My MB Alex breakdown is supported by Helix sleep. Bring is in the air and so are all of the allergens that come with it. Spring allergens means you need more sleep, but there are a ton of factors that can prevent us from getting a good night's rest. Night sweats, back pain, feeling the person next to you when they roll over a million times. We were so excited to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my Helix mattress for about five years now and I have been sleeping so much better. Jonathan and also our kids love their Helix mattresses and all of those issues, night sweats, back pain, motion transfer, those things are significantly better with a Helix mattress. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door, which is so much fun with free shipping in the US. They have a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty plus they're happy with Helix guarantee. Rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The happy with Helix guarantee offers a risk-free customer first experience designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to helixleap.com slash break down for 27% off site wide. That's helixleap.com slash break breakdown for 27% off site wide. helixleap.com slash breakdown. Shhh. Shhh. Hi, I'm Miami-Elect. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. As we wrap up mental health month, we've got a very special, super helpful episode with motivation expertician and Behavior Change Designer, Dr. Kyra Bobinett. She helped us discover the secret part of our brains that controls motivation. It's called the Habanula. And if you don't know what the Habanula is, you need to listen to this episode. Dr. Bobinett actually reveals why your to-do list, something most of us have, may actually be secretly hurting you and preventing you from getting things done. She also explains how to succeed in relationships, improve our progress towards our health goals, and how to break free from imposter syndrome. One of the topics that I loved the most was the benefit of dopamine fasting. It's gotten so much more attention these days. If you've never heard about it, it's something that you really need to learn about. She's also going to talk about how the Habeñola connects addiction, depression, and failure, how to regulate your environment to set yourself up for success, and the best sources of motivation for short-term goals and long-term goals. We're also going to talk about what's the difference between performing versus authentically being a wonderful topic for mental health month. So please enjoy this episode with Dr. Kyra Bobbinett and don't forget to join us on Substack, my and B.L.X., where we have content you can't get anywhere else. Also, make sure you're subscribed.

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It helps our show. Check us out on Substack. Make sure you're subscribed everywhere. And now, here's our episode with Dr. Kyra Bobinett. Break it down. So great to be here. It's really exciting to have you here.

I feel very motivated.

And I don't want to fail.

So. It's really exciting to have you here. I feel very motivated. And I don't wanna fail. So, I really enjoyed unstoppable brain. I'd like to think that I have an unstoppable brain. But one of the things that was really interesting is I saw a lot of my faulty or perhaps misplaced thought patterns really throughout the book. You really kind of hone in on places that we either stop ourselves or we don't let ourselves kind of fully be ourselves. So before we kind of get into that I want to start with a super basic question. Who did you write this book for? Like what was the impetus for saying this is a book that needs to be out there? Yeah, so I've tried to change the behavior of millions of people in my career and created interventions of all kinds of complexity or simplicity trying to get at this problem of, you know, I know what I should do. I just don't do it. And I wrote it for people who have that problem, which is almost everybody in every way. I'm trying to think, is there anyone that doesn't have something, right? Probably not. There's always gotta be something. Absolutely. Like if it's not weight, it's fitness. If it's not fitness, it's work. If it's not work, it's relationships. Do you feel that there's sort of one general problem that society or even our culture is collectively experiencing that sort of also needs this wisdom? Yeah, I think right now we've kind of run a ground in over using performance-based tools and performing, performing, performing and being performative. And that in particular in this this time in history is lighting up the brain in massive amounts of mental health problems and physical health problems and that kind of thing. So I think that this is a right hand turn. You know, I like to say that there was a time in medicine before we knew about bacteria. And we used leeches and we used like weird things and we had typhoid Mary and things like that. And so after we knew about bacteria, then we had antibiotics and this whole new era was ushered in of like how to treat that. Let's go right into this performative notion because this really hadn't occurred to me. And you lay it out really, really clearly. You say that performing as ourselves instead of really understanding and then being ourselves is kind of the cause for what you would describe as the disease of failure, meaning that we're all, not that we're all failures, but this notion that we will fail or that we get stopped because of a fear of failure, that the cause of that is this performative aspect. So can you tell us what does that look like? Because when I saw the list, I was actually, well, I made it into a list because I make everything into list. When I looked at the things that literally can be performative. I'm just gonna list them.

Yes, please. The list is New Year's resolutions. And so for that, when I was like, okay, well, I usually get annoyed with New Year's resolutions and I'm like, I don't really make them. So maybe I was onto something. Social media, competitive sports, fitness trends. And now I'm like, uh-oh, smart goals, which is an acronym which we can talk about in a bit,

dieting, habit routines.

And now I'm like, uh-oh, smart goals, which is an acronym, which we can talk about in a bit, dieting, habit routines. And now I'm thinking like, okay, Kyra's off her rocker. What do you mean habit routines? Then she went for the gutterall to do lists, like my favorite thing. And then it expands out, lying, career goals, relationship goals, and I literally wrote in my document, can I strive for anything? So all of these are what you would describe as falling under this performative category. So what does it look like if I'm performing instead of being? Yeah, so performing basically uses a neural network that terminates in the area of of disempowerment and extrinsic motivation. And so I'm doing it for you or my mental model in myself is I'm doing it for myself, right? So we're already there. And those two neural networks do not cross over. They are completely separate and independent of each other. And the reason why that's important is that when I'm doing it for somebody else, not myself, first of all, it's a disconnected state. But also, it sets up my brain

to be triggered by any non-expected result. So that becomes a failure. I become disappointed, frustrated, wherever the case may be, if I don't have that perfect expectation happen, which is most the time. And so the performing basically sets up a failure field. The failure field triggers the brain in this new area, the brain that we're going to talk about, the habanula, and then that's a setup. So you can use performing, the literature shows that you can use performing kind of tools, short term for short termterm goals or for single-simple tasks. But nothing complex, dynamic, irreversible, those kinds of things. And also, I just want to note, because of course, I'm sure that people, the first thing I thought of and maybe of the people think this, but it works, it works, right? Or like I lost 50 pounds or whatever it is. But I think what you're talking about is there's a price.

There's both a neurological price and kind of a neuropsychological price. Yeah. And I think you can use it, you know, like you can use it if you know about the habenula. Because then when you have a disappointment or a discrepancy between what you thought was going to happen and what actually happened, then you know what to do. Right now in this history, we don't know what to do when things don't work out perfectly.

And then we're lost and then we get demotivated. And that's this kind of like pervasive motivation loss. Even doom scrolling has been shown to trigger the habenula result in motivation loss. So basically every youth in America and around the world who is doom scrolling at night and also in the morning like my kids are basically disempowering themselves, causing motivation loss in the evenings and the mornings. And so then you get this kind of self blame that sits on top of that and depression, anxiety, all that kind of stuff ensues. If that's what it looks like to perform, right? And the notion also is, of course you would say say, like, I'm getting fit for myself, but in a lot of cases, it is about a metric, right? Or it's about, if I get to look like this, I'll have access to this person, this job, this opportunity, right? So that's the the the performative aspect. So the the converse is being yourself. So in in brief, what does that look like? Because for me, it looks like to do lists and you know, like all the things that I do, having goals and like forming habits. Like that's the old way of thinking. What is this newer way? Did you mind if I explore the two to do this? Jonathan loves what people ask you.

So how do you psychologically respond when you don't get to all your to-do list things? What is that like for you? Well, I mean, it doesn't feel great. I mean, literally before we started recording, I told you that I made it to-do list for my son because I had a list of chores that I actually needed him to do before he left the house. Yeah, there's usually, I mean, there's shame.

There's a list of chores that I actually needed him to do before he left the house.

Yeah, there's usually, I mean, there's shame. There's a feeling of why did I try in the first place. I mean, I've also read the book. So like I'm sort of like, I'm piecing it together. But the practical question I have for you is if I have a list of things that I need to get done, what is the better way to do them? What would it look like to be myself if I have a list of things I have to get done?

Yeah, it's about letting go of the performance and just saying this is an aid, this is a tool. So reframing tends to be the sort of wise thing that people who do this right do. And so if you approached it as, you know, this is a potential list that we will get to that my son might do, right? Because you can't control another human being, especially teenager. Then the way you hold it seems to be the key, you know, but the fact that you're having this, I went like here. And the fact that you're experiencing shame means that you're holding it in a way that it becomes a sharp object. Got it.

So then knowing where that sharp object happens, anything can be helpful as a tool in performance. You can set a goal. You can say, I want to run a faster mile. You can do all these things. But if it becomes a sharp object at the end of the day, then you're harming yourself. My MBS breakdown is supported by optimizers. You know, I struggled to get good quality sleep

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