Mastering the Brain and Nervous System for Personal Transformation | with George Haymaker

Michael Unbroken: As human beings, we're in this position where. We put so much emphasis on our body, on the food that we eat and the way that we move and the things that we do to take care of ourselves, from moisturizers to toothpaste, to fluoride or not fluoride and everything in between. And yet, somehow along the journey we forget how important it is to really take care of our brain in a deeper way, but then also in that to understand the power of the mind, the differentiation between the two and how you navigate the world as this fully complex and understanding and aware human being.

And that's why I'm so excited for today's episode with my friend George Haymaker, where we are going to get into the details and the nuances and talk about the difference and the journey of the brain and the mind, and the reason why you should listen to today's episode 'cause right now, more than ever, this is something that will give you the tools to help you navigate your life. George, my friend, welcome to the show. 

George Haymaker: Hey Michael, thanks for having me. It's so great to be here. And hello everyone. 

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, it's awesome to have you. You know, one of the things that I've obviously have been fascinated with for well over a decade now has been our human brains, the way that they work, why they work, how they work, and what we can do to make them work better.

It wasn't until a few years ago that through Dr. Caroline Leaf's work did I start to understand that there was a difference between the brain and the mind, and the mind being this whole other tool, this other aspect of the entire journey. Perhaps the catalyst to the whole journey itself. George, before we get into your story, just 'cause I think it's really important, can you kind of break down your expertise, what you do, and what people need to understand about the brain and the mind?

George Haymaker: Yeah, my pleasure. So I was one of those guys that. I had no idea how my brain worked and just kind of accepted what my mind produced for me without questioning it, not realizing that, you know, I was really could be in control of everything that my mind experienced. And we will get into this in a minute with respect to my story, but, you know, I had a life event that caused me to have to look at this.

And so, you know, what I began to discover is that the brain is this moldable, changeable, adaptable organ that's willing to be whatever we want it to be. But we have to take control of that process. It's not gonna happen by itself. The brain is kind of a reflection of all of our past experiences. It organizes and maps itself in terms of its neuron structure, the neural pathways and the networks according to, you know, how we've conducted our life. All the things that we've experienced, felt, thought, all the actions we've taken, the neurons actually map themselves according to those experiences.

And what happens over time is that we end up reengaging in similar patterns over and over again. And it kind of strengthens that neural mapping, but the brain is gifted with neuroplasticity. The ability to, as I said, change, adapt and evolve. And these neurons are more than happy to remap themselves, move around, but we have to show them, you know, the way to do that by retraining the brain.

And so, that's kind of a basis for, you know, how the brain works, what's possible, and then the mind is an emergent property from the brain. The brain actually predicts. We don't experience life for, you know, so for example, you and I are here in this moment, and we're experiencing it differently based on our past experiences.

And each of our brains is working ahead of time predicting what the next moment's going to be, and using a set of ingredients to do that. And so no two people ever experience reality in their minds the same way reality is constructed by all of our brains in the milliseconds before things actually happen.

And so, again, we have total control over those ingredients that the, that the brain uses to create our mental life. And if we don't like some of the patterns that recur in our minds, we can reconstruct those and build,  new patterns in a way that are more helpful. 

Michael Unbroken: And that's something that I'm, I'm super curious that we're gonna get into here as we talk this through this conversation because it's one of the things that I experienced personally. I didn't realize it was happening as it was happening, but as I look back, so much of my journey changed when I made a decision to reconstruct the way that I saw the world. And, and that's so difficult because my life story, as many people know here, you know, a score of 10 super abusive parents, homeless, most of my childhood, it always kind of felt like there was this black veil between me and reality.

And it wasn't until I started doing some certain things at that shift, but we're so heavily influenced by our stories that that narrative can really solely everything that you talk about. And it takes for many of us, honestly, probably for most of us. It takes this Herculean effort in order to create that shift to actually start to be able to remap yourself.

The hard part, I think until probably the last, I'll call it five to seven years, most people have been just doing it on their own. We didn't have the tools. It was like, maybe you'll get lucky and you'll end up at the library. Maybe you'll go to symposium. Maybe there's a random video you find on the internet, but the information and data wasn't so readily accessible unless you were in a fellowship and now it's everywhere.

And that in its own right can be a huge problem, which is something that I want to talk about, but I'd love to know more about you. Like how does, how does one walk this path, George? How do you make this decision to come and learn and become an expert about the brain and the mind? What's your journey been like?

George Haymaker: Yeah, so like you, I had a childhood that was privileged in many ways, but also difficult in other ways. My childhood, which is childhoods are very formative in all of our lives. It's where our patterns start. It's where it's how our brains begin to map themselves. Um, and mine involved a lot of moving from place to place school to school.

My dad was a high achieving executive and so we were constantly in and out of cities, in and outta schools, and I was constantly having to say goodbye to friends, meet new friends, be the new kid in school. I probably went to 10 different schools the first 10 years of my life. My parents moved overseas.

I went to boarding school here in the us. Um, my parents were very physically disciplined oriented. As I was becoming more and more uncomfortable because of all the unsettledness, I was acting out more and more. I would get punished as a result of it. There was some sexual abuse from some neighborhood boys that I experienced in fifth grade.

I was having to kind of survive in my own way and fend for myself through this unsettled environment. And I just became very unsettled, full of anxiety, full of self-doubt, insecure, always trying to have to prove myself I wasn't enough. And I carried those patterns began to cement themselves in my brain as far as these neural connections that represented that unsettledness.

And so the more times you continue to experience those things, the stronger those pathways get and the harder they are to rearrange. And so the additional part of my story is I began to medicate these symptoms as I went into adulthood. I carried these patterns with me quick to anger, highly defensive, always trying to prove myself, always stressed-out nervous system on fire.

And I began to cope using alcohol and drugs. And even though while I was a highly functional entrepreneur and performing well, I was just on a razor's edge all the time, burning it at both ends. And, so I was coping with alcohol and drugs to calm down and, and that led me into addiction. And then, you know, my early fifties, I hit a bottom, from pain pill and alcohol addiction and had to take a hard look at myself and the path that I had been on.

And so when it comes to change, that was my moment. And the consequences had to get good and high for me to see the light. And want to experience something different. It was, I was like that mouse in a maze that had turned left and turned right through all these years trying to figure out a way to still conduct my life that way and, and survive.

And I finally got to the end of the maze and there was no more turning left or right. And I was out of options was totally overcome by addiction. My use was out of control. I was using all day, all night, at that point. It had gone from being an impulsive disorder to a compulsive. I just had lost control.

And so that was the moment where the consequences were good and high. And I was forced to take a new look at things. And I actually look back on that experience with gratitude because that's what it took for me to see new possibilities and so that's what led me into the brain. I started off in a 12-step program.

They don't do a good job of explaining what's happened in your brain and what needs to happen in order for you to change. And I'm just a naturally curious individual. So I began to read a ton of books on psychology and spirituality, and eventually it led me into neuroscience because that's where all the action is in the brain.

And I just became so fascinated with, you know, that the brain could change how it worked, and then what was required to make it change. And then I began to see the results myself in my own transformation. And then when you actually experience a better way of living from the helplessness that I was feeling, you know, than the neurotransmitters, the feel-good neurotransmitters begin to flow, not for the drugs and alcohol, but for the fact that you're finding a new way to live life that's suddenly pleasurable.

You're finding pleasure and ordinary life activities that you never used to. You've got your nervous system under control. You're able to suddenly feel empathy for other people, your relationships get better. So all these things in my life, were beginning to improve. And it was all because, you know, I was working with rewiring my brain and I became so enamored with it that I, at some, at a point in my life a few years ago, I said, well, what am I gonna do from here on? Because I was coming out of another entrepreneurial venture and I said, well, you know, this is what I love and the, it's been so meaningful in my own life. Why don't I try to share this with other people? Because I know that, you know, other people struggle and, and it doesn't have to be with alcohol and drugs. It can just be. They're struggling mentally or they don't understand how their brains work and what's possible. And so I've gotten this gift,  through a hard time, but it's been wonderful because I never would've gotten the gift without it. And so I just want to bring it to other people and explain to them what's possible and help them with their own journeys.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, I love that, George, and in that I hear so much about turning our pain into purpose. And, and that's really a lot of my hope with anyone who listens to this show is to recognize, like, in this journey, you can shift everything, everything can become different, and it, it can feel insurmountable sometimes when I say that even it, it feels almost crass because I know that a lot of people are listening to the show when they're in a dark place and, and it's one day at a time.

As much as that's cliche, it truly is because there's this huge process. I mean, you know, you look at your story, George, it's wild, right? I mean, live going to 10 different schools. I resonate with that. I mean, I probably throughout all of my adolescence and childhood probably went to somewhere between eight to 10 different schools, not to mention got kicked outta three of them.

The thing about self-doubt and feeling insecure from never being settled, that carries over, right? I go look at some of the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. They started how you and I started, you know, there's, they're latchkey kids. They had abandonment issues; they had neglect issues.

Parents who weren't there mentally or emotionally, right? But then they were there to discipline physically. And then on the backside of it, this leads down this place where, you know, you mentioned your nervous system being on fire. And I'm like, man, I resonate with that in so many ways. Because so many people, they suffer that experience, right? They go through all the pain and all the hurt and all the trauma. Next thing you know in their adulthood, they're massively overachieving, they don't rest, they don't sleep, they don't have healthy relationships, they don't pair bond, they don't have human connection, they have no friends. I mean, we can keep going.

This list is just starting and then you tack on a little bit of an addiction and you're walking down that path to become a statistic and, and my hope is that people can do what you and I have been able to achieve, at least to this point. I mean, I can't predict the future, but kind of when you understand how to change things, they stay changed as long as you continue to do the work.

But people get stuck in this concept that who they are today is who they are. I used to say all of the time that this is just how I am. And as I look at that in retrospect, I've just come to realize, arguably that's the most dangerous sentence in a language, regardless of what language you're speaking.

It's the ultimate fixed mindset. It's the ultimate place of stuckness. It's the ultimate place of justifying your own things. Right now, in that. I felt so much shame, so much guilt, so much self-judgment, self-criticism, so much insecurity, and this is how I am felt like a blanket that kept me warm with all of that.

But you know this, and I know this. That on a long enough timeline becomes disastrous. One of the things that I know that you talk about that help me shift that understanding and then lean into this idea notion of becoming what I call the learner, right? Not my current coined term, but a term that I use is that when I understood that I could change, everything changed, but people are so caught up that because of the past and everything that's happened that this is who they're supposed to be.

But I know you talk about this a lot. Like the brains not fixed. It's not a fixed as in locked in kind of system. It is a mechanic that is designed to change. And so even if we have all these experiences and then you go down this path, and even with the rock bottoms and all the things that might happen, you can still come out the other side.

Not only better but different. How do we do that? How is the brain designed to change? How do we change it? If it's not fixed, then what is it? Give us some more, I want to go into the nuance here so people can really understand the power that they hold over their own journey. 

George Haymaker: Yeah. So scientifically,  you know, who we are is the formation of all of these neurons that have formed into patterns in our brain that represent all of our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, all of our experiences, interpretations, perceptions, they've all the brain has mapped them, mapped itself in representing these past experiences.

And so, these neurons are we'll connect to one another, through neurotransmission. But they aren't locked in place. In other words, these neurons are always shifting, even if it's a little bit based on your experiences that day. It's always learning, taking in new information.

And these neurons are slightly changing. Now when we're in these default mode patterns, like you described, this is who I am, this is my identity. These neurons aren't moving around much, because we're just doing the thing, same things over and over again. So the brain learns and forms itself through repetition sand, you know, so if we just keep doing the same things, those neurons aren't gonna move.

And actually the neurotransmitters are just gonna keep flowing through the same patterns and strengthening them. But again, those neurons are more than happy to break apart. And shift and form new patterns. But we have to take the lead in, in creating the experiences that cause them to move. Um, so if we have a certain pattern of, you know, anger, towards a certain, you know, in a certain context, we have neurons that have connected to one another to form that behavioral pattern along with the emotion and the thoughts that go along with it.

If we suddenly one day stopped being angry in that context and we're completely different, the, that neural pattern that's, that had been formed, there will be no more neuro transmission going through it because we're not engaging in that pattern. And so little by little, it’ll weaken. It's like a root of a tree.

Stops getting watered and fertilized over time, it starts to weaken and weaken. And then those neurons, through natural synaptic pruning that happens, you know, as we sleep, patterns that aren't being used anymore will, will start to break apart. And then those neurons are freed up to connect with other neurons in a different to form different patterns.

And so, honest to goodness, if we say to ourselves and stop one day that we're not happy with who we are and we want to be different, and we sat down in the design an identity that we did want for ourselves, we, we, we consulted our value systems. Our strengths, our belief systems, and I'm not talking about the ones we've had. I'm talking about the ones that we'd like to be, who is this person that we would like to be and began to construct it? 'cause that's really what the brain is. It's a construction, everything's constructed. Nothing is fixed. And so if we identified this new character that we wanted to be, and then began to feel emotion about that person, what it's gonna be like to be new and different,  the, and really invest some emotional salience in that.

And how is this person going to behave? How are they gonna think and feel? And if we began like an actor does with a new character that they get for a new movie, if we began to rehearse this new character and become that person, it's all almost like a CI agent that develops a new legend, right?

They get an assignment to go to a foreign country, and they have to be, go under deep undercover and they learn how to be this new person. That's what we're doing here. So you could flip a switch and stop doing what you've been doing and, and create a new identity for yourself that, represents this person you want to be for the rest of your life that you're gonna be proud of, and become emotionally involved in that identity, and then begin to act it out and rehearse it.

Those neurons that have formed those old patterns that you've been defaulting to, that you're not happy with anymore will weaken. They'll begin to break apart. And as you have new experiences that represent this new person, those neurons are all shifting around to represent. These new experiences, these new emotions, these new thoughts, these new behaviors.

And as you rehearse them over and over again and invest in them emotionally and begin to experience the reward that it, that you get from being this new person, those neurons, those pathways get stronger and stronger. And so then the brain begins to like this new version of yourself because it finds that it pleases you more. it's safer. You're not in survival mode all the time. You're in safe. You've developed a new identity that's more safe, more pleasing. And so it begins to prefer these patterns because they're more, you know, emotionally pleasing to you and safe. The brain's number one job is to keep you safe and survival.

And conserve resources in the process, mental resources 'cause the brain is super busy. It weighs three pounds and it consumes 25% of your oxygen, 25% of your calories. So it's always like trying to conserve resources and keep you safe. So if you can find a more pleasant way to be one that consumes less resources, because you're not always stressed out and have all this mental friction, the brain's gonna love that.

It's gonna begin to adapt and want to be this new person. And it'll start giving you more neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin and oxytocin that feel good. And you'll start to get the rewards from being this, this new idea. But it really, what it does is it requires you to stop one day and say, okay, enough is enough.

And that's where it's hard for people because they don't have these consequences that have built up maybe like you and me, like I was at the end of my rope, like I was gonna die. So it was kind of easy for me. But other people that are in this quote unquote trap where they don't, things aren't bad enough yet, and they don't know that they can change and they don't know what's involved in the change and they don't know how long it's gonna take, and they don't know what to do.

And so that's what's so helpful. And what I try to help people with is give them this mental picture of what this is gonna look like. And it's not that hard, but it does require, dedication, determination, perseverance, repetition. The brain needs repetition over and over and over again. And there's gonna be some steps back.

You know, two steps forward, one step back, you might get stressed out, one of your old patterns resurfaces again. But in that moment, what we teach is to stop, pause, you know, regulate your nervous system, evaluate what your mind just produced for you and say, no, this is not my new identity. This is a vestige of my old. I don't want it. And so then you don't have to live it. You don't have to act it out. You don't have to run neurotransmitters through that old pattern. But this is what we teach, is how to partner with your brain to produce a mental life that, you’re in control of. You are actually in control of all of your thoughts, feelings, and actions, because the brain is constructing them each and every moment, a few milliseconds before things happen.

But if you start to think, feel, and behave differently, then those are the experiences that your brain then goes to and pulls to construct new experiences. So the brain is always working with what's happened in the past. So if you can start creating new experiences that become your past experiences that are more in line with this new identity, then your brain will start using those as a predict it's prediction ingredients to, you know, build this new life going forward.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah, and the hardest part about all of that lies, at least in my, I'll speak from my firsthand experience when I was in the phase of the rebuild, we'll call it, where after I've had rock bottom and here I am, I'm looking at my life, 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day, drinking myself to sleep, partying every day.

Deep crippling debt. Friends don't like me, family won't talk to me. Cheating in my relationship, like everything, you know? And what's crazy is I look back at that, that really intensive rock bottom moment, that's 14 years ago. And it has been a constant journey of just every single day doing something differently.

And it’s not that the old patterns don't appear and pop up, 'cause certainly they do. And sometimes even I don't even catch myself until after I've done something I was like, oh man, it's been a long time since that thing happened. Whatever that might be. But certain things, they just kind of stick, right?

Moving down the path of not drinking, not doing drugs, not hooking up with strangers. Those things kind of happen, but then still I can disappear sometimes into like, this place where I'm being avoidant or where I'm being stubborn or where I'm procrastinating. And I have found George, that the biggest thing that works for me is when it's happening to be aware that it's happening.

Because when I can place awareness on something, I can do something about it. But that's also really difficult because I think a lot of people, when they become aware, it is then followed by shame. Almost always, especially when it's quote unquote, I'm not living my life like everyone says I'm supposed to be.

And so when you're talking, one of the things that I wrote down is how do we break the pattern, especially in the beginning while navigating shame that comes with the experiences that we have? 

George Haymaker: Yeah. So, it really does get down to having a different relationship with your brain and understanding where these old patterns are coming from. And so, you know, many of them, like in your life and mine, the unpleasant ones that are unhelpful that we keep re-experiencing started in childhood. And so what's helpful is to go back and understand. How and when these things developed and originated and why then that they ha continue to stick with us after all these years.

And by doing so, you know, you're kind of able to objectively analyze why these things occurred. And we try to do is we try to say, okay, well here's why they, here's why these patterns developed, they're clearly not helpful today. And so, you know, what is the cost of everything that we're experiencing as a result of this pattern?

And is it really true today? It might have been true at one time, to help us survive in the moment, but is it really still true today? What are all the costs associated with it? If somebody, if your friend was experiencing this, what would you tell them? And so what these exercises do is they tend to loosen the grip, or create an opening in the brain that maybe there's a different way. And the brain begins to consider when, when you begin to open a window or create an opportunity for the brain to consider something different by going through these exercises, then it's willing to consider a different pattern in place in its place.

And so then, you know, what we do is we construct. And it also just helps to look at these, these things objectively. You know, when these patterns arise, to know that they're rising for a reason. The fact that they were constructed at one time because you went through a hard time and you were just trying to survive.

And so if you're able to look at that, you know, these things that arise in your mind are not you. They're just the result of things that you've practiced over and over again to get by and meet your needs. And they probably started and originated way back when, and they're just not relevant anymore.

But if you can look at that as, okay, well objectively that, okay, this isn't me. It's just this pattern that keeps arising for these neurological reasons, then all of a sudden you create a little detachment from it, right? You're not, you're not as wed to it. And so then, you know, the emotional connection begins to dissipate.

You're able to create some distance from it. The emotional charge begins to dissipate. And the emotion and meaning are super critical in these patterns. The more emotions, assence that's attached to them, the stronger they are all kinds of neurotransmitters start to flow through these patterns.

When things are meaningful and emotional, that's why they're so stuck. And so if we could begin to disprove them and dislodge them from the psyche. Create an opening for the brain to say, you know, this guy's right. You know, maybe they aren't, maybe this pattern isn't helpful anymore. It's costing me too much.

I really don't want it. It was important, you know, 30 years ago when I was growing up, but it's just not serving me well anymore. I want to get rid of it. And so then that creates this moment for the brain to begin to loosen it. And we can then now construct new patterns that will help us get through these contexts where they start, where they keep reappearing 'cause something's triggering these patterns. So we have to create a new way of being in these moments that used to trigger the old patterns and construct a new pattern that represents this new identity that we want to be. And so then we have this template that now we can go to instead of the old pattern, we have this new way of being that we've constructed this new template, this is how we're gonna think in this moment, this is how we're gonna feel.

It's tied to our values, it's tied to who we want to be going forward our new beliefs that we're gonna have about ourselves. We're no longer gonna believe the old deprecating stuff about ourselves. We're gonna believe new things, and we're just gonna start acting it out and rehearsing it. And the more times that we do that, the more it takes hold.

And like I said, this is how transformation occurs. You're leaving old patterns behind if they do arise, you look at 'em objectively. You don't get a wed to them. You, you regulate your nervous system. You allow the motions to pass, you know, you don't engage. And then you replace it with a new, with a new pattern.

Michael Unbroken: And when I hear that, the thing that really summarizes everything you said, you gotta take something old and replace it with something new. And I think the replacing with something new is the area people miss the boat the most. And in fact, one of the things I advise to every single client I have coached for almost a decade is move.

And almost in a literal sense, I'm like, you should move. You should leave the place that you grew up where you are, where all of the experiences of the past exist and go somewhere different. Now I realize that's not always an option for everyone, but I do think about it from this per parameter. So if you're constraint is environment, which it is for a lot of people, and you only have so much control over what the variables are that you can change in the environment, then I think that you have to do your due diligence to change every single controllable variable that you can in that environment.

Because when you do that, now you're walking down this path of creating the new neural pathways and, and I see it kind of like this, right? They always say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Well, the reason why is 'cause you haven't given the dog an incentive. Right. And I think that you talked about earlier, I took this note that rehearsing on becoming this new person requires there being some kind of reward involved, right? Because we're so dopamine driven as human beings ultimately dopamine's our favorite drug either way you chop it up, dopamine's the hit that we love to take. And so as I'm thinking about how do you create these new patterns, couple things come to mind. One being, well, if you can, you probably should like literally move. The greatest shifts in my life has always come on the backside of me being like, I'm going somewhere different. And that started because there used to be this barbecue joint that was like right around the corner from one of my childhood homes, and we lived in mini, but we tend to kind of stay in this same three to four square mile radius.

And the smell, depending on the breeze, you could smell this barbecue joint constantly and. I didn't realize it until I was probably like 22 or 23, but every time I would go past that place, man, the anxiety, the fear, the shame, the guilt, the pain, all of the most negative emotions that I had would come up because they were so tied into the, that thing 'cause we're sensory beings. And so I moved to the other side of town and I noticed that feeling started to go away. And then what happened is I was like, you know, I'm gonna, it wasn't just this one experience, but I made the decision to leave where I grew up, huge shift, right? Because we're talking about this idea of introducing this new identity and becoming that right this breaking these thoughts, feelings, and creating new actions 'cause ultimately our actions become who we are. And so as you're talking, I'm thinking about this. I'm like, okay, so many people are doing the same thing every single day. That the thing that they have to do is break the habit of who it is that they actually are to introduce the new person that they want to be to themselves.

And I'm like, all right, if you go to the same Taco Tuesday every day, well maybe we stop going there. Let's go to a different place. Maybe let's not even go to Taco Tuesday. If you're going to the same gym doing the same workout, maybe it's time to go to a different gym, do a different workout. If you are having the same drive every single day to and from work, maybe we need to take the new drive and so much.

And George, you stop me if I'm wrong here, but what I'm hearing so much of this being about is recognizing that the brain is designed to be adaptable and to be amendable and to change, but you actually have to do things that require change to take place. Am I connecting those dots, right? 

George Haymaker: Yeah. The brain's not gonna change on its own. It's a record,  keeping facility that is basically just taking stock of everything that you're doing and organizing its patterns to reflect that. And so it's not gonna change unless you are the one causing the change. So you have to be the change agent. And a comment about what you were describing before, you know, patterns are habits and habits are made up of cues.

The actual habit itself or the activity, and then a reward which then stimulates the dopamine to motivate us to do it again. And so, what you were describing with the smell from the barbecue place, and it's basically the cue that that starts to have it because what I'm assuming happened in your case, you would that was all part of the experience in my case, you know, it might've been a cocaine dealer, and I would be driving down some of the similar routes, and that was my cue to know that, you know, this is what I normally did as I went to see him. And so the dopamine would begin to kick in. The dopamine actually doesn't arrive after the reward, that's the endorphins which is like an opiate. The actual reward itself is not dopamine. I mean, the dopamine is what motivates us to get the reward. And so it usually begins way before as part of the ritual, you know, that it was involved in, in getting barbecue, getting cocaine, whatever it is, you know?

And so your point about changing your environment in any way that you can is, is, is an important one because our current environments are set up of all these cues. And so we're constantly getting queued to repeat these old habits. Right. And so that makes it even harder is to try to stay in the same environment and change, you know, change it enough so that the cues are no longer in place or relevant or you're experiencing.

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. So I mean, I just in real time, connected a couple dots that have probably just been lingering, but I haven't been able to name. This actually makes a lot of sense because if the cue is the thing that step, that starts the habit, but the trigger is the thing that we become addicted to, right? The ritual based on the trigger is what we're actually addicted to 'cause you will actually see this with people who are addicts. This, it's almost ritualized the things that they do before doing the thing that causes them the most pain in their life. And this is true, this is across the board. This is why you'll see people who, I don't know, just random thought comes to mind, who get busted doing drugs under a bridge.

They've had the same ritual that leads down the path to them getting under the bridge to begin with. And that becomes a thing. When I was a kid, it's so funny, I'm connecting this in real time when I was a kid. My best friend lived three blocks down the road and or three houses down the road and we were young.

We're like 13, so we're on bikes, we don't have cars 'cause we're 13. But our ritual, we built a literal ritual out of the way that we would get high. We would ride our bikes to this certain spot. There's like this little ditch, kinda like a goalie thing in our neighborhood, which actually made no sense. If you go look at the construction of the neighborhood, 'cause it was in the city, but you would, we would ride down this ditch. We would go and sit basically at this ravine, for lack of a better way to phrase it, we would roll a joint. We would probably drink a beer, right? Some warm gross beer that'd just been sitting out there all day. We'd get back on our bikes. For whatever reason, we would ride to a park 'cause there was a park close. We'd go sit at the same table 'cause you kind of have this 360-720 views of everything. We would get high and then we would go and ride bikes again that was the ritual. We did that and that turned into this thing that we ended up doing from the time we were literally like 12 or 13 years old till I could drive.

And then it was a new ritual because I was driving and he couldn't, and it was always just that routine. I could feel like as we're talking, I could feel the energy start to kick up and the excitement over the thing. Maybe the part of it being the addiction to the chaos of it all, but the other side of it being like, oh, this feels good because it feels safe, because it's normal, because what happened?

We took something that was not so good for us and we normalized it. Right? But then this leads to this place where now our nervous systems are built around this habit. And what I think about, like, looking back on that, it wasn't until I made some decisions, even within the friendship, which were different to be like, no, I'm not going to do this today. Did anything happen? Did anything change? But I remember my nervous system was so haywire during that time. And, you know, 'cause you talk about this, our nervous system ultimately is the gatekeeper. So if we built our nervous system around this ritualistic experience that leads to the dopamine and the, and the endorphin rush that we so desperately crave, that helps get rid of the feelings of pain and sorrow and loss and hurt. Like where do we control our nervous? Like how do we get that thing regulated again, because, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I don't see a path without creating a nervous system change. Like I can see the conversation, I can plant it here, all these bullet points, but I don't see the actual shift coming without the nervous system, which is the gatekeeper getting regulated late. 

George Haymaker: A hundred percent. Most of us that struggle, we have hyper aroused nervous systems, and that is because, you know, we're threatened all the time. Our safety, our ident, our identities are built around this idea that we're not good enough and we're just in survival mode and we're always seeing threats around us.

And so when that happens, the brain detects threat and it signals with neurotransmitters to the nervous system, the autonomic nervous system, a certain state. And that state then is a highly aroused, highly activated, stress-oriented state. And then what happens is it causes, and that there's a certain physical anatomical part of our nervous system called the sympathetic state that gets activated. And that's the one that's highly aroused. Um, and then it begins to release neurochemicals like cortisol which is a hormone coming from the adrenal glands. It's the stress hormone. It's called norepinephrine, which is the tension and focus, but it really just amps, and we've all felt that right?

When we're just amped and one of the reasons why we do drugs and alcohol is to calm that down, that's our coping mechanism. But you're absolutely right because when that part of the nervous system is activated and you're in survival mode everything else in the brain shuts down. We can't think properly, our impulse control goes out the window. It's like it is all about surviving in the moment. And as I said earlier, the brain's number one job is to keep us safe and in survival. And so, everything, all the blood flows to those regions of the brain that are built for safety and survival, all the higher-level cognitive functioning parts of the brain begin to shut down blood, oxygen, glucose, neurotransmitters leave those areas. And it's all for survival. It's the most primitive part of the brain. And so when all else fails in urine survival mode, that nervous system gets activated and all the resources in your brain are built around safety and survival.

And so what that might mean to us as we've developed these habits is safety. And survival means I gotta do drugs and alcohol to calm down. And that's how I make all this go away. And so that's our safety mechanism. And so that pattern with all of the rituals and cues, because it's so emotionally relevant and salient, because it's built around survival, there's nothing more salient, meaningful to the brain than things that keep us in safety and survival.

However, we determine that for ourselves and so those patterns are just unbelievably strong and then therefore hard to break, which is why addiction's hard to break. And so to your point, one of the big things that need to needs to happen is an understanding of how the nervous system works. All of its different states and how to move in and out of these states on command and what you can do to condition the nervous system, and then what you can do to regulate it in real time if it starts staying in one state longer than, you'd like.

And so there are three different states. One is the sympathetic or activated state. One is the parasympathetic, which is the rested and relaxed state, and then the third one, which is a total shutdown freeze, survive state, which is when the brain detects that the situation you're in is so dangerous. You can't fight and flight it, you just completely shut down. A lot of people experience it when they're in public speaking, like they're up there and they just feel so threatened, their safety and survival. They just feel all these people looking at 'em, they'll like, that's what used to happen to me.

I would go and complete shutdown. So those are the three states, and the key is to be able to understand them and be able to move in and out from them on command. So it's okay to be in sympathetic state, which is the activated state, but you want to go there for task-oriented stuff, but you don't wanna stay there because if you're staying there constantly, you are consuming metabolic resources at an enormous rate. It's kind of like sitting in your car and in park and revving the engine all day, every day, all day long. How long is the engine gonna last? So ideally you want to be able to feel these states, be aware of them. And be able to consciously be able to move in and out of them on command. 

Michael Unbroken: Okay. So then that begs the question, how do you change your state on command? If somebody were listening right now and they can kind of recognize maybe they're shut down, maybe they're in fight or flight, maybe, you know, they're just completely overstimulated. What are like two to three things that somebody could implement right now that are quick and effective that will give them the ability to change their state and move into a different space in their nervous system?

George Haymaker: Yeah, so I think it's a dual strategy. One is conditioning. So again, we don't wanna react all the time. We want to be proactive. We want to train the brain. And the nervous system is one of the 16 trainable domains in the brain where, you know, regulating it and being an expert at it. It requires training, just like going to the gym.

If you want bigger muscles, bigger biceps, you know, you're gonna work the curl machine. Same thing with the nervous system. So there are things you like, I recommend doing in the morning, such as spending quiet time, when you wake up, maybe meditating, deep breathing, being in nature, taking a walk, and just you gonna work on intentionality around, okay, I'm working with my nervous system.

I'm gonna condition it, I'm calming it. And you know, just by doing that, being aware of it, partnering with it, just getting it to calm through these different exercises, you begin to train it, to calm. And so over time, you know, by doing this day after day after day, whether it's meditation, breathing just sitting outside in peace, gardening things that just really calm you. You're lowering the baseline of your overall nervous system. Okay? Then you're gonna go out during the day and you're gonna live life and life's gonna happen. And there are gonna be things that are gonna cause maybe your nervous system to spike.

But can you recognize it in the moment that, oh, my nervous system just spiked. It's not good for me. This is not a moment I want to be in the sympathetic state. Sure, somebody just pissed me off or cut me off in traffic or said something to me that I perceived as threat, but I'm gonna pause, calm, and then you can work with what's called the vagus nerve, which runs from your bottom of your brain down into your gut. It's the biggest nerve in our bodies. And that's what we want to do is tone that nerve, the vagus nerve. And that vagus nerve is what activates the parasympathetic, rested and relaxed state. So things like the deep breathing, humming, singing, even, cold therapy, taking a cold shower, taking a cold bath.

Like if you're at work, you can't do that. Just have some ice packs at work that you can put on your shoulders around your neck, you know, but the humming and the breathing and the singing, you know, you can almost feel it just, you know, you can go look at the internet and find where the vagus nerve is and it running right down your, along your spinal cord.

So you're gonna work to tone that but it really involves understanding that we don't want to be in this activated nervous system state any more than we have to. We only want to go there on purpose when it requires a metabolically significant event. Like, you know, we're gonna go work out, we're gonna do this project.

We have to stay focused, but we want the right amount of activation, not hyper aroused. Right? And so it's a matter of being constantly aware of it, trying to condition your nervous system every day through ritualistic practices to condition it to be come in at a lower baseline. You can actually feel yourself over time.

If you did meditation for 90 days straight and did 20 minutes of calming exercises in the morning, you would actually just find yourself at the gradually. By the end of 90 days, you're like, holy mackerel. I'm just like calmer. I'm starting at a lower baseline, and then, you know, as, as the days happen and life happens and people piss us off, we become, first of all, we we're starting at a lower baseline, so there's further for the nervous system to get to this normally hyper arousal state.

And you can normally catch it during this travel time, you know, in my olden days, I was so hyper aroused all the time. Like it didn't take it, the, the amount of distance my nervous system had to travel from arousal to hyper arousal to like blowing, blowing my, the top of my head off from anger was very short. So now if we can condition it and start at a much lower baseline, there's all this distance that it has to travel before it comes out as bad behavior. And then, you know, by working with yourself and practicing recognizing, you know, the flushing, you know, we all know what hyper arousal nervous system feels like.

It's this rise of blood, it's this hyper arousal, it's this flushing. We can catch it. And what we teach ourselves is that we don't like that. We only like it when we want it to accomplish a meaningful task. We don't like it when it causes us to be out of control. We always want to be in control.

And so there's this expertise that you can create by conditioning, regulating, training, your nervous system that you can become expert at it, honest to goodness. And you're right, it provides the foundation for our entire mental life if, if we don't have a regulated nervous system, our mental life is gonna be skewed period especially because it's all already around safety and survival. That's the most important thing to the brain. And so it's gonna create thoughts and emotions that are dysregulated when we have a hyper aroused system. 

Michael Unbroken: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's so many powerful tools in there and I think, you know, I look at my journey and where I'm at today very much like what you, you said just a moment ago when, when I was younger, man, I'm flying off the rails.

Almost immediately, it's wild to look back and consider all the fights, all the violence, all the mental emotional things that I would do just because I was always in hyper arousal. I was one of those people where they would call me hotheaded and I don't understand why. And then it was like, oh, I understand why. Right? Because your nervous system is just totally screwed up or people who are go, you know, you break down all the time, you can't focus, you can't function. It's like, yeah, control your nervous system. Like you have to understand that when you implement some of these tools, your life is going to be different because it's just the byproduct of understanding that you're actually in control.

That's the thing that I hope people are taking away from today's conversation more than anything. Nothing that we've talked about is not attainable by everyone who is listening because much like you, very similar experiences. It's interesting that I have friends and people who know me the closest in my life, they always say, man, you're so calm. Like, I'm like, I know I am because trust me, when I'm not, you're gonna know. Everybody's gonna know. And so every day I set myself up for success. Now, not every day is gonna be that way, 'cause I'm human, you know, and I think that we have to give ourselves some leniency in the day to day. But man, on the daily, I do my absolute best to get to this place where I'm starting regulated. I'm starting regulated 'cause I realized a long time ago, I woke up dysregulated. My trigger to all the chaos in my life was literally waking up. And that is such a crazy thing for people to wrap their heads around. But the second I woke up; I would be in hyper arousal. Why? Because as a child, the second I woke up, danger was everywhere.

And so to be able to move into this place where I'm controlling my nervous system, through the journaling, through the meditation, through the ritualistic habit of making the coffee in the morning, it led to this place where now I can work on my nervous system. Not only in those moments, but now I can start to change my mind because I'm doing things differently and through a commerce space.

Because when you're doing, when you're creating change through regulation, the opportunity for it to stick and become habit is vastly higher than when you're doing it through hyper arousal or anger or fear, or whatever other reason exists. 

George Haymaker: Yeah. You can't access those parts of the brain to change when you're in hyper arousal, you can't happen hype. Change happens in the parasympathetic mode when we're rested and relaxed. The nervous system's under control all brain functionality is online because it, a lot of it shuts down when we're dysregulated that is when change is possible and the brain is willing to consider new information.

So to your point, the nervous system sets the stage for everything in our mental life and for the possibility of change. So it's one of the first things that I do when I work with people is to. You know, help them get their nervous systems under control to understand how it works, start to condition it, bring it down to a lower baseline as things happen during the day, what they can do in response.

And again, you know, these things require time, attention, practice, repetition,  for, 'cause the nervous system is also about neural pathways. And so, we have to rewire the brain to deliver a nervous system that's conditioned at a lower baseline so that we can set the stage for all the different types of mental change we wanna make with old unhelpful patterns, you know, rewiring those. But it all has to be done with a lower baseline in the nervous system. 

Michael Unbroken: Ultimately, when you do that, your life will become different. And I hope that's what people will take away from today's conversation. George, this has been an amazing conversation. I've taken a boatload of notes, many things that I'm even going to go and consider and take into more consideration as I continue down my own journey and path. For people who are curious about working with you to learn more about you, to understand themselves deeper, to do some of this work with you, where can they find you? 

George Haymaker: Yeah. Website's a great place to go georgehaymaker.com, also have a channel on YouTube, under my name. Also, LinkedIn put a lot of content on LinkedIn and I'm also forming a group Coaching Club. It is called “The Brain Club,” where we learn collectively as a group, it's a much lower cost way to get in to work with me where we learn about the brain, how it works. And then there's also, opportunities to work one-on-one with me in addition to the group coaching.

Michael Unbroken: Amazing guys. And go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com for that and more, and the show notes for George's episode. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken? 

George Haymaker: Well, it means everything. It means hope, 'cause you know, at 52 years old, sitting in rehab, you know, really just filled with shame and guilt and wondering how the heck I had gotten there and you know, what was next. And I just had no idea; it's given me a chance to recreate myself in a new identity. One that I'm proud of, one that I'm in control of, and now I just have an incredible amount of hope around, you know, what's possible. Um, if you've, as you've said, everything is possible, and now I just have a clue as to you know, how to make that happen.

Michael Unbroken: I love that. And the truth is like it is possible. Whatever you want, whatever you're looking for in your life, in your experience, in your journey, no matter where you came from, the healing journey is possible for you. George, thank you so much for being here.

Unbroken Nation, my friends. Thank you so much for listening. If you got any value out of today's episode, please share it with a friend because I can promise you a single person in your life could learn and use all the information that we talked about today. That said, take care of yourselves, take care of each other. 

And Until Next Time.

My Friends, Be Unbroken.

I'll See Ya.