Latest / The Everyday Awesome Project / 127: Dopamine and Serotonin: Why You Keep Chasing More and How to Feel Steadier

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127: Dopamine and Serotonin: Why You Keep Chasing More and How to Feel Steadier · The Everyday Awesome Project

• 0:27
  Polly Mertens: Hey superstars, welcome back.
• 0:28
  Polly Mertens: Polly here and Sam Pruitt.
• 0:30
  Polly Mertens: What's up, beautiful humans?
• 0:32
  Polly Mertens: Let's go.
• 0:33
  Polly Mertens: Yo.
• 0:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 0:34
  Samantha Pruitt: Speaking of let's go, we're talking about some let's go hormones, right?
• 0:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Like like generally all well, and some go get it hormones.
• 0:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Some go get it.
• 0:44
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, we need to like clear up some technicality.
• 0:46
  Polly Mertens: Cause like, you know, we were thinking about calling this like the happiness drugs and you know, happiness chemicals.
• 0:51
  Polly Mertens: And it's really a little bit of fine-tuning.
• 0:53
  Polly Mertens: So the two things that we're mostly going to talk about today, which is let the cat out of the bag, are our good buddy serotonin and our good buddy dopamine, right?
• 1:00
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 1:01
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:01
  Polly Mertens: Totally.
• 1:02
  Samantha Pruitt: And why are we talking about these quote unquote feel-good hormones?
• 1:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Why?
• 1:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Because everybody is in the freaking pursuit of this, you know, chasing it.
• 1:13
  Polly Mertens: Or and hijacked in some ways by it, you know.
• 1:16
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 1:16
  Polly Mertens: Hijacked in the pursuit of it.
• 1:18
  Polly Mertens: And just know, like these are naturally occurring chemicals that are, you know, I was sharing with you that I watched this video in preparation for this about the tie-in with a woman studying behavior in animals who have this, you know, similar chemicals, right?
• 1:34
  Polly Mertens: The dopamine serotonin and how they drive them one direction, you know, out of the herd or towards the herd, or towards food or away from being chased, things like that.
• 1:43
  Polly Mertens: So guess what?
• 1:44
  Polly Mertens: We're we're purely animals here, right?
• 1:46
  Polly Mertens: And so we evolved.
• 1:47
  Polly Mertens: Speak for yourself, ladies.
• 1:49
  Polly Mertens: We evolved similarly, you might say.
• 1:52
  Polly Mertens: We don't want to, you know, however you view that evolution.
• 1:55
  Polly Mertens: Um, but it's like those drugs are still doing what they're doing by design to keep this human um form alive, if you will, right?
• 2:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, let's call them hormones.
• 2:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's not call them drugs because we don't want people to think of it like that.
• 2:10
  Samantha Pruitt: It's they're they're neurotransmitters or neuromodulators, which is a chemical um compound within the body.
• 2:18
  Samantha Pruitt: We'll just put them under the classification of hormones.
• 2:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Most people know that they have an endocrine system.
• 2:24
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know.
• 2:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Do they?
• 2:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I hope they do.
• 2:27
  Samantha Pruitt: I hope you do.
• 2:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 2:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, anyway, your body produces hormones.
• 2:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 2:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And all of these hormones, there's so many.
• 2:36
  Samantha Pruitt: That's why we're just talking about two today, because they're like the, you know, let's get happy sort of vibe.
• 2:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, they get confused.
• 2:44
  Samantha Pruitt: There's so many things in the body.
• 2:46
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 2:47
  Polly Mertens: Well, I was gonna say, so they don't just make us feel good, they shape motivation, mood, they form sleep, appetite, they create they, you know, uh they help us in learning, um, like what to go for, what not to go for, stress tolerance, social behavior, pain sensitivity, emotional regulation.
• 3:05
  Polly Mertens: I mean, it's like, yes, these puppies are like lifting heavy over here, you know.
• 3:10
  Samantha Pruitt: These are the two we're gonna talk about today.
• 3:12
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, kind of workhorses for sure.
• 3:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 3:14
  Samantha Pruitt: And people who are nerds like us who might want to know more about how their body works, should, you know, read up on this stuff and watch some videos on it, etc., and like start to understand.
• 3:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, the body in so many ways is so complex.
• 3:31
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, frankly, it's just miraculous that I'm even standing here today functioning.
• 3:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 3:38
  Samantha Pruitt: But and any of us, any of us humans who happen to be alive in this time are so incredibly lucky sons of bitches, right?
• 3:45
  Samantha Pruitt: But it's like also very simple because once you understand like core foundational health elements, these systems will work, they will work, right?
• 3:58
  Samantha Pruitt: But they can very easily become dysfunctional and diseased when you are not doing core foundational health principles, right?
• 4:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 4:08
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, and we will get into giving them some solutions for each of these, but let's kind of pick them apart.
• 4:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's start with the go get it.
• 4:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah, hormone called dopamine.
• 4:18
  Samantha Pruitt: First of all, why is it called dope?
• 4:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Whoa, yo, y'all, dope.
• 4:22
  Samantha Pruitt: And where did the slang word dope come from?
• 4:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Did it come from dopamine?
• 4:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, I that's dope.
• 4:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Dang, I didn't look all this up.
• 4:28
  Samantha Pruitt: I didn't know these questions were gonna be happening today.
• 4:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh my god, you know, I'm just gonna speculate.
• 4:33
  Samantha Pruitt: Well go get it hormone.
• 4:35
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's motivation, yeah, reward.
• 4:38
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, motivation, everybody struggles with that.
• 4:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Reward, learning.
• 4:43
  Samantha Pruitt: So many people are struggling with learning.
• 4:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Learning is challenging in this really high stimulus, stressful world that we're all living in now.
• 4:54
  Samantha Pruitt: So, this is one of those hormones that helps with that.
• 4:56
  Samantha Pruitt: It's not the pursuit, it's not pleasure.
• 5:00
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's not like a hormone that just gives us automatically pleasure, it's pursuit.
• 5:04
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, if you think of it that way.
• 5:06
  Polly Mertens: It's misunderstood often.
• 5:07
  Polly Mertens: And I didn't miss it, I didn't, I thought it was like the reward you got for going for something.
• 5:11
  Polly Mertens: It's like, oh, a dopamine hit, people would say.
• 5:14
  Polly Mertens: And it's like actually, more dopamine is hit in the pursuit of that, right?
• 5:20
  Polly Mertens: Like exactly going for something.
• 5:21
  Polly Mertens: It drives the pursuit.
• 5:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, it drives the pursuit and it balances pleasure and pain.
• 5:27
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's not all pleasure, FYI, it's not all shits and giggles, it's balances, and it helps you to regulate those things.
• 5:34
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and I think you know, I was that like I was referencing that one gal's video about how chemicals and animals, and she was talking about how dopamine is what has a gazelle in the wild leave the pack because it could get more food if it's out on its own, but you know, and and it's like, oh, it's like, oh, there's a reward out there, go for it, you know, like it gets it to go pursue something, and the reward of like getting it is like so it, you know, it it survives, it gets more food, it thrives, you know, the the species, you know, could live or whatever.
• 6:05
  Samantha Pruitt: So yeah, but it takes the risk of being eaten by a lion.
• 6:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 6:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And as it gains the success of the reward, we'll call it the food.
• 6:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, dopamine shuts off, it's it's not doing anything until the next chase, the next pursuit.
• 6:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, right.
• 6:20
  Samantha Pruitt: So again, motivation to be fed, motivation to be uh safe, motivation to win, motivation to succeed, all of the things that we call motivation.
• 6:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So dopamine feeds motivation, it's really a critical hormone to motivation as a whole.
• 6:37
  Samantha Pruitt: To get up and go.
• 6:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 6:39
  Polly Mertens: Get up and go, yo.
• 6:40
  Polly Mertens: And what I got from her um explanation was like the learning happens when that gazelle goes out, finds a patch of food or something in the in the wild, um, and it doesn't get eaten.
• 6:53
  Polly Mertens: It's like, oh, that was a good strategy, right?
• 6:54
  Polly Mertens: So it learns it's okay, or it learned, right?
• 6:58
  Polly Mertens: So, you know, these these chemicals often are um, you know, they create behaviors in us, right?
• 7:05
  Polly Mertens: Good, bad, or otherwise, right?
• 7:07
  Polly Mertens: So we can talk about you know some of the addictive neural roofs.
• 7:10
  Polly Mertens: Yes, yes.
• 7:11
  Polly Mertens: So the learning happens when it goes, oh, that that was worth the reward, you know, that reward was worth the food, the dopamine hit, the chemicals or whatever rewarded that animal for striking out and you know, doing that, if you will.
• 7:24
  Polly Mertens: So yeah.
• 7:25
  Samantha Pruitt: So the problem with that is at the root of addiction and addictive compulsive behaviors is also dopamine.
• 7:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, totally dope in a bad way.
• 7:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so this is what also feeds that dysregulation or that vicious cycle of that compulsive or addictive behavior because you got the dopamine to go do the chase, pursuit of whatever drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling.
• 7:50
  Samantha Pruitt: I could go on all freaking day long about social media, you know.
• 7:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, and then you do the thing.
• 7:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Dopamine's shut off at that point.
• 7:58
  Samantha Pruitt: You do the thing, and then there's some small reward.
• 8:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Micro, sometimes there isn't even a reward.
• 8:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Plenty of people doing drugs, alcohol, gambling.
• 8:08
  Samantha Pruitt: There's a negative consequence, right?
• 8:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, but that groove is so deep that they continue to do that behavior with the hopes that the next one might feel good because at one time they did win the slot machine, or they did have a good high, or they did have great sex with a random stranger, or whatever the hell the thing is they're doing.
• 8:29
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, and so slot machines and social media, they're the same algorithm, right?
• 8:34
  Polly Mertens: So it's the same operating under the same theory is give them enough, you know, reward to keep them coming back thinking.
• 8:41
  Polly Mertens: And dopamine actually thrives on that uncertainty, like that anticipation, also, right?
• 8:46
  Polly Mertens: So it's like, oh, I might get a great video, might get a, you know, like something I like, something funny, feel good, whatever, right?
• 8:53
  Polly Mertens: Um, same thing with slot machines, like, oh, you could win, you know, so you just keep and they reward you enough with the yummy cat video or whatever it is, or a couple of quarters out of the machine or something like that.
• 9:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Or likes on your post or whatever bullshit.
• 9:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly, exactly.
• 9:08
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, so it's that anticipation, right?
• 9:10
  Polly Mertens: And you know, it's funny, those are very so.
• 9:13
  Polly Mertens: I want to give one that was popping in my mind as you were starting to explain this.
• 9:16
  Polly Mertens: That is like, oh fuck, that's probably it too.
• 9:20
  Samantha Pruitt: So like we're so human, Polly.
• 9:23
  Samantha Pruitt: What are we being so human like?
• 9:25
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh dang, that's probably it too, which which I like and I appreciate this.
• 9:28
  Polly Mertens: So a couple uh so we can all see the let's call it the uh hamster wheel of social media or the hamster wheel of a um um gambling addiction, right?
• 9:39
  Polly Mertens: One I think is a little bit less, so I just started to notice like me planning vacations, or like I bought a I bought a flight the other night.
• 9:48
  Polly Mertens: It's like oh the vacation started.
• 9:49
  Polly Mertens: Oh, you got yeah, the trip, you know, so like that dopamine, I like I got the anticipation of something by taking a step, taking an action, even like researching about something, like the anticipation of going somewhere, right?
• 10:02
  Polly Mertens: That's my I'm like, oh wow, and I you know where else I saw it for myself is signing up for races.
• 10:08
  Polly Mertens: Well, hell yeah, let me tell you what I did yesterday.
• 10:10
  Polly Mertens: Okay, okay, I started.
• 10:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, this is confessional.
• 10:14
  Samantha Pruitt: So we are so dopamine savages.
• 10:20
  Samantha Pruitt: Dopamine savage.
• 10:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, let's just be honest.
• 10:24
  Samantha Pruitt: And so the pursuit, and you and I are freaking triple type A pursuiters.
• 10:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, we don't just like half-ass this pursuit thing, we're the fucking lions in the jungle people.
• 10:38
  Samantha Pruitt: We are like on the savannah.
• 10:40
  Samantha Pruitt: And some people might call it healthy pursuits, some people might call it a little insanity, but right?
• 10:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, that's it's finding the balance, which we'll get into that, but okay, yeah.
• 10:51
  Samantha Pruitt: What did I do yesterday?
• 10:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh so I've been planning this John Muir Trail hike I'm doing this summer.
• 10:55
  Samantha Pruitt: So talk about dopamine.
• 10:57
  Samantha Pruitt: Anytime I sit down to work on that project, that adventure, that expedition.
• 11:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, yeah.
• 11:03
  Samantha Pruitt: I am high as a kite.
• 11:05
  Samantha Pruitt: I am like, wow, couldn't be more fun to like look at the latest gear and the latest tent.
• 11:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Literally, I have a brand new tent that's not been opened yet that I'm going to be returning because a better one just came out.
• 11:18
  Polly Mertens: And how do I know?
• 11:19
  Polly Mertens: Because I was doing the rest of the.
• 11:20
  Polly Mertens: And you bought one like last year.
• 11:22
  Polly Mertens: What the hell?
• 11:23
  Polly Mertens: This is my third tent.
• 11:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh no.
• 11:25
  Samantha Pruitt: This is my third tent in a calendar year.
• 11:28
  Samantha Pruitt: This is classic, but that's a classic example.
• 11:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 11:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And then um, I made a decision a couple weeks ago that I was not gonna do my 100 miler in the fall because I just cannot get my value volume up half of nice.
• 11:41
  Samantha Pruitt: But a new race came out this week that I've put my eye on doing the Arizona Trail, which is actually on my bucket list to do the Arizona Trail.
• 11:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and a brand new race came out a hundred miler on the Arizona Trail, and you bet your sweet ass.
• 11:56
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, going, going to I did all the research.
• 12:00
  Samantha Pruitt: It's next spring, and I planned it.
• 12:02
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, so I did do some logical thinking and some grounded realization, but I was like, yes.
• 12:11
  Polly Mertens: Well, so yeah, just let the dopamine, so yeah, okay, here's the other thing that I'll from all my years of addiction studies.
• 12:17
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, we gotta talk about addiction a little bit.
• 12:19
  Polly Mertens: So um imagine uh there's this big thing in the world of bulimia, and you can I think picture this.
• 12:26
  Polly Mertens: Uh there might be similarly in alcohol, but in bulimia we call it the bulimia urge, right?
• 12:32
  Polly Mertens: It's like an urge to eat, urge to overeat, right?
• 12:35
  Polly Mertens: Some people, it's because they're starving themselves, you know, whatever.
• 12:38
  Polly Mertens: Or it's just like they're, you know, and we love Dr.
• 12:42
  Polly Mertens: Cabor Monte, maybe we'll bring him in, but it's like you're trying to shift from something else, right?
• 12:47
  Polly Mertens: So you get this urge to eat and it drives you, right, to go do stuff.
• 12:51
  Polly Mertens: And so it's like you just you you you're just like compelled, right?
• 12:55
  Polly Mertens: So the chemical is triggered, right?
• 12:57
  Polly Mertens: So it's like like that dopamine or whatever.
• 13:00
  Polly Mertens: So the hypothalamus releases these chemicals.
• 13:03
  Polly Mertens: And if you can last, the I remember working with a therapist one time and she was like max 90 seconds.
• 13:10
  Polly Mertens: It's like a wave coming through, right?
• 13:12
  Polly Mertens: If you can imagine like a slow wave coming through uh the ocean or towards your body, and like if you don't get crazy, if you rise above it, you can just ride that wave.
• 13:21
  Polly Mertens: You like, oh my god, another race! Oh my god, you know, and then in 90 seconds, guess what?
• 13:26
  Polly Mertens: It like it goes, it pitters out, right?
• 13:28
  Polly Mertens: If we don't latch on to it and ride with it and take it wherever it takes us, into the kitchen or into the like pressing and buying, and like I'm going to the race, you know.
• 13:37
  Polly Mertens: And then we get the totally.
• 13:40
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I don't act on these things right away.
• 13:42
  Samantha Pruitt: I haven't bought the tent and all the, you know, I haven't like done the things, but I'm in the cycle of like now I'm gonna review that if that's an intellectual move or is it an emotional move?
• 13:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So to me, how I do it is I ride the wave and I get excited and curious, yeah, and then I let the wave go back, right?
• 14:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And then I start to let it sort of mull around in my brain and also in my body.
• 14:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, does that feel right?
• 14:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Does that seem like feel like a good move?
• 14:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Does that make sense?
• 14:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Is that really logical?
• 14:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, I start to sort of analyze the reality of it.
• 14:14
  Samantha Pruitt: What would it require?
• 14:15
  Samantha Pruitt: How much is it gonna cost?
• 14:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Blah, blah, blah.
• 14:17
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, all the things.
• 14:17
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't just go, fuck yeah, I gotta have it, like people on Amazon or whatever they're doing, or buying products on social media, shopping on oh, that just can't, I must need that.
• 14:27
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm I I must, you know what I mean?
• 14:29
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's the gambler sort of mindset.
• 14:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and we're not saying that you know, doing fun shit is not a good idea.
• 14:36
  Samantha Pruitt: We're all about it, right?
• 14:38
  Samantha Pruitt: But understanding why your brain responds the way it responds and body is actually a physiological response, also, especially something so primal, like you talked about um food addiction.
• 14:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Like food is such a primal need, right?
• 14:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So that is a whole other slew of things going on besides dopamine, obviously.
• 15:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Totally.
• 15:03
  Samantha Pruitt: But if you think about, and same with sex, I'm sure, and there's other things that are just like so primal in nature that riding those waves can be more complex than just, you know, am I gonna buy the latest and greatest tennis shoe that just came out or the newest tent or whatever the hell the thing is.
• 15:21
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, I don't need those to survive.
• 15:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and what I want to just throw in here, and we'll talk about later, is the antithesis of this.
• 15:26
  Polly Mertens: And so these are like pleasure stimulant, right?
• 15:29
  Polly Mertens: Like we're in the pursuit of a pleasure to avoid some sort of pain.
• 15:33
  Polly Mertens: Not say that you were not to say you were in pain before you saw that idea of the race.
• 15:37
  Polly Mertens: You were just like, pleasure, you know, woo-hoo, you know.
• 15:40
  Polly Mertens: And so, like for me with the addiction with the eating disorder, it was like some sort of stress or not feeling good about something, or there was something going on in my body to avoid that pain.
• 15:49
  Polly Mertens: It was like, oh, quick pleasure, like like fast food, you know, it was like boom, you know, just so those pleasure moments, whatever they are, if it's gambling, social media, whatever, it's it's triggering the pleasure hormone or you know, triggering the pleasure reward, not nourishment, which we'll talk about later.
• 16:06
  Polly Mertens: So that's what's happening when you get sort of hijacked by those chemicals, if you will.
• 16:10
  Polly Mertens: So they're getting us.
• 16:13
  Samantha Pruitt: We gotta regulate this stuff.
• 16:14
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's get into a little bit how people can regulate it.
• 16:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, I'm not just saying this because this is my thing, but exercise.
• 16:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Exercise is the real thing.
• 16:25
  Samantha Pruitt: You know what?
• 16:26
  Polly Mertens: Before we do it, wait, I do want to say one more thing.
• 16:28
  Polly Mertens: So um there's there's there's a little pen I need to put in here.
• 16:31
  Polly Mertens: I almost forgot about it.
• 16:32
  Polly Mertens: And so, because I was working with a guy um one time who had like porn addiction, you know, and and what I learned a lot about that and how that just degrades your sexual um appetite, right?
• 16:44
  Polly Mertens: Because you're you've so overstimulated with something that's so unreal, right?
• 16:48
  Polly Mertens: And the same with social media or whatever.
• 16:50
  Polly Mertens: So know that, like, if you overstimulate yourself, you get these big dopamine spikes, especially in social media, it actually just creates this lower lull in your life that like nothing feels very good.
• 17:04
  Polly Mertens: So, like, like for this one gentleman I was treating, it was like the the porn, you know, watching a lot of porn, you know, it was stimulating at the time, and then you try and have sex with his wife, and it was just like dull, right?
• 17:16
  Polly Mertens: And just like this dullness.
• 17:17
  Polly Mertens: So it's like you have to abstain from those reward systems to get your body back, body brain back down to a normal.
• 17:25
  Polly Mertens: And it could feel a little like dull and lifeless for a while.
• 17:28
  Polly Mertens: So we're gonna talk about some things to do that, but just know if you've over-stimulated by like too much X, whatever, you know, me with the food and stuff like that, like just like normal living, if you will, going back to a norm, could feel just dull, you know, it's like novelty, you know, or it's not like lack of novelty and stuff.
• 17:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, it's not a running joke, it's definitely a reality and probably also a running joke in the ultra-running world that lots of people who found ultra-running are ex-addicts.
• 17:58
  Samantha Pruitt: It's pretty commonplace, actually.
• 18:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 18:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And addicts of all different, you know, shapes, sizes, and types and stuff like that, because they're they were getting such a high, or they were getting such a dopamine and then a high and then a crash, right?
• 18:11
  Samantha Pruitt: And so when they changed, made different lifestyle choices for themselves to move away from addiction and were looking for things to satiate these needs or these desires or this feeling of euphoria, et cetera, et cetera.
• 18:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, it got replaced in many instances by not just running an exercise.
• 18:31
  Samantha Pruitt: A lot of us do that, but like the extreme cases of running an exercise, you know, where they're doing really wild things.
• 18:40
  Samantha Pruitt: For sure.
• 18:41
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm kind of about those wild things.
• 18:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So I'm not, you know, you're kind of wonderful.
• 18:45
  Polly Mertens: So what I would just say is like dopamine regulation is what we're talking about.
• 18:48
  Polly Mertens: It's not maximization, you know, because maximization is.
• 18:51
  Samantha Pruitt: And more is not better.
• 18:52
  Samantha Pruitt: More is not better.
• 18:53
  Samantha Pruitt: Exactly.
• 18:54
  Samantha Pruitt: Actually, more is a problematic.
• 18:58
  Polly Mertens: For sure.
• 18:59
  Samantha Pruitt: So, all right, let's talk about how do we regulate all this stuff.
• 19:01
  Polly Mertens: So, how do we natural exercise?
• 19:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 19:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 19:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Exercise um also produces not just dopamine, which we're talking about, but serotonin, which we'll talk about next, uh, neoepinephrine, and BDNF, which is a growth hormone.
• 19:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So it does a lot of shit.
• 19:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 19:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Exercise is literally, I cannot say it enough.
• 19:30
  Samantha Pruitt: It's impossible for me to deliver a loud enough message.
• 19:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 19:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 19:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Like to the benefits of exercise.
• 19:39
  Samantha Pruitt: And it doesn't need to be anything extreme.
• 19:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 19:41
  Samantha Pruitt: It is small, regular, consistent doses of moving your body ideally out in nature, but whatever.
• 19:49
  Samantha Pruitt: I'll take whatever you're willing to do, people, okay?
• 19:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Because exercise does naturally provide this and these feelings.
• 19:58
  Samantha Pruitt: I was just out trail running this morning, and dude, I was so in flow.
• 20:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, it's hot as hell here.
• 20:04
  Samantha Pruitt: So I probably had a little bit of minor heat exhaustion.
• 20:07
  Samantha Pruitt: No, it's hot.
• 20:09
  Samantha Pruitt: But I'm out in nature, I'm on a trail, I'm moving my body through space.
• 20:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Literally, it's effortless.
• 20:17
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm just like floating above the trail, effortlessly moving my body because I love it so much, but I have trained my dopamine system and all these other cascade of hormones I talked about to get into that groove relatively quickly and to respond quickly and to take me along into the flow.
• 20:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Not every workout's like that.
• 20:39
  Samantha Pruitt: Some are horrible and miserable.
• 20:41
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was in the gym yesterday and there was no flow going on at all.
• 20:43
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, get in, do some heavy shit and get the hell out.
• 20:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 20:47
  Samantha Pruitt: But today, there it was.
• 20:49
  Samantha Pruitt: It was like that cascade immediately kicked in, and I was like, in it.
• 20:53
  Samantha Pruitt: I could have just kept going.
• 20:55
  Samantha Pruitt: What I was like, I gotta get back, I gotta eat, I gotta eat, you know.
• 20:58
  Samantha Pruitt: But like it's one of those things where you don't want to come home.
• 21:01
  Samantha Pruitt: And that it that is possible and available for anybody.
• 21:05
  Samantha Pruitt: It really is.
• 21:07
  Samantha Pruitt: No, it doesn't matter what level of fitness you have.
• 21:10
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I mean, you know, I love what you're saying about the outdoor because um there's several things, but you can do yoga in your chair or in your home or stretching or walking, you know.
• 21:22
  Polly Mertens: I mean, like 30 minutes of walking, 45 minutes of walking a day is just remarkable.
• 21:26
  Polly Mertens: So many, so many things.
• 21:28
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, exercise just like number one big plus in lots of lots of ways.
• 21:34
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 21:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Mm-hmm.
• 21:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, anti-inflammatory diet.
• 21:38
  Samantha Pruitt: So you should monitor the inflammation in your body because that will actually block dopamine.
• 21:43
  Samantha Pruitt: So I thought that was kind of an interesting learning for me.
• 21:46
  Samantha Pruitt: I do understand inflammation and how it works in the body and why it's not good, but I was like, oh, it also disrupts the natural biochemicals and hormones in my body who are trying to do their job.
• 21:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 21:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And instead, I am, you know, dropping a bunch of inflammation in by poor nutrition or poor lifestyle choices.
• 22:05
  Samantha Pruitt: So that was a that was an interesting one.
• 22:07
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 22:07
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, I've been on the I've been the gut guru for four years now.
• 22:12
  Polly Mertens: I'm just like gut, gut, like everything points to the gut nervous system regulation, you know, like what.
• 22:18
  Polly Mertens: Well being the genesis of disease, like I'm like, I'm um it's gut, get you, and then natural light and sleep and all those, all those yummy things.
• 22:30
  Polly Mertens: I mean that's the next one.
• 22:31
  Samantha Pruitt: There's morning light specifically, morning light specifically, because of your cortisol timing and your natural response of cortisol rather than driving it all day and all night long, like letting the body get into that morning light.
• 22:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, it's time for me to have my cortisol spike and kick in.
• 22:48
  Polly Mertens: So I'll just say more specifically because I loved that episode.
• 22:51
  Polly Mertens: There's a fantastic, like two-hour plus episode that Andrew Huberman, Huberman Lab has done on the power of morning light.
• 22:58
  Polly Mertens: So if you haven't seen it, listen to it.
• 23:00
  Polly Mertens: You know, we just give kudos to that.
• 23:03
  Polly Mertens: Um, it's all about it.
• 23:04
  Polly Mertens: And so what he recommends is watch the sunset and watch the sunrise.
• 23:07
  Polly Mertens: That's like the simplest way to say it is like watch a sunrise and watch a sunset every day.
• 23:11
  Polly Mertens: That's his little take on it.
• 23:13
  Polly Mertens: Um, but yeah, so when you say morning light, it's like not just like sitting in your house and going, oh, it's light outside.
• 23:18
  Polly Mertens: It's like get it in the eyeballs because he's he's the eye doctor, you know.
• 23:22
  Polly Mertens: It's like let the there's something about it, you know, he's got all the science behind it.
• 23:26
  Polly Mertens: It's freaking amazing.
• 23:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, the something about it is the communication to your brain and your vagus nerve, which talks to your gut, and it's all, hey yo, what are we doing now?
• 23:37
  Samantha Pruitt: What are we doing now, right?
• 23:38
  Samantha Pruitt: And circating again.
• 23:40
  Samantha Pruitt: This is the go-get it hormone.
• 23:42
  Samantha Pruitt: So, like, if you think about that being one more way to activate the go-get it hormone.
• 23:47
  Samantha Pruitt: Social connection, this is just a beautiful one that we're all about, obviously.
• 23:51
  Samantha Pruitt: But not just like feeling not feeling um isolated and lonely, but like going, because that's obvious, right?
• 24:01
  Samantha Pruitt: There are really poor health outcomes, physical health outcomes, and mental health outcomes with feeling lonely and isolated.
• 24:09
  Samantha Pruitt: So if that is the case, then you need to get busy asking for help and finding community and getting support.
• 24:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 24:15
  Samantha Pruitt: But like what I am am so into, which you totally know, which is like these random acts of constant out in the world, micro moments, we'll call them micro moments, with other humans, mostly strangers, not always, but a lot of the time, totally with strangers.
• 24:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And I freaking love that.
• 24:33
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, it can be a little thing at the gym for a couple minutes or the coffee shop or whatever, and it's those small moments of connection with people, you know, your barista or where whatever your daily routine looks like um that gives you that.
• 24:47
  Samantha Pruitt: It actually triggers dopamine.
• 24:50
  Samantha Pruitt: I was saying serotonin.
• 24:53
  Polly Mertens: Well, serotonin, too, because serotonin is what draws you to be with serotonin and oxytocin.
• 24:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:59
  Samantha Pruitt: And oxytocin.
• 25:00
  Samantha Pruitt: So there's three chemicals in that thing, but that little uh motivation spike, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Which I thought, well, that's super interesting.
• 25:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh well, I'm basically a crack addict now.
• 25:12
  Polly Mertens: I was gonna say, you're like, I gotta have my coffee.
• 25:15
  Polly Mertens: I gotta get out of here.
• 25:15
  Polly Mertens: I gotta go, I gotta go see, I gotta go see the people.
• 25:18
  Polly Mertens: The people are out there.
• 25:19
  Polly Mertens: I gotta go see my temper.
• 25:22
  Polly Mertens: Why do you think I took that damn job at REI?
• 25:24
  Samantha Pruitt: I wouldn't have been working at REI Pi Time.
• 25:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Where's people?
• 25:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I gotta go talk to people.
• 25:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Um and they're talking about adventures and cool shit like hello gear.
• 25:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Hello, hello, you all need me.
• 25:35
  Polly Mertens: The addict is here, just letting you know you guys are feeding my dopamine addiction.
• 25:40
  Polly Mertens: I need for the outdoors.
• 25:41
  Polly Mertens: I love you all.
• 25:42
  Samantha Pruitt: Do totally, and they find me in the store.
• 25:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, like they gravitate toward me because they can probably smell the dopamine.
• 25:49
  Samantha Pruitt: It probably is like a pheromone, it gives off an odor.
• 25:52
  Polly Mertens: They're like, Are you up for an adventure?
• 25:54
  Polly Mertens: Oh my god, come here.
• 25:55
  Polly Mertens: Like tell me about it.
• 25:56
  Polly Mertens: You get the serotonin from talking to them, and then the dopamine from all of that.
• 26:00
  Samantha Pruitt: It is, it totally feels so yummy.
• 26:04
  Samantha Pruitt: It is a yumminess.
• 26:06
  Samantha Pruitt: It's a reward to them.
• 26:07
  Samantha Pruitt: It's a reward.
• 26:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and again, anybody can do this.
• 26:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:12
  Samantha Pruitt: And anybody can do this, right?
• 26:13
  Polly Mertens: And I I I think, you know, we talked earlier about that wave that can lead to the addiction, right?
• 26:18
  Polly Mertens: And you're writing this wave of like, oh my god, you know, I've got to sign up for that bigger thing, or I've got to, you know, click the thing, or the the slot addiction or the food addiction or whatever, right?
• 26:26
  Polly Mertens: And there's healthy, healthy ways that it does reinforce behaviors that are natural and normal, like you were talking about.
• 26:34
  Polly Mertens: It's like, oh my god, being with people, right?
• 26:36
  Polly Mertens: Which is like more of more of that.
• 26:38
  Polly Mertens: So it's it's it's serving, it's just when it gets either in the dopamine loop and you're in addiction or you're like over-emphasizing something that's becoming unhealthy, right?
• 26:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and you mentioned Dr.
• 26:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Gabor Amate a few minutes ago, uh freaking legend.
• 26:55
  Samantha Pruitt: If people don't know who he is, please, please start watching his videos and reading his books.
• 27:00
  Samantha Pruitt: He's not going to be with us forever, he's in his 80s now, but he's absolutely brilliant in the area of addiction and trauma and all of these things that we talk about on the show.
• 27:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I'm totally obsessed with this man.
• 27:13
  Samantha Pruitt: But he says, you know, examine the pain, right?
• 27:16
  Samantha Pruitt: If you are being driven to seek that pleasure in some way, shape, or form, you need to understand, like you were saying earlier, about well, there's something pushing you towards that, that seeking, that pursuit, and be honest about, you know, I'm pursuing that thing because of what?
• 27:35
  Samantha Pruitt: What is the pain?
• 27:37
  Samantha Pruitt: So rather than focusing on the addictive behavior and the cycle of it, be willing to look at the root of that.
• 27:45
  Samantha Pruitt: What is motivating me and driving me to keep doing this thing that I know is not good for me?
• 27:51
  Samantha Pruitt: What fill in the blank?
• 27:53
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I'll just give his quote.
• 27:55
  Polly Mertens: He's on another podcast and he said something like the you know, his line is like, the question is not why the addiction, but why the pain that's causing the addiction?
• 28:05
  Polly Mertens: Like, why why what is the pain that you're avoiding?
• 28:08
  Polly Mertens: What is the thing that's m driving you to seek this pay pleasure short-term, whatever it is, right?
• 28:14
  Polly Mertens: So, and and examine that.
• 28:16
  Polly Mertens: Like, there's your that's that's the unexamined life is you know, you're you're diluting yourself, right?
• 28:22
  Polly Mertens: So you're finding yourself compulsively after something, you know, and I find I remember um, you know, so I remember coaching this one gal with her food addiction years ago, and she would tell me like she had this two o'clock um thing where she went down to this routine.
• 28:39
  Polly Mertens: So she worked in like some office building with lots, I think, you know, office building with lots of um cubicles and on a computer and whatever.
• 28:47
  Polly Mertens: And she had this routine, I think it was like two o'clock, get up, and I think I forget there was a snack room in the floor, she'd go downstairs or whatever.
• 28:53
  Polly Mertens: So she'd go like, you know, binge all these foods and stuff.
• 28:56
  Polly Mertens: And what we started when we unpacked it is she was isolated and lonely.
• 29:02
  Polly Mertens: She wasn't so hungry, she was isolated and lonely.
• 29:04
  Polly Mertens: So I was like, well, why don't you get up and go talk to somebody in a neighboring cubicle?
• 29:07
  Polly Mertens: Like instead of like going down whatever to the snack room.
• 29:10
  Polly Mertens: Totally transformed.
• 29:12
  Polly Mertens: Totally, she was just she was lonely and isolated, right?
• 29:15
  Polly Mertens: And so looking at the the source of that addiction for her was isolation, loneliness, not connecting, if you will.
• 29:23
  Polly Mertens: And so just, you know, if you've got a behavior, a pattern, a routine that you're in that you know isn't serving you, look at what what's the pain that you're maybe avoiding.
• 29:33
  Polly Mertens: And it may not feel like a pain, like you know, like a thorn in your side.
• 29:36
  Polly Mertens: It could be just sort of a numbing or a like a dull or uh, you know, like a pushes you away, you know, or just sort of like a sinking feeling.
• 29:45
  Polly Mertens: So whatever that pain is.
• 29:47
  Polly Mertens: Um yeah, just looking at that, pointing to it.
• 29:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, a lot of people will just say, oh, it's because I'm anxious or I'm depressed or I'm this.
• 29:54
  Samantha Pruitt: They're just you know, it might be like it's like saying there's one color of white paint, you know.
• 30:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And behind the white painting, we're just gonna paint it all white.
• 30:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Oh, what color white?
• 30:10
  Samantha Pruitt: We got to go a few more layers into that.
• 30:14
  Samantha Pruitt: And that can be uncomfortable.
• 30:16
  Samantha Pruitt: And sometimes you need to do that with somebody, okay, in a non-judgmental way, whether it be a friend or a family member or a coach or whatever.
• 30:25
  Samantha Pruitt: A lot of times the friends and family members can be part of the problem.
• 30:28
  Samantha Pruitt: So have awareness there, right?
• 30:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, but find some support around that to unpack that if you're not able to get to the root.
• 30:37
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, and the certain you can recognize it.
• 30:39
  Polly Mertens: You know, I want to just, you know, this is a confessional today, so here we go again.
• 30:42
  Polly Mertens: So here we go.
• 30:44
  Polly Mertens: I was telling you that, like last month.
• 30:46
  Polly Mertens: So I have this little stash of chocolate in my kitchen, and um, you know, I have maybe a little uh square or two after lunch or at dinner or something like that.
• 30:56
  Polly Mertens: And then I noticed like I wasn't even like feeling like it, but it was like, oh, lunch is over, up, have the chocolate, oh, lunch is over, up, have the chocolate.
• 31:03
  Polly Mertens: And I I'm too much in this world to in work to not notice a pattern of my own.
• 31:08
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh, hold up, wait a minute.
• 31:10
  Polly Mertens: I'm a I'm a hamster right now.
• 31:12
  Polly Mertens: This is this is not okay.
• 31:13
  Polly Mertens: And so I, you know, I quickly like, you know, aborted that pattern.
• 31:17
  Polly Mertens: I was like, nope, no chocolate visits for two weeks.
• 31:21
  Polly Mertens: No, none, you know, totally cleared it up.
• 31:24
  Polly Mertens: Yesterday I found myself walking in, I was like, it was like day three of chocolate again.
• 31:29
  Polly Mertens: I was like, oh hell no.
• 31:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 31:32
  Polly Mertens: So just noticing it, like, all right, there's a pattern developing here and and taking a look at it, you know.
• 31:38
  Polly Mertens: And the sooner you can examine it and sooner you can address it, right?
• 31:43
  Polly Mertens: It doesn't have to become some big glaring, you know, oh, I've gained 40 pounds.
• 31:47
  Polly Mertens: Where did this come from?
• 31:48
  Polly Mertens: Oh, geez, you know, whatever.
• 31:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 31:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Mm-hmm.
• 31:51
  Samantha Pruitt: So yeah.
• 31:52
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and we're not, you know, we're not making bad on the behavior, even though many of these behaviors are very damaging, right?
• 31:58
  Samantha Pruitt: In so many ways, shrips, or forms.
• 32:00
  Samantha Pruitt: That's not what this conversation is about.
• 32:02
  Samantha Pruitt: It's about like, do you have awareness of how your body works and how these motivations or lack of motivations to either the pleasure seeking or pain-avoiding motivations are even happening in your physical body?
• 32:15
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:16
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's get into the next one before we run out of time.
• 32:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Serotonin.
• 32:19
  Samantha Pruitt: I know that was just dopamine.
• 32:21
  Polly Mertens: Sorry, yeah, yeah.
• 32:22
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, well, two biggest drivers pain and pleasure, period.
• 32:26
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 32:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Serotonin is specifically mood.
• 32:29
  Samantha Pruitt: This is one of my people be moody, dude.
• 32:32
  Samantha Pruitt: Some people be moody.
• 32:34
  Samantha Pruitt: I love serotonin.
• 32:36
  Samantha Pruitt: Uh satiety, so hunger regulation, and then social and sleep rhythms.
• 32:42
  Samantha Pruitt: This is some real animal behavior right there, huh?
• 32:45
  Polly Mertens: Well, serotonin is like the bonding drug, like it's what drives you to want to seek and feel bonded with people, right?
• 32:51
  Polly Mertens: Remember, I was talking about that gazelle story.
• 32:53
  Polly Mertens: So she would say that that uh scientist said the dopamine is what sends the gazelles, they're all in a little herd.
• 33:00
  Polly Mertens: Dopamine says, Oh, you know what?
• 33:02
  Polly Mertens: Guess we're all on limited food.
• 33:04
  Polly Mertens: Um, sends that one gazelle out to risk its life to go get food to keep the species, you know, whatever.
• 33:10
  Polly Mertens: Um, and and serotonin says, Oh, that didn't work, get back over here.
• 33:14
  Polly Mertens: You know, so serotonin is like, we're we stay with your people.
• 33:17
  Polly Mertens: We do, what is it?
• 33:19
  Polly Mertens: We thrive better in a herd or something like that.
• 33:21
  Polly Mertens: We survive better in a herd.
• 33:22
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, it's uh it's definitely and it's social status.
• 33:26
  Polly Mertens: I don't know enough about that, but there's some element to it that's about like, you know, not one upness or something, but I have a feeling some of this influencer social media stuff, the likes on whatever, um, social, you know, serotonin's got something in that.
• 33:41
  Polly Mertens: My favorite, how I learned about serotonin, probably this is 20 years ago, was um when, especially with the addiction recovery that I, you know, was going through and things like that, is um, and we're specifically talking about natural serotonins, was um having a conversation with a friend.
• 33:57
  Polly Mertens: Like go for a hike and have a conversation with a friend, and like serotonin gets produced just by people hiking and talking to each other.
• 34:04
  Polly Mertens: It's amazing.
• 34:05
  Polly Mertens: You know, like social connection, social connection.
• 34:07
  Polly Mertens: So sorry, keep going.
• 34:08
  Samantha Pruitt: But no, no, no, you're good.
• 34:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, um, I talk about emotional fitness, but it's emotional flexibility.
• 34:14
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, when we think about mood, that's your emotional flexibility.
• 34:18
  Samantha Pruitt: What's your stress tolerance?
• 34:19
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, how do you handle when things get intense or hard or sad or you know, happy or whatever?
• 34:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, do you have the ability to be flexible and ride those waves, or does it just completely take you out of the game?
• 34:33
  Samantha Pruitt: You know, you get one phone call or one text.
• 34:35
  Samantha Pruitt: I was at work the other day in an environment with a bunch of teammates.
• 34:38
  Samantha Pruitt: There's a lot of stuff going on in the space.
• 34:40
  Samantha Pruitt: So it's, you know, there's some stuff, but this person got a personal text at work.
• 34:46
  Samantha Pruitt: A, that's very disruptive, but anyway, don't get me started.
• 34:49
  Samantha Pruitt: And it derailed their attention span and their emotional regulation for the rest of the day.
• 34:54
  Samantha Pruitt: They became basically unable to actually work because they had a text from one of their partner and whatever, and then they went into this spiral like that.
• 35:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Wow.
• 35:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Right.
• 35:06
  Samantha Pruitt: So this is this serotonin, it helps regulate those things, right?
• 35:10
  Samantha Pruitt: So we don't become so off balance so easily, so triggered.
• 35:15
  Samantha Pruitt: The trigger word, really.
• 35:17
  Samantha Pruitt: This is serotonin's helping you not get triggered by every little thing that comes into your space, you know.
• 35:24
  Polly Mertens: For sure, for sure.
• 35:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 35:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, we did talk about appetite and depress and uh digestion.
• 35:29
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's a big deal.
• 35:31
  Polly Mertens: Well, yeah, and you know, um, one of the things we talked about before we aired is about how 90 to 95 percent of serotonin is actually produced in the gut.
• 35:39
  Polly Mertens: So it's part of your digestion.
• 35:42
  Polly Mertens: So if you have dysbiosis and dysregulation in your gut, guess what?
• 35:46
  Polly Mertens: You know.
• 35:46
  Polly Mertens: Um, but it doesn't, you know, and then it's like, oh, does it get into the blood and then go up to the brain?
• 35:50
  Polly Mertens: But it's managed totally differently.
• 35:53
  Polly Mertens: So it's not like um, you know, I I uh was it Kabor Mate who was saying, oh, he was tying um taking SSRIs, which is like a serotonin and you know, like helps you yeah, if you're low on serotonin or something like that, it helps you.
• 36:08
  Polly Mertens: And he's like, there's zero evidence that taking serotonin will cure depression and stuff like that.
• 36:14
  Polly Mertens: So it's not just like, oh, get more serotonin in the body and and that cures things.
• 36:18
  Polly Mertens: It's like no, there's there's more going on.
• 36:21
  Polly Mertens: But um, but I think serotonin is um, I just I you know, it's I loved that that gal's thing is like it's meant to bond.
• 36:30
  Polly Mertens: It's like the bonding hormone, it's what keeps us together, keeps community.
• 36:34
  Polly Mertens: It's I think what drives us when we feel lonely and isolated to seek out people like you going to the coffee shops and micro moments and stuff like that.
• 36:41
  Polly Mertens: I almost think that partly dopamine, but I think also serotonin is on the back end of that.
• 36:46
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, if dopamine is the get up and go.
• 36:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, get up and go get in your car and get in that heat.
• 36:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Serotonin is the everything's okay.
• 36:56
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, everything's gonna be okay.
• 36:58
  Samantha Pruitt: Chill the F out, people, settle it down, okay?
• 37:03
  Samantha Pruitt: Keep it real.
• 37:04
  Samantha Pruitt: It's the keep it real hormone.
• 37:07
  Polly Mertens: I just made that shit up.
• 37:08
  Polly Mertens: I like that.
• 37:09
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, okay.
• 37:10
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, we'll take it.
• 37:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, how do you get it?
• 37:13
  Samantha Pruitt: Healthy gut again, healthy gut always.
• 37:16
  Samantha Pruitt: And why is the gut so important?
• 37:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's just continue beating the beating this drum here.
• 37:23
  Polly Mertens: Well, it's got your favorites favorite nerve in it, so tell them about that, right?
• 37:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, the vagus nerve is the communicating.
• 37:29
  Samantha Pruitt: It's I call it the mothership, right?
• 37:31
  Samantha Pruitt: But like she is communicating to the entire body and every single system within the body as to what to do next.
• 37:39
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, if it stopped working, life is over.
• 37:43
  Samantha Pruitt: So just to be clear, she's pretty damn important.
• 37:46
  Samantha Pruitt: But also, um, I've talked a lot about like having digestive issues and celiacs autoimmune and yada yah.
• 37:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So a lot of my stuff, when I do have health challenges, are related to that gut.
• 37:56
  Samantha Pruitt: I had SIBO last year, right?
• 37:58
  Samantha Pruitt: So, and gut permeability, etc.
• 38:00
  Samantha Pruitt: etc.
• 38:01
  Samantha Pruitt: So these junctions do break down or they can break down environmental toxins, there's lots of reasons, uh, menopause, la la la.
• 38:09
  Samantha Pruitt: So when that happens, those hormones actually are not getting in into the right places either.
• 38:16
  Samantha Pruitt: They can become dysregulated because of your gut dysfunction.
• 38:19
  Samantha Pruitt: So if you're finding like life actually feels pretty good, and I feel like I've got it going on in these other areas, you might look at your gut if you're still having some challenges with these.
• 38:31
  Samantha Pruitt: Because it's highly probable there's something going on in your gut microbiome, or the leakiness of your gut, or the quality of your nutrition and your digestion and your pooping and all these things that are not functioning.
• 38:43
  Samantha Pruitt: Absolutely.
• 38:44
  Polly Mertens: I couldn't have said look at your poop, people actually have a test coming to do it.
• 38:49
  Polly Mertens: So I yeah.
• 38:50
  Polly Mertens: Oh, look at you testing your poop.
• 38:52
  Polly Mertens: How fun is that?
• 38:52
  Polly Mertens: Just like that, I know.
• 38:54
  Polly Mertens: She was like, Do you want a colonoscopy or poop kit in the mail?
• 38:56
  Polly Mertens: I was like, Let's go for the poop kit in the mail.
• 39:00
  Samantha Pruitt: Sounds like a good time.
• 39:01
  Samantha Pruitt: Sign me up.
• 39:03
  Polly Mertens: Okay.
• 39:03
  Polly Mertens: No dopamine triggered.
• 39:05
  Polly Mertens: None.
• 39:07
  Samantha Pruitt: Nope, none.
• 39:08
  Samantha Pruitt: I got zero over here.
• 39:10
  Samantha Pruitt: Light exposure again.
• 39:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Circadium rhythms in particular are tied to serotonin production and regulation.
• 39:17
  Polly Mertens: Well, and I think light therapy you want to say, like um, like seasonal lack of light, you know, like serotonin needs, like, you know, uh, it reminds me um when I had chickens, so I had chickens for quite a few years.
• 39:30
  Polly Mertens: I love them so much.
• 39:31
  Polly Mertens: Um, backyard chickens is great, I highly recommend it.
• 39:33
  Polly Mertens: Um, one of the things that I found I learned is chickens produce eggs when there's more daylight, right?
• 39:38
  Polly Mertens: So like they need sunlight to make an egg, you know.
• 39:41
  Polly Mertens: And I'm like, people need sunlight to make serotonin, you know, it's kind of like that's what your body, you know, that helps, you know.
• 39:48
  Polly Mertens: So if you're in dark climates and stuff, it's no wonder, you know, you have like a small amount of hours per the day, get out in it, you know, so you can get that.
• 39:58
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you're asleep, if you're not getting deep sleep because your circadian rhythm is off, because of all of these reasons or other reasons, like you decide to stay up and be on the internet or whatever bullshit you think you're doing at night.
• 40:08
  Samantha Pruitt: Like you are just setting yourself up for hormone chaos.
• 40:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, people, hormone chaos by not sleeping.
• 40:16
  Samantha Pruitt: And I feel really bad for people that have night jobs and all those things.
• 40:19
  Samantha Pruitt: I get it, some people don't have a choice, but man, that's a bummer.
• 40:22
  Samantha Pruitt: So dumb.
• 40:24
  Polly Mertens: How the body regulates during that.
• 40:26
  Samantha Pruitt: I yeah, well, that's a whole nother lot of compensating going on.
• 40:29
  Samantha Pruitt: Um, people and relationships, we did talk about that in human connection, but let's double-click on pets and animals, which is your wheelhouse.
• 40:38
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, well, yeah.
• 40:39
  Samantha Pruitt: I just mentioned, you know, I have a little bird thing going on right now with these three nests, all these doves are hatching around my house, and I'm having a good time watching them.
• 40:47
  Samantha Pruitt: But I don't have animals because I have uh allergies to animals, but you tell the story cats, dude.
• 40:53
  Polly Mertens: I think your story of of yesterday watching your bird was like and what you chose for your nightly beverage.
• 40:59
  Polly Mertens: I think that story is a perfect arc for like the journey of, you know, share that story, wouldn't you?
• 41:06
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, I mean, I have quite a bit of challenging things going on in the external world right now, which sort of been the MO for the last year and a half.
• 41:16
  Samantha Pruitt: But anyway, so um coming from a stressful work environment on a project I'm on where there's a lot of chaos, and then home, we've got some changes in the home environment.
• 41:24
  Samantha Pruitt: So I wanted to come home and just chill the hell out, right?
• 41:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Like get to my home space and just dial down the energy.
• 41:33
  Samantha Pruitt: And but because there's a lot going on in the home space, I was like, I'm I feel like I need to have a cocktail and sit on the patio.
• 41:39
  Samantha Pruitt: It was one of those, like, this is the groove of that dopamine, right?
• 41:44
  Samantha Pruitt: Let's just have a cocktail on the patio.
• 41:45
  Samantha Pruitt: Instead, I chose to get myself a non-alcoholic uh dragon fruit drink, which was lovely, and then sit on the patio and watch the birds because I have these little birds and nests around my different patios, three nests currently, and they're all right now in hatch mode, in sitting mode, in hatch mode, and then there's one's been born already.
• 42:07
  Samantha Pruitt: And it's just so fun and calming to the nervous system, and just so lovely and pleasurable.
• 42:14
  Samantha Pruitt: I mean, I was making all kinds of yummy hormones just sitting there, sipping on this little dragon fruit, non-alcoholic mocktail thingy do-dah, and watching the birds.
• 42:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:27
  Samantha Pruitt: It was definitely a zen moment.
• 42:29
  Polly Mertens: Well, I think that one of the things they talk about is um nature and awe help us, right?
• 42:34
  Polly Mertens: And I think nature can produce awe.
• 42:36
  Polly Mertens: I'm not sure computers can produce awe, some can, but whatever.
• 42:39
  Polly Mertens: But like being in nature and the awe, because what you were looking at is a little baby bird, like beep, beep, beep, beep, you know, like that kind of moment, right?
• 42:47
  Polly Mertens: And that's just like aw, right?
• 42:49
  Polly Mertens: So that sends a signal, like we bond with that, right?
• 42:53
  Polly Mertens: Like, like it's it, like that baby's experience, life, whatever, the story you're telling yourself about that moment, you know, gets your system out of the dysregulation that you just, you know, you, you know, the story that was going on in your head is like, oh my god, I just this is whatever, you know.
• 43:09
  Polly Mertens: And like I look at it almost always as energetic, especially my my addiction.
• 43:14
  Polly Mertens: I can totally look back on my addiction.
• 43:16
  Polly Mertens: So, what would typically mine would happen is I'd have a shitty day at work, just you know, my energy would just be frazzled.
• 43:23
  Polly Mertens: It was kind of like like a scratchy record that just was playing bad music and it was like, ah, right.
• 43:29
  Polly Mertens: And I'd be like, gotta go to the grocery store and get food, and then I would just like numb out, right?
• 43:34
  Polly Mertens: And so what you're doing is, you know, getting your regulating your nervous system, your body in a different way, just by like, oh, I'll be at rest and I'll pay attention to that, create some awe in nature, right?
• 43:47
  Polly Mertens: And it's a healthy way.
• 43:49
  Polly Mertens: That's one of the things we're you know pointing to with pets is like, oh, pet and you know, so one is the dog, pet your cat, people, all yeah, petting the cat, very good for the nervous system, hearing their purring and the touching and stuff like that.
• 44:04
  Polly Mertens: It's just like oxytocin bonding.
• 44:07
  Polly Mertens: It's a whole cocktail.
• 44:08
  Polly Mertens: It's it's its own, you know.
• 44:10
  Samantha Pruitt: I took someone the other day who's really stressed and is having a hard time with some um negative behavioral patterns.
• 44:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Um A dog walk.
• 44:20
  Samantha Pruitt: It wasn't my dog, it was their dog.
• 44:21
  Samantha Pruitt: But I was like, wow, this dog is pretty like ramped up.
• 44:25
  Samantha Pruitt: Might need to walk this dog.
• 44:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 44:27
  Samantha Pruitt: Why don't we go for a walk?
• 44:29
  Samantha Pruitt: So we took the dog and we went walking.
• 44:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And of course, the dog was all you know crazy behavior at first because it had not also had its nervous system regulated.
• 44:38
  Samantha Pruitt: So I had to point that out like, hey, you're not that different from the dog, nothing personal, right?
• 44:42
  Samantha Pruitt: But like sinking, and once the dog calmed down and got happy and all that stuff, that feedback loop between the human and the dog is so powerful and so beautiful.
• 44:54
  Samantha Pruitt: And all of a sudden, the crazy mind, the rumination and stuff that was going on in this person's head was oriented, was turned off, and they were oriented towards the dog and what the dog needed, and the dog's behavior and that unconditional love coming back from an animal to a human.
• 45:08
  Samantha Pruitt: And like, dude, that shit's free.
• 45:11
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay.
• 45:12
  Samantha Pruitt: You just need to adopt a pet.
• 45:14
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 45:14
  Samantha Pruitt: And addictions are very expensive.
• 45:17
  Samantha Pruitt: And behaviors, shopping behaviors, all these things are very, very expensive, right?
• 45:21
  Samantha Pruitt: But for free, you can do these other things.
• 45:24
  Samantha Pruitt: And I know people think maybe we're being crazy, but we're not.
• 45:27
  Samantha Pruitt: This is real shit.
• 45:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, this is how it works.
• 45:30
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 45:31
  Polly Mertens: Well, you know, there's a reason they call them emotional support animals.
• 45:34
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 45:35
  Polly Mertens: I mean, they're there, or maybe that's not, I think that's what they call them emotional support animals.
• 45:39
  Polly Mertens: But it's like it's a real thing, you know.
• 45:41
  Polly Mertens: And there's, you know, people would say, Well, there's no evidence and this and that's scientifically.
• 45:46
  Polly Mertens: Well, sorry, you just need to see how people are around their animals, and you're just not paying attention.
• 45:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, now there's plenty of evidence because the brain has been studied.
• 45:55
  Samantha Pruitt: Ugh, it's just the coolest shit is going on right now with science and the brain.
• 46:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And especially around things like negative behavior loops or addictions and things like that, because it's rampant, running rampant.
• 46:09
  Samantha Pruitt: And also, we just have a physical and mental health crisis globally, not just in the United States post-pandemic, right?
• 46:15
  Samantha Pruitt: So there's all this new research coming out trying to unravel the shit can of mess that we created with that.
• 46:21
  Samantha Pruitt: But don't get me started on that.
• 46:23
  Samantha Pruitt: Okay, and then nature, last one is nature, nature.
• 46:26
  Samantha Pruitt: And a lot of that is because of that um sensory regulation.
• 46:31
  Samantha Pruitt: So you're going out into nature, and like I was this morning talking about the trail run, like I was like, rocks and trees, and I felt the breeze on my body.
• 46:41
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, you know, it was hot as hell, and I felt this really subtle breeze, and I was like, ah, and sometimes I will literally just go outside and stand to like and close my eyes to like feel the breeze, to breathe the air, to understand that I'm part of it all, right?
• 46:56
  Samantha Pruitt: So that's a very like recalibrating, is what I call it, or grounding, some people call it grounding, um, energetic thing to do.
• 47:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Leave the cubicle, go to the outside, find a piece of grass, find a piece of nature, uh, whatever you can do here, people.
• 47:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And if you can't be in a park or something like that, you can close your eyes and you can visualize that and breathe in the fresh air and feel the sun on your skin and still have that experience.
• 47:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Your body will respond to that.
• 47:26
  Samantha Pruitt: It's remarkable.
• 47:28
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, there's all kinds of science on this.
• 47:31
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, uh hundred percent, hundred percent.
• 47:33
  Polly Mertens: Yeah, I I the only thing I would just say is, you know, um, one of my favorite things.
• 47:38
  Polly Mertens: So we talked about the vagus nerve, and one of the my favorite things that I ever learned about the vagus nerve is one of the fastest ways to switch from the fight, fight or flight into rest and digest is like a deep breath, like a sigh, like, ah, and I think about when people like when I put on my shoes and I go out for a walk, like I think I naturally sigh when I get on, like I take the first step off my porch.
• 48:01
  Polly Mertens: I'm like, ah, I'm going for a walk, you know, and it's all of those things are putting us into that parasympathetic rest and digest mode versus whatever we're working on and you know, whatever's going on in our life.
• 48:13
  Polly Mertens: So it's a way to rebalance, you know, there's times when you have to warrior up and you know, you gotta get after it.
• 48:19
  Polly Mertens: And life is very warrioring these days.
• 48:22
  Polly Mertens: And you need that wizard shift into the rest and digest where it's like, you know what, everything's gonna be okay, right?
• 48:29
  Polly Mertens: Everything's gonna be okay.
• 48:31
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, I I think uh, you know, one of the things that I've seen too, um I forget how they describe it, but um vantages and vistas, you know, like when you have a view, there's something in the way that the brain takes in a view.
• 48:46
  Polly Mertens: It's like a soft fascination.
• 48:48
  Polly Mertens: Um, it's very chalaxing.
• 48:51
  Polly Mertens: I mean, it just calms the body down, right?
• 48:54
  Polly Mertens: So well, this is so interesting.
• 48:56
  Polly Mertens: You probably know the like Miss Wikipedia over here.
• 48:58
  Polly Mertens: Yeah.
• 48:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Well, just using a like human example of this.
• 49:02
  Samantha Pruitt: I recently was at REI talking to a guy who just had gotten off the Appalachian Trail, and I'm getting ready to do the John Muir trail.
• 49:10
  Samantha Pruitt: So, of course, we were like obsessed talking about all the things, right?
• 49:12
  Samantha Pruitt: We just find each other.
• 49:14
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was like, Wow, that's freaking awesome! You know, and we have all these people from the PCT coming into the store right now because the PCT runs right through where I live.
• 49:26
  Samantha Pruitt: So he was, I said, How was it?
• 49:28
  Samantha Pruitt: And he said, Actually, I'm really depressed.
• 49:32
  Samantha Pruitt: And I was like, What do you mean?
• 49:35
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, he just finished this epic five-month journey, you know, and he's like, I've never been so depressed, I will never do anything like that again.
• 49:43
  Samantha Pruitt: I was like, What?
• 49:44
  Samantha Pruitt: And of course, I'm coach, I'm like, okay, I need to have we got to download this.
• 49:48
  Samantha Pruitt: Get up in there, we gotta get up in there.
• 49:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, we gotta sort this out.
• 49:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Like, what's going on?
• 49:52
  Samantha Pruitt: So, anyway, we had long conversation, and of course, at the end, he's ready to do the PCT now.
• 49:56
  Samantha Pruitt: But in the middle of all that conversation was um, and what I shared with him, so he felt what was very depressing is it was cold and wet.
• 50:05
  Samantha Pruitt: Of course, that is the Appalachian Trail.
• 50:07
  Samantha Pruitt: It's cold and wet.
• 50:08
  Polly Mertens: And he did it.
• 50:08
  Polly Mertens: What months?
• 50:09
  Polly Mertens: Hello, like what are you doing it the last five minutes?
• 50:12
  Samantha Pruitt: But it's always pretty yeah, dark, it's dark and rooted and whatever.
• 50:15
  Samantha Pruitt: But the darkness and the tree canopy, and there's hardly any views.
• 50:20
  Samantha Pruitt: You hike for days to get to one view if the weather's good.
• 50:24
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and I was like, no, bro, no, no, that's what I'm doing.
• 50:28
  Samantha Pruitt: The John Muir, the whole thing literally is like every time you walk around a corner, you literally are like 10 more lakes, an epic thing.
• 50:37
  Samantha Pruitt: Like the views are off the hook.
• 50:41
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't know if I'll be able to come back.
• 50:44
  Samantha Pruitt: I might literally just drop into the abyss out there, and it's also, and that's why I'm drawn to do that trail.
• 50:51
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah, and then also it's one of the reasons I where I live, right?
• 50:54
  Samantha Pruitt: I'm surrounded by desert mountains that are very extreme and magnificent, and the sky in the desert is remarkable.
• 51:00
  Samantha Pruitt: And like the views, and I always have a view from anywhere that I'm at, driving my car, in my house, out the window, on the trail, whatever, like everywhere I go, I'm surrounded by views.
• 51:12
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 51:13
  Samantha Pruitt: And there is no doubt, like it literally, the amount of nervous system regulation I am gifted by the fact that I have views, or that people can go to the ocean or whatever they want to do.
• 51:26
  Samantha Pruitt: Um that is again free, absolutely gold in your pocket for you.
• 51:32
  Samantha Pruitt: If you pay attention to like a well, you do have to look up.
• 51:36
  Polly Mertens: Well, allow it to, you know, resound and rejoice and like be taken the awe, you know.
• 51:42
  Polly Mertens: I you know, I remember growing up in the south, and the first time I saw a hill was when I was like 14 years old.
• 51:49
  Polly Mertens: Like I'd never seen a hill.
• 51:50
  Polly Mertens: It was like, you know, you're just always down here at street level and stuff like that.
• 51:54
  Polly Mertens: So your mountains in the beautiful Coachella Valley Desert are then they're everywhere.
• 51:59
  Polly Mertens: And you're just like, oh, that's a fucking oh my god, that's amazing.
• 52:02
  Polly Mertens: Oh my god, where is that?
• 52:03
  Polly Mertens: I want to go hike that, you know, it's just nonstop around where you live.
• 52:06
  Polly Mertens: So yeah, yeah.
• 52:07
  Polly Mertens: And you could take it in with a park or trees or you know, whatever.
• 52:10
  Polly Mertens: But views are where it's at, dude.
• 52:13
  Polly Mertens: Where it's at.
• 52:15
  Samantha Pruitt: If you want to get high, get high.
• 52:18
  Samantha Pruitt: Just saying.
• 52:19
  Samantha Pruitt: Just you know, I'm get up a mountain.
• 52:22
  Samantha Pruitt: Damn bumper sticker for sure.
• 52:24
  Samantha Pruitt: I don't care how big the mountain or the hill is, get up it.
• 52:27
  Samantha Pruitt: All right, we better wrap this party up.
• 52:31
  Polly Mertens: So what's our what's our so is there anything we want to say for about perimenopause or menopause?
• 52:36
  Polly Mertens: Or did you say it?
• 52:37
  Polly Mertens: I know you talked about like the gut and stuff like that.
• 52:39
  Samantha Pruitt: So you mean how much it sucks?
• 52:40
  Samantha Pruitt: What'd you say?
• 52:40
  Samantha Pruitt: Sorry.
• 52:43
  Polly Mertens: We're just talking menobelly with something.
• 52:45
  Samantha Pruitt: No, darling, that's another show altogether, but um, yeah, that's just different hormones that are yeah, yeah, but it's all part of the you know, we're we're a biochemical mix of just it's it's gonna be, yeah.
• 53:01
  Polly Mertens: Like you know, if you have dips.
• 53:02
  Polly Mertens: And so I'm going in because you're getting testosterone, and I'm gonna go check out the testosterone world to see, you know, because I'm like, you know, I got these physical symptoms, physics, you know, but yeah, big guns, big guns.
• 53:14
  Polly Mertens: So all right, what's your one takeaway?
• 53:17
  Polly Mertens: What do you want?
• 53:18
  Samantha Pruitt: What do you want people to for me to land the plane?
• 53:21
  Samantha Pruitt: It's like happiness is not a drug to be pursuing, it's not a drug to be taking or pursuing, right?
• 53:30
  Samantha Pruitt: Like feeling joy in your life requires action, okay, and the right choices that drive the actions.
• 53:40
  Samantha Pruitt: So through right choices that drive the actions, you will find joy, and it's foundational stuff.
• 53:47
  Samantha Pruitt: That is it.
• 53:50
  Samantha Pruitt: Call me if you need the details.
• 53:52
  Samantha Pruitt: That is the cliff notes of it.
• 53:54
  Polly Mertens: Joy is a verb, not an out of now.
• 53:56
  Polly Mertens: It's an action verb, right?
• 53:59
  Samantha Pruitt: Yeah.
• 54:00
  Polly Mertens: Um, I would say we didn't go into it too much.
• 54:02
  Polly Mertens: I thought earlier we we might, but touching upon what you're saying, I guess the bridge I'll make is like, you know, pursuing the things, the addictive things that are triggering these, you know, innate chemicals, right, is pleasure like junk food, right?
• 54:18
  Polly Mertens: Like it's not nourishing you.
• 54:20
  Polly Mertens: So seek true nourishment, and then you will have, I think, well-being, right?
• 54:26
  Polly Mertens: So like nervous system regulation, well-being, being at a state of peace comes from real nourishment of you know, a body in motion, well-rested, well fed, in community, things like that, whatever that looks like.
• 54:40
  Polly Mertens: So seek that long-term nourishment, not the short-term fast food um hits and and you know, kicks that you get off of you know, these short-lived hamster wheel experiences.
• 54:51
  Polly Mertens: So that's my takeaway.
• 54:52
  Polly Mertens: So, all right, well, let's wrap this up.
• 54:54
  Polly Mertens: What do you want to say before we I love it, I like it.
• 55:00
  Samantha Pruitt: How your life feels, people, is more important than how it looks.
• 55:04
  Samantha Pruitt: Yes, and every day is your opportunity to find your awesome.
• 55:07
  Samantha Pruitt: See you next week.