Simple Memory Hack; Push Yourself Farther with The Forty-Percent Rule; Play Golf to Get Ahead; Decompress with Video Games; The End of Binging TV; Look Your Dog in the Eye; Smell and Attraction

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Welcome to the podcast.

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I'm John Tesh with gib Gerard, and let's jump right in here from the journal memory and cognition. Gib, when you have something you need to remember, like a new password, we want you to imagine yourself writing it on a door and then opening the door, because a password gives you access, right So, or if you're trying to like this, or if you're trying to remember somebody's name, imagine writing it on a name tag, you're imagining this, and then sticking it on their shirt. Or one more, if you need to remember something at the grocery store, imagine putting it in your cart and then placing it on the conveyor belt at the checkout stand. In your mind's eye, the point of this exercise is to link information you're trying to remember to a related action that helps anchor it in your mind. In the study, older adults were given a memory test, some of them used that technique, and the ones who did outperform the others, the key is to visualize each action, and they have to be related. This reminds you me of that book, memory palace, remember? Yeah.

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See walking with Einstein, yeah, the journalist who learned how to use memory palaces. Go ahead, yeah. Well, that's what that's all. Look that's all you're doing, is you're creating more context in your brain, which means there's more pathways to get to the memory. So what, when we, when we can't forget something? It's a little bit like, it's actually a lot like a hard drive where you're the information is still on the hard drive when you like, when you delete a file, unless you do a special kind of delete that some computers will allow you to do.

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When you delete a file, it doesn't actually delete the file. What it does is, is it marks that area for to be overwritten later, and it sort of says, Hey, we don't remember the pathway to get to this information anymore. It deletes the pathway to get there and blocks that off. And that similar thing kind of happens in your brain. Sometimes you'll have the memory in there, and that's why you're searching for it. You're trying to find the pathway that you need in order to get to that information. So when you can engage more of your brain, you're going to have more pathways to engage with it. This is why. This is why sense memories are so strong.

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Sometimes because you found that key pathway to an old memory.

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And the same thing is true with new information you're trying to memorize that we've talked about this for for tests, if you can smell cinnamon or coffee while you're studying and then smell the cinnamon or coffee when you're taking the test, you're more likely to recall the information if you the more of your brain you engage, the more, the more pathways to information you create in your brain, the more likely you are to remember information. It is a, it is a great memory hack. And by the way, the more often you do it, one the less you need to do it and to the overall healthier, the more healthy your brain is going to be as you age. So it is. It is a huge, huge benefit to just get in the habit of doing this. Yeah, even if I just use this one thing, like, right?

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Imagine you try to remember somebody's name. You imagine writing on a name tag and sticking it on their shirt. Oh my gosh, I like that. Oh, it's because I have a hard time. Oh my gosh. It goes right out of my brain as soon as somebody introduces themselves to me. I think I spend a little bit too much time watching David Goggins videos, no such thing. Too much time. He's a retired Navy SEAL who went through training at least, at least two times, maybe more than that. I don't know. He runs, and then he also yells at you while he's running, and for why you're not running. Hey, why are you not out there running? I'm running. You should be running. It's one of those super marathoners who runs like 200 mile races, and there's a little too much, there is too much cursing in there for you. Yeah. Anyway, here's his, his latest thing, I the reason I'm bringing this to you is because you know it already, but it's, I like it.

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It's he says, If you want to be successful, Goggins says, embrace the 40% rule. He says, When your mind tells you that you're exhausted, you're done and you're ready to tap out, keep going anyway. Goggins says, because you're really only 40% done, you still have another 60% left in your tank. Wow, yes.

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Basically, you always have more in you than you think. So he says, when you're about to give up on yourself, when something seems too hard, instead of thinking about if you'll keep going, then you focus on how you're going to keep going.

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Because, you know, according to David Goggins, is you guys 60% more most of our limits, he says, are self imposed, yep. So think of a time when you push past what you thought was your limit. Maybe somebody said they give you $10,000 to do 500 pushups by the end of the day.

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If you, if you, you would find a way if somebody did that right, because we're capable of achieving more than we realize.

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So he says, next time you think you've reached your sales call limits, for example, make one more. Next time you think you can't do more quality check on some something, do one more. I remember this. I know this is he's like it all starts talking about manufacturers. I remember when we reached mile 18, when you and I were training for the marathon, just, let's just do one more. And yes, well, let's just do one more. Yes.

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I mean, look, that is I was gonna bring up marathons, because, you know, marathons, not everybody has to a marathon, but for those of you who have done a marathon, I will tell you the. My experience, and it's shared by a lot of other runners who have done it, is it is not simply about being good enough shape to run a marathon. Most of you, within six months, could complete 26.2 miles if you had to. What happens, regardless of what kind of shape you are in, is that at about mile 18, everything in your body is telling you you're done, yeah, especially if you've never done it before. Call it hitting the wall. Yeah, you're it says, Hey, you are done with this. And the real the real difficulty, the real victory, the pros and the cons of running a marathon happened in those last six to eight miles where you are telling yourself that you don't have a choice. You have to put one foot in front of the other.

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That is where, that is where marathons happen. That is what that's what I love about running marathons, and that's what I hate about running marathons.

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It's those moments where your body tells you you're done and your brain has to figure out how to overcome it. It is what you learn about yourself in that time. And what I've learned from running marathons is that most of the limits we put on our lives are self imposed. Most of the limits of achievement, most of the limits of what we are capable of, are self imposed. We convince ourselves that if we work, if we do this thing today, it won't amount to anything and it's not worth our time. We convince ourselves that if we write that chapter of the book that we've had noodling in our brain for a really long time, that it won't amount to anything, and it's not worth trying. And so maybe that's true, but it's definitely true if you accept that and you don't do anything about it. And 99% 99.9% of the time finishing is, is, is what you have to get done. That's it. Just getting the thing done is, is the barrier. And most of you can do it. We just choose not to, because we put these self imposed limits on our lives.

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Yeah, again, to be successful. Goggin says, embrace the 40% rule. When your mind tells you you're exhausted, you're done, you're ready to tap out, keep going anyway, because you're really only 40% done. We I was told back Gosh, when I was first working for CBS News, when I was 23 years old, I was told that this is, I don't think Goggins plays golf, but I was told, maybe he does. I don't know, but I was told I needed to learn how to play golf. I was, I was that my whole life would change, that that would be, I'd make more money, that I'd be a better get more jobs, better jobs I would get, sure I would get, get a raise. And now, you know, golfing for a while there, it sort of faded out a little bit.

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But according to The Washington Post, it's back business.

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Golfing is back in a big way.

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Recent study they did, they found that people who could hit a 300 yard, drive or sink a puck or or sought after. They're sought after employees and finance consulting and sales and other industries. So executive recruiters, they say they get so many requests to find ace golfers that they make a note of their candidates handicaps. It's not that golf will get you a job. It's between you and somebody else who's equally qualified. It could push you over the top. They really believe this to be true. They say you can learn a lot about somebody's temperament on the golf course, as my bosses like it, especially after a bad shot.

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They want to see you know how you react. And as far as taking time away from the office, lot of golf clubs have relaxed rules against mobile phone use on the course now, so you can check email, take a call during the game. And one more thing, according to the National Golf Foundation, a record number of rounds were played last year, men and women and weekday play has nearly doubled since 2019 so golfing is actually a strategy for getting a raise and keeping your job 100% I cannot tell you how many deals are done on golf courses, and now there's no excuse for you not to have, you know, to work on your golf game. There are places like Top Golf where you can go and sit and have nachos and a margarita and work on your golf game. So, you know, we should all be, we should all be working on this stuff. It's where the it's executives do business on golf courses all day, every day. It's happening right now. And if you are in a sales job, if you are not in a sales job, and you just want to get a promotion, taking your boss golfing is a great way.

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It's, it's, it's five hours, sometimes, of uninterrupted time. If you're really good, it can be, you know, three and a half. If you're really bad, like me, it's like six hours, but you're you're out there, and you have someone's attention, and it shows you how you deal with adversity. It shows you how much you lie and cheat. Because a lot of people, you know, I've heard, we've done this story before about how if you get caught cheating in a golf game, you're less likely to close whatever deal you were doing, because they see that as a violent if you, if you if you want to cheat at golf, why wouldn't you cheat a business? It is a it is a concept that a lot of people internalize, and it's why, it's why it's a great litmus test for your ability to focus, spend time together. You get to know someone's personality. You're trapped on the course. It's also, it's a great way to get outside and get a little bit of exercise. I'm a big fan.

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I'm terrible at golf, but I agree, I don't agree that you're a terrible golfer. Okay, so let's move on to something from the journal Applied Psychology. I found this interesting, and I think you will too. It's a great way to decompress at the end of a long day. They found that you should go ahead and play a video game or a mobile game on your phone.

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Oh yeah. So listen to their study. They said people. Who played a video game after a stressful experience, they ended up recovering faster and had more renewed energy in the following morning, the study subjects were all adults working full time. In fact, those who played video games right after work were able to forget about job related concerns more easily. I want to get your comment on this, the more time they spent playing games like Sims, Candy Crush or Animal Crossing, the better they recovered. They were able to face a new workday reinvigorated. Those are like OG games, aren't they? I mean, yeah, they're just kind of puzzle games that you play on your you can play on your phone, you can play some of them are on the computer. Look, this is the benefit of video games. So we've talked before about some of the upsides, better hand eye coordination, particularly in young kids who are who start playing at a young age, they're more likely to their coordination is better if they become surgeons, they become better drivers. They're able to handle stress and puzzles more easily if they've played a lot of video games. So that's that's the benefit, and now we know it's a great way for even adults to de stress at the end of the day. And what video games are good at is they create a series of problems that take your brain and focus on whatever problem is right in front of them, which gets us out of our anxiety, part of our lizard brain, where we're thinking about everything that could go wrong, because the video game kind of forces you to focus on the puzzle that's right in front of you. So it's a great way to decompress and undo the distraction. Here's what becomes an issue. It becomes an issue when you dissociate by playing video games, when you ignore the problems in your life, when you could do something about them, not de stressing at the end of the day, but you ignore problems in your life because you are because the problems in the video game are easier to control. That is where we get into problematic gaming. That's where you see gaming addiction, which is we've talked about being on the rise in places like South Korea for the last couple of decades, where there are, there are even addiction programs that focus on video game and mobile game addiction.

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So you those are things you have to watch out for. But if you are not a gamer and you're looking for a way to de stress at the end of the day. The way that games take over your brain just for a little while is a fantastic way to decompress.

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Just don't, you know, don't become it's a little bit like the Scotch at the end of the day. You can have scotch the end of the day, just don't start having nine scotches and getting behind the wheel, right? And maybe not Call of Duty, whatever the game is, yeah. You know, I actually saw this happen, quote, unquote, organically in my life, where, when I was going through this, this big cancer battle that started in 2015 so I was in the hospital a lot, and with the this one major surgery where I was at that surgery, then I was unconscious, and then I, I sort of came back into consciousness, you know, slowly and I every time I opened my eyes, I saw Connie. I saw her playing Rumi Q on her phone. Yep, you know. And I don't think why she playing it was she playing a video game, right where it's a word game, whatever it is, and so, and I would pass back out, I'd wake up and and then it occurred to me that she was doing that because she was if she had two choices, she could either ruminate about my condition, right, or she could hijack her brain and not worry about it, right?

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A good bit. A good video game can block the ruminative processes. So if you're prone to anxiety and you you don't, you don't, you just kind of be careful you don't turn the anxiety into playing the game.

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Because you hear stories about people who when they can't game, especially these immersive, multi World Games, yes, where you're so immersed in it, and you can explore the world so much that when you can't, it feels you get that anxiety. You got to be careful you don't completely rewire your brain.

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Rewire your brain, but in the short term, great way to disengage. And exactly, Roman cube is a great, a fantastic example.

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So let's move on and talk about TV shows and streaming and things like then binge watching.

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So you know, back in the back in the day, you would wait all week for your favorite TV shows to have new episodes. In fact, I used to do this with 24 with Kiefer Sutherland, where I would wait for it to download in the middle of the episode, I was so anxious to see what was going on, but it all went out the window. Of course, when streaming platforms like like Netflix became popular and you can now binge and watch an entire season and weekend, which may in like hours, people do this, right? But according to a data collected by the platform fandom and the LA Times, the TV series that dominate water cooler conversation today. They arrive weekly, not all at once.

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You've seen this? Yes, so listen, weekly episodes, according to their study, are better able to build and sustain an audience's interest in a show than a binge. As far as the numbers, weekly episodes generate a full 33% more engagement than those released all at once, and sustain that engagement for nearly 50% longer. And the reason is simple. When we watch episodes once a week, it builds anticipation, and we enjoy what we're watching more. This is happening today with the Jeff Bridges series The Old Man, oh yeah, yeah. And I find myself, you know, checking when's it gonna be released? You know, right? That's. Only show I watch right now, and they and you can't binge, can't binge, a handful of platforms are doing what you just described. They are going back to the old schedule. So there's a show that I like with our with our friend Vince Vaughn, called Bad monkey. And they, they release episodes every week. The old man releases episodes every week. HBO still does this where they will release episodes only on Sundays.

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That was huge with Game of Thrones, build their beat their whole week around. So when a new show drops on a streaming platform with all of the episodes, you basically have kind of a week to finish it before spoilers start showing up online, or maybe even two weeks at most. And that's sort of the light for the show. And then by week three or four, you're maybe you're still talking about it, but you're probably not with a show, even if it's just 10 episodes, that's 10 weeks of conversation that you can have about the show, in terms of online, in terms of anticipation, terms of fan theory, because you want to engage with those characters, but the only way to do it is to talk to other people who've seen the show. You can't just finish the show and then move on.

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You've got to if you want to engage with it. It creates that, yeah, it's like a drug. I do this thing now, and I know a lot of people, particularly people who work in the industry that they do, they watch their shows this way, and I like this, where I will wait until maybe three or four weeks into a season, if it's say it's like a 10 episode run or 12 episode run, I'll wait till we're like in the first third of the season, and Then I won't watch anything, and then I'll catch up, so I'll get that, like, that binge, that excitement, for like, four or five episodes, and then I start watching it every week after that. It's it works the best for me because it gives me that sort of binge. I'm fully engaged in this show. I really love the characters. I can't wait any longer. And sometimes first episodes are a little bit slow, so I kind of give it two episodes, but I stay with it, right, right? And then I'm all in. So that's what happened with me and bad monkey, which I have already mentioned, huge fan of the show. First couple weeks, I didn't watch it. I waited for three or four episodes. Got caught up, and now I'm waiting to download it every single That's hilarious. Hey, coming up just a moment here, we're gonna talk about how important it is to actually gaze into your dog's eyes. It sounds our dog, our family dog, does that. First, we wanted to make sure that when you have a moment, head on over to tesh.com our website, and download our free ebook. It's called your best chapter. It's full of strategies and expert tips on how to create the most powerful chapter in your life.

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Again, it's free@tesh.com when you're at tesh.com you may also want to just go ahead and sign up for weekly coaching with me and gib. We've a lot of experience that we had a lot of mistakes, that we've made, a lot of successes we've had. We use those to guide you in whatever challenges or goals that you're you're trying to sell. It's just, we just, you know, we just talk. We tell you all the stuff we've learned on the radio show for 20 years and how to apply it to your life, plus, you know, anecdotal stuff, yeah, and it's great. It's a great community too, where you'll learn from other people as well. Okay, so the question here is, the rhetorical question is, how often do you pet your dog? When you pet your dog, you should gaze into your dog's eyes. We're going to tell you why. According to the University of Helsinki in Finland, the more you just look right at your dog's eyes, the more your dog's gonna love you. So every time you gaze lovingly into your dog's eyes, your dog's levels of oxytocin go up, and so do yours oxytocin, we've talked about before, given eyes, the bonding hormone oxytocin, is released when we hug or touch or look loving longingly into somebody's eyes, and it increases our attachment to that person or animal. So here's the new part, oxytocin makes dogs prefer smiling faces over threatening ones, because animals know they have a better chance of survival around a happy, loving person.

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I'll tell you why I'm laughing in a minute. It becomes a reinforcing circle of affection between dogs and their humans.

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The nicer you are to your dog, the more of the bonding hormone they'll produce, and that'll make them love you even more. So we do this all the time. We do it naturally because Leroy, our family dog, is, he is a gazer.

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He really is, yep, but don't try it on your cat. I had two cats for most of my life, and they, they won't they? If you look at them, if you gaze into their eyes, there's a good chance they'll just attack you. They see it as a threat. This is the psychology of cats versus dogs.

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If you're a cat person, you know, fantastic. I would be a cat person if I wasn't allergic but, but Leroy is is absolutely lives this. You just hit look in his eyes, and you pet him under his chin and on his chest and and he won't look away. He won't look away. You have to break the eye contact, and then he's imprinted like I've I've never known a dog who is more imprinted on only our family than this dog, and because, because we we talk about studies like this, and we look him in the eyes and we pet him, and so now anybody's not in the family gets growled at the rest of us.

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It's so true. Be sweeter. It's so true. Hey, one more thing for this from our dating and relationship files. This is for you guys out there, the secret to finding love is officially now, according to the journal Chemical Senses smell, according to their research, women consider a man less attractive if they smell something bad while looking at him, even if he's not the one producing the bad smell. So the opposite is true too. So pleasant odors make women find pictures. Of men much more handsome. According to the study. The researchers say, since bad odors are typically associated with disease and danger, it makes sense that a good smelling guy would seem more attractive. So the the Journal says, If you're going out on a date, guys make sure you smell awesome. But you may also want to take your date somewhere that smells like, like smells nice, like a bakery, not somewhere like a cigar lounge.

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I'm gonna say Cinnabon just made a fortune on first as a first date location, right? So because yes, exactly, you want to go someplace that smells good. You want to smell good, we just made the Cologne and perfume industry a billion dollars just with this conversation alone. Or make sure you go to one of those open kitchens in a restaurant. Oh, I love that. I love that. But look, yes, the whole sensory experience is important, and that smell, sight, touch, all of it is important. When you are engaging with somebody, the the the sound of your voice, how high or low it is, what, what you react to, how how you sound, what your teeth look like, all of it. It all adds up, and smell is super important, because we talked about this before. Talked about this before we talk about this all the time is it goes directly into your brain, so your olfactory system has a direct connection to your brain with very little processing in between. So we have these, what are almost reflexive reactions to things that we smell for the reasons you just mentioned. It keeps us safe from eating spoiled food and dealing with rancid wounds and stuff like that, infections. So, yeah, this makes perfect sense. I love what these scientists do, too. You know, they take people like by a septic tank, and they show them pictures of guys, then they take them to Panera Bread, or something like that. Steve Buscemi at Panera Bread is more attractive than Brad Pitt at a septic tank.

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That's it, and that's it for us.

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John teshuk, give Gerard. We'd love to join us for the podcast.

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We appreciate it again. Head over to tesh.com see what we have there for you. It's really good stuff if you want to dig deeper for gift Gerard, I'm John Tesh and we'll see you next time you.

Simple Memory Hack; Push Yourself Farther with The Forty-Percent Rule; Play Golf to Get Ahead; Decompress with Video Games; The End of Binging TV; Look Your Dog in the Eye; Smell and Attraction

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