Neuroscientist: This Is How You Manifest Your Dream Life Before 2024! | Tara Swart

si

tara

welcome to the podcast thank you I'm so excited to be here

this

is on my vision board oh my goodness fantastic well that's something we're definitely going to talk about during the course of

this

conversation, but look I've got my copy of the dish , as you can see, there is a lot of surfing, you know, I have folded the Loza page because I hope you don't feel like I have destroyed

your

book, but that is very used, but there are many. in this I like and you know you have very unique qualifications you know you used to be a doctor I guess technically you're still a doctor you're a

neuroscientist

you're an author but you also teach at a business school at MIT which is a wide variety of different things that you do can you Tell me how you got to this point in

your

life

? mm-hmm, so I went to medical school when I was 18 and I thought I wanted to be a neurologist, so I left and did a PhD in neuroscience between preclinical and clinical, when I came back and went to clinical school I discovered That psychiatry was much more interesting to me, it was about how people think, how their moods change, how our brain can trick us into thinking we are hearing voices when they are not there, so I decided to specialize as a psychiatrist.

I did it for seven years and then 10 years ago, after a few years I made the decision to become an executive. coaching, so I started my little consultancy which is based on neuroscience, so it helps people use their brain better to get more out of themselves and other people in business. What a trip, I have been literally engrossed in your book, the source ever since. I was going to say since it came out, but I was actually very lucky to be sent a copy in advance and there are so many things I like, so I talk a lot about health and wellness and, you know, we often talk about food and exercise , sleep and stress, which of course are very, very important, but what I really like about your approach is that you talked a lot about how important our thoughts are, how important our mind is and I don't think that's enough . time in the air when we talk about health and well-being, why are our thoughts so important?

So I think that the pillars that you talk about, like sleep, diet, exercise, mindfulness, are important to improve the quality of our thoughts, because if you really think about why you are doing those things, you are not just doing it to that your body is in good shape you are doing it so that you can think more clearly you can do your job better you can have better relationships and everything That really comes down to how you think so all the physical factors put your brain in good condition and then it's It's what you do with it that really counts.

Yeah, I guess it works both ways, right? Because I assume you know how to pay. Paying attention to these physical factors helps your brain function to help you think more clearly, but at the same time I suppose if you change the way you think and work on your thoughts, it can be easier to do a lot of these physical things. that we are talking about. I mean, one of the chapters in the book is about the brain-body connection, so I think because psychology was around for a long time before we could scan brains and bodies, it left us with this kind of idea that there's a limit to the neck and that what you think and feel is not connected with what happens in your body and vice versa, but absolutely if you are cold, hungry or tired it affects the quality of your thinking and if you are confident or anxious it affects the nerves and hormones in your body, yes, absolutely, and I think this whole connection between the brain and the body that you talk so wonderfully about in the book is very important and I guess for me it's something that's really been missing in my medical training, it's something that I think It's been missing for a long time in medicine, particularly in 20th century medicine, the way we know it, you know the way medicine really evolved to do so many wonderful things, but I think we've lost what I did, I really suppose that people known for The Years of the Donkey was one of your frustrations with medicine.

I heard you talk about it on another of your podcasts and it absolutely resonated with me. I was almost relieved to hear you say that I feel like I'm not the only one and that you Note that I started the book talking about how we evolved and the fact that once we developed this cortex, which is much more, a modern part of the brain which we use for articulate speech and to predict and plan the future. part of the brain had gotten us to that point, the intuitive, emotional part of the brain seemed to have been degraded by society, you know, like logic, and being able to speak suddenly became important and gut feelings and emotions became less important, yes, I guess I agree that there is a social narrative, right?

It is not like this? You know that logic is the key, intuition is marginalized and feelings are marginalized. Which I think you've done so well and you're obviously very well trained. You know, you have a huge scientific background, you've brought to

life

some of these ideas that have existed before, but now you have some scientific basis in them and one of your, you know, I guess one of your core concepts is how we create. the life we ​​want, how can we be in charge of what happens to us, you know what happens to our life, instead of letting life happen to us, it's something you have, it's not something you feel like you've had, you've always had. an idea of ​​or is something that has really evolved in your thinking over the last few years.

Well, it's funny you say that because, when I look back, I feel like a lot of the concepts in the book were always there and the way I lived my life, but even since I wrote the book I came up with this new analogy: Let's say that You and I want to go on a trip. Would you rather be sitting in the passenger seat and I choose where we go and the route? what we take or would you rather drive and choose the destination is something like that in life it is very easy to go through the motions every day and let life happen to you, but if you think about it, if we stop and take a step back, we have many more choices in what we tolerate and what happens to us and the decisions we make, so we necessarily think it's easy to just go on autopilot and I think that's something that really happens these days, isn't it for a lot of people?

They are living life on a treadmill day by day, a week before you know it, in other years gone by and I think one of the problems is that people don't have time, they don't have it, they don't feel that They really can do it. They separate for a moment when they reflect internally, they reflect on their own life and their journey is something like that. I know I've talked about this a little before. I've certainly written about the sets, I mean, we're recording. this podcast just yeah it was six years to the day so my dad passed away and you know that was because I used to take care of my dad for a long period of time that's why I moved to the northwest to help my mom or my brother. taking care of the parents and what was it when the interesting thing is that since my dad died I certainly had a lot of time all that time I dedicated to taking care of and trying to take care of the family I thought I would reflect or reflect on his life it is reflected in my education and it really helped me understand, wait a minute, you know, I'm living the life I want to live and in fact, you can literally mirror my happiness, but things have been going well in my career literally from the moment my father died and It's like that. a real shock for me, on the one hand I wish my dad was still here but on the other hand if dad was still here I wouldn't, he would be doing any of the things I'm currently doing because he would be too busy.

I don't know how that sounds to you, so to me it sounds like you know he's still alive by giving you this gift, which is the new life you've chosen for yourself, and I feel exactly the same way. You know what I want. He had never divorced me, but it was at that exact moment that I thought, "Okay, something happened to me that I hadn't considered now, what do I do with my life?" and it was the absolute turning point in choosing my career, where I lived. what he wanted to do, what he wanted in my life and you know, he ended up with me writing this book, yeah, well, I guess that's pretty empowering for people, isn't it? instead of looking at something that you know and maybe if we have Now we will explore, you know how divorce changed you, but you know that getting divorced for many is clearly an episode that can be very traumatic in one's life, it can cause a lot of negative feelings, what Frustration, many kinds.

A lot of things can happen that can actually happen, unless it's turned into something positive, unless it's used as a signal to say, hey, look, what can I learn about this? How can I overcome this? People can often fall into a downward spiral, so, but there are so many things we can talk about. I really want to get into the meat of this book, which was really good. It's called the fountain. Which is the source? Okay, so the source is your fully integrated brain power. So we've already touched on it. saying that logic is really key in society and that emotions and intuition can be less valued, the source is basically mastering your emotions, knowing your body and listening to your body's messages, trusting your instinct, which is your intuition, making good decisions, which is your logic that is very important, staying motivated and resilient to achieve your goals and then really taking ownership of creating your life, so that's six ways of thinking and it's about doing all of those things you don't know, think well.

I am very logical, so I will rely mainly on making good decisions and neglect the fact that I may burn out or lose sight of what I really want in life. It's about keeping those six types of fires burning. At the same time it sounds wonderful, is it something people can achieve? I think if you don't know that those are the six key ways of thinking, then it's unlikely that you're going to suddenly figure it out and create this idea for yourself, but I've presented it almost like a map and now I think people can sit down and Think, how much do I listen to my body?

How much do I trust my intuition? Do you sometimes know that I get lost with my emotions? What could I do about it and just work on the six ways of thinking? I've worked successfully with business people for the last 10 years following those six ways of thinking and of course I've done it myself and I've literally done it. If I have some kind of acute problem on my hands, I think okay, what's going on emotionally, what's the body telling me and I work through the six and now it's become more natural, yeah, absolutely like at the beginning of the book, there was this section in which you won.

I don't want a series of questions if you nod your head, this book is for you and I thought it was brilliant. I went to read them all, but some of these statements are, for example, I feel trapped in a long-term unhappy relationship and I don't see a way out that is a very very common thing I see in my practice I feel desperate to meet someone so I don't being the last childless person in my group of friends god I have so many people I know who feel this way, you know, I agonize over decisions to make.

I've never asked for a raise or a promotion, my job bores me, but it pays the bills you could describe, you know, maybe 80% of the people who walk through my door as cheap, so I think in many ways you know what What you're saying, if you resonate with those statements, I think a lot of people will, the book is for them, so if someone doesn't have a clue about one of those statements, think that's okay. I'm interested in you knowing what practical steps they can take, how they start doing this. Okay, so the book is really practical.

In fact, the last four chapters are totally practical exercises, involving some meditations and types of visualizations. the book I ask people to start journaling so they know how they talked about that moment to take a step back and reflect. It may seem like a big sacrifice to think it's okay. I will take a weekend, a week or a month to reflect on my life. but if you start journaling for a few minutes each day, I found that looking back and reading it was so revealing that I could see where I was repeating the same patterns. I could see what was happening when I was feeling really safe and happy and how that was different to when I was feeling a little depressed and unsure of the future and that helped me enormously, so I think if people read the book, they start journaling. , absolutely makes a vision board and we can talk about the vision board safely and with things. so you know it's very important for me to make the science around it very clear so that it's not just another nice thing to do, but that you understand why you're doing it and how it can change your life and then, like I said There are four chapters of exercises that you can complete in four weeks or four months or as long as you want, but I think when people get to the end of having done them, I'll be surprised if you nod to any of them.

Those statements that you know you have at the beginning are very powerful and seductive to people.people, really, but I absolutely agree. I think there are some really powerful tools in your approach. I just want to touch on the topic of journaling, so I'm aware that I know how to journal. I know what journaling is, but some people listening to this may have heard that term but they may not really understand what it is, how do I journal? a diary to find out if anyone has never done this before? they want to know how they could start, so you literally get a kind of blank diary and you can start by just saying what happened to you today so you know, I could literally say I woke up earlier than usual feeling a little in a bad mood, I went to meet you.

Rangan and doing this podcast immediately perked up and even just in that little snippet what you realized is that maybe if I don't get enough sleep it affects my mood, maybe if I'm with someone I really respect and with who I have fun with improves my mood you've already learned something just by recording that over time you can start talking about things like emotions and intuition you're basically talking to yourself you're recording it to watch it later so you can say you know I had an argument with this person and that's how it left me feeling.

I wish I hadn't said your thoughts to get them out of your head so you can see them more objectively and create a narrative that you can look back on and make certain different decisions about your future. I mean some people who recommend journaling say they do it. but they never look back at what they have written, but you say they actually go back and see if there are merits in the different approaches. I'm sure it's very individual and I never intended to go back and look, but I do. these two trips to the United States twice a year and just out of curiosity I read about the trip six months ago when I was there and I had these little muscle spasms and to my surprise, I saw that I had recorded it in my diary six months ago, so basically I discovered that travel, jet lag and the kind of stress of being away meant I needed to take more magnesium supplements and it was a real eye opener and then I thought well what if I looked at the most emotional things I've written, what might I discover? and now I would say that reading your journal again is actually more useful than just writing it down, yeah, well, awesome.

I III Write a diary from time to time. I haven't made it a consistent daily practice, but I go through periods of time in my life where for a few days or a few weeks I journal, and I personally like to do it first thing in the morning. as part of my morning routine and you know, I wonder if you know about this as a

neuroscientist

, but I'm not entirely sure, but sometimes I feel like you know, you've been in a deep seat. When you wake up, there are so many things going around in your subconscious and when you start writing first thing in the morning, I feel like what I'm doing is just helping my subconscious mind process and put it on paper so that you say it's getting out of me. head and put on paper and one of the big problems I see these days is that people live in their heads, they have all kinds of anxieties, fears, insecurities running through their brain, but the simple act of writing it down somehow literally brings it out. from your brain and put it on paper.

I fully believe that just like doing aerobic exercise can help you reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, but speaking out loud or writing down those thoughts makes you race. going around and around in your head instead of repressing them or just letting them build up, you know, until you feel like your head is going to explode, is a way to reduce stress, so actually, if you have anxieties or negative thoughts and you write them down or have someone you trust that you can talk to it gets it out of your brain-body system exactly the same way exercise can release stress hormones from your brain-body system yeah, very, very powerful, isn't journaling ?

I want to move on to another tool that You Got What You Touched on, which is vision boards. It was amazing for me to see. I actually haven't created my own yet, although when I was re-reading it this morning, as we were flipping through your book this morning, I thought, I really have to do this, I really have to pay to do it at some point, maybe this weekend or next. next weekend, and actually do it. There's something intuitively that really resonates with me about it, but you already know what vision boards are and why they're so powerful.

Well then. I'm going to start by saying that this year mine is on my phone on Pinterest, which is not the idea I recommend, but I just couldn't find the images I wanted in magazines, but your ideal vision board is a collage that you make hand to make it visual, you've been tactile with it while creating it, so you've already created a kind of bond with it in some way and I would just get a variety of magazines, like that You know, maybe travel, lifestyle, food and look for images that represent the things I want in my life that year.

Sometimes you see an image and it's not something you ever thought about wanting, but you really love that image. You can choose images. So, I try not to use words or numbers, but if you specifically want to have a goal of making a certain amount of money this year, let's say if you have your own business, you can put that number in there and it's very important to think about things. Like you don't want your life to be too cluttered, you actually have a board with some space that you don't fill, so the whole look should represent what you want your life to be like. and then it's the visual images that track in parts of your brain that resonate the most deeply, so if you write down a list of what you want in your life, that won't have the same impact, but if you repeatedly see these images of what you want So, as you go about your daily life, you are more likely to notice opportunities to do or get the things you want in your life.

This is the core of your approach where this whole idea of ​​you is not said. We know people are familiar with the law of attraction, you really have a lot of science backing that up, so what is it that makes our brain aware of what we want, actually have some kind of intention-filled act? where we're actually indicating, whether it's in a journal, whether it's in affirmations, whether it's on the vision board, we're actually visualizing what we want out of life, is that the brain is more aware of seeing those opportunities, I mean , what happens, yes. so journaling and affirmations are still words so this adds to another level which is the visual and the way it works is through two main mechanisms in the brain called selective attention or selective filtering and value labeling, because we are bombarded with so much information all the time Everything you know Everything we see Everything we hear Everything we feel Our brain naturally has to filter and most of it comes out, so there is a natural mechanism to understand what which is important for our survival.

You know, if we do it right. in life and anything that's not totally relevant that will filter out by creating a vision board, you're priming your brain by telling it what's important to you, so you're more likely to notice those things, so you know, if I told you Today, observe all that is. In red, you'll notice more buses and London postboxes and telephone boxes than you normally see and this is a more sophisticated version of doing so. Furthermore, value labeling is what the brain decides to keep as important in front of your mind then. labels in order of importance, importance in terms of things like our personal identity, our work identity, our feeling of belonging to society and then the things I need to be successful, so again, if you repeatedly look at these images, they will be much more present in your mind.

They are higher up in your value labeling system and do you remember if you played Tetris? I played Tetris, yeah, do you remember if you played it until late at night when you fell asleep and closed your eyes? you could see the little blocks falling in front of your eyes, so it's a phenomenon that has now become cool, it's called the tetris effect, so if you keep your vision board next to your bed, in those states of waking and falling asleep , the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states The brain is more impressionable, so if you see that image late at night, close your eyes, go to sleep, it will make a stronger impression on your subconscious and then the next day you will know , like you said this morning, you read the book and decided to go to the gym this weekend, you're thinking about doing the vision board, you're much more likely to act on it if there's a trigger reminding you to do it at that moment, yeah, and if you're people who haven't heard that and there's a couple of things I want to touch on, so I mentioned that I went to the gym this morning and right before we started recording I was telling him, oh, this, literally, what happened this morning, so it was. yesterday at an event in London, last night I stayed in a hotel here and I tend to get up at 5 o'clock anyway, so I got up at 5, but I was feeling quite tired, you know, at home and in my usual routine. routine and you know where I usually meditate and you know that I did what I know I possibly shouldn't do.

I went to my computer and thought, oh, I'm interviewing Tory and he needed a couple of hours and he made sure you knew that. Check out the book again, get some conversation ideas, and while I was looking for you online, there are quite a few videos that you've done, which is really cool, in fact, I'm going to link to all of those online resources in the show notes. page that will be dr. chaski calm down the fountain so you can watch all those videos I'm talking about but one of them was I think three tips on how to make your brain work better I think something like that was about drinking water it's about how you gave us statistics on whether you do how much aerobic exercise for hair in the morning and then if you remember some type of aerobic exercise in the morning, how it improves your brain function by a certain percentage, yes, it's thirty minutes, it improves your productivity for the rest of that day in 15%.

Yes, look, what matters most to me is health and well-being. I've written two books on health and wellness and I thought, you know what if I can do that now? So I turned off the computer, turned on the gym and went. We went down to the hotel gym for half an hour and that was because of watching that video of yours because even though I know, I needed that reminder, so I think it's pretty powerful that we all know what we need to do because clearly a lot. Society knows what we should do, but we don't do it, so we need these triggers.

The other thing that really fascinates me and I read about the attachments that are in your book and you've talked about all the science, which is really fascinating, is that period right before we go to bed, yes, you can do that with the boards. of vision, but if we look at what a lot of people do in society, you know they're on their phones in the evening, they're flipping through the news, let's say here, right now, we have all this, you know, so when will it come out the podcast, but you know there's a lot going on about Brexit and all sorts of things, you know, pretty toxic emotive views.

Online, if we look at that right before we go to bed, instead of these beautiful images of what we want our life to be like, that's going to have very different impacts on our subconscious, right? And that's one of the things you know. Being aware and not being on autopilot is basically controlling what you expose your brain to because the more you expose it to bad news, the more likely you are to live life through fear. We know, for example, that people who repeatedly watch images of the fall of the Twin Towers, who had no personal connection to New York, could suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

I mean, it's amazing that just repeatedly exposing yourself to bad news, especially with visual images, can actually traumatize you in a way that you know you can't easily overcome. so I am very careful with what I watch and what I read. You know my social media feeds are carefully monitored to be as positive as possible. You are absolutely right that if you don't think about it and watch bad news. right before you go to sleep and you think about little kids, you have little kids, even if they know they're reading a book that's not that scary but maybe it has some monsters in it, so they might have nightmares, they might feel scared, so yeah, all that stuff. .

What we expose our brain to has an impact and we need to be much more aware of that, especially since the brain gear is two to two and a half times more likely to focus on the negative and the positive, so we need to feed ourselves. our brain has more positive things to keep us safe and you know, move forward positively, yeah, I think what you're saying is very profound because it'sthe piece I'm missing in health and well-being, yes, physical things are important, make more importance. move more sleep more, of course, these things are more important, but what we're exposing our vision to, you know, our visual fields, what we're exposing our brain to, is something that I don't think is talked about enough. and I think it's super super.

Importantly, a few weeks ago on aspects of Johann Hari's podcast, yes, there are people who haven't heard that. I encourage you A LOT. I think it's probably one of the most impactful conversations I've had so far on the podcast and he talked about I think this study was done in the 1970s where they exposed white children to advertisements. Basically, in a nutshell, what I remember is that one group of kids saw an ad with the equivalent of what Dora the Explorer is today back then and the other group didn't see the ads and then the kids were asked if They would like to play with a nice child who knows the Dora the Explorer team or they would like to play with a nice child and you know a lot. of the kids who expected to be exposed to the ad were happy to play with an obnoxious kid just so they could play with Dora the Explorer and that showed me how incredibly powerful we are exposing.

I will see that it is a child an advertisement. and I'm putting militants at home in terms of you know, technology with children, but also ads in particular, I don't really like them and I drive and I see the children, the grandparents look, I don't want them to look and tell you where I can see. ads I think ads, you know, like my daughter last year at Christmas, no bullshit, we asked her what she wanted, she didn't really know well and I think that's for a lot of reasons because she doesn't watch ads, so she doesn't .

I don't know what she should ask for Christmas. I mean, yeah, I'm sorry to go on about this, but it's very important. You know, maybe we should know. I no longer have a news app on my phone. I barely watch the news. I'm happier when I don't. I really want you to take that apology back because I think it's a really important thing to talk about, so I hardly watch the news. People say: how do you know what's going on? When something really important happens, people tell me it's not that I don't know what's going on, but there's a flip side to this that I'm seeing in my clients and I think listeners and viewers will relate to this because I am. seeing so often, that on your social networks they produce this feeling of discontent because you don't have this incredible lifestyle, the things that other people have, that you don't look like these people on social networks and that is causing serious problems. mental health issues I mean, we know that in teenage girls, the more times a day they look at social media, the more likely they are to have an eating disorder or body dysmorphic disorder, but now I'm seeing this in successful, intelligent, well-educated adults . feeling of discontent when looking at social media and you know, I think I remember telling one of my clients that it doesn't have that effect on me because I work very hard to hold my ground, but I think if you do if you're not conscious of working hard to keep your feet on the ground and keep your children grounded.

It would be very easy to think well. I want that, why don't I have that? Why doesn't my life look like this? And you can imagine the chain of negative thoughts that that starts one of my friends is going through a really difficult time right now and his mother, you know, is coming to the end of her life and I saw him a couple of weeks ago and he said to me who is normally very active on Instagram and Facebook and he said, you know what I have, we actually went out together and he said, look, I'm out of everything, I'm taking them all on my phone temporarily, I said why, because I have I realize that I'm not in a good emotional state right now and when my friends would post really cool things they were doing, I start to feel really resentful, jealous witty and I didn't like the way it made me feel. so I thought: do you know what fun these guys are having?

I shouldn't be resentful of them so I'm just not going to look at the moment and I think it affects everyone to some extent so there you mentioned something and I think you talked about this in the book in the section on vision boards about why why images are so powerful. You know they're overlooking something in their brain. Those are the correct images. Well, I think we're a very visual queen, so you know what vision is. the main meaning for most people and we are bombarded with images that we don't necessarily select, so that's an important part, you know, a transition from what we just said, but yes, the visual type, you know, the traces more strongly to the subconscious. then when you read something it travels around the brain in a way that is picked up by logic, emotion and intuition, whereas this bypasses logic and goes straight to the core of us, it resonates with us, which is why we use images to make your life feel more positive is really important, so bypass a lot of those systems.

It made me think of it as sublingual b12, you know you need b12, you know you need good stomach acid, you need a well-functioning digestive tract to absorb it, whereas you know, a lot of people struggle with that these days, they can't even if they take me, so they can't really absorb it very well, so if you take some, it will be too, so it actually just bypasses the intestine and goes directly inside. your body and it seems like the same thing happens on one level with images, so that's the case that images are so powerful, it's not one of the reasons why Instagram has been so successful because it's based on images, but It is also one of the reasons why a mr.

Graham can be exceptionally toxic in a lot of ways, so I love that analogy and I'm going to steal it for myself, yeah, so I think you're right, that image, you know if it's Instagram, Facebook, whatever, images can be very impactful, but in a positive or negative way and that's what we need to be aware of, so yes, I think the kind of problems compared to discontent and resentment are magnified with images instead of writing, listening , so we've covered social media quite a bit. a little bit on this podcast before and for people who know, there is a middle ground, so I guess the point I'm trying to make is can you still engage in social media and get the positives from it, of which there are many? without the negatives and if so how do people do it?

I think you have to be very careful about what you're looking at, so I tend to follow people I know, people who know real people who impart knowledge. or you know, sharing positive, happy images and not focusing on things that are really materialistic or you know aspirational should be a good word, but I think it's become a bad word in some ways, and you know I want things that I can. I don't focus on wanting things that I can make possible and that's really the key difference between vision boards as they've been described before and what I'm talking about is I actually call it an action board because what I'm saying is you can.

Don't just make this collage and then sit at home waiting for the checks to arrive in the mail, you should do things every day to try to make your

dream

s come true and just so you know, spending some time on social media is great, it's fun, but spending too much time on it could actually take you away from doing the things you can do to make your life the life you really want instead of looking at other people's lives. I love it, we call it an action board because it's one of the criticisms that is often directed at ideas like the law of attraction, something that, as I understand it, you just think about these things and it just happens and I don't think that whatever they're saying anyway, but I think it's one of being the negative column, you know things I've heard against it, but you're not actually saying that.

You're saying you believe that, but use it as a way to imprint what you want into your brain and then create action, yeah. I think it's a pretty big difference and a very important difference. I think you're right. I think there's been a bit of an unfair bad rap for things like the law of attraction and vision boards with this idea that you just wait for it to happen. True, I don't think that's what it ever was either, but I've made a much stronger case for saying that you need to do things that make it happen, and I think that's what makes your books so unique, that they really do.

It has a lot of these ideas and they're based on science, which is great, it's actually great and I think it's probably going to inspire people who maybe have been a little skeptical about these ideas in the past. the past could go oh well, that's really interesting, that there really is science behind this. Now I'm going to do that kind of thing and I don't need science, but people do, a lot of people have told me that science has really forced me. to do the exercises and take action, and in fact, I have been amazed by the fact that everyone, from my stepchildren friends here in their 20s to my friends and people from the older generation, are reading the book and making vision boards, and I don't.

I didn't expect it to have such a wide and broad appeal, but if you know that some people find that the particularly science chapter can be a little difficult to read, you don't have to read that chapter if you don't want to, but the practical chapters, the chapters on the laws of attraction and vision boards, everyone seems to be really enjoying it and I think it has just the right amount of science to make you feel good. I understand why this works, but you don't know as much as you think. it's a neuroscience book because it's not really, it doesn't read at all, it reads brilliantly and then, in fact, when I was re-reading it this morning one time, I want to do it with my children, in fact, because I think you can say it causes home, but sometimes they do it on the weekends to do homework and I think it wouldn't really be fun if my wife, I, my kids, we all made our own vision board and I'm actually a big fan.

I know a lot of parents like this podcast and I think maybe we can explore this whole idea of ​​negativity and how our brain is programmed to do that. I think you said we're two to two and a half times more likely to focus on the negative, which is amazing, but I interpret gratitude. I play with my family every night, you know, we all go around the table saying what I've done to make someone else happy, what someone else did to make me happy, and what I've learned today, and you know I won't repeat the same thing. story in case people have heard it before, but what I really feel like I'm doing, although yes, it was for my kids, but I'm getting a huge benefit from making the game myself.

I have to be honest, I really feel like you know it's helping me a lot. instill in my children from a young age how to reflect on the positive things that have happened in their everyday lives and I think as the world becomes more and more stressful, more busy, more toxic, I actually think those are the skills that it's going to be necessary in the future to be happy and you know, so I feel like maybe it's an extension of that, maybe once a year we get together pretty efficiently and then I don't know, I mean, I mean, what would you think if you had? you had experience with people and if your clients do it with their children absolutely and I think that each person does not need to make their own, I do not recommend making a family one, that's fine, but everything you do is great and the What I love about it children is that, you know what you were saying before, we all know what we should do, but we don't always do it.

I feel like we put more effort into making sure our kids eat well and sleep well. You know, and even in caring for our pets more than ourselves, kids still have that wonderful self-love that I think adults tend to lose, so try this experiment with your kids. He asked them who they love. Children tend to say mom, dad, brother. and I never say "I love myself", dear, in the UK, we don't know, but in the book it's a lot about self-love and self-care, so I think every one of you knows how to make that vision board, but as a family it's like saying "I." I'm on my own journey, there are things I want, we're in this together, but you know, I'm focusing on loving myself and creating what I want in my life, as long as that doesn't clash with family, that's great. okay and then you know what each other's vision boards are and you can help each other get there yeah no I love it I'm going to try it so I think this whole idea of ​​self love loving yourself is something I think as British.

We have fought for a period of time. I think maybe I could be wrong. My perception is that in the United States they are more open about it. I certainly think in the UK we say that, although I think it's really very important this idea of ​​Negativity and fear. You have a very powerful line in the book where I don't remember exactly word for word, but you talk about how many firstsMany of us use fear as a way to make decisions and that can be problematic. Can you explain what? By that you mean it's actually a natural default so you have to try really hard to override it because helping us survive fear is actually our strongest emotion so we're programmed for that yeah what and you can see why, because When we went up to the cave, you had to be afraid of the saber-toothed tigers and run away from them, otherwise you would die, you had to be disgusted by the spinning food, you know, because otherwise you might get sick and die.

Basically, these types of negative emotions such as fear, anger, disgust, shame and sadness have a much more powerful effect on our brain than positive emotions such as love, trust, joy and excitement, and you know that has a survival advantage, but if once you know that, you've raised it in your consciousness, you can take steps to say: I choose to make my decisions out of abundance, which is the phrase that I use a lot in the book, so Of course, we don't want bad things to happen to us. We don't want to lose our jobs, we don't want to, you know, end our relationships, we don't want to lose friends, we don't want to go into debt, everyone will say yes, of course I don't want those things, but instead of making life decisions based on avoiding bad things just choose to make decisions in your life based on things like, for example, accumulating a little savings in the bank, making your relationship evolve and improve more than you imagine, even right now you are making new friends, so all those Things seem like they involve a bit of risk, you know, and as you said, we Brits don't like to say I'm going to try to earn more and get a pay rise and save some money, it's shameful that we don't talk about things. like that, but you can put that on your vision board, you can promise it to yourself, you don't have to brag about it, you can make a real effort to better understand your partner's psyche and improve your relationship, you can try. go out and meet new and different people who will broaden your horizons and actually meet new people and have new experiences traveling if you can and if not, just know how to read books on topics that are really different from what you normally do. all activities that make your brain more open and flexible and once you learn to try new things and get a positive benefit from it, if something bad happens to you like you know you mentioned grief, I mentioned divorce, you will .

You just feel a little more able to cope with a change, but you've been willingly incorporating the changes into your life, which sometimes seems like a risk, but is actually a really good thing, so I guess in many ways it's an inspiring take. . Home for me is that look: we are programmed to look at the negative, so absolutely, if we want to make the most of our life, we need a strategy if we leave it up to the default if we leave it up or if I feel like I will do it, no it's going to happen because you know we're programmed to think this way and I think a lot of people are starting to realize that's why I think so many people in the health and wellness space.

We're talking about gratitude now because yes, there is science behind gratitude, but it's great to have so many people talking and saying, "Hey, it's okay to say I'm grateful for things and have a daily practice." I've written about this before, but I feel like a lot of religions have had these kinds of practices instilled in them for years, and I often think that the real role of religions really was to help create some kind of rules of good living for society. anywhere. those societies were and you know, as we become more secular as a society, I think we're losing some of those rules of good practice and I think a lot of them really don't have to do with religion, they're just good. practices on how to feel good, so it was quite gratitude, gratitude is something that you talk about, your own gratitude practice has evolved a little bit over the years, hasn't it?

Yes, I love the way you ask that question because in the book I have drawn on a lot of ancient practices and then backed by science, so you're right, gratitude, as I'm sure it appears in many religions, but You know there's been research done on the practice of gratitude in the Buddhist religion and what I found with My own practice was that it started, as you know, I'm grateful for the things in my life, like my family, my friends, my ability to travel and, over time, it evolved into more intrinsic qualities and resources that I felt I had as myself.

I am grateful for being creative. I'm grateful for being resilient and my gratitude list for things like that made me feel like if something unexpected or bad happens to me in the future, I have the tools within me to deal with it. with that and that was a breakthrough for me that was really empowering and led me to add in the book that it shouldn't just be about gratitude, that's absolute. I would say it's the least, you know, most important thing you should do, but I've also introduced an idea of ​​accomplishments or lists of accomplishments, so sometimes instead of doing ten things I'm grateful for, I do ten things that I'm very proud of and that I've achieved because, again, I think, being British, we don't really recognise. that and we don't talk about it enough, so you know, I'll just write down some things that I've done academically or in my career, but again this evolved into things like, you know how important it has been for me to become a stepmom. and that's a real accomplishment, you know, it's an easy thing to say, well, you know, well, you're one, but I've actually put a lot of effort into it, my stepkids put a lot of effort into it and we've built this relationship, you know. , incredible.

I didn't expect that and that's why I consider it a great achievement, not just the medical degree or the doctorate in neuroscience, you know, and that again builds your image of yourself as a person. I'm someone who learned to play a role that I didn't expect to play, that's a great example because society would probably applaud you for your medical degree, for your neuroscience qualifications, for the fact that you're a professor at such a business school. dear and you know that sometimes the social viewer first doesn't do it. It doesn't really match up with how we feel about ourselves and that kind of mismatch is often at the root and at the heart of so much discontent and I think that's really powerful, how you really had to be great, I mean, in some In many ways it's unfair to say create a story, but in many ways you have to create that narrative in your own head and you know I have a very good stepmother and I've worked very hard on it and I think it will be very It's helpful for people to think in things like that, yeah, I think you know I was programmed by society to focus on those external displays of achievement, like going to medical school and getting certain jobs and things like that, and that's really helped me through you.

I know the process that I've described in the book to get to the point where I really feel like it's okay to say that I'm most proud of some of those personal things. I mean, I think it's up to my stepson to say whether I'm a very good stepmom or not, but yes it is, but it's also up to you, I guess on one level to say what your perception of your role as a stepmom is, yeah, because on Ultimately you know that you really can't control what your stepson would do. I guess you know what you think of yourself, but you can control it, and of course you know the efforts I go to to work on that relationship, but yeah, I think you know, particularly as a woman, that it's actually taken me some courage to do so. .

I say I'm proud of those things that are traditionally seen as softer feminine attributes that I've had to like work really hard at to get the kind of logical more masculine attributes and that's really the sauce of what it's all about. Peace and integration of all those different aspects of yourself. Yes, you mentioned that you are a woman and I am very interested in your experience because you do a lot of executive coaching and help a lot of people get more out of their lives. Is there any difference? between the way women view some of these ideas and the way men view it in my executive coaching work, 90% of my clients are men and because at the level that I'm coaching, at the level of leadership, that's how it is, so you know.

It says something that you know, obviously I'm a woman and my closest friends are more women than men, so when I was writing the book I definitely felt like you know, from some of these stories of women I know who have gone through relationship breakups. that were a A large part of you know what has been written in the book and then things like deciding to start your own business or seeking a promotion. I think men's and women's experiences of these things are different, but any science I've mentioned is always based on studies of population norms, so it's not all men and all women.

I always say that if you had a room full of a hundred people and asked them to line up in order of height, there would be 50 men on the course site and 50 women on the short side, there would be some mixing, so everything related with gender it has to be taken into account, you know, in that way, but I think the experiences of emotions, parenting relationships, even if they're different experiences, I think that's the key, right? you know, as a general rule, I guess obviously there were individual cases, they just don't follow these kinds of rules, but men and women probably in general experience things a little bit differently, our perception of things can be a little bit different. , certainly for some of us. but as I read your book and think about Maya's impatience that there are men and women, I don't see anything there that isn't applicable to one sex, there wasn't one, I think it's absolutely applicable to everyone, in fact, I guess I'll say that If everyone read this and applied the tools in his book, they would probably feel like they were getting more out of their lives, which is a huge compliment.

What it contains. I think I think there's a lot of things that aren't really talked about and it's a center of help and wellness, which is why I'm so glad to have this conversation with you. You talk about something that is talked about a lot, which is meditation, but What fascinates me is that I have read that you do your meditation for 12 minutes on the subway, yes, so tell me about that so that you know that we all lead very busy, as you say, so I was struggling to fit in those extra 12 minutes. I mean, that sounds really lame because it's only 12 minutes, but I like, okay, I could do it first thing in the morning, which I know you do, which is great, but I wake up in the morning and I feel like I have to do it.

Getting ready and leaving the house and taking an extra 12 minutes, which for me would mean 12 minutes less sleep, is just not a deal I've made with myself, so I would often go through the day and think hard. I'll do it after work or I'll do it, you know, before you go to bed and you're too tired. I do not need it. I really want to do that, so I started realizing that I was spending time on the subway that was essentially kind of downtime and I discovered, you know, all these great apps like Headspace calm, if I put my headphones on, if I sit down , then you would know, I close my eyes, listen to the voice for 10, 12, 15 minutes and I finished my meditation.

I have been practicing yoga for many years before that, so it took me 9 or 10 months to be able to achieve the same without the headphones and the app, that is fascinating, so you started doing it with an app that is quite successful for everyone. this podcast no one is fading and no one can download some of these apps so i understand i have a busy tube with noise and hustle around you you can shut down and meditate but you've gotten to the point where you can still meditate without your headphones and without using an app, yeah like I said it took me 9 or 10 months and by then I was someone who had been doing yoga for 10 years so it may not be right for everyone to do it.

But one of the things you can do in meditation is focus on just one sound and the many sounds around you, so as long as you know, as long as I get a seat, I tried it once while standing. Really stupid because when you close your eyes you lose your balance. Feel. I make sure my arms and legs are not crossed. I close my eyes and I focus on breathing and I do a body scan and then I'll just focus on a positive image you know one that I just used before that I really like or something that I want for that day you close my eyes, yeah I close my eyes , you close your eyes, you're sitting there for 10 12 minutes, yeah. closing your eyes and using a stopwatch?

No, because I know that six tube stops is 12 minutes. You know, what I love about this tower is that, whether it's your meditation practice, or the way you've evolved, your gratitude practice that you started. Stop doing things that you knew were going to help you and, as you got to know yourself better, you got to know your life and your routines better, you evolved them, you progress them, you have progressed in your practice ofgratitude, so it will probably serve you even better. so you put your initial, one day now you can meditate, you know, without using outside help, which you know, obviously, that doesn't have to be the goal for people, but for me you know I would love to be. being able to go out, you know, I would love to be able to meditate more without using an app if I could and sometimes I can, and it's something that I'm working on, so I just want people listening to it to really understand that they're actually just needing To get started you need to listen to some of these practices you need to look at the chapters in your book where there are some practical tips.

I just start doing some of these exercises and you know how to do them any way you want. Initially I want to do it, but it can evolve, it's not what you've seen in your coaching practice and the experience absolutely changes things for people, so when I teach at MIT I do a guided meditation at the end of the day and I think something that you know is that for a lot of people that's their first meditation experience and then they'll look for the app if I give them all the science about why meditation is so wonderful and then I tell them go get an app, but they've never experienced it.

I think there's going to be a big percentage difference in how many people would actually act, so yeah, it's a whole idea that you know we respond as humans. Oh, it's feelings about experiences, not necessarily logically from the beginning. We were talking about this, you know, we believe that logic is king, but maybe it's feelings and intuition and experience as your king, absolutely yes, and I think that's a big paradigm shift for many of you. I have to ask you why. twelve minutes, so there is this amazing study done by amici Jha in New York. She worked with the US Marines and showed that Marines who did 12 minutes of mindfulness meditation every day had greater resilience on the battlefield compared to Marines who did less. more than 12 minutes or nothing, so I think 12 minutes is the absolute minimum and basically, most of us are pretty lazy, our brains are pretty lazy, so I do the absolute minimum.

I think 15 minutes would probably be better, but you know, I have that studio. in my brain I've expanded on it in the book and given references, so obviously it's better to do more, but that's the minimum that will have a positive impact on your brain over time, so that's what I do fantastic, so I want to start bringing it. This has come to an end. I really enjoyed the conversation we had today. It really has left me quite inspired to change things in my life. I'll let you know and what I'll do is do it. it's okay for me to make my own and send it to you and text you or something, I love that, yeah, I think that's what I'm saying on the air, so it's almost a good responsibility for me to do it .

As I'm going to try to do it in the next few weeks, I'm going to try to do it right, okay, but I want to end with two questions. Actually, the first one is and this probably leads to the second question, but in your evolution it sounds. Like you've been on quite a journey over the last 10-15 years in your personal and professional life, what are the things that you think you've changed in your life that have had the biggest impact on your well-being? Big question. I'll start with sleep when I wrote my previous book, research emerged on the glymphatic system that removes toxins from the brain; the same toxins, if accumulated, lead to dementia diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, so like you, I was a junior doctor working like crazy. hours and now I don't sleep.

I travel a lot around the world so I'm often jetlagged, so I basically try to get eight hours of good quality sleep as often as I can. If I am restless due to jet lag, then I will take the opportunity to turn on my side, which is the best position to remove toxins from the brain, so the basic decision is that either side is fine, rather than facing or on your back, so sleeping on your side helps the lymphatic system work more efficiently. So basically the message is that I try to do the right thing about sleep and everything else, but I don't stress about it if I can't, so that's a really important thing, you know, I try to eat well, I try to I remember taking my supplements.

I journal when I can. I meditate when I can, but if I don't, I don't stress. I would say that it is a great learning for me. I think that's great advice. I would also say that it is better to change ten things by 1% than to try to change one thing by 10%, so make small adjustments to your routine, such as going to bed half an hour earlier, doing a digital detox over a weekend, drink a little more water you usually try to increase your steps by a thousand to two thousand a day for a week and see what happens so little things like that add up because you start to feel better your brain becomes more powerful and then you are able to do it.

I know some of the biggest goals you might have been saving, man, I love it, I love that idea that you've never heard it expressed like that before, try changing ten things by one percent instead of one thing by ten percent. , believe. You know, we often try to bite off more than we can chew. very very common. I've made that mistake in my own life when trying to make wellness changes. I would have realized that it can work for a few weeks they just don't tend to be sustainable, so that's what you've done differently and I guess it would probably be a similar answer, but you know it's called feeling better live longer, this podcast is to try to inspire people to make the most of it. their lives inspire people, they kind of believe that, they can be the architects of their own health, so can you leave my listeners with some quick, snappy tips that they can do right away?

This can improve the quality of your life. I'd say go to bed halfway. an hour before starting tonight, start journaling from tomorrow morning, download a meditation app and just listen to it, and you know, think about starting to incorporate that into your practice, don't drink caffeine after twelve and longer term, make a brilliant vision board. I think those are some great tips. I hope they've inspired people to get involved and hopefully participate in all five, but certainly follow some of them. Sorry, thanks for your time today. I know you've been very busy since the books came out.

It's been a big success if people want to contact you on social media it's something that you are, that you're publicly available on social media. Yes, I love social media. You know, like I say, I use them as a force for good. I don't obsess over them. but you know, he posts a lot of written information on Twitter at Taurus wort and a lot of visual information on Instagram at doctor Taurus, which dr taurus wallet is fantastic and guys, everything we talked about today, everything you know they asked and the links to some. Of the videos that Tom has made, I will put them all online on the show notes page, which is from dr. chaski calm down / the source so you can continue your learning experience now that the podcast has come to a conclusion sorry, thank you for your time today and I hope we have the opportunity to do this again in the near future.

Thank you very much like me. said this is a

dream

come true, for your own good, oh, thank you very much, thank you for taking the time today