SHAWN STEVENSON: In many ways it is your brain that is determining your life. Yes, it's the place of all kinds of executive functions, decision making, distinguishing between right and wrong social control, doing math. All right. There's all these cool things that our brain is doing. But also this is where our habits are formed. This is where our thoughts reside and this is where our beliefs find their home. Every single thing that we do in our lives is a result of our beliefs. Our beliefs determine our thoughts. Our thoughts determine our actions, and our actions determine our results in the world. What we are manifesting, what we are creating in the world around us. What we're creating in our inner environment.

And how we feel about ourselves, how we perceive the world. is determined by our beliefs. And that is where true magic resides. Now I'm saying true magic because this is going to be coming from the perspective of neuroscience today. We're going to be talking about the neuroscience behind manifestation. We are all manifesting. We're all creating every single moment of every single day, but oftentimes this is just on autopilot and whether we're getting results that we want or results that we don't want, it is still within our power to manifest. And again, this is often happening on autopilot.

We're creating our lives every single moment of every single day. Now many of us come from circumstances where the environment is disempowering us. Our environment might lead us to believe that we don't have the power to change. We don't have the power to change our lives, who we are, our results. But I'm here to tell you today that this is simply not the case. We are all so deeply powerful to affect change in our lives and in the world around us. And our special guest today, again, this is a neuroscientist, is going to talk about the science behind manifestation and how this literally changes everything.

Now before we get to our special guest, I want to ask you a very logical question. Do you think it would be easier to think positive, affirmative thoughts when our brain is healthy? Or when our brain is radically unhealthy and not feeling well, we're lacking mental energy. And you already know the answer to that. When we have a healthy brain, it makes making healthy decisions much easier. Now, the foundation of our brain health is our nutrition. The food that we're eating is literally creating our brain. It's creating the gray matter. It's creating the axons and the dendrites and also all the chemistry that's taking place in our brain. The neurotransmitters and the glucose uptake and all these things.

This is all a result of our nutrition. So we want to be building our brain out of real, sustainable, real foods, and that should be a given. And also, movement is critical to our brain health. Sleep is critical to our brain health. And also providing our brain with the key nutrients that literally make our brain tissue that allows signal transduction so that our brain can talk to itself. It's important. And our brain is actually, the majority of our brain, you've probably heard this a time or 20, is mostly made of water. But there is a key nutrient that helps us to maintain proper fluid balance in our brain. Without this key nutrient, our brain literally starts to lose volume and the nutrient that I'm talking about is sodium.

Researchers at McGill University found that sodium functions as an "on off switch" in the brain. For specific neurotransmitters that support optimal function. It's also found to protect the brain against numerous diseases. So this is a key electrolyte. The brain is working on all of this electrical energy. And we need these key electrolytes. These are minerals that carry an electric charge to enable our brain cells to actually work. Again, it's very important. But that's not the only electrolyte. Another one that's critically important to our cognitive function was featured in the journal Neuron that found that magnesium is able to restore critical brain plasticity and improve cognitive function in a double blind placebo controlled study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease found that Simply improving magnesium levels in adult test subjects.

These folks were between the age of 50 and 70 could potentially reverse brain aging by over nine years. This speaks to the importance of making sure that we're getting in healthy amounts of key electrolytes. And my favorite electrolyte supplement by far, it's not even comparable, is from the folks at LMNT. Go to DrinkLMNT.com/model. And you're going to get a free sample pack with every electrolyte purchase. They have no artificial colors, no binders, fillers, none of that nonsense, and no added sugar. Just the very best electrolytes and also in the ratios that really make a difference. They utilize hundreds of thousands of data points from high performing athletes.

LMNT is now being utilized by entire nations. Sports teams in the NFL and the NBA, Major League Baseball, and also the National Hockey League, entire teams are now utilizing LMNT for a reason. It really does make a difference. And by the way, if you don't notice a difference, you can get a full refund. So head over there, check them out. That's DrinkLMNT.com/model. Get your free sample pack with every purchase and get your hands on the very best electrolyte supplement in the world. And now let's get to the Apple podcast review of the week.

ITUNES REVIEW: Another five star review titled "this podcast is what we need right now" by farm KMJ. I've been listening to Shawn for about a year and every episode is packed with useful insightful information delivered with such passion for humanity. I'm a pharmacist who wants to put herself out of business. I think the key to health is within reach of us and not at the bottom of a pill bottle. The way Shawn translates complicated information for the average person is remarkable. I look forward to new episodes each week.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for leaving that review over on Apple Podcasts. I truly do appreciate that. And if you get to do please pop over to Apple Podcasts or if you're listening on Spotify, whatever platform you're listening on. Please take a moment and leave a review for the model health show. It truly does mean a lot. And now let's get to our special guest and topic of the day.

Dr. James R. Doty is a Stanford neurosurgeon, New York Times, bestselling author. And he's revealing that manifestation is rooted in science. His teachings provide us practices for neurological transformation by strategically targeting your attention, your desires. Your obstacles, intention, passion, and expectations so that you can consciously create the life that you want. Let's dive into this conversation with the amazing Dr. James Doty. So good to see you. Thank you for coming to hang out with us.

DR. JAMES DOTY: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SHAWN STEVENSON: When I say this statement, this like few people do. The health of our brain truly does determine the health of our life in many ways. Can you share how did you get initiated into this knowledge about manifestation and about being able to essentially be a creator in your life when you started off in a very difficult situation? Can you share your story?

DR. JAMES DOTY: Sure, and from my first book, as into the Magic Shop. I talk about this, but I grew up in poverty, my father was an alcoholic. My mother had a stroke when I was a child. She was partially paralyzed, she had a seizure disorder. Unfortunately, chronically depressed, attempted suicide multiple times. We were on public assistance, evicted from different places. And of course, this is not the ideal environment to succeed in society. And it's really sad too, because if you're reasonably intelligent, you sit there and you go, what's wrong? Why don't I have access to that? Now, if you're not that intelligent you sit there and go. I accept this. This is the situation here and it's okay.

And you don't think about other possibilities for yourself. But for me, I couldn't understand. I said I seem to be as smart as these other people. I work hard, and first of all, it made me realize that it doesn't matter oftentimes how good you are, how smart you are. If you're in these environments, and as you know from the first sentence in the new book, "Mind Magic" can you say profanity on it?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yes, absolutely.

DR. JAMES DOTY: I write this sentence that says The universe doesn't give a f**k about you. And I don't mean that in a negative way. I, what I mean by that is that the universe isn't looking at you. It doesn't care about you. Things frankly often happen by accident. As an example you look at some people and some people use the term they won the sperm lottery, right? They grew up with wealth or position or access to resources that you may not have. And it's not because they're bad. It's not because they're good, it's just that happens sometimes. For me though because of my family situation, frankly, when there were issues I would get on my bicycle and ride as far and as fast away as I could.

And on one of those excursions, I ended up at a strip mall, and in the strip mall was a magic shop. And I'd had an interest in magic. I used to have this plastic thumb that I would use for tricks. And I walked into this magic shop. And there was a lady there, and she was in her fifties, but she's one of these people who had this radiant personality, a smile that just embraced you, you felt okay. And it turned out she was the owner's mother. And, frankly, she knew nothing about magic, she just happened to be minding the store because her son was off doing an errand. But we began talking, and the thing about her, and this is something I think we all want, is to have an environment of psychological safety where you feel you're not being judged.

People are authentically interested in you and they treat you like an equal. They don't look down on you and this was how she was and so we began a conversation. And she asked me some questions that normally I wouldn't answer because you know if you're poor you're shamed. And in this case, though, I did answer them. And after speaking for 20 or 30 minutes, she said to me, she said, I'm here for another six weeks. If you come every day, I think I could teach you something that could really help you. Now, of course I'm not going to tell you that I had any degree of self awareness or insight. I did not at all. I was a 12 year old poor kid, but the reality was though, frankly, I had nothing better to do. She was very nice and she was giving me chocolate chip cookies and promising something that I didn't understand but I thought why not? And so I showed up every day for six weeks and it was amazing because I didn't realize.

And I think a lot of people don't appreciate. It's one thing to talk about trauma and post traumatic stress disorder associated with soldiers, but the reality is children who grow up in chaotic, dysfunctional environments, that is a form of constant trauma. And many of these children grow up with post traumatic stress disorder. And they're not able to integrate into society. Their sympathetic nervous system is chronically activated. They're always looking around. They can't focus. They're tense. And certainly that was my situation. And when I met with Ruth you have to remember this was before mindfulness, meditation were common words at all.

So when I started meeting with her, to be frank with you I thought she was full of sh*t. Because you're a 12 year old kid. You've never been in this place where you're asked to relax your muscles or concentrate. But that being said, I showed up and I did it. And I suddenly began experiencing that I was more relaxed. She taught me technique of focus because the reality is to accomplish, to learn, you have to be present. And if you're thinking about the past all the time of what could have been, should have been, might have been, or looking at a future that hasn't occurred yet, you're not present. So once I learned how to be present, the next thing she taught me was that the narrative that I had going on in my head was not truth.

And what I mean by that is, unfortunately, so many of us tell ourselves we're not good enough. We're not smart enough. We're not worthy. We don't deserve love and when you tell yourself that becomes truth. It's just if you say the word "I can't", that becomes truth. And what people don't understand is as a result of this, based on actually the power we have within our brains, that becomes truth and that results in limited beliefs. And the thing though is that it is within our power to liberate ourselves. Every time you say a negative comment, it's like putting a brick down a wall and a prison that you're creating for yourself and the walls get higher and it gets darker. Yet within your pocket is the key to open the door. It's the question is when you're going to realize that the key was always there and you didn't have to build that wall.

And that is fundamentally how we liberate ourselves and how we take control of our lives and understand our own self agency to change our lives. It's not from the universe. And then this, then, once we understand this gives us incredible power to improve ourselves. But the other thing is that once you start, stop being hypercritical with yourself. It changes how you see the world, because if you're constantly hypercritical, then you look at the world through the lens of being hypercritical of others and being judgmental. And as a result, It also limits your connection to people. And what I tell people is when I stopped criticizing myself and how I looked at the world changed how it looked at me.

Because if you're constantly angry, if you're constantly upset, if you're constantly thinking the world is unfair, you give off this vibe to everyone around you, and sometimes it scares people. And also it allowed me to forgive my parents in the sense that it wasn't an issue that they didn't love me. It was an issue that they had their own pain and they did not have the resources to help themselves.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. There's two things that I want you to share. Number one you just shared how our beliefs are going to, essentially, it's going to change the way that we're seeing the world and also how the world sees us and you mentioned emitting a vibe, but that's not again. It's just not something that's superficial or hearsay like there's a literal kind of emanation or a field that emanates from the human heart, for example.

DR. JAMES DOTY: No, that's absolutely correct. And this is why, if you sometimes you look at somebody who is just standing there and you have an immediate feeling about the energy they're giving off. And what people don't appreciate is, whether it's the brain or the heart, we emanate energy. Some people call it vibration. Some people call it oscillation. But that's true. As an example, the heart itself emanates energy that's measurable about three to five feet away from you. And there are in fact, a number of conditions where your emotional state actually affects your physiology and this vibrational energy. So that's all really true. And this is why there are people you can walk up to and you immediately feel goodness and that they're there for you. They're listening. They're present. They don't have to say anything. It's just how they carry themselves.

And then there are other people who you cross the street if you see them. Now I would temper that with the statement that there are implicit unconscious biases that are not truth and that are affected by the fact that our brain is a predictor of behavior and it looks for patterns. And whether the pattern is correct or not. It still results in interpretation, and this can result in unfair biased or unfair judgments. So you have to be aware of that and sit there and analyze yourself. Is this truth or not truth? And is it possible that the judgment I just made is not correct? And certainly this is something I've learned on more than one occasion.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. A good example would be, you're around somebody that is uniquely good and helpful and somebody who aspires to be of service and all those things. But you can feel uncomfortable around them because we might have a blueprint that, is threatened by that. It's threatening our safety because we don't want to change. We don't want to, to be to be altruistic or to, challenge ourselves to do more. And so we might feel uncomfortable around somebody that might challenge us to be better. And yeah, so it's like it's a both and thing, you know it's the environment around us and the people their unique energy and also ours and how things resonate essentially

DR. JAMES DOTY: And that's really a good point. I mean you have to appreciate that again, we don't have insight oftentimes, which causes us to be afraid. What are the causes? It could be somebody's stature, could potentially be a sense, true or not, that they're somehow more educated or smarter or more accomplished. Or you're afraid that you're going to be judged by them and you're not going to pass. 

And this is again, with mind training and understanding how your brain works, you get a sense of who you are and I'm not sure if you're familiar with this concept of Wabi-sabi and Kintsugi. But the point is that many people are afraid of showing their vulnerability because they feel that somebody is going to use it against them.

Yet, if you look at the principles of kintsugi, which date back to 15th century Japan and how they repaired pottery. It used to be that they tried to hide the cracks in the pottery when they repaired it, but ultimately they understood that the experiences we've had, even the painful ones, are not something we should hide because they make us who we are. They give us resilience. They give us strength. So they started repairing the pottery. With golden glue. So when you held the piece, it was broken, but you honored that brokenness. Yeah. That was repaired. And I think that's a wonderful metaphor for loving yourself and accepting yourself because there's not a human alive who has not made mistakes, who's not messed up, who has not been hurt.

And that makes us unique and makes us who we are. And there's nothing to hide from. And unfortunately in modern society many people are terrified of judgment. And this is causing a huge amount of mental health issues. In terms of stress, anxiety, depression. Because people keep striving to live up to levels that are not fair for them. They shouldn't be required to do that. We should give people love, acceptance. And that is the greatest motivator and power to allow somebody to change their lives.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. And that's what she did for you. She helped you to establish those things in a sense of self value. And from there, gave you some direction on creating a life that you really wanted. And so did she ask you to actually write out what you wanted to accomplish?

DR. JAMES DOTY:  Yeah, and in fact, I discussed some of these things in this new book "Mind Magic". Which actually is a result of the first book and the reason I say that is, one of the other parts of what she taught me was I call the visualization technique, but in fact was a manifestation technique. Now you have to appreciate I was 12 at the time and poor and not self aware. So when she asked me to write down things that I wanted, I did it frankly from the perspective that many people would. I thought that I want to be a doctor and it wasn't so much. I didn't want to help people. But I was a doctor and people would see me as important and accomplished. Or I wanted a mansion. Or I wanted a Porsche.

I remember walking along one day and seeing a guy in a silver Targa, and I said, I want that. And I did get it. But, and I wanted a Rolex. And I wanted a million dollars, which seemed like a lot of money in 1968. But I did this practice of visualization, but what strengthens that or does something which we call "value tagging" is through intention and repetition and utilizing as many sensory organs because that's the information that comes in. It's thinking about it, it's writing it down, it's seeing yourself writing it down, it's using your hand to write it down, reading it silently, reading it aloud, visualizing you being in that position. And literally, I did this hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of times and created this image of who I wanted to be.

And the problem with it was that I got every one of those things, but my motivation was out of a fear narrative. It wasn't out of a love narrative. And what I mean by that was I thought that if I just had those things, they would make me whole. I would be okay. And everyone would see I was okay. But it didn't do that. It made me actually more and more unhappy because here I had all of these friends saying, man, you've done it, dude. You have everything. I remember I there was a restaurant where I lived in Newport Beach and it actually was owned by Kevin Costner's wife at the time. It was called Twin Palms and it was this amazing restaurant in this mall in Newport Beach.

And I would drive my yellow Ferrari there and I would park in front. I knew the owner. And I would jump out of my car and I had a tailor who made all of my clothes and I had a table there and I would sit there at my table and people would come up and I would just chat with them. And invariably there were a number of women who would show up and all my buddies are going, God, that's amazing dude. Gosh, you're living the life. And yet I would go home and sometimes with a woman I met and I would wake up the next morning and I would have this horrible feeling that what am I doing? I don't even care about this person yet. I'm trying to live up to an image, but it's not me and it's not making me happy.

And it wasn't until I lost almost 80 million dollars in six weeks. and was three million in the hole, that I went back and reflected on where I was. And one of the things I realized was that I had not really honored Ruth. But I was 12. And when I went through everything and all of our conversations, I realized that I was looking to the world through the wrong lens. And while I was always a good doctor and cared about people, it was all about me, versus, say, how can I be of service? And that changed everything. And it resulted actually, which is an interesting thing. I had just started dating my present wife at the time. Here I am three million in the hole and I'm dealing with the banker who I borrow 15 million from who I have to pay back, so I have to sell everything and my lawyers because I created all these complicated trusts because of my wealth.

And one of the things that occurred was the lawyer when I was dealing with, he said to me, he said, Jim, we were supposed to create this irrevocable charitable trust, and we actually did not file the paperwork. 

So all of the stock you were going to give away, actually, you don't have to give it away. And I thought about this for a long time. And here I am 3 million in the hole, and I have nothing. But at the end of the day, I told him to go ahead and give it away. So that ended up being about 30 million.

But what did it do? In some ways it liberated me also because if you're poor it's like a monkey on your back, right? You worry about it. And how am I going to pay the bills? What am I going to do? What happens if X, Y, or Z happens? So I went ahead and gave it away. And, but this allowed me to create health clinics around the world programs for the disabled programs for adolescence affected by HIV. It allowed me to set up endowed chairs at different universities, set up scholarships, and fund research at Stanford. And amazingly, it allowed me to meet the Dalai Lama, who became the founding benefactor at the center I created at Stanford, and who became a close friend, and I became chairman of the Dalai Lama Foundation.

This then allowed me to meet Desmond Tutu and Thich Nhat Hanh, and a number of other spiritual and religious leaders, Eckhart Tolle, Alma the Hugging Saint, Saad Guru, Sri Ravi Shankar, and develop relationships with them. Now, I mentioned my girlfriend at the time, who's now my wife. But the Wall Street Journal did an article and it said what do you think about what he did? And she goes, I don't mind him being generous. I just wish he hadn't given it all away.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Keep a little bit.

DR. JAMES DOTY: Yes, but the other side of that coin though, is that the first part was I truly did go from rags to riches. But when I lost everything again, my worst day scenario is I'm a neurosurgeon who gets paid more than 99. 9 percent of people. So I was never going to starve. But, I still say I went from rags to riches in the sense of a spiritual journey.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DR. JAMES DOTY: Being empty because I was chasing things that meant nothing to leading a life of purpose and meaning. That's the real riches.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Amazing. Thank you for sharing that. Wow. I mean that journey in and of itself is remarkable and to be able to put all this together for us. And also the great thing about this book, and looking at some of the things from the previous book, this book is really more for us. The first book was a lot more about your story, and there were principles in there, but this one is like this is how you do it and also learning from my mistakes. That part that I missed out on essentially and I said this statement earlier. It's the come from, where are you coming from with your intention and your ability to manifest.

Because you're manifesting all the time, but where's your come from? And so I want to talk about this specifically because having you here in your experience and talking about the brain is really one of the greatest gifts we could get, which is what are these parts of our brain? What are these aspects of our brain that we are using for all this stuff? Let's talk about some of the different networks in the brain that are involved and that we can affect to create what we want in our lives.

DR. JAMES DOTY: Sure. So the first thing is, and I talked about the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system. But this vagus nerve, which has both of these nerves in it, and these nerves are distributed throughout the body and all of our major organ systems. And it's a two way street. So you're getting information from them as well, but they fundamentally affect the brain itself. And I mentioned how I was able to manifest these things when I was 12 that led to on some level, amazing success, but it was from a fear narrative. And when you're fearful, actually, oftentimes it limits many of what we call our cognitive brain networks from functioning at their best.

But that doesn't mean you still can't accomplish or have those intentions manifest. The problem is that for many people, they don't appreciate the difference between the two, the I want versus how can I be of help? And so many people are able to accomplish, if you will, selfish needs but it does make them happy. And I'm sure, a lot of very successful, at least by our societal narrative of happiness and success, money, power, position, who frankly are not happy at all. And they keep striving to get more, but it's not making them any more happy because they're confused.

They don't have that insight and self-awareness. And they're all focused on everybody looking at them and saying how great they are. The reality though is when you look through a different lens, the lens of how can I be of service? How can I be helpful? And this is activation of your parasympathetic nervous system. Because that is how we evolved as a species to live. Events that stimulate our sympathetic nervous system hundreds of years ago, or even thousands, hundreds of thousands of years ago, were typically short lived events. Your sympathetic nervous system responded to the threat went away, or you were eaten. But but then you were back at your baseline, that's where we're meant to live.

Yet the nature of modern society is constantly activating our sympathetic nervous system. But if you get into that mental state of activating your parasympathetic nervous system. What happens is not only does your peripheral physiology work much better, but your brain works much better. These cognitive brain networks. So one, the process of manifesting, we talked about how development affected our decisions, oftentimes unconsciously. Also this idea, the difference between what you think you need versus what you truly need. And a lot of people get confused about that. So that's one of the other things.

And then you have to understand how do I embed something into my unconscious or subconscious. And you do that through a process called value tagging. And what I mean by that is you have to demonstrate to the brain that something is important to you. Now that can be done out of fear or anxiety or a deep, question that you fixate on or defining an intention you want to manifest. And the reason I use the example of something as an example, fear as a neurosurgeon. I see patients who have different conditions and I may tell somebody as an example you have this tumor in your brain. It's benign. It's called a meningioma. And they'll say, I've never heard of that.

Yet you see them a month or two later and they go, it's the most amazing thing. I've seen five people who I met who have the exact same condition. Or it's like seeing I saw an orange Mustang the other day and I'm going, God, I've never seen that color. And then within a few days I saw four or five of them. And that's because you put that into your subconscious. It got embedded. And now you're attuned.

SHAWN STEVENSON: You tagged it.

DR. JAMES DOTY: You tagged it. Yeah. And so your subconscious is always looking for situations like that. where you would have normally ignored it before. If you have an intention that you wish to manifest, you have to make it salient to your brain. So the first part is, and a lot of people don't appreciate, we have 10 million bits of information through our sensory organs that are coming through all the time. Now, 99. 9 percent are related to maintaining homeostasis or bodily functions, but there's about 50 to 100 that we can have access to on a conscious level.

And when you embed an intention consciously through the acts we talked about, thinking about it, writing it down, reading it etc, then it makes it salient. So what happens is this part of our brain, this network is called the default mode network. It is self referential. It's associated typically with mind wandering or daydreaming, but it's all about, the representation of who we are or how we see ourselves or how we wish to be. Once that gets embedded there and activates that, then it next activates and that's called a task negative network actually. But then it activates the task positive network, which is the salience network. We've now made it salient. We've, it's as if we took that intention, put it in a file and embedded it in a filing cabinet in our salience network and said, this is important to me.

Then once that happens, then this activates our attention network. Now we're going to, because it's important, we're going to attend to it with our consciousness in the sense. And as a result, then you start looking around for any instance in the book, I use the example of the bloodhound that once it smells what's in that file, it has to find it. So it's looking everywhere. And this is the nature of coincidence or synchronicity. You go, that's amazing. I was just thinking about this. Now it's here, and and this is how it works. And once it's been tagged as important and your subconscious has looked around for it. Then your consciousness through the executive control network, which if you will makes things happen you track it down.

And as an example, I was at a coffee shop several weeks ago and there's a project I've been working on, but it was very noisy, and you can't hear anything yet. In the din of all of that, I heard somebody talking about the exact same thing I was working on. And it resulted in me getting up and introducing myself. But it's like you being at a party. Parties oftentimes are really noisy. Yet, if somebody says your name, in the din of all of this, because your identity is so deeply embedded in you, you turn to it. And it's the same type of thing. You have activated these brain networks which work together to help you manifest your intention.

SHAWN STEVENSON:  Yeah, those moments happen for us all throughout our lives. And I think again, we forget that happens. Got a quick break coming up. We'll be right back.

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What do you think about the idea of having, we'll say a magic notebook where you write down when those moments occur and you write them down. So you remember how powerful you are and co creating these What we would deem to be magical moments. What do you think about that?

DR. JAMES DOTY: No, I think that's a good idea because again, it strengthens your belief system, right?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DR. JAMES DOTY: And so I think that's really important It's changing your mindset and really that's what We're changing your mindset that many people have which is a negative one, which is it's not possible for me to want to, Oh, it is potentially possible. It can happen or it has happened. And once you see it happen a few times, you go, yeah, I can do it. And in some ways, this also brings up an important point, which is the nature of habit. Habits are important. And You don't go out and say, I'm going to run a marathon and wake up and run a marathon, right? It's like for yourself, as you changed how you saw yourself and ultimately it wasn't that you became a stud with six packs the next day when you woke up and said, I want that.

What had to happen? You had to go to the gym every day, probably, and you had to look at the other guys who were built, and you go, sh*t I don't look that good. But you persisted every day, and then suddenly, over two months, three months, six months, you're like going, wow, I look like these guys now, that's amazing. But it's because you created a habit where you showed up every day. You did the work that's necessary and this also emphasizes a point that there's no free ride. It's not okay, Jim, I read your book. Okay, tomorrow it's all going to happen for me. It doesn't work that way. And the great thing I think about the book is that it gives a six week program or at least six lessons you can do that help you change your brain through science to create a plan to how to change your life.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Now, this speaks to a really phenomenal fact that I don't think a lot of us ever think about, which is no two humans have the same brain. Every single person's brain is vastly unique, but we just see it as this like squishy, almost soft as butter organ. But you actually, in your work you have seen many brains and you know that brains can be very functionally different, but also. This practice of entraining our beliefs changes our brain, our physical brain, and also different activities. So if you could talk about how our thoughts can change our brain, but also how things like playing an instrument can literally make our brain different.

DR. JAMES DOTY: That's absolutely correct. Every brain is different. But that being said, Most people have the capacity, which they don't appreciate, to change their brain, or how they think, or their mindset. And this is extraordinarily powerful, and it gets back to this idea of self agency. Many people frequently give their self agency away. As an example, I remember when I was an undergraduate, First of all, I struggled because I didn't have a background for going to college. It was not a high priority at all in my family. And also, here I had many "friends", but almost all of them were from affluent backgrounds. And here I was struggling in school. My grade point average when I applied to med school was 2. 53, where the average to get into med school was 3. 76.

And my "friends" would say you'll never get into med school. It's a waste of time. Why are you trying? You're never going to make it. And this is actually also something that's horrible. Because, while each of our brains are unique, they're different, they have different capacities, the reality is, though, that every brain has the ability to change. And if you listen to people tell you what you can't do, and you believe it, you can that becomes truth or reality. And I was fortunate in that Ruth made me understand that nobody had the right to decide my destiny. And I think that's really true. People will listen to friends. Sometimes they'll listen to parents or siblings or others who somehow believe that they have the right to tell you what's possible for you and nobody has that right.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah in this instance because you know, judging you off of your GPA. None of these individuals understood where you were coming from and what you were dealing with in your life that was affecting what you were doing with schoolwork. 

But they also weren't acknowledging your potential as well. And so you faced somewhat of a board who had your fate in their hands with the decision of can this individual be placed into a medical school and you were able to go up against that opposition. Can you talk about that?

DR. JAMES DOTY: Sure. And this gets back to the thing is that and we talked about Implicit bias, people make judgments about you, of which there's no evidence that those judgments are actually valid judgments. If nobody knows anything about you, and we were talking about getting into medical school. At my college, you had to go to a pre med committee to get a letter of recommendation before you could even apply to college or medical school. And so I went to the office to get an appointment and the woman looked at my file and she said, I'm not giving you an appointment. Now, imagine you're 20 years old this has been your dream, and the woman says to me, I said, why? And she says to me, because it's a waste of everyone's time. Now, how is it possible somebody would make a statement, such a hurtful statement to somebody?

SHAWN STEVENSON: To a kid, a young person.

DR. JAMES DOTY:  Yeah. Now, fortunately for whatever reason, I had the wherewithal to say I appreciate your statement, but I'm not leaving here until you give me an appointment. And she did. And so imagine what it was like, though, to go to this appointment. And of course, I'm very anxious. And I walk into a room and I'm sure you've seen the photographs. Remember Putin at one end of a long table, these other people at the other end. In some ways, this was the same. There are these three individuals in their white coats and at one end of the table, I'm at the other end and the guy in charge who's sitting in the middle, he stands up, he has my file, he throws it on the table and he says, say what you have to say so we can get this over with.

How brutal, how horrible, how mean. And fortunately I looked at him and I said, who gave you the right to destroy people's dreams? I said, you know nothing about me other than a grade point average. And then I went on to for about 20 minutes telling him that there's no evidence that beyond an above average level of intelligence is necessary to succeed. And that you have to understand people have different events in their lives that influence their grade point average and it's not fair. And I refuse to allow you to objectify me, to a grade. And the reality is once you force somebody to look at you as a human being and not as a grade point average, they cannot turn away from that.

Yeah, and as a result, they all three of them ended up crying. Right So at the end of this they actually ended up giving me the highest letter of recommendation. The secretary, as I was leaving, because she was in the back of the room, she said, listen, I want to give you this. And it was a brochure for a summer enrichment program for socioeconomically disadvantaged students and minority students at Tulane University in New Orleans. And she said to me, she said, but I want you to understand the deadline has passed, but I don't think that's going to matter for you. So I ended up calling this lady. She let me into the program. I applied to one medical school, and that was Tulane. And I actually did not have enough credits to even graduate. So they accepted me with a 2. 52 or 5 3 GPA and no degree.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Amazing.

DR. JAMES DOTY: But you have to also now come around. And understand the rest of the story here and it gets also back to no one can judge anyone's ability. So after Hurricane Katrina, which had a huge impact in New Orleans, the medical school was flooded. It shut down for two years. The students were sent off to Baylor. The library was severely damaged. And afterwards, they were trying to find, the dean actually of the medical school resigned. So they were looking for a new dean and they had a fellow from Harvard, but he wanted an endowed chair. Now an endowed chair is typically a benefactor gives several million dollars and it names a chair after them.

And then the professor then because it's endowed, receives the benefit from those funds. So they were looking for someone to endow the dean's chair. So lo and behold I ended up endowing the dean's chair and repairing the library. So today the dean remains the Doty professor at the medical school. I repaired the library, and I'm also on the board of governors. You never know what one person has in terms of the ability to manifest a future. And this is why never underestimate the power of somebody to change their lives by changing their brain.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah man, this is amazing. That's one of those full circle moments. And also, in those moments when those individuals who you interacted with, That was so impactful for so many students into the future, but it was that moment of you standing for yourself and representing yourself. And also, I love that moment when she said, it's probably not going to matter for you. Like it passed, but she just saw what you can do. And having that mindset, come what may, I'm going to figure this thing out. I'm going to do what's necessary. And having a little bit of that sprinkled in to, your mind magic and having the audacity to do that though. It's working on yourself and all the things that you learned early on from Ruth and just putting this formula together and you're going to have those moments of decision.

And wow, this is just blowing me away. There's so many other things I want to talk to you about, but I want to ask you again, what I'm hearing is, we're coming into this world, we've got this amazing instrument that we're all endowed with, the human mind, the human brain, and it sets out to start getting data and getting programmed a certain way. And it might get programmed in a way that's not advantageous to the life that you want. And what you're saying is that no matter where you are, no matter who you are, you can change your brain and that is going to change your life automatically. And doing so, just to anchor this in, we can physically change our brain. Our brain can get a different structure based on our choices. Is that adequate to say?

DR. JAMES DOTY: No, that's absolutely correct. And if you look at, as an example monks, Buddhist monks, as an example, they can control their body temperature. They can control their heart rate. Or you look at Wim Hof, who's another example. Through deep mental training he can be out in the cold. And theoretically, I guess he was trying to climb to Everest in shorts and no shoes. Yeah, people don't appreciate. Now, I would caution that, let's say, an individual like Wim Hof or even Olympic athletes. That is a combination of genetics combining with intention.

As an example I was probably not going to become a marathon runner, right? Because, or at least a world class marathon runner, because I may not have had the combination of genes that allow me to do that. But that being said, I could become a pretty damn good one. And so yes, there are people who just through Nature end up having their activity, whether it's a sport or whatever combined with the right genetic makeup that makes them better than almost anyone else. But for most of us we can maximize what our genes allow us to do, but it may not necessarily be world class.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Thank you so much for saying this is one of my favorite moments of this right now, because this speaks to. Again, it's not about being quote realistic, it's about blending what your template is, your own genetic makeup, which is already miraculous in its, in and of itself. But for example, if you're coming into the game, you're now, a grown man, you're 25 years old and you're five foot one. And you're just like, I'm going to, be the greatest basketball player of all time. Yeah. It's probably not going to work out like that, but with your intention and you focused on, the training or you focusing on, learning, educating yourself around basketball, whatever the case might be, it's going to land you somewhere in the stratosphere of excellence in something to do with basketball, right?

So that you might be the greatest sports writer who ever existed for the NBA, or you might be, you might end up in some kind of ownership with the NBA, and I've seen this literally happen. With some of my friends and even people who've been on the show like Jesse Itzler, for example. He's now a part owner of the Atlanta Hawks. And this is just one of those things that he was just he had this interest in Basketball, you know just growing up and it's something that he stayed connected to throughout all its entrepreneurial adventures, but it was this love of this game and certain things unfolded to where he's now a part owner of this team. You know what I mean?

DR. JAMES DOTY: I would also tell you my actually my younger son who's 15 is a big basketball fat. But he reminded me and there's a fellow who's five foot six who plays professional basketball, I guess and so everyone told him you're never going to make it. So even with many apparent disadvantages, you can potentially reach a level of excellence. But again, it takes work. It takes practice It takes habit formation and it takes an iron will to make that happen, but I would also caution that when you have an intention or a goal. If you get so engaged in it to the point where you believe you have to accomplish that and you sacrifice everything. You have to then think, okay, now I'm at the top of the mountain, but what have I sacrificed?

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah.

DR. JAMES DOTY: Because, there's some people who get into their head that they have to do X, Y, or Z. But along the way, they sacrifice friends, they sacrifice marriages, they sacrifice their children, and for what? And I think that's an important issue people have to confront because we get confused sometimes about what's really important. And people, again, giving you external affirmation, telling you how great you are, doesn't take care of immense loneliness you have from discarding every person in your life to get there. And one of the greatest causes of suffering for many people is attachment and craving and when you're so attached to an outcome, it actually can be very self destructive.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Yeah. Yeah. This goes back to that ancient tenet to know thyself. And I don't think a lot of people's problem is thinking too big. It's not thinking big enough. It's not really knowing what potential they really have and stretching oneself. And so I want to give it that little caveat of being mindful to, take into consideration what is possible. Yes, but also understand you have so much more potential in you than you probably realize.

DR. JAMES DOTY: You used the term audacious earlier, and I think that's the way people should look at the world. What is your audacious aspiration of who you want to be? And if you combine that with being of service, because as I said earlier, it's not a negation of materialism. I enjoy having things, but your focus needs to be on how can I be of service and that gets you all the other stuff. Or if you decide you actually need the other stuff, and I think that's really important.

SHAWN STEVENSON: One of the greatest moments in this conversation for me personally that really stood out was when you apparently sacrificed that opportunity to have some money when you didn't have anything, when everything was seemingly taken from you and you had the ventures with the stocks and all this stuff. What did you end up being approximately 30 million dollars in value. And what that effectively was it was a form of tithing. You know, you were giving something away that you didn't necessarily even think that you had. And it's one of those seemingly commands you talked about how the universe doesn't really give a shit but this command to the universe or this this signal you're sending out that i'm okay.

I have enough i'm going to be okay. And as a matter of fact, I want you to do good And so seeing these things in a strange way coming back to you, this has been a tenant in so many different spiritual frameworks of tithing, of giving, even when you don't think you have a lot to give, just that spirit of giving and starting to embed that in your subconscious, right? So when you're doing that you're embedding this like rhythm and this framework and this belief in, I have the ability to give. And so even as I'm aspiring to be great and to accomplish these cool things in my life. This is going to be about service to others as well. This isn't just about me. It's about we.

DR. JAMES DOTY: No, that's exactly right. And I think the other point is that single action liberated me. And what I mean by that is if you grow up poor, what do you think is the most important thing? Yeah. Having money. And by doing that action, it freed me. That was no longer the narrative anymore. And that also then allowed me, again, to look at the world not from the I perspective from, but from the we perspective. And again, if you look at the world through that lens, you get everything you need.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Everybody needs a copy of Mind Magic. Can you let everybody know where to pick up a copy?

DR. JAMES DOTY: Yes. One of the places you can pick up a copy online is at bookshop. org. And the reason I mentioned that is. That is a group of independent booksellers, which supports them, but of course you can also get it at Amazon as well as at Barnes and Noble and frankly almost any bookstore.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Awesome. This has been phenomenal. I was really looking forward to this conversation. And you really helped me to just re energize this awareness. And I think one of the things that I took away from just studying your work was, once you accomplished all these things, you might get away from the practice and remembering what got you there. And so it really helped to re energize my practice and I needed that right now. So I really appreciate it.

DR. JAMES DOTY: Oh Thank you. And, I think one of the toughest things is And when you accomplish a lot there's always the danger of you taking yourself too seriously, or Thinking you're important and none of us are that important. What's important, like I said, be of service awesome

SHAWN STEVENSON: Dr. James Doty everybody.

DR. JAMES DOTY: Okay, my friend.

SHAWN STEVENSON: Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode today I hope that you got a lot of value out of This is one to share out with the people that you care about We need more people who are aware of their power To change their reality, who are aware of their power to change what's happening in our world today. And so empowerment is super important today, but also the practicality, like how does this stuff actually work? And I think that this sheds a really powerful light on, yes, we might deem some of these things to be mystical and magical and all that is wonderful, but it's also rooted in science. We can actually deconstruct how this works.

And apply this to our lives systematically so that we can see results and we can teach other people to do the same thing. We've got to take control of our most precious resource, which is this amazing mind that we all have. We've got some amazing masterclasses and world class guests coming your way very soon. So make sure to stay tuned. Take care. Have an amazing day. And I'll talk with you soon. And for more after the show, make sure to head over to themodelhealthshow.com. That's where you can find all of the show notes. You can find transcriptions, videos for each episode. And if you've got a comment, you can leave me a comment there as well. And please make sure to head over to iTunes and leave us a rating to let everybody know that the show is awesome. And I appreciate that so much and take care. I promise to keep giving you more powerful, empowering, great content to help you transform your life. Thanks for tuning in.