Change Your Brain Every Day - Giving Your Brain A Workout Today– Part 2 of an Interview with Rachele Brooke Smith

Episode Date: June 8, 2017

Rachele Brooke Smith went from being a fearful and anxious child to acting in movies alongside actors, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. In this episode of the podcast, Rachele reveals how stress management tools such as meditation, visualization, and “disruptive gratitude” helped her work out her brain and create miracles in her life.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com.

The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Welcome back. We are here with Rachel. What a joy to have you. What a joy to be on here.

We're talking really about transformation, about how you transform yourself from a highly competitive but really unhappy anxious i think anxious i think that's a big thing people and i have us and i mean i still have to watch it it's like a daily practice you know to like not have that anxiety consume you especially when you're trying to do a lot of stuff. It's a daily practice. And when you're trying to do great things, to have discipline, because your mind, like you discipline your body as a dancer. Yes. If you don't work out for a while, then your body doesn't feel right and it doesn't move right.

Your brain is exactly the same way. So talk to us about what you do day in and day out to keep your mind and your body healthy and then how you're beginning to share it with the world. Yes, so I'm so happy that you brought it up like that as well because literally that's the analogy that I use for people because I think it's so accepted. People understand. Like if I want to look better physically, you know, if I want to gain a bicep, I need to do bicep curls.

It's like with anything else in life. If you want to have, you know, you need to be doing that thing. It's just like I feel like that in confidence as well. If you want to have more confidence, you have to do something every day to build that confidence. If you want to have more like… Like a muscle. Yes, it's a muscle. It's a muscle. There's everything. And what do you do? So I think one of the biggest things that absolutely changed my life was committing to one of the first things I

do when I wake up is to listen to something inspiring, to automatically put my brain in a place of learning and growing. And just like, you know, I kept hearing all the time, the five people you surround yourself with are the most important people and who you become like. And I was like, well, people in today's world, the people we're surrounding ourselves aren't just the physical people. It's the people online, you know, especially for younger kids. Like we spend all of our time online. So it really matters who is on your feet.

You know, like who are the podcasts you're listening to? Who are people on your channel or the people you're following on instagram and i think too to hopefully help raise the standard for influencers knowing that like if you're posting stuff on a channel on your youtube channel your instagram like you're especially these young kids who have massive youtube channels or instagrams like you're affecting right people it's a responsibility. Yeah, absolutely. Anybody that has any sort of platform or viewers, like you are affecting and you have the ability to have a lot of positive change and hopefully you use it for that. So I think for sure, meditation and visualization was one of the biggest things that absolutely changed my life. I mean, and really practicing what I call disruptive gratitude, where rather than even just seeing and going through meditations or visualizations, practicing putting myself, getting so clear about what that, what my, I want my maybe future reality to be like, different goals I want to achieve and then getting to a place of experiencing it in myself so strongly of knowing

what it smells like, who's there with me, like really, really, really getting myself to experience all those things and using the power of your imagination. You know, it's just like it's a muscle. The more you use it, the more fun it gets, the more creative you can be, the more you see and experience things and then practicing gratitude ahead of time for those things. So like when I say affirmations in the morning or like when I write things down, I'm writing it as like, I am so thankful for that awesome new lead role or I'm so thankful for these things. And it created this kind of,

it was like the stress and the worry of if I was gonna do it kind of went away as much. And so it was, and as a practice, because sometimes I can feel those anxious thoughts of being like, oh, maybe it's not gonna happen. Maybe it's not gonna happen. But if you can anxious thoughts of being like, oh, maybe it's not going to happen. Maybe it's not going to happen. But if you can get yourself.

Let me just see if I understand. You were basically being thankful for it before you even got it. Oh yeah. Because in my mind it's done. So I actually started learning this technique when I was about your age. And I think it's amazing. It's so powerful. And so in what I've manifested in my life as a result, it's been crazy too. One thing I've noticed like for kids who are younger, like our daughter, 13, we've

been trying to like teach her some of this. And of course, every now and then you have a 13 year old and they like roll their eyes. They're like, Oh my gosh, you're so weird. You're so weird. Did you do that? Well, I think at that point I was so, I mean, so the first book I read, I think it was about 16 years shortly after I quit gymnastics and I was on this I mean, so the first book I read, um, I think it was about 16 years shortly after I quit gymnastics and I was on this whole other life journey was, um, uh, as a man thinketh.

Yeah. I read that book too. It was my first one. And I just read that one on cancer. It was huge. Wow. Um, it was just such that it was a pivotal moment in my life when I was like, oh my gosh, like your thoughts matter. Like I remember just thinking like nobody told me that it matters what I think about. And that's what I think I'm so passionate about. That's an interesting book for a 16-year-old to read. I know. Well, the fact that you can control, you have the power to,

I mean, granted, depending on, there's a definite difference of chemical balances. And I think I learned that big time with you guys, especially with my sister. I never used to believe that. I was can just you can choose what to think about but i think if you have and i would love to get your feedback on it yeah you can like if you're not i've also felt what it feels like to not be to not feel balanced and to be like whoa so hardware software we call it hardware software yes so i would love to talk to you guys about that too um and share that i know you guys talk about that a lot so i want to just touch really quickly what i was saying about chloe with the 13 year old because she would roll her eyes so what

what i did was learn how to put that into a fun form for someone her age and what what that looked like for us was a vision board huge so because now as opposed to oh we're gonna sit there just not gonna wrap her brain around that right yeah so instead we made it this fun thing uh well let's just go crazy with our imagination pull up the most wild fun things print pictures off the internet what do you like see that's a great mom right there yeah and just get a board yep and just start putting it on there and and then one more step is when do you want it to happen by yeah so and then the final step was now tell yourself it's already that way yeah and just start and she's obsessive about it i love it well and i think

what you i love i mean props to you for being an amazing mom like that to find everybody's so different you know everybody's body everybody's brain everybody's everything metabolism there's not one thing that might work for every single person right so i think especially and especially at a younger age, you know, just because somebody says, oh, like, I can't get myself to meditate, or that's stupid. There's so many ways to do it. Yeah, there's so many ways to do it.

And I think... For some people, it's called prayer. For some people, it's called meditation. Or dance, or yoga. Or martial arts. It's karate. It's karate, exactly. Like, finding, and I think it's like,

just like how people talk about, like, the gateway drug. It's like, what's your, like, it took a lot for me to finally get to the place where I was able to made meditation a must for myself. Um, but my first step was going from like just pounding myself and, you know, like feeling like I had to kill myself at the gym to get a good result to having a really pivotal life change when I really started learning the power of hormone balance. And that's a big thing that I'm all about is the stress. I feel like the new, the next, I hope the next wave of health and nutrition is about stress management and hormone and chemical balance to help. So how do you manage your stress? So we talked

about meditation. We know exercise. You dance like crazy. And I think doing things, but just movement. You know, knowing that if I'm in, knowing your state. Like if I know I'm in, I can, I've gotten to the point where now you can start to feel. Like all of a sudden I'm like, okay, this is not my, this is not my, I'm not in a good state right now. So I think movement. Just even if you can, I have to put on a song. I have like a special playlist.

Yeah, me too. Your toolbox. Like I have ahead of time of like what are the songs that you love that you know are going to help. As soon as you hear something, like a song that you love. Change your state. Instantly going to change your state. And as soon as you can start moving to that. And a lot of people, even if you're not a dancer, have a dance party in your room.

You know, like make it fun for yourself. I love that. In the few minutes we have left, talk about what you're doing now dancer, have a dance party in your room. You know, like make it fun for yourself. I love that. In the few minutes we have left, talk about what you're doing now. How are you spreading? Yes, yes. The mission. The mission. So that is the Disruptive Movement for me.

And I'm actually about to launch Disruptive Academy, which is like an online membership where I do. And especially for young girls. You know, I have something called Disruptive Girls Club that I'm about to launch as well. Just to be a place that is everything community. Fun, accountability, and community

is everything for me. And we talk about vision boards. We create what I call gamify your life boards. So it's taking vision boards to kind of another step of saying what are the things that you have to hit almost like levels in your game and if you can have it you have a you have a certain amount of

points and you set that so say one of my goals is to like meditate every day but we but that's a should until i make it a must so to make it a must i'm going to gamify it and i'm going to be like kind of you know disruptive in my thinking and have it so I can get like 10 points every time I do it. And then when I get to 100, I go, you know, go on a shopping day or I go get a massage or do something fun as a reward system. Because that's the biggest thing. I feel like if we don't ever reward ourselves, we don't ever celebrate our wins. We don't want to keep doing that thing. And the more we can have that as a, you know, have our reward system ahead of time, it's like.

How can people learn about what you're doing? You can go to my website. It's disruptiveapparel.com because a lot of it is backed by an apparel brand. And then we have disruptiveacademy.com as well. And we're actually doing a five-day disruptive dare challenge. So I do this thing called disruptive dares because I really, like I said, if you don't ever try new things, how are you ever going to know? Find your passion.

Find your mission. And so much of the time we get stuck in these little boxes and we do the same things with the same people, same restaurants all the time. Which is bad for your brain. So bad. Because new learning is absolutely essential to keeping your brain. I literally felt like I had a really pivotal moment. And actually what made me get so passionate about and actually starting disruptive was because I, I went through a really hard breakup that, um,

kind of made me unconsciously stop doing new things. And I, it was the first time I felt like this is not me. I feel like I'm literally in a depression. Like, and I couldn't get myself out of it. And it wasn't until I started learning that I was like, Oh my gosh, I used to do, how come I can't, I couldn't even get myself to go to a it wasn't until I started learning that I was like oh my gosh I

used to do how come I can't I couldn't even get myself to go to a new workout class like that was hard for me and that was always my favorite thing before but it felt like this those anxious thoughts or I just wanted to stay in my normal patterns and it was such a beautiful experience even though I hated it at the time of learning what it felt like to live in this kind of confident outgoing mindset and then also this very like stuck. Wasn't it Eleanor Roosevelt that said do one thing every day that scares you? Yeah and I feel like the the one thing that nobody talks about is that once you you know after you don't you don't necessarily listening to your parents all the time you have to almost be a parent to yourself of getting yourself to do things that you don't necessarily want

to do like that the insecurity is never going to go away like the most amazing like do you guys before you do stuff do you still ever have of course like we're always going to feel we talk about parenting and inner child all the time yeah exactly and i just think that's one of the biggest things i would love to help people realize is that that is always going to be there. You don't have to, there's no perfect time. You know, there's never going to be a perfect time. And those, those justifications, those reasons why, you know, maybe you shouldn't, you feel like you shouldn't go do that thing or it's going to be too hard. Sometimes doors close and then other ones open, just like you said. So we're so grateful for you being with us. Rachel Brooks-Smith. You're so pretty.

DisruptiveApparel.com. DisruptiveApparel.com. DisruptiveAcademy.com. You can learn more about her work. You can see her in movies. Coming up, the two movies you have coming up are. Yes, so the one that comes out in theaters in August is Cold Moon. And also Bomb City as well.

It's doing amazing in different festivals right now. So it'll be out as well. Yeah. And that Rachel, we're so proud of you. We're so proud of you. We're so proud of you. We're so proud of you.

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