75 percent experienced brain fog.A Paradigm Shift Decades in the Making
Closing Your Identity Gap
I was on the verge of a breakdown and beginning to have suicidal thoughts, and I didn’t know where to turn. My life at this point was an absolute lie. I was touted as “The Agent of Influence” to hundreds of thousands of devoted entrepreneurs and companies, yet I couldn’t even motivate myself to look at my next goal. And I was angry about it.
It was my dream to move to New York and continue my career as an author. I had visualized this goal countless times. I could see myself walking the busy city streets, going to cafes and restaurants, and, yes, even having my very own Carrie Bradshaw moment writing in the window of a classic New York City townhouse (don’t judge me). However, for reasons that eluded me, I couldn’t even bring myself to look at my to-do list; it was too overwhelming. I was fast becoming what my industry sees as a has-been. My dream was getting further and further out of reach, and it didn’t matter how I tried to convince myself that I was OK. The truth was, I wasn’t all right, and nobody had any answers as to why.
You may be able to relate. You know you’re capable of more, but for some reason you can’t unlock the capacity to thoroughly express it through your purpose, your vision, and your goals. Your dreams always feel just out of reach. And, no matter how hard you try to stretch yourself to grasp it, you always fall short. You try to convince yourself that you’ll get up earlier, work harder, and do whatever it takes to achieve your goals, but time after time, you miss. Is it us? Do we just have a poor attitude? Do we just need to toughen up? What are the super-successful people doing that we’re not? I followed their strategies, but I didn’t get their outcomes. Why?
We are taught that if you’re sad, you need to be more positive. If you’re angry, you need to find peace. If you’re procrastinating, you’re lazy. If you’re making excuses, you’re weak. It’s all in your head. Pick up a self-help book and get over it.
And yet if you go to a doctor complaining of these same symptoms, you’ll get a medical diagnosis of depression and be put on antidepressants to fix a chemical imbalance in your brain. Even then, the doctor can’t take the time to find out the cause of your decline, thanks to training, attitudes, and time constraints.
What’s worse is that the self-help industry looks at these same symptoms and believes an injection of motivation and an inspirational story is the answer. It’s not interested in finding out the underlying cause either.
This realization led me to ask: If these are my symptoms, what is the cause?
We all experience setbacks to varying degrees throughout our lifetimes, some more severe than others. In a 2018 online Facebook survey my team conducted of 2,000 entrepreneurs internationally, we discovered the following revelations:
75 percent experienced brain fog.
82 percent experienced procrastination.
82 percent were easily distracted.
65 percent were easily overwhelmed.
71 percent experienced high levels of stress.
58 percent did not wake up feeling refreshed.
47 percent experienced sadness.
62 percent had inconsistent energy throughout the day.
65 percent got caught in a negative mental feedback loop.
These numbers are astonishing in that they demonstrate a large percentage of people experiencing symptoms that could be related to depression. In this specific demographic, we have highly motivated people who are passionate about their goals and embedded in a workforce that is usually made up of the movers and shakers of the business world, yet an overwhelming number of them are not enjoying complete wellness when it comes to their mental health. How many of them will burn out before they can achieve their dreams due to biological factors?
By looking more carefully, we can see that there is an underlying cause triggering these symptoms. I firmly believe we can cure ourselves of this “disease” of elusive well-being. Especially in the United States, we are seeing an epidemic of prescription drugs as the answer to these symptoms, and the medical industry is not yet willing to trade in their prescription pads for questionnaires to discover the root causes of our decline.
Closing the Gap to Who You Are Supposed to Be
My story is not the exception to the rule; it is the rule. These are all symptoms of an underlying issue completely ignored by the personal development industry and the medical profession.
Like a frog, which will slowly die when put into tepid water that’s then brought to a gradual boil, we, too, will adapt to our suffering without conscious awareness until severe symptoms appear and medical intervention is required. At that point, a scorched-earth approach is taken instead of a preventative one.
All these symptoms decrease our mental ability to process new information, with hazardous implications when it comes to closing the identity gap from our current self to who we need to become to reach our goals. In particular, it limits who we believe ourselves to be and our perceived ability to bring our visions to life. Even if mild, it snaps us back into who we are at our worst.
It wasn’t until after visiting a doctor in the rural city of Dubbo in New South Wales, Australia, that I had my first major realization after what ended up being another patronizing interaction.
I wasn’t tired because I was depressed; I was depressed because I was tired. I want to know why I’m tired! Being depressed as a result of fatigue was the first of many discoveries that helped me uncover the solution, not just to my symptoms, but to reaching my goals and rewriting my model for success from the ground up. If I could discover why I was tired, making excuses, and procrastinating, everything else would fall into place. I would finally get my motivation and drive back, quit making excuses, and reignite my energy and passion for the projects I used to love.
Like millions of other people, I had started off with mild symptoms that I quickly dismissed as the result of overworking, a weak mental attitude, or late nights and tight deadlines. I had subscribed to the philosophy of “just do it” without being fully aware of the consequences.
When the soul is willing but the body is weak, the body can’t fulfill the mission the soul is on. My soul was more than ready, willing, and able. Despite reading countless self-help books, attending seminars, and drowning myself in motivational strategies for 15 years, I realized that the information I had was sorely incomplete.
We’ve been taught that our psychology is the number-one key to success; our biochemistry doesn’t get a mention unless you’re an elite athlete or experiencing severe physical symptoms that are obvious to others. But even mild biochemical problems can prevent you from reaching your goals.
Strategic planning, mindset, and willpower are essential for one’s ability to think and compete on the job and in life. These factors can make one a legitimate competitor. However, biochemistry, which fuels one’s endurance and tenacity, provides the speed to succeed.
We tend to automatically assume that we’re all biochemically on par with the likes of Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama, and other peak performers. But some of them actively work to hack their biochemistry. Others, through a combination of factors we’ll be talking about in this book, got lucky; their biochemistry naturally makes them less susceptible to stress, brain fog, and sadness, helping clear the path for their success.
That’s not to say they don’t experience these ailments; they do but to manageable degrees. Nor is it to say they don’t work hard; it just doesn’t seem as hard because they are biochemically sound, establishing a firm foundation on which everything else can flourish.
We imitate their strategies. We want to know what time they get up, what they eat, how they think, what their core beliefs and reading habits are, but not for one second do we consider that each of us is biochemically unique. We each process our food, thoughts, and emotions very differently due to numerous factors—factors we ignore in the quest for personal success, unless one of our goals is to lose weight.
Anyone can apply the same psychological principles as the ultrasuccessful, but if you’re severely depleted on things like vitamin D, omega-3s, vitamin C, vitamin B12, dopamine, serotonin, or even testosterone (both women and men), you could experience mild to severe brain fog, fatigue, lethargy, anxiety, stress, and depression, all of which will severely impede your ability to remain focused and reach your goals. It’s like putting a plant in toxic soil and willing it to grow. It doesn’t matter how much you tell it anything is possible, that f—ker is going to die!
Ignorance of biochemistry undermines the psychological principles we’re taught to apply. It’s the invisible factor that derails us—an unseen hand that holds you back from crossing the finish line. Without this information, any strategies for productivity and peak performance are incomplete and ineffective.
Instead of realizing our biochemistry is out of alignment, we attach a negative emotional mental state to our goals and decide the goal itself is too hard or too lofty. We end up with self-defeating thoughts, such as, “I’m too tired,” “I haven’t got time for this,” “What’s the point?”, “I feel too overwhelmed,” or “I’m so stressed.” To avoid that scenario, perhaps we should ask ourselves a few questions:
What if instead of just studying the habits of highly successful people, our best creative minds, and multimillionaire game changers we compiled a database of their medical data that examines their serotonin and dopamine levels and microbiome makeup and compares it to those who routinely quit, make excuses, or experience more intense negative emotions?
Would poor biochemical results impact their ability to cross the finish line? Do these biochemical levels impact the abilities of the highly successful to overcome setbacks and cross the finish line? Would these biological processes provide a real and complete understanding as to why successful people behave a specific way, not based on their mental attitude and upbringing alone?
If a person were able to deplete their dopamine and serotonin levels, how would their behavior change?
Could a successful, confident person be incapacitated physically and mentally as a result of nutritional deficiencies?
If we were to look at their biochemical levels when they encountered a major setback, what would we discover?
Upon examining other aspects of a person’s life during a major physical and emotional setback, what would we find? What were they eating at the time? How did their behavior change? What occurred in the body, not just in their attitude?
(We are of course setting aside the ethical dilemma of compiling such a database; these questions are purely hypothetical.) The only time we consider biochemistry is when we’re in decline or attempting to lose weight, not when we’re trying to become a better version of ourselves. When we fail to reach our goals, it’s implied we have a weak mental attitude, not a biochemical weakness that can be rapidly rectified with the right help. True personal transformation requires both biochemistry and psychology for lasting change. Otherwise, we’ll default back to what’s easy.
When the brain is weak, the output will be meek. One finding in our survey of 2,000 entrepreneurs was unexpected, but is blindingly obvious in hindsight: 57 to 65 percent of those experiencing brain fog were easily distracted, often procrastinated, lost their train of thought, and felt overwhelmed and sad, and were also experiencing food cravings. This was a major contributing biochemical factor as to why their day was being derailed and why they tended to give up. This discovery further led me to believe that success isn’t only in the mind or body; it’s in both.
To be truly successful means not only hacking our minds, but hacking our chemistry as well. Looking at this conundrum from a new perspective challenged everything I believed about self-help. I, like others, had been led to believe that you can will your way out of your excuses, procrastination, brain fog, negative thoughts, and sadness, but if you’re depressed, you need a drug.
But what if that’s not true?
How much does psychology play a part in your success and how much does biochemistry play a part?
The reality is that you cannot use mental ability to compensate for inadequate biochemistry. It can help, but unless you address and understand the underlying issues, avoidance and procrastination will continue. Your personal development practices will only be effective when your biochemistry is working at peak efficiency and supporting your body to its fullest.
What do you tackle first, your mindset or your biology? In the past, we’d pick up a self-help book or seek out a therapist, who might or might not address our nutritional deficiencies.
These approaches might have been fine a decade ago, before the major changes to our environment and food supply, light pollution, and the psychological impact of social media began affecting our daily behavior. However, our prehistoric brain hasn’t caught up with today’s technological advances; our biochemistry is stuck in our evolutionary past. As a result, we’re glued to our computer, phone, and notebook screens 24/7, and this addiction to technology is having a profound impact on how we behave.
Studies show that social media and app companies are using their technology to create addictive platforms, for which we unknowingly pay the price.1 They are using cute emojis and keeping track of how many times we use their app, thus creating an addictive social media habit. These habits become pleasing to the user, embedding the need to do it again for that brief hit of pleasure. Facebook has admittedly hijacked one of our neurotransmitters, dopamine, for financial gain. Dopamine, otherwise known as the “reward chemical” due to it being in charge of our brain’s pleasure-reward system, can give us the drive and focus we need to be productive. Unfortunately, we aren’t always aware that this is happening until we feel it impacting other areas of our life.
Dopamine is a key component in various brain functions involving sleep, learning, motor control, working memory, and our ability to focus and concentrate.2 Parkinson’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and other conditions are at the extreme spectrum end of abnormally low dopamine levels. In other words, is social media addiction a result of lower dopamine levels due to stress and the modern world we now live in? Excuses, procrastination, and brain fog are possible symptoms of deficient levels of dopamine, not the causes.
That’s when I was hit with a blinding flash of the obvious: My excuses, negative thought patterns, and lack of drive and motivation weren’t simply the result of a weak mental attitude. The problem was a neurotransmitter deficiency combined with various other factors. No one is inherently unworthy, useless, or weak; we all fluctuate throughout our lifetimes. Life, as you’ll find out through the course of this book, is not a controlled experiment.
Positive thinking isn’t a substitute for a nutritional deficiency. Unfortunately, we don’t associate vague symptoms such as low self-esteem, anger, carbohydrate cravings, digestive complaints, feeling overwhelmed, insomnia, joylessness, brain fog, and poor cognitive function with low serotonin levels. Instead, we beat ourselves up for not being as good as everyone else.3
You are not your excuses; your excuses are your biochemistry.
With that in mind, could my internal chemistry be triggering my procrastination, fear, anxiety, and greater willingness to quit? I had only ever experienced these fleetingly in the past, and they always subsided. This time they had laid roots I had to dig up. The short answer is a resounding “YES!”
The greatest problem with our old approach to success is that it fails to bridge the gap between biochemistry and psychology. The two are so intertwined they cannot be separated, and yet our medical system, the personal development industry, psychologists, naturopaths, nutritionists, and therapists have drawn lines between their methodologies for decades that have led to emphasizing psychology over biochemistry, or vice versa—but not a combination of both.
The true evolution will occur when we have a convergence of all practices of medicine. This is beginning to occur in the field of functional medicine, and it will revolutionize health care and the way we think about ourselves and the science of success. But before we address success, let’s talk about failure.
Why We Really Fail
Failure isn’t just due to low dopamine levels. It’s also a question of managing our “fight or flight” response. When we’re stressed, the body’s somatic nervous system triggers what is known as the fight or flight response. The body kicks into high gear and shifts its energy resources toward fighting off a threat or fleeing from an enemy.
The fight or flight response releases the hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which sets off a cascade of internal processes, including increased respiration, fast heartbeat, and blood vessel dilation in the arms and legs, which triggers our digestive system to increase our bloodstream glucose levels to deal with the emergency. Once the emergency is over, everything returns to normal.4
However, if it continues over an extended period, chronic stress can cause problems ranging from cognitive impairment and emotional instability to physical illness. Emotional symptoms include agitation, moodiness, feeling overwhelmed, an inability to relax, low self-esteem, worthlessness, depression, and isolation. Physical symptoms could include headaches, low energy, upset stomach, muscle tension, chest pain, insomnia, colds and infections, loss of desire, nervousness, shaking, or difficulty swallowing. Stress can also lead to cognitive symptoms: racing thoughts, forgetfulness, disorganization, inability to focus, brain fog, poor judgment, pessimism, and constant worrying.5
Stress, Food Cravings, and an Inability to Focus on What Matters
Stress also plays a role. A staggering 71 percent of our 2,000 respondents said “yes” to experiencing high levels of stress, and here’s where it gets fascinating: Stress causes food cravings, specifically for sugar and highly processed food. The digestion of this food releases the neurotransmitter serotonin, which brings us waves of calm and relaxation, allowing us to regain our focus temporarily, until the serotonin levels taper off.
Between 57 and 65 percent of our respondents who reported being plagued with brain fog, feeling overwhelmed, worrying, and sadness also experienced food cravings.
Carbohydrate cravings can be spurred on by low serotonin levels as this “feel good” chemical is released during the consumption of food. This results in a negative feedback loop driving people to consume excessive amounts of carbs to alter how they feel for the better. These cravings are often seen in individuals who are exposed to high levels of stress.6
The connection to our inability to succeed lies in two factors that are at play on a day-to-day basis. When we experience food cravings or stress, our fight or flight response is triggered. This takes blood away from our prefrontal cortex, which controls a myriad of executive functions, including complex behaviors like coordination, impulse control, emotional reactions, personality, focusing, organizing, complex planning, and prioritizing simultaneous information.7
This sets up a nasty cycle: Our blood sugar drops, our cravings increase, and our cortisol spikes, limiting our ability to control our impulses, attention, and emotional reactions. We reach for sweet or highly refined carbohydrates and our blood sugar increases, followed later by a sudden drop, which results in brain fog, inability to focus, loss of motivation, and the inability to reach our goals.
We attempt to address this cycle in our children by limiting their sugar intake, and yet we dismiss it when it comes to our own psychological well-being. We’ve also been duped by companies that are putting a “healthy spin” on their products, even though many of them are high in sugars, sucralose, refined carbohydrates, caffeine, and preservatives, all of which impact our ability to think clearly.
When your blood sugar drops or you experience high levels of stress, your brain switches into survival mode, driving you to take more risks and putting your primal brain into high gear. This shift causes your personality, mood, and identity to fluctuate throughout the day. Your motivation may be high in the morning, but by the afternoon, you’d rather sit on the couch and watch TV because you’ve used up all your mental capacity for the day.
In this primal state, the brain’s key purpose is to sustain life, not keep you focused on achieving your goals. That doesn’t even get a rating on the scale of critical functions necessary for your life to continue. In this state, otherwise known as self-preservation mode, you default to maintaining the status quo and nothing more.
The problem is that most of us can’t switch it off, or if we do, it quickly comes back on again later, creating a roller-coaster ride of emotions and an inability to complete projects on time. How easily it comes on is directly linked to how we’ve learned to process possible threats. This is based on numerous factors, including our upbringing, genetics, and hormone levels like serotonin and dopamine just to name a few. If your serotonin or dopamine levels are low, you’re more susceptible to dealing with setbacks poorly and more likely to have a reactive instead of responsive internal environment.
Our current lifestyles bombard us with stress factors daily once the pebble starts rolling downhill from something that seems inconsequential at the time. Examples of these stress factors could be a reaction to unhealthy foods, allergies, bad news, insomnia, pollution, hostile co-workers, financial stress, too much caffeine, relationship conflicts, family issues, constant stress, or a dirty look from someone on the street. The stress begins to pick up pace, and other problems appear as a result. It happens so slowly that we don’t notice it initially.
At that point, any attempt to get out in front of it becomes futile because our cognitive functions have been disabled; it’s like searching for a key in a room with the lights off.
To find the switch, we have to change identities and fuel sources, even if just for a moment, to reboot our spirit, body, and mind in unison.
The Old Models of Treatment
While speaking with experts in the field of medicine, psychiatry, personal development, biohacking, neurofeedback, biofeedback, and neuroscience, I discovered something interesting. They each have their own unique formula for success, but they rarely merge them into one cohesive framework to create lasting change for those of us who are asking more from ourselves. Some of these frameworks include:
The Medical Model: diagnoses and treats illness, often prescribing pills to manage symptoms without always uncovering and addressing the root cause, resulting in possible side effects. It views the body as a collection of independent organs that gets divided up by medical specialties.
The Self-Help Model: drives awareness, uncovers self-sabotaging behavior, inspires through storytelling, and encourages clients to change their beliefs and model the ultrasuccessful with drops of psychology thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, it fails to identify any nutritional deficiencies that could be contributing to these behaviors, potentially resulting in short-term success without lasting change. Clients receive an injection of willpower, but when that runs out, they default back to their old “preset mode.”
The Therapeutic Models: of which there are many, including cognitive, mindfulness, behavioral, and interpersonal therapies. Similar to the self-help model, these therapies may result in patients not making fundamental changes to their biochemistry, giving them only one piece of the puzzle as to why they may lack motivation, drive, focus, and calm.
The field of functional medicine is changing the way illness is treated. It seeks out and addresses the root causes of disease. Unlike traditional medicine, where the body is viewed as a collection of independent organs, functional medicine views the body as an integrated system. Its objective is to treat the whole body, not just the symptoms.
The insights I received from the experts I spoke to and the countless supplements, diets, mindfulness strategies, and wearable devices I trialed during this 90-day period resulted in me reworking the science of success from the bottom up. Learn as I take a complete functional medicine approach to peak performance to guide you from finding the gap in your identity to being at the top of your game and becoming unstoppable.
Halo Sport: Technology built for athletic training and used by Special Operations (S.O.) forces.
Unwrapping my first wearable device excited me to no end. It was Halo Sport, a pair of black headphones used by elite athletes from the Olympics, Major League Baseball, NBA, and NFL to improve everything from endurance and power to muscle movement.
Halo Sport works by sending electrical stimulation across the motor cortex, the part of our brain that controls muscle contraction, during training to establish stronger and more optimized connections between your brain and muscles, putting you into a state of “hyperplasticity.”
The research behind the device is extensive. In August 2016, a project was announced with the U.S. Department of Defense to help train their S.O. The partnership was the first commercial contract signed by the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit, which aims to use technology to improve military defense.8
I chose it over other similar devices due to the heavy-hitting research that had gone into it, which others had failed to provide.
During the first 30 days of the 90-day challenge, I tested it using a CrossFit workout I’d completed multiple times; I had documented every workout over the past four years, so I had extensive baseline stats to compare it to. Lo and behold, it was beyond anything I’d ever experienced before. Every single day, despite experiencing fatigue, brain fog, and lethargy, I was able to break personal bests.
Not just by a little bit, but by a lot!