Dhru Purohit Show - Neuroscientist Deep Dives on Creating Successful Habits, Supercharging Manifestation, and Creating More Love Tara Swart, MD

Episode Date: November 9, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health, Whoop, and Bioptimizers. What if you could set habits that would increase your goals for longevity, productivity, or even creativity? Reflecting on our achievements, setting intentional micro habits, and taking sustainable and practical actions to achieve our goals can help us manifest the life we truly desire.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down for round two with Dr. Tara Swart to answer his podcast community’s top questions. Dhru and Dr. Tara discuss setting goals for the New Year, best practices for manifestation, and the science behind the laws of attraction. Dr. Tara Swart is a neuroscientist, former psychiatric doctor, and senior lecturer at MIT Sloan. She is a visiting senior lecturer at Kings College, London, and an executive advisor to some of the world's most respected leaders in media and business. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Swart dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): Dr. Tara’s year-end digital detox to reset (2:56 / 2:56) Why setting two to three micro habits per quarter is a better practice than setting New Year’s resolutions (16:40 / 14:23) Why it’s important to reflect on your achievements to set habits for the future (25:33 / 23:35)  Challenging your brain and developing neuroplasticity (33:11 / 29:11) The science behind implementing small changes in your daily life to get 1% better each day (37:30 / 33:42) Ensuring that you are practicing self-respect, nurturing yourself, and challenging yourself to build more confidence (42:52 / 38:45)  Addressing ghosts, deeply embedded neural pathways, and creating affirmations to show yourself you are deserving (52:35 / 48:40) Dr. Tara’s six principles to help you determine if you are on the right path (1:01:33 / 57:15) The challenges that can arise when you try to manifest and the importance of resilience and listening to intuition (1:04:50 / 1:03:48)  3 signs a relationship will fail (1:21:09 / 1:17:07) Manifesting a healthy relationship (1:24:00 / 1:20:04) Loneliness is more prevalent, and how to seek out connections (1:52:00 / 1:48:21) Reminders to help you remember your potential and purpose (1:55:00 / 1:50:19) Also mentioned in this episode: The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain Dr. Tara Swart’s podcast, Reinvent Yourself Access more than 3,000 specialty lab tests with Rupa Health. You can check out a free, live demo with a Q&A or create an account at RupaHealth.com today. WHOOP is a personalized digital fitness tracker. To get yours, go to join.whoop.com/dhru and get your first month free. This Black Friday, Bioptimizers is offering their biggest discounts yet and amazing gifts with purchase. Just head over to bioptimizers.com/dhru and enter code DHRU10. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The habit of doing something creative most days of the week has massive benefits for your mental health, your physical health and your longevity. Things don't always pan out how you plan. So becoming more flexible and open and spontaneous was important. And I think both of those things have definitely contributed to being more creative because in creativity there is no such thing as perfection and you do have to be flexible and spontaneous. One of our most popular guests this year, neuroscientist Dr. Tara Swart, is back for a round two deep dive on your top questions regarding setting goals for 2024, best practices around manifestation and the science of the law of attraction, and how to create more love and intimacy in your relationships. If you loved Dr. Tara's first appearance on this podcast, which was a mega hit, by the way, this episode is absolutely for you. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week, we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. And as I mention, today's guest is Dr. Tara Swart. Dr. Tara is a neuroscientist and former psychiatric doctor. She is a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan and a visiting senior lecturer at King's College London. She is an executive advisor to some of the world's most respected leaders in media and in business. Additionally, Dr. Tara is the best-selling author of the book, The Source, The Secrets of the Universe, The Science of the Brain, and she's also the host of the hit podcast, Reinvent Yourself

with Dr. Tara. Dr. Tara's true mission in life is to teach others how to apply lessons from cognitive science to enhance their everyday lives and reduce human suffering. And that's exactly what she'll be talking about on today's podcast, starting with her thoughts on how to get ready for 2024 and the new year that's just around the corner by setting yourself up and setting your habits up for success. Dr. Tara, welcome back to the podcast. Round two.

Our first interview was a big hit over a million views. People are excited. We have a whole host of questions from the audience that we've been collecting since your last appearance on a whole bunch of topics, including habits, manifestation, and also relationships. Interesting. So people have a lot of questions. Are you ready to jump in? Yeah, yeah. I'm so happy to see you again. And also I so rarely do this comeback for part two with questions. I'm excited to hear what comes up. I'm honored that you decided to come back. And it's been great to not only meet you, become friends with you. And I just want to say thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Okay. Let's jump in. First question. Dr. Tara, as the year's winding down, I'm curious if you have any,

year-end rituals or practices that help you get ready to reinvent yourself for the next year ahead. Oh, I was going to answer that really in a scientific way, which I will get back to, but I have a real gut instinct to answer to that, which is that I do a digital detox for one to four weeks around the holidays period. And that completely resets me and makes me feel so revitalized and creative and re-energized for January onwards. But I will back that up by saying, I don't do big New Year's resolutions anyway. So I take the year by quarters. So we've roughly got a quarter of this year left. And I'll change two or three habits. Like I always say change 10 things by 1% rather than one thing by 10%. So I'll have incorporated a few habits across the year already. And I'll just be

trying to add in another two or three now. But the main way to reinvent myself is the digital detox. On a practical level, what does that look like? How do you get ready for it? And then when you're doing it, how do you choose to set boundaries around digital devices and communication? So it's actually a lot about preparing other people because people find it kind of a bit threatening and abandoning, I found, like over the years. So I will have an out-of-office notice. And it's It's very clear I will not be reading my emails until mid-January. I'll reply to you after that. And you set that even before?

I'll set. So let's say I'm doing mid-December to mid-January. Then I'll have set that up to start in mid-December. And it will very clearly say I won't even read your email until mid-January. So so that people don't think, oh, maybe she's read it, but she hasn't replied yet. And it gives them the option as well, then if they want to remind me in mid-January about something. and if they had a time in mind, let's say they wanted me to do something in early January, that they would know that I'm genuinely not going to see that request till I get back.

I do have a, you know, email my assistant if there's like an urgent inquiry, but then she also has like a set of boundaries in terms of what she would contact me for or not. And I literally switch my phone off. So I would not receive WhatsApp, text messages, emails, phone calls. What about from your family? Well, I should be with the people that I want to have contact with over the holidays. So there is a caveat, which is that my assistant can contact one of them, and they can tell me that something's happened. And then I could choose to switch my phone on if I wanted.

So during this time, you're completely phone free, social media free. Oh, yes. Yeah, social media as well. Does your team also take a break from posting or they might post on your behalf? Yeah, so we would have some stuff scheduled in advance so that's not four weeks off social media, but there would definitely be at least a week off social media. Before we talk about how the everyday person who's listening could sort of implement this in their own life, let's talk about the why.

Why is this digital detox so important for you when it comes to getting ready for the next year ahead? I can really answer that in retrospect. I think when I decided to start doing it, it seemed like a good idea to have a bit of a break. And when I first did it, it was over the Easter weekend. And in the UK, we have the Friday and the Monday as public holidays. So it started off as four days. So anyone who's listening to this could just do a weekend or, you know, a week during the holiday time anyway when it's not urgent that you're necessarily replying to work things. And hopefully you're with the people that you want to spend quality time with. But when I look at the time, you're looking at the time.

but when I look back on it, what I learnt was it's actually shocking how much time we must spend on our phones because suddenly I had so much time and space. It was just incredible. It really makes you realise that a lot of your time is eaten up by just being on your phone without really realizing that you're on it all the time. And if I was able to do longer than a week or two, I definitely noticed that I became more creative.

and that also made me realize that when you're task-focused and short-termist and day-to-day, your mind doesn't have the bandwidth to become creative, but after two, three, four weeks, I would be writing poetry, I would be writing, you know, just writing more, maybe even like painting or drawing, definitely really understanding the importance of spending more time in nature. and that being on digital devices kind of does detract from that. So normally I'll try to do a one-hour nature walk most days of the week. But in the holidays, especially if I'm somewhere else and I'm like hiking in the mountains or something,

the fact that I'm also not looking at my phone kind of really seems to increase that bandwidth for just calm and relaxation and creativity. And therefore the ability to really start the new year kind of full of energy. and openness. This episode is brought to you by Rupa Health. When it comes to achieving optimal health, my philosophy is test, don't guess, and I'm sure that's the case

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So the pattern for me, and this may not be the same for everyone, is that by December, I'm quite tired and stressed out. And it's sometimes making decisions that seem relatively simple feel harder than they should. that's when I know I need that break. And then basically I've become like so open to possibilities and creative that in February I can be a bit like, hey, yeah, I'll be on your podcast and, you know, can like over commit a little bit. So I've had to be a bit careful about that. But it, you know, it comes back down to a good balance. And then I find that the spring for me is a really, really productive time. Personally and professionally, so I usually do my big spring clear out at that time too.

And that I can be like much more ruthless than I would be normally when I'm like, oh, I'll keep that sweater for another year that I never wear. And then I tend to have a bit of a lull over the summer. And then I find like the fall is really productive too. And then by December I'm usually a bit tired again. It seems like this opening for you that you get from putting some boundaries also makes you see new possibilities that you wouldn't have maybe paid attention to. Yeah. Because at the end of the year, especially if it's been a big year and if you've been a big year, and have you accomplished a lot and there's been a lot on your plate, you kind of need a little bit of that reset to allow yourself to feel, okay, I'm open to saying yes again.

And just knowing you a little bit, so many beautiful things in your life came from you saying yes to new possibilities. Yeah. And I think it kind of really reminds you of the perspective of what's important because it's easy to, you know, I'm self-employed. So for me, it's kind of, it's like feast and famine. And usually in the fall and winter, that's quite a sort of productive time in terms of generating revenue. But to then stop and step back means that instead of thinking, okay, these are the numbers that I was supposed to hit and this is like business-wise what I'm supposed to be doing, I definitely can think, you know,

what's going to make me feel like really happy and proud of myself this year? Like what kind of work do I want to be doing that is maybe more creative, maybe more charitable, you know, rather than getting kind of a bit stuck down in just the business end of things. For the average person that's listening today, who may not be working for themselves or have a personal brand,

what is a way that they could implement this on a micro level? Again, you started off with just four days, I think you mentioned. What could they be doing to incorporate this digital detox to get a little taste of that as they get ready for the next year ahead? That's a really good question. and I would say that the basic would be something around whether you reply to emails in the evenings or at weekends. And a lot of the leaders that I work with who will tend to like, you know, throw out a lot of emails in their spare time, you know, evenings or weekends or when they're travelling. I always say to them, you're setting the expectation that that email has to be answered in that time frame.

So if you can as a leader say to people, I might send you things over the weekend because I'm on catch up mode because. because I've been traveling, but you don't have to reply till Monday. Or like I say to my team, please don't send business emails over the weekend. Because then, you know, basically what I talk about, like rest and recharging and having boundaries, you're showing all of our clients that we're not doing that. Even though some of my team work in Dubai, so their weekend is different to ours, I still say be mindful of where the clients are and that you're respecting their downtime. So I would say minimum having those boundaries around what your working hours are.

And then if possible, doing a weekend digital detox, like more of a full one. And yeah, I mean, if you are employed, then I guess the only time you can really try to do this is when you're on, you're using your vacation time. Even as simple as I find what can be helpful for even many of my friends who are, you know, could be even health care. practitioners or medical doctors, even having a morning, because usually you might have like two cell phones, right, if you're a medical doctor, like many of my family members, even if you have a morning where you don't take your primary cell phone, your personal cell phone with social, Instagram, all these different things, and you just keep your work phone that's there. And you even just carve out just a long walk, a long brunch, even if total, that's three hours.

The difference that three hours of uninterrupted time where you are not being distracted by just the notifications that we all are used to getting from our email and social media, even that can be so powerful. Totally. I mean, you're reminding me of a time where it's a slightly different in the UK. So I only had a personal phone and my bleep for work. Yeah. Yeah.

Pager. Yeah, pager. And I remember being in the queue at the supermarket and hearing the till, maybe. making the noises. And actually, I could feel that my body was going into fright, flight, because I associated that with being paged as a doctor. So you're right, having three hours where maybe you don't hear those sounds, whichever ones you associate with a work email or, you know, being paged, definitely could help you to

like de-escalate that nervous system. Next question we have. you talked about New Year's resolutions and how you don't send them. And we have a question here that says, do New Year's resolutions actually work? Or is there a better way to get ready for the next year ahead? Yeah, so exactly what I said. People tend to set ones that are too large and basically set themselves up to fail. So doing the two to three habits a quarter, which ends up with 10 or 12 little changes

that you've made by the end of the year, I've definitely personally found that that works much better. And it makes sense from the neuroscience why that would work better as well. So when you are gearing up to set those yourself, is that something that you do? And are there any practical ways that that's combined with or stacked on top of all the things you've talked about in the previous episode, like your action board? Oh, the action board is a, you know, that's a must that's there all year. And I think the thing about that one is, you know, in the source, I do write about patience as being an element of that as well, because if you're changing habits, you know, we're in the section of habits and often reaching a new goal does involve you

changing a habit, then it takes time for those neural pathways to get built up, you know, for the neurons to make connections. And there's a definite tipping point where a new habit becomes something that you're now comfortable with that's natural for you. And that connects up to the fact that I've mentioned micro habits because they're easier to cultivate, but they have this kind of cumulative effect. So I don't know if I've ever done this consciously, but I like what you're saying, which is if I look at my action board

and I see something that requires me to make a change in the way that I operate, then absolutely I could include that, though, you know, what will lead up to that as some of my micro habits that I'll change. So, you know, a classic example is someone that says, I really want to have a family, family. But instead of taking supplements and eating super healthily and getting early nights,

they might go out partying a lot because they think that's how they'll meet somebody that they can have a family with. So it's about adjusting that and thinking, okay, if I'm a certain age and I'm serious about having a family, then there are things that I need to do to keep my body in the right condition that I should really prioritize. So many questions here about sort of things people are curious about what you do. So kind of putting what you said with some of the questions that I have, is there a micro habit that you are focused on right now of adding into your world? Yeah, so one that I'm, as I mentioned to you earlier, I've been traveling for quite a long time at the moment. So I'll be home in a week or two. The one that I'm going to be adding in, and I do need to work out how to make it micro enough that I'm actually going to do this, is adding in more resistance training to my physical exercise. And I have to, to tell you this is for all the right reasons that you might imagine, but also because I just

read a paper in nature, which shows the difference between resistance training and aerobic training and how it contributes to the quality of your skin. So like the thickening of the dermal layer. So it's incredible. You know, once I read that, I was like, okay, I definitely want to do that for all sorts of reasons, muscle tone, bone mass, but also skin. So I've got to go home, look at the weight of the weights that I've got decide, you know, whether I need to do lightweights or slightly heavier, how many reps, and then kind of just slowly bring that in because I haven't been doing that so much for a while. That's exciting. As somebody who, that was my sort of main focus last year when I turned 40, and it shifted by life. Yeah. I grew up being sort of under

eating on protein, you know, growing up in sort of being Indian and vegetarian. Yeah, yeah. playing sports and always being active, but not having resistance training be a regular part of my life. I got serious about it last year from guidance from a friend of mine, a medical doctor, Dr. Gabriel Lyon. And I felt it completely shifted my approach in life. I felt stronger. I felt more awake in my mind, even though I always felt like my mind was working pretty well. Yeah. I felt like I had more ability to focus, pay attention.

that drive and that energy. And on a, we just did an episode yesterday all about testosterone. I almost increased my testosterone just through strength training and increasing my protein by 100 points or whatever the marker is. I was like in the low 500s and I've gotten close now to almost 600. Wow. And so there's a massive difference that I've felt and my blood glucose improved. So I, as somebody who that was my focus last year and is going to continue to be my focus because I care about longevity, I can't wait to see when you come back on the podcast next time how great you feel. Thank you.

And just another tip for you. I don't know if you know this, but one of the best ways to boost testosterone is to do weight training followed by eating cabbage because there's a compounding cabbage that helps conversion to testosterone. So because you kind of think do the weight training and then eat a steak or something like that. but actually cabbage is a really good one. Well, can I eat a steak and some cabbage so I can get the protein and then get whatever the beneficial compounds are in cabbage too?

Yeah, absolutely. That's the meal, steak and cabbage. Here's a really great question. Also continue on habits. You've recently launched season two of your podcast. Congratulations, by the way. We have a link to your podcast in the show notes below. Please everybody follow along on the podcast.

What has Dr. Tara learned from Cesar? Season two, specifically about habits. Is there any new information or any new science that we should all be aware of? I love this question. Season two has literally been life-changing for me. So in season one, you know, there was a lot of anxiety about launching something new and kind of getting it right. And following a formula that I thought was how it should be. For season two, I really just followed my curiosity.

I had been previously interested in ancient and indigenous wisdom, but had kind of had to, well, you know, I'm still reading about it out of personal interest, but it for various reasons wasn't a priority professionally. So when I introduced the idea of that being a theme for season two and everyone in the team loved it, that was great. So already we're only having episode four this week, so it's kind of early days. But from episode one, I realized, I learnt,

that the habit of doing something creative most days of the week has massive benefits for your mental health, your physical health and your longevity. From episode two, which was mostly about terminal lucidity and near-death experiences, I learned that the habit of being kind and compassionate and having mercy for other people throughout your whole life is going to make you feel better about yourself on your deathbed. Episode three was about the gut microbiome, but the thing I learned as a habit there, which will be interesting for you too, is that it's really important to eat for your gut microbiome in terms of your genetic or cultural heritage. And so, you know, I do love Indian food and I do

eat quite a lot of it, but I didn't quite understand how much more important it is for me to be eating enough spices and, you know, lentils and things like that. So I've been paying more attention to that. And, you know, whatever the listener's cultural heritage is, thinking about the kind of foods that grew in the country that you came from or what the staple diet of your grandparents was is a good habit to return to. And the episode that's coming out this week is with the COO of a beautiful retreat in India called Anandra in the Himalayas. And he talks about Ayurveda and yoga and all sorts of things. But his family were really into classical music. And so we understand there the research about the importance of chanting and humming and mantras. You know, these are really primal things that

we did when we lived in the cave. And we didn't really have the luxury of doing things for fun when we lived in the cave. So we did everything we did was because it had a benefit for your health or your life. So literally in every episode, I am picking up a new habit. That's exciting. That's exciting. You know, so much of getting ready for the next year ahead is also honoring how much has happened this year or even previous years, how far somebody has come. We chat a little bit about this on the first episode, but is that weaved into your year-end review in any way that is formalized or written down or structured? Yeah, so I have my journaling practice. And when I start writing about what I want to happen next year. I will do a review of what I wanted for this

year and kind of, you know, see how I've done in that. But that just that whole practice is much bigger for me now than it ever was because I was very guilty of never acknowledging what I'd achieved and just moving on to the next thing I have to achieve. So that was a big change for me. Where do you think that that came from? I don't want to blame my parents for everything. but they had very high standards. And, you know, had a lot of expectation on me, parental, societal school. So I think that I was a high achiever. I didn't really have a good practice for acknowledging what I've achieved.

It was always about then, like, what else can you do? So I think it's probably my personality and then also kind of the environment that I grew up in. Yeah, I can have. imagine, you know, so much compassion for your parents, my parents, a lot of immigrant parents over there because so much of their life was focused on survival. Yeah. Hey, we moved to this new country. We have to get ahead. There's no luxury to be thinking about the past at all whatsoever. It's about how do we, especially for our kids, establish some level of success in a new sort of society that we're in to get them in a place where they have some ability to have security

about the future, right? So I can imagine now anything too far one way or another obviously has its downsides, but it's great that you are now sort of bringing these worlds together, the east and the west, and taking one and say, you know what, we don't have to sprint all the time. We can take a moment because unchecked success at all cost will ultimately eat us alive. And that was many of the executives that you were working with back in the day. And so a couple of thoughts have come to my mind, which is that I hear a lot of parents of young children now saying that, you know, everybody's a winner, everybody gets a prize, how are these children going to deal with difficulty later in their life?

And I think that a lot of immigrant cultures raise their children in almost the opposite way, which is that we know life is going to be hard. and if our children experience some hardship early on, they'll be more resilient later. And I do think there's a balance between those two because like you said, either of those two can be a bit extreme. And I had another thought which has just slipped my mind, but I'm sure it will come back to me, so I'll mention it then.

It'll come back to you. It'll come back to you. One of the things that I'll add in that I love to do at the end of the year is to go through month by month and just ask myself, you know, three basic questions. what's something, even if it was tough, I managed to either accomplish it or make progress on it, no matter how big or small. And again, we tend to forget about these things, these challenging things that we attempted, even made progress on.

Maybe we made progress on the goal of weight training. But it never became a full habit in our life, but we learn so much. and now we're way more confident and we're ready to make it a staple in our life. Whatever it is, no matter how big or small. The next question is, who's someone, no matter how big or small, that I did something for?

Who did I help? No matter how big or small, who's someone that I helped that I did something for? And the last one, which is very important, who's someone that did something for me, no matter how big or small? And when I go through, first of all, this takes me a couple hours to go through the entire calendar.

And it's easy if I have my diary or calendar in front of me because I forget what was happening in February. What was I up to? Yeah, yeah. But you look at your calendar. You see what meeting you had. Oh, I had a lunch with Dr. Tara, you know, or I did this. I did that.

Oh, my gosh. She introduced me to that person afterwards. Oh, my, that totally opened my eyes. And I did this other episode, which helped me with this. You're filled with so much gratitude for the people that around you that have supported you. But also you're filled with so much gratitude. for yourself.

And I find that when you enter into the new year with that vibration, it's a whole different energy around setting goals. Most people when they're talking about goals and resolutions, as you've talked about, they don't work. They're coming from such a place of lack. Oh, I want to accomplish this. Why? Well, I feel like I'm not there yet.

I want to make more money or I want to find the right partner in my life. Well, okay, those are all beautiful things. But how about everything that went right this year? And doesn't mean that you can't have those goals. It's just, can we at least acknowledge you for how hard you've tried this year? Yeah, and I think, you know, if you don't do that, then how do you get the confidence that you're going to achieve the things that you want to achieve next year? By acknowledging the things that you have achieved, especially if some of them were seemed a little difficult or out of reach, then you're going to be much more confident about the future. But I agree with you, it's all about gratitude.

I mean, you know, part of my, the way that I look at my action board is visualize my goals for next year becoming true and then giving gratitude in advance for those things becoming true. This episode is brought to you by bi optimizers. If you're struggling with chronic fatigue, muscle aches, brain fog, anxiety, hormone imbalances, headaches, constipation, or as one of my friends likes to call it, FLC syndrome, that's code for straight up feeling like crap, listen up. because I'm about to blow your mind and tell you about the super mineral that's linked to all of the above and more. The only question is, are you getting enough of it? I'm talking about magnesium and supplementation is paramount. There are a ton of different forms of magnesium that are out there and each serves its own unique purpose. Unfortunately, most supplement brands on the market today only contain one form of magnesium, but not bioptimizers.

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b i o p t i m i z e r s dot com slash d hr u with the code drew 10 that's d hr u 10 to get access to the exclusive offer that's powerful um following up on the topic of micro habits and habits one of the things that you are known for and that you write about a lot in the is the importance of taking on new tasks or goals that challenge your brain in a healthy way, because when you challenge your brain, you are creating neuroplasticity and you are essentially growing your brain. So do you think about, or rather, a question here is how does Dr. Tara think about picking challenging goals next on her list to essentially help her brain grow.

I love that question. So yeah, I just want to start by saying whatever you pick, there are other positive consequences of challenging your brain in that way. So let's say you pick learning Spanish. Of course, then you could travel in South America on vacation and like get around much more easily and speak to people. But there are what's called global benefits to your brain of learning anything new, which mostly affects your executive functions, which are the highest functions of the brain.

So things like being able to regulate your emotions, think flexibly, think creatively, think creatively, solve complex problems, override your biases. So, you know, that is actually kind of the main reason for learning something new. So it kind of doesn't matter that much what you learn. I just go with what, you know, crops up for me that year. So sometimes it's learning a language because I'm spending time in a place where English isn't the first language. You know, during the pandemic, it was tennis because it was something you could do outside and, you know, it was physical exercise and then, you know, had a time, you know, we all struggled during the pandemic. I was struggling to see the positive side of things. It was just

really easy to start focusing on the fact that you were locked up and couldn't go anywhere and couldn't see anyone. And so then I did a six-month neuroplasticity training on just improving my happiness levels, you know, just how I would perceive things and noticing small things like a beautiful flower that had blossomed instead of bigger things like I can't go anywhere on vacation. Yeah, so it really kind of, I don't pick something artificially in advance. I wait to see what's coming up for me that year that would constitute a good learning. that's relevant to my life at the time. You follow your gut intuition?

Yeah. We have a question about the gut. We're going to come back to it. Okay. Here's a question. It could be a good opportunity to summarize a little bit of your overall beliefs around this area. But it says,

for those of us who suffer from alcohol or sugar or social media addiction, is it truly possible for us to rewire our brain and break free from these addictions? So from the neuroscience point of view, I always put motivation and addiction on a spectrum. And so motivation is when something that you like or you want improves your life in some way. So, you know, whether that's it improves your life socially or it just picks up your energy temporarily. And then when it tips over into addiction is when two things.

things. One is that you need more of the same thing to have the same effect. And the second one is that you're doing this activity, you know, drinking alcohol, eating sugar, whatever it is, and it's no longer good for you. It's got to level where it's no longer good for you. So that's, that's kind of that slim difference between motivation addiction. I mean, I have to say, as I'm speaking so generally to, you know, a wide audience that I would advise that you get help to work on something that's become an addiction, it's quite difficult to do it yourself. And depending on what it is and for different personality types, it may be that you either have to completely cut that thing out of your life, or it may be that you can minimize it and take it back to the level of

it's motivating, you know, it's got some positive in your life rather than it's in the addiction side of the spectrum. Beautiful. You chatted a little bit about this earlier, but talk to us about any science around the idea, neuroscience, about focusing on getting 1% better each day. Where is there truth to it? And where, well, actually, yes, is there truth to it? Yeah, I think there is. So rather than sort of being too pedantic about 1%, let's say like something that you can do that's not a big effort for you, but is definitely a,

a change in the way that you operate. So the easiest example is, well, I mean, I'm from England, so I'm going to talk about public transport, which maybe isn't that relevant here. But like, or, you know, even if you're taking Uber or you're driving, it's like getting off the bus two stops before your stop and walking extra. So maybe that is parking somewhere further away than as close as you possibly can to the office and getting a walk in. So just a small change to your physical activity, the amount of physical activity you do, and the habit that you have to, you know, the thing that you have to change in order to do that, which is like park somewhere different.

Things like, you know, drink an extra glass of water each day, really small things. But if you start drinking a bit more water, then your body gets used to that and it, you know, kind of the point at which you become dehydrated changes for you. And then you end up being hydrated most of the time. or you go from doing less than 5,000 steps a day to regularly doing more than 5,000 steps a day and then maybe even building that up to 10,000, going to bed an hour earlier.

I'm talking about really small things like this. And I do, and I personally started with all of these brain-healthy habits. So I got myself up to 8,015 minutes of sleep, one and a half litres of water, 10,000 steps per day. Once you've got all of that done, your brain is actually so fueled and in such a good condition that then if you say, I want to learn a new language or I want to write a song

or I want to start a podcast, then you've got more resources in your brain to be able to do that kind of thing. This goes back to that old adage. We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day or in a week and underestimate what's possible for us over the course of a year or even five. So when it comes to especially New Year's goals, New Year's resolutions, people getting ready for the next year, using the end of the year as an opportunity to reflect, there's so much emphasis

on these big, audacious goals and not enough emphasis on these tiny habits that could truly change people's lives. I agree. And you're making me think of, I don't know if. you've read The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. Skimmed. I'm not embarrassed to say when I've skimmed a book. I do need to read it, but I've skimmed it.

Yeah, so it's got lots of interesting concepts in it. But the one that really struck me, I read it a few years ago before the pandemic, was about the angel of death coming to you and saying, I've come to collect to you, it's time to go. And that faced with this, most people would say, please give me another week, please, you know, and the angel of death would say, I've given you so many weeks. Why didn't you use

them like you wanted to? And so a week was quite dramatic. So I sort of thought to myself, okay, if I knew that I had a year to live, what would I do differently? And, you know, I had a very clear answer in my mind about that. So I think one thing we could do as well is not to focus on regrets, because I really don't do regrets. I feel like everything that I've done or not done has led to me being who I am right here right now today. But maybe thinking if I could have changed a few things this year, what would those things be? Because that's probably a really good indicator of what you might want to do next year. Would you mind sharing off the cuff?

Oh, for me. If there was anything that you would shift this year looking back. Again, it's not about regrets, but how you might want to use the inspiration of things that maybe went in one direction this year and next year you might want to take them in a different direction. Overall, I'm definitely going in the direction that I want to because, you know, I'm on this journey to, like, be more creative and do more creative things. One thing I have really noticed several times, because I've traveled a lot this year,

is that I've got to the point a few times this year where I've thought, I need to just be grounded at home for a while. And I've done that maybe for six weeks at a time, but I think each time wasn't really long enough. And I have sort of questioned myself about why I've traveled so much. I mean, on the one hand, it's easy to say I've had these incredible opportunities that you wouldn't turn down. But equally, I haven't really done the right amount of balance with being grounded at home. So I haven't really got the answer to that yet, but I definitely need to be mindful of that

next year. We have a question here about someone who wants to build confidence and command respect. If I could contextualize it in the interview, I would say, Dr. Tara, how do I build confidence and command respect through the 1% approach? What are some habits or things that I could be doing in my life to help me build more confidence on a day-to-day basis? You know how I normally try to answer as widely as possible so it's as helpful to as many people as possible?

I'm going to go the other way with this one because I'm imagining this person sitting in front of me and I want to say what I would really say to somebody if they came to me as a coaching client with that question, the first, you know, my gut has immediately gone to, why do you need to command respect? And where I would question this person is, is there a lack of self-respect that's driving your need to command respect? I don't know about you, but I don't really go around each day thinking I want to command respect. So it feels like there's something behind that, you know,

so I would want to know more about that. I mean, building confidence is one thing. but then I think the respect thing has probably a lot more context to it. So I would say if I want to answer that really easily and from the heart, I think that, you know, living in love and gratitude really helps to build your confidence because it kind of, you know, takes us all back to the essence of who we are and you can't really go wrong if you're living, you know, just in love and gratitude for like everyone that you meet and yourself and everything that happens to you during. the day, usually confidence has dropped for a reason. You know, if you're saying, okay, I need to

build it. It's usually because something may have happened that has affected your confidence. So definitely journaling about that. And I would also return to the usual self-care, but add in a bit more. So make sure you're sleeping enough that you're eating as healthy as you can, drinking water, moving a bit, but then maybe something like taking a bath with nice essential oils or self-massage or, you know, spending quality time with friends or just, you know, something that makes you feel that you are actually taking time to nurture yourself and it's not just about getting the basics done. You know, it's there's something more where you're kind of prising yourself. And I do have a very specific exercise that I love.

which you can do in the shower or if you're like moisturizing your body, which is that as you touch each part of your body or think of each part of your body, you give gratitude for what it does for you. So like my feet for walking me around all day, my skin for protecting the boundary of my body, my eyes for seeing, my, you know, sort of like fingertips for feeling things like so sensitively. And as you go through and you thank the parts of your body, it really does increase your like self-love and confidence.

That's beautiful. If I could add to that, I would say, you know, doing tough things, you know, doing a tough workout that maybe you haven't done before, something that challenges your body. I know when I try tough things, especially with my body, because our world is so mental. We're on the computer so much. We're on the phone so much. And so much of where people lack confidence is where they feel. feel their relationship with others.

But going back to your idea, which is, do you have confidence for yourself? Do you have confidence that you can go, do something tough, know that it was tough and still try it? And even if it's not perfect, it was okay. And next week you go back as a workout example and you can give it another shot. And all of a sudden you can do that weight. You can do that hit workout that previously you weren't able to do. So I think that we don't think enough about confidence. in our Western society coming from the body,

both from men and women, to do something tough and to feel that you have, you know, we have this term, the young people use it these days, they have this term of building receipts, showing the receipts, show the receipts of you doing a tough workout. And getting at your best.

That doesn't mean that it went perfectly, but that you feel the sense of, wow, I tried something and I made progress in it. I completely agree with you that doing something that makes you feel physically tired rather than mentally tired is quite unusual in this day and age. And I know that when, you know, I can feel the difference of that. So like a lot of what I do is taxing to my brain every day and I'm used to that feeling. And it's not a very nice kind of tired. But when I've, I feel tired because I've exerted myself physically, it definitely feels different.

and it's kind of a nicer kind of tired as well. And I've remembered the thing that I was going to say earlier that I said slipped my mind, which was when I did really intense Pilates training on the Reformer, those were the times that I was strong because, you know, I'm very comfortable with the fact that I'm petite, I'm not particularly physically strong, I'm mentally very strong.

You know, I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, let's say. But when I'd been doing Reforma Pilates, I was so strong. And I could do things that I don't normally, do, which was quite interesting. And I loved that feeling. But I am going to disagree with you on one thing. Please, I want you to push back. Anything you want to disagree with, please, you jump in. I think it's because your testosterone levels are so high now that you're like, yeah, let's go and do a hit class or something really challenging. In terms of, if somebody really has had a

crisis of confidence or just is under chronic stress, I really don't recommend high intensity exercise because it actually spikes your cortisol levels, which is your stress hormone. So what I don't want us to advocate is that if you're stressed or you're really lacking in confidence that you go and take on some like physical challenge that actually makes you feel worse. So I always say with neuroplasticity, if you're stressed, busy, there's like demands on you anyway, that's not the time to learn something new or do a particularly challenging physical exercise. but when you've got a bit of downtime, when you think, okay, my priority now is to learn something new,

build myself up, then that's a good time to do something that's more challenging. For sure. And there are plenty of ways to, and I've learned this from the trainers that I've been working with, there's plenty of ways to do also weight training in a way that is not high intensity. That's what I'm going to be doing. Right? Yeah. And actually, you should feel we've had a few individuals on this podcast,

but Sal DeStefano, who has a podcast called Mind Pump, and has been a trainer for many years now, incredible guy and incredible communicator about this topic, he says, when my clients leave the gym, they have more energy if they're doing weight training right. I don't want you to feel dead after a workout. I want you to feel strong that you exerted yourself, but that you feel that you have energy.

And that's exciting. And I've been in that space, and I didn't really know. I used to think that, oh, working out, means you have to destroy your body and feel completely dead afterwards. And it doesn't have to be that way. No. Okay.

So before we move to this next category of questions, in summary, if somebody wanted to supercharge their goals and dreams, gearing up for the next year ahead, as we wind down this year, a few things in summary that could be supportive for them from a neuroscience perspective, one you've already added in is potentially considering a digital detox having some sort of methodology or way to journal or capture the things that you're proud about that you've accomplished in life keeping a list of micro habits that you might be wanting to pay attention to and also starting to connect more with your gut intuition to see are there any bigger things that you might want to add to your action board or bigger goals that you want to make progress on.

Anything else you would add to that? So I would just like nuance some of those by saying, you know, if you can't take a digital detox, at least take a break. You know, having a proper break before the new year will definitely, you know, help you to have that clarity in that space a little bit more. This is a little bit contradicting having a digital detox. But when I do my action board on Pinterest, I create a subsist. section called manifested and I move things from the action board into the manifested section as I

achieve them. So actually I'm kind of tracking that all year. Then at the end of the year I can see what proportion of things I manifested. So it's a little bit like the journaling, but it's an alternative. And in terms of bigger goals, I'd rather say longer term goals. So we keep focusing on doing the micro ones which are easy to achieve but have this cumulative effect and understand that doing that will lead us closer to the longer term goals. They're just things that take more time. They don't necessarily, I'd rather not call them bigger because I think that already puts up that barrier of we might not achieve it. I like that distinction. And that actually works perfectly into the next question that we have. Part two where we're talking a little bit more deeper into

law of attraction and thoughts. Part one was habits where we were diving deep into those habits. So this question came in from someone who heard our first episode and it says, I feel like I'm trying to practice neuroscience inspired manifestation, but there's a part of me that feels like, quote, why are you kidding yourself? It's not going to work. How do I dress that voice in my head, even when I want to believe that practical manifestation is real? So there's all sorts of reasons that people feel like that and it comes from what we call ghosts and so ghosts are related to neural pathways that have been there for so long in your brain that you're not even aware that they are there so the earlier in childhood that a neural pathway formed and kind of became strong the more of a

ghost it is and these are formed by things like um the boundaries that your family had you know so if some people have very like strict families and some people have very like open homes where people could just drop by any time and um stay over or whatever the values that you know that were held in your when i say family i mean the environment that you grew up in any secrets um any role identifications so this can sometimes be things like oh you're just like your father or it could be things like you know you're the kind of go between messenger and the family you know whatever so there's a lot of things that create these very, very old, deeply embedded neural pathways. And so for such a variety of complex reasons, any of us could think that's never going to

work out for me. My number one tip for overcoming that is obviously address anything that's like an obvious reason that you might think that, and that could be in therapy or through journaling. But when you have a thought like that, it's underpinned by a bit of a bit of a bit of belief about yourself and it's usually to do with deservingness. So trying to work out specifically what that is for you and then creating a positive affirmation that's the opposite of that statement. So let's say you're thinking, stop kidding yourself, that's not going to happen for you. And it's because you repeatedly watched one of your parents say that they were going to achieve something,

but then fail over and over again. And that's what you witnessed as a child. So your belief could be something like failure happens more than success. So what you'd have to make your positive affirmation is success happens more than failure. Now, at first, that might seem like you're not even telling the truth. But it has to be quite a bold statement. So even if it doesn't feel true right now, every time you think failure happens more than success, you have to say out loud or write down or in your mind, success happens more than failure,

and you need to keep repeating that until that becomes more of a natural thought process for you. Were there any ghosts that you created a manifestation around or, sorry, affirmation around, that were helpful in your journey of stepping more into your creative ability to communicate, the neuroscience? I think this, the one that came up that was, that really had to change for me, that was big for me, and I'm sure has contributed to the, um, creative story was that everything had to be perfect.

So, you know, I had to get 10 out of 10 on the spelling test. And if I didn't, I was questioned about why I got one thing wrong, um, as a kid. And so an affirmation I made when I changed my career, um, was let your truth. self shine through. And it's not necessarily related to that everything had to be perfect, but, you know, there were a few reasons that those sort of themes came up. So I used that one,

let yourself, your true self shine through for quite a while until I became, that became very natural for me. And then I, you know, I struggled with things like good enough is, is okay. You know, I could not really get my head around that for a very long time. And what I realized was that the behaviour that was panning out for me was I had such high expectations that everything had to be perfect. And then I thought, well, it's not going to be perfect. So, you know, I was just looking out for everything that was like less than perfect or wrong. And then I realized that actually usually in the end, whether it's perfect or not is irrelevant, I do quite a good job of most of the things that I do and I'm proud of them afterwards. But I've caused myself so much stress and the run up to it.

And, you know, the closest people around me maybe felt some of that. stress too, that that really just wasn't worth it. And I gave myself the data and the evidence that usually the projects that I pay my attention to turn out really well. So I kind of just learnt to drop the stress that around perfection that was coming with that. And, you know, I think a big learning that I had as well is that things don't always pan out how you plan. So becoming more flexible and open and spontaneous was important. And I think both of those things have definitely contributed to being more creative because in creativity, there is no such thing as perfection and you do have to be flexible and spontaneous. I love how you said that. You know, things don't always go according to

plan. And for some people, that is their sort of negative mantra that keeps them from trying new things. And I just had this insight that even I had a version of that when I was younger. And as I was starting my entrepreneurial journey, it was the switch of, well, things don't always work out, which was said in a negative way to prevent me from trying things. And that's switching to, you know, sometimes things don't work out and that can be a great opportunity. Because when things don't work out, it's a test, it's an experimentation. And that is all more information about a different way to potentially go about stuff. I love when things don't work out in business

because that's more information for us to find a different way of going about things that one of those next ventures will end up working out and be very successful. Yeah, I mean, as a serial entrepreneur like you, that's quite an obvious in a way, just like very tangible. But what I want to put behind that, that I'm sure you have examples of as well,

is that it's the way that you deal with that, that's the actual test. Right. Because something cannot go as planned, and you could waste months or years dwelling on that. Or you could learn through neuroplasticity to put that behind you as quickly as possible and move on to the next potential option.

And that's definitely been a big learning for me as well. And it's come from not being able to let go of things that haven't planned out the way that I wanted them to. And then really looking back and taking stock and realizing, okay, that happened anyway. Whatever it was actually happened, that wasn't going to change. But the amount of time that I wasted, not being able to come to terms with that, that was actually the mistake that I made.

Great reminder. Okay, next question here. On my path to manifesting my dreams, what evidence should I be looking for to know that I'm headed in the right direction? Are there clues that I should be paying attention to along the journey? That's a really nice question. I wish I had a bit more of a specific example, because I want to say that there are clues, but it's quite hard to say what they might be if I don't know, you know, what necessarily.

So let's, okay, let's just say generally if you're trying to manifest things. Let's say somebody wants to find a new job and change careers. and they feel very nervous about it, but they are starting to create their action board. They're imagining, and maybe they don't even know what career they want to shift to. I mean, you've gone through this in a way yourself.

And they imagine themselves being more creative, hanging out with interesting people, learning, working in a different environment, maybe traveling, speaking on stage, or communicating something. Let's use that example, right? Yeah, and I think that's a great example. and for other things as well.

A question you could ask yourself is, am I making progress however small towards that thing on a regular basis? I think if you find that you're plateauing or going backwards, then you might need to like, you know, rethink. But I want to go back to the six principles in my book and say that like make sure that it feels like these are are valid in your journey.

So the first one is abundance, which is based on the negative gearing in the brain of avoiding loss. So the balance of being nervous and excited is a good sign. For me personally, I know that that's a sweet spot for me. But if you're way more nervous than you are excited, you might want to kind of journal about that and see just what the facts are around how likely this manifestation is, how realistic it is, within your power to influence it.

And then magnetic desire is really important because often people say that they want things because that's what all their friends are doing or that's what society expects. And magnetic desire is something that you want so strongly that you are willing to go through the time that it might take or the effort that it might take and you can't not keep moving towards it.

like you don't have an option. So I think that's a really important one. And it doesn't even matter whether other people want it or not. You know you want it. Yeah. And you know, maybe particularly if it's not in the norm or the flow, but it's like very, very special to you, then I think that's actually maybe even a better sign. And then, you know, manifestation is what are the things that you're doing, whether it's through your thoughts or actions in the real world, that are going to bring that thing to reality. You know, so I guess the question here is, how much can you do?

How much can you influence this? And, you know, that may include asking for help. So it may be that somebody or something else can influence it too, but you've still got to ask for that help. And then patience, which I mentioned before, which is that you don't give up because, you know, because it's taking too long. So, you know, continuing to be motivated towards that goal,

even if it feels like nothing's happening at times, which that, you know, can happen. And then harmony and universal connection kind of go together in that the thing you're trying to manifest isn't taking away resources from someone else. You know, it's not creating scarcity. It's part of the whole general abundance that, you know, we want to sort of foster in the world. Yeah, I would say you've got to be really practical about it and go back to those things and help use those six kind of questions to ask yourself if you can see clues in your life. That's powerful. Okay, this one's a little bit of an interesting question.

Dr. Tara, after finding your content on YouTube, I've gone down the rabbit hole on law of attraction, and I'm not exactly sure what advice is real. Of course, yours, and what other advice is, quote unquote, BS. Are there things that I should be wary of as I continue to go down the path of the law of attraction and manifestation that you feel isn't supported by the science? So I think there is an element of if some things work for you, you may not need to know the science or if there is science behind it. So for some people, there are just some things that work and I'm not against that at all. But the reason that I wrote my book is because I wanted to see an explanation of the law of attraction that was based on cognitive science, which is basically the power of your mind, because A, I needed evidence as a scientist, but B, I wanted to feel the agency of influencing my own future and not relying on some external force that was intangible to me. So again, I want to emphasize, I'm not saying it's wrong to think that the universe is trying to help you or that there are vibrations or frequencies that attract things into your life. I do think you have to be a kind, loving, grateful person for good things to happen to you. And that if you're constantly saying, that's not going to work out for me, that's probably going to be true. But I think that when you use psychology and neuroscience,

science to explain that the way that you think, the things that you believe, the actions that you take in the world, impact your relationships, impact your confidence in taking healthy risks, impact your ability to move towards your goals. That is very understandable and is supported by science. So I would take that as the backbone of the way that you look at the law of attraction and maybe if there are some things around that that can't necessarily be explained by science, that's okay. So separating out that if you come across advice, if it works for you awesome and if it's not supported, just kind of keep that in mind.

Like if you're trusting another quote unquote expert, just be mindful of that. It could work. It may not work, but don't kid yourself. Is partly what I'm hearing? Yeah, and for that reason, I don't even really love the word advice. I think, you know, if it's like an explanation or a philosophy, then you can, you know, read it or try it. But, you know, and I do, I do, it's really crystallizing for me actually

that the reason I had to write the book with the cognitive science was that it's got to come back to yourself. You've got to believe in yourself. You've got to see evidence that you made this happen and not rely on a guru or an expert. or a, you know, a more intangible external force. So that, perfect into the next question. When individuals are implementing the practices in your book, the source,

what are the top areas that you see them get tripped up if they're new to this world? So the top one is giving up because it's taking longer than you thought it would. That's number one. Yeah. So that falls for me under the six ways of thinking, which are logic, emotion, physicality, motivation, intuition and creativity. That falls under the motivation one. And I just, I have this image. I think it's like seared onto my brain of a man that's digging for gold and he's digging this horizontal tunnel.

And we can see that the bag of gold is like a few feet away. But he's been digging for so many feet and he's tired. And so he gives up. Now, when it's your own life, you can't see where that bag of gold is. You can't see how close it is necessarily. But that time where you're so close but you want to give up is a real test of your own resilience, mental resilience. So building up that mental resilience and being willing to be the person that waits for just that little bit longer than, you know, the next person or your old self, I think is really important. not listening to your intuition, and that can be for two reasons, that can be partly because

you just haven't honed your intuition to the point where you feel it's a really valuable skill. And the other one can be because it's in conflict with your logic, your emotion. So a classic example is towards the end of a relationship, there are usually so many red flags, but people will try to hold on. And then as soon as it's over, they'll look back and think, why didn't I leave several months ago? So that kind of thing where you're always, you're gut is absolutely telling you that this relationship is over, but you will give yourself so many reasons to stay and try again. And, you know, you sort of, you smiled. I think everybody's got an example of that in their life. So apply that to other scenarios as well, like maybe in your work

or in something that you're doing towards your physical fitness or your, you know, your health in general. What is that period where you're not listening to your gut? Because actually listening to your gut is super important. And if you learn how to do that well, you know, you know, you're that well, it can be a real game changer for all of this. Powerful. In our last podcast, you detailed out why you call it an action board. Traditionally, people look at it as a vision board. And you say action board because you want people to take action.

So this next question here goes right into that, which is that, so I've put my action board together and I am, I've put it in a place where I can see it. They didn't write that, but that's kind of what I'm extrapolating from this question. So I've put my action board together. I've put in a place where I can be reminded of it daily. What happens when I am afraid to take action towards it? Any best advice on overcoming and facing fear that gets in the way of the action that's needed to fulfill my action board? Yeah, I actually want to take that back a stage because something I hear quite often is that people have selected all the images, laid them out on the board, but haven't glued.

them down yet. And I think this is, this person's obviously gone further, which is great, but it's kind of on the same spectrum. Usually it comes back to a feeling of lack of deserving of the image, so the thing that you want. And what I will say from a neuroscience point of view is that fear and uncertainty are actually the worst state for your brain to be in. if you take a step forward, what you find out quite quickly is that even if something doesn't

work out, that feeling is less bad for your brain than the fear of uncertainty. The fear and the holding on to fear is scarier. That classic quote, who was it one of the presidents or maybe it was Winston Churchill? We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Who is that? I think it's Winston Churchill. If we could fact check me, Tessa, so I don't get some hate mail later on from my history teachers in high school. But yeah, it is so true. How many of us have this feeling in our

life that this simple little action, it just took one email being sent, one phone call, and we made it into so much of a bigger deal in our head than it was when we actually ended up having to go through it. Yeah. And if you've got a few examples of that in your life, then that's great. It's really helpful. And I remember when I first read Who Moved My Cheese. There's one of the question on one of the pages is what would you do if you weren't afraid? And I find myself asking myself that question sometimes. So I don't put myself in a position of you have to do this. I just say, what would I do if I wasn't afraid?

And I write it down in my journal. And usually then you see the first step to what you can do. I love that. There's a sister question to that question that I've stolen from. the author, podcaster, life hack expert, Tim Ferriss. And he asks himself a question that he's talked a lot about. And he encourages his listeners to do it. He says, what would it look like if it was easy?

Oh, yeah, that's nice. So often we think that this thing that we want to make progress on in our life has to be hard. We've almost manifested hardship into it. But what would it look like if it was easy and even if it's still tough, simply asking that question, I know for me, removes a lot of the stress around this thing that I want to make progress on, I might want to achieve. And at least as a mental thought experiment that puts me in a place to even imagine that it doesn't have to be hard. And what would that look like? What would it look like if that was easy?

Yeah. And I think this relates also to procrastination about just deadlines and tasks. You know, so it's the same kind of field, which is, okay, you're not taking a step, an action. towards your like action board goals, but it's not really that different to why you procrastinate over, you know, a document or an interview or something like that. And it is because you think it's going to be much harder than it is. And so I have so many examples of where I finally get around to something at the last moment and then I think, oh, that didn't take as long as I thought. It wasn't as hard as I thought. And I have a kind of, let's say a cousin question to the two that we've already

said, which is, what would it feel like if I get the best possible result in this scenario? And once you kind of just imagine that and then you go into the scenario, you go in like so much more willingly without the fear. I love that question because part of what you're doing, or at least part of what I'm understanding that you're saying that you're doing, is you're priming the brain to expect good rather than to expect the worse. Yeah. Why is that so important?

give us a reminder. Because it's a natural survival mechanism in our brain to expect the worst to protect ourselves from, you know, potential bad consequences. But particularly in the modern world, the proportion of how often we think that's going to be a bad outcome and what actually is, is it's skewed. It's not correct. So by priming your brain more towards the trust and excitement and getting the bonding hormone going, you feel better. And the fact is that your fear of how bad the outcome could be wasn't correct in the first place anyway. So it aligns more with reality. That's powerful.

So can we just restate those questions again? Don't worry about restating mine. Restate the questions that you mentioned. So we'll go backwards. The last one was, what would it feel like have I got the best possible outcome from this scenario? What would it feel like if I would get the best possible outcome for this scenario? It's a great question,

but it's almost like partly like a mantra to set you up for, Success. And then what was the first one if you remember? What would you do if you weren't afraid? What would you do if you weren't afraid? Two powerful questions that you can bring into your life when you feel that fear is holding you back from taking a step forward. I'll throw in a last one that I've heard, and I can't remember who I heard it from,

which was, how would I act if I didn't know? How would I act in this situation? Yeah. How would I move forward if I did know the answer? I love that. I think that's very helpful. I'm not one of these people. I've always felt from a young age I have a deep connection to my gut intuition

and that I always know what to do next. And sometimes knowing what to do next for me was I don't have an answer now, so I'm not going to force it. Not that I always knew the answer, but sometimes the answer was, okay, I don't know the answer. I'm not going to push it right now. I'm just going to sit on this for a minute. But I know that there's many people that actually have. not fully felt like they're strengthening their connection between their gut and the brain, which you've talked about before.

And they actually do know the answer, but that signaling process is still strengthening in terms of their ability to know that they do know the answer. So it's a favorite question of mine that'll ask my friends who feel like they're, I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do. Okay, well, if you did know what to do, what would that look like? now. Again, it's just another thought experiment. Yeah, and I think it's, you could say, answer or outcome. So sometimes it's not a question, but it's a scenario, you know, and I'm, I'm just thinking of one that, you know, I hear a lot, which is in dating. There's a lot of narrative

around that, you know, there's no good men out there or they, you know, they all behave like this or it's always going to end up like that. Well, actually, what if you operated like the outcome was going to be one of love and trust. How would that change how you behaved? If you believe that all, you know, the potential partners out there, the people that you're going to meet on your quest for a potential partner have bad intentions are going to act in a, you know, disloyal way, then you must act differently. You must say different words. Your body language must be different because of that. How could the outcome be different if you acted in a way that like, you know, I believe the best of everyone. Like we've said before with many other examples, the, it may not pan out like that. It may go

wrong, but it's still one of those experiments where you've presented as your best version of yourself, believing in the best possible outcome. I think we, for like valid reasons, but we've taken it probably a bit too far, becomes so protective of ourselves that we're always thinking that it's going to be the worst outcome and that if we assume that the outcome is going to be bad, then we can protect ourselves in advance. But what opportunities are we losing by acting in that protective way that maybe shuts down another person's willingness to be open? Powerful. Well, you gave a little bit of a preview of the next round of questions by going into the world of dating and relationships. Before we do that, we have one more question in this category,

which is, if I care about my longevity, and I care about my health span and lifespan. That's what I'm assuming they mean by longevity. Are there ways that I could be thinking about applying the principles of manifestation to my health in the future? Yeah. I mean, you know, I always have a section on my action board that's to do with health and fitness. And I mean, for me, longevity is the amount of time that you live that you have good quality of life. not just living for a very long time regardless of the quality of life.

So you can put actual things on there that you'd like to do. Like I guess I'm probably going to be putting something to do with weights on my action board, 2024. Usually I have somebody in a yoga pose. You know, that's a very regular one for me. But it's to do with the tone and balance and things like that. You can get really specific. I mean, what I quite like doing now, which I never really did before,

is alongside my action board also having a list. So on that list, if it was related to longevity, you could have, so, you know, one microhabit that I introduced this year was eating 30 different plant products per week. So you could have that as one of your things. If you want to take certain supplements, you could list them on your list or have pictures of supplements on your action board.

So whatever you think that you need to do, that's going to impact your longevity, you can definitely have images that represent those things on your action board. And if there are real specifics, like you want to write down vitamin D, for example, then you can write that into a list as well. Beautiful. Okay, relationships. Apparently it's a hot topic. People want to know. They want to get your insights. I almost feel a little bit embarrassed to ask you this first question. But hey, you got to meet the people with where they're at. Does the doctor have any signs that she would be suggesting that we could be looking at when it comes to the category of dating and relationships, so I'm assuming this person is not married.

These are signs that the relationship won't last. I don't know how that relates to manifestation and your field, but hey, they want your take on it. So what are the signs that a relationship may not last for someone? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. So from the cognitive science, one of the things that I've stated before is that we meet people at the level of psychological wound that we are at. So the more work you've done on yourself, whether it's through therapy or your own, you know, journaling or talking with friends, like positive, you know, deep conversations. I know you have your men's group.

All of that work that you've done is going to lead you to the point of meeting someone that's on a similar level to you. But what I'd also like to say about that is that if you evolve emotionally or spiritually and someone else doesn't, then you're no longer at the same level of psychological wound. That's also a reason that people move out of your life or you move out of someone's life. So that would be one sign that you're evolving emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and the other person isn't. boundaries are really important in relationships and that can be physical, verbal, emotional, financial, the fact that if you're not respected on any one of those levels, that's a sign that a relationship isn't going to work. And then there's one really interesting one that kind of crops up psychologically,

which is about contempt. So it seems to be the one emotion or feeling that it's not really possible to get over in a relationship. So, you know, people can get over infidelity. People can get over very, you know, difficult arguments. But once there's a feeling that your partner holds you in contempt, and that's whether it's from their facial expression or something that they've said or, you know, things that they do, that seems to be a deal breaker. So those are the main three that I would mention.

Those were great. You took what I thought initially, no judgment on the question that was sent in, a very basic question, and you turn it into something really beautiful that we can all learn from, which is why we have you here, which is why you get paid. It's a term here in America. That's why you get paid the big bucks. I was a bit worried when you said, I'm almost embarrassed to ask this question. I'm like, where is this going? You're like, oh my gosh, where are we going to go with this? Yeah. Next question that we have here is on the topic of creating intimacy within a relationship, how do we think about manifestation or even visualization for, looks like they're talking about a committed partnership to create more intimacy within the relationship, to get a

couple to be on the same page together about what intimacy looks like both in the present, and in the future. Well, I mean, I'm going to have to say communicating about that as, you know, paramount, really. And I would say that to me, this is less about manifestation and more about action. So we know that the bonding hormone oxytocin is induced mostly by physical contact. So, you know, in a regular day, that could be handshaking, hugging, kissing. But in an intimate relationship, it will be more like cuddling, skin on skin, co-sleeping, sex, that you need to make sure that enough of those things are happening,

that you are making the effort to touch your partner's hand, sit close to them. But also really that both ways in a partnership, you have to be aware of what it is that you want and like in terms of intimacy, intimate behaviour, but also that you don't assume that what you want is what your partner wants and that you really put yourself in their shoes, or I'd prefer to say their brain, and try to work out what it is that their needs and desires are that you can meet. So I do quite like the five love languages. And I always say, though, that we all, you know,

we all kind of like all of them, but there may be that we have strong preferences or an order of preference. And for each of us, if you work out, you know, that, let's say, for me, doing acts of service is my top one, do to show love. But in terms of what I like to receive is words of affirmation. And so it's not always necessarily the same, but I'm very clear on what I tend to do and what I need to receive.

Then you need to work that out for your partner. So let's say acts of service is the one that I do the most, but that's not what, you know, my partner wants quality time together. So if I'm going off kind of cooking and cleaning and trying to do things to please my partner, but actually they would prefer it if I just sat with them and talked to them or whatever. I need to adjust my behaviour to make sure that I'm meeting my partner's needs as well.

And obviously also communicating what it is that I would like to receive from my partner. So the physical affection thing is really important in terms of just the hormones that underlie us bonding and feeling intimate. Using whatever model you like, I quite like the five love languages one, to understand what it is that you can do and what you need to receive. And understanding that in an intimate relationship, we all need to be admired, but we also need to be desired. And so, you know, just what that looks like in your relationship. And you have to talk about it.

You can work it out to a certain extent, but if you're not communicating, that's probably a problem. So many people have a fear of telling their plans. partner, girlfriend, even people who are married, husband and wife, what they actually like and what they don't. Where do you think that fear is coming from? What's everybody so afraid about? Well, I mean, it comes from childhood, and it's related to an area of psychology called

The Shadow. And the Shadow is parts of ourselves that we've rejected, because usually we're ashamed or we were made to feel guilty about it. So when you're a child, you're absolutely dependent on your caregivers, which is usually your parents. And you learn very quickly which behaviours are disapproved of by your main caregivers. And you work out that if you want to be loved and looked after, you need to not display those behaviours. And so you will put those behaviours into your shadow. So they're personality aspects that we hide away from ourselves. And sometimes they can actually be good.

things but because we may have been told like oh don't boast don't show off you actually hide some of your good characteristics too so often it comes to around the age of the midlife crisis and you realize that you've been hiding your light and there are things that you should like bring out from your shadow um so yeah i think it's the fear of rejection and abandonment you know it's very deep seated um you know if i actually ask for what i want i may get rejected by the person that I laugh. So maybe it's better if I don't say those things and just let them do what they want and be happy with that, you know. Which is so many people's approach and then we live a life of being miserable and we're miserable and we're not attending to our needs. We become a miserable

partner to the person that we're in a relationship with. Yeah. And if you can think of it like if I'm able to tell my partner what I want in a relationship, then surely that's giving them permission to say what they want as well. So hopefully it's building, you know, a really health. partnership. Yeah, it just often takes just that first person. It's usually one person who gets the courage to be at least the Kickstarter. It doesn't mean that they always have to be that individual, but it does take one person in the relationship to kind of kickstart that vulnerability of being more honest about some topic in life, whatever that topic might be for a couple to discuss. And so, you know, using a model like the Five Love Languages can make that a bit easier to broach

Yeah, that's kind of one of the reasons that I like it because it's very easy to say, okay, of these five, which is the one that's most important to you? Or like, what order of preference do you have for these five? And then, you know, that can start a conversation. My wife and I, when we were serious about wanting to be serious with each other, we used this deck of cards from the Gottman Institute. Oh, yeah.

And it was called 52 questions before marriage and moving in. Yeah. And even we had some friends saying, like, are you guys ready to get married? And I said, no, we're not ready to get married yet. But we are serious about wanting to be serious with each other. And we want to go through these questions to get a sense of, are we on the same page? About some of the fundamental aspects of life. And guess what?

If we're not, that's okay, because at least we'll be honest with each other earlier. Also from the Gottman Institute, because you were talking about the five love languages, They also have something called the five to one ratio. Have you heard about this? So the Gottman's, evidence-based marital therapy, and they have an institute that's based, I believe, up in Seattle. They were most famously known for their work that was featured in the book, Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell. And they were able to do this process of thin slicing,

which is a 90% predictive rate of whether or not a couple would get divorced in the next. I think it was like five years or so. So they got these couples. They ran this sort of formula. They would have them talk about, they would say, the researchers would say, tell us about a past problem in your life, something in the past. And talk about that problem and what it was. And they were using that question in particular because, like many couples, these individuals

that were there as part of this research project, you think you've addressed this past problem. But you haven't. Okay. So how do you talk about that? What are the four horsemen and how frequently do they come up in the conversation? And number one that they're looking at is actually contempt. What is the frequency based on this dialogue between a couple? How often does contempt come up in the conversation?

The next one that came up was stonewalling. That's when somebody's, you know, crossing their hands and refusing to participate in the conversation. I'm not going to talk about that. We already said we already talked about in the past. I'm not going to talk about it now. The next one was, I believe, like hypercriticism. How frequently did a partner give somebody else a back-ended compliment, you know, a hypercritical statement? And I forget the last one.

But out of that work and out of their research, not only were they able to predict the, with 90% accuracy, who would get divorced and who wouldn't in the next five years by blinding the researchers and not having access to seeing what happened and then looking five years from now and saying, okay, which couples stay together and which couples didn't. Yeah. Audit research also came this idea of the five to one ratio, which is happy and successful long-term couples, have five positive interactions with each other for everyone that would be neutral or negative.

And a positive interaction isn't a doting compliment every morning before your wife goes to work, it could be that. It could be something as simple as, you know, a hand on her hip or waist just saying, and a nice kiss for making you coffee in the morning. Right? Or your husband doing something nice for you and you're just resting your hand on his shoulder and just giving them a little, you know, putting your head on his shoulder, whatever it would be. But happy, successful, long-term relationships have this five-to-one ratio. And there's a lot of couples that would say well, we don't fight that much. And that might be true.

But when they looked at their ratio, it was one to one. They don't fight a lot, but they don't give each other many compliments or affirmations, whether they be for physical or words. And so even if you're a couple that doesn't fight that much, if you don't have this 5 to 1 ratio, you're still in trouble because you don't have enough of these positive interactions to the neutral and negative interactions. It's mind-blowing. Yeah, well, that makes sense because the loss aversion ratio is that we are two to two and half times more focused on potential loss than potential gain of an equivalent amount.

So the five means that you're like doubling that up the opposite way. So that completely makes sense. It's fascinating. Any advice for people that find themselves in a relationship where they are often the more critical or hyper-critical partner? Any advice for that person? Yeah, I mean, the first thing I would look at is that's usually driven by stress. So, you know, without putting blame on somebody and kind of saying that they're doing that on purpose,

maybe that's the kind of behavior that leaks out when you're under a lot of stress. So working out if that's true and then seeing what the source of your stress might be and what you can do about it. And then I would say that, I mean, I always say that awareness is 50% of the battle. So a lot of times people will say, but I don't realize that I do that. And so actually engaging your partner or even maybe like wider family and friends to just tell you when you're doing it. And if you say, if I said to you Drew, please tell me if I do that, then I'm not going to feel like you're criticizing me when you tell me because we've made to that agreement. I've asked you to do that. And if I genuinely feel like half the times that you say Tara, you know, you just made a bit of a harsh comment that I wasn't aware of it, then I can learn.

from that. So, you know, that should be taken as a positive. And once you've got the awareness, you can get yourself to the point where you're aware that you're about to do it and then you can choose to say something different. Beautiful. So we had a bunch of questions come in about finding and choosing the right partner. But knowing your content so well, listening to all the podcasts that you've been on, reading your work, I'll synthesize these questions into this. I've heard you say that it's important for people as they're venturing into being in a place in their life where maybe there's single again, maybe they're divorced, whatever it might be, that when it comes to picking their next partner and attracting them into their life, maybe even using an action board, it's important for them to make a list of those attributes that they're looking for, but then to also do the second thing that nobody else talks about, but I've heard you talk about, which is to, to look at those list of attributes and to also reference those list of attributes against the person that you are today. Can you explain why that is a powerful practice when it comes to attracting

a new girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, partner into your life? I think it's very natural and I think this is quite societal rather than kind of primal to be much more conscious of what is that you're looking for in a partner than what you have to offer. I mean, if you think about the times that you were single, how often did you sit down and think, okay, this is what I have to offer someone? It's much more likely that we'll sit around with a group of friends and say, this is what I'm really looking for in a person. And so I think there's two ways you could do it.

One is that you could actually just make a list of the things that you have to offer and help that to guide you, sorry, use that to guide you to finding somebody that is looking for those sorts of qualities. But I do think the best one is what you just summarised, which is, sure, make a list of what you're looking for in a partner, because that is important. That's how you're going to make your choice. But if you're not all of those things,

how can you expect that someone's going to want to be with you if that's what you're looking for? And it's much more healthy and positive to focus on becoming more kind and generous and warm and complementary and, you know, socially aware or into the arts and culture or whatever it is that you want, then just sitting there focusing on what you want that you haven't got and not doing anything about improving yourself.

And part of it is looking at it to see if you have those qualities, you know, if you want somebody kind, compassionate, patient. Another part of it is, do you have something complimentary to add? There are people that are, I know, that want a more traditional relationship and they want to be maybe a stay-at-home mom, which is, again, especially if you want to raise kids, that's a super tough job in itself. And they want to find a man who is a provider, let's say in a traditional relationship. They want to find a man who's a provider. And they're very clear on that. Their dream is always to do that.

And they imagine that. They want to raise kids. They want to raise them in a particular way. It's important to make home-cooked meals or whatever the reasons are that somebody might want. that. So they might look at it and say, well, I want somebody who is, you know, likes their job or loves their work and is proud of the work that doing and can provide financially. That may not be the thing that they want to do, but they know the complementary thing that they want to bring to the table. Being nurturing. Being nurturing or keeping the household organized or maybe keeping the budget

extremely organized, whatever it is so that they have that complementary. So I'm hearing that that's a part of it as well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think when we come down to really fundamental values-based things, I do think you have to be quite aligned. And that's things like kindness and generosity or whatever. But then, yeah, there are practical things like that you want somebody who's, you know, successful or passionate about what they do, but that's not, you know, you want to be successful and passionate at raising a family, then, yeah, sure. I think just you bring it down to values, then it can apply to what it is that you want to do practically in different ways, sure.

Are you familiar at all with the idea of polarity in relationships that we often hear this term that opposites attract, but it's really polarity attracts that, you know, there might be, you know, the masculine and the feminine, which applies, you know, the masculine and feminine can apply. It's not to male and female. There could be a woman that is more has what traditionally might be. be explained as certain qualities or traits that might be in the masculine bucket. There could be a man that's more feminine.

But ultimately, it's sort of the negative and the positive that polarity attracts each other. Are you familiar with this term? Do you have any thoughts on it? Yeah, yeah. I think there are elements of that because there have to be some differences and we're not all looking for a clone of ourselves. That would be a very miserable relationship to be in if we're a clone. A lot of people think that they want to date themselves, but that seems like a very

miserable relationship to be in. Well, I think there is another element of that where. you know, you've got to have enough to offer that you can get the person that you want. So quite a good question is, would I date myself right now? And if not, then which are the areas that you, you know, you think you should tweak to kind of get to the stage where somebody would want to date you, including yourself? Not that you would want to end up with yourself, but are, you know, do you feel like, yes, I'm really offering something that somebody would want to date? So I think that some differences are very attractive, but in terms of values and long-term goals, they really have to be aligned. One of the questions here is I believe that this individual saw your interview on the diary of the CEO, which was great.

Thanks. Congratulations on that. That interview is doing very well. You talked about the importance of eye contact when it came to bonding. And this relates to relationships. And the question here, which seems to be more of a statement, is that an individual finds himself in a relationship where as a relationship has grown, they're just noticing naturally that there may not be as many moments where they're maintaining eye contact with their partner

in a way that is creating this bonding element between them. So are there things that couples can do to take advantage of it? So maybe for those that are not familiar, just talk about eye contact and why that is important when it comes to bonding in relationships. So I mentioned the hormone oxytocin and I talked about how it's induced through physical contact. But actually, I missed out a couple of things. So eye contact and laughing together also induce that hormone. So those are all the things that we need to be doing to, you know, it's basically creating

what I call the love bubble. So the more oxytocin you have, the more you feel. like you are in that bonded warm, kind of, you know, safe place and relationship. As humans, we were not created to be able to survive alone. We need to be part of a tribe. And we do like to be in partnership or in like family. So when I hear people saying, as time has gone on, we're not really having the time to make eye contact.

I would really question what people are prioritising in life. Our positive, meaningful relationships are one of the most critical factors to our longevity, our health and our mental health. And, you know, particularly something like eye contact doesn't really take long to do. You can do it whilst you're doing other things. You can do it whilst you're talking. You can do it whilst you're cooking. You can do it whilst you're eating.

So, yeah, I would say it's such an easy one to do that can increase intimacy and bonding that I would just say if you need to question yourself if you're saying that I don't have time to do that because it's really important. All right, here's a spicy one. What does the doctor think about scheduling sex in relationship? So I don't know if you are familiar with this, but there's a lot of conversations on YouTube right now about the importance of people who are in a committed relationship, scheduling sex, especially those who have kids because life gets crazy. And people tend to minimize that and deprioritize it on the list of things. Any thoughts about the topic?

So I do hear about this a lot with people who've got young kids. And I think if there's something like, you know, having young kids or shift work or a lot of time spent apart because of travel or something like that, then maybe you do, you should schedule it. But I definitely think, I mean, in my opinion as a neuroscientist, there's a lot to be said for it, you know, being spontaneous and kind of based on mutual desire. So I think the scheduling aspect is better than not doing it at all. But ideally wouldn't become a long-term way of being intimate in a relationship.

So if I could extrapolate based on this question that's here, if somebody's finding that the spontaneity inside of the relationship has waned over time, things that couples can do to bring that back into their union together. Are you asking me what the things are? Are the things that people can do to bring that back into their union together? So I think that spontaneity that's waned over time is different to what we were just saying, which is that reasons that maybe you need to do scheduling for a time, for a, you know, a period of time, because otherwise it's just not going to happen for practical reasons.

Spontaneity that's waned over time, I mean, I think that a really good resource to refer people to, not that it has to involve infidelity, is Esther Perel's TED talk on rethinking Fidelity, which shows how people, where there has been a break and the trust in the relationship, can kind of start over. So what I, again, because of what I do and who I am, a lot of people confide in me and that will be both sides of a relationship.

So what I hear a lot is both parties saying, we don't really have sex anymore, but of course I'd like to, but they're not saying that to each other. So they're both assuming the other one's too tired or the spontaneity's gone. And it's just kind of a, you know, it's a difficult conversation.

to start sometimes. But if we go back to a lot of the themes that we've covered today and we say, what would it look like if I got the best case scenario out of this? What would I do if I wasn't afraid? The fact that we do need to communicate and someone does need to be the brave one that kickstarts these conversations, then, you know, what's the worst that can happen? You can try and kickstart that conversation and you can be met with a stone wall and maybe then actually there's a different thought process that you have to go down in terms of remaining in that relationship. But if you never try, then you're never going to know. So I would say that suddenly becoming spontaneous sexually when that hasn't been happening for a while could be a bit difficult.

So probably a conversation is the best way to start. And then if both parties are agreeable, then, you know, trying it out in real life. I love that you mentioned Esther Perel. She's a dear friend I've known over the years We'd love to connect you guys If you guys haven't met before She could be a great podcast guest But her book mating captivity

Was a big one for a lot of individuals And the core idea that Modern life Which has largely brought us Towards security and safety Which was very important We didn't have those things always In our human history

From an evolutionary biology lens And so we've tried to get so much security through every aspect of our life And in that fight for security, we have sort of starved out a lot of the spontaneousness, the sort of unexpected. And additionally, what we used to get from an entire, this is her quote, what we used to get from an entire village we now expect from one person. We want our one partner, our husband, our wife, our girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. We want them to be our everything.

They're our confidant. there are co-provider or provider in the relationship. There are co-parent in bringing kids together. There are all these things that we used to get from an entire village. And on top of that, we want them to be our exciting, you know, sexual fantasy or partner. Yeah. You know, our definition of what intimacy looks like at its ideal. And it's a lot of expectations.

And that sometimes creating intentional. space in a relationship is one of the core aspects. I'm doing a disservice. There's plenty more that's there to create and allow couples to sort of see each other from a distance. So what does that look like when that starts happening? And I highly recommend that people check out that book. It was a beautiful book for many of my friends and my own relationship as well. So I'm glad that you mentioned that book. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's interesting hearing you say that. And maybe I'm just not really of the age group that's having those sorts of conversations. But it immediately struck me as that, I was going to say that can't be right,

but I'm going to probably be word it a bit stronger. But that's very dangerous to expect your partner to be all of those things. Yeah, absolutely. It's not right. I do remember a sort of romantic, you know, fantasy when I was younger that your boyfriend would be your best friend and, you know, everything. But definitely with like maturity and wisdom, I've loved. that that's too much to place on someone.

Imagine that burden being placed on you to be everything for someone. And I know you have your men's group and I have my really close female and male friends. That's really important. So that you do, you know, you have an outlet that you're not placing all of your emotional baggage onto one person who's probably not equipped to take it. I mean, I'm a former psychiatrist and a neuroscientist, but I still wouldn't want that to be placed on me. in my relationship. Yeah, even outside of your relationship, imagine if your friend expected everything from you

that would feel so claustrophobic and it would be unhealthy. And yet we do that so often, especially in the disnification of relationships, we think of that person. And it's funny because typically, especially on social media, you know, people are very critical of women doing this. But there are a lot of men that do this out there

well that they want this partner to be the perfect person in the everything for them. And again, regardless of gender, it's not healthy for anybody. We need this robust input from many people in life. And we don't want our husband, wife, partner, girlfriend, boyfriend. We don't want them to be doing the same things as our best friend might be wanting to do with us. I tell my wife, like, okay, sweetie, if you want somebody to go shopping with you for these particular things, I'm happy to come along, but like, you know, is like, you probably want a friend. I have genuinely no insider opinion on outfits.

I can tell you what I think, but I can't explain to you why. I'm going to do you a disservice if you try to go clothes shopping with me. Fine. If you want the company, I'll be there, but don't expect any sort of meaningful insight for me because I just don't have that. Maybe, you know, have a friend come with you. And she's generally okay with that. Anything else about the topic of relationships.

seems to be something that a lot more people have been asking you about on podcasts that you've been going to. When you look at your work, neuroscience, manifestation, visualization, when it relates to this area of relationships, have there been any insights that you think are very important or valuable for people to hear through your lens? Yeah. So from the start of the pandemic, I became very concerned about the possible mental health consequences of what we were going to go through. And then, you know, you can argue whether it's ended or not. But, you know, when I would say sort of summer of 2021, when things changed and became

more open again, there was another concern about the consequences of how we would re-socialise. And, you know, what has become apparent is that loneliness is a real epidemic. So people are more lost and alone and disconnected and lonely. than ever before, I think. And so I wonder if this, yeah, I mean, I've hardly ever been asked about love or relationships in terms of being a neuroscience before and it seems to be like a really popular topic now.

And I wonder if it is because we're seeking that connection again and we're, you know, feeling that need to be close to people and give and receive love. So as a human being and a neuroscientist, my answer to that is one that's been very constant for me for a long time, which is just give as much love as you can. Call up that friend that maybe lives alone or, you know, go and spend time with people

that, yeah, need a different perspective from maybe from what they get from their partner or their young children all the time. Yeah, being loving and compassionate is one of those things that is actually, you know, quite selfish because the more you give it, the more you get it. So it's really good for you. So, yeah, just I think we just all need to be,

be kinder to each other there are some, you know, very difficult things going on in the world at the moment on a micro and a macro level. And if each of us was just kinder and more loving, it would make a massive difference. A beautiful reminder and a great segue into our last question that we have here, which is from me. It seems that a lot of the subtext of the questions that we got in from the audience who are big fans of yours. I've seen a lot of your content. A lot of the subtext of these questions has been an underlining forgetting of just how powerful we are and how capable we are as human beings.

So for anybody who's listening today, whether they send in a question or not, and they feel like they've forgotten. And they need just a little bit of a reminder. could you give some closing thoughts to them as we wind up today's interview? Yeah, I mean, I kind of got goosebumps when you said that, because that really is the mission I'm most passionate about, which is that for people to realize how much potential they have in their brains and how capable they are of making their life better if they want to.

And sometimes I have felt like that's a very privileged thing to say, but the more I've researched it and met like a wider, group of people, I've really understood actually from the people who are facing the most hardship of the groups of people that I may speak to, that there is a little thing that you can do every day that can make your life better. And you just have to believe that you deserve to do that to prioritize that thing. And like I said, it can be something that you do at the same time as something else. So even if it's an affirmation or a mantra that you recite whilst you're cooking, even if it's just looking at your vision board before you go to sleep

and actually having made the time to make the vision or action board before, you know, so that you have something, even if it's just four images on your phone on Pinterest. But just, you know, I think to remember we've all got something to contribute to the world, even if it's just to one other person in our life or it can be bigger than that. And it does make a difference. So do something, positive for your brain because you know that you deserve it and also because you know that it

will have an impact on someone else. Powerful, powerful. Dr. Tara, this has been fantastic. I want to thank you so much for your time, for your friendship. It's been an honor to get to know you and you provided so many incredible insights, not only on today's episode, but with the totality of the work that you put out there into the world. And I just hope you always remember that when you wake up first thing in the morning that you're impacting the lives of so many people. Oh, thank you so much. And I feel the same about you.

Thank you again. We'll have all the links to your podcast, books, show notes below. Please everyone follow. And I can't wait to have around three one day in the future when we have plenty more to talk about. Yeah, definitely. Thank you again. Thank you. Hi, everyone.

Drew here. two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share it with a friend, share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter. And it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday. Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone

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