experiment that you did?

And I had a very great speaker and a great scientist that was my early mentor that encouraged me to think about that story.

What is the story you're going to tell the audience?

Because they don't want to hear all those boring details.

They want to hear what the origin is, how you got through it.

What is that hero's journey?

And then what is your conclusion?

And so I got hooked on telling the best science story.

And then it takes a while to get the next story because you have to do all these experiments and it's really, really hard.

But I got really excited about trying to get people that like, I know you may not be interested in this part of science, but let me try and pull you in and tell you why this is so cool, because I really have something cool to tell you.

It's kind of my secret Energizer Bunny that maybe it comes from my people-pleasing, natural disposition.

>> Yeah.

>> It's like, I want you -- I want you to be as fascinated as I am with this, and let me show you how fascinating it is because it is so fascinating.

Just give me a second.

Let me explain it to you.

And that's how I always approached my teaching.

And that's what evolved into my speaking.

>> What's your definition of greatness?

>> Using your unique brain to its full potential, whatever that means.

That is great.

>> We hope you enjoyed this episode and found it valuable.

Stay tuned for more from "The School of Greatness" coming soon on public television.

Again, I'm Lewis Howes.

And if no one has told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

If you'd like to continue on the journey of greatness with me, please check out my website lewishowes.com, where you'll find over 1,000 episodes of "The School of Greatness" show, as well as tools and resources to support you in living your best life.

>> The online course Find Your Greatness is available for $19.

Drawn from the lessons Lewis Howes shares in "The School of Greatness," this interactive course will guide you through a step-by-step process to discover your strengths, connect to your passion and purpose, and help create your own blueprint for greatness.

To order, go to lewishowes.com/tv.

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