The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Rewire Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change (Your Neurotoolkit for Everyday Life) By Nicole Vignola

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Rewire Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts and Create Lasting Change (Your Neurotoolkit for Everyday Life) By Nicole Vignola https://amzn.to/3Vdx5Kz Change your mind to change your life—discover the neuroscience of a better you in this revolutionary book from neuroscientist and online sensation Nicole Vignola that teaches you how to rewire your brain to achieve peak mental wellbeing. Are you stuck in a habit of believing you are not good enough? Do you fixate on a particular story about yourself that you wish you could change? Are negative beliefs holding you back from reaching your fullest potential? Do you sometimes feel like it’s just too hard, or too late, to change? If any of this sounds familiar, you need Rewire, your personal guide to understanding the neuroscience of why you are subconsciously programmed to repeat certain habits and how you can do, or undo, any type of behavior to be the person you want to be. BREAK THE CYCLE, ALTER YOUR THOUGHTS AND CREATE LASTING CHANGE In clear language, neuroscientist Nicole Vignola demystifies the science of breaking bad habits and how to make good ones, the principles of neuroplasticity, and neurohack methods for changing behavioral patterns. In the end, she helps you to see yourself in a different way and control how you react to any life situation, from overcoming negative, limiting beliefs to managing stress and achieving peak mental wellbeing. Think of your brain as your hardware and your mental health as your software. Your hardware must work well before you can upgrade your software; Once you learn the fundamentals of rewiring your brain, you can instill new habits, shift your mindset, and change unwanted behavior to create the best version of yourself. We all have habits and behaviors that hold us back from reaching our fullest potential. This book will help you see that you are not stuck, that you can rewrite your story—and shows you how.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. There are all these things that makes it official. Welcome to the big show We certainly appreciate You guys being here As always The Chris Voss Show Is for the family

That loves you But doesn't judge you At least not as harshly As your family does Because your family Has been looking at you For side eye for years Wondering

Is he going to make Anything of himself Is he going to See this is a failure Of the launch mode So knock it off For further show To your family and friends

And relatives Goodreads.com For just Christmas LinkedIn.com For just Christmas This is a failure to launch mode. So knock it off. For further sharing with your family, friends, and relatives, goodreads.com, 4sayschristmas, linkedin.com, 4sayschristmas. I just make it. I don't know what the hell's going on. YouTube.com, 4sayschristmas, christmas1, the TikTok. Today we have an amazing author. Have you ever noticed in the last 16 years and 2,000 episodes that we always have amazing authors on the show?

It's like two to three times a weekday. And you should always tune in and listen to every episode of The Chris Voss Show. You're going to be so damn smart that your family will stop giving that side eye. See what I did there? She's the author of the latest book that's coming out June 4th, 2024. My God, we're halfway through the year. Nicole, and that's not to the title of the book, by the way. It should be maybe, I don't know.

It's her newest book. It's out called Rewire, Break the Cycle, Alter Your Thoughts, and Create Lasting Change, Your Neuro Kit for Everyday Life. Nicole Vignola joins us on the show today. We'll be talking about her insights and all of her scientific knowledge and what she's discovered in writing her book. Welcome to the show, Nicole. Nicole, how are you?

Thank you very much for having me. I'm great. And I must say that intro actually pumped me up as well, so I am ready for this. We like how that intro just kind of fires people up. It's got that juice. I'm awake. I'm here. I'm present.

There you go. There you go. Not that I wasn't before. It wakes me up. But there you go. So give us your dot coms. Where do you want people to find you on the interwebs

I'm on Nicole's Neuroscience out on Instagram Nicole's Neuroscience on TikTok and Nicole's Neuroscience dot com there you go so thank you very much

and then people just have to remember how to spell neuroscience right when they go to those websites but hopefully by the end of this talk they will be able to

they will we're teaching a lot of neuroscience people to make your brains better because your family keeps giving you that side eye. So give us a 30,000 overview of your new book, Rewire, Break the Cycle. Yes. So it's my firstborn child, I must say. So it's, you know, a lot of people have thoughts, habits, behaviors that are holding them back. What neuroscience tells us is that these thoughts and behaviors reside within the wiring of our brains. And that's why I've called the book

Rewire because we can rewire our brains to get rid of these habits, make new habits. And we actually have this ability up until old age. So for a long time, we didn't know that we could make plastic, we call it plasticity or plastic changes to the brain after the age of 25 but we now know that we absolutely can which is remarkable yeah do you do that through 3d printing to have the new plasticization pieces in fun fact the word plasticity comes from the greek word plasticos which means to mold and it's the reason why it's called plastic surgery, not because it's attributed to being like a Barbie doll. Wow.

Plastic surgery. Look, my God. That just, like, my brain just went on and went. Yeah, I know. Duh. Plastic surgery. I know a few people I want to mold, but usually it's with a crowbar to the head. I want to mold their brain.

I said that wrong. I want to mold their brain. Anyway, don't do resort to violence. Don't do that. Is this your first book? And tell us about your journey of life and what got you into these fields. Yeah, so I started studying neuroscience, you know, deeply fascinated with the inner workings of the human mind, probably my parents, family, giving me the side eye, which pushed me even further to wanting to go and understand where that was coming from but no I had mental health in my family my father had bipolar disorder and I just wanted to

understand you know we talk about mental health and psychology and I think it's all wonderful but I was deeply fascinated with the mechanisms you know like why I needed to know more why but but why and it was kind of this rabbit hole of wanting to know on a molecular level what is going on in the brain for us to behave in a particular way, for us to enact particular habits, behaviors, and thought patterns. There you go. And what made you want to write this book? What was the motivation? I got approached by HarperCollins and Penguin in the UK, actually. And I always thought I was going to write a book.

I just didn't think it would be this Nicole. I thought it would be kind of like Big Nicole. But the opportunity came two years ago and I grabbed it by the bulls and I went with it. Grabbed it by the bulls, grabbed the bull by the horns and went with it. So I kind of threw myself in the deep end, which is something that I do talk about sometimes. You've got to kind of go to places where you don't have any confidence to get something that's what i did i had no idea what i was doing and i just yeah took a leap of faith there you go for a second there your accent made me think you said something other than bulls but i grabbed it so that was good so what are some of the things this book is going to help what are some issues people have that your book is going to help them break the cycle of so a lot of people have

something called negativity bias we actually all in negativity bias it's the way that the book is going to help them break the cycle of? So a lot of people have something called negativity bias. We actually all have a negativity bias. It's the way that the brain is pretty much hardwired or inclined to be wired. And that's down to evolution. We have to attach negativity to survival. So we started to attach more importance to that. The problem is that we don't need to do that anymore.

In some respects, we do, of course. But it means that it can drive our everyday life. So in one way that that can show up is you either jump to assumptions about yourself or other people. Perhaps you repeat a particular narrative that says you're not good enough, you can't, this or that. Or a very classic one is you are having a bad day and then you start attaching yourself to this bad day and then you start sort of trying to find reasons why this bad day is so bad you start kind of piling it on and then this happened and then that happened and then this happened and the

next thing you know you're overlooking all the wonderful aspects of your life so Chris if I said to you how many blue things are in your environment? It's not very hard because the whole screen is blue right now. The background is blue. I can see a lot of blue. And if I said to you, okay, how many red things did you find? You're going to say, I wasn't looking for the red things. I was looking for the blue things. And that's kind of how negativity bias works. If you're focusing on the negative, you overlook the beauty of life. Ah ah i think a lot of people do that in marriages oh the at least they do on the back end of it does that does that does that affect

our confirmation bias when we look for data by chance exactly is that connected at all yes exactly so there's a there's an element of wanting to confirm that your belief is true so if you say to yourself you're having a bad day or your life sucks, then you'll go through life trying to find reasons as to why that statement is correct. So you confirm that negativity bias with your thing, huh? Exactly. One way that we can mitigate that is by slowly sort of starting to reframe. So you might be having a bad day right now. It doesn't mean that the rest of the day is doomed, or you might not think that you're not good enough for something but that could change so the reframing part comes where you say something like okay i suck at it right now but i can learn instead of trying to plaster it with this kind

of toxic positivity and say no you're brilliant don't worry about it it's all going to be okay so that's toxic positivity that those affirmations yeah yeah i mean affirmations can work you just i think sometimes somewhere along the line we maybe took it a little bit too far with with the affirmations what about the people who do that manifesting crap like they're manifesting with whiteboards and stuff is that is that too much of the fufu no there is some science there now i was going to talk about visualization so visualization the problem is it needs to be paired with motor activity now visualization is the the the concept of visualizing who you want to be in the future and that's where those vision boards come in

the problem is that generally speaking people manifest these very abstract things in their lives that are not tangible and the brain doesn't work like that. Visualization works best in athletic performance. So we've seen it in studies. We've seen it in, you know, sports psychology. When athletes visualize a particular movement and then they physically enact it, the brain has already created a blueprint for what it needs to do. I don't know if you watch rugby, but, you know, Owen Farrell, he's a classic example of he kind of

does this really weird head thing where he visualizes the ball going over the poles in rugby. And I think they're called poles. I'm South African. I should know that. And it's interesting because it actually helps him with this kick. Now, that's why visualization can work, but it has to be paired with something that then follows physically, it has to be more tangible. So if you want to be better in an interview, or you have a work meeting coming up, and you're stressed, maybe you have a review with your boss, you can visualize yourself being calm under pressure, being able to respond to questions that maybe throw you off and just kind of generally keeping your cool.

And then enacting that in the workplace will actually come easier than if you hadn't practiced it at all. The woo-woo stuff comes when people say you can manifest, I don't know, being this like millionaire, I don't know. It could work, I'm sure it does, but the research says there's a strong link between physical enactment because parts of the brain need to communicate. Yeah. So I can't just lay around all day in my bed, not leaving the house and manifesting a million dollars coming to me somehow.

Yeah. But, you know, with that being said, if you manifest yourself thinking you're going to be a millionaire, you might go through life then confirming reasons why you could be. So maybe an opportunity comes around and you go, I'll take that and I'll grab it by the horns, just like I did with my book. Yeah, there you go. Maybe that's what I did through my success because I grew up poor and I wanted to be successful. I wanted to be a millionaire. I wanted to have a big company. And I kept looking for opportunities. And then when the right opportunity struck and I was prepared with education and made it happen with a little bit of luck and elbow grease and hard work, it worked.

Exactly. So I wouldn't – I love that. I love that because you saw a vision, a version of yourself that was capable of doing that. And if you hadn't believed that you could, then maybe you would have never gone to that, yeah, to that journey. Huh, maybe I should get one of the manifesting vision boards and buy some fucking crystals or some shit. Yeah, do a rain dance as well. Yeah, you have those friends who do those bowl things,

you know, where they make the sound bowls. Okay. You know, I think it's yoga kind of thing. Yeah. And they do all that. I'm not sure if they're smoking peyote, but I'd have to be smoking peyote when I'm doing that. So, you know, people, if they're stuck in a habit or believing they aren't good enough, what about fixating on a particular story about yourself that you wish you could change?

What type of story is that? A story from your past, maybe trauma of your childhood or a belief system you have about who you are and what you're about absolutely so we have this programming that was given to us in our formative years and it's pretty wild when you think about it that programming isn't really ours it's based on our environment our parents, what we saw growing up. You said you grew up in poverty. And then we're put out into the adult world and with this programming that isn't really yours. So the question is, what is that narrative that you're repeating? Is it something that was given to you by somebody else? Or is that narrative yours? If it isn't, then you can change it. Like you did. You said you didn't want this for yourself. And you could have easily have

stayed stuck in that narrative that this is where you belong and whatever perpetuating story you may have hypothetically told yourself and i'm glad you didn't tell yourself that one so these narratives can keep us stuck because we build this ideology of who we are and where we belong in what belief system we we reside in as well but it But it's not really our programming. We also observe our parents and how they interact in the world. Through observational knowledge, we can learn how to get to school without being told. But through observational knowledge, we also learn how to yell at each other to communicate because that's maybe what your parents did. So you learn that effective communication comes through screaming.

And then these patterns. Wait, it doesn't? Yeah, exactly. Apparently not, but I don't know because I didn't grow up in such a nice household. Screaming and throwing things. That's how I got the side eye, I see. Exactly. So there you go. Now, does this affect feelings too too along with thoughts? Is it harder for people to change feelings,

maybe negative feelings about themselves than just thoughts about themselves or are they too tied together maybe? I don't know. I can't feel anything since NAMM, so I don't know. So we have a cognitive triangle that explains that our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and actions, sorry, all affect each other. So the way you feel our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, and action, sorry,

all affect each other. So the way you feel will affect your emotions, the way your emotions will affect your body language, your body language will affect your thoughts, your thoughts will affect your feelings, and so it goes. So they all intertwine, they're all interlinked. And that is why there's some really interesting research around body posture and body language and how you carry yourself you know if you walk into a room and you're like hey guys what's up you're going to be like okay even subconsciously you're going to think this person's confident you might not actually think that they're a confident person but there's going to be some new ones there where your body picks or your brain picks up this body person is confident if this person walks in with a kind of like hey everyone or you're going to

think do they know what they're talking about and that's why putting yourself in a position where you know you're you're confident you're going to present or whatever it is you're going to do can actually then help you also feel better and feel more confident within yourself so there's very interesting interplay between our thoughts actions and, and emotions, which is very interesting. And on top of that, to add an extra layer to it, the power of our thoughts is wildly sort of powerful. They did a study in 1995. They took two groups of people. They asked one group of individuals to play a five-finger piece on the piano.

Neither group had ever played the piano in their lives before. And the second group had to imagine that they were playing that five-finger piece on the piano. Neither group had ever played the piano in their lives before. And the second group had to imagine that they were playing that five-finger piece on the piano. And what they saw was that both groups had similar levels of plasticity in the brain. That means that they had similar levels of new pathways being created in the brain just through thought alone.

Oh, wow. And that's what's really interesting because we can actually carve our pathways through our thoughts. I need some carving. this old brain's going to shit on me so and our thoughts can influence our our physiology as well so i want to do a little activity with you i want you to close your eyes i want you to imagine it's a hot you're not going to do anything wrong on the show like poke my eyes out or something like that. No, I'm going to put you in a hypnotic state. You're not going to hit me.

That'll be a good trick. It'll be a good trick since she's on the other side of the world. All right, close my eyes. I'm in Madeira. It's a tiny island off Portugal. All right, close your eyes. Imagine it's a hot summer day. I want you to imagine yourself walking to the fridge and you grab a waxy yellow lemon.

It's shiny. It's cold. You bring it to the chopping board and you cut into it. And as you do that, the juice starts oozing out. You cut into it again into a wedge. Something compels you to take that wedge of lemon and just bring it to your mouth and take a big bite out of it. Did you salivate? Huh? Did you salivate? did you salivate a little bit i'm my my nose is wrinkling i feel like a little bit yeah you can open your eyes so a little bit of that delimity yeah exactly so some people get like kind of like this feeling in their mouth like oh your nose wrinkled and that's how powerful your thoughts are you can evoke a physiological response just on your thoughts and we can evoke a physiological response just

on your thoughts and we know that because when i start thinking about my tax my brain starts going oh bugger and i can become quite stressed i've got an unexpected tax bill this year but oh there you go anyway that tends to have an effect on most people exactly you know those kind of examples show us that what we think can trigger our body. So, if we're perpetuating things like you're not good enough, you're not worthy, you could never do this, then you may end up enacting it because your body language is going to follow. Ah, so body language is really important. Yes.

So, do you just have to kind of fake it till you make it with body language maybe? There's an aspect of, yes, you can, but also reframing your mindset. So your mindset, as I showed you through the lemon experiment is wildly important as well. So one thing that we can do is do something called the physiological sigh. Now the physiological sigh is a breathing mechanism that is a type of breathing that we can do to regulate our central nervous system. So let me backtrack a little bit. When you're stressed or triggered or you've thought about the tax man and now you're in a kind of state of panic,

it's very hard to reason with yourself in that state of mind. So if you're perpetuating like you're not good enough, you're about to go into this meeting and you suck and your boss is going to tell you all the awful things you've done, that's going to probably trigger an element of stress. Your brain is not designed to listen in a state of stress. It's designed to fight or flight. If there's a lion in your vicinity,

you're not going to start trying to understand why the lion is there. You're going to run away from it or you're going to fight it. I hope you run. Mostly, I'm going to run. I think that's the wise thing to do. I mean, I grew up in Africa, and I have a pretty good feeling that fighting it is not going to get you anywhere. Are you supposed to run, though, from a line? Or just back away slowly?

I think you just need to say a prayer and hope for the best. That sounds like a good idea. Yeah. Right. So, your brain is not designed to run. Sorry, to listen. It's designed to run or fight. So if you're trying to reason with yourself in the state of mind, it can be very hard to do.

So doing something like the physiological sigh can regulate your central nervous system back down. So let's do it twice together. It's an inhale through the nose and then another inhale through the nose. You pause at the top and a long exhale through the mouth. So the inhale through the nose is pause at the top and a long exhale through the mouth so the inhale through the nose is a little bit shorter so let's do another one together let's go are you doing two you're going yeah i don't think i kind of like capacity. Because I feel really nice. Yeah, yeah.

It's calming. Yeah. You can just sit here and do that for the rest of the show. Yeah. We'll just close out the show for the next half an hour. We'll just be done. Yeah. People are like, what's going on? It's just breathing.

What the fuck? Some ASMR. It's a yoga show. Yeah, exactly. When did Chris start a yoga show. Yeah, exactly. When did Chris start a yoga show? When he got his sound baths. Okay, so that means that it can help you just interject those thoughts, and then you can reframe. So then you can say, okay, yeah, you do suck.

You did do that thing that you shouldn't have done your boss is probably going to remind you for it but let's just gain control of the situation or whatever it is that you know you're dealing with but it can help you put yourself in a more logical mind state so that you can then approach it with a sort of solution to the problem oh i love it it sounds like a much better way of doing things. And we tend to breathe, like you say, when we're not in that fight or flight mode. And it can make all the difference in what we're doing there. This is very interesting. And using the things to rewire your brain.

Oh, I remember the question I had for you. What about like when people have dementia and Alzheimer's and things? Is there a way to try and, I mean, I imagine it's a losing battle on the long enough timeline, but is there a way to try and rewire your brain or replasticize your brain to either protect against those things or fight them as they onset? Yes. So, there is research to show that neuroplasticity is being used as an intervention or therapeutic intervention for dementia. Now, we can't regenerate neurons, not in the majority of the brain anyway. There are two areas where there's speculation that this could happen, but at the moment, the clinical significance is irrelevant, really, because if we

could regenerate neurons, we wouldn't have things like dementia and Alzheimer's in the first place but we can mitigate the current effect or the current status of our brain so we can also increase synapses so let's reverse a little bit you've got a neuron and then on this neuron you've got this axon that comes off and that's where communication happens and then you've got these dendrites which which communicate with other neurons as well. And those can increase in size. So they can branch off and make more and then communicate with other neurons and strengthen pathways. But we can't actually generate the cell of the neuron. So once that dies off, it's gone. That's why neuroplasticity could potentially work in dementia by mitigating the effects and potentially even reinstating some level of activity through neuroplasticity in the sense of creating these new synapses. We can do that through aerobic exercise.

We can do that through learning new things, so skill acquisition. We can do that through staying cognitively engaged through life. That appears to be one of the biggest predeterminants of how we age is if we have a job. And I don't mean a job as in like a physical nine to five, because that would probably be the death of us. But I mean, a purpose, a purpose, something that you can keep yourself engaged with mentally. Yeah. So like, you know, if you love your kids, you raise your kids, you. You've got some hobbies there and all that good stuff. So there you go.

So give us, as we go out, your final thoughts to pitch people on on picking up the book, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. So the book will be available everywhere. It's on Amazon at the moment, but you can preorder it from what's the places that you guys use? Barnes & Noble. Barnes & Noble.

Walmart. Walmart. Yeah. Everywhere. It's available on there pretty much. And it will be available in bookstores as well. But, you know,

I hate to say it, but Amazon's probably the best place to send everyone. And unfortunately that's the way that the cookie has crumbled in this scenario. So Amazon rewire. They kind of own the scenario basically. Give us your dot coms. Where can people find you on the interwebs?

Nicole's Neuroscience on Instagram. Nicole's Neuroscience on TikTok. Or if you type in my name, Nicole Vignola, it will come up. And Nicole's Neuroscience dot com is my website. There you go. Thank you very much, Nicole, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

There you go. And you taught me to breathe, so that's important. Yeah's important yeah use that anywhere i'm gonna use it all the time the breathing yeah i actually really hope you do because you can use it at any point when you get cut off in traffic instead of the middle finger you can just breathe yeah there's gonna be less murdering around here exactly breathing so there you go let's side eyes as well thank you and thanks for tuning in go to goodreads.com for chest christmas linkedin.com for chest christmas christmas one of the tick tockety and all those crazy places on the internet thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe we'll see you next time