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Improve Willpower in 5 Mins | How Heart Rate Variability helps Brain Function - YouTube
Channel: What I've Learned
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[Casey Neistat gently humming]
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"Dude get off my back what the hell"
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Just kidding, there's no vlog.
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That counts for an April fool's joke right?
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So this video is actually about willpower.
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Specifically how just slowing down my breath
has really helped me to do the hard thing
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in several situations.
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On March 3rd , I found myself in a quite ironic
situation:
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While listening to âThe Willpower Instinct,â
by Kelly McGonigal, I was lining up to buy
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something that would end up undermining my
willpower.
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The problem was that the new Zelda game was
way better than I anticipated.
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I would set aside 30 minutes to play which
would quickly turn into an hour then two hours
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and so on.
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So after investing way too much time into
finishing the game and finally starting to
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shift back into my creative and productive
mode, I noticed I had less capacity for willpower
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in general.
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It wasn't so much that Zelda was preoccupying
my mind, it was just more difficult to get
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to work and stay focused in general, and a
lot of times I would diffuse that uncomfortable
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tension by zoning out on my smartphone or
on social media websites.
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So, in these uncomfortable moments of really
not wanting to do the harder thing, I started
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using this breathing technique I picked up
from the Willpower Instinct.
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Basically you just breathe in one breath for
10 seconds and breathe out that breath for
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10 seconds.
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Five to ten minutes of this was usually enough
to dissolve that tension and give me the willpower
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to focus on work.
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This kind of breathing is significant because
it improves something called heart rate variability.
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When people talk about heart rate they are
actually talking about the average heart rate
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over one minute.
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You know the kind of scene on House where
they inject the dying patient with some unexpectedly
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effective thing like snake venom and the heart
monitor shows a pulse and you hear a ping
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ping ping.
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The ping is when the heart contracts, this
generates a bit of electricity which the machine
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can read.
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So heart rate variability refers to variations
in the time between these pings.
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If there is precisely one ping every second,
then your heart rate is 60 beats per minute
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but you have virtually no heart rate variability.
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If thereâs .85 seconds between the first
two pings and then 0.90 seconds between the
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second two and then .95 seconds then .90 seconds
again and so on, then you have some heart
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rate variability.
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This is a good thing.
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Everybodyâs heart rate changes throughout
the day and even moment to moment.
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Your heart speeds up a little bit when you
inhale.
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It slows down again when you exhale.
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A smooth variation of heart rate is good and
means that your heart is getting signals from
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both branches of your autonomic nervous system:
one is the sympathetic nervous system, which
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speeds you up and is responsible for things
like the fight or flight response, and the
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other is the parasympathetic nervous system,
which promotes relaxation and engages during
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processes like digestion.
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Studies show that people with higher HRV are
better at ignoring distractions, delaying
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gratification, dealing with stressful situations
and are less likely to give up on difficult
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tasks.
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Because of this Heart Rate Variability has
been called the bodyâs âreserveâ of
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willpower.
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This is because Heart rate variability is
the single best physiological measurement
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of something called the "pause and plan response."
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Pause and plan is essentially the opposite
of the body's fight or flight response.
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When your environment presents you with stressful
situation, the brain switches on the fight
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or flight response, and as much energy as
possible is directed to the body to help you
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run or fight.
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This means energy is directed away from the
brain.
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The pause and plan response starts when the
prefrontal cortex identifies that another
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part of your brain is asking you to do something
that may benefit you now but is not helpful
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for long term goals.
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It could be something like wanting to drink
a beer at lunch or eating cake for breakfast.
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To generate the self control to slow down
and make the decision to not do these things,
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energy needs to be transferred from the body
to the brain.
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To do this, your prefrontal cortex will communicate
the need for self-control to lower brain regions
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that regulate your heart rate, blood pressure,
breathing and other automatic functions.
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Then all these processes slow down and self
control improves.
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When people successfully exert self control,
the parasympathetic nervous system steps in
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to calm stress and control impulsive action.
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Heart rate goes down, but heart rate variability
goes up.
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Suzanne Segerstrom, a psychologist at the
University of Kentucky, observed this physiological
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signature of self-control when she asked hungry
students to not eat freshly baked cookies
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in front of them.
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As they sat there resisting the cookies, their
heart rate variability went up.
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Variability in other participants who were
free to eat the cookies stayed the same.
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Heart Rate Variability is such a good indicator
of willpower that you can use it to predict
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who will resist cravings.
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For example, recovering alcoholics whose HRV
goes up when they see a drink are more likely
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to stay sober.
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Recovering alcoholics whose heart rate variability
drops when they see a drink - have a greater
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risk of relapse.
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In fact, your body, brain and mental willpower
are so well connected that people with strong
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self control can actually stay a bit more
sober on the same amount of alcohol when they
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need to.
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A report from the University of Kentucky compared
alcohol metabolism in a group of men with
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similar body compositions.
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The men went through an evaluation process
to assess their ability for self control,
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then they drank the same amount of alcohol
and their blood alcohol content was measured
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afterwards.
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They found that the men who ranked higher
in self control were actually less drunk.
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The study gives an example where two men with
different levels of self control each have
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two drinks âThen, their supervisor from
work arrives unexpectedly, and they spend
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the next 30 min regulating their behavior
so as to appear sober.
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All else being equal, the present results
suggest that the man with high trait self-control
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will likely have a BAC around .026, and the
man with low self-control will have a BAC
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around .032 â approximately 20% higher."
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So why do some people just have better heart
rate variability and better self control than
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other people?
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Many factors influence your capacity for self
control- things like anxiety, anger, depression,
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poor sleep, loneliness and even poor air quality
are all associated with worse heart rate variability.
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Things like regular exercise and proper diet
can improve HRV.
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Practicing meditation or the controlled breathing
technique I mentioned earlier also increases
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heart rate variability.
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One study found that a daily twenty-minute
practice of slowed breathing improved HRV
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and reduced cravings and depression among
adults recovering from substance abuse and
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PTSD.
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But whether youâve been practicing this
or not, at any time you can take a moment
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to slow your breathing down to manually improve
your heart rate variability and self-control
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in the moment.
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In this presentation, Dr. Alan Watkins actually
demonstrates how breathing like this can quickly
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improve your HRV.
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A volunteer is hooked up to a device that
measures the change in his heart rate and
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as you can see when he first walks up on stage
his heart rate is quite erratic, but after
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he begins to breathe in a slow rhythmic fashion,
you start to see nice smooth waveform.
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The thing thatâs happening when you breathe
like this is: youâre simply destressing
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yourself and creating the physiology of calmness.
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As mentioned earlier, the stressful fight
or flight response diverts energy from the
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brain to the body.
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When this happens activity in the prefrontal
cortex decreases.
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This is good in some situations, you donât
want to have to slowly decide to run from
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a bear, but some situations you really donât
want your prefrontal cortex shutting down.
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It lowers your willpower and you become more
impulsive, but other forms of self control
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suffer.
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With less prefrontal cortex activity, you
may yell at your spouse, forget how to use
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words during a job interview, and you might
find yourself saying âHi there, my name
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is come here often.â
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to an attractive woman at the bar.
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This slow and controlled breathing engages
the pause and plan response and directs more
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energy to the prefrontal cortex giving you
better control over yourself.
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This brings me to my favorite point in Dr.
Watkinâs talk:
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There is something even more fundamental,
down here in the basement of the human system
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is your physiology.
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If you want to be brilliant every single day
you've got to get a grip of every single level.
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At the root of behavior is physiology.
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If you want to improve your behavior, you
need to change how you think- and if youâre
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in a negative emotional state itâs quite
hard to change your thoughts.
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And Most emotional states are determined by
feedback between the brain and the body- your
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physiology influences emotion.
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This is why you feel jittery or anxious when
you drink too much coffee, you donât just
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calmly observe your heart rate rising.
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The hard thing about having a powerful imaginative
human brain is that we can turn anything into
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a source of stress.
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An offhand comment from your boss or simply
the absence of a text message from a person
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youâre attracted to can be interpreted by
your brain as a threat to survival.
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This causes your body to express the physiology
of stress which affects your emotional state
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which affects your thoughts which affects
your behavior.
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If you want to better control your behavior,
one thing you can do is invest a couple minutes
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into controlling your breathing and changing
your physiology which is the root of your
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behavior.
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Quick thanks to SeraNova for the drone, if
you're in Japan make sure and check them out.
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They're a drone rental service.
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Also, thank y'all for being patient on the
part 2 to the video about the internet's effect
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on your brain.
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I'll have that one out soon.
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