John Lee Dumas: What’s shaking, Fire Nation? JLD here with an Audio MASTERCLASS on Mastering Your Mind: the Tools to Create a Mindset of Success. And to drop these Value Bombs, I have brought Ariel Garten. Ariel is a neuroscientist, psychotherapist, and co-founder of MUSE, the brain sensing headband that helps you meditate. Ariel has been featured on CNN, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Men’s Health, and so much more.

Ariel and MUSE help you understand and super charge your brain. And Fire Nation, in today’s Master Class, we’ll be talking about what is meditation, how it can help you, what happens during meditation to the brain, how it can help you as an entrepreneur, and so much more, when we get back from thanking our sponsors.

Ariel, say what’s up to Fire Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don’t know.

Ariel Garten: Hello, Fire Nation. It is awesome to be here. So, something about me that you do not know – I just learned that John won a car on The Price is Right. But what you don’t know about me is that I cry out of joy and happiness when people win insane things on game shows.

John Lee Dumas: Oh.

Ariel Garten: Because I love people, and I love life, and I’m happy for everyone.

John Lee Dumas: That is so fun. Although, I could tell you a couple stories about winning my car that might turn your tears of joy to tears of sadness, because it’s a pretty interesting little backdrop to that whole game. But overall, it was a great experience. It was fun, and I love that you love celebrating with people. So much fun. And Fire Nation, as I dropped in the intro, we’re gonna be talking all about mastering your mind, about the tools that are gonna create the mindset of success. And man, let me tell you, Ariel has created quite the tool, and we’re gonna be focusing on that today.

But first and foremost, let’s just start off by sharing with Fire Nation, Ariel, what is meditation?

Ariel Garten: So, most people have a misconception about meditation. They think your mind’s supposed to go blank, and then maybe you’ll levitate. Neither of those things ever happen. Meditation is just a practice or a training that leads to healthy and positive mind states. So, it’s a training that you do over and over again that trains your mind to be healthier and happier. There are lots of different forms of meditation. Most people have heard of Zen or walking meditation. The most common one is focused attention, where you focus your attention on your breath. Your mind wanders. You notice it, and you return. And when you do this activity repeatedly, some amazing things happen to your mind and body, which we’ll talk about in the rest of the episode.

John Lee Dumas: So, I love the fact that you’re really clarifying that I’m not needing to levitate while I meditate, so I’m not totally doing it wrong. And Fire Nation, we’ll talk a little bit more about my personal meditation in the upcoming segments here. But let’s just talk about how meditation can help people in general.

Ariel Garten: So, there’s over 1,000 published studies talking about meditation’s ability to make changes in your mind and your body to help you improve your attention, decrease your stress, improve your productivity, improve your GRE scores, even potentially change the way your body and brain age. It’s really tremendous. And when we kind of dig into how and why this happens, we see a few things.

So, remember I told you that in a focused attention meditation, you put your attention on your breath. You notice your mind has wandered, you then choose to turn your attention back to your breath rather than following your wandering thought. This is the basic focused attention loop.

When you do that, what happens is you, for many people for the first time, don’t follow your wandering thoughts in your wandering mind. So, most of us just kind of go through the world with a brain that thinks thoughts. We have lots of thoughts, and we just sort of assume that they are supposed to be there. And often, they are negative and ruminating and frustrating and emotional. And you just kind of keep thinking them.

Well, when you choose to take your attention off your wandering thoughts and put it onto a neutral object, what you’ve done, for many people, for the first time in your life, is you’ve changed the relationship to your thoughts. You’ve gained control over them. You are no longer at the mercy of what’s in your mind. You can actually choose what you think about. So, you don’t have to think about the things that are negative and ruminating and frustrating.

You can choose where to put your mind. And when that happens, often people become a whole lot happier because you’re not stuck in negative, ruminating, frustrating thoughts. You also have incredibly positive effects on your body. You can improve your immune system, help you go into rest and digest. It can help improve your cardiovascular function, and on and on.

John Lee Dumas: I mean, Fire Nation, all of those benefits, they are real, and who wouldn’t want those benefits? And Ariel, I’m just kind of curious, because one thing we hear about all the time in this world where we’re literally having these attention spans that are now like less than goldfish. They are like three seconds, four seconds, and then we’re off to the next thing. Our phones are always buzzing. Our computers are always flashing. We’re always hearing all these noises and distractions. It’s just like the bright, shiny object syndrome is everywhere.

In my mind, that’s why I go to meditation, because it just helps me just disconnect and refocus and re-center. What have you seen in that area?

Ariel Garten: We have seen tremendous effect in that area. So, when we talked about following the wandering mind, what we’re talking about is following any distraction. So, whether you’re following the distraction of your phone going, or the urge to go check the kitchen to see what you’re gonna eat right now, or the urge to go talk to a friend at the water cooler.

You can then identify all of those little distractions and wanderings and say, nope, don’t need to go back there. I’m gonna come back to the thing that matters to me, the work that’s in front of me, the thing I’m focused on, my big goal. So, it becomes an extraordinary tool to decrease distractions in all aspects of your life.

John Lee Dumas: I’m a huge fan of tools. About three years ago, I noticed that entrepreneurs were really struggling when it came to setting smart goals, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, time balance, and then actually accomplishing those goals, which is why I created the tool called The Freedom Journal. And now, it just guides people or walks people through that process. And now they do it once. And now they understand the process, and they have had the guidance to learn how to correctly set a smart goal and then accomplish that goal.

You’ve done something very similar with meditation. And you’ve created a tool. And that tool is called MUSE, that I have actually been using since 2016, so it’s on my fourth year now, of actually using MUSE. So, give us your origin story behind that, like where did the idea come from to create that tool? What specifically is it? And how does it make meditation easier?

Ariel Garten: So, MUSE is a brain-sensing headband that helps you meditate. And so awesome for me that the Entrepreneur on Fire – the Entrepreneur has been using this for the last four years.

John Lee Dumas: Yes, oh, I love it.

Ariel Garten: That’s fantastic. So, MUSE gives you real time feedback on your meditation to know if you’re doing it right, and to keep you into that focused attention zone. So, most people, when they sit down to meditate, don’t really know what they’re supposed to be doing. And your brain kind of bounces all over the place, and you’re like oh my God, this sucks.

John Lee Dumas: Right.

Ariel Garten: And you get up, and you just don’t do it again. You think you’re bad at it, and you don’t want to do things that you’re bad at. We wanted to change all that. So, we made a tool that really shows you what you’re supposed to be doing, that gives you real time feedback on your brain as you meditate, and that allows you to track your progress with real data. So, there is no more like, oh, I don't know what I’m supposed to be doing. Is this working? It’s like, yes, this is what you’re doing, and look at the progress. It is working.

So, what MUSE does is it tracks your brain while you meditate with an EEG headband. It’s actually reading your brain activity. So, the same device that you see in a hospital, but this is in a sweet, slim, little wearable device, just kind of like a Fitbit. So, you’ve got a little wearable device on your forehead. It’s tracking your brain activity, and it’s letting you hear the sound of your mind while you meditate. When you’re thinking, distracted, mind wandering, you actually hear it as stormy. And as you bring yourself to quiet focused attention, it quiets the storm.

So, in this really simple way, you’re able to know when your mind is wandering and when you’re focused. And then, after the fact, you get data – charts, graphs, things that show you what your brain was doing moment to moment. So, you can reflect. You can learn. You can see your progress, and you can keep on track to meditate day after day, and then, get all the amazing benefits.

John Lee Dumas: Let’s talk data for a second, Fire Nation, because the reality is this. I’m a competitive person. I just love competition. I love analytics. I love numbers. I love just the overall image engaged that what gets measured gets improved. It’s just a true statement for me. And so, before MUSE, when I was just sitting down, I was doing it from day to day. I was having those issues that Ariel was talking about or just like, I’m not good at this. My mind’s wandering. I suck at this, blah, blah, blah. All of these things were going through my mind. And it was tough to get consistent with that.

But then, when I started using MUSE back in 2016, it was like day one. And then, I looked at day 10. And then I was like, I can see the progress that I’m making now. I can actually see these visual graphs of how I’m improving, how I’m more calm for longer sessions during these meditations.

And to me, it was just like man, I can see the growth. I can see the progress. And man, do we as humans, especially as entrepreneurs, love progress. That’s such a special word. And when we can see ourselves progressing, whether it’s our business, our life, our health, our wealth, whatever that might be, that is absolute gold. So, to me, that’s such a huge part and a huge benefit of MUSE is that I’m getting real, tangible feedback on what my last session was, but also, how that compared to prior sessions and where my trend is going.

And there have been weeks where I’ve been like man, I am just off my game right now, and I have been able to think and identify why. Like sleep has been crappy. Or stress has been through the roof because of this project or that. And it’s really this pulse and this insight into my life that I just really, truly love. So, Ariel, around that, can you kind of maybe expound about how other people have used MUSE to really benefit themselves in that data driven way?

Ariel Garten: So, you really described one of the main benefits of meditation, which is to be able to give you insight into yourself so that you can then make changes. So, MUSE doesn’t zap you. It doesn’t automatically make you smarter. But it does guide you and teach you how to do an activity that’s really critical to help you hone your focus and reflect. Reflect on what’s going on in your life, reflect on what’s going on in your body, and then, make the appropriate changes to improve.

People describe it as having a mirror. So, if you had never looked in a mirror and one day you looked in the mirror, you’re like oh my God, this is what my hair has been looking like the whole time? So, and you can look in that mirror and be like oh. And it’s not a scary thing. It’s not a weird thing. It’s just if you’ve never meditated before, this shows you what to do. And if you have an existing practice, this gives you a new mirror, and new insights to understand your own internal process in really, really meaningful ways.

And people get super excited about it, and then, they start to share MUSE with people. I don't know if you’ve had this happen in your household, but mom brings it home. Dad starts using it. The teens start meditating and competing with each for who’s meditating more. And then, all of a sudden, everybody in your life is talking about meditation, talking about how it’s working, what your graphs look like, what the changes are. And you see the effect really ramp forward with everyone.

We see it in companies, too. So, we’ll bring MUSE into a company, often like the CEO will use it. He falls in love with it – he or she falls in love with it and says like, I want everyone on my team doing this. And we come in and we do challenges. And we’ll have teams working together meditating, talking about their meditation. You can really see the shift in culture. It’s beautiful.

John Lee Dumas: And it’s such an overall just good brand play, Fire Nation, to think about. This is an area where you can strategically invest in yourself by saying, hey, who is the decision maker? Or who’s the person that’s kind of the leader at this company? What if I gift him or her one of our products, they fall in love with it, then obviously that becomes something that’s talked about at meetings? People start the conversation, and it just becomes more of this now culture in the company.

They’re just like wow, meditation’s actually something we can talk about that’s open, that’s potentially beneficial. Let me give it a whirl, because if my boss, who’s crushing it, is finding it beneficial, it’s gonna be beneficial for me. So, it’s just a good idea in a business as you’re listening to different strategies and tactics that Ariel has used to blow up MUSE, how can you do something in your business in a similar way? Now, let’s get back to specifics during a meditation. What does happen to the brain?
Ariel Garten: So, meditation can actually make real changes in the brain. So, we have this area in the front of our head called the prefrontal cortex. It is our attentional control center. It’s our higher order processing. It’s the thing that separates us from most other mammals. It’s the thing that lets us really be human, to think, to plan, to organize, to focus. So, the bad news, as you age, your prefrontal cortex thins. The good news, if you’re able to maintain a long-term meditation practice, you can maintain the thickness of your prefrontal cortex, even as you age.

So, this ability to keep your attention on track, to inhibit, to plan, to organize, is really a process that can grow and actually grow with the structural changes in your brain as you meditate. Totally awesome. We also have another area of our brain called the amygdala. And the amygdala is the fight or flight response. It’s the thing that causes you to go like ah, there’s a fire over there. Or these days, ah, there’s a wrinkle in my pants and I’m going into a meeting. Oh, no!

John Lee Dumas: Oh no.

Ariel Garten: Oh no. Ah, I got an email from my boss and maybe I’m being fired.

John Lee Dumas: Right.

Ariel Garten: Oh, hold on, I just hyper reacted. So, our amygdala tends to hyper react. And that gives us these sort of overly strong emotional responses that can cause friction in our company, cause us to make bad decisions, cause us to speak unfairly to people, yell at our kids. And so, with meditation, what we’re able to do is to actually calm and down regulate the amygdala. And you even see this in short-term meditators. You can see a decrease in the activation of the amygdala. In long-term meditators, you can even see a decrease in the size of the amygdala. So, these are persistent changes.

And you can kind of think about it as the relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. So, in meditation, you are strengthening your prefrontal cortex. You’re [inaudible] [00:14:27]. You can plan, organize, see. And it’s now your prefrontal cortex is talking to your amygdala and down regulating it, saying like hey, it’s okay. This thing is not an emergency. We can actually see the landscape here. We can have wisdom. We can see far and wide, and everything is okay, amygdala. Shh, calm down.

So, you’re really strengthening your prefrontal cortex’s ability to regulate your amygdala and therefore, regulate yourself and your emotions and your responses and your ability to wisely see what’s going on in the world.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, I hope you’re understanding all of the vast benefits. And just the thing is, back in the day, you might have asked me, hey, John, what are the benefits of meditation? I would have just been like you know, it’s just important to just relax, close your eyes, and just take a deep breath. And you’re gonna get some benefit from that. But I would have maybe stopped there because that’s just where my education stops. But you can just see these are based on studies and long-term research of all of these massive benefits that happen to somebody who practices meditation on a regular basis.

So, the trick is, how do you get into it on a regular basis? And again, for me, I know that’s just been the ability to track and see my progress over time that’s honestly been that massive game changer. And without going too deep, because I don't want to scare people off, but talk a little bit about some of the neuroscience of meditation.

Ariel Garten: So, we just talked about the neuroscience of the relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. Meditation can make even more changes in your brain. In long-term meditators, we can see an increase in the size of the hippocampus. So, the hippocampus is the area of your brain responsible for learning and memory. We also see increased thickness in the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the bundles of nerves that connect your left and right hemisphere. So, it’s as if you’re seeing increased integration in the brain.

We can see an increase in the temporal parietal junction. So, in some long-term meditators, you’ll see an increase in the part of the brain, the temporal parietal junction, that’s associated with compassion, empathy, and perspective changing.

John Lee Dumas: Oh, I need me some of that. Give me some of that.

Ariel Garten: Yeah, yeah, it’s really good. And one of my favorite studies, done by Dr. Sara Lazar – she was able to show that after just eight weeks of meditation, participants had an increase in the density of their gray matter.
John Lee Dumas: Whoa.

Ariel Garten: Whoa. So, just for context, the gray matter is the number of connections that you have in your brain. And although as a neuroscientist, I’m not supposed to say glib things like well, the more gray matter you have, the smarter you are. I can tell you that Einstein had more gray matter than the average individual.

John Lee Dumas: I like that correlation. We’re gonna run with it. And Fire Nation, if you think Ariel has been dropping some Value Bombs, we’re talking like neuroscience Value Bombs, we’re just getting started. We have some really killer things coming up as soon as we get back from thanking our sponsors.

Ariel Garten: Thank you, sponsors.

John Lee Dumas: Ariel, we have just been talking about all the awesomeness that comes from committed, dedicated, regular meditation. And honestly, I’ve mentioned multiple times how MUSE has helped me become that regular meditator. So, let’s talk about the aha moments. What was the moment that you were like, you know what? I’m going to create an actual tool that’s gonna wrap around somebody’s head – where did that first vision come from?

Ariel Garten: So, the vision started back in 2003. I was working in the lab of Dr. Steve Mann, he is one of the inventors of the wearable computer. He’s the guy that made Google glass literally before Google did. And he had an early brain computer interface system that he built at MIT in the ‘90s. It was a single electrode on the back of your head.

And by focusing on relaxing, by shifting your brain state, we were using it to control music in the room. And as we were doing this, I stood back and said, oh my God. We’re like literally controlling the world with our brains, and the world needs to know about this. And this is totally commercializable. I can see making a product here.

So, I got together with my co-founders, Chris Aimone who is a brilliant engineer, and he is one of Steve’s master students, and Trevor Coleman, who was a friend of mine who was just awesome at business and knowing how to make things people loved. And the three of us got together like any good startup, regularly, in Trevor’s basement, building business plans for a business that didn’t yet exist.

And trying to show people the power of their minds. So, we made a levitating chair. You could literally relax, and the chair would levitate to the sky. And then, we made a thought-controlled beer tap. You would focus, and the beer would pour. And we did a massive project at the Olympics where people could control the lights on the CN Tower, the Canadian [Inaudible] [00:18:54] buildings, and Niagara Falls with their brain –

John Lee Dumas: Wow.

Ariel Garten: – from across the country. Totally wow. We were completely able to see so far outside the box and accomplish something that most people would have thought was completely impossible. And I credit a lot of that with these similar techniques that I learned in meditation to quiet the inner negative voice, to quiet any sense of limitation that you have and just be able to see this clear field of what is possible.

So, we had this amazing, amazing technology. And it was still in search of an actual product. We didn’t know what the thing we were gonna go to market with it was. And we ultimately recognized that as cool as it was to control technology outside of yourself, it was even more powerful and more valuable to be able to control our inner technology. And so, we recognized that we could use this tool to give people real time feedback on their brain in what was gonna be one of the most valuable skills to learn in their life, and that was to meditate.

I was a psychotherapist at the time. I was trained as a neuroscientist. So, I was constantly trying to teach my patients to meditate. And nobody would ever do it. You teach them. They go home, they do a little bit. They come back. It was a failure. And I was even struggling with my own meditation practice because I had a million ideas and a million things I wanted to do. And sitting down for five minutes seemed antithetical. And through the course of building this tool, we recognized that we were building something that could really move the needle for humanity.

And now, it came out in 2014. You got it in 2016. Now we have literally hundreds of thousands of people all over the world that use it every single day. We have 200 different research institutions that use it like Mayo Clinic, Harvard, NASA. It’s even in the NASA Mars Simulator. We have professional sports teams that use it, NFL teams, Olympians across the board, people who just need to hone their focus, their attention, and rock on in life now use the tool to help them do that.

John Lee Dumas: Ariel, fear is something that lives within us all. We are human beings. It’s just a reality of life. But it stops so many entrepreneurs from ever accomplishing what their goals are, what their dreams are. So, as we’re talking about meditation, how can we use meditation to help us overcome these barriers of fear?

Ariel Garten: So, fear has two components. One is mental and the other is emotional. So, meditation teaches you to deal with both of them. So, in the mental component, you have things that your brain is telling you, like oh no, this is not gonna work. It’s just not good enough. Go back to where it’s safe. And so, meditation teaches you to deal with those thoughts. Let them go, not engage in them, and keep focused on what matters.

Fear also has an emotional component. You feel this thing in your body that’s going like ahh. And when you can learn to overcome the emotional aspect of fear, when you can learn to change your relationship to it, you can get through any fear. So, when the sensation of fear rises in your body, rather than it triggering a bunch of thoughts, which triggers more fearful sensation, and it triggers more thoughts, with meditation you can say okay, I’m having some sensation in my body. My chest is tightening. My heart is racing. But I don’t need to give in to that. I don’t need to be ruled by it.

I can acknowledge the sensation happening. I don’t need to roll it forward into thoughts and more feelings. I can disconnect the relationship between thought and feeling. I can experience the sensation fully, have it come, have it go, and know that actually, I am fine this whole time, that fear doesn’t need to rule me. That this is just sensation that might be old, it might be based on the past. It might be based on how our bodies were wired to live thousands of years ago. It’s not based on the present. It’s just my body’s reaction.

And I can see clearly the goal in the future that I’m going towards, and I don’t need to let sensation get in my way.

John Lee Dumas: Fire Nation, you don’t need to be ruled by fear. Acknowledge and then release. And that’s something that meditation can really help you do. So, let’s talk about testimonials because people like myself have been using MUSE, and it’s helped in a lot of different ways. But what are some other users of MUSE saying that you think Fire Nation would find really interesting?

Ariel Garten: So, we keep hearing things across the board, and some things that are surprising. So, sleep is an obvious one. Lots of people use MUSE before they go to bed to help them sleep better and stay asleep. People use it during the day to deal with stress as it comes up. I mentioned there are a lot of really top athletes, I can, can’t say who they are, but there is a football team that wins all the time, and they use MUSE.

John Lee Dumas: I can say Tom Brady, because he’s the GOAT.

Ariel Garten: I can’t say anything. And they found it extremely effective across the board to help with sports performance, recovery, and the ability to live well every day. And the story is really there. Sometimes it’s a mom talking about how for the first time, she was able to realize that she was in the park with her kid and not present. It just helps you make life better, because you’re present in the moment.

And for other people, it can be about productivity, like knowing how much more efficient you can be because you’re not pulled off by your distractions in your own mind or real distractions in the world around you every couple seconds. So, the stories have been pretty awesome.

John Lee Dumas: Now, see, I’ve been using MUSE as part of my morning routine for a long time. And I just love it as part of my morning routine. I go for walks. I have a rebounder. I meditate, I journal. I have this 90-minute morning routine that I use. But I’m gonna be honest. I never really thought about also using it right before bed to test that. Because I recently got the Oura Ring. And the Oura Ring gives me these unbelievable sleep scores when I wake up every morning, so I know how long I was in deep sleep, how long I was in REM, how long I was in light sleep, how many times I woke up throughout the night, what my heart rate was.

There are so many cool things. Again, I’m just a data guy. I love to be able to actually see how I’ve been doing in different areas of my life. I am gonna start using MUSE before bed now, as well. I want to see what, if any, impact that has. That will be really interesting.

Ariel Garten: Do you have a partner that sleeps next to you?

John Lee Dumas: I do, yeah.
Ariel Garten: So, notice if he or she notices a difference because that’s something I’ve actually heard from partners. They’re like oh, my husband now sleeps differently.

John Lee Dumas: Maybe the snoring will disappear.

Ariel Garten: If only it was that magic.

John Lee Dumas: Right, that would be magical. So, Ariel, you dropped some incredible Value Bombs in the area of meditation and the benefits of MUSE. Talk to us right now about if there was just one thing that we as the listeners of this could walk away with, what would that one thing be?

Ariel Garten: That one thing would be the understanding that the simple act of noticing your thoughts and choosing where you put your mind can fundamentally transform your life and your business.

John Lee Dumas: Mic dropped, Fire Nation. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And Ariel actually has an incredible gift for you, Fire Nation, if you are just saying, you know what – meditation needs to become more a part of my life and this tool, MUSE, that JLD and just other incredible entrepreneurs and sports celebrities use – what do you got for us, Ariel?

Ariel Garten: We have 15% off if you use the code FIRE at ChooseMUSE.com.

John Lee Dumas: ChooseMUSE.com, Fire Nation. You’re gonna get to take 15% off with the promo code Fire. So, take advantage of that. That’s a big chunk of change to get you going in your meditation dreams. So, Fire Nation, you also know you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you’ve been hanging out with AG and JLD today.

So, keep up the heat and head over to EOFire.com, type Ariel, that’s A-R-I-E-L in the search bar. Her show notes page will pop right up with everything that we talked about today, links to everything. But of course, your direct call to action is ChooseMUSE, M-U-S-E, ChooseMUSE.com. Check out what their website has going on. Check out the incredible tool called MUSE and if and when you check out, use promo code FIRE for 15% off. And Ariel, I just want to say thank you for dropping these Value Bombs on Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Ariel Garten: Can’t wait.