Inner Mammal Institute

Get your 5-Day Happy Chemical Jumpstart! One email message on each of 5 chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, endorphin, and cortisol. You find your power over these chemicals when you know how they work in the state of nature! InnerMammalInstitute.org/jumpstart

Free Webinar on the Mammalian Urge for Social Dominance I'll discuss our natural social-comparison impulse to the Neuroplasticians Community on April 22 at 1pm New York Time. Short talk with long Q&A. Register at buff.ly/6yIpouJ It's easy to how other people long for the one-up position, but hard to see in yourself. But it's useful to see in yourself because that frees you from taking your one-down feelings as facts. You know it's just an illusion that your inner mammal created. Then you can just RELAX, knowing that everyone has a status-seeking mammal inside them just like you! I hope to see you there.

What the news doesn't tell you about the chimp wars: 1. Chimps learn to identify their group mates at a young age. After a split, they still recognize the others as familiars. But in time, more chimps grow up without personal ties on the other side. This year for the first time, no chimp had a parent in the other group. Voila. 2. Chimps fight over territory. Food is scarce in the dry season, so survival depends on a particular tree that fruits then. Chimps fight for control of that tree. But they don't wait until it’s fruiting because that’s when they're weak and hungry. They fight when they’re strong. 3. Early humans did the same. Humans spread themselves around the earth when total world population was tiny. They didn't just cluster where humans first evolved because moving reduces conflict over resources. But populations kept growing, and conflict grew with it. When Christoper Columbus landed in the Caribbean, the people he met told him that their neighbors were evil and dangerous. The same thing happened when Captain Cook landed in Hawaii and Henry Stanley went to Africa. Europeans were fighting each other then too, of course. Welcome to Primate World. More in my book, I, Mammal: How to Make Peace With the Animal Urge for Social Power

A lot is being said about a chimp war in Uganda recently. It is spun to fit the mindset that “the world is going to hell in a hand-basket.” Before you believe that, consider these facts: 1. Researchers and media get rewarded for claiming that something unprecedented is happening. 2. Jane Goodall found a chimp war half a century ago. 3. Chimps have always fissioned into smaller groups when their numbers grow too large. This reduces food fights when a group finds a new resource. More on this tomorrow, and in my book I, Mammal: How to Make Peace With the Animal Urge for Social Power

More on Politics Addiction Here's how politics sparks your dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. Like any addiction, it feels good in the short run but hurts you in the long run. I explain in this podcast: buff.ly/fMOTIKS

Not realistic? Yes and no. In nature, a dog makes its own decisions about how to meet its own needs. A pet is on a lease and it doesn't meet its own needs. Many people want to be a pet, in the sense that they want others to meet their needs for them. Then they end up on a leash. If you want to control your own leash, you have to meet your own needs. Tell this to any teenagers you know.

This rainbow appeared near my house. Of course I know that rainbows have no forecasting ability. But I use this photo to remind myself to look for the positive. That may sound fake and delusional, but our brain is already trained to look for the negative. So if we don't actively offset that, everything will look bad. Our sense of doom is fake and delusional, but you have a choice! This is the subject of my book, The Science of Positivity: Stop Negative Thought Patterns By Changing Your Brain Chemistry buff.ly/9Yawn3I

ADDICTED TO POLITICS? It's a dopamine thing. Dopamine creates the "what comes next?" feeling. It drives us to make predictions and search for evidence to confirm your prediction. No matter what your political views are, following politics meets the need to feel like life is predictable. Of course, it's not. Listen to my podcast on addiction to politics: buff.ly/fMOTIKS

Did you know these beautiful drawings of neurons were done by the scientist who discovered neurons? He drew the illustrations for his own anatomy textbooks in the days before photography was possible. He started drawing as a child to calm his nerves while living with terrible abuse. He went on to win a Nobel in Medicine, so he's often mentioned in children's books on famous people. They present him as an artist and a rebel. This gives kids the impression that you can win a Nobel by being a rebellious artist. I think that's a really bad message. I tell his true story in my new Substack: buff.ly/WiQ2QTR

BAD CAREER ADVICE The man who discovered neurons wrote a career advice book. Should we trust advice from a guy born in 1852? I liked it, so I read a biography of him. His childhood was full of horrific abuse. We'd call it "trauma" today. Yet he went on to win a Nobel in Medicine. How? My new Substack tells the story: buff.ly/WiQ2QTR

The Man Who Drew Neurons: Ramon y Cajal You have probably seen the artful drawings of neurons done a century ago by Ramon y Cajal. I saw the originals exhibited at the University of California-Berkeley, and I learned that the sketches were done for real research rather than “art.” More important, they were done by the man who discovered the synapse. When I heard that Ramon y Cajal also wrote a book of career advice, I was eager to read it! "Advice for a Young Investigator" gives us a glimpse into the culture of academic research a century ago. It’s interesting because the author made such huge contributions to our knowledge of the brain. He discovered that neurons transmit electricity in only one direction. He wrote a textbook on the nervous system, based on his own extensive lab work and sketches, that was used to train doctors for generations. I wanted career advice from this person. read more: buff.ly/JmOCL5m

How to Make Sure You are Not Raising a Manipulative Jerk Not my words - Scott Ervin of Behavioral Leadership. buff.ly/UkKNNb6 If you give in to every demand, you wire a brain to expect that. How to say no? Here, Scott scripts a conversation for you. It seems shocking at first because we're not used to hearing "no." So read and listen to a few of his resources to rewire your automatic pleasing habit.

@Thereallo1026 I have no guilty conscience about where I am.

The White House App has OneSignal's full GPS pipeline compiled in, polling your location every 4.5 minutes, syncing your exact coordinates to a third party server.

The Desperate Urge to Fix Your Parents You think you can't be happy because your family is so flawed. That's just a pathway in your brain. Everyone learns this pathway because it's so tempting. You can rewire it in 3 simple steps. Here's how! buff.ly/a2Cr9bU

Make American Sane Again Here's my take on a culture that rewards bad behavior and then rewards it a second time with a disorder label. buff.ly/Brq19xK

CREATING MONSTERS This is what happens when we reward bad behavior. It's hard to avoid doing that in today's culture, but it's important!!! Here, Scott Ervin uses the words "creating monsters" so I don't have to. buff.ly/an1bNQe

How to create an alternative to a behavior chart Follow up to yesterday's post on the sticker economy and a better way. Practical tips to reward desired behavior and stop rewarding bad behavior buff.ly/tQFH2gq

STICKERS They're the currency of today's schools and families. They're the modern concession to reward-learning. No one likes this. We can't throw the baby out with the bath water. The brain learns from rewards. It's wired by the reward structure we live in. We rely on STICKERS because we fear using more significant rewards. We fear making rewards contingent on a kid's behavior, so we only do it with stupid rewards. Here's a guy with a better alternative. He calls it Behavioral Leadership. Here's a sample: Behavior Management Must Move Out of the Dark Ages buff.ly/FDAfsaq

Here's a good reminder of why our brain defaults to the negative. 2,000 years ago, Aesop knew that a mammal can survive without a meal longer than it can survive the jaws of a predator. So our threat chemicals are faster than our reward chemicals.

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Q. Why does our brain default to negativity? A. Because it evolved to anticipate threat and to save happy chemicals for opportunity alerts. Q. What happens when you're trained to expect happy chemicals all the time with a brain that's not designed to do this? A. That's the topic of my upcoming roundtable with the Neuroplasticians Hub. Free with introductory free membership buff.ly/vyY6gKv