Due Quach: Brain Hacking 3.0

Aurora: Hi, Due. We’re so excited to have you on the show with us. 

Due: Hi. I am excited to be here too. 

Kelly: Would you like to introduce yourself. Give us your pronouns?

Due: Sure. My favorite pronoun is actually “we.” I know, most people prefer to call me she her. I’m actually not that attached to my gender.

Kelly: I Like we. We haven’t heard that yet.

Aurora: Yeah, that’s beautiful. I have a “we” tee shirt. So today we’re here with the amazing Due and what we’d love for you to share with us is a little bit first, your journey of what is it that you do.

Due: Sure. Well, I am a social entrepreneur. My primary venture is called Calm Clarity. It’s a social enterprise that uses neuroscience and mindfulness to address complex social issues like bias, like trauma, like the lack of inclusive leadership in many of our organizations, institutions, corporations, and also the need for people to find out how to become their whole selves, especially those who have experienced trauma in particular, racialized socioeconomic trauma.

And I would say a big part of what we do is help people understand how brain functioning can impact the way they see the world in the way they show up in the world. 

Aurora: And maybe you can share with us how you came to doing what you do.

Due: I started life as a refugee from Vietnam, as a baby. My parents escaped Vietnam and I barely survived that journey. I nearly died over and over. And when we settled in the U.S., we were very lucky and grateful to be resettled in the US. But we were settled into a very violent area, Philadelphia, the Logan section. And it wasn’t long before my parents started to wonder, did we just trade one war zone for another? And you had to be street smart to avoid being robbed. Friends, other refugees were shot, were hospitalized. One of my uncles was stabbed. It wasn’t an easy way of growing up to not feel safe in the world. And there was a lot of PTSD in the family. So there was a lot of abuse and dysfunction and toxic interactions. And so, you know, it wasn’t that safe inside the house either. Right. And I remember, as a young girl, my parents messaging to me was always, since you’re a girl, there’s a lot of things you’re not supposed to do or you can’t do or you shouldn’t even expect to do. Because we got to keep you safe. And they didn’t expect me to excel at school. They’d expect me to go to college and didn’t expect me to leave home until after I got married. Right. And that was a pretty harsh way of treating a girl. You know, they’re super strict. There were double standards on what I could do versus what my brother could do. And it was really unfair, you know, because no matter how much I excelled academically, my mom or might say, like, it doesn’t matter because you’re just going to get married and be part of your husband’s family anyway. And I was like, what? What do you mean it doesn’t matter? I’m not in China. I’m not in Vietnam. Like, what are you talking about? Right. But she couldn’t ever get herself out of her past, her upbringing.

Aurora: Her programing.

Due: Yeah. And she expected that I would follow the same programing in a completely different culture and environment was was very shocking. And so it was really up to me to carve out my own path and advocate for myself and make sure that whatever my parents wanted me to do wasn’t going to harm my future or my interests. And I couldn’t really trust them to do what was best for me. I realized early on it was really up to me to question what they were pressuring me to do and make sure that it was actually good for me.

Aurora: Where did that come from and how old were you when you started to discern?

Due: Maybe five, six, seven. The signs started to show that there were double standards and the things they were telling me about who I could be were very limiting, right. I think my dad used to say, like, you know, if you’re Asian in this country, they’ll never let you be successful unless you become a doctor or a pharmacist or an engineer. All the other things were just bad decisions. They weren’t really options because Asians would experience racism and discrimination in business and anything that was subjective. Recently I saw a comedian say you know, if you’re from an immigrant family, you have four options for your career, doctor, lawyer, engineer or disgrace to the family. And obviously, I ended up choosing disgrace to the family.

Kelly: Option D.

Due: But going back to the the the neuroscience obsession, I think when, you know, I experienced all these traumas, obviously there were mental health repercussions that I wasn’t aware of. And I remember feeling horrible and depressed and miserable. You know, in my childhood, you know, I now look at that type of brain activation and call it brain 1.0. When you’re in a state of freeze flight fight and you withdraw from society or you get so depressed that you just want to smash everything. Right. And you don’t care. It’s like that song the roof is on fire. We don’t care to let it burn right like that feeling. And I remember, you know, it felt so miserable that you would want to escape that. Right by binge watching TV, eating a lot of food or, you know, sometimes alcohol, right?

Aurora: Numbing.

Due: Numbing or shopping it away. Or in my case, it was over achievement. So I buckled down at school and I was the top student and almost all my classes graduated at the top of my class at Central High School because it gave me an outlet. Right. Like something that made me feel worthy. And it was a sort of a middle finger up to my parents. 

I don’t think my parents understood, like, how ambitious I was and that it was fueled by their lack of support for me. They, on top of that, didn’t want me to go away for college. And so I was like, is there any condition in which I can go away for college? What if I get into the top school? And they said, well, good luck with that. They didn’t believe that was possible. But sure, if you get into the top school, we’ll let you go there. I was like game on, you know, and I applied to Harvard and I got in. Even then, they made me swear an oath to become a doctor. And that was the only way that they would let me go away to college.

Aurora: Wow.

Due: And so when I got to Harvard and the culture shock sucked, right? And it was terrible and I hated it. And I was is a miserable I couldn’t come back to my parents and complain because they’ll say it was your choice. You wanted to be there. I felt guilty, in fact, because, like, my parents had run a takeout restaurant and that was the main person who supported them in running that restaurant. And they actually had to sell it when I went to college, because there was no one else who could help them.

Aurora: Being in an environment that I have to imagine couldn’t have been so completely opposite of the environment you were extracting yourself from. And then to have the added pressure. Of knowing the economic impact, your choices making or having on your parents.

Due: I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Cause you hear this brand your whole life, Harvard, Harvard, Harvard and it’s like the end all be all place to go. It’s like the. Yeah. It’s like you achieved every high school students dream, you know? And I get there and I’m like, what is this place?

So I was like like, this isn’t making sense. Right. The reality versus what I thought it was going to be. I was a first generation college student. Right. And that wasn’t yet an identity. So there was no group to go to to hash this out and talking to someone who might have the same experience. We couldn’t find each other because it was invisible and no one spoke about it.

Aurora: I’m so understanding what you’re saying, because feeling the same way in the sense of it was unspoken. By consequence, there was no groupings that we could find each other, and the academic institutions for the most part weren’t understanding the chasm that many of us were experiencing, being afforded that opportunity as a first generation student to enter these environments. We didn’t know the code.

Due: Yeah, yeah. There was a lack of cultural fluency. Right. And furthermore, Harvard was an institution made for people whose ancestors did come from the Mayflower. And most of people who were able to send their kids to Harvard didn’t need Harvard to look after their kids. Right. Like they they had the jobs lined up for their kids upon graduation.

Kelly: They just needed the diploma saying the word Harvard.

Due: It was a finishing school. Right.

I remember that class issues were so taboo and people like I kept quiet. It was invisible. You know, your race was was your appearance was was visible, but not, you know, whether you grew up poor and I wanted to believe in an idealistic way because I was also a Harvard student like we would all be equal at Harvard. But I learned the hard way that, no, that’s not true. One of my best friends was from a Taiwanese family. And and she was from California. But her mom her mom was cruel. And she told her daughter to stop spending time with me because I was little class.

Aurora: Oh, my gosh. 

Due: Yeah. So, I mean, it was like parents knew, you know, why they groom their kids to go to Harvard. It was to move up in society. So why hang out with the trash? Right. So I was like, wow, that that that that stung.

Aurora: And that’s human. That’s what humans do to other humans.

Due: So this is how I got into the neuroscience, because I was like, how do you explain that humans could be majestic and generous and altruistic and yet ugly and brutal and selfish? Like, how could the same person have such a range even? Right. Like, why are such different people in different situations? Like, how could I be, you know, saintly in one situation and ghastly in a different situation? Right. Like what is happening inside me? And why was I starting to hate myself at Harvard? Like, why? Why was I becoming so suicidal and so depressed? 

I was just so much in danger of hurting myself that I went to the emergency room and they gave me ativan and it worked. And I thought, can I get some more, you know? And that’s when they explained I had to go set up an appointment with a psychiatrist if I wanted a prescription. So I thought maybe it’s worth it. Right. Like, if you’re already to the point where you’re considering giving up on life, like, why not have the courage to live? Right. And so I went and saw the psychiatrist and he was the first person to let me understand that or make me understand that all the traumas I went through before I was two years old, you know, from escaping Vietnam and nearly dying. He’s like that impacts brain development, that impacts your personality. That may be why you’re having the symptoms now and compounded by all the additional trauma throughout your childhood. He’s just like like that might be the reason why, you know, you’re you’re having all these symptoms. And so that that’s when it hit me that.

My other Harvard classmates probably weren’t dealing with the things I was dealing with, right. Instead of seeing myself as weak and being part of a stigmatized group because I had mental health challenges, I was actually incredibly strong and resilient given everything I’ve been through, and that I was still earning an honors level GPA at Harvard. I was still pushing through. Right. And I was able to get myself to get help, you know. 

Aurora: I think you’ve been demonstrating courage since you were a baby. You know, when you share your story, it’s like, oh my God. Courage, resilience, courage. Breakthrough, breakthrough, breakthrough, breakthrough, push, push, move forward.

Due: Yeah, I mean, I think what I learned from the neuroscience was that, you know, there are certain pattern of brain activation in which I was miserable. Right. And now I call it brain 1.0. Right, freeze, flight fight. I spent a lot of time in freeze mode, just like withdrawn, isolated, suicidal, paralyzed, no energy, crying fits couldn’t get out of my bed. And there was like, how did I get into these negative spirals? And a lot of it was this other pattern of brain activation I call Brain 2.0 now, which was like the reward and acquisition system where the dopamine goes off and you’re like, oh, I got a I have a sense of FOMO now. Like, I’m I’ve I’m missing out. I can’t miss out. I got to figure out what the herd is doing and get to where they are, you know? So it’s like the grass is always greener wherever the herd is. So you’re chasing it constantly. And at Harvard, when the herd is like, you know, children of millionaires and billionaires, you know, it’s like. Following that herd was not healthy. 

And so I was just like, OK, Brain 2.0 doesn’t seem to be a recipe for happiness either. But let’s step back and think about the moments when I have been happy, when I was in a state of flow and felt like I liked myself. Right. And and that was when I was curious. That was when I was compassionate. That was when, you know, I was like the highest version of me. And I wasn’t like putting myself or other people down. I wasn’t comparing or benchmarking. I was just doing the things I love doing. And I loved learning for the sake of learning not to have a PhD or show off or let other people see that I was smarter than them. Like it wasn’t about that. Like the 2.0 way of putting people down to put yourself up. Right. And so I was like, I need to go back to basics. Like, I gotta figure out what puts me in Brain 3.0. And for me, when I’m in Brain 3.0. I hear something that sounds more like an inner sage where, you know, you connect to your wisdom, but you don’t care what other people say. You don’t care about impressing people or doing things just to look good. Right. You do what you know is your path. 

I was searching for that inner compass. Right So I call it mind hacking. That’s how I manage to heal my brain. 

So I graduate from Harvard unemployed. And but I managed to contain, you know, these mental health challenges that I had by teaching myself mind hacking tools, which I think was probably more important than graduating with a thesis or a job or anything. Because now I was no longer dependent on medication or therapy like I had sorted out, like how to manage my breakdowns. And so I then had to figure out how to get a job. And so I called up my friends from college and found out what they were doing and learned about management consulting and thought, hey, you know, I think I want to change the world. I think that matters so much to me. And it sounds like with management consulting, they learn how companies work. You learn how to manage change. You learn strategy. And that may equip me to eventually be able to deal with like changing the world

So when it was time, like in management consulting, after two, three years, you’re supposed to apply for business school. So I applied and somehow got into Wharton and they gave me even a fellowship because I wrote about how my dream to become, you know, a social entrepreneur and create some program or organization to help kids growing up with the challenges I faced, you know, discover their potential and change their trajectory.

And I remember, you know, taking these courses with people who had like very prestigious or intimidating backgrounds and doing just as well as them and just feeling like, OK. Like like I’m not an imposter. Like I belong here, you know, not socially necessarily. Like I didn’t understand how to interact with them in a social setting. But like, at least in the classroom setting. And when it came to, like, work, I was just as competent as any of my classmates. Right. And so I think that helped me to become like more sure that I could change the world. If these people could, then I was just as qualified. Right. And I remember, you know, there was still like a sense of confusion, like class anxiety, you know, because most of the class, like had a lot of money and some of the finance people didn’t need to take out loans at all and they were living in three thousand apartments in her own house square right. And they were spending a lot of money partying and drinking and things like that. And, you know, my parents live in North Philadelphia. Right. And, you know, during pre orientation, I just commuted from north Philadelphia to class. And I didn’t take part in the parties. Like I was confused. How do I hold onto who I am and like navigate that class consciousness. 

Kelly: So how did you get to that next step?

Due: So I don’t think I ever have. I’m still confused. Like in terms of class, where do I fit? You know? 

Aurora: Well. And I think this is such a great point, because, Kelly, this is this is the conversation you and I have all the time. Right. Because I think on the outside, white people see many of the achievements of brown and black people. And there’s a perception that we have our shit together. And I think what, Due, you’ve just articulated. Is this the work that we have to do in finding our self-worth, our self-love or self compassion in a way that, you know, quite frankly, your white privilege gives to you from the get go. 

Kelly: Oh, complete overconfidence. Yeah

Due: It’s also a question of do I want to belong to this social group? Do I want to give up on who I am to assimilate?

Kelly: Totally. No, I actually was asking the question thinking you were going to tell me your brain hack because I feel like so much of your 3.0 doesn’t live in that area.

Due: Yes. I think this is a 2.0 thing where it’s like, where’s my tribe? These people aren’t my tribe, you know, and what do I do? You know, when I asked people what they wanted after they graduated. And there was a sense that they wanted to get married, have a white picket fence and have kids. And I was just like, who am I supposed to marry and where am I supposed to live? And am I supposed to become like a suburban person who commutes into New York City and send their kids to private school? I’m really confused, you know. And I don’t think that’s whated. And so I escaped those decisions by convincing my former employer to send me to Asia. And and I realized there’s class in Asia too. And so that’s when I realized I was just like, I can’t really escape. But I’m learning about the world, you know, and I’m seeing these patterns and I’m getting out of America. I’m least being exposed to my roots and understanding different dynamics and seeing human nature at a more universal level. And I remember, you know, the post-colonial mentality. 

Aurora: And that’s there you go. 

Due: White people are treated like kings in Vietnam for no reason. Right.I think that’s when like the neuroscience really kicked in because you know, in Vietnam, you know, people were so hungry to have a Louis Vuitton bag and they were so hungry that other things didn’t matter to them. Right. The obsession of having a smartphone and not like having a proper roof to live in. Right. Like people were making these weird compromises that were not rational because of Brain 2.0. And so like, if you were in Brain 3.0, you would not make that decision. You would make these decisions because something happened in Brain 1.0 that made you feel so shitty and you want to escape that by buying your way out of it. Right. And so I don’t know, it was just like mindblowing to see human nature. And again, that range of the worst to the best. Right. Because you also saw people paying it forward during altruistic service aid workers sacrificing enormously to help people who they didn’t even know. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for volunteers who came to the refugee camp and gave me medicine and so that I could pull through those different diseases. Right. So when I came back to the U.S., like I’d taken a year off and I had studied meditation and mindfulness in India and Singapore and various places. And. And the irony of all of that was, you know, when I was meditating, that’s when I saw what I would later call Brain 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0. Like, I saw my inner Godzilla. I saw my inner teen wolf. I saw my inner sage. I saw how different I was in each of those modes. 

Aurora: It all comes back to our self. And so somewhere there is this accountability or this responsibility to look at my life, to look at my programing, to look at my traumas. Right. And understand how those are keeping me stuck in a very severe in a very severe form, I’m stuck in 1.0 right where I can say is a marginalized person I’m in a place of victimhood or hopelessness. Or I would say if I am a person of privilege and if class and I may, it may show up as anger and a greater level of separatism. 

Kelly: Would it be tweeting in all caps? Maybe.

Aurora: Yes, tweeting in all caps.

Kelly: Yeah. I would say for me, like 1.0 is scared of all black and brown people. Just gotta take care of our immediate family kind of thing. Or in denial of everything. And maybe that is 2.0 still. I don’t know.

Due: I mean, a lot of times 1.0 and 2.0 get entangled. And so. Like in 1.0, like things feel bad. And we escape that in 2.0 with rationalizing why,

Kelly: So like 1.0 is almost like the core emotion and then 2.0 is like the traumatized response. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. So I have shame then in 2.0 I’m a perfectionist and I want to be the best. X, Y, Z or the. Mm hmm. You know, the coolest friend or the best white person or whatever that is.

Due: Yeah. Or a fixer. You know, when you see liberals come out and say we’re saving the world.

Kelly: Yes.

Due: And that’s the most condescending, patronizing attitude ever.

Kelly: Well, that comes as a traumatized response to. It’s coming from. Right. It’s coming from a negative emotion, disempowerment at some point in their lives. Right.

Due: Well, I mean, it’s hard to say, but it’s when you think is your job to fix other people. It’s a way of escaping the fact that you need to fix yourself.

Kelly: Bingo. Yeah.

Aurora: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Kelly: Yeah. It’s a narcissistic response. You know. You want to fix them for your own well-being, not for theirs.

And is getting to 3.0, a choice, an evolution?

Due: I would say it is a journey. It doesn’t happen overnight. And it comes from kind of like how you if you want to run a marathon, you have to train on a regular basis. Well the brain is like that. These narrow networks don’t become stronger unless you use them on a regular basis. So I tell people like that’s why meditation, yoga and these other practices are important because you’re strengthening networks in your brain and there are specific networks that are helpful. Like all of us have this thing we call the voice in your head, the inner narrator, the inner editor, and it’s tied to a group of structures called the Default Mode Network, which are constantly activating self activating and helping you navigate your social world mainly. And unfortunately for many people, it’s a very negative, almost dark voice. People call it the inner critic, the inner saboteur putting themselves down. And the weird thing I realize like is that some of the wealthiest families have the darkest inner critics. And the suffering, the self created suffering. I’m like, why did you torment yourself when-

Kelly: Because that’s their trauma too

Due: all this material wealth and influence. And yet the thing that’s keeping you from being happy, it’s you. Right. And this is the crowd that goes to, you know, Garrison in Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Center and [unclear]. They can afford it, they can afford all this expensive therapy. Right.

Kelly: But they’re not without trauma. Right.

Due: No, I’m not saying they’re either saying like that’s something that that has really opened my eyes. There is no socio economic immunity. Sometimes it’s easier to help people of color and low income communities where life is just brutal. Right. Where you know, what’s bringing you to Brain 1.0, you know, it’s the guns, it’s the drug dealer. It’s like you can name what it is that’s bringing us into Brain 1.0

Aurora: And you can see it. And that’s why I believe that at the end of the day people of color have a much more visible articulation, tangible understanding of their trauma. And by consequence, we struggle more with the resources and the access to get support for that trauma. But I think that’s why we lean on things such as faith. We lean on things such as family. We lean on things such as community to pull us through those scenarios in a way that when you’re extremely privileged and wealthy, you can hide it 

Due: Yeah. Yeah. So. That’s what I mean, it’s like the irony is that because the narratives for people of color and people from low income communities are coherent, it’s actually easier to heal. But when we’re working with people who have affluence and privilege, the narratives are not coherent. Right. And it’s like like people feel guilt and shame for being unhappy. 

Aurora: Yes. Right. 

Due: The drug abuse, the. It’s like you have all these things. What’s not working. Right. And and. They need to go inside is deeper, and so that introspection, that meta cognition like it has to be even deeper. 

Aurora: Yeah, right.

Due:  And so. So 

30:00 that’s what I mean. It’s like the work that I do, I realize it has value for all people. But supporting someone who has grown up in privilege, living in brain 2.0 to shift into Brain 3.0 is actually more challenging because it’s easy for them to live in brain 2.0 

Kelly: It’s given accolades to. It’s rewarded.

Due: Yeah. There isn’t as urgent. There isn’t a fire under the seat to shift from brain 2.0 and to brain 3.0, but if you’re living your life in a state of danger,  right. The need to shift from brain 1.0 and 3.0 and the benefits of it are so tangible. 

Aurora: Yes. And this is why Due. We do this work and this is why we’re having this conversation and you articulated so beautifully this fire, this underbelly for all of us to do the work. And I’m going to say and why it’s so critical for white people, for privileged people, for folks in it, and an advantage socio economic place to do the work.

Kelly: Mm hmm.

Due: It’s interesting. I’ve now been able to share calm, clarity training with like Wharton MBAs, Penn law students, the International Women’s Forum, people with a lot of privilege. Right. CEOs, executive boards. And every time we walk through the framework, lightbulbs go off and people realize they say, I spend too much of my life in brain 2.0. And it’s not healthy. We break it down, brain 1.0 was a state of toxic stress and everyone knows it feels bad. And it’s like you need to get out of that state, but in brain 2.0, the state of carrot chasing constant FOMO, always feeling like you gotta go, go, go. Never feeling like you’re enough. We think it’s normal. Yeah. You know, especially over achievers. And we take for granted that there’s got to be chasing the next thing. As soon as you get to one milestone, you’re chasing the next milestone. Right. And so we think this is normal. I thought it was normal. I was conditioned to think it was normal at Harvard, at Wharton. But your brains actually impaired and you can’t do your best work when you’re in a state of tunnel vision and when you’re dopamine system has taken over. You can’t see the bigger picture. You can’t see the system. You can’t be creative. You can’t be that innovative. And you see everyone else as competition. And so you’re not that connected. Right. And you actually feel pretty isolated in brain 2.0. And so when people see that and they can name it and then they they remember like what does it feel like to in brain 3.0. And we actually hack their brains with some meditations to turn on the networks of Brain 3.0. Everyone’s like, I would be so much more kick ass if I was in brain 3.0 all the time. I would get more stuff done. I would like myself. I would like my work. I would like the people around me. If we were all and brain 3.0 like like the work dynamics would actually be healthy and not toxic. And brain 2.0, when everyone’s your competitor, it’ss kind of toxic, right?

Kelly: It’s very toxic.

Due: It’s like Game of Thrones. Yeah, right. But in Brain, 3.0, you know, if people supported each other in teams being 3.0, those teams will outperform the teams in Brain 2.0, and they would have better health. And so once they experience it, everyone’s like, take me to 3.0, hopefully I don’t want to live in 2.0 anymore, but most of the time it hasn’t been named. And because it hasn’t been named, it can’t be tamed.

Aurora: So you started to develop the program working directly with students. Can you share a little bit about that?

Due: The reason I started calm clarity was because I saw so much pain, so much suffering in the inner city. And I saw these narratives, these narratives of hopelessness and despair and that there was no way out. And I’m like, how did I break through that narrative? You know, because I was given the same narrative. And yet there was a spark inside me that was just like, you’ll prove them, you’ll prove them wrong. I was like, how do you replicate that? 

 How do we help students stand in their own power to recognize they have a voice that’s beautiful. They have a story that’s uplifting. They have something to show the world. And we built this nonprofit organization that in its first year touched like maybe three, four hundred students. We started a college scholar program where we would run weekend workshops and give scholarships to first generation college students to come for free. Right.  And hundreds of professionals signed up to be part of it in some way. People showed up as mentors. We’ve had mentors who’ve now mentored every semester since we started. Right. Like, they just keep coming back. 2020, I want to expand our community outreach by starting the Calm Clarity Community Catalyst program. And this is to train volunteers who work at local colleges, high schools, maybe even elementary schools, non profit organizations that serve people in low income communities to use calm clarity tools and frameworks and exercises share them with the people they serve.  

And so to fund this program, we created these calm clarity cards. And these cards provide words of wisdom that activate brain 3.0 along with exercises they can do to bring the quote into real life.

Kelly: Due, what intergenerational wisdom would you like to impart? 

Due: My parents went through a lot, they went through horrible adversity, like rebuilding their lives after the Vietnam War like in America. And the what the brutal struggle to survive, you know, the refugee experience and how people treated each other like dogs, you know, and sometimes I remember my parents. My mom said one of my dad’s best friends, he helped escape Vietnam and on the boat after everyone started running out of food my mom just had a little bit of milk that she brought for me and my older brother. He gave the milk to a girl that he had a crush on and we ended up starving. Right. And then when we got to the refugee camp again, he would undermine our survival, instead of help it because he was in this survival mode, you know, for himself, he would eat the food that was meant for the kids.

He wasn’t like trying to save the food and make sure we survived. Right. And my parents were so shocked. Right. That this was like one of my dad’s best friends. And he was a taker, not a giver. However, my parents were still givers. Through that period of time, even though you felt betrayed, like they stuck through their promise and they helped him. Right. And other people, they helped. And it was hard for them. But they did. Like people got out of Vietnam because of my parents help.

And my parents, even though they have very little to give, they helped a lot of people. And I saw that growing up, you know, and I realized like life isn’t about taking, you know. And when you give it’s it’s about who you are. It’s not really about who they are. And that’s an important lesson to learn.

Kelly: What is your opt in for our listeners?

Due: I think what’s really important is for all of us to opt into being human right to recognize, even as you start to other-ize, someone who’s different from you. That person is still a human being and you are fundamentally more similar than you are different. And don’t let social, cultural racial, ethnic differences disconnect you from your higher self. And all of us we’re biofeedback systems. If you recognize yourself treating someone you know as an enemy, someone in Brain 1.0, then you’re in Brain 1.0 too, right? And and it’s up to you to decide whether it serves you to stay in that frame of mind or take the steps to activate Brain 3.0 and bring yourself back to who you really are. And so what I love for everyone to do is to opt in to being human, to taking responsibility, to take yourself out of Brain 1.0 and 2.0

Aurora: Beautiful. Thank you, so I thank you so much. Thank you for your wisdom. And thank you for your tremendous heart. We love you, Miss Due.

Due: I love you, too.

Aurora: Wow. Kelly, I was starting to get so emotional there at the end. 

Kelly: I know, boo. You were choking up! What was going on for you?

Aurora: I just felt such a deep connection to Due. Her openness and willingness to share her story was so beautiful.

Kelly: Yeah and I feel like that’s such a special part of Brain 3.0. Like once you get there, you can own your story and share it with others – the good, the bad, all of it.

Aurora: If you want to learn more, go ahead and visit calmclarity.org for more information on trainings and other resources.

Kelly: You can also buy the Calm Clarity card, which are absolutely amazing. All of that info is linked in our show notes.

Aurora: And don’t forget to find us on the socials. What does Brain 3.0 look like for you? Let us know @theoptin.

Kelly: Thank you all so much for listening. You all seriously mean so much to us.

Aurora: Together we can make a change.

Kelly: Talk next week.

Aurora: Bye