In this episode 35 protocols
▶ 0:17 Red Lens Glasses Tools “And I'm wearing these red lens wind-down Roka glasses because we are recording this late at night, which is unusual for us. and bright light in particular short wavelength, bright light in the blue and green part of the spectrum quashes melatonin and it makes it hard to sleep.” ▷ 0:25 Avoid Bright Blue/Green Light at Night Behaviors “bright light in particular short wavelength, bright light in the blue and green part of the spectrum quashes melatonin and it makes it hard to sleep.” ▷ 11:57 Music for Emotion Regulation Behaviors “Music is a really powerful tool for modulating our emotions. I actually, an unintentional parenting victory for me was when my youngest daughter was around five or six and I was coaching soccer.” ▷ 24:28 Use Touch to Soothe Behaviors “The comfort that we experience, the release of stress fighting chemicals that occurs when affectionate embraces are registered. That continues throughout the lifespan. So if my daughters... If I know they're having a bad day, I'll go over and I'll rub their back in a totally un-creepy way.” ▷ 28:00 Expressive Writing Behaviors “One example would be expressive writing, this wonderful tool for working through problematic experiences. You sit down, just let yourself go for 15 to 20 minutes a day for one to three days.” ▷ 30:11 Use Sensory Shifters Behaviors “these sensory shifters, music, looking at images, these are modality, taste, touch. These are ways of pushing your emotions around pretty effectively for short periods of time that in a pinch... can be quite useful.” ▷ 34:01 Exercise Six Days Per Week Behaviors “I try to exercise six days a week, although some are short workouts, some are longer.” ▷ 38:02 Think in Complete Sentences Behaviors “one of the reasons why the Penny Baker effect is believed to be so useful is because it imposes a structure on the stream going through our head... because we are taught when we write, we write in sentences.” ▷ 40:45 Use Writing or Talking Instead of Only Thinking About a Problem Behaviors “if you get people to think of, to recall a chatter-provoking experience... and then you randomly assign them to just think about it... versus write about it... or talk about it to someone else. The talking and the writing both do better...” ▷ 47:43 Use Movement to Access Insight Behaviors “it was in the act of not trying to parse things through words that words sprung up from my whatever unconscious somewhere in my brain... And it was like, that's it.” ▷ 52:38 Do Not Box Recreationally Behaviors “I don't recommend people box unless they're, you know, they're professional and even then, I mean, I must say as a neuroscientist... I can't encourage people to box.” ▷ 57:40 Distance Self-Talk Behaviors “So I will often use my name and the second person pronoun you to try to think through a problem Ethan how are you going to manage this situation? ... when you use your name and you to work through a problem, it's automatically switching your perspective.” ▷ 1:01:09 Separate Social Media to a Dedicated Phone Behaviors “I have a specific phone with Instagram and X on it, and those apps are not on any other phones so that it's segregated from... Somebody sends me a tweet or sends me an Instagram post, I'm not going to open it. I can't open it on those phones. And that's helped a lot.” ▷ 1:05:12 Avoid Looking at Your Phone Between 11 PM and 4 AM Behaviors “I certainly believe that from everything we know about the circadian health literature, that you want to avoid looking at your phone between the hours of 11 PM and 4 AM, most nights, nobody's perfect. But that if you wake up in the middle of the night, one of the worst things you can do is get on your phone and start scrolling social media.” ▷ 1:06:18 Long-Exhale Breathing Behaviors “And there are some tools like long exhale breathing and things that clearly work.” ▷ 1:08:26 Temporal Distancing Behaviors “So when you jump into this mental time travel machine and you ask yourself, how am I gonna feel about this tomorrow morning, next week, next year, 10 years from now? What that does is it activates this understanding that what you are going through, as bad as it may seem, it is temporary.” ▷ 1:10:08 Go for a Walk in a Safe Natural Setting Behaviors “If that's not sufficient, then I'll go to the level two response, which consists of, if weather permits, I'll go for a walk in a safe, natural setting. ... a park, I find restorative, and there's a ton of work highlighting the restorative features of green spaces.” ▷ 1:13:18 Understand Night Wakings as a Sleep-Architecture Transition Behaviors “one of the reasons they'll wake up suddenly at 2 or 3 a.m. is that they're undergoing this transition from kind of one form of sleep to another. ... and that heart racing emotionally laden thoughts is characteristic of where they supposed to be in the sleep architecture cycle.” ▷ 1:17:32 Use Mental Time Travel Into the Past for Perspective Behaviors “When I'm struggling with some kind of adversity, I will go back in time and think of another experience in my life or someone else's life that I know of when times were even worse and they got through it. And, oh, if I got through that, well, sure as heck I can get through this.” ▷ 1:20:26 Use Mental Time Travel Into the Future Before Sleep Behaviors “My sleeping pill, metaphorically speaking, is mental time travel. It's getting away from the present. It is fantasizing about the future... Or going into the past and savoring some of the positive things that happen... And that to me is a wonderful way of going to bed.” ▷ 1:21:34 Use Breath or a Mantra to Refocus on the Present Behaviors “when we experience chatter, we start worrying about the future or ruminating about the past, refocusing on the present, our breath, a mantra. Yes, lots of data support the utility of that.” ▷ 1:42:34 Use Awe-Inducing Experiences Behaviors “going for walks in natural settings often elicit the emotion of awe... when we are experiencing something vast and indescribable like that, this is the ultimate perspective broadener. So it leads to what we call shrinking of the self.” ▷ 1:46:32 Keep Phones Out of the Room During Important Conversations Behaviors “We don't have our cell phones out on the table. No, not for me, not even in the room. ... And so by leaving our phones outside of this space, we are managing our emotions in a very blunt and effective way.” ▷ 1:49:30 Structure Your Environment to Support Goals Behaviors “I am structuring my spaces strategically all the time to give me the best chance of being successful at meeting my regulatory goals.” ▷ 1:53:08 Organize Your Space When Feeling Out of Control Behaviors “A lot of people find that when they are experiencing chatter, they reflexively start organizing their spaces. ... Creating order around us compensates for the lack of order and control we feel inside.” ▷ 2:09:13 Avoid Substance Abuse as an Emotion-Regulation Strategy Behaviors “I may, in fact, do some bad things, right? I may, you know, use unhealthy tools, substances that really can very powerfully, you know, substance abuse I'm talking about, that can modulate my emotions, but has some negative consequences.” ▷ 2:12:09 Physiological Sigh Behaviors “things like long exhale, breathing, physiological size, meditation...” ▷ 2:12:09 Meditation Behaviors “things like long exhale, breathing, physiological size, meditation, Wendy Suzuki's lab at NYU showing you 13 minutes a day of meditation improves focus, emotion, regular emotional state.” ▷ 2:20:28 Reframe Anxiety Physiology as Preparation Behaviors “if you communicate to people, hey, this is just your body preparing yourselves to adaptively respond to this uncertain circumstance you face, all of a sudden you are totally flipping the frame.” ▷ 2:21:05 Recognize Intrusive Thoughts as Normal Behaviors “If you experience intrusive thoughts at times, again, welcome to the human condition. It's a little blip in how our brain operates.” ▷ 2:31:52 Use High-Speed Audio for Focused Learning Behaviors “The way I do it is often through an audio form and I will put the speed rate up to 2x. I'll often go as high as I can go on the app. And I can retain a huge amount of information going that fast, but it does require that I very vigilant.” ▷ 2:35:11 Use Low-Demand TV or Video to Downshift at Night Behaviors “When I'm finally done going through my email at night, I want like a good hour of just total mindless vegetation. ... it puts me in a wonderfully serene state to then slide into bed.” ▷ 2:38:42 Use WHOOP Goal Planning Behaviors “So WHOOP is an acronym... So how do you go from knowing to doing? WHOOP is designed to help you do that because what it is explicitly designed to do is target each of the places where goal pursuit often breaks down.” ▷ 2:41:22 Use Nature, Chatter Advisors, and Distancing as a Tiered Chatter Protocol Behaviors “I've got if then plans for chatter. If the chatter strikes, then I do distance self-talk and mental time travel. If the chatter is too overwhelming and those two tools don't work, then I go to nature and I go to my chatter advisors.” ▷ 2:46:02 Alternate Between Focusing on a Problem and Taking Breaks From It Behaviors “oftentimes, the signature for adaptively coping with emotional curveballs is being able to focus on the problem at hand, deploy your attention elsewhere, take a break, and then come back to it.”