#1 Neuroscientist: Truth About Stress, Belly Fat, Coffee, Alcohol, Diet & Journaling -Dr. Tara Swart

Because you've been a doctor, a psychiatrist, an executive coach, you're a

neuroscientist

and I think one of the topics that people talk about a lot these days is MH

stress

, so right at the top, I'd love to understand when you hear the word. It emphasizes what it means to you, so when you introduce me like that, like you know you're a psychiatrist, it makes me feel a little bit like, oh, I'm like a jack of all trades, but as soon as you said the word

stress

, Each of those roles made sense to me, so I define stress as when the load on your body or mind is too much for you to bear, so as a doctor, as a junior doctor, if I saw someone in the ER who was having a heart attack, meaning that stress on your cardiovascular system as a psychiatrist, if I saw people who had a breakdown of their psychosis or depression, that stress on their mental state and then I changed careers at a really interesting time because, having been a psychiatrist , and starting from the bottom of the ladder to executive coaching, the fact that it was the time of the financial crisis when people were under a lot of stress, there were high-profile suicides and, you know, at Canary WARF in London, um, there were a lot more people suffering from heart attacks caused by stress.

That was actually something I could address, so it made sense for a psychiatrist and a physician to get into the executive coaching space in financial services at that time and then as a As a

neuroscientist

, I would say that's where the stress really comes in for me because your brain's perception of what's happening will have this cascading effect on the rest of your body, so if you perceive basically, your brain perceives that you know there's a threat. for your survival, then it will tell your cortisol levels to increase, so your adrenal glands will release more cortisol which circulates into the blood, crosses the blood-brain barrier and the receptors in the brain can see that you are on high alert. time and that process is pro-inflammatory so it has all kinds of knock-on effects on your cardiovascular system your immunity your gastrointestinal system and it's very dehydrating so you know it can show up on your skin and your hair your scalp and and the Other thing is that as a very ancient survival mechanism that encourages fat storage in abdominal fat cells, you would basically have very dry skin, curly hair, a bigger

belly

that you can't move, sleep disturbance, probably some kind of digestive problem. and that's all you know, what's behind all that is stress, yeah, it's incredible.

When you really understand the physiology of the stress response and how it affects each organ system, then you understand why many doctors, including me, say that 80 to 90% of what we see on any given day is somehow related. with stress. Certainly, stress has a huge impact on physical health. Cheers for a moment, yes, clearly, many people around the world are trying to lose excess fat on their bodies for a variety of reasons, sometimes out of vanity, sometimes out of vanity. Health, whatever it is, it may be right and there is this obsession with the MH

diet

and of course

diet

is important but I.

I think we underestimate the stress behind our weight, the amount of fat we store, you know, and many other things, would you agree with that? Yes, totally, because again, referring particularly to the time of the financial crisis, this was happening a lot. More people were telling me that they had gained weight, and as a result of that, they had Ed start eating a little differently, either a little less or a little healthier, and they started exercising more, but they still couldn't. . it changes weight and as soon as I heard that I knew it was driven by cortisol, so even if you eat less or move more or both, if you have these high levels of cortisol, it's still driving you to, you know, deposit fat . in your

belly

, so you know we have subcutaneous fat and then we have visceral fat, so you're not putting on weight all over, but it's mainly the belt that people would say, you know, I've liked to undo it a little bit and I just can't change it. and that's definitely driven by the stress hormone.

I once heard you say in an interview that you've also seen many people suffer from stress-induced heart attacks. MH I was teaching a class at MIT where he was. talking about exactly what we just talked about and a very young woman stood up and said that when I was at a very busy, stressful job I had a heart attack and it was interesting because in your mind when you talk about the type of people who have heart attacks from stress, you're imagining yourself as an older man, maybe someone who's a little overweight, um, so seeing this, you know, it's a woman who looks so young and thin and healthy, hearing her say that she actually had a great impact. about me, but it was when I was working with a really large global bank in several different capacities, so I had seen their Employee Engagement survey and then they came and told me that they were seeing a lot of deaths from heart attacks or deaths that were not caused by the death on the operating floor and they wanted, because I was a former doctor, they wanted me to help them, you know, deal with it, and I said, but I've seen their employee engagement survey, so I know that people She's very stressed, so I know.

Those two things are connected, so we really have to deal with the fact that they couldn't understand, I mean, it was like 15 years ago, so the whole idea of ​​the connection between the brain and the body has evolved a lot since then. , but what was so obvious to them? Me as a doctor really wasn't obvious to them, to the point that they wanted to help these employees, but they couldn't understand that you had to deal with stress and you couldn't just deal with heart attacks. Yes, it's interesting that that. The client you saw with a stress-induced heart attack was a woman.

It reminds me of a patient I had 10, maybe even 15 years ago, she was in her 30s, she was thin and she developed prediabetes just because of the stress and the reason I know that. It's because I knew she took care of herself with her diet and exercise, but her job was mega mega stressful and when we helped her address that, she realized she needed to address it within a few months without changing her diet and exercise. his blood sugar went back into the normal range, so it's a type of stress, an impact on our physical health, I think it's profound and I don't think the public knows enough about it and, frankly, I don't think our profession knows enough about it. no, it's because it's behind whatever inflammatory marker you're looking at, it's almost like it's hidden, so you know, even if we understand that a certain disease is underpinned by inflammation, we're still not necessarily taking that step.

Come back and say what the stressors are in your life. We are much more likely as a medical profession to say keep a food diary. Know how much you exercise. How do you sleep? And keep focusing on those physical things. and I think I think it's a problem, but I also think it's - remember when we did the episode during the pandemic at the beginning of the pandemic and I told you that this would be a mental health crisis or a spiritual revolution? We still have our options open, so I think some of the things that we learned during the pandemic, whether it's just the benefits of being in nature more or whether it was understanding mental health better, I think it's opening the door to the medical profession. and you know and educate the population about stress and the huge impact it has on all those other things.

Yeah, I remember you saying there's a lot to unpack there. Um. Nature of the spiritual revolution. I definitely want to get into all of that. Because we focus a little bit on women, we've said you know your client, my P, and what I would do after stress. In your experience, do women and men handle stress differently? Obviously, these are generalizations, yes, but I would say that you. I know what I hear when I'm in a taxi talking to the taxi driver or just meeting my friends or whatever, there's still this idea that men don't talk to each other about things like stress and mental health.

As much as women do, but on the other side of the coin, I think because of this myth that women are better at multitasking than men, women put a lot of pressure on themselves to do everything, whether it's all you know. , be the mother that the wife still has. a career, you know, working out often with the type of type A personalities that I work with, they have a super, super stressful job, like they're part partners in a law firm and they go and do very high intensity exercise and I always tell them that it's raising your cortisol, so actually you're exactly the type of person who should do gentler exercise because you know your personality type and the stress of the job you have.

And I think. that women under stress may skip meals or because of the pressure to be a certain weight they may be dieting in a way that is actually not healthy or useful, so I think that contributes to stress in the system because if you are not feed properly, it's very difficult to do all the things that need to be done, so I think there are different problems, you know, the two genders that we're talking about and there's some research that shows that men are very good at adapting. stress responses, so if there's a crisis, they can deal with it and, you know, a short period of time, but then they need to like, you know, go away and hide in the cave and recover, while women find ways to better regain your resilience during long periods of stress.

That is interesting. You mentioned men and it's a little cliché, but it's also true from what I've seen as a doctor but also in my personal life and what I've experienced. I've seen from my friends that you say that men traditionally haven't opened up as much as women mhm, why is that important, especially if we think about it through the lens of the brain? Because there are two main ways to unload stress from your system, one is physical exercise which removes cortisol from your body with sweat and the other is by talking out loud or possibly also

journaling

, but I think that talking, you know, talking to someone because then you have that kind of social connection, but instead of reflecting on your thoughts if you actually get them out of your brain-body system, that also lowers your cortisol levels and I think you know that.

I imagine you trust your wife. I think a lot of men trust their wife, but I think they trust other men. It's still not happening as much as it might seem. The

truth

is that this is something that I have realized is a problem in my own life in recent years because my best friends are still the same ones I made in college, yes, and they live in hundreds of people. miles away from me, oh and literally four weekends ago we got together, went to Wales for a weekend. Oh yeah, and it's a very different weekend than we would have done when we were 20 years old.

We went for a walk in the hills and it was Amazing, there were actually only three of us but I think we really opened up and shared things with each other that I don't think we've done in a long time and I think we all felt lighter when we left and you know , we drove home and back. home with our families, so that would have been, you know, being in N, don't underestimate the power of being in nature, I know we'll get to that later, but yeah, you know being with people that you trust is that I have such a long story that you can share things that maybe you will discover that some of the problems that you face in life you are not alone in them.

You know there are many benefits to that. What is the impact? stress on our ability to make decisions Yeah, basically, when those receptors in the brain detect these high levels of cortisol, another thing they do is restore the blood supply because they sense an imminent threat to our survival, they don't. I don't want to give up resources for things that aren't crucial to our survival, so basically thinking flexibly, regulating your emotions, suppressing your biases is solving complex problems, being creative, being imaginative, you don't need to do any of that to survive, Mhm, that's what I call it.

By going into low power mode, you know that the blood supply is actually only going to the parts of the brain that need you to wake up in the morning. Take care of yourself as little as possible. Make sure you don't lose your job. But in terms. Many of you know that complex decision making in which normally the prefrontal cortex regulates the emotions that come from the amydala and that regulation becomes less good, so in the state of stress we are likely to experience emotions such as fear, anger or shame and that has a very negative effect on our decision-making power you mentioned two terms there, the prefrontal cortex and the amydala, what are they?

So the amidala amidala are two almond-shaped structures that are found in the lyrical system, which is the type of size and shape. your closed fist is indeep in your brain and then the cortex is the part of the brain that's around that and in that system are these two almond-shaped structures which is where all of our basic emotions start from, but the lyrical system and the cortex We're talking about between us all the time and the prefrontal cortex is just the part of the outer cortex that's here in the front. When we experience an emotion, the prefrontal cortex can regulate it so that it is not too extreme, but when we have high levels of cortisol then we are experiencing more of what we call survival emotions and the prefrontal cortex receives less blood supply with oxygen and glucose, so who is less able to regulate those emotions.

In recent years it has become very clear to me that if who you are in the world is essentially related to the attunement of our nervous system, then it means that if you are chronically busy with work and overly stressed, you are literally becoming a different person. and then if you follow that logic, the question arises: who are they? we like, we even know who we are if we are that stress all the time from my perspective if I think about who I am today compared to let's say 12 years ago, when my father was alive and I was in the middle of taking care of the parents, while you know, I was married, had a family, a busy GP job and also helping my family care for my father.

Yeah, I can't believe what I used to do now that my life, compared to then, is so much calmer. more under my control than back then, I think I was a different person, I think the same elements of rongan were still there, but really, the way I saw the world, how I could adopt a more victim mentality towards the world , instead of me. I'm in the driver's seat of the world, I think it was very, very different and a big part of that I think was due to the state of my nervous system, yeah absolutely, I love the way you phrased it, you know if you do . you are stressed all the time, you are literally becoming another person.

I mean, I've never heard it like that before, obviously I talk a lot about neuroplasticity, which is the brain's ability to grow and change throughout life, but that's something you already know. That's like longer-term learning, but what you're talking about is the stress and aggressions of everyday life that can overwhelm us and prevent us from becoming the best version of ourselves, so I would say yes, I think that Throughout life we ​​evolve as people, but also at each stage there is the choice to be the best version of yourself, it will be a stressed version of yourself and you know that there will be Shades of Gray in the sense that it will be a spectrum, um, absolutely the point you made, which is that if you're chronically stressed all the time, then you're going to be on the lower end of that spectrum, but also day to day.

I mean, the other day I was sharing an example with a very close friend where I realized that on days I feel stressed. I look in the mirror and I think I look terrible and the next day just because I'm in a good mood I think, "I look great today, but I looked very different from yesterday." today, but you know the thought that goes through your mind is like, oh, you look terrible, but that starts with stress, so it's like you know negative self-image and then that goes into a spiral, right? I look in the mirror and I say I look terrible so my day isn't really going to get better um and it did, it was just what doesn't always happen overnight, but it was interesting because it did and because I tried to practice metacognition. as much as possible, which is to think about your way of thinking, so even when that thought crossed my head, I was able to step back and say, "Okay, you must be stressed today because it's like you didn't tell him that." to your best friend". you know, um, yeah, and it actually did, I had an idea of ​​it because the next day I was like, oh, I look really good, well, back to metac cognition, yeah, another way to look at it is through the dream lens. true, because lack of sleep is a huge stressor on the body MH and if I take today compared to yesterday Wednesday night, I actually slept very poorly for a variety of reasons, yes, yesterday you told me you were tired , yes, we, we.

I had a long chat on the phone yesterday and my brain just wasn't working, I felt like I was a bit soft today and you know, things were looking bleak and my workload was getting the best of me and I thought wow, how I'm doing! I'm going to do all this and all this kind of stuff. I said it very well last night and today I'm like a different person. I feel on top of the world. I feel like I work. Cloud, no problem, at least I do it. You know, the world. cool, I mean, it's pouring rain, it's dark, I know, but today I'm like buzzing because of my sleep, so we can be a different person, literally, I think we can be a different person depending on whether we sleep well or not , we can be a different person depending on the levels of stress that we are carrying, yes, and I think getting as much information about yourself from that is really important because now I'm at the stage where, if I'm on that day , the workload just seems so overwhelming that I actually now say, "Okay, there will soon come a day when you will have had a great night's sleep or you will just be in a better mood and have that to-do list in no time." ". minutes what feels like a mountain now isn't going to feel like that every day so it's okay don't do it today just wait until you have a good day because I have a lot of evidence of this now you know from times when I was thinking, oh, I have a lot to do and it feels like the deadline is coming up and I haven't done anything and I keep putting it off and I finally do it and it's like, oh, that's not as bad as I thought. but it is much more related to what you are saying, which is that yes, the state of your nervous system.

What does this term metacognition mean? You gave us a brief explanation, you know, thinking about the thoughts. I know you're huge. fan of

journaling

, we've covered that in the past, but I'd love to talk about it again because I think it's a very powerful tool for people to improve their physical, mental and emotional well-being. Yes, journaling is a type of metacognition. It is if you reread your diary entries, so simply writing in it may not be enough because you are writing at that moment when you believe that what you have written is absolutely true or is just a representation of what you have written.

What you feel in that moment when you read it is when you can practice metacognition, which is questioning what you have said. It's very difficult to question it at the time you just wrote it because you wouldn't have done it. I wrote something that you didn't think was the case, um, so I think there are some things here, if there are people who say that for whatever reason I don't have anyone, conf I would find my you know, deeper mental and emotional problems to then write a diary. way to get that out of your brain-body system, so you know, I mentioned before about talking out loud, preferably to someone, but journaling is a good second option, so in terms of, you know, gaining self-awareness and practice metacognition, reading backwards. the last three months or six months or something, see if there are patterns, see if what you wrote then still rings true, it's good practice now and you mentioned that journaling is good for physical, mental and emotional well-being, so Many patients tell me that life feels blurry because of the pressures many of us face, the busyness, the overwhelming never-ending list of things to do.

I've heard it time and time again, why haven't things changed? Why can't I incorporate these healthy habits into my life? life and making them stick I've been a doctor for over two decades and I have to say one of the most transformative practices I've seen is the practice of journaling because it breaks the cycle in which we have these unconscious patterns, these subconscious patterns. working. In our lives we don't realize how many anxieties, worries and concerns we have and journaling is a very simple way to get things out of your brain, put them on paper and see them and that does something really powerful. when there's a new diet you were following falls by the wayside when the new healthy habits you were following start to go astray that's the self-awareness that journaling will give you when people ask the right questions they get the answers The right answers and those answers correct ones allow them to change their lives.

Keep a journal today and watch your life start to change, but I think it's also great for spiritual evolution because even if you only do 10 things, I'm grateful. By practicing gratitude through your journal, then you know that you are actually also doing a spiritual practice and doing more than that. You could tell if it's if you made a decision with your intuition or your logic or if you know it. recording that you've been practicing some singing or some drumming or, um, what you know, what are your mental and physical experiences of spending time in nature, if you record all of that, then you're evolving spiritually as well, what does spirituality mean for you?

So when I do my quadrant exercise with people, which is physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, the way I describe it is physical is what you feel in your body, mental is what happens in your thoughts, emotional is how you feel in your emotions and spiritual is something that's not described in those other three um and it's just a feeling of how you are in your Spirit or your soul um and if you're not comfortable with words like Soul or God then you might know what are you like. you feel that your values ​​are being respected because having your values ​​crossed in any way is as if it were a transgression of limits and that hurts deeply, you know that it is not just emotional, mental or physical, it is something more than that, it is your integrity, so I say that.

You know, I mean spirituality means a lot more than that to me personally, but in terms of the way I framed it in the source was to remove any conflict that someone might have about their own religion or faith or lack of and just say that you know that there is something more than what you physically feel and what is happening in your thoughts and emotions. We've been talking about stress and the impact that chronic, unrelenting stress can have on us. and you just mentioned about spirituality and how if our values ​​are crossed, that's a boundary violation.

One thing I've been thinking about recently is the causes of M burnout and obviously you know we can say yes, it's too much work, not enough time. rest and recovery and of course those things are important, but more and more they lead me to the belief that a big cause of burnout for people is not living a life according to their values, oh yes, absolutely yes, and I think that's how it was. This transgression of limits is interesting to me. I think we can link it to chronic stress and yes, I recognize that some people do not have many options or autonomy in their work, let's say I recognize it, but I think that for many people it is not just the workload, no, it is also what they do. on a daily basis, yes, and I think it's two things: one is that you could take two people, say you and me, and we could have the same job that we actually had in the NHS as junior doctors and one of us could burn out and the another no, why in part there are things that you can do to develop your mental resilience to develop your resilience to stress, so if you have those tools and practices, if you have been doing them for years or you or you know how to incorporate them now that they can help you cope with stress, but the other thing is that there are clearly different thresholds for different people for what really causes burnout, so you know, let's say someone gets divorced, someone might find it a difficult EXP experience, but already you know, keep going and someone else might completely break down, so basically two things, one is that each of us has our own starting point or threshold and two that we can. do things to develop that and I really found that in the pandemic at the time of the last time we talked on the podcast it's because I had been practicing yoga and meditation and you know, walking in nature and bathing with salts and I know everything about keep a journal because I had been doing those things for as long as I could.

I could really turn right away to the help I can get from those things. But you know, one message that I kept putting out is that even if you've never done these things before. If you start now, it will help if someone says to you, Tara, "I hear everything you say about values. I know how important they are, but how can I find my own?" you tell them um the first thing I say is what characteristic you don't like most in other people because chances are the opposite of that is your strongest value. I love that question.

It's interesting when I hear that question. I think that but I also think about something else, I think that a lot of us don't like the qualities of other people thatWe have it in us too and the reason we don't like them as much is because we don't like them in ourselves, but it's easy not to look inward. and change something in ourselves, it is much easier to judge another person, yes, what do you think about that? I mean, obviously there's some

truth

to that because psychologically that would be described as you know something that's in your shadow, the shadow of your personality, so, um. what tends to get included in there are things that you worked out as a child that if you did your primary caregivers would reject you so you would hide them in your Shadow, you know things like oh don't brag or stop being so bossy or you know, share with your brother, you know, stop being so mean, um, so those things yeah, that can absolutely happen, but I think you have to separate that and because okay, let's say generosity is my main value, so if I thought that that's because I actually feel like I'm not very generous, I think I would know, but you know, and I'm not, I'm not just talking about money, I think you know, generosity of spirit, generous with your time when I see people who could do something for someone else, but they don't, you know, I really notice that, um, and I don't think I'm guilty of that, let's say, so, let's say, let's get along, you, you, you.

I've shared that generosity is one of your core values, how does the knowledge of knowing that help you in your daily life? Well, for example, it lets me know that you know how to get ahead of things like I'm going to go. I'll go out for

coffee

with you after this podcast. I'd like to pay, or even you know something you said today and that is you know, hey, if you want, stay a couple hours after we finish the podcast. I can leave you. to the station unless it's too late for you, you know, and I thought, well, I'll be home a little later than I had planned, but really, how often can I see you?

I haven't seen you in years, um, it's pretty long. trip, so I'm not necessarily going to see you again as soon as I would like to, so you know, sharing my time with you, I think you know, I see it as a gift, it's something that you're constantly evaluating, for example, in your journaling practice I think your journaling practice unless something has changed in the last few years oh not every day is okay so your regular journaling practice do you wonder or know if generosity arises somewhere that you know if I'm living in alignment with this value or not it's not at all, I don't know, it's as specific as that, no, so I think it's because I identified it a long time ago and, you know, I feel like It is a strong value. characteristic for me, so what's most likely to happen is if I feel like someone's not being generous to me, whether it's with their time listening or you know someone owes you money or whatever, you know I feel like that would make me question?

Is this person a true friend? Is this person? Someone I want around me? And you know, I remember when you know I was 20 years old. I had a friend who literally gave me the last note from her. We didn't have money and she had it. I have IVF left but you can have it, you know? So for me, I'll never forget that he's a very generous person and then there are people with a lot of money who wouldn't do that, so it's about your attitude. It's not even about being equal because I think you know you pay for things upfront, like you get a lot of help from a friend here and you give it in a different way to someone else, but it's only if that's that value. is so important to me, so it's more about making sure I feel that in my social circle, what are some of the other values ​​that are important to you?

Trust is really important. Mainly because you know what I usually say to my team. I mean, we signed contraconts, obviously, but above all I say that I operate with confidence. I make my decisions with confidence. Someone could break that, but I choose to live my life based on trust. So, obviously, I do feel that there is someone in me. a life that is not trustworthy would be a serious boundary violation for me. I love what you just said and I love it because you're making a very intentional decision about how you want to live your life.

You are basically controlling what you can control. right, you can, you're basically saying I'm going to approach things based on trust now, if someone decides to break that trust, you can't do anything about it that's out of your control, yeah, as you take this back to the state of stress. correct because with confidence you can't really operate from trust if you're stressed not correct because the fear response is I'm in danger you don't want to trust people if you feel in danger correct, so trust is that you have to have a calm regulatory nervous system to operate from trust first of all, but what I really like most about what you said is that look, yes, people can trick you, people can break that trust, people can do those things, but if you choose to live because you're afraid of that happening, well, it changes who you are, yeah, and you can't even control it anyway, no, and let's use that example because you used it if someone cheats on their partner at the end of the day.

The problem is theirs. You know they have let themselves down as a person. You know it had the impact it had on the relationship. I can walk away from that and say I'm not a cheater. Thank you. Thank God. I should feel. I'm really good to myself, but the problem often is that if we take a relationship as an example, the experience of, say, someone in a relationship, one party has been unfaithful for whatever reason, okay, the party that hasn't has done, yes, as you said it can. they walk away, they know they didn't cheat and maybe you know Integrity, um, trust, these are core values ​​for them, so they know they didn't break that, but unfortunately, because of how our brain is wired, often what happens is that. then it impacts how we present ourselves in the future, yes, because we were fooled once, we are less likely to want to trust in the future, yes, that's true, so I want to go back and pick up on something you said about that, that you know yourself.

You can't operate on trust when you're under a lot of stress, so they're actually opposite states, which is why survival emotions fear anger, disgust, shame, and sadness, which correlate with the hormone cortisol in On the other end of the spectrum we have joy, excitement, love and trust, and they correlate with the hormone oxytocin, so you can't be in those two states at the same time because one of those hormones is higher than the other, so that you literally can't trust yourself, trust anyone. Otherwise, trust your decision making when you are in this state of stress, then you say you trust your instinct a lot.

I think when you make the right decisions, we're going to follow everything we just said throughout this conversation. extreme right so you can trust your gut you can't be stressed running too busy how do you do it then because a lot of people really struggle with this the reason I'm spending a lot of time in this chronic stress is because I've seen first hand how many people this It affects physical health, mental health, emotional health, the whole thing when we're chronically stressed and I really think a lot of us don't even realize how stressed we are.

I agree, we just got used to it. that, like our normal states, our decision making comes from that place of stress, which is why I think we find it difficult to operate from love, trust, joy and compassion, because of that, what can people do, how is it done, how is it done? I know when you're making a decision if it's really coming from trust or fear. Oh, I mean, I can tell the difference and I can physically feel when I'm making a decision, like what state I'm in in your life. head or in your body not in my body then what happens? um, maybe both, but if I am, because you know, even I go between those, I'm not constantly like walking in a bubble of love, um, you know if I'm smiling.

If I'm feeling calm, if I'm like I'm moving relatively slower, then you know I can say I'm in a parasympathetic state, which is basically like resting and digesting or resting and relaxing when I'm feeling agitated. The facial expression is not, you know, it's kind of like depressed, um, when my like thoughts are like racing more than I know, you probably know that I'm not going to make the best decisions that I can and often. It comes with that feeling of I can't decide, I can't, you know it's a decision you need to make, you just feel like you can't make it, it feels very cloudy, whereas when you're in trust. and the state of love, things feel very clear.

What I tend to do, what I've learned to do in that moment is think of three people and you know family or friends that I trust and that would have a relevant opinion on the decision that I'm making. trying to let you know it's three, it could be three different people each time and I ask each one what their opinion is and then I'll use that to try to inform my opinion, but I'll also try to wait until you know I'm in a better place. state before making a final decision? When you ask your family or friends, do you literally call them and ask them?

Yeah, and the reason I asked that is because I had Shane Parish on the show a couple of times. Months ago, whoever just wrote this book called clear thinking and in that book Shane talks about having a board of directors that we can always refer to, but that board of directors could be dead, there could be fictional characters from the past, so you know what would do. I'm not against what you just said, but he would be, you know, I guess he would argue that, say, for example, someone doesn't have access to friends or family and feels really isolated, maybe this direct side would be very helpful. . for that person you have friends, you have family and you ask for help, but it's almost like imagining it, you know, let's say someone had you on their board of directors, well, what would Dr.

Tara do here, what would she say in this situation you know what she would say I don't know what my grandmother who died 10 years ago would say, what she would say about it. I guess in both examples what's happening we're somehow getting it out of our own heads and our bodies and minds and we're distancing ourselves a little bit, yeah, like that. that we're basically going back to that idea of ​​metacognition, which is that when you're tangled up in your own thoughts and feelings it can be very difficult to be rational and have perspective, but if your brother comes to you with the same problem that you're experiencing, you could give him some advice, so by having real friends or the fictitious board of directors, you are taking like a step away from yourself, another thing that What I tell people is what would your sister or your best friend tell you or you know what would tell you your wife and another exercise that I do on my own is I po I, you know, in a way I recognize that I am here in the I present today the age that I am and I ask myself a question seven years in the future and then I walk seven steps forward and I turn around and like I'm looking at Tara today and I identify myself as Tara plus seven years, um. and then I answer the question and that's accessing your intuition and sometimes it's amazing that you literally feel like a different person, like you're looking at Tara and thinking if you knew what I know now, what does intuition mean to you?

Well, it basically means wisdom from all the light life lessons we learned throughout our lives, but we don't necessarily remember them consciously. So let's start with that basic fact, which is that we can't remember everything we've experienced. our entire lives, but we'll let you know that we're not done with that example of cheating, so let's use that as an example: We may have been in a relationship that we thought was going to last forever and then the person cheated on us and you know we you got it to the point where that leaves the person who's been deceived less willing to trust people in the future um and if that happens three, four or five times then yeah, that's your pattern um but if you say maybe it's because I'm choosing the wrong type of person for me maybe it's because I'm choosing someone who doesn't have the same values ​​as me so you can use your judgment to make a different decision next time or to make it's very clear that that's a deal breaker.

For you, you know, sometimes these things aren't said out loud beforehand, so intuition would be in that example a way of making your own judgment based on relationships you've had before from people you know. you know, you know examples of relationships that you have in front of you about whether he is likely to be a trustworthy person, um and then in all the other scenarios, it is knowing that you have not based it on anything logical or that you know NE obvious data, but based in the sense you have of the world through the experiences you have accumulated, yes, I love that I asked my wife this question yesterday.

I told him: What is intuition for you? You just had a couple of seconds of thought and said a knowledge, no. based on logic, oh, and then she got up and went and put on the kle. I thought: that's amazing, I love it, that's really very good, I like it and it kind of echoes what you just said, sure, yes, totally, but where does it come from?aware that if I haven't digested my food, I know I won't sleep, so I'm aware of always trying to leave that space when it's not possible for various reasons, like I was recently filming in the Navajo Nation, you know, I basically lived in a van and, wow, when we got to a motel, we hadn't eaten in a long time, so we had to eat and I.

It turned out that I needed to get 8 hours of sleep to be okay for filming the next day, but ideally I wanted to stay awake for 2 hours to let my food digest and I had this book about the Navajo people that I needed to get my hands on. I also finished, so I thought, well, I'll end up sleeping at 1, which is really really late for me, but I can read the book for two hours because I'm not going to sleep anyway and I'll still get 8 hours of sleep because I won't. We're going to start early, so you know, I solve it like this, yeah, I love it, I mean, what it really tells me is that you've spent time getting to know yourself, yeah, right. so you know what works for you yeah what you said about caffeine and knowing to finish before 10am. m. does it work for you.

I think there's a broader point here, Tara, that I'd love to hear your perspective on, but this is this kind of idea that I've heard that

coffee

is good or bad, okay, research shows that two cups of coffee a day they do this for health, it's the largest source of polyphenols in the American diet, we read all this and then we say, yeah, so coffee is good. It depends in a way, yeah sure, if you're chronically stressed, overworked and anxious and you're using caffeine to prop yourself up, I don't think it matters how many polyphenols you like, it's probably not going to be good for you in the context of your life, but for another person and to be clear, you know that I drink coffee as I think you know that caffeinated beverages can be part of a healthy and balanced life.

I completely agree, but you have to tune in to yourself and find out what works for you, right? Yes, you absolutely agree. I mean, there is some evidence that a small amount of caffeine is actually beneficial for you. You also know your brain. It's like they're too much and you know. what time is the topic, yeah, we touched on nature before, we haven't delved into nature and there's a term you texted me yesterday about neuroathetics and I thought it's a wicked term. I hadn't heard of him, okay? I've been talking a lot about stress and the harmful effects of too much stress.

Mhm, one of the antidotes is nature. Hmm, so neuroaesthetics is basically the science of the impact of beauty on our brain, on our health, on our mental health, and on our health. longevity and So within that, you're frowning, no, I'm thinking I'll take it in because I love it and I've never heard the term before. I love the impact of beauty, yes I love it, so it basically says that creating, doing or contemplating creative activities is good for your health, so that's art, dance, music, um, and it's both painting and going to an art gallery, it's both singing in the shower and going to see a musical, um, and that's what you know.

It's dancing in your living room or going to the ballet, and you know the different differential benefits of doing and contemplating, both are good for you, but you know that ideally you would do a little bit of both, and within that, you and I could have the same taste in art but different taste in music, but nature is the palette in which we have existed since the beginning of time and that is why we all feel a sense of beauty when we are in nature and you know we know it when in nature, our blood pressure goes down, our heart rate goes down, there are certain trees that secrete chemicals called phytonides that stimulate the natural killer cells in our immune system, so a lot of good things happen when we're in nature.

Um and yeah, that's all you know, basically, thinking of nature as a beautiful setting, you know, and understanding that beauty and creative activities are very beneficial to us and, if you think about it, when we lived in the cave , you already know. We lived with the seasons We looked at the stars in the sky at night We walked barefoot like you try um and we danced around the fire We played drums We sang and the people you meet It's okay Once it's dark, you know it's not It's not like you could be hunting or something like that, but you know people didn't do it.

There was no extra time for fancy activities when you lived in the cave, it was all about survival, so we really believe that these types of activities are somehow crucial to our life. survival, whether it's the social connection or the benefit to the cardiovascular system by reducing blood pressure and heart rate, yes, it's a beautiful idea, it's a calming idea, we all feel good when we're in the forest. or in the wild, yeah, generally speaking, it's hard to get to the US, right? Yes, for several reasons. I don't know if you've read Daka Kelner's book or if he's a Berkeley professor.

He has been studying happiness for 20 plus years and released a book about a year ago. I think it was called or the science of you'd love to, and I really look at it without looking at what happens to humans when we experience everything that of course we do in nature correctly and Reduces stress Improves mental well-being Improves physical health I think it's also related to longevity, which is absolutely amazing, isn't it? So how much nature does it take to get these benefits? I am referring to the field of neuroaesthetics. let's say, ideally, 20 minutes a day of a creative active activity, doing it, contemplating it or being in nature, personally, when you know, I used to like to go for a walk in the forest every day and, as you know, just for physical purposes.

It was 30 minutes ago when I started doing an hour, the effect on my mental health was so noticeable it was unbelievable. I didn't realize it would make that much of a difference and we don't always have the luxury of being able to go for a 1 hour walk, but both physically and mentally, I could tell the difference between half an hour and an hour. Wow, just to make sure you're taking action after watching this video. I've created a free guide to help you develop healthy habits that we all can. make short-term changes, but can those changes become a fundamental part of our lives?

This is often not the case and that is why in this free guide I share with you the six crucial steps that you must follow and that are really very effective if you want them. Get that free guide right now, all you have to do is click the link in the description box below and I can also tell the difference between walking for an hour in really beautiful nature like in ancient forests and walking for an hour by the river. in London, which is definitely better, you know really beautiful nature like no concrete jungle, the difficulty there of course is that the world is becoming more and more urbanized, many people live in mega-urban environments and you know that many times it is people in disadvantaged communities who we know have worse health outcomes anyway for a variety of different reasons and I think it's important for them to know that I'm lucky to live in Cheshire, there's nice nature everywhere, it's very easy within five minutes from my house. to obtain that nature, yes, but not everyone has that right, no, for that person who does not have it, what would you say?

So even having more plants in your house has the effect that I mentioned on the trees in the forest yeah, you're doing it right, we tried to see that in this study, yeah, um, and you know, I mean one of the examples that, ya You know, the neuroaesthetics researcher I spoke to gave you was just to have a little vase of flowers next to your bed so that when you wake up that's the first thing you smell and see, you know, it's a neuroaesthetic day that starts with a real piece of beauty, um, yeah, it's harder if you live in an urban environment, but there are amazing parks in most cities, so trying to get to them, but even just knowing how to notice the trees that you can see in the horizon or a body of water, yes, it makes a difference.

I've seen research on fractals, which are these, of course, you know, these geometric shapes that we already have in nature, that when a human eye sees a fractal, it reduces levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, oh, wow. , I think that's one. One of the many reasons why nature is so powerful, right, and there is research that also shows that simply looking at a picture of nature will reduce cortisol levels. I don't think it's to the same degree, but it still does it. I was going to say, I was going to say that if you really can't get to a park near your house, then it's probably not that good, but if you look on your phone or on TV or whatever and just look at the landscapes of nature , I mean one of the things I'm planning to do next that I plan to do later this year is to release a series of guided meditations with my voice, but played over some really impressive nature time lapse photography.

I love it, I look forward to it being converted. part of my morning routine yeah I want to talk about death Tara I've seen some of your interviews online recently MH uh and they've been really fascinating and death is something I've seen you talk about more and more . about the past, I say year, maybe why yes, I would say a year or two because you know, at the beginning of the pandemic I told you that I feel like this is potentially a mental health crisis, what I came out of it feeling There were so many people who experienced loss and I mean, you know, loss through the actual death of loved ones, but also a lot of relationships were broken, a lot of people that you know really suffered during the pandemic, whether it was because they were isolated or you know.

The way things work changes that loss of sense of self, so I feel like there's a lot of suffering in the world right now and I also feel like we're more lost and disconnected than ever before. um and so as part of my personal spiritual practice, I made the second season of my podcast more about ancient wisdom because I wanted to learn about Sufism and you know South African traditional healers and you know Tibetan Buddhist beliefs and other things, yeah, but as part. In fact, our friend at La um Drew suggested a guest to me for my podcast who was an Austrian doctor named Alexander Bathani who works on Terminal Lucidity and Terminal Lucidity is when people have some type of brain damage or Reduced Consciousness because they have had a stroke. brain or dementia suddenly became completely lucid, so people who forgot they even had children suddenly remember their children's names and tell them that they love them and have a conversation with them that was completely normal. until a few years ago and that really got me thinking if it's possible that Consciousness can exist outside of our physical body, basically if your spirit is still somewhere after your physical death and then there was this documentary on Netflix about how to survive The deaths. down a rabbit hole, you know, I get into a topic and then I really get into it, but I felt very passionately that this could bring a lot of comfort to people, um and something else that I'll come back to, so um after I interviewed Alexander.

I told Drew this about a fascinating topic and he gave me another guest who is a professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia who works on near-death experiences, so these are people who you know their heart stopped and the number of minutes. That was enough for us to know that the brain was beginning to decay, but somehow they returned to physical life and could describe the experience they had had. He also has a colleague who works on past life memories, but me. I haven't been able to talk to him, but he works with children who remember being someone else before and then I spoke to a Tibetan doctor who does dark retreats, which is the closest experience to a near-death experience that you can have without actually almost I die so you're in complete darkness for seven days and seven nights and in fact monks do it for 49 days oh wow yeah that got me thinking do you know you told me that? you are very interested in intuition right now.

I've been interested in intuition for a long time, but all this you know, there is potential research that can't prove anything other than pointing to the fact that the mind and brain could be separate. I mean the way Dr. Grayson put it is that the brain is essentially filtering the mind because the mind is capable of a lot, but to survive in this material world we can't be overwhelmed in that way, so the brain actually creates our mind. fit for purpose of this material world, so if you think about the fact that bats and dolphins can see and hear things that we cannot see, that means that a biological model has a range in its Consciousness that is outside of our range, so if we believe it is true that the mind is being filtered by the brain, is it possible for usReal effort not to be rushing with mom when she was more capable than she is now and she was walking and doing her things, you know, I was busy and running and I would go in to see mom and do some things, but she was always in a hurry to get out. and all this kind of stuff, right? never do that like I literally never do that anymore, yeah, because I'm like no, you know, actually, last week I was working from home one day and I went out for a walk.

I thought about stopping by to see mom for 10 minutes but I have to go back I have work to do and mom was having a good day and she said oh are you going oh I said oh mom you know it's kind of a Tuesday I have I have some work what to do yeah I said oh you know I said oh you want me to say oh yeah because sometimes I'm just alone and you know what I thought you know what the fuck I'm just staying here, yeah, yeah, that day I was able to make that decision.

I recognize that when I say that some people have jobs or have days in the week they can't do that, but I could and could have made the case. for me you have to do this job and it would have been better to do it right AB for my job I probably would have done it, but for me and my mom and I am so aware that there are not many more days like this left, yes, so I want to be present for all of them, yeah, and ending the cycle of what I was saying before is um, I'm just going to sit there and hug him and pet him because you can.

I have a deep level of communication through touch, yes you absolutely can and you can see mom smiling and it's lovely but I would never have done it that way if she was talking so I like to see everything in life as an opportunity . The opportunity for verbal communication is not what it was, yeah, so what's the opportunity? The opportunity is good, I can get better at communicating through the skin, yes, but you can also talk to her, yes, yes, yes, yes, which you know she would like even if it's a bit like a monologue to Sometimes it's interesting, isn't it?

I think you know, I imagine that in that state you know things like silly things the kids did or like you know what you ate and what you cooked for the last supper. night, you know, it's if she said because sometimes I'm alone, so basically she's probably a little bored and just wants to hear about normal life and yeah, yeah, I mean, there are some deep rabbit holes to die in, sure. , yeah and and I think maybe it's a reflection of getting older and encountering death that makes us think about it more like, yeah, in the last season of your podcast, when you went down this rabbit hole, is there a moment?

Is there a person, a guest where? You heard something where you thought I didn't know that I didn't think that was possible, but now you're making me think that yes, it was. It started with Alexander Bani, the Austrian psychologist, and I actually recorded it quite late, but I mentioned it. at number two because I was very excited and so it was and Dr. Bruce Gra repeated a similar message, but you know I really pressed him on this point of whether Consciousness can exist after physical death and he said, you know, even My friends and family say it's okay Alex you can tell us we won't tell anyone and he and you know he said again it can't be proven but I have a strong impression and then he talked for a while and I told him yes.

You just said a lot of things without actually saying anything and he said, Tara, no one has ever pressured me that much to answer this question and I said from what I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but from what you I just said I'm going to say. So the answer is yes, let's look at this another way, does it really matter? And where I'm coming from with that question is let's say this is all nonsense, right? and it's not real. Okay, and again to reiterate, you've said many times that you can't prove this to be right or you have no proof of it, it's just that no one does their research and research and their passion or whatever it can be if we think. in what you said before about the brain and we were talking about the brain and how it is recording all our experiences correctly so it may not be conscious but within our subconscious we have all these experiences and therefore at the moment appropriate to my life.

Life, mhm, maybe it's all internal and nothing external. You could say no. You could absolutely say that what I'm trying to say is that we currently don't believe it's possible to have communication with a lost loved one. a true one, what if it is possible? But since we don't believe it to be true, we won't do it. That is the question I am posing. It's another podcast in itself. I know and I don't know. I'm still investigating. I don't have the answers yet and when you do, I look forward to that conversation. um, just changing direction slightly at the end of our conversation.

Many people listen to this program because they want help leading more meaningfully. happier and healthier lives, right, we've covered a lot. I think there has been a lot of practical guidance woven throughout our conversation. I certainly hope so. Yes, in closing, while I want to talk about why people struggle to make changes in their lives, let's take the New Year. resolutions as an example, yes, they are notoriously unsuccessful, yes, of course, what is it? 80% of the people who take them in the first week of February no longer do something like that. In your opinion, what is the biggest obstacle in people's lives? that is stopping them from moving forward, that the goal they have set is too big and therefore not achievable, so it has less to do with its sustainability, but with the fact that it is too big in the first place and , therefore, the effort.

What is required for that major change is so much effort that you are more likely to give up quickly, so the year that was a game, Cher for me, was the year I decided to add two or three micro habits per quarter, so I started the year and identified three things that I was going to do and also knowing that in some quarters one of them would just fall by the wayside and not actually be incorporated, but what it meant was that there were things so easy that in the end In the end, you know, at the end of March I thought, "Okay, what else can I do?", another three um and that meant that at the end of the year I looked back and I had 10 things that I was doing now without a doubt that I didn't They had been habits the year before, but you know, when I set my mind to something bigger than that, I don't get to the end of the year and say, oh, you know, I achieved that New Year's resolution, so in a kind of conscious mind rational practical. through that kind of lens that is very consistent with what I found in clinical practice, which is very consistent with, say, Professor BJ Fog's research on behavior change at Stanford, this idea that they are small habits, It is small changes that are actually the ones we manage to introduce. in our life and make it sustainable, yes, yes, there is also the subconscious pattern within us, although I also believe, and this was definitely true for me, that the reason many behavioral changes fail.

I'm all for small habits, but I think one of the reasons, for example, that New Year's resolutions fail is because I think they come from an energy of lack rather than an energy of abundance. So what can I do to punish myself? I'm not good enough right now. You know, my life is. I'm not going down the path I need to make this big, yeah, yeah, but I'm also not doing it because I like who I am and I like the person I am in the world. I'm doing it in some way to punish myself, yes. and I used to do that.

I used to be great for 21 days meditating for 20 minutes a day. I think so, this year I will do it. I'm doing. I thought one day I would miss it. Yes, this is it. A few years ago, oh my gosh, the personal conversation about what a failure I was and how I couldn't even keep it up that year, right, I realized that was the problem, yeah, the problem wasn't the meditation, it wasn't the habit. wrong, the problem was the energy behind that decision, whereas now I don't make them. I actually really like who I am. You know, I know it sounds ridiculous, but I don't think I said years ago.

I like it. I like the person. I've had to work hard to get to that point, so now I don't beat myself up and now the changes I choose to make, whether in January, July or November, tend to be sustainable because of the energy behind them. Yes, I absolutely love it, the point of lack and abundance is really good and very commonly in my training practice I see people you know miss a day or you know I miss whatever. I miss the regularity of the habit and then I'm like Oh, that's it, you know, I've ruined it now and I always say don't put any energy into punishing yourself, just start over, you know, because next time it'll be 31 days and then maybe you miss a day. and then you know next time it will be 41, but I think the point is that when we started we thought if I'm doing this, I have to do it every day, why do you have to do it every day? like when you told me at the beginning oh your daily practice of journaling I thought I'm not going to lie about that I don't do it every day but it's a practice in my life you know um and okay I also love what you said before about your yoga practice, which if you don't have time you'll still be on the mat and I think that's really powerful because it keeps the momentum going, right?

It's almost the antidote to what some of your clients say yes, it's like I'm sure you don't have your 20 minutes or however long you want, you're still going to have yes, get on the mat exactly Tara. I love talking to you. This conversation certainly touched on some areas I wasn't expecting. I've learned over the years to not expect anything from these conversations and just trust and see where it goes and see what the energy is between us on any given day and I don't think it could have been better than this. I loved. and I think people are very warm to you.

I think I think they really do. I think they like your knowledge and wisdom, but also the way you convey it. So no. I think I and many other people appreciate it. Well, thanks for trusting me. going into some areas that I know you weren't necessarily willing to look at well, there had to be two-way conversations to finish a simple question in your entire experience, a neuroscientist coach gives a lecture, whatever it is, what are some of the changes and more impactful lifestyle choices that people can incorporate into their lives that will immediately improve the quality of their lives.

I'm going to start with some really simple basics because I think they're always worth repeating, so things like drinking enough water, I mean just going from being in a slightly dehydrated state to being in an adequately hydrated state all the time is going to make you feel different. . Changing your diet today will begin to change your gut microbiome and you will notice the benefits of that within minutes. days, if not a week, getting enough sleep, going to bed and waking up at regular times has been shown to be really important, but then I'd like to switch things up a bit and say that the latest research on the benefits for your mental health Your health and longevity, spending time in nature, nature, having meaningful and really positive social connections and having a purpose that transcends yourself, these are the three things that I'm most focused on right now, you know, I understand the basics mostly well, love.

That's brilliant advice, thanks for coming to the Shar, thanks for having me. Click here to have a powerful conversation with an amazing bodh monk who has life lessons to share that will immediately help you with your health and happiness, only when you learn what to do. With your unhappiness, you can really break through and find stable happiness. We are all drowning in addictions and they are all based on distraction. What are we trying to distract ourselves from?