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“As soon as they have hijacked your dopamine system…you don't have free will anymore,” says Greg Schmauss, holistic health practitioner and host of Mental Health in a Modern World. After overcoming severe anxiety and OCD himself, and guiding thousands through integrated approaches to mental well-being, Greg brings clarity to why mental health issues are surging in today’s high-speed, overstimulated culture.

In this milestone solo episode, Greg makes a compelling case that reclaiming agency over your attention and neurochemistry isn’t just essential for happiness—it’s essential for sovereignty itself. He breaks down the four-dimensional nature of human beings—biological, psychological, social, and spiritual—and reveals why so many are suffering from anxiety, depression, and addiction as we abandon nature, creativity, and even our sense of self for endless consumption and digital distraction.

Discover the five keys to optimal mental health that Greg has distilled from a decade of practice, including the power of delayed gratification, the loss of sustained attention, the necessity of true solitude, and why reconnecting with nature is as vital as any therapy. If you’re ready to understand how your environment, relationships, and even technology shape your mind—and what you can do to change it—don’t miss this episode of Mental Health in a Modern World.

5 Key Takeaways

Transform your mental health by reclaiming your agency and reconnecting to your true nature—here's where to begin:

1. Balance creation and consumption—nourish your life by shifting from endless consuming to purposeful creating.
2. Practice delayed gratification—pause, breathe, and train your mind to wait before indulging, building willpower and self-mastery.
3. Strengthen your sustained attention—devote daily time to focused activities like meditation, reading, or creating, and put away your devices.
4. Prioritize solitude—spend intentional, distraction-free time alone to rediscover who you really are.
5. Reconnect with nature—step outside daily, ground yourself to the earth, and let the natural world restore your well-being.

Choose one thing to act on today—your mind and spirit will thank you.

Memorable Quotes

"Having agency over your life. Because as soon as, whether it's the processed food industry or the social media or technology industry, as soon as they have hijacked your dopamine system, from my perspective, you don't have free will anymore." 00:00

"When you're truly willing to be alone is when you realize that you're never alone." 38:49

"The balance of creation and consumption is actually a law that we have to live by. If the snake consumes itself faster than it can recreate itself, it destroys itself." 21:36

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

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Having agency over your life. Because as soon as, whether it's the

processed food industry or the social media or

technology industry, as soon as they have hijacked your

dopamine system, from my perspective, you don't have free will anymore. In

a world moving faster than our minds were designed to handle, mental health is

becoming one of the defining challenges of our time. Welcome to Mental Health in

a Modern World with holistic health practitioner Greg Schmauss.

After overcoming severe anxiety and OCD in his own life,

Greg dedicated the past decade to helping others heal through a fully

integrated approach to mental health, combining lifestyle coaching,

psycho emotional healing, mindfulness, and archetypal work.

Over the years, he's facilitated thousands of sessions guiding people back

to peace, clarity and a deeper connection with themselves.

Each week, Greg shares powerful solo insights, conversations with

leading voices in holistic healing, and immersive live coaching sessions that

take you into inside the healing process itself. New episodes every

Friday. Follow the show and start reclaiming sovereignty over your mind

in a modern world. Here's Greg. Hi, this is Greg

Schmauz. And welcome back to Mental Health in a Modern World.

So today is a very special episode. It's our first solo episode

together. And so it's just going to be you and me, and together

we're going to explore the five key factors

to restoring and optimizing mental health in a modern

world. And before we get into any of that, I would just love to start

with a little breath work together. So if you're not

driving or operating any heavy machinery,

if you could just put one hand on your chest and one hand on your

belly, and if you are doing something while you're listening to this, you

can still just mindfully and consciously breathe, which

you're doing at all times, so you can still follow along no matter

what you're doing. So just take a moment and attune

inward. Begin to breathe in and out through

the nose.

Begin to feel the rising and falling in your torso.

See if you can feel a little more movement from the belly than the chest.

And we're just going to take a few breaths. Breathing in for a count of

four,

holding for a count of six.

And breathing out for a count of eight.

Breathe in for four,

hold for six,

Breathe out for eight.

One more. Breathe in for four,

hold for six.

And exhale for eight.

Then just take a moment, bring yourself back.

One of the reasons I absolutely love breath work for mental

health is the breath is one of the only

involuntary and voluntary systems of the body.

So what that means is we can voluntarily change Control

or manipulate the breath like we just did using the 4,

6, 8 breath. And it's also involuntary,

which means whenever you're not thinking about the breath, it's

still happening on its own. So it's part of the autonomic nervous

system. And so the breath is really the

main tool that we have to access and shift

our autonomic nervous system. And remember, the autonomic

nervous system has the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches.

The sympathetic is the fight, flight, freeze, facade,

survival response. And the parasympathetic is our rest,

digest, relax and restore system. So

we can use the breath to shift ourselves out of a fight or

flight state state into a parasympathetic state, which

immediately shifts our perceptual lens of reality

and the environment. Because really at large, our

autonomic nervous system is the lens that we perceive reality

through. So breath work is one of the most important tools for

optimizing our mental health and shifting our state and

perception of reality. Now, just to lay a

foundation, most of us know this, but rates of anxiety,

depression, addiction, adhd,

ocd, bipolar, schizophrenia,

have all reached an all time high. And a lot of it is due to

the environmental pressures that human consciousness is under.

And so together we're going to start by laying a little bit of a

foundation before we get into the five key factors

for optimizing our mental health in a modern world.

So it's important to remember that we are,

from my perspective, four dimensional beings, right? So

we are biopsycho social,

spiritual beings. And we'll break that down. Bio means we

are biological beings, right? So our biology, our

physiology is all connected and woven into nature. So we

are biological in our physical form. We are also

psychological. So within that biology, we have a brain, we have a

mind, we have a psyche, which regulates and

interfaces with the flow of information. We are social

beings, which means we are relational. And this is

relationships to not just people, but people, places and things, especially

the environment. And then we are spiritual beings, which

means we are consciousness, we are beings, human beings,

human being, the biological, psychological and social. And then the being

being the spiritual, which is we are consciousness, we are energetic,

we are more wave than particle. On a subatomic level,

we are atoms, are 99% empty space.

So we are really energetic beings having this human experience

and form. So that's the four dimensions. We are

biopsychosocial spiritual beings. And so we're just going

to touch a little bit upon each of those and then we're going to go

into the five key Factors. So

biologically, we are expressions of nature, right? So what we are

made out of is the four elements of earth, water, fire and air,

right? So your physiology, your tissues are made out of the foods, the plants

and the animals that we consume. You have this gut filled

with trillions of bacteria, viruses, parasites, fungi,

protozoa. And so we are one with nature. We are

literally expressions, biological expressions of nature.

And so we must live according to the laws of nature.

Unfortunately, in this modern world, we have completely

divorced ourselves from the laws of nature. We are not moving

our bodies. We are eating processed food. We are not sleeping

in harmony with the circadian rhythms of the rising and

falling or the rising and setting of the sun. So we

are, you know, consuming processed foods. We're overly sedentary, and our

circadian rhythms are all disrupted or all putting huge amounts of

stress on our biology. And as we put this amount

of stress on the biology, we express symptoms of this stress,

a lot of which are anxiety, depression, addiction,

adhd. Because when your biology is under stress, it

triggers a fight or flight state. It triggers the sympathetic

nervous system. And when your biology is under stress and you trigger

this overactive sympathetic nervous system, it moves you into this

perceptual state of survival. So anxiety,

addiction, over consumption, all of these

expressions of an autonomic nervous system,

autonomic nervous system, that's out of balance, all goes back

to a lot of the stress that we're placing on our

biology by not living according to the laws of nature. How

we're eating, how we're moving, how we're sleeping, how we're breathing, et

cetera. Right? So the biological piece is very important.

Now, psychological, obviously we can make the bridge connection between

mental health and our psychological state, but we're just going to

unpack it a little bit as a building block or as a foundation.

So the psyche really is responsible for

processing the flow of information, Right. The mind

processes information very similar to how

the digestive system processes food. So if you

take this analogy of the mind being a similar

digestive process than the body digesting food,

food at its most basic level is energy and information,

right? So food would be calories. Calories are units

of energy and nutrients. And nutrients are

actually bundles of information that trigger the

body to perform certain processes, right? So

food at its most basic level is energy and information

that the body ingests, digests,

metabolizes, assimilates, and then eliminates.

Now, when we're consuming information, let's say we're scrolling on

our phone, we're also consuming energy and information,

right? So the light coming off the screen, light is a carrier of energy,

and light and information are what's entering your psyche,

right? So energy and information comes in. So the

mind ingests the energy and information. It then

has to digest, metabolize, and assimilate the information.

If you take the word information, it breaks down to the

word information. So we have to take energy

and information and put it in formation through

a digestive process. Now, interesting research

shows that the average person consumes more

information in one day than our

ancestors consumed in one lifetime. That's a scary thought.

So if we use this analogy, imagine consuming more food,

or imagine consuming an equal amount or more food in one

day than our ancestors did in a whole lifetime. And what that would do

to your digestive system, it would blow your body to pieces.

So we're actually doing that to our psyches, which is a scary thought.

And so that over consumption of information, that

overstimulation is really creating another form

of stress on our biopsychosocial

spiritual being. And so this over consumption of

information, the overstimulation of the psyche, our

neurochemistry is hijacked. Our neurochemistry is

hijacked through the dopamine system. Our neurochemistry is

hijacked through an imbalances in the right and left brain,

brain hemispheres. Most of our education system and

information consumption is all left brain dominant. So when

we move into the left brain and create an imbalance with little

right brain activity, remember, the left brain is your

linear, rational, logical,

mathematical part of the brain that

divides things into pieces in order to digest.

Right? Just like the digestive system breaks down food and

divides it into its isolated components to integrate it,

the mind has to do the same thing. Right? So when we're left

brain dominant, we see through the lens of

divisiveness. We see this or that, right.

We see left versus right, we see up versus down.

So it's always dividing and polarizing in order to

linearize and understand and digest the information.

Now, the right brain is more about holistic thinking. The

right brain is seeing the whole. The right brain is the creativity.

The right brain relates to emotional regulation, creativity and

social connection. And so when we're left brain dominant,

we create divisiveness. We can't see the whole. And this

is why we're experiencing so much divisiveness in the

world. Because the left brain says it's either this or that.

The right brain says, I could see this and that, and

this and that are necessary for the Whole to exist, which is what

the Tai Chi symbol shows, right? So

due to the over consumption of information, the overstimulation,

the hijacking of our neurochemistry and the

imbalance in our hemisphere is left brain dominance. This is why the

psyche is under so much stress, right? So you could see the

biological being under stress, the psychological being under

stress. And now we're going to go to the social piece.

So when it comes to the social piece, like I said, we are relational

beings and we're in relationship to people, places and things,

right? So the environment is something that we're in relationship. You

cannot separate yourself from the environment. You existing as

a physical being in the three dimensional world of time

and space, you're in relationship with the environment. And the

environment has become incredibly toxic, right? So we have

chemicals, we have pesticides, we have, you know, a

lot of increase in molds, we have electromagnetic

toxicity, we have all of these,

we'll just call them toxins in the environment, both on a chemical

level and on an electromagnetic level that are creating

a lot of pressure and stress in the organism. So

we're becoming psychologically and biologically toxic

through the electromagnetics, through the chemicals and pesticides,

through the also the flood

of negative information, right? So media is

part of the environment, right? So media pumps out 90

to 95% negative information. And all of that

is fear based. And what that does is that also appeals to

your sympathetic nervous system, it appeals to your fight or flight state,

it appeals to your survival reflex, which is why it's

so enticing. And we get pulled towards it, we get pulled towards

negative things because it triggers an alarm in our system that says

I need to know about this for my own survival. And so the

media knows that and it's what really pulls us in. So

environmental toxicity, information toxicity,

you know, chemicals and pesticides, electromagnetics, these are

all putting environmental pressures and stress on the

organism which is then expressing these symptoms of

physical and mental illness. Right? What I said earlier, we

are relational beings. So that also relates to people.

Unfortunately, people are now just relating through devices,

either connecting on social media, cell phones, text

messages, you know, going back and forth on WhatsApp or

whatever it is. But there's really a lack of true connection. And even

when people are together, they're still, you know, staring at their screens,

they're not actually connecting. So there's a huge lack of social

connection, even though we're more interconnected than ever before,

right? So the social piece, we have the environmental toxicity, we have

the toxicity of media and we have the disconnection in

relationships, which is creating a lot of social pressure and

stress. Now lastly, the fourth leg of the

table, so to speak. We're spiritual beings, which means we're energy.

And what I'm finding in a lot of the work that I'm doing also in

my own life is we're waking up, globally

or collectively, to the multidimensional aspect of

ourselves. We're realizing that we're not just this single

entity in this linear time and space. We are much

more multidimensional. We are experiencing different

timelines, we are experiencing different realities. We are

experiencing a multidimensional existence

within this physical form. And as we wake up to

that, a lot of people actually express symptoms of

anxiety, depression, depersonalization, even

schizophrenia, as they're waking up to the multi

dimensional aspect of their existence on a spiritual or soul

level. So this can actually create symptoms of mental

illness, but it's actually a spiritual awakening process.

In addition to that, as we are

collectively raising the frequency of humanity, we

where integrating higher vibrational states into the

physical body and into a human nervous system,

which can initially trigger a fight or flight

or a sympathetic response, as we're integrating

higher frequencies, almost like more horsepower into an

engine. And so that can also express symptoms of

dysregulation in the human nervous system as we're

integrating higher frequencies into our biology

and physiology. In addition to that, the rate

of awakening, especially in young children and

young adults, is outpacing the rate of

individuation and integration. So it's almost like

people are waking up before they grow up. People are waking up

to their soul essence before their ego structure

has actually individuated. And it's also creating

symptoms of anxiety, depression,

schizophrenia, depersonalization

and a lot of these mental health symptoms. Right. So the

rate of awakening for a lot of children and young adults is

outpacing the rate of individuation and integration.

Right. So this is. I just wanted to lay that foundation on a

four dimensional level of

biopsycho spiritual social

beings. And why each of those levels. There's a huge

amount of internal pressure and

stress that's put on the system and put on the organism.

So now we're going to go into the five key factors that I have

found just through my own exploration, to really be

the key building blocks and essentials for mental health in a modern

world. And the first is balancing creation

and consumption. Right. So we are creative

beings at our core, at our true essence, we are

creative beings. We are here to create, we are Even here

to remember ourselves as the creator. So we're not just here to

create, but we're here to remember ourselves as the creator.

And we are always creating consciously or unconsciously, which is an important

truth to realize. And so our culture

at large, over the last maybe

hundred years, really the industrial revolution, is we went

from creative beings to consuming. We went from

creators to consumers. We went from creation to

consumption. And as we made this transition from being

creative beings to being creators of consumers,

we created a lot of pathology. So we

disconnected from our true nature, our divine nature

as creators, which gives us a real deep fulfillment on a

soul level. And we moved into beings that are

consumers, which is really just the instant

gratification of the ego structure. So we've been

disconnected from our soul and really trapped

in this box of egoic existence as consumers.

And this really creates a lot of

anxiety. It creates a lot of depression, a lot

of apathy, a lack of fulfillment, and a lot of

obviously over consumption. And this has also

hijacked our dopamine system, where as we're

consuming, we're getting instant gratification. Quick dopamine

hits, but at the expense of true fulfillment,

right? The act of creation actually takes time. So the act

of creation, there's a delayed, rewarding experience,

but there's really a

true fulfillment at the end of the road, which really lasts a lot

longer. The instant gratification is like a quick hit, like a

quick drug, but then you're starving a few minutes later. So

this act of consuming but not creating has created a lot

of dysfunction in our mind, in our body, in

our culture, you know, at large. You know, one of my

favorite symbols, and many of you have probably seen this before,

is the ouroboros, right? See, the. The ouroboros

is the symbol of the snake eating its own tail. And

it's a very powerful symbol. And one of the reasons is

it represents the law of balancing

creation and consumption, right? The balance of creation

and consumption is actually a law that we have to live by.

So if the. If the snake

consumes itself faster than it can recreate

itself, it destroys itself, right? So you see,

if we're consuming faster than we're creating, we're

creating an imbalance in the law of

complementary opposites, like the Tai Chi symbol, yin and yang. So the number

one law of the universe is the marriage of complementary

opposites, always remaining in equal balance and equal

harmony. So this balance of creation and

consumption has become disrupted. And we see it

psychologically, we see it physiologically, we see it

environmentally we're consuming the environment a lot more than

we're regenerating. This is why regenerative agriculture is

so important in the world right now, is because this,

this expression of humanity as consumers but not creators is

really putting huge amounts of stress on the environment. And

so this Ouroboros symbol of the snake eating its own

tail is really essential piece of something we

all need to be aware of. So whether it's, you know, for example, when you're

consuming food, the act of cooking food is the act of

creation and the act of consuming food is the act of

consumption. A lot of people don't cook their food anymore.

They're, you know, ordering out, they're doing drive through Uber

Eats. So nobody's actually engaging in

the act of creating when it comes to food. They're

just consuming. So food is a perfect example of

how we've gone from creators to consumers. I love cooking. I

love the act of creating a meal and then consuming it.

And the funny thing is, the reward and the dopamine is so much greater

when you've put in an effort to consume or you've put an

effort to create and then consume.

For example, if you take the same meal, if you take a piece of

chicken and some sweet potatoes and

you're sitting on your couch and you order it from your phone, Uber eats,

and they just knock on the door and deliver it to you and you eat

it on your couch, your level of satiation

would be very different than if that hot meal was

waiting for you at the top of the mountain that you did a six hour

hike to get there and then you consumed it. That

meal would taste so much better at the top of the mountain because there was

an act or a process of effort or creation,

whether it's cooking or traveling to get it, that

allows you to experience the fullness of the,

the experience as a consumer. And so the balance of creation,

consumption, even information. Most people spend hours

scrolling on social media and they're consuming content, but they're

not creating content. You know, I love creating content like

this podcast. This gives me such a feeling of reward and it

gives me so much more satiation than scrolling. Watching

these short Instagram reels, which gives me a momentary

dopamine hit, only to be left starving a second later.

So you see the balance of creation and consumption, why it's so

important for our mental health.

The next piece is the importance of delayed gratification.

Now, this ties in a little bit to the first piece, but

delayed gratification and instant gratification this all goes back to our

dopamine system. So remember, dopamine is the

neurochemical of motivation, of reward,

of seeking, and of pleasure and pain. So it's the balance of

pleasure and pain. And when we have this

constant instant gratification, we're constantly

getting these highly palliative, whether it's through food or

media, dopamine hits in a matter of seconds. Now,

historically, dopamine was an essential

neurochemical for survival. Dopamine was what

gave us the motivation and drive to go on the

hunt, to kill the buffalo, to bring it back

to the tribe, to to cook it, and to share the

meal and the feast with the tribe and experience the reward

of that consumption. Now, if we didn't have dopamine,

we would have no drive to survive. They've even done studies

where they sever the dopamine system or the

dopamine pathway in mice and they'll put food a few inches in

front of the mouse and the mouse will actually starve to death,

right? So without dopamine, there's no drive to survive.

This is why having agency over your neurochemistry,

especially your dopamine system, is so essential for

survival and so essential for having

agency over your life. Because as soon as, whether it's the

processed food industry or the social media or

technology industry, as soon as they have hijacked your

dopamine system, from my perspective, you don't have free will anymore.

You literally don't have free will if your dopamine system is

hijacked because they have hijacked that primal

circuit of survival. So they are literally controlling your choices

if you are not taking agency over your dopamine system.

And so this is why practicing delayed gratification

is what allows you to reclaim agency over your

dopamine system. And so by reclaiming agency over

your dopamine system, you increase emotional intelligence,

you increase the capacity for self regulation,

nervous system regulation, emotional regulation

and responsiveness. You increase the activity of your prefrontal

cortex, which is your executive function that allows for

real, clear choice. When you practice

delayed gratification and you have taken

back agency over your neurochemistry. And also

delayed gratification increases the

satiation and fulfillment of whatever it is. Like we talked

about going on a six hour hike and having a hot meal at the top.

That meal is so much more rewarding than ordering from Uber

Eats, where in a few minutes someone knocks on your door and you're sitting on

the couch eating that, you know, chicken breast and sweet potato.

And so delayed gratification allows you to reclaim

agency over your neurochemistry, your emotional

regulation, your nervous system, et cetera. So it's really

essential, actually for free will, which is something that we

all want to have and reclaim. The

third piece is practicing sustained

attention, which is really increasing your attention

Spanish. So in this modern day and age, especially with

social media and short form content,

people's attention span is completely diminished,

right? People have a hard time staying with something and focusing

on something for an extended period of time because their

neurochemistry is so used to getting such a big

dopamine hit within a few seconds and then a crash.

So they need something new, something stimulating, something

novel to bring their dopamine levels back up.

So it's pretty much like an addiction where you get hooked, but your

attention span has completely diminished. Now,

sustained attention or increasing attention span

is absolutely essential for creating safety in the

nervous system within yourself and creating safety

relationally, right? So sustained attention or

attention Spanish is the prerequisite to

establishing safety in yourself and safety in

relationships. If you've ever noticed someone, for example,

who has ADD or adhd, they have

zero capacity for attention span, and it's almost like they're

constantly scanning the environment looking for potential threats.

Now, a lot of ADHD is rooted in children that grew

up in unsafe environments where if they focused on

one thing and relaxed into a single point focus

for any extended period of time, they might miss out

on a potential threat coming from a different direction.

So your nervous system is very tied into your attention

span. When you're able to focus on something for an

extended period of time, it relaxes the nervous

system because it sends a signal saying, we don't need to

focus on anything else right now. Everything else is okay. We're safe

to focus on this one thing. So attention span and

safety in the nervous system are absolutely connected.

In addition to that, attention span in

relationships is important for creating a safe,

coherent field for social connection.

So, for example, if I'm having a conversation with you and you're

speaking to me and I'm distracted with a million things, it

creates a lack of safety in your nervous system. It creates frustration. It

creates this sense of, I'm not seen, I'm not heard, I'm not

valued. And so you could see how important sustained

attention is when it comes to

safety on a physical, psychological and social

level, right? So it creates safety within ourself, it creates

safety relationally and creates a

sense of safety and relationship to the environment. Now,

sustained attention is also how you raise

your frequency, right? This is why, you know,

from, from my perspective, all meditative

practices and a lot of spiritual practices

are actually the practice of sustained attention.

For example, meditation might be follow your breath, focus

on your breath. When your mind wanders, come back to your

breath. Or repeat this mantra. When your mind

wanders, come back to the mantra, focus on the

flame of this candle. When your mind wanders, come back to

the flame or the candle, focus on this movement. If you're doing

chai chi or qigong, when your mind wanders, come back to the movement, come

back to the body. So all meditative practices

are really the practice of sustained attention. Now,

sustained attention raises your frequency or vibrational

state. When you raise your frequency or vibrational

state, it expands consciousness so you

have a greater access to consciousness and higher

dimensions of consciousness when you can raise

your frequency. Because you are essentially like an antenna.

And that antenna is picking up. Just like an antenna picks up

on different radio frequencies, you're an antenna

picking up as consciousness different dimensions,

different frequencies, different vibrations. And that

allows you to have access to a broader range of information

at the level of consciousness. And so this is why some people

can connect to spiritual dimensions just through their

own practice, through their own meditation. Obviously,

things like psychedelics and plant medicines can do that, but we can do

that ourselves through the practice of raising our

frequency, through sustained attention. Now, it's very

interesting that we have this

whole field of technology and social media, which

is short form content, which is diminishing

the human psyche's capacity for sustained attention.

And it's almost like it's putting a cap

on the frequency or vibrations

that humans can actually elevate to. Now, this is why it's

so essential to bring your awareness away from

the devices, away from social media, away from short form content

and practice things that really create sustained

attention, whether it's meditation, breath work, even

reading a book, doing a puzzle, anything that allows

you to focus on something specific

for a set duration of time. And when your mind

wanders from it, you really come back to it. That allows you to

raise your frequency and expand the range of

consciousness and the range of information that your consciousness has

access to. Right? So practicing sustained attention is

essential for mental health in a modern world.

The next piece is spending time in solitude.

And this is one of the most important. And the reason is because

most people with the amount of overstimulation

aren't really spending time alone with themselves anymore. Most people

are strangers to themselves. Most people are afraid of themselves.

Where someone might say, oh yeah, you know, I had the evening to myself

yesterday, but you were scrolling on your phone and watching television, so you

weren't really alone with yourself. So most people, you know, if

we go back historically, if you had an evening to yourself, you were

probably sitting by the fire contemplating your life, you

know, processing thoughts and emotions. You are really with yourself.

But most people are not with themselves anymore because they're carrying around

these devices that are constant distractions and

almost like surrogate relationships without the fulfillment of

relationship, right? So most people nowadays are

complete strangers to themselves. This is why a few months ago,

I actually spent four days in complete darkness. I went on a

darkness retreat and spent four days in complete sensory

deprivation, where I wasn't able to even see my own hand in front of me.

And the reason I did this is very interesting. You know,

I've shared my history in previous episodes of

obsessive, obsessive compulsive disorder, severe anxiety, things like

that, where I was so afraid of my own mind. I was so afraid of

myself. I was always spending my life trying to run or

escape from myself. And I realized that I really

want to overcome the fear of myself. And so,

you know, over a decade later, I find I find out about this

darkness retreat. And I said, that is a perfect catalyst

to really confirm for me that I have done the work, that

I am no longer afraid of myself. And so I signed up for four

days, which was, you know, 24, 48, 72, 96

hours in complete darkness, complete solitude, complete silence.

And, you know, when I was sharing with a lot of people, this

is what I was doing. Most people were like, oh, my gosh, that's so scary.

I could never do that. Most people went into a fear response.

And what I realized is based on people's response and even

my own fears or trepidations that were coming up is we're afraid

of ourselves. The thing that we're most afraid of is ourself,

our own mind, our own emotions, right? Our own

internal experience. And I really wanted to overcome the fear of that.

So I went to an extreme measure, which was four days in complete

darkness, to really overcome any residual fear of

myself. And thankfully, I was able to do that. And it was an absolutely incredible

experience. I'm going to do a podcast episode on darkness

retreats coming up soon,

so stay tuned for that episode. But spending time alone

with yourself is how you really connect with yourself. It's how you

really come to know yourself. And we're living in this world

where everyone is trying to tell you who you are,

right? Through media, through instagram, through, everyone's

trying to tell you who you are. Nobody has an innate sense of self

anymore. And also there's an extreme sense of loneliness

in the world. Even though we have all this social media connection, there's an

extreme sense of loneliness and disconnection. And I don't think that's

loneliness and disconnection, just from others. It's really a

disconnection from self. This is why they say solitude is the only cure

for loneliness, right? Because loneliness is really the

need to be alone, to reconnect with yourself.

And if you can't connect with yourself with the absence of others, you feel

lonely, right? So nobody's really spending time alone with

themselves anymore. And it's absolutely essential to spend

time in solitude, alone with yourself, to know yourself.

That's what you're here to do. You're really here to know and experience

the fullness of who you are. And

most people are afraid of that, which is why it's so essential to

go into the cave that you fear to enter. You know, as Joseph Campbell said,

the cave you fear to enter holds the treasure that you seek.

Right? And you know, in one of my, you know,

retreats of solitude, I had this intuition come through

that said, when you're truly willing to be

alone is when you realize that you're never alone.

The paradox, right? So when you're truly willing to be

alone is when you realize that you're never alone.

And so when you're willing to be truly alone is when you

realize that you are actually never alone because you are connected

to all things through consciousness, right? There's a non local

field of consciousness that connects you to all things. And

so whatever time and space you're in, you're once again a multi

dimensional being. So when you really commit to spending time alone with yourself,

you realize that you are never alone. In fact. So

that's. Number four is spending time in solitude.

Number five is reconnecting with nature. We are so

disconnected from nature in this modern technological world.

And the disconnection from nature is a disconnection from our

biology. It's a disconnection from our true

nature as human beings, because we are expressions of nature.

So the more we disconnect from nature, the more we disconnect from

our true self. And so by spending time in nature,

we bring ease to the nervous system. You know, there's,

there's even research showing that forest bathing

has a greater impact on anxiety and depression

than antidepressants do, right? So they've put

forest bays, forest bathing up against

antidepressants and forest bathing winds in terms of

efficacy. So reconnecting with nature is

really essential to reconnecting with reality and

reconnecting with your true nature. It's not surprising

that the word nature is in true nature, right? So when

we reconnect with nature, we reconnect with reality, we reconnect with

our true nature. We bring cortisol levels down, we

drain the pollution and inflammation from electromagnetics,

we boost our immune system, we boost endorphins, we boost all

of these neurotransmitters and hormones that are

essential for our well being when we spend time in nature.

So to get the hell off of devices, after you finish this

podcast and get out in nature and spend time,

you know, without screens, without input, just connecting with

the natural world that is connecting with reality. It's connecting

with your true nature. When you spend time in nature and connect with

reality and your true nature, you remember your original frequency.

Your original frequency is who you are at your core. Nature

as frequency, as energy, you know, as your experience

as consciousness. Prior to all the wounding, all the

indoctrination, all the programming, all the conditioning,

and all the, all of the ways that we've adapted to a modern

world rather than achieved optimal mental health

and wellness in this modern world. So just in summary,

the five keys to mental health in a modern world balance

creation and consumption. Make sure you're, make sure you're

creating just as much as you're consuming, so you

remain the ouroboros that is creating and consuming at

the fast pace so you don't become the snake that eats its own

tail and moves into self destruction. Number two

is to practice delayed gratification so you

can reclaim your neurochemistry. Increase emotional

intelligence, self regulation, impulse control,

executive prefrontal cortex function, and increase

the fulfillment and satiation of the reward

when you delay gratification, reclaiming free will through

your own neurochemistry. Practicing sustained

attention. Remember, sustained attention creates safety both

in yourself, in the environment, and relationally.

Practicing sustained attention raises your frequency and

vibration, which expands the field of

consciousness that you have access to. Number

four is to reconnect with nature, to ground

yourself in reality, to connect with your true nature, your true

frequency, and then to spend time in solitude

so you can reconnect with yourself in a world that's trying to

constantly pull you out and away from yourself.

So these are the five key factors to achieving and

optimizing mental health in a modern world. So what I would invite you to

do is maybe take out a pen and paper and

write down one thing that you can do for each of those five. You might

say, okay, I'm going to

spend 10 minutes a day just getting my bare feet on the earth.

I'm going to spend five minutes a day focusing on my

breath. I'm going to

make sure I spend at least five to 15 minutes a day really alone with

myself. And remember, you can stack all of these together so you could

practice breath, work alone in nature and

kill three birds with one stone. Right? Then

practice delayed gratification. So make sure that, for example,

maybe when you sit down to eat dinner, instead of

starting to wolf your food down right away, pause and

take five deep breaths. That's a little practice of delayed

gratification. So five deep breaths before you start eating your

meal. A beautiful, simple practice of delayed gratification.

And then balance creation and consumption. Maybe it's cooking more

and eating out less, just as a simple way

of balancing creation consumption. Or it's consuming less

videos and maybe creating one. You know, instead of consuming a

bunch of content, maybe you create a video this week or maybe you write

a blog rather than reading 20 of them. So choose one

thing for each of these five key factors to really

start optimizing mental health in this modern

world. And if you'd like some continued support, you can reach

out to me for one on one coaching at my website,

healing4d.com. This is really my area of focus which is a

holistic approach to mental health. And you can also check out my

flagship 21 day online program which is all pre recorded content.

Healing the Mind A Journey to Wholeness, which is my flagship program. It's a

21 day mental health program that takes you through really the

essential building blocks to achieving mental health, especially in

this modern world. And it's all prerecorded. It's step by step.

It takes you on a beautiful 21 day journey. And for all of our

podcast listeners, I have a 20% discount code.

So if you go to healing4d.comhtm

and just use the code podcast, you can save 20% off for healing

the Mind A Journey to Wholeness. So those are a few next next steps for

you. And once again I invite you to subscribe to my podcast.

Share it with anyone that you feel might be supported by this content. I

feel deep in my heart, you know, this is not just my business, this is

my soul's purpose to get this information and this

content out to the world, to really support people's healing,

reclaiming their neurochemistry and remembering their true nature

as human beings. So I look forward to sharing more with you soon.

Next week in a beautiful episode, I'm sure I'll have something for you. Wonderful.

And I look forward to seeing you then. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

Bye. Bye.