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Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist at Stanford and host of the Huberman Lab Podcast.

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Well, I wake up now, I get my sunlight, I hydrate, I use

I've started to practice a prayer in the last year, which is new-ish for me, which is, we could talk about

And then I have a meditation that I do that actually is where I think through what the different roles that I play.

Like we are, we are like biologically animals, right?

Human, you know, I'm a man, I'm a scientist, I'm a teacher, I'm a friend, I'm a brother, I'm a son.

I have this list and I think about the different roles that I have and the roles that

I still want in my life going forward that I

It just takes me, it's sort of an inventory of where I've been, where I'm at and where I'm going as they say.

And I don't know why I do it, but I started doing it this last year, I think because it helps me understand just how many different contexts I have to exist in and remind myself that there's still more that I haven't done that I'm excited about.

So within each of those contexts, there's like things that you want to kind of accomplish to define that.

I have an older sister and I love her tremendously.

And I think I want to be the best brother I can be to her, which means maybe a call, maybe just, you know,

we do an annual trip together for our birthdays, our birthdays are close together.

We always go to New York for our birthdays if we've gone for the last 3, 4 years.

Like really like reminding myself of that role, not because I'll forget, but because I have all these other roles I'll get pulled into.

I say the first 1, I'm an animal, because I have to remember that I have a body that needs care, like any of us.

I need sleep, I need food, I need hydration.

I need that I'm human, that the brain of a human is marvelously complex, but also marvelously self-defeating at times.

And so I've been thinking about these things in the context of the different roles.

And I just find it brings me a certain amount of clarity that then allows me to ratchet into the day.

The prayer piece, I think I've been reluctant to talk about until now because I don't believe in pushing religion on people.

And I think that, and I'm not, It's a highly individual thing.

And I do believe that 1 can be an atheist and still pray

But for me, it really came about through understanding that there are certain

aspects of myself that I just couldn't resolve on my own.

And no matter how much therapy, no matter how much, and I haven't done a lot of it, but no matter how much plant medicine or other forms of medicine or exercise or podcasting or science or friendship or any of that, I was just not going to resolve.

And so I started this because someone close to me said, a male friend said, you know, prayer is powerful.

And he said, I don't know how, but if you can get, it can allow you to get outside yourself, let you give up control and at the same time take control.

I don't even like saying take control, but the whole notion is that, again, forgive me, but there's no other way to say it.

The whole notion is that, you know, like God works through us, whatever God is to you, he, him, her, whatever, life force, nature, whatever it is to you, right?

And so I do a prayer, I'll just describe it, where I ask, I make an ask to help remove my defects, my character defects.

I pray to God to help remove my character defects so that I can show up better in all the roles of my life and do good work, which for me is learning and teaching, learning and teaching.

Well, I'm acknowledging that there is something that bigger than me, bigger than nature, as I understand it, that I cannot understand or control, nor do I want to, and I'm just giving over to that.

I certainly know, there's the head of our neurosciences at Stanford until recently.

Bill Newsom has talked about his religious life.

For me, It's really a way of getting outside myself and then understanding how I fit into this bigger picture.

And the character defects part is real, right?

I got a lot of flaws in me like anybody, and trying to acknowledge them and asking for help in removing them, not magically, but through right action, through my right action.

It's helped me be better to myself, be better at other people.

I still make mistakes, but it's becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life.

And I never thought I'd talk like this, But I think it's clear to me that if we don't believe in something, again, doesn't have to be traditional standardized religion, but if we don't believe in something bigger than ourselves, we at some level will self-destruct.

And it's powerful in a way that all the other stuff, meditation and all the tools is not because it's really operating at a much deeper and bigger level.

And, you know, yeah, I think that's all I can talk about it mostly because I'm still working out, you know, the scientists in me wants to understand how it works and I want to understand.

And the point is to just go, you know, there's, you know, for lack of a better language for it, there's higher power than me and what I can control, I'm giving up control on certain things.

And somehow that restores a sense of agency for right action, better action.

I think perhaps a part of that is just the humility that comes with acknowledging there's something bigger and more powerful than you.

It's, I mean, you go through life as a hard driving person, you know, forward center of mass.

I remember being that way since I was little.

It's like a new Legos, I'm like, oh, Legos.

I was like on the weekends, you know, learning about medieval weapons and then giving lectures about it in class when I was 5 or 6 years old.

We're learning about tropical fish and, you know, cataloging all of them at the store and then organizing it and make my, you know, my dad drive me or my mom drive me

to some fish store and then spending all my time there until they throw me out, you know, all of that.

But I also remember my entire life, I would secretly pray.

and things weren't good, but mostly when things weren't good, because it's important to pray.

For me, it's important to pray each morning regardless.

But when things weren't right, I couldn't make sense of them, I would secretly pray, but I felt kind of ashamed of that for whatever reason.

And then it was once in college, I distinctly remember, I was having a hard time with a number of things and I took a run down to Sands Beach, It was UC San Barbara.

And I remember I just, I was like, I don't know if I even have the right to do this, but I'm just praying.

I just prayed for the ability to be as brutally honest with myself and with other people as I possibly could be about a particular situation I was in at that time.

I mean, I think now it's probably safe to say I'd gone off to college because of

more frankly, more than my biological family was at a certain stage of life.

And we'd reached a point where we were diverging and it was incredibly painful.

Do I, you know, I was ready to quit and join the fire service just to support us so that we could move forward.

And it was just, but praying, just saying, I can't figure this out on my own.

It's sort of like, I can't figure this out on my own.

No number of friends could tell me, and inner wisdom couldn't tell me, and eventually it led me to the right answers.

She's happily married with a child and we're on good terms.

But I think, you know, it's a scary thing, but it's the best thing when you, I can't control all

And asking for help, I think is also the piece.

You're not asking for some magic hand to come down and take care

You're asking for the help to come through you, right?

So that your body is used to do these right works, right action.

Isn't it interesting that this secret thing that you're almost embarrassed by, that you did it as a child, is something you, it's another thing you do as you get older, is you realize like those things are a part of you and it's actually a beautiful thing.

A lot of the content of the podcast is, deep academic content And we talk about everything from eating disorders to bipolar disorder, to depression, a lot of different topics, but the tools or the protocols, as we say, right?

A lot of that stuff is just stuff I wish I had known when I was in graduate school.

If I had known to go outside every once in a

while and get some sunlight, not just stay in the lab, I might not have hit a really tough round of depression when I

And when my body would break down or I'd get sick a lot, I don't get sick much anymore.

Occasionally about once every 18 months to 2 years, I

But, you know, I used to break my foot skateboarding all the time.

I couldn't understand what's wrong with my body.

Now I developed more slowly, I had a long arc of puberty.

I was still developing, but how to get your body stronger, how to build endurance.

Like no 1 told me, the information wasn't there.

So a lot of what I put out there is the information that I wish I had, because once I had it, I was like, wow, like A, this stuff really works.

You know, sometimes certain protocols are a combination of, you know, animal, human and animal and human studies, sometimes clinical trials, sometimes there's some mechanistic conjecture for some, not all, I always make clear which, but in the end, like figuring out how things work so that we can be happier, healthier, more productive, suffer less, like reduce the suffering of the world.

And I think that, well, I'll just say thank you and for asking about the prayer piece.

Again, I'm not pushing or even encouraging it on anyone.

I've just found it to be tremendously useful for me.


Speaker 0: I have a morning meditation that I do. Well, I wake up now, I get my sunlight, I hydrate, I use

Speaker 1: the bathroom, I do all the things that I

Speaker 0: talk about. I've started to practice a prayer in the last year, which is new-ish for me, which is, we could talk about

Speaker 2: it in the morning. In the morning? Yeah. Can you talk about it

Speaker 1: a little bit? Sure, yeah. And then I have a meditation that I do that actually is where I think through what the different roles that I play.

Speaker 0: So I like, I start very basic. I say, okay, I'm an animal. Like we are, we are like biologically animals, right? Human, you know, I'm a man, I'm a scientist, I'm a teacher, I'm a friend, I'm a brother, I'm a son. You know, I go through this,

Speaker 1: I have this list and I think about the different roles that I have and the roles that

Speaker 0: I still want in my life going forward that I

Speaker 1: haven't yet fulfilled. It just takes me, it's sort of an inventory of where I've been, where I'm at and where I'm going as they say.

Speaker 0: And I don't know why I do it, but I started doing it this last year, I think because it helps me understand just how many different contexts I have to exist in and remind myself that there's still more that I haven't done that I'm excited about.

Speaker 2: So within each of those contexts, there's like things that you want to kind of accomplish to define that.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm ambitious. So I think, you know, I'm a brother.

Speaker 0: I have an older sister and I love her tremendously. And I think I want to be the best brother I can be to her, which means maybe a call, maybe just, you know,

Speaker 1: we do an annual trip together for our birthdays, our birthdays are close together. We always go to New York for our birthdays if we've gone for the last 3, 4 years. Like really like reminding myself of that role, not because I'll forget, but because I have all these other roles I'll get pulled into. I say the first 1, I'm an animal, because I have to remember that I have a body that needs care, like any of us. I need sleep, I need food, I need hydration.

I need that I'm human, that the brain of a human is marvelously complex, but also marvelously self-defeating at times. And so I've been thinking about these things in the context of the different roles. And the whole thing takes about 4

Speaker 0: or 5 minutes. And I just find it brings me a certain amount of clarity that then allows me to ratchet into the day. The prayer piece, I think I've been reluctant to talk about until now because I don't believe in pushing religion on people. And I think that, and I'm not, It's a highly individual thing. And I do believe that 1 can be an atheist and still pray

Speaker 1: or agnostic and still pray. But for me, it really came about through understanding that there are certain

Speaker 0: aspects of myself that I just couldn't resolve on my own. And no matter how much therapy, no matter how much, and I haven't done a lot of it, but no matter how much plant medicine or other forms of medicine or exercise or podcasting or science or friendship or any of that, I was just not going to resolve. And so I started this because someone close to me said, a male friend said, you know, prayer is powerful. And I said, well, how? And he said, I don't know how, but if you can get, it can allow you to get outside yourself, let you give up control and at the same time take control.

I don't even like saying take control, but the whole notion is that, again, forgive me, but there's no other way to say it. The whole notion is that, you know, like God works through us, whatever God is to you, he, him, her, whatever, life force, nature, whatever it is to you, right? That it works through us. And so I do a prayer, I'll just describe it, where I ask, I make an ask to help remove my defects, my character defects. I pray to God to help remove my character defects so that I can show up better in all the roles of my life and do good work, which for me is learning and teaching, learning and teaching.

And so you might say, well, how

Speaker 1: is that different than a meditation? Well, I'm acknowledging that there is something that bigger than me, bigger than nature, as I understand it, that I cannot understand or control, nor do I want to, and I'm just giving over to that. And Does that make me less of

Speaker 0: a scientist? I sure as hell hope not. I certainly know, there's the head of our neurosciences at Stanford until recently. You should talk to

Speaker 1: him directly about it. Bill Newsom has talked about his religious life. For me, It's really a way of getting outside myself and then understanding how I fit into this bigger picture. And the character defects part is real, right? I'm a human, I have defects like,

Speaker 0: I got a lot of flaws in me like anybody, and trying to acknowledge them and asking for help in removing them, not magically, but through right action, through my right action. So I do that every morning. And I have to say that it's helped. It's helped a lot. It's helped me be better to myself, be better at other people.

I still make mistakes, but it's becoming a bigger and bigger part of my life. And I never thought I'd talk like this, But I think it's clear to me that if we don't believe in something, again, doesn't have to be traditional standardized religion, but if we don't believe in something bigger than ourselves, we at some level will self-destruct. I really think so. And it's powerful in a way that all the other stuff, meditation and all the tools is not because it's really operating at a much deeper and bigger level. And, you know, yeah, I think that's all I can talk about it mostly because I'm still working out, you know, the scientists in me wants to understand how it works and I want to understand.

And the point is to just go, you know, there's, you know, for lack of a better language for it, there's higher power than me and what I can control, I'm giving up control on certain things. And somehow that restores a sense of agency for right action, better action.

Speaker 2: I think perhaps a part of that is just the humility that comes with acknowledging there's something bigger and more powerful than you.

Speaker 0: And you can't control everything.

Speaker 1: It's, I mean, you go through life as a hard driving person, you know, forward center of mass. I remember being that way since I was little. It's like a new Legos, I'm like, oh, Legos. I was like on the weekends, you know, learning about medieval weapons and then giving lectures about it in class when I was 5 or 6 years old. We're learning about tropical fish and, you know, cataloging all of them at the store and then organizing it and make my, you know, my dad drive me or my mom drive me

Speaker 0: to some fish store and then spending all my time there until they throw me out, you know, all of that. But I also remember my entire life, I would secretly pray. When things were good

Speaker 1: and things weren't good, but mostly when things weren't good, because it's important to pray.

Speaker 0: For me, it's important to pray each morning regardless. But when things weren't right, I couldn't make sense of them, I would secretly pray, but I felt kind of ashamed of that for whatever reason. And then it was once in college, I distinctly remember, I was having a hard time with a number of things and I took a run down to Sands Beach, It was UC San Barbara. And I remember I just, I was like, I don't know if I even have the right to do this, but I'm just praying. I just prayed for the ability to be as brutally honest with myself and with other people as I possibly could be about a particular situation I was in at that time.

I mean, I think now it's probably safe to say I'd gone off to college because of

Speaker 1: a high school girlfriend. We had, essentially she was my family,

Speaker 0: more frankly, more than my biological family was at a certain stage of life. And we'd reached a point where we were diverging and it was incredibly painful. It was like losing everything I had. And it's like, what do I do? How do I manage this?

Do I, you know, I was ready to quit and join the fire service just to support us so that we could move forward.

Speaker 1: And it was just, but praying, just saying, I can't figure this out on my own. It's sort of like, I can't figure this out on my own. And how frustrating that is. No number of friends could tell me, and inner wisdom couldn't tell me, and eventually it led me to the right answers. And she and I are friendly friends to

Speaker 0: this day. She's happily married with a child and we're on good terms. But I think, you know, it's a scary thing, but it's the best thing when you, I can't control all

Speaker 1: of this. And asking for help, I think is also the piece. You're not asking for some magic hand to come down and take care

Speaker 0: of it. You're asking for the help to come through you, right? So that your body is used to do these right works, right action.

Speaker 2: Isn't it interesting that this secret thing that you're almost embarrassed by, that you did it as a child, is something you, it's another thing you do as you get older, is you realize like those things are a part of you and it's actually a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: A lot of the content of the podcast is, deep academic content And we talk about everything from eating disorders to bipolar disorder, to depression, a lot of different topics, but the tools or the protocols, as we say, right? The sunlight viewing and all the rest. A lot of that stuff is just stuff I wish I had known when I was in graduate school. If I had known to go outside every once in a

Speaker 0: while and get some sunlight, not just stay in the lab, I might not have hit a really tough round of depression when I

Speaker 1: was a postdoc and working twice as hard. And when my body would break down or I'd get sick a lot, I don't get sick much anymore. Occasionally about once every 18 months to 2 years, I

Speaker 0: get a, you know, I'll get something. But, you know, I used to break my foot skateboarding all the time.

Speaker 1: I couldn't understand what's wrong with my body. I'm getting injured. I can't do what everyone else can. Now I developed more slowly, I had a long arc of puberty.

Speaker 0: But I, so that was part of it,

Speaker 1: I was still developing, but how to get your body stronger, how to build endurance. Like no 1 told me, the information wasn't there.

Speaker 0: So a lot of what I put out there is the information that I wish I had, because once I had it, I was like, wow, like A, this stuff really works. B, it's grounded in something real. You know, sometimes certain protocols are a combination of, you know, animal, human and animal and human studies, sometimes clinical trials, sometimes there's some mechanistic conjecture for some, not all, I always make clear which, but in the end, like figuring out how things work so that we can be happier, healthier, more productive, suffer less, like reduce the suffering of the world. And I think that, well, I'll just say thank you and for asking about the prayer piece. Again, I'm not pushing or even encouraging it on anyone.

I've just found it to be tremendously useful for me.

Speaker 2: You

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Andrew Huberman on prayer and faith in God | Lex Fridman Podcast Clips