Why You Can't Just "Rewire" Your Brain

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Right now, when you buy more carpet at the Home Depot, you save more. During our Buy More, Save More event going on now, upgrade your carpeting with the top brands and save up to 15% off installed carpet projects. Installation starting at just 49 cents per square foot. Select from a wide assortment of carpet to fit your room, lifestyle and budget during the Buy More, Save More event at the Home Depot. Offer valid August 27th through September 13th, 2026 Base price for standard installations only excludes Traffic Master and stock carpet. Licenses see homedepot.com/licensenumbers.

SPEAKER_2 (0:30)

Now you can watch ESPN College Game Day and select live college football games on Disney Plus. All day every Saturday at no extra cost for Disney Plus subscribers. Now there's something for every kind of fan.

Select live college football games are now on Disney Plus. It's going to be wild. A limited sampling of content from ESPN is now available to all Disney Plus subscribers. Upgrades will plan that includes ESPN to access the full ESPN on Disney Plus experience. Terms apply.

Alok Kanojia (1:00)

The mechanism of trauma is distracted mind, environment focuses mind once the mind is focused, to absorb whatever is happening to you.

SPEAKER_4 (1:09)

If you tell yourself, I will write down a hundred times something about yourself, that writes it into the neurofrontal cortex at such a deep level that your brain will start reconciling you to that. I was terrified of public speaking until I just sat down for a week, and every day I spent 10 minutes just writing that I like public speaking. I love public speaking. You wrote that down? Yeah.

A week later, and I knew it's not this works when you know what you're doing. It's not like a placebo. It's actually like you just actively change your neurofrontal cortex. So I use this often. I also write to myself, message in a bottle.

SPEAKER_1 (1:42)

You write messages to yourself?

SPEAKER_4 (1:44)

Yeah.

SPEAKER_5 (1:44)

Affirmations or just...

SPEAKER_4 (1:45)

No, it's just like, Ben, I feel like something is like, there's something I've figured out that I really like. I know I have to write a scheduled message to myself to remember it, because I need space to repetition on the idea.

Alok Kanojia (1:59)

Thoughts?

I love this stuff. So this is why I like science. Before I went to med school, I was gallivanting around the mountains, the Himalayas, and wandering across ashrams. And I encountered someone who was like, hey, this guy had cancer. And he went to an ashram, meditated, he learned to play a flute. And what he did was play the flute every day for four days. And cancer was cured. And so here's the tricky thing. You may say that sounds like BS. I'm not saying it's BS. I mean, it could have happened. Maybe the flute cured cancer. The issue of science is reproducibility. So here's what bothers me about things like this. So here's a person, Toby, who's the CEO of Shopify, founder of Shopify, who says, hey, I did this thing and I transform my fear of public speaking. Now I love it. I just wrote this thing to myself 10 times. My question is, what is the reproducibility of it? If human beings on the planet write something to themself 10 times every day for a week, will their fears disappear?

Is it that simple? And the answer is, I don't think so. We're gonna do a really simple scientific kind of like, not experiment, but just, I'm gonna ask y'all. So what we're gonna do is look at Tobias Lutke's Wikipedia page, and I'm gonna ask you guys a question. Of the variables that we look at, which of the following do you think has the, if we duplicate this thing again, which one do you think has the biggest impact on overcoming a fear of public speaking? Early life, born in Germany, received a personal computer at the age of six, rewriting code for games he played at the age of 11 or 12, graduated from school and entered an apprentice program, became a computer programmer after the 10th grade, lived in Ottawa home of his parents, parents-in-law Bruce and Dale, who were federal public servants, provided seed capital for his startup, et cetera, et cetera. So which of these variables, writing something in a journal 10 times a day for a week, or being given a gift, being supported professionally, being supported financially, being encouraged professionally, I have an idea to start a company, like I have this idea of self agency and determination, like I can shape the world and then the universe shows up and they're like, hey, here's a pile of capital, go do your thing, brah. I'm not saying the guy isn't amazing. And this is what kind of bothers me about like, why I don't like advice from successful people, because the advice from the successful people almost never takes into account the variables that are actually responsible for the change.