Dr. Jill: drjilltaylor.com.

JJ: Okay. So, that’s where you go if you just want her. And if you’re along for the ride, this is cool. Now, if you’re on the podcast and you know we’re doing a video, come to jjflizanes.tv so you can see us have a really good time. Oh, and by the way, if you’re finding this on YouTube, this is also a podcast. So, click the link below, right on the description. It will take you straight to the audio file where you can take us with you as you walk or play or cook or shop or drive or exercise. So, she’s back. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor is back with “Whole Brain Living,” which is what she was chomping at the bit to want to talk about at the last one. I had to take her back a decade to talk about the other book. Not because I’m late to the party, but because that’s the evolution of me. So now, we’re getting deep into the woods here, really deep, with “Whole Brain Living.” And I’ll be honest with everybody. I’m only halfway through the book as of this moment, but here’s the thing I’m going to say about that. I released the need to have it finished because it’s so chockfull of great information that I want to not only retain but utilize. And so, today’s conversation, if I get through this book, I’m going to have a conversation with you that people aren’t going to be able to track because they haven’t read the book. So, my first recommendation, of course, is, everybody, get the book. And I would recommend this because of the density of it. Not that it’s a thick book. I mean, I have a pen in it right now. But get the audio book. I have both. I’ve been listening, and thank you for reading it. I’ve been listening. I was listening and following along. And then now I have it as I’m flipping through it. But honestly, get both, but at least just get the audio book because those of you listening to me on the podcast, you like audio. So, listen to her on the podcast. So, welcome back to the show.

Dr. Jill: I am so excited to be here. You know, we had such a good time last time, and it’s nice to be up to date now. Whole Brain Living. I’m so excited to dig into your brain.

JJ: And I am excited for you to dig into my brain. In fact, if you’re willing, I’d love for you to do a little diagnosis, if you don’t know me that well, but I’d love to hear what you think the percentages I am of character 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Dr. Jill: Me or your listeners?

JJ: No, me. I want you to… Would you be willing to say, “This is what I think you are”?

Dr. Jill: Well, let’s talk about it. Shall we talk about it?

JJ: Yeah.

Dr. Jill: Let’s talk about it so that you can introduce the parts of you to me that I don’t see. So, I see a lot of strong character 1 because you’re clearly organized, you’re clearly punctual, you clearly care about getting it done, you have the schedule, you got the plan, you got the recipe, you got the structure, you got the look, you got all that. So, that’s very strong character 1. You have to be able to have a strong character 1 to be you and do the kinds of things that you do. I’m also guessing that because you have a strong 1, I’m guessing you know your own character 2. And although I and your audience probably would not be introduced to your little unhappy, discontent, discombobulated self, your relationships would. Yes?

JJ: There is a character 2. We all have one. And when you go through this book, you want us… And I kept saying, “What’s it called? What’s it called?” and you’re like, “Oh, no, I want you to name…”

Dr. Jill: I wanted you to name it.

JJ: Well, but I don’t… Because my default was to name it somebody I don’t like or somebody that I think is out of balance, and I do not want to associate myself with… Your names are awesome because you made them mean… So, it takes a lot of… now that I’ve gone through it, and I’ve explained this to other people since reading the book. I’m like, “Well, her character 1 is called Helen, and here’s why.” But it’s so concise. And I’m literally wrapping my brain around what feels right for me, and I haven’t found that yet. So, I love your names and I think it’s a good default. I mean, character 4, I can come up with a character 4 for me that’s different than yours. And your character 3, I can also. But your 1 and 2, I’m like, “Ooh, I like those. Those are good.” So, yeah, I have a character 2. I would say that part of the work I do in the world…

So, for those of you that are listening and you’re not up to speed yet, I would guess that by what was just taught to you, that left brain character 1, that thinking brain is all those structural, linear, leadership, thinking, organization, that’s the part of your left brain character 1, which is your thinking part of your left brain. And then we move to character 2, which is the feeling part of your left brain, and that is more of the kind of always in fear, or always in survival mode part of you. You call her Abby because of being abandoned, which we all have. We all have forms of PTSD all over the map. But I have so many people that live in their character 2. We all have it. And for me, the character 2 is like, “Okay, here’s what the stuff we need to heal is.”

Dr. Jill: Right.

JJ: But there are so many people that are attached to the identity of their character 2, they’ve never experienced 4, they don’t allow themselves 3. They live in the 1 and the 2. And not even in the 1. They live in the 2. It’s always the survival mode. So, I know I have it. Dr. Taylor [10:13], we’ve just interviewed the other day. I don’t know when it’s going to get published, but he was giving an example and I had just been triggered by my mother, like a situation, which, by the way, it’s a sadness trigger, it’s not an anger. I’ve never had anger. It’s a frustration. And he was giving examples, and I say, “Hey, can we just use me?” And so I just basically had a therapy session on air, and he was breaking me, and I was like, “I get it. And trust me,” I go, “if this was a real therapy session, I would have been bawling my eyes out, hysterically ugly crying 20 minutes ago.” I said, “But I’m trying to hold it together for my show.” So, I didn’t cry as I do on my show. No one is immune to JJ having tears and sniffling. I’ll be like… But to stay focused. So, I do have a character 2, and I saw her on Monday. But I don’t think she comes out tgat much because my whole life purpose is healing and doing kind of healing work on people.

So, we all have this part of ourselves, and it’s our extreme vulnerability. And I think the real key is how do we each, as individuals, figure out how to self-soothe that part of ourselves? And I think when it comes to healing, then it’s a matter of we have to come into the consciousness of the right brain, into the present moment, where it’s not just all about me, me, me, the individual. I’m not about the past, and I’m not in the future. I’m in the present moment, and my present moment consciousness can then reach into the pain of my past and say, “Oh my gosh.” But that’s not now. And so, how do we grow from that? How do we prevent that from happening again? How do we manage something that looks like that the next time we see it coming toward us? How do we bring our own emotional triggers down so that Mom doesn’t have the power to just pounce on it? Nobody’s got the power like the biological family. It had to trigger our triggers. And so, health, to me, the healing and the healthiness is really the consciousness of the right here, right now, present moment. And in the present moment, I am accepting of all that is. Whatever it is is.

JJ: Yes. Absolutely. And I love the setup that you just gave in terms of what does that healing mean. And I know, as I’m going through the second half of the book, and the breathe, and the assess, and having those other tools, EMDR, EFT, visualization, rampage of appreciation and gratitude, looking at those things… I had a client earlier this week, and this is where I’m going to have a really good time with this work and with astrology. I am not a certified astrologer. However, I’m teaching an astrology class tonight with the head astrologer from the Jan Spiller company who has deemed me my own kind of astrologer, because I’m that kind of geek about it. And when I look at patterns, looking at the pattern of somebody that I work with this week who has a lot of earth in them, an earth generally is very grounded, also very stable. But because they’re very stable, they’re not very flexible, not very moving, and they don’t go anywhere. And this person is literally living in their character 2. And I remember she’s sitting in this place, and when I asked her, “Okay, so what’s the trigger with the boss that you hate?” and “Well, he thinks I’m stupid,” and I said, “Okay, well, usually it’s a mirror for ourselves. So, do you think you’re stupid?” And then she burst into tears and said, “No,” and then she said, “Well, sometimes.” And so, after that sort of emotion got released, I said, “Okay, so what do you know that you’re good at?” And then she rambled off like 10 things that she was good at. I said, “Great. Are you doing this at your work?” and she said, “None of them.” I said, “Great. So now there’s no confusion. You’re addicted to the confusion. Your character 2 is addicted to the drama and confusion that there’s something that you don’t know. Now you know it. Are we in agreement now that you understand that what you’re good at, what you know you’re good at, you are not living?”

Dr. Jill: Right.

JJ: “And this situation is never going to change. Even if you change who you are in it, you’re still not using the strengths that you have.” But I looked at the character 2, and she’s also a whole bunch of Taurus and Virgo. Taurus and Virgo are not only very stubborn to change, because of that whole stability, “I’m not taking a risk” thing. And we’re not done with my 3 and 4. But how do we take somebody who lives in their character 2, who isn’t convinced because they haven’t had experience? One more quick story I’m going to tell you because I told this client this story. When I said, “There’s no confusion right now, correct? You’re clear. So, anytime you want to sink back into this idea that you get overwhelmed with emotion about… There’s no confusion. All you need to do now is action, to get out of there, to figure out a solution at this point.”

Back in 2004, I did… It wasn’t a Tony Robbins event, but it was kind of like a Tony Robbins event, but it was about, like, warrior training, and we went through a lot of really hard, emotionally and physically hard things for five days. And at the end of this five-day process, the group of us were in two different circles: an inside circle and an outside circle. And it was then that I had this clarity and epiphany. And I am highly intuitive, and I have lived in my 3 and 4 for a lot of part of my life, especially when I had to learn about law of attraction. Absolutely. But I was in this circle, and they wear you down by the end of the week, and there’s music playing, and they want everybody to break down and cry and have this emotional release. And that’s cool, and that’s fine. But I’m going around the circle, and remember, I don’t know any of these people except for these five days, and we bonded over all the stuff that we did. But I remember looking in someone’s eyes, and I remember noticing and being aware in that present moment that if I was to be in the present moment, there’s nothing wrong. But I recognized that most people were looking at me, crying about something in the past, or that I had the opportunity to click into, buy the music, buy the sentiment. In that moment, I’m being reminded of something or I’m being afraid of something. And that’s where the emotion is coming from. It’s not coming from being here and now. And when I could breathe into and make that choice in that second to go, “Oh, if I’m actually looking at you, person I don’t know, who I have no history with and I have nothing, there’s nothing wrong. So, why would I be sitting there crying because I’m thinking about something in the past?”

So, this left brain character 2 that’s emoting about something in the past is highly addicting to many people, and they get stuck in it. So, besides the awareness that’s being created by understanding the four parts, how do we move somebody out of character 2, and how would you move somebody out of character 2 to say… And again, awareness for some of them, because some of them are so afraid, they’re addicted to their fear and they don’t want to move. So, even if you say to them, “Do you want to change?” they’ll say, “Yes,” but then they don’t want to do the work for whatever reason. How do you move somebody out of that?

Dr. Jill: And that was a beautiful example. And right now, it’s even worse because of our societal norm. And the societal norm says it is acceptable for us to be projecting all of our fears of our character 2’s out into the world because we’re right below anxiety. And because we’ve been in this pandemic for so long now, even if we’re not in the rage or the fear or the sadness or the anxiety of our character 2, we’re right below it, so it takes nothing for us to trigger each other. So, right now, we really are in a pandemic of character 2. So, you’ve got to know what your choices are. If you say to me, “Jill, don’t be in your character 2,” I’ll look at you and I’ll say, “Well, JJ, what are my choices? What are my options?” And that’s why I love this material because if I know these four characters very well inside of me, and I really have done the work, and I feel what it feels, I know when I’m in my character 2, I know when I’m in my character 1, she holds my body different. I speak differently. I’m generally in my office and working.

Where is my character 3? My character 3 starts bouncing. My voice goes up. I get very excited. I’m in my art space, or I’m out playing in the woods or wherever. I mean, this is her, you know. She’s arrived. And then my character 4, she’s calm and she’s enormous and big as the universe, and she’s simply loving and open and available. And she’s just this wonderful part of me that accepts whatever is is. I’m this amazing life form. I did nothing to deserve this or earn this form of life, and now I’m here, and boom, I’ll be gone. And wow, what a wondrous experience that I exist at all. So, I can sink deeply into each of these four parts of me. So, if I feel, and I can tell, as soon as character 2 starts coming online, I feel the trigger, I feel the anxiety, I feel the furrow in my brow, I feel the jaw start to clamp, I feel my chest getting narrow, I really feel in my body my character 2. As soon as I feel that trigger, I recognize that for 90 seconds from the moment I trigger that trigger, I think the thought, it triggers the emotion, I run a physiological response, it floods through me, it flushes out of me, and then it’s over. Now, I can rethink the thought and rerun that circuit again or not, but I have to know. So, what I do for people who are so really turning into their character 4, I always say, visit there, but don’t make it a lifestyle. If you make it a lifestyle, then you’re going to notice that the people around you are going to be either pushing away from you, or they’re going to be coming in as misery loves miserable company and then we’re all just worrying or we’re all feeling whatever it is negative that we’re feeling.

So, simply becoming aware of “What am I feeling? Which of these four characters am I?” And then the last step is what I call the brain huddle. Once we know the four characters, any of the four characters can call a brain huddle. And I encourage each of our characters to practice literally 20, 30 times a day. My character 1, she’s structured and she’s organized. She actually puts on the list of her to-do. “Call a huddle.” When I get there, it’s like, “Okay, Helen is going to call a huddle.” That’s what I call my character 1: Helen. She’s Helen. She gets it done. So, it’s like a huddle. And the huddle is just like any team that calls a huddle. My brain team are these four characters. And when they’re all in the present moment, thinking and relating to one another, then I can make the best decision for me about what am I going to do next because I have my best self, my character 4 that is connect to all that is and is loving and nurturing. She’s online, my little playful self. I can leave it to her and go have some fun. My little character 2, “Okay, I’m not done yelling at you. I’m chewing on that bone,” or “I’m feeling down and I need some love.” Or my character 1 is going to go and fix something and do something and get stuff done. So, really for me, it’s helping people understand these characters. And they recognize. Even

JJ: Yeah. You’re very thorough. It’s very clear. I wanted to make it more simple, but I was like, “No. She’s pretty thorough about it.” I don’t want to oversimplify it because then we don’t give credit to what the purpose is. So, rather than looking at character 2 as the negative one, but it’s really about survival, we need our character 2’s for survival, and we need to lean into the fear if our gut is telling us something that we override with character 1 because we don’t have time deal with it. So, I appreciate the thoroughness of the explanation of each of them and how you take us through them in the world. And then you’re naming yours. And until I come up with a better name, I’m going to borrow Abby and Helen.

Dr. Jill: You can use all of mine.

JJ: They’re good.

Dr. Jill: Who’s your playful… I want to know who your little playful self is, JJ. I would think JJ because JJ is like a fun little nickname.

JJ: Yeah. My character 3?

Dr. Jill: Yeah.

JJ: Yeah. Well, actually, I was thinking about when you were like, “It’s physical,” and I’m like, “Oh, yeah. In the moment, character 3.” And I’m like, “Oh. This is why I dance.” And I taught salsa, and I’ve been doing salsa forever. Of course, not recently, although we could. My partner Doug and I, we could. In fact, every time we watch the movie “Chef,” we dance because the whole score is salsa music. And by the end of it, we just stop and we dance when they’re having their wedding at the end. So, dancing was that path. To me, when people would hear, and I would even say, in terms of creating balance in life, and balance has sort of always been my thing also. It’s not about good or bad. It’s about balance. And that’s what it sounds like also with this book about the decision. The balance of the power, for whatever your goal is, for whatever you want. And sometimes it will be more of one because it has to be, and other times it will be more of another. But we can’t spend too much time in one, otherwise we become depleted. And we have compensation patterns that in the end don’t serve us, and we’re not happy, because there are prices to pay for being in one for too long. Even the ones that we think are great, like you were saying in terms of you get nothing done if you lived in character 4 all the time, right?

Dr. Jill: Absolutely not functional.

JJ: And you’d probably be hurt if you do all the things physically that you want to do if you were character 3 because you wouldn’t pay attention. So, again, I really love the well-roundedness of the benefits and all the aspects to give credit where credit is due and to not make one necessarily good or bad, but that they’re all functional. So, the salsa part of me, the dancing part of me, which I’ll be in a restaurant and if they’re playing salsa music, I will get up and dance, and I will say, “Who can salsa?” I walk up to people I don’t know and I’ll say, “Do you know how to salsa? Can someone lead me?” Because I can lead. Or I say, “Does anyone know salsa?” and I’ll lead them because I can lead. But it just overtakes me, especially Marc Anthony. I can’t be anywhere near Marc Anthony and not dance. So, that’s probably part of my character 3. I would love to find the places where I am more character 3 besides dancing. But what I would tell people, like with salsa especially, it’s when women… And I love teaching women how to do this because I’ll take them and I’ll lead them and I’ll make them close their eyes, because they’re all like, “Well, I’m going to know the steps.” They’ll use character 1 to learn how to dance. I’m like, “Nope. It’s not how you learn how to dance.” When you are being led, whether it be you’re being led by a woman or led by a man, when you’re being led, it means you have to follow, which means you have to give up control and you have to relax and you have to just feel it. You can’t think about it, and you can’t plan for it.

So, I think that my character 3 probably lives happiest in that space, and that’s definitely what activates it. And I miss that because I haven’t been doing it very much. I mean, I do it. I have a good time, but it’s not as physical. I mean, we have a hot tub. And Doug and I, we’re really playful and we’re really funny and we’re always making fun of each other in fun ways. We’re always laughing, and we’d always take things not very serious, so we barely fight. We’ve grown together and worked out our stuff from our past marriages and figured out, because I’ve done all this work, so I had to use it somewhere and had it work. Plus, I manifested him because I worked real hard at it. I lived in the space of character 4, of knowing everything was going to work out and that I was going to get what I wanted, and I did. So, I kind of would call my character 3 something like a salsera. I’d call her like Little Miss Salsera because she wants to dance, and she wants to dance everywhere, and she wants to dance all the time. And literally, if I’m really tired, I would just dance. You put salsa music on, I’m like, “Ooh.” I’ll stop whatever I’m doing, wherever I am. My birthday last year was in Venice. We went to Venice. And yes, the pandemic had just started, but we were in Venice, and in the pizza shop, they were playing salsa music. I’m like, “I’m up.” I have a video that Doug took of me doing salsa by myself in the pizza shop. I’m salsa dancing, and then I had him lead me. I don’t care. They were like, “Yay!” So, that’s my character 3. And anybody who knows me, they know that’s true. If there’s salsa music on, I will dance no matter where we are: grocery store, restaurant.

Dr. Jill: And I hope that your audience comes and watches how it overtook your whole soul. Your body just started wiggling, and it’s just like, “Oh, yeah.” Your body got excited. That’s the character 3. I love that. I’m the same way with disco. As soon as disco goes and my head starts going, I’m out of there. It’s just boom. It’s a different era, but I’m a disco girl and I just can’t stop my head. Once it goes, then the hips go, and then everything is going. I’m just happy.

JJ: Well, I think music… Let’s talk about frequency for a second with this. It helps to activate that part of ourselves.

Dr. Jill: Yeah.

JJ: And it overrides some of our other chatter that we have. And because of the fluidity of music, it actually can affect the way that we… I did a live event a couple of months ago, and by the time this is published, last year. And dancing is a huge part of it. I mean, we teach a dance to get everybody up and get them physical. We have a dance party on the second night. And there’s little dances in between, breaks, fun dance music. And it’s to get everybody actively and to have a good time. Besides the chemicals in the brain that get stimulated, it’s also just the connection to ourselves and to integrate. One of my clients, Maureen, she’s been a client for a long time, and she said, “I danced this time.” And she’s been to every live event that I’ve had, and she’s never danced. And I’m like looking at people and “Come on. Get up.” “No.” I’m like, “You don’t have to look good. Just move. This is a safe space to look stupid and just flail your arms around.” So, I think dancing and music helps that…

Dr. Jill: Oh, absolutely.

JJ: That third part of our brain.

Dr. Jill: Yeah. But really, I mean, as soon as you bring in the march. You bring in the march and what do you got? You got character 1. Character 1 comes in. It’s just very… It’s doing the march. And then you can also have some music that just takes you into a more flowy space, so the character 4, that’s just open. But the power of music, because it’s a wavelength, and what’s the brain? It’s just a bunch of cells communicating with chemicals in wavelengths. Actually, somebody sent me an email and he had done some research on looking at which characters were using which neurotransmitters and which wavelengths (the alpha, the beta, the delta, the theta) were influencing which of these four different characters. And, you know, it’s just physics stuck in biology.

JJ: Absolutely. And it’s quantum physics at that.

Dr. Jill: It’s quantum. Absolutely, yeah.

JJ: Well, can I guess? So, would we say that… So, would alpha be maybe… No, let me go theta. Theta would be character 4?

Dr. Jill: Yeah, theta is pretty mellow.

JJ: Pretty character 4.

Dr. Jill: Pretty character 4. Yep.

JJ: And alpha would be more maybe character 1?

Dr. Jill: Character 1. Pretty much character 1. And beta is just that “Dadadadada…” So, that’s going to be more either character 2 or character 1, depending on if it’s thinking or if it’s emotion, the drilling of it. Yeah. But alpha is really these big, beautiful kind of waves of big picture. Character 1 as well. Theta is interesting because you’re kind of awake, you’re kind of asleep. It’s right before you go deep deep. And there’s a real high level of action going on in theta. People are doing things in theta. So, theta may actually overlap with 3. The primary difference between 3 and 4 is that character 4 is peaceful, blissful euphoria, but there’s no action. It simply is awareness of the presence. And everything in the present moment is really perfect until you filter it through an emotion, and then I have, depending on circumstances, whether I want to say “I love it” or “I hate it.” “It’s good” or “It’s bad.” No. It just is what it is to character 4, and it’s like, “I’m alive.” So, why isn’t that like the best thing ever until I’m gone?” and it was like, “Wow, that was such a thing.” But Character 3 is an impetus of energy toward. There’s a moment of action, like salsa. Something is going to burst out in an action.

Dr. Jill: Goddess of the world. She is, isn’t she?

JJ: Yeah. Well, you made it a toad because of your playfulness. So, I was like, “Yeah, no, toad is not going to work for me.”

Dr.  Jill It is a queen.

JJ: Queen Toad. Right.

Dr. Jill: There’s the balance.

JJ: Right. Which was funny. I was like, “Queen” and you went “Toad.” I was like, “Toad?” “Because I’m goofy and I’m funny.” And I’m like, “Okay, definitely that one is not me.” I mean, I’m goofy, but…

Dr. Jill: Well, I live on a boat half a year, so that’s my little path.

JJ: There you go.

Dr. Jill: So, you know, toad.

JJ: Right.

Dr. Jill: Yeah.

JJ: I say Goddess of the World because the joke is, with the last therapist that I’ve worked with years ago, and I told Terry Real this the other day, because I used astrology to explain this, as a Pisces. Because my last therapist years ago was a Taurus. And I’ve worked with different coaches, and I have a coach now, but when I worked with her, it was very specifically to help heal some traumas or patterns using EMDR, because at the time, I didn’t realize that EFT was self-administered EMDR. So, now I have EFT. But I used EMDR with her, and I was searching for somebody. And she was a Taurus, and I would hear her love. I interpreted her correctly, her love for me, but she’d say things like “I think sometimes you go too far outside of yourself.” Of course, which was a perfect Taurus thing to say. I’m like, “I appreciate that.” I said, “But we interpret things differently.” I said, “You as a Taurus want grounded, stable, steady. You go inwards.” I said, “The more inward I go,” I go, “the less connected I feel.” I said, “As a Pisces who wants to look outside of myself, it expands me, which calms me,” which is very different than the way that she did it. So, that’s why I said Goddess of the World because the minute it goes big and expansive, I melt into a calmness because now I’m the same as all that is.

Dr. Jill: Yeah. That’s your 4. It’s beautiful, fantastic.

JJ: Okay. So, in order to jump, if we had to not categorize one word, but I’m looking on Page 175, “Connection to Our Self: Our Four Characters in the Body,” because I stopped at this. I was flipping through to see what else I wanted to ask you and to talk about. And there’s plenty to talk about, don’t worry, but I’m just saying, this is a good thing I want people to hear. Character 1 sees our body as a vehicle. Character 2 sees our body as a responsibility. Character 3 sees our body as a toy. And Character 4 sees our body as a temple of the soul. I think that is really succinct also for someone who just quickly is trying to figure out what the different parts of their brain are without the really wonderful description and complete flushing of every point of view that you do with each one of these characters. And now I laugh. My character 1 was like, “Can you just tell me? Just give me the overview, give me the cliff notes, so I could move on.” Because I have other tools too. And then as I’m listing, I’m like, “Oh, no, that’s true. That’s good. Okay. I have a different perspective now. All right. Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. I see why she’s doing it this way.” So, I was having this whole conversation with myself and going, “Okay, this is good. Yep, you needed to hear this entire thing. You could not skip over this. There was no cliff notes to this. So, just shut up and listen.”

Dr. Jill: And I think you’re right. I think cliff notes are great, but if people truly want to embody the material and be able to know these four characters of themselves, the book is designed to have them truly look at this part of themselves, recognize this part of themselves. Because really, doesn’t life boil down to “How do I get out of my character 2 pain when I’m ready to?” Because it’s great to be a 1, to be functional and organized and get stuff done, and it’s great to be a character 3 and have playful joy, and it’s great to know how to step into that character 4. And a lot of people, character 4 is this great mystery. “I have to meditate for 20 years before I can find that blissful euphoria.” Well, in the meantime, I get caught up in the languaging of “Am I doing it right? Is it good enough?” and “Oh, I need to do that. Oh, I forgot to do that. Oh, there’s this, there’s that, and the other.” And then my meditation time is done. And so, I never really get to that character 4. Or when I pray, what am I praying to? If I’m really stuck in the characters 1 and 2, I don’t know how to attain that space of simple gratitude that I exist at all. And so, one of the things, one of the reasons I take you so deeply into each of these is so that you know how to get your character 4, because character 4 seems like this great unconscious mystery, and it’s like, “No.” This is a part of our brain. It is connected to all that is. We can step into that piece of who we are instantaneously, and we do it periodically throughout our lives. So, recognizing when I am there, strengthening that part of me, then it’s like now I have access to all of me. And then it’s like in any moment then, I do have the power to pick and choose who and how I want to be because I know what my four choices are so well.

JJ: Yeah. And I think that one of the benefits of, like you just said, knowing what they are, recognizing where you are, knowing it exists, because people will think, like you said, “Well, I have to go to bed. I have to go to be a monk. It’s the only way I’m going to access this part of my brain.” Which isn’t true, which helps people get over this excuse that they can’t get there or that they don’t know how to get there. To me, the brain… My last two events were called the Manifestation Boot Camp. And I don’t know if I explained to you that I come from a personal training background, and so physiology was something that I learned. It took me a while. It had to be mechanical for me to see physiology. It had to be to see all the chemical and electrical passing off from action potential to muscle contraction. It took me a while until the Atom Company came up with a colored, user-friendly depiction that gave things form and color and shape and size, and now it became mechanical, and I could see it, and I could make sense of it. When you have your professor drawing things in black pencil, it didn’t translate to my brain.

So, when I did the Manifestation Boot Camp the first time, it was funny because I was trying to explain the idea of elevating our frequency and how we could learn to do that. And I even came up with a “Strengthening Intuition” class after this. But I started to make the muscle, and I started to explain that when you do the same exercises all the time, you’re only stimulating a very small part of the muscle fibers in that muscle. And sometimes because of trauma or an injury, those muscle fibers get blocked and then we compensate. And there are just times where parts of our muscles aren’t ever being used because we don’t create a pathway for it. And so, when I explained it in the muscle, I realized, “Oh, it’s the same thing for the brain.” It was like, “Oh, the brain is not much more complicated than the muscle. We just don’t have a pathway for it.”

So, back to the client I worked with earlier this week, who is stuck in a character 2 in her job, and I asked her, does she do what I teach people as rampage of appreciation, an exercise, which is like having gratitude but I like appreciation better. It’s a better frequency for me. So, we do rampages, and I challenge people just to do a rampage of appreciation, which is anywhere from a two- to four-minute consistent, constant rampage of things you appreciate. And the goal of it is to feel good. The goal of it is to activate the feelings. And I asked her, does she do them, and she goes, “Oh, I do them to myself.” I’m like, “No, not acceptable. All right. Go.” And so, she went, and then I turned around and I did one, and she goes, “Wow. You’re really good at that.” I said, “Because I’ve strengthened it.”

Dr. Jill: Right.

JJ: And that’s all it takes. That’s the only difference. Just like exercise, when you go to the gym and you’re not so strong, and then you do the exercise, and you do it over and over again, you get stronger. You strengthen the brain. You strengthen that part of you. You do it. You do it over and over. You’re not going to be good at first, but you’re going to get better at it the more you do it, right?

Dr. Jill: Right.

JJ: I mean, isn’t it kind of that simple?

Dr. Jill: Yeah. That’s exactly what it is. It’s circuitry. The more you run a circuit, the stronger the circuit begins to get, and then eventually, it will run on automatic and become a new habitual emotion or habitual thinking. That’s how we create habits in our brain. You’re absolutely right.

JJ: What is your percentage? I was listening to when you were saying that you decided that the only way you wanted to come back is if you could live in your character 4 as much as possible, and you only involve the other ones just to function or get by. So, what is your percentages of choice? So, we’re character 1 right now because you’re being linear and thinking and talking. And there’s parts of us that are doing character 3 and character 4. Not as much 4, but more 3, with the undertone of we’re in the same frequency of belief, same frequency of appreciation and love and acknowledgment and consciousness of all that is. But I’d love to hear what your… I mean, give us a before and after. Where were you before, and then where are you now?

So, I just pretty much go with the flow. There are certain things that unfold and I end up in the flow. And now that the book is out, I’m really focused. My friends say, “Jill, you’re a mile deep and an inch wide.” I’m all about this message in every avenue that I absolutely possibly can do it. So, right now, I’m working with a research team at DePaul University, and we’re going to get Whole Brain Living in a school system so that we can show that it’s evidence-based, because our schools are desperate for getting everybody out of that too. The teachers are quitting. Whole school systems, some of them cannot be opened five days a week because they don’t have enough teachers or substitute teachers, and they’ve dropped all their standards for who can be a teacher because they need an adult warm body at the front of the room. So, we are in a crisis in our school systems, and it’s like, “Can Whole Brain Living help?” And I truly believe it can, and I truly believe it will. But yeah, I’m an inch wide and a mile deep.

JJ: Is this crisis because of the pandemic?

Dr. Jill: Yeah. Well, we already had a whole lot of hostility and anxiety. I have to say that as long as we’ve been teaching to the standardized tests, which is a purely left-brained phenomenon, we’re not training kids to think. We are not giving Whole Brain Living. We are teaching them how to memorize and how to regurgitate, and there’s never enough time. And then the leadership is saying, “Well, we have to have decent scores because that’s how we get our title funds.” And so, there’s just this incredible left-brained pool. So, we’re having a collapse because we’re all left-brained. We’re not looking at “How do we actually support people who are in pain, who are scared, who don’t learn details really well?” And so, this has been a buildup since the Reagan era when it really began that we were going to begin with this kind of standardized testing. So, we were already…it wasn’t working, and then you stick an emotional pandemic on top of it, and the teachers are going, “I got half the kids in class. I got half the kids on Zoom. I’m working twice as hard. I’m exhausted. The parents are angry because the kids are at home, so they focus on me. And my principal is saying, ‘You got to do this and that and that. And the grades got to be like this.’” And the teachers are going, “My kids are in emotional distress.” And so, in October of 2021, the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Physicians, and one other group all got together and declared an emotional emergency for our elementary kids, a nationwide emotional emergency. And the teachers in the school systems are just in a major crisis. So, yeah, that’s what’s going on in the real world. And it’s like, “How do we help people get out of their 2’s so that they can actually become functional again? And how do we learn to nurture someone else’s 2 so that it doesn’t just destroy a classroom?” It’s amazing.

JJ: That’s a lot. And I’m trying to decide and decipher what part of that I want to speak to, because I was recently at a meeting here locally, people who are pretty much against all mandates and making their own school systems and doing home schooling and things, which is what I would do also. And I kind of thought, “Oh, I’d volunteer to teach.” And then I thought, “Well, what would I teach?” And emotional intelligence came up in my mind. But I’m like, “Okay, do you have a curriculum? Can I teach them this?”

Dr. Jill: You absolutely can. That’s what this research project at DePaul is doing. We’re creating a curriculum to teach not the kids, but the leadership, the principals, the teachers, the parents, the staff. We even want the bus drivers. They’re the first person a kid sees and the last person a kid sees at the end of the day. So, if we can drop Whole Brain Living to create a new community, then the kids will automatically get it. And we have to be very careful because we have this program called SEL, social emotional learning, that has been pretty much in our school systems for the last five or six years, and now it’s under a political attack. And so, we don’t want to do that. We just want to help. At this point, we just want to help stabilize people.

JJ: People need to be stabilized. It’s one of the reasons why we’re having what we’re having right now is because of a lot of repressed and character 2’s taking over because they didn’t have an outlet. Now they have an outlet, and now their momentum has been completely increased and they’re living this momentum of their character 2’s fear of the future and fear of the past and pain of the past, and it’s being projected from things that have nothing to do with what’s actually happening. And so, we’re living in this state. I mean, we’re at that crux of emotional intelligence that when we talked about it before, it’s like “Oh, that’s nice, but that doesn’t pay the bills,” but, oh, yes, it does, because it’s actually what we need now, because it’s what everyone is looking for. The reason why there’s so much dysfunction and discord is because people aren’t paying attention to the part of themselves that is the reality. So, we’re talking about the reality of the 3 and the 4 characters versus the reality of the 2, which isn’t reality. It’s a vision or a fear of something from the past or a memory.

Dr. Jill: Right.

JJ: So, that’s amazing work. Is there a place I can send people who are wanting to either help you push this through or want to be a part of this? Or if there are teachers that listen to my show, where can I send them?

Dr. Jill: drjill@drjilltaylor.com. Come straight to me because right now we’ve already put in the proposal, we already know we’re going to be funded, we’ve already started the teaching, and now it’s just a matter of how do we really develop it and get it downloaded into different systems? So, yeah, if anyone is interested in helping with this, please, drjill@drjilltaylor.com, and I’ll send you to the right person who knows the right answers.

Dr. Jill: We’re just at the beginning of all of it, and we will get there, absolutely.

JJ: Okay, because that will be extremely helpful to have people go through the workbook part. I mean, you ask very good questions. And it’s funny because in my mind, I think you were asking, “Well, who doesn’t like your character 4?” I said, “I don’t care who doesn’t like my character 4.” Or “Who doesn’t like your character 3?” “I don’t care who doesn’t like my character 3.” Obviously, by the way, I intro my show now. Just to be very clear, I’m not here to people-please. I’m here to educate. And if you and I don’t jive, I’m totally cool with that. Goodbye. I, by the way, pay for this show. It’s free content for you, and you’re welcome. And I do it because it’s an extension of what I am learning and what I am sharing and the work that I’m doing in helping people. And it’s another tool in the toolbox that could make the difference for somebody. It could be the one thing that they’d been missing that clicks in a new way, they go, “Oh my god. That changed everything for me.”

Dr. Jill: Right. Yeah.

JJ: And I think for a lot of people, it will, if it hasn’t already. So, everyone, please get “Whole Brain Living,” book or I think audio, because if you’re listening on the podcast, you like to listen. So, get the audio book because you’ll hear Dr. Jill be reading her book to you. But I don’t want to be done with you yet, so what do you want to tell people now? I don’t want you to go yet, so what do you want to tell people? Anything else about… Because we looked at the…

Dr. Jill: Well, I think it’s time for you to turn on the salsa and we start dancing. I think we’re at that stage, don’t you?

JJ: I think the intro to my last…the intro that you people in YouTube don’t get because I recorded on audio before I publish the show. But what I think I said to my audience was “Okay, so I’m kind of high octane, just so that you know. It’s a very high energy.” We’re both very high energy, so you might want to turn it down a little bit versus turn it up. So, I’d like to say the same thing for this show, which is fine, which is cool, which is fun. Well, so then I don’t have to ask you what’s next. So, what’s next is that you’re creating this curriculum, creating a workbook.

Dr. Jill: Right, because I have a colleague who is a chief of a fire department, and suicide is very high in police and fire departments because these are the first responders. So, I’ll be working with fire departments. I’ll be working with police departments. I’ll be working with school systems. I’m working with groups who need it. And it’s interesting because people come to me and say, “You know, somebody was looking for a motivational speaker for a school system because of the last shooting, that school shooting that happened.” And it’s like, oh my gosh, to be able to really help these people manage all of it, just life right now. And one of the other things, JJ, not-for-profit organizations are coming to me and saying, “We have 30,000 yoga mats in prisons across the U.S., and we want to get Whole Brain Living into the prisons.” And I say, “How do I serve you? How do I help you?” So, Whole Brain Living will be going into the prisons. It will be going into yoga, into AA rehabilitation. It’s going into camps for children with cancer. I mean, if you’ve got a group, contact me, please, because it’s a beautiful program. We’re just working out all the details on how to do it. But Whole Brain Living, the anatomy of choice in these four characters. It gives us our choice. It gives us the power to choose who and how we want to be in any moment. And, oh my gosh, how do we train ourselves to self-soothe our own pain? And we can’t do that if we don’t know what our own options are. So, I think the material is beautiful. It’s anatomically based. And we’re just at a point in our society now where everybody can benefit from this information.

JJ: Absolutely. And you and I will talk offline because I’m chomping at the bit here. Well, yeah, I want to be involved, and I want to use your work and the work I’m doing. I want to help with your work. I want to help with that processing. It’s how I started working with Dr. Nasha Winters because she came on talking about the metabolic approach to cancer and emotion being a part of why someone heals or doesn’t heal from cancer. And I went down the whole path of emotion. And by the end of it, I was like, “Hello, this is what I do.” Helping people deal with their emotions is the only freaking thing I talk about ad nauseam.

Dr. Jill: You’re this wide and a mile deep. That’s what I’m hearing.

JJ: Right. And so, this is another tool to bring into that work. And then I also feel like there’s other complementary things, because we’re on this same team doing the same thing, trying to get people to understand and to have a different perspective, to have choice that they don’t even know they have. Because the subject of emotion, the subject of even feeling the feelings of character 2, most people… A lot of the clients that I have right now will joke because one came to the event, and she’s a three-time breast cancer survivor, and she came and she crossed her arms, and she furrowed her brow, and she looked at me, and she, basically without saying the words, said to me, “You’re not breaking me.” And I was like, “Whoa. Okay, you flew all the way across the country to come to my event, to sit here and tell me I wasn’t going to break you? Okay, cool. That’s fine.” And then, by the end, she broke open, and now she feels free, and she’s like, “I always hear what you say. It’s not going to kill you.” I’m like, “Correct. It’s going to save you.” But you have to let it out. And most people are so afraid of their emotion, thinking that they’re going to die if they cry. So, it’s being able just to normalize that, and to have that be acceptable, and to not continue just celebrating character 1’s in the world, but by looking at we’re all… Because here’s an Abraham quote that I don’t know that I said last time. But the only reason we want what we want is because we think we’re going to feel better when we have it. And that is the entire life cycle, period, the end. Anything character 1 is trying to get to, it’s because they want what character 4 is. That is it. Every single character is just looking for the 4. You’re just looking to feel good. I don’t give a shit what it is. That is what you’re doing. And that’s what I teach.

Dr. Jill: You’re on air.

JJ: You can skip to the end. All right. So…

Dr. Jill: But you’re right. You’re absolutely right. And the character 1 too, it’s just this stress circuitry. So, what does stress do? Distress, disease. I mean, it’s just like boom, run that cycle. Let’s step out of that into our peace of heart and peace of mind, come into the present moment and say, “You know, I’m okay if I don’t get that list done. I’m good with it.”

JJ: Yep. This is an epidemic and pandemic, the way we have led this and taken this. So, if you haven’t been thoroughly convinced by this point, I don’t know if there’s hope for you. I’m just kidding. But get “Whole Brain Living,” the book and the audio. Dig into it. And of course, she’ll probably be back. And if not, I’m sure I’ll be telling you more about stuff that we’re doing and things you can get. And then, when the workbook comes out, I’ll let everybody know because I’ll be the first to get it, because then that gives people something tangible they can do. The ones that aren’t real good character 1’s need a little but more structure for the character 1 part.

Dr. Jill: Yeah. Perfect.

JJ: Dr. Jill, thank you again for coming back so quickly and for gracing us with your character 3 and 1.

Dr. Jill: Thank you very much.