How to Find Your Purpose in Life | Dr. EJ Chichilnisky & Dr. Andrew Huberman
00:00:00.000 | - Did you always know you wanted to be a neuroscientist
00:00:04.460 | from the time you started college?
00:00:06.100 | What was your trajectory?
00:00:07.000 | I should know this, but you were an undergraduate at?
00:00:10.500 | - At Princeton.
00:00:11.340 | - At Princeton, that right, studying?
00:00:12.780 | - Math.
00:00:13.620 | - Math.
00:00:14.780 | So you could have just done all your work
00:00:16.180 | with a piece of paper and a pen,
00:00:17.380 | but you had to try and engineer all these electrodes.
00:00:20.160 | Okay, that's a pen and paper pen.
00:00:22.620 | - I took a very random route.
00:00:24.580 | I studied math as an undergrad.
00:00:26.620 | I spent a few years running around playing music
00:00:29.140 | and traveling and living a bohemian life.
00:00:31.120 | - Tell me more about that.
00:00:32.220 | - Oh, it was, I basically just told you
00:00:34.440 | all I'm going to tell.
00:00:35.940 | - Following the Grateful Dead.
00:00:37.900 | - No, not quite following them,
00:00:39.340 | but that was an important part of the story.
00:00:43.120 | - Was that an important part of your personal development?
00:00:46.100 | - Yes, very much so.
00:00:48.100 | Free expression, dance, music, creative, exploratory music,
00:00:54.100 | all that kind of stuff.
00:00:55.540 | - Such a contrast to the EJ that comes forward
00:00:59.460 | when we're talking about the precision
00:01:00.700 | of neural stimulation in specific retinal cell types.
00:01:03.920 | But I think it's useful for people to hear
00:01:05.860 | both young and old, like that one's nervous system
00:01:10.000 | can be partitioned into these different abilities.
00:01:12.100 | You're like, go and dance and travel,
00:01:13.560 | and you weren't doing anything academic at that time.
00:01:16.100 | - No, for a few years I wasn't doing that,
00:01:17.500 | programming computers to make a living.
00:01:20.060 | And then I started three different PhD programs
00:01:24.240 | at Stanford before I started-
00:01:25.460 | - Simultaneously?
00:01:26.300 | - No, no, no.
00:01:27.140 | - Oh my goodness.
00:01:27.960 | - In sequence, I started in the math PhD program.
00:01:29.540 | I learned that was not really for me.
00:01:31.500 | And I started in an economics PhD program
00:01:34.820 | in the business school there.
00:01:35.980 | And I realized after less than a year,
00:01:38.220 | that was not for me.
00:01:39.380 | I worked in a startup company for a while.
00:01:42.180 | I did a lot of stuff for a few years
00:01:43.900 | and took some settling.
00:01:45.400 | But then I decided to go into neuroscience.
00:01:50.300 | And there were a couple of formative things.
00:01:52.940 | One is that I had gotten a really formative experience
00:01:55.940 | as an undergraduate from a wonderful guy
00:01:58.180 | called Don Reddy,
00:01:59.000 | who taught an introductory neuroscience course,
00:02:00.980 | who was really inspiring mentor.
00:02:02.920 | And then when I was at Stanford,
00:02:07.000 | I met Brian Wandel, my PhD advisor,
00:02:09.880 | and I was inspired by him.
00:02:11.740 | I thought, I didn't know why he was studying,
00:02:13.940 | what he was studying,
00:02:14.760 | but I just knew I wanted to learn from this man.
00:02:16.720 | And I wanted to study with him.
00:02:18.780 | I just knew this was the person who should be my mentor.
00:02:21.260 | - Based on something about him.
00:02:22.420 | - Yes.
00:02:23.320 | - Can I ask you about these three PhD programs?
00:02:25.620 | Because I think people here,
00:02:27.020 | or see what you're doing
00:02:30.740 | and probably imagine a very linear trajectory.
00:02:33.740 | But now I'm hearing you like tour around playing music.
00:02:37.180 | Then you start a PhD program.
00:02:39.100 | Nope.
00:02:39.940 | Then another one.
00:02:40.760 | Nope.
00:02:41.600 | Then another one.
00:02:42.420 | Without getting into all the details.
00:02:43.260 | I mean, were there nights spent lying awake,
00:02:45.700 | thinking like, what am I gonna do with my life?
00:02:47.100 | Or did you have the sense
00:02:48.060 | that you knew you wanted to do something important,
00:02:50.780 | and you just hadn't found the right fit for you?
00:02:52.940 | Like how much anxiety on a scale of one to 10,
00:02:55.340 | 10 being total panic,
00:02:57.060 | did you experience at the apex of your anxiety
00:02:59.620 | in that kind of wandering?
00:03:00.860 | - Am I allowed to go above 10?
00:03:02.220 | Like turning up the amp to 11?
00:03:04.180 | - Sure.
00:03:05.020 | I just think it's really important for people to hear
00:03:06.800 | whether or not they want to be scientists or not.
00:03:08.220 | This idea that people that are doing important things
00:03:10.600 | in the world, in my view,
00:03:13.280 | rarely if ever understood that that's the thing
00:03:17.300 | that they were gonna be doing.
00:03:18.180 | There was some wandering about.
00:03:19.620 | - That sure seems like it, doesn't it?
00:03:21.220 | Yeah, I experienced the same when I talked to other people,
00:03:24.060 | and it seems like that.
00:03:24.880 | And for sure, for me.
00:03:26.660 | It just took a while of trying different things
00:03:28.460 | to see, number one, what I was really good at,
00:03:31.180 | and where I felt I could make a difference.
00:03:36.020 | And I realized I studied math, and I was okay at math,
00:03:41.020 | but I know, I have known mathematicians
00:03:44.500 | who are really talented, gifted mathematicians,
00:03:46.620 | the one who really make a difference.
00:03:48.100 | I wasn't gonna be one of those people.
00:03:50.180 | Likewise, playing music.
00:03:51.580 | I don't have that intrinsic talent.
00:03:52.940 | It's fun.
00:03:53.760 | I can play songs in front of people and do stuff.
00:03:55.700 | I like it and stuff like that,
00:03:57.560 | but I don't have that kind of talent.
00:03:59.220 | In fact, I'll say something that I say to friends sometimes,
00:04:03.020 | and you're a good friend of mine.
00:04:04.620 | If I had the talent to get a few thousand people
00:04:08.300 | on their feet dancing by playing music,
00:04:11.000 | I'd probably just do that.
00:04:12.340 | - Really?
00:04:13.300 | As long as we've been friends, I knew none of this.
00:04:15.940 | I knew none of this.
00:04:17.040 | Mostly because I think we always end up talking
00:04:18.740 | about neuroscience or other aspects of our life,
00:04:22.020 | but I didn't know, I mean, I know a great many things
00:04:26.140 | about you, but I had no idea.
00:04:27.620 | It's so interesting.
00:04:29.100 | Do you still do dance?
00:04:30.420 | We had Eric Jarvis on the podcast, by the way,
00:04:32.540 | professor at Rockefeller who studies,
00:04:34.380 | at one point was studying speech in birds,
00:04:40.220 | as in song in birds.
00:04:43.480 | And then he's done a great many other things now
00:04:45.780 | in genetics of vocalization.
00:04:47.740 | And he actually danced with or was about to dance
00:04:52.740 | with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.
00:04:54.900 | So he had really, really talented dancer.
00:04:56.940 | And so dance seems to be like a theme that comes up
00:05:01.540 | among the neuroscience guests on this podcast.
00:05:03.460 | Do you still dance?
00:05:04.620 | - Yeah, I love to dance.
00:05:05.500 | I'm a free form dancer.
00:05:06.660 | I'm not a skilled dancer, but I love music.
00:05:09.020 | I love dancing.
00:05:09.860 | I think it's part of the human spirit.
00:05:11.340 | I someday will understand the neuroscience
00:05:12.940 | behind dancing, right?
00:05:13.900 | Dancing is a universal human thing in all cultures.
00:05:16.480 | What is this dancing thing?
00:05:17.700 | Why do we do this and other creatures don't?
00:05:19.700 | - Well, Jarvis thinks that perhaps it's one
00:05:23.020 | of the more early forms of language.
00:05:25.660 | And that song came before spoken language.
00:05:29.380 | It's sort of interesting that birds
00:05:31.580 | that can actually recreate human speech
00:05:36.380 | oftentimes have the ability to dance as well.
00:05:38.980 | - Oh, wow.
00:05:39.820 | - And so there's some common circuitry there.
00:05:43.140 | We'll provide a link to that episode.
00:05:44.820 | Jarvis, a really interesting guy.
00:05:45.860 | - I would love to hear that.
00:05:47.520 | But if I may, I'd like to riff on that in a different way.
00:05:51.880 | I did spend some time wandering around, as many people do.
00:05:54.780 | And I think particularly for your young listeners
00:05:58.020 | and viewers who don't know, wow, could I ever be a scientist
00:06:01.700 | and develop new things, stuff like that?
00:06:03.300 | Yes, you can.
00:06:04.140 | And if you're messing around in your life,
00:06:05.620 | trying this, trying that, trying the other thing,
00:06:08.460 | definitely stick with it.
00:06:09.940 | Keep looking for the thing that works for you.
00:06:12.260 | I really deeply believe that.
00:06:14.140 | You gotta play around.
00:06:15.260 | You gotta find what it is that works for you.
00:06:17.820 | Interestingly enough, at least it's interesting for me,
00:06:21.580 | I spent a lot of years studying the retina
00:06:25.060 | in a pure basic science,
00:06:26.580 | just curiosity-driven research way,
00:06:29.680 | as you and I have both done in the past.
00:06:31.940 | And as it turned out,
00:06:37.700 | I learned all the stuff I needed to know about the retina
00:06:41.880 | to develop a high-fidelity adaptive retinal implant
00:06:46.880 | of the type that I'm talking about in that process.
00:06:49.420 | The technology, the stimulation, recording,
00:06:51.340 | figuring out the cell types,
00:06:52.180 | how do you stimulate, all that stuff.
00:06:53.780 | I learned all that stuff.
00:06:55.820 | And I have come to a point in my life where I realize,
00:06:59.060 | wow, if somebody's gonna do what I think needs to be done,
00:07:03.140 | which is to take everything we've learned about the retina
00:07:05.620 | and instantiate that in smart technology
00:07:09.020 | that can restore vision
00:07:10.040 | and do all the things we've been talking about,
00:07:12.920 | who are the people in the world
00:07:14.780 | who have the right training and background
00:07:16.920 | and know-how to do that stuff?
00:07:19.460 | I'm one of them.
00:07:21.740 | I know that.
00:07:22.820 | And it's totally by chance that I picked up and learned,
00:07:25.860 | or it seems by chance that I picked up and learned
00:07:27.780 | the things that I need to know for this.
00:07:30.360 | But I definitely have the right know-how to do this
00:07:33.620 | based on all my training and the research that I've done.
00:07:35.740 | And it feels accidental sometimes.
00:07:37.360 | I look back on my own history.
00:07:38.700 | I'm like, how did I get here
00:07:40.420 | where this is obviously the thing I need to do?
00:07:43.060 | Was this on purpose?
00:07:44.900 | It didn't seem like it was on purpose,
00:07:46.420 | but now I gotta do this
00:07:48.300 | because I know what needs to be done
00:07:50.020 | and it's something that needs to be done.
00:07:51.380 | So that's my mission for the coming decade or so.
00:07:55.860 | - Wow.
00:07:56.700 | I mean, I knew you had this engineer, mathy,
00:08:00.220 | geeky neuroscience.
00:08:01.340 | I don't wanna say geeky,
00:08:02.180 | 'cause it makes it sound like I'm not right there
00:08:04.300 | in the same raft with you.
00:08:06.500 | But I didn't know about this more free-spirited
00:08:10.820 | move in all directions,
00:08:11.940 | depending on what one feels in the moment, dancing EJ.
00:08:15.580 | It's very cool.
00:08:16.640 | Are you still a absolute level 11 coffee snob?
00:08:22.060 | - Yes.
00:08:22.900 | - Okay, yeah.
00:08:23.720 | I used to go to meetings
00:08:24.560 | and EJ would bring his own coffee maker
00:08:27.300 | and coffee to meetings.
00:08:29.180 | We're not talking about an espresso machine.
00:08:30.780 | We're talking about like extreme levels of coffee snobbery.
00:08:34.420 | - Press pot, the correct ground coffee,
00:08:36.500 | the correct kind of press pot, yeah.
00:08:37.820 | - Good, good, good.
00:08:39.100 | I expect nothing less.
00:08:40.620 | Proof that not all circuits in the brain are neuroplastic,
00:08:43.620 | nor should they be.
00:08:44.580 | - That's right.
00:08:45.420 | - But to bridge off of that in a more serious way,
00:08:48.900 | despite the free exploration aspect to yourself
00:08:55.540 | and that hopefully other people don't suppress,
00:08:59.940 | it seems like you really are good at develop,
00:09:04.900 | like knowing your taste.
00:09:05.980 | Like it seems like the,
00:09:08.420 | I think it was the great Marcus Meister,
00:09:09.780 | a colleague of ours who has also worked
00:09:12.340 | on the neural retina extensively, of course,
00:09:14.260 | who once said that there's a coding system in the brain
00:09:17.580 | that leads to either the perception,
00:09:20.260 | the feeling of yum, yuck, or meh.
00:09:25.260 | And that so much of life is being able to register that
00:09:28.220 | in terms of who you interact with and how,
00:09:30.540 | and the choices or problems to work on.
00:09:33.140 | It seems like you have a very keen sense of like, yes, that.
00:09:37.100 | And you move toward that.
00:09:38.500 | You've always been very goal-directed
00:09:41.300 | since the time I've known you.
00:09:42.580 | So, and you've picked such a huge problem,
00:09:46.540 | but going about it in such a precise way,
00:09:49.820 | hence the analogy to the space mission.
00:09:53.220 | So like when you experience that,
00:09:58.060 | may I ask, does it come about as like a thought?
00:10:00.620 | Like, oh yeah, that has to be the thing,
00:10:02.100 | or is it like a whole body sensation?
00:10:03.900 | - What a great question.
00:10:04.940 | I love that question.
00:10:06.100 | I have two things to say to that.
00:10:08.140 | The first is that for me, it's all feeling.
00:10:11.360 | I don't make hardly any decisions out of thoughts.
00:10:17.500 | I think, I process, I put it all into the hopper,
00:10:21.700 | and the hopper comes out and spits out a feeling,
00:10:23.660 | and the feeling's like, yeah, that's the thing to do.
00:10:26.460 | A hundred percent.
00:10:27.380 | And I know not everybody's like me.
00:10:29.260 | Lots of people aren't like me,
00:10:30.580 | and particularly lots of scientists aren't like me.
00:10:33.140 | But I definitely roll that way.
00:10:35.660 | That is absolutely how I work.
00:10:37.740 | There's something that's related to that
00:10:39.620 | that I think is philosophically,
00:10:42.540 | and in terms of personal development
00:10:43.980 | and spiritual development stuff,
00:10:45.660 | I think is quite relevant that I think you'll relate to.
00:10:48.500 | My favorite aphorism is know thyself, the oracle.
00:10:55.460 | And I think, because if you don't know yourself,
00:11:00.160 | you can't do anything.
00:11:01.700 | You don't even know where to go.
00:11:03.780 | You can't even orient yourself
00:11:06.260 | at the next thing in your life.
00:11:08.360 | And I think it deserves to have two corollaries
00:11:13.800 | that go with it, or addenda.
00:11:16.460 | Know thyself, be thyself, which is not easy.
00:11:21.980 | It's not easy to really be yourself in this world.
00:11:24.500 | There are all sorts of things telling us
00:11:26.340 | to be something other than what we are.
00:11:28.300 | And the third one is love thyself.
00:11:31.500 | And it's, you know, having gone through much exploration
00:11:36.660 | of yourself and your life and your values and me too,
00:11:41.700 | and all the things we've talked about over time,
00:11:43.980 | that's not easy.
00:11:45.140 | Some of us are not necessarily programmed to love ourselves.
00:11:48.500 | And it's a skill.
00:11:52.020 | And I really, I try my best
00:11:55.060 | to be with those three things all the time.
00:11:57.400 | Know thyself, be thyself, love thyself.
00:12:00.220 | - Could you elaborate a little bit more
00:12:02.380 | on your process for the third?
00:12:04.460 | This is a concept that has been very challenging for me,
00:12:08.760 | and I think for many other people.
00:12:10.500 | And it gets kind of opaque
00:12:15.900 | when it starts getting conflated
00:12:17.660 | with like self-respect and et cetera.
00:12:20.100 | Like loving thyself, do you have practices?
00:12:23.740 | Do you meditate?
00:12:25.460 | Do you journal?
00:12:26.760 | Do you spend time trying to cultivate a love for self?
00:12:31.460 | - Yeah.
00:12:32.580 | Yeah, I meditate in an informal way
00:12:35.020 | in the morning with my coffee.
00:12:36.920 | Every morning I make a fantastic cup of coffee.
00:12:40.620 | And I sit with it for five or 10 minutes
00:12:43.660 | and take in my world as it's coming toward me
00:12:46.180 | and start to, as I come into the day
00:12:49.100 | and come into consciousness, I meditate like that.
00:12:52.700 | And I have a Ashtanga-related yoga practice.
00:12:56.100 | Many of your viewers and listeners
00:12:58.900 | will know about Ashtanga yoga.
00:13:00.180 | It's a very physical, spiritual, traditional yoga practice
00:13:04.840 | that has a deep meditative and breath-focused component.
00:13:08.100 | I know you've had lots of episodes and discussion
00:13:09.940 | about the breath and the importance of that for awareness.
00:13:13.140 | You know, at the end of many Western yoga practices,
00:13:18.760 | you end with namaste, which is expressing your respect
00:13:21.900 | and for the connectedness of what is in front of you
00:13:26.180 | to the whole universe
00:13:27.580 | and what's common to all of us and everything.
00:13:31.380 | And I usually practice yoga by myself.
00:13:34.100 | When I say namaste at the end of my yoga practice,
00:13:37.100 | a part of that is to myself.
00:13:40.020 | - Earlier, when I asked you about
00:13:42.180 | how you guide your decisions, you said, "It's all feel."
00:13:46.620 | And you provided a beautiful description
00:13:48.660 | as to how and why that occurs for you
00:13:51.480 | and your trust in that.
00:13:52.740 | I don't recall you saying whether or not
00:13:56.640 | the feeling is in your head or it's a whole body feeling.
00:13:59.840 | Does it have a particular signature to it
00:14:01.640 | that you'd be willing to share?
00:14:02.920 | Is it excitement that makes you want to get up and move
00:14:05.080 | or is it a stillness?
00:14:06.640 | I think I ask because we've been talking
00:14:09.920 | throughout today's episode about the precision
00:14:12.320 | of neural coding and the signals
00:14:13.840 | that are at the level of individual cells.
00:14:15.440 | And yet, when it comes to feeling,
00:14:17.860 | we actually have a pretty crude map
00:14:21.860 | and certainly a deficit in language
00:14:23.620 | to explain what this feeling thing is.
00:14:25.860 | And I know that people experience life
00:14:28.300 | and feelings differently,
00:14:29.200 | but I think it's often insightful
00:14:31.380 | when somebody with your understanding
00:14:35.020 | of the nervous system and yourself can share a bit.
00:14:38.300 | What does it feel like?
00:14:40.020 | - I love that question.
00:14:42.980 | And it relates to something you said to me
00:14:45.260 | years ago.
00:14:46.180 | What it feels like is ease.
00:14:51.600 | And I remember years ago when we were talking
00:14:54.920 | about challenging things that each of us
00:14:56.340 | was facing in our lives, you said to me something like,
00:14:59.420 | "I wish for you some ease with all of this."
00:15:02.640 | It was very moving, touching.
00:15:06.240 | As that's what a good friend does
00:15:07.960 | is to give that to somebody who they love.
00:15:11.120 | And it sticks with me probably 10 years later.
00:15:16.120 | So the feeling I feel when I'm on the path
00:15:22.580 | that makes sense for me is ease.
00:15:26.340 | It's, there's just, it's just, okay, this is it.
00:15:31.340 | - Thank you for tuning in
00:15:32.660 | to the Huberman Lab Clips channel.
00:15:34.500 | If you enjoyed the clip that you just viewed,
00:15:36.620 | please check out the full length episode by clicking here.
00:15:39.680 | [BLANK_AUDIO]