the bossbabe podcast - 121. How to Rewire Your Brain for Happiness with Daria Tsvenger

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

Did you know that our brains don’t want us to be happy? Our default mode is to be constantly on the lookout for danger. This is how the evolutionary process shaped our brains and how our ancestors physically survived. Today, we’re joined by special guest, Daria Tsvenger, Mindset Expert and Life Coach for entrepreneurs. Daria has been featured in Forbes, Vogue, and so much more for her expertise in science-based personal development.  Tune in to learn how you can rewire your brain for happiness and success. Daria is diving deep into the neuroscience of achieving goals and sharing actionable tips on how to shift your mindset to overcome anxiety, fear, and procrastination. Blending the best of spirituality and science, Daria is teaching us how to use our brainpower to take inspired action beyond manifestation and visualization.  If you’re ready to learn how to deconstruct your brain and reprogram it for a stronger, more positive mindset, then get ready to take notes because this episode is for you!  Join Daria’s FREE 10-Day Dream Spring Challenge starting October 7th: https://www.thedreamsprint.com/ 

Get clarity on what you really want. Because if you don't have this reason why, you will be doing random things all the time, but you won't see the big picture and you won't feel the accumulating effect. Because you want to accumulate towards something. And the biggest mistake that people make here is that they shoot for something unreal. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Boss Babe and your host for this episode. So this week, we are chatting with a friend of mine, Daria,

and we dive into all things neuroscience, anxiety, stress, performance. You're going to absolutely love it. And we talk a lot about how to really get your brain out of fight or flight and getting into a place that feels really calm and aligned in your day-to-day life. So I know so many of you are going to love this episode. A bit of a life update. So me and Danielle have actually just gotten back from Austin. So we went there. I actually booked it as a surprise for my husband, Stephen's birthday. And we went there with a bunch of friends on like a couple's trip and we got a house on the lake. And it was funny because it was actually at the same time as our launch. And I was like, should I just postpone his birthday trip?

Cause we're in a launch and realized, no, that's the exact reason I created my own business. So I could have that level of freedom. So we actually went during a launch and we were in the launch for IJ. It was actually the last time we were launching IJ signature, which is now closed, but we went during that time and it was actually really amazing to be doing a launch like in nature on a lake just in a really calm place and still get a chance to like step back and take time off and enjoy being there so it really just brought me so much gratitude to remember why I started off doing this in the first place and just a reminder that the freedom does exist I know in the beginning when I started my first business, I had no freedom. I

definitely couldn't be planning vacations willy-nilly and taking time off when I was in a sprint or something at work. But as time goes on and you start to build the business with more leverage and you get a team and you implement systems and processes, you do get that freedom and you do get to step back. But one thing I will say is it's really important to think through that and be intentional about it from the absolute beginning when you are building your business it's really really important because I know if I'd built the business without that freedom in mind or without that leverage in mind I would have made decisions probably quite differently to what I did which wouldn't necessarily have brought me the freedom. And I do know a lot of business owners who are

literally chained to their desks and they can't take time off the way they would even with a corporate job. Like they are working 24 seven for themselves versus working that nine to five for someone else. And so I really recommend for everyone that is building a business that does want freedom. Think about that from the getgo and think about whenever you're making big decisions and deciding how things are going to run you have that intention in mind you know why you're doing what you're doing and sometimes that might mean leaving money on the table it might mean simplifying it might mean hiring and splitting your profit early on. Like it might mean lots of different things. For me, what it meant was getting really good at systems and processes, getting really,

really organized, doing things simple. So rinse and repeat, especially with launches. That's why I created OLS and finding A players to work with. Those things have really contributed to us having a business that gives us a lot of freedom but I know that if you know I'd been tight on budgeting and hired C players versus A players it would be different or we weren't as organized as a company and didn't have that system and processes set up to support us then it would have looked differently so just a thought for anyone that is in that building phase to really just get intentional about why you're doing what you do and what you really truly want to create because you can create it is possible

you see a lot of people online talking about building businesses that create freedom and it isn't this kind of elusive hard to reach thing it is possible it just really comes down to how you do it and it did take a while to get here but but just to be able to do that, it felt amazing. So yeah, we went to Austin. That was really, really fun. It was really interesting situation flying. It was the first time we'd been flying since COVID hit, but it was fine.

There was tons of precaution taken. It felt really safe. It was just nice to kind of get out of these four walls and experience a new place. So I felt really, really safe. I mean, Austin, it was my first time there it was really really fun that city is absolutely amazing so we had such a great time there and then yeah we closed up our IGA signature launch it was absolutely incredible we have welcomed so many new members into IGA so that's been really really fun and right now I'll give you a little bit of insight

of things I'm working on so right now we are actually building a whole new society you've heard here first if you do hear here first go let me know on social at I'm Natalie because I want to see how many of you are excited for this so we're building a whole new society platform so for anyone that's a member you're going to get a big surprise come early next year we are just up leveling the entire content library the user experience the community the entire thing so that's a really big project for us right now we started working on it a while ago and it should be ready i'm hoping by february but you never know how these things go so that's a really really big project and we are also working on hosting a virtual event in October it's actually going to be our first ever virtual event and even though it's virtual Danielle and I are flying to Florida so basically we don't like

doing things small we don't like playing small we're going to go all out and we're working with a virtual events company where you fly to them and they've got a full studio built and the production quality is amazing like the whole nine yards because I feel like if we're going to do it why not just go all out so we're going to be doing that end of October so details will be coming out shortly so we're going to be doing that we're going to be flying to Florida it's going to be my first time in Florida I feel like I'm really seeing some of America this year. So yeah, that's kind of what's going on behind the scenes.

And then just making sure we are going into Q4 really strong. I've got a mini virtual retreat planned with the team to just get really clear on Q4. And just ending the year really, really strong. So that's what's going on on my end. Thought I would just drop in with a little life and business update before we dive into this episode but without further ado we're gonna just dive in and I know you're gonna get so much out of this interview so enjoy a boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise keep going and fighting on she is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just

believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the podcast, Doria. Thanks, Natalie. I am so excited that we get to do this. You have such an interesting story. So I'd love to start there in what it was like immigrating. We have such a similar story and moving countries is not easy. What was that like for you? It was not as I expected. I expected it to be super easy, super fun, seamless process because I lived abroad in Asia for a year. I was traveling a lot throughout my career in Russia. I was working for Fortune 500 companies. So for me, travel was something that I was doing all the time, especially travel for work.

And one time I was living for more than six months in Vietnam. So, I mean, if I can transition from Vietnamese culture, then like, oh, my God, Western culture, it should be super easy. But when I moved to San Francisco first, I completely lost my identity because I just got married and I moved to San Francisco and all this change was just too much for me to bear. And my husband, he was working all the time. He's really passionate, serial entrepreneur, startup founder. And I was looking at him and I was really wanting to do something too. And I found myself in this very strange place. I didn't have anything particular to complain about, but my mind was finding all these ways of why I'm not good enough, of why I even should be here. And I was even telling my husband that,

you know what, maybe I did the wrong decision. Maybe I should just go back. And it was like super hurtful for him to hear because he felt his responsibility for my happiness. And it was just such a complicated situation within me. From the outside, it was super perfect. You know, my friends from Moscow, they were like, oh, Daria, you live in like California dream. Like, what are you complaining about? And I didn't complain to anybody. I was kind of like experiencing this overwhelm on my own.

And this was the hardest part because I couldn't talk to my parents about that. They would tell me, oh, Daria, just move back. Like, why? And I couldn't talk to my friends about that. I couldn't talk to my husband about that. I couldn't talk to my husband about that, really, because I didn't want to be weak or to seem weak. So all these internal conflicts were boiling for a while. And at some point, I realized that I had no energy, literally. Every single day was the same day. And I could go to sleep in the middle of the day for no reason.

I could cry for no reason, like in the middle of the day for no reason. I could cry for no reason, like in the middle of a social event or at a dinner party. And at that point, I understood that it's completely wrong. And this is not me. I remember myself as super energetic, as like super enthusiastic person who goes after things that she wants. And I was always this way since I was like eight years old and had my first business and, you know, wrote my first book and stuff like that. So my identity shut down and I realized that I can't no longer be this way. And this is not who I am. And then mental health space, you know, I started to get into mental health space because it was wrong to

feel this way. And if you, the person who listens to this right now, if you feel that the same things, if you feel that you have low energy, if you feel that you are extremely frustrated of what to do next, it's okay because it's just mental health that's wrong right now. It's something in the mind that's a little bit broken and you should fix it in order to move forward. Unless you fix it, you can't move forward. Whatever goal you want to set yourself, whatever dream you want to pursue, this mindset, this broken mental health will prevent you from going after it. It will keep you stuck, it will keep you in procrastination mode, and you will just settle for

a very average and safe life. But this is not what we want to do. We want to achieve dreams, we want to build amazing lives for ourselves and for our loved ones. So yes, I started to deconstruct how my brain works, how the mind works, why do I feel what I feel? And in this quest of answering all these questions, I stumbled upon really amazing people in this space, like Dr. David Tegelman, Dr. Jodie Spencer, Dr. Loretta Bruning. And I did in-person events with them and I trained with them. And now I can see how my brain literally changed. I rewired my own brain and my own patterns. It was not easy. It was not like in a month. It was several months of work. But now I feel really in a totally different

space emotionally. And of course, external things start to line up once internal things. And Natalie, you remember the event that we did together more than two years ago in San Francisco? This was like the major turning point for me. This is when I just got my foot into the door of the neuroscience. And I was like crazy passionate about the subject of the brain. And this was the legit 40-minute talk that I gave on this topic. And when he reached out to me, Daria, you want to do a talk too and at that time I froze I want to say no but I say yes of course I've done it before maybe I even told you that because I was convincing myself first of all thank you so you are a really important person in my journey thank you so much I love that you would never have known because you killed it but that's amazing to

hear and I think there's real power in saying yes before you're ready. I think if we always wait until we're ready, and we're waiting too long. So I love that. So what was it like for you to discover the power of neuroscience and starting to rewire the brain? It's something I'm super interested in. I love Joe Dispenza. I think he's incredible. And the work he teaches is really changing the world. So what was that like to discover for you? The main discovery that I stumbled upon at first is that our brain doesn't want us to be happy. It's not our default mode. Our default mode is to be pretty miserable the whole time because we are waiting for dangers. And this is how the evolutionary process shaped our brain that we are constantly looking for potential threats in the environment.

And this is how our ancestors survived. And this is why we are here because our ancestors physically survived. And so we have this old hardware which constantly looks for threats. And back in the times, it was, you know, lions, bears and all this physical adventure. But nowadays it's like emails, dreadful public speaking, dreadful sales process, or, you know, setting up an email sequence. It's all a threat. And because our brain perceives it as a threat it tells you freeze freeze if you're frightened you freeze and this is where this procrastination happens because when you're freezed you can't do much your body is contracted you may even feel that your chest is contracted

your breath is shortened you can feel a lot of physical symptoms. And there are two ways to go about this. One way you can go from the body to the mind. So all this breathing techniques, all this like chest expansion and full belly breath, all this gives you an opportunity to kind of like knock on your mind's door and tell your mind, okay, we are not in the stress response here. We are actually just writing an email and this is okay. And you go from mind to the body. It just depends what is the easier path for you. You can logically convince yourself.

I love talking to myself because if I find myself in the middle of some really nasty conversation, in my mind, I'm like, Daria, why are you doing this? Like, let's not do this. Let's do this. So I feel I'm like Daria why are you doing this like let's not do this let's do this so I feel I have like two identities this identity is always chatting with one another let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform Kajabi you know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which I love not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place.

So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients

and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe i love that and so what does that look like then for someone who might be in that fight or flight mode what can they be doing on a daily basis that's actually going to help them move forward because you hear that a lot and i think one of the biggest blocks of success is mindset and it's like what you say it's that frozen it's finding reasons to procrastinate and waste time and you sit down at your computer and you are planning on getting eight hours of work done but actually you get three hours of Instagram an hour

of work and the rest you're just going through your inbox and I think a lot of that is mindset and it really gets in the way of people's success. And so what are some of the techniques you've learned for helping people move from that state? Yes. For this, the first step is to get clarity on what you really want. Because if you don't have this reason why, you will be doing random things all the time,

but you won't see the big picture, and you won't feel the accumulating effect because you want to accumulate towards something. And the biggest mistake that people make here is that they shoot for something unreal. They shoot for something that they see in the magazine or they do the vision board and they attach like a Bentley there. But you know, to go like from being constantly, I don't know, in Toyota Prius to go to Bentley, it's a long way. And it's so hard for you to map away somewhere really far. So when you break it down to really small chunks, and you set yourself not for the final, final, final goal, but for something that, you know, it's a little bit better than what you have now.

In this state, you feel powerful because if the goal is too far from you, you tend to do nothing. But if the goal is close to you, you tend to act because you get, okay, this is real. This is like, why not? You know, for example, if you want to start writing content yeah I know that for many people they feel like I felt it a real freeze in terms of writing content and because you know I can figure out so many excuses like English is my second language and this and that and I'm more of a talker rather than writer But these are all excuses. So I just put my butt in a chair, turn off my Wi-Fi, and just do the thing. And I know what I'm going towards, yeah? I want to have my blog like good

SEO worthy blog. And this is kind of like the small goal. But the big goal, of course, I want like, you know, New York Times bestselling thing or whatever, big things. But in order to get there, you should break it down to the small things. So this, I think, is the first. And in terms of the biology, like what can you do physically to set yourself up into this productivity zone, it's actually to do some breath work. So just when you close your eyes and scan your body, you may notice tightness in different parts of your body. You may notice that you contract an area around your solar plexus, or you may just crumble

your shoulders and you may feel tension in the neck. And you just consciously relax muscle by muscle and start to breathe fully. And here's this advice all the time, do belly breath, breathe, breathe, breathe, actually 10 breaths, you know, like box breathing when you inhale for four, exhale for five, and you're already in a better emotional area to do what needs to be done. And then you accumulate it day by day, you know, bit by bit, and then you get somewhere closer to a final goal. I love that. So one thing that I know that you talk about as well is the neuroscience of envy and how you can use it to your advantage. What does this mean? Yeah, oh my god. I found a lot of power in envy and jealousy. These are two emotions that I think

are really underestimated because this is something that is engraved in human beings in one or another way. And another face of envy is inspiration when we are inspired by other people. Basically, we want something that they have and it's fine. This is how we define our dreams, our goals. But the emotional base for this can be different, yeah? If you're kind of like more of a light-hearted person, more easygoing, you would probably be inspired. But if you're kind of like more needy, more intense, you probably will feel envy. And this is fine. This is basically the same thing. It's when you want something that you don't have and other people have. And our society treats these emotions as super bad. Nobody wants to recognize that they feel envy towards somebody or jealousy towards somebody. And this is really understandable

because religion tells us that this is a sin, like it's a deadly sin, literally. You shouldn't envy people. It's a sin. But at the same time, when we still experience it, and we experience it for a very also evolutionary reason, because back in the days, everything was limited. Food was limited. Mating opportunities were really limited. So if you're not landing a healthy mate, it means that you will end up with not healthy mate

and have not healthy offspring, it means that you will end up with not healthy mate and have not healthy offspring and all of that. So those are real risks that our ancestors were encountering on a daily basis. So when they saw somebody having a better chunk of food or a better mating opportunity, they would go and take it from them because it was very, very limited. And our mind learned that, oh my god, if somebody else has this type of business, then for some reason our brain starts to run the circle that I won't have this because it's already taken. This niche is taken. Everybody else is doing this. I think everybody else is doing the thing that I'm doing. So why reason to start? And this is what I want people to stop doing because we live in a world where we can have thousands of people doing the same things. And all of these

people will do it in the unique way. And this is the beauty. We have 7 billion people on the planet Earth and there is enough for everybody. So if we can turn this envy into actually a possibility window where we can see and acknowledge that envy comes, okay, I really want that. But it doesn't mean that if this person has it, I can't have it. It means that I can have it, it means that I can have it too. So it's a very inspirational thing to track yourself what is triggering envy and then understanding your deeper desires. Because sometimes envy is just unrecognized dreams that we have, something that we do not allow ourselves. And then we try to talk ourselves out of this. I experienced like a lot of mental blocks in terms of, you know, starting the DreamSprint, starting the program, like, oh my god, so many

people in personal growth space, like who would need it? You know, like everything is already written, like thousands of articles on the internet. Why do people even want to hear it from me? And, you know, I worked through this and I understood that my unique approach and my unique experience will resonate with people who are like me. And this is my unique opportunity. And thousands of other people can do the same thing, but in a totally different way. So it's all about building the inner confidence and appreciating yourself and appreciating other people too. Because they're doing their best. You're doing their best. And you actually can join forces.

And this is what you advocate for, of joining forces, of uplifting one another. And I think this is really important for us to track, to stop, and to convert it to opportunity. Yeah, I love that. And I think there's a lot of power in that. Sometimes an emotion or a feeling or a trigger is perceived as wrong or bad we will sometimes criticize ourself for feeling it and try and shut it down I think that's probably the least healthy thing we can be doing no matter what we're feeling we're feeling it for a reason and if a kid is feeling sad we're not going to go and say you have no reason to be sad stop being sad we'll say oh yeah I totally get that that's really hard and

oh let me understand where you're coming from and we'll listen and that emotion is surely gonna come and pass whereas sometimes our internal voice isn't that nurturing parental voice but more like stop feeling that oh that's bad like how dare you think that and I think the more that we can actually flip it and understand where it's coming from and just notice it is really powerful all right i hope you enjoyed the episode so far stay tuned as we share a bit of info about who supported this episode this episode is brought to you by ship station i don't know about you guys but this year is just flying by for me i can't believe the holiday season is right around the corner and this year obviously we know that people will be buying more stuff online than ever before. So if you're an e-com seller, are you ready to meet those demands? If not, you can

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when you use offer code BOSSBABE. I am telling you, if you're not using ShipStation, you are missing out. It's that easy. So get started at ShipStation.com today. Click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and type in Boss Babe. Again, that's ShipStation.com, then enter offer code Boss Babe. And we're back. Let's jump straight into today's episode. So when it comes to using neuroscience brain power to manifest or create a big goal that you're going after what does that look like love this topic because i have a pretty unique approach to that basically i don't like the word manifest because it has a lot of spiritual connotation to this and many people who are into manifestation, and this is what I found out by, you know, leading and receiving work from hundreds of people, that it is said that when you

visualize stuff and you visualize it every day and you feel it, you receive it. But actually, we live in a physical reality. It doesn't work this way. It's a trap that personal growth space kind of like bumps into all the time. And let me explain why. There is this term, it's called a magical thinking. And it's a professional psychological term, which describes symptoms of an unhealthy mental behavior. When you tend to think about something and give the meaning to this thinking, which is not logical, which is kind of like, oh, if I saw 1.11 on the time clock, it means that I will have a badass awesome day. Oh, or if I, you know, saw the, I don't know, a red car, this is amazing. And different cultures have different like superstitions around that.

So actually, when we are doing these things to ourselves, we are just conditioning ourselves. And it has nothing to do with the physical reality. It's just what we are thinking about it. So we can actually attract things that we want to attract by linking physical reality to other unrelated circumstances in life. But the same thing works for the bad things that we are expecting. So whatever basically we're expecting, we get in it. This is one part of the deal. Another part of the deal that when we are visualizing stuff, our brain and body perceives it as physical reality. And there are a lot of studies that have been done. I'm sure everybody has, you know, heard them already about the famous golf player study when, you know, they measured their brain waves when they were doing the shots of what's the right word in English, the shots.

And then you imagine how you're doing the shots. The same brain activity fires up. Doesn't matter if you do physical action or not. So yes, our brain perceives everything that we imagine as physical reality. But at the same time, when we are imagining the final result, for example, if you want to become a New York Times bestselling author and you're imagining yourself becoming a New York Times bestselling author without even starting a blog yet, it actually does more harm than good because your brain already thinks that you have it. And that's why you have this chemical cocktail that helps your body feel really good. So when you visualize

it, you feel really good. And this is where it gets dangerous. Because every time you feel good, you experience this dopamine rush. And your body rewards you for imagining stuff that is not in real life. But at the same time, you have a very limited amount of dopamine. And if you waste it on imagining stuff, which is so far from your reality now, you actually lower your chances of doing the steps towards the stream because you already ran out of dopamine. And your brain like, why do we need to write a blog if you're already in New York Times bestselling author in your mind? And this is where people get really trapped.

One time I had this woman, she like at some point in the program, we are writing the real steps and holding each other accountable for making them. And one woman, she sent me her list of 10 dreams. And under each dream, she wrote it, visualize this in the morning, visualize this in the afternoon, visualize this in the evening. That's it for physical steps for every single dream. And I had some work to do to, you know, convince her otherwise. But the thing is that just by visualization, we can't get somewhere. And the best way to visualize stuff is actually to

visualize the process rather than end result. So visualize yourself sitting down, but in the chair and writing a blog post. Visualize yourself hitting the publish button or medium. Visualize yourself pitching journalists. Visualize yourself having a good sales call. But when you're just visualizing the very, very end result, it just damages your neural circuits and you waste your dopamine on something that is not productive. And can dopamine run out if you're doing that too often? Yes, this is the thing. When you are doing visualizations every day, and this is what many books recommend, you visualize your end result every day, you put it on the trim board, you know, whatever, all these things. But yes, this is the science behind that. I was just interviewed by Vogue Australia about dopamine fasting. And dopamine fasting, it's when actually

you deprive yourself from receiving cheap dopamine in order to restore your dopamine sensitivity. Because basically dopamine, it makes you achieve things. It's what makes you feel good when you're achieving things. It's what makes you feel good when you hit all the goals for the day. It's what makes you feel good when you complete an article or send out an email. But if you have damaged circuits, you won't receive these rewards. They would seem less nice for you. You would not feel this rush that you should feel. And yes, you can run out of this. And this is what we are now doing. Every time we go on Instagram or like social media, we're searching for gratification and we become

this searching machine for cheap dopamine because it's a very cheap very easy dopamine like in normal life we should get dopamine from sex from different other activities that actually make us kind of like bring us closer to our dreams and to our next quality of life but this illusionary dopamine it just it's no go i think that's so interesting can you talk a little bit about dopamine fasting and what that would look like? Because I think we are in a culture where we're obsessed with getting that next hit, whether it's scrolling through Instagram, posting a status, waiting for a like. I think it can be really addictive. So what would fasting look like?

It is addictive. It is super addictive. And right now there is this economic study that the most wealthy people, they use the least amount of technology. And kind of like the poorest people, they use the most amount of technology. And it was completely reversed even a decade ago. A decade ago, all the things, technology,

were really, really expensive. And so wealthy people were like, oh, I have this new device, this, new that. And nowadays, you pay a lot more not to have these devices. Yeah, because you should hire real people to do the other jobs. Yeah, like the schooling system. When you send your kid to no device Waldorf school, this is the type of schools where all devices are prohibited.

It's a really expensive thing to do. So how to do dopamine fasting? Ideally, this is what Vipassana is for. Vipassana is this 10 days long silent meditation retreat where you are not allowed to get any type of dopamine. You're not allowed to exercise. Can you imagine that? Not allowed to journal. No outputs. Just sit with your mind. I know it's terrible. I hate it. I can't say that I'm like, oh, perfect. Not at all. I'm on this journey. Sometimes I have a really bad day and I have like five things that I should do during the day and I end up doing one and I know that it sucks. But I get up and I start the day fresh and I don't let myself go into this shame route. This is very important.

You can fail many times and it's okay. Just don't shame yourself. Give yourself a fresh start every time and love yourself. Say like, okay, Daria, I really love you. You're doing your best. Yes, you were sitting on Instagram for two hours today, maybe three. It's fine. Today's the new day.

You can do it. I believe in you. Yeah, I think that's really important. So aside from a Vipassana or perhaps meditating, is there certain ways that you could restrict it? I know some people restrict going on their phones until a certain time. And a lot of people wake up and the first thing they want to do is look at their mobile to get that reminder of who they are,

to get that dopamine hit. Are there any kind of rituals, routines you recommend in the day? the day yes for sure don't keep your devices in your bedroom just put them to a different story to a different room and said i have my alarm on ipad and this ipad doesn't have any sim card i love that so this is literally just ipad maybe i know to browse some design inspiration or whatever and i put an alarm there and it took a while for me to convince my husband to do this because you know when you live in one room you kind of like should decide things how you may have a different opinion so it took some convincing in order to convince him to put devices aside and to wake up an hour earlier. So I mean, what would happen from like

6 to 7am if you don't check your email? I mean, nothing would happen. But your brain thinks, oh my god, if you reply an hour early, it will be better, but it will not. So devices out of the room, ideally, I mean, I love this quote that, you know, you can still watch Netflix and be successful, which I believe that it's very true. It's all about balance. It's not about like, oh, I will just leave like a person in the woods, you know, with no internet, with no devices, no nothing. But you know, it's not true. We live in a modern world and we should respect it and we should respect ourselves. So healthy boundaries, this is really important. Like set yourself time. Okay, if you want to watch Netflix, if you love the shows, this is fine.

Just set yourself like an hour a day or like 45 minutes a day. So you're not forbidding something to yourself. You're actually allowing it, but in a kind of like in a dosed manner. Because when you forbid something, it's really easy to go over when you allow yourself. Like when you forbid yourself to watch Netflix for a month and you go and watch like 10 episodes straight. Or the same thing with food. If you forbid yourself to eat certain foods, when you actually start eating them, you overdo it. Because your body is just, oh my God, we won't get this next time.

Let's kind of like go all in. So yeah, this is the fasting. But the best fasting is when you of course remove yourself from triggers this is like the easiest one for example go into like a week-long hike this is what I did in Siberia it's where I'm from went for a week-long actually 10 days long hike when you carry everything with yourself except water like the tent everything everything and you just have nothing to simulate yourself with other than picking berries or you know watching out for the bears or whatever

so this really works and you literally can feel when you come back to civilization that you react differently to triggers even to like electricity and to light it stimulates you more than it used to yeah I think that's super interesting and I think we often don't realize how addicted we are until we take that thing away I've been trying to do the no phone on a morning thing and it's so funny how your brain will tell stories of what will happen if you don't check your email or you know if you just respond quicker on slack someone can get their job done and it's just not that important but it's so easy in our culture to make ourselves overwhelmed and I think the more that we can take that away the

better so what does your ideal morning routine look like ideally I would wake up at seven but it doesn't happen all the time this is fine then I would spend seven to eight just no phones no nothing do a little bit of stretching you know hot lemon water with some minerals in there just to get my digestion started cuddles with my husband for a good 20 minutes i think in this hour it's so right now like in la it's so cold and i don't want to get out of the bed in the morning this is crazy especially when i keep my window open and like with my out of the bed in the morning this is crazy especially when I keep my window open and like my husband in the bed I'm like no I'm not but yeah back to the productive morning and yeah no just having a nice breakfast a good nutritious food this is really

important to me 10 minutes meditation just silence thing to set my brain into clarity and sometimes I journal sometimes I not when I feel like it when I feel a lot of thoughts. I want to put them on paper. Sometimes I don't and then I don't. What's a breakfast look like for you? Oh, I love this rice crackers, gluten free rice crackers. And I put some cream almond cream cheese on top and some salmon and with some avocados on the side. This is kind of like the standard thing that it's super quick, super easy, and it's also healthy and nutritious. So this is what I'm going for. I love that. Okay, so coming back to

brainpower, I think for some people listening, I think it might be triggering for them to hear that visualization and manifestation isn't the thing that's really gonna get them to where they want to go you know a lot of people talk about this and a lot of books talk about this so what would you say to those people everything should be in balance so it works but it's only one tool for example imagine yourself as a painter and you have 10 different paints to paint and you want to use all of them to create a painter and you have 10 different paints to paint and you want to use all of them to create a beautiful picture. You can't just use one paint to do the whole thing. So imagine that law of attraction, manifestation, it's just one part of the paint.

And you can do visualization. You can do all the things. You can trust the process. And this is all amazing to release the mental pressure because all these tools in the law of attraction world they are designed to release the mental pressure and to increase trust in yourself in the universe in whatever you believe in yeah you are the universe because you are made from the same particles as the universe is made. So basically, you can call yourself a universe. So I think we underestimate our power.

And it's normal to have this desire to attach your identity to something external, like a guide. That's why we hear all this thread, like, trust your guide, trust the guidance. But at the same time, this is all within you. So when you understand that your mind is programmed to make you feel bad all the time, and when you know how to pull the needed triggers to feel better, and you understand that you have not invented yourself, you were born in this body, and it's crazy to realize. But look at your hands, for example, at your legs, like this is a perfect creation. And you didn't

have any option to choose any feature of yours. So the way you're born, the way you exist, it's a very unique way of this universe expressing itself. And it's like a big game field for, you know, somebody that we call God or the energy or the source or whatever. Basically, we are all the playing field. So law of attraction is a good tool, but action is really important because we live in a physical universe. That's why when you combine the power of your mind with physical action, and when your mind is in a clear space, action is easy. When you don't have internal conflicts, action becomes easy. It becomes inspired action. So I think the whole goal of personal development is just to bring people to the space of inspired action. I fully agree with you. And I think sometimes it can be really easy

to put energy into visualization versus inspired action. I think you don't get anywhere with just visualizing and just thinking through if you're not in a place where you can take action so I absolutely love that where can someone go if they're wanting to find out more information about using neuroscience in helping them achieve their goals yeah for sure I have a blog on Medium where I write about stuff like that. And I actually talk about pretty much all these things during the free version of the program. It's kind of like a separate thing itself. Many people just go through this

and they already find out a lot of things for themselves. So just do this 10 days. And then literally I would explain it to you in a form of things for themselves. So just do this 10 days. And then literally, I would explain it to you in the form of audio podcast the same way like you listen to me right now. This is the format the time sticking to so it's easy for you to consume. And the new group starts every month and first 10 days are free for all all the time. I would be happy to guide you there. And what kind of thing do you do with people in a dream sprint? Yes, that's a great question. So I bring them through 10 challenges.

And each challenge, it's narrated in a form of audio podcast. And these challenges are designed for people who want to move from the place of stagnation to the place of inspired action. We talk about, you know, dopamine fasting and all these things and how we can use visualization for good and how we can gain clarity on what exactly we want. Because there are so many moving pieces and there is not just, oh, just do this one thing and it will work. No, it's a process and it takes 35 days. The DreamSprint lasts 35 days. And the main thing that I'm really proud of is that I'm holding you accountable 100%.

And you, every time I send you the challenge, you have three days to complete the challenge. And if you have not completed it, I delete you from the program and you can't restore your access. Because for me, it's enough of free content out there. It's enough of just consuming consuming consuming because when you're consuming without producing you just clutter your brain and create less clarity in your life so in my program unless you put this into action and send this to me and i will provide feedback you can't go forward and if you will be deleted so this is the commitment that i want people to make because this is how you get results there is no other way you can't to make because this is how you get results there

is no other way you can't just you know read a book and get results I think that's so fascinating and it's incredible what percentage of people will buy an online course and not complete it so I think that's super interesting so even if they pay and they drop off there's no refunds they just don't continue yes I think that's so great I just delete that I think that's so good and I just delete that. I think that's so good. And I think it probably makes people think twice about whether they want to invest or whether they don't. Because I think sometimes buying an online course can be a dopamine hit.

It can be, okay, I'm taking action. I'm buying the course. But it can be hard to stay on track with that if you don't have that person really holding you accountable with a consequence. So I think that's amazing. Yes. Thank you so much.

And so where can people find out about it? The Dream Spr the sprint when you run like the telephone company dot com love it well thank you so much for being on here of course thank you so much Natalie for having me if you loved this episode please subscribe download few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks. If you want a copy, just leave us a review,

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